Moon Over Peridot

(Underrated movie by the way.)

So as July winds down and the new moon (and month) appears, it's looking like this baby's birthstone will indeed be August's peridot. See, he/she is fashion sensible -- coordinating with his/her room color already! Meh has been spending some time in the to-be-baby's-room, visualizing and pondering the infinite furniture placement options.

As the count-up continues, every outgoing phone call starts with family and friends thinking it's The Call. And every incoming call is similarly checking to confirm that they didn't inadvertently miss (or get skipped over on) The Call. I think there were perhaps three or four of the latter yesterday while Meredith was taking a nap? Time to unplug/mute the upstairs phone -- such pressure and anticipation!

The neighbors are getting in on the act as well - two inquiries this morning while I was walking Korby (without Meredith, who was sleeping), and a few others over the past couple of days. And in a hilarious turn of events, Meh told me that while she tried to work in the front garden yesterday (cue the Jewish grandmother voice: "In your condition?!?"), two different neighbors saw her, stopped by, tried to get her to stop, and then proceeded to at least help out with weeding. Hooray for close and supportive neighborhoods!

Of course, once the family and friends recover from the fact that nothing has happened yet (did I mention the inquiries appear in instant messages and e-mails too?), the next best topic of discussion is these increasingly exotic techniques for inducing labor. Beyond the medically recommended ones, there's spicy foods, raspberry leaf tea, acupuncture/massage techniques, standing on your head while walking up steep hills (okay, so I made that one up), and even that recurring story about certain dishes at specific restaurants. No, we're not flying to Georgia to go try some eggplant parmesan, thank you very much.

Anyway, for now we'll just do our best to keep Meh comfortable. And finally discuss Harry Potter, which I finished last night.

Today's random trivia factoid of the day: Tuesday is the most frequent birthday for babies (I've seen numbers indicating 15% above average), and Saturdays and Sundays (20-30% below average) are the least frequent. So perhaps August 7 will be the day?

The Final Countdown up

Welcome to our due date! The countdown timer started blinking as it merrily moved into counting up mode. Meredith re-set it to count down to +14 days (August 13). I myself celebrated the occasion by updating the little online counter control on the right side of this site to work correctly in count-up mode. Pretty exciting. Anyway, more news as it becomes available...

One day more...

Our countdown timer's "number of days" field has dropped to 0 -- we're down to mere hours before our due date! We even exhausted the baby countdown book last night (somehow we'd gotten a day ahead I guess?), and now will only be able to look forward to reading a measly paragraph a night from its "count-up" section. On the plus side, going right up to the date (and possibly beyond?) has given us some extra time to prepare:

• We've gotten to see a few extra movies (The Simpsons Movie last night, Hairspray a few nights before). I don't think we'd been to the theater so frequently in quite some time! And yes, everyone is telling us that we need to see the topically-pertinent Knocked Up if we get a chance as well.


• We've gotten to enjoy a nice weekend together, with lovely weather and fairly low-key activities (including Meh finishing Harry Potter and me desperately trying to get through it so that Meh, my brother and I can discuss). Incidentally, best omen of the weekend: while playing Scrabble, I held a bingo in my hand for "DILATION". Granted, it was using a blank, and in the end I couldn't fit it on the board without using an existing N, but still -- how's that for a sign?


• Last night I finally finished painting the baby's room; the ceiling is back in good shape. I'm planning to finish clearing out the painting supplies today, and that room should at last be ready to accept furniture.


• We started reorganizing our somewhat unmanageable CD collection, which should give us back some space in the office. (And maybe I'll even use the opportunity to listen to some of my still unopened/vacuum-sealed collection.)

Meanwhile, the rush is on to try to finish preparing my presentations for the Gamefest conference that's starting to look suspiciously close to the big day. I've enlisted backup speakers, but I still do have to at least finish slides and demos beforehand if at all possible. Back to those after this post!

That's about all of the excitement from here for now - the waiting game (and the keep-Meh-comfortable game!) continues. A friend who was a few days late told us: "The suspense was almost as excruciating as labor itself." I'm going to interpret that with the hope that it really means that the suspense was minimal and that labor will be the same for Meredith!

How do you like them apples?

The sunny weather has finally returned, and with it, our, er, backyard bounty. Korby's generally the first to discover it; he goes out ostensibly to use the facilities, and five minutes later we see him playing with what looks like a tennis ball -- except it's one that he eventually bites in half. And then in half again. And then he switches to another apple, never actually finishing the first. The backyard ends up littered with half and quarter apples. Hey, it beats him eating dirt (though he keeps that part of his diet up as well).

