Amazing Race All-Star Edition?

I just read on TWoP (and this article) that there are rumors about an Amazing Race All-Star edition. That would be great. What would not be great would be if I had to again deal with teams that I couldn't stand.

Topping this list would be:
1. B.J. and Tyler - the 'hippies' and winners of the last season of TAR. I've watched all 9 seasons of TAR, and I've never found another team that annoyed me quite this much. Tyler apparently wrote:

"What would be ironic is if someone were putting together an all-star version of the race and contacted teams like [now married former The Amazing Race 7 competitors] Lynn [Warren] & Alex [Ali] and [fellow seventh season competitors] Brian & Greg [Smith], but did not contact us, the most popular and amazing team of all time, about it."

Most popular and amazing team of all time, my ass. If I have to watch these two morons for another season, I might just gouge my eyeballs out with a spoon.

2. Jonathan and Victoria - the abusive husband and his wife. They are married, right? I think I blocked out everything I knew about them.

3. Charla and Mirna - The midget (dwarf? I don't know!) and her irritating cousin. Charla, the one who was the actual midget/dwarf was fine, it was her cousin Mirna who I couldn't stand. Constantly haranguing Charla, bitching about how the other teams weren't babying them enough, please. Its a race. When Phil got teary during their elimination, it was tears of joy.

Wow. I really can't think of that many teams that I really, passionately hated. I'm probably just forgetting. I didn't like the Guidos at the time, but have come to accept them.

I would like to see:
Colin/Christie
Hayden/Aaron
Kevin/Drew
Rob/Brennan
Brian/Greg
Kris/Jon

I'm sure no one else who reads this watches this show as obsessively as I do, except Becky. So, what do you think?

Someone just take me out back and shoot me

I made it through most of my pregnancy with nary a problem - some heartburn, some sciatica, but nothing major. Not so these last few weeks. Now I'm completely falling apart!

This week we went on our tour of the labor and delivery unit at the hospital where we'll have Studs. That was on Tuesday night. It was very exciting. Brian wheeled me around in a wheelchair, as walking and standing for extended periods of time are not my strong point lately. Also, wheeling me around in a wheelchair is not Brian's strong point. I kept thinking he was going to run my other foot into something. So anyhow, we saw the laboring rooms (nice!) and the postpartum rooms (not as nice!) and the nursery, which had a few little tiny babies in it. Holy crap - we're going to have to take one of those home with us in 7 weeks or so. And of course, we learned about how to check into the hospital and all that.

Well, on Thursday night we got to PRACTICE checking into the hospital. I started to feel sick at around 4pm that day. My stomach was really crampy and sore and I was having some... GI issues. I just wanted to go home, but I didn't feel like I was going to be able to drive myself, so I hung around at work for a while. I struggled with trying to decide whether I should call the doctor or not. I was having some major stomach cramps and some other possible symptoms of preterm labor, except I wasn't really sure whether these were contractions or just stomach pains. Like I know what contractions feel like! I have no idea. I decided to call, and the doctor said I should drink a few glasses of water and lay down for a while and call her back if it didn't get better. By this point it was 6:30, and I REALLY had to go home to let the dog out (Brian had to be at a dinner for work, so he wasn't coming home), and also to do this whole laying down thing, so I managed to drive myself home.

When I got home I drank my water, laid on the couch and starting taking notes of how frequently I was having the severe stomach pains. I did this for about 45 minutes and then I started throwing up, so I figured this was a stomach issue and not a baby issue. I called the doctor back and gave her all this information, but since the stomach pains had been coming at fairly regular 4 minute intervals, she told me to come in just to make sure I wasn't having contractions. Brian was on his way home from dinner, and we went to the hospital as soon as he got back - about 9pm. We registered (we hadn't gotten to our pre-registration form yet) and they took us up to labor and delivery. The nurse hooked me up to some monitors to check on the baby and to check for contractions. Well, luckily it wasn't contractions and the baby seemed fine. I tried to drink some water and threw up some more. They had given me one of those little kidney shaped basins, but that was not big enough and I ended up overflowing all over myself, more than once. Poor Brian was trying to empty out the basin and keep up with me, but there was no chance. So yay, now I am sitting in the hospital bed covered in puke. The call button wasn't working or something, so no nurses came. Brian was digging around in the cabinets in the room trying to find some new sheets or something - he ended up finding some towels that we spread over the wet spots on the mattress. Finally a nurse came back in and helped us out. They gave me some anti-nausea medication and some ginger ale, which I was able to keep down, unlike the water. We stayed there until about midnight when I asked to go home. They let me because I hadn't thrown up for about 2 hours and had kept down some fluids, so they sent me home with some more anti-nausea meds and instructions to call back if I continued to not be able to keep any fluids down - the biggest concern being that I was really dehydrated which can trigger contractions.

So I'm glad it wasn't a baby-related issue. I hadn't planned on being back at labor and delivery so soon, but the nurses and all were really nice and I felt better knowing that the doctors err on the side of caution and wanted me to come in. I was still sick for the rest of the night and spent most of Friday sleeping, eating saltines, and drinking ginger ale and gatorade. Brian was suppossed to be at UNC giving a seminar, but they were really nice and rescheduled it so that he could stay home with me. I guess it was some 24 hr stomach bug? Or something I ate? Who knows.

Broken foot-o-rama: the pictures!

I know you've been sitting there for the last few days thinking to yourself... 'Its all well and good that Lisa broke her foot and has a cast, but what good is this to me if I cannot see this myself, for my own amusement?' I'm here to tell you that your wait has ended - I had Brian take a picture of me this morning.

