Not Quite.

The docs declined to crank up the ultrasound machine, but Your Sister is fine. The office was happy with the blood pressure, urine tests, and weight. She's put on six pounds in the last month. The baby's heartbeat, which we heard, is fine, and we go back in two weeks for what they're calling "the anatomy." They'll do a range of tests, and we should learn what we're carrying. The doctor mentioned the option of various tests, and we passed. We're going to term unless the scanner shows us something dangerous to Your Sister. The doctor mentioned the arbitrary nature of defect probabilities and noted the risks were there but slight, even for old folks like us. We're inviting My Mom to the next appointment, and Your Mom will be invited to the next one. Oh, Your Sis was given Midrin for her headaches, which were described as hormonal.

Mom is beginning Zoloft today. Her doc said she needs a little help dealing with everything of the past two years. He and I agree that she needs to break her routine and get out of the house. I seemed to have talked her into seeing a movie this weekend, and she does still intend to travel this summer. Spring will be here soon, and that will help. She agreed to come up for the appointment so long as there's not ice blizzard tornado that day.

The website is up, simple and plain. I can't get the mouseovers to behave.

Picture of the Day
A lesson in Legos.

Oh. Right.

I had the idea to start a Flickr page to work around the page limit of my new website. Imagine my surprise when I learned I already had a Flickr page set up, and it included the anthology comic I did last spring. I completely forgot. I don't have an email detailing when I signed up and with what password. Wait ... I just figured it out. I have access to the page now.

I started digitally inking a sketch last night. It isn't faster yet, but it will save me time on digitally repairing the traditional inks. I hope to post the image by the weekend on FB.

We have our appointment today, and I'm groundlessly hoping we can get scanned and learn the sex. I continue to fight the inclination to yearn for one gender over another. It's not fair to anyone.

Picture of the Day
Dr. Hoodie Robot, can you see the golden child?

She Has A Point

Me: "So I got a call from GoDaddy.com tech support today. My site was flagged as a sex site, and they wanted to know what was up."

Her: "GoDaddy was worried?"

Me: "Yeah."

Her: "The people who advertise with the girls in jumpsuits talking about their 'enhancements' are worried about people making sex sites?"

Me: "Yeah. Apparently Heygregory looks like heytherebigboy."

Her: "So what will your sex site offer?"

Me: "Imagine the tips for dumb husbands in our baby book. My tips will be for the prequel."

I called them today for a tech question, and they fixed it immediately. Their ad campaign is dopey, but the service is fantastic.

I think Your Sis is suffering from the dry air. The headaches and traces of sinus blood parallel the heater's recent workout. We use a humidifier in the bedroom to help. I don't think the head problems are pregnancy related, but we'll mention them tomorrow. Since they're not doing a scan, we'll get our money's worth by burying them in minutiae. Although if we can bully them into a scan, and we do find out the baby's sex, we'll broadcast it.

Picture of the Day
This is why kayaking is preferable.

Shifting

My website was hosted by GeoCities since the mid-'90s. GeoCities closed in September after nicely warning their customers for months on end. The comic convention will list websites in their program and website, goosing me to get to work. My old site is kaput. I will build a new one and leave the personal material to FaceBook.

I decided to host a site at GoDaddy. It has good prices and is large enough to offer decent tech support. I had no idea how good it was until this morning. I've been a customer for less than 24 hours, and they called me to get my site on the right footing. It's so unheard of that I still suspect it might have been a scammer calling to steal my site or ID. My site was somehow flagged as a sex site, and I had to explain its real intent (and content). The site is currently a one-page greeting for now, but I should get everything online by the end of the month.

I've also scripted the first mini designed specifically for the convention. I hope to experiment with digital artwork this weekend. I used my PC tablet to draw repairs on the comic I did for the high-school arts magazine, and it was not only quick but fun. I want to have that energy for the convention material creation. I was told this morning that I can't sit with the publisher at the con; the tables around theirs are reserved. We won't be that far away, and I can practice working on my own for a while. It's been a quick succession of decisions since Friday, starting from "maybe I'll go" to "how many comics can I make and sell at my own table." Golly.