Anyway, when we collected them last summer, we found out that they're actually quite yummy-tasting tart and crunchy apples. If you can keep up with collecting them, that is; Meh has already gathered at least three large baskets. The yard also has a slightly less prolific cherry tree (that makes excellently sour cherries best used in Meh's tasty muffins and pies), and according to the arborists that trimmed the trees this spring, even a pear tree. (We're still waiting two summers later for the first elusive pear.)

Meh's mad cooking skills have transformed some of the apples (and a few stray cherries) into an excellent pie that we enjoyed this evening while watching one of our Netflix. There is also a serious amount of homemade apple sauce in the fridge and freezer. Between that and the meals our friends have brought over (and the other meals Meredith made from an assemble-and-freeze cookbook), I think the larder is definitely stocked if we decide to, say, never leave the house until the baby starts school.

Hm, if an apple a day keeps the doctor away, maybe we should cut apples out of the diet for a little bit so we can have the baby? But in all honesty, we're in no rush and are just happy that Ziggy continues to wiggle around energetically.

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Last night I finally completed most of the paint touchups on the soon-to-be-baby's room. (Dig my spiffy Xbox-branded painting shoes?) Note how the color kind of sort of matches our blog title bar? It's a bit closer in normal sunlight. This picture also features the massive new blinds we installed for the baby room windows -- Home Depot had to drag over one of those giant ladder-on-wheels things to pull down our blinds, the largest size they stock. Is that window really so huge?

Now all that's left is the scary ceiling, which was peeling when the painters tape came off. I think I'm more paranoid about painting directly overhead, since gloops will be coming down right onto everything (tarp, floor, my head, etc.) But a ladder and lots of blue tape later, I should hopefully be able to cover it all up in the next few days.

This morning was our now-weekly doctor's appointment. We of course got to hear Ziggy, thankfully chugging along at a steady one hundred twenty-something beats per minute. Also talked with our doctor about what happens if we pass the due date (which again, many pregnancies do). +1 week we can start thinking about intervention options, and +2 weeks we would more actively be in that realm. Again, it's all speculation at this point (like a moose fighting a bear? Obscure shoutout to a select few readers...), but with not much else to do besides wait, still good to know the potential roadmap.

One reader predicted today would be the big day - sorry it didn't pan out, but please do enjoy some of our fabulous parting gifts. Should we start a pool or something?

Week 39 pics posted

Korby was again underfoot the whole time, but photos are here. The difference is a bit less dramatic than previous progression pics, but I think perhaps the baby looks a bit lower, no? Tomorrow is a doctor's appointment, we'll have more data on how things are looking afterward...

The sound of one hand counting?

(Today's title was between that and "V: The Series". Too obscure?)

We're now at 5 days and change from our due date!

Throughout this experience, we've gotten weekly e-mails from our hospital talking about the baby's development, common pregnancy and child care questions, and so on. Meh aptly noticed that while in the first 38 weeks, these were always paired with peppy comments like "it won't be much time now!", the last few are more measured with "it could still be a little while" and "the due date is just a midpoint of a range, can be miscalculated, and you just need to chill". Suffice it to say, we're excited - never actually "ready" really, but definitely eager to meet our baby!

This morning, we took both cars to get our car seat and two bases inspected, and to make sure we'd actually installed them correctly. (Incidentally, it's great that so many agencies offer this service on a free/volunteer basis.) The instruction manuals all around are horrendously vague - the car seat company makes sure to say the bare minimum about how to attach it to the seat belt, and the car manual won't make any comments about how to attach the belt/LATCH to the car seat. Mmmm, litigation protection...

Is it weird that I was somewhat impressed that all modern car seats actually have a hidden (well, to non-parents/parents-to-be at any rate) "easter egg" automatic locking mode to assist with car seat installations? Beats the scary locking clips folks used to have to deal with. Anyway, that's just a random musing...

LATCH [Lower Anchors and Tethers for CHildren - stealing the CH from one word seems like cheating, but anyway...] sounds like a cool idea, even if it's just a glorified pair of in-car metal anchors that car seats can conveniently hook to. But it's kind of weird that in smaller vehicles (the Prius isn't exactly a compact, so I guess "smaller" apparently denotes cars with less volume than, say, a Hummer), LATCH is only offered for the left and right seats -- and those seats aren't recommended as highly as the center since curtain airbags still deploy there. So we've got unused LATCHes and are using the center seat belt instead. Go figure.

Anyway, luckily I'd gotten it mostly correct, and the nice woman at AAA walked us through the minor corrections and things to watch out for over time, as well as the completely separate set of instructions for harness tightening, adjusting, and releasing. I'm starting to understand why so many of our friends have pictures of their baby's first experience in a car seat - it's looking like a true feat of mental strength to get everything buckled correctly that first time! So now we've got car seat bases in both cars and at least one basic post-hospital need is met.

