It's A Sidekick

Before getting home yesterday, I zoomed into the grocery store to stock up on Your Sister's mom snacks. The death snow looms. I chugged a caramel frappuccino for lunch and pulled into my carport right as Your Parents arrived. We had about half an hour to kill before we picked up Your Sister. I cut up her celery snacks and tucked away groceries while Your Mom vibrated in the house. She seems to be more wired in the last year. The anxiety of seeing a grandchild on ultrasound, and kibitzing over possible ailments, did nothing to settle her.

We scooped up my baby mama and began the check-up relatively quickly. Your Sister has put on two pounds in two weeks. Her blood pressure is fine (124/68). We were directed straight to the scanning room, and she was radar'ed within 15 minutes.

The baby is fine and appears to be a week ahead in physical development. The head, neck, belly, and femur measurements are good. We saw the heart chambers. We saw feet and fingers. And then we saw what the doctor defined as boy parts. He's confident we're brewing a lad. Your Sister wants to keep some girl names in reserve just in case, and I offer a "probably" disclaimer to be nice. But it's a boy. We're having a padawan. (Yes, there were female jedi, but we saw, what, two in six films?).

Your Mom voiced concerns about a number of wives' tales, and they were each shot down. The baby, for instance, is breech right now. The doctor assured her it has plenty of time to turn. It's the natural fit, after all. But what about the baby being born with the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck? Happens daily, he said. Does the speed of the heartbeat confirm it's a boy? Nope. Sometimes I can't tell if she's genuinely nervous about something or buzzing with energy. Either way, all signs point so far to a healthy pregnancy. We go back in a month for the blood-sugar test.

Your Parents didn't want to loiter in Yokelsburg after the appointment, and Your Sis and I had a celebratory dinner at the pub. We spied a child's birthday party, and Your Sister grew ravenous for cake. We slipped into the now-emptied grocery store and bought a one-layer red velvet cake. We discussed parenting matters along the lines of when do we have The Talk? How do we handle curfews? You know, things we have a decade to gear up for.

I called My Mom and told her the news, and we called a few other people before I shouted it on the Book of Face.

He looks healthy. That's all that matters. I think Your Sister wanted a son. I hope she's as happy as I am. It looks like we'll be snowed in for a few days. I don't mind. A small period of stillness will let us contemplate further this project, and we can huddle together in our home.

Picture of the Day
The menstrual cycle in cute cartoon form. We won't be seeing this until summer.

Place Your Bets

As we might find out today what we're carrying, let's breakdown the predictions:

Your Aunt: Boy (an angel told her)

Our Sister-in-Law/My Coworkers/Some of Your Sister's Coworkers/Many People Online: Girl

Our Oldest Niece: Both (She thinks Your Sister is carrying a boy, but her cousin will be a girl.)

Me/Your Sister: No comment. We have preferences. We'll never admit them, although I think I did here a few months back. If I did, ignore it. I was raised being told what my girl name would be and what I would have done at various ages. I got the hint that Mom didn't get what she ordered.

Your Mom has accepted the invitation to join us for the appointment. I don't know if Your Dad is coming too. I invited them both. My Mom was flattered by the initial suggestion and plans to join us for the next doctor visit. We're facing another snowpocalypse. I bought a real snow shovel and will hit the grocery store before the appointment today.

I got home last night to find both Amazon shipments had arrived. The new big scanner is a beauteous thing of beauty. Choirs sing when you look at it. My comic art boards fit entirely in the scan bed. Simple hook-up, simple interface. I like it muchly. The first of the journal comics are scheduled to go online Monday, and I'll link to them when they're up.

Picture of the Day
Learn it, live it, love it.

Power Outage

The canceled schoolday allowed Your Sister to stock up on forms and gear up for the next semester. She secured a desk and bulletin board for her student teacher. He gets to host a vocabulary test today, and she thinks he's lulled himself into overconfidence about it.

Mom all but confirmed she will not be coming to the appointment tomorrow. The weather forecast is too dire. She's clearly upset by it and assumes there's some divine reason for the obstacle. We'll extend the invite to Your Parents, but Your Sis thinks the weather will keep them home too. Or the dog will. Your Mom doesn't like leaving the dog alone at the house. When they visited Saturday, the dog came along. I'm not bothered by it. He's a great dog -- well behaved and sweet. But the commute is practically longer than the visit.

I discovered an failed outlet in my workshop this morning. That made my computer set-up inoperable. I checked the circuit board and fiddled with the other outlets. Repairing it is just on the other side of my comfort with household maintenance, and I found a local electrician to come by. He fixed it in no time, and luckily it was a bad outlet and not bad wiring. That was my fear. That and an ensuing house fire. The bill was steeper than I expected, but I'm glad to pay it.

