The Littlest Penguin

Amazon vs the store down the street

Thursday, February 4th, 2010 | books, internet | 3 Comments

I don’t have anything terribly intelligent or informed to add to discussion over the Amazon.com vs Macmillan price debacle. In fact, I love, love, love Amazon. But I also understand the importance of supporting local businesses and I understand why authors whose books were yanked from the world’s biggest book marketplace (even temporarily) would be pissed off right now. In fact, Charles Stross removed Amazon from his “buy my books” area all together. Which led to a fairly delightful discovery for me. Now Stross’ links direct you to IndieBound, a site that (among other things) can help you find local bookstores carrying the title you want. You can go get the book yourself or order online from their participants. I wonder if the site can tell you if they serve good coffee, too.

Christmas Tree Win

Thursday, January 7th, 2010 | Christmas, fun stuff | 2 Comments

These dudes have quite the holiday spirit.

Baby’s first Christmas

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 | Christmas, Liam, Playgrounders, family | 4 Comments

First off, I don’t know why folks buy babies clothes for use on specific holidays. The fact that the kid will only ever wear the outfit once makes it all seem wasteful. That said, Liam in the reindeer hat his G-G gave him is easily the cutest thing ever. I saved it in his box of one-year-old clothes just in case we can get another use out of it next year.

Christmas was a bit of an adventure, toting Liam around airports and seeing how well he handled the airplane. He actually did very well, though the unavailability of wiggle space eventually annoyed him on the flight home. (This kid is all movement.) He also had a rough first night while he adjusted to new surroundings. Thankfully we were staying in the neighbor’s house while they were gone, so we didn’t keep anyone awake and Liam didn’t have too much overwhelming him at bedtime. The rest of the time he charmed everyone and got to meet his cousins and other extended family. Gibson had a great time ripping into his presents. (And would not let the Thomas the Train toy carrier we gave him out of his sight!) We had a relatively small crowd at Christmas dinner this year, mostly mom’s family. It was warm outside, but still nice enough to sit on the patio. The Sunday after Christmas Rue’s crew and some of dad’s family came over to meet Liam and William. It was cool enough to have a little fire and make s’mores.

Zeb, Alarra, and Ceika drove down to Johnson City for New Year’s at the New Hippie Hut. We wanted to join them, but we didn’t want William to be that exhausted when he went back to work on the following Monday. Also, we weren’t sure what kind of shape Liam would be in after the trip to Florida. We opted for a shorter trip to visit Kevin and Stephanie instead. We missed hanging out with everyone in Tennessee, but we were kind of right about Liam. He would not have dealt well with a longer trip than the 3 hour ride to Durham. Not after the Florida trip, at least. We’re aiming to go to Tennessee over William’s spring break if all goes well. We didn’t do much in Durham, but we had a nice visit. Kevin and Steph have learned to make candles and showed William and I. Kevin also showed William how to make “bath bombs,” scented and molded bath salts that fizz when you toss them in the tub. Very nice, very nice indeed.

It was all fun, but it’s good to be home. Today we’re back to our regularly scheduled week, though we do have piles and piles of laundry I should be folding instead of updating my blog. Tonight we’re playing Star Wars with Mike via Skype and tomorrow Nick might come over and hang out with us before he has to fly back to Saudi. And maybe I’ll be able to catch up on some sleep, too.

Updating fail

Monday, December 7th, 2009 | Liam, musings | 8 Comments

My last post was apparently submitted sometime after midnight on Sept 10 – 11, because I know for fact I didn’t blog the day of the 11th. It was kind of creepy, though,seeing that date posted and knowing that it wasn’t too many hours later I was checking myself in to the hospital prepping for a c-section. I dread surgery and I was in tears calling around to William and my parents. I’m under the impression that the preeclampsia they found was worse than they let me believe, because they wanted the baby out now. They waited just long enough for William to come and the 8-hour waiting period after my last meal to pass before I was on the table talking to the anesthesiologist.

