Taking inspiration from Danny’s blog: if I were forced to evacuate my home and had 15 minutes to pack, what would I bring with me?

1. If it seemed at all likely that I would be giving birth while evacuated, I guess I’d bring diapers. The baby won’t need clothes, necessarily; he/she can just hang out in a diaper under my shirt.

2. Shirts, large enough for baby storage. I saw this hilarious ad in a hippie parenting magazine for a tank top that actually contains an inner pouch for a baby, but I’m not finding a picture of it online. I don’t own one, but if I did, I’d bring it.

3. Laptop + charger. I back up most of my stuff online, but I would still want it. Which reminds me, I have some backing up to do.

4. Lip balm. A person’s lips get chapped, and you don’t want to bum that off some stranger you meet in the emergency shelter.

5. Toothbrush, toothpaste, hair comb. No need to have bad breath. The hair comb’s for Denny because he hates having hat head.

6. Blankets and pillows. I like a lot of blankets and pillows, and I’m too picky about them to want to use emergency shelter-issue ones.

7. Scissors. You’d be surprised at how often you need to cut stuff.

8. Comfortable shoes. Any other items of clothing that are durable, practical, and comfortable, like jeans and sweatshirts. This isn’t a fashion show, people.

Apparently the comment spammers have thwarted my filters, because I’ve been getting a lot lately.

In an effort to reduce that, I’m now requiring name and email address for commenting.  Your email won’t be published, but hopefully the spammers won’t get past it.  I don’t want to go to “login required” mode, so we’ll see how long this works.

Highlights from the weekend:

Good food, and lots of it.  I got to see lots of family, including cute kids (see previous post for photographic evidence of one).  We did an early Christmas gift exchange, because my cousin is due to give birth in January and doesn’t want to be traveling during actual Christmas season.  We had fun and gave/received some cool things, including a diaper bag (from my grandparents) and ear plugs (from my cousin).

We also made a Babies R Us trip with my parents and Denny’s mom, who were kind enough to give us early Christmas gifts of some nice baby gear.

Lowlights:

Holy crap, I am freaking huge.  My ribs are getting kicked, I can only sit in certain positions, getting up out of a chair is hard, and I haven’t even bothered trying to wear shoes that aren’t slip-ons.  And I still have 10 weeks left.  And those are the 10 weeks with the most noticeable size changes in me.  Um…yeah.

Denny got sick.  I’m still healthy thus far, but I’m trying to do a lot of handwashing. He had some really gross phlegm this morning that he was kind enough to show me.  I think he’s on the upswing, though—he was much better today than he was yesterday.

Now it’s back to work.  This is going to be kind of a busy week, lots going on.  Woosh.

I don’t know how he/she did it, but that little fish is ambitious.

Today is slow, with so many people already out for Thanksgiving. We’re heading to Denny’s family’s celebration tomorrow, then to my family’s on Friday, then to an early Christmas on Saturday. We also need to go to Babies R Us on Saturday to pick up some Bisquito-related items. I am looking forward to the cuteness but not the crowds, no way no how.

I hope it’s not all too exhausting. I feel like I get tired moving my arms around these days.

Found in a very little-used cabinet in the office kitchenette.

Click to view full-sized and truly appreciate the grossness of coffeepot.  I’m not a neat-freak, but seriously—have some standards.

Thank you, Internet, for giving me this.  (Warning:  contains some offensive language and multiple unprecedented ethnic/cultural stereotypes.)

On Sunday I did something that is a very rare occurrence in my life:  I attended a Hawkeye sporting event.

Denny got some tickets to the men’s basketball game from his boss, so I went with him.  It was actually pretty fun.  I like basketball as a sport, but I never wanted to go before due to not wanting to support a certain coach and player.  But now both those individuals are gone, so it was safe.

My favorite player was Looby, for these reasons:

1.  His name is fun to say.  LOOOOOOOO-by!

2.  He is from Antigua.  I would like to visit Antigua.  If I were from Antigua I would probably not move to Iowa, so it’s interesting that he made that choice.

3.  He dunked 3 times.

I hope he is a nice person.  I don’t know anything about him except for the aforementioned three facts.  He didn’t seem overly bad-attitudy or foul-y.

Also, my shirt is on backward.  It’s blowing my mind.  Whhhoooao!

This, my friends, is my 999th post since I moved to WordPress. It’s exciting in the same way it’s fun to watch one’s odometer hit a milestone, or to watch the counter make pretty patterns on the DVD player when the movie is boring.

Whoops, I need to make some copies for my 10:00 meeting. Maybe I’ll see you again on the 1k side.

I ended up making both.

Quick survey:

If you were going to be attending a Project Runway season premiere party with me tonight, with which of the following would you like me to fill mini puff pastry shells?  It’s going to be puff pastry because I’ve already thawed it out.

1.  Lemon curd with a dollop of whipped cream and a raspberry
2.  Some sort of  ganache and/or chocolate mousse situation,  maybe with pecans because I have some (plus for ganache:  super quick and easy)
3.  Some kind of cheesecakey filling (minus:  I’ve never tried to put a cheesecake filling in puff pastry before and I might ruin it)

Hooooo boy.

Let’s say there’s this pretty prestigious, high-visibility project you’re on, and there’s a listserv for the purpose of communicating with many people all over your organization about the project.

Let’s say you send an email to that list, and you accidentally make an error in it.

Let’s say your colleague notices the error, and he sends a reply correcting that error. He meant to send it privately to you but accidentally sent it to the whole list.

Let’s say you don’t notice and reply with the text “Go**amn stupid everything,” only without asterisks. Your reply also goes to the whole list. Let’s say your boss and your boss’s boss subscribe to that list.

I haven’t had morning sickness at all in this pregnancy, but right now I want to puke.