Your Sister is bedeviled by headaches, and I blame her grading posture. She curls on the couch and strains her eyes with sunlight reflected off the yard glaciers. It may also be work stress, but there's no sign that it's related to pregnancy. I try to relax her when I see her brow furrow about work matters. "Don't boil Roo," I warn. She needs help sometimes getting off the couch and off the bed, depending on her positions.

Picture of the Day
This photo wasn't labeled, and I initially thought the woman was in the cockpit of a blimp. By the joystick of the pilot looks a tad too modern for that. His cap and haircut say '60s to me.

New Things

School was canceled Friday due to a dusting of snow Thursday night. Exams are now pushed back a week, and teachers noted this with much relief.

We begin Week 17 today. Your Sis is a tad rounder. But then we're stuck inside all day. I'm probably a tad rounder too. We learned only recently that this week's doctor's appointment will not include a new ultrasound, meaning we have to wait another month to discover the sex. That's deflating. That will happen, we hope, four weeks later, and we're inviting My Mom to come along.

Your Sis is changing snacks and will now try peanut butter and celery. Also, clementines were bought. She's moved away from grapefruit for now.

Within two says of each other, I was asked to take part in online comic projects. One is a story told with via page posted online per month. The other is a journal comic. Then I discovered Asheville is hosting a comic convention in May. The prices for artist tables is dirt cheap ($35/50 per table), and I have decided to slap together minicomics to sell. I'm going to work a table for my stuff. But I since learned my publisher will have a table there. I will contact him to see if he wants to meld tables for the show. I'll also give him the first opportunity to print my stuff. If he passes, I'll do it myself. The con is holding a poster contest, and I want to give that a shot too. There's a money grand prize. My publisher is probably going to enter as well, and I'd like to show him up in the spirit of friendly competition.

The NFL Bet
We blew it. All of our teams are now kaput. Your Sister adopted the Arizona Cardinals again during last night's game. She wants old QB Kurt Warner to succeed.

Picture of the Day
Another new item in the grocery store: Buddha hand. I hadn't seen it before. I'm amazed at what we sometimes find in this yokel burg.

Convening With Mentors

Our local Mexican restaurant hosts a school fundraiser the first Wednesday of each month. The proceeds go to the high school's language courses. The teachers are strongly encouraged to go, and I join in. We sat last night with teachers and their babies, and we all talked baby shop. We're shadowing parents now. The common question now is whether we'll learn the sex before the delivery. We hear stories of people who didn't want to know and others who learned at birth that the shipment was not what they ordered. We hope to learn next week, but there's no hurry.

I learned my mentored senior will fail English. A healthy chunk of that grade is based on the senior project. I was assured that he was simply a horrible student across the board.

The town is vibrating at the prospect of more snowfall before Friday morning.

We continue to eating Christmas leftovers. They're good. But still.

Our NFL Bet
It's been ugly for both of us. We're down to the one mutual team we picked (the Patriots), and it doesn't have an easy route for the Super Bowl.

ME:
Pittsburgh Steelers 9-7 (out of the playoffs)
New England Patriots 10-6
Philadelphia Eagles 11-5
Atlanta Falcons 9-7 (out of the playoffs)

Her
Pittsburgh Steelers 9-7 (out of the playoffs)
New England Patriots 10-6
New York Giants 8-8 (out of the playoffs)
St. Louis Rams 1-15 (worst record this season)

Picture of the Day
The Lost Supper. There's a rumor the State of the Union might land on the same Tuesday as the Lost season premiere and preempt it.

A Triumphant Victory of Winningness

With terror coursing through his tremulous fingers, the aging man approached the fearsome innards of the contraption. It sat silent upon the work desk. It was deactivated, silent. Lurking. But once it was awakened, none knew what might ensue. Would it continue its benevolent demeanor? Or would it instead lash out in a destructive fury bringing doom to all, including its own damnable existence?

HP Lovecraft could corner the market on computer-repair horror. (Wait. HP "Hewlett-Packard" Lovecraft?)

I paced the house until I goaded myself to get it over with, and it took 45 minutes. I had to open the PC frame three times to adjust the memory boards. They snap into place, and one frets about breaking them before hearing that snap. It didn't begin well. I used a power screwdriver to open the frame and then opened the memory-board package. The first instruction was not to use a power screwdriver to open the frame. F' F' F'.

