(Sorry, I accidentally posted an early draft of this earlier today)

One of the great benefits of working for Microsoft is our parental leave policy.  Even though we had our baby almost a year ago, you have up to 12 months to take your leave… which really helps work around project schedules, life events, vacations, and most importantly to me, making sure you’re home with your child at the “right” time. 

For me, spending time with my daughter as she approaches 1-year old was infinitely more satisfying than it would have been had I taken the time when she was born.  She’s barking at dogs, giggling all the time, playing hide & seek, and is saying “Dada” now.  We had a lot of fun.  She’s an amazing little girl.

But my time off wasn’t all play.  I had a bunch of little projects I wanted to finish around the house that I just haven’t had much dedicated time to do all year – so I used this work-less time to crank through them.  Here’s the list in all its glory:

• First of all, I was sick the entire time.  So I had a few doctor visits.  Turned out to be a series of colds thanks to my daughter’s daycare, but it threw a serious wrench in my gym time.
• Took a 5-day trip to the Washington coast to kick off my leave – lots of relaxation, reading, and walking on the beach with the fam.
• Cleaned out my closet & donated my old clothes.  I try and do this at least 1-2x/year, but for some reason this time it just felt more satisfying.
• Cleaned out bookshelves and recycled old books; sold old DVDs/CDs.
• Cleaned out bathroom drawers and realized it’s much easier to keep them organized than to organize them, so that’s the plan now.
• Stella and I took afternoon trips to the Seattle Aquarium (she loved it), the Woodland Park Zoo, the Children's Museum, and we even went to a parents & kids movie with some friends which was fun.
• Rented a wide angle lens to experiment.  Stella and I did a photo shoot with the lens and I got a few great shots.  In all, I probably took over 2,000 photos of the munchkin.
• Spent some quality park time at Myrtle Edwards Park, showing Stella the boats in the Sound (the photo above is from that visit).
• Filled up my gas tank just ONCE in 5-weeks!  WOW.
• BIG project: Scanned hundreds of old documents using a ScanSnap, and then proceeded to shred almost all of them.  Our home is now 99% paperless and it feels great.
• Downloaded Zune 3 and Windows Live beta – Love them both!
• Rebalanced all of our investments - not like it mattered once the crisis hit.  Would have been better off not having any!
• Applied for life insurance for my wife & me and started a 529 college fund for our daughter.
• Sold off almost all of my old Xbox games (sad – expected to get $5-10/ea but instead clocked in at $1-2/ea)
• BIG project: Digitally encoded 25+ VHS tapes and recycled them (this is worthy of another post as it took 4 trips to Best Buy to make this work – it was pretty horrible)
• Made a video with Windows Movie Maker for my Mom’s birthday from footage from 20 years ago.
• Bought a Polar heart rate monitor, learned how to use it, and started a more intense fitness program once back to normal.
• Ignored my blog completely thanks to Twitter which has become my outlet.
• Changed almost all of my online passwords after reading horror stories (see: Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account)
• Learned a lot more about politics and started following the campaign on an hourly basis (I’m hooked now!)
• Bought a new fireproof media safe for my backup hard drives & miniDV tapes, transferred everything to it.
• Renewed my driver’s license.
• Took a 5-day trip to Pasadena to visit family & friends and soak in the sun!

In all – a very satisfying leave.