We've been busy, busy, busy lately. Among other things:

- My dad and younger brother will be arriving this weekend to spend some time with us. It has been over 2 years since we've seen them, and I was shocked to see recent photos of the little brother I remembered now as a teenager! My mum was supposed to be here too, but unfortunately she won't be able to make it due to medical issues. This makes us very sad :(

- Jack has been crawling for the last few months! While this is exciting and cool, it also makes us nervous. They get into everything at this age! Not long now and he'll be walking....

- We recently bought a Yakima roof-rack and cargo box for our car, which will be very useful when travelling and lugging around all sorts of baby stuff. This will also hopefully save us from having to take both cars on our various vacations when my dad and brother are here.

- After spotting a Dell sale on their 24-inch LCD monitor (2407WFP-HC) about a month ago, I decided to order one. I've been very impressed! There's a lot more screen real-estate now, making it ideal for our high-def video editing, photo viewing, games, and so forth. I was initially disappointed the monitor had 2 dead pixels, but they honestly haven't bothered us.

- I've played a bit of the new PC game, Bioshock, and it's incredible. Not only are the graphics and sound top-notch, but the setting and characters are truly eerie. I only wish I had more free time to play it!

- Not wanting to waste the processing power of the new PC, I've had it grinding away at SETI@Home in the background, looking for alien signals :P Between our quad-core desktop and dual-core laptop, the number of work units is really racking up.

- We've caught the Sopranos bug. After reading about the series finale, I became curious and decided to order the first season on DVD to see what all the fuss was about. Since then we've become Sopranos addicts, devouring the first two seasons and eager for more.

- Hot Fuzz is hilarious. I think I might've even enjoyed it more than Shaun of the Dead.

- I've been reading Joe Hill's short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and I must say I'm very impressed. I haven't been so entertained by a short story collection in a long time. Now I'm really looking forward to reading his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box.

- I patched and painted our garage door recently, and it looks so much better now than the peeling mess it had become. Carrie's dad was a great help turning around the bottom panel. The outer side was starting to disintegrate along the bottom, and it was full of dents and peeling paint. Hopefully it'll last us a few more years yet before we have to replace the whole thing.

- The veggie garden continues to keep us in tomatoes and peppers. Alas, the cucumbers finished recently, but we still have zucchini, potatoes, carrots, brussels sprouts, and broccoli to look forward to. There haven't been so many garden photos this month, since much of it isn't quite as colourful as it was in prior months.

- Unfortunately my fiction writing output has suffered greatly of late. This is partly due to lack of time and partly due to lack of motivation. Lately I've been reassessing exactly what I want out of it and what direction to take it in future. It doesn't seem quite as fun as it once was--or maybe I'm forgetting how much hard work it is between the fun parts. Thankfully the itch to write is still there!

I think I've missed a few dozen things, but that'll do for now. So what have you been doing lately?