Sidecars and fried cheese

I'm it.

2010-08-11T20:40:00.003-04:00

I got tagged by Scattermom, so I guess that means I have to get off of my seemingly ever-expanding ass (yeah, I'm not one of those people who breastfeeds off the weight, thank you Gisele. Quite the contrary - I think my body is preparing for a potential grocery store famine) and write a blog post.

(okay, it isn't that I've been sitting around doing nothing. I've been crushingly busy at work AND traveling for business and for pleasure. Subject for another post, one which you will undoubtedly have to wait a month for)

Anywho. Here's the meme:

1. Sum up your blogging motivation, philosophy and experience in exactly 10 words.
2. Tag 10 other blogs to perpetuate the meme.

1. If I don't blog, all I write is boring science.

2. The problem with this tagging bit is that many of the people I'd tag have ALREADY DONE THIS. Or they've given up on blogging altogether. This is the problem with being a latecomer to the meme, yet an early-comer to blogging. So if you're in my blogroll and you haven't done this one yet - well, heya! You're up!

A love letter to my Buggle

2010-06-27T20:09:00.002-04:00

Dear Buggle,

I'm having so many days lately where, after you've gone to bed, I come downstairs and say to Daddy "Wow. Owen is just such a joy. What a great kid."

I have to admit, when you were two, you were a bit trying. But at three, you're such a big boy. You're so articulate. You're funny. You're a big helper. You (most of the time) are a great listener. You're a wonderful and loving big brother.

You're such a smart little kid. You find letters and numbers everywhere. I love when you take a bite of a cracker and say "Look! It's an L!" Hee. You've become so imaginative. I love watching you play, and playing with you. I really love coloring with you. I can tell you're going to be a great athlete one day too. You are amazing at sports, you always have been (clearly, you got this from your father, not me). I also have a great time with you in the kitchen. Today we made banana bread together. You always want to help me make dinner. Even though I make most of dinner while you, Alison, and Daddy are driving home from school, I keep little jobs aside just for you to do with me.

I love that you're so great with your sister. Mommy and Daddy were a little apprehensive about what it was going to be like once we brought a new baby home. When I was pregnant and hormonal, I cried about it all the time. After all, it had just been the three of us for three years. Were you going to resent that you were sharing the spotlight with another kid? Were you going to feel left out, or like I didn't have time for you anymore? I remember when I took you to the Big Brother/Big Sister class at the hospital, they sent us home with a little packet with some information about how to help our kids prepare for a new baby at home. One of the pages said "Mommy, it only takes five minutes to let me know you love me..." with all these little things I should remember to do with you. Oh, I cried so much after I read that. Was I really not even going to have five minutes for you, after you'd been the most important thing in my life up until then? Well, thankfully, it wasn't so bad. You loved Alison as soon as you saw her. We could barely keep you away from her. Every morning before you went to school, you wanted to come in and peek at her. "Can I just see her cute face?" It was so sweet (even though sometimes you woke her up - that was less sweet!). You were always very patient and understanding when I needed to take care of the baby. Your face lights up every time she smiles at you - which is often! - and hers lights up when she catches your eye. I can't wait to see how your relationship develops.

When you were born, I was so surprised - I didn't know I could love someone that much. But I do, and I love you more and more every day. I'm so lucky to get to be the Mommy of such a wonderful kid.

I love you, Buddy!

xoxoxo,

Mommy

The Art Project Project.

2010-06-24T21:31:00.002-04:00

Owen comes home from daycare with folders full of art. Some of it is painfully cute. Some of it is bizarre and crunchy. Some of it is completely unrecognizable. In today's vlog, Owen tries to walk us through his most recent art folder.

The Art Project Project. from meandertail on Vimeo.

What I learned from our Disney trip.

2010-06-09T14:24:00.004-04:00

We went to Disneyworld earlier this month. It was the first time in many years that either Brian or I had gone, and the first time EVER that O had gone. Since we just celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary, we decided to use this trip as our anniversary present, so we spent a little more money and stayed in the hotel at the Animal Kingdom, where you can sit on your balcony and watch zebras, giraffes, and other crazy wildlife right outside of your window.

1. Even if your kid has not sat his precious little butt in a stroller for two years, he will want to ride one at Disneyworld. When your friends tell you to bring a stroller for him, listen to them.

Seriously. I cannot even remember the last time O has been in a stroller. He was one, I'm sure (he's 3.5 now). Everyone said, "Bring a stroller for him!" And I said "Pshaw! He has the energy of ten thousand adults! He'll never sit in a stroller! And if he gets tired, we can carry him in the Ergo!". And by 11 am, the kid was TIRED AND HOT and having all of the meltdowns associated with those two conditions. Mommy and Daddy were also tired and hot and having meltdowns.

(actually, this was a sobfest over the thunderstorm that was going on)

We did try to carry him in the Ergo, but you wouldn't walk far before he'd want to get out and see something. And what a pain in the butt it was to keep loading him back into that sucker. So by noon he was in the stroller. Of course we had the baby too, so we had to carry her in the sling. And it was in the 90s, so that was pretty hot for her (plus there isn't any shade). Also, we had the carseat in the stroller since she's still so young. So we had to carry that around too. All could have been avoided if we'd just brought our umbrella stroller like everyone told me to!

2. There are mosquitos at the Animal Kingdom. If you are one of those people that mosquitos love, don't be an idiot. Bring insect repellant.

We got a savanna view room at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. It was great, because it had a balcony and there were all kinds of cool animals right outside our window. After we put the kids to bed, we took some wine out onto the balcony and played Scrabble on my iPad.

Now, I don't know what I was thinking, I mean, it's summer. In Florida. At night. And I am one of those people. Not only do mosquitos think I am friggin' awesome, I also react badly to them. After two nights on the balcony, I counted nearly 75 mosquito bites, covering both calves, my feet and toes, my arms, and even some on my back, right where my shirt ended. Now I am covered in large, bright red welts and I look like I have some sort of skin disease. It's day 5 now and they are starting to fade, so I'm hoping they'll be gone by next week because I have a business trip to go on and I'll be wearing a skirt!

3. The Baby Care Center rocks.

They have one Baby Care center at Magic Kingdom. They had a big room with big changing tables (and disposable covers), one with highchairs (didn't need that this time), and a smaller room with rocking chairs for nursing moms. I totally have zero problem nursing in public, but it was REALLY HOT and it was nice to have somewhere to sit quietly in an air conditioned room with the baby every couple of hours. They really need more of these areas at Disney. They even had diapers, diaper cream, wipes, baby food, etc. - anything you might have forgotten (that you'd buy I'm assuming, amazingly we didn't forget anything so I don't know for a fact).

4. Check a crowd calendar.

I just Googled 'disney crowd prediction' and found a crowd calendar that told you how busy you should expect the park to be on a given date, and which parks to do (and which to avoid) on that date. The lowest crowds predicted were for a Friday of the timeframe that we were looking at, so that's what we picked (and Brian took an extra day off of work so we could do that, instead of going on Saturday). And obviously we only went for one day, so I can't compare other days which had higher predicted crowd levels, but it was, in fact, really not crowded on the day that we went. We hardly had to wait in line at all. We walked right onto some of the rides. This was great with a 3 year old who might not always be the most patient waiter.

5. Use a travel agent.

I never knew how travel agents worked. But I happen to know someone (from TriangleMommies and Twitter!) who is a travel agent specializing in Disney vacations. She got us more discounts than we knew about and helped us formulate a plan for our day at Magic Kingdom. Even though we did not stick to the plan faithfully (see point 3 - had to go to the baby care center constantly!), it was really helpful in making decisions about what was and wasn't worth doing with a 3 year old.

(worth doing)

(not worth doing - Snow White's Scary Adventures and Pirates of the Carribean... both of which our travel agent suggested might be too scary. And in fact, they were. But the lines were so short we tried them anyway...!)

6. Spend some time at your hotel.

We didn't do this as much as I'd planned. But the parks are EXHAUSTING. And the hotels have such nice pools. And other stuff to do. We had hoped to spend some time hanging out at the pool but we only got about an hour. It was fine, but I would have liked to have used the hotel a little better.

Ask a stupid question...

2010-06-03T13:34:00.000-04:00

Q: "Why do you have cars in your shorts?"
A: "I'm pretending it's a garage."

Baby Experiments: Part One of Surely Thousands to Come

2010-06-01T21:11:00.001-04:00

I am a scientist, so of course I am an experimenter by nature. Since I've become an administrator, I don't get to do experiments anymore. However, having a new baby in the house has given me a new outlet for my desire to experiment. Babies are, by nature, completely and utterly baffling in their behavior which leads to the development of all kinds of hypotheses. Of course, most baby experiments take place in the wee hours of the morning - thus, the minimally-functioning brain characteristic of this time period (and let's face it, all time periods at the moment) makes proper study design and data interpretation more difficult.

Here are a few of my experiments thus far (Note: IRB approval was sought but our house does not have an IRB):

1. Is it gas?
Observation: Baby goes to sleep peacefully at 8 pm. Baby wakes up screaming as if in pain at midnight. Screaming is accompanied by sounds of gas leaving the body through various openings. Is baby possessed? Is gas cause or consequence of waking up and screaming like a banshee?
Null hypothesis: This is just a normal - albeit exhausting - feature of one month old babies.
Alternative hypothesis: Gas is the cause of waking up screaming like a banshee.
Study Design: At one-month check-up, ask doctor why normally agreeable baby turns into a screaming, farting mess in the middle of the night. Doctor indicates that time, or possibly medical intervention will alleviate this problem. Stumble, bleary-eyed, into drugstore. Purchase 'Infant Mylicon Drops'. Administer 0.2 mL 'Infant Mylicon Drops' to baby before 8pm feeding, before midnight feeding, before 2 AM feeding, before 4 AM feeding, before 6 AM feeding... (some of these data points will require nightlight technology, as well as for eyes to be open).
Outcome: As doctor probably predicted, consistent application of 'Infant Mylicon Drops' made little impact on the nocturnal screaming, farting behavior. What did make a difference was baby getting older. Accept the null hypothesis.

2. Pacifier woes
Observation: Baby likes to suck on things. Often that thing is me. Baby also enjoys sucking on a pacifier (Avent brand - they are the least ugly) (that is honestly exactly how I came to the decision to use this brand). At least I think she does - she cannot keep that sucker in her mouth for more than ten seconds. This pisses baby off to no end. I am certain that if she could keep the pacifier in her mouth, she'd be peaceful and happy all the time, and sleep beautifully all night (see experiment 1).
Null hypothesis: Newborn babies are incapable of keeping a pacifier in their mouth regardless of brand.
Alternative hypothesis: Baby does not like this particular brand of pacifier, and would prefer something uglier.
Study Design: Purchase 2 'Soothies' brand pacfiers at Target.

aside: For those of you who do not have babies, Soothies are the kind of pacifiers they usually use at hospitals. Thus, I thought these would be the perfect, never-fail pacifier. After all, that must be why hospitals use them, right? The downside to Soothies pacifiers are that they are really crazy looking. They are made of a single piece of molded rubber, so the part that goes into the baby's mouth is like a tube that you can see into. And since the rubber is sort of clear-ish, you can SEE THE BABY SUCKING ON IT. It's all very creepy.

Ahem. Back to the study.

Purchase 2 'Soothies' brand pacifiers. Attempt to get baby to suck consistently on Soothies pacifier. Attempt to get baby to suck consistently on 'Avent' pacifier. Post question on local mommy group internet forum asking for experiences of newborns with pacifiers. Hope against hope that one of the experimental conditions will be successful (that's kind of like regular lab work too, isn't it).
Outcome: Neither pacifier stayed in baby mouth for any significant time period. Accept the null hypothesis. Reject the creepy Soothies pacifiers.
Supplemental data: Now that the baby in question is 10 weeks old, the pacifier stays in at least long enough to do it's job. She still doesn't sleep beautifully all night though (see experiment 3).

3. Swaddle? No swaddle? Half-swaddle?
Observation: Babies have spent their entire lives up until birth crammed into a uterus. Babies also have a powerful startle reflex. Thus, babies feel more comfortable wrapped up, straitjacket-like, in a swaddling blanket. The popular parenting literature supports this observation. Indeed, current baby's older brother slept better when swaddled, at least for the first few months. However, current baby also really likes to suck on her hands or whatever else is available (see experiment 2). Mother is awoken each night to grunting and crying sounds of baby trying desperately to free one hand and position it such that she can suck on it.
Null hypothesis: Baby will sleep the same whether swaddled or not swaddled.
Alternative hypothesis #1: Baby sleeps better swaddled.
Alternative hypothesis #2: Baby sleeps better unswaddled.
Study Design: Baby dressed in onesie and swaddled for sleeping from birth. Swaddling blanket utilized is the SwaddleMe blanket by a company that seems to be bought out by another company every time I purchase one (again, this is very much like lab science). Baby's normal sleeping pattern is to sleep from 8 PM until midnight or 1 AM, nurse and go back to sleep, wake again at around 4 AM to nurse, wake again at around 6 AM to nurse, and sometimes go back to sleep, sometimes not.
- First phase of study began when experimenter noticed at first night feeding the great pains baby was taking to wrestle one hand into sucking position. Experimenter began to undo the arm part of the swaddling blanket and rewrap it under baby's armpits, thus freeing both baby arms for the remainder of the night. This pattern continued for several nights and sleeping durations did not change, so experimenter decided to stop swaddling baby completely.
- For phase two of study, baby was dressed in a sleeper and not swaddled.
- For phase three of study, baby was dressed in a onesie and a fleece 'sleepsack'-style sleep gown.
- For phase four of study, multiple methods were used over the course of a single evening (also known as the PANIC PHASE).
Observations: Given the success of phase one (swaddled for part of the night, arms later freed), phase two (unswaddling) was predicted to go smoothly. Indeed, sleep patterns did not change for the first two nights. Because this was a terribly planned experiment, an additional variable was introduced during Phase two - baby received two-month vaccinations. These two-month vaccinations can have varied effects on babies. Older Brother completely lost his shit in the days following the two-month vaccinations. Current baby appeared to have little to no reaction to vaccinations, other than to sleep all. day. long. on the actual day the vaccinations were received. Because the effects can be so variable, the impact of this stimulus on the current study is not immediately known. Anyway. Sleep patterns started to break down in phase two (unswaddled). First sleep period became shorter, which resulted in more total evening feedings (since remaining feedings continued to occur at 2-3 hour intervals following initial feeding). This also resulted in a significant decrease in the mental capacity of the experimenter. Thus phase three (sleepsack) began, on somewhat of a whim. The idea behind phase three was that it would replicate the half-swaddled condition - legs somewhat contained, arms freely roaming. Phase three lasted only two nights before experimenter began to lose her ever-loving mind. Experimenter reverted to phase one of the study. As existing swaddling blankets were becoming too small, a larger fleece swaddling blanket, used previously for Older Brother, was unearthed. Yes, it is ridiculously hot here in Florida in May, and yes, our A/C may be a little bit wonky. However, experimenter was a little bit desperate. In the repeat of phase one, baby slept until 2:30 am - longer than any sleep period previously. Buoyed by this success, experimenter purchased a second, lighter-weight swaddling blanket in the larger size. Unexpectedly, night one in the new swaddling blanket was a disaster. The new blanket appeared to be even easier for baby to escape. Experimenter feared she had not followed the wrapping protocol exactly, and repeated the experiment the next evening. However, this too resulted in chaos. At approximately 1 AM, phase four began. At each successive wake-up the conditions were changed. The experiment was aborted at 6:30 AM when the experimenter was found brain-dead and quivering in her bed.
Results: Who the hell knows. This experiment is ongoing (back in phase two).

