Had A Great Weekend

Husband's birthday. Ice cream cake. Dinner with friends. Football watching (does it snow in TN??). Soccer playing. Couch shopping. Made chili. Slept in. Picnic in the park. Only 4 more days till the next weekend!

Link Roundup

"I want these two hypocrites to apologize to all of my gay and lesbian friends who want to be able to marry the one they love, rather than being scapegoated as threatening traditional marriage. Seriously."

Amen!

I am so glad I was born in a country with good healthcare. And I am fortunate to have access to the healthcare I needed while I was pregnant. There's so much I can say but it's easier for you to just think for yourself:

"Childbirth in Tanzania." (no gory pictures)

"It’s not easy to hear the truth, that your child is indeed different. Some parents do not even hear the doctor’s words: “Your child has superpowers.” It is natural to feel afraid, and even to seek a second opinion. But it is within every parent’s power to handle such an occurrence. Indeed, you will likely come to find your life with a superpowered child an enriching one, in addition to never fearing street toughs again."

Phew! Questions answered. via The Morrissey Chronicles.

"here isn't enough money to go around, and to try to help everyone a little bit—to observe the principle of universality—isn't as cost-effective as helping a few people a lot."

Sometimes the solution isn't fair. via Alkaline Earth.

"And then we dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter's term, and which had been so taken for granted that no one ever even mentioned it to us in law school. That's when we found out what happens when an advanced industrial economy tries to function with no cap at all on interest rates."

Good read on the current economic crisis. via Alkaline Earth.

And finally, here are some pictures. The Peanut absolutely loves his exersaucer. We call it his office since he always looks as if he's working pretty hard and having way too much fun.

Weird

On my way in to work this morning, I was driving behind an old, teal sedan. While we waited at a stoplight, the driver threw her cigarette butt out the window. Bad. We continued driving, I was listening to NPR (note to self, time to pledge) and had the windows rolled down because it was nice outside. I started smelling gas fumes. The smell continued for a few blocks and I started watching my gas gauge, to make sure it wasn't me. I then realized it was the car in front of me. The car wasn't dripping gas, it was spewing gas. It was really gross. I switched lanes to try to pull up next to the driver and let her know she was leaking gas, but traffic prevented me from pulling up beside her. We finally reached the street where I had to make a right turn and the leaky car got in the lane to make a left turn. Even though we were a couple of lanes apart, I noticed that not only was the car spewing gas, it was also smoking. I looked up to see if the driver was looking in my direction, and I saw her roll down the window and reach for a cigarette. I started honking to get her attention and when I did, I signaled and mouthed that she was leaking gas. She nodded her head and mouthed "I know." I made my right turn and drove away as fast as I could. What was she doing throwing her cigarette butt out the window if she knew she was leaking gas??!!

Priceless

I love my husband.

"[Roethlisberger] bumbles around defenders like an old man looking for his glasses, stumbles out of the pocket like it was a dive bar at closing time, and then completes a pass to whoever while I’m off getting a beer because I can’t watch that Vaudeville crap anymore."

Be sure to watch the video, with the sound on, at the end of the post.

Outsourcing - Because Everyone's Doing It

Right before Christmas our friend Tim came for a visit. He stayed with us through the weekend and we had a fun time driving around the area and taking lots of pictures. Tim is our camera expert and we consulted him for advice before we bought our SLR.

I had been meaning to post about his visit, but I am way behind on posts. So, since Tim has a nice post about it on his website, I will link to that instead. He has a play-by-play of our weekend together, in addition to lots of great pictures. But I have a warning, some of the pictures make me look like a beached whale, which is actually the way I feel sometimes. You know how the camera adds 10 lbs., well, I think that's 10 lbs. per person - 10 for me and 10 for baby - in addition to the pregnancy weight I've added. Enjoy!

Happy New Year

I'm still alive and not in labor. I've just been busy with the holidays, organizing our place, and resting. Yup, me who hates naps in the middle of the day and can't wait to get up to get stuff done has to slow down. My blood pressure is a little high and it's of concern to the doctor so she suggested I try to get more rest. If it's still high in a week, they might put me on bed rest. Aghhhh! That really is what it sounds like...I would lay around on my left side (and right sometimes to switch it up) all day. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that so I've been busy laying around as much as I can these past couple of days. On to better news...

My parents came to visit for the Christmas holiday. On Christmas Eve we went out for lobster. There's a local place that flies in lobster from Maine and it's sooo good.