How many more things have we completely overlooked? That's not an entirely rhetorical question; I'm turning anonymous commenting on, so folks without Blogspot accounts can still leave us notes, feedback, questions, or better observations than we clueless parents-to-be can. Hope to hear from you!

Harry Potter and the School of Rock

Warning: No plot spoilers ahead.

(Incidentally, what is it with people and ruining stories/endings for other people? Shortly after book 6 came out, Meredith saw a person driving their car with a piece of paper pinned up in the back window stating who died at the end of the book. Come on, that's just mean. I'm also hearing about people reading the last chapter of the final Harry Potter and that's it. Really? Isn't the journey the important part? Otherwise you could easily just find a plot summary somewhere online if you really tried, and save yourself the $16.99.)

It's always fascinating to see to what lengths fans of a fantasy genre will go to celebrate that fantasy-world. There are the costumed SCA participants and comic book convention attendees. The extensive collections of fan fiction for, well, really every sci-fi/fantasy universe. The people who stand in line for weeks for a major anticipated film or product (Xbox, iPhone, etc.) opening. Heck, even my friends' film George Lucas in Love is in essence a brilliantly executed series of riffs paying homage to the Star Wars series. (Well, there's more to it than that, but I'm trying to make a point here!)

For me, one of the perhaps most bizarre but fabulous examples of this kind of fan creativity is the recent growing musical sub-(sub-sub-sub-)genre of Wizard Rock (aka 'wrock'). That's right, it's all music about the Harry Potter universe. Sure, this isn't all stuff you'll be singing along with, but the sheer concept is fabulous - and some of these bands are even getting famous, albeit primarily in a cult kind of way. Still, they made ABC news this week (in the business section, wha-?). And they're certainly at least doing well enough to go out on country-wide concert tours.

Rather than just play music about magic and Hogwarts and such, many of the bands choose to emulate characters or otherwise act like they live in the universe. There are the Parselmouths (who play "evil" Slytherin girls - they performed at Meredith's library on the day The Deathly Hollows came out), Draco and the Malfoys (their website is http://www.evilwizardrock.com/ - you just can't make this stuff up), The Remus Lupins, and likely the best known band, Harry and the Potters, who perform as the main character himself -- at two separate ages, via magical time travel of course. Sheer brilliance.

My brother Brian is one of the big fans who turned us on to Wizard Rock; a Harry and the Potters track even made it onto an anniversary podcast/"book on tape" for Meredith. You know he's hooked when I left him a voicemail during the Parselmouth concert at the library, and he was able to pick out the track they were performing from a 5 second clip. Impressive.

(Aside: The opening band was actually covering Harry and the Potters tunes. There are already Wizard Rock cover bands?!?)

Anyway, these bands are a bunch of really creative folks, and the lyrics are fabulous. My favorite: "Are you petrified / of being petrified?", from Harry and the Potters' classic hit "Save Ginny Weasley". It's also great to see them getting recognition - yes, they mainly play at libraries and small venues, but I'm seeing 1.1 million listens to "Save Ginny Weasley" - and the kids and adults alike were having a blast at the library concert. I'm having fun just seeing band names, let alone hearing the tracks. Now there's even a Wizard Rockumentary and a Wizard Rock Encyclopedia. Here's to creativity!

Makes you a little disappointed to think that instead of one of these great bands -- of fellow kids (probably even younger than the actors at this point, no less) -- the filmmakers decided to have former members of Pulp perform at the Goblet of Fire's school dance (Yule Ball) sequence. Ah well, film marketers and CD sales will trump authenticity. Until the CD is dead at least. Long live personalization, creativity, and Wizard Rock!

And now, back to reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. Well, once Meredith relinquishes it. Should I start a Wizard Rock band while I wait?

The Last Supper?

As belated birthday celebrations for two close friends who have been amazingly supportive and helpful throughout our whole pregnancy (and really throughout the whole time we've known them - Jonathan made our wedding cake!), last night we went to The Herbfarm. It was also likely the last time for a while that we'll be able to enjoy what ended up being an incredible 5+ hour touring and dining experience!

