Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

It's been a busy couple of days, as you might imagine.

Cora, our kraamverzorgster, is a real blessing. She cooks, she cleans, she bathes the baby, she tends to Sarah's nether regions, she does the laundry, she washes up. There's not much that she doesn't do. We love having her around.

We settled on Mr. X's new name Monday evening. I went down to the stadsdeelkantoor today to register his birth, but soon learned that the burgerzaken department closes at 14:00 on Tuesday. Wednesday is the last day for registration, so I'll be there in the morning to take care of it. Until that happens, we're remaining tight-lipped about the name. That also allows us to have a last-minute change of heart. We've already had one of those this afternoon, so we don't expect any more.

Eloïse got to hand out beschuit en muisjes at peuterspeelzaal today. In English, it's crispbread with tiny little aniseed sweets on top. It's traditional to have this with either pink or blue aniseed sweets, depending on the gender of the baby. It was good for her to be able to do this, because -- in spite our resolve not to neglect her in favour of our new acquisition -- the simple fact of the matter is that time spent breastfeeding the baby and changing his nappy is time that is no longer spent with her. Prior to last Sunday, all of our time went to her, so it's taking a little getting used to; for all of us.

She also got to ring the bell at the end of the day and spend some time sitting on Wanda's lap, so she came home looking pretty lucky. The mums and dads of the peuterspeelzaal had had a whip round for us and bought Mr. X his first toy, a cuddly red car. They also bought us a puzzle book, which Eloïse loves. She's already done all of the puzzles in it. This was a really kind gesture and serves yet again to indicate what a special place her play-school is.

Mr. X himself is doing excellently. He sleeps enough for ten men, has taken to the breast like a professional, and cries only when his nappy is being changed; no doubt due to the cold air circulating around his rude bits.

Jackie (the doula) came around Monday afternoon and talked to Sarah about how the labour had gone. This afternoon, Laura (the midwife) came over to see Sarah. We are so impressed with the loving care that Sarah has received from everyone involved during pregnancy and birth. It really couldn't have been any better.

So it's all going perfectly, really. No breastfeeding issues, no nothing. The meconium nappies finally passed today, giving way to the instantly familiar scent of breast-milk based poop. It smells identical to my memory of Eloïse 's early nappies.

Check out our gallery for some day two and three snaps.

Our difficulties with choosing child names are well documented. We went through the mangle with Eloïse (née Franbert) and it's been no different this time with Mr. X.

Happily, that process has now run its course and concluded, partially thanks to Dutch law, which gives new parents just three working days to register the monicker of their new progeny.

Henceforth, Eloïse 's new sibling shall be known as Lucas (Luuk ) Alexander Caspar Matthijs Macdonald.

I registered the birth this morning at the stadsdeelkantoor on the Koninginneweg. It took only a couple of minutes.

Apart from a birth certificate, I came away with a present from the local council voor de nieuwe Amsterdammer (for the new Amsterdammer). It turned out to be a red, hooded bath towel on the I Amsterdam theme. A nice touch and a pleasant reminder of why it's cool to live in Amsterdam.

Luuk is doing well. Neither he nor Sarah has left the house since his birth, but we're thinking we may briefly venture out on Friday. It all depends on how fit Sarah's feeling.

The house is embellished with blue streamers and whatnot, inside and out, so none of the neighbours can be in much doubt about the fact that a baby boy was recently born here.

Tiny male genitals are proving quite a challenge. At any moment, a nappy change can (literally) erupt in an escaped hosepipe scenario. Sarah, Cora and I have all been sprayed across various parts of our body. The wall by the changing table has also had a good dousing. At some point, we'll get the hang of this.

Our bed has pretty much reached its maximum capacity now. Eloïse and Lucas both comfortably fit in next to us, but we're no longer swimming in excess width. If Sarah had surprised us with twins, we'd be scratching our heads now.

With the name and birth registration taken care of, the next item on the agenda today was health insurance. I ticked that one off this afternoon. Tomorrow, I'll call our doctor and register him with the practice.

The next step will be to get mug shots done and apply for a Dutch passport. The American passport (required for travel to and from the US if you're a citizen) can wait until closer to the time that it's actually needed.

It's a contradiction in terms, I know, but I am impressed with Dutch birth bureaucracy. I registered Lucas 's birth only yesterday, but already the bureaucratic machine has swung into motion.