First, we have a picture of the toes. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of my foot before the cast went on, mostly because on that fateful Friday morning, I never suspected that I'd never see my foot again. Lucky for you my toes are hanging out of the front of my cast (so that I can constantly stub them) and you can at least see what they look like. Remember, I didn't hurt my toes, but they still look bad. Of course, my pedicure looks good though. Phew.



Next we have your full-body picture. In retrospect, this wasn't the best location to take the picture, because I'm wearing a brown shirt and my belly then gets obscured by the dark bathroom at the end of the hall. We might have to do a re-shoot, because I think you really need to see both of these features clearly to appreciate the full ridiculousness of this whole thing.



Finally, here's my 32 weeks belly picture.



I went to the OB yesterday, and he said (after pushing on my belly for a while) that the baby's head was now in the down position. Locked and loaded!! I'm going to trust him. I couldn't tell you where the baby's head was, thats for sure. There's some big body part (which I'm guessing is the baby butt) near my belly button that moves around sometimes (from one side of me to the other). The other night, the butt pushed itself so far out that I thought a baby butt might explode out of my belly.

Also, the OB said that if I needed to get a pin put in my foot, that was certainly do-able. So I called my orthopedist yesterday to discuss this, but I'm still waiting for him to call back. For some reason I don't think he's in the office on Mondays. I'd rather do that now for several reasons: a) hate the stupid cast, b) don't want to have to recover from a broken foot twice - once now, once when I end up needing the pin after I have the baby anyway and c) did I mention how much I hate the stupid cast? So hopefully sometime soon I will be having foot surgery and having a cast taken off of my stupid foot.

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE!!!

As you've probably seen, I've got a whole list of other people's blogs over there. Those are all the blogs that I check every day. Most of those people I actually know, but not all of them. We've got Roger and Brian (who are friends of Karl's), and we've got Annie and Adrienne. Annie found my blog during the Naughty Nauseef discussion, and now we keep up on eachothers blogs. Annie actually lives in Durham, so we're hoping to get together when schedules permit. And Adrienne is Annie's friend, who lives in Baltimore. Where, incidentally, Karl/Roger/Brian also live.
I got an email from Adrienne yesterday. She plays in the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, which I'm a little bit jealous that I don't get to be in too. Oh, especially since I see you're playing De Falla - 'El Amor Brujo', which I love. We played it when I was in state honors orchestra, or MYSO, or something. Oh, thats not true actually. We played 'El Sombrero de Tres Picos', but I have a recording of that and 'El Amor Brujo' is the other piece on the CD. Thats why I got confused.
Anyhow! Also apparently in the JHSO is Roger (I think Karl's wife Aimee is too), and the other day at practice Roger met Adrienne. That is pretty crazy. The whole blog universe is collapsing in on itself!

A big pink cast

Well, I just got back from my trip to the orthopedist. Who, first of all, was horrified that they didn't fit me in until today, 6 days after I broke the damn thing. I had to have another X-ray to make sure that the bone hadn't moved any further out given that I'd been hobbling around on it since I broke it. Which it hadn't. But that still didn't change the inevitable end to this: I have a cast now. Hurrah.

Actually, I have a cast now, and we'll see how it goes but I may still end up needing the surgery and the screw to get it to heal. Apparently the broken off part was pulled pretty far away from where it should be. That seemed to be sort of the determining factor in how it was treated. If it hadn't been that bad, I would have stayed with the stupid velcro shoe until it healed. But it was pulled far enough out that he didn't think the shoe would give it enough support. He said that if I wasn't pregnant, he probably would have just wanted to do the surgery straight off, but since I was, he thought we should try the cast first and then see how it heals. I asked how long I was going to be in the cast for, and he laughed and said that he might meet me in the delivery room to take it off. HA. so its going to be 6-8 weeks. Terrific. At least I got to pick the color of the cast, which is (of course) pink.

The news of needing a cast very nearly triggered another bursting into tears episode, but I did manage to hold off until I got to the car and called Brian. Next, I called my mom who said 'I guess you thought your blog wasn't interesting enough.' Haha.

I'm guessing if people laughed at big old pregnant me hobbling around on the little velcro shoe, they're REALLY going to laugh at me when I've got a cast on. It goes all the way up to my knee too. I didn't know it needed to go up that far, but what do I know anyhow? Nothing.

And just so you know? If you see me, you're totally signing it.

Foot, jackasses, and maternity pants.

Well, things are starting to calm down a bit around here. The out-of-town visits are coming to an end (until Thanksgiving), the review I was working on (and immensely stressed about) is almost done. Now I'm working on my paper again, and I have to give a talk on the 30th. And thats about it as far as work goes. Phew!

My foot still hurts a lot and is all bizarrely bruised. The bruise is a traveling bruise too - when this first happened, my toes and ankle were completely unaffected, but now the bruise has migrated into toes AND ankle. Its lovely. I'll take a picture of it for you. I just hope you're not eating when you look at it. I have been managing to hobble around work, some days are better than others. I can tell today is going to be a bad day because its already hurting pretty badly, and I haven't even been walking around yet. I had a few days of feeling extremely sorry for myself. On more than one occasion, someone would ask me how I was doing and I would burst into tears. Which people love, I know. My friend at work was teasing me about being in a bad mood, but I think if she were 7 months pregnant with a broken foot, she might be a little bit pissy too. Anyhow, I'm feeling a little better about life now, so its probably safe to talk to me.

