Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Rebecca's hands fall asleep in the middle of the night. Normally, sleeping would be a good thing, but this is referring to the "pins and needles" sensation of a loss of blood flow to an appendage. We were a bit concerned about this happening to both hands (since sleeping on her side she could only possibly be laying on one hand at a time), so we called the doctor. The nurse told us that everything was normal and the best thing to do is "to have the baby." It looks like she's just stuck with it. [she said it's not my hands falling asleep actually, but a prelude to carpel tunnel, which is "common" in pregnancy because of increased bodily fluids putting pressure on various things...who knew? -beck] At least we found a fun monkey pillow on clearance that now doubles as a small pillow to keep Rebecca's back supported in the night.

We learned that the Discovery Channel Store is going out of business and shutting down all their physical stores in replacement of only doing online business. The clearance prices range in the 40%-60% off, so we decided Monday evening to stroll through the store and see if there was anything worth considering. And there wasn't. In fact, it was all cheap junk [or things that rely on batteries...we don't like battery-operated things]. No wonder we haven't ever bought anything from that store. Afterwards, we came home and made a second batch of jam, this time playing with the recipe to make a fruity mix of blackberries with a primary strawberry base. It turned out delicious and best of all we were able to do it in record time and without anyone getting bit by bears.

Work for both of us was straightforward this week. I spent all of Wednesday on the floor and with a soldering iron readjusting all the nodes on my light bot. Thomas realized I had read the schematics backwards, which wasn't making the right kind of resistance for the processor chip and the potentiometer. Finally, I have a bot which chases light and performs very erratic behavior, yet because of weight ratios being unevenly distributed to the different axles and the motors running at different torque, I still have problems with efficiency.

Friday morning, we got a phone call at 6am. I didn't answer. It was too early and I was tired. But the phone rang again and again, so I answered. My worried mother had heard (from Camilla I might add) there was an earthquake in Oakland that measured 4.2 and was checking up on us. We were fine and hadn't even felt a thing at 4 am when it hit. Later, I checked up to see what the damage was, since we didn't feel a thing. At 4.2 on the Richter scale, and 3.6 miles under Oakland, the earthquake had managed to set off some car alarms and that was about the extent of the damage. We felt nothing. Oakland is too far away.

We've had a few warmer days here and we've spent a few more evenings in the swimming pool. Before we had dinner with Chris and Alyssa on Friday night, we went swimming and then picked up a free baby tub for newborns to 2 years old. We have been trying to get other baby things for free through craigslist and freecycle in the area, but due to the oversaturation of these sites, getting anything is as tough as the lottery.

Saturday morning we went to the temple and took care of some errands along the way. The nearest Wal-Mart to us is halfway to Oakland, and we needed to return something we picked up on our trip a few weeks ago, as well as get some thread for mending jeans. Thread isn't one of the things you can easily get in the bay area. What we also learned is that, a) when the Oakland temple pageant is running the temple is closed, and b) apparently we were fated to not see the pageant this year because everything was already planned for us over top the show dates.

Rebecca heard the funniest comment this week from one of her co-workers. When mentioning that we were going to Oakland to take care of some errands this weekend, she replied that it was a good thing we were getting errands out of the way now because once you have a kid, you can't. So there you have it from someone who had a kid in the past year: you can't run errands anymore because of the kid. They lock you in a house and you can never leave. I'm not sure I understand some people's parenting style.