Niles Wallace Benson was born on December 28th at 2:17 am and we couldn’t be more glad. He was 7 lbs 10 oz, and was 20 3/4 inches long. Mandy has some pictures on her blog — here’s one of my favorites:
This year, we had a family Christmas at the Schumann’s. Unfortunately, Mom, Dad, and Karen couldn’t make it due to illness. Here’s a quick video that Mandy put together of the festivities:
I recently started a PhD blog: Vanilla Draft. Feel free to follow along if you’re interested. Also, a special note to my non-RSS-feed-using family members: there is an option to subscribe via email on the Feeds for Syndication page.
Thanks to everyone who helped me recently to make the decision on whether or not to continue in the PhD program. I deeply appreciate your input, advice, and willingness to be a sounding board.
From the most recent post:
This last week, I had a mid-academic-life crisis where I found myself thinking and praying as to whether I would continue with the PhD program or not.
Why? Postponing progress would let me focus on other areas of my life that are important to me: family, friends, reading, playing sports, being outside, and sleeping.
Not to mention the fact that we’re having a baby in a couple of weeks (God-willing). It’s admittedly tempting to quit a program that is hard to do and doesn’t promise much in terms of career payoff to spend more of it with the people I care about. When I think of it this way, it seems obvious that I should quit.
However, I really want to do the PhD, and I enjoy research, and learning, and reading, and writing, and working on hard problems. I feel that God has given me a desire and an interest in working towards this, and so, why not? Also, I have 90% of my coursework requirements already completed. Why would I stop when I’m this close?
After seeking counsel from family and friends, I decided, in fact, to continue with the program, but to reduce my load for the next semester while we get used to having a new baby at home.
Building management just posted a note disallowing the “extended use” of bathrooms on floors other than the one we work on. Discrimination! Exhibit A:
Sydney loves to chew rawhide on her back, and it cracks me up every time.
Well, in light of the fact that I got zero (zilch) responses to my desperate plea for landscaping help, I just ended up going with a Washington Hawthorn, and one very “bad-ass deciduous” (Sugar Maple):
Mandy was laughing the entire time at how small the tree was. I might have to tie an orange flag around it so I don’t run it over with the lawn mower next summer.
It’s only about 18 inches feet high right now (don’t confuse the bamboo shoot with the actual tree in the photo above — it only goes as high as the highest green twist-tie), but should grow to 60 feet just in time for me to retire in 2044.
Here’s something I didn’t plan on finding today: a senior adult church hip-hop choir called Funky Fresh Seniors. They don’t seem too engaged at the beginning with Eminem’s lyrical work, but they definitely warm up nicely to Nelly at the end.
Bonus: they’re available for weddings, private parties, and bar mitzvahs! I only have one question: what church approves of their elders singing “It’s getting hot in here, let’s take off all our robes”? This is highly disturbing on multiple levels.
My favorite photo of the day: Eddie Murphy’s giant head, traveling down the interstate.
Interesting article from Edward Champion on Michael Hyatt’s recent Book Review Blogger Program, which gives people free books from Thomas Nelson Publishing in exchange for writing a 200+ word review: There’s no such thing as a free book. Champion argues that the program is inherently flawed:
While Hyatt’s marketing strategy appears to have yielded results, there remains the more troubling question of what this means for the blogosphere. Will Thomas Nelson stop sending books to those who write negative reviews? Will the publisher demand 400-word reviews a few months from now? Will other publishers begin setting more extraordinary terms for hotter titles? And, most importantly, will the blogosphere ever understand that surrendering to marketing forces simply isn’t a substitute for journalistic integrity?
Personally, I’m confused about why this is a big deal. Hyatt doesn’t require that reviews are positive. Instead, he says that reviews can be “positive, negative, or somewhere in between.” Don’t journalists get free books all the time for writing reviews? Why is this any different?