Just shy of three months later, surgery wasn’t all too bad. And the end result is pretty darned cute, though the first month and change of mommyhood wrecked my nerves. Liam would hold his breath and then inhale with a loud gasp. I’m told this is totally normal and he is growing out of it, but holy crap was it unnerving. He still does it every so often, but at least now I’m a little more confidant he’s not really dying. Also, because he came c-section I didn’t start producing milk for nearly a week, so I was constantly worried he was hungry. And of course he cried most of the time he was awake and he woke at weird hours and all that normal stuff. Thankfully my mom and William’s mom took turns staying to help those first two weeks. They made sure I got some sleep and some alone time with William and didn’t have to cook while my stitches started healing.

They say that the first 6 weeks are the hardest, but I declare shenanigans on that. Liam only recently started smiling, so I’ll say things were toughest through about the 9 week mark. It’s still not easy, but at least now he looks around, grins when we’re in the room and munches on his hands when he’s starting to get hungry. It’s a little easier to figure out what he wants when he cries and he makes a funny little squeak when he tries to laugh. He’s napping less during the day, but will sleep for longer stretches at night. He’s also not quite so teeny-tiny, which makes us a little more confidant when we’re holding him. He was born at 6 ponds 14 ounces, and weighed 10.5 pounds at his two month checkup. He’s also grown about two inches.

I miss having coworkers and having an income to contribute, but that’ll come again soon I hope. The smiles and snuggles are a pretty good reward, too. (Though I could do with less spit-up!) I really miss being in the church choir and all the activities I had there. I found a nice congregation, but I’m not 100% sure they’re where I’ll end up. I might try one other place before talking to Little River’s choir director and starting to make that place home. The gaming group William, Mike and I do over Skype once a week helps fight the boredom and missing my friends. And Zeb and Alarra and Cieka aren’t very far. Also, and I almost hate to admit it, messing around World of Warcraft with the Circle of Fear guildies also helps. The cats help, too, when they’re not tearing the apartment down or demanding as much attention as Liam. So I think I’m settling into this new groove pretty well.

Now I just have to get back into a blog-updating groove.

On Facebook, Politics, and Status Messages

Friday, September 11th, 2009 | internet, rants | 17 Comments

Recently I broke one of my cardinal rules: I posted a political opinion on Facebook. And now, gentle reader, you get a rant.

Not that I have issues with other people stating what they believe in their profiles and status messages – by all means do. But when I joined Facebook I worked for a college and was not often sympathetic to their official stance on certain social, religious, and political issues. The campus could be a little bit like a fishbowl, and though I had (have) very few students and faculty on my friends list, I decided it might be better to exercise care in what kind of information I put out there. Also, ideologically, I’ve been a lot of places in my short life and know people all over the spectrum. Maybe it was one part fear that kept me from saying anything that would upset old conceptions of what I think. Maybe I just didn’t want to deal with the inevitable postings calling me an uninformed lemming of a liberal. Or worse, someone ignoring me all together.

Back in college I posted on a forum called The Ooze (no, I won’t link it) that was supposed to be a safe place for discussing the Church in the 21st century, specifically the Emergent Church. A lot of nice people on there, one or two of whom I even met personally a time or two, but eventually the trolls got to me. I couldn’t handle working on what I considered a well-worded and calm post for 30 or 40 minutes just to be brushed off with a “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day” ten seconds later. Worse was checking back on the thread a day later and realizing that no one had found my post worth the time to respond to. So I stopped going, stopped posting, stopped asking my questions in the forum and decided sitting around with two or three friends and a chai latte or beer was preferable to sitting in front of my computer agonizing over why some total stranger didn’t think I was worth their time. I rarely posted on forums after that, aside from the Order of the Stick forum’s silly message board games. Stabbity Death really doesn’t lend itself to political debate.

