Hey, I Know What's Wrong With It!

It's not expensive enough.

In a year when rootkits were doled out, batteries exploded, and a console has been launched to dubious acclaim indeed, the way to fix it, surely, is to revamp the product so as to remove its only virtue, add silly features that only the geekiest of audiophiles give a rat's ass about, and then jack up the price on the thing and throw it into the marketplace as well.

WTF is going on at Sony Electronics? I really used to be in their corner but they've managed to run me off most doggedly.

Oh, and Happy New Year to all.

Christmas Gift Joy

The B really likes her Christmas presents, but she seems to have taken a particular shine to her play piano. Take a look:

Love, Actu—Huh?

So, I mentioned before that our last TiVo bit it in the power outages from the last ice storm, and that we'd done a replacement with the company and were set up to TiVo again.

However, we did lose everything that had been on our old TiVo, some of which was quite old and was sort of a bonus to have there if one of us woke in the middle of the night and had trouble going back to sleep. On that list of stuff on "keep until I delete" for months (or in some cases, well over a year) were several episodes of Good Eats, a couple of Futuramas, three episodes of the first season of the new Doctor Who, and the movie Love, Actually. It was Love, Actually that was the go-to program for me most of the time, being pressed into service whenever I needed something reassuring on in the background to allow me to go back to sleep.

While I have the movie on DVD, we don't have a DVD player in the bedroom and who wants to get up at 2 am to put on a DVD anyway? I set up a keyword search on Love, Actually, assuming one premium channel or another would dust it off and program it for the Christmas season.

Instead, USA network put on a "basic cable safe" version of it. As a curiosity, as I am probably the closest thing on the planet to someone who would gleefully collect Love, Actually curiosities, it is interesting to watch. Billy Mack's tirade of swearing in the recording studio is replaced with an emphatic "Ohhhhhhh!" When Natalie meets the Prime Minister, instead of swearing several times in front of him, she instead impulsively kisses him. Jack and Judy, the body doubles, basically seem to have had to film their entire appearances in the movie twice...once with rampant nudity and once without.

It's just so odd that there's enough stuff in the movie that it wouldn't have made sense in a purely censored version, and the makers of the film actually saw it coming far enough in advance to film entirely different versions of scenes that would make the storylines nonsensical by their omission.

I actually might keep this version, just because it seems like some sort of weird ultra-rare, like a foil Charizard or something. It does suck with the commercials in, though.

Merry Christmas

To those of you who celebrate it, Merry Christmas from the mister, me, and the B.

Real Food

After her one year well-baby visit to the doctor, I was given the green light to basically start feeding her adult food. Well, with some exceptions for things she can't have, but she now eats a smaller amount of a subset of the same stuff you and I would eat in a day.

Well, she eats healthier than me, a trend I hope fervently will continue.

For the curious, she has one tablespoon (or thereabouts) from each food group at each of her three meals, and then she has two small snacks.

She's very selective, though. She'll mix all the food together on the tray, but then she'll pick one specific food out until it's gone (a combination of ending up in her stomach, on her lap, and on the floor) and then start on her next most favorite.

Usually the carrots, if offered, come in dead last. Sigh. I don't like carrots either, so I can't really fault her. They're just so orange. Ugh.

Suckitude in Ice Storm Land

There was one electronic casualty of the ice storm. The TiVo bit the dust after repeated power on/power off cycles. Yes, I should have remembered to unplug it. No, I didn't remember. I was trying to get the baby's things packed up for our flight to the MIL and FIL's and I didn't unplug everything I wanted to unplug before we left.

After calling the company, for a fee, we could trade in our old box and get a refurbished unit of the same ilk, then send back our old and busted box. They'd then transfer our lifetime service to the "new" (to us) box and we'd be good to go.

It took some time to get it shipped (just arrived today, we've been TiVoless for about a week and I appreciate the service more now, I think) but there was one real bitch of a problem to work out...although all of our config data was pre-loaded onto our new box so that we didn't have to re-authorize the new box or any of that unpleasantness, we lost all of our season pass information.

Those of you who have TiVos may have taken a gasp of horror at that point, and the rest of you were thinking, "So the $**()#*$ what?" A season pass list, with its quirks and hierarchies and "this program runs one minute over" subtleties, is cultivated over time, like a fine cheese or wine. It's constantly tweaked. Programs fall out of favor. New ones come into vogue. It takes forever to get it to "just that lovely place" where it catches things that you would have missed (like our wishlist search for Lewis Black that gets his appearances on talk shows and on Comedy Central, though not his appearances on The Daily Show, regrettably) and doesn't record the wrong thing because your hierarchical list was in the wrong order.

"So sit down and fix it," you may be saying. Ah, but I can only search for programs that the TiVo knows about, and it has limited guide information at this time (though I forced it to update about fifteen minutes ago, and we'll see if that helps a bit). Plus, things like 24 that won't premiere for weeks yet wouldn't appear in the guide anyway, so I can't really put it in my list.

I've done a bit of sneaky scheduling via the Yahoo TV website, where I already had our box information configured (here's hoping the hoo-hah that TiVo did when it switched the boxes on our account will keep that Yahoo->TiVo box link working, which I think it will, as our "new" box knew what the old box's name was) and I hope that will be part of what this forced reload will update on my box.

Now I'm off to do some real work around the house, before I look into boxing up the old TiVo to ship back to them either later tonight or tomorrow.

Hideously Out of Date Reviews: Stranger Than Fiction

If you've ever felt detached and lonely, or if you've ever counted writing fiction among your hobbies (or vocation), then you'd probably like Stranger Than Fiction.

I can't tell you how many times we've tried to engineer a trip out without the baby to see this movie, but we finally got the job done on Saturday, in the early evening. I've known I wanted to see it since I saw the first commercials for it.

Dr. Heimlich had the best analysis of Will Farrell in this movie. He was definitely "clothed" in this movie, and not mired in Naked Will Ferrell Syndrome. I thought he was great and very likable.

Dustin Hoffman was good, as was Queen Latifah. But really, Emma Thompson did an amazing job. She did a lot of voice over narration, which is much harder than many people think. For one thing, VO annoys a lot of people, so you have that to contend with. Then, you have a lot to get across without being able to use facial expressions or body language. I think she did such a good job with it that even people who don't like VO would probably rate this movie's use of it as an exception to the rule.

But more importantly, she does what a lot of actresses, especially actresses who are no longer in their 20's, would be reluctant to do. Playing the reclusive, quirky, twitchy author, she had the stringy hair, the goofy clothes, the (apparent) lack of makeup. She embraced who this woman would be exactly this way if she really existed and just sort of fearlessly brought her to life. She had to bring comedic moments in with a lot more dramatic stuff, and I'm hard pressed to think of someone else who could have brought it off so well. It really was absolutely fearless.

If people are balking at the ending (which I won't reveal, obviously, in case any of you were waiting for video for this one) then I'm not sure how they would have thought the more "obvious" ending would have been more satisfying. Emma Thompson's character explains it better than I could, but I wouldn't have been as uplifted by the movie had it ended with things working out the way that seemed inevitable for most of the third act.

I would especially recommend this movie, like I said above, if you do enjoy or have enjoyed in the past, writing fiction. I've written things with characters that seemed so real to me at the time that I wouldn't have been shocked if one of the characters strolled up to my doorbell and rang it, probably to complain roundly to me of their treatment in my hands. From that perspective, this movie is particularly interesting. But the performances really make it something a cut above.

You Make It, I Break It

Everything I have tried to get done online in the last week or so, in the very moment when I really needed to get it done, has broken while I was trying to use it.

I had stuff to do at Shutterfly, it goes to pieces when I finally had time before I was tired and after the B went to sleep, and it was slow and bits of it wouldn't load. That doesn't happen that often, but it was on a new product of theirs and it was biting me in the ass until the problems fixed themselves after I'd stayed up way too late and I was able to finish up.

