So as some of you may know, Anabelle was originally going to be "Isabella". Back in about 2004, before we were even married we (i.e. Christy) started thinking about names for our eventual kids. And we happened upon "Isabella" pretty quickly. It was kind of amazing. I don't remember exactly who said it first but once we came up with it we both were like "yep, that's a really good girl's name." And had we been ready for our little bundle of joy back then we would have been ahead of the curve. But slowly as time passed we were getting birth announcements from various friends and families and, although I know it wasn't, it seemed like every girl was being named "Isabella". I think that the final straw was 2 years ago when Christy had 3 Isabellas in her pre-school class at the same time. It was like "hmm; not so original anymore." So we kept a variation of the "Bella" and added an "Ana" and, presto chango, we have Anabelle.
I bring this up because today I saw a real good reason why it seemed like every girl was being named Isabella: every girl was! Well not really, but it did overtake "Emma" as the most popular name for girls in 2009. While I'm not one of those people that needs to have their child have a name that no one in the history of the world has ever had (e.g. Apple, Pilot Inspektor), I'm glad that she will not have to go through school with likely 5 or 6 other people in her grade having the same name. FYI, Anabelle is the 46th most popular girl's name while its components (Ana and Bella) are respectively 44th and 18th. Although it certainly seems to be the case that "Bella" has shot up in popularity due to the Twilight series, it's going to annoy me to no end if 10 years from now people just assume that she got the "Belle" part from that.
The big news of the week is that it is now 95% certain that 7 weeks from today we will be full-fledged suburbanites again! I liked to fool myself into believing that we were still quasi-urban up in Evanston, but now there will be nothing ambiguous about it at all anymore as we are moving into a house in Naperville. It's not without more than a little bit of irony seeing as how Christy and I have been quoted on many occasions as saying "well, we might move back out into the suburbs again at some point, but we are NEVER moving to Naperville." But we basically had a checklist of 8 things (house, 3-bedrooms, AC, dishwasher, yard, garage, within a mile of the Metra, and less than $1600/month) and this one met them all so it seemed pretty stupid to turn it down just because we didn't like the idea of "being Napervillians" (actually I think I might start referring to myself as a Napervillain, that sounds way cooler).
And just so I comment on something with a little bit of weight, today saw another bad news is good headline as the unemployment rate went up. Why is this good news? Because in April the private sector added the most jobs (231,000) in any one month since March 2006. However, as a result of the labor market looking better people who had previously given up on looking for jobs have now crowded back into the job search and as a result the unemployment levels have gone up. Seems like there should be a better statistic given to track the unemployment rate so that you wouldn't have two (those unemployed and actively seeking work and those just unemployed) and you wouldn't have counterintuitive effects like these. It's important because this weekend a Republican can go out and say "the economy is horrible; the labor numbers came out on Friday and unemployment is up again" while a Democrat can say "the economy is much improved; the labor numbers came out on Friday and in April we added the most jobs in any one month in 4 years" and both statements would be absolutely correct.
Finally, anybody else see the fun little roller-coaster the Dow decided to do yesterday (plunging 1000 points before getting about 2/3 of it back by day's end). Apparently the culprit is that some specific set of circumstances hit which triggered a massive selloff by computerized programs. I swear, computers are going to destroy the world but it's not going to be in some cool "Skynet launching nukes" or "machines turning us into batteries" way. No, I think that one day a computer network is going to decide to sell all the world's assets to a dead guy in Iceland for $1.95 and everybody's going to be wiped out in one fell swoop.
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Couple hours after the giant tumble/recovery I think it was CNN that reported Sam Adams opened the day around $58, dropped to around $2 during the "flash crash" and then spiked back up to $52.
And lets not kid ourselves, Skynet is here. Cloud computing and distributed processing has made it so. This was just a test.
Not really related... except maybe in the sense of you moving to the suburbs, and the trade-offs of city vs. suburban life, and the creeping disease of... creeps.
But I just found this Ta-Nehisi Coates article, "Ignorance," so interesting. Definitely read through all the comments, too.
Also, interesting side fact, last Thursday I saw a med student in scrubs exit the hospital doors and spit into the garbage can rather than the sidewalk and it was literally the first time in my life I had ever seen someone do this. I almost went up to him and thanked him. And, you know, mentally made out with him, so strong was my reaction. (What IS that spitting thing anyway? Jesus. No girls do this--ever. And I guarantee you our spit isn't any gunkier than you men's. ... Whew. Okay, sorry, been meaning to get that off my chest for... years. :) )
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