At Last!

My new baby niece, Anya, who was born August 16. Dad finally uploaded pics:

Check out Dad’s other pictures of the girls here.

Tags: family

Jammie night

It’s all of 6:30PM, and I’m already in my jammies. We’ve had a couple of raining, spitting, drizzly days and cool nights, which can only be combated with snuggling with a kitty or two on the couch with ordered-in Chinese food and bad TV. There may be some scrapping in my near future, though I might be overcome by couch-potato-itis instead…it’s difficult to say at this point.

Tags: comfort

Jeans for Real Women

Sweetie and I spent the day playing, and our first stop was to Lane Bryant. Why LB? Certainly there are LBs at home, and I don’t need to pick up more clothes here. But, Sweetie had heard about a new line of jeans at LB that are made for real women. According to this article, LB invited women in to their stores to be scanned to determine how real women are built.

You see, men’s jeans are based on two measurements – waist and length. This works because a man’s waist and hips are pretty much the same size. Women’s jeans, however, are based on sizing determined by studying women in the 1940s. But, our pants have always been based on one number (sometimes a length is included, but only three choices – tall, regular and petite). But this rarely works well for women. For one thing, women have hips. Oh, and not all of us have the same proportion of hip-to-waist measurement. Odd how clothing manufacturers haven’t figured that out.

The new LB jeans are an attempt to rectify the situation. They have three types of fits that account for different amounts of “curvy-ness”. Certainly, LB is not the first to try different fits for women. A couple of years ago Eddie Bauer introduced different fits. However, I have yet to try EB pants, because the ones that would work for me have not come in styles that I would actually wear.

I haven’t worn my new LB jeans yet, but they seemed to fit pretty well in the store. I’ll update when I’ve tried them for a bit.

Tags: reviews

Close to home…

By now, most of you have probably heard about the bridge over the Mississippi that came down in Minneapolis yesterday evening. Regular readers know that I grew up in Minnesota, and I still have friends and family there, so this tragedy hits close to home. (And, oddly enough, Andrew and I are heading to Minnesota today to celebrate Sweetie and Jeff’s wedding.)

I’m relieved to report that my family is all alright (though Dad had driven on that bridge yesterday morning <shutter>). Sweetie sent out an e-mail last night, and she and Jeff were safe at home at the time of the accident.

The family and friends of those lost in this disaster are in our thoughts and hearts.

Tags: suckitude

Oddest medication warning ever….

Just saw this in an ad for some medication:

Let your doctor know if you are allergic to anything to do with birds, like feathers, eggs or poultry.

Feathers?

Tags: oddness

Random stuff

My officemate is complaining that I haven’t updated this blog enough. Of course, he could just talk to me, but that’s too much trouble.

So here are some random bullets of stuff that I’d thought about writing at the time, but never got around to:

• Yes, we’ve been biking this summer. We don’t have a clear goal like we have the past couple of years. I’d rather work on getting my speed up than shear distance, but it’s hard to figure out how to make myself go faster. It should be easy to measure if we’re going faster or not, but how do you make yourself go faster without wearing yourself out completely? It would suck to be 10 miles from the car without enough energy to get back.

  Anyway, Andrew wrote a cool little applet that I’m trying to work into my blog sidebar so y’all can keep track of how much biking we’re doing. I’ll let you know when I have it working.

• We went to Montreal over Mother’s Day to see Andrew’s mom. I’d heard about an exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on “Inspirations of Disney” running this spring, so we decided to go. We stayed in Montreal and visited McGill campus and the Redpath Museum, the McCord Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts. We also walked around Old Montreal, and stopped at the Montreal equivalent of Build a Bear to get outfits for “the girls”. And we spent Mother’s Day with Andrew’s parents, taking them to dinner and driving up Mount Royal.

  The trip had some fun quirks, though. The trip out was fun because we ended up sitting on the airplane on the tarmac for 2.5 hours. They then brought us back to the terminal so we could get dinner (and the plane could refuel) before we finally got underway. The trip home…well, let’s just say that I was up in the bathroom the entire night before. Fortunately I slept for the plane ride, but it was a bit scary, if you know what I mean.