Me: 2, Insects: 0

2010-05-28T10:16:00.002-04:00

Insects vacuumed up today:
1. The evil spider from the other day
2. big old millipede

Brian is still falling down on the job.

Responsibilities

2010-05-26T10:51:00.002-04:00

In order to keep a two-working parent household running smoothly, each parent has certain responsibilities that they must fulfill. For example:

- I cook dinner and Brian cleans up afterwards.

- I buy nice, matching outfits for the children and Brian dresses the children (specifically, the Buggle at this point. I'm sure he'll get there with Alison too if we give him time) in a random shirt paired with a random pair of shorts, such that the children look like they are homeless.

Another responsibility of Brian's is home insect management. This responsibility has become even more important now that Brian has relocated the family to North Florida, where both the quantity and size of insects has increased exponentially. It's tough though because I am the one at home all day with the bugs. Even when I am not on maternity leave (which I am for two and a half more weeks), I work from home. So on weekdays I have to fend for myself. If you are a long time reader of this blog (which I can't imagine you are, given that I have only updated it one time since 2008), you'll remember that I am terrified of bugs.

Last week I discovered a big, scary, flying insect of some sort with a six-inch long stinger (possibly an exaggeration) in our family room. Since it was before noon, I was going to be trapped in the house with this sucker for way more hours than I cared to think about. Fortunately, I'm very smart and clever. I got out the Dyson with it's extra long telescoping attachment thingie and sucked that little bugger right up. Unfortunately the Dyson has a clear dirt canister, so I could see the insect flying around in there. Or, trying to fly around there anyway. There wasn't much room. We do have four cats and a dog after all. I couldn't have the bug escaping back into the house. Can you imagine? I'd have to spend the entire day continually sucking him back up. So obviously I pushed the (running) vacuum over to the door into the garage, opened the door and put the (still running) vacuum into the garage, pulled the plug and threw the cord into the garage and slammed the door and left the whole mess for Brian to deal with when he got home.

Yesterday I spotted a big, horrifying spider crawling around the downstairs foyer. I actually thought for two seconds about Brian, who hates to kill bugs, especially spiders. He tells me that when he was younger, he actually kept a bunch of spiders in his bedroom. Loose. Just living on their webs wherever they chose to make them. Yeah, I don't know how I ended up marrying him either. So instead of sucking the spider up with the vacuum and leaving the vacuum in the garage all day, I let the spider walk around and I just kept an eye on him all. day. Somewhat terrifyingly, he eventually moved upstairs, which is closer to our bedroom, which is WHERE I SLEEP AND AM DEFENSELESS AGAINST INSECTS. But still, I kept it together. Except then it was time to make dinner, and Alison was crying, and Brian and Owen got home, and chaos ensued until it was bedtime for children. And then I forgot, until it was time to go to bed and I spotted the spider in the hallway. I informed Brian of his responsibility, but since it was 10 pm and he was tired he said "I'm not taking that spider outside right now. Just leave it."

Now I can't find it.

So if I die in my sleep because it bit me, and I leave Brian a single parent of two small children, it will all be because he didn't fulfill his responsibility. FYI.

Holy absence from the blog, Batman!

2009-02-11T23:05:00.003-05:00

I know, I have been absent from the blog. See, I started this new job, then Brian was looking for a new job (didn't know that? oh yes, he was!) and then Brian went on many interviews, and then I got addicted to Animal Crossing, and then Brian stressed out about taking a new job, and then Brian accepted a new job, and then we have been getting our house ready to sell. Because we are moving! To Florida! Where Brian will be an actual tenure-track assistant professor and not a "we really just use you until there's nothing left" research-track assistant professor. And he'll be at Florida State, where they actually care about nurturing their young scientists, and not at Duke where they eat them alive. And that means that I have to leave my fabulous new job and find something else.

So anyway, thats what we're doing!

We aren't moving until August. Thank god too, since its going to take us until three Augusts from now to sell our house. And also, really excited about keeping the house showing-ready with four cats, a dog and a two year old.

More recent pics

2008-09-20T20:50:00.002-04:00

A few more recent pics from the Museum of Life and Science

(this following one is from our house... ick)

Yearbook yourself!

2008-09-07T20:10:00.002-04:00

At this website, Yearbook Yourself, you can upload a picture of yourself and then it will put your face on pictures of people from high school yearbooks ranging from the 1950s to 2000. Here are a few of my faves.

Here I am in 1956...

1960...

1962... (it took me ages to get my hair to do that!)

1966...

1968...

1982

1986...

and 1992...

Obvs. I could not stop at myself, and I had to do Owen. You can see some of his stylin pics on his blog.

pictures from this weekend

2008-09-03T20:23:00.003-04:00

Owen and I had a busy weekend while Daddy worked on grant applications and job applications. More pics on his blog, but here are some of the pretty things we saw at the Museum of Life and Science or at Duke Gardens.

Look who is in our wren house!

2008-08-24T22:15:00.002-04:00

Yesterday (as we were getting ready for the Wiggles concert - see Owen's blog for deets) Brian called me outside to look at something. There was a little nose and hand sticking out of the hole in our wren house.

This flipped us out a little bit, because it looked sort of like a squirrel (although not really right - like, its eyes were too big for its head and too close to its nose) but we could not figure out how a squirrel could get out of that tiny hole. Later in the evening, after the concert, we went out to check to see if it was still there. I sort of shook the wren house (which is on a very tall pole), and the little squirrel came out.

It was VERY small. Had a thin, yet slightly bushy tail. It was on par with a chipmunk in size (at least it seemed like it was) but didn't have any lines on its back, and was really agouti (yes I am a mouse nerd) and not that sort of reddish color that chipmunks are.

Today I was trying to figure out what it was, and I think its a Southern Flying Squirrel. Cool!! Now we just need to catch it flying.

Fin.

2008-07-08T20:12:00.002-04:00

The Biggest Loser competition at work has finally ended, and I am celebrating with a piece of leftover (fabulous, and thank you Kara!) pie.

Oh, you didn't know I was a biggest loser AGAIN? Of course. Last time I was losing the pregnancy weight (easy). This time I was losing the pre-pregnancy fatness.

Things really went downhill when I was finishing up my Ph.D. I think that plus Ed's death (these two events were not that far from each other) really conspired against me, turning me into a total lard-ass. Also, even though I was not yet pregnant or even trying to be, we knew this was in the cards in the nearish future so I always thought, why bother? Why lose weight that I'm only going to put back on? I'll just wait and do it all at once.

Oh well.

So at the end of last years TBL competition (our team won due largely to the heroic efforts of two of the men on the team) I finished off the last of the baby poundage. Then I set about getting rid of the rest. It was hard while I was still nursing, but once that was all done and my body belonged to me again, I went back to work.

It hasn't gone quickly, for sure, but so far I'm 26 pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight. Woo! I lost 8 pounds during this years TBL competition, which I am happy with. I was much stricter with myself these last 8 weeks because my team was depending on me (and also our team captain is a slave driver...no, i'm kidding. mostly).

Of course my journey of deprivation... I mean lifestyle changes, and exercise does not end here - my goal is to lose 11 more pounds. %$#&.

CSA week....9?

2008-07-02T19:29:00.003-04:00

We are getting less leafy green food in our box and more of the kind of vegetables I actually use normally. This week we got a bag of red potatoes, a bag of green beans

(all of the potatoes and some of the beans are here)
some red cabbage (the savoy cabbage I bought at the Farmer's Market this weekend)

also carrots, scallions, more beets and two tomatoes. Okay, yes we did still get some leafyness in the form of braising greens (will be stirfried, most likely) and more chard. Brian is particularly excited about the chard and refuses to eat it.

Another funny new comic in the paper

2008-06-26T20:09:00.003-04:00

Our paper continues the comics trials. One that we have now I find particularly funny, 'Scary Gary'. It only recently started in our paper, but it appears to be about a vampire and a monster who now live in the suburbs, among normal people. You can read it here.

We also have another one that seems like it might be decent, Pooch Cafe.

Pictures

2008-06-24T19:25:00.002-04:00

Taken in our backyard and at Marbles Kids Museum.

CSA week OMG PLEASE STOP THE SPINACH!!

2008-06-05T11:44:00.003-04:00

I still have two weeks of spinach in my fridge, and yet we are getting MORE SPINACH this week! And more swiss chard! Yow. Don't get me wrong, I like it, but I'm feeling like I'm drowning in greens. I have finally admitted defeat with two things (aka thrown them out) (and I wish I could say 'composted them' but I cannot):
a bunch of collards
a head of lettuce

We were planning a dinner with a friend who is also in a CSA. His wife is out of town this week, so he was telling me that he was feeling particularly overwhelmed by the greenery at his house and not knowing what to do with it. Here is an email exchange between us:

me: want to meet up for dinner tonight or tomorrow? i just can't do it on thursday.
Brian: Or D you're welcome to come over to ours and eat lots of leaf. We have lots of leaf, many shades of green leaf, some with yellow veins running through them.
D: ...as far as leaf goes, thanks, but we are fighting our own losing battle. i can't be responsible for eating yours, too.

This week I made swiss chard rolls that I just sort of made up. Mixed a container of ricotta cheese with some pesto and a beaten egg, spread it on some chard leaves, rolled them up like enchiladas and put them in a baking pan. I also made some tomato sauce and put that over the top. It was good, but I think it would have helped to have at least blanched the chard before hand, to make it easier to work with and maybe not release quite so much water (made it a sort of soupy mess).

I also found that chard makes my teeth do the same funny thing that spinach does. They feel like they are dissolving.

I ate a lot of the broccoli in salads and I'm actually mostly caught up with the lettuce, finally. I saved the snow peas, a head of baby bok choi and some broccoli to stirfry, probably tonight. I also sort of made this, which was ADDICTIVE. I used 2x the soba, left out the mixed greens, used extra bok choi, went REALLY EASY on the oil (i think I only used maybe a tablespoon), didn't have any peanuts. It was fantastic. I am totally making it again. We are getting more bok choi this week.

We also had baby turnips cooked the way my boss likes them, in butter. They were tasty.

Going on a cruise!

2008-06-01T20:09:00.002-04:00

Melissa and I just signed up for the Manic Mommies Escape 2008!

Manic Mommies is a podcast that is done by two working moms that live in the Boston suburbs. Tiffany got me into it to start with, right around the time I went back to work. The Manic Mommies kept me company on many lonely pumping sessions. Then Melissa had her baby and I got her listening to it too. She said "They remind me of us when we've been drinking." Totally.

Its funny listening to podcasts like this because you totally feel like you know the people, and yet they don't know you at all. One of the Manic Mommies, Erin, lost her sister last year. I sent her an email afterwards because I know what its like, and I sort of feel now like my mission in life is to help out other people who lost siblings. That's a whole other weird post for another time. Anyway, its just strange to feel like someone is one of your very good friends when they don't even know you.

They did the first MM Escape last year and I didn't go, but I totally wished that I had. So this year Melissa and I decided: We're GOING.

Mario Kart

2008-05-24T07:54:00.001-04:00

We just got Mario Kart for our Wii. Let me know if you have it too so we can play each other online!

Score!

2008-05-22T09:09:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I went out to lunch with the RTP working moms from my mommy group. We went to a new "contemporary mexican" restaurant in the area. When I got there the parking lot (it was in sort of a shopping center with other shops and restaurants) was already pretty full and I was worried that I would be driving around for ten years looking for a spot. I was super excited instead to see this:

Three spots right next to the restaurant! Reserved especially for me! Woo!

Of course when we finished lunch (it was yummy) and went back out to our cars I noticed that the other two spots were taken by non-hybrids (including 1 SUV, aka the anti-hybrid). Schmucks.

Win an Ergo

2008-05-21T19:28:00.001-04:00

I kind of want an Ergo (a soft carrier), but I haven't spent the money on one. I have a hip carrier that is ALL RIGHT. And was cheap. But someone posted a link to this contest to win an Ergo, and you get a bonus entry if you put a link to the contest on your website!

Win a Free Ergo Baby Carrier from Along for the Ride

Damn straight.

2008-05-20T21:54:00.002-04:00

Apparently its World Vegetarian Week! So here are thetop ten reasons to go vegetarian.

Its true that it is so much easier now than it was when I stopped eating meat, lo these twenty years ago (approx). Then, going out for dinner meant eating a dinner salad and soup that you knew wasn't really vegetarian because it was made with beef broth, but at least it didn't have pieces of meat in it. Now I have choices between actual ENTREES at most places (not all, but most). Sometimes I have five or six things to choose from, that is hard! I don't know how meat eaters choose from a whole menu. I'm so used to not having a choice that I am overwhelmed by five or six options!

