Leslie Turek came over the other night, and we had a very pleasant visit. I told her about the theory of sleepless parents. She objected on the grounds that until fairly recently people didn't have much of a choice about whether or not they got pregnant. Had I been more awake I'd have thought to point out at the time that the ancients had birth control too. There are indications that cultures as far back as the Egyptians and the early Chinese dynasties had techniques for preventing conception as well as an understanding of natural abortifactants. (The book "Ancient Inventions" is full of interesting tidbits about these and other topics.)

We also had an interesting discussion of parenting decisions and her choice to remain childless, the issues of surrenduring control of your whole life to a child, etc. I'm not sure it really has to come to that -- I know people who work their kids into the fabric they want their lives tobe, take them on vacations to places they as adults want to go, etc. -- but it certainly does change things, and there's no question that you have to plan your days and nights around the baby's needs. Just trying to do some baby shopping and have lunch today was a fine demonstration of that, although we managed to work it all out in the end. In some respects having a puppy first was probably pretty good training.

Speaking of puppies, Ella has been waking up at 5 or 6 am every day to go outside now. I think her sleep schedule is as messed up as the rest of ours. I've got to get her back to her usual routine of going out at 11 pm or so, and then not going out again until 7 am the next morning. Waking up the extra time in addition to all the Samantha wakeups just won't do.

Shannon's visit on Saturday was great. I really enjoy her company, as does Amy. She went completely overboard with gifts for both Samantha and Ella. Hoover, her new puppy, is wonderful. Hoover and Ella had a ball together; they got along very well and played for something like three hours. Ella was tired and happy at the end of the day. I was impressed again with what a calm and agreeable dog Ella is at heart -- Hoover took her favorite chew bones and started chewing on them, and Ella was willing to share them. I haven't seen that accommodating a personality in many dogs.

Shannon shared some of the news from work that I've missed out on while I've been on leave, and told us about the latest goings on at the Media Lab (very bad stuff, large sums of money missing and no one sure where they went, etc) and Brian's career situation. I'm so glad that she and Brian will be coming to Sam's baby naming next week.

The rest of Saturday night, until around 2am, and some of Sunday morning were spent working on a bad bug in our product that needed to be fixed by Tuesday. Putting in about 10 hours on Saturday slogging through twisted and complex code that I've never seen before and don't understand all that well even now allowed me to get far enough in the analysis of the bug that Tareef, the engineering lead for our product, was able to pick it up and complete the work on Sunday. For all that working on this sort of bug is frustrating, tedious, and annoying, the process of working on it with Tareef, exchanging ideas by email and IM late into the night as we tackled it together, was kind of fun. At least insofar as that kind of thing can ever be fun.

Unfortunately, between working 10 or so hours in Saturday night, taking Ella to the park today, and buying the bouncy seat for Samantha afterward, I never got around to the taxes (which I need to do so we can get our much-needed refund this year), or to cleaning the house, or to writing to my brother in prison. There just aren't enough hours in the day, or in the combination of day and night for that matter.