I used a coat hanger to ground myself. I unwound it, stretched it out, and hooked it around my wrist and the PC frame. I thought I had bought the wrong board as the only obvious slot was too small. Then I realized those were hardware slots for adding components to the PC. I had to move wires to find the memory. Snap snap snap, a silent prayer to Ganesha and Odin and Batman, and I hit the power button. It cranked up. An online scan confirmed the memory upgrade, and it indeed runs quicker. I did it. I credit the new Tom Waits CD for getting me through. And of course Batman, Odin, and Ganesha.

Your Sister got through a long day of meetings, and her back was feeling it. She hitched a ride home with a fellow teacher. She was OK after supper. Behold the healing power of fajitarittos.

Picture of the Day
I need not your astromech droids.

Tinkering

I picked up a RAM chip for the PC while checking with the Best Buy employee and my notes from home. The latter is a stream of gibberish, a list of acronyms and numbers. Almost all of them match the RAM package I picked up from the shelf. All except the mHz, a measure of clock speed, a term I almost understand. The employee assured me what I had in hand would work with my computer. My online advisers, who also told us how to repair a wet iPhone, said I'm OK. We'll see.

I took the HP drive back to Target and surprisingly got my money back with no hassle. I went a few doors down to Office Max and picked up a Seagate drive at the suggestion of a pal. It works like a charm. Better, it works like a backup drive is supposed to. It doesn't, for example, crash Windows. I copied all my PC files last night. Your Sister is working late, and I hope to install the RAM tonight.

It's a quick process. You crack open the tower, remove the motherboard, clip in the memory, reassemble and turn on the PC. I've installed more complicated hardware back when I had to manually install a board for a scanner. As with that process, the biggest danger is static electricity. I'd like to have antistatic band, but I can work without it.

Your Sister is walking back from work tonight, and I told her to call me first. I'll walk to work and walk back with her. Why not drive, you ask? She wants the exercise. But I won't let her walk back alone so late in this lung-crushing cold. I think my abs have gotten a workout from shivering.

Picture of the Day
This one goes here, that one goes there. Right?

Back At It

I've looked at external back-up drives for months now. The miniaturization of memory created a glut of drives, and one goes snowblind looking at them on the shelves. I hoped to get one this weekend and had settled on which brand to get. Then I saw the new HP SimpleSave with 1 terabyte of space. It was only $100. A big name and a small price is usually a good sign.

Nope. It crashed my Windows repeatedly. Online searches found nothing but press releases, but I did learn this was the PC version of Mac's Time Machine. The SimpleSave purports to need no software installation and only a USB connection and Windows. It doesn't tell you on the package that it also needs an AC outlet and the most modern motherboard driver available. So no go. I've been advised by a trusted retail expert that Seagate is the bestest, and I saw Wal-Mart advertise a 500G drive for $50.

I spent most of Sunday learning how to update various PC components and eventually needed only to boot the PC with a homemade driver disc. Couldn't do it. My common-sense was tingling. I realized I needed a new back-up drive not a risky PC upgrade. I do plan to install new running memory today; I can do that fine. We want a drive to backup my PC and her laptop, and I doubt we could fill up 500 gigs even with five years of Roo pictures.

Your Sis is nursing a tender back and using an exercise ball to loosen her hips (hey now). We got a body pillow to keep her off her back at night to encourage vena cava circulation. We return to work today, and she has an exercise ball now in her classroom to help her make it through the workdays. I think she needs support shoes. Also, she's moved to the Be Band virtually everyday to prevent jean chafing on the belly. We're at 16 weeks today. The book says Roo has languo all over.

We had the occasional Roo philosophy chat yesterday. Normally we discuss practical matters like aches and food, but sometimes we hunker down and plan out parent strategies. We both have unspoken gender preferences for Roo, and we've agreed to keep it that way. We picked up a book on baby sign language; maybe we can have specific "conversations" with Roo before it can talk.