Last night was the Project Runway finale, which we'll get to watch today when it comes out on iTunes. I had every intention of not finding out who won, until I went over to E! online and saw a news headline telling me. Well, damn. And a word to the wise, if you don't know who won yet either, you might not want to read the rest of this paragraph because you'll be able to figure it out. Anyhow, I thought it was early enough in the AM that they wouldn't have anything up yet, but I guess not. Oh well. It was not who I wanted to win but who I thought might win anyhow, even though he's a humungous jackass. I guess this still stands: If you are evil, you will win.

I went maternity clothes shopping yesterday which was totally not fun. I actually went maternity clothes RETURNING yesterday. I have a bunch of maternity pants, but they're mostly shorts and capris. Now that its starting to get cooler (although its 85 today) I need some long pants. I'm having a hard time finding what I want, because now I'm big enough to really be picky about the kind of waistband on the pants - I only want that full panel, thanks. Mid-belly panel is workable as long as its not a crappy one that keeps folding over. I looked around a bit, but I actually had a hard time finding something that fit these criteria. But when Melissa was here, I bought a pair of jeans from Mimi Maternity. I paid full price for them ($68) which I hate because I'm only going to be wearing them for 2 more months + some postpartum time. I've had a fairly difficult time finding clothes, but not impossible. I have been able to wear size L pants for most of pregnancy but now I really need the XL, although many stores don't carry this size, which is crappy. Mimi Maternity, in general, does not carry XL, but they do apparently have a few styles that come in XL. So I got pretty much the only pair of jeans in the store that was a size XL. I put them on last week, and the little adjustable drawstring in the top broke the first time I tried to adjust it. Of course, I was already out of the house at this point, so the rest of the evening was spent hiking my pants back up. Maternity stores have crazy return policies. You can't return anything that you bought on sale. You have only 10 days to return things. You can't get a refund, only an exchange or a merchandise credit. Its a little bit ridiculous. I was still within my 10 day return period, so I wanted to return the broken pants. Since I didn't want to do any more walking than needed, I called them first to clarify their return policy for damaged items. It turns out that damaged items can only be exchanged for other items, you can't even get a credit. I was worried about this because I knew there weren't even that many things in the store in my size to start with. What if I couldn't find anything? I can't wear the shirts in there either, because no shirt encompasses my two-sizes-bigger-than-prepregnancy chest. Anyhow, I hobbled around and tried on practically every pair of L and XL pants in the store. I ended up getting two pairs of corduroys (which are in addition to a pair I bought the first time around). It was a lot of fun to try on pants with a broken foot, I have to tell you.

Grace is my middle name

I'm incredibly graceful. I'm being sarcastic. When I was in college, I was on the dance team, and I don't think my mom completely believed me until I showed her some video of us performing. Now that I'm 7 months pregnant, I'm even more graceful than usual.

So, this weekend we had all these visitors: my brother and his girlfriend were here Thursday-Sunday for a wedding, and Eve was here (well, she's still here as I'm writing this) Friday-Monday, also for a wedding. This is a popular weekend for weddings in the Triangle area, I guess. On Saturday, Brian and I went out for lunch with Jim and Sara. We went down to Cosmic Cantina for some awesome burritos. Cosmic Cantina is up on the 2nd floor, so you have to climb two flights of stairs to get there.

As soon as you walk in, there is a small step down to the main floor. I'm not sure what I did exactly, but I missed the step somehow. I felt myself falling and I tried to make myself fall backwards, so I didn't land on Studs or anything. Brian and Jim caught me too, but I was a little too heavy for them to fully rescue. But I did fall pretty slowly. And my left foot hurt like hell. It started swelling up immediately. On the top of the foot, right on the outside, there was a big lump that eventually took over most of the top of my foot. Two nice women asked how I was and gave me their glass of water, which was good because I also got all hot and sweaty all of the sudden. They gave me a bag of ice - and our lunch for free - and I sat there while we waited for the food, which we took home. Then Jim and Brian had to help me get back DOWN the two flights of stairs - that was fun. I spent the rest of the day sitting on my couch with my foot up and ice on it, then we wrapped it up before I went to bed.

This morning I got up and it still hurt, just as badly as it had the day before. I started to wonder if it was just sprained or if it was broken or something, so we went to the urgent care. Where I found out that, yes, I broke my foot. Awesome. The doctor said this was a common injury for athletes or dancers, so I may pretend that I was doing something exciting like ballet. They gave me one of those hard-soled velcro shoes to wear, which has made hobbling around a little bit easier. I have to go to an orthopedist this week to see what to do next - apparently they'll often do nothing, but sometimes will put a cast on it. If I really were a dancer or an athlete, he said they'd put a screw in to help it heal properly. We'll see what happens. I'm really looking forward to trying to get from the parking lot into work - its not THAT long of a walk, but long enough. Hopefully they'll give me some sort of temporary pass to park near the front of the building or something.

Baby names

People can obviously not be trusted to make decisions on their own. Thats the only reason I can think of that Crocs are so popular. Because, are you gardening people? Are you working in a hospital? Are you in fact Mario Batali? No. You are not. So why in the hell would you think that these are a good fashion choice? It is becase you are obviously blind. And also because someone told you they were 'cool' and you completely lack the capacity to form an independent opinion about it. I hate to break it to you folks, you look like idiots. This could be even more idiotic than the recent 'bohemian skirt' craze which made everyone look like they had HUGE ASSES.