Here we are enjoying our Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Day we baked lots of cookies and lounged around. My mom and I baked pistachio cranberry biscotti, peanut butter cookies, pistachio sugar cookies, and cranberry oatmeal cookies. They all turned out yummy and when my parents headed home, they took most of the cookies with them to give to my aunts and uncles.

The kitties had a pretty good Christmas. I put all their favorite things in their stockings. Monkey got a bag of treats, Major got a bag of catnip and a furmination, and Noodles got some grass. I'm not sure who had a better Christmas - Major rolling around in catnip, getting brushed, or Noodles chomping on his grass under the tree.

The only other highlight of our long weekend was watching the Patriots play a very good game against Buffalo. Despite their win, they didn't make the playoffs and are only the second team in recent NFL history to finish 11-5 and not make the playoffs. The clincher was Brett Favre playing a terrible game causing the Jets to loose to Miami and allow Miami to stay in 1st place. While we watched the Jets game as Favre fans for 3 hours, we caught glimpses of the Eagles vs. Cowboys game. Ouch! Poor Cowboys fans - sorry Pablo and Jaime. Maybe next year.

We've been playing around a lot with our digital camera. It's been fun. Here's a good Monkey picture that initially looked like a mistake because it was all washed out but is actually pretty nice.



Happy New Year!!

Lots to Do

We had a very busy weekend! We got our Christmas tree on Saturday. Noodles is the only one that really noticed when the tree arrived and he was quite hesitant at first. But now he loves to sit by it, sniff it, play with the water in the watering dish, and knock off ornaments.

On Saturday morning, the husband joined me at pilates. He was quite impressed with the intensity of the workout and was still a little sore on Monday.

Christmas came early this year – we bought a Canon SLR! It’s the Rebel XSi and we love it. Now we are ready for the baby! We got lots of practice taking cat pictures this weekend. The weather was rainy and cold, otherwise we would have taken the cats outside for a photo shoot. And we actually watched the informational video that came with the camera (it’s about 1.5 hours long) and got lots of great pointers.

So here are some pictures:


Noodles likes to sleep in the tent next to the Christmas tree.


Nice picture of Noodles.

I will have more later. Most of the pictures we’ve already taken are in raw format and we still need to install the camera software onto our computer to convert these images.

Over the weekend we also rearranged the guest/baby room in preparation for our visitor this weekend.

And finally on Sunday we watched the Patriots kills the Raiders. We watched the broadcast on our tiny tv at home. The reception was bad, but at least we didn't have to eat bar food this weekend. Oh, and I just found out that Eli Manning got sacked 8 times in the Cowboys vs. Giants game on Saturday. Nice! The Cowboys are now my second favorite team.

Another Week

Once again I won more free burritos at Chipotle. Note that I’ve only been to Chipotle twice since the last time I won (sometime over the summer), and I’ve only put my business card in the fishbowl once. I’m starting to get a little creeped out. But my coworkers are always happy with the free food. Maybe it’s just karma for all the loyalty the husband and I (and any classmates who would join us) showed Chipotle during our grad school days – we would eat there almost every day.

Saturday night my friend, Christine, and I made paella. It turned out pretty good. The paella flavor was a little bland so next time we’ll need to add a little more salt (or appropriate spice). Christine went to Spain over the summer and she was our authenticity check. She liked the paella. As an appetizer we made patatas bravas, which is like home fries in a mayo based sauce with lots of different spices – thyme, paprika, Tabasco, parsley. The patatas bravas were really good, but next time I would use a lower sauce to potatoes ratio.

On Sunday we watched the Patriots vs. Seahawks game. It was great to watch the Patriots win, but they really need to work on their defense. The Pats defense made Seattle look good (and not like a 2-10 team). We also watched bits of the Cowboys vs. Steelers game. The bar was full of both sets of fans and it was quite an exciting game. However, I was really disappointed that the Steelers won. This was a hard game for me to pick a side, but I decided I hate Steelers fans more than I don’t like the Cowboys. Plus, I kind of like some of the Cowboys fans (Jaime, Pablo), and I’m happy when they are happy.

Over the weekend we tried to install the car seat and we had a really hard time. I’m afraid our car seat won’t be compatible with our old, 1996 Toyota Corolla. We got the top of the line car seat (highly recommended by Consumer Reports), but maybe now we need to get a better car (I vote for a Toyota Rav 4). On Wednesday we have a consultation with a car seat expert at Stanford’s Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital. It’s a free service in case anyone in the area is interested.