Part of me thinks that keeping my thoughts to myself is a little self serving and dishonest, though. Why should I let people think I’m something I’m not? They knew me once, and they liked me enough to find me on Facebook, so why not let them know me now? So the other day I responded to a status message posting about the health care reform debate. One of the hottest button issues I could have touched. Really, I should have known better. While the guy whose status message is of a similar mind to mine, and one of my old college mates complemented me for my presentation of a view counter to someone else’s in the discussion, I ended up angry and ultimately fighting a very intense desire to make a verbal attack. But this isn’t Facebook, this is my own personal blog. I still maintain that an email from an unconfirmed source claiming to be a congressman doesn’t count as a reliable source. Even if the email is legit, we’ve watched congressmen and women distort the facts of this issue for their own gain. Do your own damned homework. It isn’t that hard. Fox News isn’t a reliable resource, either. Hell, no ONE news or information source is. Cross-reference for crying out loud. This is the digital era. If you’re on Facebook you have the rest of the internet at your fingertips, too. Bills and proposals are easily found online. Lots of respected professionals have blogged commentary on this issue. Google is your friend. If you have issues with my argument, address them. Don’t discount or ignore me because the only thing you zoomed in on was my “liberal” source and not my actual argument.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, last night I posted a vaguely political status message of my own. Now, my big thing in the health care discussion is that no one has been treating it like a discussion. All I’ve seen is a lot of sensationalized coverage of town hall meetings, congressmen and women throwing insults across the aisle, and mass emails sent from God-knows-where about how we’re becoming a Socialist state or a Communist regime. Thank you for your fear tactics, whoever you are, but could we please set them aside now and talk to each other like civilized human beings again? So my status read “Ginger listened to the president’s speech and had some ice cream before bed. Here’s to hoping Obama was able to inspire a more informed, civil discussion about health care.” Maybe the president was able, but it appears I sure wasn’t. Trog posted a very even-handed response about how Obama addressed all the highlights of his critics’ problems with the idea of health care reform. But then an old youth minister of mine chimed in saying “Giving that much to the government is scary.” He’s a smart guy, and I don’t want to discount his opinion, off topic though it kind of was, but that feels like bait to me. And I took it, some. William took it more. He didn’t give sources, which is a little bit of a mistake for folks like William and I, but he isn’t a person who does research of some sort every day like we do (or I did) and probably doesn’t place the weight we do on sources. So again, I don’t want to discount his opinion, but I do want to know what kind of info he’s working off of. Not that it matters, because he shut the conversation down. Without responding to my response trying to tease out his sources, or at least better details on where he’s coming from. Yes, William got sharp with him. No, I’m not going to censor my own husband, though I do think I’ll serve him up a nice ‘I told you so.’

I still think that in both cases I posted a legitimate question that was ignored, and that really irks me. Maybe I should go back to keeping it to the blog, though some angry part of me wants to take every stupid opinion poll and sign every petition on Facebook just for spite. Maybe I’ll just post a link to this rant on my profile.

countdown

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 | baby, family | 2 Comments

Well, we’re just under the three week mark and I have to say things have started to get darned uncomfy. I mean, they’ve been uncomfortable for a while, but wow. I’m pretty sure I can make out where his head, shoulders, and rump are – and he’s heavy. Rolling over in bed is a little like feeling boccie balls move around in your innards, and William made the mistake of laughing at my attempt to get off the couch the other day.

That said, everything seems to be going smoothly. I still need to find and buy the little guy a dresser / changing table and his name is still up in the air, but other than that we’re mostly ready for him. I think. I have a prenatal visit with the pediatrician this coming week, and a tour of the hospital’s birthing center. Lisa and Paul gifted us (well, the baby really) with the ViaCord service and we should be getting everything we need from there soon.

In non-baby news I called Granma today. She recently bought a laptop so she can email, but being well into her 80s and having never touched a computer before, her learning curve is pretty steep. She’s just now figured out how to log in to Gmail. But today was also the 7th anniversary of Grandpa’s death and we all like to call and make sure she’s doing alright. Mom and Dad took her out to dinner tonight as well. Its our little way of commemorating him, I guess. Today would also have been his birthday. He’s interred at Arlington, so hopefully next year I can make the trip to his mausoleum and leave flowers. At the risk of getting mushy, he really was the best Grandpa I could have hoped for, and I’m sometimes sad that William and my son will never get the pleasure of knowing or being spoiled by him like I was. I think he would really have liked William.

Month of roadtrips

Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | Playgrounders, baby, family, travel | 2 Comments

You know, for someone who is no longer working a 40 hour job plus choir, committees, and gaming, I’ve been really lax on this goshdarned thing. Which is kind of sad, because late June and July were pretty interesting.