CSA week 3: Drowning in lettuce

2008-05-20T21:35:00.002-04:00

I eat a huge salad every day at lunch, so I didn't think this would be a problem, but I am drowning in lettuce. I got behind last week on my salad consumption because I didn't go to work for lunch on two of the weekdays, and on the weekends I am less strict with my diet and eat leftovers and no salad. That put me one head of lettuce ahead on Thursday when our next box came, which contained another bag of spring mix and two more heads of lettuce. I can see now how this can get overwhelming!

We got a lot of greens last week: two kinds of kale, more spring mix, more cilantro, more arugula and some bok choi. Other than greens we got some broccoli. Broccoli is mostly gone to salads, So now I've got arugula waiting to be used, cilantro (waiting for taco night which is tomorrow) and bok choi, which will be stirfried in much the same way that we did with the 6 heads of baby bok choi we got last week (yummy). I am saving the last bunch of kale at the moment hoping for another bunch in Thursday's box. This week we used kale in:
Lentil soup (Owen loved this - the things he likes just crack me up sometimes)
Mashed potatoes

Both of these were great, although Brian prefers regular mashed potatoes. I think its the olive oil flavor that he doesn't like.

We also signed up for strawberries, an extra, but they were very good.

Since we got a lot of greens and not much else, we went to the Farmers' Market on Saturday and got some extras: radishes, baby turnips (these came in our box in week 2 and were great! taste like horseradish without the bite) and cauliflower. Purple cauliflower. How could I pass that up??

Worst pet parents

2008-05-16T09:09:00.003-04:00

We are the worst pet parents ever. We have a sheltie which means he has long hair and needs to be brushed regularly. We've had him for three years and have been doing the vast majority of his grooming on our own but honestly, once Owen came along we have not been as good. Consequently his fur has gotten matted in places and we were not able to brush it out. So Brian made an appointment to take him to the groomer. The groomer told him that he would not be able to brush him out either, so we really didn't have much of an option. So here's our new dog:

For reference, here's Milo before:

Best blog ever...

2008-05-07T19:52:00.002-04:00

...well, besides mine, of course.

In my mommy group we talk about parenting, yes, but we also talk about whatever. One thing that comes up a lot is the discussion of grammatical or spelling errors that DRIVE YOU INSANE. A perennial favorite is "irregardless", a non-word that you say when you really mean to say "regardless".

Something that drives me insane is when people use quotation marks incorrectly. They think, for some reason, that quotes around a word indicate a particular emphasis on that word, which is, of course, completely not true. I HATE THAT.

Anyway, someone else in the mommy group hates that too, and she sent me this blog which is hilarious. I present to you:

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

CSA update

2008-05-06T20:21:00.002-04:00

I also wanted to keep you posted on the progress of our first CSA box!

I have been rationing out the carrots and radishes for my daily lunch salads, but I used the last of the radishes today and will finish off the carrots tomorrow. Also gone are the salad greens (in salads... duh), the kale and part of the spinach (in Penne with Greens, olives and Feta from my April Bon Appetit), the braising mix (Stir-fried tofu with greens and peanuts - this was made unspicy though for Owen - not that he even ate any of it). I still have a bit of spinach and cilantro left, all of the parsley and the arugula. I have some ideas for the arugula (beets and gorgonzola being chief among them) but my boss, who is in the same CSA, can't stop talking about this recipe for roasted carrot salad, so I may hope for more carrots in the next box and try this out.

Amee's wedding Part I

2008-05-06T19:53:00.002-04:00

Finally getting around to posting all about our trip to Pittsburgh for Amee's wedding! First of all, this was super exciting because we left Owen here. We just filled up a whole bunch of bowls with Cheerios and covered the floor with plastic, left him without a diaper on. It was all good. No, my parents came up from Florida to stay with him.

Anyway, no kid. That was exciting. We love him, but getting up at 6:30 on Saturday and Sunday has really lost its charm.

On Thursday we drove out to Pgh in my car so we could get better gas mileage. We didn't do as well as I normally do, I think we had about 40-41 mpg. Disappointing! Brian is not used to driving so low to the ground and with his legs so scrunched in. He managed though. We no sooner got to our hotel than I had to take off for Amee's house for the very exciting ritual of getting henna tattoos (mehndi).

Here's Amee starting out. She was sitting there for, I think, over THREE HOURS.

Here's her hand afterwards (she got this on the front and back of both hands and on both feet)

and here is what she looked like the next day:

Dan's family was also there and they got henna'd, and so did I. It was really exciting!

The artists just put the stuff on with a paper cone, sort of like they were decorating a cake. They were just coming up with the designs off of the top of their heads! It was really neat to watch. You let the henna dry until it gets sort of crackly and then you mop it with lemon juice. No idea what that is for, but I think it helps your skin take up the henna. Or something. Don't listen to me, I have no idea what I am talking about.

I learned a lot of exciting things about mehndi. First, the color comes from a reaction where something in the henna binds to the melanin in your skin. So it isn't like its on top of your skin and you can wash it off, it is sort of in your skin. Second, the darkness depends on the heat of your body. It is darker in warmer parts and lighter in cooler parts (see how the tone changes from Amee's hands to her arms).

Okay, so after we got our henna (and while Amee was still sitting) we had dinner. Lots of Amee's family and friends were there, and it was a buffet of wonderful Indian goodness. More Southern Indian (I think) and ALL VEGETARIAN. This is like my heaven. There was even a guy there making dosa and uttapam on a portable griddle. I love dosa. Of course, my hands were covered in sticky henna and lemon juice, so Brian (who had joined us by this point) had to help me eat. The food was fantastic though (this is going to be a theme here, I'm just warning you).

Here's what my mehndi looked like the next morning.

The next day we went back to Amee's house for a ceremony of some sort, where they are basically getting the bride ready for the wedding and doing a lot of blessing of things, or making offerings, or something like that. Basically we all sat on the floor (all women) with Amee and her family at the front, in front of an altar type thing.

Then the priest talked or chanted a lot (it turns out that he was speaking Sanskrit) and put things on various places on the altar (like money, food, flowers, a coconut, some other stuff). Then he lit a fire in this little bowl (that sort of freaked me out - fire in Amee's living room!) and Amee and her family would throw things in the fire. This all had meaning and stuff, but I can't really help you with any of that. It was neat to watch though. One of our other sorority sisters, Lis, was a bridesmaid and was there for all of this too. We were the only two non-Indians in the room, and we were totally confused. But at least we were confused together.

Then we did something else very exciting: Amee got all dressed up in another nice sari and we smeared turmeric paste (my friend Archana tells me it is turmeric and sandalwood) all over her. She sat on a stool in the middle of the room and everyone took a turn. It was awesome.

Lis and I took a turn as well (like we would miss out on this!).

This post is getting long, so I will break it into two.

Poor put upon Republicans.

2008-05-02T10:49:00.003-04:00

I have been punished for being a Republican and, in particular, not caring about Obama. Because he is here today (well, in Carrboro) and having a rally or something and ARCADE FIRE is playing at it.

I didn't even know about it because - how would I? Boo hoo.

I am in a serious Arcade Fire rut right now, for which I have my friend Kathy to thank. Funeral is such a great album, and 'Neighborhood 1-Tunnels' is in serious, heated competition for Wilco's 'I Am Trying To Break Your Heart' for best song ever written, ever (so funny too because I'm really not a huge Wilco fan overall, but that song is nearly perfect). Neon Bible is good too but it (except maybe 'Intervention') has not grabbed me in the same way, although Owen quite likes it. He sits in the back of the car and claps all the way through 'Keep the Car Running'.

First day, CSA.

2008-05-01T22:40:00.004-04:00

This year we joined a CSA. CSA = Community supported agriculture. We paid a certain amount to a local farm for a 'share' in the farm, and every week they deliver a box of goodies to our door. I wanted to do this last year when I was all making baby food for Owen and wanted him to eat only fresh, organic produce (now I am happy if he eats ANYTHING), but I thought about it too late and we weren't able to get in.

We are doing this through Timberwood Organics. They sell at some local farmers markets, but not at the Durham one, I don't think. Unless I missed it.

Anyway, today our first box came and it was super exciting. We got kale, spinach, salad mix, braising greens (a mix of greens), parsley (curly parsley though. I am really a flat parsley kinda girl) and cilantro, and carrots and radishes.

I am going to be eating some awesome salads this week! I have been hoarding recipes for kale as well, in anticipation.

Brush with death

2008-05-01T13:27:00.002-04:00

In my endless effort to lose 20 pounds (er... more than 20, but I've already lost 20 so now I've got ANOTHER 20), I have been trying to go for a walk around the lake at work when I have a short experimental break. It takes me about 25 minutes to get around, going at a decent pace, and I usually listen to podcasts or call my mom or Melissa and catch up.

(And people always think I'm sort of strange when this happens because it just looks like I'm listening to my iPod, but I'm talking to myself as well - remember the iPhone has a little microphone on the earbuds!)

Anyway, today I was on the phone with Mel having a convo about whatever when all of a sudden - PANIC! Because I spotted this in my path:

When I first saw it it was on one side of the path, just starting to head across. I had to wait for it to go. I wouldn't say that I'm afraid of snakes the way that I am afraid of bugs, but I still was picturing this snake rearing up and biting me, or constricting me, or whatever it is that they do. When it was fully crossed over the path, I RAN past.

Once I finally got past the snake and settled back into a normal conversation, we were again interrupted by my second brush with death:

This looks like an innocent pair of geese with their three, cute, puffy, little babies. If you are a long time reader of this blog, however, you will remember this fateful day, the day that I found out that geese are not all cute and innocent but are ATTACK BEASTS. Their tendency to attack is even higher when they have babies with them, so I sort of tiptoed along quietly behind them until I thought I could get around. The one goose totally came for me, hissing. Gack. I had to wait a little bit longer but I was able to run fast and make it, unharmed.

You're not even safe at work.

Fun with camera

2008-04-14T19:40:00.003-04:00

Today I got the new polarizing filter and wide angle lens Brian bought me for my birthday. I wanted to take some pics of the wisteria blooming in our area right now, so we headed out after work today to a patch right outside of our development.

Wisteria is a weed here, and actually quite a problem as it chokes out the trees that it grows on. But its so pretty!

Happy Birthday to Me!

2008-04-13T21:13:00.006-04:00

Today is my birthday! I am 33. Oh goody. One of my coworkers pointed out that if I were a hobbit, this would be my 'coming of age'. Surprisingly, my nerdy, LOTR obsessed husband did not remember that. Hm. Clearly he is off his game.

About a month or so ago, Brian and I were watching 'Good Eats' (in HD!) and Alton Brown was making a coconut cake. I love coconut cake. My friend Patrick (from Pinkerton) went through an obsessive baking period, and he made a great coconut cake and brought it my lab for us to eat. Yum. Brian, if you remember, never even really cooked before I got pregnant. Okay, he says that he cooked but that he COULDN'T COOK VEGETARIAN STUFF. Whatev. Anyhow, he handles most of the cooking now because he gets home from work first. He really has never baked anything, but something about watching this episode of 'Good Eats' piqued his interest, and he asked me if I would like him to bake me a coconut cake for my birthday. Of course I would. I intended to journal the whole process, for you at home to enjoy.

Last week Brian came home with three coconuts. I should have taken pictures of these, but I forgot, and they were gone before I got around to it. On Friday Brian came home early from work and harvested the coconuts. He drilled holes in two of the eyes, poured the water out (into 50ml Falcon tubes) and baked them in the oven until the shell cracked. Then he cracked them open, peeled them and shredded the coconut meat in the food processor.

I am so sorry I missed this.

By the time I got home, we had:
1 bowl of shredded coconut
several 50ml Falcons of Coconut water (labeled helpfully, "C. Water")
Two cups with shredded coconut and milk in them, to make a) coconut milk and b) coconut cream

Although AB also advocates making your own coconut extract, Brian didn't get to this in time (the coconut extract had to sit for like, a week). I found out that my friend Patrick had made the same recipe and HAD made the coconut extract. I tried to get Brian to get in touch with him because I thought he might have extra (he did. Four bottles extra!), but he ended up going with McCormick imitation coconut extract instead.

On Saturday, the cake got made.

Getting ready:

Lining pans with parchment:

Mixing the dry ingredients:

Brian kept referring back to the episode of 'Good Eats' which we had saved in the DVR:

Once the cakes were baked, they had to be evened off and cut in half. Brian rigged this contraption up to do that evenly (a la AB):

Brushing the cakes with C. Water:

Making the '7 minute frosting':

Frosting and coconuting the first layer:

Final layer of frosting:

Completed product!

Cutting the cake:

More than half eaten:

The Wiggle addict now dances

2008-04-09T15:54:00.001-04:00

Last night when we were driving home from work/daycare, I was playing the Wiggles CD for Owen. One of the songs that we usually dance to (we being Brian and I) is "Do the Flap", where you basically just hold your hands up by your head and flap them up and down. When I looked in the mirror behind me, Owen was sitting there doing the Flap. HA! And then this morning he was doing the Emu.

He is picking things up like crazy lately!

Wiggle addict

2008-04-07T20:58:00.002-04:00

We have a Wiggles addict on our hands. Me.

No, really, its Owen. He comes to us with the remote, holds it up and goes "uuuuhhhh!" Translated, that means "Make the Wiggles come on!" When he is satisfied that you have gotten the message, he goes over to his chair and sits down, ready for the Wiggly delights to come.

What is sad about this is that Brian and I are getting into it too. We each have our own favorite songs (Mine are: Mop Mop, Move like an Emu, Do the Owl, and the Monkey Dance. His are: Nicky Nacky Nocky Noo, the Captain's Magic Buttons, and Do the Flap). We enjoy trying to pick out the various Wiggly Dancers in the various skits or Wiggly Concert clips. We know all the words to all the songs, and many of the dances. Owen looks at us like we are freaking nuts.

