Reading, Writing and Running

Man, it's been busy since I started at OpenDNS. I've been down to San Francisco twice (once when I was hired, and again for a planning meeting w/the rest of my team), I've been writing a post for the company blog (coming RSN), and I've been leading a team of bloggers for the USENIX blog (along with the excellent @beerops, @noahm (who had to bow out after one article, sadly, but hey, guy's probably a father already!) and @markllama). The kids now know to say to me, "Daddy, you've got blogging to do!" :-) It's been a lot, and I'll be glad when the conference is over and I can get back to slacking.

The last week or so I've been reading to the kids at night. That's not a new thing -- we did this since they were infants -- but I sort of changed it up a little. Most of the time they pick the books, but I was getting tired of Garfield and one night I announced I was going to read part of "The Wizard of Oz" before we got to their choices. They've displayed occasional interest in longer books (like the time I had to read a bit from "The Lord of the Rings" for a few days), but this seems different: I was asked to keep going. We're up to chapter 7 now, and Eli in particular seems to like it. We'll sit downstairs; I'll sit on the couch, and he'll stretch out in the recliner. "Ah," he says, "it's so relaxing to sit here and have you read to me."

Arlo, meanwhile, is taking to drawing. He's practicing his faces, which are noticeably different from his usual style: wide eyes and big open mouths, usually with "AAAAAAAAHH!" coming out of them. It's all fine, really. :-) He's also written a couple of comic books, including one about Godzilla terrorizing people in their apartments that, sadly, he hasn't finished.

And Clara is, on Saturday, going to run her first half-marathon. She's been training for this through the summer, and can now run more than two hours straight. This is awesome. We'll be out there cheering for her, but she isn't promising to share the beer she gets for completing the race. That's fair.

Finally, a miracle occurred yesterday: in spite of rain and winds and I don't know what-all, the clouds cleared for 15 minutes in the afternoon, and we were all able to see the partial eclipse of the sun. AR 2192 was clearly visible, and it was incredibly cool to see the moon (partly) covering the sun.

Concluding paragraphs are for the weak.