• If you look at my Flickr stream at all, you’ve probably noticed that I’m uploading loads of old pictures. I’ve decided that I need a back-up of my pics somewhere, so I’m going through all of my old pictures and putting copies up on Flickr.
• Andrew started his new job a couple of weeks ago, and he seemed much more content. Now if we can iron out our scheduling bugs. He gets home much later than he used to, so I’ve had to take over some of the cooking duties. It’s not that I can’t cook, it’s just that I don’t like it as much as Andrew does. (I don’t hate it, I just find it annoying to have to do it day after day after day after day after day after day.) Then again, I’ve warned him that my schedule may get wonky once I start writing my thesis.
• We had a yard sale a few weeks ago, and I set up a table with my scrapbooks and jewelry. I sold one of my bracelets, and lots of people “ooo”ed and “ah”ed over my scrapbooks. I think that if I could get enough stock to get a table at my work’s craft sale this fall I could do pretty well. The problem with selling on Etsy is that people can’t pick them up and look at them — the pictures just don’t do justice to the work that goes into the books I do. The problem at the yard sale was there was a bit of sticker shock, since people were looking for bargins, rather than full-priced items.
• Speaking of Etsy, I made my first sale to a complete stranger last week! One of my blanket bears is on her way to a new home in California. Yay!

I think that’s it. I don’t promise to be better about posting – my heart just isn’t in it right now, but I’ll pop by from time to time.

Tags: bike, my man, trip report

Dear Beltway Parents

Imagine that you are driving on the beltway with your child snugly cinched in their car seat (or in their seatbelt, if they happen to be over the car-seat weight and height limit). Suddenly, your child tells you that they have to go to the bathroom NOW. Do you (a) take the next exit off the beltway and find a gas station (or other suitable restroom) or (b) pull over onto the shoulder and take them into the shrubs along the side of the interstate?

I hope that most of you answered (a). But a frightening number of parents choose option (b). In fact, even one parent choosing (b) is frightening, in my view.

I have to admit that I’m not a parent, and I never plan to be one. So, I’ll never know the scream of a child who needs to use the bathroom immediately, and I’ll never know the urgency. (Though, I have spent a day with my two, very cute, nieces, but one was still in diapers, and the other was pretty good about telling us when she needed to go.) However, it just seems common sense that letting your child stand alongside an interstate, especially the Washington DC Beltway, is very foolish thing to do. I would rather clean up a wet child.

Why do I bring this up? Because I saw a car pulled over on the beltway on my way home from work tonight. Walking away from that car was a woman and a small (4 or 5-year-old, maybe) child. It was clear that they were heading toward a small stand of trees.

This reminded me of an incident several years ago. Over Thanksgiving weekend 1999, a father pulled the car over on the Beltway to let the kid use the trees as a restroom. While he was doing his business, another car crashed into his parents car, killing his parents and seriously injuring his sister. All I can think is what a f—ing selfish act of his father. The kid did not deserve to lose his family, just because he needed to go to the bathroom. And you know that this poor kid probably blamed himself. But it’s the father’s fault.

So, just in case you’re ever tempted to take option (b), let me just slap you in advance. Pull off the damn beltway at any of the non-interstate and non-tollway exits, and you’re likely to find several accommodating gas stations or fast-food restaurants. It’s not worth the risk to yourself and it’s certainly not worth the risk to your child.

Tags: rant

Why do I feel like a Piranha?

I just got off the phone with my Dad. His mom has been in long-term care for several months now, and he and my aunts are holding a garage sale this weekend with much of what they had cleaned out of her apartment earlier this year. They are giving all of the grand-kids a chance to pick out things that they want to keep.

I can’t get home for the sale this weekend, so Dad called me this evening to describe the items in the sale. I had him put my name on a few things, but I have to say that I’m feeling a bit dirty.

Grandma’s not gone yet. She’s 96. She moved from her apartment to assisted living last year, and then to a long-term memory care place in April. She’s not going back to her apartment, and she doesn’t have much short-term memory. She can’t even remember if someone visited her 10 minutes ago. But she’s not gone yet.

I know she’s not going to get better. Her memory is gone. Her apartment is gone. She can’t take care of herself and she won’t be able to take care of herself again. Her things have just been sitting in storage for a couple of months. But I still can’t help feeling weird about rustling through her things and picking at the remains for a momento or two.

Tags: family

What makes a happy Barb?

Vanilla Coke Zero

’nuff said.

Tags: comfort

Mental Note

When setting up the DVR so I can try out a new show, just set it to record all instances of that show instead of just the first one. Why? ‘Cuz there just might be a two-hour premier, which the DVR will only catch half of. Grrr….

Tags: rant