Friday Fragments

Friday Fragments is brought to you by Mrs4444! You can visit her blog here.




I bought peaches and cherries at the grocery store yesterday. Hooray for summer produce! That's one of the best parts about this time of year.

They finally started playing Green Day's Last of the American Girls on the radio. It made me remember how much I loved that band. I can't believe I got my first Green Day CD 17 years ago. That's some staying power.

I wish American Idiot would come to Cincinnati. I'm freaking dying to see it. I searched for tickets to the Broadway show but there are none available while I'm out there next month. Sad :(

Today is National Donut Day! Just another great excuse for me to hit up Dunkin on the way to daycare.

I'm not a Tigers fan, but I'm still sad for that poor kid who threw a perfect game on Wednesday. I wish they would reverse the call, but I kind of understand why they won't. Either way, it's a great example of someone who is acting like an adult (Galarraga) and taking the high road rather than whining and stomping his feet about the injustices of the world. If we all acted like that, I wonder how that would look?

Even though The Office is on summer vacation there are still plenty of quotes from the reruns we enjoy watching! Back to the vaults for this one.

Angela: Kevin, you screwed this form up again. The amount owed goes at the top.
Kevin Malone: Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was doing something wrong. If I had, I would've admitted it, and stopped right away.
Angela: That's enough.
Kevin Malone: Because I wouldn't want an innocent person, who doesn't know anything about the form... [Angela puts headphones on; Kevin looks at Oscar] What?
Oscar: That was good... It's just, at the end you weren't saying something that could also apply to the form.
Kevin Malone: How about, "I'm sorry I did such a whorish job filling out this form?"
Oscar: There you go.

Our house desperately needs to be cleaned before our company comes tomorrow. I got up early to mop the floors downstairs but here I sit, blogging and catching up on my Google Reader. Oh well. There's always tonight.

Thankful Thursday

Because I have zero time for original material this week, I'm stealing a blog meme from Steph at The Adventures of Goober Grape and Monkey Man.

Thankful Thursday

1. This morning I watched the proceedings from the launch of the Community Health Data Initiative that took place in Washington, DC yesterday. Not only did it remind me of the "Lunch Party" episode of The Office, but it made me even more thankful for my new job. I'm thrilled to be a part of something great that's going to help so many people, rather than worrying about the bottom line of big companies and how they can squeeze a few extra bucks out of their customers.

It's kind of a big deal. Huffington Post said so. Lots of data coming my way, and you all know how much I love data!


2. Even though I'm so excited to be starting a new job, I have to say how thankful I am that I was able to work with such amazing people at my old job. I'm really going to miss them, and I know that some of us will still be good friends even though we're no longer co-workers.

This is us. We ooze awesomeness.

You know you're jealous of our sweet matching shirts.


3. I'm thankful for a plethora of Office reruns. Watching older episodes (like the one where someone leaves "a package" on the floor of Michael's office) gives me hope that the writers will redeem themselves and the final season will be a hilarious return to their roots. After the disappointment of last season, I have to cling to something.

4. The Dunkin Donuts down the street. After spending a few days in Alabama with no Dunkin Donuts (and no liberals, and no heathens, but that's another story), I realize just how lucky I am to have a Dunkin so close to my house where I can get my caffeine fix.

5. Woodchuck Summer Cider. After the disappointment that was the pine-sol-like Spring Cider I was a little apprehensive, but it was all worry for nothing. My friend Alison told me it was safe to try, so I picked up a 6-pack when we got back into town on Monday. Had to stop at Kroger for the necessities after being away for so long. Of course, by necessities I mean Woodchuck and beer. Can't come home to an empty fridge, especially after having a shrieking toddler in the backseat for the last 2 hours of a 9 hour road trip. The website mentions that it includes hints of New England blueberries. Just another thing I miss about living in the Northeast Corridor. Sigh.

I'll have to snap a picture of the actual bottles in my fridge later.

Busy Busy!

Excuse my recent absence from blogland, I was down south for vacation over the weekend and am now working on settling in at my new place of employment. I got my new email address today, and I'm geekily excited about having a "dot-org" extension! I'm seriously excited about this opportunity and I can't wait to really get into things. More details to come, later.