Clearly the Wiggles knew that Mommy would be watching, so they made sure that Anthony, the Blue Wiggle, was a treat to look at. There's also a Wiggly dancer for everyone! Brian insists that he does not notice whether any of the Wiggly Dancers are hot, I totally disbelieve this, knowing my mindset while watching the Wiggles (i.e. where is the guy who does the acrobatics??). Then again, I don't think I ever fully got past the boy crazy period of my youth.

When Owen gets a little older and can actually talk to us (as opposed to babbling and saying Uuuuhhhh!), and he asks to go to a Wiggles concert, neither Brian and I will be opposed.

Yes, this is what our lives have come to!

Pigs

2008-03-17T08:58:00.003-04:00

Everyone at work is excitedly watching the wild pig-cam.
pigs
You can read about it here, but only if you read Estonian. Which I don't. I have also put up the birds one which is so far birdless.

I did see pigs last night though! They come out at night (in Estonia).

Idiot.

2008-03-16T09:34:00.004-04:00

This weekend I had a couple of things going on. I had a band concert on Saturday afternoon, so I had to plan everything else around that. I made plans with my friend K to go baby clothes shopping at the Carter's store, where they were having a big sale AND I had two 20% off coupons. Wheeeee!

The concert was at 1:30 at Duke. It was an outdoor thing, and it was raining. Yuck. I put on my stupid band outfit, got in the car and started driving through the drizzle. The whole way there I kept thinking, "Ugh. I am just going to turn around and go home." I can think of about ten million things I would rather be doing than sitting outside in the rain playing my oboe. But then my sense of responsibility kicked in, and I kept driving. When I got there I parked in the parking garage. Normally you have to pay for this, but we had been told that it would be free for the band people. Good thing, because I only had a dollar. I got out of the car and started walking towards the chapel, which is where the concert would be. I was about five minutes late and was surprised that I couldn't even hear anyone warming up, or that no one was walking from the parking lot. When I got out in front of the chapel, no one was there. I whipped out my iPhone and checked the email: the concert was on SUNDAY. Duh. So I walked BACK to my car in the rain, paid my only dollar to get out of the parking garage, and went home.

Well, obviously now I could not go to the Carter's outlet on Sunday afternoon with K, so I ended up going on my own. Got a lot of cute stuff for O in the next size (12-18 month), which he is just starting to need. He's short. I remember being super bummed when he ended up being a boy and not a girl, because I wanted to buy all of the cute girl clothes. It turns out the boy clothes are cute too, just not pink.

After I got home from shopping, Brian, Owen and I drove out to Chapel Hill to meet Karl, who happened to be in town, for dinner. I have not been out to eat in CH since Owen was born, so I wasn't sure where to go that would have good food and still be relatively kid-friendly. We ended up going to the Carolina Brewery, which was fine. Even though we were out in CH (about 35 minutes drive), we still managed to get home in time for Owen's bedtime, leaving Karl to entertain himself in the bars of CH. Aah, toddler's hours.

Elevator shenanigans

2008-02-26T08:49:00.002-05:00

We have some issues with the elevators where I work. Namely that they do not do much elevating. 9 times out of 10, you will find a magnetic sign on the door that says 'Elevator Out of Service'. Or you won't, and you'll stand there for six hours waiting for an elevator that is never going to come. If you are lucky enough to catch an elevator in a working mood, you will get in and a) the door will not shut, b) it will not respond to your pressing of the button or c) it will take you wherever the hell it wants to.

Yesterday I ran into two friends as they were coming up from lunch on the first floor. We work on the fourth floor (aka the top floor). They said that they had gotten into the elevator on the first floor with a woman. She looked at them, pressed ALL THE BUTTONS, and then got off on the second floor (I'm not even going to talk about how much I hate it when people take the elevator to the second floor when the STAIRS ARE RIGHT THERE, they are not crippled and not pushing a cart or carrying anything. Ahem.), leaving them to stop on the third for no reason on their way up to the fourth. What is up with that?

Do you get elected to that?

2008-02-25T12:41:00.004-05:00

I am listening to a podcast (Pediacast by Dr. Mike!) right now where they are interviewing a woman who is talking about a nationwide effort to promote using kick counts while you are pregnant to help prevent stillbirths. She said that "football players and other public officials" would be doing PSAs about this. I just thought that was funny.

Whats wrong with pizzelles?

2008-01-26T20:47:00.000-05:00

Some people have mentioned that they are tired of looking at my pizzelles. What, you want me to get more than 1 blog posting a month? Are you high?

Okay, well holidays were good, but that is so last month. I will not bore you, and anyway, you've probably read some of our holiday updates on Owen's blog. Here are some things we have done this month:

1. Bought Owen his first pairs of real (i.e. not leather booties) shoes. They cost $50 at Stride Rite. That is more than I spend on my OWN shoes. Then I bought a second pair of Stride Rites online for $30. Much better.
2. Got a new (used) breadmaker and am making first loaf of bread right now, as we speak
3. Am looking for a new job (very leisurely at the moment). Want to hire me? Know anyone who works at a biotech company around here who wants to hire me?
4. Hired a babysitter and went out on the town. Well, to Brian's work party. Not exactly "the town". But it was fancy. That counts!
5. Lots of playdates and fun stuff with my Mommies group
6. Joined the newly starting up (again, for the third time at least) Alpha Xi Delta Triangle Alumnae Association.

Here are some things we have not done this month:

1. Finished our thank you notes from Christmas and Owen's birthday. Yes, that was a month ago. Yes, I have actually written some of them. I wrote them right after his birthday, actually. But I hadn't made an organized list of the gifts he/we got so I was hanging on to the notes until I finished them all, just to make sure I didn't miss any. I have already had to open one of them to amend it because too much time had passed since I had written it, and I'm going to have to do that AGAIN. So yes, thank you, I am just a total flake.
2. Paid our taxes. Still waiting for my tax information.
3. Finished O's baby book. Not even close. But have a scrapbooking night with my Mommy group coming up, so this is my task for then.

A pile of pizzelles

2007-12-24T12:20:00.000-05:00

To get ready for Christmas, I made a bunch of pizzelles with the pizzelle maker I got at our White Elephant gift exchange last year. Here's me making pizzelles last year:

I don't have any pictures of me making pizzelles this year because you really can't beat last year's picture, can you? No. Instead, here are some pictures of the pizzelles I made this year.

P.S. My White Elephant streak of awesomeness remains intact. This year I got two bottles of wine (!). It was the second best gift available, the first best being a bottle of vodka. We get a real assortment in our gift exchange. About 2/3 of the gifts were the kind of crap we intended to be featured in a White Elephant exchange, the other 1/3 were actually decent stuff.

Anyhow, I made the pizzelles because I hate baking. Thus, pizzelles are the perfect cookie for me to make because essentially you are making tiny waffles. I am good at waffle making, bad at baking. Then I had a cookie exchange, which used to be an annual Lisa tradition, now resurrected. It was smallish, but fun. Some people from work and a few other friends from various places, including Annie of blog fame. A good time was had by all.

Now my parents are here, they arrived on Saturday night in time for Brian's 35th birthday, which was yesterday. Wow, I am married to a geezer. My brother Jim and his girlfriend will arrive on the 28th, in time for Owen's birthday! Which I cannot believe is less than a week away. Wow.

The endless season of sickness and some unrelated b$@%*ing

2007-12-07T21:10:00.001-05:00

For some, the holiday season is a time of happiness, joy, *"cheer"...

(*note: I put quotes around cheer because we got an email from our department head today about our work Christmas party tomorrow, in which he said to 'join us for some food, fun and "cheer"'. WTF was the reason for the inappropriate quotes around cheer?? This is one of my pet peeves. Quotes do not indicate emphasis, people! If thats even what he was doing with them. Really, I am completely baffled by this totally inappropriate use of quotes.)

For us, the holiday season is apparently a time of illness. Yes, we made it through the horrendous stomach bug of '07. Rather, Brian and Owen made it through and I helped clean up. I never got it, thank god. Given the grumbling going on in my Mommy group, it sounds like this has been going around the entire Triangle area, so it wasn't just me. In fact, one of Owen's daycare teachers also spent her Thanksgiving vomiting. She said she particularly enjoyed that she had to do it repeatedly in front of her inlaws. Hee.

Anyhow, that finally passed.

Now we all have colds. Owen started getting his right around the time his stomach bug was letting up, and Brian and I both have it now. And I don't want to be all stereotypical about men being whiny sick people, so I won't.

Ahem.

I'll wait for Brian to dispute that in the comments or something... I know you're reading this!

The thing I hate most about having a cold is the red nose. Well, maybe second to the sore throat. I always get a bad, bad sore throat. I think its because I have ridiculously large tonsils. I don't know if those two things are actually connected, but it makes sense in my head so I'm going with it.

Anyhow, its time for the unrelated b$@%*ing (look at me keeping it all PG rated).

1. Owen has been on full time sippy cups for at least two months. This is great because those Dr. Browns bottles, as wonderful as they are, were a REAL PAIN IN THE BUTT to clean. Now we don't have to send anything to daycare other than a big bottle full of water that they can use to mix up his drinks. And soon, when he drinks cows milk, we won't have to send anything fluid at all. That will be a fun day. Anyhow, we have thus invested in a good number of sippy cups. We have a couple Playtex ones that have handles. These are about $4-5 per cup. I think we had about 4-6. I bought these first because I thought they would be easier for him to use, what with the handles and all. Then we started having some problems... Cat problems. Jasmine is obsessed with chewing on the spouts of his sippy cups if they have had formula in them. So she would find his cup that he had discarded on the floor and chew it. Or his cup that he had finished that was in the sink. I think she chewed 2-3 of these to the point where we had to throw them out. When we started getting low, I went to buy some more the next time I was at the grocery store. But all they had was girly colors, and even though we are getting Owen a play kitchen for Christmas (ssssshhhh, don't tell him), I didn't want to raise no sissy boy drinking from a pink cup. I didn't want his other baby friends to give him a hard time. So I got some of the Take-n-Toss ones that are essentially disposable. They're like that Gladware in sippy cup form - You can and will use them over and over again, but you won't cry when something happens to them. These were $2.99 for 8 cups, so way more bang for your buck. Except Jasmine still wants to chew the crap out of them, and since these are made of really thin plastic, even one good chew means death to the cup. In contrast, the other ones were still okay with a few chews because the spout was made of pretty thick plastic. So now I am trying to do the cost benefit analysis on sippy cups. And also on keeping Jasmine. No, I'm kidding. I'm not getting rid of Jasmine.

2. Yesterday I took my car in for its 30K service. Since my car is a fancy hybrid, we decided I should take it to the dealership for the service. Either I have been lazy about getting my car in for its regular service (possible) or we have taken it somewhere else (also possible) for at least one of these services, because this was the first time I had gone to our dealership for anything other than an oil change, and I only did that once too. Anyhow. I got the shuttle guy to take me to work. Later in the afternoon they called me to tell me that my car was done and that the shuttle guy was going to come pick me up. The dealership is only a couple of exits down from where I work, so this shouldn't have taken long. I still had some work to finish up and I also had to leave by 5 at the latest to pick O up at daycare. When I got there, the service guy was like, "Uh, we actually have a little bit of a problem. Something happened to your car and we're going to fix it, but it isn't going to be done in time for you to take it home tonight." Okay. I think what happened was they were pulling the car in or out of a garage area and the garage door was not up enough and they scraped the roof of my car on the bottom of the door. So they were going to get me a rental car. I thought this meant a rental car was going to come to me at the dealership. We went out and got all the crap I needed from my car...

(incidentally, the guy asked me what I needed from the car and I said "parking permit and iPod stuff (I mean, my charger and my iTrip - I had my iPod with me)". Then when I called Brian and told him what was going on he said "What are you going to do about the carseat?" Duh. The carseat!! I had completely forgotten about that. I forgot about my glasses too - I only use them when I'm driving so I leave them in the car. I am a fantastic mommy!)

...I looked at the damage and it was really just scratches that could be buffed out easily, not a huge deal.

The rental car guy came and it turned out he was going to take me to the rental car place. I don't know why, but they use a rental car place in Chapel Hill, which was like, 25 minutes away. Why they would do that when the airport is much closer is beyond me, but whatever. Then I got my rental car (a minivan! I felt like a real mommy!) and had to drive back to work - another 25 minutes. All in all I was gone for about two hours. By the time I got back I had time to do some lab stuff that desperately needed to be finished before I could leave and then ran out to go pick up Owen. I didn't think it would be a big problem, but it really turned out to be a fairly major inconvenience that I could have done without. I was irritated, but only slightly.

Today I went to pick up my car and pay for my service. This was a big service, so it was like, $500. Which is crazy, but whatever. Thats what I get for going to the dealer, right? I said "And I'm sure you gave me a discount, because the whole ordeal yesterday was a big inconvenience". He said "Oh, of course. Its about $100 off. And we cleaned and detailed your car for you"...

(okay also? Why do they call that 'detailing'?)

...I had had a coupon in my hand for $25 off this service, but I ended up not using it because he had already given me a $100 discount. My service came to $450. I paid and drove off.

As I was driving I started thinking "He gave me $100 off and I still paid $450? Is that right?" I stopped in a parking lot and looked at the bill, added stuff up on my fancy calculator on my fancy iPhone, and couldn't figure out where this discount was. I went back to the dealership and asked him to walk me through the bill and where my discount was. He showed me. It turned out he had taken 10% ($50) off. He had counted the price of the detailing in as part of my "discount". I was pissed. I didn't want my car cleaned (although it needed it for sure, so it was a bonus), I wanted MONEY back for my trouble. I explained that I had had a coupon that I didn't use for $25 off that I had found on their website. My point was that if they'll easily give $25 to anyone for having a coupon that they can just print out, when they screw something up the discount should be significantly more than that. I thought it was a little bit ridiculous. The guy was also bugging me at this point. I was not happy to begin with, and he almost instantly adopted an attitude with me that was making me even angrier, like I was just some crazy lady. He asked me, "What will make you happy?" The way he said it indicated that he meant: "What will get you off of my case, lady?" I told him that his dismissive attitude was not helping me be happy. In the end he gave me an additional $100 off, which is what I asked for, pretty much (actually, I asked for $100 total off, but he gave me an additional $100 off, so $150 total). In the end I was happy with how it was resolved, but not happy that I sort of had to argue for it and that they hadn't done that to start with (or at least something better than $50 off).

