Bugs, bugs go away

I was relieved to read Traci's slug post and realize I'm not alone in my weariness. Last night was a beautiful evening to have dinner outside...fortunately restaurants provide this option and we took advantage. We simply cannot be outside at our house, even with bug spray, bug coils and candles, etc. I'm torn between loving our shade, grass, plants, etc. and despising the bugs it all encourages. Don't worry, the tree hugging-side of me will continue to win out, but for now I'm just anxiously awaiting some colder nights, so we can enjoy some outside air without the requirement of pavement.

Weekend Events

This was a nice pro-community weekend for us. Saturday afternoon/evening was a park party in our neighborhood. Just a pot-luck in the park, but extremely well-organized, rather more like a birthday party a super-mom would throw. The highlight was cardboard slides. They spread cardboard down a hill and then mostly kids used pieces of cardboard to slide down. Lil-M followed the big-kids and waxed her board prior to sliding. There must have been 75 adults and at least that many kids.

Yesterday we visited Carrboro, a small ultra-progressive town near Chapel Hill. We had been there in our previous lives to listen to music at Cat's Cradle, and buy goodies at the Performance Bike shop. This time there was a music festival. Many closed streets, more bands than one could possibly take in, and excellent kid activities. It was an interesting environment that was enjoyable. We had glimpses of a burg event in it, but with ridiculously more disposable income floating around, which has pros and cons. Lil-M whined much of the afternoon about not having ice cream like half the kids we passed and I whined about the heat, but overall we were glad we made the trek. We had a drop-in on my cousins whom I rarely see, and it was well worth the stop! I may have even contributed to the event. We were sitting on lots of random stuff, railroad ties, bricks, tree roots, etc. At some point I managed to make a nice tear and pretty near expose myself to all those walking behind me. I came up with the great idea of twisting my skirt, so only my hip was exposed....I wonder who out there is blogging about the "sight" they saw at the festival!

Putin

This image made me laugh out loud.

Surprise visit

Last night Nately J happen to be in town and unexpectedly had the evening free to hang out with us! We were reminiscing about "drop-in" friends and lamenting the lack thereof in our current lives. It was excellent to have a friend drop-in on us! Why do people seem to outgrow this wonderful aspect of relationships? I'm definitely not ready to give it up.

Will the economy seize?

The last few days I've been downloading the podcasts of the Diane Rehm Show to listen to at lunch time. It's a nice happy time (despite the topic) to sit outside, eat lunch, watch the campus foot traffic, and attempt to catch up on the government financial bail-out plan.

I only got through about 15 minutes of the show, but today's is excellent. In general I love this show, it's very critical without being partisan, at least the first half before the call-in questions start. Even that part is useful. They always give great explanations that are intellectual, yet not so politicized that I can't follow what's going on.

Today was a nice discussion of the potential disasters if congress does not pass a bail-out this week before they break for the year. They were not expecting doom and gloom, but certainly the worst case is quite disastrous. The gist that one guest was emphasizing, primarily via examples, was our dependence on credit in our own economy. Previous shows presented the impact of our credit structure on world economies and our ability to recover our own economy. A quick summary being if our economy faulters and we have enormous government debt, other foreign companies and governments will not have incentive to invest via loans and recovery will be exceedingly more painful and drawn out.

The expectations of today's guests was that congress would pass something, but it would most certainly include limits and guidelines on executive pay, relief for homeowners, and limits on the control of this new unbridled power of the secretary of treasury. They expect that a plan for next steps will not even be touched until 2009.

Anyway, if you want to get a good perspective of what's going on, I recommend checking out some of the last few shows. They are broken up into ~15min segments. The first two segments are typically the best. Diane Rehm is out this week, so they have guest hosts who both are very good. Today's 10am "Debate over Treasury Rescue", and Monday's 10am "Tresury Rescue Plan." You can stream them from the show's website or download a free podcast from itunes.

Legos at work

My job was fun for an afternoon. I just built a lego robot. It was critical that it be tested before the kits could be sent out for classroom use. I needed to figure out which parts to track the return of, and if it could be used in another class or not. I saw no other choice but to give it a test run.

This kit is super cool, and ridiculous, really. There are online communities of these Lego Mindstorm junkies. Anyway, I built this little robot with a claw for picking up stuff. It has all kinds of sensors: sound, light, and ultrasonic. Tomorrow I get to write the program to make both the robot and the claw move. Should me more excitement.

This year's flood

Traci's most post about spending gave me a thought that I decided was too long and off target to put as a comment. She was noting that finally in this financial crises you hear people talk about trying to control their spending.

It made me think about disasters that affect our communities, be they natural, human-implemented (war, terrorist, etc), or in current days, financial. I was just thinking how they serve as a modern-day flood. Whether or not one believes the biblical flood happen or not, you can take away from the story that people were messed up and the flood was used to set things straight and start new. How about the story of Joseph storing up food in the good times to feed entire regions in the bad times. These are obviously not new stories to our primarily christian society. It's fascinating to me that as a society we live beyond our means thinking the party will never end. If nothing else, the income party ends when you retire! It's difficult to look or plan for much of the future, and all though the bible also says to not worry about tomorrow, seriously, you have to do some planning as there will certainly be some floods and famines to face in our lives. Why is this concept so hard?

Well hopefully for the near future our country will learn to become slightly less careless about spending, but I'm sure it won't last long. I've already heard excitement over yesterday's slightly up market....seriously is their hope we'll bounce out that quickly. Let's all learn from Miller and "Live Responsibly" :)

Belly Tipping Point

Although it's been obvious to me for about 6 months now, it's officially obvious to the public I'm pregnant now. It's ramped up over the last couple weeks, but now nearly every random person I encounter is treating me differently. I walk up to a counter and if the person working is of the friendly type they ask when I'm due followed by the sympathic groan or excitement (I never know which I'll get) for a christmas baby. The other big change is the high rate of door holding. Honestly, I'll take the door holding and seat giving, especially in the coming months!

