Shall I compare thee to a carburetor?

Bulwer-Lytton 2005 contest

I think that I need a vacation

It's a beautiful day today, not too hot, not humid, sunny, nice breeze. It's a perfect day for a picnic or hanging out at the park, or lounging on the balcony, or going for a nice walk. Here I sit in my office without a window as my mind drifts to all the lovely things that I could be doing, and I'm getting a bit down about the whole situation. Should I run away from work and never come back? When I was contracting I could take days like this off (or at least part of the day) and enjoy it. What I really need is a winning lottery ticket - anyone got one out there to spare? Drat! Guess I'd better get back to work then...

Fun weekend!

The weather cooled to mid-20 temps and was sunny and not humid for a change-hooray for non-stickiness! It was perfect summer weather for me. On Saturday we did chores and tidied the house and went for a walk. On Sunday, we drove up to the folks and frolicked in their new replacement pool. I'd have pictures, but we had battery problems, doh! It's a little larger than their old one, but made with plastic and resin, so it shouldn't rust out like the old one. Ben was iffy with it. He likes the wading pool, but this pool was deep and I think that makes him a bit uneasy. He did like playing with daddy and sitting on his huge blowup aligator and in his little inflatable car (beepbeep). Steve and I lounged around on pool noodles and despite sunscreen, I got a little reddish. We finished the day in the country with some fresh picked berries and whipped cream - yum!
Ben had a blood test last week because the doctor thought that his penchant for chewing on metal might mean that he was a bit anemic - but no, he's fine, we just have a chewy child. I guess that he comes by it honestly, I chewed the hands off my favorite doll as well as bits and pieces of several hundred other toys, and when my mother sold her humungous station wagon (aka land yacht), she had to explain that all the teeth marks on the passenger-side dashboard were mine. Can you imagine what the safety police would do to a mom today that let her toddler chew on the dash in the front seat of the car, without a seatbelt of any kind, while she was driving? I shudder to think.

Zoo

For Ben's actual birthday, we went to the zoo. We had a wonderful time, although it was so hot that all the animals looked kinda loggy.

See more pics here!

See some of Ben's birthday party photos here on Flickr!

Potter head

I finished the newest Harry Potter on Monday. Obviously, it kept me reading, so the mystery portion of the book was good. My biggest comment is that this book really lacked in plot action - the action occurs very late in the book and much of the beginning serves only to remind the reader of 'important' events from the previous books to set up the final book. When I thought about what new information was added, I realised that it could have been brought together in a much tighter narrative and left room for more actual story to be added around the set up details so that they appeared less forced. Don't get me started about the romance aspects of the book, I agree with one reviewer who said it was like Degrassi Junior High for wizards. I won't talk about the ending, but I will say that looking at the amount of things that JKR has set up to resolve in the final book, it's going to be either an enormous installment or a big disappointment.

Birthday boy

Happy birthday Ben. I cannot believe that two whole years have gone by since I first saw your angry little red face. Since then, you have grown and changed so much. You are now your own little person, sometimes you throw yourself on the floor and scream when you are not getting your way, sometimes you are running into my arms laughing. You babble away and seem to expect me to know what you are saying, and I try to oblige by shaking my head and saying "Really? Is that right?", and then you look at me like I'm somewhat retarded.
I can't imagine life without you. You have a smile that warms up my heart everytime I see it, and when you fall and scrape your knee, it tears me in two to hear you cry as I hold you and want to take all the hurt away. I want to protect you, but I know that you have to fall now and learn. You aren't my baby, now you are my little boy and I love you so very much.
-Mommy

