no sleep until the bairn is born

We went to bed a couple of hours ago, but neither of us can seem to get to sleep. It's now nearly 2am and I am sitting in front of the computer writing this and drinking tea. I wonder why we can't sleep? My mum phoned today and didn't even bother talking to me. Apparently, she was very nice to Mrs McMuffin, telling her that it was perfectly normal to be anxious. She also said that she had been very anxious when she had been waiting for me to arrive, but my dad had been a great support and had helped calm her. It was a bit strange hearing that. He was never that great at being a parent, but it's nice to hear that he played his part well in the beginning. I wonder what kind of father I'll be? Not like my dad, I'm sure, but I imagine I will have my own little foibles. Nothing too terrible, I hope. At least I will be able to introduce him to the joys of Mac and rock and roll music.

By the way, although I had planned to download the new iLife 06 suite from one of those free sites, I just couldn't be bothered waiting. It looked as if they were having some difficulty splitting the apps, so I thought I would go and buy my very own copy. It is an amazing suite of programmes. You just seem to get so much for you money. It is probably worth the money for the huge improvements they've made in iPhoto alone. The iWeb app is a little bit basic, but nice enough, I suppose. I have already worked out how to modify the site templates. The best bit about the whole suite though is how well integrated it all is, the apps with each other, and with .mac. You really need to have a .mac account to make the best use of iLife 06. I can see how that might get very expensive. If Apple had their way, we would be uploading tons of stuff onto their servers. It's probably just as well that it is really easy to buy extra storage space.

Tonight I have been messing around with Garageband's podcast studio. It's great. I am now sorely tempted to start creating some podcasts. Maybe I will, if I can think of anything to say. It has occured to me that I could broadcast a recording of Mrs McMuffin giving birth, but who would want to listen to 8 hours of her swearing and abusing me. She has a foul mouth on her sometimes, and I wouldn't be surprised if she allows it free rein when the time comes.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention iWork, a 30 day fully functioning trial comes with iLife 06. I was initially very positive about Pages last year when it was first released, but quickly grew tired of it's limitations and very poor performance. I eventually became so tired of the spinning beach ball that I put it away for good. I still had time for Keynote, though. I often use it to make pretty charts rather than use Excel. Anyway, I have spent the day preparing a report for work, and I have done it all with Pages 2 and Keynote 3. Pages just seems to work now. It's responsive and feature rich. It now has all the features we expected in the first draft. Mail merge, easy arranging of pages, different layouts on the same page and so on, it has it all. A very nice update, and definitely worth the £55 Apple are asking.

I better go to bed now or else my day will be torture tomorrow. Goodnight to all of you, wherever you may be.