Contact by Carl Sagan

Plain View #95 was lost, but now it's found. Sorry about the mix up. I need to work on my click and drag skills.

Plain View #95

Even though my due date is still 3 weeks off, I am, as of today, officially full term. If I had the baby today, it would not be considered early anymore. Lucas read a statistic yesterday, though, that most first time mothers have their babies between 38-42 weeks. Which is an enormous, month long window. We decided the baby will be here before Christmas, though, and even more ideally before the 20th. My midwife gave me lots of exercises to help move the baby into ideal position, plus suggested a regimen of red raspberry leaf tea and 5W herbs. So, operation have baby before Christmas is officially underway!

My most recent midwife appointment was last Wednesday. We had to go a day earlier than usual because of Thanksgiving this week. I got the results back from my Group B strep test--negative! This makes me happy because I get to avoid the IV during labor. Also, my blood count came back normal, so I don't have to take any extra iron or protein. Baby had moved slightly (instead of back towards my left side, back was facing front), so I have been doing the yoga cat/cow moves and laying on my left side to help it move back into position. We do know it is head down, and because there is hardly any room left in there, it really doesn't have room to turn all the way back around, which means it should still be head down at birth. yay!

Lucas and I have almost finished packing our bag for the birth center. With a birth center birth, you go home anywhere from 4-6 hours after the baby is born, so I am trying to resist over packing...very hard for me, but Lucas is doing his best to keep me in line =]

Pictures of the nursery to come after this weekend. Lucas and his dad built the crib yesterday, and today we are moving in some of the other furniture...

~Kelly

"They encourage one another with the words, 'Be strong!' The craftsmen rush to make new idols. The carver hurries the goldsmith, and the molder helps at the anvil. 'Good,' they say. 'It's coming along fine.' Carefully they join the parts together, then fasten the thing in place so it won't fall over."

-Isaiah 41.6-7

There are reports of three deaths related to Black Friday shopping--one in which a man was stampeded at a Wal-Mart, and two in a shooting incident at a Toys-R-Us.

The man stampeded was given CPR on-site and then transported to a local hospital where the official determination could be made. The store decided to close for a few hours--A FEW HOURS! The customers who had trampled the man to death and the many others who stepped over his body or around rescue workers as they tried in vain to save him COMPLAINED that they could not complete their holiday shopping immediately and would have to wait less than a day to make their purchases.

I read this blog post just about a week ago. It has a link to a Wal-Mart stampede video from a few years back.

The writer of the Sojourners blog wonders if his antipathy toward Black Friday might not be a kind of upper class privilege, especially after someone told him it was. But who exactly is dignified by this kind of chaos?

The media reports all have the same bland, thoughtless musings about what could have been done to prevent the tragedy--more security, maybe Wal-Mart is to blame for selling things so cheaply, whatever. But maybe the problem is our own greed, and the many ways in which that greed is played upon, encouraged, and rewarded. Maybe what needs to be discounted is the fundamental way in which we value things in American society.

One thing is certain: Fear has gripped our nation. These are not the signs of a confident society, but of one the world has new cause to ridicule and revile--and they are beginning to accept the invitation.

Even though the Rickroll is fading in the meme world, this is still awesome. Props to Astley for having a sense of humor about the whole thing. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I'm off to San Diego for my ten year reunion tonight!

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Hey folks. My Mom is in the final 2 for the female team. The upside is she's lost the most weight percentage wise and hasn't been on the chopping block since she started competing. The downside is the other lady has a ton of votes. That said, please vote and vote often. Pass it to your friends and family if you feel so inclined.

Here's the link: http://www.11alive.com/life/contests/atlantas_biggest_loser/

And the read the following from my Mom:

Hi everyone,

As many of you know, I've been a contestant in Atlanta's version of The Biggest Loser. Thus far, I've lost over 30 lbs and have retained the lead (percentage) in weight loss among the Blue Team (the women's team). Now that we're down to the top two women, I need your online vote to remain in the competition and compete with the last standing member of the men's team.

Wow, I'm feeling great – have renewed energy and my core has strengthened considerably. At the beginning of this competition, I couldn't run two minutes – now I'm running 20 and then working out for an hour followed by classes.

You can vote online once per day per computer (beginning this afternoon) at: http://www.11alive.com/life/contests/atlantas_biggest_loser/

The best news of all this Thanksgiving is that my son, Brian, who has been in Iraq since March is now back in the states and is on his way here from Mississippi to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with me. This will be the best Thanksgiving ever!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's an edited version of my most recent communion meditation.

It may be surprising to some of you, but in my experience, high school students have a lot of interests outside of their class work. In some cases their only interests lie outside their class work. And believe it or not, one of the things that students talk about a lot is religion. In the last couple of weeks alone, I have been privy to (that means I have eavesdropped and horned my way into various conversations), I have been privy to discussions about what happens to us when we die, the relative wrongness of homosexuality in comparison to other sins, and how various denominations read certain scriptures differently. None of these discussions were initiated by me (although I did stick my big beak in and contribute my two cents).