Movie review - The Island

We went for a sneak preview of The Island last night. We made sure to get there early, but almost nobody showed up. There were no announcements before the movie other than a warning about cell phones, and no free handouts after. The only thing they did do was check bags for cameras and have a couple of security guys in the theatre. On the whole, the movie was very good - the action sequences were wild and the premise was interesting. There were also some delightfully funny throw-away bits from some of the minor characters, and Sean Bean was great. Big criticism? The ending was very lame, but it didn't spoil the rest of the movie for me. I knew almost nothing about the movie before we saw it and I think that's what made it good. Afterwards I read a synopsis in the free movie magazine they give out in the theatre and if I had read that beforehand, I think that it would have wrecked it for me. So, if you're interested, don't read anything before you see it. Now that I think about it, I wonder how many movies have the potential to be good and surprising on paper, only to be ruined by advertising trailers and press release blurbs that give the entire plot away. I seem to remember a time when I went to movies knowing nearly nothing about them (which explains why someone got me to see Dead Ringers - ick!). Do we really need to know the entire plot before we go to the theatre?

Vroom vroom!

Well, Steve will have a new car on Friday! We decided to replace his old car before the winter, and we found a nice 2001 Outback for a decent price. We had it inspected yesterday and test drove it around. It has lots of gizmos and electronic gadgets and air conditioning - wheee! I have first dibs driving up to the townships :-)

It will be nice to have a station wagon for lugging stuff around too. Ben seemed to like the view from the backseat, and I'm sure he appreciated the a/c when we were stuck in traffic during part of the trip. Two kids and a station wagon .... all we need is a dog and we'll be those people I never thought I'd be, sigh...

Steve's folks are driving in tomorrow for Ben's birthday party on Saturday. We won't have as many kids as last year, but it promises to be sunny and hot, so we're still planning on having it across the street at the park with the wading pool. We have to get some balloons and hats and make his birthday cupcakes. His birthday is Monday, and I'm thinking about maybe taking the day off so we can go to the zoo or something fun. In the new car no less!

In other news, Ben has hit his climbing stage. We've now caught him standing on the kitchen table- twice. He also climbs into his highchair by himself and tries to strap himself in which is pretty funny.

Welcome Alex!

My friend Kuan had another baby!
Alex was born yesterday, 8lbs 11oz (yeeps!), and 19 1/2 inches long. Pictures to come! Congrats to her and her husband Chris, and big brother Ryan!

A few things

I'm so not into working today. I had to get up early to get to the children's hospital and get an ultrasound done with a cardiologist - everything is fine and dandy. Note to self: never play poker with an ultrasound technician. They train them to show no emotion. I was trying to figure out if what I was looking at on the monitor was good or bad, and I had no idea by looking at her facial expression. I had to wait until the cardiologist came in to find out that everything was ok. It's now the middle of the afternoon and I am exhausted and my reading material for the day is less than invigorating, why can't merging guidelines contain clever plot twists?
I have a ton of stuff piling up at home to do. I had planned on doing some baking and lunch prep on the weekend to make my life easier, but somehow it's Wednesday and I haven't done a thing on the list. I'm not sure where all of that long weekend went. We did go and see Batman at the new cinema guzzo in marche central. The movie was great, but the theatre was bleak and unfinished and had no ambiance. It was just concrete and sad.
Oh,and congrats to the NASA Deep Impact team. I'm sure that when their project manager told them that they would be actually trying to hit the asteroid that it was every childhood scientist's and engineer's dream come true.

Good dental hygiene

ben bathroom
Originally uploaded by dina the mundane and oblivious.

Is there anything cuter than a kid standing on a stool and brushing his teeth? I think not :-)

We had our second ultrasound on Monday and everything is looking perfectly normal. We don't have pictures because we got it on videotape and I forgot to ask for a pic for the web. Luckily, we have to go back in two weeks so my doctor can have a better look at Pumpkin's heart which was beating and looked ok, but she couldn't get a good view of the chambers. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we will have a womb with a better view :-) I know that everything is just fine because I experience serious kung-fu action several times a day and at least a couple of times at night. This baby seems to be way more active than the first, perhaps Ben stretched it out so there's more space or something.
For Father's Day Ben and I took Steve out for breakfast on Saturday because on Sunday we drove up to see my folks. We did some chores while Ben frolicked in his new sandbox - complete with a roof and mosquito-resistant netting. Yes, our son is spoiled to little bits by his grandfolks.
This weekend is a long weekend for us. We're going up to the townies again to help my folks take down their pool in preparation for a new one. The old one is over 20 and has just started to come apart. This means more sandbox time for Ben and grandma gets to chase after him up and down the hill. Last week, he ran down the hill and threw himself into a ditch. He's starting to get those toddler scraped knees and bruised shins.

