Jacket, where are you?

Still no sign of the lost jacket. Still no sign of any kind of compensation from the daycare either. How frustrating!

I've reached the point that every day when I pick him up, I'm wondering what item of clothing has been lost. The other day when I picked him up he wasn't wearing his shoes. The girl who was in the room with him said she thought they might be in his bag. Thought...might be...not good things to say when talking about the shoes of a toddler. I did find them, thankfully enough. I was going to be one pissed off person if in the course of a month our daycare had lost both my son's jacket and shoes.

Do other daycares lose personal items, or is it just mine?

CNN.com - Recovered digital photos show tsunami wave

This is a little freaky. I can't imagine what it would have been like to see all that water coming toward me and being powerless to do anything.

It's also sad that they had no warning, literally didn't know what hit them.

My 43 (or 8) Things

Check them out here.

Things seem to be coming together

It's my day off again! At least I haven't been sick like I was last week. Last Monday was awful.

I made some oatmeal raisin cookies this morning. Yummy!

Yesterday, Julian and I decided that upon arriving in BA, we're going to rent a temporary apartment for some time whilst we look for permanent housing. I found a pretty nice place that's $500/month for a furnished apartment with all utilities included plus weekly maid service.

I still have a lot of work to do, but we're getting there slowly but surely.

Countdown

Waiting for Baby 2

Some yummy restaurants in Little Rock

I picked up a visitor's guide to Little Rock and found some web sites for restaurants that I like.

So here are a couple:

Bene Vita -- an Italian restaurant in my neighbourhood

Cajun's Wharf -- the times I've been here have been mainly for the bar, but the food is good too

Overheard: singing

Enzo: Old McDonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-O. On his farm he had a dinosaur. A roar roar here, a roar roar here, everywhere a roar roar. Old McDonald had farm. E-I-E-I-O.

I had no idea that dinosaurs were farm animals.

It's official

I'm having another baby. Went to the doctor this afternoon for my exam. Got all checked out, had my blood drawn, and got the first ultrasound and got to see that tiny little heart beating inside me.



By the way, the head is on the right side in this. I know it's a little hard to make anything out of the image. I showed this to Enzo and I got a quiet "Wow" from him. I know it's too early for him to understand anything.

I'm 9 weeks, 6 days pregnant and my official EDD is 9/15/05. The doctor said everything was looking good. Yay!

Feeling better today

It's been over 24 hours since my last trip to the bathroom due to vomiting or diarrhea. Woo-hoo! Enzo has also been diarrhea-free today. Who knows what happened yesterday? Julian was fine through it all and still is.

Enzo and I had a relaxing day at home today. We played, watched PBS, and went out for a bit this afternoon before we had to pick up Julian from work.

Here's Enzo with the tractor outside the Museum of Discovery. He's wearing his beloved sweater that his grandma in Argentina made for him.



Did I mention that the weather today was beautiful? In the mid-70s this afternoon. Nice enough for the kiddo to wear shorts and for me to dig out some capris.

Tomorrow is my first prenatal checkup. I'm a little anxious. It seems like I've been waiting forever for this to come. I've been trying my best to eat well, have been taking my OTC prenatal vitamins, and am quitting smoking (I'm down to about 2 cigarettes a day on average from around a pack a day). I just have this nagging worry in the back of my mind that since everything went so well with the first that there's got to be something that goes wrong this time. I really really hope that's not the case. I guess this is normal worrying that will be soothed somewhat after my appointment tomorrow.

Happy Valentine's Day to me...

Arrgh. I survived another work week, made it to Monday and was excited by the start of my weekend.

I shouldn't have been. I'm not sure if what I have is a stomach bug or food poisoning, but either way, I've been miserable. I woke up several times overnight to run to the bathroom and the fun has continued today. Julian stayed home today with me. I haven't been able to keep anything more substantial than chicken broth down.

Then, to add to the excitement, Enzo also had diarrhea this afternoon. What a day.

I've spent the majority of the day in my bed, either asleep or just lounging while watching PBS. The rest of the day has been en route to the bathroom.

That's my big news. Sucks that it had to happen on Valentine's Day. I'm not seeing anything romantic on tonight's agenda.

Work over the weekend was okay. Sunday was a little busier than last week. Our supervisor left partway through, left me in charge and gave us all his cell phone number. Nothing happened. We ran out of cases to work about 15 minutes before we closed, and we answered 42 calls. 100% service level. I'm still not sure why we are open on Sundays.

Hopefully my day off tomorrow will be less eventful than today has been, and I can crawl out of bed before 4 pm.

River wins!

River Plate 3
Colon 2

Another Saturday at work

I'm listening to a little music and doing some surfing, trying to postpone the inevitable: I have to work today.

