Roughly what my desk looks like. (Via the crappy camera on my phone, sorry!) Thrilling, eh?

As of today (well, yesterday, but I was stuck in airports) I have an office mate. It was nice to have a solo office, but I knew that was not going to last long, because they seem to be pretty rare here, and also because, well, my boss shares an office, so the chances of me not sharing one while he did for any longer than a couple weeks were pretty slim. :-)

My new office mate is a developer named Ian. He’s Australian. I’ve only spoken to him for a few minutes so far, but I’m sure he will be a fine office mate.

Well, I made it to Atlanta. But because of weather delays my flight into Atlanta didn’t get into the gate until boarding was already done for my flight to Seattle. I am now rerouted to a flight to Salt Lake City (after a four hour layover here in Atlanta…) then once I get to Salt Lake a 3 hour lay over before I catch a flight to Seattle from there. Fun. I am very tired too.

They really should have those napping pod things like I’ve heard they have in Japan. I’d pay $20 to have a nice private little pod thing to sleep for the next few hours with an alarm set to ring an hour before my flight or something. Yes, that would be cool.

I could have gotten a direct Atlanta to Seattle, but instead of waiting here four hours in the Atlanta airport, I would have had to wait seven hours, and at least by the scheduled time, it would have gotten there later anyway. Yawn!

Anyway, this will mean I miss work entirely Monday (although I may try to do some things remotely while I am at airports, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get done… this wireless at the Atlanta airport sucks and keeps cutting out). I’ll end up getting back to Seattle something like 21 hours later than originally scheduled.

Brandy called this morning to let me know she had just gotten out of the parent teacher conference for this grading period. She was all prepared to go in fighting again. But instead… it was all positive. The teacher said Amy was doing very well, that everything that had been a problem earlier in the year no longer is, and that she is doing great. A’s in Math and Science. A strong B in reading (her weak area) but that is a strong improvement and is still getting better. And she is much mroe organized than before. She is getting things done. She is turning things in. In fact she is finishing what she needs to do well before the time allowed and is asking for more. (Which is what we’ve told her to do when she is assigned something she thinks is boring and stupid, rather than not do it because it was stupid and boring, which is what she often used to do.) In any case, she is doing great.

We are very seriously looking at private schools for next year in Seattle. The public school gifted programs are on a waiting list, and assuming we apply now, it might well be over a year before she actually got in. And the reports we have been able to find on public school quality in the area are pretty uneven. There are however a number of good private schools. Brandy is in the process of getting all the applications in right now. The deadlines for most of them were in January, but all of them we have called have said since we are just moving to the area now, they will wait for our applications and consider them. They are all very expensive though. Brandy is filling out the forms to apply for financial aid too, but we may or may not get anything significant there. We have to plan as if we’d have to pay out of pocket. If we don’t get into the schools we want, we’ll fall back on the public school system. But if we get in, we’ll figure out how to make it work. That expense might very well balance off most if not all of any financial benefit gained from the new job and certainly would reconfirm the fact that we will be picking a place to live that is much lower on the budget scale.

But you know, it is just a question of priorities. Making sure Amy is in a setting where she will be able to thrive and do well and succeed is critical, and trumps most ofther concerns. Rebecca posted a few days ago about changes to priorities and perspectives that occur after becoming a parent (see here). Her’s was in a very different context, and I was suddenly the parent of a 3rd grader (now 5th grader) and I missed the baby years, but same sorts of things. Priorities about how you spend time, and how you spend money, what matters and what does not… just change completely. And that is OK. Not only OK, but good.

Very proud of Amy this morning.