I’ve “decided” that I simply cannot read The Economist from cover-to-cover. While I’m interested in doing so, I cannot keep up with the volume of material and haven’t been willing to dedicate the time. I still enjoy the magazine and will continue to skim as well as keep them for later reference.

I continue to find myself spending a too much time working; even though I’ve worked hard to keep my physical presence at work down to 40-50 hours a week, I find myself thinking about work, using my crackberry, emailing from my home PC or firing up my corporate laptop.

Eriko and I witnessed Jerry take several steps on his own today.

I came home early from work and caught Eriko and Jerry in time before they headed to the QA community center for some time in the playroom. I joined them and it was a lot of fun. Jerry is loads of fun to be around. He is demanding - if I don’t pay attention to him he’ll come up and bite my leg!

Jerry said his first word - kinda. Almost. Eriko says it doesn’t count if he doesn’t know what he’s saying. In addition, it probably doesn’t count if it one can only recognize it as a word because they heard what I said first. Even then, “da” “su” sounds a lot like “dishes” if “dishes” is what you want to hear. =)

We have this picture book of zoo animals that Jerry likes. With each animal, I like to make a sound. For example, a cow goes “moo” (actually, cows aren’t in the book, but you get the point). Lately Jerry has been mimicking my lion roar. Today Eriko informed me (and I subsequently observed several times) that if I say “lion”, Jerry will “roar”.

I just rebooted spike and belle for the first time in 435 days. I upgraded the kernel and operating system.

Here’s hoping for another 435 day run…

This is the classic tale of a totalitarian regime, taken to the utmost extreme. At times it was hard to get through, but strangely fascinating.

Today, Jerry turned 11 months old. Check out his exciting eleventh month!