Just another month

Haven't mentioned being pregnant much on the blog - not a preggo blog after all - but it's obviously on my mind more and more as I approach 200lb and ankles the size my knees used to be.
Yesterday my lovely work friends had a shower for me - totally unnecessary as I have a 4 year old and they held me a shower for him back in '04, but I was really chuffed, and we had sheet cake - yay!
Last night we went for dinner at the mall and then lined up for over an hour to see Santa. Little guy was just delighted to see him, but apparently even standing for an hour is too much for me now - spent the night in hospital with v sore contractions, and came home this morning still cooking this baby but poked full of holes and exhausted.
Like I say, just another month.
Maybe I'm just a moaner. I mean - look at this woman. Hats off...

Some pictures to keep

Tuesday night was a momentous one -

Wednesday at Sip n Knit we were discussing whether this would be one of those 'where were you when...' occasions - all too often those are linked to tragic occasions - 9/11, Diana dying, Kennedy getting shot (bit before my time that last one), so it's wonderful to have a happy memory to anchor onto. Of course, if anyone asks where I was when the first black president was elected, I'll have to say I was fast asleep in bed, hugging big pregnant belly :) Ah well.

PS - though I had the chance to buy actual newspapers on Wednesday morning, it never occurred to me. By the time I realized that I was missing out on wonderful souvenirs, this is what I found:

Well - there's always Inauguration Day!

cheesy grin alert

Been a good good week. Extra hour in bed on Sunday. A wonderful new President. And...my first week in two years

without

braces

!!!

Got braces two years ago because my not-very-crooked teeth were getting chipped from the bad alignment. Or something. Twenty four months and 4 orthodontists later (grr) they came off last week and I have a lovely All-American girl smile now. I even bought some of that teeth-whitening stuff last weekend. I will update later with some up-close-n-gorgeous pictures, but for now here's me and my two men and my big cheesy grin!

What amazed me was, when I went to work and met friends over the next few days, that they didn't immediately notice. Manys the person who smiled politely, then worriedly, as I grinned widely at them demanding an opinion. Like my teeth aren't foremost on everyone's mind, sheesh...

OK here's one more look:

Election '08 - there's no avoiding it

No don't run away!
NPR took the whole 'lipstick on a pig' furore to it's logical conclusion - right here.
Love it :)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Ah happy days...Candy corn back in the stores! I bought myself some Autumn Mix in Giant on July 31st. Time really is moving faster as I get older...

An Irish story.

Look at this wonderful carving I got in Sligo - a wedding gift for the couple whose wedding I recently attended:
Ireland has a great storytelling tradition, full of warriors, princes and princesses, magical creatures, spells cast and hexes...One of the stories everyone knows is Niamh and Oisin in Tir na nOg*. This carving shows Niamh on her horse, when she meets Oisin.

This was carved by a wonderful artist named Michael Quirke, who works in his renovated butcher shop in Wine St. Sligo. Should you ever be in the vicinity, take the time to visit - not only does he have wonderful art on display, he'll take the time to explain it all to you. I was delighted to find something special for my friend.

*sorry for the rather breathless prose in the link ;)

97 or so...

Wow coming up on my 100th post!
I may retire after one hundred - my blog is going like so many others, running out of steam with more and more infrequent posts...so anyhoo, for another off-topic post, let's invigorate some debate: In these days of technology and convenience, what are the things that set your teeth on edge but aren't exactly worth complaining about - two that come to mind for me are:

Voice mail instructions.

First you hear your friend/coworker/whoever give a detailed description of why they aren't there to talk to you, and what you should do next. Then you hear that chirpy "At the tone please record your message. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press 1 for more options..." When I call DH it takes 57 seconds before I can get a word in (longer if he answers ;) )
What ever happened to "leave a message after the beep" ???

Magazine subscription inserts.

There I am, settling down on sofa with dog, kid, cold non-alcoholic beverage, and copy of new Glamor/Entertainment Weekly/The Week/Newsweek/News and World Report/Interweave Knits* and out slithers 3 of 4 of these. I already subscribe to the magazine...

*I subscribe to a lot of magazines...

So what's your most irksome small annoyance? Here's your chance to vent!

Ruining my carbon footprint...

Completely off topic:* today I was at a meeting in a hotel conference room and it was perishing cold. WHY do these places turn the air conditioning up so high? My power bill shows a definite bump in July and August by cooling my little house - what must the Holiday Inn power bill be like? And last summer in Orlando I stayed at a hotel that provided buses to and from attractions, and those buses were invariably so cold there was condensation on the outside of the windows...
Anyway, tomorrow I'm digging out a cardi (purple maybe??). Perhaps I'll bring along a flask of soup too...

*though I was wishing for knitted goodness

More Guilty Pleasures

Check out Entertainment Weekly's list of Cheesy Ballads: be warned, not for the lactose-intolerant.


