Canada!

So, I've had photos sitting in my hard drive, and a blog post sitting in my head for over a week now, and it's high time I updated before something else happens in my life and pushes last weekend out of blogging range. In my defense, I have been sick for a little over a week now, a phenomenon I am choosing to blame on whatever pollens were blooming about three weeks ago in Philly that made me sick then, and apparently chose the very weekend I was visiting Canada to bloom there so that I could enjoy that particular bout of allergies twice.

Right, so about that trip to Canada.

I had booked a four-day weekend off of work. I am part-time now, which makes booking time off that much easier (and also me much happier and less exhausted). Jeremy chose not to come with me, because he wants to save his time off for when there is a baby to spend it with. I spent Friday driving, and even with my frequent, pregnant-lady pee and food stops, I still made it to my mom's house at exactly the time I had estimated. That was very un-Davis of me.

Benjie and Trish were there when I arrived, and I got to meet my niece, April, for the first time. Such a sweet baby. Auggie is going to love her cousins.



After dinner, I got together with my friend-since-we-were-eight-years-old, Sarah, and we bought slurpees, put candy in them, and sat in the park talking on the swings for a long time, just like we used to do in high school. I have many fond memories of hanging out in that park with slurpees and good friends. It almost makes me miss being a teenager. Almost.

Saturday morning was my baby shower, which was the original purpose of my trip to Canada. My mom still attends the church that I grew up going to, and, to this day, I have a hard time calling any place but Sunnyside my "home church". But I've moved around so much since graduating high school (11 years ago now - man, that makes me feel old), so I haven't been a regular attender there for more than a summer here and there, and that one year when I was articling in Ottawa. I was really touched that anyone other than my mom even wanted to attend a shower for me, and when I saw how many people came out, from every era of my life, to show their support for me on my journey into motherhood, I was really blown away. I'm pretty sure I cried once or twice, but I'm gonna blame the hormones for that. Yeah, hormones.



I also acquired a lot of stuff for the baby, and I'm finally starting to feel like it might just be possible that I won't have to wrap Auggie in one of her dad's old shirts and have her sleep in a cardboard box. Although I do have some very nice cardboard boxes, I think, in the end, I might find the highchairs and whatnot that came inside them much more useful.

In fact, I acquired so much stuff that those who were helping me carry it all to my little Mazda 626 seriously doubted that it would fit in my trunk. But all those years of watching my packing-guru father load the family car up for trips to grandma's or to the lake or to Algonquin park seem to have paid off. Also all of those hours of Tetris he and I used to play. See? Who says video games rot your brain!

The big surprise of the shower was that my aunt and cousin had made the trip up from Rochester to join in the festivities. It was really nice to see them, and we spent a really nice afternoon on Saturday sitting and talking and visiting. Then it got late, and I went to bed.

Sunday morning, I was able to attend church at Sunnyside, which is always one of the highlights of my trips to Ottawa. I still feel so much like a part of that church, and I received many warm hugs and congratulations from old friends and practically-families. It also boggled my mind, as it always does, to see the growth of the church since I was a kid there. I had one Sunday school teacher for most of my childhood, and I was almost always the only one in my class. Then, when I finished a grade, she would move up and teach me in the next class, because there were no more than a handful of other kids in the church, and there was no one waiting in the class below me, and no one graduating from the class above me. Now, there is such a crowd of kids (over 50, I'm guessing), that you wouldn't know that it was the same church, except that it is filled with the same loving spirit under which I remember growing up.

Sunday was hot. You'd think it would be less hot in Canada, but Ottawa gets its fair share of heat and humidity, and when it does, it's extra miserable because many people (my mom and brother included) don't have air conditioning. And I'm usually okay with that, because I believe that it's healthier to turn on some fans and keep cool naturally, but pregnant, I find it unbearable. AC has become a necessity for me.

