jumping ship

The new website is now up and running, so I'll be abandoning my Blogger address. Check out baby news and photos at www.kellanhogye.com.

When I get the blog software working on the new site, I will probably transfer this blog over there.

something new

It's been a nice Christmas break. For my birthday, Mike and his other family members surprised me with an iPod Nano, which is really tiny and weighs approximately 0.000000001% of the ancient MP3 player I had before. We had a good time with family, too. This was probably the last Christmas for a while during which it will be easy for us to travel, so we saw as many people as we could. By far the coolest gift we got was a pair of table lamps designed and handmade by my brother for his summer design class at Virginia Tech. They're the first gift I've ever gotten that also fulfilled a class assignment. At Mike's family celebration, Nathan and Grace demonstrated their new piano skills with a duet.

So far Mike and Helen have spent the entirety of 2007 playing MarioKart on our new Gamecube.

We have officially reached the midpoint of the pregnancy (20 weeks), and we should find out tomorrow if the baby is a boy or girl! Now I have to stop putting off all the planning and stuff-buying and start getting ready for this child. In the past few days, Mike has been helping me get up to speed on new (as in newer than my 1997-era) HTML and CSS conventions, so I'm almost done with the new website. With that, finishing the music I'm working on, keeping up with my German, getting involved in our new church, and preparing for Baby, I don't know how I'm going to have time to work in the next 4 1/2 months. Suddenly my very boring life has become very busy.

unto us a child will be born

Today is 19 weeks for Baby and 1,404 weeks for me! Mike left a mysteriously small and compact birthday/Christmas gift wrapped for me under the tree. I have no idea what it is, the tantalizingly coy thing.

Since I have now administered my last exam for the fall semester, and since I don't want to start grading them until after the holidays, I have put aside my books and devoted myself to becoming an über-housewife. Our house has needed a serious cleaning for a while now, so I've sneezed my way through the past few days dusting and organizing closets. I have also spectacularly botched some Christmas baking. (That pumpkin bread recipe called for two cups of pumpkin puree, not two cans.) C'est la vie -- the holidays, for us, are about eating food that other people have cooked.

It's pretty amazing to think that I'm almost halfway through this pregnancy. The second trimester has so far been the easy part. I don't feel sick anymore, and as long as I'm up and moving around most of the day, my legs don't hurt from circulation problems. (That's also behind my cleaning frenzy -- it keeps me off the couch.) The only problem is sleeping; one is supposed to sleep on the left side during pregnancy in order not to restrict blood flow to the baby, but I find that position most untenable. I end up tossing and turning most of the night. But Baby still seems to be happy and kicking. Since the discomfort has been minimal lately, we've been able to be more excited about how soon we'll have a child!

under a lucky star

This weekend we went to Mike's office Christmas party at Rose Hill Manor in Leesburg. The company throws very nice Christmas parties. The food was good, of course, but the real star of the evening was the chocolate fountain. I had never tried dipping blackberries in milk chocolate before, but trust me that they're heavenly.

For the second year in a row the company had arranged a casino night. I re-learned how to play craps (which has convinced me even more solidly never to spend a penny of real money on casino games, but which is a lot of fun when there's nothing real at stake). Mike's colleagues are all computer geeks and mathematicians, particularly statisticians, and many have PhDs. Imagine trying to play poker or blackjack against four other people who can calculate in their heads the exact odds for every move and, in some cases, count cards. That's why I played craps.

I feel like I'm finally getting to know some of the guys our age that work with Mike and their wives and girlfriends. So when we go to the parties, there's a group of fun, interesting, and very intelligent people to hang out with. Plus we have won the gift-basket centerpiece every year we've gone, which means that we come home with lots of yummy things and a couple new bottles of wine.

Coincidence of the Day: I had a dentist's appointment this morning, and while I was getting my teeth cleaned, I heard a jackhammer pounding away. It wasn't some unlucky person getting a filling -- it was a construction crew right outside. But what a way to make people in the waiting room sweat!

if only it were this easy

Since grading essays is the thing that I dislike the most about being a literature teacher, I greatly appreciated this blog entry from yesterday.

that music used to make me smile

Tomorrow is 18 weeks for Baby, and this evening I learned something new about him/her. I was driving out to run an errand tonight and had the song "American Pie" playing on my MP3 player. I was singing along, and Baby was kicking like crazy. Evidently our child is a Don McLean fan.

I'm almost done with Christmas shopping -- only one gift left to buy!

life lessons

I learned the following things today:

1. Ritz Camera sells my preferred brand of black-and-white film at $1.50 less than does the pro shop I normally use.

2. I love shopping for Christmas gifts online.

3. Atlanta Bread has a truly fabulous chicken salad sandwich.

4.It's hard to tell whether baby kicks are just muscle spasms, but I think our little one is happy in there.

