Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Changes

My bellybutton is disappearing.

Well, perhaps that is the wrong word, but it has gotten dramatically shallower over the past couple of weeks. Considering the fact that I'm not quite four months along, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have an outie for several months at the end of this.

Outies are weird.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Nice Things Friday

Friday was a very nice day.

After bugging the tech guy off and on for about a week, Friday morning he finally came over to try and put the more current version of a program on my computer. I had work to do, but could not access our files with my older version of the program. The tech guy tries to install the program, but it won't run on Windows 2000. So, he disappears into his office, and comes back with a brand new computer. Brand spanking new, with the Windows 7 beta on it. As it turns out, the new monitor they had ordered for me had arrived that morning, so in a short amount of time I wound up with a nice new computer setup. It is all very sleek (and Windows 7 seems pretty cool).

On my way home, I decided to drop by this little grocery store (North Park Produce, for those of you in the area). Ever since we moved, I had been eyeing it pretty every time I drove past, and hearing someone on the radio rave about the freshness and cheapness of the produce finally pushed me to go in. Well, it turns out the store is not as small as it looks on the outside, and the produce section is massive! Everything you could look for, and cheap too. I bought a bunch of radishes, a head of lettuce, two mangos, a pound of beets, and some persian cucumbers for $4.20! I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to go crazy and buy everything, but they had so much cool stuff, like quince, tamarinds, raw almonds, huge stalks of lemongrass, several varieties of cucumber... I could go on and on. I only glanced at the deli and non-perishable sections of the store. R and I will have to go back and explore further next time the fridge is empty.

Monday, April 13, 2009

30-hour onions

Several mentions of how well caramelized onions freeze had me eyeing the Costco-sized sack of onions in my pantry. San Diego is not exactly known for its cool and dry weather, so leaving all those onions out made me slightly nervous. Follow up these thoughts with an article on dyeing eggs with onion skins, and you can imagine how I spent my Easter morning.

The eggs, dyed using the skins of regular yellow onions, turned a rich terracotta color. I'd be curious to try red onions, as I imagine they would make a nice purple egg. Being the only boiled egg eater in the house, I had one for lunch today and saved one for a later salad, but was inspired to turn the rest into pickled eggs. Throwing together my own pickling spice from scratch was cool and made me very impressed at the spice collection I have acquired. The only thing I didn't have was whole mustard seed.

The onions took forever. I broke out the mandolin (I knew I kept that thing around for a reason) and quickly sliced a pile of onions into extremely thin slices. I then let them cook in the crock pot... and cook... and keep cooking overnight... and keep cooking while I went to work. They were finally done this afternoon, at which point in time I spooned them into the wells of a mini-muffin pan and put it out in the big freezer (I love that thing!). I think I'll be rolling in caramelized onions for a while, so the whole process was probably worth it.

Today my stomach decided that 14 hours was not a long enough time to digest the twice-baked potato I had for my Easter dinner the night before. I know this not only because of the heavy, unsettled feeling of my stomach, but also because a little came up to greet me this morning. Who made hash browns, I thought, confused. I wound up going back home after a couple of hours and sleeping the rest of the morning. Shortly after I woke up, R arrived home with a few groceries and (drum roll, please) Vegemite! I've been looking for the stuff for ages. He totally made my day.

Friday, April 10, 2009

The week's lesson

I suppose the proper expression is "you learn something new every day," but I really only wound up with one lasting lesson from this week. Considering how unmemorable most weeks tend to be, one lasting, lifetime lesson probably isn't a bad outcome.

This week's lesson: Don't microwave salmon at work.

That probably goes for all fish, but salmon is particularly pungent. R could still smell it upstairs when he got up, hours after I had cooked it. At work, I could hear my boss commenting on it from down the hall, at which point in time I decided to never microwave salmon at work again. He later came into my office in his quest to track down the source of the smell. I fessed up and swore I wouldn't do it again. It was quite embarrassing.

Don't let that one incident fool you, though. The main office of my company is an awesome place to work. I got an Easter basket today!

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

"Mess with the girl, YOU GET THE HITLER!"

Well, that's going to get some strange search results. Seriously, though, if you haven't watched The Venture Brothers, I highly recommend it. We've been re-watching it of late and strange phrases from the show (such as the one above) keep popping into my head. Makes life interesting.

Oh, I totally forgot to tell you all that there is something new and exciting. There is a bump! It's little, but I've definitely got a little pregnant belly.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Oh... Hi there

I seemed to have taken a brief, unplanned blog hiatus. We're hitting the end of a six-month project at work, so things have been more than a little hectic as we've been trying to get things done in the time allotted (and not quite succeeding). I wound up working until 7pm last Friday (nearly a 12 hour day), which is somewhat surprising as I have always been opposed to working in one's off-hours.

This afternoon, though, the madness came to a head as we were trying to burn the final product onto DVDs. My outer monologue (too fried for an inner one) went something like this:

"Alrighty, into the writable folder. Now burn... Why aren't you burning? What is the issue?

"Okay, let's try just this one file... Still no? Damn your mother! Why aren't you working?

"Wait, why do you say 'writable CD folder'? Can you not burn DVDs? You have a DVD burner. Here, let's try a new disk... Arg! Why do you hate me! There is no program for burning DVDs, and the boss took the only internet card, so I can't download anything! What are we going to do?

"Aha! My in-laws are back in town! I bet they have a DVD burner. They live in [neighborhood right next to the base]; they're close."

So, in the end, I wound up racing over to my in-laws house and using their DVD burner. Still, far too much stress for someone who had been racing to implement all the last-minute changed and requests and still finish everything for the deadline.

Yesterday, slightly inconveniently as it turns out, I had my first actual visit with my obstetrician. He turned out to be a round, jolly fellow, a bit younger than I was expecting. He whipped out the fetal microphone and found a strong heartbeat exactly where it should be for this stage in gestation (midway between navel and pubic bone), so it seems that the baby is healthy and growing well.

After I commented that I was surprised to be having no morning sickness due to how sick my mother was with me, the nurse's assistant speculated that perhaps it was due to my carrying a boy instead of a girl. Apparently there is some truth to that line of reasoning (see halfway down the article), but the differences are slight. Being my first baby, there really is no way for me to tell. Maybe I'm just very lucky.