The doorbell rang this afternoon. It was the GGD, coming to do Lucas 's neo-natal hearing test and heel prick. We had no idea they would come so quickly, or without first calling.

Luckily, Lucas was asleep, so he made no sound while his hearing was being tested. We're pleased to report that both of his ears passed the test without issue.

Eloïse never had the hearing test, because she was born in the US, where the test isn't performed (unless the child is born in hospital). Indeed, the way she ignores our instructions sometimes, we do wonder whether she's deaf, but it's just healthy infantile contempt for our parental authority, of course.

Afterwards, it was the turn of Lucas 's foot for the heel prick. He didn't even wince as his foot was pricked and a few drops of blood were drawn. If we haven't heard anything after three weeks, it means that all tests were negative (which in this case is positive, if you see what I mean).

I registered Lucas with the doctor this morning and arranged for the birth bed-pan to be picked up tomorrow. It wasn't actually used during the birth.

We're pretty much on top of things here, not in the last place thanks to Cora, who continues to endear herself to us. Expect to find us suffering withdrawal symptoms after next Monday.

I've put up a few more photos of Lucas . These are of days three and four.

The remainder of Lucas 's umbilical cord snapped off Wednesday evening. I'm glad that's out of the way.

Laura is going to make a little drum out of the main part of the cord that she took with her after the birth. Similarly, she's drying and preparing the placenta for future medicinal use. It will end up as a pot of powder that Sarah can dip into as needed. It's supposed to do you a power of good and, even if it's beneficial effects are exaggerated, it certainly won't do any harm.

It's hard to believe that Lucas was born a whole week ago. My, how the past week has flown by.

Saturday was Cora's next to last day at our house. She'll be back on Monday for the last time (in connection with Lucas , at least). Cora's been a great help: cooking, washing, massaging, etc. Most importantly, she has created the breathing space for Sarah to rest and recuperate.

Friday was Sarah's first venture outside the house since Lucas 's birth. She came with me to pick up Eloïse from the peuterspeelzaal, which is close enough that it made for a perfect first outing. The other mums and dads were excited to see our new family member.

Earlier this week, a sprinkler company subcontracted by our gardening company came over and laid down our new watering system. It's only a sprinkler installation, I know, but it's very clever. Technology is technology and this system is well-engineered. Good engineering is always impressive, whether it's a washing-machine or a computer program.

The gardeners will hopefully return tomorrow to continue the task of readying the garden for spring. Spring's already here in theory, but Mother Nature doesn't seem to know it yet.

Our friends Marc and Miranda came over to meet Lucas this morning. After they left, I drove Eloïse to a birthday party in IJburg, where she had fun playing with the other children.

Lucas still spends most of the day with his eyes closed. I've seen them, though. They're blue. Sarah says he looks like me, but so did Eloïse at that age. Who's to say whether it'll stick?

Things are going well here.

The last time Lucas was weighed, he had regained his birth weight and progressed beyond it. He's supposed to be putting on about 50g per day and, judging by how he's feeding, I suspect he's hitting his targets.

We went out on Tuesday with Lucas to Bagels & Beans for lunch. We used the Cameleon pram frame with the Maxi Cosi car-seat on top as transport. The reason for the car-seat in spite of being on foot was so that we could pass by a photographic shop on the way home and get some passport photos of Lucas taken.

The car-seat turned out to be unnecessary for securing him while the photographs were taken. Instead, Sarah just sat him on a chair with one of her hands behind him to prop him up and support his head.

Lucas was getting his photo taken when he was just nine days old. Eloïse didn't go for her passport photo (in Los Altos) until she was a full thirteen days old. In both cases, the big issue was the eyes, i.e. keeping the little buggers awake, so that their eyes are fully visible in the photo.

I don't know why they make such a big fuss of the rules for baby passport photos. Newborns bear no resemblance to their passport photo within just a few months, so why bother?

Similarly, Lucas had to appear in person the next day at the stadsdeelkantoor, while I dealt with his passport application. Sarah came, too, as she needed to sign the form to give her consent. It went very smoothly -- I didn't even need to fill in a form -- and Lucas 's passport should be ready for pick-up next Wednesday.

Lucas had his first bath today, unless you count the one he was born in. He seemed to enjoy it, although he'd definitely had enough by the end.