5. Christmas trees are worth the decorating effort. I took the picture with our digital camera set on a 13-second exposure and no flash. (It's completely unedited, though I did scale it to a manageable size.) Click on the thumbnail to see the real thing.

6. The Eastern world has a whole history that we never learned about in school. I'm reading a book on the geography of religion and realizing that half of world history is completely new to me. I'm currently fascinated with the history of India and southeast Asia.

7. My husband doesn't like all the same foods that I do. I made butternut squash soup for the first time (trying to find creative ways to sneak yucky but healthy vegetables into our diet), and my conclusion was that it looked, tasted, and felt like baby food, but he thinks it's pretty good. Oh well -- at least someone will eat it.

I'm currently working on designing my personal website (there's nothing there right now) so that, as the baby's arrival approaches, I can keep people up to date on things while still retaining control of the photos on my normal server, not Blogger's. Whenever I get things ready, I'll move this blog over there and post a link.

an update on baby

I had an appointment with my OB today at 15 1/2 weeks. All is well! Baby's heartbeat is strong and I seem to be gaining weight at the appropriate pace. My next appointment will be after the New Year, and that one will be the 20-week sonogram. I'll post a picture if I can find a decent scanner.

wedded bliss

So Sondra and Eric are married! We had a great time at their wedding, especially with the very funny multiple-choice test they handed out at the reception. Below I have posted some pictures. Unfortunately, I unwittingly had the digital camera on the wrong setting (it's that pregnancy shrinking-brain thing again), so the flash didn't go off indoors, and nearly all of the pictures I have that actually include Sondra and Eric are blurry. If anyone has other copies and would be willing to send them to me, I would be grateful!









We had to get a picture with all of the 1709 JPA girls (plus Petra, who is an honorary 1709 resident).









The husbands occupy themselves acting like real men while the girls catch up.









A few more pictures. Somehow the pictures I take of Amy and Dave always turn out well. You two must be very photogenic!









And this is one of the blurry Sondra-and-Eric ones, so I played with it.

Congratulations to the new Williamses! May God bless you and give you a long and happy life together!

Indian summer

Yesterday was a busy day. I went downtown with Mike's parents and Lucy, mainly to go to the National Geographic Warehouse Sale at the DC Armory. I was excited to go because I had gone last year after hearing about the sale almost by accident, and it turned out to be a gold mine for teachers. I got a bunch of books for the classroom and some gorgeous school-quality atlases for between 50 and 70 percent off. This year it wasn't such a treasure trove for me -- they had a lot of the same types of books as last year -- but I was able to find a pile of children's books for my mom's classroom. I also got myself a book on American history with great pictures and a book on the geography of world religions.

The only bad part was that security at the Armory (which is basically a big run-down gymnasium) made us pour out all our liquids before entering. Ostensibly this was for our protection. However, no one in his right mind would ever want to blow up the Armory, unless the place were actually scheduled for demolition (which, from the look of the building, could happen any day). The real reason for the "security" was because the group that runs the Armory had set up a concession stand inside and was charging $4.00 per 20-ounce bottle of soda. The water fountains inside were mysteriously "out of order."

The day was unseasonably warm -- 75 degrees and sunny -- so we decided not to go right home. Instead, we went to the National Museum of the American Indian to eat lunch. It turns out the museum has a truly wonderful cafeteria. Instead of being just a traditional lunch-type cafeteria, it is divided into six or seven sections based on regions of the Americas. Each section serves native dishes and other food created with only native ingredients. I spent half the time just deciding what to eat -- I could get salmon at the Pacific Northwest station or turkey in Woodlands or totopos in the Mesoamericas. I finally decided on the totopos because it was pretty mild (I'm still having difficulty stomaching highly seasoned food!), and I was quite pleased. Now I just want to go back and try some other stuff.

After lunch we spent about an hour actually visiting the museum. Seeing the building was the best part: I've never been so affected by the architecture of a museum more than its contents. I was somewhat disappointed with how little the museum actually has in terms of exhibits, but my view could be skewed: we never made it to the fourth floor, where the exhibits that would have most interested me (American Indian cosmology and history) were. It was getting late, so we had to go home.

It's a good thing we left when we did: the new Marine Corps Museum was opening in Quantico, and all the HOV lanes on I-395 were closed for the "dignitaries" to use for a procession. Traffic was horrendous, in spite of the fact that it was a federal holiday. If we had waited until actual rush hour, we'd still be there. We inched back to Mike's parents' house for an hour and a half.

That evening, after Mike finished work, we went to see Stranger Than Fiction. In general, I enjoyed the movie. However, I think the NY Times review states my opinion more succinctly than I could: it's a clever movie that, in general, is quite well done, but it lacks tightness. I do like how it poses questions about the real worth of artistic integrity and the relationship between an author and her creations.

13 weeks, 1 day so far!