25 Weeks

I really am pregnant. My pants are fastened with a pony-tail holder.

Giveaway

My friend, Ana, is hosting a giveaway of some hand-knitted baby mittens. So far, I am the only one who has entered to win said mittens. (Which makes me wonder why I'm bothering to spread the word when right now I have really fantastic odds of winning, but I digress.) Ana makes all sorts of cool stuff with yarn and knitting needles and crochet hooks. She is one of the people who taught me to knit and crochet. You can look around at her Etsy shop and see some of the cool things she has made.

And also go enter her giveaway. Even if you don't have a mancub who would fit into the mittens, they would be a great gift!

High School Newspaper

I was on my high school newspaper staff for three years. It was a great extra-curricular activity for me. Because of my time on newspaper staff, there are a few things that I have natural preferences for.

One is single spaces after periods. Double spaces are a waste of perfectly good space, and they are not used in newspaper writing, so I don't use them still. Plus, they are pretty out of date now anyway, which I find rather convenient.

The other is candid photos. We were each assigned one or two events every six weeks that we were supposed to photograph. We were not allowed to photograph other members of the newspaper or yearbook staff. (This was because we shared photos between the two publications, and it is in bad taste to post pictures of your own staff throughout your publication.) Sometimes this couldn't be avoided, and that was understandable. We were also not allowed to take obviously posed photos. We were taught to believe we were actually participating in journalism, so the pictures needed to be candid. Because of this, I almost hate posed photos.

I know that may come as a surprise since most of my photos are posed, but that is because Eric is the primary photographer, and he always makes me stop and smile for the camera. Plus, with only two of us, I start to feel kind of goofy just standing around taking photos of Eric playing the tourist. One day when I am ridiculously wealthy, I will pay a photographer to follow our family around on vacations and take candid pictures of us.

The thing is, in journalism, you want a picture that tells a story. Your caption should be able to illustrate what was going on in the photo, and having a newspaper or yearbook filled with, "Eric and Sherry smile for the camera," would be quite possibly the most boring publication known to man.

For example:

A caption for this photo could be: Eric, Gordon and Andrew stand and smile for the camera after their 540-mile canoe trip.

Sure the photo shows that they were tired and furry-faced, and there are two canoe on the van behind them. But compare that rather lame caption to the one accompanying the following:
Sherry was ridiculously bad at rowing the boat in Seattle.

I mean, really. My face in this picture is just priceless, and I find it one of the most amusing pictures in our collection.

The other reason that I prefer candid photos is that they don't interrupt the event. Eric has an inherited tendency to make me stop in front of every possible photographic thing in our travels so that he can take a picture of me smiling in front of the photographic thing. I find that it interrupts my actual enjoyment of the photographic thing, and I would rather he just take a few candid shots of me. Granted, I don't hate all posed photography. I think a lot of it has its merits, particularly with things like weddings and family photos. But I really like there to be a mixture of both the standing-in-front-of-and-smiling photos as well as the candid shots.

If it weren't for my years on newspaper staff, I probably wouldn't notice double spacing after periods, and I probably wouldn't be nearly as bothered as I am by non-candid photos. Alas, I will never get those three years back, and I doubt my preferences will ever change.

Zombie Jim and Pam

My old roommate, Priscilla, and our good friend, Chad, are REALLY close to winning this contest. They need you to vote for their video by clicking "Like It" beneath the video. You can vote on Zombie version of Jim and Pam (from "The Office") here.

And the thing is, if you watch the original clip and the first-ranked clip, you will quickly realize that Chad and Priscilla are FAR superior to the guys who are beating them. So help them out and vote really quickly.

Or else.

Fancy Ultrasounds

Since I am in my mid-twenties, at any given time I have about 4.9 gazillion friends and/or family members who are pregnant. I keep encountering this odd phenomenon on Facebook: 4-D ultrasounds.

Excuse me?

I know of three measurable dimensions:

• height
• width
• depth

The fourth dimension is an abstract idea used by really brilliant physicists and mathematicians. It cannot be measured and shown in an ultrasound. Sorry, it's just not possible. In former days the fourth dimension was considered to be time, but Wikipedia informs me that that idea of the fourth dimension as time is outdated, which is too bad because I was kind of imagining these 4-D ultrasounds as a super-intelligent means by which to travel through time to see what your baby will look like when it is no longer inside of you.

While I may at some point be interested in getting a 3-D ultrasound (but not likely because those cost money), I positively refuse to get a 4-D one, because those companies are insulting my intelligence.

Anyone care to guess what exactly these so-called 4-D ultrasounds are measuring?

Disappearing Act

A few tidbits to tide you over until I have time to write a real post:

• Work has never been so busy for me. This is what I call job security. No fear of getting laid off for me.
• Eric and I have been watching the BBC series of Little Dorrit. The extra-double-super fun part has been watching it with his Grandma L. We love getting to hang out with her, and we all really like the series.
• My belly has really been protruding in the last few days. My midwife told me that it was likely between my last appointment and my next that I would just pop right out, and that has been true. No pictures. Sorry. We can't find the camera.
• I went to California this past weekend with my old roommate and Eric to attend another old roommate's wedding. It was a great trip. After the wedding the one old roommate headed down to Southern California to visit her family, and Eric and I headed to Northern California to visit my cousin whom I've never met. It was way awesome.
• I usually like to sit down and write three or four blog posts in one go. I was going to do that last night, but my brother distracted me with family history queries. You can blame him if you don't hear anything from me for the next week.
• Eric's family will all be coming into town in the next few days because my little Andrewton is leaving for his mission ONE WEEK FROM TOMORROW.