During our second labor and delivery class last week, we discussed all the drug options – narcotics, epidural, etc. Before the class I was convinced I wanted to get an epidural as soon as I checked into the hospital. Now I want a drug-free delivery. An epidural would be the best option since it only affects the mother. But there is a narrow window of administration (not too early nor late), it takes a while to take effect, and it will usually draw make the labor longer. Narcotics can be administered at any time, but they have a potential of suppressing the baby’s respiration. But what motivates me to have a drug-free delivery is the challenge. I know this sounds kind of morbid, but I feel up to the challenge of labor and feel that I can get through it. The class has prepared me with great techniques for getting through painful contractions and having my husband around as my coach will really motivate me.

But then again, I’m trying to keep an open mind and trying not to equate my use of drugs as a failure. I’m sure that after 16+ hours of labor, with slow progress, I (and my doctors) might be thinking differently. The husband, on the other hand, thinks epidurals should also be administered to spouses.

Here are a few more tidbits/observations:
Last week we had spotty internet service, at best. It was ok for the first couple of days. But as the week progressed and we lost our networking ability (no access to our computer cluster, the printers, etc.), it got really difficult to make any progress. My coworkers and I were walking around the office with our memory sticks, trying to get files from each other. On the other hand, our Google wifi at home has been working great.

Gas is so cheap nowadays. We paid $1.89 on Friday. Wow! How low can it go?

In the last few months I’ve noticed that drivers have been worse than usual. Cell phones are usually the reason, although California has a law that you can’t use your cell phone as you drive (you must use a hands-free device). I see cars swerving, not yielding correctly, getting cut-off by another car and purposely cutting-off the car back for revenge – on the freeway!

We had sushi for dinner tonight. I mostly stuck to the cooked rolls, but I did cheat a little. It was sooo good.

A Holiday Weekend

Thanksgiving was great this year. We headed south about 1 hour to hang out with the husband’s cousins. The wife is a horse vet and they have a nice, new spread with lots of land, 4 horses, 4 dogs, and 2 cats. Most of the dinner ingredients were either grown by the cousins or bought locally and you could really taste the difference. Dinner included turkey, stuffing with andouille sausage, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, fresh baked bread, squash soup, roasted squash, roasted beets, green beans, asparagus, and cornbread. Despite the copious amounts of food, the 6 of us at dinner managed to make a big dent in the food. For desert we had a pumpkin roll and a pumpkin-chocolate-pecan cake I made that was actually quite good (NY Times recipe). And of course, there was a lot of great wine (I sniffed a lot of good wine). The wine provoked a couple hour discussion on the biggest American band of all time. I’m not sure what the consensus was.

There weren’t a lot of Thanksgiving leftovers, so I didn’t have an over-fill of Thanksgiving food, and now I’m craving turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy. I don’t expect any restaurant will have food that’s as good as what we had over the weekend.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing not very much. I had a super long to-do list but didn’t get many items crossed off my list. My friend Christine and I went shopping in Union Square in San Francisco. We checked out the huge Macy’s Christmas tree and hit a bunch of stores. I didn’t buy any Christmas presents, but mostly bought goodies for me. I used to think I wasn’t much of a shopper. And I’m not when it comes to clothes for myself. But I love shopping for house stuff. I bought a paella pan and a Spanish paella and tapas recipe book. I can’t wait to try out my new toys this weekend.

I have some pictures. These aren’t relevant to anything I’ve written about in this post, but I haven’t put up pictures in a while, so here you go:

Here’s Monkey sleeping on the warm dishwasher door. She has a funny way of sleeping where she likes to place her chin flat on the ground, instead of propping it on her paws.



And here is Monkey wearing her Santa’s Little Helper shirt.



To end on a depressing note, did anyone watch the Patriots vs. Steelers game on Sunday? The first half was good. The second half was a joke. I lost track of the Patriots’ turnovers and horrible plays. The worst thing about the loss was losing to the Steelers. I really don’t like Steelers fans. The Steelers are a good team and they deserved the win, but the Steelers fans went crazy happy when Welker was taken out of the game with a late hit. The hit wasn’t that dirty, it was just late. And it was little Wes Welker vs. a huge Steelers’ player. Still, a good fan would not cheer when a player is injured. But then again, I am talking about Steelers fans.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Both a weekend and midweek update in one day!

