Friday, October 17, 2008

My apologies.

I have plently to say on the election, but I’m muzzled by the Hatch Act when I blog from work, which is where I do my blogging these days since I’m so done in by the end of a work day that I don’t bother to go anywhere but to bed when I get home. Thank you, run on sentence.

I love Peggy Noonan, but I disagree with this column. I’m disappointed to hear and read the dismissal of Gov. Palin’s down home personality and speech. Noonan doesn’t get that this is what people are flocking to her rallies for - she is not a wonk or part of the party intelligensia or the good ole boy network in Washington. This is why she resonates with regular people. Show me in the Constitution where a politician is required to speak in so high falutin’ a manner to be qualified to run for any public office. I don’t believe it impacts her effectiveness as a Governor and I don’t believe that it will impact her effectiveness as Vice President. I have no problem with being called “Mom or Dad” instead of “Mother or Father” in speeches. I don’t see it as dumbing down. I am Mom. My mother is Mom. It’s as good a term as mother, imho. Anyway, my 2 cents.

I don’t understand the Fang tribe on Survivor. Two weeks in a row the majority talked about ousting the people who most threaten them and yet they vote out someone else. I think the lack of food is affecting their brains as much as their brawn. That said, it was cool that they had the experience with the elephant that hangs out near their camp.

I really want to go see Quantum of Solace in the theater when it comes out.

How ‘bout them Red Sox?

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

and the Speaks’ couple is usually awake. I don’t know what’s going on, but one or the other of us wakes up at about 3am every night. This wakes up the other. It’s frustrating.

In other news…

Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary. They are a true model of a couple that have a great marriage - through the trials of my Dad’s Navy career, many moves across the country and to/from England, and dealing with two mostly obedient if headstrong daughters, they have stuck with each other with much love and a steady faith in the Lord whom they serve. Thanks for showing us your great example, Mom and Dad. I hope you enjoy your night out! Love you!!!

I had a terrible couple of days sans Zofran. Long story short, my Rx ran out and I couldn’t get a refill without my doc’s authorization. Monday being a holiday meant that didn’t happen until Tuesday. At least I didn’t get the pills until yesterday because when I called the pharmacy on Monday afternoon/evening to check the status they said it still wasn’t filled. So I spent Monday and yesterday in bed feeling as nauseous as when this all started. I’m still completely dependent on the Zofran to keep me feeling normal and functional. Also very frustrating.

That said, the rest of the weekend was enjoyable. Jesse was adorable with his new obsession with Goodnight Moon or as he calls it “MoMoMoom.” Beau showed him the real moon on Saturday night and now takes him outside to say goodnight to the moon before bedtime. So sweet.

Church was great. I finally had my rotation on worship team and it was so much fun to be singing again. It helped that the guest worship leader was awesome and put together a great set of songs. We were told by many people that they really felt led into true worship, which was our prayer all weekend.

FIOS is great, although the new channel line-up is still confusing me at times. I spent all day Monday watching the DIY Sweat Equity marathon. Love that show. I also watched a couple of episodes of Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style and I think I prefer it over What Not to Wear. He gives better advice on what is essential for a good wardrobe, although they don’t leave the person with much in the wardrobe since they don’t have a huge spending spree like on WNTW. And I love that while Gunn has that hoity-toity accent, he seems to genuinely like each person they makeover regardless of their social status. He’s not the snob you’d expect from listening to him.

In other TV news, I haven’t been watching this season of The Amazing Race. After the initial episode I’ve been meh about it. I watched Batman Begins for the 3rd time on Sunday night instead and probably had a more enjoyable time. I am loving this season of Dancing with the Stars, though.

OK, need to get back to work. Happy Wednesday, people.

Friday, October 10, 2008

I was told to expect the FIOS technician between 8 and noon. He arrived at 8:15am. Awesome.

He is currently in the back working on installing their boxes to the house and then the work inside will begin. No internet at some point, but I’m working from home so I’ll report progress later.

[10:20am]: We have internet! Woo!

He’s hooking up the cable boxes now. It is all very exciting and now we need to save for an HD TV.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Again, I cannot access Gmail this morning. I get a 404 page, so there is definitely something going on. It’s frustrating.

Dad, I wanted to email you about your former employee - he pled guilty yesterday, is cooperating with the feds to find the kingpin, and will get a minimum of 5 years and I’m guessing will be deported upon release. Apparently he had 80Gb of data on his home computer, but his ISP turned him in because he tapped into a known sketchy IP address that was on a watch list.

