In the home stretch now...

So, officially in my third trimester sometime last week. I've started visiting the Dr's office every 2 weeks now, and all seems to be going well except for the usual swelling complaint. My feet used to fit in size 7.5/8 shoes, and now it's 8.5/9, and wide, and oh are they ugly. Ah well. I took the 1 hr glucose test last week, and should find out this week if I 'passed.' Hopefully so, cause I love my carbs. Nowadays people definitely don't think I've just gained a bit of a beer gut, and make comments. And when I visit our stuff under construction, I certainly have a few extra eyes making sure I don't trip over anything (no need to worry - I'm super cautious, and it's not that tough of a job site). There's this weird similarity between my hard hat and my belly, especially when I'm wearing a white shirt. We'll see if I can get a photo sometime. Meanwhile, here are some updated post-Yoga photos. Looking back at the last one, it's surprising how big everyone's gotten!

(yes, I can still see my feet!)

edit - One of my friends put a poll on her blog to guess the sex of the baby (what a great idea!), and I've followed suit!

read this

so, I've become a fan of Google Reader - I no longer really worry about bookmarks, and sometimes it actually brings up other random stuff I like. So, here's a rundown of some recent items my reader has shared:
- Cool photos of bridges
- Make your own word cloud
- Make your own favicon ? (no, I had never heard that term before either...)
- Pimp My Smart Car
- New bookstore in Austin to check out
- Massive drought in Texas already
- and therefore watering restrictions in Austin, though they aren't necessarily being followed...

the Texans take on the Jersey shore

Kyle and extended family recently headed up to Ocean City, New Jersey, for a week-long family vacation. They saw some sights, walked the board walk, were stuck in a hotel room (not really, but why on earth would you cram that many people into one hotel room? Don't worry, they weren't all sleeping there!), and had a pretty good time by the sound of it.

blew it

So, Rice totally blew the game in the 9th. We were actually up 5-0 at one point, and then in the 9th up 5-2 or something like that, and then all of a sudden LSU loads the bases and we lose 5-6. Disgusting.

3 weeks!

So, I received an email from some college friends today, that they had their little one just this last Wednesday - 3 weeks early! Yipes! It definitely shocked me. Sputnik is due in the middle of September, and since the whole due date thing is really not an exact science (plus or minus 2 weeks either side) I've pretty much been assuming and saying that the baby is due in just generic ol' 'September.' But the thought of August sort of freaked me out today - that's seems so much sooner! A couple of weekends ago I wrote out all of the stuff to try to do before the kiddo comes, and it's a lot. Ah well. My friends said the infant car seat had just arrived that morning, so really, all was well. It was a pretty short labor for a 1st child (only 7 hours) and the mother was able to have the natural birth she wanted. So, congrats to them and the now 3-person large family!

avoiding cankers

After yoga this morning I treated myself to lunch at Whole Foods, and went ahead and grabbed a few groceries while I was there. I was so excited when I found Tom's of Maine new toothpaste. Because I get canker sores occasionally, due to stress or accidentally biting the inside of my cheek, I had been using a Rembrandt toothpaste that did not have SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate, which basically makes all sorts of things, including soap and toothpaste, fizz) in it. When Rembrandt was purchased by Johnson & Johnson a couple of years ago, they dropped the SLS-free product, unfortunately. The SLS-free toothpaste doesn't stop the canker sores, but I certainly get fewer of them, so am so happy to see this new toothpaste!

Vacations Are Good for You, Medically Speaking

So really, obviously, we were very fortunate to be able to live in Munich for 6 months. Kyle was working, but for me there were quite a bit of vacations involved. And everyonceinawhile even Kyle was able to take some time off of work. Previous to that, I think the last time we had taken a vacation (just the two of us, and not for any other reason like visiting family or going to a wedding) was our honeymoon - in 2002!

So, frankly, I'm not that surprised by this article. I get 10 vacation days a year, plus holidays. By the time you take out events like weddings, Christmas, and Thanksgiving, there really isn't that much time to actually take a vacation. That's one of the reasons why Kyle's birthday surprise was so wonderful - it was a real vacation, and worth it even if I did have to take some time off without pay. Now if only I could somehow swing that every year... :)

State of Science

Found this editorial article interesting. An excerpt:

"These past seven years might be termed a Galileo moment—a hopefully brief interlude in which the priorities of leaders shifted from a respect for science and facts (convenient or inconvenient) to one in which science was ignored—or denied—if it interfered with policies, politics, or ideology.

A similar situation occurred in 17th-century Italy. Galileo Galilei‘s support of a heliocentric universe, as proposed by Nicolas Copernicus, ran afoul of the Roman Catholic Church. Earlier, during the Renaissance, the church had embraced scientific discovery but had then returned to strict interpretations of ideology and dogma as it fought a bitter feud against Protestant reformers.

Church officials declared that the earth is the center of the universe, despite evidence to the contrary—and forced Galileo to recant his views under threat of torture.

The papacy's denial of science caused technological development in Southern Europe to languish while momentum for progress grew in the north and west."

The above may be an extreme comparison - I hope so. No matter your views on (embryonic) stem cell research, reducing funding for such basics as the FDA puts many people at risk. Time for someone who isn't scared of science to occupy the top position in the executive branch and actually lead this country and encourage, in turn, our country to lead the world instead of lag behind. We still have to wait almost a year to find out who that will be...

I love not washing dishes by hand

Our old dishwasher broke (conveniently right before big junk day, so we didn't even have to haul it away ourselves). Marcus and Kyle put it in, while I dried laundry in the sun - so much faster! And now we have nice clean dishes, and I no longer have dry hands. All is well with the world.