One recent student's comment that has stuck with me was this: "Doctrine is everything." What this student meant by that, I think, is that believing the right things about all things spiritual, is the most important thing. As I pondered this, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't disagree more. If the church, the millions of brothers and sisters around the world who are celebrating communion or washing each other's feet, or singing and listening to a sermon instead of doing either of these things, if we are only united by what we believe about the trinity, virgin birth, transubstantiation, predestination, preventient (pre-veen'-ynt) grace, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and a hundred other things that as far as I know, Jesus never took the time to talk about, then we're done for. If that's everything, then all is lost.

But, if when we come together for communion, when we remember that we are part of a community of believers, a global community of believers, a community of believers that disagrees about a lot, but can agree that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and that he is our lord and savior, then that's something.

But it's just the start. When we participate in communion this morning, and remember what Christ has done for us, and who we are, and what we're part of; and when we go out into the world bringing the love of Christ to the lonely, the hurt and the hungry; then that, I believe, is everything.

One thing I try to at least be consistent about is one post per week. Ha! I'm almost done with the review of Let the Right One In, though. So hopefully there will be two, but I'm not promising anything. :)

This weekend definitely had its ups and downs. I spent all of Thursday night trying to get photos ready to show my family what our trip to Britain & Ireland was like. Unfortunately, the load tweaked and my thumbnails didn't match my actual photos. And then, unlike my old camera, I wasn't able to copy the files from my computer to the SD card, which is what I wanted to do so that I could plug the camera into my parents' TV to blow up the photos for the older folk to see. Boo. So then I tried burning a DVD, which didn't work. And then a CD, and of course I got confused. Three hours into it, I handed it over to Ric, and he helped get it all on a CD.

So on Friday we all went out to eat at Panera and came back to my parents' house for cake. My family gave Ric Ticketmaster gift cards for future Kings tickets. We also wanted to show them the photos. But of course, neither of my parents' DVD players could recognize the CD files. So we uploaded all of the photos onto my sister's laptop, downloaded them again to her Archos, and then plugged her Archos into the TV. It was just that kind of weekend. So eventually, we were able to show them about 200 of my over 1200 photos from the trip. I was impressed with myself for narrowing it down that much!

Saturday we got up early for the cable guy to fix a weird line problem we've been having show up whenever the cable is plugged in. Of course, he arrived 10 minutes after the two hour window (in which we mostly just sat around waiting for him to come), and told Ric to use a direct line from the cable box to the TV, which Ric had already done unsuccessfully, but this time it worked. Whatever. So from there, we made our Lowe's shopping list and headed out to drop my car off at the mechanic. And of course, the noise I wanted him to look into was audible my whole way there, but not when I tried to show it to him. Also, I had to replace two tires, and run-flat tires are not cheap, kids - remember that if you ever want to buy a Mini. We went to Lowe's from there, and were really hungry. That's a bad thing to do. All you want to do is get out of there, but of course, it takes a while to hunt down the things you're looking for and make decisions as well. We bought a little miter saw set, some base boards, a chip repair kit for the chip in the bathroom sink, new light covers for the kitchen lights, and a nail set for nailing the baseboards. I think by the time this bathroom is done, we'll pretty much have the Lowe's layout memorized, as well as have bought most of the major tools a person can use in a remodel. We went home for a nap after lunch and then got a call to come pick up the Mini, which we did, and then Ric went to buy Quicken while I went to deposit checks. The reason we needed Quicken is because the motherboard on our computer freaked at the same time I was loading photos and I had Microsoft Money open at the time, and it basically destroyed our money files, and none of the backups will open. Yaaaay! Ric spent the evening working on re-entering all of our account info and we sat around watching tv to comfort ourselves for such an off day.

Sunday we went to church, and our pastor is doing a series on Matthew. He's spending two weeks on the first 17 verses of Matthew alone, which is why I like him. The part everyone usually skips over is the part he'll spend more time on. After church we went with the Andersons to Liz's parents' place for lunch and enjoyed each other's company and conversation for a while. We headed back home and I caught up with some TiVo, then decided to kick things into gear rather than drive to Irvine to see a movie. I spent the next five hours working on our place. I did a lot of paint touch-up, and now the upstairs painting is finally done, and worked on filling the holes in the upstairs bathroom bathtub (where we removed the glass doors and their screws), touched up some frames and hung a couple of photos, and did all of this while listening to a few discs of Nicholas Nickleby. Speaking of which, I noticed at the library that there were signs indicating that a person can actually check out an MP3 player with a book preloaded on it. I want to ask about this the next time I'm in. Other good scores from the library were Das Rheingold (I want to see how I like this version of it), some Philip Glass (to see if I like all of his stuff or just the movie scores), and some of the world's greatest Arias (to see which composers I prefer).

Up this week: prepping for Thanksgiving travel, making a dessert for Thanksgiving, and enjoying Thanksgiving with the family! Only 1.5 days of work left. :)

Sorry I've been so quiet on here. Here is a picture of me and my Goddaughter when she was a few days old.

