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Zoning Out

My brain is mushy. Thanks a lot, TV. I'm sure this is your fault.

Here's what I like right now:
• Bones – her social ineptitude and overly literal interpretations crack me up
• Gossip Girl – that Georgina girl is going to be some kinda fuN!
• Wife Swap – nothing like these extremes to make you feel normal
• Super Nanny – picking up tips and boosting my mommy self esteem
• The Office – Nothing makes embarrassment fun like Michael Scott
• Ugly Betty – I'm going to take that Charlie beeyotch out myself soon
• Top Chef – mmmmm… yummy food, yummy chefs
• 27 Dresses – cute cute movie, hideous bridesmaid dresses

But good books are working hard to make it firm and fit again!
• No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency – lovely simple stories about the only detective (lady or otherwise) in Botswana
• The Tenth Circle – interesting premise, compelling story, but I'm not sure if I can handle the drama
• The Sharper Your Knife the Less You Cry – funny, interesting adventures at the world's most famous cooking school
• Body + Soul – taking the fun out of almost everything I like … plastics, junk food

What're you mushing up your brain with?

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What to say?

It has just been BUSY. I feel like we've been going pretty much non-stop since yesterday morning. Matt is trying to get the computer built as fast as possible since we have a very small window in which to return defective parts and its fighting him like crazy. But meanwhile, dinners have to get made, work has to get done, and our sweet baby girl wants to play.

Tonight after dinner when we went upstairs to change Tabby (she's practicing drinking with a cup and it gets way messy), she went over to her toy cabinet and brought out the babydoll that Grandma Sherrie & Grandpa Sandy got her for her birthday. She's gotten really into playing with her lately, feeding her her bottle, and snuggling her and giving her kisses. It's way cute.

What else? The house looks like a cyclone struck. Matt has stolen my computer monitor to use while he builds the new one, but that has left me in the middle of my digital filing project and so my desk is absolutely buried. Then I've been trying to get a good bit of running in every night since the race is coming up quickly … and 101 other things going on at work and at home and … yikes! Well … definitely time for bed.

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Under Paper

The parts for the computer did not arrive. But the scanner did, so
• We spent snippets of time all weekend digitizing files for this year (I found I actually hadn't filed anything since Oct 2007!) and it is easy and fast and awesome!
• I got some bizarro virus where I felt like crap all day Saturday and was shivering cold and achey and slept a LOT.
• Still made it over to my parents' house though (but I spent most of the time lying on the couch) for mexican food and movie watching.
• We saw Enchanted, which was oh-so cute.
• I rented it, and two other movies from Red Box @ Mc Donalds! I am Red Box's hugest fan now. Just $1 and I don't have to plan ahead like with Netflix. They do not have nearly the selection though. Also watched No Reservations (cute!) and couldn't make it through Atonement (it's long, slow,depressing and we have a very mobile toddler on our hands!).
• The mobile toddler had one singular ambition this weekend … to be outside. So we spent a lot of time walking around the neighborhood and various parts of the city. She tried to eat gravel. That was lovely … especially since she bit me (hard) when I removed it from her mouth.
• Tabby bought her daddy an early birthday present: Mario Kart Wiiiii! It is great fun.
• As usual, it all went by way too fast.

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The Goings-On

It's been one of those crazy weeks. Well less crazy and more just not normal. Here's what's been going on.

• After thinking for a couple of months now that tabby was going to walk “any day now,” she actually is!! She still looks like a drunk or something, but a very cute drunk who's imminently pleased with herself. We've been cheering her on as she toddles across the room.
• We made a kickass dinner last night. This great stir-fry that was quick and easy and reaaaally yummy. Definitely a winner.
• I've been in Crystal Reports training since Tuesday. It's been kind of nice to get away from the office and learn something new. Kinda makes me want to go back to school … or not.
• The weather has been beautiful and we've been spending lots of time outside, walking, jogging, etc.
• And that has been even more fun because I lost my mind and bought the P&T … it was 20% off, no shipping. I have *never* seen it cheaper and it's every bit as cool as I thought it would be. And I can jog with it … for real. Like for 40 minutes!! Yay.
• Good TV is back … including Gossip Girl (don't judge!) and Ugly Betty. w00t!
• Tabby has decided that Loki (and all other dogs&39; proper name is “Wooo” (i.e. Woof!). Cracks me up.
• I'm pretty much caught up on sleep from our movie night. It was still worth it though!
• The weekend is almost upon us and we have NO plans for a change. Yay.

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Serving Up Some Files

A couple of you expressed interest in our fileserver, so I thought I'd give you an overview of what we're up to. We're to the point right now that our personal computers are filling to the brim with photos, MP3s and other miscellaneous stuff. It slows down the computers and beyond that, we're not doing much in the way of back-up since it's just too overwhelming. Bad bad bad computer nerds. Lastly, we want to get our paper documents (except the things like birth certificates and car titles) into digital form so they aren't bogging down my office. So the goals are the following:

* free up space on our personal computers
* automate backups
* reduce redundant data (i.e. data such as MP3s that we have on multiple computers)
* transform paper into bytes

Servers are really expensive, it turns out, but luckily we have the chops to DIY on this one. So we ordered parts off of NewEgg. Luckily for me, Matt loves to research this sort of thing and figured out what we needed. It's going to be your typical computer with a couple of differences.

The biggest one is the hard drives … they are LARGE. And we're planning to set them up in a RAID 5 configuration. Which is a fancy way of saying we're setting up the hard drives so that they automatically set away (back up) enough of the data so that they are able to recreate data if a drive fails. The other main difference is that we will set it up as a server on our home network so that we can map various directories as drives on our other computers.

