So, finally something to report health-wise. No, no weight gain. No rise in blood pressure. No diabetes, so no further sticky sweet gak consumption required. But I have reached a new low where iron is concerned. I started out at 40, which is lower than ideal but apparently no cause for concern. Since then I have managed to drop to 12. Oops. It explains a LOT actually; the eternal exhaustion, the breathlessness, the inability to stay awake past 11am or to concentrate on… pretty much anything. YAY there’s a reason! The cause would be a combination of diluted blood, not eating enough, and very rarely wanting to take up valuable stomach real estate with red meat, which I’m not overly fond of anyway.

So to pay for this lack of respect for my carnivorous roots, I now get to take iron supplements for the remainder of the incubation period. Apparently they may cause constipation and will make my poo black. Oh the new levels of excitement we are reaching.

Speaking of excitement, Sam and I attended our first antenatal class this week. It was, as expected, not my cup of tea. Our ‘educator’ is a little too adversarial for my liking, and one wonders how she of the ‘challenge everything you are told’ mantra will deal with being challenged herself. Still, she seems nice enough, and definitely not boring. BIG class though, most of whom are foreigners – we had representatives from India, China, Poland, South Africa, and a handful of Brits. I suppose if we were taking classes in Parnell the group makeup would be somewhat different: less ethnically diverse and probably wearing more expensive clothing.

Next week we get the labour and birth class, with the first birthing video HOORAH. Apparently she won’t force anyone to watch it, but I will sit on Sam and pry his eyes open if he tries to wuss out. I do hope my aggressively relaxed attitude to the birthing process won’t cause any lectures to come my way. Basically, as long as the thing comes out alive, and I come out alive, I don’t give a rat’s how it’s achieved. Sounds reasonable to me!

Other stuff this week: mother showed up with a sack of clothing. She’s been on a Trademe spree and effectively tripled our haul of pink clothing in a single visit. So much pink. I think we’re beyond set for the first few months now. Clothes-wise anyway. Definitely pink-clothes-wise.

Sam started clearing out the spare room last weekend. He got as far as moving a bookcase and sorting out half the books. I pointed out to him he only has a handful of weekends left where he’s not working (and fewer where I’ll be in any state to help), so hopefully he will get everything done in time. Or, you know, wrath of Karen.

This week we also got the border / decals for the room. Since we can’t paint, we’re just sticking removable / repositionable crap on the walls. While I love the decals from Blik, we went with a cheaper option, being cheap as we are. We eventually settled on an animal theme that is unnervingly cute and does not involve any princesses or unicorns. I figure any spawn of mine will have to love animals from day 1 in order to survive, so might as well start off SURROUNDED by them. Mother says “what if the kid has an allergy to cats?” and I say “there are shots you can have”. Me Best Mother Ever.

In summary:

Me = keeping well.

Spawn = wiggly.

I know I don’t talk about work that much – mostly because the subset of people interested in my world who are ALSO interested in my work is kinda miniscule. I can’t even sum up my job in a nice little sentence universally understood by the majority. I can be all ‘I am a content manager’, which dad interprets as ‘a manager who is content’ – but that still doesn’t tell you much about what I do.

Here’s what I do:

• design stuff
• write stuff
• reformat stuff
• edit stuff
• analyze stuff
• do stuff with stuff

Basically it’s design (graphic / document / web / interface / corp id / marketing comms), copywriting & editing, helping out with the evil that is Word and the lesser evil that is Powerpoint, SEM/SEO and… stuff. Are you any the wiser? No you are not.

Anyway, yesterday we went offsite for the day to celebrate a milestone: 10k user profiles in our system. Even though I suggested we all take part in a knitting circle, we ended up going tree-course-thingy-doing and quad biking. And by we, I mean the boys. I took photos, chased lizards, tried to get an antisocial cat to talk to me and basked in the sun.

Their day

It was actually a great deal of fun, even from my ground-bound perspective. Possibly less fun from the perspective of the guy who rolled his quad bike and broke his collar bone, or the one who drove into a tree, or the one who rode over his own leg. I missed all that good stuff though as I couldn’t follow the bikers, and nobody entertained me by falling out of trees. I did ask them to recreate the more exciting events for me, but surprisingly had no takers.

My point is, it was a fun day with no drama and no ego, and vastly different to the last team building day I attended. That one resulted in over half the ‘team’ quitting or being fired in the following months. One even quit that night. That is why I appreciate the happy geeky family that are my workmates.

The best part though (besides the lizards)? Even though I had fun just pottering round taking photos and eating BBQ, I got presented with a voucher for East Day Spa – so I can go get fat pregnant people massages and foot rubs to make up for not being able to fall out of trees or off quad bikes. Completely unnecessary but so thoughtful and very much appreciated. And that is why my work is more betterer than yours!

My day

We have a new door. One you can’t see through. Holy crap people, it’s only been 3 years!