So, after Benjie and Trish and I had a quick lunch, we took April to an indoor pool for her Very First Swim Outside the Womb. It was a lot of fun, although April didn't seem entirely sure what to make of the gigantic bathtub. She seemed to have a good time, though. After swimming, I was craving shawarma, so we stopped at a little place I used to go to all the time with Sarah, and I indulged my craving with shaved beef and heartburn on a pita. I've pretty much resigned myself, at this stage of my pregnancy, that anything I eat is going to give me heartburn, so why not eat what I want? It was delicious. I really need to find a shawarma shop in Philly.

After shawarma, the four of us laid claim to one of the air conditioned lounges in the church that was not currently being used (my brother lives above the church offices), and spent the rest of the afternoon not being miserably overheated. I broke out my water-based face paints, and Benjie and Trish created the first two entries in my belly art gallery. I will post them after I finish this post.

At this point in the weekend, my pregnant body had pretty much had enough excitement, and I was ready to go back to my mom's house, maybe play a board game, and go to bed early. But there was more excitement to be had. A few hours later, I was upstairs on my mom's computer, when I heard the door open, and someone said the name of my sister's dog. My sister lives in Vermont, and, although she couldn't make it up to Canada for the shower, she decided to bundle up her dog and my nephew, and surprise us on Sunday night for a visit. It was awesome to see my sister, and Nick who has doubled in size and mobility since I saw him last. He's even saying a few words now, and most adorable of anything, he makes little fishy faces when he wants you to pick him up to ring the fish chime that is hanging from the door frame.





So, counting Auggie, all three cousins were together for the first time, so we made some fumbling attempts at a family portrait. Here is, sadly, the best one of the bunch. Hey, it was getting late, and we were all pretty over-stimulated by this time. Even the babies.



Monday morning, I got to spend a bit of quality time with Alana and Nick before hitting the road. We took Eli for a walk, which I thought would be a good idea, since I was about to sit in the car for 8 hours. Unfortunately, I think it was the walk that ultimately did me in, allergies-wise. Between that, and the stubborn gas bubble in my chest that mysteriously appeared sometime after eating the shawarma (completely unrelated, I'm sure) and didn't go away until Tuesday morning, I was feeling pretty lousy by the time I hit the road at about noon. The trip home was miserable. The only highlight, really, was a relatively easy border crossing, where the border guard peeked in my trunk, but didn't even need to see my extensive list of all the gifts I had received with all of my rough price estimates. So yeah, let's fast-forward through the overly long drive, with far too many stops (several of which might have ended with me sleeping in a parking lot somewhere if it hadn't been for the fact that I had to keep driving to keep the AC on), and a burning sore throat, and a nose that wouldn't stop running. But I made it home eventually, tired and miserable, and really not feeling up to going out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary when I got home. We've decided to postpone that particular celebration.

And that brings us up to today. Well, okay, not really, but we can fast-forward through the rest of last week, last weekend, and the the beginning of this week, and that will bring us up to today. I'm not as sick anymore. The sore throat has gone away, which is good because it was the symptom I was most worried about, and the cold/allergies/whatever has mostly settled in as a stuffy nose and glop in my chest. Still no fun, but better than before. Besides, I'm on vacation now, and that makes everything better! I'm on vacation for two whole weeks, during which time I will be doing a bit of cleaning at the house (but only a bit), and then heading off to Massachusetts to play story games with some friends I met in a forest in Virginia, and then off to New Hampshire to sleep in a tent and spend some quality time with some friends from college. I will bring my face paints along, and if I happen to see you on my travels, maybe you can paint my belly!

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Maybe I should get a GPS...

So, our Wednesday night crew are coming to our new place tonight, and I decided that I wanted to make sushi. I remembered, about a year and a half ago, stumbling upon an asian grocery with a friend while we were on our way back from somewhere. I couldn't remember exactly where we were on our way back from, but I had a general idea of the direction, and I was about 80% sure of the road that it was on. So far so good. I can usually find my way back to somewhere I've been to before with some amount of trial and error. As long as I'm coming from the same direction.

