First snow of the year (not on the mountain)! Last day of September. We have a fire going and I just put some cider on the stove. Yum!
Yesterday (Saturday) I installed a new garage door opener. It was one of those jobs that, the first time you do it, it takes all day (I literally started at about 9:30 and finished at about 5:30 yesterday), but the second time would probably take half as long. Ah, well.
D and I went to Home Depot in Avon (Vail) Friday night and spent a fortune (it's virtually impossible not to when you live so far from there).
Purchased: - closet organizer for the baby,
- new hardware for the kitchen cabinets (gone are the ceramic ugly drawer pulls, here are some cheap brushed nickel ones),
- new garage door opener (see paragraph 2),
- various stuff to get rid of the horrible ceiling texture in the nursery,
- new bathroom hardware for the master bath (and bathroom cabinet thingy),
- Coke Zero (it was really cheap there),
- a grate for our wood stove (there wasn't one in there),
- a handful of more ceiling lights to replace the ones in the nursery, guest room, and laundry, and
- some random other stuff.
Overall, a good trip, but like I said: we spent way too much. Thanks to my p's for my birthday Home Depot gift card, which took care of a good portion of the purchases (let's say they bought the garage door opener and the baby closet).
Anyway, I also decided I want to write "Steamboat Springs" on here because Google doesn't associate our blog at all with Steamboat. Or with "Mark Fitzgerald". So hopefully this paragraph will help with that.
Later!
[UPDATE]:
Looks like that last paragraph worked!
So Mark and I had our third prenatal class last night. This one was a bit on the boring side for me, as it was all about the newborn, but I know Mark got a lot out of it, which is good. That was kinda my idea about the classes--give me a refresher on OB stuff (which I did 2 months of in med school about 8 years ago) and give Mark an idea about what to expect. Mark even got a chance to practice swaddling a baby last night. He made it look like a Buddhist monk, with just enough of the chest exposed to allow for baby's chest hair to be shown off. Because you know if any baby is going to be born with chest hair, it will be my baby.
I've got today off, which is nice because the weekend was a busy one on call. Not too many crazy phone calls from parents, but I did have a series of calls from the ER starting at 1 in the morning Sunday, then 3, then 4, and I finally went in to see the patient, who has some serious psych issues going on. Did a bunch of stuff in terms of her workup before finding out she has regularly seen another provider in town, and so, thanks to professional courtesy, I was able to hand care off to him about 11 am or so, finish up with my other kids in the hospital, and go home to sleep. Just felt gross all Sunday, and watching Rex and Bears suck it up didn't help any either. At least I slept great Sunday night, and was quite productive at work Monday.
But now I have today off, and will be getting a prenatal massage this afternoon (thanks Jim and Ann!). I need it--my body is way jacked up. Then tonight we're going over to Scott and Gina's for a Corn Dog Challenge. Mark has never attempted the cooking of corn dogs before, so this should be interesting.
What else? Looks like we've got the baby shower date set, and my mom has been looking into flights as well as Mark's mom. Mark and I set up a registry at Babies R Us, which was a new experience. Man, there's sure a lot of baby crap out there. And I find it somewhat amusing that I'm researching breast pumps and being somewhat excited about that. It's not something that I've ever really pictured myself getting excited about, but with hopefully more of our Irish Brood on the way in the next few years, I'm all concerned about durability, easy of cleaning, etc. So strange, and makes me want to kick back with a cold one. A cold one with an O'Douls label, unfortunately, is all I'm going to get. Good times. I feel so old. :)
So I'm 30 weeks and one day today. I've seen some 35 weekers, and most 36 weekers, do really well and go home a couple days after being born, so it seems strange that we could be bringing a baby home in a little over a month. Our nursery is still a laundry/ironing room with unprimed new drywall and crappy carpet, so I guess we need to start working on that. Mark and I did go look at carpet this weekend, but the installation was ridiculously expensive, so I think we're going to check out another place in town to compare prices.
