gaspode, doin it right.

A-Rod

A few weeks ago we went to a Yankees game (our last of the season, our last in the old Yankee Stadium). Unfortunately, the start of the game was delayed by a thunderstorm. We hadn't gone inside yet to meet our friends, and were standing under cover outside the stadium, eating pizza, when I overhead this conversation between a little boy (around 9 or 10) who was there with his dad, and a friendly stranger who was chatting to him.

Man: So is this your first time to Yankee Stadium?

Boy: Yep

Man: Well, I was talking to A-Rod earlier, and he said he'd hit a home run for you!

Boy: ...

Man: How'd you like to see A-Rod hit a home run and win the game?

Boy (to Dad): But you said A-Rod's a choker! You said he doesn't hit home runs at the right time!

Me: heh.

One thing I'm sad about

Is that at 38 and a half weeks of pregnancy, I still don't have an outty.

First day off work

I decided to take my leave from 2 weeks before my due date. This seems atypical for most of my colleagues, who work right up until the due date, or until the baby makes its presence known, whichever comes first. I am lucky in that I have a lot of sick days saved up, as well as vacation days, as well as (and this is really the most important thing when you are a post-doc) an understanding mentor. From talking to an acquaintance who is on the post-doc committee at my institution, there are plenty of mentors who are vehemently opposed to their female post-docs taking more than a few weeks total off for maternity leave. Interestingly enough, many of these seem to be female themselves, and who have had children. The whole "I had to be back at the lab bench in 4 weeks, so should you" mentality. Per the US government, I have 12 protected weeks for maternity leave (they are of course, unpaid, unless one is in my situation with a lot of sick leave owing) and I intend to take every one of them.

That said, this whole two weeks before the due date thing seemed like a good idea at the time (I can make and freeze food, relax before the inevitable months of sleeplessness, do last minute baby-prep stuff), but I realise that it does lead me to do one thing: eat. I am a boredom-eater from way back and combine that with the hunger of the end of pregnancy and an incredible ramp up in my already quite high baseline level of sugar craving, and I'm left with a manic desire to go to the corner store and buy all of the candy bars in sight. Eating a lot of fruit has curbed the cravings, but it's just not the same as half a pack of circus peanuts.

Ha!

And then yesterday there's a post on Ask Metafilter: Why is the Olympic medal table different in American media?

Because it doesn't take a lot to make me smile

On every website I look at for Olympics news, there is invariably a medals table. And, except in one instance, the medals table looks how I expect it to look: in order of gold medals. So China is first. But this is the way that I have always seen the medals table represented!

The one exception is the NBC website (although I don't look at any other USA websites), which lists the medals in order of total won. Which, as of this writing, has the USA at the top. Back in the day, this would have annoyed me incredibly, and probably instigated a rant about US-centrism and blah blah to tedium. Now, it just makes me smile. Aw, America. You need to be first, don't you? It's been hard going the past few years, looking down the barrel of decreasing influence in the world, and obvious contempt for the fucking around in the Middle East. You need that little boost. I kind of want to give the US a hug now.

In other news, New Zealand is having a fucking awesome Olympics. Go Kiwi!

Salsa baby

My friend Jan sent me this. Hee hee hee.

and just so as to not make it two baby-related posts in a row... today's xkcd is particularly awesome for those of us who completely nerded out in middle school and high school (and onwards...)

"So you're a preggo..."

Is the book that mr. gaspode thinks he should write. He thinks it would sell much better than the one we have (the ubiquitous What to Expect when you're Expecting).

Happiness is...

An empty inbox.

QotD: Five Good Words

What are five words you really like? 
Submitted by purplesque.

Oh this is a beautiful question. In university, my friend S. and I had a list of words that we used to keep and try and work into our essays. I can only remember a couple of them; definitely mellifluous and parsimonious were two of them (keep in mind we were neuroscience majors). But there were a bunch more. Man, I wonder if she still has that list. I should email her and ask her.

From the same time period, but not worked into our classwork was autumnal. Probably still my favourite word, just for the images it evokes.

The term that I have constantly stuck in my head (it's been there for 8 or 9 years now) is seminiferous tubule. And I do like the word seminiferous. It rolls off the tongue well. I make up little songs about seminiferous tubules. Yeah, I'm odd. What?

Movies

Typically, I see around 3 or 4 movies at the theater per year. I would like to see more, for I love going to see movies, but always there seems to be something preventing me - other obligations of course, or they are on at a bad time, or not at a theater near me, or mr. g has to work etc. etc. But in the last couple of months, we've managed to see 4 movies all of which were pretty good.

1. No Country for Old Men. This went straight to one of my favourite movies of all time status. Beautifully shot, sparing dialogue, and a fantastic performance from Kelly Macdonald as Carla Jean.

2. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Poor movie. It suffered from me seeing it only a few days after the previous one. Very few movies would come out with a positive comparison. It was good, a good movie, kind of tragic in that inevitable fate kind of way, and a surprisingly good performance from Ethan Hawke. Also, I love Phillip Seymour Hoffman, always, all the time, anywhere.

3. Charlie Wilson's War. The movie you go see as a compromise because your mum is in town and you really want to see There Will Be Blood, but know that she will be bored to tears by it. Aaron Sorkin making politics look breezy and fun again. Also, I hate Tom Hanks. This movie made me not hate him. Not bad at all. And again with the Phillip Seymour Hoffman, gloriously chomping on the scenery as a Greek CIA agent.

4. Sweeny Todd. Well, I liked it. Opinions in our group were mixed, although my mother really like it. Go figure. I was distracted the whole way through because one of Helena Bonham Carter's boobs was continually hitched higher than the other one.