40 days ago, my wife and I welcomed a new child into the world. Miles Robert Blankenburg was 8 lbs. 10 oz. and 19" long (tall?). On that day (April 16), I started my very generous paternity leave from Microsoft.

Prior to Miles joining us, I had aspirations for what I would do with all of this time. First and foremost, I would be able to completely focus on my family. But certainly there would be some time left over to work on a coding project or two, right? Maybe I'll now have the focus to lose some weight? Maybe I can finally catch up on some of the landscaping I've been putting off?

I'm here to report that family is ALL that I focused on (that's the right thing, right?). I actually gained two pounds. And as this blog, my email, Twitter, my fantasy baseball team, and dozens of other sites will attest, I have almost not touched a computer during that time. Sure, I checked the weather a couple of times, and looked up some sports scores, but that would pretty much be the extent of it. It's weird. I feel like I've gone through some sort of 12-step program. The first few days, I tried bringing the baby into my office so that I could get online. But that became harder and harder. Slowly, I weened myself off of the computer entirely. Not because I wanted to, but because it seemed unnecessary during what was supposed to be family time. This past week, I've almost not been interested in using a computer. But now that I'm back to work (and let's be honest, I'm ready to be back), I feel like a smoker who quit, only to go through an entire pack in an evening. Today will probably be very scatterbrained, surfing everywhere and accomplishing nothing.

My corporate network password has expired, so I've got that interesting challenge to overcome this morning. I've got a full inbox to go through (once I get network access, of course) and start responding to. In short, I'm probably going to spend this week catching up on what you've all been doing for the last 40 days.

So, what did you do in the last 40 days?

Here's a list of the things I know I missed (what an amazing 40 days it's been in the Heartland!)

05/10/08 - West Michigan Day of .NET
05/17/08 - Cleveland Day of .NET
A number of new specialized user groups have sprung up, but I will write a new post outlining these later this week.

Labels: heartland district, jeff blankenburg, microsoft