The back yard is a sheet of thick, unyielding ice. The neighborhood continues to host mini-glaciers, and this 20-degree weather ain't helping. I can't punch through with my heels anymore. If we hadn't scraped out the walkways and driveway, I think it would still be a ski jump.

Picture of the Day
Oh HP, why must you fail me so?

Homes and Holmes

Your Sister doesn't do vacations where one sits around. She moves forward always. In between grading papers, she's combining the guest bedroom space and the office and beginning the transition between Old Office and Nursery. Yesterday she finished construction on the guest bed, elevating it from the floor and affixing the Hitchcock boards to the bed frame and the wall. She reassembled her office desk in the guest bedroom.

We also finally donated some of my old furniture, and I, also not so grand with inertia, cleaned out the DVD closet. We're donating a heap of VHS movies. Owning them is needless when we can stream them online anytime. Included in there is Twin Peaks, my college obsession. It makes a better cultural document than a watchable series. Also, it's on DVD now, and I would upgrade if I wanted to watch it again.

We snuck out of the house before the sleet came down and caught a movie.

Sherlock Holmes is instantly forgettable. If not for the stunt casting of Downey, it would get no attention. I wonder if this is a similar scenario to Saving Private Ryan: a by-the-numbers script is taken to Olympus by Very Big Names.

As the opening production credits rolled, it made me wish someone else had taken a crack at adapting From Hell, the the Alan Moore comic about Jack the Ripper. Then I realized this film is an accidental sequel to From Hell. Even though the bad guy is never linked to those murders, it's an obvious avoidance of identification. In that perspective, I liked the film.

The "update" of Holmes is mild. Instead of the immaculate intellect we're used to, we instead get the cliched slob-genius, seemingly for no reason. Downey could have been directed to play this straight, and it would have worked fine. But this "new" direction is mild. It hedges its bet, and leaves very little impression. Same with Law and Adams as the other leads. They're just walking through stale roles.

However, they set up a sequel very well, and with another bit of stunt casting, it could be fun to watch. But I'll be watching actors, not characters.

We walked out to an iced car and drove to the grocery store for dessert: doughnuts and red velvet cake. We crashed into bed with a quick sugar plummet.

Picture of the Day
Jeepers, the cops!

It's Not Avatar-ible.

I got back from Mom's around 2 on Saturday, and that can only be the result of a time-warp. I can't be sure what happened; I was falling asleep as I entered my city limits. That night I inhaled 6 turkey-and-tomato rolls while I flipped channels on the new HD signal. It's hypnotizing. Unfortunately, we have 3 dozen shopping channel to wade through.

On Sunday, we did our usual grocery run before I cleared the driveway of the remaining ice. I thought it might take an hour. It took almost three. Only NPR programming got me through. When Says You ended at five, so did I. We had talked about catching Avatar later in the day, and I found a theatre showing it in two-and three-D. We arrived at the cinema about 20 minutes before the movie, and we discovered a shocking brain failure by the staff: They scheduled five movies to start at the same time, including the two viewings of Avatar. The lobby was a mob scene with one guy -- one small, old guy -- directing traffic. The vast majority of the ticket holders were there to see the film in 3D, and that left us in a small but crammed theatre.

It's a gigantic movie. About halfway through it, I realized I hadn't seen a film on this scale since Lord of the Rings. I mentally declared that it took four years for an effects-heavy film to compete with that trilogy's new standard of FX. When the film ended, I notice that WETA, the Rings FX people were the prominent FX company for the film. Of course.

It's clearly a step up from the Robert Zemeckis motion-capture animation style (Polar Express, Beowulf, Christmas Carol), but it also cheated a bit by focusing on non-humans to carry the film. Still, it had sweep and more than a little art doing the heavy lifting. It's impressive. It's also the definitive Cameron film, combining all his previous films. There's even a nod to True Lies when a character dangles by a locked missile. I suspect that felling of the big tree surpassed the emotional wallop of all of 2012. I'm glad I saw it. Glad Sigourney Weaver had a prominent role too.

We snuck into the soon-to-close Krispy Kreme for our post-movie ritual and drove home. I slept hard. I was exhausted.

Picture of the Day
We all fear the Math Witches.

