Sea Changes

Those of you who use blogger, like me, have no doubt realized that they have created a new interface. I'm not exactly sure why, but I'm not too happy with it. I think it's partly because the interface is so simple...so easy to use, that it almost seems to have lost something along the way. This is my first post using this new interface, so we'll see how it goes. I'm sure everything will turn out just fine in the end.

They have added a neat new profile feature. I guess this is so that you can enter your various favorite novels and then search their database in the event that there is some really hot girl who also happens to think that A Clockwork Orange is one of the best books ever written. Similar to Friendster, I guess...except that, unlike Friendster, this does not have the added bonus of an incredibly slow server and not loading 80 per cent of the time.

While there has not been much change in my life over the last few days, the lives of many of my friends are on a collision course with differentness. I found out yesterday that a friend of mine from college, John Borah, who is now in the Air Force, has been deployed to Afghanistan. A few weeks ago, Shane Ross was awarded his PhD from Caltech and, last Friday night, he became engaged to a girl who is just an incredible person, officially making him one of the luckiest guys I know. Another friend, John Lin, also became engaged a few weeks ago. (I don't know his fiancée too well, so I can't gush about her...although I'm sure she's nice.)

And then there's the babies. Yes, everywhere I look one friend or another seems to be having a baby. There is, of course, Tisra, who is now expecting her third child.

Which brings us to the greatest sea change of all...Shane and Erika Bonham are now expecting their first child.

It is at this time that I would like to set the record straight- I don't hate babies. For some reason, a lot of people seem to assume that I hate babies. That's not the case at all.

The thing is, however...I just honestly don't know what to do with them until they turn ten months old or so. Maybe it's just because I have no children of my own but, up until that point, they all seem about the same to me. I look at them, and they just sit there. I smile at them, and they just sit there. I wave stuffed animals in their face, and they just sit there. And then, they poop. (Oddly enough, the last four sentences could also refer to old people.)

Once they hit the ten month mark, however, I find them quite amusing. That's when they start to do that spontaneous bouncing thing, and when they start to move around the room, and start to throw stuff out of their play pen so you pick it up for them, and try to share their cheerios with you and so on.

I guess another thing that I've never known quite how to handle is how the dynamic of a friendship can change once friends have babies. No longer can you spontaneously go out to eat, or to the movies. These things now have to be planned weeks in advance, because they have to get a sitter. And of course, it often happens that they were unable to get a sitter so you either have to take the baby with you, which totally rules out the movies, or you have to opt for hanging out at their house that evening, playing pictionary and speaking in voices that are barely audible while watching Office Space with the closed caption on because if you turn on the sound you'll "wake the baby."

Don't get me wrong...I'm not saying that any of these things are bad. Quite the opposite- babies are good things and I am happy for my friends when they have babies.

As a single guy, however, I currently see having a baby as a limit on being able to do things. No more annual trips to Europe, no more heading out to Hollywood for a night of revelry.

I'm confident that once I do settle down, I'll see that there is infinitely more value in having a child than in those other things. For now, however, I'm just not ready to watch Office Space with the sound off.