Deaf and dumb divers

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.

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

Boring life update

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

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

Uh, no.

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?

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

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

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??

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?

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

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

Kissing or nursing?

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

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

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

Vote for me

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

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.

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.

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

What is... we're dorks?

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

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!