Now, I need to quickie order a couple of pictures to get my hands on tomorrow, and the Walgreens photo site has shut down on me. Two different browsers, and it's just throwing up its hands and staring at me. Won't even load the login page.

I was going to order a couple of other presents earlier today, but I didn't just in case I got a better idea later for the people I was about to buy for. You can thank me for not doing it if you later went to that website and used it, since I didn't touch it and break it so no one could have any fun.

Sheesh. Don't these people get that I have a very limited amount of time to tap this keyboard where it doesn't make the baby want to eat (or at least drool on) my laptop?

Trees of Glass

On the drive home this past Monday, we saw a rather stunning side-effect still lingering in the aftermath of the ice storm. Tree after tree seemed to be sculpted from glass. Any tree that didn't have any leaves left was basically encased in a thin layer of ice. Even the dead grasses on the ground were individually frozen.

The picture above doesn't do it justice, as I was taking it from a moving car and trying to track along with the forward motion of the car to keep it focused. This was probably my most effective attempt.

Hurtling Toward Toddlerhood

Wearing more cake than she ate
Originally uploaded by lostonpurpose.

Didn't have a chance to post this yesterday, but yesterday was the B's first birthday.

She absolutely massacred her slice of birthday cake. Miraculously, she didn't get it on her jammies or in her hair. Don't ask me how.

A Great Name For a Band

"Hurley's Food Stash".

No royalties necessary if you use it.

Hey, and Shocho: I just got conked on the head by the Beta Fairy. I'm about to see if it will let me convert or if my blog is too buff to fit through the do'. Wish me luck.

A Reason For Me to Watch Heroes

But, once you're the Doctor, isn't anything a step down?

He was so good on Doctor Who. That might get me to try Heroes again.

Put Up the Tree a Little Early

Put up the tree a little early
Originally uploaded by lostonpurpose.

I do love the tree. As we still don't know if we'll be here at home for Christmas or not, I decided to put the tree up now so we'd have plenty of time to enjoy it either way. Of course, last year, we ended up taking it down in March, but we had the "tiny baby" excuse.

This was just after I finished decorating it. I had to tear the basement apart looking for that last flat of ornaments. It had her "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments in it, as well as most of my other favorites.

Now we just have to keep the B away from it. Argh.

Best of Craigslist

The Best of Craigslist is a hit-and-miss affair. The hits, though, are really, really funny. (Some NSFW.)

Some of my favorites of what's on there right now?

Furniture Shopping Around the World with Craigslist

Married Means MARRIED, You Moron

Don't Touch Me (Pregnancy Rant)

The HORROR

7 Out of 8 Ain't Bad (if only for the graphic)

Tuesday Night on the CW

I'm Sick of the Ads

I'm so glad the nasty campaign ads will be gone after today. So sick of them. Of course, some of them have been really ridiculous. Here's one I found on the ad company's server. I guess they decided it wasn't fit for airing. (If it doesn't animate, click on it to view it by itself.)



As soon as the baby's up and fed, I'm off to vote, hoping to miss the post-work rush. Don't even get me started on how hard it was to find a list of all the ballot measures I would see once I'm in the booth. They rail at us for not being well-informed enough, but it took me over an hour with Google and three different sources before I found a non-partisan look at the ballot in my zip code. It's a disgrace.

How To:

How To Tell You Have a Baby:

You find popcorn, popped, in the microwave at the end of the day, long forgotten.

How To Tell You Are Sick and Have a Baby:

You don't remember if you put it in there yesterday or today.

How To Tell You Are Overtired, Sick, and Have a Baby:

You eat it.

Most Useless Item Ever

The chiming paper towel holder. But at least, for only $5.95, you can buy a two year replacement guarantee.

The one I have is so much better, isn't it? And it cost less than the replacement guarantee on the other one.

Eleven Months

In the continuing effort to turn my blog into "OMG I <3 my baby" all the time, she turned 11 months old today.

First year's nearly over. Hard to imagine that someday sooner than I realize it, I'll be asked how old she is and I'll answer in years and not months.

Happy monthday, B.

Oh, My Frickin' Head

Please tell me the time until the elections will pass quickly, before I have to stab my eyes out and puncture my own eardrums. I am so sick of the advertising that passes for "campaigning".

There should be disposable nose-plugs given out at every polling place, as we are all doomed to have to vote for a politician of some kind.

Card Destroyer

So, the B and I go on a little "walk" (okay, crawl) around the downstairs of the house every day. On Thursday, she found our stash of games in the dining room and seemed to like the looks of all the Apples to Apples boxes. Video's iffy quality because I had to take it with the still camera (video camera was too far away) but you can clearly see a gamer in the making.

The Zoo, After Hours

So, last night we took the B out to the evening Halloween festivities at the zoo. It was really neat! A very minimal gate fee to get in, which was only a dollar more for us to pay than we normally pay to park there (usually admission is free but you pay for parking) and the parking was free for this event.

They had creepy Halloween decorations, people in costumes wandering around, the carousel running (Halloween music for the carousel would have been a nice touch, but the regular stuff was fine too) and crafts and things for the kids a little older than the B to do.

I really think she'll enjoy this event every year as she gets older, at least until it's "not cool" anymore. I'm sure that will come sooner than I will even realize it, so I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

I dressed her in some mild Halloween themed clothes, but almost all the kids there were in their full Halloween costume. The cold weather made for some odd hybrid outfits, though, like the fairy princesses wearing brown corderoys under their diaphonous, sparkly skirts and the Power Rangers (I had no idea they were still popular enough to have costumes out there) with their puffy winter jackets on over their stretchy costumes with the fake muscles built in.

We both had a ride with her on the carousel and we decided she was ready to try an animal that rides up and down. She did that with her dad, who is tall enough to really keep a grip on her on the high end of things. As you can see, she's pretty good about holding on, so she did just fine. She even kicked her little feet excitedly near the end of the ride.

All that, and we got a goody bag on the way out. Poor little thing is too young for the candy in there, so her mama had to eat it. Oh, well. Hard work, this mama stuff.

WTF

There have to be better costumes than this.

Rumors of My Disappearance

I keep meaning to post, really I do.

Honestly, it's not that I have no time, it's just that I have very little of it, on the whole, and I have just been choosing to frivol it away on other things recently.

The most remarkable event of the recent past is that I slipped on the steps on Sunday night (not carrying the baby, thank goodness) and fell on my head, back, and butt. I am happy to report that all three are relatively fine, but bruised and sore, along with my ego. Taking care of the baby while being a crotchety old sore person has been interesting, but I'm obviously still here to tell the tale.

Lord help me, Lost only just barely entertained me more than last week. I miss the old snappier dialogue from seasons past on Gilmore Girls. It also occurs to me that I barely remember any of the plot twists from Veronica Mars last year that are coming back up now, but I can't be bothered to go look them up. Hopefully I'll figure it all out in context.

In other television related news, I am cutting myself off from Battlestar Galactica. It's not that it isn't a good show. I honestly can't tell you whether it's good or not, because I simply can't take the beating that mothers have been taking on that show for the last five or six episodes or so. It just hits too close to home and it isn't worth having nightmares (no really, the premiere gave me horrible nightmares and I get too little sleep as it is to give up some of it to something preventable) just for some entertainment. I hope everyone else enjoys it but it's just too much for me, just like I gave up horror movies long ago for similar reasons. The real world is scary enough for me without watching someone get frog-marched away from their screaming baby in the middle of the night, thanks. For heaven's sake, in live in an area where a six day old baby was kidnapped after the crazy bitch who broke in to take her nearly stabbed the mother to death in order to do it, quickly followed by the death of a woman whose cousin cut the fetus from her stomach. I just can't take any more mother/baby-related drama. Six and Fatass!Apollo will have to get along without me.