I'd apparently gotten my facts wrong before:

• The Herbfarm is actually a "AAA 5-Diamond" restaurant, the only one in the US north of San Francisco and west of Chicago. (For those wondering, Michigan actually does possess one 5-diamonder, in Grand Rapids no less.)
• Upper 20s on Zagat's 30-point scale (alas, looks like you have to pay to look up the actual current numbers online).
• Its executive chef is a James Beard award winner.
• And of course it's collected an impressive array of other culinary/"foodie" awards; as usual, Wikipedia has far more info if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Anyway, enough about the awards. The restaurant itself was incredible - looks like a cozy cottage, with incredibly detailed and rich/warm decor. The evening began with glasses of tasty punch while we strolled around their library (on the second story, overlooks the main dining room) and incredible wine cellar (largest in the Northwest I think?). I'm not a wine connoisseur (or even know if I spelled connoisseur correctly, though the spell check seems happy enough with it), but it was fun to see floor-to-ceiling stacks of well organized and labelled (white marker on the bottoms) bottles. The oldest wine was from 1795 (and cost about $8K). Jonathan and I couldn't resist looking at the Kosher wine part of the catalog - they clearly know their stuff, the blue bottle Bartenura moscato (our favorite) was at the top of the list. Gosh we're sophisticated.

After that, we toured the grounds, though unfortunately in the continuing summer rain (so weird in July!). They grow all of their herbs right there, and the owner passed around a variety of flowers and plants they'd be featuring in tonight's dishes for us to taste and smell. We also got to meet The Herbfarm's resident recyclers (and truffle hunters in training), two cute and happily snorting pigs who live in a pen in the middle of the herb gardens.

From there, we came back inside and were individually seated at our table. The table service (well, and the wait service too!) was amazing - I think I counted 5 wine glasses plus a Kiddush cup-looking metal water glass, 4 forks (plus a fifth 'flying' [at the top of the plate]), etc. They briefly reconfirmed our dietary restrictions (Meh had tried to explain them over the phone) while we admired the set up. Next the sommelier (hah! I did spell it right - blogspot isn't frou frou enough to have it in their dictionary) immediately came around with the first wine pairing - Meredith tried to block the pour, but they explained that hers was actually an herb-infused non-alcoholic tea. Shari made the switch one drink later, and their drinks were indeed excellent - a variety of teas, sparkling ciders, and exotic fruit drinks. They were serving different wines with each course as well, and they were all tasty too, though I'm sure I'm boorish enough to have missed the brilliance of the pairings.

Once the first course was served, the entire staff came out from behind the open kitchen to welcome us. The executive chef and the sommelier then round-robbined descriptions of each of the course we'd be enjoying along with its wine pairing. They introduced the entire kitchen (and entertainment - the guitar recording I'd been enjoying was actually a live Spanish guitarist playing 10 feet away!) staff, with employees from culinary institutes and restaurants from all over the country and world. (Even a USC restaurant management student as a sever - fight on!)

And so began the remainder of the 9 courses. Believe me, they had us at hello. Morels with snap peas, salmon with rau om (Vietnamese herb), just-foraged potatoes and mushrooms with goat cheese, squab with blackberries and basil (or for the non-bird-eaters, a delicious fish substitute), cheeses with roasted apricot, a "fruit circus" with perhaps my favorite (blueberry cobbler), and I'm sure I've missed several other courses. Oh, the fresh (and tiny) rolls/bread they served alongside were amazing too.

(Many more pictures on our photos site.)

The pacing was perfectly leisurely; we even took a break to stroll the grounds and go feed the pigs (they honestly let you, even providing a tiny pail full of scraps from the day's food preparations) before returning for an amazing selection of teas (I had fresh chocolate mint, straight from their garden), and capped off with tiny little treats. They also served a nearly 100-year-old 1910 madeira with dessert - a bit bitter for me, but interesting to be able to taste something bottled so long ago.

All in all, an incredible evening with our friends. Hopefully not the last time dining out, but maybe the last on this scale for quite a while. Hm, any chance I could get a salmon like that at McDonalds?

Dropping into the single digits...

(Not the weather, which is thankfully back up into the lovely 70s - though the rain continues, perhaps today will be a bit clearer though?)

We're now down to the last 1000 days ("1000" is binary for 8 - wow, did the blog just jump up several dorkiness factors?). Speaking of dorks, yesterday I visited my friends' film music scoring session for "Sydney White" [previously the title was addended with "and the Seven Dorks"] downtown at Benaroya Hall. It was excellent getting to see a few clips of the movie (sans sound), see them being so succesful and 'at work', and hearing Derbie's amazing and wide-ranging music (both from the booth and at one point sitting in a nearly empty Benaroya to hear a personalized performance) - plus visiting the recording engineer who used to run our USC student film scoring sessions and of course getting to catch up a bit with Joey (the director). And I also ran into a violist friend who was actually playing at the session - the musicians and the music were both great, I'm excited to see them in the finished film, which has been announced for September 21 (yup, the day before Yom Kippur - I'll have to see a matinee before heading to Kol Nidre!).

Tonight, Meredith and I and two amazing friends who have been graciously housing our baby gear, hosted a baby shower, helped paint the baby room, and in general are total rock stars, are going to The Herbfarm, considered Seattle's top restaurant, and of course one with a progressive west coast view of food (namely, grow it yourself); there's apparently a tour of the garden (weather permitting), and the description on their website of the exotic herbs they've been growing for tonight's dishes sounds very tasty.

