Unplanned hiatus is over

It's been a quiet month here on the blog, which is completely the opposite of what's been happening offline for me. Here's the highlights:

• Chicken pox - Julianna is just about over them, which means that Mari and Kolbjorn are probably going to be dealing with them in a few weeks time.
• Baby on the way - we're hoping the baby isn't early, 'cause the due date is pretty much right after we expect Mari and Kol to be finished dealing with chicken pox. We had an ultrasound yesterday, and we actually got a decent look at the baby's face - very, very cool. No idea about the gender, and that's just fine with us. We've also finally settled on our name choices - of course, we're not saying anything until the little one is finally here.
  
• Renovations - the main bathroom is finally usable after six months, except for the sink (need to rip out some of our freshly installed and painted drywall because we forgot to put in a crossbrace for it). The concrete for half the driveway has been poured, and the rest of it should be finished PDQ (weather permitting), and the frames are in place for the sidewalk to the front door. The basement and deck have had no progress.
• Work - craziness continues. Big project right now: our co-lo ISP has asked us to move our servers to a different IP subnet. It's not a quick and easy job, to say the least. Also continuing staff changes, budget fights, etc. Situation normal, I guess.
• Babylon 5 - just about finished season 4. This has been very exciting - when B5 was originally broadcast, our local TV station dropped it midway through the third season. Had a friend who worked for another local station who taped it off the satellite feed and made a bunch of copies to distribute - managed to keep up with it until early fourth season, when his manager caught him using the company equipment for his little operation. Since then, I had never seen any further 4th or 5th season episodes. Fantastic show - the acting wasn't always stellar, but the writing and story are excellent. I'm almost going to be sorry when I finish watching the entire series - but hey, that just means I can start again from the beginning and pick up on all the hints of things to come that I missed the first time through.
• Aquarium - we've added a whole lotta fish, including some "refugees" from my sister's tank (which she is decomissioning while they are in the midst of renovations). Current count is 13 pristella tetras, 6 black skirt tetras, 2 cardinal tetras, 6 panda cory cats, 5 otto cats, 1 upside-down cat, 1 pleco, and 3 angels. It's a very busy tank, but not too crowded. Very relaxing to just sit and watch.
• The Saskatoon Curse - yes, it struck again. Transmission trouble with the van stranded Kristen and the two youngest in Saskatoon one day a few weeks ago. Warranty covered the repairs, but we had to borrow a vehicle from my folks for a few days while ours was in the shop.

I'm sure that there's more that I could ramble on about, but I'd really like to watch one more Babylon 5 episode before going to bed. A man's got his priorities, you know.

One last note - I've still got more Gmail invites than I know what to do with. If you want one, just let me know. Doesn't matter to me if you're a close relative or a complete stranger - ask, and ye shall receive.