Friday afternoon I was lucky enough to get a nap in. Of course, I had to sleep on my sheetless bed because I had them in the dryer, but I can’t really be that picky when the urge to sleep hits and Eli is asleep and I don’t have anything I have to accomplish for 45 minutes. I fell on the bed and was pretty much instantly asleep only to be keep half awake by my kid with hiccups. Apparently, this child is not as unperturbed about hiccups as Eli was. She kicked and rolled and beat about with her fists. I think she finally go over the hiccups, because she settled down and I didn’t move again until Eli came to tell me he wanted to watch a show.

It’s 4:56 am. I’ve been awake since about 4 because she has the hiccups again. And yes, verification: she doesn’t like them. I think if she could wail there would be wailing to go with the gnashing of teethless gums. She was pitching and rolling so much, I had to wake Stephen so he could experience it too. His response, “Wow, she’s really mad,” mumbled sleepily into the back of my head. After which, he promptly fell back asleep.

I’m not sure how the drama will play once she gets to the outside. I don’t think anybody else in the family will be all that impressed.

Alanis Morissette: My Humps (2007)

“My Humps” is one of the most annoying songs in recent memory, but Alanis Morissette has taken it and, by turning it into a slow ballad, shown us the sad person underneath the happy clown makeup. She lays bare the pathos that is at the heart of

I can’t finish typing that, I’m laughing too hard. When this song first appeared on that there computer internet, people debated whether this was a serious cover or not. The video makes it clear that Alanis is taking the piss.

Hurra Torpedo: Total Eclipse of the Heart (1995)

At least for this moment, Wikipedia describes Hurra Tornado as “Norway’s most famous kitchen appliance band”. That seems about right. And no one covers Bonnie Tyler like hirsute Norwegians whaling away on kitchen appliances. For more, see their live performance of “All The Things She Said”.

Bonus video time!

If this video confuses you, you’ll need to go watch an episode of “Dora the Explorer”. As Maraka says, “Don’t question it, just do it!”

Yes, that’s right it’s the weekly march to the end. I go to the doctor every week from now until the baby comes. Which is saying something considering my doctor is on maternity leave. I was scheduled to see the head doctor from the practice this morning but the nurse came in and said she was “incredibly” behind schedule so would it be ok to see the nurse practitioner? You mean, not sit here with no pants on for another half hour? Yes, I’ll take that! The NP was very nice and very apologetic about the doctor giving me a miss but I was quite relieved to be getting out of the doctor’s office in under an hour.

The baby’s heart rate was good and she said I was measuring a bit small but I did that with Eli toward the end too so I’m not very concerned about that. I have Braxton-Hicks contractions pretty much with all walking and or bending movement but hey, I don’t work so I can just lie down until those go away, right? My blood pressure is normal and I’ve gained one pound, bringing my total up to three. Also, the baby has turned head down which always gives me a sigh of relief.

I feel pretty tired all the time now and have an annoying shortness of breath. But the breathing thing is better since it rained on Tuesday and cleared all the pollen out of the air. Last night, we slept with the windows open. I think Stephen almost had icicles hanging from his ears this morning while I was enjoying the fresh spring breeze. Such is life for the very pregnant.

My brain is being eaten by work, so here’s a short post on nothing of much importance. A while back I confessed to my youthful love of Knight Rider. Now I have learned that I can relive that obsession by buying K.I.T.T. Some ten years ago Tim Russo bought one of the Trans-Ams used for close-up views of K.I.T.T. It has a turbo boost button, working video screens, and the red light in the car hood that goes “vrrm vrrm”. The best part of the article: “Most of the buttons don’t do anything, Verhoek said. Nor can the car hold a conversation or drive itself.” Sadly, K.I.T.T. is not street-legal. Of course, if that turbo boost worked you could always out-run the cops.

So: if you could have one television prop, what would it be?

I procrastinated and didn’t make Eli’s yearly appointment the recommended four months ahead of time so instead of having his yearly check-up around his birthday in February, we had it today.

Going to the doctor’s office is actually one of my favorite places to go because it is there that I feel I can brag about how awesome my kid is and it is totally acceptable. (I mean I guess I can brag here as well and people who don’t get a kick out of it can read someone else’s blog, but I do actually try to keep it to a minimum.)

When we go, I am given this list of developmental questions to answer. He’s always done pretty well on these questions and the sheets are cleverly designed so you can check the side and see what age each developmental milestone is pegged to. Most of the time he is between 4-6 months ahead of schedule. That’s cool. It always does a mom’s heart good to see that her kid is doing above average. I try very hard to be honest and not fudge. It aggravates me for people to assume that their children are more exceptional than everybody else’s kid just because they managed to win that particular kid out of the gene pool lottery. And most kids even out over time so even the brightest children usually become regular (more average) adults. Stephen and I are very conscious that just because he may seem bright now, it doesn’t mean he won’t have issues in some area later. Being “smarter” doesn’t mean he’s “better.” With all that said as an introduction, this is what happened to us today…

Previously, the questionnaires have been stuff for me to answer based on my interactions with Eli. This time, many of the questions I had to ask him and fill in his responses. We completed the front page with all yes answers and so I flipped it over and started on the back. Usually we get the prescribed three ‘no’ answers pretty quickly on the back and then we are done, that’s roughly the six month mark.

Eli was pinging around the exam room like a pinball. Opening the sink cupboard, running his car over the exam table and the support beam underneath, sticking his hand in the trashcan, flipping the light switch on and off, playing with the roll of paper on the exam table, asking for a snack, another toy, another book, a drink of water and all of that was in the first five minutes. So needless to say he wasn’t exactly focused on the questions at hand.