We've been told we can listen to music while we work, particularly on weekends, as long as it's at a low level, so I've packed a few CDs. I'm taking Chau Soda from Soda Stereo, Outlandos d'Americas a Police tribute, and Colores Santos from Cerati/Melero. Hopefully the day passes a little quicker than it did last week.

Rebuild the Wall

Okay, okay, it's bluegrass. But I have a strange fascination. My husband had this. I'll say now that he's a huge Pink Floyd fan. I'm not so much into Floyd, but I really liked this. It seemed almost more accessible to me. Weird.

Jacket update

Still no sign of the jacket. I found out today who they think may have taken it home, and I hate to say it, but I'm afraid we may never see it again.

So, if we don't see you again...jacket, you've served us well. May you rest in peace.

It's Friday!

But today is my Wednesday. Bleh. I had forgotten how much working the whole weekend sucked.

Today is payday for us. It always amazes me how the money seems to be spent before it's even deposited in my accounts. I guess that's part of the joy of being an adult.

Things have been relatively uneventful around here. My biggest excitement this week has been the disappearance of Enzo's jacket at daycare. Hopefully that remains the biggest excitement, unless Ed McMahon wants to show up at my door with a cardboard check for $10 million.

My days are all messed up

since my "weekend" is on Monday and Tuesday. This doesn't feel like Thursday to me, since it's my second workday this week. I'm going to need some time to get used to this schedule.

A bit of news from the work front: today I was selected by my peers as "team captain." It doesn't mean a whole lot in the big scheme of things. A meaningless title I can put on my CV. A little extra work and no extra pay. But it did feel nice to know that my co-workers think that highly of me and my knowledge.

In other work news, I'm getting myself out of the attendance hole. I don't think I mentioned all this before. My department functions on an "occurrence" basis as far as attendance is concerned. Absences and tardies are assigned a full or partial occurence based on the amount of time you're late or leave early, up to one full occurrence per day missed. One is supposed to be notified by ones supervisor each time an occurrence is issued, and when one reaches 6 occurrences, will receive a written warning. Note the emphasis on supposed. I'll admit, I've had some issues with tardiness. That doesn't excuse what my supervisor did to me. Back in November, I got a written warning about my tardiness. At that time, I was advised that I had 4.25 occurrences, an okay number, since it takes 10 to be terminated. That is the last time until 17 January that I was advised of receiving an occurrence or the number I had accumulated. I moved to a new team in January and got a new supervisor. It was on my first official day on the team of this new supervisor that I was advised that I have 9.5 occurrences and was going to receive a final written warning about my tardiness. And oh, by the way, you're one absence away from termination. It turns out that my previous supervisor had miscalculated my occurrences in November and that instead of having only 4.25, I actually had 7.25. Super! So, anyway...the attendance policy also gives one the opportunity to "win-back" 1 occurrence with 30 days of perfect attendance, no absences, no tardies. My 30 days will end on 13 February. If I can make it to work on time tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday I'll have one occurrence subtracted from my total. I'm almost there.

I got a big packet from my insurance company earlier in the week with a bunch of pregnancy literature, including a free copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting. I now own all 3 editions. That was a pretty neat surprise. I go to the doctor next Wednesday for my first prenatal visit.

We're in the final stages of getting my husband's book ready to shop around to agents. I've enjoyed reading it over the last year. I would tell you about it, but he's been kind of weird about me blogging his book, afraid someone's going to steal his idea or something. As soon as I can get his permission to share, I will.

We're still working on the move to Buenos Aires. I'm more overwhelmed than ever, since the plan is now to move prior to the birth of baby 2. That's pushing my move date up by about 4 months. I really need to get cracking if I'm going to make this happen.

Take off your pants and jacket

Ants

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I hate ants. We peacefully coexisted until we moved into our current apartment, though. I only saw them when I was outside. That's where ants live and belong, right?

Apparently they also inhabit our apartment. I've had recurring bouts with ants since we moved in here. I've seen them in our kitchen, both bathrooms, our living room and our dining room. I've been complaining about the ants since we moved in here over 3 years ago, and my complaints have fallen largely on deaf ears. I was once told that since no one else living around me was complaining about ants, that I must have brought them with me when I moved in. What?! There's no way I could have brought the number of ants I've seen with me. They'd probably fill multiple ant farms.



They seem to come from somewhere down behind/below the dishwasher and around the bathtub faucets. In the other areas of the house, I have no idea. I just want them gone. What do I have to do to make our apartment management stop playing the blame game and get an exterminator in here?

I suppose at this point it doesn't matter that much, since we won't be here that long. But I suppose it will sound funny to a real estate agent in Buenos Aires...what are you looking for? Oh, 2 rooms, ant-free...

By the way, what spurred this: I ate some yogurt for breakfast this morning. I did not immediately throw away my container. I left it on my desk. I went to take a short nap, which turned out to be 3 hours. I came back to the desk to find my yogurt container with ants inside it. Arrgh!