With the baby anticipated in 9 weeks (NINE WEEKS OMG!), we spend a lot of time thinking of names. Rather, I spend a lot of time thinking of names, and then I present my shortlist to Brian. We're down to two by the way, and no I'm not going to tell you what they are. Anyhow. You would not believe how many websites are devoted to baby names, the discussion of proposed baby names, baby name meanings, etc. A lot. A lot of websites. Usually when I read these websites I become concerned about the future of the planet, because this generation of kids is going to have some totally messed up names. First of all, no one can spell a name in any normal way. Second, no one can pick a normal name, period. As a result, we're going to end up with a whole generation of people with "Wal-Mart names" spelled in unpronounceable ways (Seriously, one discussion I read this morning concerned someone who wanted to name their boy 'Lyric' (gag) but then decided to go with 'Lyre' instead, pronouced 'Leer' which a) isn't the way you pronounce 'lyre' and b) why would you want your child to be named Leer?).

I found this website that commented on a bunch of these baby name polls, and its hilarous.

A discussion of baby names would be incomplete without mentioning my friend S who wants to have a daughter named 'Pita'. Only if she names her next child 'Hummus', I think.

If you're going to fight over someone, at least make sure its someone worth having.

People? This is who Paris and that chick from Dancing with the Stars got into a fight over.

Please.

My super power: rambling blog posts!

Nothing too exciting to report. Last night was 'Nursery Decor Showdown!' Ok, it wasn't really a showdown, but that makes it sound more dramatic. We moved the furniture all around to try and figure out how we want the room set up. We've been leaving the door shut so the cats can't get in (thus increasing the room's mystique), but when we had it open ALL FOUR cats were in there - even Beamish, the invisi-cat. Think we've got the furniture all sorted out, now we're thinking about where to hang pictures...

...which we'll do this weekend when Matt and Melissa are here visiting! They're coming out for the World Beer Festival in Durham, aka the Best! Day! Ever! Again, I'm the designated driver. I think I'm getting in a lot of bonus points for when I can drink again. Actually, this is a big month for out of town visitors, as my brother and his girlfriend and also my friend Eve are visiting, but the next weekend. Hurrah!

I had so been looking forward to the arrival of the new Killers album, which came out yesterday. I'm disappointed though, I thought it kinda sucked. Boo.

Oh, the other thing: Even though I was trying not to develop any new TV addictions, we started watching Heroes, which had gotten good reviews. And it is really good. Very simply, its about a bunch of regular people who are just realizing that they have super powers. Obvy there is much more to it than that because there's also a bad guy who freezes people and removes their brains? And a guy who seems like he must be nefarious in some way but who is also the father of a girl who spontaneously heals when she gets injured?

Also, tonight is a big night for favorite Chadwick TV shows: The season premiere of Lost (!) and the Project Runway reunion episode, which is sure to be chock full of drama! I won't get to watch PR until tomorrow night (damn you Time Warner-Durham and your crappy no Bravo-ness!), but my mom will almost certainly call me tomorrow morning and say (in a teasing, singsongy voice) "I got to watch Project Runway and yooooouuuu didn't!"

Why I won't do highlights at home

As promised, here is a story about why I don't do my own highlights anymore.

I color my hair. I have for a loooooong time, I can't really even remember what my natural hair color is. Most of the time I'm coloring my hair red, or reddish brown sorts of colors (although I've gone more to the golden brown-blonde side - I just don't think blonde works as well with my coloring, which is pink. I am pink.). If I had my laptop here, I could post 'Lisa's hair: a retrospective' too. Anyhow, its believeable that I would have red hair because my mom does. Ok, so maybe my mom's hair has a little help now too, but honestly - it used to grow that way. Anyhow, usually I color my own hair because I am cheap, and also I always go to expensive hairdressers which makes a professional coloring even more expensive.

My first foray into hair coloring was in middle school, I'd guess, when I tried the whole 'Sun-in' thing. That wasn't really giving me what I wanted though, so I decided to try highlighting. This was now my freshman year of high school. My mom bought me one of those Clairol 'Frost-n-tip' kits, and we went to work. This is one of those kits where you wear this plastic cap on your head and use a crochet needle-type thing to pull strands of hair through the holes in the cap. Then you smear the bleachy stuff all over the exposed hair, wait, and voila! You're frosted and tipped.

Well, the first time we did this, I wasn't that impressed with the results. I think I was hoping for something a little more obvious than what I'd gotten, which was not a big change from my pre-frost-n-tip hair. A few months later, we decided to try again. We bought the same kit, but made some adjustments to the protocol and decided to leave the bleach on a little longer. Also, I feel that this second time, my mom was being a little excessive with the crochet needle thingie. Instead of pulling 'a few strands' through each hole or whatever, she was pulling through bigger chunks of hair and the holes were getting all stretched out. My mom might remember this differently, but thats what I think. To recap: much more hair pulled through the cap + extended time in the bleach.

When the time was up, I went to wash my hair out. I had fairly long hair at the time, so I could see parts of it while I was still in the shower, and I felt like something might be wrong. When I got out and looked at myself in the mirror I could tell that something was DEFINITELY wrong. The bleached sections were really blonde. My natural hair color, if I ever let you see that, is pretty dark brown. So there was a major contrast between highlighted and non-highlighted parts. I was a little traumatized, and started yelling for my mom to come in. My mom was getting ready to go to a wedding or something that day. She told me to dry it, and maybe it would look better. I don't know why I believed her, because obviously the blonde parts look darker when they are wet. When I got my hair dried, it was even more horrifying. I had black and white striped hair. Seriously, the blonde parts were so blonde, they were practically colorless. OMG, I thought I was going to die of embarrassment right there.

My mom recognized how traumatic this was, and decided that she was going to skip out on this wedding and help me get my hair fixed. So she called our wonderful hairdresser, Frank, and he said he could probably fix it. We piled in the car and drove down to Kenosha (and I bet I was weeping softly the whole time). Frank didn't think it was as bad as it could have been because my hair hadn't turned green or anything, which was a good point. I may have looked like a skunk, but at least my hair had not turned a primary color. He put some toner on it to try to make the white parts look more blonde, but that didn't make an enormous difference. He also tried to color it darker, but the color wasn't really taking on those parts. So when I left, I still had stripey hair, but now it was more of a normal blonde color + dark stripes, instead of white + dark stripes.