But then I decided that I needed an oil change. And the closest Jiffy Lube was about five miles away, and not at all in the same direction as where I imagined the asian grocery to be. But not in the opposite direction, either, that would have made things too easy. They were three corners of a triangle, and I decided that I could cut across the top of the triangle and save myself some time. I was even a good little girl and tried to look the directions up in my map book, but unfortunately, we live on the top edge of the map book, and I had traveled even further north, out of map range. So I just started driving.

Then I passed a Goodwill, so I decided, on a whim, to stop and see if I could find any decent maternity clothes. Or a decent table for the new place. I generally consider a trip to a thrift store a success if I find one thing worth buying, and I'm ecstatic if I find more than two or three things. Today, I found a total of nine items of maternity clothing that fit me and I liked. Pretty awesome. I figured, at this point, I had probably used up all of my good thrift store karma, but decided to check out the furniture anyhow. And I found a gorgeous dining room table, in nice heavy wood, with two leaf inserts to make it big enough to seat about 12, and with only a few scratches on the finish that could easily be refinished away, but would be covered by a tablecloth most of the time anyhow, so were not a big concern to me. There were no chairs I liked, but my karma had to run out at some point. Best of all, I got out of there spending only $50 on everything together. Take that, Ikea.

I also caved at this point and called Jeremy to see if he could get directions for me online, and I carefully wrote down the route he gave to me. Then I missed a turn somewhere along the line, and ended up about 5 miles north of where I wanted to be. So, I called him again, and got fresh directions from my new location.

As I was driving along, still not 100% sure of where I was going, I passed Big Lots. Then I remembered where I had been coming back from with my friend when we found the Asian grocery. Big Lots! So, I stopped in to see if I could pick up a few of those random household things that you always seem to need to get when you move. Like a broom and a dustpan and a kitchen trash can and an ice cream sandwich (okay, fine, that last one had more to do with being pregnant than moving). I even managed to pick up a remanufactured Hoover vacuum cleaner for about 1/5 of the normal retail price. Score.

And, believe it or not, I even found the asian grocery after that. It was right where I had thought it was, and I probably would have saved myself a lot of time and energy if I had just driven home first and gone there "the long way". But then I wouldn't have found so many awesome things on my random shopping stops. I managed to find everything I wanted at the grocery (which, for my later reference more than anything else, was called "Assi" and is just north-west of 202 on 63). I even found some things I wasn't looking for, like red bean mochi. Yum. I had also forgotten that this particular asian grocery was also, for some reason obviously not related to geography, a hispanic grocery. So now I know where to go to get maseca and queso fresco the next time I have a hankering for pupusas. Mmmm... pupusas...

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You should try soft pretzels with ranch dressing. Yum.

So, I disappeared for another month. This is starting to become a bit of a habit. Maybe I should just change the by-line of the website to, "Now with monthly updates!" Then we will all know what to expect.

Speaking of expecting, Auggie is doing well. She (and yes, I am using the feminine pronoun in a gender-uncertain context; I blame going to law school in Canada for that tendency) has become extraordinarily active in the past month. She remains almost completely quiet the entire time I am at work, and then as soon as I am at rest, she likes to disturb my rest with pokes and prods and kicks and jabs that cause me no end of amusement. Except when I am trying to sleep. Then they are less amusing.

I learned an important lesson this Sunday in church: Don't wear shirts that are skin-tight across your six-month pregnant belly if you want to be able to pay attention to the sermon. Auggie loves music, and whenever I sit down after singing or drumming, she decides to keep the beat going for a while. This week, "for a while" lasted throughout the entire service. I kept laughing, because you could actually see my belly bounce up every time she kicked it. And, of course, the other people in my row kept looking at me to see why I was laughing, and then they would see the little kicks, and laugh, too. I really hope the pastor was trying to be funny, because an entire section of the church was suppressing giggles for the entire sermon.