One of my all-time favourites is on there: Crazy for you. I actually won a competition* in the mid-80s in Smash Hits, and the prize was a Crazy for you tracksuit. Basically just a grey jersey tracksuit and Crazy for you across the back and I think up one leg. Which I wore till it fell apart...
*Competition question: what is Madonna's real name?




So tomorrow we're having a bbq to celebrate DHs 40th (actually falls next week, while we're in Ireland). You know that Guilty Pleasures Mix will be played loud and proud - he's Class of '87: The Golden Era of Guilty Pleasure music...

Here he is being welcomed home by Paddy and Jamie:

Happy Birthday hon!

Guilty Pleasures: the final cut

OK - so had to make some cuts as there isn't a music CD (that I could find) that holds 71 songs. So may I present:

Guilty Pleasures - Rock:

You Shook Me All Night Long/AC/DC
You Give Love A Bad Name/Bon Jovi
Total Eclipse of The Heart/Bonnie Tyler
Money for Nothing/Dire Straits
Sweet Child O' Mine/Guns N' Roses
Me and Bobby McGee/Janis Joplin
Don't Stop Believin'/Journey
Rock n Roll all nite/KISS
Paradise by the Dashboard Light/Meat Loaf
Come As You Are/Nirvana
Crazy Train/Ozzy Osbourne
We Are the Champions/Queen
Black Betty/Ram Jam
I Wanna Be Sedated/The Ramones
The Galway Girl /Steve Earle
Come Sail Away/Styx
Whiskey In The Jar/Thin Lizzy
Pride (In The Name Of Love)/U2
Jump/Van Halen
Brown Eyed Girl/Van Morrison

and

Guilty Pleasures - Pop:
All Out Of Love/Air Supply
I Write The Songs/Barry Manilow
Uptown Girl/Billy Joel
Top of the World/Carpenters
If You Leave Me Now/Chicago
Brick House Commodores
You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)/Dead Or Alive
I Want To Know What Love Is/Foreigner
MMMBop/Hanson
Like A Virgin/Madonna
Beat It/Michael Jackson
The Other Woman/Ray Parker Junior
Can't Fight This Feeling/REO Speedwagon
Never Gonna Give You Up/Rick Astley
Don't You (Forget About Me)/Simple Minds
We Built This City/Starship
When Will I See You Again/The Three Degrees
Africa/Toto
The Hustle/Van McCoy

Like I said - let me know if you'd like a copy!

Guilty Pleasure Sing-alongs?

DH is preparing to go on a very long car-ride soon and to keep him awake I'm making a mix CD (how very 80s) of those songs you crank up and sing along to when driving...if you're by yourself. The idea came to me as I belted out the chorus to REO Speedwagon's "I can't fight this feeling anymore" in traffic yesterday. You know the kind of song - generally it came out more than half your life ago, people born around the time the song was released wonder how on earth you know the words, it's melodramatic in a way that today's music doesn't dare to be...
This is where I need your help!

I'm going to include the REO Speed wagon song, Journey's 'Don't stop believin'', something byAir Supply... what else?

Please if you read this leave a song title in the comments section - if you do I'll promise to send you a copy of the finished product OK. To start the ball rolling I'm tagging Knitty McKnitknit, Twiceknit, Flibbertygibbet, Ginger Lucy, Pheelya, A Pile of Laundry, Thyme to Sew and heck why not Crazy Aunt Purl.

another blog post on the price of gas

Or petrol.
Truckers from all over the nation have converged on DC to protest the spiraling cost of gas, and are blazing a path down highway 395, which runs three floors below my office.

This morning I spent $42 to fill up my little car - the kind of price I was used to paying in Ireland. I can't imagine having to fill it up everyday, out of my own pocket, just to do my job.

Desktop nightmare!

Here's a scary sight, from my desk yesterday:Not only is that the nastiest soup in the world, there's a (gasp) empty plastic water bottle in the background! Been a lot of discussion on plastic bottles lately. From The Onion, to knitting bloggers and NPR. Forgive me for being a little fatalistic, but before I go throwing the baby out with the bath water (and also the blue plastic bath, I guess), I'd like to hear a few facts. That's why I was so annoyed with the quality of the interview given by Dr. Michael Shelby, head of the research study that led to this scare, to All Things Considered April 16th last. So much so, that I even sent in a listener comment:

Date : 4/17/2008 1:58:13 PM

I was disappointed in the interview with Dr. Shelby on the safety of Bisphenol A.

The news that everyday items like plastic bottle and baby food containers could be a cause of cancer, early puberty etc. is a headline grabber, but this piece only increased my confusion.

Dr. Shelby may have been the brains behind the study, but needs to learn the importance of risk communication. He provided no useful information on the applicability of the findings from the study, and seemed to be unsure even as to their significance to the average consumer. The obvious question "should I throw away my baby formula?" seemed to stump him - what did he imagine National Public Radio listeners (i.e. members of the *public*) would want to know?

All I learned from this study was that I now have one more thing to worry about. Maybe...