Things that make you go hmm...

I took this morality-based politics test at Moral Politics.

According to this, I'm a Socialist.

The following items best match your score:

1. System: Socialism
2. Variation: Extreme Socialism
3. Ideologies: International Socialism, Activism
4. US Parties: No match.

Little Rock: Lessons in civil rights history - Feb 7, 2005

Hmmm...I had forgotten about Central as a tourist destination. Maybe it's the fact that some of my friends went to school there.

I wrote a paper for a US History class about the Central High desegregation. I was in the main library for days with the microfilm machine.

Bit of an update

sunrise- saturday
Originally uploaded by lacarita.

I worked all weekend long. It was one of the most boring weekends ever. I don't understand why we are even open on Sunday. There were 4 of us who worked on Sunday and we took about 34 calls and worked 120 tickets. Over 8 hours. Imagine the boredom.

I guess the one upside is that I got to see (and photograph) this gorgeous sunrise on Saturday that I wouldn't have seen if I didn't have to work.

Yesterday I had Mexican for lunch. A cheese enchilada, a taco, bean tostada, beans, and rice. I also got cheese dip, salsa and chips. It was really good, but filling. I ate that for lunch and then was so full I didn't eat dinner.

I'm off today and tomorrow. Enzo is home with me today. I felt kind of guilty since I didn't get to spend much time with him over the weekend.

O'Reilly Network: Stewart Butterfield on Flickr

This is a pretty neat article/interview. I'm a member of the Flickr group that they talk about, squared circle. Some of my photos are in the poster. I'm addicted to squared circle.

Not digging myself right now

This pregnancy thing sucks. I don't really mean that. I'm excited about having Baby 2 on the way, but what it's doing to my body is driving me crazy.

First is the fatigue. It's not every day, just most days. I would probably take a nap every day if I could find a nice quiet place at work. I'm going to bed between 9 and 10 on most nights, which is earlier than I went to bed as a kid. Ugh. The nights I don't go to bed at that time is only because I've fallen asleep on the futon while watching TV.

Second, the mood swings. I cry over commercials on TV. Yesterday I was telling Julian that I wanted to have lunch with him and it made me cry. There's also the anger, frustration, depression...and that's just from the last 10 minutes. I don't even know what to expect from me at the moment.

Third would be my strange relationship with food. I'm having cravings. I wanted KFC a week ago. Yesterday it was potato cakes from Arby's. Today was pasta with mozzarella cheese on it, no sauce. Tomorrow -- who knows? I'm also somewhat nauseous and my hunger level can go from starving to non-existent in less than 5 minutes. This drives Julian crazy. I'm talking about how I want x food, but then a few minutes later when he asks me if I want to go eat at the restaurant where I can get that, I'm not hungry anymore.

Last is my incredible expanding abdomen. I'm not that far along, but my pants are already getting tight. The oh-so-cute pants I got with my Christmas money now have an unsightly bulge along the zipper mid-abdomen. And what kills me is that since Christmas, I've gained maybe 2 pounds. I remember reading somewhere that on secondary pregnancies, you'll start to show earlier because of your uterus being "stretched" or something. I imagine that's what's happening to me. Fun. I guess it's a good thing I kept my maternity clothes. I know that I at least have a few pairs of black pants I can salvage and start wearing if the need arises.

Other than these things, life goes on as usual around here. Enzo is growing so fast. He sings, he "reads", he counts to 20 and says his ABCs. It seems like just yesterday that I was coming home from the hospital with a tiny little bundle who didn't do much more than eat, sleep and poop. He still does those things...and much more.

I think I'm going to lie down on the futon for a bit.

Blowing out my candles

Blowing out my candles
Originally uploaded by lacarita.

Here I am on Saturday, blowing out the candles on my cake. Enzo is assisting. In the background are my mom, one of my nieces, and my sister. My husband was the photographer.

My Day Off

I'm at home today with Enzo. I didn't take him to school today, so we've been hanging out together. I played the Pirates! game earlier and I've also been working on completing the proofreading of Julian's book. Enzo has been watching PBS and playing, sometimes with me and sometimes by himself. We're going to go eat with Julian in a few minutes. We may go see the "Big Eagle" as well.

I heard on the radio earlier that we have a chance of snow tonight. I think it's supposed to be a mix of rain and snow/wintry precipitation. There's a winter storm watch in the northern part of the state. I wonder if there'll be a run on the grocery stores as is the norm when there's any chance of snow in the forecast. I guess we'll see.

I finally found a way to get my Audioscrobbler "Now Playing" information to display over in my sidebar. Only problem is that Audioscrobbler's submissions are so backed up that the music I'm listening to now isn't being immediately processed and I appear as if I'm offline. I guess it'll catch up eventually. I've been listening to Astor Piazzolla and a Cerati/Melero CD -- Colores Santos.