The last weekend of June was the Third Annual “Southeast Trogland” Giant in the Playground Meetup. The group was smaller than last year, but the number seemed to work better. Less chaos, less drama, more fun. Of course, I wasn’t technically a “local” anymore; I carpooled with Zeb and Alarra. (It was the last week of school at the JDC and William had to work.) All in all a great time, and I got to meet a few new GiTP forumites. Which is all the more interesting considering I haven’t really done more than peek at the forums in a year. But Playgrounders are almost always fun, no matter how you meet them. Zeb, Alarra, and Ceika are relatively close to me here in VA, but I haven’t gotten together with them yet. Zeb and Alarra are brand new parents, and I’ve only got 4 more weeks to go, so maybe once baby chaos settles down we can hang out. There’s even a mini-meetup in the works for October.

For July 4 we drove over to Smith Mountain Lake, VA, to spend about a week at William’s grandparents’ house. Apparently the area has become a popular place to build vacation houses since Nana and Granddad built their retirement home on the lake years ago, but they still manage to have a nice peaceful house under the trees. It was my first time meeting them, so I was nervous, but they’re really delightful. They met during the Second World War – he was in the US military and she the British. They wrote letters back and forth for a long while and eventually she came over and they married. And now they’re possibly the cutest little old couple I’ve ever met. Sadly we couldn’t see the fireworks from their house, but we did watch the Washington, DC, display on TV. (Not quite the same, I know, but it had to do.)

The following weekend we drove up to William’s mom’s for a baby shower. Nana and Granddad were there, and so were Lisa and her family. We spent one morning at Hershey’s Chocolate World. The whole place is really nothing more than a tourist trap designed to give you a sugar high and make you want to buy chocolate, but with the kids it was fun and I got to buy some t-shirts for my parents. Jan had tons of really wonderful food and we went to a nice, casual restaurant for the shower. The guys stayed through lunch and some of the silly shower games. Colin even won the game where you guess how round I am. After that I was on my own in a room full of barely-familiar women, but it was fun.

The weekend of July 18th we flew down to Florida for another baby shower hosted by Aunt Rue. It was good to see all the aunts and cousins down there again, even if it was kind of brief. Rue gave a great shower. Amy, Gibson and Alyce flew down, and we got to spend some time with William’s friend Mike and my old friends the Eastlicks.  William also got to meet my grandma for the first time, as well as my Uncle Rick and cousin Cookie. A few of my aunts were disappointed that he didn’t go to the shower, but we’re hoping to go down again at Christmas, so they’ll get to meet then. We don’t want to overwhelm the poor guy; my family is much larger than his.

And that’s pretty much all the travel I’m allowed until the little dude is here. The Florida trip kind of pushed my “no-fly” cutoff, but since my TN doctors never told me what that cutoff was and I had to make plans, oh well. (I had trouble with that office. Don’t get me started.) Four more weeks and hopefully I will no longer have indigestion that keeps me up and blogging until 1am.

Do you take this penguin. . . ?

Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | family, friends, fun stuff, penguins, pictures, travel | 3 Comments

Last weekend William and I embarked on our second ever road trip together – 4 hours south to Chapel Hill, NC for Kevin and Stephanie’s wedding. We got in late Thursday night (technically it was Friday, but just barely) and checked in to a nice suite. (He spoiled us and got the suite because it wasn’t that much more and we could have friends over that way.) On Friday our job was to go pick up the food for the rehearsal dinner from Chipolte, but we ran into some issues when about 10 burritos and other tasty dinner items seeped through the bag and fell to the ground when lifted. Add to that delay about 45 minutes of running around wondering where in Durham we were, and you have dinner on the table approximately. . . 2 hours late. Everyone was good natured about it, but we did feel bad. Kevin was super stressed trying to get us there and William and I both get a little jumpy when we’re lost. But we did get there, the food was still yummy, and Kevin and Steph said if that was the worst thing to happen they’d be happy.

And I think it was the worst thing that happened. At least that I’m aware of. Saturday’s ceremony was lovely. I had my typical trouble singing (since getting pregnant singing and standing has been a challenge to my ability to stay conscious), but I listened to William and Sheri sing next to me and that was a good substitute. I helped guide folks through the digital guest book interface, which was kind of fun and easy. Then there was a really nice spread of light lunch foods – salads and bree and crackers and some little sandwiches. The bride’s cake was beautiful and had fruit preserves in it, and the groom’s cake was . . . well, look for youself. It is a brownie penguin. Very Kevin.

