When at home, I try and do some of these things ...

Since becoming a parent , I don't have near the amount of free time that I used to have. I would say that it is worth it for me though (I never had a life before anyway). Still, in my precious minutes of freedom, I try and...

Television

Watch lots of tv.

There are way too many shows that I watch. Watching TV is one thing that I can generally do even while watching Amanda, though I try to not do too much of it (I usually fail though). Since Amanda has been born, we tape all of the shows that we want to watch, so we don't miss any of the lines from her crying or otherwise needing attention. If there are conflicts, the "lesser" shows are the ones that we try and watch live. This is of course backwards from the way most people do it. Last tv season, we taped about 7 hours of programs a week. That at least is down from the year before when we taped 10 hours! A couple of shows that I'll admit to regularly watching are Xena and Buffy .

I also try and watch a lot of sporting events, especially games where the Seahawks , Sonics , Mariners , UW Huskies, and other local Seattle teams/figures are involved.

Computer

Use our home computer

Our home computer system was recently (late 96/early 97) upgraded, but of course as of 12/97 it's already obsolete again. Our original poor 486/33 still has the same case, but we now have a new motherboard, a new Cyrix P200 processor, and a moderate (but way better than 8) 16 MB RAM. We still have both Linux (Debian) and DOS (Just say No to Win95!) running on it, and it is able to run decent enough games for us. We still play Civ II . I also really enjoy playing Angband on the Linux side, though my best character so far died at level 49 before finishing. I haven't finished any lengthy DOS computer games since Xwing (and the Imp. Pursuit and B-wing additions.

Read

I used to read a lot. Sadly, I don't get nearly as much read these days that isn't work related. I limit my leisure reading to primarily fantasy type books. My current favorite is a femaleauthor named Melissa Rawn (She's really cool! Buy and read her stuff!).

Socialize with Friends

We used to play lots of bridge, but we don't anymore. We still like to gather with friends for the occasional strategy or train game . We have a monthly meeting for our investment club which was started by some friends of ours. We're actually profitable now. Sadly, we don't get out much for movies anymore, but this probably saves us some money in the long run.

Go massively into debt!

We took on our first big debt/loan in the Summer of '96 when we bought a car.

There may eventually be a link to what we got and did, including some helpful web resources we used, but for now this link is not written.

We are currently (12/97) looking to take on even more debt and get into our own house. More details on that as it happens, and again, if I get the time I'll make a(nother boring) page to that, including our mortgage lender, local real estate links, etc.

Take the special shuttle back to the homepage, or become lost in the underground tunnels.