She is now almost four weeks old and is already able to move around using her legs. Seriously. Not much going on, really. Still addicted to Oblivion. I'm headed down to San Diego for my 10 year reunion this weekend. Thanksgiving I'm hanging out with some other refugees in L.A.. I've got some other cool stuff on the horizon that I hopefully will be able to share with you soon.

We had another appointment on Thursday. She checked position of the baby and it appeared to be in optimal position =] Let's hope it stays there! We had all the regular checks, plus the Group B Strep screen at this visit. I think we'll find out the results of that on Wednesday when I go for my next visit. If you test positive for Group B Strep, they administer antibiotics during labor to ensure you don't pass it on to your baby. Stats vary, but roughly 25% of women are positive for Group B Strep but do not manifest symptoms, which is why the test is done. If you have it and don't know it, 98-99% of the time it won't be passed on to your baby anyway, but because of the side effects if you were to pass it on, they take the precaution of administering the antibiotics for that 1-2% chance.

I posted last time that I thought my picture made me look even bigger than I was. Well, now I am pretty sure I am huge and the pictures are accurate. I ran into a doorway yesterday because I forgot how big my stomach was. Oops. Lucas and I have fun watching the baby squirm around in there. It has a pretty powerful kick. Lucas is hoping for a soccer player.

We got our car seat over the weekend. We are going to try and get it installed in the car next weekend. The baby's room is also nearly ready. We need to clear out the building/painting supplies and vacuum, then we can put up a picture. We are going to try and get a rug this week, also. Luckily, I don't have to work this week because schools are out for Thanksgiving break, so I can get to work on some of the final projects!

To close, some pictures of my giant belly. I took them myself today, since NASA doesn't get Thanksgiving break and Lucas had to work...

(via TruthDig)

Christmas On Mars by The Flaming Lips

Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Hundie Jo [dot] Com » Blog Archive » I am not sure what to expect?

Henry announced today that Meredith is 9 weeks pregnant! Congrats guys! I guess this really is the age where this sort of thing becomes a pandemic but it's still kind of nuts.

Things mention today in the "bible study" that's held in my classroom every week, that will make you a better Christian: reading the bible, praying, going to church. Things not mentioned: loving our neighbors, feeding the hungry, vising the sick, living justly, loving mercy, walking humbly. Things called into question: The Twilight books, the Harry Potter books.

Last night I got home to find that I could download the New Xbox Experience, Microsoft's new dasbhoard program for the 360. One of the prominent new features is the ability to create avatars. They are similar to miis, but actually much more customizable. Here is mine:

I also tried out the integrated Netflix streaming and I really dug it. While you can't browse the Netflix catalog and add new titles like you can from the Media Center app, I really dug the way you flip through the titles in your Instant Queue and the fact that you can stop and resume watching the movie at a later time. I'm really happy with the NXE so far and am looking forward to what Microsoft has in store with it.

Discrimination against atheists is one of the last types of socially acceptable discrimination. It comes in many forms, the most shocking of which is legal: Some state constitutions attempt to strip atheists of their legal rights. Before I go any further, I would like to make a disclaimer. Though I think discrimination against atheists is real and runs counter to the spirit of our nation, it is nothing compared to what is been faced by black Americans, gay Americans or female Americans at various times in our country's history. It's also different because we choose it (unlike race, gender and sexual orientation) and we choose how public to make it. If I wanted to, I could present myself as a nominal Christian or I could choose to not discuss religion at all. But if a person decides that they don't believe in any invisible, undetectable deities and they make this unbelief known, they will find that they are often the odd man out.

Although the U.S. Constitution forbids religious tests for any federal office in Article VI, section 3, several state constitutions create just such a test. The following states require belief in God to serve in public office: Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Two states (Arkansas and Maryland) require belief in God in order to testify as a witness in court. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1961 (Torcasa v. Watkins) that all of those tests are unconstitutional, but the laws mentioned above are still on the books.

In the minds of many voters, there remains a de facto religious test for public office. Several studies have found that, all other things being equal, voters are less likely to vote for an atheist candidate than (in order) a homosexual, 72-year-old, thrice married, Mormon, Hispanic, female, Jewish, black or Catholic (Gallup). In that study, atheists were the only group that more than 50% of the respondents wouldn't vote for. This study was one of the reasons that I ended up not running for state representative when I was asked this spring.

Where are people getting the idea that a person is unfit for public office just because they don't believe in an ancient tribal god? How about their pastors, a President and the Bible. Pastor Rick Warren, days after hosting both presidential candidates at his church, said he would never vote for an atheist. George H.W. Bush (41) said that he didn't think atheists should be considered citizens. The Bible says that people who deny that Jesus is Christ are antichrists. I doubt that many Christians who believe in the Bible would vote for a person who they consider to be an antichrist.

It's not just in the political arena where atheists are at a disadvantage. When I started a new job this spring with a web development company my boss found my website and asked me to never link to the company site or any client sites because they might find out that an atheist is working for him. While I think it's sad that I can't link to projects that I'm proud of, I don't hold it against my boss. It's not his fault that he could lose business because of my beliefs. I might do the same thing if I was in his position. I only wish that non-belief didn't turn a person into a pariah.