After the wedding, Jared, Sheri, and Tony came over to the hotel to play some Carcassone and some Gloom before we went out in search for some supper. William’s only other experience with Carcassone involved “the City” version, which we played with Jared, Sheri, and Tony several years ago. It was terrible and I’ve never exponged the guilt of telling him he’d enjoy it. (I thought it was like normal Carcassone!) But this game redeemed Carcassone for William, and Tony taught us how to play Gloom. We’re taking it with us to visit his family for 4th of July weekend – his mom loves silly games like this.

Sunday morning we had breakfast with some of my family on our way home. Uncle Ben took pictures, so I’m sure I’ll have something to link here eventually. It was fun to see everyone. I actually hadn’t seen my cousin Aaron in years; I’d never met his kids! They’re darned cute, by the way. I think William charmed Hannah out of some shyness, too. Hopefully I can do a better job of keeping in touch with everyone, especially now that we’re all on Facebook.

This weekend’s a “break” from trips and visits, but next weekend. . . Southeast Meetup!

Tags: Kevin's wedding

It’s not dead, it’s pining for the fjords!

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Well, with several months of near-inactivity on this blog, you’d think I would throw my hands up in frustration and just let the thing die. But not this penguin! I kept radio silence for a while partly because it’s tough to know who’s reading out there and I had some things going on that I didn’t want certain people to find out about until I could tell them in person. (My parents, family and friends, my boss. . . ) Also because blogging while stressed and busy didn’t seem like fun to me. Sorry.

However, that means that a ton of stuff has happened and you don’t want a novel of a blog entry, so let’s begin.

Back in November William and I started dating again. (We dated when I was a college freshman. Insert mooshy “we’ve been friends ever since” story here.) He spent Christmas with me in Tennessee, which was really wonderful even though I felt bad leaving him alone all day while I went to work. We started to talk about me finding a job in Virginia, near him, and plans. And then in February I realized I was pregnant, so we sped up the moving and planning parts of our conversations. Changing that much that fast is scarry as hell, and I have to admit I had a few anxiety attacks in the process. Not fun. (Telling your parents something like this, even at age 29, also not fun.) But I had a lot of support from William, from his mom, and from my friends. Mom and dad, too, once they got over the shock and the weirdness.

So my last day at the archives was May 15 and two weeks later my friends, who deserve more thanks than the pizza I got for them, helped me pack up the UHaul. William flew in to help me pack and drive the truck, and get me through a pretty tearful good-bye to everyone over dinner at MidCity. Next morning, Robb and Edie came over to help me throw the last few things into the truck, clean the apartment and load up the kitties (one with me, one with William). The drive up to VA wasn’t too bad, for the humans at least. Paddington and Anselm hardly came out of their carriers the whole time, and Anselm cried for maybe 3 hours striaght. Poor William.

We didn’t have nearly as much help unpacking, but William did a lot and my brother-in-law Paul helped a bunch. I’m still unpacking some boxes, but most everything is unpacked and integrated into the apartment. It’s a nice 2 bedroom place near the Occoquan River – our back windows have a view of trees instead of more apartments or highway. Anselm and Paddington have settled in and have made friends with Fezzick and Sapphire and the four of them keep me company during the day.

On the 29th our families came in and William and I did an itty-bitty exchange of vows at a park on the river. It poured down rain right up until we started, but it stopped in time for some pictures to be taken. My brother-in-law Jared did the vows and I wrote the short service. The dress I wore wasn’t the one I was hoping to, but it was still pretty and William looked very handsome in his suit. The we all went to Madigan’s next to the park and had a really nice dinner together. Mom and dad gave us two nights in a bed and breakfast in Manassas. The place was beautiful and the hosts were fantastic. And it got us away from the stacks of boxes at home. We only invited our parents and siblings to the vows, pretty much. Next year we’re planning to have a big reception-style party for everyone else. William sort of wants to run it con-style. We’ll see.

So here we are. I’m still learning the roads around here, and we’re planning a busy July of going to see our families in VA, PA, and FL. But first, I need to finish getting my name changed and there’s a Southeast Meetup that needs to be attended!

That’s not all the news that’s fit to be told today, but I’ll cut this short and blog about Kevin’s wedding and other fun later.

new niece!

Saturday, April 4th, 2009 | family, niece, pictures | 2 Comments

Alyce, Amy and Jared

My niece arrived on March 27. Meet Alyce!