I am happy to report that we are now Comcast free!! We managed to get the free Google wifi working for us, using a signal booster. Since we don’t really watch tv, we figured we could cancel Comcast altogether. Yay!!

We just started watching season 5 of The Wire. We are half way through and totally hooked. They definitely are going out with a bang! If you haven’t seen this HBO series, I definitely recommend it. It took us a few episodes in season 1 to get into the series, so don’t give up too early. The Wire is probably my favorite HBO series, followed by Rome, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Sopranos. Deadwood is another good series, but it can be a little gory and intense for me. If you watch Deadwood, pay attention to the dialogue because it’s really good, almost Shakespearean.

We started our labor and delivery class last night. It’s a 9 hour class over 3 days. We watched a birth on video last night. I was a little nervous it would gross me out because I tend to get queasy with gross stuff, but actually it was quite fascinating. The husband, on the other hand, is more convinced that he needs to be somewhere else during delivery. Too bad he doesn’t really have a choice. During the video, when the mom saw her baby, she said “that doesn’t look like a baby.” And it was true. When babies are born, they are usually covered in a layer of something (can’t remember what it’s called) that kind of looks like Crisco. It’s to protect and help get their skin used to the new environment. But it also makes the baby look like a white alien.

In addition to the typical signs for the onset of labor (water breaking, labor pains), there are a few other ones that could signal the start of labor. These signs included a nesting behavior, where the mom suddenly goes into a getting ready frenzy. This kind of freaked me out because over the weekend, I had a bit of a nesting frenzy myself. I started reorganizing the house and was hanging up pictures, moving stuff into the garage, organizing my crafts. I had also noticed a shift in the baby’s position and now I feel as if I’m carrying the baby lower (the baby “dropping” is another sign of labor). But I’m hopefully just being paranoid because we are only at 29.5 weeks and the baby needs to bake for another 2 months.

In taking these classes, we’ve figured out that most people find out the sex of the baby before it’s born. We tend to be the only couple waiting for a surprise out of 10-15 couples. I find that odd. But then again, I find it very odd that I myself am really excited about waiting. I guess my competitive self beat out the control freak in me.

I love mole, especially when my dad makes it. Making mole is a very involved process, so I don’t usually request that my dad make it for me. But it’s become customary for my dad to have 1 or 2 frozen containers of mole for us to bring home whenever we visit him. The recipe calls for at least 4 different types of dried chilies, sesame seeds, roasted peanuts, and chocolate, in addition to another 10-15 ingredients. There are different types of mole, too, such as sweeter, spicier, and even green mole. Each region in Mexico has its own unique style of mole. My dad’s tends to be spicier with the flavor of the chilies really obvious. Mole is usually made with chicken, but my uncle’s tell me that my grandmother’s signature recipe is turkey mole (I’ve never had it). I’ve also had mole with fish (the fish choice wasn’t great) and with potatoes (fantastic). My dad has also mentioned mole with different kinds of squash. Maybe with leftover turkey, I’ll try to make mole. Oh, and what’s the best beverage to accompany mole?? Coke. Seriously.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!!

Another Good But Busy Weekend

Here’s the highlight reel:

We completed another one of our baby classes – baby care. I am really glad we took the class because I feel a lot more confident that we won’t screw up too badly. I am sure we’ll constantly do things wrong but hopefully they will all be minor mistakes and we’ll be smart enough and observant enough to not mess up with the big things. Here is an interesting tidbit...did you know that babies knead? Yup, soon after they are born they start kneading very similar to cats to help get the milk going for breastfeeding. For the first week or so, not only will we need to monitor the baby’s milk consumption, we’ll also have to keep track of the pees and poos. The instructor passed around a chart with pictures of…well, you can imagine. They also taught us how to swaddle and soothe the baby. We saw part of The Happiest Baby on the Block and it was amazing to see a baby go from screaming to completely quiet and relaxed in a matter of seconds. The trick – swaddling and the reverse football hold (imagine carrying a football, except the baby’s face faces away from your body).

We also got the crib delivered this weekend. We inherited our friend’s crib and it’s absolutely gorgeous. Once we get the guest/baby room more organized, we’ll be sure to send out pictures. Surprisingly, the cats haven’t jumped in the crib yet. They probably associate the crib with my friend’s two little girls who gave the cats more attention than they wanted. But the cats were great. They tolerated all the petting, holding, and running around without a single scratch. Phew! I think they will be excellent with the baby.

