Friday Four

1. The good news: Our newborn son seems to do well in this baby carrier, provided he is in a reasonably deep sleep when I put him in. The bad news: His sleep cycle is currently inverted, meaning that he is predominately awake at night (and almost continuously during my writing time!) and asleep during the day. He loudly objects to it if he is awake.

As our daughter has transitioned into toddlerhood and, over the past couple of months, sleeping through the night most of the time, I'd managed to forget just how demanding the needs of early infancy are. By contrast, with all the things I was starting to be able to accomplish, it had felt as if I were finally beginning to breathe again.

Once our son establishes a normal circadian rhythm, the carrier will help a lot with keeping up with chores during the transitional time between when I write and when everyone else gets up for the day.

2. If my check of Urban Dictionary this morning is any indication, I may well be the only person who uses the term "terraform" to mean something like, "clean up someone else's unworldly mess". (e.g., "When I started the job, I had to terraform my part of the office off and on during my first week.") This needs to change!

Of course, my normal blogging topics suggest to me another possible slang meaning for the term.

3. If you subscribe to this blog via RSS, remember that Google will kill Google Reader on July 1. John Cook posted about alternatives some time back at The Endeavour (as did a few commenters there). I use Netvibes as my RSS reader. If anyone has an alternative they like, feel free to extol its virtues in the comments. Similarly, if there is one you did not like, you could save fellow readers some time by explaining why you did not like it.

4. Where should I live? That's an important question, and too few professionals seem to give it enough thought. Cost of living is a major concern, but I agree with Louiville resident Ernie Miller that control of one's own time is a greater one. That's one that many people miss.

It's often said that "time is money," but nothing could be more misleading. Time is most definitely not money. Some of us have much more of the latter than others, but everyone has the same 24 hours in their day. Therefore, I value my time, and I protect it. When I do decide to "waste" time, I try very hard to do so on my terms. Here, again, Louisville helps me.

I already mentioned that I crave peace and quiet to recharge. If having that place to recharge meant dealing with an hour-long commute each day, or long drives every time I wanted to do anything even remotely entertaining, I don't think I'd make the trade.

He's right that small, but "respectable" cities such as his offer a great chance to make time and money go as far as possible.

-- CAV