Vacation was nice, it was good to visit with my dad and grandma.



It's good to be home, but Charlie really misses the trampoline.



Hot days always put me in the mood to listen to some NKOTB. In lieu of a blog post with actual content, I'll direct to you relive two of my NKOTB memories and hope that tomorrow I'll be back in the swing of things and ready to share my P90X 90 day pictures!

NKOTB Columbus (featuring old-school NKOTB-crazed 8-year-old Jene)

NKOTB Cincinnati

Friday Fragments

Friday Fragments is brought to you by Mrs4444! You can visit her blog here.



Today is my last day at my current job. It's funny how some of your co-workers can end up being such some of your closest friends. I'm sad to be leaving such great people, but incredibly excited about what lies ahead.

I'm wearing my geek shirt proudly :)

P90X is over today! I can't believe we made it through the whole thing. Round 2 starts next week!

I went bathing suit shopping for our trip to Alabama because I needed a new basic black boyshort bottom to wear with my black top. My old one hasn't fit since pregnancy. It was a size small. What did I end up buying? A large. I know I shouldn't get hung up on the size, but I did just complete P90X and I think I'm in decent shape, maybe the best shape ever, so that gets a big WTF from me. Damn pregnancy hips.

Apparently I started some drama about my desire to do a "trash the dress" session. I'm not going into details because you never know who's reading, but just to be clear, "trashing the dress" does not mean that your marriage is a sham, or that you have marital conflict, or that you're not happy in your marriage. It's just a fun thing to do with the wine-stained gown that's been hanging in my closet for almost 5 years.

I'm not looking forward to the 9-hour roadtrip we're taking today. I'm looking forward to visiting family at the end of it, but not the actual ride down there.

Traveling with a toddler requires a lot of stuff. Charlie has his own bag. Half of it is filled with cloth diapers.

I get irrationally pissed off when I see the stories about the oil spill and the effect that it's having on marine life and the environment. I'm already regularly disgusted by the (lack of) respect that people show the earth, and this isn't helping. It makes my blood freaking boil. What is it going to take for people to get a clue?

New Addition to my Wardrobe

Our geeky shirts are here, just in time for my last day at work :)

I know you're so envious of my coolness.

The Dress

My friend is in the process of expanding his photography business, so he mentioned last week that he was looking for volunteers to do a "trash the dress" photo session. After our wedding I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the dress. I think the fact that it's still sitting in the garment bag shoved in the back of the closet and hasn't seen a ray of sunshine in almost five years is a good sign that I haven't developed much of a sentimental attachment to it, so I told him I would do it. As soon as I agreed to it I realized that I didn't even know if the dress would even fit anymore, given the, um, transformation that it went through during pregnancy. My hips will never be the same, and I have concrete evidence of that fact after bathing suit shopping yesterday (but that's a post for another time).

So Saturday night, after my disastrous attempt at mowing the lawn for some cardio exercise, I got out of the shower, looked around, and decided to try it on. I'm rather pleased to report that it still fits. Something about zipping that thing up made me feel all princessy, so I pranced around the house in my wedding gown for a good half hour, posing in front of the mirror to take pictures with my awesome camera phone.

Husband was too busy giving me the "WTF?!" face while talking to his parents on the phone to take a proper picture.

The pigtails really complete the look, don't they?

I think I want to have a wedding dress party. Get all the girls together in fancy dresses and do some martini drinking. I think that would make a lovely photo op.

Oh, picture of my flipping sweet lawn mowing job.

It's Not the Heat

I'm feeling slightly less crappy about my parenting skills now. It's nice and cool in the house, but Charlie is still refusing to sleep, so I'm chalking it up to something else. We had a pediatrician appointment for his diaper issue today and mentioned the new behavioral quirk, and at this point we're thinking it's just normal weird toddler behavior (normal weird - now that's an oxymoron if I ever saw one).

The tantrum of about 10 minutes ago was because there was a tissue in his crib. Oh, the humanity!

So I Suck...

Ok, so now I feel like a horrible parent for not having turned the air conditioning on yet :(

It really isn't that hot in the house at night, which is why I don't think we would have a problem if he didn't insist on wearing his flannel PJ pants. Even the shorts weren't an acceptable substitute.