I've also found that some from my old church are no longer interested in being my friend and they don't return my emails. I'm sure I share part of the blame for that because I've been so vocal about my loss of faith and the problems I see in religion. Perhaps if I kept quiet about it they wouldn't shun me. But I've heard many of these people say that atheists are going to be tortured for eternity in Hell, so I'm not the only one criticizing. I do regret some of the things I've said about religious people and I intend to be more considerate in the future. I will continue to discuss religion, but I'll try focus my attacks on ideas, not people.

There are signs that things are getting better. While the world celebrated the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first African-American President, another milestone was quietly reached out west. Pete Stark of California became the first openly atheist person to be elected to the U.S. Congress. There have already been female, black, gay, Jewish and Muslim people elected to Congress. Another bright spot was in North Carolina where incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole attacked challenger Kay Hagan for associating with atheists. Dole's attack fell flat and she lost, in part because Hagan returned fire, calling Dole a liar and affirming the fact that she is a Christian. I'd like to think that Hagan also won because voters rejected the idea that atheism is evil, but I'm not too sure.

If you are a non-religious person, what has your experience been? Do you keep it quiet? Has it affected your relationships or career? Do you think things are getting better? What can we do to improve our status in this country?

A Cat Rides A Roomba and Achewood Again Predicts The Future

That's pretty awesome. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, start here.

With this season's movie selection being much slimmer than others, I just haven't been heading out to the theater as often as I used to. But, I determined to get myself going more often (when I'm actually around to go!) again. So my sister and I drove out to Irvine to see Happy-Go-Lucky, the latest offering from director and writer Mike Leigh. Not many of you may have heard of him, but if you might possibly recall, he has been nominated for Oscars in directing and writing for his earlier films, Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake. Most of his material seems to be fairly heavy, so it was a surprise (despite the movie title) to see this film open up with scenes of a girl named Poppy riding her bike through town, smiling at everyone, enjoying life, and set to some very happy music. I fell in love with the movie immediately, and my first impulse was to think, "Please don't ruin this and have something terrible happen to this girl!"

Happy-Go-Lucky gives us a snapshot of Poppy's life. She's single, 30, an elementary school teacher who lives with her best friend, and when her bike gets stolen (I loved her good-natured response to this, "I didn't even get to say goodbye!") she starts taking driving lessons. Poppy lives a very optimistic life and is definitely a Pollyanna type (thank you for the comparison, imdb reviewer), but she's probably a lot less annoying. Her responses to the situations she face in life brought out a lot of laughs from our audience. I smiled and laughed a lot in this film, and probably more than in any of the more direct comedies I've seen this year.

That doesn't mean that this film is entirely a comedy. Sure, we smile a lot, but Poppy's character interacts with all sorts of people, and none of them live life with the same perspective she does. People respond to her optimism in different ways. Sometimes it's contagious, and in other times, she rubs people the wrong way. In a sense, it seems like her attitude confronts people with their own life perspectives, and each of them will respond accordingly. The most obvious case of this is Poppy's driving instructor Scott, played by Eddie Marsan. We discover over their series of training sessions that Scott has "issues" and he just can't take Poppy's flightiness and let it be. He seems to be attracted to the happiness that she has, but he gets angrier as the sessions continue because his problems come to the surface whenever he's around her. Also, Poppy deals with a kid in her class who is being abused, as well as momentarily befriends a homeless man.

In a sense, it seems that other people learn from Poppy, but also, as she branches out and meets these people, she learns about how far her optimism can go. She can't make everyone look at life the way she does. Life isn't full of happy things. But of course, she's not stupid. She knows that there are darker sides to life, but she chooses to approach them in a good way. And I'd have to say that her character is very smart. It seems like she--for the most part--knows exactly how far she can take her joking around, and adapts quickly.

I just need to point out that Sally Hawkins was an amazing find for this movie. She is absolutely perfect here. Her character is so infectious that I think most of us in the audience were smiling when we first saw her, and we smiled and laughed through most of the film. But of course, she couldn't do it alone. How wonderful to see Mike Leigh's film making greatness to be used for a slightly lighter film. He's great at it. I would nominate both of these people for Oscars, if I got to make the choices.

Happy-Go-Lucky was just the thing I needed to take me out of my movie slump. It's delightful, it's thoughtful, and it's just about perfect. I loved it.

Brother Is to Son by Br. Danielson

I have uploaded all of our vacation photos (the unabridged collection) to Picasa if anyone cares to sort through hundreds of photos. No captions there yet, sorry! Final couple days of recap coming soon!

Well, while others are making writing records on their blogs this month, I've just not had enough time for it. Sorry about that. I will try to better this week, but besides today I've got a full work agenda and may run out of time for blogging.