In happier mother/baby news, B and I went to a new mom's group this morning where she caused some innocent mayhem. She was scooting around (as the babies who can crawl tend to do at this group) and she crawled right up to the speaker (it's an informal group, though, so this wasn't as mortifying as it sounds) and started patting his shoe before I got her and walked her back to our blanket. Everyone, including the speaker, seemed to think it was funny and life went on. I think we might have a stand-up comedian in the works. Or maybe she just likes shoes. It's hard to tell.

Tired now. 'Night.

Wow, What an Outfit

Lounging
Originally uploaded by lostonpurpose.

Only a baby can get away with an outfit like this.

I accept full responsibility for it. It was cold and that was the only pair of pants I could find that weren't in the laundry basket. I may have traumatized her. We'll have to wait and see.

A Quick Note

I keep looking at my feeds list and being sad that no one has written. Then it occurred to me that it's been awhile since I posted.

Anyone who contacts me via my yahoo email address should know that our lovely, capable cable company has a "known issue" with yahoo domains, which means yahoo no worky. If there's anything important, send it to the gmail account on this page and I'll get that, no problem.

In other news, if the prequels killed your love for Star Wars, the new original trilogy Lego Star Wars game will go a long way toward rekindling it. It's very fun. We play it when the B sleeps. More than we should, since I feel kind of tired today. It's worth a rent at the very least, if you are the slightest bit inclined.

Be safe out there, kids.

My Head Asplode

So I was reading Mark Morford's latest column, which included the Donald Rumsfeld quote, "Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

I couldn't believe anyone actually said that, even Donald Rumsfeld. So I googled it, and found references to it on literally hundreds of pages. I find it hard to believe it could be so widespread and not be an actual quote of his. Apparently it was when the pictures of flag-draped coffins and other, more disturbing images of the war were found to have been suppressed that he said this.

Second or third on my list of search results was the upsettingly-titled page, "Funny Rumsfeld Quotes" on about.com. Now, I don't take about.com too seriously. The editors are volunteers and may not have a whole lot of journalistic training. But if even half of the quotes on this page are actual quotes then it makes me want to go hide under the bed. I'd do something more proactive, but there's precious little that it seems I can do to affect this situation. I voted against these people. I've voted against the people responsible for this over and over, and each time, I'm outvoted by the people who appear to want the war (even though I keep seeing these approval ratings for it that don't make it out of the 30th percentile).

However, go read those "funny" Rumsfeld quotes. I can't see how anyone would laugh at a single one, as they all turn my stomach with their smug disregard of anything that he finds inconvenient, like having to explain away American soldiers looting Iraq or asserting that he has no idea what the President has said, but that it "must be right". Because, you know, anyone who was once capable of doing a medocre job of running the Texas Rangers baseball team must be correct. If there's anyone out there laughing at these quotes, someone so hardened to the idea that civilians in Iraq are dying and many analysts don't feel that we're affecting the political situation in that country for the better with all this mess, then come closer over to me so I can smack you dead in the mouth.

I wish this was better formed and less mad, but when I'm watching my nine month old baby play and thinking about how we responded to people who hate us because they think we want to mess with their way of life by messing with their way of life, by poking the tiger in the eye with a stick and then being surprised that it slashed our arm off with its muscled arm and sharp claws. I don't agree with Taliban-like governments, even just based on the lack of humanity assigned to women in those situations. I'd like to see a more enlightened approach to governance in every country where there is oppression. I just don't think you can use tanks and force and rhetoric to accomplish that. I think it does exactly the opposite, makes it worse, makes them dig their heels in and be even more set in their ways.

I think it comes down to this. You can't give freedom. You can't force freedom. (Not that we know what it is, in a country where the President seeks to abolish the laws he wants to break because they're inconvenient.) People who aren't free have to want it so bad they're willing to rise up as one and take it. You have to build your own freedom. I don't think you even recognize or appreciate it if someone comes in and gives you their "brand" of it.

So what the hell are we doing?

Agree with me, disagree with me, whatever. But if you're about to post a bunch of pro-war rhetoric, a bunch of "but they attacked us" (not Iraq, no they didn't) stuff, fair warning: do it on your own damn blog. I'm so mad about this that if you try to disagree with me here, I'm just deleting the comment. You have the right to your opinion, but not under my banner.

And thus ends the least well-crafted, most ranty blog entry I'm ever likely to write. I refuse to change a word of it. I want to remember being this mad the next time I feel too tired to continue to care as much as I do right now.

Dear Rachael Ray,

I want to like your little show. I do. (The new network one, not the one on FoodTV.) I could do with some quick cooking tips, I need some noise on in the background during that hour of the day, and there's nothing else on just then.

You seem so nice, really, but you just want to be my friend too fast. Slow down. It's stuff like the uber-conversational tone, and calling yourself "Raych". Maybe that will work in a year or so if your show makes it, but it feels presumptuous now. I feel like you're asking me really personal questions and saying, "Let's be best friends forever!" I'm afraid to return your phone calls, Rachael Ray. I dread that lunch invitation because I have a feeling that you'll ask me stuff like whether I had an episiotomy or not.

I dunno how you pull off, "Nice, but way too manic," but you've done it. Slow down. Take a deep breath. Take one half step back. Then try again.

(First comment is this post in Pirate speak.)

Another Successful Trip to the Science Museum

The sign says, "Step on this scale and see how much it would cost to launch you to orbit today."

Like I said on Flickr:

Outfit: $7.
Trip to the museum: Free.
Trip to the moon: $190,000.
Evening with the silly baby: Priceless.

Another great trip to the science museum. Hopefully all that knowledge is just sinking into her pores.

Does this freak anyone else out?

There's something just wrong about the way they use her facial expressions on the dancer's body that just seems...wrong...to me.

How Not To Be Seen

Excellent job.

Welcome Back to the Intarweb, CK

I believe there may be cable installations happening for one of our fold today, so I looked up a link especially to welcome them back.

To your right you will see my masterpiece which I call, "Bullshit on a Stick". I made it at jacksonpollock.org. You can make one too! See how easy it is to become a multi-millionaire?

Does mine have too much turquoise?

Confidential

In response to poor E, whose blog has been eaten by Blogger after upgrading to the beta version. (Apparently, you should beware before upgrading. Doesn't sound fun at the moment.)

I wrote the longest. comment. ever and blogger ate it instead of actually attaching it to your post. I will try to summarize.

The B has two teeth that are about halfway in on the bottom. There are two more coming in to match it on the top, according to her doctor after her nine month checkup. It is simultaneously thrilling to see the development and sad to see the end of that silly gummy smile.

Also, I think poor Katie's jacket was poorly tailored as well. She seems really small and there is no reason I can see that she would naturally strain buttons. I am still rockin' the white shoes and shirts, and all the people who apparently care about that grandma rule of no white after Labor Day can stick it.

Okay, that was what I tried to say. I'm out.

I LOL'ed

I don't usually laugh out loud at this stuff. There's something about the way this man orders every single thing on the McDonald's menu that just kept breaking me up.

It will cost you only one minute and 49 seconds of your life...take a chance that it will give you a bit of a laugh. Couldn't you use a laugh today?

And Lo, the Organization Did Find Them

And it was good.

I had been storing the B's downstairs toys in a couple of bins in the corner of the room, but it looked messy and it was difficult to find specific toys.

Enter this little bookcasey sort of thing full of bins, on sale at Target this week. I originally thought I'd use this in her closet upstairs for hats and socks and the little bits, but it's much better used like this. I even secured it to the wall with two screws and some picture hanging wire. I couldn't pull this thing down, so it should be very safe for B. She just doesn't have the motor control necessary to get the bins out, so I think we're good to go there as well.