Happy Freaking Thanksgiving!

2007-11-25T12:10:00.000-05:00

We had a fun weekend planned. My parents ended up not being able to come up for Thanksgiving because my grandfather fell and broke his back the week before (!) and they stayed in Florida to help out with that. I was feeling a little bit bummed that we didn't have any plans and afraid that Thanksgiving was going to turn out just like any other day, so Brian bought a photo printer (its totally awesome actually) and decided that we were going to sip champagne and work on Owen's baby book this weekend. Maybe go to the museum, hang out at home, do some Christmas shopping (online thanks - I am not crazy). We also had plans to hang out with friends on Saturday.

Instead this is what we did:

Owen woke up on Thursday morning, ready for his first Thanksgiving. I dressed him in his cute 'Baby's First Thanksgiving' outfit and sat down to give him his sippy cup of formula, which he guzzled down. And promptly threw up all over me, his outfit, the ottoman, the floor. This is the first time I have ever seen a baby actually throw up, as opposed to spitting up. Uh, its an obvious difference. This was more like 'The Exorcist'.

Took off the outfit and changed him into something else. Rinsed the outfit out with hot water and put it in the dryer - I had invited two friends from work over for dinner so O still needed to look cute!! Brian made biscuits and fake bacon for breakfast. We sat O in his highchair and gave him some, and a little bit more formula since he had pretty much not ingested any the first time. He picked at his breakfast and barfed all over it. Eeeeexcellent.

He was pretty good the rest of the day but was starting to have some diarrhea. Friends came over, we ate, O went to bed, we hung out, it was fine.

Next day O has major diarrhea. And Brian starts puking. And puking. Oh great.

Friday and Saturday alone, I think Owen went through about 10 pairs of pants. Brian was in bed all day both days. Obviously, we cancelled our plans. He's moving around a little bit today, but not much. Owen is still sick. We're already on our second pair of pants, and its only noon.

So there was not so much sipping of champagne and scrapbooking and hanging out with friends happening this weekend. There was a lot of grumpy babies and messy pants and sleeping husbands and trips to the store for Gatorade and Pedialyte (O is not a fan). I did get some Christmas shopping done and ordered our Christmas cards, so at least some progress was made.

And so far I have not gotten the horrendous stomach bug. Fingers crossed!!

In other news, O is steadily getting better at walking.

Hope you had a nicer weekend than we did!

I'm glad its not just me

2007-11-14T19:36:00.001-05:00

Apparently some hedgies have a weight problem to deal with too.

Perfect Mommy Night

2007-11-13T21:26:00.000-05:00

See if you can identify the components of a Perfect Mommy Night in the photo below:

2 years

2007-11-10T19:49:00.001-05:00

Today is the two year anniversary of when my brother died.

This morning we all got together by phone with my dad and Jim, who were at the cemetary. We shared Ed stories over the phone, and they poured a beer over his grave. And I drank a beer for lunch.

Owen celebrated Ed's memory by taking a 3.5 hour nap.

It is hard to believe that we have gotten to this point already - two years later! That morning, I was so unsuspecting of how my life was just about to change forever.

So many things have changed in these two years. We have made lots of new friends, lost some people who turned out not to be friends after all. We decided to start having children, got pregnant and had Owen, who is almost a year old. Jim has a new (well... new in the last two years) girlfriend who we love and they bought their first house. My cousin got married, as did Herryn. We have gone on lots of trips to visit friends and family, and have had lots of friends and family come to visit us. We got Jasmine.

It has been a rough time, but a lot of wonderful things have happened too. I wish that Ed had been here to see them.

Knowing the exact instant we get frost

2007-11-09T08:49:00.000-05:00

The other night, Brian and I were sleeping snugly in our bed when we were awoken by some unidentified beeping. It woke up Owen too - CURSES! It was 5:30 am, and he's a light sleeper from 5 onwards! Anyhow, we finally figured out what it was: our newish indoor/outdoor thermometer. We got it this summer sometime so that we would always know how freaking hot it was outside. Apparently it has an alarm on it to tell you when the temperature goes down below 37 degrees (Farenheit, for our UK readers). Who cares!! I am sleeping. What am I going to do, run out and cover my (non-existent) roses with blankets? If I cared that something was frost-sensitive, wouldn't I take care of it BEFORE I WENT TO SLEEP?

We couldn't figure out why it had come on because there was no obvious indicator on the thermometer that there was a low-temp alarm on. So it was difficult to turn said alarm off. I was hoping it was just a fluke, so the next night we went to bed and forgot all about it. Of course it was not a fluke, and the alarm went off at 1 am. Fortunately it only woke me up. Unfortunately, it woke me up. I couldn't get back to sleep. I was annoyed, so I just took the batteries out. So now we have no thermometer.

Thats okay, its cold (finally!). I don't need a thermometer to tell me that!

Bento Boxes

2007-11-08T08:57:00.000-05:00

Owen is eating table foods with us all the time now, and I am always running out of ideas as to what to make for him (usually same thing that we're eating, but this is not always suitable if we're eating something that doesn't translate well to finger foodness). Someone pointed me to a Flickr group about kids lunches. In there, people have annotated photographs of what they have sent for lunch for their kid that day. One person had these fantastic bento boxes that she makes. Check these out!! They're amazing.

2007-11-07T21:48:00.000-05:00

Not a lot going on. We are totally geeking out watching the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions.

Memes upon memes

2007-10-28T21:54:00.001-04:00

two memes to do:

A. I got tagged by Owen for 8 random things about myself.
1. I just got reminded about how, in 6th grade, my friends and I used to have all of these businesses where we would sell crap to the other kids in our class. Like, we would doodle on pieces of notebook paper, fold them up and sell 'fans'? Or we raised guppies and sold them? (The other part of that is that we would take the dead guppies into school and this one group of boys in our class... and if you went to middle school with me, and I know some of you did, ask me and I'll tell you who...would EAT THE DEAD GUPPIES. I remember they put them on their lunchroom pizza or in their chocolate milk or whatever. Ew.
2. My first car was a 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix and it totally had an 8track player, but my parents replaced it with a cassette player for me because they love me.
3. I watched the Bachelor for more seasons than most people did. And yet, I haven't watched it for a couple of seasons. WHO IS WATCHING THIS?!?!
4. I am obsessed with celebrity gossip. But I don't get the time anymore to keep up on it! Crap!!
5. When I found out Studs was going to be a boy I was a little bit bummed because I had these visions of buying little pink dresses and having a cute pink nursery. And yet, now that he's Owen and not Studs? I cannot imagine having anything other than him :)
6. I stopped eating meat when I was in 6th or 7th grade.
7. I wanted to be a plastic surgeon for a looooong time. Until I realized that calculus was going to prevent my going to med school. And now I realize that this was all for the best, all around.
8. My dad is in the final stages of making me a dollhouse which I am so excited about, and YES I AM 32 YEARS OLD. Shut up.

OKAY WAIT. After I had already finished this my mom (who is here visiting) reminded me of another good, random story for this meme. Okay. In 8th grade I was in the Kiwanis Youth Symphony in Racine. We went to Florida to play a concert at Disneyworld and we were there for a couple of days. So imagine, you've got a bunch of middle and high school kids staying together in hotels. I think there were 4 people in a room. And.... I am not what you would call 'neat'. In fact, I am what you would call 'a total slob' (if left to my own devices). My other roomates, in typical teenage girl fashion, were also a bit on the slobby side. And anyway, one day our room was in such bad shape that the MAID LEFT US A NOTE that we needed to clean up our room. How bad is THAT??

B. Tiffany tagged everyone in the universe:
Jobs I've had
1. Music store clerk
2. 'Wrap Desk Coordinator' (aka lead register girl) at Express. Pre-cool headphones days.
3. College Pro home painter
4. medical records filer

Places I've lived
1. Alliance, OH.
2. Arlington Heights, IL
3. Racine, WI
4. Windham, NH

Foods I love
1. Indian food
2. Pizza
3. cheese curds
4. kringle

Websites I visit
1. Triangle Mommies
2. Go Fug Yourself
3. E! Online
4. Television Without Pity

Places I'd rather be
1. Sleeping
2. Shopping
3. Out at a nice dinner with friends (and husband, obviously)
4. Playing with my buggle!

Movies that I love
1. Amadeus
2. Zoolander
3. Rushmore
4. Star Wars

TV Shows I watch
1. Ugly Betty
2. Lost
3. The Amazing Race
4. Project Runway (although I have to buy this on iTunes, thanks so much Time Warner Cable for not getting Bravo in Durham!!)

People I tag:
Melissa (like you're going to get the time to do this, Ha!!)
Kendra
Brian
Roger
Annie

And you all can choose which of these memes you want to do. I am not a tyrant.

A smiley leaf

2007-10-24T11:26:00.000-04:00

I saw this leaf while I was walking this morning.

Morning at our house

2007-10-22T11:46:00.001-04:00

This video made me laugh so hard I was crying.

Multiply this x 4 (even Beamish gets in on the action) and you will have the morning at our house. This morning while we were laying in bed, Brian said "The cats really get annoying in the morning!"

One day in daycare and the tough clothes tumble

2007-10-21T12:58:00.000-04:00

You're going to have to trust me here, but Owen, despite all appearances, is not a homeless baby. He does have a Mommy and Daddy who love him, feed him, bathe him and clean his clothes. You would never know this if you saw him for the first time when we were on our way home from daycare.
When he was in the younger infants room, they would take the babies outside almost every day, but I think they would be playing on a blanket or in an exersaucer or something. He would come home looking almost exactly the same as he did when I dropped him off. Okay, maybe he'd have a clump of dried rice cereal in his hair, but nothing major.
Almost instantly upon being switched into the older infant room, Owen started coming home looking like a homeless baby. This is the anatomy of a homeless baby's outfit (I should also mention that when I picked him up this day, he had dirt all over his face because he had been trying to eat it).

This is a cute outfit we got as a gift. It was cute in the morning, anyhow. Here is what it looked like when I picked Owen up:

Exhibit 1. Some strange food stain. They do use bibs at daycare, but bibs are not foolproof.

Exhibit 2. Some other strange food stain plus a spot of barf. The barf actually happened on my watch. On the way home we needed to make a stop. When I was paying, I sat Owen up on the counter (I was holding him, obviously. I don't need no parenting classes!). He proceeded to barf all over himself, my arm, and the counter at the store.

Exhibit 3. The mysterious black knees and ankles. I really do not know what causes this, to be perfectly honest. I think it is the surface they have outside in their play area. It is like rubber gravel, if that makes any sense. I assume thats what these stains are from.

This mysterious black stain is the biggie. I can never get this out. Here's another pair of pants, part of a cute outfit:

These pants have been through the wash no less than FIVE TIMES. They have been treated with Shout, with OxyClean, with detergent, with a combination of these three, etc. This is the best I have been able to do.

@#%$!

Taking dorkyness to an even higher level

2007-10-06T21:28:00.000-04:00

Well, so upon reflection, thats probably not true.

I think I hit my peak of loserdom when I joined the band at my work. I'm a scientist, and I work with a bunch of scientists. So being in the band at a science place is like, the height of dork. But in the band at work I have been playing saxophone. Of the three instruments that I own and thus could play now without having to go out and rent (flute, alto sax and oboe), the flute and sax are the easiest to pick up again after a 10 year hiatus (and actually, I played in the CWRU jazz band for my first year of grad school, so it was slightly more recently that my sax had gotten some action).

Oboe is a very challenging instrument to sound good on at the beginning. All new oboe players sound like dying ducks. I was thinking that all oboe players, despite the fact that they used to be very good, would sound like dying ducks after not touching their oboes since their last concert of college 10 years ago. So, even though it was really my primary instrument, I was terrified to try it again. I think even more so because it was my best one: what a shock to go from sounding pretty good to sounding like a dying duck! Better to just keep the good memories of how it used to be.

But then someone in my work band joined the Durham Community Concert Band. He totally talked me into joining. And, of course, what community band is looking for a saxophone player or a flute player? None of them. Both of those are a dime a dozen. So it was settled: I was going to play oboe.

Holy crap.

I never learned how to make reeds to any level that I could actually use them and sound good (long story why not, but suffice it to say that I am a freak among oboe players to not know how to make my own reeds). In college I used to use the other oboe players reeds when she didn't like them anymore. She always said she was amazed that I could sound so good playing on such crap :)

So anyhow, I had to buy some reeds first. I did this over the internet. Woo!

Then I had to make friends with my oboe again. I busted it out about a week before my first practice with the band. Not good. Although, to be fair, not as bad as I thought it would be.

First rehearsal. It is 2 hours long. My embochure is so shot that I cannot keep my mouth on the reed for more than 15 minutes. This is going to be a nightmare.

Second rehearsal. Much better! I can keep my mouth on the reed for much longer. An hour!

Now it has been 6 or 7 practices, so I am feeling much better about things. Our first concert is coming up on the 27th AND I have a solo. Small, but still. OMG. And I'm happy to say that I sound okay. I mean, nowhere near where I used to be, but I don't sound like a beginner.

I'd make a pretty crap Southerner.

2007-10-03T21:23:00.000-04:00

Last week I went to Carolina Beach for my work retreat. I drove out there with two of my friends from work. G is a relatively recent transplant from Canada, D is from Iowa, but his wife is from South Carolina. G asked about boiled peanuts, because you see signs on the highway for them a lot. I've never had boiled peanuts, and neither had he. D, being married to a Southerner, has had them and tried to describe them to us. And they did not sound good. We had to stop to get gas and there was a guy selling peanuts and stuff out of a little trailer at the gas station, so D bought us some boiled peanuts to try. I bought some regular peanuts in case they were nasty and we needed to get the taste out of our mouths.

