krisalis

Today not only marks the end of the wonderful, fabulous 4-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend (boo hoo), but also the end of NaBloPoMo. I didn’t actually manage to post something every single day, but entries were certainly more frequent than they have been around here for a while, and I did enjoy the process of just posting something, anything, to prod me out of my lazy habits of not posting.

I rather enjoy poking through my old archives, rereading tidbits of my own history, reliving tiny snapshots of life gone by, and I think it’s a shame that I don’t find the time/energy/creative enthusiasm to write more often nowadays in order to give future-me further insight into current-me. But the truth is that life evolves, and with every passing year (krisalis has been around since 2001!), I drift further and further away from the series of events and situations that led me to start this weblog in the first place.

When I first began tinkering in the world of weblogs, I was living overseas far from my family, and stuck in an undemanding job that left me with plenty of brain power and energy to throw into storytelling and link-sharing on the interweb after office hours had ended. Now I’m living within a 15min drive from my parent’s house, surrounded by an assortment of sisters, with a husband, a son and a dog. I have a demanding job that I really like, but which leaves me with very little tolerance for further computer-based interaction at the end of the day. The factors that made weblogging so attractive to me in the first place are mostly gone.

Now, that’s not to say I’m about to hang up my templates and stop writing. I still like this medium, and I still have family overseas that can dip in and check up on what’s new around here. But my life has changed and what I write (and don’t write) about reflects that.

So, it’ll be back to my regular unscheduled programming again as of tomorrow. Which most likely means more Alexander pics/videos/stories and some updates on Marathon training progress. See you soon!

Thomas and friends
Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Saturday morning cartoons.

Test
Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Testing from MMS.

Test
Originally uploaded by krisalis.

Test

A-train
Originally uploaded by krisalis.

In the car, tolerating his Mother’s photography attempts with her new
gadget.

I have a cold.

And a hurty mouth from a dentist visit.

But at least I got to sit in front of a lovely fire and watch 2 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy back to back. Perfect trashy tv comfort for an otherwise less-than-spectacular evening.

This weekend has been great. But short! Too short!

Billie and I knocked out our 12 mile run on Saturday morning. After a quick turnaround, Mark, Alexander and I met up with Jeff and went to Waterloo Icehouse for brunch yumminess. Then it was nap time all round for people big and small. After the napski, Mark, A-train and I made the pilgrimage up to Ikea in search of some new furniture for the guest bedroom. Then we went up to Katie and Marc’s for Mangia pizza and college football watching.

Today, I got up with Alexander and we played in the house for a while. Once Mark got up, we all walked Rosie around the neighbourhood in the rain. Then it was time for breakfast, church, home, lunch and nap time. Alexander and I both took lovely long naps while Mark put up a shower curtain. Grocery shopping. Dinner for Alexander. Walk the dog. Bath and bed for A. Dinner for me and Mark. Bit of telly, bit of internet. Bed soon.

Thankfully we’re coming up on Thanksgiving, so it’s going to be a short work week with a lovely four day weekend to follow. I’m sure we’ll find plenty to do to fill it up.

I got my first cell phone in July of 1998 when I moved to Singapore, where we referred to it as a ‘handphone’ (I’ve always wondered about that name – handphone – as opposed to what? A footphone? An earphone? A mouthphone?). My phone was a yellow Ericsson T10. It was a fun little gadget, mainly used to communicate with my family and negotiate and coordinate evening pub-type meet-up arrangements with friends. I only figured out how to send text messages on that phone in early 2000.

My next phone was a company issued Nokia brick that I got in July of 2000. I can’t remember the model number – maybe a 3210? Mark might know. I used that phone until I departed from that job. The phone was functional and reliable, but also big and clumsy.

Next up, I got a silver Nokia 6210, which I got at the beginning of September in 2001. It was slender and silver and oh-so-pretty, and I used that for a couple of years until my SingTel contract was up and I was eligible for a new model.

(I may have swapped out my 6210 with Mark’s 8210 for a couple of months in the interim).

So I got a Nokia 8310, which was a great little phone. It was small and durable, had a great battery life and provided decent radio reception for the bus ride to work. I still have this phone and it still works. I still use it when I go back to Singapore for business – just stick a HiCard in it, so I can have a local phone number.

