Thursday, September 27, 2007

Biggest hour of TV ever?

So tonight at 9pm what will you be watching? Three premieres of three of the biggest shows on television! Will it be Grey's Anatomy? Will it be The Office? Will it be CSI? Or will you be watching Lobster Wars on the Discovery Channel? Even the CW is rolling out something called The Reaper, a show about a kid who's parents sell him to the devil. I mean, that's gotta be worth at least a commercial flip over doesn't it? Even with a TiVo or DVR, you can't watch all of this stuff! I think this might be the biggest hour of television ever. Thank God the MLB playoffs haven't started, or you'd have a baseball game to contend with as well. Of course in a few weeks that will be the case, and then we're all screwed.


I know George Clooney's not on the show anymore, but please, please give ER a chance tonight at 10. It's still the best hospital related show on the tube....and yes I know House and Grey's are hospital shows.

For the record.....I'll be watching The Office. And DVRing Grey's.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Me? Prepared?

Last night was our last childbirth preparation class. After six classes of learning about everything from breathing techniques to massages to breastfeeding, we finally finished. Logic would say that at the completion of a preparation class, you would be prepared.


No fricking way.

Everything we learned was helpful, don't get me wrong. Even though most of it is common sense, it's nice to hear it so that when Rachel goes into labor and is screaming and not very cooperative or coherent I can fall back on this stuff. Might help me keep my wits about me a little better.

Last night we discussed techniques for calming a crying baby. We watched this video called "the happiest baby on the block." Basically it's a video by this doctor who is sort of a baby whisperer. He'd take these crying kids and do his patented "5 S's" and the kids would just fall asleep. It was crazy. The first S was Swaddle, which just cracks me up because you essentially wrap your kid up like it's a mental patient. Apparently the babies like this. The next S is to turn them on their side. He'd take this kid that's wrapped up like a burrito and it'd be on its back still bawling, and he'd just pick it up and tilt it on its side and it was like someone hit the mute button. Kid shut up instantly. Amazing. Next S was swing. Really it's more of a shake, but there's a lot of negative connotations with shaking your baby, so swing sounds safer. Basically you turn the baby into a living bobblehead. Judging from the video, babies love this. I'm a little hesitant to try it, but that first night I'm up at 3am and the baby is crying like somebody shot it, I'm sure I'll try anything.

The fourth S was Shhh-ing the baby. This is not gentle shhhhshing. This was basically making hurricane noises in the babies ear. Weirdest thing I've ever seen. He'd take the baby and make the loudest shhhhssssh you've ever heard and the baby would stop crying. I can't imagine doing this in public. People would think you were insane. That is, unless of course they've seen this video. I bet if you did this in public, you'd get about 5 crazy looks and one mother who'd just smile and say "isn't that video a lifesaver?" I don't know if anyone's done a study on hearing loss in these babies later in life, but man it's funny to see. The last one is sucking, which basically means if the baby's crying, stick something in its mouth and it'll shut up. That one's a no-brainer. I found a video on youtube of this guy....he's crazy. Check it out.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luZlph1mxWg

Friday, September 21, 2007

Office Gripes

If you don't enjoy watching "The Office" on NBC, it's probably because you don't work in an office. Things on that show seem so ridiculous, but in actuality, those things happen every damn day. Want examples?


We have a fridge in our kitchen here at work. It has an ice maker. Someone here decided it didn't make ice well enough or didn't make it fast enough, so they bought a separate ice maker. This ice maker works ok, but it doesn't exactly freeze the ice as well as the fridge freezer does. So when you throw the cubes into the freezer, it just all freezes together in one giant clump that nobody can use. So if you want ice, you have to freeze your damn hands trying to break off a chunk, or risk serious injury by stabbing away at the block with an ice pick. Apparently nobody else has an issue with this, because this whole retarded cycle happens on a daily basis. I don't know if people think fridge ice will make them sick or something, but I drink a 32 oz nalgene bottle of tap water with fridge ice every day, and I've missed exactly one day in almost 2 years here due to illness. That occurred before I started drinking water every day.