Professional Social Events

Seriously, why do we do this to ourselves. Socializing with work people is just a bizarre kind of work, not a social thing.

So there is this IE department dinner here that I'm considering attending. I am an alum of the department, but not otherwise associated with it. However, I may need to tap some resources there for my current job. Additionally, given my sporadic employment habits, I'm very reliant on others to get my random work. Random projects are not advertised, they come to you through connections. However, I hope that I don't need to find random work around here. Ahh...I suppose I should go, but I loathe the Engineering small talk. It will also cause me to have only about 30-60 minutes with my kid that day.

Dinner last night

How routine is that title?! Our dinner last night was not standard, but good. We helped cook dinner for some homeless families. There is a pretty cool national organization with a local arm here, WIHN. Although we've done a little when our church as sponsored in the past, this time we got to meet the families. We were really impressed with it all. It was a very easy, simple evening for us. We prepared a small amount of food and cleaned up at our church. Lil-M had fun playing with a few of the kids all evening. We really had no idea what to expect from the families. They were all very pleasant and enjoyable everyday sort of people, working to get back on their own. We have been amazed at how expensive it is to live around here. I can't imagine trying to support a family on a minimum, or near minimum, wage job. I looked at the stats and it's really unacceptable. According to the WIHN website, a worker making minimum wage cannot afford fair market rent anywhere in the US! I'm happy our church is participating and selected this as one of the few outreaches it can handle. Because of the small size it takes a fair effort from a large percentage of the people, but it's so simple to do and from what I can tell effective.

Abnormally Dry - the new drought status

I am abnormally hot and large. We had a fun afternoon at the lake yesterday. It was a huge relieve to be in the water. I am in a continuous mode of near explosion due to the heat. I suppose slight relief is coming sometime in the next month or two, but that feels very far away. Thankfully we have friends with toys who are willing to share and facilitate a day at the lake. Lil-M loves to tube, more precisely bounce all over the place in a tube.

Thanks to the various storms this summer, the lake levels are finally high. In fact so high that yesterday the lake was flooded into the parking lot. There is normally a beach, but instead we set up camp in the parking lot and walked through grassy waters to get to the sandy part of the water where we could play. It was a little strange at first, but turned out to not really make much of a difference.

It's a bizarre situation to have the lakes overflowing and still be classified as abnormally dry. I've heard that the ground water levels are still a little low. People tend to think, the lakes are up, lets waste some water. It's not easy to find much information on this. It's like a secret around here what's really going on with the water. After a little investigation this morning, we are still under some water restrictions, which seriously if they happen to be effective I'm in favor of having all the time. Really, why people should be free to waste as much water as they please is beyond me.

working mom

I just read a TNR article today about the Palin-style working mom and thought I'd write a bit about my recent new status as a working-mom. The article was interesting because she claims to do it all without ever missing a beat. However, she is able to "do it all" because her husband is basically a stay-at-home dad and she's loaded with other family around her helping out. Therefore, she has made some token efforts towards working parent concerns, basically only fair-wages for women, but none of the other biggies that count, like, affordable child-care and availability of accomodations at work for moms, i.e. breastpumps.

So, my recent job has been an overall good change for me, and I think the whole family. It's really great because it's short-term, so even if it was the wrong choice, it's only a problem for another 3 months. In the immediate term, the major plus for me is that life is easier. I'm not sleeping quite as much, but I get to sit all day! At 6 months pregnant, sitting in an ergo-designed chair is much better than the ground, park-bench, or just playing and constantly moving. The longer term plus is that I'm learning some new stuff and filling in the resume some so it's not completely blank. The negative is it's often boring and I have strict working hours. The working hours thing is completely ridiculous since I rely on noone else to do my job and only need an internet connection and a spreadsheet, maybe Word too. It's exactly the type of job that as a working mom they should be allowing some flexibility, but yep, that's not the case. As a consequence, there is little chance I'll come back to it after this contract. The little one seems to enjoy daycare and gets to play with much cooler toys than at home, do gymnastics, dance, music, and spanish, lots of fun stuff that she loves. The hubby is adjusting as well and doing a great job getting lil-M out the door every morning...not as easy as one might expect.

I appreciate the chance to mix things up for our family and give us all some different experiences. The sad part is that jobs which could be more accomodating to moms aren't. I could easily do this job part-time, from anywhere, but neither is an option b/c they are inflexible. At least it's only 4months long.

USA

The combination of September 11 and Elections has caused me mixed feelings. The 9-11 memorials on the radio today generate the need to love our fellow Americans (and people in general for that matter). In contrast the ridiculousness of the campaigning has me pissed at the stupidity of Americans. I'm appalled at the obsession over Sarah Palin. Seriously, I'm embarrassed to be a female these days. How can the same women who hate Hilary be in love with this hoochie mama. The obvious answer is that the suburban-mom identifies with her...do these women think they themselves could do a good job as VP?

What's with this logic of identification with our president? It worked for GW, he's just as ignorant as the majority of the country. Personally, I'd rather have someone smarter than most people as our leader. Because someone is smarter than most americans does not imply that they can't understand the problems to be addressed. The real problem is the lack of rational decision-making from the masses that the campaigns so effectively cater to. Last night a commentator suggested that in the debates Obama needed to tone done his orator style of speech to sound more like the general stupid american. Again, I appreciate that he can speak better than me! When he speaks with leaders from other countries, I prefer he be intelligent and sound that way than sound like the average american. Look how well that strategy worked for GW...wait he doesn't talk to other countries, just bombs them.