My mom turned sixty this year, and I turned thirty, so we decided that we should do something special to celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime "I am half your age and both our ages end in zero" event. So, we went to see a Broadway show with my sister and her mother-in-law. Believe it or not, this was my first Broadway show. I saw "Phantom of the Opera" in Toronto when I was 11, but this was my first New York City Broadway with a Capital 'B' Broadway show. It was awesome. We had coal oven baked pizza for lunch, and saw a matinee so that my sister could get back in time to feed her baby before bedtime. I snuck my baby into the show without buying her a ticket (shhhh....) but I'm glad I did, because I think I have a Broadway baby. Easily the most active Auggie has ever been was during the big choral numbers of the show. I wonder how young is too young to start your child in tap lessons?

The show was Curtains, with David Hyde Pierce (and a couple of other people from "Frasier," too), and it was amazing. But then again, I am no Broadway critic. I probably would have been starstruck and impressed by anything.

My sister sent me a picture of the four of us outside after the show. I'm the fat one in the purple shirt.



So, let's see, what else has been going on in my life in the past month or so? I spent most of the month of April quite sick. I even went to my doctor because I thought I had something serious like mono (and, if you know me at all, you'll know that it takes a lot to get me to believe that I am sick enough to go to the doctor). Fortunately, I did not have mono. Unfortunately, I did not have anything treatable, so I just had to stick it out until the pollens changed and my allergies died down a bit. Yeah, allergies. I spent a whole month sick from allergies, and there is not a single blooming drug that you can take for allergies while you're pregnant. I've never had allergies like this before though, so I can only hope that it was just some kind of fluke combination of a bad pollen season and being pregnant and having no immune system, and that I won't ever get them like this again.

Meanwhile, I have still been working full-time at the store, which has left me completely drained. Eight hour days on your feet the entire time is pretty exhausting when you're simultaneously building a human being. The paperwork hasn't gone through yet, but hopefully, by the end of the month, I will be down to part-time hours. Then I might just maybe have time to blog more than once a month again. And get that daily nap that I was supposed to stop needing about 13 weeks ago when I entered the second trimester.

Oh yeah, and we also moved. See? This is what happens when I only blog once a month. I forget to mention big things like moving all the way back to the opposite side of the city, to a lovely townhouse that we have yet to move all of our crap into, so it still looks nice. Or at least, it still looks new and empty, which is nice in its own right.

This just proves to me that I need to blog more often. I still don't think I wrote about my trip to Florida in March. I definitely didn't get to write about the lovely day I spent in Princeton with Katie and Mike and Isla (and Squidgy), who were down from Canada for a conference. Nor did I write about the fantastic weekend, albeit cold, that I spent in a Virginia forest with a bunch of story-gamers playing all sorts of fun games. Jeremy even learned how to make boffer weapons out of PVC and duct tape.



But, when you're always either working or sleeping, and you manage to squeeze in a day (or even a weekend) to do something fun for yourself, you pay for it afterwards with extra working and sleeping. Hence the infrequent blog posts. I've been told that now is the time to do things for myself, to go on trips and have fun, because it's the last chance I'll have to do those things without having to figure out how to include or make alternate arrangements for the baby. I'm not 100% convinced by this argument, because I'm truly looking forward to sharing camping trips and, one day down the road, games and Broadway shows, with Auggie. But I do understand that, in just a few short months, my life will be changed irrevocably, and if there is something I really want to do now, I should do it now, before my life and priorities are turned completely upside down.

That said, I am making it my goal to thoroughly enjoy my third trimester. And yes, all of you mothers out there, I heard that snigger you just made. But really, I have been so tired and overworked for the first two trimesters, I have had very little chance to enjoy myself and my pregnancy. But I'll be dropping to part-time hours, I have several trips planned, and, always subject to providence throwing me a curve ball, I want to make the most of this. I might even (wait for it...) blog more often! I have a few ideas for the third trimester, including a weight/date pool and featured guest belly artists. Wow, I don't think I've ever done a "coming attractions" thing on this blog before. I guess I'm stuck with it, now!