If he would lose the pants and the blanket, it would all be good.

Thanks for making me see the light. Looks like we'll all be resting much cooler this evening.

Holy No Effing Sleep

We had an incident last night. It all started around 7:30 when we started getting ready for bed. It's been rather freaking hot here this week, up in the high 80s during the day, and we haven't turned the A/C on yet because we can survive without it we're cheap. It's not so bad in the house at night, but still warm. Toddler Charlie refuses to sleep without pajamas. Actually, he refuses to do anything without clothes on. I'm convinced it's because he's inherited my OCD (says the woman who absolutely cannot sleep without white cotton socks on), but it's probably just a toddler stubbornness issue. Anyway, the only pajama bottoms that he has are heavy flannel pants, and I didn't want him to wear them because of the heat and some diaper issues we've been battling lately. The more circulation the better, but he doesn't seem to understand that.

So we put him down in the crib (sans pants) by 7:45 and he screamed and screamed and screamed. I kept thinking that he would give up and go to bed, but he didn't. Finally, around 8:30, I went in and put his pants on. He went back to sleep.

3:20AM (two hours before my alarm goes off) I hear him starting to whine. "Feet, hot, hot, cup, up, up, FEET!" I let him whine for a few minutes, hoping he would just turn back over and go to sleep, but he didn't, and the whines turned into full-blown screaming. I went in to see what was going on and he was standing up in the crib (and you know that means a major meltdown is imminent) yelling at the door. "Hot! Feet!"

Oh, do you want me to take your socks off? "No!No!No!" Well, do you want me to take your pajamas off? "No! Hot! No!" Ok, well if you'd try sleeping out from under your blanket that might help. "NO! Kitty! Up! Up! Up!"

Then I broke the cardinal rule of night-time awakenings. I took him out of the crib. After that it was all over, and there was no way that I was getting back in my own bed peacefully. I tried sitting with him in the chair, hoping he would fall asleep, but he just kept going. Then we had to go to the bathroom to fill up his water cup, and as soon as I opened his door he bolted down the hallway. "HI! HI! Hi dad, hi kitty! HI!" So now we were all up. Husband Charlie went back to sleep, I took Mr. Sunshine back to his room, where he raced around like he had a can of red bull in his sippy. I kept trying to get him to lay down, but he would just cover me with the blanket, give me his kitty, pat my back, and run away. Every time I tried putting him in the crib he shrieked and flailed. Nice gash on my nose to prove it.

I think we're done with the crib. If he wants to get up and play at 3:30 in the morning then that's his prerogative, but I don't see why I should have to suffer because of it. What do you think? Valid solution to our problem?

P90X - in the home stretch!

We're finally in our last week of P90X! I can't believe we've made it all the way through. We'll take our 90 day pictures Friday morning. I don't know how much progress I'm going to see between my 60 day pictures and my 90 day pictures, since this last set of workouts was heavy on the pull-ups and I still can't do a single freaking one, but I'm still very happy with what I've seen so far.

We're going to take next week off while we visit family in Alabama and I get started with my new job, and then we're starting another round, P90X Classic this time, with the P90X Plus tapes mixed in to stave off the boredom. I'm also asking for Insanity for my birthday, which will be about a week after we finish Round 2. Whee!

BABIES!

I went to see this last night with a good mommy friend of mine. I bookmarked the trailer months ago and nearly forgot about it, until the big advertising push right before mother's day. I knew it wasn't something husband C would be interested in, given that there are no car crashes, twisted subplots, guns, or dialogue, and it just seemed like the kind of movie that would be more fun to see with another mom.

It was the most entertaining movie I've seen in a long time. It was fascinating to see how universal baby behaviors are - that so much overlaps from American civilization to Namibia in terms of how babies develop and how they interact with each other and with their environment. Everything was just so similar, from watching all four babies try to chew on everything in sight, watching them interact with the animals in their environments (cats are apparently very popular pets), and watching the two boys develop a fascination with a certain part of their anatomy. It starts early with them, doesn't it? And some things never change.