The best part? The B seems to be happy with being able to see all her toys, too. I put all her favorites in the bottom bins and she's already enjoying rummaging around and taking things out. She got the book in the picture out all by herself! Now if only I could teach her to put the things she takes out away on her own.

White After Labor Day? Oh Noes!

So, almost every television reviewer on the planet is taking a shot at Katie Couric for wearing white after Labor Day.

WTF?

Seriously, are they kidding?

Katie, I wore white shoes when I took the B to the doctor today (regular checkup; she's not sick) for you. If you can rock the white, so can I.

Sisterhood.

IKEA > Mall of America

I still need to do a wrapup post for our trip to the Minnesota State Fair. You could say that when I forgot to grab the camera on the way out of the hotel room for our one actual afternoon at the fair itself, it sort of killed my enthusiasm for writing that post. I have no picture of her first carousel ride. This is not a great tragedy, but a minor disappointment that I wish I could have avoided.

Anyway. The first full day that we were there, we spent the pre-nap B time at the Mall of America. Her post-nap period was originally to be spent on the upper floors of the mall, but we decided to go to the IKEA across the street instead.

Boy, I forgot how awesome IKEA is. Bless the Scandinavian flat-pack furniture people. We got an awesome, inexpensive wok. Also, two really cool hanging storage thingies for the B's room (for when she's older and won't hurt herself on them), some other kitchen things, chair pads for the dining room, and a few other random items. We got a bunch of stuff and it was just a little over $60. It was awesome. Just looking at the stuff there, even if you don't want to buy it, is great. I wish we had one here.

Did We Miss Something?

First things first. Upon watching Dane Cook on HBO this evening, I have to ask: "Has anyone seen Dane Cook and Kyan Douglas from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in the same room at the same time?" It appears Dane Cook is a raging heterosexual so I know it's unlikely they are the same person, but I believe the above is the sort of indisputable video evidence that even an NFL referee would approve of. They simply must be the same person. I kept waiting for Dane Cook to do a set on exfoliating, nose hair trimming, and applying hair gel from the back to the front.

Second. Who is this Dane Cook person? His special on HBO has been promoted as though everyone on the planet knows who he is, and now that it's on in the background, there are a metric ton worth of people who have turned out to see him in person. He said something about 18,000 people being in the audience, and I think that looks likely from what you can see on the cameras.

I looked on IMDB and didn't see anything that would indicate this sort of level of fame. Now it's driving me crazy. Where did the fame come from? Did we have a baby and completely lose touch with what is popular? I can't even tell if I think he's funny, because I'm too obsessed with the otherwordly resemblance to Kyan and my preoccupation with his apparent 1960's-Beatles-like level of fame.

Son of a...

We just got back from a nine hour car trip. We were home for two hours, then our power went out. I can only assume it is in solidarity with the power in Virginia. So greetings to you from my cell phone, which I am now turning off to save power.

Edit: The power came on about an hour and a half after it went out. I was asleep when it did, but the light from the hallway eventually woke me up and spurred me to get up and get the B's room straightened out. Had to make it dark again (too much light coming in from said hallway light) and start up her white noise CD. Kudos to the electric company for getting us going again so quickly.

Actually, a CK/LWC Visit Wrapup Post is in Order

Well, it's just occurred to me that I never really recapped the marvelous time we just had with the K clan when they were all in town with us earlier this week.

We spent a nice, low-key evening after their arrival, havin' a little dinner and then just hanging out. Plans were made for the next day, including a trip to the Cardinals store at a local mall.

The next day, after the usual B getting up/getting fed festivities, we headed for the mall. We visited the Cardinals store, and I also found a nice Disney store and a Pottery Barn for Kids store. Boy, did I find a few things for the B in that last store. I wish there were four Halloweens every year for all the costumes I want to put her in before she's old enough to roll her eyes at me and tell me she's too old to dress up. I got her a little fairy skirt and a butterfly headband which I plan to just randomly dress her in whenever I'm feeling festive. She seemed to tolerate it pretty well. We also witnessed a command performance of Guitar Hero, which I got no pictures of, as the B and I napped on the couch a bit while it was ongoing. It wasn't the company, I assure you. I do like the catnap with the baby, especially when she wakes up at five and doesn't take her morning nap.

We had dinner with relations of CK's, and it was just delightful to meet them all. The B did OK, although everyone left in the restaurant at that hour was treated to her cranking noises when I took her to change her diaper. Here's an idea: how about better insulation on restrooms to keep the noise inside?

The next day, Tom was able to take off from work and we had a nice, leisurely breakfast to start out the day. We decided to go to the botanical garden to see the Chihuly exhibit, so we loaded ourselves into the minivan and cruised over there.

We wore out our cameras at the garden. Additional batteries were purchased, and we continued to take more and more pictures. Here's pictures of us wandering around. Here's a load of pictures of the Chihuly glass installation. Finally, if you are interested in such things, we also saw some flowers and a silly duck fountain.

A trip to Steak and Shake was next on the docket, where I was corrected, quite cheekily, as the Brits would say. I ordered a hamburger for my mister, and got, "Do you mean a steakburger?" from the man taking the order. ::eyeroll::

We took the food home so the poor little tired baby could sleep in peace, which she did. We hung out, and things were just started to seem the same as they used to be, when our houses were fifteen minutes apart (by car, not by Star Trek transporter, which they should hurry up and invent so we can start Friday night gaming again).

The next morning, after one more visit from their son, they had to load the cars and pull out of town, only to head as far in the opposite direction as they'd driven to reach our house. It was sad to see them go, and I missed my goodbye hugs as I had a sleeping, pretty cranky (several missed naps during the visit, but totally worth it) baby lying on my chest.

Good luck in your new town, CK and LWC. It was nice to see you, and we still miss you.

Stressful Day

Long, stressful day today. Lots of cranky B time, poor little girl. She spent more time strapped into her car seat than she wanted to deal with.

But it should be a fun day tomorrow. Stay tuned for all the exciting details.

Playing With the New Toy

I've been wanting to get this for her for awhile. It's $50-$60 new, but no one has them in stock, including every website I could think of.

Then I googled it, and found one on craigslist for $20, less than three miles away from here. Score. The mister picked it up on his way home from work and we had it here tonight, the same day that I found it on craigslist.

It needed a little cleaning (obviously) but it's in marvelous shape and I wouldn't have thought twice about buying it if I'd seen it in a resale shop in this condition.

This toy gets the best reviews online, and there's about a million ways to play with it. It's your basic baby toy that makes a bunch of noise and delights the baby, plus she can use it to pull herself to a standing position.

As you can see, she took to it right away.

A Whole Nother Problem

Is "nother" a word? (Apparently, they've added it because of this execrable phrase that's come into popular use, "whole nother".)

Random House seems to have given it a pass, but I can't take it one more day. I just heard a very educated psychologist (although I suppose Tom Cruise would have something to say about her being a psychologist) on television say "whole nother". I don't even think she was trying to be "folksy", either. It was used as though it was impeccable grammatical structure.

Is it a lost cause? Are we damned to a lifetime of "like" and "whole nother"?

Another Find

It's a kitchen organizer!


It not only has a butterfly on the top, but it has two shelves on one third, a paper towel holder on another third, and a utensil organizer on the other third. Plus there are little cup hooks on the ends to hang other things on.

On top of it, it came with a wisk, two wooden spoons, and a wooden meat tenderizer (not pictured, they were in the dishwasher when the pics were taken). And it's on a lazy susan so you can spin it around. Boss!

How much would you pay? I found this when I went to old town yesterday to a craft/antique/collectibles store. It was on sale for... $4!!

Four bucks! Can you believe it? I've paid more than that for a wisk the same quality as the one that came with this organizer, plus I got all the other stuff too!