Korby managed to perform another escape routine yesterday morning bright and early. A sprint to and from the park later (well, for me, "sprint" is relative, and boy did that demonstrate how out of shape I am!), I decided to recheck the neighbor's yard on the way home, as they've put up temporary fencing that 'theoretically' should have sealed Korby in (I hadn't seen him or heard him despite a few calls when I first got outside). And sure enough, there he was, sitting there wagging his tail at me through the fence. I had to coax him back through and move a picket, so I'm not sure exactly where he made his escape, but clearly we've got our own border security problems here. Time to get some 2x4"s nailed into place, perhaps this weekend if the rain will hold off...

Pimp Meh's Ride

An apparently favorite pasttime of Prius owners is looking for ways to get even better gas mileage (hm, definitely feels like a variant of the "smug" concerns so brilliantly displayed on "South Park" a few seasons ago). There's the 'electric mode' button (found on European and Japanese cars, but interestingly not available in the US short of wiring hacks), which bypasses the gas engine entirely - but only for speeds under 35 mph. There are crazy analyses of exotic driving styles (and slightly more common-sense driving techniques), including discussions of if/when to use the mysterious 'B' driving mode. Other folks focus on turning the Prius into a plug-in hybrid (PHEV), where you can use the power grid to drive your first x miles of the day (and if x is less than your roundtrip commute, gas-free). And of course throughout it all, everyone is trying to find more powerful battery supplement/replacement options.

The principal problem with most of these (short of having to tear apart your car and potentially voiding parts of its warranty) is the crazy expense; plug-in solutions look to be $10K and up. But it's still fun to read and see nutty pictures of folks doing everything short of mounting a flux capacitor and electric hook system to their cars. (Hmm, now that I mention it, that's not a half bad idea... And apparently you can even order Flux Capacitors and Hover Conversions at DeLorean's website.)

My personal favorite is someone who figured out how to use their Prius as a backup home generator - we definitely could've used that when we lost power for 10+ days in this past winter's wind storm.

The only 'free' hack I've seen is to turn off the audible beeping noise (heard only inside the car) when in reverse. The directions sound like something out of a video game cheats website; I'm half expecting to have to plug an Xbox controller in somewhere to make it work, or at least for the car's screen to let you play Pac Man when the steps are completed.

We get by with a little news from our friends...

We're now firmly in the 'any time now' range, and are both nervous and excited to meet our baby! At today's doctor appointment, we got to hear Ziggy once more, and s/he continues to shake and shimmy up a storm in between checkups.

Though it's been tough over the years for Los Angeles friends to make the trek up to Seattle (possibly made somewhat easier by my ridiculously frequent trips down there?), we're excited to be having several Pacific Northwest visitors this week (naturally the weather has turned back toward the cliche overcast chilly weather). Had a nice dinner with Susan and John last night; she's the former USC Hillel rabbi (and now USC's dean of religious life). Two other good friends are heading up here tomorrow for a very exciting project indeed - the recording of the music score for their (director and composer) upcoming film release "Sydney White" (starring Amanda Bynes). I'm hoping to go see at least part of the session on Friday; Seattle definitely continues to be an attractive alternative to LA for film (and video game) score recording, but I haven't been to a recording session in quite some time.

Also in film news today, a good friend of mine was featured on the cover of Variety - congrats, Craig! (Oh, and did I mention Craig and Laurie also recently had a beautiful baby girl? Part of that aforementioned baby flurry!)

We are also looking forward to several other friends coming down (up? Or in the case of our London friends, 'over' I suppose...) in the next few weeks, and I think our parents are of course practically ready to take the controls themselves to get here as soon as there's any news! To answer a common question, we'd of course love to see you whenever you can visit - of course, house space may be at a little bit of a premium for the next month or so, but still, come enjoy the beautiful Seattle summer! (I swear it'll stop raining one of these days.)

Babies, babies, everywhere!

A close friend due at around the same time as us just had her baby today - mazel tov! Friends of ours had twins a week and a half ago - mazel tov! Another pair of friends had a baby just over a month ago, and yet another 6 weeks ago. Yup, it must be open season for babies.

The National Center for Health Statistics keeps a pretty impressive list of birth-related stats, but for those wondering which months are the most popular:

For 1998, the top three months were July, August and September, in that order. Although the numbers can vary slightly year-to-year, it is almost always summer and fall months that have the highest birthrates.

And that's one to grow on. Looks like we'll be, like, *so* part of the statistical norm.

Does our dog have a sixth sense?

(Granted, of the five senses, most of his perceptual ability seems focused on the sense of taste...)