I laughed often because I recognized my own baby in the four featured in the film, and cried when Mari celebrated her first birthday and the others took their first steps of independence. So bittersweet to watch those milestones pass. Everyone tells you that all the time before you have a child, but it takes actually having one and living that experience to understand just how quickly time can pass.

Right now isn't the best time for us to add another family member, but this movie certainly made my uterus ache. I would say that if you have even the tiniest bit of baby fever then you should probably skip this one.

Friday Fragments

Friday Fragments is brought to you by Mrs4444! You can visit her blog here.



The awesomeness that is my Droid phone continues. It was so neat to have it while wandering around a strange city last week. A few button clicks showed me how to get back to my hotel when I had strayed too far. A few more pointed me in the direction of the nearest Dunkin Donuts.

Is it sad that when we hit the Dunkin drive-thru Charlie starts chanting "Munchkin! Munchkin!" from the back seat?

I know we're supposed to be making forward progress in terms of language development, but I'm still a little sad when he learns how to say cute words correctly. First the "shuss" disappeared when he learned how to say "shoes," and now his "fooooooooooonnnn!" and "booooooooooooonnnn!" have been replaced with "spoon" and "boom."

Speaking of "boom," he asks to read Star Wars Spaceships almost every night. I realized this week that he knows all of the sound effects that go with each page. You turn to the Imperial Star Destroyer and he's screaming "ZIP!" before you even get to the end of the ship description. Hopefully he hasn't picked up my useless-knowledge-storage-habit. Maybe if I could have replaced the random song lyrics with useful information I would have done better in history class....

I can recite a bazillion songs from memory. You would be impressed. All right stop, collaborate and listen, ice is back with a brand new invention, something grabs a hold of me tightly, flow like a harpoon daily and nightly, will it ever stop?, yo, I don't know, turn off the lights, and I glow, to the extreme I rock a mike like a vandal, light up the stage and wax a chump like a candle.

My NKOTB skills are even better, including the most obscure song that no one remembers but is freaking awesome nonetheless.



I'm for you, and you're for me, we can stay together so easily!

The Office season finale was on last night. It sucked. What a major disappointment. The best part wasn't a quote at all, it was a shot of David Wallace sitting on his front step with a "Suck It" sweatshirt. That's exactly what The Office did last night. Sucked.

I'll have to go back to last week for my QOTW.

Those lumps are cats and those cats have names!

Recipe - Chocolate Breakfast Muffins

I've had my eye on this recipe for a long time now, with no good excuse to actually make it until recently. I didn't change a single thing when following this one. The King Arthur Flour All-Purpose Baking Cookbook is my absolute favorite baking book. The King Arthur catalog is like food porn to me. This book is awesome, I think you should get it if you like to bake anything at all.



As you can probably guess, they aren't very good for you. They do make a great every-so-often treat.

These muffins are rich and tender, high-rising, and deep chocolate, both in color and flavor. Warm from the oven, spread with butter or raspberry jam, they're a totally decadent way to greet the day. We recommend them anytime you feel like treating yourself to something really special. And, by the way, they don't need to be relegated to the breakfast table; frosted with fudgy icing, they double as an awesome cupcake. A final aside–one of the King Arthur taste-tester comments we received was as follows: "This is the best chocolate thing I've ever had to eat in my whole life, and the best thing I've ever eaten here at King Arthur." Fair praise, indeed!

2/3 cup (2 ounces) Dutch-process cocoa
1 3/4 cups (7 1/4 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 1/4 cups (9 3/8 ounces) light brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon espresso powder, optional
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips
2 eggs
1 cup (8 ounces) milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons vinegar
1/2 cup (4 ounces, 1 stick) butter, melted
coarse pearl sugar, for topping (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a standard muffin pan with paper or silicone muffin cups, and grease the cups.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the cocoa, flour, sugar, baking powder, espresso powder, baking soda, salt and chocolate chips. Set aside.

In a large measuring cup or medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla and vinegar. Add the wet ingredients, along with the melted butter, to the dry ingredients, stirring to blend; there's no need to beat these muffins, just make sure everything is well-combined.

Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin tin; the cups will be heaped with batter, and the muffin will bake into a "mushroom" shape. Sprinkle with pearl sugar, if desired.

