Since 1999, Kay and I have been maintaining our family web site. Why have I in particular been so meticulous about this? Have I nothing else to do? No, can't be that, I have stayed up too late and done without sleep often enough in the pursuit of its maintenance for me to convince myself that this is more than simply a need to fill hours.
Partly I want to log the (fascinating) development of the kids; partly I want them to have such a log with which to compare their kids; partly we sought to maintain communication with people especially in Oz; partly I like the idea of keeping a diary (though the usual sort of diary is a grind to write and dull to read).
The web site does in effect mark events, a selective diary. What did we do in 2002? This page is the one-year diary summary... we can view the year in various "departments":
In housing terms it was a busy year:
On the negative side, we managed to watch about three movies all year.
In terms of social interaction,
we had Dominique & Paul Schreurs and David & Jo Skellern
visit with us (2002 was a lean year for
visitors), we had dinner parties with friends, a wedding, and many,
many lunch parties (at least throughout the Summer):
Merinda had 22 entries made in her diary (click on an image to read the entry):
pointing to such diverse events as her "home-made organic lemonade stand" (that looked
like something out of a Schultz comic) and kite flying.
Teddy had 18 entries in his diary (click on an image to read the entry):
though he did not graduate to doing much beyond going trick-or-treating that is visible as
an entertaining activity in this, his second, year.
Career-wise, it was an interesting, if not so fun a year: Agilent had to lay off
about one in every four people, not counting temporary workers,
a victim of both a global tech downturn but also inexperienced management
of uniquely Dilbertesque proportions.
The cartoon at right did the rounds, powerfully summarising management's
method of moving to a new enterprise information system.
Except of course we didn't continue to get paid the same,
but lost 5% of base salary for 6 months, saw no profit to share,
and did not see a pay rise that year or the one before, or the one after.
I did manage to do exciting work; I gave a paper at MTT, had one accepted
for 2003 (although John Wood would give it for me because Agilent would not pay
conference expenses in 2003) and had a patent filed in my name.
Funnily enough the same thing started in 2002 at Agilent as happened
at Sydney Uni---I became busy because people discovered that I
solved problems, but no material recognition followed.
Sundry events included things like launching rockets with Dale and Charlie,
snow falling in Santa Rosa,
visiting Jim and meeting his new wife Lisa and his llama PJ,
Kay visiting Ann and Ally in Sacramento,
playing croquet (not often enough),
seeing Tony, Gloria, Jim and Mary
and Danny as they passed through SR,
losing and regaining our Alligator Fountain from the front garden,
seeing some awe-inspiring displays of Christmas lights,
getting my first reading glasses,
Kay losing 10kg from start
to finish of the year
and the whole family seeing a huge number of presents opened at birthdays and Christmas.
I managed to construct one
N-gauge and one
Z-gauge "portable" model railway.
In itself this might not be more than engineering play,
but it seems to have resulted in Edwin becoming quite obsessed
with trains.
Where Merinda might take a stuffed toy to bed with her, Teddy wants to
take a G-scale, or worse N-scale, steam engine to bed with him.
As Holly remarked on Red Dwarf one Saturday night,
"The highest form of civilisation is a man, the lowest form is a man with a train set".