2008 February: Bates

Luckily the frost of the winter is passing here in Utah, and I can emerge from my heavily heated hut. In doing so, I decided to do some Yard work. So, Tamara and I have cleaned out the flower beds so we can plant some flowers, and we're also working on digging up the back yard to plant grass (and hopefully get rid of the rampant barley that has taken over back there).

In "spir-tule" news, I was released as Gospel Doctrine teacher and called as Primary Pianist. I can't really read music, so the poor children are learning to be tone deaf (for their own defense). It's a really nice chance for me to practice though so I can eventually (some day) actually play the piano.

A couple weeks ago Tamara and I got a puppy from a co-worker who had to get rid of theirs due to housing restrictions. He was 12 weeks old and came with the name Max. He is a black-lab & cocker-spaniel mix. He loves our chihuahua even though she still hates him. He is learning (rather slowly) that the carpet is not his personal bathroom, and we have high hopes that he might one day be potty-trained.

The most time consuming event this month was work. I ended up working some over-time to meet all of the deadlines I had. We switched the way we schedule product enhancements, and I hate it. Instead of my boss handling that, the Product Managers get to say what they want each month. We estimate it so they can schedule the right amount. Unfortunately they look at total hours available on our team, not total hours available for each person who needs to be doing the enhancements they want. I am over a very popular product, and ended up with about twice as much stuff as I could possibly do this month. But, with a little help from co-workers, and some over-time, we were able to meet the deadline.

Other than that we are just having fun and getting ready to have a baby (holy weirdness Batman!). We are very excited and overwhelmed to become parents, and hope we are up to the challenge.

-Rob & Tamara