From the Mommy Files, Beau and I were talking about the Duggar family and I said that as much as I love being a mom, if we were 20 years younger and I didn’t get so sick when pregnant I’d totally be up for having 4-5 kids. Not 18, but a nice large brood of kids. That said, I’m thrilled with our 1.3 children because I never expected to have any children at this age. I adore Jesse and I’m falling more in love with the little lemon in my belly every day. Thank you, Lord, for this unexpected blessing.

Nutella = French Vanilla Coffeemate + coffee (decaf) = deliciousness. And it’s way cheaper than *$.

I’ve got a case of the Thursdays.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Is Gmail down or am I just not able to get to it?

[4:20pm]: I’m in now. Thanks.

Today is my mother’s birthday.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I hope it’s a great one - as great as you are at the very least.

I love you!

Monday, October 06, 2008

1. More house hunting yesterday. I’ll sum it up this way - three great houses, but not an offer submitted. It’s a long story with which I won’t bore you.

2. Bizarro pregnancy dreams continue. I had two this weekend that really boggled my mind. I’ll just share the weirdest one.

Friday night. Beau and I decided to adopt a baby girl even though I am pregnant with a baby girl (in the dream I was at about 6 months along). So Lando Calrissian took us to some city in the clouds over Italy in the Millinian Falcon where we waited with other adoptive couples for our baby. When the first one arrived, I booted people out of the way at the door to get to the baby first. It was cold, so the infant carrier was covered. I unzipped it to find a lovely red-haired little girl and I scooped her to me mine. As for the Lando appearance, I can only attribute it to my recent watching of Return of the Jedi on cable. There’s no other explanation because I much prefer Han Solo over any other male in the Star Wars universe.

3. Useless One complained to me about how busy she is and to warn me that medical bills will be coming to me late. And then she proceeded to complain about how our boss told her she had to step up to the plate to take on more in her job. How dare he! Yadda, yadda, yadda. I told her we’ve all had to step up to take on extra at times and that it’s just the way it is when we can’t add the admin staff that we need. She then tried to blame that on the management, but I defended them because I know for a fact that our management constantly asks for more admins and repeatedly gets told no by HQ. We are the red-headed step child of federal agencies - we just don’t get the funding that others get.

4. Jesse is a generous little boy. He takes great delight in sharing food with Beau and I. He loves to feed Daddy grapes or pasta or Froot Loops, opening his mouth as wide as it will go and holding out the piece of food for Daddy to take from his little fingers. I had the pleasure of getting fed Froot Loops yesterday and his happy face made me tear up - or maybe that was the pregnancy hormones.

He has also perfected the zerbert. He loves to tickle, although his tickles are really pinches. But he showed his mastery of the zerbert yesterday when I heard this noise from Beau’s direction. We were watching the Redskins game (hail!) in the bedroom after a long morning of looking at houses. Jesse was wrestling with us on the bed when I heard the noise. “Did Jesse press on your belly hard enough to make you toot?” I asked Beau.

“No, Jesse did that,” Beau said, laughing.

I looked over to see Jesse press his mouth to Beau’s belly and he let out this beautiful zerbert. I cracked up, laughing so hard I had tears streaming. Jesse thought this was great and continued to zerbert. Then he zerberted me, too. And tickled/pinched. So much fun.

5. Oh, and the Redskins started winning when Beau put Jesse into his Redskins shirt. The boy will be wearing that shirt on all game days for the rest of the season.

Friday, October 03, 2008

1. I remembered #5 from yesterday - just a general complaint that my lower back is already hurting after sitting for too long. I fear the pain yet to come as the baby gets larger. Oy.

2. On the debate, I am ashamed to say that we turned it off about 40 minutes in. I was worried because she kept ignoring the moderator questions to discuss her own agenda items. I didn’t think that would work well. Turns out that I was wrong and should have stuck with it, apparently. I think he was completely charmed by her, as well and I like that he openly laughed when she was funny, even at his own expense.

3. *$’s Signature Hazelnut Hot Chocolate is deadly good stuff. Just a subtle hint of the hazelnut with the rich chocolate - it reminds me of Nutella. Which reminds me, Beau was supposed to buy me a jar of Nutella. Honey, will you add that to the grocery list, please? [ADDED LATER] Also, please add hummus and pita bread. Thanks!

4. We get our FIOS installed on Tuesday. I’m very excited!

Thursday, October 02, 2008

1. I’m fed up with our Congress. Socialism, here we come. I will be calling my representative today to beg him to vote NO on the bailout bill.

