Jonathan continues to bless our life everyday as does Hannah. Hannah loves her little brother and I’m sure she will have no problem mothering him for the rest of his life. She loves to give him hugs and kisses. Today she kept wiping the drool off his chin. Jonathan continues to grow and look so cute with his double chin. I wait everyday for that first real giggle. I think I heard one the other night but it may have been a dream.

Hyrum is out of town again this week but happily for me this his last trip for the semester, at least work related travel. He and Ian are hatching a trip for over Christmas break, we’ll see what happens with that. I sure miss him when he’s gone and so does Hannah. Today she heard the wind rustling leaves outside our door and asked if it was daddy. I said no and she followed up with Grandpa. She was pretty disappointed that neither Daddy nor Grandpa was going to walk in our door.

We’ve seen the Wrights for the last two weekends and she loves seeing them. We are glad they live close enough to see pretty often. We wish we could see my parents more often though. We’re feeling pretty lucky for having seen them twice this year. Family is a wonderful blessing. We’re so lucky to be part of two big wonderful families. We just wish we could all live a little closer together. I have siblings in Utah, Idaho, and Colorado with my parents in New York and Hyrum’s parents are in Texas with siblings in Texas and Utah.

I’m really looking forward to the holiday season. I love the smells, the music and just the general feelings. I love shopping for Christmas presents and planning my goodies for the holiday. I bought fabric the other day to make a tree skirt. I am really excited. I love creating things whether it’s crafts, dresses for Hannah, food or something else. I feel intelligent when I figure out how to make a pattern for the project I have in mind. These days, an opportunity to use my brain is greatly appreciated. I always hated math in school but I have to admit that I use it a lot when I am making a pattern. I never thought I’d say that.

We’re doing well just trying to make it one day at a time. We are loving life and dealing with all the excitement and the daily happenings that remind us we’re alive and really blessed. I’m glad that my problems are potty training our toddler and keeping our infant happy. Those things really are pretty simple compared to things other people have to deal with. I’m grateful for my husband. I have two beautiful children and the opportunity to care for them and love them is such a blessing. God has blessed us and for that I am grateful.

It’s the first high school football game I’ve been to since being in high school myself, and I’d almost forgotten what high school football in Texas is like. The football wasn’t particularly stellar, but the environment can’t be beat. Even the little kids enjoyed it, though I think they were ready to leave after we saw the band at half-time. Seeing the 500+ member marching band perform was amazing. It was also a new experience, since I’ve always been in the band, not watching it.

Allen ended up winning the game by 3 points, and will mostly likely go the playoffs, though based upon what I saw last night, I’m not very confident in their chances. Still, for a few hours, it was good to be an Allen Eagle again.

The appendix in the human body is similar. It’s little appendage connected to the large intestine near the it’s junction with the small intestine. Nobody is really quite sure what this finger-sized organ does, though recent studies suggest that it keeps a “backup copy” of the bacteria which as needed for proper gastrointestinal function. Because of humans’ extensive social interaction these days, we can usually get new flora from other people if we need it, so the appendix is really a bit redundant, though it usually gives people no trouble, myself included.

Until today.

I woke early this morning to a dull pain in my gut, and could not get back to sleep. After a couple of hours, I called the nurse helpline at the student health center, and was referred to the urgent care clinic which opened at 8am. I also called a couple brethren from Church to bless me, which turned out to be a wise idea. After poking and prodding at the urgent care, they referred me to the hospital with possible appendicitis. By this point the pain was starting to localize, and it was also a bit intense at times.

After meeting the surgeon, who poked and prodded even more, we decided to proceed with a laproscopic appendectomy. It took a bunch of waiting around, but eventually an operating room opened up, and the surgeon was able to remove my appendix. Things are settling down now, and I’m recovering, but it’s been a long day with lots of poking and prodding. Heather has been a great support, as always, I think I’ll be able to go home tomorrow. If nothing else, this has sure helped cure my jet lag from last week’s trip to Germany!

And now I don’t have to feel so guilty about not reading appendices in the future.

Some highlights:

• Discussion about the upcoming 1.6 release.
• Preview of the new working copy library.
• Talk about the tree conflicts work, for 1.6 and beyond.
• Much hacking on file system improvements for 1.6. (More in a separate post.)
• And much more!

One of the coolest parts of the Summit for me was a off-hand conversation between Mike Pilato and I about how to fix some storage inefficiencies in our current FSFS backend. Over the course of the last few days, I’ve been hacking on the code, while Mike has been finishing up work on the fs-rep-sharing branch. Hopefully both improvements will make it into Subversion 1.6. The synergy of getting a bunch of developers in the same room has been amazing.

In some ways, it’s pretty surreal to be at a conference dedicated to an open source project that I work on largely in my spare time. During the Subversion Roundtable held on the eve of the conference, we got some good feedback from current users, and people that are still waiting on features to do large-scale rollouts. All-in-all, it’s good to see how people are actually using Subversion; I spent a lot of time focusing on minute details of the project, and taking a step back every once in a while is useful.

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten the chance to see as much of Munich as I had originally planned, but I did get to see a few things during my wandering on Monday. Definitely a cool town, and one I’d like to visit again.

As somebody who attempts to know a little bit about the inner workings of the economy, I’ve been following the roller coaster ride of the last year with some interest. I’m fairly insulated from it all as a grad student—there’s not much difference between being poor because you’re in grad school and being poor because you just got laid off—but it has been interesting to watch, especially people losing their heads over problems which will just sort themselves out in the long run. As a society, we’ve become greedy and impatient, and that’s the root of the problem, bad mortgages aside.

