Adventures with wildlife

Yesterday was not a banner day for me and wildlife. There were three separate incidents that led to this post. Had they not occurred on the same day, I wouldn't have really thought anything of it. However, nature seemed to be conspiring against me yesterday, thus this post was hatched:

Incident 1: The bird at HEB
After loading up Anjali in the car and dropping Amar's lunch off at his office, I decided that I had time to do a quick grocery store run. Upon arriving at HEB, I parked the car, loaded the baby into the cart and headed toward the store. I noticed that there were some HEB employees milling around the parking lot, but didn't really think anything of it.

I was about 20 feet from the store when I felt something on my the back of my head. I quickly moved to brush it off, and then saw a bird fly precariously close to my face. Then I heard someone behind me yell, "Yep - that was a bird. I'm working on it!" I turned around to see that it was one of the employees talking, and then surmised that I had just been dive-bombed by said bird. I felt my head again, to make sure that the bird didn't leave anything behind after it said hello to me. All clear. Luckily, the bird targeted me and not the baby.

Incident 2: The squirrel
After a successful trip through the grocery store, I loaded everything (and everyone) back into the car and headed home. About 3 blocks from the grocery store, I apparently murdered a squirrel. I say "apparently" because I didn't even see him. I heard him. More specifically, I heard a "thump thump" as I ran over him, and not until I checked the rear-view mirror did I realize what I had done.

Incident 3: The bug in the kitchen
Now, you may know that I have a strict no-tolerance policy towards all members of the bug, insect and/or arachnid categories. No-tolerance. I will either kill it, or distance myself so far from it as to render its scary qualities mostly ineffective. And all of them have scary qualities.

Last night, as I was heading to bed, I turned the kitchen light on. I noticed some dust particles coming from one of the lights, and called Amar's attention to it. We both examined the light for a few seconds, and then Amar said "WOAH!" I then saw the reason: a huge, black bug started to poke its head down from the light and into the kitchen. Amar quickly handed me the baby and I darted into the bedroom, slamming the door behind me.

Now, after Amar dispatched the offending bug, he and I started to realize that Bella, the not-so-bright member of the Scottish Terrier branch of the Rama family, tried to alert us to the insect earlier in the week. She spent the better part of one evening staring intently at part of the ceiling of the kitchen. Amar and I both inspected that part of the kitchen several times that evening, but found nothing. Bella remained intent (she's nothing if not dedicated, especially when it looks like she might get some sort of food out of the operation...and I can only imagine that this bug looked like dessert to her). So it now looks like we have a good watchdog in our family. Apologies, Bella, for underestimating your intelligence in the past!

All that to say that yesterday was not my day with the local wildlife. Hopefully today will be much less dramatic!

Chaos abounds...

We had a bit of a chaotic moment last night at the Rama household. Looking back, it was pretty entertaining, so I thought I'd share.

In general, Anjali has been a great baby. She is relatively easy to calm, and very rarely gets REALLY upset. However, she is just a baby and thus, she will occasionally have moments where she is upset even though nothing is obviously causing her pain or discomfort.

Last night was one of those moments.

I fed her around 6PM, and Amar got home around 6:30. Almost immediately after he got home, she got fussy. And not just "give me a pacifier" fussy - all out wailing and flailing.

Amar and I took turns trying to calm her over the next hour. And just to underscore how easy a baby she's been so far, she's never cried for more than 5 minutes at a time; we're usually able to calm her pretty quickly.

Last night, however, she would have none of that. We rocked her. We swaddled her. We unswaddled her. We put her on her back. We put her on her stomach. We bounced. We danced. We took her outside. We changed her diaper....you get the picture.

After about an hour, I decided to try to feed her a bit more. Amar and I headed to the nursery, and right as we were turning the corner in the hallway, we somehow knocked the carbon monoxide detector loose and it fell to the ground. As soon as it hit the floor, it started emitting the most horrible, shrill, loud and obnoxious sound known to man. I think essentially the entire block thought that our house was about to self-destruct.

So I'm trying to feed a screaming child. Amar is running around the house with a small white box that is making a horrific noise and is not able to turn it off (apparently when it fell, some part got lodged inside that prevented it from being shut off). He starts threatening to smash it with a hammer. I start laughing.

Then, somehow, the house alarm starts going off. Screaming baby. Screaming carbon monoxide alarm. Screaming house alarm.

It was pretty awesome to say the least.

Eventually, Amar got the house alarm off. Then he found a hammer and started to work on the carbon monoxide detector. The baby had stopped screaming so that she could eat a second meal. And after about 90 minutes of non-stop noise at our house, we were able to rest peacefully and have a conversation at a normal volume.

Good stuff indeed!

Update: Day 10

So our little one is now 10 days old. It's been a long, but good, 10 days :) Kudos to all the parents out there - we now understand how hard but rewarding this adventure is.

