Welcome Blobby!

Chance is preggers. That makes just about all the women in my life pregnant, 'cept me of course. I've named him/her Blobby, which is quite fun to say after anything.

Jonathan: "We need to buy water filters next time."
Me: "...for Blobby!"

Try it. You'll be amused.

It's so exciting to be an auntie for the fiftieth million time in a row (actually, 12th time; great auntie to three, soon to be four. This is what having a crazybigfamily is like.). I need to get knitting. I wanted to make it my thing where I knit all the babies blankets, but so far, only AJ has one, and as first-time projects, it's not that beautiful—a bit crooked. Oh well, he doesn't know the difference. So that makes two babies I behind knitting for. My nieces are now a year and half and I still haven't started. Now I have this kid and my niece's kid. Something tells me that those aren't the only kids waiting in the wings to be born.

---

Watched Cloverfield on Amanda's fabulous 52in. flatscreen. Sweet. But I just about peed my pants. I hid most of the time behind a pillow. If you like alien movies, watch it. If you like dooms day movies, watch it. If you don't like any of those things, do not watch it.

Watched The Jane Austen Book Club. I was sorely disappointed. I think I need to read all the Austen books to possibly appreciate the parallel themes of the books and the movie. All the women are all at a cross road in their lives (all the cliche ones: divorce, cheating, new love, old love, parental issues, gay love—okay that one isn't cliche and about the only story line I actually appreciated.). If there's nothing else on, watch it. Otherwise, watch something else.

Watched The Lives of Others. This foreign film was wonderful. I don't get all the historical political significance (history isn't my strong suit), but you don't need to understand too much about East Berlin in the 80s to get what's going on. It's a touching story about a man in Intelligence for the Stasi who fabricates his reports after learning the writer he's spying on is a pretty harmless but loveable creature, and that the only reason he's being told to spy on him is because the Minister wants to sleep with the writer's girlfriend.

Sex & the City, the movie

Went to see Sex & the City this afternoon with my dear friends Lucy and Amanda. The movie delivered, even if it was all very predictable—down to the part where Charlotte craps her pants. It was fun to watch the movie with other Sex watchers, instead of Jonathan, who would have moaned and complained the entire time. This movie definitely tied everything up, where as you felt things were left a little undone in the TV series, probably for the very reason of leaving the conclusion open to a movie spinoff. All in all, very good.

Afterward, we went to the Sushi House for lunch where I decided I'd be a little adventurous, especially because I wasn't feeling like sushi—amazing, I know. So I decided to try a buckwheat soba noodle bowl. Yeah, too adventurous. Not only was it hard to eat (it's basically spaghetti-like noodles in broth with meat; I chose beef), I didn't like the buckwheat noodles. Oh well. I least I can say that I tried it, and if I come across any recipes that call for buckwheat soba noodles, I can just move on without inflicting any test pain on Jonathan. So far, I've only had one incidence of test kitchen gone bad: turkey burgers stuffed with zucchini, squash, and carrots. Turkey burgers, good. Zucchini, squash, and carrots, good. Paired, bad idea.

Prince Caspian brings you good music

We went to see Prince Caspian today. (That's two movies within a week of each other; we must be crazy.) The movie was okay, not as good as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe...but the music was good. Regina Spektor provided some good fade to black with "The Call."

When work takes over, have a picnic

We didn't get anywhere near our plans of going to the arboretum yesterday. I was stuck on the computer much of the day proofing PDFs of the latest issue of Urban Times. But by the end of the day, I was needing to get out. Must. get. out.

It was too late to go to the movies, unless we wanted to go to the really late one, where teeny boppers rule the roost and annoy the heck out of you. It was also too late to go to the bookstore and browse if we wanted to go grocery shopping as well. So after I put together our menu for the week, looking over cookbooks and checking out the Chicken Chicken Mole and Mexican Red Rice (we watched Simply Delicioso's Ingrid Hoffman earlier that day) for our Memorial Day feast, we headed to Super Target to get our weekly shopping done and grant me a little get-out-of-the-house sanity and give my eyes a rest.

We also decided that this weekend should be really fun when I wasn't working. And one of the things we wanted to do was a wine, fancy cheese, strawberries, grapes, bread, pound cake, and melted chocolate for dipping smorgasbord. After returning from our shopping trip, I laid out a blanket on our living room floor and we had an indoor picnic. It was so fun! We talked about work (bleh, I know!) and what kind parents we would be. It was great just to have that time with the TV off, the computer powered down, and just enjoy each other's company—and yum yum food.

Here's what made up our indoor picnic:

Havarti cheese (This is a wonderful soft cheese to eat with fruit. It's really rich, so I recommend a lighter fare cheese to go with it.)

Gouda cheese (This one paired nicely with the Havarti, but I'm sure there's a better match out there.)

A French baguette (Crusty bread cut into .5in-thick slices—perfect size for the cheese slices.)

Hershey's Bliss chocolate pieces melted fondue-style. I normally use Dove chocolates, but they're hard to find when it's not a holiday. These were just the same. Good find. (We didn't break out the big fondue pot just for a few pieces of chocolate, instead we used our little Fondue au chocolat pot that heats with a tea light. Thanks Sis for getting that for us. You're right, it's very useful.)

Strawberries and green grapes

Blackberry Mead from the Pirtle Winery in Weston, Mo.

One blanket

Candles (make it romantic!)

The ants go marching

one by one. Hurrah! Hurrah!

You may wonder why I have this song in my head, and that's because the ants are literally marching one by one into our kitchen. A couple of weeks ago we told out apartment manager, who said they would spray. Spray they did. But did it help get rid of these pests? Nope. We bought some ant things with poison for them to crawl into, grab some food (poison), and carry it back to their queen. So far it doesn't seem to have worked. The ants continue to march in all kinds of numbers into our kitchen via our kitchen window. This means that I'm on constant dish-washing duty, where I keep the Windex bottle at the ready—my weapon of choice for the ants are too far away from the traps to reap the poison. There's some satisfaction being able to watch those little suckers die and get swept into the trash.

I really don't understand why the "Ants Go Marching On" is so upbeat. Not "hurrah!" It's more like, "Dammit! Dammit!" But the song is catchy anyhow. Both Jonathan and I have taken to singing it to keep ourselves from being driven mad.

Side note: I'm not sure why my posts this week have been violent; first the key fob, and now the Windex. I'll try to start writing about fuzzy stuff. Jonathan and I are going to try to make it to an arboretum and go see the new Indy flick this weekend. I'll try to take pictures of the trees and write an upbeat post so as not to drag done the mood of this blog.

Three degrees of Will Ferrell

Check out Will Ferrell's Funny or Die website.

That's my co-worker Eric interviewing good ole Willy on his upcoming movie Semi-Pro for Eric's website scene-stealers.com.