The back side of the questionnaire were the more complex versions of the front side questions. I had to ask him, “What do you do when you are tired?” And write down his response, “Take a nap!” “Point to the thing that flies.” “Draw a straight line here.” And on and on. We didn’t answer no to a single question.

Here is the blatant mommy bragging moment. I had to stick my head out into the hall and ask for the next questionnaire, yes that’s right, the four-year old questionnaire. The nurse looked at me in either horror or disgust, I’m not sure which, and said we’d get that one next year. I wondered for a moment if she thought I was lying about needing the next one. I guess my finish-everything-you-start OCD is showing here, I thought I needed to go on to the next page. That meant I needed to ask for it. And frankly, I wanted to see how many of the four-year old questions he could answer.

The doctor was suitably impressed with Eli’s performance with those questions and the one’s he asked Eli himself. He told Eli he was as smart as a four-year old and Eli got this very odd look on his face that I’m still not quite sure how to interpret. He is a healthy, active three-year old that the doctor promised me would learn to go to the potty. He said and reiterated several times not to let the outside pressure get to me about potty training, that he’d do it in his own time.

I guess he thinks he’s so smart he can learn to control the urine with the power of his mind. I’ll keep you posted on the results of those experiments. And while I haven’t actually done any research on this topic, I’m pretty sure that even Einstein had to pee in the potty just like everybody else.

So everybody I know is pregnant. Ashley, Jessica, my optometrist, my dentist, and my OB/GYN (She just had her twins), another woman from our Sunday School Class (brings the current total in our class up to four), a friend from playgroup and three other moms from Eli’s Mom’s Morning Out Class. So when I say everybody, I’m not really exaggerating all that much. So naturally when we convene on Tuesday Nights, the talk often turns to pregnancy and related issues.

Last night was no different. Since Jessica is now 12 weeks pregnant and announcing it (you may remember her from this entry) we started talking about vomit. What you don’t want to eat and vomit and what actually isn’t bad to vomit back up. Amy asked why I hadn’t written about this. I realized that I hadn’t, mostly because I felt like it might be a bit too gross. Maybe it is and then again maybe it will be helpful to one of the 40 pregnant women I know.

So here now for yours (and Amy’s) perusal, here are two lists of things. One is for things that are not good to vomit and the other is for things ok to vomit. Feel free to add your experiences to the list.

Not Good
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (too chunky!)
Vitamins (too bitter)
Spaghetti (too stringy)
Anything with fruit chunks in it
Omelet with onions in it
Chocolate Ice Cream

OK (Because ‘good’ in this context is just too far out of reach)
Orange Juice (tastes pretty much the same coming up as going down)
Honey Nut Cheerio Cereal Bars (very sweet)
Yeah, the list is short because let’s face it, vomiting is just gross.

I don’t know why I end up picking up more and more things to do with my ever-shrinking pool of free time, but as long as I’m going to do so, I might as well pimp them here. I’m doing a podcast with Brian Richardson, Chris Lloyd, and Patrick Jarrett. We’ve been working together on Dragon*Con TV stuff, and Brian decided it would be fun to have the four of us talk about pop culture in general and geek culture in specific. Not that we’re geeks or anything.

It’s called WhatTheCast?, and we’ve got five episodes under our belt. Episode 5 is my favorite of them so far, because we get to talk about tree sex, exploding whales, and panda porn. Panda porn. Let that one rattle around your brain for a while.

I have finished the cross stitch portion of this piece and last night I started on the beading. We’ll see how long that part takes!

I don’t normally talk about work here, since that’s a good way to get Dooced, but this is too cool for me not to share. About three years ago I had a project to design and build retro-reflecting targets for the Advanced Video Guidance Sensor, a device that measures how far away the targets are and how they’re oriented. If you know that and you know how the targets are mounted to a satellite, you know the distance to the satellite and which way the satellite is pointing. That’s the kind of stuff you need to know if you’re going to dock two spacecraft on orbit without a pilot flying one of them.

And as it happens, DARPA, Boeing and NASA are doing just that for the Orbital Express mission. Orbital Express has two satellites that will move away from each other, re-dock, and transfer fluid to demonstrate on-orbit satellite refueling. OE is using AVGS and our targets.

Ah, there our targets are, nicely circled in red. Anyway, Orbital Express launched on March 8th. Today I found out that DARPA has released footage of the two satellites on orbit as viewed from the camera arm. If you watch the video, at the very beginning you can see one of our targets — it’s the bright white cylinder in the top right corner. At 00:26 you can see one of the targets move from the left side of the video to the right and another come into the field of view. At 02:25 to 02:27 you can see a very overexposed version of the smaller target cluster.

Like many kids, I dreamed of being an astronaut. One night in high school, while I waited for my parents to pick me up, I lay down in the grass and stared up past the brick wall next to me and into space. “I’ll see you one day,” I whispered to the moon. Later I realized that I would never be an astronaut, and how the difficulties of going to space meant I would likely never leave the ground. For a boy who dreamed of the stars, having something you held in your hand, something you helped shepherd from idea to reality, now orbiting the Earth is the next best thing.

Eric Clapton: Layla (1970)

As this video from 1983 shows, “Layla” wasn’t always an introspective song. I’d never heard this version before. It’s quite the lineup, what with Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Andy Fairweather Low on guitars.

The Police: Don’t Stand So Close to Me ’86 (1986)

Oh, man. Oh, man. YouTube doesn’t have the original studio music video that The Police made for this song in 1980, so you get the 1986 version with the slower chorus and the computer graphics and the floating instruments a la the 1987 video for Rush’s “Time Stand Still”. If you draw a line through the 1980 version of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and the 1986 version, it goes straight through “All for Love,” the ballad he, Rod Stewart, and Bryan Adams did for the movie The Three Musketeers, and ends at the album “Mercury Falling”.