If you've never been so "fortunate" to come across boiled peanuts, here is a picture I took of them:

They look slimy, and thats because they are. Wet and cold. Actually, D said that when he had had them previously they were served hot. These had crystals of some sort on them, either ice (ew) or salt (I love salt but... ew).
They look kind of normal on the inside, but instead of being dry and crunchy looking, they look like a wet dog.

I wish I had taken a picture of me eating a boiled peanut. D's analysis that they tasted a bit like beans was right on. It was like eating cold, slimy, al dente kidney beans out of cold slimy little cases. I don't think G or I will be picking up any more boiled peanuts.

Also, they were totally not what I expected. I don't know, I expected them to be green for some reason, don't ask me why. And I also didn't expect them to be in their shells. I think I was picturing another thing that, I don't know, but I think might also be Southern because I have never seen it before: wet walnuts. I've never had them, but they are a topping or mix-in you can choose at our local frozen custard place. Yet another reason why NC frozen custard is a little bit off. I guess I thought those were boiled. The guy in the trailer was selling those too - wet peanuts or something - in little containers and I thought thats what the boiled peanuts were going to be. You can imagine my shock when D whipped out the plastic bag full of slimy, cold, wet peanut shells.

At my retreat we were subjected to another strange Southern thing, sweet tea. Actually, thats not revolting like the boiled peanuts were, but I'm still not a huge fan. It tastes good but is a lot sweeter than I like my iced tea to be.

This past weekend we went to the local Farmers' Market with D and his wife K. I saw some purple hull peas, which I see every week when I go to the Farmers' Market but I never know what to do with. But I asked her what to do with them, and she said she usually serves them with rice. I decided to cook them with onion, garlic, carrot, celery and tomatoes and some herbs and served them with rice, a la K-dog. They weren't bad, actually, especially when I covered the whole thing in hot sauce.

Another friend from work (an Indian friend) gave me some ideas of what to do with them to make indian peas. They're essentially black-eyed peas, which I've had in indian before. So I might try that next. They were a good compromise between Brian and I because he likes peas (he's English, what do you expect?) and I hate them. These actually had a slight pea taste, but not enough that they made me want to hurl.

Four stars!!

2007-09-22T22:03:00.000-04:00

Do you ever read People magazine? I do. I subscribe to it. I love all that sort of trash.

Anyhow, People also has music, movie and book reviews. The movie and music reviews will often be low. I mean, I'm flipping through one issue right now and I see three music reviews that got only 2 and a half stars. But I've noticed that the book reviews are ALWAYS high. I can't remember ever seeing one lower than 3 stars. And I think I can only remember one that was 3. Usually they're 3 and a half or 4. And I noticed this a while ago, so I've made it a point to check every time I get a new issue (weekly). Are all books fan-freaking-tastic?? I find that hard to believe. I have read books. They are not all good.

I'm not sure exactly how to explain this phenomenon. The best I can come up with is that all writing looks like 4 star work compared to People? Not that I'm complaining, obviously.

Oh I know....!

2007-09-17T19:52:00.000-04:00

I know, you all want my links back. Well, you're just going to have to wait! That is going to take more time to accomplish than I have at my disposal right now. Thats the real bugger about switching templates. Whine whine!

New template in progress

2007-09-16T20:15:00.001-04:00

I think blogger dumped the template I was using, because it never comes up anymore and it is no longer available as a choice. I don't like any of the choices that exist already, so I'm going to have to come up with something myself. Give me some time.

OMGOMGOMGOMG!

2007-09-14T19:26:00.000-04:00

It is raining! For real, like for about an hour or so!! Woo!

OMG IT STOPPED RAINING!

2007-09-14T16:21:00.000-04:00

Okay, that lasted for like, five minutes. What a gyp.

OMG IT IS RAINING!!!

2007-09-14T15:32:00.000-04:00

Actual rain is falling! Actual wet rain! Woo!

Our new reality: back to back to back to back colds

2007-09-14T09:47:00.001-04:00

Owen has had a cold for 3 weeks now. Its fun when a baby has a cold. Owen has already described to you on his blog some aspects of this, which are "Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy!!" The most fun part actually is the constant battle with mucus. I am looking forward eagerly to the day when Owen learns how to blow his nose. Because right now, not so much. This is accomplished with a bulb syringe I got at the hospital when Owen was born, and he HATES IT. I mean, I would hate it too, so I can't really blame him for having a total freakout every time I do it, but still. He can't eat when his nose is blocked so we start nursing, it goes horribly, we stop (which pisses him off in and of itself) and then go upstairs to his room where the evil bulb syringe lives. Then the real screaming and fighting can commence. The rest of the time Owen has twin trails of snot coming out of his nose at all times. Wiping his nose is also met with screaming.

I have been biding my time waiting for this to come to an end, but it has been 3 weeks today so I took him into the pediatrician this morning. The doctor told me that yes, this was an awful long time for one cold to last (typically 10-14 days), so he was guessing that we had actually had two colds back to back, and that this was not unusual for babies in day care. Hurrah. This could have been what happened for sure, and I probably missed the middle part of it because that was probably when he had roseola (for the second time! woo!) over Labor Day weekend. Yeeha!

Now I'm getting the cold too, my throat is sore. I guess this is going to be our life now. Hurrah!

Joining this decade

2007-09-11T20:28:00.000-04:00

You read my blog and you probably think to yourself, "My. Lisa is soooooo technologically advanced and with it! I mean, she has a blog! And her 8 month old son has a blog! I am in awe!"

Yeah, okay. But I am not on Myspace. And I am not on Facebook.

I never got the appeal of Myspace and I'm afraid I still don't. First of all, most people's Myspace pages make my eyeballs hurt. Second of all, I mean, what do you do?? I have no idea.

Yesterday I got an invite to be someone's friend on Facebook. It was someone I knew when we lived in Cleveland but had lost touch with, so I thought it would be a good excuse to see what she was up to. I joined. Facebook checked out my Gmail account for people who were in my address book that also had Facebook accounts. Lo! Many, many instant friends. A few surprises:
1. My father-in-law
2. My PhD advisor
These are not people I expected to be Facebooking. But my PhD advisor is all into undergrads (I mean, professionally, not in some weird way) so I guess that is why he is there. I do not know why my father-in-law is on Facebook. He has only one friend, Brian's cousin, so I guess he's not super into it. I'm looking forward to hearing about this actually, so next email Mr. C - an explanation!

Today I was busy doing important scientific experiments, but I had lots of short incubations or something where I went on Facebook. I can see now how you can get addicted to it. You can search for new friends! Add things to your page! Write on other people's pages! See what TV shows everyone likes!

I put some stuff on my page. A daily quote from Karl Pilkington. A thing where you can buy me a virtual drink. I wrote on some people's pages. I got more friends, like some people from college that I had not talked to since, well, college.

So now I'm all 2005! Woo!

iPhone update

2007-09-07T08:32:00.000-04:00

Well, the day of the iPhone price drop, I talked to someone at the Apple store (Okay, I know someone who works there, who, like many of the Apple employees was in the same boat as I was). That night he was somehow able to swing a refund of the $200 price difference. I think it was helpful that this all happened on the day of the price drop - the Apple stores were bombarded with people just like me, all wanting a refund. They didn't quite know how to handle it, and they gave a number of refunds that night. I think it helped if you were nice to them, as is true of pretty much any other case where you are a customer trying to get something from a company - a lot of people were not! Anyhow, so I ended up getting the refund on Wednesday night.

On Thursday, Apple announced that they would give a $100 store credit to others who had bought iPhones before the price drop.

While I was certainly super annoyed about the whole thing and felt a bit betrayed by the company, I don't know that I really felt like they OWED me something. I mean, as I said, when you buy technology soon after it comes out, you are going to pay the highest price for it. You know the price will go down, but you don't expect it to go down so much, so quickly. This sort of drop was pretty much unprecedented for Apple. I did feel though like they took advantage of their most loyal customers, which sucked. They basically confirmed that they were totally taking us for a ride with the original price of the iPhone.

So, even though the $100 credit is sort of nothing to them (if anything, it will bring in more money to them because what can you buy for $100 or less?), it was nice of them to quickly make an attempt to smooth things over. From a customer service standpoint, they did pretty well.

Thanks for totally screwing me, Apple.

2007-09-05T20:18:00.001-04:00

Dear Apple,
I am a dedicated Apple fan. I don't think I've ever owned a computer that wasn't an Apple. An Apple IIGS, a Quadra, a series of iMacs (I have had one of each style!), a PowerBook, a MacBook Pro. There are three iPods in our house at the moment. I sing your praises to anyone who will listen.

Obviously, I desperately wanted an iPhone. Desperately. I did not run right out and buy one, I waited a month or so to make sure it lived up to its promise. It did. I bought one. 27 days ago, to be exact. It was a LOT to spend on a new gadget, especially given that I have a (relatively) new baby at home, a job that doesn't pay a spectactular amount, and a new day care bill to contend with. But my husband indulged my need for gadgets and my blinding love for all things Apple and found the money so I could get one. Obviously I bought the more expensive of the two, the 8GB one - better to have the space when I want it then save some money now!

So. I'm sure you can imagine how absolutely freaking ticked off I was today when I saw that you had dropped the price on the iPhone from $599 to $399. Today. what is it... almost 70 days since it came out? Something like that. Also, less than 30 days after I purchased it.

When you buy into new technology at the beginning, you expect that the price will go down at some point. You know that, but you accept it. You do not, however, expect that the price of the new technology will drop SUBSTANTIALLY, two months after it is introduced.

What is most aggravating about this whole thing is this: Who were the people who bought iPhones in the first 70 days? The people who love Apple. Your most loyal customers. So basically, you've just told us "Ha! Suckers!"

Thats great. Thanks.

Ways you can tell I have to give a talk on Tuesday

2007-09-02T20:32:00.000-04:00

1. Today I cleaned all of the doorknobs in the house with disinfecting wipes. For the first time, I think, ever (actually, its a bit surprising that I didn't do it at least once, if not daily, while I was writing my thesis).
2. I would have washed the hardwood floors if Brian hadn't just done it yesterday.
3. I spent about an hour last night updating everyone's blogs.
4. I've checked Triangle Mommies for new posts about every hour. Or, okay, more like every 15 minutes.
5. I've been looking at pictures of cells all freaking day. And yesterday. And the day before. And I think my eyes are about to drop out of my head.
6. Oh, forget it. I give up. Bleh.

Cat toys experiment

2007-09-01T15:53:00.000-04:00

We have accumulated a lot of cat toys. I think the major problem is that they get stuck under the couch, the refrigerator, the washing machine, so we lose track of what we have and buy more. Sometimes Brian will do a big clear out and liberate all of the cat toys at one time. Then the cats set about getting them back under the couch. We imagine that they have little cat thoughts like this:

"Hm.. I think I'll go over here and take a nap. What the...? Oh man! He got them all back out again! Ugh. He's always making a mess with those. I mean, I don't have any thumbs! I can't pick them up! All I can do is try to bat them around and under stuff, and that takes FOREVER. Well. I guess I'd better get busy putting those away again. Hopefully he'll get the message this time!"

We have also noticed in the past that some toys appear to be preferred by the cats, but we never remember which ones. So this time, we decided to do an experiment.

Here, Brian is setting up the cat toys:

Jasmine was immediately intrigued/annoyed by our experiment and decided to get an early start:

Here's what we found when we woke up in the morning. You can see that the light green mouse that was closest to Brian, the wooly pink mouse (it doesn't look like much of a mouse anymore), the glittery green mouse and one of the green rope mice are gone. It would appear that the cats don't like the rope mice much, but they do like green!

Whoops! An interloper!

The baby also doesn't seem to like the rope mice. He goes straight for the Fish.

Then for the leopard print ball...

And whats better than one ball? Two that you can bang together!

Beamish surveys the destruction left in the baby's wake.

A few hours later, I check in again. The Fish is gone, but whether this was baby-related or cat-related is not clear. Also missing: one of the red rope mice. Surprise, the two balls are back!

Later that evening, not much has changed. One yellow rope mouse is missing, but that is it. All is quiet on the cat toys front.

That night we know that something major is going on, because Cherry is heard annoyedly meowing ALL FRIGGING NIGHT. This seriously disrupts the sleep of the lead researcher whose ears are already baby-trained to be supersensitive! And we were right. The next morning, all of the cat toys have been "put away" except the leopard print ball.

The baby is fine with this result, because the leopard print ball becomes his favorite new plaything. I guess he just wanted to get revenge on the cats for past injustices. In fact, when the baby was having issues with the cats overstepping their boundaries, Caleb suggested that one day the tables would be turned. It appears that he was right.

Results:
- The non-rope mice are favorites.
- Green is the cats favorite color.
- If all the other cats slack off, Cherry will clean up for everyone. This is no surprise, as Cherry is very conscientious in cleaning up. I swear, she'll spend like, 10 minutes kicking the cat litter around after she does her business, until no trace of the smell remains. Then she'll spend another 5 minutes wiping her paws on the mat beside the litter box.
- The baby prefers the balls.
- No one likes the rope mice.

Cherry - Bug Assasin

2007-09-01T15:20:00.000-04:00

All of our cats are fat, pretty much, but Cherry is the fattest. By far. She looks like a big stripey sausage. But Cherry has a secret identity: Ninja Bug Assasin. Cherry plucks bugs out of the air and eats them, while the other cats look on admiringly. Here is but one example of her powers:

Ninja cat from meandertail and Vimeo.

comics

2007-08-18T20:27:00.000-04:00

Our newspaper is running a bunch of test comics to replace various ones that are gone or going. One of them I had never seen before, F Minus. It is HILARIOUS. Unfortunately its month long test is over now so I thought I'd look it up on the internets. Check it out! He has a blog too where he sometimes explains the story behind the cartoon. <

Speaking of comics, there are some comics that I can't believe still exist. Like, who reads Family Circus? Anyone? Garfield used to be funny when I was a kid (or maybe I just had a kids sense of humor and maybe it is just as funny now...) but now it totally sucks. And, Dennis the Menace and Marmaduke? OMG.

Other comics I actually enjoy and I can't understand why. In this category we would find Funky Winkerbean. It is so depressing, and yet I read it every day.

What are your favorite comics, and which ones can you totally not stand?