Bake the muffins for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Remove the muffins from the oven, and after 5 minutes remove them from the pan, allowing them to cool for about 15 minutes on a rack before peeling off the muffin papers or silicone cups. Yield: 12 muffins.

Nutrition information per serving (1 muffin, 101g): 335 cal, 13.8g fat, 6g protein, 18g complex carbohydrates, 28g sugar, 3g dietary fiber, 69mg cholesterol, 273mg sodium, 265mg potassium, 101RE vitamin A, 3mg iron, 108mg calcium, 117mg potassium, 18mg caffeine.

Big News

Interesting how people always jump to pregnancy when a woman says that she has something to tell you.

Not pregnant.

The big news is that I start a new job next month! I'm actually going back to social science/academic research. I told my current employer yesterday morning and they're disappointed that I'm leaving but said that I can come back if things end up not working out. It's not like I'm going to work for the competition, I'm going to work on something that I truly care about. No more figuring out the highest price that a company can charge before they start losing market share. No more calculating how much smaller a company can make their packaging and still sell it at the same price. No more work for clients whose business practices are so opposed to my moral compass. Now, if only I could get C to dump the stock we have in that one particular company....

This is a door that I thought had closed behind me for good once I sold my soul to the market research industry. I know I've bitched about this before, and "sold my soul" sounds overdramatic, but that's honestly how it felt. I cried about it for weeks.

I'm going to work with my old mentor from UC on a project that I helped him get started 6ish years ago. I was doing the bitch-work then as a graduate student, but now I'll get to be a real part of things. The project has gotten a lot bigger and is still growing, and I'm so excited to be a part of the evolution.

I'm going to miss my co-workers, though. We're a very small company and we have a really tight-knit group, so I'm sure we'll keep in touch after the fact. It's not that I don't like where I am right now, they treat us very well here, just that it will be nice to go work on something that I'm really passionate about. Something that makes a difference. I can't wait to get started!

Big Things Coming

You know that feeling you get when you're about to make a really big change in your life and you're not sure whether you're really excited or really ready to puke on someone's shoes?

That's where I am now. Hopefully the details will come later. No, I'm not pregnant.

Or, I guess it could be the slice of moldy cheese I accidentally ate last night. Lucky for Charlie that mommy sneaks pieces of his cheese while packing his lunch for the next day.

Chicago Review

So, I'm back in the 'Nati. It never gets any easier to hear the pilot welcoming us to Cincinnati. Not that it's a bad city or a bad place to live, it's just not the greatest place in the world. Oh well, it is what it is.

The whole reason for going to Chicago was to give a fancy presentation at a fancy conference for public opinion research aficionados. The slogan for this year's conference was awesome: Freqs and Geeks.

I went with my co-worker/friend/P90X coach and we had planned on buying the conference t-shirt because the slogan was just so freaking fantastic. Unfortunately they only had them in large and extra-large, so we were forced to do without. We decided to commission an Etsy artist to make us our own custom shirts because we're geeks like that. I can't wait for them to get here.

The first night we were there we ate Chicago Pizza. So much for sticking to the P90X diet while I was there. I rationalized it by pretty much not eating anything for the entire day before pizza time, which I realized was probably a mistake after we met an old friend of mine for a drink and I was feeling pretty loopy halfway through my single Blue Moon.

Of course, it rained the entire freaking afternoon on Wednesday and pretty much most of the morning on Thursday.

In between the torrential downpours we wandered through part of Chicago.

We visited the American Girl store to see how badly Mattel ruined the brand.

Lynn was sad that all of the dolls had tiny yappy dogs and there were no Whippets or larger dogs to be found. I was sad that they discontinued the Kirsten collection. We were both sad that American Girl Place features a doll beauty salon, where you can get the doll's hair styled for the low, low price of $20.

We ate leftover pizza for lunch and then gave our super awesome presentation. It went pretty well, if I do say so myself. I think it was well-received, even though most of our audience leaned heavily toward the academic side of things and wouldn't know a web panel if it bit them on the ass.

After the presentation we did Core Synergistics. Yes, I did my P90X while I was out of town. Tony would be proud.

