Updates Galore

I intended to do a musings post yesterday, but since it was a holiday Monday, I didn't get around to it. Plus, life around the ol' household has been cuh-razy lately. Of course, the pregnancy is still kinda kicking my butt. I hit the 12 week mark tomorrow (according to the last preggo calculator I looked at) which means that by NEXT Wednesday, I should officially be onto Trimester Deux, and - hopefully - feeling better. The fatigue is really getting to me, especially with work and house stuff being so overwhelming for the past several weeks.

Alright, so first the house stuff. We listed our house on May 2nd and it sold two weeks later. Which, in this market, is pretty insane. So then we were scrambling to find the right house, and luckily, we found it pretty quickly, made an offer last Friday, and came to an agreement with the builder/seller (oh yes, we got a NEW house!) on Sunday. Today we got the loan approval from the bank, so all systems are go. Plus, this week we're scheduled to have the buyers' inspection on our current house this week AND the inspection for our new place too. Whew...

Work has been super-busy too. I've been assigned to a pretty big project with NO time to do it. Yay! Corporate America is the best! It's been quite a brain-drain, I gotta say. It's been a good challenge, but my brain doesn't really need a challenge right now beyond the whole pregnancy dealio. I'll be glad when vacation rolls around in a few weeks because I definitely need it.

So let's see: new house, upcoming vacation/brother-in-law's wedding, growing the baby, moving into new house, etc...June is gonna be a busy month. But busy for good reasons, so I can't really complain too much.

Monday Musings, No. 1, Vol. 12

I'm watching this show on Food Network called Unwrapped. I really like this show because I'm always fascinated about how stuff is made, and since I like food, learning how food is made is pretty much awesome, as far as I'm concerned. However, tonight they're showing how relish is made and um, mass amounts of relish slogging along a conveyor belt is NOT appetizing. Blech. Musing should clear the imagery...

I'm glad we have no plans for Memorial Day weekend. Usually we have to drive to BFE, Washington to camp with the in-laws, which is fun, but the drive always takes too damn long.
Counting your pregnancy weeks confuses the shit outta me. I mean, my brain's already working at roughly 34% capacity because of the hormones. Can't the pregnancy books, and websites, and doctors' offices, etc just agree on ONE way of counting? All I know is that I'm due on December 9th, which means my 2nd trimester is just around the corner. And I cannot wait.
Our house is still not sold. I just want one reasonable offer before the end of the month. Just one. I don't ask for much.
Tonight's random craving: Tuna melt. With (shudder) american cheese.
Getting supes excited for Boston. I bought cute 'walking' shoes at the Columbia employee store this weekend and have already started breaking them in.
I'm really surprised that D.Stern allowed the Celtics to lose their Game 7 - at home. The old guy's switching it up on me.
Our realtor let us bring our loveseat back into the house after our open house this weekend. Finally.
I miss wine. On our way back from the casino this weekend, we stopped at a few wineries and the husband got to taste all sorts of delicious varietals. I got to smell them. Fun fact: now that I have the scenting ability of a bloodhound, the different aromas in wine are really clear to me, yet I can't drink any. Ah, irony.
Gossip Girl season finale tonight. Squee!
Speaking of finales, I did like The Office season finale. Yes, I'm worried that the JAM pregnancy storyline will be um, mishandled by the writers, but I hope not. It could actually be fun and not a giant cliche.
I am so excited for the new John Krasinski/Maya Rudolph movie, Away We Go. Only two weeks until its release. And Sam Mendes directed it, so it has to be awesome.
My SUV needs an oil change.
Less than a month until I'm a bridesmaid in my brother-in-law's wedding. In which I wear a very light pink dress. I need to start tanning like, two weeks ago.

Monday Musing...special edition

So here it is: the rough size of the embrytus (embryo + fetus) that is currently residing in my body.

Some sites compare the 9-weeker to other fruits or veggies, but I like the olive imagery, because it reminds me of martinis. I miss booze.

There are a few of you readers who already know about the wee babe, but several of you are just now finding out. When did I find out? How about on April Fools Day...no joke. The husband didn't even find out right away, because he was traveling for work at the time. So I had to wait until a couple of days later, when he came home for the weekend, to tell him. Also please note: It is VERY possible to get pregnant on your first try off the Pill. VERY possible.

Fast forward to May 1st, our initial prenatal appointment. I had them do an ultrasound to confirm that everything was a-okay with the baby because frankly, after the year I've had, I didn't want to have to wait for bad news if some was pending. But all is well with the babe - it has a nice strong heartbeat and is growing right on schedule for my December 9 due date.