Melting and meltdowns

It was hot this weekend! Hotter than hot! Stupid hot! But I had a great birthday weekend despite the melting humidity. Friday night I went to bookclub and Steve made my b-day cake - twice. He tried to take it out of the pan too early the first time - oops! Saturday we cleaned and prepped and people arrived around 5-ish and we snacked and then had burgers and cake and ice cream. We moved our bedroom air conditioner into the diningroom which managed to bring that part of the apartment down to near-tolerable temps. It was a fun party, there was even a game involving rewriting Hamlet! I got lots of great gifties too. The heat got to everyone eventually though - the party ended at 10 and Steve and I washed up and watched some of my DVD (Scrubs-season 1) and went to bed. Sunday I woke up to more presents! Excellent choices from Ben and Steve and Steve's folks and brother. Ben was a bit off in the morning, but we figured that he'd sleep in the car. My car doesn't have air, but we thought that we'd be fine on the highway, and we were fine, but Ben was not. He fussed and wouldn't sleep and then just before Bromont he melted down and went super hysterical and we had to pull over. His back was soaking poor guy! We took him into a Burger King and let him cool down for half and hour and then continued to my folks' place, but he really didn't sleep, so by 6 he was fed up and hot again so we came home and gave him some tempra and put him to bed in his air conditioned room and he slept all night. We had some BBQ and cheesecake at the folks and some nice gifties. Strangly enough, Ben seemed to get more stuff than I did :-) At least I didn't have to mow the lawn.

Happy birthday to me!

Store wars - Chewbroccoli!

Oh and....

my birthday week has officially begun. Bring on the fun!

Reading and the weekend

I finished two books recently - Andrea Levy's A Small Island and Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. Both are highly recommended. The first is a novel told in multiple narratives about four people in London after WW II - two Englanders and two Jamaicans. The second is a literary detective novel set in 1985 England, where the Crimean War is still being fought and literature is popular culture. If you studied lit in university, you'll fantasize about this alternate universe. The main character, Thursday Next, has to stop an arch villain (Acheron Hades) from destroying popular English novels. Half the fun are the character names, such as Braxton Hicks and Jack Schitt. It's part of a series that I'm definitely reading.
Now I've moved on to Motherless Brookyn by Jonathon Lethem and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The first is told by a detective with Tourettes, the second is an autistic 15-year old. So far, I'm enjoying them both.

Great weekend! We stayed in town and just hung out and enjoyed the hot weather and sunshine. Ben has taken up long distance walking. He walked about 8 blocks to the video store Saturday and almost all the way back with Steve and I and then played in the park for another 45 minutes. He's very good about holding our hands when he's walking, but he wants to walk, he gets really annoyed when you pick him up to cross a busy intersection. If he keeps this up, he'll have the calves of an everest climber by age 3. In preparation for his birthday, we went out yesterday and picked up his gift - he pointed at it in the toy store flyer. It has little people and airplanes. The fun thing about this age is that he has no idea what we do at stores, so we can take him shopping for his gifts and even have him help us pick them out and they're still a surprise. We also managed to clean the house a bit and watch two movies - Porco Rosso and Closer. Clive Owen was brilliant as Larry, there's a reason that I love this guy so much. Porco Rosso is a Miyazaki film - they never disappoint.

Black market Henckels anyone?

So the doctors in Britain want to ban pointy knives because they contribute to many nasty assaults each year. Apparently, they don't think that they're necessary in a household kitchen. How do you carve a turkey with a bread knife? I guess I could always use a pointed stick.....