A city fellow was invited to spend a weekend at a friend’s farm. Several things were new to the city fellow, but the strangest thing he saw was a pig with a fancy artificial limb. When asked about it, the farmer replied “That is no ordinary pig. Last year our house caught fire while we were sleeping, and that pig knocked his snout against our bedroom window, woke us all up, saved our lives. Another time, little junior was swimming in the creek and hit his head on a rock. The pig dove in, grabbed Junior by the trunks and hauled him out. A pig like that, you don’t eat ’em all at once.”
Fasten your seatbelts
Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our cruising altitude of 29,000 feet. We have turned off the fasten seatbelt sign and you may feel free to roam about the cabin.
Does this mean that the morning sickness is gone? Nope, but we’re hoping that it eases up soon. It is already getting a little better as normally good food odors like a cheeseburger or pizza now smell good again. Not so long ago, those odors were repulsive. There is still no appetite, but that will come with time.
In other exciting news, I got notice back from DTS. My application has been found acceptable and a background check is being conducted. Once the background check has cleared, I will be officially accepted as a student at DTS. In case you were wondering, the answer is “yes”, we will be moving to Dallas for four years of grad school.
The First Trimester
For those of you who haven’t ever experienced morning sickness, let me try to help you understand what it’s like. The first thing to know is that there are varying degrees. Some women don’t have any, others, like my lovely wife, get their share and someone elses.
Age plays a factor, as do other things, but mainly it just boils down to luck. Some women have fierce morning sickness with one child, and none with the next, or vice versa. Some women suffer greatly during every pregnancy. Again, the overriding factor seems to be luck, or lack thereof.
The condition is not aptly named, as it is not confined to mornings. Jen spends just as much time bowing before the porcelain throne in the afternoon, evenings, and the middle of the night as in the morning. So much so that we’ve set up a giant pillow there to make the time pass a tiny bit more comfortably.
The truly special part about morning sickness is that you’re turned into a miserable, wretching creature even when you have nothing to throw up. The raging hormones are the trigger, not food. Eating becomes a bidirection experience instead of the infinitely more pleasurable unidirectional one. So you eat what you can, and hope to time it between wretches so that you get something from it.
Women who suffer excessively from morning sickness tend to lose weight. It’s not hard to imagine why. She looks at every food item and then tries to decide how it’s going to taste on it’s way up. Bananas taste about the same in either direction, but they get old after a while. Our doctor recommended eating anything that would stay down, including potato chips and cheese curls. I had never imagined hearing a doctor recommend eating potato chips.
Tonight Jen walked into the kitchen with her regular conundrum. She needs to eat, she wants to eat, but there’s not a thing in the world that she wants to throw up. There’s not much of a chance that anything that goes in will stay there. She wants to eat something, anything, but there’s nothing she wants to eat. How do you solve that?
Being male, I have my opinions. “Well heck, if you’re going to throw it up anyway, you may as well eat what you want.” This does not coincide with the sensibilities of the feminine species. I have this on good authority. There’s plenty of home remedies for morning sickness: ginger, Vitamin B6, carbonated beverages, unisom, etc. We’ve tried quite a few options. Some help, most don’t. None help enough.
There’s little I can do. I put a “I Love You” note under the toilet seat. I dole out hugs like they’re candy. I’d love to make this experience less onerous. I have a lot a stake here. What are the odds of her thinking this is a good enough idea to do twice if it costs 9 months of misery?
Fortunately, we’re nearing the end of the first trimester. That’s typically when morning sickness recesses and mommy gets to enjoy her body again, for a time.
The Answer
Happy Birthday to us
Yesterday was my birthday, tomorrow is Jen’s. Today some friends threw us a party where Jen opened her box from me, consisting of four items, three of which were related: ginger ale, ginger snaps, and more ginger snaps. If you consider the medicinal purposes of ginger, you’ll have another clue as the nature of “the question” alluded to on the 27th of Oct.
The fourth item was a printed itinerary for our Christmas vacation plans. We’ll be off to Costa Rica to visit with Jason & Mishael, our friends from Atlanta who now live there. Jen was rather surprised to see an itinerary to arrive in San Jose. After realizing that the San Jose we’re arriving at isn’t in California, the picture came into sharp focus.
Halloween
Each year at Halloween our church hosts a “Pumpkin Patch” party. To get a mental picture, imagine a large building with 2-600 little kids all dressed up in their costumes playing various carnival type games, door prizes, balloons, and other exciting stuff for kids. Jen and I are in a group and our group volunteered to serve at the event and were assigned to assorted positions.
