I came home tonight all ready to study, but instead found myself confronted with a sick baby and an equivalently stressed mom. I’ve gotten some studying done, and am feeling slightly better about the test on Wednesday–slightly–but still wish the little one had picked a different time to get sick.

Ah, parenthood. Lisa occasionally mentions that she sometimes feels she’s going insane when staying at home with the baby all day, but from my point of view she’s doing a remarkably good job. I’m sure if I was the one staying home I would’ve gone coo coo for cocoa puffs a few months ago. It’s kind of weird: She often suffers from a lack of adult interaction, I often suffer from too much of it, and we’ve found no great way to bridge the gap. There have been a number of days where I’ve come home completely wiped out from work and school wanting nothing more than to have an hour or so of down time, only to find her in a position 180 degrees from mine. Long term, this will get better as Lisa and I start going on trips again, or even start finding the time to go out on a few dates. Until then, though, there will probably be a few more nights like this one.

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A few hours after going to sleep, Mathias awoke agitated and cranky. Lisa and I both took turns trying to put him back to sleep, but both of us failed. I came close at one point, but he caught a coughing fit a moment after I put him in his crib, and we were back to square one.

Eventually Lisa and I ended up together in his room with a few of the lights on, with both of us taking turns holding him. He calmed down, started sucking on his fingers, and quietly stared back and forth at the two of us, apparently comforted by the fact these two people he’d grown very familiar with were sitting there keeping him company. And in that way, while it wasn’t a good evening, it wasn’t a completely bad one, either.

School may finally be getting to me. I’m feeling completely overwhelmed this week. I have the first of two accounting midterms this Wednesday, and I can’t even remotely claim to be ready for it. I tried doing one of the practice exams a few hours ago and failed miserably.

The weird thing is I’ve studied everything included on the test. I’ve read the book and handouts, and have done more than the required practice work, and yet I feel like I’m retaining nothing. On the practice test I found myself looking at a question asking me to write a reconciliation of retained earnings for a specific case, and I couldn’t even remember what the format of a retained earnings report looks like.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong here.

Back to studying, although I should probably get some sleep soon…

• Talk about unintended consequences:  “These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.  The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.”

My walk into work from one of the hinterland parking lots this morning pretty much summed up my day.  Using a narrow path through some landscaping as a shortcut, I found myself behind a WBWDA (White Boy With Drop-Ass).  One of his shoes apparently came undone, and, unfortunately, he suddenly decided the path was a good place to re-tie it.  This left me stuck behind three-inches of exceedingly hairy butt crack, with no alternative route options other than backing up about 15 feet.

Awkward.

As noted yesterday, Lisa and I won’t be out for the caucus tomorrow night, but I wanted to take a brief moment to mention my support for Barack Obama. Clinton and Obama’s positions are generally more similar than they are dissimilar (aside from the war, at least), and as such I’d be happy having either one as our president. That said, I believe Obama is the best candidate to positively engage our country in a way that hasn’t happened in my lifetime, and think he would be better at putting forth a progressive, collaborative approach to our foreign relations.

So, there are my two cents. Take them for what they’re worth.

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Bonus spare change: Neither Obama nor Clinton is really perfect for me. Both of their health care plans are messy, and both are way too focused on old-economy jobs and business that are more about where our country has been (manufacturing) than where it should be (technology, innovation and knowledge leadership). Comments from both of them framing immigration as contributing to employment problems practically horrify me. With the exception of specific individuals we can tangibly deem to be a threat to our nation’s security, I can find no ethical basis for us trying to keep people out, and that includes immigration limits like we have today. I think our immigration policy should be one of inclusion and outright recruitment—we should be doing everything we can to identify smart people overseas and to actively encourage them to make their permanent home here as American citizens. Anything less than that is just setting us up to be eclipsed by China, the European Union, and, probably, India.

If I could be a single-issue voter on immigration I probably would be, but all the likely candidates are kind of protectionist in this area, so I don’t really have that as an option.

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Also, go Al!

Three things Lisa and I would probably be doing this week if we weren’t parents and I weren’t in school:

1. Catching DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist at First Ave (Monday)
2. Caucusing (Tuesday)
3. Sleeping (Monday-Friday)

I’m not complaining.  It’s just sometimes I find myself thinking how much our lives are really different now.

In addition to the regular studying and errands handled this weekend, our family headed off to the SuperTarget in Roseville to get some portraits made of Mathias. (I’m kind of old school and wanted to go to Sears, but Lisa had heard good things about the Target studios.) Mathias actually seemed to enjoy the photo shoot, although the end results were kind of disappointing, with the overall quality somewhat akin to what you’d see on a ProLife Across America billboard.

Next time we decide to do a portrait, I’ll probably just buy a fancy set of sheets and do it myself. When we get the prints I’ll see what I can do to scan them in and get them up on Flickr.

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In other Mathias news, I wouldn’t be surprised if our little guy starts talking in the next few weeks or so. He’s been making various baby sounds for quite some time now, but sometime over the past few days he’s started enunciating in such a way that his sounds seem less like baby babble and more like some unknown foreign language. This is just another one of those things I never thought I’d find exciting, but, let me tell you, it is.

5:30 p.m. Not sure who I really want for the SuperBowl. New York winning would help heal the sting of the Packer’s loss–and, well, I actually like the Giants–but New England winning would finally shut up those whiny ’72 Dolphins.

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5:40. Ok, I don’t like Audi, but that their “horse head” ad was kind of cool.

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5:50 Sack the fucker! (Damn, missed.) Guess I’m officially rooting for the Giants now.

Related: German study links heart trouble, game-day stress.

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6:43. Not liking the game too much, but the T-Mobile ad with Charles Barkley was funny. As was the Doritos mouse ad.

Lisa: “That seemed like a European ad. Because it was pretty absurd.”

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7:55. This game is proving to be very… Boring.

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8:05. Liked the Coke parade ad. Clever.

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8:11. Touchdown Giants!

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8:39. Fuck.

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8:57. Fuck yes.

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Huh, that turned out to be a good game after all.

Belichick will probably be hearing about that premature exit.