Korby has always been one of the more insane dogs we've known (he's our now 12-year-old border collie mix). We generally chalked most of the craziness up to his previous life; we adopted him at age 7, and apparently before that, he was an outdoor/garage-type dog. So that somewhat explains the obsession with food (even when that extends to non-food-like products, like dirt, pine cones, bits of wood, etc.), the wild outbursts of energy (his desire to 'blur' [run in circles] in the yard, and play crazily with his toys), and his need to show ownership (mild pulling and insistent stopping on walks; carefully considered circling approaches to a bush, tree, or random unmarked area of interest; etc.).

But in the last few months, we've been noticing a few other trends. Whining for dinner has started earlier and earlier when we're at home - now it's rolled back to like noon or 1 pm (we generally feed him no earlier than 4 pm). The "mighty paw" (stealing a phrase from Meredith's parents' dogs, whose paws at least don't cause much permanent damage) has become more and more insistent - this is where if we're sitting (Meredith trying to read, take a nap, watch TV, etc.), he'll come up next to us, whine, and start trying to put his paws up on Meredith's lap (seemingly much more so than mine). The last bit can be a little painful with the claws, and we've tried a host of corrective measures in the past - generally firm voiced commands worked. But now, scolding, positive attention, ignoring, and distracting all seem ineffective - short of blocking his route to Meredith with the ottoman, he keeps putting his paws up until either I sneeze (somehow that alone still seems to make him submissive?) or I take him outside -- at which point he reverts to the food focus and eats everything out there that isn't bolted down.

Of course, Meredith being pregnant isn't the only change here; it's summer, so he still wakes up with the dawn (the whining/barking starts at 6 am or earlier - luckily I'm still the lighter sleeper, so Meredith can continue to sleep while I take care of him). He seems to be losing a significant portion of his hearing (as witnessed on the 4th of July, when he didn't really seem to care about all of the fireworks our pyromaniacal neighbors were setting off - I'm still finding debris in our yard weeks later), so that might explain why scolding doesn't do much. He's also of course becoming a more 'mature' dog - a bit slower to really wake up after the early morning breakfast, spends late evenings already snoozing in his house, not really allowed upstairs anymore because he has trouble successfully getting back down. But still, we keep wondering if somehow he understands what's going on and is trying to hoarde some more attention. (If you were wondering, the generally accepted answer to the question of whether animals sense human pregnancy is a resounding yes.)

So at a friend's birthday picnic at the park last night, he was as naughty and crazed as ever, so at least that getting older theory doesn't hold much water. He managed to grab a loaf of bread (luckily still in its bag, though we had to toss out a few tooth-marked slices) that wasn't immediately put on the table, then actually tried to grab Meredith's plate off the table (not anything specifically on it, mind you -- a plastic plate!). Crazy pooch.

Incidentally, random trivia from Wikipedia's border collies entry includes the following "well known" border collie:

"Ziggy"the crown prince couple of Denmark's dog.

Blast, there goes my 'cute but not in a dog name sort of way' requirement for our Ziggy's nickname.

13 is a very lucky number!

In addition to being the second and final Friday the 13th of the year, yesterday marked Meredith and my fourth anniversary. It's amazing to think that it's already been four years! Unknown to both of us, the 4th anniversary is traditionally marked with gifts of "fruits and flowers", or more contemporarily [is that even a word?], appliances (!). Intelligently, we both passed on the ever-so-romantic notion of hair curlers (though I really could use one) and irons. Meredith got me a lovely new wallet to replace my, er, well-loved one, and I serendipitously brought her 4 roses when I picked her up from work for Dunava's "casual concert" at a tea house in Seattle. Listen to their Balkan vocalizations here.

Afterwards, Meredith and I dusted off and watched our old wedding video. It still doesn't seem like four years, though Meredith was convinced that we both did indeed look a bit younger. It was wonderful to relive the ceremony and celebration, and to see so many friends (and thankfully so many that we still keep in touch with despite the often great distances). Incredible how many changes occur in four years - whether in appearance, marriages, job/career changes, moves to new cities, pregnancies, and children (amazing that several friends at our wedding now have one, two, or even more kids!).

Anyway, tonight is our anniversary celebration proper; we're going to our favorite cozy/posh restaurant that happens to be quite nearby. (Seattle's sole 5-star restaurant will be getting a visit from us next weekend, Ziggy permitting! If not, hopefully they'll let us reschedule, for, say, when Ziggy is 17?).

It's Meh's turn!

I know you are all shocked to finally hear from the Meh of Scoot, Meh, and Ziggy. The time has come! And it may be TMI for some of you, so here's a warning: if you are offended in any way by bathroom humor, you might want to skip this entry. In fact, you may just want to skip any entry that comes from Meh.

