I use Python at work, and since I do I tend to not use it at home on my personal projects. That makes sure there's no conflict of interest with my employer. It also keeps me sane so that I don't get into a rut with my ideas.

These days I'm going with C and Lua. For example, I'm starting this project:

http://edifying.tv/

For fun with Lua and wxWidgets, and my latest websites are all Mongrel2 and Lua based with:

http://tir.mongrel2.org/

But, for teaching total beginners to programming I'm finding Python is the best so far.