Been watching a lot of Women's World Cup Soccer. The US is kicking some butt now after a pretty tepid first round game against North Korea. They play in the semifinals on Thursday, but since the tournament is in China, I've been having to TiVo the games in the early morning, desparately attempt not to peek at si.com during the day, and then watch in the evenings. Working well so far. Mark and I also started watching Ken Burns' lastest film, The War, on PBS. All about WWII, and really good so far. Considering the thing is something like 17 hours long, I'm sure that will keep us entertained for a while.
And speaking of entertainment, new Sluts in a Hospital starts this week! I've been missing my brain candy.
OK, should probably try and be somewhat productive today. If I have to.
Disclosure: I grabbed the above image from the blog of a local Realtor.
I was sitting in my office, looking outside at the rain today and thinking that at altitude it probably meant snow - sure enough, there you have it. So: it truly is fall.
I've been meaning to get out and get some pictures of the mountains for a new header pic for the blog - the aspens are starting to turn and everything is starting to look like fall.
Lots of other stuff going on. October baseball is nearly here, and the Cubs magic number is down to 4. The house has been making slow but steady progress, though I've been taking a break from work on it (and we have some company coming in several weeks) so I have a feeling a big push is about to commence again. Plus, it's time to get the nursery ready.
The Bears stink and really need to get rid of Grossman. But at least we have the Cubbies (for now). Dana and I were surprised (and excited) to see pre-game coverage of another Miami OH football game this weekend - they were in Boulder playing the Buffs - but when we got home we realized the game wasn't on. Not a big deal, really - they got their asses handed to them something like 44-0. Oh well.
There is potential other news coming up but I'm holding off on it for now. In the meantime, enjoy thinking of how nice a fall it's going to be. Time for me to buy some wood and fire up our wood stove for the first time!
(I love Autumn)
The electric outage experienced by Yampa Valley Electric Association was due to a marmot that got past a chain-link fence and climbed onto a transformer.
*(how perfect is it that I found a picture of a marmot in front of a fence?)
I forgot to include you all in on this - though Pablo and Shaffer found the pictures themselves, I realized that some of you have lives outside my own and probably don't often check the pics we add at picasaweb.
Anyway, last Monday Dana got the final part of her birthday present - a surprise closet. We were going to use the proceeds from our sale of the CR-V to get a fancy new TV, but responsibility can sometimes be overwhelming and I decided instead to blow a load of money on a closet. Turn 30 and it makes you boring, I guess. But the closet is awesome. It's like 2 and a half times the size our closet would have been if we hadn't expanded it, so that's a big bonus. AND we have (a little) room to spare. yay.
This weekend, D took off with the girls to a cabin in Wyoming, so instead of working on the house I too opted to have a relaxing weekend, so I ordered a pizza (Chicago-style!) and a couple movies and sat on my butt. But I did do a little work - I ran a wire for and installed our 2-in-1 speaker in the master bathroom (so D can listen to music while she scrubs her expanding belly), and got our doorbell working. (and they both sound great, I might add). And I moved our freebie chest freezer into the garage as step 1 in its planned transformation into a beer fridge/homebrew kegerator. I'll have to get some pics of the garage eventually - I spent a whole day cleaning and organizing it last weekend and have to show it off to someone!
Also: as a result of my weekend of gastronomical debauchery (and at least partially to one of the movies I watched, in a sick way), I have decided it is once again time to lose some freaking weight and get in shape. I've been really bad all summer (home improvement takes a lot out of a guy, you know) and it's time to stop the nonsense. I'm trying out this website to help me along as well. Exercise will be a big part of the deal, but I'm also going to focus on my diet as well, since that's what usually fails me. Included in this will be a booze limitation as well, but I haven't figured that out yet. Mostly will be counting calories (which booze has lots of, natch), so as long as I don't eat I can still drink plenty. :) (just kidding!) Anyway, decided to post about it because I know I'm more likely to follow through after making some kind of public announcement.
Also also: Congrats to Scott who just secured a competitive fellowship in Marseilles (yes, the one in France, and yes, spellcheck nailed me on that). I think they just gave it to him because he has the word "ennui" in his domain name.