Okay, my life is complete now

2007-08-11T21:59:00.000-04:00

I got my iPhone (in lovely, tax-free New Hampshire)! And it is, in fact, just as wonderful as I dreamed it would be.

New baby!

2007-08-04T10:08:00.000-04:00

Melissa had her baby yesterday! Her water broke at 1:30 in the morning. After a valiant 17 hours of labor, she delivered the baby by C-section. So at around 8:30 last night, Madeleine Ruth G. was born. She weighed 8 lbs, 5 oz and was 21 inches long. Mel's mom sent a picture that I'll try to post here.

We're up in NH right now, actually, so we're looking forward to seeing Owen's new girlfriend when our conference ends.

Yay, new babies!

Deaf and dumb divers

2007-07-30T21:35:00.000-04:00

Last night, Brian and I were watching 'Nature' on the PBS HD channel on our fabulous plasma TV. It was really amazing. They cut from an underwater shot to one of the divers getting out of the boat. They were talking to each other, but all we could hear was the sounds of the water lapping up against the boat. No words coming out. I said to Brian, "I think something must be wrong with the audio." And he said, "No, I think they're just deaf and dumb." Huh? Why were they talking then, moving their mouths? "They must be lip reading" was his answer. I asked him to check the 'info' for the program on the cable - surely if this was a program focusing on deaf and dumb scuba divers, it would mention that in the program notes. But it did not. More of the show, more water noises, no words. I noticed that it wasn't narrated either, which seemed strange. I made Brian check the non-HD channel and it was fully narrated AND the people were talking out loud. So no shows about deaf and dumb scuba divers. There's a niche that needs to be filled, if you're looking for one.

I'm not a vegan, but still.

2007-07-29T21:23:00.000-04:00

This blog (it was a Blogger 'Blog of Note' today) looks hilarious. I'm going to have to keep reading.

Boring life update

2007-07-29T17:21:00.001-04:00

Just a bit of an update. Everything is going well here. Owen is really burning through his first year of life. Remember those days when we were super excited that he had HIT SOMETHING? Okay, yeah. The kid is now standing himself up and trying to climb the stairs. We are so not prepared for this newfound mobility. So far he has still not mastered the whole sleeping-through-the-night thing, much to my dismay. It is hard to function at work when you have not slept straight through the night for oh, almost a year (since I was pregnant!) But we are working on this, and actually he slept from 7pm until about 6:30 am about half of the nights last week. So I am pressing onward! Of course, just because Owen sleeps through the night does not mean that Mommy sleeps through the night, at least not yet. I still wake up once or twice out of habit!

It is still so, so hot here. And muggy. And occasionally rainy. On Friday I got absolutely drenched walking from work to our parking lot, and then again from the daycare parking lot into daycare. Then I had to meet Brian at Elmo's, aka "The restaurant I used to hate because of all the kids which now I love because of all the kids", looking like crap with frizzy hair and very soggy shoes. And of course we ran into someone we knew from Duke. OF COURSE.

My brother and his girlfriend recently bought their first house and they finally closed on it. Okay, they closed on it a couple of weeks ago but it took like, 6 weeks or something insane like that from the time they first were supposed to close to the time that they actually closed. Legal hell!

Melissa's due date is tomorrow! Woo!

Finished

2007-07-29T17:12:00.000-04:00

I finished Harry Potter. That is all (I do not want to spoil it!).

Uh, no.

2007-07-26T20:58:00.001-04:00

When we moved to Durham, we were totally psyched to find that one of the like, three Dunkin' Donuts IN THE ENTIRE TRIANGLE AREA was right down the street from us. We had to drive past it to go to work. It was the greatest thing EVER. Okay. It would have been better if they had ever carried my FAVORITE donut, the chocolate frosted cake donut. They were all into the raised variety, which I do not like. Anywho! I also like the coffee quite a bit, and we would always go there and get coffee. Iced coffee even, although that is not big in the South (why, I do not know - it seems like a total haven for iced coffee!).

Okay. So we've lived here for just over 4 years and the DD had been there since before we got here. I know they had problems with getting stuff from DD - it is one of those small shops that is a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins/Subway all-in-one, so it wasn't like the guy was getting up in the morning, saying "Time to make the donuts" and going to our DD. For a week once they had no donuts because the DD in Raleigh was not going to supply them anymore or something like that. I guess that kinda thing makes it tough to be a Dunkin' Donuts - no donuts.

Anyhow, about 7 or 8 months ago, our friend the Dunkin Donuts disappeared, as did our friend (not that I ever got anything from it) the Baskin Robbins. They were replaced with COFFEE WORLD and ICE CREAM CLUB. I was ticked. COFFEE WORLD also sells Krispy Kreme donuts! I've only had one or two Krispy Kreme donuts in my lifetime, neither of them plucked hot off of the glazing conveyor belt, but I wasn't a fan because - raised donuts. Anyhow, whatever. All of this is irrelevant except for the fact that they had the GALL to put up a sign outside that said:

"Now serving better coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts"

I'm sorry, what? WHAT? BETTER coffee? I don't think so. I don't agree with Rachel Ray on many, many things (like, for example, calling a sandwich a 'sammie'. Hello. Are we five?), but I have to say that we are of like mind when it comes to coffee. So now I won't go to COFFEE WORLD out of principle. Ugh.

Well, right across from this whole debacle there used to be a Burger King that closed a while ago and has just been sitting dormant since then. A few months ago they started remodeling it, and it became a Starbucks. I don't really like Starbucks coffee, and I don't really like the way they take over the world and everything, but I was secretly looking forward to the coffee wars, and hoping that Starbucks would teach COFFEE WORLD a lesson.

I felt really guilty about this because I thought this was a local guy's coffee shop and I know I shouldn't want the little guy to get beaten by the corporate giant. Until my favorite computer support guy came up and showed me his iPhone and pretended that he wanted to get ice cream in Manhattan. He searched for 'ice cream' in New York City and showed me all of the entries that came up, and one of them was ICE CREAM CLUB. You already know that this is a chain because I put the link up above, but this was the first I had heard of it. So! It wasn't some little local guy building his coffee shop with his own blood, sweat and tears! He was just a franchise of some other bigger company that I had just never heard of. Well, I stopped feeling bad and started looking forward to the battle.

Every day when I drive to work, I pass by the COFFEE WORLD and Starbucks. The Starbucks always has like, eight cars waiting in the drive thru line. The COFFEE WORLD does not. One car, maybe. And hardly anyone parked outside. And every morning, I take a sick pleasure in this. Better coffee than Dunkin' Donuts. Whatev.

Is this really necessary?

2007-07-25T21:06:00.000-04:00

Brian got this free razor in the mail from the friendly folks at Gillette. As he was opening it, he said 'Oh my god, it has five. No, SIX blades.' I didn't really look at it until I just went upstairs to go to bed (okay really, to read Harry Potter. Come on.), and I was really moved to photograph it for you.

Really. Five blades? Is shaving really a FIVE BLADE affair? I mean, I shave two entire legs, two armpits and some unmentionable areas, and two blades (maybe there are three on my razor, actually) serve me just fine. Do faces really require two extra blades?

Plus an extra blade on the back for, I don't know what. Slicing your finger open when you go to reach for your insane five-bladed razor?

Kingdom of Loathing

2007-07-25T20:47:00.000-04:00

Tiffany reminded me today about Kingdom of Loathing. I used to like that game a lot, especially when I was in the end stages of grad school. I feel the Brian's (and perhaps the Roger's and the Industrial Strength Science friends of the Brian's) of the world would also enjoy.

I can't remember my password, and its tied to an old email address so I can't get it back. Bugger.

Hypermiling

2007-07-25T20:34:00.000-04:00

I saw a piece on GMA the other morning about "hypermiling", which is basically trying to maximize your gas mileage. Some of the tips I remember:
1. Inflate your tires to their max allowable level
2. Coast when possible
3. Avoid quick accelerations
4. Don't speed
5. Turn car off when not moving (or even when moving, although they mentioned that this wasn't really advised!)

There are more, but this is what I remember. Since I got my hybrid 2 years ago, I have become a little bit obsessed with my mileage, so I decided to give these tips a try during my commute. (about 25 minutes, most of which is highway). I basically paid more attention to #2, because my car does some of the other things for me - it turns off when I'm stopped (which freaks my mom out because she forgets and thinks I've run out of gas or something), and it uses an electric assist when I am accelerating (unlike the Toyota technology), so actually, I think I do better when I accelerate rather quickly to get to my desired speed. Anyhow, I was about halfway through the tank of gas when I started, and I was getting 40.8 mpg, which is not great for me, but I've had the A/C on for Owen's sake. Today when I got home I was at 42.8 mpg. So I've improved two mpg in a few days, and its harder to budge the overall mileage when I'm well into a tank of gas. We'll see how I do on my next fill up.

Its fun, because its kind of like a video game. And you know how I like the video games (I finished FFXII this weekend btw. And I cried a little bit at the ending. How freaking lame am I?).

It is true that there is a learning curve to driving a hybrid. When I first got my car, I was averaging 37 mpg on each tank, and now I usually average 42-43 (without my A/C).

What am I doing??

2007-07-23T21:10:00.000-04:00

Why am I still sitting here screwing around on the internet when I could be reading Harry Freaking Potter?? Every moment I waste is another moment I might get accidentally spoiled on the ending!! Ack!!

Boy or Girl?

2007-07-23T08:46:00.001-04:00

Melissa has ended her long, practically-entire-pregnancy-long blog silence about a week before her due date. She and her husband are way more patient than either Brian or I, so they have elected to not find out the sex of their baby. Go to her blog and vote on whether you think she's having a girl or a boy (she put a lot of pertinent info on her blog to help you decide).

I would have said boy, because many things from her pregnancy have been similar to mine except that hers did not involve a big pink cast. However, I know three other people who are pregnant right now and they're all having boys. So I think that statistically, we're due for a girl. We'll see!

Trip to Chicago. Also: Why even babies hate American Airlines

2007-07-20T20:13:00.000-04:00

You can read about our recent trip to Chicago on Owen's blog.

Kissing or nursing?

2007-07-11T21:58:00.000-04:00

For a couple of weeks now, Owen has been occasionally 'latching on' to my face. I thought he was just crazed with hunger and trying to nurse off of my cheek, but I have started to realize that this is his way of giving me a kiss. Today he practically attacked me with face sucking while we were playing. What a Cassanova.

Feasting on Asphalt and other dorky shows I watch

2007-07-05T08:10:00.000-04:00

Looks like there's going to be a second season of Feasting on Asphalt! We really liked that series, and not just because Alton Brown is my television boyfriend. I mean ME AND BRIAN liked that series.

Brian and I also enjoy all of the medical mystery shows on Discovery Health. The other day we were watching 'Diagnosis: Unknown!' which should really be called 'Diagnosis: How fast can you figure out who is poisoning the patient?' because they all start out as medical mysteries but they pretty much all finish with the person having been being poisoned. And you can always tell who is doing the poisoning from very early on, so there really isn't a lot of mystery going on. However, occasionally the show mixes it up and gives you a case where no one is being poisoned. The one we were watching was about all these North Carolina fishermen who were getting sick and having neurological problems and sores on their bodies. It was a result of a Pfesteria epidemic, which came from hog waste washing into the rivers. There were scientists at NC State working on it, and they got sick too because at first they didn't know that it caused these kinds of symptoms. When they figured that out, they built a BSL3 or something lab that vented out into the atmosphere but the ventilation was set up wrong and it was actually ventillating into this other guy's office. He still has problems with it. Anyhow, they apparently had a big summit to talk about this and it was at the Institute that I work at, so they showed a few shots of my work. Woo!

The third dorky show we're watching (also on Discovery Health) is called 'Jon and Kate + 8'. This couple had twins (through fertility treatments) and then wanted one more child. They had to go through fertility treatments again and ended up with 6 more. We like this show because they seem normal, like people we would hang out with.

We also continue our 'Jeopardy!' dorkfest.

Obsessed

2007-07-04T13:43:00.000-04:00

If you wanted to get me something, say, an iPhone, that would be lovely. Thanks.

Vote for me

2007-06-25T19:08:00.000-04:00

Please go to http://samueladams.com and vote for my photo:

Navigate to the 'Shots of Summer' part of the site and then to 'Voting Gallery'. You'll see my photo. Click on it to vote.
We want to win a trip to the Sam Adams Brewery! Wahoo!

Traveling with an infant

2007-06-07T10:11:00.000-04:00

Owen and I are just about to head out on Owen's FIRST PLANE TRIP. More excitingly for me, its my first plane trip where I am 'That lady with the screaming child'. Hurrah!

We are heading up to NH to see my family, including my brother Jim, his girlfriend and their new house (which he will hopefully close on tomorrow). Also we are attending Melissa's baby shower! She's 32 weeks pregnant right now (not that you would know it from surfing her blog!!) which is right about the time that I broke my foot, I reminded her. Hopefully she escapes that fate especially since she'll be super pregnant in June and July and not November and December. Ankle swelling much more of a problem now!

Anyhow, wish us luck! We're getting back on Monday. Brian will be here holding down the fort.

Its bad.

2007-05-31T21:25:00.001-04:00

Brian is fairly oblivious when it comes to fashion. Or the maintenance of personal appearances. He's not a horrendous slob but he will let his hair get RIDICULOUSLY long and stupid looking and THEN try to cut it himself.

(Oh dear god, look at this picture from about a year ago and tell me that I am mistaken. If we hadn't been there for our ANNIVERSARY I think I would have ditched him)

And also, wear vendor t-shirts and shorts to work every day as if he were a grad student. Anyhow. Brian will let himself look like whatever, but he does notice when other people look REALLY bad. I enjoy it when we're in a public place and he points someone out to me and is like, "I cannot believe she is wearing that." You know you look like crap when BRIAN notices your fashion transgressions.

And so you can imagine how embarassed I was when we were sitting at dinner the other day and he asked me to look down at the table again. And then said 'Oh my god, your roots are horrible!'

Oh bummer.

2007-05-31T21:24:00.000-04:00

Mehrun's a goner. He lost to a long haired construction worker!

