Cartoon Links!

Some links for others, courtesy of the amusingly wonderful cartoon at xkcd.com which I recently rediscovered.

For Jen.
For Lauren.
For Melissa.
For Becca.
For Cari.
For Sarah.
For Jose.
For Bob.

Presidential

Yesterday, Melissa took Gavin and I on a behind the scenes tour of the Clinton Presidential Library. It was pretty cool. I was particularly amazed that they are expected to store all the papers from an 8 year presidential administration in one room. And it's not that huge a room. When I thought about the stacks at a presidential library, I had a room the size of the cavernous warehouse that's in Indiana Jones at the end. You know, where they store the arc. Not so much.

Tomorrow we head back to Texas. Sounds like it will rain cats and dogs most of the day, so that should be fun.

45-10

It was a fun first half. We were merry, watching A&M in a bowl game. Unfortunately, the second half wasn't much fun as Cal scored 31 unanswered points. C'est la vie.

Little Rock

We're halfway through our visit here it Little Rock. We're having a great time. Today we took the dogs on a long walk down by the river. I got pretty tired toward the end - I really need to start walking more regularly. Roxy and I were going about the same pace at the end and she's such an old lady now.

It seems like everywhere we travel these days, it ends up being a menagerie. In addition to our two dogs, Lauren and Melissa have three cats. And, they're also pet-sitting a guinea pig. Everyone is getting along OK - meaning that the cats are staying to themselves in their room and hissing when the dogs get too close. So, Roxy and Zoya have been keeping their distance and trying not to look directly at the cats when they're in close proximity. Zoya is just as or maybe more interested in the guinea pig than she was in Nick's bird. It's pretty funny.

Missing Pieces

To celebrate the end of the mission and my return to the land of the people who sleep at night, we went out to dinner tonight with Becca, Cari, and Jose. We got back home to find that Roxy had chewed one of the presents from under the tree, torn up the plastic wrappings from our gifts from Becca, and eaten the continents of Austrailia, Africa, and South America from my jigsaw puzzle. Yes, SHE ATE THEM! I kept looking around for chewed up pieces, but they were nowhere to be found.

I got my uncle's Christmas letter today, and discovered that he bought a float plane! Hmmm... Maybe I'll have to go visit ND again soon. :) Anyhow, I feel like we ought to take the baby up to see my grandmother sometime soon, since she doesn't travel too much anymore. Good excuse.

Tomorrow, we get in the car with the dogs to drive to Little Rock for Christmas. Gavin brought up the fact that my car needs an oil change pretty badly. Oh, well. I gues we're not leaving as early in the morning as I hoped.

Flying By

You know how December seems to be the shortest month of the year because of how busy things are? Yeah, double that effect for when there's a mission. I don't know where the time has gone. We're supposed to leave for Christmas in Little Rock in less than a week, and I have so much stuff to do it's sick. I finally mailed off the last of my Christmas presents today, and had to pay the "Oh, my God, Christmas is in less than a week" shipping prices. It wasn't my fault this year - really. The first Christmas present I ordered for someone was the last one to get to me.

Flying got cancelled yesterday because of the fog that's basically been around all month. I'm going to try again on New Year's Day. That will be about a month and a half since my last lesson. Sigh.

Flashback #5

December 12, 2005 9:30PM

So last I wrote, we were stoically ignoring the baby impulses. This is mostly true. However, we probably weren’t as careful as the birth control as we were before the quitting of the pills. Anyway, when I was a couple days late we felt it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that it was because I was pregnant. Turns out, no. But, it made us rethink the waiting until after Gavin finds out about California thing.

So, back to baby making.

Neurotic

You know how some people can't stand the sound of nails on a chalkboard? Well, for me it's the sound of someone handling tape. You know, the sticky sound when it peels off your fingers. It gives me the chills. Literally, I get goosebumps. It's a strange neuroticism, and I'm rather shy about telling people about it. I think Gavin and I were actually married before I fessed up.

A couple nights ago, the trainee on my shift spent most of the last hour we were there peeling a sticker off his notebook. Piece by little piece. I'm getting shivers just thinking about it now. But I didn't want to ask him to stop, because then the sticker would be half peeled off, and that offends my sense of neatness. So I waited, shuddering from time to time, while he peeled every little piece off. I internally celebrated when the last piece came off and went into the garbage.

And then he started picking at the sticky stuff that's left after you peel a sticker off. Eew eew eew eew eew eew eew!

Homelife

Oscar went home today. I think Nick and Heather were afraid that he’d have had so much fun at our place that he wouldn’t care they were home. Not to worry, he spent a solid 10 minutes crying and running back and forth between the two of them. I was consoled by the fact that he’d spent the last 20 minutes before they got there sitting at my feet with his head lying on my knee.

Afterward, I had a nap on the floor with my dogs. Roxy is great to cuddle with. I put a pillow against her rump and offered my hand to be licked. She fell asleep with her head cradled in my hand. I think they’re getting used to me leaving them at night. Just in time for Gavin to get back home later today.

I was hoping that I’d be well enough adjusted to my work schedule to go flying for a couple hours after one of my shifts this weekend. I haven’t been able to sleep shift as easily as I normally do this mission, but I think by Sunday I may be OK. I need to decide tomorrow, though, if I want to try.

Flattened

Busy couple of days. My mission shift is 1:00am to 10:00am. I'm having a harder time sleep shifting than normal. In the last three days I've had 4 hrs sleep, 4 hrs sleep, and 6 hrs sleep. Considering that I've been averaging 10 hrs a night recently, it's not so good. At least it's improving.