Cora's last day was Monday, as planned. We miss her, but on the other hand, it's also nice to have the house back to ourselves.

Wednesday saw the installation of an apple tree and a Chanticleer pear tree (a sierpeer or decorative pear tree in Dutch) in the garden. They look very nice,although they'll need to grow a bit before they look at home here.

With that, the garden is on hold again for a few more days. I'm not altogether sure what the hold-up is this time, but there's no real hurry, in any case.

Anyway, photos of Lucas 's second week of life are now on-line, including photos of his first bath.

I'm coding again and it feels good.

The only serious coding I'd done since leaving Google was tv_grab_nl_upc, an XMLTV Dutch TV programme guide data grabber for use with MythTV. It's a decent piece of code, but it hasn't exactly found a wide audience.

One of my most popular projects of all time has undoubtedly been Ruby/Amazon, a Ruby interface to Amazon's Associate Web Service. Ruby/Amazon was originally written and released in 2004 as an autodidactic exercise for me to gain experience with programming for Web services.

It was written for Amazon's AWS v3 API. Amazon announced soon after the release of Ruby/Amazon that it would soon be launching AWS v4, but would continue to maintain the AWS v3 interface until further notice. That notice came in the first half of 2007, when Amazon announced that it would finally shut down access to the AWS v3 API on 31st March 2008.

Close to a year's notice would have given a normal person ample time to work on upgrading his code to use the new API, but I'm no mere normal person, so the code predictably continued to gather moss under my custodianship.

I did finally do some significant work on rewriting the library for AWS v4 while Sarah and Eloïse were in Chicago for a few weeks last summer, but once they had returned, the code stagnated again. By the time I'd found my latent coding stride -- something I can only work up to in relative solitude -- the house became a hive of activity once more.

The unavailability of that state of solitude, a state I find essential in order to foster concentration deep enough to produce quality code, has, as far as I'm concerned, been the most debilitating aspect of parenthood. If I'd had an office five minutes' walk from here, that would have been enough to solve the problem, but being in the same house has proved, for me, to be too big a distraction.

Nevertheless, for whatever reason, in the last ten days of March this year, I was suddenly gripped by the urge to get working on the library again and knock out a working version for AWS v4 before the AWS v3 shut-down deadline at the end of March.

Version 0.0.1 of Ruby/AWS, the sequel to Ruby/Amazon, finally saw the light of day on 24th March. The code was ugly -- embarrassingly so -- and was publicly released for the sole reason of providing Ruby/Amazon users with a migration path to the new API. Yes, I should have given people more than a week to migrate -- I should have done this work two years ago -- but at least I didn't leave them completely in the lurch.

Why the name change to Ruby/AWS? At the time, AWS was the only Amazon Web API, so it made sense to call my Ruby interface to it Ruby/Amazon. In the intervening years, however, AWS has become just one of many Amazon Web APIs. Therefore, it's more accurate to call the new library Ruby/AWS. An even better name might be Ruby/Amazon/AWS. Take your pick.

Ruby/Amazon has, in some ways, been my most successful piece of code to date. Not only was it downloaded and used by a lot of people, but it also scored me an opportunity to write about my own software for an issue of Dr. Dobbs' Journal a few years ago. Writing an article for a serious publication is always great, but writing about your own code is even more enjoyable.

Over the last three years, I've had many questions about updating the library for AWS v4 and even an offer of paid contract work to do it, but the motivation has always sadly been lacking. Then, suddenly, with the arrival of Lucas mere days away, I was suddenly possessed by the urge to do the right thing and not just let the code fade into oblivion. I suppose I needed the boost to my self-esteem, because a decent amount of my self-respect is derived from my intellectual muscle, if you will; muscles that have atrophied and become a bit flabby in recent times.

I was also spurred on by the increasing number of mails I was receiving as the end of March deadline approached, most of which basically said, 'Help, my code is about top stop working.' I felt a certain obligation to my users not to leave them out in the cold. For whatever reason, people weren't entirely content with the other projects that had sprung up to fill the vacuum in recent years.

Anyway, yesterday saw the release of version 0.1.0 of Ruby/AWS, a version that no longer causes me embarrassment. It doesn't (yet) support the full v4 API, but it's pretty good at what it does.

