lewis and clark had a journal. you, beth-annie, have a diary.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Ophelia, Esmerelda or Hermione?
Last night we narrowed our list of names down to five. Josh tried asking my tummy what she thought of each of them, but I think she was sleeping at the time, so we didn't get much of a response (maybe we'll try again later). One of the five names is in the 2005 top ten (which is unfortunate) and a couple of them I think would surprise people. We're not going to make any final decision until the baby's actually born, but at this point I think I know which two names we're likely to choose one of. I think. :-)
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Calling all Super Mario Brothers fans.
If you have ten minutes to spare, you're likely to get a kick out of this guy playing a bunch of the music from Super Mario Brothers through Super Mario World on the piano.  It's really quite impressive, especially when you consider that he had to figure it out by ear (I'm assuming, at least).  And it made me realize that, really, a lot of the music composed for those games is not too shabby, all things considered.

It also made me want to play them again.  It's been a while.
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Monday, August 28, 2006
Blah, blah, blah.
We've also been getting old seasons of "Scrubs" from the library, since we didn't start watching it until a few seasons in.  We just watched a second season episode that featured Colin Hay, lead singer of Men at Work, singing one of their songs.  But this song was extremely familiar to me, despite the fact that I know all of about one Men at Work song.  So I figured I had to know the song as covered by someone else.  Turns out I was right.  Two points (meaningless, of course) to anyone who can listen to the song and guess correctly from what artist's version I actually know it (without cheating).  I'm pretty sure there are a couple of my readers who should be able to get this based on the song alone.  Others of you will have no chance.

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In other news, this child has apparently decided that she is not content unless she is almost constantly poking and shoving me, and I swear at times doing backflips.  Of course, this has been going on for quite a while, but never so strong as it is now.  It's downright distracting at times, often uncomfortable, and occasionally even a little painful.  I think it's called getting a head start on being a parent.  :-P  As for Josh, he's really good at feeling the jostles and jabs with his hands and laying his head on my belly like he'll be able to hear something.  It's pretty cute, actually.  :-)
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Friday, August 25, 2006
Copycat.

Yup, them's my visited states (68%, if anyone was wondering). The end.
3:21 PM || I want to be a comment. Post me!

Wednesday, August 23, 2006
What to do?
(No, I don't know how to come up with creative titles anymore.)

For quite a while I've been hearing about how great "Battlestar Galactica" is, even to people who aren't typically big sci-fi fans (the show has aired two seasons so far on the Sci Fi Channel).  So I decided it was time to check it out for myself and see if the hype was justified.  We put a hold on it at the library (there's a great southern Wisconsin library system where all the libraries sort of share their collections and it's supereasy to get anything from any of them), and earlier this summer started receiving the discs.  We recently finished the first season and want to see more ASAP -- both because it ended on a pretty huge cliffhanger and because we really want to get the entire second season watched before the third starts airing Oct. 6.  The problem?  The library system has a whopping ONE copy, and we're 21st on the hold list for it -- not nearly soon enough to get even just the first disc before new episodes start airing.  And Josh hasn't found a video store around here that has it for rent, which actually surprised me.

It's starting to look like we might have to sign up for either Netflix or Blockbuster's online rental program just long enough to get the stupid three discs we need (we're so not going to have enough time to stick with either one after that), but I'm not entirely sure how those programs work and whether we could even guarantee that we'd be able to get those three specific discs right away and not have to wait for availability of some sort -- if anyone has any knowledge of either one that could shed some light on the particulars, I'd be grateful.

I suppose as a last we resort we could just record the third season and keep them on the DVR without watching them until our library holds finally come in and we can get caught up, but we're usually short on DVR space (and don't even mention VHS to me, I can't really stand the crappy quality anymore) and there would be a big danger of getting spoiled as the new episodes aired -- I'm already having to be careful on certain websites and reading magazines like EW  to keep from finding out anything that happened during the second season.
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Monday, August 21, 2006
Seven months.

Also, the new fall television season officially starts tonight when "Prison Break" resumes new episodes.  And thank goodness, because I need to know already if Dr. Sara is alive (hint: she'd better be).

Also, "Veronica Mars" Season 2 is out on DVD tomorrow.  Followed by "Arrested Development" Season 3 next week, followed by "Lost" Season 2 the week after, followed by "The Office" Season 2 the week after that, followed by "Gilmore Girls" Season 6 the week after that.  That's... a lot of DVD.  We may just put off "GG" for now and pick it up later when Target puts all the older seasons on sale for cheap (especially since ABC Family runs the show in syndication and I don't think the DVD has any special features, plus some  might say that the season was... sub-par, shall we say).