Over the weekend we went to the Computer History Museum with our friend Leonard, who was visiting from NY. It was ok. Definitely not my thing, but there were a couple of great highlights. I enjoyed the demonstration of the Babbage Difference Engine No. 2. It’s really a remarkable machine made of over 8000 parts. Mr. Babbage came up with the design over 150 years ago but it was finally built in 2002. It takes a brilliant mind to design something so complicated (so many moving pieces!) without the help of computers. I also enjoyed some of the old computers they had on display such as the recipe organizer from the 70’s that cost $10,000 but you had to input/output everything in binary. Useful.

Weekend Update

So this weekend we did something that we rarely do...we went to the movies. On Sunday afternoon we checked out the new Bond movie. It was pretty good – action packed but not too over the top and not too long. Plus, the new Bond guy is hot.

Overall the weekend was quite busy but fun. We had brunch with some friends in San Jose and then strolled through the San Jose Rose Garden. It was a gorgeous day and the smell of the roses was very pleasant.

On Saturday afternoon we had a baby class – breastfeeding. It was basically all you ever wanted to know about breasts and then some. The husband tried to get out of the class but I made him go, and I am glad he went because I was a little overwhelmed with all the info. Plus, it was a couples class so my husband was not the only man in the class and not the only one making weird/shocked/disgusted faces.

Saturday evening I took my coaches out to dinner as a thank you for being my assistants. After dinner I became DD for the husband’s poker night.

On Sunday we also sorted through baby clothes and tried to figure out what we already have and what we need. Since we didn’t actually know the names of most of the clothing items, our inventory descriptions read like this: “one piece thing with a zipper down the front, long sleeves and long legs and little feet.” The clothes are actually really cute and really small. The other baby thing we did was unpack and assemble the stroller. We got a stroller/car seat travel system, so the car seat can either click into the stroller or you can take the baby out and put it into the stroller. The car seat is a little bulky when it’s folded so we had a hard time getting it into the trunk. I think we might end up getting a smaller frame that adapts to the car seat and use that when we don’t need the full stroller.

In other thoughts:
Costco rules. The husband bought a sweet, custom built HP laptop through Costco. A couple of weeks ago, the laptop died. So we called Costco’s Concierge Service and they put us through to HP. HP sent us a box and next day FedEx label. I shipped the laptop on Thursday evening and we got it back, fixed, on Monday. Amazing! The best part was not getting transferred overseas for customer support. Yay for Costco.

I think I prefer Facebook over all the other friends sites such as My Space and Linked In.

There are a lot of spiders all over the place. I think they are making their final push before they all die.

Thursday Tidbits

So you can see Russia from Alaska. That was Sarah Palin’s claim for why she has foreign policy experience to Katie Couric. And when Couric asked again, she replied “because our neighboring countries are foreign countries.”

The husband has a couple of clips on his blog of the Couric-Palin interview which are priceless. He also included an question-answer session with Ms. South Carolina for comparison. They are just a precursor to the debate tonight. Enjoy them here.

During an NPR interview, McCain was asked what foreign policy qualifications Sarah Palin has. McCain’s response:

“she has the knowledge and background on a broad variety of issues, including probably the major challenge of America, and that's energy independence...She has the world view that I have. She is very highly qualified and very knowledgeable.”

If you have an IT department at work, have you noticed what theme was used in naming your computers at work? We used to have a feline theme, but we started moving towards a professional cyclists name theme. The new trend is because our IT guys are big cyclists. Some other offices from my company have a Lord of the Rings theme.

We are going to Boston and New York for about a week so I may or may not be posting. We’ll be in NY this weekend for a wedding and we hope to see some of you NY people. We’ll spend the rest of the week in Boston. Two of my high school friends also planned their vacation to Boston around the same time as we did, so I’ll get to hang out with them during the week.

Randomness

Random Thoughts for a Happy Tuesday

You know how sometimes you have to move the mouse a lot to try to find it on your computer screen. Well, now I have two monitors at work so it takes me twice as long to figure out where my mouse is.

Did you ever wonder where the phrase “cockpit” comes from? Is it because traditionally it was a pit full of… I don’t even want to think about it.

