Where the Heck I've Been for 4 Months

Wow, have I really neglected my blog for that long?  Assuming I have any Devoted Followers(TM) left .. or that I had any to begin with .. I apologize.  There has been a LOT of life happening since last I posted.

A more recent picture of Isabel looking
somewhat sleepy

Certainly the biggest deal is that my newest daughter was born on July 29th this year. Isabel Scarlet arrived at 5:13 PM, weighing in at 5lb, 5.7oz, and 18.75 inches long. For you metric folks, that's 2.4kg and 47.6cm .. but I figure if God wanted everyone to use the metric system, we'd have all been born with 10 fingers.  Just let that sink in for a while.

We're all doing well and adjusting to having a newborn in the house. It's been pretty crazy, what with all the sleep deprivation and diapers and mayhem that goes along with having a family. As anyone who's ever been there can tell you, it's exhausting, frustrating, and completely worth it.

I've also re-kindled what is perhaps my longest-held hobby - Amateur Radio. I've managed to erect a set of home built antennas and resurrect some old equipment I had in boxes and have a more or less fully functional station set up. Now I'm starting to think about upgrading pretty much everything next time I have a big wad of cash I don't know what to do with.

That will be, as they say, an interesting day.

My martial arts training had to take a back seat from about a month prior to Isabel's arrival to this month. I started classes again the first week of October. Fortunately, this hiatus was much shorter than my last one, and I seem to be getting back into the swing of things.  Hopefully my next belt will come by the end of the year.  In any case, I am still learning a lot and I can tell I'm making progress. Even if the progress is slow, it's at least thorough, so I won't advance prematurely and miss something important.

So yeah, that's mainly what's been going on.