Brendan's Brother Reports 'Brendan Is So Dead' | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Wow, this is awesome. Props to Ryan for sending it to me.

It has been awhile since we've written about any baby news. So, things are going really well. I am about 24.5 weeks along and definitely looking like there is a baby in there (or a large helping(s) of chocolate cake...you be the judge). We are very bad about taking belly pics, which is what people keep asking for. I think we have taken...2. Both during week 14, at which I really did look like I maybe ate a few slices too many of that cake. I will try and get Lucas to take one tonight that we can put up here. Edit: took picture, see below (not the greatest shot ever...but it will do):

We had an anatomy ultrasound done during week 18--that I do have pictures of that I can share. Baby is healthy and growing right on track. We did not (and will not) find out if baby is a boy or girl--it will be a surprise. I am finding out that people do not like it when you tell them it will be a surprise. This apparently "ruins their day" (per the ultrasound tech) and "takes all the fun out of it" (per half the people in my office). We, however, think it is lots of fun and are excited for the surprise!

I switched practitioners around week 17. I am now seeing a midwife who practices at a free standing birth center. She is great--and I feel like I am getting much more personalized care. She even offered me her old maternity clothes at my last visit. There are 2 birthing rooms at the birth center, designed to feel like bedrooms at home. Instead of a hospital bed, there is regular queen sized bed. There is a whirlpool tub, a kitchen, a room with couches and a TV for family to wait, lots of birthing aids (balls, stools, etc.), and a masseuse on staff. The environment there is very homey and much more relaxing than a hospital environment. If anyone has any questions about it, you are more than welcome to ask!

My aunts Kathy and Vicki co-hosted a baby shower for me when I visited Omaha in July. It was a lot of fun and very appreciated! We have not yet worked on a nursery, or bought much for the baby. Although, we did receive a baby carrier in the mail today from Lucas' mom, sister, and grandma that I am super excited about. Lucas helped pick out the pattern (scroll down on the linked page till you find "Jack") =]

I guess that's good for now! I'll try and do updates more often, or at least after each midwife appointment...that would be a reasonable goal!

Well, I did lot less than I intended to this weekend, but probably because I thought most businesses would be closed on Labor Day. Come to find out as we drove out to the movies last night, it looked like business as usual. Oh well.

Friday night we met Ric's folks at Camelot to play a game of mini-golf together. It was his mom's birthday, and I think that was a fun way for us to party together. I got last place. You'd think an Olympic silver medalist would do better than that. We went back to their house after the game for gifts and cake. We gave Ric's mom a new griddle. She always asks for the practical things in life! Except for a few kitchen items, my wish list is almost completely devoid of practicality.

Saturday I slept in, lounged around a little while listening to the end of The Two Towers, drove out to the library to return the book and get Return of the King (only to find out that they were closed for the entire holiday weekend), drove by our old neighbors' house to say hi (and they weren't home for the umpteenth time), and got home and started making a playlist for my painting afternoon. I haven't looked at our iTunes at home since Ric uploaded all of my CDs into it. Wow. There were so many songs I had forgotten about! I reconnected with some really great music. A lot of it brought back so many memories and it all made me long for the days when all I had to do in the summer was lie on the floor in Erika's room and listen to good music that changed my life. Fast-forward 10 years and I can let those songs affect me, but only when I have time for them - which was basically while touching up the line between the bathroom's blue walls and its white ceiling. In the evening, my sister and I went out to eat at Rutabegorz and then had coffee at Cafe Veronese. It's good weather for vegetarian food and chatting outdoors.

Sunday, the terrible heathens that we are, we and the Andersons decided to forgo church because of who was speaking that day. If the head pastor is listening to the sermons of this person and continually allows him to guest-preach, then that's fine for the head pastor, but there's only so much misuse of Scripture the rest of us can handle. We met up at IHOP for breakfast, which included discussion of politics and real estate as well as many attempts to get Emily to taste hot sauce and tabasco. Poor, trusting girl! We all went back to Liz' parents' house to keep on talking for a while, and then Ric and I headed out to Lowe's to buy more goodies: mortar and a few other items for laying out tile in the bathroom. I watched tv for a while, then played piano - some lovely Rachmaninov, Chopin, and Debussy. I did some dishes, and then moped around the house a lot. I get cabin fever pretty quickly. Ric and I ended up making a trip to Jack in the Box for drinks and then settled in to watch Sledgehammer for a while.

Monday, I slept in, did some reading, and spent a lot of time on the internet. I contacted our credit card companies about our upcoming travels, checked out all of the hotels we'll be staying at to confirm that I won't need to bring my hairdryer with me, and started trying to figure out what we can do to entertain ourselves on our first day before the trip, when we have just a few hours free in London (and we're not actually staying in the city center). I did my pushups, which are getting harder and harder to get through, and I have no hope for being able to do 100 consecutive pushups in just one more week. I was wearing shorts, too, so I got carpet burn on one of my knees. I felt like a kid again. Ric suggested that we go see a movie, so we had dinner at home, went out to deposit some checks, got some Starbucks, and then saw Tropic Thunder (review to come). After the movie, we watched several more episodes of Sledgehammer before realizing we had to call it a night and go to work the next day.

I'm trying to be more productive (relatively successfully so far) this week at work, since I finally finished a rather tedious project. Once I get caught up with my regular job, I'll be focusing on figuring out how to create terms and all of their rules for my program on our new software. One thing I've been thankful for lately is that I've had people to help me do the things that have been piling up on my desk while I work on the software conversion. Our student worker is back and doesn't complain a bit when I give her the most boring work possible, and my co-worker is having a slow period and offered to help me with some items as well. Wohoo!

Up this week outside of work: back to the library, grocery shopping, hopefully and finally have a phone conversation with Erika (we're playing tag), a Bocce ball lunch tournament beginning at work, sit down for trip talk with Ric, organize a to-do list for my weekend, and maybe help Ric with some condo work. Movies in the queue for lunchtime viewing this week: Platoon and Full Metal Jacket.

Google Chrome

I'm very impressed with this comic explaining Google's new open source browser which is to be released sometime today. You can check out screenshots here. I'm very excited to try out Chrome but it's going to take a lot to dethrone Firefox as my default browser.

Just wanted to let all participants in the 2008 Fantasy Football league that the draft is going to be live tonight at 8:30 PM Pacific Time. If you're going to be auto-drafting make sure you set your rankings now!