We had an appointment with my doctor yesterday. As some of you may know, when you are pregnant, you are required to submit your "golden gift" at each appointment. Before I was pregnant, I had performance anxiety, and would often submit an empty cup. However, for Ziggy's sake, I did my best to load up on fluids so that I could put out. With the progression of my pregnancy, I found that I never had any problem producing enough of the stuff, and doctor's appointments were footloose and fancy free...

...until about the 7th month. Suddenly, I found myself incapable of locating the origin of the stream. Could it be moving steadily backward as my belly got bigger? How is that possible? I am not a flounder (whose eye moves from the side to the front of its head as it matures, check out the picture)


so how come I can't find the stream? Not that I have any problem dousing my own hand as I frantically wave the cup beneath myself, trying to catch something to hand in.

As a woman I was helping in my job as librarian dreamily mused, "Isn't it wonderful being pregnant?"

Daytrip is my middle name

What better way to beat the heat than to fly down to California. Huh?

Yes, in a bizarre climatological twist, I flew down to Oakland for an event yesterday and the temperature was substantially less than Seattle, which ended up hitting 98 degrees. Check out a picture of how the squirrels responded. (excellent picture from KOMO news site)

Oakland, or more specifically, Emeryville, was overcast, and in the 60s if that. I was helping to launch a new professional group focused on sound design and implementation for games, called IESD (Interactive Entertainment Sound Developers). It was held at Ex'pression, a rather unique college down the street from Pixar, with impressive facilities focused on 'digital arts' (visuals, game design, and sound).

The event went well - a mix of press, faculty from the school, and students listened to us ramble on about the importance of sound designers talking with each other, then we had a nice Q&A discussion and brief social. Here's a pic of the four co-chairs of the IESD and the president of the Game Audio Network Guild (GANG), which is the primary group for game composers and sound designers, both professional and academic (IESD is a part of GANG - confused yet?). Looks like this already generated a bit of press.

After the event, I had just enough time to dash back to the airport and catch the last flight back to Seattle. (Left at 7 pm for an 8 pm flight - stressful, but luckily the traffic cooperated.) Ah, the day trip -- up at 4:30 am, back home by 10:30 pm. Pretty exhausting, even after doing it multiple times for my USC class. Anyway, yes, that is definitely my last trip away from Seattle until after the baby!

Meanwhile, Meredith and Korby tried to deal with the heat with lots of shade and ice cubes in the water dish (for Korby, not as much for Meredith), but it was still pretty sweltering. At our doctor appointment today, the nurse said that one clever patient had actually put their fitted sheets in the freezer, then taken them out when they were ready to go to bed. S-M-R-T!

Speaking of doctor appointments, Ziggy of course took advantage of the opportunity to release his/her latest single, titled "134 BPM". It's an abstract, avante garde track, with hints of trance and techno elements. Maybe a bit minimalist, but you've got to admit the kid's got talent. No bias here, of course.

It's (gonna be) too darn hot...

As hinted at earlier, the nasty heat wave hitting the West Coast is due to reach Seattle for the next three days, with National Weather Service warnings of temps in the 90s to 100s. Luckily, we have a portable room air conditioner. Unluckily, we've only got one. More incentive to stay in air conditioned offices or go watch movies, though thankfully the downstairs has stayed pretty cool so far. Still have to finish touching up the paint on the soon-to-be baby room, but it's just too darn hot in there in the afternoons and evenings. Getting some shades in there will definitely help; we're hoping to do that in the next day or two.

Our back deck has gotten excellent use; the shade and breezes really help beat the heat, and it's a good place to rest, lay low, and read a good book. Or in my case, a giant 990-page tome that I've been reading for several months (and likely through a few too many library renewals).

Even Korby eventually (or at least intermittently) gets tired of eating grass and dirt, and chills out in the shade, though he's quite skilled at intentionally waiting to sit or lie down until he sees us trying to call him inside. Yup, the eldest child is already acting up...

Here's a pic of one of his favorite places to hang out (from a few weeks ago, before the grass started its inevitable transformation to hay).

We're now down to under 20 days, yikes!
-Scott

T-Minus how long now?

One of the more unique gifts we've gotten is a pregnancy countdown timer. Well, it's actually an arbitrary countdown timer (with an affirmation to 'make every minute count'), and you can plug in the date you want it to count down to and watch it spin. Here's how it looked at the time of this posting:

Not visible off the right edge of the picture is the millisecond counter - they scroll by too fast to make much sense of anyway. Yup, milliseconds. Is that a little more dramatic than strictly necessary, or is it just me? Also makes it feel like we're preparing for a Mars landing. Roger, Houston.