Of course when Friday morning came around it was bright and sunny, since that was the day we were leaving.

This was how sunny it was at 5:30 AM Chicago time. I love it!

Sure looks different in the sunlight.

This is quite possibly the cleanest city waterway I've ever seen in my life.

Yum!

All in all, it was a nice 48 hours. I wish we had more time to spend there, since we really didn't get to do or see anything fun. I told C that we'd definitely be making a weekend trip at some point. I'd drive up there just for the pizza.

Oh, and you know how sometimes you come back from a trip and you get to work and there's a list a mile freaking long of things that you need to do as soon as you get back? Yeah, that kind of sucks, doesn't it?

Chicago!

In about an hour I'll be headed to the airport to spend 48 hours in Chicago! I've never been there before. When you're growing up that close to NYC you don't really need to go anywhere else, so when I think city I think New York.

Since I have a million things to finish up before I leave my office, I'm going to send you to check out one of my new favorite blogs instead of writing a new post.

The blog is called Alabaster Cow, and it's written by Ericka and she's got a super cute daughter named Ava. She's sarcastic and witty and an excellent writer, and I never leave her blog without a laugh. You feel like you're actually inside her head, and (un?)fortunately for me, the surroundings seem rather familiar. Start here with her Letter to Whole Foods, and then go back to the beginning and read everything else.



If you're really hurting for blog-reading, here's a flashback post from my pregnancy days. Part of the Donut Day Saga.

Things You Want - Yo Gabba Gabba! Edition

Things You Want Wednesday is on Tuesday, because I'll be out of town at a super-awesome-conference in Chicago tomorrow. Whee!

In an effort to find something to watch at 6:00 on Saturday mornings that ISN'T Star Wars, I DVRed a few episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba!, hoping that it would buy me 20 minutes or so to actually wake up and become a functioning adult. Also hoping that it would distract Charlie from his cheddar bunnies in the pantry. Because nothing says "breakfast!" like 30 white cheddar crackers, and I'm too unmotivated to actually make anything until about 6:30. Even then it's risky.

So we tried Yo Gabba Gabba!. Charlie seems more interested in it than any of the other kid shows. He'll actually watch it for a few minutes, dance around the room while they're dancing, and wave his hands and talk to the monsters. It's a good distraction, but he's still mostly indifferent to it.

I, on the other hand, am completely addicted.

I love DJ Lance. I love that the first episode I taped included Jack Black as the Dancey Dance Guest of the Week. I love that the filler graphics include old-school Nintendo look-alike games. When I did some more research on the show and found out that it was created by two members of The Aquabats, I loved that, too.

I saw them what feels like a million years ago when they opened for Goldfinger. I had an Aquabats sticker on my first POS car, the unpainted chevy station wagon. Good times.

I love the music, and I love the dancing, and I love the characters. Even though it's a kid show, I kind of feel like it was made specifically for my generation of parents. The ones who grew up listening to Biz Markie (who also appears regularly on the show, with Biz's Beat of the Day!) and doing bad things in high school. I love that Weezer and Tony Hawk and Elijah Wood and Andy Samberg and Anthony Bourdain have all made guest star appearances. I love that they sing about the "Party in My Tummy," because that song is awesome and gets stuck in your head and then you sing it all the time and it annoys your husband.



The sad vegetables at the end is the best part! We want to go to the party - the party in your tummy :(

I think I would watch this even without a kid. He just provides me with a good excuse.

School Pictures

It appears that this year's school pictures weren't a total fail! I was pleasantly surprised to see that he was actually smiling in them. Not excited enough to shell out $13 for a single picture, but excited nonetheless.







I wish they didn't have to use those cheesy-ass backgrounds. They're all going to end up on Awkward Family Photos at some point. Makes me even happier that we have a kick-ass photographer who does all of our family stuff.

P90X - Week 10 Completed

17 days to go! And then we get to do it all over again!

Someone needs to do a Mystery Science Theater version of P90X. How could you not, with Tony quotes like "Hamburger bad, fries bad, coca-cola bad… There I said it. Drink your water people," "We're all auditioning for the cover of Downward Dog Magazine," "Like a pterodactyl backing out of trouble! Ka-kaw!," and possibly the best of all, "We don't do spray on, this is real. We do actual DNA removal." Um, ew. But I don't mind the pterodactyl comments because it reminds me of XKCD and the raptor invasion.

