The newest Rama

Well folks, she arrived!

Anjali Katherine was born on Saturday, June 26 at 4:55 PM. She weighed in at 7 lb 10 oz and was 20 inches long.

All was well at the first doctor's appointment yesterday. Amar and I are mainly trying to keep her alive at this point, while also trying to get as much sleep as we can. Here are a few pictures from Anjali's first few days with us:

Note: eventually we'll post some pictures of her NOT bundled up, but for now, that's her favorite thing in the world, so we keep her wrapped pretty tight most of the time.

Some last minute updates...

Well, things are about to change a bit around here, so I thought I'd provide a few last minute updates before we head to the hospital to meet our daughter this weekend.

Nursery Pictures
After the repair work was complete in the baby's room, I set things back in their proper order and snapped a few pictures:







40+ Weeks
Here's my last pregnancy status picture. The due date was 6/20, and it's 6/25, so I'm almost at 41 weeks in this picture...and apparently I make weird facial expressions during these photo shoots. Whatever.




Cuteness...
Now I have no freakin' idea what a layette is, nor did I really put one together for Anjali. Additionally, I intentionally didn't have a 'theme' for her room...I did, however, wind up with some personalized Scottie gear, courtesy of my dear friend Danielle. Check out the goods:



I then went on to make a Scottie-mobile, during one of the days this week that I was trying to pass the time.



Wish us luck this weekend!

Goats are awesome

I've never thought much of goats until I just saw this. Now I want some.

Is that a gun in your pocket, or...

I know we're all about Keeping Austin Weird and everything, but this is NOT the way to do that. Essentially, a young man looking to score cash for drugs takes a transgender prostitute to a convenience store and robs the owner using a caulk gun.

Among the things NOT to do are:

• Pick up a transgender prostitute
• Rob a Speedy Stop
• Use a caulk gun as a weapon

Just to name a few....

People: there are other ways to keep this city unique.

Amar will be thankful for this site:

Called YourNextRead. He'll be thankful for it because I think I probably ask him to pick out another book for me about every 2 weeks or so.

He and I don't exactly have what you'd call 'similar' taste in reading, though there are a few exceptions. However, this site may make things a bit easier on him and help me start using our local library (all of 1 block away) a bit more.

Do you have any suggestions for what I should read next? Looking for something light that I can read in small increments (i.e. something that fits well into the somewhat ridiculous schedule I'm about to take on...).

The sky is no longer falling: a job well done

It's been about a week and a half since we got a new AC installed in our aging house. The AC is working great - I just need to figure out how to program it.

During that time, we've had a lot of people through the house to remove, install, repair and inspect the work. As you saw with my previous post, the work was not without its own drama. However, I didn't want to leave you thinking that we got the short end of the stick with the AC folks.

When we first started the process, we decided to go with the Strand Brothers, a local outfit here in town.

Being a homegrown Austinite, I was familiar with their cutesy radio commercials, and was generally understood their quality of work to be high. When we got a personal recommendation from a friend of ours, encouraging us to go with the brothers Strand, we decided to go for it. That, along with the fact that they do all the rebate (city, state, federal) stuff for you, and we were sold.

Midway through the installation process, some of the employees wound up accidentally making a small crack in the ceiling of the baby's room. The workers were super apologetic about it, and they scheduled repairs for a week later. Over the next week, the crack widened just a bit. Then, on the night before the repair was supposed to take place, the ceiling collapsed.

Amar called their offices immediately, and by 8:30AM the next day, there was a crew at our house. They came on Friday, Saturday and Monday to complete the cleanup, the repair, and the final inspection.

Faithful readers: know that the folks at Strand Brothers have handled this situation in a professional manner, with courtesy and humility. Every person that came through our house was respectful and competent. When they said they'd arrive between 8:30 and 9, for instance, they showed up at 8:30. When they said that they'd be done in an hour, they were done in an hour. When insulation filled our baby's room, they had a cleaning crew in the next day and hauled the dirtier items off to the dry cleaners.

The house is now well-air conditioned, the ceiling completely repaired and the house completely cleaned.

I have to agree with their slogan: they are indeed really nice boys!

Technology

I can't even begin to imagine what this search would have looked like in an email-less world. Even just ~10 years ago, combing through 34 million pages of documents would have been painstaking.

However, in this day and age, very little of what you actually communicate is private. Keep that in mind, as this article points out, if you plan do to anything remotely suspicious or even slightly illegal ;)

Too bad for the folks at Lehman Bros. Really, I feel for them....oh wait, no. That must have been someone else I was feeling bad for. Oh yeah, the rest of the country.

Anyhow, I love the mental picture the Bloomberg article paints of a bunch of lawyers sitting in a conference room trying to compile a list of search terms that people might use if they were involved in a massive cover-up. Almost makes me wish I were a lawyer.

I'm sorry, but what?

Has anyone else seen the commercials for the new "limited edition" Huggies Jean Diaper?

Is there really a need in the market for diapers that look like jeans?

Two men and a baby...

...or, two and a half men.

Either title is appropriate for what went down at our house last night.

While I was out with some girls celebrating a friend's birthday, Amar and the birthday girl's husband volunteered to babysit another friend's baby. The reports we (the girls) were hearing at the restaurant were that things were fine, and while that was definitely true, it wasn't completely the whole story.

And now for the rest of the story....

After dinner was over, Danielle, whose baby the guys were watching, drove me home from the restaurant to pick up her child. When we showed up, things were great. Baby was happy to see mommy. The boys were happy to be child-free. Everyone was still alive and breathing.

...and then Amar said something like, "Well, we had a bit of an incident." I immediately thought that they were referring to a diaper-related incident. But then he pointed to the room we'll use for our baby and asked me not go to in.

Quick background: we recently had a new AC installed, along with some insulation in the attic. While that was happening, the workers managed to lean the wrong way on something in the attic and it wound up creating a small crack in the ceiling over the baby's crib. No major damage, and they were scheduled to come this morning to clean it up. In preparation for them to clean/repair it, I had moved all of the furniture in the baby's room to the other side. However, since the boys were babysitting last night, I moved it all back in case they needed to use the room.

Back to last night:

When Amar told me not to go in the baby's room, I glanced over at the door and immediately knew why: I could see insulation covering the floor in that area of the house.

I couldn't stop myself - I had to see what happened. So I slowly walked over to the door and nudged it open.

This, my friends, would not be on the list of things you want to have happen less than 10 days before your baby is due (especially if you've cleaned everything, washed everything):

The overall atmosphere in our newly-remodeled nursery. We're going for a factory-chic look here:

Detailed view of the hole in the ceiling, from whence came showers of insulation and drywall:

Another view of the wreckage:

You'll notice that the crib became a virtual bucket for insulation! Yay!!

Zoey was disturbed by the entire incident and spent some time deep in thought...

Note: no one was harmed. Praise GOD that the guys decided not to use that room last night.