Today I had to go do my latest round of blood (etc) tests. I’m trying to go to a different Medlab each time, so I get to see new places and meet new people. Also because this time I had to hang around for an hour, and there’s SFA to do in Panmure or middle of nowhere Ellerslie. So today, Queen St!

On an unrelated note, I took my scratched and stood-on specs (one of my beloved felines knocked them onto the floor beside my bed during the night, and I found them with my FOOT) to OPSM for tightening while I waited. Seems they can’t fix the scratches, oh the humanity, so it could be time to upgrade. It has been 3 years I guess, and I did find some sexy sexy frames while I was wandering around blindly waiting to get the specs back. 2008 will just be the year of Spending Lots Of Money.

So the new test for today was the Polycose screening (gestational diabetes indicator thingy), where one gets to drink 300ml of warm semi-flat lemon flavoured soft drink (called ‘carbo’ – right…), wait an hour without eating, chewing gum or smoking, then have half the blood in one’s body drawn for testing. The stuff is still repeating on me. I am resigned to heartburn, but it seems kind of evil to have it caused by a required freakin diagnostic test, especially when it’s going to screw up my ability to eat anything substantial for the rest of the day. AND THUS NOURISH THE SPAWN.

Anyway, if I fail it I have to do another one, except the next one is 2 hours of testing and requires prior fasting. So I better pass. Today blood was taken from my right arm for the first time – apparently my vein there is problematic and not spurty enough, based on the muttering of the rather grumpy young lady doing the tests.

Other notable occurrences? This week mother dropped off the buggy thing, as you can see from the really big picture of the buggy thing (with teddy!) It’s kinda huge. It’s surprisingly maneuverable, yay, but big – so I can use it to be that annoying person on the bus who makes everyone else MOVE ASIDE FOR BABY. Sweet. Cats haven’t had a go in it yet, but it’ll happen because it’s all about them and they own everything that dares enter the house. But they’re not evil manipulative criminal masterminds. Not at all.

I also finally bought some linen n’ junk. Although sometime soon we may actually have to find something to put the linen on / in. Baby steps! Ha. Baby. It’s cute as far as sheet sets go. There’s like… chickens and cows and junk on it.

I am keeping well. Except for the disgusting heartburn and the fact I pretty much look like a fertility idol when naked. You don’t want to picture that, but you’re doing it right now, aren’t you? Here’s a pictorial aid in case you drew a momentary and completely involuntary blank.

Spawn is good. Wiggly. It has this thing where it butts some part of itself (I don’t know which, it all feels lumpy) up against my side under my ribs, and stays there creating a bump and uncomfortable pressure. If I poke it it’ll poke back a few times then eventually slither away. SLITHER. I can actually feel it roll around and stuff now, instead of just random jabbing. It’s freaky. I mean, beautiful and natural. But also freaky.

It’s purty and sparkly and new.

I made the decision on this lappytop in possibly record time (for me). So only a few weeks of weighing up every possible option, as opposed to several months. Maybe I’m getting better, but it’s possibly a one-off lapse.

Anyways, I got me a one of these: Dell Vostro 1500. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s basically the small business equivalent of the Inspiron 1520. But the Vostro does not come in pink, alas.

So why this one? Far be it from me to admit to extreme cheapness, but it was the best system I found for only slightly more than the upper limit of what I was willing to pay. Basically I needed something meaty enough to handle the demands of my workings (design is something of a computron whore), as well as capable of running the occasional post-2002 game, should I feel the need to blow stuff up (I frequently do). So it had to have a decent graphics card, and that is of course where the extra moneys ended up going (Nvidia 8600M GT if you care). Handily Dell had a special on the 1500 – with free increased RAM and free shipping – so I made a snap decision. Over three days. Three snappy days!

I won’t do a boring technical review. I will say it’s a hefty wee beast, but since it’s essentially a desktop replacement I shouldn’t be lugging it around everywhere anyway. I’m happy with it, even getting used to the evil that is Vista. Apparently monitor quality is touch and go on el Vostrono, and I don’t think I got one of the coveted super smooth LG dealios, but if this is what people consider ‘grainy’ then they are fussy mcfussersons and should come check out the ghosting on my desktop’s LCD. They would cry.

So I’m sprawled here on the couch with a wireless keyboard, slowly turning into this guy. It is so much more comfortable than scrunching over at the desk – although possibly less so when Bee insists my lap is his and I am forced to accomodate him, keyboard, mouse, occasionally Fizzgig and usually Sam.

I picked up a sleeve for it for cheaps, while I try to find a bag that isn’t ugly as heck, HUGENORMOUS or costs a millionty dollars. I very much like the Crumpler range (and attitude), but unfortunately the price range can’t be described as ‘extremely cheap’, so I keep looking.

Then the next step will be prettying it up somewhat. Hello Kitty? Maybe not. But these guys have options! I just need to find something perfikt. Or someone who keeps whining about being bored can find the perfikt look for me! Hooray!