It’s now two weeks since Michelle’s due date. She went into Holles Street Maternity Hospital this morning to have her baby induced. No progress yet. That kid doesn’t want to come out! It may be Sunday before it’s born.

Ironically, the Wild Geese Players read the Oxen of the Sun chapter of Ulysses last summer, which takes place in Holles Street. Bloom goes to visit his friend Mina Purefoy, who’s been three days in labor, and meets up with a crowd of drunken medical students and Stephen Dedalus. Between them, they manage to re­ca­pit­u­late the de­vel­op­ment of the English language.

We fly back to Seattle in the morning, so we certainly won’t see the …continue.

When my parents visited me in September, I bought them a second laptop and an external drive for backup. One laptop stays in Dublin, the other in Cape Town where they spend much of their year. Both laptops are in Dublin with me at present, so that I can clean them up and get them in sync. (I had to remove some very obscure registry settings to get one DVD drive working again. <sigh/>)

Their backup needs are simple. Both of them have web-based email at Yahoo!. The only personal data on either computer is photos. Inevitably the photos are out of sync between the two machines.

The WD Passport drive came with WDSync, which …continue.

2008 closes, leaving economic wreckage in its wake. Personally and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, it’s been a good year. At the national level, it’s been both a very good year and a disastrous one. Obama’s historic victory is offset by the imploding economy.

My health remains good, I’m a little fitter than I was a year ago. I’ve notched up a few personal milestones, such as receiving my Competent Com­mu­ni­ca­tor award at Toast­mas­ters and becoming the secretary of Freely Speaking Toast­mas­ters.

My friends and family are, mostly, doing well. My sister is (still!) on the verge of having her first child. Emma’s health is never great: she will have surgery to remove abdominal adhesions in a …continue.

Sequel to Dark Fire. The hunch­backed lawyer Matthew Shardlake has been sent to York by Archbishop Cranmer to meet the Royal Progress, where Henry VIII is to accept formal surrender from those who had earlier rebelled. Shardlake is to hear petitions on the king’s behalf, but really he is there to ensure that a high-ranking con­spir­a­tor is brought safely back to the Tower of London. He stumbles upon a cache of secret papers, which leads to a series of attempts upon his life.

Shardlake, once an ardent support of the reform of the Church …continue.

Michelle and her husband David B† came over for dinner. Her baby is now nine days overdue and she’s more than ready to give birth.

† Not to be confused with the other David, our brother, who is currently living at my parents’ house in Dublin.

We had lunch with Alan and Sheena in Dundrum and met their new baby.

It’s been very hard to hook up with my old friends here. We landed seven days ago and the only other meet up was a couple of pints with Jimmy on Monday. They’re (almost) all middle-aged, mortgaged, married, and bechilded, and otherwise busy with their own lives. We are to have lunch with …continue.

When I was a boy, anytime we said ‘Dundrum’ (a suburb of Dublin), it was with a snigger, because it was synonymous in our minds with the mental asylum located there. Nowadays, Dundrum is much better known as the home of a large shopping centre. I’m so out of touch with Dublin that I hadn’t realized that there was a major new shopping centre there. I assumed that people were talking about the unim­pres­sive little centre that I remembered there from my childhood. Until today, when we went there to return the mobile phone that we had given my mother for Christmas.

Dundrum was, indeed, a madhouse. There’s much talk of a recession …continue.

Trou­ble­mak­ing cops–the Res­ur­rec­tion Men–from all over Scotland have been sent to the Police Training College to make them into team players. DI John Rebus is one of them, though his real job is to get the dirt on three bent cops. The senior officers who sent Rebus in seem to mistrust him too, since the Res­ur­rec­tion Men have reopened an old case where Rebus’s behavior was ques­tion­able.

Back in Edinburgh, DS Siobhan Clarke is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the murder of an art dealer, where Rebus’s old nemesis, the crime boss Big Ger Cafferty …continue.

Captain’s Fury is the fourth book in Jim Butcher’s fantasy series, Codex Alera, and the sequel to Cursor’s Fury.

Tavi is still undercover as the captain of a legion fighting the Canim invaders; an ambitious senator arrives from the capital to take over. Tavi finally comes into his own, learning that he is Gaius Octavian, the hitherto un­sus­pect­ed son of the First Lord’s long-dead heir. Far to the south, Amara and Bernard accompany the First Lord, Gaius Sixtus, on a secret mission, walking into the rebellious Kalare. Their journey bears not a little …continue.

Normally, we have Shuttle Express take us to Sea-Tac airport, but they were completely booked up when I tried to make a reser­va­tion earlier in the week. Lyndol very kindly came over at 6am and drove us down to the airport.

Our plane left an hour late from Seattle, as it came in late the night before and the crew had to wait for the statutory FTC minimum stopover. The late departure from Seatac was no problem, since we had a scheduled 5-hour layover in Philadelpia. After being shoehorned into the plane, we needed to stretch and wandered through several of the terminals. The only excitement was when I realized an hour …continue.

I tried to take the bus into work today, but no bus showed. I later learned that the #39 had been “tem­porar­i­ly suspended”. Emma drove into downtown Seattle, getting off at the James St. exit. James is steep and it was closed to traffic. She let me out at 7th and James and I walked down to the Smith Tower.

Other people were not so lucky on the steeper streets, as you can see in the photo of a bus hanging over the interstate.

This is the worst snow we’ve had in several years, and Seattle is not equipped to handle it. Most years, we only get a day or two of …continue.