Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

It's been a busy week at work. We're coming out of beta use this week for our product, so there was lots of to-dos on my agenda every day. You would think we wouldn't be adding/changing functionality heavily right before going into general use...but we are. It has kept me busy in the evenings when Wayne would head off to campus to try and make a little progress on his projects.

We took a much needed break twice during the week. The first was for National Cheesecake day on Wednesday. We made a chocolate cheesecake and enticed Karl and Angela and Thomas to come over during the lunch hour. We decided we should have planned time for naps, and that we should play hookey like that in the middle of the day every day.  read more »

It was our anniversary on Saturday. Our fifth.

In the morning, we drove up to Berkeley so I coud talk strategy with a colleague for my thesis projects. Paela and Rebecca came along for moral support -- and to get out of the house, I suppose. On our way back, we stopped at the mall to look for a video game (which we didn't find) and get pedicures. Paela was well-natured throughout the pampering process and I was just scared, but for my first pedicure, it was fun.  read more »

I'm impressed we got it all (mostly) done. In the same week, I had my entire family visiting, our team at work released the project we've been working on since January to beta testers, and we moved to a neighboring town. Not a small amount of stress, and at least some fun.

Paela's early-to-bed mentality made family togetherness a trick to figure out. We left earlier several nights, but later than Paela would have liked, just to have Paela fall asleep in the car after we'd driven 3-4 blocks. We moved bath time to the morning since she wasn't home for any sort of routine for days. And several nights Wayne was kind enough to hang out alone with the sleeping baby and our kitty for company while I went to hang out with the rest of my family.  read more »

Paela got stuck behind the toilet.  read more »

Well we got approved for the apartment we applied for. Part of me wonders if this is a good choice, to move when we could probably stay here for about the same in rent. The other part sees the gas prices rising to 4.70 here in CA and thinks living closer to school/work is a very good idea.  read more »

This week marked Rebecca's first full week back at work, without unpaid family leave, because her boss won't let her work from home more than just a little bit of the morning.

After we went apartment shopping last week, we placed in a bid for an apartment and now we've been waiting all week for the manager to look over our application and give us approval. We don't know whether or not we'll be moving in a few weeks, which doesn't help us much. [apparently the manager we really need took the week off because she got married. Hopefully she'll get back soon and isn't overwhelmed trying to catch up.]

Rebecca worked all day long and all evening long after Paela went to sleep. Her team at work has a project due. Last week. So they're behind.  read more »

Well happy gummy bears day to you all. Er, happy father's day. We celebrated Wayne's first official father's day with literally pounds of gummy bears. Seriously. We saw that Amazon sells 5 pound bags of gummy bears (Wayne's favorite brand, Haribo, even), and we couldn't resist.  read more »

The ZERO1 SJ festival is over. There were some really great things and there were some things that I'm going to do everything I can to get Joel Slayton to recognize needs to be fixed for 2010. As bienniale festivals go, it was a success, and I'm not just saying that because I was heavily invested in this offering.  read more »

Now that Wayne is done with school, he is jumping head-first into quite a few projects. Some of his projects are ones involving coding, so I've been able to help off and on during my days off work. It's fun to have him around, and Paela and I try not to distract him too much from working.  read more »

The weather cooled down. Last week it was in the upper 90s and low 100s, this week it was in the low 70s and upper 60s. Big changes.

Because this was the first week after school, I had collaborated on a couple dinners with colleages. One, Tuesday night, went better than planned and we even had gorillas show up, dancing for us. No professor at BYU ever got in a gorilla suit to dance for me.

Paela eats tofu and plums, not to mention a bunch of other foods. She's still a fruit loving child, gobbling up applesauce like it was... well, you get the picture. She also has learned to enjoy time in the kitchen, "helping" in any way she can.  read more »