Productive Anger

I left work around 3 in order to beat the freeze. I got to Your Sister's school to pick her up and noticed the tremendous reduction in death ice. It was now mush and pavement.

Her phone is a curious device; it will always connect to my phone immediately, but it won't accept the signal from my phone when she's at school. I call her whenever I'm back in town, and I did so again yesterday.

Of course the phone doesn't pick up, and I leave a message. The problem here is that I don't have a school key, and, if I'm picking her up, I have to stand outside the school, banging on the thick glass in hopes someone will hear me. This routine has gone on since before we married. This is the important part: This has happened for years. It's the norm.

I get to the school, park as I did yesterday morning, and slop around to the front of the building. By this time, I've had a frustrating day. Let's wrap it all up in senioritis. I'm counting the minutes until I have a vacation. And after I drive home in the slush and gunk, I have to summon Your Sister by playing building bongos. She hears me, comes to the door, and asks wide eyed and sincere, "why didn't you call?"

I lose it. "I DID." It's officially a spat. As we walk to the car (sitting on the other end of the still ruinous parking lot), her phone receives the message I left ten minutes earlier. This happens every time. Why is this such a surprise for both of us? I fume all the way home. She pulls up the garbage bags arranged to melt a walkway, and I grab the shovels. I shoo her inside eventually and chisel away the ice between the road and the garage door. Burning with anger, I keep at it until I have a walk cleared. It takes 90 minutes, and I finish just as my light disappears. The anger's gone. I've spent it.

I get inside and find Your Sis has made me my first hot toddy. It's good. It's welcome. And we're fine. She gets to bed early, and I go back to the workshop to finish her Christmas gift. It'll be in flux until the last second.

I think I can clear the road next to our yard enough to allow all of you to parallel park next to the snowbank. There's no way I can clear the driveway for parking. The snowplows have packed the glaciers in front of it.

I'm almost finished with Christmas shopping. One more thing to get ...

Picture of the Day
I'll start the garden early this year.

Work Ahead

It's warmer but not by much. If we're going to host people for Christmas, I'm going to have to spend Christmas Eve shoveling. It's inescapable. I'm still a bit stiff from chopping away at the road on Sunday. Hopefully, the sunlight and forecast warmth will help me out.

I'm going into work today for a half day and going home before the road refreezes. I took Your Sister to work, but the school parking lot is not plowed. We parked on a back road, and I escorted her to the building. I don't know why they wanted teachers to work when they didn't clear the lot. It's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Picture of the Day
Lego Hoth.

Snowpocalypse

The two major weather reports -- NPR and Wunderground -- said it was gonna snow. Not maybe, not might. And we'd get a lot of it. We did. It poured snow and ice Friday, and you've seen the pics of us from that day. It continued until Saturday morning. From what I can tell by scraping the car,we got six inches of snow topped by two inches of ice. Our road was a sheet with deep tread troughs. There was no way our car could move for days.

I had to take the shovel out of Your Sister's hands and remind her she was pregnent. No work for her. Instead, I went to the road to see what I could do. It took me 90 minutes to carve away 30 square feet. A neighbor came down to help only because he couldn't make headway with his driveway ice. When I cleared a runway for the car, I hoped it would be enough to get us to the store. Your Sister and I checked the road beyond our street, and there was no stinking way. It was all ice. And I was beat up from digging and a slapstick black-ice fall. I took to the couch with the heating pad for a few hours, and we've since watched three movies: Capote, There Will Be Blood, and Alien Nation.

This morning we talked to you, and we have since gone to the store. The road was bad, but the troughs were so deep, the car slipped through. Ever seen kids bowl with the gutter bumpers? That's what we had. The store was packed and oddly hot. All those caffeinated bodies made it thick with dry heat. We nervously approached the road home, and I spied a blinking yellow light. It was a snowplow pulled to the side of the road. And then I saw it was not pulled over. It was titling over. It was stuck just before it tipped over on its side in the neighbor's yard. Some crew guys helped us slip by, and then they had to move their truck from my cleared out bay so we could park and unpack.

Since then, the plow has been righted and is now scrapping our road, and I worry it will bury my car as it sits at roadside. I'll try to clear it out in a few hours if need be. I'm sure we can accommodate the family for a Christmas visit even if we park the cars at the school and shuttle people back and forth.

