Gotta Knit, No Time To Eat

1) Amnio next Tuesday. Maybe find out baby's gender then ... if not, within 2 weeks after.

2) Tom and I going to Japan for vacation 12/23 - 12/31. Tokyo and environs. Whee!

This afternoon, because I was bored, I imagined having a conversation with someone who didn't understand the xkcd comic "Sandwich."

So I explained the sudo command and when it might be used, and how it was kind of a Unix inside joke, although Apple may have opened things up a bit having Unix as the core of MacOS X.

Then my imaginary listener floored me by asking, "Okay, I get the part about sudo, but why is it funny?"

After thinking it over a bit, I realized that it was actually a pretty good question. And so in my imaginary conversation, I pontificated on how the comic subtly and poignantly expresses the unrealizable desire to have complete control over one's entire surroundings, and threw in a bit about how it is representative of the attitude of our geek-slacker instant-gratification generation.

Deep, eh? My imaginary listener thought so.

Now, make me a sandwich.

OK, so I finally got around to scanning these from last week's visit. (13 weeks) Click for larger image.

So I figure that since I've spilled the beans and all, I'd talk a little bit about what being preggers has been like so far for me.

I guess you can say I've got morning sickness. Which is a total misnomer, since in my case it goes on all day long. I've managed to only vomit once, but I experience various degrees of nausea (ranging from "I feel yucky" to "I'd better go stand by the toilet just in case") nearly constantly. That really sucks. Everyone knows about morning sickness, but I've also got this heartburn thing going on, which is very common and I did NOT know about. Evidently the "pregnancy hormone" hCG causes a general slowdown of your entire digestive system which can lead to heartburn and acid reflux, which I'm also experiencing. It's supposed to drop off around the end of the first trimester so I'm hoping for some relief.

I'm eating very differently. Now I eat a lot of tiny meals/snacks ... sometimes 7-8 times a day. And my preferences have changed ... anything with really strong smells or fatty/oily is a big turnoff. So overall I'm eating healthier and trying to get a good balance of proteins and carbs in each meal. This has meant more tofu and cottage cheese. Although I have been having a lot of sugar because I've  been sucking on hard candies because they help with the nausea. And I think I'm a little bit dehydrated all the time because liquids also make me feel ill.

Tom and I really like our doctor. We've been in to see him twice so far. As it turns out, he is a Techer! Graduated in the 70's and was a Darb. A few of my coworkers also had him and highly recommend. One of the things we really like is that he views the "research" with a scientific eye and knows when it's real and when it's bunk. One of the first things he told us was that a lot of doctors cultivate what he calls a "culture of fear" meaning that pregnant women are often told to not do this or that thing even when the risk is very very low. This really resonated with us.

Anyway, it's time for my mid-morning snack, so I'm going to wrap this up for now. More later.

Oy, is it September already? I haven't been updating my journal frequently enough. Tom and I returned on Tuesday from an extended Labor Day weekend in Ohio. Mostly we relaxed, but Tom's mom and dad drove down from Michigan on Friday and spent the afternoon with us. Then the six of us (me & Tom, Tom's parents, my mom and grandmother) went out for steak dinner at Stoney River. The steaks were pretty decent and we got 3 free desserts for the three birthdays in the group: Tom (8/26), Grandma (8/30) and Lou (9/2).

Saturday and Sunday we helped my mom get ready for her big farewall party for her best friends Hiromi and Midori who are returning to Japan. Mom rented the clubhouse and hired a sushi chef. There were about 30 people all told and we had an MC and karaoke and everything. It was very nice. We got all the leftover sushi and had a smaller (9 ppl) sushi party the next night. So I am sushi'd out for a while!

It was nice to spend some time with my grandmother. She just turned 89. She's kind of frail and doesn't get around much because she gets these dizzy spells from high blood pressure. She doesn't like to walk anywhere unassisted. So her day pretty much consists of sitting around the house, feeding the wild birds and watching them, watching Japanese satellite TV, and drinking a shot of cognac every evening (doctor-recommended!). She's a bit senile but not too bad, and her hearing is going but she refuses to get a hearing aid. Anyway, we were able to communicate a little bit; I remembered more Japanese than I thought I could. She and Tom would also have drawing-assisted "conversations" and she was trying to teach him some Japanese but I'm not sure how much he will remember.

Flying under the new "no beverages" rule is a pain in the arse. You get so dehydrated on the plane. We flew Northwest, which no longer serves in-flight meals. Instead, you can buy snack boxes for $5. Luckily we were prepared and made ourselves real sandwiches to take with us, and lots of good snacks. I highly recommend doing this.

Hello friends, I have been terrible about not posting for a while. I've been really busy at work. Um, lots of things to talk about quickly.

Tom and I are working on setting up a trust/will thingie. We hired a lawyer and everything.

I've been playing too much Kingdom of Loathing.

We're going to Ohio/Michigan for the Labor Day weekend. My grandmother will be there. One of my mom's best Japanese friends is going back to Japan, so she is throwing a going-away party with a PRIVATE SUSHI CHEF. This will rock.

Funny: Within the space of one week, I kid you not, Tom got jury summons from both the LA Superior Court and the US District Court. Evidently the US one is a special juror selection process for a super-long trial; the letter says 4-6 months. Luckily the LA one is a week before the US one, so hopefully he can get out of the US.

Not doing as much knitting as previously, but I did knit a little hat for Misako's baby shower which is next Saturday. It's also Tom's birthday next Saturday.

Like I said, I've been super-busy at work but it's been a good busy. We're implementing some new systems so it's fun to learn new stuff. And I got a really great personnel evaluation from my boss this year, which kind of made my day today.  =)

Well, I spent this four-day weekend doing practially nothing. Let's see. Tom and I went to see Superman Returns (more on that later), we had Korean BBQ with Misako and Naoki, I played a lot of KoL, my Wacom tablet arrived and I experimented with it, I read a lot and slept, Tom and I baked gingersnaps.

I enjoyed Superman Returns, mostly because Brandon Routh was a fabulous Superman/Clark Kent. I came home with a little schoolgirl crush. That got me thinking about other celebrity crushes I've had throughout my life, and I realized for the first time that they almost all fit a pattern: tall, dark, and handsome, with the capacity for love. (Tom thinks that what I mean by the last part is really pussywhipped.)

Here's a list of the ones I thought of:

Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in the BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice
Adrien Brody in King Kong
David Duchovny as Fox Mulder (does he count as dark?)
Kyle Maclachlin as Agent Cooper

Some others which don't quite fit the mold, for one reason or another:
Keanu Reeves, when he is not talking
Matthew Broderick, in either War Games or Ferris Beuller's Day Off or Ladyhawke
Cary Elwes in Lady Jane, or as Westley (before he becomes the Dread Pirate Roberts)
Luke Skywalker, but only in Return of the Jedi

I'm sure there's more but I can't think of them right now.

So, what's YOUR type?  =)