Thoughts for the "New Year"

Lots of mini-entries piling up in my brain, so here's a core dump:

• Babies are Analog Devices: So after nearly 10 months of having an infant in the house, I've come to the stunning conclusion that a baby is not at all like a computer. Let me explain a bit. Computers are satisfying to me not only because of the expanded powers of production and repetition that they offer, but because when things go wrong there's generally a very specific set of steps that always fixes the problem. There are exceptions, of course, and situations that never get fully solved, but for the most part a digital device has digital solutions - they either work, or they don't. Not so with babies. What worked to get him to sleep one day might not work at all the next, or might work a little bit but take some augmentation. Nap times are never quite the same, techniques for getting a belly laugh are wildly variable, and sometimes he's just plain stubborn and nothing works. Analog means fuzziness, and fuzziness means improvisation and endless recombination. There are no solutions, just resolutions. It's an important lesson to remember with babies.
  
  
• "New Year" is an arbitrary designation – I was just saying to my wife this morning that I get more and more jaded about the concept of the "New Year" every "year" that passes. Just because our calendar system says that the cycle is starting anew tonight doesn't mean there's anything actually special about this day, or that this is some kind of milestone that marks the "end" of anything important. Our government is still rotten to the core, Pakistanis are still suffering the economic aftershocks of their quake, and my baby will still sleep soundly through the night and want mommy in the morning. My point is that every day is the beginning of a new cycle and the end of the old - for that matter, every hour, every minute, every picosecond that passes is a rollover of some sort, if you want to look at it that way. Which I don't. I don't want to look at it that way - I want to see life as a continuum that stretches thousands, millions of years, a cycle of nested cycles that repeats ad nauseum as far as our puny human lifetimes are concerned. One measley year passing, one time of "reflection" and "closure" on the issues of 2005, seems silly in comparison to that. I hate the arbitrariness of it all.
  
  
• This has been the suckiest vacation evah – So here's a quick rundown of my vacation:
  
  
  1. Worked for two days.
  2. Had surgery to remove my gallbladder
  3. Went home to be in pain, sleep, and get an infection in my belly button that hurt like a bastard
  4. Christmas Day, when my in-laws came over and got all up in the baby's grill and our best friends were two hours late to the party for no apparent reason
  5. My parents arrived and proceeded to "help" us by staying with us for about four hours a day, not watching the baby when we needed them to, and then inviting everyone over to our house on Friday for the entire day while my wife was at work and I was coming down with a cold that was knocking me flat because I was already on antibiotics and still infected and in pain
  6. Tomorrow: My wife works 16 hours straight to make extra money and I get to watch the baby all day
  7. Monday: School is of course open for a professional day, unlike every other workplace in the universe
  
  My only question is, when does my vacation begin?
  
  
• Call in the Stasi – So now that the Times has disclosed that our government has decided that it's OK to spy on U.S. citizens with no checks or balances, contrary to any court decisions or laws that came before, they're also deciding it's a Great Idea to launch an investigation to find the person that leaked this information, presumably so they can be tried for being a traitor and revealing state secrets. Just when you thought it couldn't possibly get creepier or more dictatorial, it does. But it begs the question: Why can't they just wiretap everyone at the NSA, secretly, to find the traitor? Hey, it's legal now. Terrorists are everywhere, my friend - just keep an eye on your neighbors and report them, and we're well on our way to being East Germany! Hooray for police states and complete lack of trust!!