So currently we're waiting on the parts to show up … then we'll be building the computer. After that we've got to migrate all of the files and I think there will be quite a bit of organizing as we migrate. Then we're going to start the scanning. Yikes.

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Let's Go to the Movies

While at a baby boutique checking out the Phil & Ted jogger, we were presented with free passes to go see Baby Mama. For Tues night. I am not a big fan of doing this sort of thing on a weeknight because they're busy enough and we have to find a babysitter, etc. etc.

Buuuut … I wanted to see this movie. A lot. I love Tina Fey … and Amy Poehler and the plot line intrigued me. My dad and sister were kind enough to watch Ms. Tabby and we brought my mom along and had a great time. It lived up to – even exceeded – my expecations. I had no idea Steve Martin was going to show up as the CEO of a Whole-Foods-Like chain with long grey hair and an over-the-top (in the best sort of way) hippy dippy persona. The dialogue was good and really funny. And the story had some unexpected twists and turns that made it really fun.

I highly recommend you see this movie … it's due out on Friday!

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Pimp My Ride

The Kelty Deuce Coup that we bought at a garage sale has, unfortunately, seen better days. It isn't a bad stroller, but it has one major flaw, namely that I must put my hands at shoulder height to use it. This makes running with it nearly impossible. At first I was blaming my lack of running experience for my inability to push the sucker more than a block, but after pushing my friend's BOB Revolution, I know this isn't the case. I could've pushed that guy all day.

Well maybe not ALL day. The sun was some kinda fierce. Anyhoo, so we're in the market for a stroller. Blah. I mostly hate the idea of the ginormous price tag associated with relatively decent jogging strollers. Then there was the two-vs-one thing. We only have one kid right now. We'd like to change that sometime in the future, not right now, but y'know … sometime in the future. But you look sort of ridiculous toting around a jogger meant for two with just one. I tried to put Loki in the other seat, but he took umbridge with the idea (go figure). Last but not least, I really hated the idea of a huuuge double-wide jogger that is so expensive, and yet I can't even take it anywhere else because it won't fit in my car and it won't fit through doors. That is the one thing I dislike about the BOB. It's large and in charge.

Enter Phil and Ted. They have some of the most unique joggers I've ever seen, mostly double-decker joggers! I saw one of these at the Zoo and I thought it was great. I chatted up the mom about it and she confirmed it was a hit for them. Reviews have also been excellent and it meets most if not all of our criteria. 1. Color (also comes in Camo pink that I adore, but Matt wouldn't be caught dead with), 2. adjustable handle for 5' nuthin me and 6' him, 3. room for two AND you can take off the back seat when just one is along for the ride, 4. pivoting front wheel, 5. narrow width, 6. good storage (though this is somewhat diminished when baby #2 is in the back) … very nearly perfect. But oy. That pricetag. I will be saving my pennies.

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Weekend Update

Sunday night again?? Yikes. I didn't feel like I really owned this weekend. It was committed to things that I was more or less required to attend. I don't necessarily mean that in a BAD way, just a matter of fact way. A wedding Friday night, a baby shower on Saturday.

We did have a lovely long run-turned-walk on Saturday morning and after the shower I went shopping w/ my mom and sister. I finally got new jeans. I have been finding lots of good clothes at The Limited (where I hadn't shopped much since high school!). And I got to use a $30 off coupon. Excellent. Today was sleeping in and errands and laundry. We went running-turned-walking with our friend Holly and had dinner with her and her family.

I had planned to participate in Shannon's Photo Bloggy days, but I did not do so well. Just didn't do so well with it. Forgot the camera altogether on Friday and did cruddy with it on Saturday. Oh well. Can't do it great everytime.

Matt's weekend obsession was creating a fileserver for us. We have waaay too many photos and MP3s that are taking up space on our personal computers and I want to take our office paperless (i.e. scan tons of crap and store it electronically so it's not all over my office). So I guess our economic stimulus package check is going directly to Taiwan. Was that how this thing was supposed to work, I wonder?

Oh yea, thanks for all the hair input. I still have no idea what to do. I'm thinking of finding a stylist and saying “fix it.” We'll see, I guess.

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Me and My Stupid Hair

Ahh… a dilemma for the ages. What should I do with my stupid hair. I hate a love hate relationship with my hair. Possibly leaning towards hate. It is very very fine (probably the diameter of a nickel when pulled together in a ponytail). It is also impossible to grow it past my shoulders because it gets all stringy and stuff when it does. It's that way now, so I am wearing a pony tail (err … rat tail) a lot.

Basically, I've had it shortish and straight for as long as I can remember. Sometimes there are some layers. But as I am cheap and will not pay $35-$40 for someone to spend a lousy 15 minute trimming my hair, I usually get it cut a a chain place and lets face it, those are sketchy at best, so the layers come and go. Not to say that I wouldn't spend a bit more … if I actually thought it was worth it. I also will not be bothered with coloring it. Takes too long, looks crappy too fast. Maybe a great color job could change my mind, but I doubt it. I also have to do SOMETHING with it when I workout. Although it's a pain as it is now and gets in my way, so I will not be extra picky about this. There's always a baseball cap.

I think Kate Gosselin's hair is pretty cute. But I have no idea if that would work on me … I have a very round face. That is another potential issue. The cut Mandy Moore has in this photo is kinda cute, but possibly difficult to replicate in any sort of reasonable time frame? I flunked girl 101 and have no feel for this crap.

So what the heck should I do with this mess on my head?