We had the 2 week pediatrician visit yesterday and for those of you into the stats, here's what we found out:

• Her head grew by 1 cm, bringing her into the 50th percentile for head size
• She is back up to her birth weight, weighing in a 7 lb. 10 oz., putting her into the 40th percentile for weight
• She is 20.5 inches long, putting her into the 50th percentile for length

All in all, she's doing really well.

Here are some more pictures that our friend Krista took:

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.

Awesomeness defined

Jim is a maker of awesome pancakes. I'm serious. You have to check out Jim's Pancakes to really appreciate what I'm talking about.

But as an avid eater of all things breakfast food, this is phenomenal....

Sneak preview:


A freakin' 3D Ferris Wheel of pancakes. BAM!

Happenings

Just a quick list:

• Got a new AC unit installed at the house yesterday - yeehaw!
• Still pregnant, with ~3 weeks to go.
• Getting a new computer at work...eventually.
• Planning to work for ~3 more weeks...
• Desperately need to bathe the dogs!!!
• The yard folks planted some cute flowers w/o me asking - good stuff!
• Baby laundry is done and ready for a little person to start wearing it.
• Heading to the lake this weekend, and will plan on sparing people the sight of me in a bathing suit.
• Car seat is installed - thanks Danielle!!
• Amar started a new job and is enjoying it - also yeehaw!

I think those are the main highlights. I know I need to post another picture...we'll try to get to that this weekend.

Facebook Privacy Settings: The Tangled Web

The New York Times has a good summary of the various ways to setup your Privacy settings on Facebook. I just went through and updated mine, because it seemed that most everything had defaulted to allow "everyone" to see things about me.

Take a few minutes to do the same, especially if you're concerned about what info is floating around on the web about you...

NYT Article: here

33 Weeks and growing

Squeamish...

Hooray for (hopefully) the last blood draw for quite awhile!

I had my 33 week check-up today (I will post another progress picture soon), and much to my surprise, I had to get my blood drawn again. Now, if you know me, then you likely know that not only do I not like medical things in general, but I have a specific aversion to needles.

So you can imagine my disappointment when the nurse told me that due to a new 2010 law, all pregnant women have to get an HIV test in the 3rd trimester. I asked her if I could just swear that I didn't have HIV, but she said no. They would just test the baby later if I refused to give blood today.

So my dear future daughter, I took one for the Rama team today. Be sure to thank me later ;)

Seriously though, I think this is the 4th or 5th blood draw since October and I'm glad to have it behind me. There is one phlebotomist in particular that I dread having take my blood. So I was specifically praying that I wouldn't get her today (had her the first time and don't want to re-live that). When Amar suggested that maybe that wasn't the best prayer, I switched to "please let me get someone who is compassionate" and gave that a spin.

Well, the first prayer was definitely answered: I didn't get the person I was dreading. However, the second prayer...not so much.

I typically explain to the nurse that "I'm not so good at the needles and blood thing" and they typically respond with "Awww, we'll make sure this isn't too bad." This is a dialogue I can support.

However, when I started my speech this morning, the guy barely acknowledged that I was speaking. Not a good sign.

After I closed my eyes, he then proceeded to jab the needle about halfway through my arm. Pain when shooting through my body. Then when he was done, he started wrapping the gauze and tape around the (still throbbing) wound. When he went to tear the tape off, he pressed (rather firmly) right where he had poked me. Yikes!!

I'm SO glad that Amar was there with me (even though friends/family are supposed to wait in the lobby). I got out of there as soon as I could, and then started to feel a little weak on the way back to the car. And, not surprisingly, I started crying.

Hormones!! Gotta love 'em.

To summarize:
All is well
I still don't like needles
I (still) know without a doubt that I was never meant to be a doctor

Keeping up with the Joneses

I read a few finance and money blogs (because I'm a nerd and find some of that interesting...hope you do too!), and today there was a post about "How do you know when you're *rich*"...

As in, everyone has some sort of number in the back of their mind as so what it would take for them to consider themselves wealthy, or well-off, or comfortable. It's a different number for everyone, but it's interesting to think about.

Anyhow, part of the article talked about global wealth and how you measure up. Check out this site: www.globalrichlist.com to see where you come in.

Kind of helps set perspective a bit...

Link to the original article: Get Rich Slowly - Are we there yet?

30 weeks and growing!

Off to a great start

So I've been buried in Microsoft Excel this week, which by itself, isn't that bad. I'm actually a bit of a nerd like that. I even dreamed about this one particular spreadsheet last night - oy!

However, upon getting into work this morning and starting the data mining again, I got this error:

"Excel cannot complete this task with available resources. Choose less data or close other applications."

Nice.

Does that officially make me a power user at this point?

Happy Friday!