life

Lately I've been working on finishing a few side projects – some websites, some apps, etc., and I thought I'd list off a few of the things I've done lately here for posterity:

• Keith English for Missouri State Representative (website)
  I've worked with Keith to make a nice website where he can present his campaign platform and show some of the things he's done for the area he's hoping to represent. The site has some neat little front-end optimizations that I've been playing around with lately.
• Before I Do St. Louis - Wedding and Event Planning (website)
  My good friend, Jenny Madras, has recently started her own business planning events and weddings in the St. Louis area, and it seems she already has some great clients! I'm excited for her, and was glad to help her make a very simple but elegant website.
• Jeff Geerling's Portfolio (website)
  For a year or so, I've had a very basic HTML5-based website set up at jeffgeerling.com, but lately, I wanted to port it to Drupal and start building out a better portfolio of my work. Progress is slow, but the basic site is done, it runs fast, and it's a responsive design, so it should look pretty good on mobile devices!
• flocknote (website)
  I've been working like crazy on flocknote (my full-time gig) the past year, and we recently added a ton of new features and gave the entire website a makeover. If you're doing any kind of Catholic communication work, check it out! 
• Mac Apps, iPhone Apps
  I've been polishing up Quick Resizer (a simple/fast image resizing program for the map), and I'm working on two different iPhone apps and an Android app right now. More news to come on that front sooner or later!

Marriage is great, and my wife and I just reached our 1.5 year anniversary. I hope to write a few more anecdotes about the married life soon—stay tuned!

This week I've been visiting doctors, getting checkups, getting tests, and generally being a lab rat. My health has been better, so any prayers you could spare could be appreciated... but enough about me!

Since I've been feeling not-so-good lately, and since the whole HHS mandate fiasco's been so annoying to me, I've felt relatively pessimistic in the past week.

Well, during one of the many waiting room visits (I hesitate to call them doctor visits, since I usually spend more time in the waiting room ;-), I heard a lullaby play over the hospital's PA system. Nobody seemed to notice it, but I asked one of the receptionists what the lullaby meant (I figured maybe it was employee nap time or something like that, being 3 in the afternoon...).

When she told me that a baby was just born in the labor and delivery area, a little tear caught in my eye. What a great thing to have happen while I was sitting there!

A few days later, I was back in the waiting area for a while, and just before I was called to get a test done, I heard the lullaby again (awesome!)... and about a minute later, another lullaby!

Sometimes these little moments can turn a day around 180°. I'm still pretty happy to have been at the hospital during three births, and I'm reminded that, as Malcolm says in Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way." Life finds a way to bring you back to hopefulness. Life finds a way to remind you that death and cancerous beliefs in society (like the contraceptive culture's belief that it's a positive influence) will not be victorious in the end.

I'm feeling a little better now.

My wife and I have crossed the one-year threshold; after achieving this milestone, she told me, "Once we get past a year, we're set for life, right?"

Christmas 2011: I'm trying to look normal, I think. Didn't work.

While it's not true that strengthening the marriage bond gets easier over time (it's always a challenge—but in the best possible way!), it is true that seemingly-insignificant things (like doing the dishes, emptying the trash, and saying daily prayers) we do in our marriage help a lot.

Our faith, for instance, needs constant attention and care. We have already had periods in our married life where we've fallen short of our committment to pray the Rosary daily, or to attend daily Mass more often. We continually struggle to make faith a priority in our relationship. But we push through, and keep on getting back into good habits of prayer—together as often as possible.

Keeping up with chores is another area where routine is important, but often done haphazardly. We have a wonderful chore spreadsheet, and we often go on 'cleaning rampages' where we complete a bunch of chores in a day (well, that's more me than my wife... she usually does her chores regularly), but we also skip chores some weeks due to a busy schedule. We're not living in a dump, and nothing is unsanitary, but things tend to go downhill quickly once you let the routines slip away too far.

Routines may sound boring, but they are important for a strong relationship.

Giving a kiss or hug and saying 'goodbye' every time we depart each other's company helps us remember that we are always looking forward to seeing each other again soon. Going to Sunday morning Mass together, even when one of us is really tired, or would like to sleep in, reminds us that we need to approach our relationship with God hand-in-hand. Watching a movie or reading together on a regular basis lets us learn to relax together (of course, too much media consumption can be harmful!).

These routines firm up the foundation of our married relationship. Some of the routines will change over time—especially when children enter the family—but many will be a stable bedrock of our marriage for the rest of our lives. If we let them slip away, we risk losing an important part of our love for one another. The covenant we entered more than a year ago is important enough that we are both vigilant about the 'routine' of loving each other.

My wife came back from the grocery store today and recounted a heartwarming interaction with the bagger in the checkout line:

Wife: "I like that you're always so happy and smiling."

Bagger: "Well, I just like living, you know? Jesus is nice. Things are working out good."

I think this would be a pretty good prayer of thanksgiving during this consumeristic season.