Aaaaand, I had to go back to school the next day. I don't even remember what happened at school, I think I blocked it out. I had the stripey parts in my hair until my senior year. I think actually my first haircut before my senior year started is when the last of the stripey parts got cut out, and I think I celebrated.

And this is why I won't highlight my own hair. Its a bummer too, because they have these cool 'Color Experte' kits out now that combine highlights with all over color, and I'd love to try them. But no, I am too terrified. Actually, what I try to do now is be a guinea pig for my hairdresser (who I love). She does hair coloring classes at her salon, and I have been her model for this. Then she colors my hair for free, and she usually does something really cool.

Still narcoleptic

I finally got my PowerBook back yesterday. They had hung on to it for two weeks waiting for the new logic board to come in, gave it back to me to use for a bit (although it was more broken then than it had started out), took it again on Monday night, replaced the logic board yesterday and brought it back to me yesterday afternoon. I swear, I had been using it for about an hour when it put itself to sleep again. So it appears as if this whole ordeal was for nothing. Hurrah.
From reading the Apple Support user forums, it would seem that this problem affects a fairly large number of 15 inch PowerBooks purchased at around the same time as mine was. You would think they would issue a recall or something, but so far that hasn't happened. It also seems that people who are having this problem who still have warranty coverage (under the AppleCare agreement - I do, only because work bought my computer) are trying to get their computers fixed and having the same problem. The people doing the fixing don't seem to know how to fix it.

My belly: a retrospective

I thought you might be wondering exactly how close to "side of a barn" I'm looking these days, so please enjoy "My belly: a retrospective":

We'll start with 18 wks, because you can see there isn't a whole lot to see here except a little bulge. Also, the earlier pictures are on another computer and I'm too lazy to upload them. Also, this is about when I started to feel Studs, but I wasn't sure whether that was really what I could feel or not.


Already at 21 weeks things look a little bigger. But I think people still just thought I was eating a little too much ice cream (actually, that nice roll of back fat there doesn't really help my case, does it). At around this time I could feel Studs FOR SURE.



We took this photo this morning, at 28 wks. Now people can tell I'm pregnant. And Studs makes his presence known on a regular basis, especially when I'm trying to sleep!

I did other things this week too...

Here are some of the other things I (or Brian) did this week:
1. Brian painted the baby's room and put together the crib, which he didn't have any trouble with. Hurrah!
2. We went to see Sufjan Stevens in Chapel Hill on Thursday night. I was supossed to go with my friend Dan, from work, who loves Sufjan. Unfortunately, Dan has been stricken with a horrible disease which is either a) a weird virus, b) a brain tumor or c) something strange like Meniere's disease, which my mom and my grandmother both have. Basically, he's been dizzy (and nauseous and throwing up) for almost two weeks. It really sucks, and the doctors don't really know what the problem is. I think they finally ruled out 'brain tumor', because he had an MRI earlier this week. He missed our retreat, and he also missed Sufjan, so I had to make Brian go with me. Brian doesn't like Sufjan Stevens. At all. There's one song in particular that inspires his hatred, from his Michigan album. Of course, its one of my favorite songs. When the concert started, I don't think Brian really knew who it was that we were listening to. The first three or so songs were ones I didn't recognize, so from albums I don't have, or maybe songs I skip on the ones I do have. Or new ones. Whatever. Then he played my favorite one, the one that Brian hates. As soon as it started up, Brian turned to me and said "OH. Its that guy." Ha.

The concert was really good though, I loved it. You've probably never heard him, but maybe you should give it a shot. My favorite album is 'Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State', but you could start with Michigan or 'Come on Feel the Illinoise!' and probably do equally well. Dan and I have a theory that people who were in band or orchestra are more likely to like Sufjan. His music is very um... symphonic. For example, on this tour he traveled with a ~10 piece string orchestra and a trumpet and a trombone player. And Sufjan also plays the OBOE, which was my major instrument. He didn't play it in the concert, but he does on the albums. I have to love a guy who plays his own oboe parts on his albums. Other people in the band alternated on piano, guitars or banjo, and various mallet instruments. Also, they were all wearing elaborate feathered masks (these largely were removed after the first song though) and coats with butterfly wings on the back. The concert was at UNC, and was largely populated by UNC students who all apparently only have the Illinois album, because they only cheered when he said he was going to play something from that one (I say this like I'm so much better, but I'm really only one album ahead of the UNC poseurs). You're probably also wondering why these two albums are named after states, which is a little bizarre (and the songs are all related to the state too). Apparently he's planning on doing an album for each of the 50 states, so I guess he'd better get busy on that. He played a few new songs, but many of them were about birds actually.