What it does is ItemSearch, ItemLookup, SellerListingSearch, BrowseNodeLookup and ListSearch. It also supports batch requests and (as of 0.1.0) multiple operations.

Conspicuous by its absence is support for remote shopping carts. This will come later.

Version 0.1.0 has a new recursive XML parser that dynamically creates classes and instantiates objects from them on demand. This is an improvement from versions 0.0.1 and 0.0.2, as well as from Ruby/Amazon, which were all only semi-dynamic in their class definition. This one change allowed me to ditch most of the work I did last summer, which involved manually defining a large number of classes to match the data sets that could be returned by the API.

Anyway, it does feel good to have produced a new piece of code. Almost no code from Ruby/Amazon was recycled in the process, because the v3 and v4 APIs are totally different.

This Web site is already running the new code to display links to Amazon products in the left sidebar and Ruby/AWS has already been placed in the Fedora distribution (releases 7 and later), replacing the now obsolete Ruby/Amazon.

If you need programmatic access to Amazon, Ruby/AWS may be your thing.

My new crosstrainer was finally delivered on Friday. It's a 2008 model Tunturi C85, purchased locally.

I'm glad I bought it locally and had the guys bring it upstairs and assemble it. I couldn't believe how many pieces it came in. There were a million little screws and washers. The assembly instructions are very complex.

I spent Friday and yesterday preparing a new release of Ruby/AWS, so I had no time to play with my new toy until today. This afternoon, however, I sat down and read the manual (yes, I'm the theoretical person about whom you always wondered whether he existed: the man who first reads the manual) and then climbed up for my first training session.

And what else would I choose but the Fat Burner 1 programme? Let's face it, I have fat to burn, figuratively and literally.

I must say, the half an hour I spent on the machine, I really enjoyed myself. It did, indeed, bring back memories of my daily visit to the Google gym. One negative thing that reminded me of those visits was the annoyingly familiar numb feet by the end of it. I'm going to have to think of a way to avoid those.

Off the crosstrainer, a quick, refreshing drink, and then into the steam shower. Lovely! And all of that without even having to leave my own house. Wow.

I'm looking forward to literally putting the C85 through its paces in the days and weeks ahead. It has all kinds of amusing features. It even has a couple of USB ports for updating the firmware, storing programmes and music files, etc.

Beta books are a great idea. Why don't more technical publishers (or even publishers of any work of non-fiction) do this?

Take the Pragmatic Programmers, Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, and their publishing company, the Pragmatic Bookshelf. Dave's currently working on the third edition of Programming Ruby, updated for Ruby 1.9. The finished product will be in the shops a few months from now.

Nothing unusual about that, you might say, but rather unconventionally, the book is already available for sale. How is that possible?

Firstly, the Pragmatic Programmers have taken the entirely logical step of selling PDF copies of their books. If you buy the paper + PDF bundle, you get them for less than the sum of the two. A PDF of a technical book is a grand thing, because it's a lot easier to use a computer to search a file than it is to use one's fingers and eyes to search a stack of paper.

PDFs are also cheap to produce and not just user-friendly, but environmentally friendly, too. Extending the idea, why not produce PDFs of books that aren't quite ready yet. Offer them to your readers and, as with a piece of beta software, you'll get errata reports back. Reader feedback is important to an author, so why not get that feedback while you write the book, instead of after it's published, by which point it's only useful for the next edition, which is almost certainly a few years away. And that edition will have its own problems, too.

So, I already have my copy of the third edition of Programming Ruby and am happily using it. Whenever the manuscript is updated, I get an e-mail, which allows me to go to the Web site of the Pragmatic Programmers and regenerate the PDF for myself.

I think PDFs of technical books make perfect sense. Beta PDFs of not yet finished books make even more sense, if you can improve on perfect.

On Tuesday morning, we took Lucas out for the first time in the car. It was also his first trip outside of Amsterdam, but only as far as Amstelveen, so he's not exactly a globe trekker just yet.

We all went to the Amsterdamse Bos, specifically to Boerderij Meerzicht and had pancakes for lunch. It was Sarah's idea and she'd picked a gloriously fresh spring day for it. After pancakes, Eloïse played in the playground and I took some photos. Why don't we do this every morning?

That first trip in the car was hopeful. Lucas was quiet and patient. Only on the return trip, when we were just around the corner from our house, did he begin to get restless and cry.