Picture of the Day
Lost pairings.

Second Visit

It's a snow day, and we're both at home.

We saw the doctor for the first time in a month.

Your Sister weighed in at 155 and seemed happy with that. Her blood pressure was "perfect." Our nurse used a baby CB contraption to hear the heartbeat. We could also hear Roo moving. The heartbeat was 150, also "perfect." It was a relief. We see all the signs of Roo's occupancy without seeing Roo. It's like living with a teen.

Dr. Hernandez popped his head in to ask if we wanted an ultrasound. She deferred until I said I wanted one, and then she leaped up to have it done. The office was demo'ing a new 3D scanner and wanted to test it more. After sitting for a while, he came into the room with the new toy and gooped up her tummy. We saw much more development: backbones, skull, limbs, the pulsing umbilical cord, the heart and stomach chambers. The doc thinks we saw boy parts. We're not sold yet. It might have been girl stuff. Perhaps labia. We're calling it "maybia."

I had a rush of nausea and lightheadedness, and I fretted about getting sick in the office. So I was panicking over a possible panic attack. I breathed it through, but she noticed and suggested it was the same spell she had last Friday. I wonder. Was I disappointed that it might be a son? Did I feel that strongly about a daughter? Was it the reality of a baby smacking me around? I thought I had gotten past this. Maybe it was my wonky brain computing strong emotion. For her. For Roo. I dunno.

We go back Jan. 14.

This morning, school was canceled "for students." No word on what teachers were to do. I walked Your Sis to the school, and we found only one other teacher there. Also the Pepsi guy was filling up the vending machines. After 20 minutes, a notice was placed on the school website that everyone was to stay home. We packed up and trudged home. We've since split into our offices for work-done-getting.

Picture of the Day
I'm getting winter skin.

Frankly, My Dear, She Doesn't Give A Damn.

Forgot to mention a failed experiment after the grading dinner Tuesday.

Your Sis and I plopped down on the luuuuuuuuuvseat and activated the magic speakity box. I found Gone With the Wind, and it had been on for only 20 minutes. I again tried to get Your Sis to watch it -- to endure it, mayhap even enjoy it -- and she only lasted 20 minutes. She hates Scarlett so much she can't enjoy the reactions of those around the character. I knew marrying a Cape Cod girl would bring me frustration eventually, but I never figured I would:
a) grow to enjoy the movie; and
b) marry a woman who didn't.

Alas.

Yesterday, I cruised the mall to find knickknacks for Your Sister. I intentionally made a circuit near the mall Santa and was lucky enough to catch him between kids. I didn't approach him, but I did walk close enough to catch his eye and wave. And he waved back. That made my day.

She's now call herself fat, and I remind her she's preggers. She is definitely showing. Oddly, her arms look thinner. I don't think it's relative to the belly. I think her mass is moving to the tummy. We see the doctor again this afternoon.

She reported that my mentored student earned the second lowest oral-presentation score among all the seniors. The worst grade belongs to his girlfriend.

Picture of the Day
Frustrated by Your Sister's driving, the redlights are ending it all.

The Hammer Falls

We met up with two other teachers to grade the community volunteer section of the senior projects. The students had to present their products and the crafting process to the layman. The volunteers score the presentation in 20 categories; we added the scores over dinner.

The students have to speak no less than seven minutes and no more then ten. I knew my student couldn't do it, and he did not. He spoke for five minutes and had nothing left. I didn't tally his sheet; I didn't want him to have any leeway to gripe. I was assured it was unlikely he could complain, but I wouldn't risk it. I did see the final grades he earned from the volunteers. He bombed it. He averaged 85 points, the lowest of all the seniors this semester. It's also a near-record low from these local folks who want to help the kids succeed. They are an easy crowd, and he couldn't win them over. That's pathetic.

I'm not happy with his grade, but I'm satisfied with it. This counts 20 percent of the final project grade. I remain curious about his final overall grade.

The grading dinner is always fun work. We take over a table at the Mexican restaurant and crunch numbers over cheap food. This year, I did not drink. I'm still wary of drinking in front of Your Sister. It sometimes seems mean.