What is... we're dorks?

2007-05-29T21:17:00.000-04:00

I mentioned in my last post (I think) (also, OMG! Two posts within the same week! Unheard of!) that Brian and I have become a little bit obsessed with Jeopardy! You would think that watching Jeopardy, it being a game show and not really having characters or anything, you wouldn't really be able to get into the actual people playing the game, but alas. We do. Because: we're dorks. We liked the last guy who was a champ for a while (5 days I think?) whose name I forget, but he is seriously the nerdiest guy on the planet. Just imagine the nerdiest guy you can imagine, and it was him. But we loved him and we were really sad when he lost. He was kinda quirky in his nerdiness.

Right now we are also in love with the current champ, Mehrun. We love him because he is from New Hampshire, and I am from New Hampshire! We love him because he is from DURHAM, NH and we are in DURHAM, NC! We also love him because he makes hilarious faces at the camera, both at the beginning when they are introducing the contestants, and during Final Jeopardy! when he has finished writing his answer. Right now he has made just shy of $100,000 in 4 days of winning and we hope he keeps winning and that he comes back in the Tournament of Champions and plays our friend the nerdy guy. Because (and I think we've established this pretty well here), we're dorks.

My once monthly post

2007-05-26T14:23:00.000-04:00

Its that time of month again! No, not THAT time.

A lot and not much has been going on here. I mean, Owen is just about 5 months old now. Can you believe that? We can't. He's doing great. He's bene in daycare for a month now and its going pretty well. And more to the point, I'm doing pretty well with it too. Not the first day, which was filled with many tears. Or even the first week (okay two) which was filled with even more tears and also worry about what he was doing all day. I had been going over to feed Owen on my lunch break and it seemed like every time I went over there (or to pick him up) he was sitting in the swing sleeping. I got myself all worried that he was so unfussy that he was just getting stuck in the swing all day and forgotten about. Of course, this is not true, I just happened to be coming over when he was taking one of his regular naps and that week they happened to be using the swing pretty heavily for his naps. Which is fine. Now these last couple of weeks Owen has learned how to shriek with this horrible, ear piercing scream and he's quite fond of doing this when you put him down for a nap or to go to sleep at night. So then I started to worry that Owen had become the "bad kid" in his class. Hee. How fast they change.

Actually, it seems that Owen might have become so screamy because he's getting his first tooth! It just poked through, we just noticed it this morning.

My brother and his girlfriend are in the process of buying a house - OMG! Jim's a grownup! Owen and I are traveling up to NH in 2 weeks so we can go to Melissa's baby shower, and we're looking forward to seeing Jim and Sara and their new house. I'm a little worried about making Owen's first plane trip by myself, but I'm sure it will be fine. Then in July we're going to Chicago for my cousin's wedding. All three of us are going on that trip. We'll get to see bunches of relatives and family friends then, and we're also looking forward to meeting my other cousin's new son Caleb (he's ~2 months older than Owen I think?)

I'm giving a talk on Tuesday for work and I'm totally not ready. Ack! In fact, that is theoretically what I am doing now while Owen takes a nap. And yet, here I am blogging.

For this Memorial Day weekend we're going to two barbecues at various peoples houses. One is this afternoon, one is on Monday. The weather is really great here this weekend which is nice. Our friends left sunny wonderful Durham and went to Iowa for Memorial Day and I saw on the news this morning that its totally raining there (ha!).

All of our TV is over for the season which is both good and a bummer. The Heroes finale was kinda crap I thought but we liked the Lost finale (we always like Lost, I never know why people complain about it so much!). We're totally obsessed with watching Jeopardy now. It comes on right about when Owen goes to bed so thank god for DVR!

Okie dokie, Owen just woke up!

The Sweaterboy saga continues...

2007-04-28T19:29:00.000-04:00

Remember Sweaterboy? I know you've all been waiting patiently to find out what he's up to. Well. The other day I was going down "to the farm", and when I turned a corner I saw someone coming down the hallway on one of those Rascal thingies.

(ooh - I thought of a better link for that)

Anyway. We have a couple of these at work that are available for people to use. I was 9 months pregnant with my foot in a cast, and I never used one.

Guess who it was? Sweaterboy!

He had his knee wrapped up in an ace bandage. I don't know what he did, but still, its a little wussy. Yet, hilarious. I actually had to call my friend upstairs from my cell phone in the "farm room" to tell her, rather than waiting until I got back upstairs.

2007-04-19T08:35:00.000-04:00

I love it when I get scam emails that look relatively real until I realize that I don't have an eBay account. I bet people fall for these all the time:

Dear eBay Member

According to our site policy you will have to confirm that you are the real owner of the eBay account by completing the following form or else your account will be suspended within 24 hours.

Never share your eBay password to anyone!

Establish your proof of identity with ID Verify (free of charge) - an easy way to help others trust you as their trading partner. The process takes about 5 minutes to complete and involves updating your eBay information. When you're successfully verified, you will receive an ID Verify icon in your feedback profile. Currently, the service is only available to residents of the United States and U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and Guam.)

To update your eBay information please click the link bellow:
(REDACTED)

One would have to hope though that actual eBay has some command of grammar ('Never share your eBay password TO anyone?!') and spelling ('click the link bellow').

Well, not much is going on here except that I've been working! I think its probably been a good way to get back into things: 2 weeks of part time and 2 weeks where my Mom was here. So I didn't have to go straight to daycare, I got to ease into it with still being at work but with a family member taking care of him. I've also had a few weeks to get used to the whole pumping thing. I'm still nursing exclusively, so I need to pump to leave something behind for Owen. So pretty much I spend an hour every day sitting by myself in a tiny room, alone with my thoughts and the whirring of my pump. Its a pain in the ass because we really don't have very good facilities for lactation and we have a lot of breastfeeding women who need to use it. So we each got scheduled two slots (I heard that recently there were even more breastfeeding women than there are now and everyone could only have ONE slot, which SUCKS). The whole scheduling thing is the biggest problem because there are natural breaks and downtime during experiments that I'm not able to take advantage of. I've been spending my pumping time listening to podcasts, so let me know if there are any good ones that you like. I know people say you can do work and stuff while you're doing it, but if I'm doing anything that requires any real active thinking it doesn't work as well. So, podcasts it is! When Owen starts daycare it will be nice because I can go over there at lunch to feed him myself. That will really help, because its hard to come up with three bottles worth with only two pumping sessions.

Wow. Wasn't that an exciting discussion? This is what its going to be like now that I'm a mom.

We also took Owen back to the cardiologist, as I've discussed (er... I mean as HE'S discussed) on his blog. I didn't get to stay long enough to see the doctor (even though I was there for over an hour an a half!) because I had to get to work where I was taking an Infant/Child CPR course. How handy that it was offered for free at work! The teacher was absolute crap though, but we got some booklets and stuff that will help me study and brush up on it.

For all of you who are looking for new music, my new favorite band is the Decemberists. My friend Dan is doing some music service of some sort (I don't remember what or how it works or anything) and he heard them on that, and then I heard them on his shared music library. I have a real tendency to get into something and listen to it over and over and over to the exclusion of anything else, and this is what I've been doing with the Decemberists.

I've talked before about how much I enjoy this sharing feature of iTunes. I only wish that the stuff you bought in the iTunes store was playable on more than five computers. I mean, maybe you shouldn't be able to play it DIRECTLY on more than five computers, but I think through a shared library (which you don't have access to 24/7) it should be open. Anyhow. The other week I noticed that someone had put up their music library called 'Hey J3N - I dig your music! Email me at *****', apparently in response to one of the other shared music libraries. I thought it was pretty funny and emailed Dan to tell him that someone was trying to pick up someone else in iTunes. A few days later I got an email from another friend at work that said 'Don't you think the title of your music library is a little bit confrontational?' I was very confused. But when I looked at the shared libraries, I saw that Dan had changed his to be called 'meandertail - your music selection is lousy and I hope we never meet'. Hee!

Well, Owen just woke up from his traditionally extremely short nap (40 minutes!), so its time to go!

Yay, me!

2007-04-13T20:26:00.000-04:00

I always forget that I have the same birthday as Courtney Peldon of 'Go Fug Yourself' fame. Except she is 26 and I am a twenty-tween.

For my birthday, Brian and Owen bought me shoes and a new fancy camera. I guess all those trips to DSW with Owen in the BabyBjorn paid off, because he had good taste in shoes. My mom and dad got me a Kate Spade purse. For a loooong time I have wanted a Kate Spade bag, and this year I got two (I also got a Kate Spade diaper bag from my mom before Owen was born).

Brian took me out for dinner while my mom babysat. We talked about science a lot, proving that we're still just as boring as we ever were!

My friend Sheri made me a cake decorated with flowers she made out of Reese's peanut butter cups. Yum!

I don't know what it means to have my birthday fall on Friday the 13th, but hopefully it doesn't mean that 32 will suck.

Mii

2007-04-10T21:20:00.000-04:00

(Gosh, remember back when I blogged? Yeah, NOT SO MUCH ANYMORE!)

(Oh - I've been meaning to say... I bought some shoes on endless.com and it was great! Overnight shipping was free PLUS you got $5 off your order. Try it!)

(OK. Here's what I actually meant to blog about.)

(Gosh, these pictures are taking FOREVER to upload!)

(No seriously. Like AN HOUR.)

The Wii is pretty cool in that its a video game system that EVERYONE likes to play, regardless of whether they're a video game dork like I am. My parents are here now and we've been playing Wii Sports. We also played with Brian's parents when they were here. I made a Mii for everyone (except Brian's mom - she played as my friend Sheri!):

I'm especially proud of the ones of my dad and Brian's dad. Every time they came up everyone in the room cracked up.

Remember me?

2007-03-20T21:02:00.000-04:00

I feel like there were all these things I was going to tell you and now I can't remember. My brain is not up to full potential I guess, because Owen's sleeping from 8-3 was just a fluke - he's back to waking up at 12:30 or 1 am. Oh well, thats okay. Technically, thats considered 'sleeping through the night' since that only means 5 hours at a time. This is not my definition of it, but oh well. What do I know. They say you should feed the kid in his sleep before you go to bed, but I'd rather drink some wine and know I don't have to feed him for a few hours.

Nothing much is going on anyhow. We had a St. Pat's party (really, seriously, this was brought about because we had a cute outfit for Owen). We had lots of Wii sports playing, which was fun. You know a game system is really cool when people who could not care less about video games leave saying 'I want one of those!'

I'm shopping for a new digital camera. My nice, fancy camera (Sony DSC-H1) crapped out just before Owen was born. It wasn't that old - it was a PhD gift, and I've had my PhD for less than 2 years. I took it into a camera shop for repair but it will cost $250 to fix it, which I'm not convinced is worth it. So we're getting a new one. I am sticking to Sony because I've had three Sony digital cameras so far and I've really liked them all. And also, I've got a memory card for the Sony. They are coming out soon with a new camera and its sort of killing me to wait for it.

Back to work next week! Ack! Only part time for a couple weeks. G-G and Sky King are coming out for 2 weeks in April to watch the Bug so I can work full days for a bit. It will be a good way to get back into it.

Oh, so sad.

2007-03-13T17:48:00.000-04:00

I am in love with Tom Hulce. You probably do not know who that is off the top of your head, but he played Mozart in 'Amadeus', my favorite movie EVAH (which I could practically recite by heart, I've seen it so many times) (he was also in 'Animal House', another movie that I like). I don't know if I am really in love with Tom Hulce? Or with Mozart as played by Tom Hulce? Whatever. He was totally cute in that movie with the laugh, and the messy hair, and the wigs, and the piano playing, and the tights...

So you can imagine how unhappy I was to see this. So very unhappy.

Now I can relive the Tom Hulce glory days with my DVD of 'Amadeus' watched on our new HD plasma TV. You see, Owen wanted it, and all the books say that you can't spoil an infant and you should always respond to their needs. So thats all we were doing - being good parents. Today our HD DVR box was installed so we can watch glorious HDTV on our glorious new television.

This month's mommy blog entry!

2007-02-27T22:11:00.000-05:00

Seriously, I am not doing so hot updating my own blog. Oh well. I think Owen's life is more exciting than mine at this point. Actually, right now I am at work! Like a grownup! There are other adults here with which to converse! Unfortunately this is Brian's lab, not mine, so I only know two people here. Thus, not a lot of conversing going on.

I was planning on going back to work starting yesterday (8 weeks of leave) but as D-day approached, I realized that I was not really ready to go back. The Bug is still so little! And I cannot bear the thought of not being with him! This is quite a turnaround from how I thought I would be feeling right now, which is: bored of being at home and starved for adult contact. Well, I am a bit starved for adult contact, that is for sure. But I am not as dying to get out of the house as I thought I would be.

So I am taking 4 additional weeks off and will start back to work the last week of March. At that point, Brian and I will alternate Owen-shifts for about a month, because we didn't get a daycare spot until May 7th (I'm happy we got one at all, frankly). That will be a good way to ease back into things. At the moment I am doing some work at home and some at Brian's lab, trying to do additional experiments to get my paper published somewhere. Brian's lab has all the equipment I need, and is much closer to home and also Owen-friendly, if we both need to be here. We brought Owen in this weekend, in fact.

Not too much else is going on. We are settling into being parents. The Bug and I are getting on a bit of a schedule, which is good because then I can sometimes find the time to shower (You only have to read this, not smell me. Be grateful for that). And, as you will have seen on his blog, he slept all night for the first time! Hurrah!

I am always shocked by how much we love our little Bug. Everyone said that would be the case, but it didn't seem real to me until it actually happened. I can't wait to see what he's like as he gets older. Its going so fast.

Additional:

2007-02-18T17:21:00.000-05:00

I got a Wii! Brian has been trying to get me one for a while w/o paying an exorbitant amount for it. What worked: mid-week eBay purchase. I haven't had a chance to play it much though, but I did quickly try out the Wii Sports games. So cool. I got the Zelda game too but have not started it yet.

I give up.

2007-02-18T17:19:00.000-05:00

Britney? This is the last straw. You and me are OVER (although I will always love the song 'Toxic', no matter how bad things get between us).