I still remember Eloïse 's first trip in the car, from Mountain View to Los Altos in California, to get a passport photo taken. The return trip was hellish, and that was even shorter than our trip to the Amsterdamse Bos on Tuesday.

Speaking of passports, we picked up Lucas 's passport yesterday afternoon from the mercifully bustle-free stadsdeelkantoor.

Getting a passport is a relatively efficient process in this country. Lucas isn't yet three weeks old, but he already has his travel document. We'll eventually have to get him a US passport, too, because of the silly rule there that you must travel in and out on an American passport if you're a citizen (which he automatically is, thanks to his American mother). This can wait until he's about to make his first trip, however.

A woman from the Consultatiebureau came to the house this afternoon to do a check-up on Lucas . He's growing well and has now passed the four kilo mark at 4010g.

We had a good conversation with this woman about why we don't have our children vaccinated. She wrongly assumed, as do many people, that we were selfishly choosing to reap the benefits of herd immunity, whilst not having our children contribute to the herd. Not so. The reasons we don't have our children vaccinated are many, but can basically be summarised as follows: we don't believe the vaccinations are effective. In fact, we believe they are actually detrimental to society.

I could fill many on this subject alone, but people far more knowledgeable on the subject than I have already done so. I can give pointers if you're interested.

Finally, the new boy in town has also gone on the waiting list for Eloïse 's peuterspeelzaal. You can never enrol your children too soon for anything here.

Our birth announcement cards arrived in the post today. I'll be posting some of those through neighbours's letterboxes tomorrow and sending the rest out in the post at the start of next week.

If I were designing a birth announcement card for my friends, I'd probably choose something with a geek element, such as the following bit of Ruby code:

family << Child.new( { :name   => 'Lucas Alexander Caspar Matthijs',
                       :sex    => 'Male',
                       :dob    => DateTime.parse( '2008-03-31T13:31:00+02:00' ),
                       :weight => 3500 } )

Clear enough, right?

Sarah would never allow it, though: far too sensible and traditional. Oh well.

Well, not quite just yet, but it's coming alone nicely now.

The pathway paving is more or less complete, lots of soil has been strewn on the borders and today, work is being done on a new geveltuin along our perimeter wall.

A geveltuin is a border garden, commonly placed along the facade of a building, but, as in our case, sometimes also along a perimeter wall. They're very popular here, not least because, for many city dwellers, it's the only kind of garden they're able to have. The local council will also do the work to lay one for free, as it's seen as increasing the allure of the street. All you need to do is file the application. Once you have one, you're obliged to maintain what you plant in it, but why else would you want one?

To this end, the pavement tiles are being dug up along the edge of the wall and a narrow strip of soil is being laid, so that creepers can be planted and made to climb the wall. Once the plants take hold, it should look really nice and counter the slightly sterile look of the brickwork. It's hard work, though, as a stone saw is needed to cut through the square tiles, so that just a small piece of each tile can be put back.

The actual planting of the garden starts tomorrow, which should rapidly make our little plot of land look more like a real garden. All of the work so far has been preparatory and, whilst very necessary, provided little of aesthetic value and gave little impression of the progress being made.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the borders full of shrubs and flowers. We'll still need some outdoor lighting and a new set of garden furniture (the old set is really on its last legs), but the garden will be mostly finished at that point.

Eloïse 's climbing frame should also be erected by the weekend. Hopefully, we'll have good weather this weekend and she'll be able to play on it for the first time.

Speaking of the weather, it's been lovely here over the last few days: gorgeous sun, a warm temperature and no hint of rain. It's been a real treat after the long cold spell of late. Having said that, it's drizzling again outside as I write this.

Lucas had his first visit to the Consultatiebureau today, where we learned that he has now grown to 4210g and 53cm. That's quite an achievement in such a small space of time. No wonder he needs to sleep so much: it must be exhausting to increase your bulk by 20% in just over three weeks.

I've put up a few more week three photos, as well as a bunch from this week. The week four photos are definitely the best yet; Lucas even has his eyes open in some of them.

Sarah made a fruit smoothie the other day and added a spoonful of ground placenta to the mix, just to see how it tasted. Whichever positive qualities the placenta possesses, a pleasant taste is not one of them, it has to be said.

The arrival of new offspring understandably inspires a certain amount of fundamental self-reflection. How have I lived my life? Am I a good father? How do I want to live the remainder of my life? Can I better myself?