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Overdue for an update

So, a lot has happened since I last posted. I worked, slept, slept, worked, slept, slept, worked, took some pictures at a wedding, slept, slept, slept, worked, slept, slept, slept, and got my ultrasound. And, since it is hard to update my blog when I am sleeping, I haven't really managed to do it. But, I figured I might try and do a teensy update, since an ultrasound is a pretty big event. Big enough to take some time out from sleeping to share.

Anyhow, enough babbling. Here is a barely discernible photograph of Baby Auggie:



If you're having trouble seeing a baby's face in that mess, you're just not trying hard enough. Close your eyes, count to three, and look again:



See? Now you should be able to CLEARLY identify the outline of Auggie's face, his gorgeous blue eyes, and her luscious red lips. Isn't Auggie a beautiful, poorly-photoshopped, gender-to-be-announced-in-due-time baby?

Auggie completely disappointed all of my paranoid maternal fears at the ultrasound. My baby has all the right body parts. (I counted two legs and one arm, but Jeremy assures me that there was a second arm that I just missed seeing. I thought it was a little unfair that Jeremy had the front row seat and could see the whole procedure, whereas I had to lie patiently while the tech did all the measurements, barely able to see the corner of the screen, while Jeremy got to see Auggie's perfectly four-chambered heart, perfectly straight spine, perfectly enormous genius' brain. She let me see the screen for a little while at the end, but I'm geeky enough to have wanted a clear view of all the boring, medical measurements, too.) My placenta is anterior, which is a big word that means "not a big deal because it's not previa" and also means that it wasn't my fault that I couldn't feel my baby's kicks until week 20; Auggie was hiding behind an enormous, life-giving, foetomaternal organ.

It was also exciting for me to discover that, in spite of the fact that 90% of the women in my pregnancy groups (in real-life and online) look much more pregnant than I do at 21 weeks, Auggie is actually measuring 2 days bigger than my calculated EDD. Grow, baby, grow! Apparently, Auggie is already one pound. I can't help but keep imagining that there is a human being being the size of a bag of coffee inside of me.

So, after a long day of work, ultrasound, and dinner with the soon-to-be second-time grandparents, we dragged ourselves home and remembered that we had promised to take pictures of the outside of my belly to go with the pictures of inside my belly. So, if you'll ignore the "please, is it bedtime yet?" look on my face, here are some pictures of pregnant me at 21 weeks:

Front shot, so you can see how I look to myself in the mirror everyday when I ask myself, do I look anything other than just chubby to the rest of the world?



Side shot, where somehow, through the magic of telling me to turn another quarter inch to the right enough times, Jeremy managed to find an angle where I actually look like I might have a bit of a baby belly, and not just a diet that includes too many pizzas.

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An Open Letter to an Anonymous Commenter

Dear KE:

I don't know who you are, and you obviously don't know me. I'm pretty sure I've never written about abortion on this blog, and I don't plan on writing about it now. It's an extremely volatile topic, and I would much rather write about the lovely trip I just took to Florida.

However, abortion debate aside, I stand by my use of the word "fetus". Fetus is the scientifically accurate term for any mammal, human or otherwise, during its developmental stages before birth. Actually, I deliberated over the wording of that post for a while, and ultimately settled on the word fetus, even though at Christmas, Auggie was technically still in the embryonic stage. But, by the time of posting, he or she was already into the fetal stage, so I took the liberty of using that word rather than "embryo", simply because I thought it sounded better and made for a punchier punch line.

So, if you want to stop reading my blog because of ridiculous assumptions that you have made about my politics and morality based on my refusal to redefine the English language to suit political ends, so be it. That's one less judgmental and spiteful reader for me to worry about upsetting.

Sincerely,
Jule Ann.

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Valentine's Day

Jeremy bought me this shirt for Valentine's Day:


It goes really well with the fetus he gave me for Christmas.

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Answers

Okay, so here are the answers to all of those questions people have been asking me, all in once convenient place. If I missed any, feel free to post your questions in the comments.

