It’s been a fairly busy week for Vivian and me here in Omaha. Along with a flurry of meetings and projects at work, we both got to eat out at the soon-to-be-closed Venice Inn twice during the week — first on Tuesday with her parents (who had never eaten there before) and then again on Thursday for a pro-life luncheon. Our speaker was Carol Szczepaniak, whose son Joe was part of the chain that got me connected to the exciting job I have today. Then on Thursday, I got to attend a meet-and-greet at the Fox and Hound with Yaron Brook, the Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute. He was passing through Nebraska and made time to chat with a cluster of my Objectivist friends about the virtues of selfishness, among other things.
Spring is, of course, the season of new life, and in the case of the Mills is means a new baby boy named August. I dropped by the hospital to get their first family photo with their new arrival on Friday, which was a delight. Their son is going to be about the same as ours, and with Sam and Hannah nearly the same age as well, we’ve got some inevitable play-dates in our future, I expect.
At home, Vivian and I have been busy transforming my office into a new baby bedroom for our little boy. That meant hauling down bookshelves, filing cabinets, and entire desk, and my old desktop computer to the “dance floor” of our basement. It was a fairly exhausting task, but we got a little help from Hannah to finish the job on Saturday as we put the crib together. We went out for barbecue ribs at Swine Dining with Donna and my parents to celebrate its (near) completion on Saturday. Then I got to spend the afternoon doing yard work, assembling a fertilizer spreader that I bought with my dad and putting down some weed and feed before some thunderstorms rolled by overnight. Things have been growing in our yard again, particularly the cluster of pretty tulips underneath our maple tree in the front yard. Hannah dropped by to let her Baby Cow sniff each of them while going on a walk with Grammy as Vivian and I worked on the house.
