Spoken by our 4 year old today – “Daddy can’t earn money, that’s what Mommies do.”
I’m so proud… she’s completely bucking social conventions, and doesn’t even know it.
Month: May 2006
Sunday Gym Rat
Sunday workout – now that’s my idea of rest and relaxation. Sweating, pushing metal… it’s become my habit to go to the gym on Sunday afternoons. We’ll come home from the regular service, usually after going out to lunch, and then I’ll head to the gym for an hour or so before Jason heads back to play for the evening service. I used to feel a bit guilty about working out on the Sabbath until two things happened: (1) I ran into one of our pastors there on Sunday [granted, Sunday’s a work day for him], and (2) I realized that for me, working out is relaxation, both a mental and physical break from the ordinary jobs of software development and motherhood. It’s me time, all the better when I can convince a friend to join me there and talk as work out on the elipticals. Even more encouraging, I keep seeing a woman who’s obviously at least 7 or 8 months pregnant there, doing the same stuff as me, which gives me hope that I can keep this going. It’s nice to think that as I weigh in at the doc on Tuesday, that I can claim some amount of the weight gain as muscle mass. And if I can hold onto that muscle gain, then the baby weight oughta come off that much more easily.
The one gotcha I ran into today: a baby foot or arm, couldn’t tell which, in the ribs really isn’t conducive to working on the pec machine…
I keep asking my doc each visit, making sure this is all still OK. Each visit, she expresses surprise that I’m still able to do it, but keeps telling me that as long as I’m up to it, it’s OK for the baby. I’ll ask again Tuesday, but am sure hoping that I can keep this up for at least a few more months.
Mommy is a Prince
My girls are big into princesses, both of the Disney variety and otherwise. So I count it as high praise that my Mother’s Day card this year noted that ‘Mommy is a prince’. Not sure why the use of the male royalty title… One of my little girls then called me a Queen! That’s more like it…
New Napster biz model
I’m impressed by Napster of late. They recently announced that users can now listen to every track in their catalog for free, up to five times. After five times, if you want to listen to it again, you need to either buy the track, or subscribe to one of Napster’s monthly services. In the meantime, as you’re listening to your free tracks online, you’re being exposed to various ads, whose revenue is then apparently shared with the music industry as its payment for the use of the free music. (Napster’s FAQ on its free music model is here.)
This seems to me to be a brilliant music model: the few second snippets offered in other music libraries are not enticing enough to cause me to browse to find new music which I might purchase from their stores. Napster, through use of this ability to listen for free, as well as its playlists, encourages me and makes it enjoyable to browse for those songs I would be willing to buy. No longer am I consciously shopping: I’m browsing, and impulse buying.
I wonder if the 5 listen limit is too high, actually. New songs only stay in popularity a short while. And there’s quite a breadth of material on Napster. Seems I could always be listening to new and interesting things, without ever really hitting the 5 song limit. Now, I’d need to be perpetually connected to an Internet connection, else I might want that song in my portable player. But I generally AM perpetually connected to an Internet connection… my portable player serves me at the gym, but not many other places. Napster might consider lowering that limit to 3… if I’m willing to listen to a song more than 3 times, I probably oughta pay for it…