But hey, let me tell you about my weekend while I can! It was Ric's 30th birthday on Saturday, and he's not much of a party guy, so I decided to do something different for him. Plans A, B, and C fell through, so I eventually decided to take him away for the weekend. We went up to Arrowhead on Friday night. We got to the Lake Arrowhead Resort around 9:30 and checked in, then went over to the village to have some drinks and pizza for a while, then headed back. Whenever I stay at a nice hotel, I like to make full use of everything there, so I think I took three showers in all. Haha. I loved the shower there, and even loved the shampoo and conditioner they provided. We watched some tv in bed until late.

Saturday morning we slept in a little, got ready, admired our view of the lake for a little bit, then checked out. We went to the Belgian Waffle Works for breakfast. They make good waffles and are right on the lake - a good combination, if you ask me. We shopped around the village for a while, then had a little bit of time to kill, so we went to Starbucks in Blue Jay and chatted for a while there. We headed to the theater to see Quantum of Solace, and then went to Yo's place in Crestline to hang out. We had great food and watched the Kings game, then headed back home.

Sunday, we missed the first service by accident (Ric thought it started half an hour later than it did) but made it to Sunday school. I gave Ric my belated anniversary gift - a beautiful new Bible. After hanging out with Liz and baby Emily for a while, we headed home for a breather. In the afternoon, we had appointments for massages in Brea, and then we went to Ric's parents' house. We all went out to eat at the Seafare Inn, which none of us had ever tried before. We had cake and presents back at their place. Ric got Iron Man and the book Between the Lines as well as several accessories for his bike. We watched a bit of the Kings game, then headed home.

I spent the rest of the evening trying to catch up with my life in the areas of laundry and cleaning, which have sorely been neglected in the midst of all my fall travels. Ric and I had a lot of fun this weekend, though. We decided we need to make more weekend trips. It was a nice breakaway, and we were luckily able to miss some of the worst of the bad air from the fires. Speaking of which, I hope everyone out there is doing okay. So far I haven't heard any bad reports from friends who live in the area.

Up this week: shopping tonight, movie night on Wednesday with the Agadonis, and not much else scheduled! I've got to work on the house and get back to painting trim in the house. In the movie queue this week: finishing up Madness' Take it or Leave it and starting up Scorcese's New York, New York.

Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage by Kurt Vonnegut

I love listening to Nina Totenberg read Supreme Court transcripts.

For one thing, I'm fascinated by the way Supreme Court justices engage in open dialogue with each other, making arguments, asking questions, and posing hypothetical situations.

But I think Nina Totenberg read the proceedings makes them even better. All of the justices' sound warm and rational when coming from her lips.

If you don't know what I'm talking about listen to this recent story about a local government's right to display privately-donated monuments.

So Twitter is the latest victim of the Popularity Contest Syndrome. This is a common ailment of many social media sites. Actually, I think it's just a part of the human condition. It really bothers me though. Half the tweets I read now are about twitter grades, twitter rankings, how popular the person is, or them trying to get new followers. It's like the blogs about blogging and the digg posts about how to get more diggs. It's stupid. It's ruining a once great web service. It's kind of like what happened to StumbleUpon and countless other sites where in order to still use them you have to wade through tons of marketing crap and spam messages. I've been blocking users like crazy but even folks I enjoy following still occasionally get bit by the popularity bug.

The bottom line is this: It's turning the internet into a bunch of Amway salesmen. You have some friends you used to talk to about everything and suddenly they only want to talk about one thing and it's annoying as hell. Is that what you really want? Wow, you're the most popular person on Twitter or MySpace or whatever but no one wants to talk to you. Just like the most successful person at Amway. Just my two cents here.

I'm trying to make up for lost time at work, so no journals or reviews today. But I just wanted to note Veterans Day and say thank you (even though they don't read my blog) to all of the veterans in my life who have served our country. You are braver people than I, that's for certain.

We had another midwife appointment last Thursday. It was pretty uneventful--just a basic checkup (glucose and protein levels, blood pressure, baby's heartrate). Everything looked good. I do have a fun, somewhat pregnancy related, "extra" that I am currently "dealing with" (read: "hiding"). I say somewhat pregnancy related because it isn't something limited to pregnant women...anyone can get it. It just so happens that I happened to get it while pregnant, possibly because of lowered immune system functioning that comes along with being pregnant...or maybe I would have got it anyway. What is it, you ask? It happens to be called pityriasis rosea. I tried to find a picture most similar to what mine looks like, but all the pictures online are much more severe cases than what I have. I do have the "herald patch" on my upper left shoulder, and red patches all down my back, upper arms, and they are beginning to creep onto my abdomen and neck, despite my emphatic begging them not to. It is non-contagious. It seems it is most common in the fall and spring, and you catch it from the air, like an allergen. The good news is that you only get it one time in your life. The bad news is that I have it at all. It has no negative affects, it seems, other than appearance. Doesn't itch, won't affect the baby, doesn't require medicine...but it sure isn't nice to look at. The sites I've seen say it lasts from 6-8 weeks. However, and this is the interesting part, my good friend had a case of this last spring, and her's lasted almost 3 months. When she got it, she was pregnant (about as far along as I am), got her herald patch in the same place as mine, and worked in the same environment as me. We have concluded that work is to blame. There is another pregnant teacher who is about 3 months along. We decided that she should come hang out at the office when she is roughly 7-8 months pregnant, and if she gets it too, we will be sufficiently confidant to blame our office.