3. My computer is back, but not back. They had to order a new logic board for it, with no known ETA. They just hung onto my computer for 2 weeks, not fixing it. I told my computer guy that this was sort of killing me, because I have a grant due next week and I'd really like to be able to work on it at home, where I get less distracted (however - here I am blogging, aren't I?). So he picked it up for me and told them that he'd bring it back when they got the part in. Yesterday was the first day I really worked on it much though, and I had all kinds of new problems with it. For example, the sound was totally messed up. You could try to adjust the volume, but really your only options were FULL BLAST or MUTE. The headphone jack wasn't working right either. If you pushed the prong all the way in, only the right headphone worked. To get them both to work, you had to pull it out a bit. Of course, the system volume was up to full blast (although adjusting the music volume thru iTunes worked for some reason), so when I got a new email, my notifying beep nearly blew my head off. The other problem I had was that it doesn't seem to go to sleep anymore (well, except when its being narcoleptic, which it still is). At work they're doing some crazy thing where they're grinding out all of the grout or caulk or whatever around all of the windows and replacing it (from the outside). They got to our lab yesterday. We taped up the windows to try to keep the dust out, but as we weren't really sure how well this was going to work, my boss had told us to cover our computers when we weren't using them, just so they didn't get all full of crap. So when we went to lunch, I closed my computer to put it to sleep, and covered it with a few paper towels. This should have been fine, because it doesn't really create any heat when its asleep, so it doesn't really need to be super well-ventilated (and I also covered it loosely so it would have some circulation, just in case). Well, when I came back the computer had shut itself off and was HOT. HOT HOT HOT. Apparently it hadn't gone to sleep at all and was running with the lid closed and was poorly ventilated, so it overheated (for real) and shut down. I couldn't get it to restart for 3 hours. My computer guy came up after I sent him a frantic email telling him everything that had happened, and he said that they probably actually screwed up my existing logic board when they were initially trying to repair it, so that the sound was messed up and it no longer knew how to go to sleep when it was closed. Super!

4. I had my glucose tolerance test on Thursday, so I got to drink the super sweet Glucola or whatever its called. Holy sweetness. And yuck. Hopefully I pass this one so I don't have to do the 3 hr test, where the juice is even sweeter and more needles are involved.

Talking and networking at the beach

This week was our department retreat at the beach, which was pretty nice. This was the 2nd year in a row that my boss got suckered into planning it, but he did a good job and we had a lot of free time. Last year was my first year and we had a bunch of random speakers from other departments at the same institute, which... well I'd like to say that I really cared what they talked about, but I didn't. Because I am a terrible person. At the end of the retreat I felt like I hadn't learned anything. I still didn't know what any of the other labs in our department did, and we don't have a postdoc seminar series or anything, so I didn't learn this during the rest of the year either. Because I'm a bit of a loudmouth, I complained about this to the department chair at the party at last year's retreat. And at the end of the retreat when they asked for suggestions for next year's. And again several months later when we had a postdoc meeting with our department chair. I was also looking for some outlet for postdocs to give talks. Its not like I love giving a talk, I don't. I hate it. I get all nervous and feel like I'm going to barf. BUT. I think its a really important thing to work on. I mean, we're going to have to give talks all the time: at meetings, for job interviews, etc. We're only going to improve with practice.

Anyhow, my boss agreed with me and suggested at a faculty meeting that postdocs give talks at the retreat this year instead of outside speakers. Some of the PIs thought this was a good idea, some didn't. One even told him that he wasn't a very good postdoc mentor because he didn't do a very good job of shutting me up, and instead allowed me to "bully" the other postdocs into having to give talks. Nice. I have to say that, even though you hear about women getting discriminated against in science, this was the only time I've ever felt that way myself - like if I had a Y chromosome, my being persistent in trying to change things would have been viewed favorably, and not like it was some horribly negative trait. Well, the chair agreed with me too, and so the retreat format was changed. I thought it went really well, and I think everyone else did too. A bit of vindication! People actually paid attention to the talks, asked questions, and I learned what everyone else was doing. I'm guessing it will stay this way next year too, which is good.

So we were at this nice hotel on the beach, and we had a lot of free time, which was nice. We had one invited speaker from another institution, who happens to be a "big guy" in my field. Everyone tells you when you ask for career advice how important it is to NETWORK. Like, at a meeting you're supossed to talk to all of the "big guys" so that they know who you are. Etc. How the hell you're supossed to accomplish this, I have no idea. I'm not very good at it, and I'm pretty outgoing. I've only been to a couple of meetings. The first one was ASHG, which is enormous. No way you're going to get any networking done there, and I didn't. The second one was a big mouse genome meeting. Not as big as ASHG by a long shot, but still big enough, and still no networking accomplished (although I had been selected to give a talk at this one, so at least people saw me). The other one I went to was an epigenetics meeting at Cold Spring Harbor that Karl went to as well. Karl met someone in the bar before I arrived who actually was a "big guy", and we spent a lot of time that week hanging out with him at the bar. It was fun, and this guy wasn't all that scary after all, in fact he was really nice. But that was all due to Karl's excellent bar skills, not mine. At the same meeting, Karl also went up to Jim Watson and attempted to chat, much to my delight. Also, Karl kinda got shot down (as did the vast majority of people who went to talk to JW, it certainly wasn't a Karl-specific thing). Unsurprisingly, I did not try to talk to him. However, Jim Watson did totally stare at my chest. So that was the extent of my networking. He doesn't know me from Adam, but he might remember my boobs.

Anyhow, during the free time at the retreat my friend and I usually went to the beach and floated around in the waves. Thats fun. Actually, the first day I no sooner stepped in the water when a big wave totally knocked me over. I went underwater and washed up onto the shore, where I ran into the legs of one of our PIs. Niiiiice. Also, so much for not getting my hair wet. The invited speaker was also floating around in the water with our chair, so we got to chat with him. That was nice, and a non-intimidating way of networking. He's totally not going to forget who I am either, because I'm the spunky pregnant lady. At the party, he asked me whether Brian was anything like me. I said, a little bit, but not really because, could you imagine TWO of us? Yikes. I emailed him after the retreat and said that it was nice to get to meet him in that sort of an environment, where I wasn't terrified of him, and he said that I should find him at meetings and he'd be happy to introduce me to whoever I wanted to meet, and that I could certainly socialize with the "old-timers". So, its nice to know that all the "big guys" aren't scary and that they actually do want to help you.