I'm probably going to post quite a bit about my pregnancy now that I'm "out", but I'll try not to turn this into a preggos-only type of blog. And since my brain is absolutely mush already, my Musings might even become more entertaining! For example, today I was trying to look through a data model at work and couldn't figure out why the person who made it didn't attach a table to one of the lines on it...turns out they did. I just didn't see the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the window indicating a table was just off to the right. Sigh...

Also, I haven't told my co-workers about the bambino yet, so mentions of the baby on Facebook are verboten until further notice on this here blog. It's close to lunch time now, so me and the olive are gonna hit the road and grub up.

Monday Musings, No. 1. Vol. 11

Now that the basketball season is over (well, for us Blazers fans it is), I have a lot more free time on my hands. Oh wait...no, I do NOT, because now we are in full house-selling mode. Allegedly, homes in our area, in our asking price range, are selling in 30-45 days on average. Holy crap. If we sell our house in a month, we are scuh-rewwwwed. I mean, yes, it would be nice to sell it and be done living in a goddamn showcase - which I'm already tired of, three days in - but we don't exactly have our next dwelling selected yet. Oh well, let's muse...

Time to put the Blazers gear away for the summer. 25 weeks until the 2009-2010 season kicks off. Booyah.
I found the itinerary for our high school reunion today. Feel free to check this site out: www.lewiston1999.com. Note that for the dinner, which they are asking us to shell out $75/couple for crappy Lewiston hotel food, there are NO free adult beverages. Come on. I emailed the reunion chairperson about this, because frankly, that's a shitty idea.
Speaking of, I am really excited for summer to arrive. I normally like May, but so far the weather's been all jank here.
I like drinking earl grey tea at work sometimes, because after I throw away the teabag (heh heh, I said 'teabag'), it makes my office smell good all day. Like a classy English teahouse.
I love Cheez-Its.
Tonight is a new Gossip Girl and I'm excited. But not as excited as I am for the prom episode next week. I'm a dork.
Maddie and Boris are NOT pleased about living in a staged house either. They don't get to lay on the couch anymore.
I'm still worried about the fancy warranty we bought for my Pontiac SUV. I hope they still honor it, since I've got about 5 years left on the thing.
When Sergio and Channing leave, I'll probably have to box up their bobbleheads, which is gonna be a sad day. I don't have a Travis Outlaw bobble...which is just as well.
People are snippy at ye olde workplace today. I've heard more bitching since lunch than I usually here in a whole week. Yikes.
Just over a month until our Boston trip. I've been researching stuff that's within walking distance of our hotel, and realized almost everything in Boston proper IS within walking distance. I think this is gonna be a good trip.

Monday Musings - No. 1, Vol. 10

No Musings because the only thing that matters today is the Uprise. Rip City! Go Blazers!

Email Server Down = Blogging

I didn't do a musings post yesterday because I forgot. This is a common theme in my life. I forget a lot of things. For example, I went to Target last night to get a prescription, some cleaning supplies, and poop bags for the dog piles. I remembered everything...except the poo bags. Frick. I need to make lists.

But I can muse away until our Outlook server gets fixed at work...

My fellow nerds and I get free fruit at work. It's organic and all that good stuff, but the fruit is rarely ripe enough for human consumption. I shouldn't complain because, well, free is free. But still. An underripe pear tastes awful.
The house is going to market soon. Like, in a week or so. Holy crap.
Chace Crawford's man-bangs looked especially bangy on last night's Gossip Girl. He's too pretty.
I've been obsessed with eating Sun Chips lately. Perhaps there's a correlation between SUN Chips and actually having SUN in the sky around here. I don't know.
Speaking of the sun, Maddie (the puggle) loves her some sunbeams. I mean, she loves sunbeams like nobody's business. If Boris - or anyone, really - gets in that sunbeam where she's lazing about, she gets really pissy.
The Blazers will win tonight. They will. They have to.
I realize I still haven't written a post about my Jeopardy! experience. Maybe closer to July 1st I will.
Less than two months until Boston. Heck yes. Buuuut, here's something bizarre: We are staying at the Marriott Copley Square, which is where the Craigslist Killer murdered one of his victims. Is it gauche to call the front desk and ask them to NOT put us on the floor where she was killed?
The server is back up and functional. Time to work.

LiLo Needs A Date

I love celebrity gossip. I enjoy reading about these crazy trainwrecks who make mistake after mistake...only to go to rehab, then make the same mistakes again. My favorite trainwreck is Lindsay Lohan. This chick is Crazy...yes, with a capital C. On one of my favorite gossip sites, LaineyGossip, I came across an amazing video posted yesterday from Funny or Die.

The Lohan eHarmony ad. It's magnificent.