So, that's fun. Other than skin conditions, I've been doing just dandy. My back pain has subsided enough that I am sleeping fair-good on most nights. My feet have had some swelling, but I do walk around a lot during the day picking up kids for therapy, so that probably accounts for that. Lucas and I have had 5 child birth classes. For a fun little experiment, you can all try what we did at the last class. It was meant to simulate labor. Hold an ice cube in your hand and try to relax. You have to keep it in your hand for 1 minute straight. Then remove it for 1-2 minutes, and do it again. We did 10 reps. Super fun!! But, I think it was a good way to practice all the relaxation techniques we've been learning.

We've been working on the baby's room little by little. Lucas finished putting up bead board around the bottom half of the room last night. This coming weekend we are going to install the floors. Then I will try and get some pictures up here.

This feels ramble-y. I will end here...
Expect more frequent updates. Starting next week, we are up to weekly midwife visits.

Me at 28 weeks pregnant at Austin City Limits. It was disgustingly hot and dusty, but we had a good time. I think the baby did, too. It seemed to like Beck a lot.

Here is a pictures last week, 33 weeks along. I think the picture makes me look a tad bigger than I am (not that I am not huge...just maybe not that huge. Yet. I'm sure I will be.)

Assembler. Enjoy. The last level (18) is a bitch.

Hey everyone! Quick re-cap so I can get back to work!

Friday evening Ric and I went to see the school's production of Lilies of the Field. With most of the veteran actors having graduated and a lot of the actors being in their first productions, there were only a couple of characters who felt natural to the play. The play in itself was disjointed because it jumped back and forth so often between narration and action. I'll save some of my worst comments for in-person reviews, but suffice to say we were disappointed in the construction as well as the shortness of the play.

Saturday I slept in, called up my sister who had just gotten back from a bunch of adventures on her work family's cruise to Mexico, and we went to Irvine to see Happy-Go-Lucky. From there, we headed to the Elephant Bar to have dinner with Ric, and then he went home to watch hockey while we went to Coldstone and then to see Journey to the Center of the Earth at the dollar theater. I got home in time to watch the Kings win and watched some tv with Ric before bed.

Sunday, we went to church with the Andersons, had a bite to eat from Burger King, and caught up on some TiVo for a while. Then I spent a while on the last coat of upstairs trim while listening to The Island of Dr. Moreau, and then jetted out to Orange to see Let the Right One In at the Block (where noisy people go to see movies). I came home to a tired husband, and we watched the opening scenes of Sleeper before he decided he wouldn't be able to stay awake unless we watched something louder, so we watched the last few episodes of 30 Rock's season two before heading down to bed.

Up this week: shopping, maybe another movie, maybe checking out the remnants at Mervyn's, and celebrating Ric's 30th birthday (plans still in development).

So something I forgot to mention when I wrote my review of Zack & Miri Make a Porno is that it also continued the streak of having someone in the theater be a jerk. This time it was a woman who thought it necessary to talk back to the screen, repeating jokes and guessing what would happen next. I gave her the stare, then the shush, but to no avail. She was immune to my powers. I was enjoying the movie too much to make more of a scene so I just let it be. But this is why I hadn't seen a movie in the theater since The Dark Knight and don't plan to head back anytime soon.

I don't know when it started. I'd been going to the movies for years and years and never really had any problems. Maybe it started in Moberly, Missouri. The infamous Panic Room altercation. It was my first real incident of nearly wounding a man in a movie theater. That was the first time I was actively aware of people talking in a theater. Perhaps I lost my magical zoning out abilities that day. Perhaps it happens with age. I'm not sure.

So my proposal is this: I will come back to the movie theater in the name of science. With funding from some kind organization, I will find the source of this menace. I will find out the reason for this vile behavior. Is it genetic? Is it learned over the years? Is it society's fault for letting it continue? Clipboard in hand, the next time someone talks in a theater I will not shush them, I will ask them a series of questions to figure out just what the hell is going on.

Seriously though, I am very curious as to why these people do what they do. I was taught at a very young age that silence is golden. My first real memory of the movies was when my dad took me to see Return of the Jedi on opening night when I was three. In particular, I remember being very frightened during the scene where they are powering up the Death Star to blow up Endor. I was very distraught because that meant they were going to blow up the Ewoks. I could care less about Han and Leia, but I was in love with those furry guys. I remember yelling out something like "No! They'll blow it up!" or something like that. My dad quietly told me that it was not okay to talk during the movie. I obliged and continue to do so to this day. End of story. So what is their story? I'd really like to know.

We finally get to see a Chiefs game in its entirety, and they lose because they can't figure out the best way to convert points after touchdowns.

And, as an update to the last couple of posts, Obama won the election. Just thought you'd like to know.

