Month of October , 2008
Unemployment is a very common term around here. In the past half year, Rebecca's work has seen occassional layoffs. Then they took the plunge and dropped 20% of their remaining workforce on Wednesday, including Rebecca. With their stock at 3$ a share now, we don't expect the company to last very long -- or at least not without outsourcing almost everything to India. Which is already the direction they've been going.
So, Rebecca is unemployed. After a 700+ point drop on Wall Street, many companies here are jumping ship and eliminating their workforce. We see moving trucks all the time, people are leaving the area like rats in a burning building. On the positive side, Rebecca now has more time to spend with Paela and I can frantically try and get my pre-thesis defense finished in three weeks.
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Submitted by wayne on Sun, 10/05/2008 - 11:41.
The good news is, we're working on a new look for the website. The bad news is, it is still a work in progress. If things look a little goofy, try refreshing the page a few times and see if that makes it look better. If it doesn't, try standing on your head and counting to ten -- maybe things will look better in the morning. They usually do.
Submitted by rebecca on Thu, 10/09/2008 - 08:22.
Perhaps we should talk about all the things we didn't do this week. I didn't go to work. Wayne didn't make it to the free culture conference he wanted to go to on Saturday. We didn't make it to the beach. Paela didn't nap at Church again -- I think she is done with Church naps finally. It's asking a lot for a toddler to sit still long enough to sleep. And toddle she does. read more »
Submitted by rebecca on Sun, 10/12/2008 - 21:11.
A birthday for Paela. She had visits from her cousin Thomas and a friendly squirrel who wanted to come inside. She loved her toys and opened presents all day.
Submitted by wayne on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 13:01.
And a happy birthday to princess Paela, ruler of all at the Madsen household. Our little adventurer was busy with firsts this week.
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Submitted by wayne on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 13:09.
Mostly the week was filled with ATC prep work. There were a few other things throughout the week, but mostly it was last minute touches and setting up the show.
We got the shocking function added in early in the week, and Wayne made sure we bought/rented the equipment we didn't have already (projecter, thing to put the projecter on, thing to put over cables so no one trips, etc). Friday and Saturday were spent setting up in the gallery. It was the first time all the pieces were together at the same time, so of course it took more work than we expected. The good news is, even though we hit quite a few snags, we solved them all relatively quickly.
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Submitted by rebecca on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 14:10.
Paela was a monkey for Halloween. Thomas, her cousin, was a penguin.
Submitted by wayne on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 14:47.
Some of you may know we've been signing for Paela since she was born. We don't know a lot of sign language, but what we had read assured us that babies know even less; that even "baby talk" sign language would be picked up by our child. And so we tried it, signing "milk" and "more" whenever we fed her from newborn age on.
Wayne can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was around 8-9 months that we finally thought she could understand what we were signing to her. We would do the sign while saying the word, so it is hard to know for sure whether it was the vocal or visual cue that clued her in. She started doing the "up" sign around then, when she wanted to be taken out of her high chair after eating. We were excited and were sure more signs would soon follow. We were wrong.
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Submitted by rebecca on Wed, 10/29/2008 - 10:15.
I'm done with pre-thesis, the most important part of my masters degree. Now all I have left is thesis show and a 20 page research thesis paper.
Submitted by wayne on Wed, 10/29/2008 - 13:38.