It's all worth it though, because I have actual abdominal muscles that you can see.

Still no pull-ups. Sigh.

Office Quote of the Week

Thought this would be fun! Share your favorite quote of this week's episode, too!

"Don't talk about me in Morse code!"

Friday Fragments

Friday Fragments is brought to you by Mrs4444! You can visit her blog here.




I'm so glad it's Friday! We have a good weekend planned and the weather is supposed to be kind to us. Cooler, but sunny. I just double-checked on my super awesome super phone. How did I ever survive without one?

Speaking of weather, let me tell you about Wednesday night. Husband C had to get up at 3:00 because he needed to leave for a meeting in Pittsburgh by 4:00. 4:00 AM. Ass-early in the morning. So we went to bed, and then around midnight a massive thunderstorm rolled through. It was probably the loudest storm we've had in a long time. He got so pissed off. "Effing rain! WTF?! Whose idea was that?! I have to get up in 3 hours! WTF? WTF? WTF?" I couldn't stop laughing. Who gets pissed off at the weather and actually shakes their fist at the sky? Apparently my husband does.

I'm really excited about the conference I'm going to next week. I've never been to Chicago, and I get to spend two nights with a nice hotel room all to myself. No snotty noses to wipe, no food smeared all over my back, no diapers to change. For a whole 48 hours. Whee!

Toddler C's school pictures should be in today! I saw the boxes sitting in the director's office yesterday. Part of me hopes they're better than last year's disaster, but most of me is hoping for another total school picture disaster because they're kind of funny to look at.

Last spring:



I think he was afraid of the giant crayon.




In the fall they brought in the fake foliage background, and that apparently wasn't any better than the crayons.



That or the photographer they use is just plain scary. Either way, poor Charlie. Those pictures aren't really my style, anyway. Charlie looks nothing like he does in those pictures.

I had a bagel this morning because it was "Muffins with Mom" day at daycare. Muffins don't equal bagels, but that's beside the point. I feel so carb-stuffed that it's gross. Yummmmm, bagels.

I Feel Pukey

Next week I'm giving a conference presentation in Chicago to an audience of 50+ random strangers. I'm cool with that. Today I have to give my mock presentation to my co-workers. A whole eight people. I'm terrified. I think I have reverse public speaking anxiety. I do really well in front of people I've never met, but stick me up in front of people I interact with day in and day out and I feel like I'm going to puke.

I know there's no rational reason to feel this way. This should be the warm-up audience, the one that I use to practice on and work the kinks out of my speech. But no, I was up late last night worrying about it and I'm continuing to worry about it while I sit here reviewing my notes. Ew.

It's been like this as far back as I can remember. Every book report we had to present in class, every time it was my turn in the spelling bee, even playing Around the World during math time. Once it was almost my turn I would start to feel sick, my hands would shake, and I would get all clammy. That's going as far back as 3rd grade, so about 20 years. It still hasn't gotten any easier. Even when I teach I get nervous, even after 10 weeks of teaching the same undergrads the same information. My knees still shake up there behind the podium and I feel like I'm just waiting for the moment that I'll be exposed as a fraud - say the wrong thing, look like an idiot.

I wish I could be like this guy. Faceless, nameless, unconnected to anyone in the audience.

Can't wait for the conference! And I actually mean that.

Things You Want Wednesday - Star Wars Board Books

This is more of a recommendation for the geek parents, I suppose. Toddler C has two of the coolest board books ever. Star Wars Heroes and Star Wars Spaceships.

These are two of his favorite books. They're also two of our favorite books to read him, because we feel like we're doing our part to introduce him to an important pop culture phenomenon. We use other books to work on shapes, colors, letters, and numbers, but these books let us teach him about more important things, like the sounds that the different spaceships make - he loves running around like a spaceship yelling whoosh! Incredibly enough, he picked up on Wookies really fast. It was only a few days after we got the book that he would open it to the page with Chewbacca and point out that he's a Wookie, then roar to demonstrate what a Wookie says. Don't believe me? Check out the video for yourself.