Now we need to paint the kitchen light yellow, and I want to make sunflower curtains for the kitchen window. I have a theme! Yay!

(None of you stinky boys reading this care about that at all, do you? Well, tough.)

SoaP Reviews?

Come on. I know one of you went and saw it. Give those of us who know it isn't worth a babysitter some love and tell me all the details in the comments. :)

The Latest Silliness

The HPV Vaccine "Debate"

I've been meaning to write about this for awhile but haven't been able to crystallize my feelings on it into one succinct, readable package. Now, Tristan Taormino has written it for me. (Warning: Her other columns may be the sort of thing some of you wouldn't appreciate at all, but she's dead on right about the HPV vaccine so I refuse to shy away from linking to her.)

The only thing that she left out is this: It is my firm belief that if a sexually transmitted virus caused prostate cancer in men and we had a vaccine for it, the vaccine would be encouraged and paid for by insurance without any hoo-hah or fanfare. Boys would get the vaccine along with the others they get sometime between the ages of nine and twelve, and no one would think twice about it.

Oh, but let our girls remain at risk to a form of cancer that we've found to be completely preventable. I still can't fathom why anyone would fight against access to the vaccine (because let's face it, for our nation's poor, if the choice is between paying the rent or for a vaccine, they'll choose to not live on the street and gamble on the HPV) because it is for a sexually-transmitted virus.

Yep, that needle sure is carte blanche to our daughters. No matter what else we say or teach them, the shot is a tacet, "go ahead". Every other moment that you've spent with them was wasted, because we all know how important the word of a needle is to a girl over everything they've learned from their parents growing up is. Never mind the fact that there are such horrors in the world like non-consentual sex. Nope, I'm sorry, girls. If you don't make it to your wedding night wearing your chastity ring, no matter whether it was consentual or not, we think you should have to take the risk of dying of cervical cancer because of it. We'll protect you from measels and mumps and whooping cough, from rubella and smallpox. But cervical cancer? Hey, if you get it, you brought it on yourself.

I dare anyone to give me a good reason why this isn't just madness. I just want to hop in a time machine and go live a couple hundred years in the future. Maybe by then another comet will come near enough to the Earth to make these modern-day dinosaurs extinct.

(Yes, I know the vaccine exists and it's perfectly legal for me to foot the bill and pay for a course of it to be administered to my daughter at the appropriate age. Rest assured that I will be doing just that. However, we could wipe out HPV in a few generations the way we wiped out other viruses if the use of the vaccine was wide-spread. The only way for that to happen is if the cost is covered by insurance, because to some people, $360 is still a lot of money to drop at the doctor's office.)

Let's All Welcome...

...Ceres, Pluto-Charon, and (??) Xena.

Shameless Mocking of Childhood Classics

So, yes, last night's entry was a bit vague. I was feeling very blah and vague, so that was an accurate representation of me at that moment. Thrilling, eh?

I have been meaning to write another entry for awhile though, and I never remember when I have typing access to the keyboard. (Much of my day is spent with a computer in the background upon which I can sometimes click to access content or (more likely) allow to go to the Da Vinci screensaver to entertain the B, but unless there is a husband or a nap involved, no typing.)

What is the deal with Goodnight Moon? Most of you parents out there know what book I'm talking about. It's a beloved childhood classic. We received copies of it in two different languages as baby presents. I have it memorized, because it's shockingly easy to memorize and it's easier to tell to a squirmy, sleepy child at the end of the day that way.

It's a cute little book with illustrations that I'm sure I'd get much more out of if I didn't simply tell the story from memory at bedtime most of the time. However, there are some things there that any second grade teacher would never let you get away with if you tried to turn it in as a project.

Early on in the book, "moon" is rhymed with...you guessed it..."moon". Now, I know it's hard to find things that rhyme with a complex sound like "-oon" (136 results at that link) but you really should try a little harder.

Shameless padding of book size is another problem. "And a picture of" and "the cow jumping over the moon" are spread over two pages. As I try to actually do a good reading, I'm never sure whether the break should be stressed in a dramatic way or if I should just blow through the sentence and read it as it would normally be read without the page break.

Then we get to the part that seems utterly phoned in. Once the little bunny or whatever he is starts saying good night to all the things in his room (yeah, let's encourage the kids trying to draw out bedtime by echoing this behavior as they grow up) there is an entire BLANK page that says "good night nobody".

Good night nobody? Are you serious? What sort of short cut is that? The first hundred times I read it (or so) I skipped that page because I felt too stupid saying it. How do you nuance that so that it makes sense? I've taken to throwing it in now, but only to preserve the pentameter.

Man, that sounds grumpy, but doesn't that stuff bother anyone else who reads that book to their kids? I keep telling her the story because it's supposed to be a classic, but I'll tell you what's a hundred times better: Gerald McBoing Boing. Now there's a rhyme scheme.

Let Me Save You All Some Time

blah blah blah blah baby

blah blah blah blah politics

blah blah blah blah goofy intarweb link

blah blah blah blah can't get motivated to lose the baby weight

There, that pretty much sums it up.

Army Crawler

Ah, so, the B is crawling now. It's a tummy-down army crawl, but she can make it work pretty well.

I'm suddenly an even busier woman.

Yikes.

I hear they eventually learn to walk, talk, and then talk back. Do they have to?

In My Eyes

My eyes have been twitching for the past few months, so I decided I should go for an eye exam and see if my prescription had changed. I figured it had in the three years since my last one, and my glasses are falling apart, anyway.

I had my appointment last night. I was asked about a million times if I wanted contacts, and I kept saying no.

"Your daughter grabs at your glasses, right? Wouldn't contacts be better?"

"No, because I barely get time to shower, much less put contacts in and take them out."

"Do it when she's napping."

"I don't really want them. I tried them before and they bothered my eyes. I don't like that sensation that there's something in my eye."

"Oh, the ones you had before must have been badly fitted. That feeling is supposed to go away shortly after you put them in."

"It never did. It was itchy and uncomfortable, and I can't imagine ever not being able to feel something, even something that narrow, that is sitting on your eyeball. I really don't want them."

Even with this conversation, I somehow managed to get talked into "trying them until my glasses arrive". (I had to go to a place that participated in the vision insurance plan we have, which wasn't one of the one-hour places I've always gone to before and walked out the same day with new glasses, which I prefer.)

They gave me a pair of contacts and a starter kit, and reminded me how to put them in and take them out. I left with them on my eyes, and by the time I got home, I wanted to pull my eyeballs out. I actually had a little panic attack trying to get those bastards out because I couldn't get the left one out and my reptile brain was screaming, "Get that thing off your eye! You'll go blind!"

I'm not even going to think about putting those things back in my eyes. I am so mad that I let myself get talked into trying it. Even this morning, my eyes still feel funny.

He must get a huge cut of the contacts money, plus all the fitting exams and whatnot. What he doesn't know is that, for the people who are pissed off at getting pressured, he'll never see those people again after they pick up their glasses. I'm never going back after I pick up my glasses, and if they even try to talk me into trying them again, I'm going to pick up my glasses and walk out mid-sentence.

Did I mention that they had all the insurance information wrong and kept trying to charge me for stuff that was covered? And tried to talk me into saving the insurance for the contacts instead of using it for the glasses? And tried to talk me into getting shitty glasses because "I'd be wearing the contacts all the time anyway?"

So mad.

Take That, You Ceiling Fan Hatin' &$*%&$%&

Ah, ha ha ha ha! I'm watching a rerun of Trading Spaces on the Discovery Home channel (okay, it's on in the background while I'm holding B's hands and walking her around the room...exhausting work, actually) and the people on the show just made one of those snooty designers put the ceiling fans back up.

Bwa ha ha. Fan's making a comeback. You can have my ceiling fan when you pry it out of my cold dead hands.