I checked estimates for printing my comics through OfficeMax and got numbers I expected. I have to decide how many copies to print. Do I do a big batch? If I don't sell out at the show, I can sell the others later, but it will cost more now. If I buy a bit less and sell-out, I might miss out on the maximum profit for the show. Also a friend who works there offered me a good deal on a b/w printer, and that would allow me to print the comic at home and take it to OfficeMax for the assembly. I'd probably still print the color covers there. I checked the price of paper cutters too.

It will definitely be a better use of money to buy equipment and do it at home, but that labor will require me to finish the artwork earlier. Also, I'm going to only do two comics, not three. A lot of time remains between now and the show, but I must get cracking on the pages. I've had good sketch luck recently, and I think I can produce a good story.

Picture of the Day
If our galaxy was a subway.

Then Again, Maybe Not

I forgot to mention yesterday: When Your Parents came over Saturday, they brought a pile of stuffed animals from Your Sister's childhood. Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, Peter Cottontail, and a Roo. I had no idea she owned a Roo back then. They were musty with basement air, and it took two thorough washing-machine cycles to clean them up. They're now brighter and awaiting their guest of honor, and all this anticipation terrifies me that something will go wrong. It's been too easy so far (Yes, too easy for me, the one not getting bigger each day, the one who can easily stand up from the couch and bed, the one who gets to sit all day at work).

The Pooh Bear wore a German bib with "Mitt Woch" on it. I was also reminded in a conversation last night that Your Sister didn't grow up in America. We were talking about football teams of our youth, and she pointed out she had fewer because she didn't know about football until the early '80s.

A small snowburst canceled school today. This was to be the first day of the new semester. The roads are clear, and I drove in to work. Another snowfall is predicted for Thursday night and Friday, and this might cancel Mom's visit. I can't go get her this time, and I doubt she wants to risk staying with us until Sunday. I talked to Your Dad and offered (or he might have asked) for them to come with us Thursday if Mom cancels. If nothing else, they can all be there at the same time, but we'd rather parcel out the parent escorts to the doctor. We want to outnumber the parents if possible. I'll call Mom tonight to warn her about the weather. That won't go over well. But I'll advise her that we're not guaranteed to learn what we're packing on Thursday. Hopefully that will help.

Did we ever tell you that Your Sister invited both sets of parents to our jailhouse wedding ceremony at the last minute? We agreed to tell none of them until after; I knew My Parents wouldn't be able to leave work on one day's notice. She couldn't contain herself however, and I had to explain to Mom that if they couldn't attend, Your Parents agreed not to either. It was an excited notion Your Sister had, and I had to squelch a potential forest fire. It made a hectic weekend a little more frantic. I want to keep things fair between the parents.

An email I sent to Your Sister resulted in a possible new mother nickname for her: Queen Mum.

Picture of the Day
Quick, to the VW Ball!

Beetle Bouncing

I was informed Friday that Your parents would take Your Sister's car to dealerships near them to learn its trade-in value. They might even do basic haggling for a new car then let us bat clean-up. We had talked of replacing her car for a while, and that noise grew louder after we became pregnant. As it's her car, I'm out of the loop on the conversation they had. I'll do what I'm asked.

Your Parents came by Saturday to get that car and leave us their VW to drive in the meantime. Your Father called me that night to say he talked to Your Brother, who had suggestions for selling it privately. I called him, got the info (briefly: check online car sites, find the average asking price, and sell it online), and called Your Dad back to verify. With that information in hand, it was decided that we should take the car back.

I drove the VW to work today and will swap it with Your Sister's car sometime before I return home. It's a jarring change from driving our Matrix, and I'm pretty sure it's never before bounded down the road to the thumps of Missy Elliot and Jay-Z. I'm surprised the flowers stayed in the dashboard vase. Also, European gear boxes are the devil.

Your Sister watched over Saturday exams for students getting a second chance to pass them. At the same time, I performed surgery on a dying scanner before calling time of death around 10:30. I immediately ordered a larger one off Amazon, and it's the scanner I've wanted for ten years: one that can scan 11x17 art boards. No more reconstructing comic pages digitally, thank Odin.

I began scripting one of my minicomics and hoped to have a local printer handle the reproduction and binding. The first shop I went to was run by a woman who shook her head as soon as I showed her the minis I wanted to emulate; the town's allegedly preeminent print store is actually a Xerox and mailing store. She did suggest the other two stores in town, and neither is open on weekends. I'd have to drive to Hendersonville or Asheville if I wanted this work done in my free time. Instead, I'll give some Asheville shops a chance to print my convention comics, and I'll offer them advertising if they give me a discount. The inability to use nearby shops pisses me off. Virtually every business open on weekends are restaurants and tourist shops, and only half of those are of interest to locals. This will probably be a $500+ job to make three comics for me; I'm sure some business wants that money.

Your Sister worked at school Sunday during a biblical rainstorm. We lost our TV signal a few times during the very good football games. Neither Super Bowl team -- Indianapolis and New Orleans -- are ones we picked in the preseason, but we're happy with them. I'm sure she'll root for whoever I don't.