Pregnant people have a super sensitive sense of smell. The only thing that causes nausea without fail is something stinky, such as the trash or stagnant water in the kitchen sink. Someone suggested that it is probably a defense mechanism from the cavemen days, when, without refrigeration, people would rely on their senses to figure out if food had gone bad. It’s a good thought.

We bought a camcorder last week, for the baby (and the cats). I think the minivan is next. Actually, the camcorder has been fun since we’ve been doing lots of videos/interviews of each other regarding the baby. It will be interesting to come back to them years from now and see if we actually had a clue about what having a baby was going to be like.

I am really annoyed that the government is considering a bail-out for all the businesses and people who made bad financial decisions. Why should my taxes go to help the idiots who jumped into mortgages they couldn’t afford and the scummy business people who lied to them? We are financially responsible people and we didn’t jump in when everyone else did so why should we have to pay for it? I don’t want to think about it anymore.

I am still doing pilates twice a week. All the ab work is getting harder – a lot harder. Part of it is because my lower abdomen is in the way (like when I try to do a sit-up) and the other part is because those muscles are getting stretched out and they are loosing functionality. There’s not much I can do about it.

I take back what I said about Brady coming back in 3 months after ACL surgery. It turns out he tore 2 ligaments. And I spoke to my athletic trainer friend about it and she said that you can’t beat the science with technology. Your body needs the time. The body will “break down” the ligament and build it back up and that takes time. That’s too bad.

So Behind!!!

So I am way behind on my weekend posts and I know everyone is dying to know what I do on my weekends. I’ll try to be brief but we’ve had a lot going on.

Over Labor Day my high school friend Linette came to visit. Linette was probably our second highest frequent visitor (after my mom) when she worked in the central valley. However, it’s been at least a couple of years since she visited last so it was nice to see her again. And she is a cat person too (although she only has 1) so the kitties got lots of love from another human. Linette’s main reason for visiting was to go to a wedding on Sunday afternoon. So Sunday morning we went on a bike ride, I took the husband’s and Linette took mine. We were seconds from getting on the trail I take to work when Linette crashed her bike going down an overpass. All I remember was hearing the crash, jumping off my bike, and running up the hill and almost crying with joy when I saw Linette moving around. Nothing was broken thank goodness but she did have some pretty bad road-rash on her palms, elbow, and knee. We are not sure why it happened, but she flew over the handlebars and skidded to a stop on her belly (she remembers thinking “I wish I had gloves” as she was sliding on the asphalt).

The husband came to pick us up so we could take Linette to the hospital and a nice lady offered us her truck to take the bikes home. Even some nice off-duty firemen stopped to talk to Linette and make sure she hadn’t hit her head and was suffering from a concussion. In addition to her road rash, Linette also had a bruised heel (there was an actual bruise on her heel – never seen that before). The emergency room is about 1.5 miles from our place and I was happy to find out how professional and expedient they were. We were there in the early morning hours which is actually the least busiest time of the day (note to self, go to the ER in the morning). Linette had both of her hands bandaged up (kind of like the prewrap boxers wear), with some white mesh gloves over the bandages. It actually matched the dress she was wore to the wedding and most people assumed it was a fashion thing until they noticed the elbow and kneed bandages.

When Linette left our house, she headed east to the central valley for a business trip. Linette is a wildlife biologist and was doing some construction inspection. On Thursday she called me to let me know that her rental SUV had be run over by a tractor. Luckily she wasn’t in it. We think Linette’s luck is about to turn because that’s her third accident in a few weeks (she got rear-ended a few days before the biking accident). We suggested she buy some lottery tickets.

Over this weekend, Linette came back and we went to the downtown art and wine festival. It was very hot so we spent more time inside the local bars and restaurants than outside with the vendors. I got a wood frame that I can use to make a cork board out of the hundreds of corks I have from drinking too much wine. I've been collecting them for over 4 years now. Now all I need is a glue gun.

I'm coaching a girls under-19 soccer team, so basically high school girls. It's been fun so far. The only annoying thing is that only 1 girl has come to every practice and I tend to get only half the team at practice each day, and half of them are late. We had our first game this weekend and we won, 6-2. The team we played wasn't very strong and we'll have a much more challenging game this coming weekend, against the rival city team. I know the coach and I DON'T want to loose to him.

We are fostering a couple of kittens right now. We actually haven't taken any pictures of them yet but I'll work on that in the next couple of days. We wanted another kitten to keep Noodles busy so he would leave us alone but I think it's backfiring. More later.

