What an unusually long time since my last post...
Well, it's 4 in the morning, and I'm an insomniac tonight, so this is the perfect time to do something useful and post.
Things have been really busy for us here in Vernal. I guess it doesn't slow things down that we head to SLC every few weeks. That totally eliminates weekends for us, which should be our recoup time between very busy weeks.
For those few of you who we haven't told directly, Ilene and I are pretty much settled on a name for Bean. We're going to go with Tobias Gregory Platt. We'll call him Toby. That is, if we ever stop just calling him Bean, Beanie Baby, and the like. We like Toby because it's a name with which everyone is familiar but which isn't so common that there will be more than one in his school classes. I feel as though a child who has the same name as several other children around him ends up feeling indistinct. Like Dono...so many Mikes around that it's hard to identify one from the other. So, since I've never really known anyone named Toby, I figure he should have the name pretty much to himself.
Work is going pretty well. I'm getting close to being caught up with everything I need to know, and I'm starting to work on projects that need to be done (rather than working on things to prepare me to do things). I have to say, though, that I can't be very effective at my job if the planning commission doesn't listen to me. I had my first meeting where I was really in charge of planning and zoning last week. We had an issue come up where a decision had to be made which had actually already been made (and made correctly), but where the Mayor wanted a change. I completely understand why the Mayor wanted the change, but I really think it was short-sighted, or at least there was a lack of recognition of things which are already happening in the area. Anyway, I gave my reasons to the commission for not making the change but they went with the change anyway, and then 2 days later the council enacted it, as well. It's one of those things where it's not that big a deal now, but in a few short years (I'm guessing no more than 5) this is going to cause a big headache for someone (probably me). Essentially, you can't stop a road from being a collector road by calling it by some other name, you can only do it by not allowing development which will add lots of traffic to that road. But development was not stopped, and won't be stopped, but the road was reclassified.
I guess that's enough complaining about things which most of you really don't care about.
Our next Doctor's appointment is for later this morning. I anticipate things will go fairly well this time. We're kinda in that doldrums part of the pregnancy. The initial excitement is over. We've done the major preparation stuff. The birth is still months away, and right now it's just a matter of taking prenatal vitamins and sleeping on a side.
Sometimes I feel like I used to be a lot more interesting. These days half the things I talk about are baby-related and the other half are work-related. What ever happened to conversations about physics and theology and photography and geography? I guess that's life...finding joy in the daily grind. Still, I need to make time for some not-so-immediate topics. At least I still have things like dance (so you think you can) to bring me out of the melodramatic. And thank goodness for good books! Not that feeling the baby kick isn't fun...but it's not exactly mentally challenging. In a few months I'll probably look back on this time (the moments where I wasn't always doing something baby care-related) as the good times. But then, that's the nature of life, too, I suppose.
As you can probably tell, I have a lot of time at my disposal. :) I don't have a job (and I won't be getting one, if we can help it) so I spend my days doing chores, making lunches and dinners for me and Greg, exercising, running errands, paying bills....... and pursuing my hobbies.
Here is our living room/office area. A bit small, but it works.
A typical kitchen 
This is a part of the upstairs hallway. If you check out my earlier blog, you'll see the nursery that we've turned the other bedroom into. I won't show pictures of the bathrooms. They aren't anything special.
And here is the back of the place. 