When we moved to the US, and I got a another Nokia. This time a Nokia 6820 in April of 2004. I used and abused that for a couple of years, before succumbing to gadget lust and getting a gorgeous little white Nokia 6111 whilst on a business trip to Singapore.

The 6111 was a beautiful little phone, but not widely released in the US, presumably because it’s petite size and limited reception capability were not a good fit for the American market. Eventually, I got fed up with the poor reception, particularly since it got zero bars when inside my house, so I stopped using it, opting to trade it in for a generic Cingular offering….

Which brought me…another Nokia – the 6085. Not nearly as cute as the 6111, but a lot more functional. Well, at least until Alexander sent it for a swim in the bath….

Leading AT&T Wireless to send me yet another Nokia – the 6555, at the end of January 2008. The 6555 was….meh….nothing special, with an annoyingly short battery life. In the past month, the phone started randomly switching itself off when I was in the middle of sending text messages, or during a call, and the battery began running really hot and running down even faster than usual. Not good.

I put in a call to my cell phone provider and discovered that my contract was up for renewal, and I was eligible for a new phone….so now I am the owner of a shiny new Blackberry Bold. My first departure from the clutches of Nokia since 2000!

Alexander is now 20 months old. Can you believe it? I just don’t know where the months have gone. My baby is gone! He is all boy these days – an active, grubby, noisy, rough-and-tumble, car and truck and crane and train and plane and boat obsessed BOY.

Alexander is an excellent mimic and can repeat most things we say if he feels like it. He is also a complete sponge when it comes to soaking up information from the world around him. It’s becoming hard to keep up with his latest developments because it seems like he’s learning new things each and every day. We’ve had to stop listening to inappropriate CDs when he’s with us in the car for fear he’ll start spouting the lyrics (bye bye “Way To Normal”).

He surprised us all a couple of Saturdays ago when we were downtown. He kept pointing at the sky and shouting “Canky! Canky!” over and over again. It took us a while to figure out that he was pointing at the cranes, and calling them Cranky. As in Cranky the Crane from Thomas the Tank Engine. We don’t even have that DVD at our home, it’s only at my parent’s house, so he has probably only seen the DVD of Cranky a handful of times, but it clearly made quite an impression.

Other current obsessions include: balloons (loon! loon!), wagons (wagon!), naming every vehicle that passes on the street (car, truck, bike) followed by an appropriate sound effect (brrrroom, brrrom, peep-peep! etc), chasing Rosie around the house and/or garden shouting Ohhh-deee, Ohhh-deee, or bad-dog (baa-doe) or good-girl (gooo-gir) over and over, asking for ice-cream/yogurt after his meal (he calls both “cream”, which he pronounces as ‘keem’), identifying objects as ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ (lights are hot, the oven is hot, the taps are hot, ice-cream is cold etc), pretending to go to sleep (night night) on the sofa/floor/dog’s bed, getting my Dad to switch on the television for him by fetching the remote and giving it to him (this doesn’t work as well on my Mum, and rarely works at all on me or Mark, so he’s mostly stopped trying with us for the time being).

His favourite books at the moment are “The Little Engine That Could” and his children’s Bible (or Bibl as we call it, since it has a mis-print on the spine that reads, well, Bibl). I’ve been enjoying reading to him from his Bibl, as it makes light work of the Old Testament (we’re already up to Ruth). And it has cool pictures.

Alexander also seems to be getting more cuddly than before. He seeks out little hugs here and there, particularly first thing in the morning and right before he goes to bed, or if he takes a particularly bad tumble. If I’m lucky, he’ll run to me and give me a hug when I get home from work, but only if he’s not engrossed in something more interesting – playing with a tennis ball, chasing Rosie around the lawn, clambering around in my parents parked car. It’s not that he’s not affectionate, more that he’s just always busy doing something, and he doesn’t want to stop to snuggle. I can respect that.

Alexander talks a lot these days. We’re starting to be able to understand more of what he’s saying too. Although still not everything.

This video was taken during his bath this evening, and I hereby present it to you for your viewing pleasure in lieu of content that would require me to actually write anything. His 20 month update is hopefully coming soon.