It's been a quiet coupla months in Lake Wobegone....

So we've quickly adjusted to many things ....

• The shock of being not just a homeowner, but a homeowner of a vintage (ca. 1925) home. In the first month-and-a-half, we had electrical and plumbing issues, at least partially related to the age of our home. "Well," our real estate agent said, "that's why I always say to put an extra 2% of your purchase price aside for situations just like this." Laura and I looked at each other and then simultaneously said to him: "You never told us that."
  
  
• The constant upstream battle against the "customer service" branches of just about every utility in the world. I have thought very seriously of starting a separate blog just for my remarkable travails with SBC, Comcast, AT&T Wireless, GE Medical Systems, ADT Security, Allstate Insurance, ComEd, NiCor, and I'm sure others that I'm way too exhausted/angry to think of at the moment. Then I realized that I'm barely keeping this blog alive, and the last thing I need is to start another blog I never write in.
  
  
• The reality that we're really going to be parents again. Yes, Laura is 22 weeks along. For those of you not into math, that would be a due date of around January 11. Every once in awhile, we look at each other at around 9 p.m., after we've put Piper down and we're trying to figure out if we can stay awake long enough to go water the yard in the dark or work on ridding the paper pile-up on our dining room table ... and we can't believe we're going to do this again. Early on, we asked Piper if she would rather have a baby brother or a baby sister. Piper was very clear every time we asked: "A baby sister." I thought it best that we find out the gender of the baby so that she would have plenty of time to adjust, lest she be getting a brother instead. But once again, Her Royal Highness will be getting just what she wants.
  
  
• The idea that summer is coming to a close ... and yet Chicago never really had it. It seems like all through July and August, we were setting records for new LOW temperatures. We had the occasional spate of warm days, but it was kind of a drag of a summer overall. I think Piper's three-day-a-week babysitter, Marta, has decided that this is the way Chicago is every year. She's moving back to Slovakia. And football's already here! I can't believe it. And speaking of sports ....
  
  
• The slow realization that the Cubs are not the team everyone said they would be. Hell, there are still baseball analysts that say the Cubs are the team to beat if they make it to the post-season. People, they've had 130+ games to prove that they're the team to beat, and they've been beat pretty well by just about everybody. What makes you think that they're going to make it past the first set of playoffs, if they get that far? I'm holding out for a miracle and a good, long winnning streak here in the waning days of the season, but the words "Wait 'til next year" are slowly coming into better and better focus.

I miss you all, and I'm looking forward to more writing here soon.