Sorry, folks. Have some pictures!

So. I have to apologize. I owe all y'all several stories, as evidenced by the now long-finished poll languishing on the left sidebar over there. I know it's been a ridiculously long time to wait, but you're going to have to wait a little longer.

I know, I know you're disappointed. And I'm still sorry. Here, have a free fun picture:


No threat intended! Really! You can come back!

I did start writing the story of the Epic Saga of DOOOOM in my long boring class one day a couple of weeks ago, but then an interesting guest speaker came in and I stopped writing in order to listen. Unfortunately, that's been the only real time I've had to blog because all the rest of my time has been spent doing final-semester-of-school stuff (maybe 5%), sleeping (~50%) and feeling completely sick to my stomach/ready to die (at least 172% and YES I KNOW that's ~227% OKAY?).

You scoff at my math? You think I'm engaging in melodramatics? Well, yes, probably, but that's beside the point.

Because the point is this:



And this:



And also this:



No, that's all the same baby. Not triplets (although what an excuse THAT would be, eh?).

But THE POINT IS we've got Baby Nib or Shallow Jr. on the way and arriving in October and WE FINALLY HEARD THE HEARTBEAT this morning (see picture #3 in the series above. We've never been able to do that before).

And life, as they say, is pretty darn grand.


(The other point is that I firmly believe in modern medicine and the amazing prescription they have given me that in the last two days has finally allowed me to be a human and no longer just a mass of morning sickness so bad that I may or may not have lost 10 pounds in less than a month.)

A poll; or, In the meantime . . .

So I've been looking at the votes so far and I'm wondering if some of your kindergarten report cards said "Has trouble following directions." Tsk, tsk, people. The main point of the exercise was to choose what to blog about first, not just to reiterate that they're all good things to blog about. Again, tsk, tsk.

But I've fooled you. Not all of those are actually interesting stories. Some of them aren't actually stories at all. I just wanted to provide some variety for the voters. Ah-HA!

At any rate, I'm going to leave the voting open until Friday at close of business. To help encourage you folks to make my decision-making process easier, I'm putting a poll up on the sidebar. If you don't feel like submitting your votes again, don't worry, I'll factor the comments in, too.

Once a winner is determined, I'll write up a slam-bang (ish) blog post.

In the meantime, though, feel free to head on over to my other blog for the tale of a mystery encountered and then solved.

Enjoy!

Story time! And time for a VOTE!

And again, this isn't a real post. But it will be, WITH YOUR HELP!

So many great and blog-worthy things have happened in the last couple of weeks. Well, some not so great, but still blog-worthy. But the upshot is that with all the time I've spent actually living through these things (and the rest of my time being spent doing ridiculous law school stuff *cough*edits*cough*), I haven't had time to actually blog about them. And now I'm just too tired to blog about them all.

So I think I'll put it to a vote. Do you want to hear about:

1. The night we did epic battle with the fence in the massive windstorm with 40 mph gusts?

2. The epic saga of Doooooooom! that is our car, beginning with a failed attempt to see my little sister's play and ending, most recently, with us being stranded at Walmart this evening?

3. A love song to mac and cheese and my newfound domesticity?

4. An ode to my car's left turn signal (not to be confused with the epic saga of Doooooooom!)?

5. A well thought-out and intelligent book review of an awesome book I just finished reading?

6. A tale of adventure on the high seas?

7. Or an introduction to a new blog?


Leave a comment with your top three votes, and I'll write a blog post on the winner, and possibly the runners-up, sometime this week.

Until then, I think I'm going to take another nap.

I think it might be love.

Made these this evening for the first time.



My life will never be the same.

I urge you to go and do likewise.

Enlightenment will ensue, I promise.

(If it doesn't, that means you didn't do it right.)

But Mother, I don't WANT to edit an article about civil liability!

(said in my best Wendy voice)

Argh.

I have two or three great posts I want to write up for the blog but I can't because I'm supposed to be editing an article for the law journal.

I don't LIKE editing articles for the law journal. First off, I don't think it's the editor's (namely, my) job to write your thesis sentence, roadmaps, arguments and footnotes for you if you couldn't do it yourself. Is this the way it works for all journals? Because with my limited experience in publishing, it seems like editors usually give the author ideas, suggestions and feedback about what work needs to be done and then make her do it herself. (And why is our journal accepting articles that have no discernible theses to begin with? Who knows.)