Columbine

I know, the title of this post, especially if you were a high school senior on April 20, 1999, like I was, is a downer. Nearly ten years ago, I came home from school and watched hours upon hours of news coverage of the shooting at Columbine High School. My dad and I were transfixed - I'm sure he was scared that something like this could happen to his own high school senior, but I was scared for a different reason. I didn't think it would happen to me or my class, but I worried for a long time that it would happen again, somewhere, but would be much worse. I couldn't help but think, This is just the beginning.

During our drive to Lewiston on Saturday morning, I was perusing a recent edition of Newsweek on my Kindle, and saw a review of a new book, Columbine, written by Dave Cullen, and decided to download it. (Side note: we were driving past Boardman, OR when I came across this review and decided to get the book. Two minutes later, it was downloaded to my Kindle and ready to go. I LOVE my Kindle.) Cullen spent the last ten years working on this book, and his work has paid off tremendously. He doesn't shy away from the gory details or from the mindsets of the killers and he's very candid about the mistakes he and the rest of the media made in the aftermath of the shootings, when statements from traumatized teenagers were spun into "true" legends disseminated for a public that was so eager to understand why? The law enforcement teams are also called on the carpet by Cullen, most notably for not revealing the lack of interest that some detectives had in earlier violent incidents committed by Eric Harris, the massacre's mastermind.

The book is incredibly moving, meticulously researched, and unflinching in its analysis of a town forever changed by the shootings. While the students proved to be surprisingly resilient in the face of such atrocities, the parents and school administrators' post-shooting lives paint a much different story. One of the survivor's mothers killed herself shortly after her paralyzed daughter started physical therapy. Several sets of parents and teachers ended up divorcing. Cullen shows us how the wounds never healed for so many, yet stories like that of Patrick Ireland, who was severly injured after being shot in the head but who fought his way back to nearly-full use of his limbs and cognitive functions, are beyond inspiring.

Cullen's Columbine is a powerful book. For those of you who remember watching it all unfold on TV, remember the stories of the "Trenchcoat Mafia", remember all the rumors of jocks being targeted by sullen outcasts with no friends, READ this. It debunks so many of the Columbine attack myths and paints a much more frightening, tragic and real picture of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and what really led them to kill 12 of their classmates, a beloved teacher, and finally themselves.

Monday Musings, No. 1 Vol. 9

Springtime abounds here in the Portland area and I am thrilled. Sad too, because according to the most recent forecast, the rains will return in a few short days. But hey, I'm enjoying the nice weather while I can - even if that means working from my patio or deck if need be. Musings filled with sunshine...

I love when Bravo shows Serendipity three or four times in a day. It's one of those movies that I guess I should own, but I just don't.
The containers of pre-cut fruit at Whole Foods (or, if you are my friend Adrea, Whole Paycheck...love that name) are a great idea. Especially if you are only trying to feed yourself.
Staging our house is a lot of work. But not as much as I anticipated. Yet.
The usual place where I take the dogs for their big-time grooms is being forced to find a new location. I am sad about this, however, they are holding a big sale so I need to try and get the pooches some new collars for a lovely discount.
I am so excited that the Blazers are in the playoffs. It's unfortunate they couldn't bother to play like a playoff team against Houston last night, though.
I can't wait to get some new capris for the spring and summer. I love capris.
The husband just realized that ShamWow Vince is also Slap Chop Vince. He needs to watch more TV.
On TLC, they keep showing those "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" shows. I refuse to believe a woman can be that clueless to NOT know. Babies move around in utero...shoot, my best friend's second kid nearly turned her abdomen into a horror flick with all his kicking and what not. Seriously: How can you NOT know?
I love Easter. Holy week is pretty depressing, but I do love me some Easter. And to spend it with my family this year will be great. Bittersweet, but great.
I cannot wait for our Boston trip. Just a little over two months to go...
I'm not doing so well on getting through my 2009 Book List. I need to pick up the pace.
Again, the Blazers are in the playoffs and I will be at every home game - RIP CITY!

Slacking off...

Yep, that's me. Slacking off this week. I'm going to go ahead and blame mental exhaustion from Jeopardy! last week, even though I know that excuse is already way old.

Tomorrow I plan to write a lengthy and probably semi-boring post about what it's like to be on the show. I am ONLY writing about my initial feelings. I can't give away how I did - and yes, the producers can and will find me and my little blog too - or I will not get my money. And nothing gets in the way of me and my stacks, yo.

I thought all day yesterday about April Fools' Day pranks and came up with nothing. My best prank of all time though was in 2001, when I called my stepmom from school and told her, through my surprisingly effective fake tears, that my sorority's charter had been revoked and we were all being told to leave the house immediately. I was going on and on: Where would I live? How would I afford it? Could I move home if I needed to? Bless her heart, my stepmom bought it hook, line and sinker, until I cracked up and told her "April Fools!" Yeah, she didn't sound overly impressed, but I know she was. I've always been a horrible liar but I finally got her.