A Very Special Thanksgiving Episode

Actually, there is very little, if any, Thanksgiving content here, but I am typing this up on Thanksgiving, and I couldn't come up with a better title.

Last warning: Baby 2K7's gender will be mentioned from time to time on this blog. I have no idea if there's anybody out there that wants to be kept in the dark on that, but I warning you anyway. I hope everybody wants to know - I don't want to lose any readers!

Anyway, as mentioned earlier this week, there was a sonogram on Monday. The big news from that was announced on Monday's post (hint: pink dresses aplenty in Baby 2K7's future!) Here's a breakdown of the rest:

• No insurance problems at all this time!


• We saw the heart. All four chambers: present and accounted for! And working!


• Kidneys: Also present and lookin' fine!


• Brain: Yup! Lookin' good!


• Cheeks (facial, not bottom): The doctor himself said they look good!


• Umbilical cord - stomach: Perfect working order!


• Nasal Bone: Totally uncommented on! But it still looked A-OK from where we were sitting!


• Limbs: Two arms, two legs - all good!


• Spinal cord: Top half looks good! Little Miss Uncooperative 2K7 wouldn't let them get a good look at the the bottom half.

Because of that last part, M has to go back in two weeks to try another look at the lower spinal cord.

A lot of people had been predicting a boy. My dad was very surprised she isn't going to be a boy. Boys tend to run in the family. I mean that both ways, actually. The babies tend to be boys, and they tend to grow up to run track.

Other random stuff:

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The following exchange between my nephews was heard over the monitor one recent night (names have been changed for privacy reasons):

T-Dawg: J-Bird, get in bed!
J-Bird: I am in bed!
T-Dawg: J-Bird, get in your own bed!

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While shopping for some graham crackers and butter at a local convenience store, I noticed a sign in the parking lot saying "Customers Only. Violators Will Be Towed". Someone had put smiley-face stickers in every "O" on the sign. Nothing tones down a harsh warning like a smiley-face!

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Lately, we'd been hearing a thump whenever the heater in the house stopped. We weren't sure if this was a bad thing, so we let the landlady know, and she had us call in the company that set up the HVAC a few years back. A tech came and checked out the equipment and found nothing wrong. But the thump happened while he was still there, and he immediately identified it as the condensor pump kicking in. The reason why we were just noticing the noise now was because it had been kicking in a lot more often since I set the humidity control to the maximum a few weeks ago (decreases dry skin on my hands, don't'cha know). The fact that we were hearing it when the heat was shutting down was pretty much coincidental. Dialing it down a little solved the problem. The cost to my landlady for this informational visit was about $110.

Baby 2K7's Gender Revealed!

We had another sonogram today, and a certain somebody was cooperative enough to be positioned in a way that we could see if there's a boy or a girl in there.

I know that there are people that are pretty adamant about waiting until their babies are born to find out, but, being as I'm not one of those people, I have no idea if that desire to be surprised extends to knowing the sex of other people's kids ahead of time. So I'm just letting you all know that the answer will be revealed in the first sentence of the following paragraph. And I'll probably start referring to Baby 2K7 as either "him" or "her" and start using words like "son" or "daughter" after this post. Also, people who do want to find out are welcome to comment on the results in the Comments section. Just wanted to warn anybody who might need that warning. I'm all about being considerate to my readers.

They're not allowed to say with 100% certainty, but both the sonogram tech and doctor said that we're having a baby girl. The tech said it was 90% certain. The doctor said it was 95% certain. But considering the way they both talked about it, I think both numbers meant "100%, but we can't say that."

A sonogram picture and details from our doctor visit will be coming later today or tomorrow! For now, I gotta get back to work. If I can get my projects done today, I can take Tuesday and Wednesday off! Cha-ching!

A More Proper Introduction to the Blog Changes

I do believe I promised a more proper introduction to the new and improved blog, so here you go. I took a Dinosaur Comics template (available in the Reader Art section of that website) and put in my own dialogue. I tried to get as close to the usual style as possible. You'll probably have to click on it to see it better.

Baby 2K7 - Still A-OK!

M went in for her monthly checkup, and everything still looks tip-top! She heard the heartbeat again, so we know that he/she's still in there and hasn't skipped town to Aculpoco.

M also got some blood drawn to test for spinal bifida. Results TBA!

The insurance declined to cover the bloodwork from the nuchal translucency. Our insurance liason at the OB/GYN office was notified, and she's on the case!

A New Look for Self-Indulgent Ramblings

As you all may have noticed, the blog looks a little different now. I switched over to the beta version of the soon-to-be new-and-improved Blogger. I did it for the ability to assign labels to my posts. I am now in the process of applying labels (or, categories) to all of my previous posts.