It's Not Really Her First Word

Quick, someone remind me that a first word has to be said with intention. She has to know she's saying "mama" for it to count.

'Cause part of me wants to do a little dance that she picked "ma" as her first babble syllable.

Happy Eight Monthday, B

Who Wants To Be a Superhero?

OMG. This is hilarious. Wonderfully absurd. Come for Stan Lee, stay for Major Victory, who strikes poses as he runs. I can't do it justice. It should make you laugh. I almost cried, I laughed so hard.

Most Expensive Baby Toy EVER

Most Expensive Baby Toy EVER
Originally uploaded by lostonpurpose.

This is what I decided to do with the trashed laptop that would cost more (exponentially, nearly) to fix than it's worth.

She wants my new laptop, but she'll settle for the old one. I've pulled out the battery and anything she could hurt herself on. I will open it up and pull more guts out of it to make it lighter (hard job, it was really heavy to begin with) so it's more fun to play with. Also, I'm sure I can sell the memory on eBay or something, since it wasn't damaged in the diet coke incident.

Gosh, it was an expensive present, though.

This Just In: Forward Progress

I know her hair looks all goofy and her cheeks are still all rosy from her nap, but she struggled and pulled herself across the floor on her own to get to this book.

It was more of a tummy-down, army crawl than she's been trying for, but it was forward and it was all by herself. It seems to take a lot of energy because she tends to rest for a second or two before she tries again, but I think this is the start of chasing her around the house.

Even though my life probably just got a lot harder, I'm still happy she did it. Yay B!

She Wants to Crawl SOOOOO Much

My poor little baby has taken to pulling up on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth, then trying to push forward without moving her hands. This lands her on her tummy on the floor, looking confused about why she's two inches back from where she started instead of halfway across the room.

I have tried to suggest to her every way I can think to try moving her hand first, but she doesn't seem to believe me. She seems to have all her weight on her hands, so when I pat one or urge her to move it, she falls onto her tummy and looks at me as if to say, "That was mean, mommy."

She'll get it, but she's getting so frustrated in the meantime. Poor little girl.

Clerks II

Saw it two nights ago and dug it. It really could have been mindless references and jokes from the first Clerks, but ahoy! There was actually a plot and stuff there. Better than the first one, I think.

A few things:

The Silence of the Lambs dancing? Funny stuff.

I wanted to hate Elias but couldn't quite do it. I don't know why I wanted to hate him or why I wasn't capable of doing it, and I don't have the wherewithal to analyze it further.

The dancing on the roof scene? Now I know why you boys like this movie so much.

But really, I liked it a lot. What I don't get is all the pissin' contests going on about it (go to Kevin Smith's blog if you wanna read about it, but it's goofy stuff). For heaven's sake, it's just a movie. Like the man himself pointed out in his most recent post, don't people have more important stuff to argue about?

(Ooooh. Sick burn.)

Scary Movies From Your Youth

This is a great Fark thread.

What movies scared you as a kid? Would you still be afraid of any of them? Have you conquered some of them? Even come to like some of them?

Lots of stuff scared me as a kid that I saw in movies or on TV, but nothing more than the commercials for Magic. I would give you a link to IMDB for this movie, but then I'd have to look it up and I'd probably see a poster for it on that page, and I'd be up all night. It came out when I was about six or seven and it dominates my memory of that time period. I know movies stayed in theaters longer back then, but it seems as though those ads were on television for months.

The ads for that frackin' movie featured a ventriloquist dummy slowly being revealed out of the darkness. It may or may not have been sitting on a stool. I think there was a slow pan in on the dummy and it said scary, menacing things. I'm not sure I ever saw the ad all the way through. I do remember my mom telling me that this was before we had a remote for the television (man, am I old) and whenever it came on, someone would have to leap up and change the station before I completely freaked out. I apparently just clapped my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, screaming bloody murder until someone came to my rescue.

Damn, that was scary stuff. I will never be able to see that movie.

I'm thinking really hard and I'm not sure I can think of a movie that scared me as a child that I like or even can tolerate now. The original Poltergeist was another movie that scared me quite a bit, but I don't think I'm quite over that. I had to have my mother remove a doll from my room after seeing that movie, and now I can't even remember what in the movie had anything to do with a doll and I'm not willing to watch it and find out. (Update: I hadn't read the whole Fark thread yet when I posted this originally, but now that I'm further through it, it's clear there was something in Poltergeist about a clown doll. I choose not to think any further on the subject at this time.) I'm rather embarassed to tell you that I can't even watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because of an irrational fear of Oompa Loompas, not even now that I'm a real live adult with a baby of my own.

Again, perhaps this post would have been adorned with a picture of a doll, an Oompa Loompa or two, or (shudder) a ventriloquist dummy, but doing the Google image search for any of that would leave me whimpering in a corner.

Lady, I Feel Your Pain

At the Milwaukee County Zoo, which we visited during our desperate flight from the power outages and hundred-degree weather, we stopped in the monkey house and observed this poor lady spider monkey. You may have to go view the picture larger to see exactly how pregnant that monkey was.

In person, she looked so pregnant that I think we might have seen a brand-new baby monkey if we'd been willing to wait ten minutes or so. She was having a little more trouble getting around than the other monkeys flying from rope to rope around her. I held the B up so she could get an idea what her own mommy had gone through to get her here, but I'm not sure it sank in.

(Don't worry, I'm not planning to be one of those mothers who tells the 'I threw up for nine months for your ungrateful self' story every time the poor B misbehaves. Much.)

I also thought Miss Easily Distracted might enjoy this pic of a red panda. The poor little thing is supposed to have a big, bushy tail, but hers was amputated after a medical issue. She seemed really shy, hiding way in the corner of her pen, so I quickly snapped this picture and then moved along to give her some privacy. She was cute as a button, though, tail or not.

Oh, Yeah...

Ah, and we did get power back. We had already planned to evacuate to the MIL and FIL's house in Wisconsin, so we went ahead and made the trip anyway. I hear there was another storm while we were gone, but we reportedly kept our power and will be returning to a house with air conditioning and internet.

Hurrah. Thanks for the well-wishes.

Congrats, Floyd

I suck. I counted you out. I admit that I underestimated Phonak and Floyd's ability to rebound from a disaster to produce victory. Here is the crow I intend to eat:

And congratulations to Phonak's Floyd Landis, the next winner of the Tour de France!

No power

I am posting this from my cellphone. Twenty percent of the area has no power. There are supposed to be more storms and the temps are supposed to be in the 100s. But how is your day?

Oh, Floyd

I wonder what this Tour would be like if Floyd Landis had never left the Postal team (now Discovery) to lead Phonak. His boys just weren't enough to get him up the mountain in yellow today, and I don't think he'll be using those yellow tires or that yellow bike again this year. The team around him just isn't near strong enough to beat back all of the attacks coming from the other team leaders.

But if he'd stayed with Postal/Discovery, he'd surely be wearing the '1' for them and leading the team. And that team is strong enough that I think he'd be wearing that yellow down the Champs-Elysées.

New Laptop

For those of you following the 'diet Coke in the laptop' saga, I got yukky news today. The best price anyone could find on a motherboard to replace the one I fried was $800. Now, I don't know if any of you have been watching laptop prices, but you can buy a laptop nicer than the one I had for right around that price.

That meant a trip to the lovely computer store. Yes, I could have ordered one. Yes, I could have gotten a discount through Tom's job. But 1) I'm sick of not having a laptop after I've been so used to having one and 2) there are some screamin' sales. I found this lovely creature with $150 in rebates, to bring the price under $1000. It even has more than twice the RAM I had in the old laptop, and a faster processor and bigger hard drive.

And, since there's no love lost between me and the maker of my last laptop, this one is also about half as heavy, has better keyboard and trackpad action (and no, that's not judged on an old, broken-in keyboard--I recently replaced the busted-ass keyboard in the old laptop, and don't think I don't wish I had that money back) and it also has a bitchin' fingerprint reader.