I decided to sleep after my shift this mission so that I could at least see Gavin in the evenings. There's only one problem - he's in Cali this week for work. So, I'm all alone all night. I took the dogs on a long walk in the fog tonight. I hope it will help them not care that I'm gone all night.

Oscar's family is coming back on Wednesday. He'll be really glad to see them, but I'll miss him. He's really a sweet dog. I'll also have to explain to Nick and Heather why the sides of his bed have been crushed flat. See, Roxy really likes Oscar's bed. She watches until he gets up and then sneaks into it. Only she's really too big for it, so she hangs out over the sides. And her nose gets pushed into the side, which makes her snore really loudly.

Ghost Baby

OK, so I know I promised these weeks ago. Here are the pictures from my last ultra-sound. That was at 12 weeks. I’m in my 15th week now, and have another doctor’s appointment in about a week, but…

This one is the cute one. See the little hand?


This one is the one Becca says makes the baby look like a ghost. Well, how good do you think you looked when your facial bones were only half formed?

Accent

Hmmm… Well, I’m definitely from the West. But, I have relatives that live in Fargo and I don’t talk like them. “About” does not rhyme with “boat”. But, they probably don’t have a category for a Wyoming accent.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central   "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The West
The Midland
Boston
The Inland North
The South
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Countdown

One of the bad parts of my job is the uncertainty in my work hours. If the Shuttle launches today, I have to come to work at 0330 tomorrow morning. If not, then I have to come in at a normal time. I know I’m going to have a harder time sleep shifting for this mission than normal, so I’m stuck with complete indecision about what to do as far as sleeping tonight. I think I’m just going to go to bed at a normal time and call it a ‘nap’ if we launch.

Weather is really bad for the rest of the weekend, so let’s hope that we find a break in the storms tonight.

A Says 'a'

Tracy's post about Eva reminded me of something cute Caroline was doing when we were in Wyoming this time. She has this set of refrigerator magnets with the alphabet on them. When you place a magnetic letter on the main magnet and press it, it sings a song with the letter sound. Caroline isn’t playing with the magnets too much anymore, but she liked to sing the song at the dinner table.

"The A says 'a',
The A says 'a',
Every letter makes a sound
And A says --"

At the end she’d open her mouth in the shape of an 'a', but no noise would come out. Then she’d look across the table at you, raise her eyebrows, and smile as if to say "I know what it says, do you?"

Name that Formula

I'm having fun the last couple days springing my pregnancy on people at work. I'm kind of doing at random - just whenever I see people. It's pretty fun. I'm still waiting for my boss to redo the flight schedule so I can tell the lead Flight Director he's getting a new FDO. That's the only one I'm still "nervous" about. I'm not really nervous, either; I just want him to hear it first from me.

During our holiday luncheon today, I revealed the apparently suprising fact that Gavin and I have a Baby Names spreadsheet. I thought that this was perfectly logical, us being engineers and all. However, it seems that even my engineer friends thought that we weren't geeky enough to put the selection of the name of our first offspring into a formula. Of course, the first thing they wanted to know was not what the names were or who liked what, but what's the formula. So here it is, the Fabulous Mendeck Baby Naming Formula...

-- -- ^ 0.1
J + G 2005 Popularity
Points = ------- * ---------------
2 1001
-- --

where J = Jen's preference 1-5, 5 being high
G = Gavin's preference 1-5, 5 being high

Yields a score out of 5

Front runners: Elayne (4.5), Carina (4.37), Sven (4.0), Tomas (3.72)

Jeans! Glorious Jeans!

The first article of clothing you grow out of when you’re preganat is your jeans. All your jeans. For me, that happened about the end of October. That’s about a week or two before we told our first friends about the pregnancy. A month before we told the rest of the world. It’s more than a month since I’ve worn a pair of jeans.

You know what I’ve realized? Jeans are the most wonderful, useful article of clothing I own. It’s been terrible not having any to wear. I have had to wear nice pants or sweats out on the town, to the grocery store, everywhere.

About three weeks ago I started looking for some maternity jeans. Argh. Either they looked like they were sewn together with yarn, had a waist the size of Santa Clause, had legs that were skinny enough to fit a chicken, or had so much material in the thigh that I could have stuffed Zoya down there to smuggle her to work with me. Oh, and they seem to alternate between costing $20 and looking like a junior high home-ec project and costing $160, which I will not do. I have been supremely frustrated.

Yesterday, I found this little shop in League City called Mommie Chic. I went in my sweat pants because I didn’t have any other warm pants I could wear. Thank God, I found some jeans. I was so happy that I didn’t mind paying $60 for them, which is about $20 more than my usual cap on jean spending. I also found this very cute shirt that shows off my growing belly quite nicely. It was very cool to pick out an outfit that acknowledged this pregnancy.

Flashback #3 and #4

Oct 17, 2005 10:35AM

Yesterday I discovered it would be at least one more month before I can say I'm on my way to motherhood. Having "that time of the month" has never exactly been cause to celebrate, but I never would have applied the emotion disappointment to the event either. It's incredible how only two-three months on this roller coaster of impatience, anticipation, and disappointment feels like so long.


October 21, 2005 8:45PM

There’s a chance Gavin will be going to California to work at Jet Propulsion Lab for three or four months. Because of this fact, we decided to cool it on the baby making until we know for sure what the situation is going to be.

It’s hard. We waited for a long time before this, of course, but it’s harder stopping after letting myself get into that "I hope I’m pregnant this month" mindset. I’m such a lost cause, too. There are babies EVERYWHERE. They’re in the grocery store, at parties, and in the stands at baseball games. Pregnant women are all over, too. I feel like screaming "STOP GLOATING" at every smiling pregnant woman I see. I don’t, though, because I don’t want to be crazy-wishes-she-was-pregnant-lady.