Back to my life as a TV junkie.

Fall TV is starting back up again, hooray! Last year I boycotted Dancing with the Stars, because Master P was such a waste of space but never getting voted off and it was annoying the living crap out of me, but this year I'll try to watch it again. It doesn't make it easy for me though because... two hours?? The first ep was 2 hours long. I was really bored of it by the end, but waiting just to see Jerry Springer (who was not as bad as I thought he would be). And then the following results show, which was only an hour, was half filled with crap and Tom Jones. Lucky for me I DVR'd it, so I didn't have to watch all of that. Unsurprisingly, Tucker Carlson was voted off. I don't watch his show or anything, so I really had no previous impression of him other than BOW TIE. Actually, he is sort of hilarious. And a terrible, terrible dancer. Its too bad, really.

A question for Annie:
Pediatrician in Durham: Who do you go to? Thats my next baby-preparedness job, and I only know two other Durhamites w/ recent babies, and they both go to the same place. Comment or email, Adrienne has my email addy. Thanks!

Baby-readiness and the rest of the weekend

This weekend I got a little obsessed with baby-readiness. We had decided not to set the alarm for Saturday morning because neither of us needed to go to work, so I was excited about sleeping in. However, the cats and my bladder were not as excited about this, so I ended up waking up just before 7am anyhow. Bugger. I snuck out of bed and went down to the piano room, where we've been storing all of the baby stuff. I decided that I needed to assemble everything. Partially because I wanted to make sure things hadn't gotten damaged in shipping (Babies R Us is pretty sucky at shipping - nearly EVERY BOX we've recieved has been partially open when we got it because it wasn't taped very well to start with), partially because some of the things would take up less room assembled and folded up than they would in their boxes, and partially because I've been overcome by this sense of impending doom about entering the third trimester and not getting everything done in time for the baby. So I unpacked a bunch of stuff and put together the high chair (not like we're going to need that for a while, but it folds up pretty compactly). Brian came down about an hour and a half later and helped me by assembling the stroller and the pack-and-play. Everything was in good shape, thankfully, and if we have a baby tomorrow, it will have somewhere to sleep (the pack-and-play doubles as a bassinet), a car seat, and a stroller.

Later that afternoon I went to visit my friend from work who just had her baby. She told me her labor story, emphasizing the fact that she lived through it, so I feel a bit better. Well, until we get to prepared birth classes anyhow. I remember she freaked out a little bit after those. Actually though, she said she used some of the techniques from that to help her out before she got her epidural (her labor was going pretty slowly, so it was a while) and that they actually worked. She also said that once she got the epidural it was like she returned to earth without having even realized that she had been completely out of it, on the planet of pain.

Yesterday I spent the morning editing Brian's grant application. I'm weird, and I like editing. Don't think that means you should send me all of your draft manuscripts. You should at least read my last two papers and see if you hate them. Seriously, if science doesn't work out for me, and my second career choice of 'Britney Spears, but less trashy' doesn't either, then I will become an editor. And someone who makes figures and slides for other peoples talks. I like doing that too. Then I realized that I had left another baby-readiness issue untended to: selection of nursery paint color. So I busted out all of the paint chips and picked one. Phew.

Then Brian and I watched a movie I hadn't seen since high school, Harold and Maude. I had forgotten a lot about it but it was coming back to me while I watched it. Its such a strange, funny movie - in a very black way. My favorite part is when Harold pretends to set himself on fire in front of his blind date. When his mother gives him a Jaguar XKE, he paints it black and turns it into a hearse. Brian and I both noted that my dad would have been having a heart attack if he had seen that. Although, I liked it better after he painted it black (my dad's is black too). It was gray at first, and I wasn't a fan.

This morning Brian woke up very tired because he was nervous about teaching his first class of the year, which was suppossed to be at 8:45 this morning. He went into work pretty early and called me to tell me that he didn't have class after all because there had been a fire in the building the class was in. Hm! It was unclear how bad the fire was, but he walked down and looked at the building and it doesn't seem as if it was too bad. Still, its a research building so there are lots of labs there, and I'm sure that the fire will cause huge problems for them. Problems maybe worse than shipping your entire mouse colony out to North Carolina and having the guys at the airport open the shipping crates, let some of the mice escape, round the rest back up and put them randomly in the shipping crates so that you can no longer tell who is who, exposing them to whatever so that they have to spend the next three months in quarantine, after which point they're too old to breed, so you lose the mutation you'd been trying to identify, thus screwing up your last four years of thesis research. Wow. I'm still bitter about that!

I'm tired of being pregnant, and so is my laptop

This past week, I've gotten really tired of being pregnant. I'm sick of having heartburn all the time. I don't even think the heartburn is pregnancy-caused, I got it before too. Maybe not quite so frequently though. The only problem is that I can't take anything for it that actually works. Tums? Whatever. At my last doctors appointment I talked to him about this, and he suggested I switch to the liquid antacids, like Mylanta. So I went out and bought myself some of that. It tastes like crap, and I don't think it does anything much either. Unfortunately, my heartburn doesn't seem to be triggered by food or anything like that. My normal non-pregnant heartburn comes for a week or so where I have it all the time, and then goes away for a few weeks. Now it just won't go away.

I'm also sick of my butt hurting. Sometimes I think its my pelvic bones loosening up or something, other times I can tell its my sciatic nerve. In the morning I feel fine, because that big body pillow really makes a huge difference. As I go through the day, my butt and lower back start to get sore. On bad days, I feel like I can barely walk at the end of the day. This comes and goes too, I think depending on where the baby is sitting or something. I had it all last week, but it seems to be tapering off a bit this week.

