Sunday, February 17, 2008

'Normal' Week

One of the drawbacks to a post-a-week promise is that some weeks...well, some weeks defy normal description. Here are the odds and ends from this week:

Tuesday night we had movie night - this week we were (very belatedly) celebrating Doug's birthday and as such, he got to choose the movie. Therefore, we got to watch the esteemed Hensen classic, "The Dark Crystal". I'm sure we've ruined another priceless childhood memory by rewatching a movie that was chosen because it "was one of my favorites". Kids movies (or movies you loved as a kid) don't always stand up to time. We did have the most fantastic meatloaf with it though (affectionately being called, Dark Crystal Meatloaf). Maybe I'll post the recipe later.

In addition, Tuesday was Darwin Day! For those that aren't married to a paleontologist or evolutionary biologist, Darwin Day is the celebration of Charles Darwin's Birthday. (Feb 12, for those keeping count). In celebration, Sarah made flying spaghetti monster treats. Note the edible googly eyes. Super cool.



For a primer on why a flying spaghetti monster is a Darwin Day appropriate treat see the Wikipedia article here, it'll describe it far better than I. And if you want to make flying spaghetti monster treats all your own, the geniuses at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories were the ones that came up with the recipe.

On Thursday we celebrated Valentine's Day in splendid fashion - we did laundry. Yep, our romantic evening was spent toting laundry back and forth from the laundry room.

Now, to be fair, this probably deserves a post all it's own, but the long and short of it is that on Friday we discovered that due to a clerical error at the DMV, our plates came up surrendered, a fact explained to us by the very nice cop who pulled Justin over and confiscated our plates. Not fun. Now we expect to have quite the adventure trying to get it all straightened out and getting new plates for our car.

Right now, we're just lucky to have a backup vehicle (THANK YOU GRANDPA) otherwise we would be totally up the river. Go figure it happened on the President's Day Weekend so we can't even start to straighten it out until Tuesday morning.

Oh, and we found a fantastic buffalo wing place. If you are a buffalo wing afficionado and are lucky enough to find a Buffalo Wild Wings Bar and Grill, I highly recommend stopping in. Both the baby and I survived our test drive of the hottest wing sauce on the menu, but OH MY was it hot. I did only eat one.

The weekend was spent running errands, and relaxing at home. I spent the whole day today playing in the kitchen - made coffee cake, banana bread, chicken soup with dumplings and Valentine's Day cookies which we spent all evening decorating. I love decorating cookies.



As you can see, a strange week. Funny thing is, looking back on it, other than the ridiculous car problem, it was a pretty average week for us. Guess strange is just the norm around here.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

23 Weeks

Just yesterday I posted - well, you get another today. Don't get too used to it. Lot's of neat things happened in the last 24 hours.

First, Justin and I celebrated Valentine's day a bit early, since last night was a performance of the Flying Karamazov Brothers at Stony Brook's Arts Center. It's been too long since we've gotten into the theatre, and even longer since we've gotten to enjoy a great juggling performance. As a matter of interest, it seems that we got to observe the last performance of the last of the original Flying Karamazov Brothers. A neat historic event.

Since we were going out, we dressed up (a bit) and I thought I'd treat you all to a current picture of me and my stomach. As you can see, I'm starting to really get 'big'. I cannot imagine how much more I have to go.

Finally, I received a postcard from ANTARCTICA yesterday! Turns out, one of my dearest friends from Pitt is currently residing in Antartica, working as a IT guy for the science base. Cool stuff. If you want some cool photos (and a very detailed blog about his experiences in Antarctica check out his blog here. Some really neat stuff there. Not every day you get a postcard from Antarctica.

It was a banner Saturday.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Funny Story

So, most of you know I knit. Having a baby on the way is exciting because it means lots of little instant gratification projects with the added bonus that they are constant reminders of the baby-to-be.

As soon as I knew it was a boy, I hit my favorite online knitting suppliers. I bought a book of baby patterns that had a few really great little boy patterns in them, and the yarn for my first project. I, of course, started knitting the first one the day it came the door.

In this case, it's a vest - made in a cotton blend - for the little one. I have knit the back completely:


And I started the front last weekend, roughly Sunday morning (in front of the pregame show for the Superbowl, and straight through the evening's festivities) So far I'm here:


This morning, I sat down to work on it some more. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with knitting, how long something becomes is dependent on two things, how many rows you knit, and how much length each of those stitches takes up, known as gauge. So, for this project, when I knit the back, I counted very carefully how many rows I had to the bottom of the armhole to make the length I wanted, and then when I knit the front, I simply knit that many rows again.

Only I knit the front, *During The Superbowl*.

I was tense during the whole game. So I pulled the yarn tighter. So the rows took up less length...

Yep, you got it, this morning I was a few inches from finished at the top and realized that the pieces looked different.



All because of the darned Superbowl.

I don't plan on fixing it. It's a small enough difference that when I put it together it should come out ok. But it is funny.

At least to me.

Monday, February 4, 2008

What this post was supposed to be.

For the last few days, I've been thinking...'what goes in the blog this week?' I mean, it's not every week we get sono pictures, or even so much as a doctor's visit. This week was fairly run of the mill, with a fun movie night to celebrate a friend's birthday and a lazy weekend. However, it was going to end with the Superbowl. So I thought to myself that I would wait until today to post a celebratory "We won the Superbowl!" kind of post. You know, it never even dawned on me that I might be a bit disappointed today. Alas.

As a result, Jus and I are kinda down. Ever tried to mourn your team's loss in the heart of the victor's territory? Yeah, it's been that kind of day. Even the dog is having a hard time of it - since she A) didn't understand why we were screaming at the tv during the fourth quarter last night and B) doesn't understand why we are less than happy go lucky today. She has been doing her best to be cute though.



I just keep telling myself that it's only 12 days until pitchers and catchers report for spring training. We can't really expect to be reigning champions in all sports every year, can we?