Picture of the Day
Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane as the leads in the new Addams Family musical. I'm geeking out over this.

Stunned.

When Your Sis and I went window shopping Saturday for maternity items, we also kept Christmas shopping in mind. I told her before we left that I would point out items on my list for her to catalog. The understanding being, I thought, that she could note the items and decide what to buy later. Instead, I pointed out an item, and she picked it up to buy. I was stunned.

"No, wait. It's just a suggestion."
"I know. But you want this, right?"
"For Christmas, yes."
"Right. For Christmas."

Now when I say "for Christmas," I mean "if you're going to buy it for me, don't let me see it." I like Christmas gifts as surprises. That's why we wrap them. But she refused to put it back.

"When am I going to get a chance to be here again to buy it?"
"Dude. Amazon."

A few hours later, at another store, I showed her an item I had considered to get her. I showed her some options to leave the mystery. The final specific item would be a surprise. Instead (again) she picked one out and carried it to the register. More stunnage.

This isn't how I do Christmas. So now, I'm gonna ambush her with whatever strikes my jolly-elf fancy. Christmas should be a mix of surprise, joy, and gratitude. It's date-specific altruism.

When I arrived home last night, Your Sister had just returned from more Christmas shopping. As she recounted her day, she said "oh, and I bought [those other items] you asked for." Super stunnage.

"OK, please. If you're buying me anything else for Christmas, don't tell me what it is. Please."
"OK."

Maybe it's the pregnancy. She didn't do this before.

Picture of the Day
Line forms on the right.

Window Shopping

We're thinking of hosting a meal for the family at Christmas/New Year. Would you be up for it?

As the semester nears its end, Your Sister seeks to avoid the pile of papers and again wished to get the hell out of Dodge. She needed some clothing items, including unmentionables. She's definitely showing. And growing. She leaped two cup sizes. We bought a belly wrap called a Bee Band. It covers unbuttoned jeans and fills third-trimester jeans immediately after birth.

She saw the mall maternity store. It's slim pickin's, and it seems to cater to the last trimester and first six months of motherhood. I walked in there by myself a few weeks back and got the hair eyeball. I think they thought I was a fetishist. We looked at kids books at Barnes & Noble and traded notes on what we read as youngsters. I found Encyclopedia Brown and Choose Your Own Adventure. She found Beatrix Potter. We decided to skip the Winnie the Pooh library for now, but it's inevitably coming to our house.

We picked up two jumpdrives for two students who claimed they couldn't afford them. We could find none smaller than 2 gigs, and they were only $10 each. Amazing.

I put up the tree yesterday. A little Star Wars here, old Bullock ornaments there. It looks fine.

Picture of the Day
Greetings, citizens! I am your bright yellow sentinel of the night! Enjoy the safety of my guard as you rest your weary heads! I hope my bright yellow radiance doesn't blast your eyes while you chase the blessed release of sleep! Carry on! Don't mind me!

A Man With A Plan

I bought a digest-sized magazine called Make. It's a geek craft title. My nesting instincts are driving me to expand my knowledge base, including making stuff. I can design it. I can decorate it. It's that crucial corporeal component that eludes me. I wanna work on that. This issue is geared toward kids, and that sounds like the perfect entry point for me to hop aboard.

I ordered HD for our satellite service, and it will be installed the day after Christmas. We've had the TV for almost a year without making that final step. Now I think we're ready to be gobsmacked by every broadcast image. I ordered early to avoid the inevitable rush after many an HD TV are unwrapped this year.

If there's a food Your Sister is craving, it's cheese. It's quickly emerged as the common ingredient in all our dishes. Maybe it's the salt. We check to see if it's pasteurized, and in it goes into he dish by the bucketful. Instead of thawing leftovers as we planned, she asked if we could zip to the local Italian place for pizza. That we can do.

Suddenly, it's December, and suddenly, it's two weeks from Christmas, and I don't have clues what to buy people. You mentioned kayak stuff, and we'll be glad to do that once you give us details. So give us details. Everything I think to buy Your Sister is immediately disqualified by her hologram in my head.

Also, it's shockingly cold.

Picture of the Day
No introduction needed.