A more proper introduction is forthcoming (hint: it involves extinct creatures).

iTunes and Dinosaurs

I've been remiss in adding a link to my new favorite webcomic, Dinosaur Comics. It basically involves intellectual discussion (more or less), delivered by clipart dinosaurs. One of the catchier aspects is that, while the dialogue changes, the visuals never, ever change. It's the same 6 panels with the same clipart everyday(with the occasional missed day). Someone once made a movie out of the first 1000 comics, showing 24 comics per second. The dinosaurs never moved.

Here are a few of my favorite strips:

http://www.qwantz.com/index.pl?comic=451
http://www.qwantz.com/index.pl?comic=400 (This one may or may not appeal to my book writing colleagues)
http://www.qwantz.com/index.pl?comic=409
http://www.qwantz.com/index.pl?comic=856

Also, here is a review of Dinosaur Comics, in Dinosaur Comics format (you can click on it to get a bigger version):



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A while back, I mentioned a certain Senator I despise. You all will be happy to know that this still-not-identified-here Senator is now soon to be a former Senator, thanks to Tuesday's election. He's one of the ones that got to bed at a reasonable hour because he was able to get his concession speech done and out of the way early. I was very excited to hear the news of his defeat. I'm sure his successor supports autism research just as much, only without the so-far-right-it's-almost-back-around-to-the-left viewpoints on other issues.

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And now, here comes the music!

1. "New Moon On Monday" - Duran Duran
2. "Bringin' On The Heartbreak" - Def Leppard
3. "Mixed Emotions" - The Rolling Stones
4. "What's The Frequency Kenneth?" - REM
5. "Do You Love Me Now?" - The Breeders
6. "Take The Skinheads Bowling" - Camper Van Beethoven
7. "Road To Nowhere" - Talking Heads
8. "Ashes To Ashes" - David Bowie
9. "Loneliness Is Worse" - Veruca Salt
10. "We Got The Beat" - The Go-Go's
11. "Falls On Me" - Fuel
12. "It's True That We Love One Another" - The White Stripes (with Holly Golightly)
13. "Rock n Roll All Nite" - KISS
14. "Only You" - Yaz
15. "Nothing But Flowers" - Talking Heads
16. "Lay All Your Love On Me" - ABBA
17. "Never Here" - Elastica
18. "I Got You" - Split Enz
19. "Too Late For Love" - Def Leppard
20. "Phantom Bride" - Erasure
21. "Awesome" - Veruca Salt

* I've always assumed that "Loneliness Is Worse" was actually titled "Happy With Me", since the meat of the chorus is "Don't you want to be / happy with me". I never actually looked up the name of the song until it came time for me to put it in this list, and I looked at the iTunes playlist to make sure I had it right. "Awesome", on the other hand, was titled exactly the way I would have expected.

* Wow, not only did I get a bunch of repeats from last week, but I ended up getting double shots of Talking Heads AND Def Leppard AND Veruca Salt. Some randomization.

Color Me Inaccurate (and a SDG Fan)

Last Friday, I grudgingly predicted that Ehrlich and Steele would win the Governor and Senate races, respectively. I also meant to further predict that even if they didn't win, it would be a close race that would take days to work out, but I forgot to actually post that.

I ended up being wrong with both predictions (all four predictions, if you want to count Ehrlich and Steele separately in both predictions). Hooray!

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As you may have noticed in the comments for the previous post, I had an anonymous visitor who was looking for bloggers that had something nice to say about the movie The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang. By virtue of my having mentioned it praisingly during the Maryland Film Festival post, I was such a blogger. She asked that I sign a petition to get the movie a theatrical release (so far, it's pretty much just been seen at film festivals). The distributor is considering just going straight-to-DVD, which really would be a shame. She also asked me to ask my friends to sign the petition too.

As it so happens, I already signed that petition a few weeks ago, but I'm posting the link here if any of you would like to sign it too.

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/SDGinTheaters

It really is a good movie. It kinda perplexes me that Napoleon Dynamite, a similar, but inferior, movie, gets to become famous, while SDG languishes in limbo, seen only by those lucky enough to have a film festival happening near them.

I also finally got around to making my MySpace page so I could add the Sasquatch Dumpling Gang MySpace page as a Friend. Hope it helped!

You can see the SDG MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/thesasquatchdumplinggang, if you are so inclined.

By the way, I liked Napoleon Dynamite just fine, and I own the Special Edition DVD. I just think that Sasquatch Dumpling Gang was better.

PoMoOftMo

November is apparently a big month for writing. You've got National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), wherein one must write a novel between November 1 and November 30 (my colleague at Focused or Distracted? is doing that). Then you have National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), wherein one must post to their blog at least once a day. My colleague at Chicken Butt wanted to do this but missed the deadline and wanted to participate in something, so she invented Minimize Blog Navel Gazing Month (MiBloNaGaMo), wherein one "will stifle the impulses to ponder the minutia of [one's] life."