After just a bit of twiddling, this laptop is not only on my LAN and sharing files with the desktop PC, but I can login to the machine and to most of the websites I visit where I have a username and password with only a swipe of my index finger on my fingerprint reader. Swanky!

I have almost all of my old applications reinstalled (everything I really use is open source anyway, so I just popped to a few websites and downloaded the installers) and the files that the repair shop could copy off my old hard drive (they did a good job, and gave me a great deal on an external hard drive that they copied the files onto, which I will now use for much more frequent backups--my last big backup was in March, boo me) are now in my brand-new documents folder. Those thankfully include an installer for the program I use to burn bitchin' DVDs of the B that I couldn't re-download, as well as project files and movies that were lovingly transferred from the video camera and then edited. There were also about a dozen pictures of the B that didn't exist anywhere else, and that has been taken care of as well.

So this is the end of the laptop/coke disaster of 2006. I feel guilty for burning the money, but everyone's human, right? Keep those cans away from the expensive electronics, all right? Take it from me.

Ha! Ha! A Post!!1!!

A lot of you reading this right now know your way around Fark and/or Something Awful and you are possibly aware that it was this week, last year, when every thread on Fark was threadjacked by the Ha! Ha! Guy. If you don't know who this gentleman is, or why he's so damn happy (!!!1!!!) then you can read about it on Wikipedia. If you still haven't had enough Ha! Ha!, then check out today's (as always, possibly not work safe stuff on Fark) thread on Fark, commemorating the Ha! Ha! Guy's birthday.

If you asked me, I'd probably answer that I don't think he's all that funny anymore. However, I did snicker at a couple of the Ha! Ha! Guys in the thread on Fark, so who the heck knows anymore?

The internet is not a truck. It is a series of tubes.

The internet is not a truck. It is a series of tubes.
Originally uploaded by lostonpurpose.

I laughed out loud for about a half minute when I saw this display in the cyber wing of the St. Louis Science Center. It's stuff like this that makes you glad you have to carry the camera wherever the baby goes so you can capture her doing all her cute little things. I get that stuff, but also the internet, as invisaged as a couple of tubes.

If you don't know what I'm talking about because you don't follow the net neutrality debate, don't read Boing Boing, and don't watch The Daily Show, then you really have a lot of entertaining reading ahead of you, if you want to find out what some ancient senator thinks about "downloading the internet".

You can try here for the tech version or see the techno version. You can read about it on Boing Boing or watch Jon Stewart skewer him.

So, I already thought this was funny, then I see this "Bandwidth" machine at the science center. Ah, old white Senators. How you'd make me laugh if only you didn't have an overwhelming amount of control over my life. (sigh)

I Have Questions

1. Is there anything more embarrassing than having your cell phone go off in the middle of the new mom's group at the hospital while a very severe pediatrician is speaking to the group...and your ringtone is Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me? Wasn't me, but boy did that lady look embarrassed.
   
2. Is it possible for your head not to jerk toward the television when you hear the phrase, "reduction in semen"? It's during a commercial that plays about a hundred times an hour during the Tour de France coverage on OLN, but I'm still not used to it. Pulls my full attention every time.
   
3. Why do I want so much for the baby to crawl when a) it's not a true milestone and 2) it's bound to make my life much more lively, interesting, and fraught with danger the moment it happens?
   
4. If diet Coke is going to end up inside my laptop through stupidity on my part, is it entirely fair that the only place it goes and the only part it fries is the most expensive one? I need a new motherboard. Sigh. Is it karmic punishment for leaving a can of soda next to my laptop? I mean, it was dumb, but $500 worth of dumb? Really?
   
5. Where should I take the B today? I'm running out of antique malls and it's too hot to take her someplace where we have to stay outside. Ah, I guess I'll come up with something.

Antique Mall Finds

I've gone to two different antique malls around here in the past couple of days, and found a couple of things. One that we needed, and another thing that is really pretty and didn't cost very much. I'm pretty happy with the pull.

First up is the coffee table I've been looking for. I wanted something smaller that could get easily dragged out of the way, because the B still lies on the floor in the living room playing with toys and tricking us into thinking she's just about to start crawling.

It has a completely rounded edge, which is good for her noggin in the event that she bangs into it. It swivels, so she'll have fun with it there. And it's round, so she can walk around it once she can pull herself up and sidle along. In fact, she'll be able to do that pretty early, since she won't even have to move her hands at first due to the swivel. So, pleased with this lovely purchase for $55:



This lovely trio of small stained glass (real, not the gallery glass painted kind) was only $12! I need to run out to the hardware store and buy some small chain link to hang it, but so so pretty, right?



I also found four long-out-of-print Little Golden Books for $2, and a bag of antique buttons (good for crafting, you know, as soon as I get time to do that) for $3.

Maybe I'll go to another one today! Or, to the grocery store, where I really should go. I think I've done enough goofing off so far this week. But at least it was fruitful.

Lewis Black Demands CNN Remove Banner During Interview

Lewis Black, gotta love him. The banner removal is near the end.

The Perils of Thinking in Black and White

I keep hearing this guideline bandied around. To wit:

"According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)...children under age 2 should have no "screen time" (TV, DVDs or videotapes, computers, or video games) at all. During the first 2 years, a critical time for brain development, TV can get in the way of exploring, learning, and spending time interacting and playing with parents and others, which helps young children develop the skills they need to grow cognitively, physically, socially, and emotionally." ^[1]

Listen, I'm all for not parking the kid in front of the television and ignoring them. I think that's horrible. But isn't this going a little far? Let me explain.

See, I'm a typical American woman. I like a shower every single bleedin' day, and I like them after I've woken up but before I leave the house to do stuff. I am not a shower the night before kind of girl. If I tried that, I would honestly not leave the house and show the B the wide, wide world, because I would feel itchy and yukky whenever I did go out. Yes, this is a personal failing, I suppose, but there you go. I still want to shower in the same quadrant of the day that I did before we had the baby. There, I said it. I'm a monster.

There are days when the baby doesn't appear to agree with my need to do this, or when the timing of when I need to take the shower so that I'm not late to an appointment just doesn't happen to coincide with her being in a mood to play happily for 15 minutes in the exersaucer while I do what needs doin'. I have popped her in the exersaucer, her crib, or the playpen, only to have her literally scream, crying the entire time I was away. That can't be good, can it? If there was a safe, quick way to distract her for that period of time so she didn't spend it red-faced, gasping, and screaming, wouldn't that be better?

What I have found, however, is that if I take the portable DVD player and pop in one of the three HBO Kids DVDs I have (these, I think, are great, and the B appears to agree—she talks to them and points at the screen while they're on, and the high-quality music they use is the kind of stuff my classical music lovin' self would love for her to at least be comfortable with in later life) that will take that already-crying baby and make her calm and entertained while I shower, throw my hair back in a barette, get dressed, and pack her diaper bag.

She looks at me to check in while the DVD is playing (thanks to our glass shower enclosure in the master bath and her exersaucer in the master bedroom, she's completely in my line of sight the whole time) and laughs and smiles at me instead of screaming and crying because she's alone and sad.

Am I wrong here? Every day I try the exersaucer by itself and many days it works like a charm. She bats at the toys and interacts her little heart out, working on her gross and fine motor control like any well-brought up baby should. But those days, the ones when she just isn't interested and can't be distracted by play, is it so horrible that she spends fifteen minutes listening to music I think is great for her to be exposed to, watching animations of cute little babies and animals that she thinks are so amazing that she keeps looking for me so she can grin and babble her approval.