They didn't play it the next day, but they played others in the same vein. Then yesterday I got this response from Kate at NPR:

Dear Denise,

Thank you for contacting NPR's All Things Considered. We regret if our programming has not met your expectations. We strive to offer the highest quality of news and information available. Listener feedback helps us to accomplish this goal. We welcome praise, as well as criticism, and your thoughts will be taken into consideration.

Thank you for listening to All Things Considered, and for your continued support of public broadcasting. For the latest news and information, visit NPR.org. Sincerely, etc.

I realize it's a form letter - but I certainly didn't mean to imply that it was their programming that didn't meet my expectations - And I'm still unsure what to do about all the plastic in my life...

Let's go smell the roses. And pansies.

Grumperina socks coming along slowly but surely. Great colours aren't they? Finally a sock pattern that is interesting to do and let's a pattern show thru a variegated colourway - yay!

I love NPR

Usually I listen to an audiobook in the car - I do up to an hour driving on the days I have to commute so I can knock out quite a few books that are difficult reads this way. Today I didn't have anything that I particularly wanted to listen to so I turned on NPR. Love NPR.

This morning they interviewed John Banville, a Booker-prize winning literary author who recently published The Silver Swan, a truly excellent crime noir novel, under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. Fascinating to hear the author's voice reading his work.

Then this evening, they gave an update on the Amazon.com writing contest I was a semi-finalist in. I was weeded out months ago, and today it was announced that Fresh Kills came out as winner. I just pre-purchased - I know it'll be excellent - the competition was stiff after all ;)

Finally - another airing of a story that makes me cringe every time. Today it was announced that Gene Weingarten won a Pulitzer Prize for Pearls before Breakfast, his feature in the Washington Post describing what happened when he convinced world-class violinist Joshua Bell to play beautiful music in a Metrorail station to gauge commuters' reaction. From all I've read on the experiment since both Bell and Weingarten were somewhat surprised by the lack of recognition of the pearls by us swine. Yes, I was one of the 1,070 people who scurried past. In fact - you can see me on the accompanying video of the whole experiment: I was wearing the same jacket I had on today. I remember the day in question: I noticed the violinist because he wasn't standing where the buskers usually stand...and that's about all I noticed. I usually walk up the escalators and always have my ipod on. What can I say?
Oink...

For the day that's in it...

Distractions

I am currently reading three books.
Killing Floor by Lee Childs (read till past midnight on this last night). Well past my bedtime.

Silver Swan by Benjamin Black. This is actually an audiobook, read by Timothy Dalton. He has the most wonderful, expressive, sonorous voice...

Shakespeare: the world as stage by Bill Bryson. Bill (can I call you Bill? Thanks) is so adept at explaining commonplace, potentially very dull topics in such a way that has me adding up and truly interpreting things for the first time. A short history of nearly everything is my go-to audiobook. I actually have 3 copies of it, and have bought it for a few people too.

Who else reads more than one book at a time?

Socking along

Almost to the toe of the first Hogwarts sock. It's going to be blue and yellow, only. The Ravenclaw colours are blue and bronze but this is as close as I could get, and have already invested quite a bit (of time, effort and $$) in these socks. After faffing about with different patterns last week I finally settled on the simplest possible pattern that is not just stockinette: the body of the sock is k3 p1 around, with the purl stitch moving one ahead each row to have sort of a spiral effect. You'll just have to imagine how lovely it as, as my camera is all out of batteries.

Went to see "Miss Pettigrew lives for a day" at the weekend, on a rare date night with DH. It was very sweet, set in 1938/39 before all hell broke loose in London.

Off to West Virginia again, to do some training. This probably means there will be some sort of weather emergency in the next two days in the Washington DC metro area. You have been warned...

Knitting Poetry

I do like to write, as I said. So I think I'll take this challenge from Knitting Daily. Tortured examples (max. length is 50 words) to follow. Don't laugh too hard.

I ordered 2 of these (poetry knitting magnets) from the link above. One for my Hogwarts swap and one for me.
I mean - is there a fridge-owning knitter in the world that wouldn't want this?

In other writing news - I am stalled at 13 reviews in the Amazon competition. Seeing as these are mostly from friends I have a 5-star average - which is good - but some people have 70-80 reviews! Must be a full-time job recruiting that many reviewers. Guess I am too busy working/mothering/knitting.
And I kind of expected the story to speak for itself and generate its own reviews. Hah!

Crazy dogs

I get to work from home a day or two a week which does wonders for the sanity, considering my commute. Usually this means I have conference calls, where I've learned to be quick with the mute button:The one on the left is Paddy, our rescue pup, who just wants to be petted (and fed) all the time. The other is Jamie, who wants to play, and thinks Paddy is a wuss. She torments him, but I think he likes it really...

While I've been away...

Can't believe it's been two weeks since I posted - here's some pictures of what I've been doing and where I've been: Mobile sweaters, Co. Mayo
Famine memorial, Co. Mayo

Celtic symbol in the Leitrim glens
My Dad and my son, in Hazelwood, Sligo.