The night before, I felt Roo move. It felt like stomach rumbling. We held our hands there for so long that we lost Roo's movement among our own pulses. We were eventually sure it was over and fell into sleep. Mom's still planning to come up Thursday for the scan.

Picture of the Day
I need to run again now that the cold has passed.

Listen and Sniff

You suggested The Moth podcast, and I've listened to each one with an engagement and contentment I used to get from This American Life. There's also RadioLab, and it's hit-and-miss, but it's clearly made by people who enjoy the layering of information. The edits embellish the progress of the stories.

One of my comic projects is an online comic diary. I'm aiming for three strips a week, all made well ahead of time. Digitally inking it is weak, and I wish I were quicker with the traditional inking process. But I suspect my real frustration is with the pencils. I need to slow down and draw in a style that I like instead of lazily sketching. I need to bear down. I also think I can do a 16-page hero comic for the con.

The website will now feature regular front-page updates. It'll be YouTube videos for the foreseeable future.

I'm on the back-end of the cold, and it's still no fun. DayQuil and NyQuil are my best friends.

Your Sis mysteriously got bigger in the last few days. It's very noticeable. She's smuggling a cylinder.

Picture of the Day
I must away.

A Matter of Nomenclature

Whenever Your Sister asks me to pick up medicine on my way home, I assume it's goop for female parts. This has been the pattern for years. She'll rattle off an unwieldy name, and I'll scan the shelves to find it based on phonetics. She and I have bemoaned the poor choices in names for some of these medicines. We have taken the step to rename them with a word beginning with the same first letter so as to be demur in the grocery store. For instance, "I need to get some Voltron."

So when she called me last night to pick up Chlortrimeton, I assumed it was for the lady-garden. It wasn't until she said "I need a decongestant," that I realized it was for the northern climes. It's the only such medicine allowed by the baby book. I scoured the cold/flu/decongestant shelf at CVS. Nothing. I called her to ask for the medical name (chlorpheniramine). Nothing. I called her again to ask what else the book would allow. None, she said. I finally asked a pharmacist, and he bolted to the exact shelf space. In the allergy section. Ah. There's the problem. But she now has the safe medicine to fight the cold I gave her.

My own infected head is clogged, but it's manageable. Feels like it will be gone by Saturday.

Picture of the Day
Now that's a big Wampa.

Hello, Possums

I intended to use the sick bed last night. However, our new roommate will have its own room, and that's the old office. The old office's contents moved into the guest bedroom, along with all of Your Sister's clothes. That means she gets up before I do and goes to the current guest/sick bedroom to put on work clothes and do some grading. That would have made for a bad morning for our hero, who is frog-throated and medicined. The sick bed, then, is now the Bed of Your Sister no matter who's sick. Seems unfair, but there it is. Last night, I doped up with NyQuil and slipped pleasantly into a pool of black.

Moving Picture of the Day
Now my voice sounds like that of Dame Edna. How charming for Your Sister, I'm sure.

Baby Babble

Pardon all the baby stuff.

Your Sis felt Roo move for the first time this morning. Even if she wanted to wake me up to share it, I was out cold on NyQuil. My throat is raw from running on Saturday. I thought it was warm enough, and I'm downing Yogi tea and cough drops until I'm back to normal. Your Sis pointed out that such tea, made with slippery elm, can lead to miscarriages. I should be OK though.

Sparked by outside conversations, we discussed allowances and books. I'm of the mind that allowances are earned, and advances are earned through extra work. I think allowances can include "overtime pay" for extra work that doesn't diminish the next allowance installment. Your Sis likes making Roo use the allowance to buy the cool stuff. We'll provide basics, but if Roo wants the cool clothes, Roo has to use the allowance. I'm OK with that.

We also have a simple curriculum of stages of reading. I like Judy Blume. Your Sis doesn't not. Because she's a commie. I read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (and its sequel, Superfudge) and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great repeatedly. She won't hear of it. She wonders what chapter-books we should move to after the basic kids books. Charlotte's Web is her choice. I also like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. She asked when Harry Potter could be introduced, and I said it depended on Roo's maturity. But Narnia and The Hobbit would make for a good entree into Potter and The Ring trilogy later. No discussion on comics yet. We talked about this over lunch, and I'm sure we entertained the other restaurant patrons as we told those books' stories to each other. I could have used a puppet or two.

I'm starting two new comic projects this weekend: a comic story told one page each month, and a casual diary comic. Both are going online. I'll tell you where to find them as they go up. The monthly comic is story I've dabbled with for over a year. In addition to these, I need to hammer out about three minicomics for the May convention. But I have four months to do the latter and can manage that if I stick to a schedule.

I have the rare weekday lunch with Your Sister today, and I'm sure we'll bore everyone with baby talk.

Picture of the Day
Crucial notes if you ever go time traveling.

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.