[ADDED 10:45am]: To contact your representative, click on this link. It is a HoR map, click on your state and then you can select your representative to get their contact info. I think email is bogged down, but phone numbers are listed as well. I called the Cannon number for my dude and got right through.

2. Looking forward to the debate tonight.

3. So I was going through a box of maternity clothes that I got back from a friend at church. There were a couple of sweaters that I forgot about and also some new things that she must have received included. Bonus! The bad news is the pants are now way too short, so I’m going to have to spend some money on new pants for work. And the jeans never got returned, so I’ll have to buy a couple of pairs of jeans, too.

4. I have bizarro dreams every night. Last night’s was X-rated in a marital way and involved an embarrassing moment that cracked me up and equally horrified me when I woke up. I told Beau about it and he thought it was funny and weird, too. The other night I woke up after dreaming that I was running willy-nilly through an empty NYC.

5. I had something else to share, but it’s gone after a long discussion about the bailout with my boss (he’s ticked, too) and a phone call from Beau.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Two things for today:

1. There’s a new update at Ticklish Giggles.

2. I hope Beau doesn’t mind me telling the story behind this picture, which I love. He was giving Jesse his bath and all of a sudden ran downstairs asking where the camera was. I panicked that Jesse was left in the tub alone. I was in bed, of course, and started struggling to get out of bed without instigating nausea so that Jesse didn’t drown in the time it took Beau to return. He was running back up the stairs before I rounded the end of the bed. Mere moments later I got to the bathroom and he handed me the camera so that I could see the shot he managed to get before Jesse ruined the beard in his enthusiastic play.

Note the farmer’s tan on those arms. His pasty white skin is darker than mine. Imagine how much darker his tanned bits are when next to my ghostly skin. I’m so glad he got his Dad’s complexion. His face didn’t get tan because Dad is great about making sure he wears a hat in the sun.

Monday, September 29, 2008

We had a successful house hunting weekend and found a home that we put an offer on yesterday. It is an older home (40+ years) that has been renovated to make it much larger. It’s a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom split foyer style. Not my favorite, but I can live in this house easily. The kitchen needs a complete overhaul and there are some other cosmetic changes we’ll make in time, but of the many foreclosure homes we have looked at it is in the best shape. It is essentially move-in ready, which is a huge plus.

So I spent a long time on the phone with my bank to start the loan process and also with Countrywide (a Countrywide pre-approval is required, but we don’t have to get our loan with them).

And now we wait to see if our offer is accepted. There are other offers on the house, so we’re nervous but also excited!

[UPDATE (4:50pm)]: We didn’t get it. The bank accepted the other offer before we got our loan approval in. I’m ticked because it was a frustrating process with Countrywide, who demanded that we do the application online. Unfortunately, our network was super slow and bogged down this morning and it took forever for each page to load. It probably took twice as long to complete as a result. *sigh*

Thursday, September 25, 2008

I love fall and it’s helping with my morning sickness, I think. Now that it’s cooler I am feeling much better. Of course, that could be because I’m nearing the end of the 1st trimester, but maybe it’s both.

I’m happy today to be wearing my favorite maternity shirt. I’m also happy that most of my maternity clothes will work for this pregnancy since I’ll be at my heaviest in the winter and early spring. There are some sweaters that I got for my pregnancy with Jesse that I never got to wear because of my bed rest. I’m thrilled to be able to wear them this time.

Facebook is way too addicting and such a time waster. But I love that I’ve been able to reconnect with some friends with whom I had lost touch.

The house hunt on Saturday was disappointing. Foreclosed homes are in such rough shape. One had real potential until we discovered the mold in the basement. So we press on in the hopes of finding something sooner rather than later.

I’m not happy about this bailout thing. As a taxpayer, the thought of $1T added to the national debt makes me cringe. However, I do believe the economists who say that long term this will be a lot less worse than it could have been otherwise. But it still rankles.

I believe the debate should go forth tomorrow night. That said, I also believe that it is important for the Senators to be on the Hill to tend to do their jobs. But then they can hop their campaign planes for the debate in the south.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

There’s a new update over at Ticklish Giggles.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Yes, I finally joined. If you know my real name, you can find me.

One question...I have created pieced of flair, but I have no clue how to add that to my wall.

For some odd reason the code to the graphic for this quiz doesn’t render properly on my blog, which means it isn’t nearly as fun for you to see when I merely type in the results.

If you want to see what it’s supposed to look like, then go see Robbo’s results.

Mine:

I could survive for

51 seconds

chained to a bunk bed
with a velociraptor

How Long Could You Survive?