• I'm 11 and a half weeks along. The due date is August 25. Donations of cute, maternity sundresses are gladly welcomed.


• We don't know the gender, and don't plan on finding out until he or she comes out. We're hoping it's a pony.


• Yes, we have names picked out. No, we won't tell you what they are. For now, we are calling him/her "Auggie."


• Yes, I have been taking a prenatal vitamin with folic acid. Except every time I look at the bottle my brain anagrams it into a "parental vitamin," and it makes me giggle.


• Yes, I have a copy of "What to Expect When You're Expecting," and I absolutely hate it. It makes me feel horrible and terrified and Jeremy has banned me from reading it anymore. I also have a copy of "The New Pregnancy Week-By-Week," and we love reading it together every Sunday night, and I get all teared up at Auggie's milestones. My baby already has fingers!


• We are using a certified nurse midwife for the prenatal care and delivery. My midwife is awesome, as are all of the other midwives I've met at the practice. I don't know which one will actually be at my delivery, but she will stay with me throughout the entire labor and delivery, and will help me to cope with pain without drugs if I so choose. I believe that birth is a natural process, and only when there is a problem should it become a medical process.


• Although I would love to have a home birth, Pennsylvania law and our current living arrangements do not make it a viable option. The hospital we will be delivering at supposedly has very nice Labor/Delivery/Recovery suites, which (for my medical professional friends) are immediately adjacent to the surgical unit. My hospital also has a Level II NICU and is not far from the only Level III ICU Nursery in the county. So you're not allowed to be paranoid; I'll be in good hands.


• No, I don't want to hear your opinions on my birth choices. We've spent a lot of time thinking over, talking about, and making these decisions, and if I want your advice, I will ask.


• No, I haven't had an ultrasound yet. I will get my first one at 20 weeks, unless there is a problem before then.


• I'm not really showing yet, although I have already grown out of all but two pairs of pants. I feel a little silly buying maternity clothes this early, and am hoping to wait at least a couple more weeks until the third trimester. Just this week my belly popped out above my pelvic bone, so I'm anticipating that I might make some more significant (and cute?) growth over the next few weeks.


• I am feeling rather nauseous, and utterly exhausted, thank you for asking. I do pretty well with the nausea as long as I eat something every 3 or 4 hours. Still trying to work out how to deal with the tiredness, aside from taking a nap every day and lying down in the car on my meal breaks at work. People keep telling me that I will be less tired in the second trimester, although I don't know if that will do anything to help the back pain, which is sometimes so bad by the end of a shift that I am almost in tears. Advice on dealing with back pain without drugs when your job keeps you on your feet is hereby welcomed.


• I find myself craving red meat and milk. I expect it's the protein (and iron and calcium). I also eat a lot of peanut butter sandwiches made with white toast. I know I should eat wheat, but white tastes so much better to me right now, so I allow it. My aversions include anything too sweet (like cake) and anything too salty (like bacon). I stopped liking coffee the day I conceived (or within a few days, anyhow), but so far, I still like the smell. Except for French Roast. For some reason, that particular coffee smells horrible to me. Fortunately, we hardly ever brew it.

Well, that about wraps it up for now. I promise I will eventually get back to blogging about other things, but bear with me for a while, as I have been keeping this in for two months. Thanks for all of the congratulations and well-wishes. It is so nice feeling connected to you all through this site!

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Fourteen Ways to Tell the World You're Pregnant

1. Plan a trip to Canada to surprise your mom and siblings for your sister-in-law's baby shower. Be forced to cancel your trip because of a huge winter storm. Tell your mom over the phone instead. Cry happily.


2. Call your sister, who is also canceling her trip to Canada because of the winter storm. Tell her that you had an ulterior motive for wanting to go to the baby shower this weekend: because she and Trish both had family gatherings to make their pregnancy announcements, and you wanted one, too. Cry some more happy tears.


3. Make a baby shower card for your sister-in-law and email it to your mom to print out and give to her at the shower. Write, "A Special Present for Our New Niece" on the front, and, "You won't be the youngest cousin" on the inside. Cry when you see the picture of Trish crying when she got the card.


