Friday, May 02, 2003

And yes, finally, a Baby Related Post. Gender is revealed, but you're going to have to read on...

We came down to stay at my Mom's on Thursday night, since we were going to start so early in the morning on Friday for the appointment. It was going to be at 8:30 Check in. We woke up in time despite the fact that my cell phone clock was about 12 hours ahead (PM), and we drove down to the University of Washington without incident, really. Didn't really get lost or anything, which is rather impressive of me. If I was born thousands of years ago, I would've been a famous explorer who just found countries just because I got lost.

The University Hospital was kinda strange, a cross between a University and a old hospital, and there was an awful lot of artwork that adorned the walls. We got into the Ultrasound room on schedule, and it pretty much started on the dot. The doctor (for lack of a appropriate job title) went through her measurements, taking stills of the baby's head size, circumference, bones, checking the number of fingers... Making sure all the appendanges were intact. The baby did a few kicks and waves, which made us smile a lot. This went on for about half an hour, just doing the measurements and looking at closeups of the little beating heart and the face of the baby, which looks a bit alien because only the eye sockets and the pupils or something show up on the ultrasound, giving the baby a rather different counternance.

We finally asked that we wanted to know the sex of the baby, and the doctor said that she already knew, but didn't know if we wanted to know. So, being the experienced doctor she was, she found the baby's legs, and used her fingers to cast a shadow on the baby's legs and proceeded to tell us that there was a scrotum, and a penis.

So, there you have it, we're having a baby boy. We went through some genetic counseling, and it seems that our odds were going to be pretty much fine, and that put ourselves at ease a lot. Doctors aren't really inclined to give percentages anymore, or reassure parents that nothing is ever going to go wrong, so a lot of times they just give generalizations and vague answers, but this one was good enough to make us feel good for the next four months. For a while after they announced the gender, I sorta mourned a little about the idea of not having a girl. Seems like I was trying so hard to be impartial that I ended up being partial, one way or another. It's silly, really, the girl never existed, but the idea did.

We dropped off my Mom at her workplace and went to Target, then to rent some movies. Just watched "Jackass", and now I'm a little afraid of having a boy. What is wrong with these boys???

Anyway, we are happy as clams, and there should be a photo coming your way shortly. Along with the Vegas photos.


Yes, I think it has been two years since my last entry.

Sorry about that, folks, but working 15 days with one day off isn't easy, and despite being richer (and quite happy about the money), I still long for my three days off and my sanity, thank you very much. Even my iMac has expressed its remorse by being weird and fussy. Franklin no longer recognizes me, and doesn't wake me up in the mornings with his whine and wet nose. It's going to take a lot of love to go through the recovery process, but I will prevail.

Finally, the North Bellingham Fred Meyer opened to a grand fanfare of... 15 customers. They got the greatest ovation from the staff ever for being at the premises at seven in the morning. And the first 100 folks did get rewarded for it. They got a bag of lower priced groceries (pasta, bobble-head Mickey, pasta sauce, and other strange things.) and a lottery ticket from the folks at Mega Millions, and free coffee from SBC. I spent most of the grand opening day being the most well paid courtesy clerk, bagging groceries and retrieving carts, because they put me on the schedule without giving me an actual assigned task. When my shift was over, it was like this huge barge was lifted off my chest and I celebrated my freedom from the dreaded workforce by going home, waiting a few hours for my wife to come home, and... Going back to Freddys.

Dude, Great Clips was cutting hair for 4.99. And T-bone Steaks were 2.99 per pound. We got four steaks, grilled them on the George Foreman Grill with BBQ sauce, and completely murdered the Foreman with BBQ muck. Yeah, whatever, it was kinda fun to finally visit the store as a store, instead of a construction site. I'm glad the store is finally open and I'm on a regular work schedule with regular work tasks. It's all good now.

Sunday, April 27, 2003

Still working too much, still not able to feel the baby kick. Dying, just dying to get back on a regular schedule so I can have more interesting things to say.

Being on Google's staff must be the most interesting job in the world. They get to see all the search keywords that people type into their search engines. Like someone was mentioning earlier, half the phrases I wouldn't even think about publishing on the blog, because it would seem really wrong. But here are some of the search keywords people entered into the search engine, found my site, and clicked on it anyway.

"Country Dansen" which, apparently in the Netherlands or Denmark (Sorry, I suck in geography), means Country Dancing. All I can think about is Dansen in a cowboy hat and spurs saying, "Howdy" because it also had hits for "Country and Western Dansen."

"Freak Baby Clothing." Because freaky babies doesn't mean it have to be a nudist baby.

"2 people shagging in bed and having sex" A hit from the UK, but tell me this. If you're shagging, aren't you already having sex?

And apparently, "Older Chinese Man having sex." was cross referred to me by Trenchcoat's site.

My biggest question isn't so much why people put in those query words, or why the hell they need to see older Chinese men having sex, but why they would scroll down and continue to click and visit on my link, when the description has obviously nothing to do with their searches. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.

Ha ha.