Skype is so great

I’ve gotten a taste of Skype, and now I’m pretty much addicted to it.

It started out with a few ‘calls’ to the Pittsburgh residence to get the families to say hi to each other and check out how slick video calls can be, and now I’m using it pretty much all the time. Jess and I have been Skyping back and forth at least once a day, and usually twice. It’s really great to see her, and it’s really great to see the house behind her, looking all normal and familiar. It’s much better than I would have guessed. It’s good for Jess, too. She gets to see my face, she calls me ‘cute’ over and over, and it usually makes her feel better, too. She has stomach cramps and headaches and she always says that just looking at me and relaxing makes her feel so much better, so evidently my super powers work over Skype, too. She wants to cuddle me, too, which we can’t do over skype, but we’ve gone from audio calls to video calls. By the time I’m 80, who knows?

The pregnancy is going well. If I can convince Jess it’s a good idea, I may have her post up some of her weekly ‘pregnancy e-mails’ here. They’re great reading. It’s just two more weeks until we get the ultrasound where they try to divine the gender of our baby. That’s a thrill waiting to happen right there.

I’m still in Vegas for a few more hours, at least. I’m meeting up with someone at 3:00 today at the rental car center to head down to Baker. Not much happens today, other than checking into hotels and meeting up with people. Tomorrow we have a meeting to go to, and then it’s off to do some data collection, or something. Honestly, the work promises to be long and pretty boring. Similar to other collects I’ve done in similar scenarios, if everything is working correctly, there’s nothing to do. It’s only when stuff goes wrong that there is any excitement, so if we’re good at our jobs (and we are) it should be a snooze-fest.

Even extra snoozy given that we have to get up so darn early. I’m expecting to be getting up at 4:00 AM most days, so I’ve been moving my days up earlier and earlier. I was up at 5:00 today, so plenty of daylight still ahead of me. I plan to do some laundry before heading off today.

I made cinnamon rolls for the family here, which turned out pretty well except it didn’t rise the first time. I added the yeast and everything and nothing happened. I think I bought some dead yeast. So I just bloomed some yeast from another source and then sort of kneaded the yeast-slurry back into the bread. It was a mess, yes, but at least the dough rose. I tell you, though, between that false start and heading out to the casinos It took me all day to make a single batch. Came out good, though.

-N