4. Take your in-laws out to dinner because you've been craving steak. Take the waitress aside on your way to the bathroom and request a special dessert to be delivered to your table when you're done eating. Watch your in-laws' confused expressions gradually turn to excitement as they watch you top your bowl of ice cream with pickles. Hug and cry and cry and hug. Taste the pickles and ice cream and wonder where on earth that stereotype comes from. Take the pickles back off and eat the ice cream plain.


5. Place a praise request in the offering plate at church thanking God for another new baby that will be coming to the church this year. Make sure to sit at the front so that your little slip of paper gets buried under other things and overlooked when the pastor reads the prayer/praise requests. After the service is over, dig the slip out and give it to the pastor in person, hug/cry, then run around the church telling everyone else in person, which ultimately, may have been more fun than making a big announcement to everyone anyhow.


6. Have your husband call his brother and tell him the story about you ordering pickles and ice cream. Then, after he doesn't get it, because of some sort of generation/gender gap and the failure of the pickles and ice cream myth to be quite as ubiquitous as you thought, explain it to him. Receive a big hug the next time you see him.


7. Plan on telling all of your husband's extended family in two weeks at the Valentine's party. See the look on your mother-in-law's face on Sunday afternoon, after keeping the secret to herself for a day and a half, and decide to make the rounds telling everyone that afternoon instead.


8. Call your husband's sister and ask her whether she thinks her nine-month-old would like a cousin to play with.


9. Come right out and say, "We're pregnant!" Get some hugs.


10. Ask your cousins how they're doing on their babysitting classes, and whether they will be ready to be babysitters by August. Get some hugs.


11. Change your status on Facebook to "pregnant".


12. Post a pregnancy count-down ticker on your forum profile page. Casually point it out to other forum users.


13. Blog about it.


14. All of the above.

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The Further Geekification of Jule Ann

So, in case it wasn't geeky enough that I have started to play a fantasy roleplaying game (Burning Wheel) once a week. And discuss it between sessions. And read the forums....

This weekend, I had to cancel a trip to Canada because of a nasty winter storm. So, to make the most of a weekend off, I drove down to Virginia on Saturday with some friends to play various independent storytelling games (and eat awesome food) with other geeks of the world. And I had way too much fun. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. And I think my nerdish soul is now officially beyond salvation....

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LOST!

So, color Jule Ann very happy this week, with the return of LOST! I know there's only going to be eight episodes (boo, writer's strike!), but still, it started back up with such a bang, I feel like it's going to be eight, quality episodes.

Some observations (probably chock-full of spoilers):

1. I was a little worried after the end of season 3 that switching to flash forwards instead of flashbacks would close things off too much and make the remaining seasons just feel like resolution and tying up loose ends. And yet, somehow, they managed to create MORE mystery with an uncertain future.

2. Charlie!

3. "The Oceanic Six" apparently includes Hurley, Jack, and an unfreckled Kate. Any guesses on the other three? I'm thinking Sawyer for at least one, but I'm drawing a blank for the other two.

4. If Hurley and Jack went separate ways, how did they both get rescued? The only thing I can think of is that this isn't actually the rescue that gets them off the island.

5. Any guesses on who the people on the freighter are? I'm leaning towards an evil corporate entity, out to exploit the island's power or something. We've already got our evil communists, so we're due for some evil capitalists.

6. Did you ever notice that Richard hasn't aged a day in 30 years? Jeremy thinks he came from the pirate ship (the one with the dynamite). I wonder if he has four toes...

7. The first hour was a pretty good recap episode, even for someone who watched all of the first three seasons. I noticed that they didn't bother mentioning the Nicki and Paolo episode, though. Was that really just a random interlude, or will it come back and have some significance later?

8. I just checked, and this week's episode is already up On Demand. Which means I will be able to watch next week's episode even though I have to work the closing shift at work. Woot!

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