Well, I'll keep it at that for right now and I'll expand on other stuff later.

Productive Weekend

I had a great week and weekend. My mom was in town all week and then my dad joined us for the weekend. It was great to have my mom around. I always had a workout partner and while we were at work she did stuff around the house. I think the kittens will miss her now that she’s back at home, especially Noodles. I am sure he enjoyed having a person around all day.

My dad arrived on Thursday night and so we spent most of Friday and Saturday doing stuff around the house. My mom and I tackled the boxes that we still had in the guest/computer room (and will soon also be a baby room) and the husband and my dad installed a new door and finished setting up the projector and screen. The new door replaced the old laundry room door. The project turned out to be a major pain since we got the cheapest door available at Home Depot and it didn’t have the hinge grooves marked off. Plus, the door frame wasn’t quite right so my dad and husband had to grind down part of the door. They also installed a kitty door in the laundry room door so that we can keep the door closed to keep the litter dust contained. We’ve been working on the kitty door with the cats, using food, treats, and catnip to coax them through the door.

It’s nice having the projector mounted on the ceiling and the screen on the wall. We finally have our coffee table back (which doubles as a dinner table). The projector looks really, really nice. Especially movies and pictures and computer stuff. TV doesn’t look that much better (something about HDTV not really being HD). We watched Casino Royale in blue-ray last night and it really looked amazing.

Has anyone been watching the Olympics? Particularly the swimming? We saw three amazing Olympic races over the weekend, and even the husband was impressed. The first was Michael Phelps’ incredible finish over the Serbian swimmer. When we first saw the finish, I seriously thought it was the Serb who had won the race. But the frame-by-frame footage actually showed Phelps touched ahead of the Serb. The other priceless image from that race was Phelps’ mom’s reaction. You have to check it out here. I get a kick out of her and his coach’s reactions. The other great swimming race we saw was the 400 m relay medley, that the US won to give Phelps his 8th gold medal.

So I am not totally biased towards Olympics swimming (I liked it even before Phelps made it cooler). I also like watching track and field events, especially the sprints. We watched the Jamaican Usain Bolt win the 100 m dash and break his own world record by 0.03 s. This may not seem like a lot, but it's significant in a 9 second race. The most incredible part about this was that Bolt actually started celebrating with 20 m to go in the race. While everyone else around him was going full speed, Bolt had stretched his arms out (creating some drag, I'm sure) and then pounding his chest in excitement. I can only wonder what the world record would have been had he gone full force for the entire 100 m. Bolt definitely left himself some room for improvement.

Good Week

Had a good week. I had enough energy to make it through the day on about half the days and nowadays that's a good thing. Fortunately I've switched to a more flexible schedule at work and so I can leave early if I need to.

They Olympics are starting. Yay! I love the Olympics. I love the concept of the Olympics - athletes from around the world coming together to compete in the sports they are passionate about. I don't like that the US wins a lot, I prefer to spread the happiness. But I do love all personal stories. My favorite sports are soccer, swimming, diving, track, and gymnastics.

I won free burritos again at Chipotle. Without even trying. They hold the contest every week, but the last time I went to Chipotle was about 3 weeks ago, and I didn't even drop a business card in the bowl. Nevertheless, my coworkers were pleased with the free food.

Funny

Good conversation lead to great bumper sticker line:

"I'm not happy because the world sucks."

Would work on a t-shirt too.

Weekend News

Had a great weekend. We didn’t do one big thing but lots of little things that added up to lots of fun. Now granted, most of the fun things we did were very domestic in nature but I guess we’ve moved on to that stage in life. I overheard the husband telling one of his friends that now he would get excited over fancy ranges and huge refrigerators and modern couches and he didn’t understand why. He’s friend responded with “yeah, it’s called a wife.”

Friday I went to Sacramento with my boss for a meeting. We drove 2.5 hours for a 2 hour meeting and lunch and then drove another 2.5 hours to get home. This wasn’t very environmentally conscious, I know, but it was worth it. We had a great meeting and will even get more funding to do more work. Another agency had done work similar to us but had gotten different results, but it turns out that they did a lot of things differently so we would have been comparing apples to oranges. Friday evening we worked out in the husband’s home gym and then went for a walk around the park, which was filled with families and little kids.

