Ramblings

Boy this blog has been dull lately.  I just spent a bunch of time reading our posts from last year (If I'm going to stay home from my job mid-week there is no sense in diving into projects and making it feel like work) and things sure did sound more exciting a year ago.  Everyone seems to think life should be exciting with a baby on the way, and in a big-picture kind of way it is.  The day to day reality is that today really isn't much different from yesterday, which is similar to the day before, etc.  Even the terrifying prospect of becoming a parent fades with time.  Mid-September I will look back on this post and my pining for excitement and will laugh, probably uncontrollably, curled up in a ball on the floor... but I digress.

The truth is life has been pretty normal lately, with both of us working, going out to eat on occasion, watching TV in the evenings, normal people stuff.  Entertainment consists of counting the eagles we can see around us in the marina (so far 18 at one time is our record), or checking the nearby mountains to see if the snow level dropped back to sea level overnight.

Entertainment inside the boat is never far away.  Our mentally unbalanced cat has decided she will adopt a sleeping schedule based on daylight hours, meaning she wakes us just after 4 am each morning to let us know it's getting light outside, and refuses to follow us to bed before 10 pm.  Adorable little critter.

Another fun activity that takes a lot of our time is thinking about baby names.  Half our list got thrown out when we found out we are having a girl, but narrowing it down to female names still leaves quite a few choices.  So far we are finding it easier to rule out names than to add them to the list of possibles.  After getting a dozen or so names on the list, a friend sent us a link to the most common girls names from the past several years.  Turns out we are not as original as we thought, four of our possible names are on the top ten lists.  Probably not a big deal, as I had the 25th most popular name the year I was born, and Nicole was ranked 15th.  Still, we all want our kids to be special (in the good way, not like our kitty is "special") and what better way to start that off than by giving them a one-of-a-kind name, although we need to approach that with caution as well.  Wonky Mae Filipek would certainly be original, and wouldn't require much creativity from the other kids to make fun of her name, yet....  Truly random ways of coming up with names, like tossing a hand full of scrabble pieces on the table, don't seem to yield useful suggestions either, unless you want to name your kid Iehkdbf.  Possibly the most fun, and equally useless, are the numerous random name generators on the internet, giving me options like: Dollie Kampen Filipek, Elinor Kittleson Filipek, Harriett Plemmons Filipek, and my favorite so far, Nannie Weatherholtz Filipek.  I'm pretty sure the middle names were meant to be last names but it really doesn't matter.

So, although life here maybe isn't exciting in a "hold my beer and watch this" kind of way, it's not exactly boring either.

So long from Greg, Nicole, Hope, and "she who shall remain nameless" (for now).