My cinema-studies class that day is an 'open' class, because the school is doing a one-day Humanities fest and throwing open the doors to show off how utterly cool our humanities department is. :->

So if you want to watch the Persepolis film and hang out, you're invited. Class is from 12:30 to 3-something Monday afternoon at 30 E Lake St, 60601. ( Read more... )

John and I were batting around names, attempting to (a) firm up a middle name for our daughter, and (b) choose a just-in-case backup name, in case she's a son ( Read more... )

I was listing off a bunch of things that I think Any Household With Kids should have * to John, asking him to put them on our baby registry. He objected on the grounds that those aren't really baby-registry items, since you don't need them before the kid arrives ( Read more... )

Today I had my 'level 2' ultrasound, sometimes known as 'the anatomy scan,' or on pregnancy communities, 'the big ultrasound' (because it's the one where you find out the gender, generally ( Read more... )

Herewith, a fairly-terse list of Very Fun Things I have done or participated in since mid-May [1] this year ...

• I attended Be-All 2008 (one of only a handful of folks going MY direction down Trans Avenue to do so), and it was amazing. I hope to go again next year.
  
• I attended Duckon, a whole other collection of neat people and fun things to do.
  
• I ( Read more... )

Ok, so I'm a little late (this week is officially #15), but between Worldcon, a week spent largely sleeping to recover from Worldcon, and a long weekend with in-laws in town, I figure I can cut myself some slack ( Read more... )

In other words, a fairly eventful day, by recent standards.

We saw three raptory birds whirling, soaring, and chasing each other on the thermals put up by our alley and the next street down, so we whipped out the binocs, and then my camera, and now I can say they're definitely American kestrels (Falco sparverius). Pics will be uploaded for your ( Read more... )

We have quite a varied ecosystem in our backyard and neighborhood ... for the heart of Chicago. We have a wide range of birds that come to our feeder (sparrows to redwings to parrots to bluejays and beyond). There are two species of squirrel. But the land-dwelling predator niche is pretty much entirely owned by feral cats and dogs ( Read more... )

So it turns out today is not Day 46 of a very late period ... it is in fact instead Week 6 of my first pregnancy. :->

This is not entirely unexpected, as we've been trying for a while (and using a fertility monitor for two cycles), but it WAS entirely unexpected for it all to work so soon, so I'm happy, startled, happy, excited, happy, worried out ( Read more... )

All hail mon462 for noodging me into registering for guitar classes at the Old Town School once more, after a multiyear hiatus where I only seldom touched my instrument, and then only to whizz through very basic accompaniments for songs I already knew how to play. All hail ( Read more... )