Kate tagged me with a meme (how could she?! ;) Ah well, fair enough.

The rules are:

1. Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share seven facts about yourself.
3. Tag seven people at the end of you post, and include links to their blogs.

So, seven facts...

1. If you're ever around me, you'll hear me go on about wanting life to finally calm down. While that's changed a lot since I became a father, that's still a little bit of a lie—I feel too strongly about the things I involve myself in to stop caring and keep my head down—that draws me into chaos like a moth to flame. To paraphrase Chuck Jones, Bugs Bunny is my goal, but Wile E. Coyote is my reality.
2. I'm a huge fan of the sandwich. Not just any sandwich, mind you, but a truly well thought out Sandwich. For example, today's lunch was homemade chipotle-garlic mayo, bacon, and fresh roasted turkey crisped on the pan after the bacon was finished grilled off on fresh local wheat. I'm convinced that the reason the panini took off is that it was the first real sandwich many people have had.
3. I'm generally what political bobbleheads would call a middle-liberal but, in reality, I'm more strongly a social progressive which makes me come off as a little conservative on rare occasions—I often get wary of promoting changes that look like they'll harm large segments of society in the long term.
4. I have an extreme aversion to dealing with fax machines. While most electronic toys bend readily to my will, some embedded evil magic of the fax seems to consistently thwart me. I'm certainly not the only technical type I know that has this problem, but I often wonder what the issue is.
5. I was born to a Catholic family but didn't identify with it until my late 20s. During my teens and early 20's I looked at many religions (and the non-religions as well). In the end, I found that the Catholic church, particularly as it is experienced by the Franciscans was a better fit for me than I had thought when I was younger
6. I've made it through umpteen years of education and written a book without being able to completely overcome the “its/it’s” issue. It's not that I don't know the rule, I just have to stop and think about it. If I do it at the time, I often have the flow of my writing break, so I've learned to to a global search on " it[']?s " to check everything before my writing goes out.
7. If you've followed the blog, you've probably noticed that I have a lot of interests, like film, textile art, psychology, technology, fashion, cooking, etc. While I'd love to believe this makes me a bit “renaissance&rdquo, odds are much greater that I'm just an over-amped information packrat ;)

So much for me, I'm tagging these seven:

1. Jason
2. Peter
3. Blaine
4. Craig
5. Ant
6. Dan B
7. Dan T

Last tuesday, on the way home from work, my Elantra was struck at by a minivan going somewhere between 35 and 40 mph. The car was spun 180° and the airbags deployed—an experience I can only describe as being like losing a pillow fight with godzilla. Having heard too many bad stories about injuries from getting up too quickly from an accident like this, I struggled my phone out of my pocket and called for help. The Lincoln Fire Dept. managed to get me out of the car onto a board and haul me in to a closer look, where they found... bruises and scrapes.

I'm feeling extraordinarily lucky to have come out of this so well, considering what I saw of (the remnants of) the car the next morning. I'm also thanking God that I didn't have a passenger with me. The frame held as well as it could have for this kind of collision, but it still would not have been a good place to be.

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It's been an amazing year for me. At work, I've cleared out a wide variety of standing issues that will make us much more able to respond to the needs of our partners quickly, and helped get some projects and contracts moving in a way that keeps us doing interesting work. In my graduate program, I've finally gotten into a groove on my thesis and think that I'll end up with an interesting experiment to write about and discuss this coming year. Most obviously, I've become published my first book which, thus far has been very well received by reviewers.

That's only one half of my life though. I've also bounced ideas back and forth with Kate for her masters project, which should be really interesting to watch evolve in the coming months. We're also expecting another addition to our family. While I'm not confident in my ability to manage two little ones at once, I've also finally gotten into the groove of fatherhood a little bit and am looking forward to starting it all over again :) With everything that's happened this year, the two highlights that I'm proudest of are two evenings with Aidan.

Aidan has a habit, when he focuses on learning something, of getting absorbed totally. Back before his first birthday in February, he decided that he was going to walk. That weekend, he just would not sleep—he'd nap for a little while then be up again, stumble/cruise/walking until he got it down. Fast forward to this month, it's happening again, this time with letters. He reads letters to us until he can barely keep his eyes open, drop for a nap, then wake up shortly after to do it all over again. It makes for an exhausting evening, but it also makes me happy to be with him, doing something that he's so interested in doing.

At the end of the day, the book and projects and software are great, and I've had a blast with all of them, but this year has given me some of the happiest moments in my life, staying up late and me trying to help him walk and read letters and him helping me remember why I started to love experimenting and learning in the first place.