I'm Filing a Complaint

With whatever controls the weather. Last week it was just perfect. Sunny and cool, but not too cold, warm enough for short sleeves with a breeze to keep you from overheating. I couldn't wait for the weekend.

What did it do all weekend?

It sucked, that's what it did. From 5:00 Saturday morning when the thunder woke up Toddler C until we went to bed late Sunday night. It was almost an exact repeat of last weekend. Rain, rain, rain all the time. Do you know what it's like to be cooped up with a toddler for an entire rainy weekend? Do you know what's it's like to be cooped up with a toddler WITH AN EAR INFECTION for an entire rainy weekend? It was torturous. All he wanted to do was play outside. He stood at the front door, banging on it and yelling "o-side! o-side!"

He started riding around the house on his little wooden truck, as if to pretend he was outside riding on his trike.

How sad is that?

On Sunday evening, it eventually got to the point where I figured I'd let him stand on the front step and see that it was raining. That way he'd understand that outside wasn't the best place to be.

I opened the door and let him out. He didn't have shoes on - why would he need them? It was pouring. I still had my slippers on. What does he do? Takes off running through the lawn and up the street. With only socks covering his feet. So there I went after him, with no shoes on my own feet, either. He was rather upset to be carried back into the house, and even more upset that I made him take off the wet socks. Kids are weird.

The worst part is the monotony of the indoor toys. I developed a twitch by the end of the day - A says A! And A says Ah! Every letter makes a sound! A says A! And Ah!

Of course, yesterday and today are in the upper 70s and sunny. WTF?

New Toy

Up until Friday I was a geek trapped in a free Samsung flip phone. While everyone else was parading around with iPhones and crackberries and Droids, I had this little pile of suck.

Sure, it looks kind of ok, the numbers on the digital clock look pretty modern, and it has a camera, so it must be cool. But I didn't text, and I didn't upload pictures, and I had no data plan whatsoever. Friends would text me and I would never get the messages, because my phone didn't text.

Well no more! Friday we decided to get rid of our Sprint plan. Coverage in our neighborhood was always spotty and it took 6+ rings before our phones would tell us there was a call coming in. Fine for me, because no one ever called me with anything important, but not fine for C, who was trying to run a business out of his home.

So we got new phones. And not just any phones. I am now the proud owner of a Droid. Thank you BOGO deal that made it all possible.

This was totally me in the store.

Oooooh!

We're also ditching our landline as of today, so we're actually saving money now, which is just crazy. I sent my first text message ever on Friday. Then on Saturday, like the geeks we are, we sat out on the deck after our date night was over and played with our phones, checking out the neat apps, playing games, watching highlights (lowlights, more accurately) from the Yankee game, and texting each other from the other side of the table. Because we're cool like that.

Apps. I haz them. Tell what ones you have, and what ones I need. KTHXBAI.

P90X - Week 9 Completed

24 days to go!

I did another half pull-up yesterday. That was my big accomplishment. We rearranged our schedule last week and bumped our off day to Saturday. We have a few weekends this month packed with activities so it will be much easier to get things done if we don't have P90X looming over our heads. That and I'll be able to enjoy naptime again, rather than spending the 90 minutes working out and showering.

I've discovered that I very much prefer to exercise at night. Actually, I take that back. My first choice would be early morning, but I already get up at 5:30 and I'm not getting up any earlier to spend quality time with Tony Horton. Second to that is exercising at night. By the time 7:30 or 8:00 rolls around, I feel like I've gotten my second wind of the day. I think that I sleep better afterward, too, but that might be all in my head.

I've mentioned before that once we're done with this first round of P90X I'm going to bring running back into my repertoire. I always work better when I have a goal in mind, so my goal for next year is to run the Flying Pig Marathon in May 2011. I'd love to run all 26.2 miles, but I'm going to start training with the Half in mind and see where I get. C is worried that I'm going to hurt my knee again. I think that as long as I'm smart about my training and I take direction from people who actually know what they're doing then I should be fine. Good thing Tony doesn't do marathons. I don't know if I could stand that kind of torture.