This used to be the picture greeting visitors on the original front page of this website, when it was not blog-centric yet. It charted the major places we resided at in our life. Which aren’t that many, obviously.

My good friend Sergey suggested back then that the picture would be more intriguing if it had an additional arrow into the unknown (represented by a symbolic question mark), suggesting to the viewer that future holds more moves to exciting locales. I did not go for that, mainly of account of just having moved to London. I did not want to think about future moves.

As anyone can now surmise, Sergey was right on the “future holds additional moves” count, but he was overly optimistic on the “exciting” part.

I caught up with the idea that a static front page was not a good approach to website-building within a couple of months of starting the website. The “old front page” was relegated to a curiosity link on my blog’s menu bar. When I recently moved the site to a new host provider, I completely discarded that page among the few cosmetic changes.

But when I did that, I figured that the old picture diagram needed updating.

So, here we go.
 

 
This is a very precise diagram, by the way, since for all senses and purposes we live in the same area that we left for London. If you imagine yourself looking southward, this diagram well approximates the distance we moved from our previous house.

It is also a bit confusing. Do we now keep going back and forth between London and New Jersey? I don’t think so.

Anyway.

Yes, you read it right, paternity with a “p”. As in, the father of a newborn child can get 12 weeks off work with full pay.

I know plenty of people who take advantage of that. In fact, I know one guy who seemingly takes advantage of that every other year or so.

Did I go on paternity leave when Emily was born?

Um… no.

For reasons that I will surely regret eventually, I decided that my complete absence for 3 months would place in jeopardy various projects that “need” me. Instead, I agreed with my management hierarchy that I will work entirely from home for the foreseeable future, take time to help Natasha with the new baby, but make myself generally available for all and any tasks in progress.

The result? Instead of bonding with my new daughter and letting Natasha rest when she is not nursing, I sit in my basement office for nine-hour workdays.

Ok, saving over three hours of commute time every day is definitely helpful. I do take breaks throughout the day to give Natasha a breather here or there, I relieve her of chauffeuring-the-kids-around responsibilities, and on some days I do manage reasonable enough windows to keep pretense of being home for the sake of child-rearing.

Most of the days, though, it feels as though I plop down in front of my laptop at 8 in the morning, and stagger up the basement stairs with a headache at 6pm.

Nothing to complain about, really. Considering that I can jump into pool immediately following that…

In yet another corner, there was an impromptu juggling center. One guy juggled tennis balls, two more guys practiced juggling clubs, but the center was taken up by a group of four people who toss-juggled clubs in a square-and-diagonals pattern. They weren’t exceptionally good, but they kept trying over and over again.

I had a hard time catching them in a nice shot, and did not really succeed. But one detail can be rather clearly seen in this shot. Two of the four were dressed in an office attire, marking them as office-dwellers who came out to play during lunch. I found the concept of going for a juggling exercise during lunch fascinating.
 

Welcome to all new visitors! I hope you find something useful in my old ramblings. At the very least, you’ll never mistake one bridge for another in the future

The results?

Unlike Brian (who was consistently pegged to the same author with every sample of his writing), I ended up as either a vary talented pretender or someone with abject absence of any discernible style.

Consider.

My short visiting Prague essay apparently resembles David Foster Wallace.
 

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

 
My latest drive-by movie roundup pegs me to H. P. Lovecraft.
 

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

 
My reflection on new parenthood most closely aligns with Stephen King. (What!?!?)
 

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

 
My DIY adventure is in the style of Cory Doctorow.
 

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

 
I stopped at four attempts. I have a feeling that I might have been able to drain the analyzer of all of its choices rather quickly.

While I am familiar with all of these writers’ names, I can’t say that I ever knowingly read anything by them, so there is no way for me to intelligently assess the validity of this analysis.

I always thought my writing was Kurt Vonnegut-ish…

But when it comes to a newborn, and the card signifies the very first official document that the little person has, it definitely passes for another milestone.

Not having been pregnant for most of that time, I did manage one overseas trip (and Becky managed two!). But I feel tons of empathy. This is something that is definitely missing from our lives nowadays.

We do have our hands full with the baby, of course…

I have one strange artifact in the Travelog, which I will have to look into at some later time. I also do not yet see the mail server resolved to the new platform. But other than that, burlaki.com is now residing at a new host. And I actually managed to get the cost down to one-fourth of what I was paying before. It’s not that great deal of money, but it makes me happy nonetheless.

If you catch any strange behavior with the website, please let me know. Cheers!