Skeletons by Ray Bradbury

Another morning, another several places to visit (after the regular breakfast)! We left the busyiness of Dublin behind and headed onward towards Waterford, with several stops along the way. We traveled along the pretty Irish freeway, which has tens of times more planted trees than any freeway I’ve ever seen. Our weather was good, yet again. Ric was actually starting to get upset that we weren’t experiencing any of the normal weather conditions in the places we were visiting, since most of the time we either had clear blue skies or blue skies with fluffy clouds.
In the morning, we made a stop at Kilkenny. It’s a smaller town, whose main feature seemed to be Kilkenny Castle:

We were given an hour and a half to explore. Ric and I walked through the shopping area and made a stop at Super Mac’s, a fast food chain where all the beef is Irish, apparently. Ric had a decent set of chicken nuggets while I tried out the homemade gelato: Bailey’s creamy cream! It was tasty, and I definitely think it should be sold in the States. Maybe it is. I need to check. We hurried to Kilkenny Castle to try and hit up a tour of the castle, but the tour had already sold out. So we went shopping in the Kilkenny department stores and eventually found our way to a quiet area with gardens. The house here is called Benton House, if I remember correctly. We had been seeing this type of ivy everywhere, and it was amazingly bright up close:

We wandered around the gardens for a while. It was definitely a more peaceful area and was full of all types of plants and trees, and of course that meant we were sure to run into the Canadian girls again, since they always seemed to gravitate toward the same places we liked to go to. I especially liked the apple trees and all of the curly growth on them:

Ric and I continued on and decided to stroll along the lawn at the castle, and made it for a while until we realized we needed to head back. Back at the bus, we spotted one of our favorite signs (note the odor lines):

From Kilkenny, we drove onward towards Waterford and got there in the early afternoon. Our first stop in town was the Waterford Crystal Factory, which is world renowned for its special designs. We were given a while to go through their galleries and shop. Ric wasn’t interested much in the idea of browsing the galleries, and this was our last chance to spend Euros (the exchange rate changed for the worse right after we bought all of our foreign currency, so we figured we’d lose a lot if we saved money, so we might as well spend it), so we spent the whole time buying souvenirs for family and a couple of items for ourselves. We got a crystal cross ornament, an engraved stein, and a set of carved celtic-designed frames, and a few other trinkets. I won’t say what else we bought in case anyone who’s reading will be receiving one of those items (which we plan to hand out at Christmas).
After that we were given an orientation to Waterford by bus, and brought to our hotel. This hotel was right across the street from the river, which I thought was really cool. The whole area seemed enjoyable to me, with a small downtown and a lot of really colorful buildings. Our hotel had a lot of character too, except for our room, which was kind of 70s, but good enough, and we had a view of the river too. We had a while to kill until we had to get up and go somewhere, so Ric and I headed out into town:

We stopped by a bookstore to buy an Irish cookbook, got some snacks since we had missed eating lunch, and ventured out in search of the cathedral we had seen from the streets. We found it, but only had about five minutes there before we needed to head back to the hotel. I snapped as many pictures as I could, but a lot of them turned out poorly because of the cloudier day and low light. It was surprisingly bright inside, though, which I wish the pictures could have captured:

Around four in the afternoon, we were driving to the countryside of Dunmore, to Murphy’s pub. This was a small place filled to the brim with decorations and life. We all piled into a tiny room with drinks in hand and were treated to a late afternoon of Irish folk music. We had a blast listening to the more familiar songs as well as the more obscure reels, and learned more about the types of instruments used in that genre. Here’s the small family group who entertained us:

After a couple of drinks, a lot of our group was rather crazy (lightweights) and so the ride home and dinner were pretty entertaining. We sat with a few Canadians and an Australian couple we had met earlier, the husband of which was hilarious. After our dinner of fish and potatoes (and some really WRONG vegetables) and a dessert of good cake, we decided to go for a walk along the river. We got waylaid for a while at the hotel pub, where we hung out with the Canadian girls and the Arizonan couple for a little while, then all of us headed out for a walk outside. It was sprinkling, but the fresh air was great, and we all had a good time commiserating about how we had all taken our turns babysitting the young Australian kids, who seemed to be desperate for love and attention. Here’s a view of the street:

It was much more interesting in person! Ric was tired eventually, so we headed back to the hotel, where I showered up and then spent more time online and uploading photos. I can’t quite remember, but I probably went to bed late again.

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Movie reviews are back! Wohoo! I'll still finish the British recap but felt like writing a shorter post today.

Network stars William Holden and Faye Dunaway as two network executives who live during some depressing times. It's a time not a lot unlike ours, with economic struggles and a general low morale for the country. There's a news anchor named Howard Beale who is told that he will be losing his job due to low ratings. Beale is played by Peter Finch with a great spectrum of emotions, the first of which is such matter-of-factness that his character declares on the air that he will commit suicide live on the air on his last show. This triggers a rating boost from people who tune in to see if he's crazy and if he's actually likely to do such a thing. William Holden's character, Max, at first tries to smooth things over and get Beale the help he needs, while Dunaway's Diana decides to exploit him for further ratings.