On the plus side, this does really give us a quick- glance-view of how many days are left until the due date - though as we're frequently reminded, that has little bearing on when the actual big day lands.

We were also given a countdown book with day by day baby development trivia ("by today, your baby can already feel embarassed by his or her parents") and obscure quotes on babies/children that we read from each night. As if to confirm the wide possible actual delivery dates, it also includes a countup of additional weeks after the due date with continuing tips in case you "go long". (Hm, unintentional football terminology seems even less appropriate here than usual.)

That's one of the tough things right now - we just don't know when things will happen, so all we can do is try to get ready as possible, then play the waiting game. Ah well, back to watching the counter I guess!

Baby Color Wars

Is there any particularly good reason why everything baby-related has to be either blue or pink? Interesting side note - I recently heard that these colors used to actually be reversed:

At one point pink was considered more of a boy's color, (as a watered-down red, which is a fierce color) and blue was more for girls. The associate of pink with bold, dramatic red clearly affected its use for boys. An American newspaper in 1914 advised mothers, "If you like the color note on the little one's garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention." [2]"There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." [3]

Anyway, back to today's styles, I think some of this long-term fashion trend might explain why some friends were frustrated we weren't finding out the gender - you either commit to the possibility of cross-dressing the baby (for shame!), or you can't get arbitrary pieces of clothing, bedding, playsets, or even diapers in some cases. It went so far that at one point, we found some blankets or bibs or something that we liked, added them to a registry, and folks leaped to conclusions about the baby's gender from their color.


I for one have many other colors in my wardrobe, and I don't consider myself much of a fashionista. Admittedly, I haven't had any pink since an Izod shirt in the 90s, but still...


All of this leads in to the power of the apparently single gender-neutral baby color, namely green. We painted the baby's room the color of our blog title bar (kudos to Justine for the excellent color pallette throughout the site, by the way!), a green the good folks at Behr Paints call 'peridot' (though apparently anything but in actual color, since here's peridot the precious stone):

As a happy coincidence, peridot happens to be the August birthstone, so if the baby is a few days late...

On the other hand, if the baby is on time or early, July's birthstone is ruby. That's, like, *so* girly.

It's blog, it's blog, it's better than bad, it's good!

What better reason to start a blog than major life events? Particularly when they're the kind where for days/months/years afterwards, you'd want to be giving the latest news to friends and family, and likely ending up coming this close to sending out form letters and mass e-mails?

With this in mind, we're setting this site up as a status board for the upcoming Ziggy Selfon, and likely our own discoveries of the joys and cluelessness associated with new parenthood. As most of you likely know, Ziggy is baby Selfon's "code name" (much catchier than most Microsoft product code-names I've seen in the past - though Cairo Selfon would certainly have an air of mystery about it). Scott and Meredith picked this name when we first found out, since:

• At that point, Ziggy was still considered more of a "zygote" than a "fetus". Alliteration is good. (My high school English teacher would be so proud.)
• Ziggy is fairly gender neutral. (Those who think it's always a form of Sigmund clearly haven't fanatically watched Quantum Leap.) [Wow, first post and already going to the Quantum Leap references? Our readership may not last long...]
• Ziggy is fun and clever, but not too much in that cute dog name kind of way.

Meh alludes in her librarian posts (I won't link here to protect the innocent - ask me if you'd like a link to her hilarious adventures in the library) to an excellent baby info summary she made and attached to the back of her name badge, answering the most common (and apparently frequently demanded by anonymous patrons) questions she gets asked. I'll offer up my own answers here.

Ziggy Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
(Jeez, a baby FAQ? I've really been at MS too long!)

1. What's Ziggy's due date? July 30, 2007. No, we don't know if we'll be early, late, or on time. (Though the number of inquiries here suggests there's some secret sign we should be noticing?)
2. What's Ziggy's gender? A surprise for us. Some people were actually insulted that we're not finding out - is it really so uncommon these days?
3. What's Ziggy's name going to be? Also a surprise, for everyone else at least. Yes, we've got our "top" boy and girl names picked out. No, we're not telling. And no, you can't guess and ask us if you guessed right!
4. How's Meh? So far so good, thanks. The last month is generally called the least comfortable, so of course the temperature has been getting further into the 80s to coincide.
5. How's Scoot? Nervous and excited. More reflection on these as the big day approaches, I'm sure.
6. How's the baby's room? It's all painted, but per the Jewish tradition/superstition, we're keeping it empty (and generous friends have thankfully been storing various babywear/gadgets/bedding/etc.) until the baby arrives. For more on baby-related superstitions, here's a great blog posting.

Two lists in our first blog entry? Oy. Anyway, if there are other questions you think should be included here, let us know. Otherwise, back for more later!

-Scott