The point is, there are so many more interesting and useful things I'd like to be doing. Cleaning off the kitchen desk. Baking bread. Exercising while catching up on Gilmore Girls. Playing old-school video games. Blogging.

Come on, people! Don't you understand? There are cupcakes to decorate (a new-found love), scarves to knit (because I'm totally going to teach myself to do that now), hats to crochet, old blogs to read, new blogs to discover, recipes to try, offices to organize, houses to redecorate, numbers to paint by, and OH MY GOODNESS books to read.

SO. MANY. BOOKS. (Some of them written by highly attractive Welshmen.)

FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, THERE ARE BOOKS TO BE READ!!!!

And, unfortunately, at least one article on civil liability for misstatements in offer documents (yeah, you read that right) to edit.

With attendant threats of demerits if someone doesn't get it done in time. (Really, people? Demerits? Really?? Are we not past the elementary school stage yet?)

So the books by gorgeous Welshmen will have to wait.

And so will you, because my more interesting posts will not get written tonight.

Taking a moment

I'm having a moment of silence over on the other blog today.

I promise I'll post something new and gloriously snarky soon. But not just yet.

So long, 2009!

So I've been looking back at 2009 and I just can't quite muster up the same feelings of AWESOME as I did for 2008. Which is probably because 2008 was pretty darn awesome and it would probably be hard to beat by just about any year's standards. But I think it also has a bit to do with the fact that, in many respects, 2009 was just not that great. It did have some good points, but the overall backdrop for my personal year (see, e.g. the economy) helped lend a sense of doom and foreboding to the year. And I don't think it was just me.

But here are some of the things that come to mind when I think about 2009:

*Finishing up my second year of law school.
*Starting up my third year of law school and seeing the end approaching quickly.
*Geek nights galore. We have seen this thing grow from an impromptu game of Duck Hunt to a massive behemoth of multiple systems, games, tons of people, lots of good food, and networking galore.
*Making a very successful pitch to the CEO, CFO and other higher-ups of World Book, Inc.
*Helping to pull a publishing company out of the "some guy working out of the garage" mode to a more stable level. We've moved from the garage to the basement, I guess you could say, but we also have not only a consistent stream of projects each month, we've also got a cushion of projects that are already done so we're ahead of the game.
*Combining my publishing company experiences with Geek Night experiences and being able to hire several of my friends.
*Editing essays. Oh, the essays I've edited. . . .
*Trip to Alabama to visit Shallow Man's family. Love his grandparents.
*Having Shallow Man's sister drop our camera on the hard tile floor and breaking it as we were about to leave. We still haven't bothered to get it fixed, come to think of it.
*This is partly due to the fact that I have continued trying to maintain my Lemony Snicket-type existence, keeping photos to a minimum.
*SPENT and the epic-ness that was the Katamari presentation. Also the battle of the chairs and a return to junior high drama. (Good times, good times.)
*Taking a class from one of the most inspiring and all-around awesome people I ever hope to know, Michael Goldsmith.
*Getting a chance to sass back at Prof. Goldsmith and watch him enjoy it and play along.
*Yeah, I also got a pretty good one-liner off in Business Associations. (Hey, I told you the year wasn't great; I have to take what small pleasures I can get here!)
*Continuing to get to know the awesome people in my law school class. (But not the 2Ls. They are not awesome. Except for a few.)
*Getting a chance to finally read To Kill A Mockingbird for a class.
*Getting to write a paper about TKAM, A Man For All Seasons and Alice in Wonderland, of all things.
*Footnotes. Beautiful, beautiful footnotes. Lengthy, beautiful non sequiturs in footnotes.
*Trying to finish a paper while sitting in my car in the early morning waiting for the gas company to arrive because the carbon monoxide alarm had gone off and thinking we had a leak.
*Oh, the chagrin of realizing that it was just an "Lb" for "low battery" and not a "97" for "that's a lot of toxic gas floating around in your house", which we probably would have realized a lot earlier if we hadn't been so dang sleep-deprived from finals at the time.
*Ice cream after finals.
*Our fifth anniversary. (Holy crap!)
*Finally finding a great doctor who listened to ME and not to the sound of his own voice.
*Getting that positive pregnancy test back in May. Very high point of the year.
*Making lists and plans for the baby.
*Seeing my mother's face (and the faces of the rest of my family) when we told them the good news. They probably had already figured it out, anyway, though, because of the sheer number of times I had to use the bathroom during that camping trip.
*KAT CAME BACK!!!
*Just Jane. I think you girls saved my sanity this year, in so many ways.
*Being an orphan in June when Shallow Man was in DC and all of my other family members were on fun vacations without me.
*Helping to clean out my grandfather's house when he moved into my aunt's house, and seeing the family gathering spot for as long as I can remember all out of sorts and empty. Then seeing it again later after it had been remodeled and loving the new changes, and thinking that it's good that life still goes on.
*Working from home periodically through the first part of the summer when I was feeling sick.
*Seeing that motorcycle accident with the car who made the illegal u-turn over by Riverwoods with KEY and Shallow Man. Crazy.
*Sitting in the doctor's office while he tried to find the heartbeat with the doppler. Sitting downstairs while he tried to find the heartbeat on the ultrasound. Sitting in the hospital waiting for the grouchy ultrasound technician to get around to telling us the results and praying that it wouldn't be what we already knew it would be.
*The worst four hours of my life on July 16th.
*Love and support from family and friends and God.
*The other blog.
*Weddings for my cousins.
*Henry Crawford, Henry Crawford, and Henry Crawford. Did I mention Henry Crawford?
*Driving on back roads for the first few days of August because we hadn't been able to get our car repaired for inspection before July ended.
*Babysitting my nephew and taking him to church while my sister was in the hospital having my new niece.
*New niece = very yes.
*SYTYCD in the summer with KEY and my sis.
*Getting a new nephew, too.
*Baby blessings and almost having to leave my niece's because you just never know when suddenly something is going to be too much. But making it through anyway with only Shallow Man and the four-year-old sitting in front of us really noticing anything.
*Just Jane again. Did I mention you girls are amazing?
*Firing people but finally getting a working staff.
*That horrible, horrible FSU game.
*Discovering the Art City Trolley.
*Game day at the cabin at last.
*Swine flu. Very No.
*Playstation 3, yo. It has changed my life.
*Actually passing the MPRE after not getting enough time to study for it. And kind of rocking it. (Why can't I do that with finals?)
*The primary kids. And the parties. And nearly going insane some weeks.
*Going to see Ingrid Michaelson in October with Kat and KEY. Epic.
*Pink plaid shoes. Oh yes.
*SYTYCD concert with Kat and my sisters. Epic, epic, epic.
*The impromptu dance party with all those other cars stuck at that malfunctioning light.
*The passing of two great men in November within two days of each other: My grandfather and Prof. Goldsmith. A week of funerals and tears, that one, and of good reunions with friends and family. Bittersweet to say the least.
*Fixing the oven door that had been broken ALL BY MYSELF.
*Seeing "Singin' in the Rain" at Hale, even though I had a headache afterwards.
*Working at the same place as Shallow Man and how interesting that's been.
*Billy the bookcase says hello.
*Thanksgiving with my entire family -- so much fun.
*Finishing my Christmas shopping early because I actually knew, for once, what I wanted to get for Shallow Man weeks in advance, and I still managed to surprise him a little bit.
*ROCK BAND. And Lego Rock Band.
*Finishing a 20-page paper in less than 24 hours.
*Having major scares at Stake Conference.
*Baby, our car, finally breaking down. Borrowing Bertha from my cousin. (Thanks again!)
*The adventure to Temple Square and breaking Kat's screen.
*Getting surprised on Christmas with an iPod touch.
*Getting released from Primary without 1) asking for it, 2) moving out of the ward, 3) having a baby or 4) getting a new calling. I still think this might be unprecedented in our ward.
*Extreme Jenga.
*An amazing New Year's Eve party.

This, of course, is in addition to all the late nights with the Smiths, hanging out with other good friends, long conversations with KEY, getting my Kat back, hiring all my friends, great movies and good fun (I especially enjoyed "Up" and "Star Trek") and good books (mostly re-reads, though). So, all in all, not a horrible year, even though I've had better.

Now let's just hope that 2010 can beat its predecessor. I'm looking forward to it.


I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of things here. Just know that if I haven't mentioned something it doesn't necessarily mean I didn't enjoy it. I probably did, in point of fact, but my brain, while it holds an amazing number of things, still does not do everything.