My Baby Called Me a Geek

...or at least Mona and Kari did with this gift! :P Really, I'm not surprised by this present.


Here are a few more pictures from the shower that Alicia and Erin took.





Thank you to all for the great presents and wonderful company at the baby shower!

Baby Showered

Sunday my good friends Alicia and Erin hosted a baby shower for me and it was fabulous. I got to hang with a bunch of my favorite ladies and eat all the great food and cake they made. We had a great time talking and, since there were other pregnant ladies and a couple already moms, swap a few pregnancy storie. For the non-preggo, I think it was educational if nothing else.

I got lots of super cute goodies and thank you to all that could make it!

I'll post more pictures when I get them since I wasn't shooting any myself, but for now, the pretty, pretty diaper cake.

Gross

I can't even come up with a good title to this blog post because I'm having a hard time keeping my lunch down looking at this. If you ever had any reason to question why we have an obesity problem in this country, just take a look at what KFC is test marketing to masquerade as a new "sandwich". Note, the Vancouver Sun estimated (because KFC won't yet release this information) the calorie content is over 1200! WITHOUT accompanying fries (300cal/medium) and a soda (250cal/20oz) in the "meal". Seriously, that 1750cal "meal" is literally more than I eat in an entire day!! Never mind, that it is all fat and carbs. I'm aghast.

http://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_column/08/kfcs-new-double-down-chicken-sandwich-is-frightening/

New Kids On The Block

Monday night we drove up into our driveway and saw a Labor Day party occurring in the driveway of a house down the street. 5 minutes later we got a knock on the door and were accosted by more than half the ladies that live on our new street (or rather dead end court). We were being welcomed officially en mass and invited to the party, which as it turns out, was most of our neighborhood.

I'm already impressed. At our old house we literally only knew the neighbors on either side of us and certainly didn't do anything social in the hood. But the new street appears to be a lot of fun as they were quickly trying to tell us and we had a good time hanging out for an hour or so in the evening as the party wound down. The new street comes complete with Halloween parties, progressive dinner Christmas parties, and other parties and get-togethers to be discovered. At one point I jokingly told one of our neighbors she could stop selling it as we had already bought the house and were committed. Seems like there are a lot of interesting folks on the new street and it was a great introduction to the neighbors.

p.s. If we ever get mostly unpacked, I will take some pictures and post them of the new digs. But right now if generally looks like rooms with boxes, no artwork on the walls, and a kitchen with no oven. I think the only "complete" room minus artwork is the formal dining room seeing how that mostly just involved putting the chairs around the table.

Homes Have a Sense of Humor

Moving, as with remodelling, must be approached with a sense of humor I think because inevitably things happen you can't prepare for. Friday morning, the movers came and moved us in under 3 hours. WOW! Totally worth that money for sure. John and I spent the rest of Friday and most of Saturday unpacking and have made a huge dent in that. So we are in the new house and already enjoying it for the most part with a couple minor exceptions.

Saturday afternoon, we wanted to install the new oven after pulling the old non-working oven out in the new house. Hmmm... so when the contractor told us the house had a 30" oven, it didn't, it's a undersized 27" oven. So the awesome brand new (and working oven) is still on the floor and an empty space exists where an oven should be. So we have an oven we can't return easily because we ordered it online and doesn't fit the space, an oven that doesn't work and does fit the space, and no usable oven in general in the house. I don't want to buy an oven that "fits" either because I don't really want an undersized space saver oven at all. We are waiting for the contractor to call us back so we can see how much moving some of the kitchen remodel we wanted to do up is going to cost.

Second fun thing, we were back at the old house doing some last fix up things and I cleaned the doggie door. When finished I put the plastic panel in to lock it up and "close" the door... and it broke. So there it is, the very last time I needed the doggie door to "work" and it broke. Murphy's Law in the extreme. Now we have to put a new doggie door in the old house just for grins and giggles.

Today I did some pretty cool stuff at work. Since I'm working on Orion, sometimes the best example of how to do things is just go look at how Apollo did it. The Apollo 17 Command Module (owned by the Smithsonian) is on permanent display at the JSC visitor center, so the astronaut I've been working with setup with them to let us get in and take a look. I actually got to climb into the sucker to get a view from the seat out the window for the hardware. Really cool although incredibly cramped and hard to get in/out of.

We also had a fit check for the hardware in the Orion mockup in Building 9 today. What a difference 40 years makes. People may call Orion "Apollo 2.0" but the similarities end at the hatch. Orion actually has space to get in and out of and can fit way more people and equipment, mostly because your watch has more computing power than Apollo did and it fits on your wrist and not half the interior volume. Here's me in the Orion mockup too, we look a little cramped but that's just because we were in the seats to see out the windows again. Really there are two other people and loads of extra space when this was taken. Interesting to get in both on the same day though to really tell the difference in the two.