We also just hired a lady. I'm not sure what her job is. So far all she's done is read accounting books and ask questions. And print emails. Every email she gets. At least twice a day I walk over to the printer to pick something up, and she's printed out an email. Some of the emails I can understand having a hard copy of....stuff that pertains to certain accounts, policy changes, etc. What I don't understand is printing out an email that says "The building will be closed Nov. 12 in Observance of Veteran's Day," or "so and so will be in late. She had a dr's. appointment," or "please join us in welcoming our newest hire, who starts next monday!" Does this make any sense? Is she keeping a file of all correspondence? If so, isn't that what an INBOX is for? I'm so confused.

Still time to make guesses on the baby's gender, height, weight, and D.O.B....we've had about 12 people make guesses so far...don't be left out!

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

How to be a Beaver

So you want to be a Beaver. Good for you! Here's a few tidbits on how to be a Beaver fan:


Gripe about how we never play anyone tough in the preseason.

Gripe when the Beavs lose bad on the road to tough teams.

Gripe about how the Beavers need to pick a quarterback.

Gripe when they pick one and he does bad.

Bellyache about how Phil Knight supports the Ducks.

Forget that the only reason we still have Pat Casey as a baseball coach is because of Phil Knight.

Gripe about how our coach is "too nice" for football.

Forget that he's never lost a bowl game, whereas the previous coach was 1-2 in bowl games.

Seriously. I hate our fans.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

food makes you do crazy things

Our office is like a 24 hour restaurant. If you miss breakfast, don't sweat it, because the odds are like 2 out of 3 that someone has brought in donuts, or muffins, or cake, or chips and salsa, or vegetables from their garden, or brownies, or cookies, or something. It's amazing. The other day we had a farewell party for a lady leaving, and of course they order a cake the size of Rhode Island.


Not a good situation for Andy, because if there's one person on the planet who hates to see perfectly good, freshly baked cake go to waste, well, to quote Snoop Doggy Dogg, "He is I and I am him." So of course I had a piece. And of course it was delicious. No harm no foul right? Wrong.

So now I've had my one piece, and I'm totally set. However, there's about 60 freshly cut pieces of cake looking at me. I can tell they're judging me too. I want another piece, but I know if I eat it, I'll feel like crap. But it's free cake! And it's good cake too. Very moist. I like how there's only two things are acceptable to call moist: cake and that other thing that we won't mention because this is a family blog. But I find that interesting. Anyways, back to the story....

Of course I have to eat another piece. Of course I felt like crap afterwards. Kristi, one of the very very few people at the office I can relate to, also had a second piece, and also felt the crappiness that comes with doubling up on farewell cake. So we made a pact to keep each other away from the office food. Here's where things just got bizarre.

We pinky swore on this.

We're in our mid to late twenties, and we pinky swore over keeping each other away from cake.

It gets worse.

It was my idea.

A married man with a baby on the way pinky swearing. I don't understand me sometimes. I felt ashamed the rest of the day. Really, I had trouble sleeping that night, wondering what possessed me to pinky swear. I'd never pinky sworn in my life....why now? Why over cake? So yesterday I went to work and apologized to Kristi for putting her in the awkward position of having to pinky swear with me. She laughed, but then she said "well how else would you make a pact about cake? It's not a handshake sort of deal." This is true. Kristi also has this strange thing with high fives. She doesn't do them, so that was out. No handshakes, no high fives......signing a contract in blood seemed a little too extreme as well. So we figured we were either down to a fist pound or a pinky swear. Fist bumping is something you do after hitting a homerun, making a particularly dirty (but funny) joke, or celebrate your team scoring a touchdown. A little too manly for "we're not eating cake anymore!"

I guess there are still times when it's ok for a man to pinky swear.