12:33 p.m. A man in the 1800 block of Central Park Drive was concerned that children would see offensive graffiti written on a car. Police said the graffiti consisted of an expletive and a reference to President George W. Bush. A report was taken.
This is a picture of my dream birthday cake.
I did not get this. Probably for good reason.
So I'm 28 weeks pregnant today, that's a little over 6 months for those of you counting at home. We have our next OB appointment tomorrow, so I'll be able to find out officially how much weight I've gained so far, but I'd guesstimate about 20 pounds. Ice cream has become an acceptable substitute for beer.
I had a good birthday last week, only had to work a half-day, and then Mark and I went to Ski Haus and got me some sweet skate skis, bindings, and poles. Got a great deal, between my birthday discount and mark-downs since it was last year's models, saved about 40%. We held off on buying the boots because my feet could still get bigger (permanently) with this pregnancy, and besides, they didn't have much of a selection anyway. I grew up cross-country skiing classic style (got my first pair of skis at 5), but wanted to give skate skiing a go--looks like a blast, you can go so much faster, and supposedly if you're comfortable ice skating or roller blading, the motion isn't too hard to pick up. I'm super excited to use them, especially since they form the core of my lose-pregnancy-weight plan prior to the first installment of Weddings Bonanza 2008.
Mark also got me a Derrek Lee bobblehead doll. A HUGE Derrek Lee bobblehead doll. Appropriate, as he is not only my Cubs boyfriend, but also shares the EXACT SAME birthday as I do. It is now in a place of honor in my office.
Another of Mark's super-awesome presents, that officially confirms I am now an adult: he called the plumber to come out and fix the drain on my shower, which has been leaving me with well over an ankle deep's worth of water each time I'm in there. I've been bugging him to call the guy for weeks, and he came out on my birthday, so now I have an appropriately draining shower, which rocks. Now that's a great birthday present.
To round things out, this final present was really for the both of us. After selling my CRV, we decided we needed a little extra money in savings, so we didn't splurge for the new TV as previously planned. Instead Mark ordered all the goodies for our custom master bedroom closet so we can actually use that space instead of just admiring its beauty. The 11 boxes of this closet set arrived today--woo hoo! Mark has his work cut out for him.
We had a great time this weekend--started it out with Mark making me a belated birthday dinner at home of lobster, corn, and bacon-wrapped scallops. Sweet. Saturday we spent trying not to watch college football as Mark's alma mater, Miami of Ohio, was playing my alma mater, University of Minnesota, in football for the first time in about 20 years. Unfortunately, the only way we could watch the game was the BigTen Network, which wasn't broadcasting it until Sunday morning at 7 am. We both managed to avoid seeing the outcome on Saturday, and spent that evening going to a fundraiser for Humble Ranch, a great program for handicapped/ADHD/troubled kids in the area. Sunday Mark got up early to start the homemade chili, and then we proceeded to watch the Golden Gophers kick some Redhawk ass in triple overtime. Thank you, Big Ten Network. Mark keeps going on and on about the "moral victory" of the Redhawks, which didn't seem to come up much while he was trash talking DURING the game. Followed that up with a Broncos last second win (Scott, Gina, and Owen came over to help cheer. And eat chili) and then a disappointing Bears loss. Oh well.
OK, time for some lunch. We have our first prenatal class tonight. Note--NOT Lamaze class. Eff Lamaze, I'm getting an epidural. Anyway, the class goes into all the stuff right before and after the birth--how the labor stuff goes down, what to expect, etc. Should be good times. Although I have a feeling the newborn info will bore me to tears, but I am interested to see what parents are being taught in this class. Mark can take notes. And then obliterate all new knowledge with some adult beverages afterwards, like any good soon-to-be father. :)
This is news to me!!There also was a magnitude 2.7 earthquake three miles south-southwest of Steamboat Springs on Thursday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey
(from this Steamboat Pilot article)
I just added this long image (from explodingdog.com, as always) to push that gross dude off the front of the screen for all you.
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