When Howard Beale is allowed to tell his thoughts to the world, he declares, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" and encourages all of America to do the same. When people recognize him as a voice for their struggles, it becomes a craze and Beale gets his own tv show. Right about here is where the story loses some interest for me. Instead of focusing on the more interesting story - the climate of the times, the movie shifts to Max and Diane, who enter into a relationship with each other despite the age difference and the fact that Max is married. The hard-nosed Diane has the pleasure of conquering her career idol and Max has a little spice in his life. Obviously, it can't last forever, nor can Beale's extremist show, and the two struggle with what to do with the situation.

I enjoyed the bread of the sandwich that is this movie. Some of the middle is a mess and jumps a little too far into the relationship between Max and Diane, as well as takes Beale's popularity to the extreme, both of which lost me. But the beginning is very interesting and the end left me thinking, "Wow."

The movie won four Oscars, for actor, actress, supporting actress (Beatrice Straight), and screenplay. I agree with those choices, for the most part. For me, this movie was interesting because of the comparisons I could make to our times, and the great performances of the actors. It left me thinking for a while, and now I finally get the references to that famous quotable line. Dunaway played her role well, but unfortunately she and her role were what annoyed me the most, more than I think the movie makers would have intended. I don't think it's perfect, but enjoyed what Network was trying to explore, so for that, I like it over all.

I promise that soon I'm going to quite participating in the endless post-election analysis, but I thought this was very interesting.

FiveThirtyEight.com compares how the Obama 2008 campaign did compared to the Kerry 2004 campaign among various demographics. In almost every area, Obama outscored Kerry, which is not surprising in itself.

What's interesting is that the largest difference was a 17-point gain among people earning over $200,000 per year. Kerry won 35% of their vote; Obama won 52%. Remember that these are the only people for whom Obama actually promised to raise taxes, and they as a group showed the greatest movement toward the Democratic candidate.

I really don't know what to make of it, but kudos to them.

Batman to Sue Warner Bros. - ComicMix news

Batman, the small subdistrict of Ankara, Turkey announced on Wednesday their attention to sue Warner Bros. for its Batman movie franchise. According to the story at India?s Top News, Batman mayor Huseyin Kalkan feels permission should have been obtained prior to filming. The very first filmed Batman was the 1943 serial with the first full-length feature being the 1966 movie with the television cast. More recently, The Dark Knight amassed $992,764,009 in global box office receipts according to Box Office Mojo.

Mind = Blown

Plain View #95 - Oct 8, 2008

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Did you miss me? I swear, whenever I actually leave my day-to-day life, I forget completely about the fact that I have a blog.

Well, last week on Thursday, I flew out to Portland and Erika and Justin picked me up. We went out to eat at the Doug Fir Lounge. It was a great way to kick off the weekend, with some really good food. They pair their flavors carefully there, and everything I ate was just right, from my rosemary chicken to the deliciously grilled green beans. We went back to their house, which is in Vancouver (not to be confused with the Canadian Vancouver), and I got to take a tour of the house and meet all of the cats and the dog. Erika and I headed out to buy some groceries and buy me some pajamas, since I had forgotten mine at home, and came back to the house to watch tv. Erika made brownies and I got to squeeze in The Office and 30 Rock just in time!

Friday I slept in while Erika and Justin went to work. I enjoyed hanging out with the house pets, who are so much more cuddly than Pip. Erika took a half day, so we went out about town for the afternoon. We had lunch at Whole Foods, where there were tons of freshly made items to choose from. I liked the store a lot and wish the nearest one didn't have to be in Long Beach. We went to Erika's work so I could see what she does for a living, which is working with special needs kids at an elementary school. It was good to actually get an idea of what her class environment is like, and meet the kids she cares for. From there we drove out to look at some of the neighborhoods that she wanted to show me, and then came back home, where we carved pumpkins until Justin came home. He us up a great dinner of chicken and pasta garlic bake. Around eight, we headed into Portland to go see the Eagles of Death Metal at the Wonder Ballroom. It was Halloween, and a large amount of concert goers were in costume, and the band really got the crowd going. It was pretty entertaining!

Saturday we slept in again and got going around noon. We drove out to Multnomah Falls and hiked around the trails for a little bit. It was great to see a very pretty area and get a good view of the Columbia from up high. The drive along the way was very beautiful too, because the majority of trees are either yellow or a bright red right now. After hanging out there for a while, we drove over to Hawthorne. We had some tasty pizza for lunch, then wandered the shops for a long time. I could have done all of my Christmas shopping there, had I not brought just one carry-on for my trip (which was filled to the brim with clothes and shoes for five days). There were so many cute things to buy. After Hawthorne, we came back home to check on Justin, who was tired from the concert. We ended up going out to pick up food for everyone and spending the evening watching tv together. I stayed up late online once I realized there was a wireless connection.

Sunday, Erika and I got up and headed south to visit her mother-in-law in Oregon City on her beautiful 10 acre property. It finally started raining - I was beginning to think "good" weather was following me everywhere I went! We admired the horses, chickens, grounds, and resort-like home for a while, then headed back up north to pick up Megan at the airport. We drove into downto