(Note to Liz:  Best Buy for $37.99 -- this week only -- is the best price I've seen for "VM.")
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Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Snapshots of our life.
Last Friday night:  After missing out on 4th of July fireworks for who-knows-how-many-years now (we've always been traveling), we finally caught some at the annual Belleville Community Picnic, all pretty and reflected in the lake.  Considering the size of our town (~2000), I was impressed with both the length of the display and that it actually included some fireworks I'd never seen before.

Last night:  Stayed up till about 1am watching the Cubs beat the Astros -- in 18 innings (the Cubs used every single  available player, including using starting pitchers as pinch hitters and having to put in the next day's starting pitcher as a reliever).  It was totally worth it.  (Don't ask me if it still would have been if we had lost.  :-P)
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Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Oh, the bliss.
The biggest problem with M&M's is that they're milk chocolate.  Which, as we all know, blows.  They supposedly came out with limited edition dark chocolate M&M's over a year ago when Star Wars Episode III  came out, but we could never actually find them.  And then they were gone anyway.

Sunday at, of all places, Menards, we found "NEW!" Dark Chocolate M&M's.  And the villagers rejoiced!
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Monday, August 14, 2006
Oh, the agony.
There once was a girl named Angela. She played golf for a living and, though she wasn't exactly a superstar, she became a favorite of a spectator named Beth-Annie. One August weekend Angela led a golf tournament by at least three strokes after each of the first three rounds, which thrilled Beth-Annie but with each round made her increasingly disappointed that this was one of the only tournaments of the season that she couldn't watch, as it was being broadcast only in Canada. Still, she'd take a win she couldn't see over a poor showing she could.

Then, on Sunday, the unthinkable happened: Angela's four-stroke lead going into the final round turned into a one-shot loss as Cristie Kerr, who started the day eight strokes back, shot a 65 and Angela bogeyed her last two holes to shoot a 74. Poor Beth-Annie, who'd been following the whole round on her computer, could only do one thing: writhe on the floor in pain and cry, "How?! How on earth this could have happened again?!" Again, you ask? Yes. And when I say again, I mean again. Compare, if you will, Angela's status after each round of two tournaments this year:

One word: ugh.
11:59 PM || I want to be a comment. Post me!

Friday, August 11, 2006
Honey Bunches of Uninteresting.
I got a cramp in my right calf muscle in the middle of the night several days ago -- hideously painful, they are, I can only imagine in preparation for childbirth -- and ever since then that muscle has been so sore it's caused me to limp around the house (though it is better now).  Still, not fun.

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Also in the "not fun" category:  Monday night Paul grilled for us and we had a lovely supper outside, but with the patio door open as much as it was (which I swear wasn't even that much) we let some flies into the house, which we've have been annoying us all week.  We've already killed at least four, and there are at least two still flying around.  Those are quick little suckers.

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My belly button has finally started to pop out, though it's doing it from the top down, so the result is a sort of S-shaped belly button cross section with the top half convex and the bottom half still slightly concave.  Thrilling, I know.

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Also in belly button-related news of a sort, we have finally registered for items of the baby variety, at Target and Babies 'R' Us (and their respective .coms).  If nothing else it gives us a nice shopping list for ourselves.

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Poo on "Big Brother" for having technical difficulties during the live HOH competition last night and so having to completely re-do it after the fact, with a far less favorable outcome in my eyes.  I won't give any more specifics than that, but if anyone (moM, Lizzie) wants to find out what happened, you can easily do so on the internet (or I could tell you in the comments).
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Friday, August 04, 2006
Bad news.
Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Last weekend my grandmother was doing better, still in ICU but able to get up from bed briefly and talk to people, watch her soaps, etc. Then early Monday morning things took an unexpected turn for the worse, enough so that Josh took the day off and we drove to Waterloo to see her. Though she was never conscious while we were there, I'm so glad we went, because it would be our last chance. She passed away Tuesday afternoon. Kaly's been visiting us since we got back Monday night, and Paul was actually able to fly up here yesterday from Texas. We're all leaving today to go to Cedar Falls for the funeral tomorrow.

Thank you all for your prayers, and they would still be helpful, especially for my grandfather who just lost his wife of almost 55 years.

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