I'm sick of waking up in the middle of the night. I had been waking up once at about 1-1:30 am and once at about 4 am, which gave me 2 more hours until the alarm went off. For some reason the 4 am wakeup has shifted to 5:30, which is too close to the time the alarm goes off (6 am). If I fall back asleep for 15 minutes, I'm extra-tired when I finally do get up. Argh.

I know these are just your standard pregnancy complaints - I don't have it that bad, really. I mean, my friend had morning sickness through her 6th month. Aimee B. actually HAD gestational diabetes to deal with, instead of just convincing herself that she did. My cousin had tons of problems with her first pregnancy. I'm just feeling whiny. The third trimester is only a week and a half away... ack!

Also, my laptop is experiencing a sympathetic pregnancy - its sleepy, hot and moody. I have a Mac 15" PowerBook G4 that is about a year old. I love it. I would marry it if I could. Except a few days ago it started suddenly putting itself to sleep. That was a little irritating. It happened once or twice every day I've used it since Friday. Its my work computer, so I contacted my Mac support guy, who is the best. But it was over a holiday weekend, so I knew I wouldn't hear from him until yesterday. So I looked on the Apple support pages to see if anyone else was having this problem. It turns out that lots of people are. It seems that a temperature sensor has gone bad and the computer thinks its overheating, so it puts itself to sleep. It seems like the people who were having this problem also started noticing it when the computer was about a year old. Computer guy came up yesterday and checked on that and found that my computer was having the same temperature sensor problem. Hopefully we can get it fixed quickly, but in the meantime I've got to use another computer in the lab. Sniffle.

Also, for a special extra bonus, read the last post in that support thread (at least its the last one right now). That guy needs to unclench. I mean, he's right, but holy crap.

More adventures with wildlife

The last few days have been full of crazy animal experiences. First we had the fox. Also, every day I have my own adventure with wildlife while I'm sitting at the computer catching up on all of my internet surfing and blog writing. I do this while I eat breakfast (I've been in a rut since I've been pregnant because I have a bit of a 'thing' for Quaker 100% Natural cereal. So we have cereal, yogurt - because I don't drink milk - and water or chocolate soy milk), just to kill two birds with one stone. Right before I come down here I feed the cats upstairs, so I get a few moments of uninterrupted eating time. Then Cherry and Jasmine come down, jump up on the desk, and proceed to stick their noses in my food and drink. It was bad enough when we just had Cherry, but its even harder to fend off two cats at once.

The third animal experience happened yesterday, when Brian had a run-in with... something. Brian went home to work yesterday afternoon, and called me while he was driving home. Actually, he had called a few times, but I was really busy in the lab and not able to get to the phone (also, my phone gives you three rings before it goes to voice mail, and thats never enough time for me to get there). When I finally picked it up, he said 'Um... I'm driving home, but I think I might be in trouble'. Huh? When I got him to elaborate he told me that when he had gotten in the car, something had bitten him on his ankle, but he didn't see what. He said it really hurt, like someone had hit him in the leg with a sledgehammer. Now, Brian has a very high tolerance for pain. Like, the guy had kidney stones and only sort of flinched a little. So when Brian is telling me he's in a lot of pain, I know its bad. I told him to drive back to the Urgent Care facility he had passed on his way home. He wanted to go home first because he wanted to look at the bite to see if he could figure out what had bit him - a snake, maybe? I had visions of him getting home and passing out from like, poisonous snake venom or whatever, and not being able to reach me and me getting home later to find him unconscious or dead. So I made him go back to the Urgent Care place.

They looked at it and decided it wasn't a snake (only one hole) but they didn't know what it was. They suggested either a brown recluse spider or some strange caterpiller that apparently is around here now, or maybe a hornet. They sent him home with a prescription for an antihistimine and a pain killer, and told him to come back if he started throwing up. Oooookay. So we still don't know what it was, but his leg hurt really badly the rest of the night. He said it was throbbing, and every throb felt like someone was jamming knitting needles into his leg. Later in the evening he told me about his drive home after the bite. He had driven for a while and felt okay, but after a while the pain was so bad and so distracting that he felt like he had to pull over. Then his leg started to feel numb and he felt a little woozy. He quickly realized that he probably should have not started driving in the first place.

This morning everything seems okay, he said it just feels sore around the area of the bite. Anyone have any ideas of what the heck bit him?

Update

1. I beat the last guy!
2. Animal Control came and took the fox, the poor guy was in so much pain (and probably shock) that he didn't even struggle when they tried to catch him. The Animal Control guy was really nice, but still I cried like a baby when he drove away.
3. Roger, Metroid really is the best game series ever (I think Legend of Zelda is a close second). I also have the two GameCube Metroid games (which are first-person shooters that I didn't think I'd like, but I did) and I haven't even GOTTEN to the last guy in either of them, much less beat him.
4. I watched this stupid TV movie on NBC last night, the unauthorized behind-the-scenes look at Different Strokes or something. Ok, actually it was terrible. I mean the acting? OMG. Horrors. But it was interesting anyhow to see what life was like for Gary Coleman (very sick), Todd Bridges (in trouble - but at first not really) and Dana Plato (overdosed). Most interesting to me was the fact that Dana Plato's mother was portrayed as a) absent, b) selfish and c) irresponsible, completely not being a mother to her daughter, who needed one. And subsequently got into serious trouble, and eventually died. It totally reminded me of Dina Lohan, Lindsay's "mom". I think Dana Plato's mother was the Dina Lohan of that generation. And look what happened to Dana Plato!