The vogue thing to do in political circles these days seems to be promising relief for “Main Street” as well as Wall Street. And usually when politicians presidential candidates make those promises, they tend to focus on people who are in the midst of losing their homes. “These are good people,” we hear, “who just can’t afford to make the payments anymore.” While I can’t vouch for the character of the individuals involved, I can sympathize with not having enough money to buy something I want. When that happens, though, I don’t run to the bank (or the government!) and ask for money. Instead, I go without.

The relief being promised to delinquent home owners varies, but it usually involves having the taxpayers buy the mortgage, and then renegotiate the terms taking into account the decreased value of the home. There are a number of problems with schemes like this, but the question I haven’t yet heard addressed is this: What happens with the homeowner sells the home in a few years?

Only two people should care what the “value” of a home is: a potential buyer, and the county tax assessor. The “value” of a home is only what somebody else is willing to buy it for, and that only happens when the owner looks to sell. The fact that somebody may be “underwater” in their mortgage isn’t worth a hill of beans, unless they try to sell the home. The flaw in the proposed rescue plans is that they look at home values right now in a depressed market. What happens when the government writes down the values of these homes, renegotiates the mortgage, and then the homeowner sells for a nice profit down the line? He gets a nice chunk of change, but the taxpayers end up footing the bill.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of helping the innocent victims, but I think they number far fewer than we think. Instead of decreasing the mortgage amount, why don’t we just subsidize the loss somebody takes when he sells his home? It wouldn’t “bail out” people who can’t make their current payments, but it would help them—by forcing them to either live within their means or find a way to make that payment. It may be tough love, but hopefully this approach will introduce some accountability back into the system.

In either case, though, I’m not too worried about a Main Street rescue happening: it’s just a campaign promise, after all.

I’ve also purchased the necessary items for Halloween costumes. Hannah is going to be a princess once I alter a dress I made for her last year for her birthday. It still doesn’t fit so I decided to shrink it so she can wear it. And a pumpkin costume for the baby. With all of these projects finished I’m glad to take a little time off doing too much and just reading a book or two before I jump into more.

Since writing the above I have finished a biography on Agatha Christie, one of my favorite detective story writers and started work on the Halloween costumes. And . . . Hyrum is home!! So I get to work on what I can while we hope the baby comes sooner rather than later.

With high gas prices, and especially lacking a car this summer, I’ve discovered something new: public transportation. Growing up, “public transportation” meant the school bus, a slow, smelly contraption driven by a grumpy driver, and filled with rowdy kids, none of which were friendly to me. Needless to say, this harrowing experience poisoned my impression of public transportation for many years. In fact, my first practical use of a bicycle was commuting to school as an alternative to the bus.

Even after moving to Austin and using the university-provided shuttle system to get to school, I was still pretty wary of using “normal” public transportation. Few routes are useful to me, and the times that I have managed to ride the city bus, the experience pretty much paralleled my school bus nightmares of years ago. I’ve learned that public transportation in Austin (and other cities in Texas) consists of an underfunded, poorly-planned system that attracts the more uncouth elements of society. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but it does tend to scare away those of us who would otherwise use the system more often.

But, spending the summer in the Bay Area (and during my trip to Portland for OSCON), I’ve learned to love a well-planned public transportation system. Using buses, trains, light rail or my bike, I’ve been able to get just about everywhere I’ve wanted to, from airports to sports stadia to church or just sightseeing. It’s been great, and has really opened my eyes to how useful a well-implemented public transportation system can be. It’s opened my eyes to what public transportation could be (and I hear things across the pond are even better!)

Maybe I should start planning highpointing trips around public transportation.

This scripture has taken on new meaning in the last couple of days. There is obvious spiritual context but I have come to appreciate a physical application. I’ve realized just how much I try to do this with Hannah on a regular and daily basis with something as simple as saying, “Please,” or “Peeees” as it comes out of Hannah’s mouth. It also includes letting her help me make dinner and washing dishes, even if it means pineapple juice or water everywhere.

Sometimes I question my ability to deal with such messes patiently but I have learned their value. So, tonight we repeated the process. As I watch and think about this new ritual, I have thought about the many “things” Hannah may become. I am happy to say that at least, provided things continue as they are now, she will grow up to be a responsible young woman, and one who will make a good wife and mother as she learns these little skills from me now. I’m grateful for my own mother’s help in teaching me these same things. Besides, what better way for us to hang out and become better friends than by mixing up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

So I will continue our forays into the world of domestic competence and someday maybe some one besides myself will clean the bathroom.

Later, before going out to dinner, we opened presents from Grandma and Grandpa Hollingshead and the card that had come in the mail. Hannah just loved opening all of these things. Today she though she got to open everything that was in the mailbox. We had dinner at Applebee’s and then we came home to watch a movie together. The choice was “Chicken Run.” Hannah had a great time, especially since she got to stay up two hours past her bedtime, well probably closer to three and a half by the time she finally went to sleep. The day was apparently so great that she was full of energy and was still making noises when I finally fell asleep.

We had a party a couple weeks ago too while Hyrum was home. She got to open presents from us and Grandma and Grandpa Wright. We also enjoyed a Teddy Bear Birthday Party Cake and some strawberry ice cream. Hannah wasn’t too impressed with the ice cream and the cake but she loved the frosting and liked looking at the teddy bears. Dad had to blow out the candles which was probably a good thing because if Hannah had really tried we might have had a soggy cake.

We are so glad to have our Hannah Bug in our life. She sure helps to make it interesting and keep things light. I’ve realized that you have to have a sense of humor when you have a toddler. She certainly makes us laugh. We look forward to enjoying many more years with her.