April 2008 Archives

A couple weeks ago on a morning news show featuring the pope's visit to the white house, the banner across the bottom read: "Who is Pope Benedict XVI?" throughout the entire segment--a topic they were not discussing.

I forgot my headphones when I went to the gym, so was forced to resort to closed captioning. This makes me feel bad for people who rely on that for knowing exactly what's going on, because those typists are just wildly guessing a lot of the time.

Case in point: the closed captioning referred to "A Chorus Line" as "A Corrus Line" repeatedly. Later it was "Core reduce."

More disturbing case in point: closed captioning also rendered CNN anchor Sunny Hostin's name as "Sunny Holocaustin." Holocaustin!

* * *

Overheard conversation in Portland while waiting for brunch:

Guy 1: Wait, so it's "Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell"?

Guy 2: Yeah. Or the other way around.

Guy 1: ...

Guy2: Either way, there's no chickens.

I really didn't mean to leave you guys hanging all that time.  Urban Honking moved to a new server and during the interim we couldn't post any new entries.  Unfortunately that included posting about not being able to post.  The upside to the move, of course, is everything is now new and shiny.  I'm hoping to do a little design renovating around here, too.  So let's just move past the non-self-imposed hiatus for now and focus on all the exciting things I have to tell you.  Like:

That's our son!  All that morning sickness and the baby bump and the squiggling around in my belly--turns out it really is a baby.  With, like, fingers and toes and a mouth and stuff.  I didn't really think about the ultrasound as being a movie, but that's what it is.  We got to watch him kicking and sucking his thumb and making kissy faces against my belly.  It was totally surreal and probably the coolest thing I've ever witnessed.

So: a boy!  We didn't have a preference and wanted to find out, so that was a fun surprise.  I know a lot of people hold out on finding out the gender of the baby so they'll have a "final" surprise at the end, but I kinda figure there will be lots of surprises to come.  I've never once heard anyone say, "Now that the baby's born, everything's so boring and predictable!"  Plus, now we know to buy footballs and trucks for the nursery instead of Disney princesses.  Very helpful. 

If you haven't already, you should stop by and wish Sally a hearty congratulations for giving birth to her own little boy last week.  I'm glad I have an internet friend a few months ahead of me on this one so I can make use of all her birth and baby-raising advice.

I'm hoping to post a lot this week to make up for the weeks of silence.  You can look forward to stories about botched closed captioning and putting the expletives back into the expletive-free cake.  Seriously, the cake was cursed.

Vacations are pretty great. Willow and Mike were wonderful hosts and we basically ate our way through Portland. I think Portland is made up exclusively of delicious dinners, pizza, coffee, donuts, breakfasts, rice pudding, desserts, and assorted treats. You know what they have there? Waffle carts. You know what they make at these waffle carts? Yes: giant crispy waffles folded over an assortment of wonderful fillings and then wrapped up in foil like a gyro so you can eat a waffle with warm maple butter spread and veggie sausages while you are walking. I know!

Even though it rained off and on, the sun did peek through fairly often. That combined with my first visit to IKEA marked my official truce called with the Pacific Northwest. We are now friends again. I'm not packing up and leaving Denver or anything, but I probably shouldn't think about the waffle cart too much for fear that I will rationalize a $200 plane ticket in the near future just to jam one more waffle in my mouth. I'm pregnant and prone to irrational behavior! If I go missing, you'll know where to look.

Every morning while I eat my cereal, I tune into a little television. I used to exclusively watch the news, flipping between several stations, but during a rare all-commercial moment, I skipped around and found "A Baby Story" on TLC. Now guess what I watch for ten minutes every day? The timing of it is such that I usually get to watch the actual birth. Maybe you would think this is a bad choice for breakfast viewing, but whatever. It's all TLC'd and junk so it's pretty non-graphic. Anyway, I think if I watch an average of 5 births a week until I have to give birth, it will dull my reaction to it when it actually happens. Like somehow watching birth stories will count as some sort of actual experience. You do get a good sampling of stories: cesareans, natural births, water births, epidurals. This helps you learn things, like water births look pretty relaxing, and you can sleep through labor on an epidural, and at some point all the women declare that they don't want to do this anymore.

The one thing I have definitely decided on is that people who have their birth stories filmed for national television are cra-zy. At this point, I'm not even sure I want a camera in room, much less a video camera, and MUCH LESS a film crew. So see, I'm learning things about myself already.

Sorry for the birthing tangent. Here is a wonderful picture of a Cap'n Crunch Voodoo Doughnut to clear your head:

It's no waffle cart waffle, but still pretty wonderful.

Off to Portland in the morning. I'll leave you with this banner ad I caught. I think it's my favorite.