Is that really the worst thing that could be happening? I stopped working to stay home with her to make sure she got more one-on-one interaction as an infant than she would in a daycare. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, that's just what we decided to do.) I play with her, down on the blanket on the floor with her, handing her toys, playing peek-a-boo, or sit on the opposite side of her exersaucer while she bats at toys and encourage her. She literally gets hours of direct interaction with me and with a variety of toys every single day of her life since the moment we brought her home from the hospital. She gets time on her stomach, time encouraging her to try to crawl, time where I hold her steady as she stands and grins madly at me. We've played little games at every stage of her development so far, making them up as she became interested in new skills and was physically capable of doing them.

And yes, I won't deny it. When we play, there's usually music or the television on in the background. Sometimes she appears to notice it, but most of the time, she only notices it if the volume spikes suddenly, then she goes back to doing something much more interesting to her, like chewing on her foot. Interestingly, if a song comes on that I sing to her, she looks up and looks around, then looks and me expectantly until I start singing it. That floors me, that she can learn to associate specific music with me at such a young age. What having the 'background noise' does for me is engage the portion of my brain that would go to sleep handing her the same toy that she drops over the side of the exersaucer over and over again, letting me play that game and many others with her until she tires of it, instead of when I can't do it again without wanting to jump off the back deck.

The one thing I don't do is plunk her down in front of the thing, completely alone and for no real reason, and expect it to raise her for me. That's my job and my privilege and I don't intend to share it with an inanimate object.

So, is it evil? Will she have the horrible, miniscule attention span the AAP warns me against? Is she doomed to be sedentary and overweight because I do this? How long does she have to look at the screen before it alters her DNA and tears down all good things our hours upon hours of interaction has brought about? Is it instantaneous, like Peter Parker being bitten by the radioactive spider?

Is it just me, or is a blanket stricture like this going a little bit off the deep end? Is it so terrible to view it as another tool in the arsenal, to be used thoughtfully and responsibly when it does more good than harm? A tool, like every other, that can build if used responsively just as it can destroy good work if used recklessly?

Some days, I think the worst two words in the English language are "always" and "never".

[1] KidsHealth for Parents article, How TV Affects Your Child

"Heeeey! You Look Like a Real Jerk!"

"Well, I am a corporate executive."

Bah ha ha ha.

Worst Night Ever

So, yesterday.

It wasn't really all that bad until it got later in the day.

We went for a walk with the B. Came back, and I saw a can of diet coke on the table next to my laptop. I thought it was empty and I picked it up to throw it away, only to discover that it WASN'T EMPTY. You know when you pick up something and it's much heavier than you thought? How sometimes it just seems to slip out of your hands because you didn't pick it up the way you would have if it would have been even a little bit heavier?

Stupid thing slipped out of my hand and dumped fully half of its contents on the keyboard of my laptop. I had hopes that the aluminum panel at the bottom of the keyboard would protect the stuff that could short out, but this morning, after letting it spend the night next to the fan to dry out, it's a goddamn doorstop.

Sad. Very very sad. I hope we can find the parts that shorted and replace them, or at least salvage the hard drive and put it in an enclosure so I can get some data off of it.

Then I watched something that both did, and didn't, enhance my day. It was the Doctor Who S2 finale which I snagged on the QT online. I've seen the whole season, in some sort of legal gray area (or red area, but how else am I going to see it, as the Sci-Fi channel still hasn't inked a deal to bring it stateside) and this was the last episode I'd been waiting for. The next paragraph is written in white text in case you don't want spoilers. They are minor spoilers, more dealing with my reaction to what happened rather than a blow-by-blow account of the episode.

So so sad. Anyone who's read Mkae's blog knows Billie Piper was leaving the show, so they had to write her out. But did they have to wrench my heart out of its chest, then stomp on it repeatedly before slapping me in the face with it? I felt it was really, really well-scripted, well-acted as well.

But it finished downloading at 12:45 am and I couldn't stop myself from watching it. There I was, then, at about 1:30 am, unable to sleep with my mind buzzing about what I'd just watched and what might become of my laptop (whose fate was unknown at that moment).

I finally got off to sleep, but the baby awoke at 4:00 am, which she hasn't done in MONTHS. I changed her, fed her, and she seemed really sleepy. So was I, for the record, as I was on about an hour of sleep at that moment. Then the reason for her early awakening became clear. She was teething. Hard. I tried all sorts of stuff. Letting her bite on my finger and rubbing her gums seemed to help a little, but not enough. Biting on a washcloth, same thing. Cold, not so helpful. Teething toy, she seemed too upset to keep it in place.

Eventually, I decided that distraction has been the best thing to help with her teething so far. I put her in her exersaucer, where she played, surprisingly, happily, until she tuckered out. She went back to sleep around 7:00 and got three more hours of sleep, and so did I.

So, here I am, on four hours of sleep, which isn't terrible, but not great either. I have a dead laptop and a brain filled with Doctor Who that I can't talk to anyone about because I'll spoil the frack out of them. I have no idea how much fixing the laptop or salvaging my data from it will cost, because I think this is beyond my own personal kung-fu.

I'm just glad I put all my bookmarks in del.icio.us awhile ago. Now I just have to remember all my logins that were saved on that poor brick, and hope that I get something back out of it.

But enough about me, how was your night? (grumble)

Small Things That Make Me Happy

What makes me happy, other than the obvious larger things like the mister and the B, is what we have on the mantel in the living room.


I wish I had room for more pictures. There's a goofy little display cabinet in-between the two sides which I've cropped out, mostly because I'm thinking of moving it. I would let me put about four more pictures up on the mantel and one up on the wall, and I think I'd like that.

While these pictures are missing a lot of people that I'd love to have represented up there (there are more pictures in the built-in bookshelves to the left and right of the fireplace) I feel good every time I look up there. From the close-ups of the newborn B on the left to the posed and unposed shots of family and a few of our friends in the mismatched frames, I like to look at all of the pictures.

The teacup ride at WDW is represented...cycling, family, my first trip to the zoo with the B, my parents' 50th anniversary brunch cruise. I usually hate having my picture taken, but looking at these makes me quite content.

Happy Happy Fourth

Hey, here in central time, I still have forty-three minutes and counting to post this on the right day. We had a nice fourth, I think. The odd part of it is that I never saw any fireworks. I heard some through the walls of the house, but they happened to coincide with the period of time that the B wanted to go to bed, so I stayed in her room and told her stories until the sounds went away and she stopped flinching at them so she could sleep. We had a cute little outfit for the tiny B to wear today, as a part of my "celebrate all of her first holidays" plan. I think it was quite cute. I may put her in it again before she outgrows it, mostly because it doesn't actually say "July 4" or "Independence Day" on it.

We took a trip to the Missouri Botanical Garden today with her, which was great. She enjoyed it too, as you can see below.

There were lots and lots of pretty flowers and displays at the garden. I included the daylilies picture below, but click on it to see the whole set in my Flickr stream. It really was very beautiful out there today. The only downside was that it was hot as &$#()#_@#* out there, so we had to suffer just a wee bit to see it. It wasn't too crowded, though, and we found a drinks machine at an opportune moment, so we survived it.


So, nice day. Hope everyone out there is well and feeling good.

Happy Seven Monthday, B!

It is also the mister's father's birthday, and happy birthday to him, as well!

I hope everyone is having a great time at the various cons and cookouts and whatnot. There's not all that much going on here. The B is down in her crib for the night, sleeping like a little angel baby, and I am making use of a rhymes-with-porrent and starts-with-t downloader to see some of what David Tennant's working on now, ahem. So I'm off to indulge in that a little more. Whee!

Nightmare Pooh

This is really frickin' scary.

No, man, really.

There's no excuse for this. Seriously. Some of us have to read Pooh books to our kids, for cryin' in the sink. How can I do that now with this in my head? Where's that crochet hook, so I can use it to PUT OUT MY EYES!