Can a leopard change its spots? Imagine my surprise when one day, unexpectedly, my Ruby interpreter provided the answer.

[ianmacd@frankincense]$ irb
irb(main):001:0> self = self.better
SyntaxError: compile error
(irb):1: Can't change the value of self
self = self.better
      ^
        from (irb):1

This funny clip is still doing the rounds. If you know Silicon Valley and you haven't seen this yet, it may make you laugh.

Schiphol experienced its busiest day of the year yesterday, as 170,000 passengers milled through the airport and headed off on their way.

It's the start of the May holiday here, which this year includes Koninginnedag (the queen's birthday), and Hemelvaartsdag (Ascension Day). That means workers only have to take three days off work to get a nine day consecutive run, so many people have decided to go on holiday this week.

We were originally planning to be a part of this group ourselves, and go to England today to visit Fenella et al in Cornwall. Time is short, however, as Sarah's folks arrive next weekend, so we'd need to be back by then.

Car, plane and train all seemed inappropriate for this trip. Lucas isn't yet used to travel and we were reluctant to start him off with a trip that, one way or another, would mean quite a long day in transit. He's still so young and tiny at the moment, and I feel that we need to stay close to the nest for at least another few weeks.

Not only that, but there are things going on at home, too. The garden, for example.

Yesterday, Eloïse 's climbing frame was delivered and installed; and today, the lawn sods were laid down on top of chicken wire (to thwart the moles), thereby rendering the initial laying of the garden more or less complete.

As I've written before, we have yet to put in the new lighting and there are a few places where plants and flowers are still missing, but this should all be taken care of in a matter of weeks. We've started looking for new garden furniture and may already have found something appropriate. We'll know in a few days.

We had beautiful weather today. The Vondelpark was teeming with people. When I got home from having my hair cut, Eloïse was standing atop her climbing frame and clearly enjoying herself.

She spent the rest of the afternoon riding around the garden path and patio area on her outdoor tricycle. She, for one, is clearly going to get a lot of use and enjoyment out of the garden.

The sods need a week or two to settle without being trampled underfoot, so we're going to have to try and keep Eloïse off them. The problem with that is that the slide of her climbing frame lands on the grass. We'll have to see how well we can control her tomorrow.

06:45 and I'm already up. I've dressed Eloïse and she's outside, riding her bike around the garden.

Ugh.

Koninginnedag 2008 is at an end for us, although the rowdy hordes continue to listen to really bad Dutch music -- spot the pleonasm -- on the Museumplein.

The rain that was predicted didn't materialise and the temperature remained cool, which was nice for us, but kept the numbers down. Reports say that half a million people were out and about in Amsterdam today, as opposed to 600,000 last year. The lower numbers meant that we could actually walk fairly normally through the Vondelpark and even push Eloïse 's buggy in front of us.

The Apollolaan, too, seemed quieter than usual. We didn't buy anything except Belgian waffles and hot-dogs this year, but the waffles were great, so I'm happy with our purchases.

We avoided the centre entirely today. I've seen enough Koninginnedagen that I really didn't feel the need. I was too knackered, anyway, thanks to all of the early mornings being forced upon me. It was nice to just stay local for once and just experience the neighbourhood celebrations, especially the Vondelpark, which is really all about the children.

Eloïse watched a young girl play the accordion and announced that she'd like to learn that instrument later. When we passed a boy playing guitar some minutes later, she said she'd like to learn to do that, too.

It's amusing to me that Princess Maxima, wife of Prince Willem Alexander, is by far the most popular member of the royal family in this country. How typically Dutch to love the royal who isn't even Dutch. Wat je van ver haalt is lekker. The royals were up in Friesland today, visiting a couple of small towns there.

It's also funny to see the children of Prince Maurits and Princess Marilène on TV with their parents. On normal weekdays, we often pass these young children biking up and down our street as we're walking home with Eloïse from the peuterspeelzaal. The family lives just a few doors down from us.

It's on days like today, when the neighbourhood is absolutely packed with cars and people from all over, that I'm extra appreciative of being lucky enough to live where I do. I live in a beautiful house in a beautiful neighbourhood and that's a real privilege. I don't think there's a day that goes by that I don't spend a few moments feeling consciously grateful for what I have, but that sense is heightened on days like today.