On Saturday we went for a 3 hour bike ride. Our mission was to return something to Costco. We took my usual path to work (a hike/bike trail) for most of our ride and had an awesome experience. The hike and bike trail was bustling with cyclists and pedestrians. I typically see about 10 people during my 6 mile ride in to work and on Saturday morning we saw 10 people in the first 30 seconds. I guess the trail is the place to be on Saturday morning. We saw a really cute all black bunny along the side of the trail. He (or she) appeared to be someone’s ex-pet since he wasn’t shy at all until the husband tried to pick him up, and then he only hopped out of reach. The bunny drew quite a crowd and it turns out the bunny and some of his friends have been on the trail for about 1 month. By the time we continued on our trip, there were three ladies who had gone home to get supplies to try to trap and rescue the bunny. When we returned on our way home, we saw some lady walking around with a carrier and some veggies but there was no sign of the bunny.

The rest of Saturday we just hung around and did a few things around the house.

On Sunday we went to The Home Depot and Ikea. We tried The Home Depot closest to us but it’s a smaller store than the one we used to shop at and it didn’t have a big selection of some of the things we were looking for, so we went to our usual Home Depot. We bought a storage/shelve thing for the garage, a tool box for our current tools, and a cat door the husband will hopefully install in the door leading to the laundry room/litter box so that we can keep that door closed to keep out the chills (there’s a big vent in there) and the liter dust. We then went to the Ikea across the street and were exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated by the time we found the exit (and we even took the shortcut). We didn’t buy anything at Ikea.

This morning I rode my bike in to work. It was great a ride. The weather was cool and I felt I was going pretty fast but I still couldn’t get my ride time to less than 35 minutes. Oh well. I feel great right now so we’ll see how I feel in a few hours.

On my ride, I was thinking about the differences between conservatives and liberals. I always figured the conservatives are just the people who don’t know – the ones that don’t travel, have lived in the same small town all their lives, don’t have any friends who are different from them, and are probably religious. But I figured that you could still be really religious and liberal, as long as you respected other people and other people’s views. For example, you can be a devout Catholic, but still respect other people’s religious views and understand that this country was founded on religious freedom. Often this respect for other people and their views comes from traveling and meeting other people who are different from you and realizing that while they may attend different churches, have different activities at family reunions, eat different things, they really want the same thing as you – the opportunity to provide the best life for themselves and their families. The thing is that I’ve met quite a few people who are well traveled and have done lots of different things (like the peace corp and living, and not just traveling, in other countries) who are still quite conservative. The only other reason I can think of for being conservative is that you are super rich and you don’t want too much government involvement in your everyday activities. It doesn’t pay to be poor or middle class and a conservative. So that’s my political two-cents for this week. I used to always listen to my ipod on my bike rides, but I’ve been lazy about updating it and charging the battery. So now it's just me and my thoughts.

I can’t believe it’s a Monday again and that it’s another 4 days before the weekend. Happy Monday!

Blah...Can't Think of a Good Title

My mom was in town over the weekend and it was nice to see her. We mostly just hung out. We went to the farmer’s market and church on Sunday. It had been a long time since I had been to a Catholic mass and it was not as bad as I was expecting. Before each reading, the reader would give context to the meaning by explaining where it came from and what the source was about in general. After the brief introduction, and a long pause, the reader would say, “And now, a reading from…” I found that bit a little silly. The priest’s sermon was also pretty good. It was brief and he discussed some of the major topics of today – capital punishment, gay marriage – without sounding preachy. The priest basically said that the church is starting to get involved in the discussions of today’s important topics and that it may lead towards reform. That would be a good thing.

Noodles has been extremely whiney the past week. We think he misses his little friend Biscuit. Monkey and Major don’t give him any attention and when Noodles gets in their way too much, they tend to beat him up (Major smacks him and Monkey hisses and growls at him). We got Noodles a new toy (a fish with feathers on a string attached to a stick) which he loves, but we have to play with him constantly. We probably played a few hours with him over the weekend (everyone would take turns). He barely got tired and was whiney when we stopped. We are considering fostering another kitten to keep Noodles busy.

I learned a new word today, locavore. A locavore is a person who wants to consume food that is produced locally. And that has generated a new business:

“But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden?

That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.”

Not only does eating locally support the local business, but it’s good for the environment. We were pretty good at killing our plants in the past, but we now have a basil plant that has survived for almost 1 month. The key is to not do anything to it apart from giving it water (in other words, don’t pick it’s leaves).