Where oh where have I been? Well, to make a long story short, my computer at work has a virus. Or, I should say, it had a virus. Amazingly, my boss decided to spring for a new computer for me, so my sick computer went away and has been replaced with a dazzling new laptop. This means that I have internet again! Oh, sure, we have internet at home, but usually by the time I get home I'm too exhausted to get on the computer. Being almost 14 weeks pregnant will do that to you! And yes, I did break down and get a Crackberry a few weeks ago, but it is really hard to type posts and long e-mails on that thing. I'm trying not to become too dependent on it or else I will end up needing physical therapy for my thumbs.
Anyway, it's been quite a few weeks. I spent a whirlwind weekend in Minnesota for Emily's baby shower, which was a lovely event. I am so excited to meet Little K in just a few weeks! (Well, okay, I won't get to meet him/her for a while longer, but mainly I'm excited for the phone call or e-mail that reveals whether Little K is a he or a she! I am going crazy with the suspense, so I can't imagine how Em & Brett must feel!) I also got to attend the Lutheran Summer Music choir concert. My only regret was that Seth couldn't be there - he is a legend around that place and it doesn't feel right to enjoy LSM without him!
Last week my oldest friend Kelley invited me over to her parents' house to try on a big bagful of maternity clothes she is graciously lending me for the duration. I'm in an awkward in-between stage where you aren't really big enough for maternity clothes but nothing normal fits. Basically it's as if I've just eaten too many desserts, yet can't justify buying new clothes. Soon I'll be able to wear some of the great things she loaned me... and I must say, it was quite a trip trying on maternity clothes in K's childhood room where we used to hide from our brothers while they were off doing boy things!
I am feeling much better than I was a month ago. The nausea is about gone (knock on wood) although I will be very surprised if I ever eat chicken again. (However, we just learned that a Buffalo Wild Wings is opening here tomorrow, which has some of the best sports bar food ever, so hopefully I can still partake. Otherwise, an outing involving chicken and beer isn't going to be that enjoyable for me...) I've now moved on to the world of round ligament pain. The night before experiencing it for the first time, I remarked that I had no idea if I'd know what it was, considering I do not know where my round ligaments are. Turns out, I was wrong: I definitely knew I was in pain. YOWZA. Even worse, I consulted my two pregnancy books and neither of them spoke a word about this. Luckily, my trusty friend Google was there in my time of need, but what's with not informing women about this? If I hadn't known what it could have been, I would have been terrified. Okay, I'll admit it: I was terrified anyway. It was major, people... like pondering-whether-to-ask-my-boss-to-drive-me-to-the-emergency-room major. Still, I'm feeling much better overall, and we're starting to get really excited about this. The further things get, the more it feels like this might actually be happening! (I still haven't told my office, though, because it's been mighty dramatic around here with some client happenings and it just hasn't been right to drop "Oh, by the way..." into the conversation. I've been trying to broach the subject for over a week now! Hopefully tomorrow!?)
This weekend (well, tomorrow, actually) we are headed to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for the wedding of Seth's cousin. It will also be a whirlwind trip, which is disappointing as we would have liked some more time to explore the Grand Tetons. I'm told Jackson is absolutely stunning and we're looking forward to our time there. But we have to get back by Monday because I have three hearings that day... so back we come.
It's been a nice summer. Seth has been singing Billy Budd with the Santa Fe Opera, and it is quite the experience. I've gotten to go a couple of times, to his show and to a dress rehearsal of Handel's Radamisto (which was spectacular). It's nice to know people in high places. :)
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
today in sports news...
This isn’t a surprise to some of you, but we think it’s finally safe to announce that, to borrow Sarah’s language, we will be drafting a rookie for Team Hartwell in late January! (If you don’t speak sports talk, like me, that means: we’re having a baby!)
After 28 months of charting, 14 months of trying, and many tests/procedures, our doctor told us it was time to start IUI/IVF. (As it happened, with our particular issue, they probably would have wanted to skip right to IVF.) Lo and behold, three weeks after getting this very discouraging news, a miracle happened.
I’m 10 weeks, 4 days along now, and we had an ultrasound yesterday which finally allowed us to be excited about the whole thing. (We've discovered that when pregnancy is hard to come by, it’s almost impossible not to feel anything but cautious and anxious at first.) Finally, we saw the baby moving and waving at us yesterday, and we breathed a sigh of relief… although I’m told that parents never breathe normally ever again!
I’m feeling much better than I have in the last few weeks, and we are telling the world. Except I’m not going to share with my office for a few more weeks (if possible), so if you know my boss, please don’t tell him! I'm pretty sure they just think I need to lay off the doughnuts.
Monday, June 30, 2008
how many books have you read?
I borrowed this meme from Liz & Kristine. Play along in your own blog if you want to!
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well, let's see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I’m sure I haven’t read the entire thing, but I’ve read a pretty fair amount.)
7
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve come pretty close to reading the entire complete works – I’ve read all the sonnets, and most of the plays. I haven’t read all the histories, though.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I just started this on Sunday!)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (I'll admit this is well-written, but I HATE this book)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (Seth is making me read this by the end of the summer. It’s his favorite.)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
I'm happy to report I've read well over six books! I'm not too sure where they came up with this list, though - since when does The Da Vinci Code belong on the same list as Shakespeare and James Joyce?!
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
wednesday humor
Me (telling my boss about the opera Seth is in this summer): Well, it’s Billy Budd, from the Herman Melville book, and it’s all men. You know, because it’s a sea voyage and everything. Just men.
My boss: How do they know when the show is over?
Me: ?!?!?!
My boss: You know, ‘cause it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. If there’s no fat lady, how do we know when to go home?
:)
Friday, June 20, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
I'm still so sad about the death of Tim Russert. I've been watching Meet the Press as long as I can remember. Sunday mornings will never be the same. Nor will elections. Tim, I hope there is a white board waiting for you in heaven.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)