Kate is back online now with a great new redesign and for StudioAzure. She also migrated to CommonPlace, so she has a blog now and hopefully will keep it up to date better than I do ;)

I’ve been writing more than I ever have in my life—Just not here ;) Between working on a host of projects and contracts at work, my masters program, and a couple of other things I’ll mention soon, I’ve been at the point where when I’m not working, writing or spending time with Kate and Aidan, I don’t feel like coming here to write some more ;) I’m not going to promise to be more consistent on updating this site anymore. If something happens, you’ll see it here. If not, you wont. Sound good?

I know, I know... Wait 10 weeks for 20 articles, I should just put out a newsletter or a long update. The reason for the individual articles is that I use this space to keep track of dates for myself as well. Either way, I’ll try to do better with the updates from now on.

Seriously.

No. Really.

I like the crib that we chose. Not just because it provides storage and changing close by or because it doesn't cost a small fortune, but because, while I have assembled many many pieces of furniture, this one had by far the best instructions and pieces that I've ever encountered. All of the parts were clearly labeled and separated into pods for each part of the product. Additionally, the actual small tools necessary were included in each pod (if two pods needed a screwdriver, each pod had a screwdriver). Absolutely fantastic.

I thought that these might be a pretty good idea for the outlets in the nursery that need to have things plugged into them. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to work very well at all. I found that unless you tighten the plate down really hard, there is a gap between the plate and the wall that concerned me. When I did tighten it up, it had the problem that the plugs would stick open, rendering the plate entirely useless. Additionally, several of the plugs that I tried didn’t seat firmly, which means that there were exposed prongs. These are gone now and I've put in outlet plates that have a spring-slide cover. They don't seem like they need as much work to open, but at least they work.

After the chaos of previous months, we have had a chance to settle down and enjoy the Advent season. It's a very different feeling to go through this season of anticipation for the birth of the Christ child while anticipating the birth of our own. Kate and I hope that all of you are able to celebrate the season with friends and family. Merry Christmas!

I tend to agree with Mike that Christmas has become far far to commercialised and hope that we can keep that from being a dominant factor with our son. One of the things that I'd like to add to the conversation, however, is that I consider handmade gifts to be a different thing entirely. Unfortunately, much of the world doesn't seem to understand this idea, but when I give or receive something handmade, especially something handmade for the person it's given to, there's a special feeling of really giving of oneself or having the blessing of being the recipient of such. Whether it be something quilted or knitted (as was the case with me for a few people this winter), worked from clay, wood, words, music, or food, these gifts help to build and reinforce special bonds that we should be hesitant to allow the commercial hierarchy to take away.

I know that not everyone has a holiday today but, for those who do, I hope that you're able to spend the day with important friends and family in your lives. Even if you're not, this is still a valuable time to stop and reflect on our lives and what we have been given. For us, this is certainly a big year for thanks. While there have definitely been some very low points in the year, we come into the holidays with a few new family members from marriage and birth, a new cousin who has bounced back from a premature birth, my father recovering successfully from his injuries and a complete reversal of fortune for our son, who should be joining us as a completely normal healthy newborn in February. In the daily picture of deadlines and jobs and things to do; In a world of suffering and despair and bad news; Even in a year where we have lost friends and family; we must remain mindful that it is people in our lives—even those who we have lost—who matter most and that every day we have with them is something to be thankful for. Take care, be safe, and have a great Thanksgiving wherever you might be.

--Jeremy and Kate

I've had some time off, so I finally got around to bringing this site back up to speed. After a long search for new software, I finally decided to create a custom solution that I'm calling CommonPlace. This is a Rails application named after commonplace books, which I was first introduced to via Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. If you've been to the old version of the site, you'll notice some content that wasn't there. I've been maintaining a “shadow” blog during the past months and decided to import those posts along with the archives from the old Semeiotike. Among other issues, this is why the dates on posts before this point look mostly contrived.

Back in July, Warren spent a couple of weeks in Japan, which is a trip that I’d love to make at some point. He also put up pictures and a travelog.

This spring I was in a seminar class with Jim Sorrell. He's a clinical psychologist with the University of Nebraska Medical Center, but we were in a class discussing adolescent development and constructivism. Jim also does a local radio show called Sunday Night Shrink Rap that acts as outreach to young people to talk about mental health in an open non-judgemental way.

I found this little guy with my mower. Fortunately, I was quick to stop and, after the shock wore off, he ran off with all four lucky feet and joined the other rabbits in the neighborhood.