Since I also missed the deadline for NaBloPoMo, and I want to participate in something too, I've decided to invent Post More Often Month (PoMoOftMo). This is my way of getting out of the every-one-to-four-weeks posting schedule I've been keeping, while still posting infrequently enough to keep my occasional readers from having to catch up too much. I'll try to post every three days or so this month, and maybe even beyond this month.

I considered doing MiBloNaGaMo too, but I decided that it would conflict with the whole "Self-Indulgent" Thing.

The Triumphant Return of iTunes Friday

Just some random thoughts today. And an iTunes list.

I don't think I've mentioned it, but we have another sonogram coming up on the 20th. We should find out whether we're having a boy or a girl then, assuming Baby 2k7 is positioned right. If we find out, I'll be sure to let you all know. In case anyone wants to wait until April to find out, I'll be sure to put a big spoiler warning around the headline.

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I found out yesterday that two characters from Heroes have their own MySpace pages. I like Heroes (a lot), and I don't have a problem with fictional characters from that show having MySpace pages like they're actual people. What's strange is the real-live people who ask to be added to the Friends List, thank the fictional character for adding them, and then post messages to them like "Hey Claire, I don't think those were really your biological parents". First of all: a-duh, of course they weren't really her biological parents, and second of all: she's fictional - I don't think she's gonna read your comment and say "gee, maybe someone was lying to me!"

I know, it's just people getting into the moment. That's fine. Hope they enjoy themselves. It just struck me as being a bit odd.

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I installed both IE7 and Firefox 2 yesterday. So far, I've found both to be improvements over IE 6 and Firefox 1.5. I also installed an extension for Firefox that allows me to see coding that remained unattainable to me before, such as external CSS files. Plus, I could toggle all kinds of tags on and off right there on the page, rather than having to muck through the HTML code in View Source. I was nearly brought to tears as I tried out all the wonders of this extension.

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This is getting a bit too geeky, so I'm going to bring it back a little more towards the mainstream and talk a little about politics - a rarity for this blog, let me assure you.

Steele's going to win the Senate race, and Ehrlich is going to get re-elected for Governor. I don't like it, but that's what I see happening. Don't let the Presidential election returns fool you - Maryland is a red state with a bluish-purple streak on the west side of the Bay.

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And now, as promised, the return of iTunes Friday. There are many new visitors to the blog (so I'm told), so here are the rules: 10 songs, no skipping, no apologizing for questionable taste. I don't follow those rules. I do 21 songs and skip if I'm really not in the mood to hear something. I do follow the "no apologies" rule, mostly.

In the past I've run into problems with the same band coming up two or even three times, but that now may be a thing of the past. I found a setting in iTunes that decreases the odds of that happening. We'll see how it goes.

1. "Volcano Girls" - Veruca Salt
2. "We're Not Gonna Take It" - Twisted Sister
3. "Since U Been Gone" - Kelly Clarkson
4. "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" - Lemon Demon
5. "Only You" - Yaz
6. "Halah" - Mazzy Star
7. "If I Wasn't Shy" - They Might Be Giants
8. "La Isla Bonita" - Madonna
9. "And We Danced" - The Hooters
10. "I Know There's Something Going On" - Frida
11. "Girls On Film" - Duran Duran
12. "Wild Wild Life" - The Talking Heads
13. "Wild World" - Maxi Priest
14. "I Got You" - Split Enz
15. "I Will Remember You" - Amy Grant
16. "This Town" - The Go-Go's
17. "It's True That We Love One Another" - The White Stripes (with Holly Golightly)
18. "Are You Happy Now?" - Michelle Branch
19. "Kiss Them For Me" - Siouxsie and The Banshees
20. "The Reflex" - Duran Duran
21. "Big Bang Baby" - Stone Temple Pilots

* Looks like the new shuffle setting worked pretty well! I did get a double dose of Duran Duran, but I guess that's to be expected since they have a double name.

* If you had told me that the day would come that I would be drumming on my desk to a Kelly Clarkson song, I would have called you mad and alerted the mental health authorities without delay. But that day has indeed come, as I was doing exactly that during "Since U Been Gone".

* I used to think, in "La Isla Bonita", that the line was "Last night I dreamt of some Pedro", like it was short for "some guy named Pedro" or something. It's actually "San Pedro". That makes more sense.

* While we're on the subject of mis-heard lyrics, I also thought, in "And We Danced", that the line was "...as the band played 'Attitude'", like there was a song named "Attitude" that I hadn't heard of but was famous enough to get referenced in a Hooters song. It's actually "...the band played out of tune".