I was one of 11 people assigned to security detail. It is Halloween so a costume would be necessary. I had aspirations of being a Roman Centurion but a $15 plastic helmet and sword doesn’t do it justice and a “good” costume with real metal helmet and sword was a bit much at $800.
I didn’t give the costume much more thought until last night when Jen brought up the matter. Since we were now in the 11th hour, we were limited to clothing options in the closet. Jen came up with a great idea, an Agent from The Matrix. I already had the black suit and black square sunglasses. The white iPod headphones made a perfect earpiece, so only a few accessories were needed. A trip to Wal*Mart to acquire a black tie, tie clip, and hair gel and I was in business for a whopping $21.
The real work was done last night, reviewing the movie again to get the lines down: “Hello Mr. Anderson”, and other classics like, “I’m going to enjoy watching you die Mr. Anderson” expressed in monotone eloquence. I’m quite pleased to report that it was a smashing success. The most common comment was “You look so professional”, followed closely by “You look like an agent”. Everyone got the “government agent” part. Members of demographic profiles that would likely have seen the movie got it immediately, and everyone else guessed Men In Black, or CIA agent.
Defining moments were intimidating 15 year olds with nothing more than an expressionless stare and issuing an appropriate agent greeting to a miniature Neo. The little Neo was quite taken by the experience as well. We enjoyed ourselves very much this evening and hope that you too did something enjoyable and memorable on this holiday.
iMac 17″ for sale
Do you know someone looking for an iMac but can’t afford a new one? I have a 17″ iMac G4 (800MHz) for sale. I am the original purchasor, as this was Jen’s iMac. It was top of the line with the just released 17″ LCD display, 80GB hard drive, SuperDrive, 56k modem, Ethernet, and speakers. I bumped the RAM up to 768MB and added an Airport (WiFi) card. I did a price search on eBay and this system currently sells between $1,000 and $1,200. This system would lean towards the higher end of that range due to the SuperDrive, extra RAM, and Airport options. It’s a great little computer but it’s being replaced because a faster system is needed.
To buy it’s replacement (17″ iMac G5 1.8GHz, 512MB, SuperDrive) costs $1,700 direct from Apple. Despite this systems ability to fetch over $1k on eBay, I’d sell it for a little less to someone I know.
The answer is yes, but what, pray tell, is the question?
Some people don’t get the iPod
It’s no secret that in psychological terms, humans have a tendancy to project their world view onto others. Because of this, they often have have quite distorted views of reality. I found this iPod user review to be a classic example. It seems iPod users have been giving each other “the nod”. His assumption is that because he bought his to “be cool”, that so too have all other iPod users. How absurd.
Continue reading “Some people don’t get the iPod”
Cellular And IP Telephony Update
I’m now a Sprint PCS customer for the next 12 months. Despite not having quite the plan I wanted, and despite a very limited selection of phones (which do not support bluetooth), they do have a decent nation-wide plan, as well as adequate local service in northern Michigan. Almost as important, it saved a friend a $150 contract termination fee by taking over her contract.
For my purposes, data access is as important as the cell coverage. Sprint PCS has what they call “Vision”. Vision encompasses many things such as web surfing on your phone, picture exchange, etc. The short version is simply that for $15/mo I get internet access at ISDN speeds, anywhere Sprint has vision coverage (most everywhere). This is quite cool.
Today I purchased a $23 cable at Radio Shack. I plugged the cable into the phone and the USB port on my powerbook. Right now, Jen is driving 85mph down US-131 on our way to a Third Day concert in Ypsilanti. At the same time, my cell phone is charging (via my laptops USB port) and I’m typing this blog entry on my Powerbook, connected to the internet through my Sanyo 8100 cell phone. Slick.
Oh, and one more question just got answered. I can also receive calls from telemarketers on the cell phone while connected to the Intenet.
On a related note, my Packet 8 IP phone has a useful “forwarding” feature. Instead of doing a “normal” forward like your traditional (POTS) line, it forwards the call to a number and rings in on the IP phone at the same time. Whichever phone picks up the call first gets it. Now, should you call my home phone, after I fail to answer in two rings, it rings my cell phone. Very slick. đ
I am fairly pleased with Packet 8 but their call quality leaves a bit to be desired. As soon as VoicePulse provides service in my area, I’ll be jumping ship. Their service costs $5 more for unlimited national calling but offers a many more useful features in addition to better call quality. If I lived in an area where I could get my number transferred to VoicePulse, I’d do it poste haste.