Skype and the art of working from home

Today was the first day where we blended a little bit of work back into our lives. When you are accustomed to working huge hours (and being on email nearly 24/7), the adjustment to working full days (only 8 hours!) or half days (4 hours?!?) is dramatic. By the time I went to lab meeting, had a meeting about our undergraduate HIV/AIDS course, did some email, and tuned into our HIV/AIDS course remotely, I'd already worked more than 6 hours today. Fortunately, most of that was at home with Eli and Shelby. The key is the near magical power of Skype and Acrobat Connect. The former lets us audio and video conference with campus, lab, and colleagues. The latter lets us watch presentations (such as class lectures) and review data from our computers at home. With this combination, we expect to spend a lot of time at home with Eli this fall and winter while still continuing to run the lab (which is now about 15 people)!

We're settling into a rhythm with Eli. He is feeding very often...and we are learning the virtue of patience. His hysterical shrieking fits are less frequent. Either that or we are simply losing our hearing. I'm certain that there are more incisive or profound thoughts about parenthood that come and go throughout the day, but recall suffers under the weight of sleep deprivation.