Ninja Skillz

Since I accomplished the feat of burning boiling water (more on that soon,) we had the window cracked open last night. Somehow, a mosquito-looking insect made its way inside.

With Mr. Miyagi-precision, Jeff instinctively caught it even before I could yelp, “Can you get that?”

He beamed with pride and said, “Were you impressed with my ninja-like skills?”

Rolling my eyes, I said profoundly, “Uh, killing a mosquito is hardly ninja-like.”

“First of all, it was a moth, not a mosquito. Did you see the wings on that thing? And secondly, yes, moth catching is very ninja-like.”

And to think, I was foolhardy enough to doubt my husband’s ninja skillz.

Happy April Fool’s Day!

I’m not a prankster person myself, but I certainly felt like the world was pranking me with the same usual commuting chaos this morning.

I did, however, get a kick out of Google’s April Fool’s pranks.
I’m so gullible, I was like, no way! A custom time stamp? AWESOME. haha. E-flux capacitor? Brilliant.

I’m one of the dumbasses that believed them!

Google’s Gmail rolled out a fake “custom time” feature, which lets users send e-mails into the past and consequently never miss important deadlines again. The new feature “utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality,” Google wrote.

While we’re talking about jokes, there’s this wildly popular blog on WordPress called Stuff White People Like. (I’m not linking to it, sorry.) One of the older entries is, Asian Girls.

I mean, I laughed out loud…at first.

For the most part, the blog is meant to be humorous (I think.) But seriously, when you’re generalizing and calling people’s kids’ annoying hybrids, it’s surely a disturbing joke.

Um, aren’t we ALL hybrids? And please, don’t even venture to the comments section. Brace yourself if you do.

Should white guy / asian girl marry, they produce hybrids that are atheistically pleasing, but are very annoying. This practice is also a means by which white people can catch up to the asian peoples in the population race, as most of the hybrids often act white rather than asian.

Yikes.

Easter Lily trivia

Beyond the stupid cheese and debra barone post, one of the most popular posts on here is the Easter Lily post. And since it’s the first day of Spring, I thought I’d list some mindless, but fun facts on Easter Lilies for those that find their way here. They must be true because I found them on the web 😉

First and foremost, people: Lily, the flower, has only one L.

L-i-l-y

Outside of work, I’m not usually the grammar or spelling police, but I had to get it out.

Ok, now that I’ve got that off my chest, here we go:

• Since the beginning of time, lilies have played significant roles in allegorical tales concerning the sacrament of motherhood. Ancient fables tell us the lily sprang from the milk of Hera, the mythological Queen of Heaven. Roman mythology links the lily to Juno, queen of the gods. Legend has it that while Juno was nursing her son, Hercules, her excess milk fell from the sky. Some of this milk remained above the earth to form the stars; the rest fell to earth and turned into lilies. In early Christian art, the lily was a symbol of purity because of its delicacy of form and its snow white color. Biblical legend tells us that the lily flower came from Eve’s tears when she and Adam were banished from the Garden of Eden.
• The Easter Lily originated in Japan. 95% of all Easter Lily bulbs for the potted Easter Lily market are grown on 10 farms along the California/Oregon border.
• Lilies are often called the “White-Robed Apostles of Hope”. Lilies were discovered in the Garden of Gethsemane after Christ died on the cross. During the Easter season, churches line their altars and envelop their crosses with a multitude of Easter Lilies, to signify the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the hope of eternal life.
• The Easter Lily (Lilium longiforum) is native to the Ryukyu Islands of southern Japan, as well as the islands of Okinawa, Amani, and Erabu. Although Easter lilies came to England in 1819, commercial bulb production initially started in Bermuda in 1853. The Bermuda lily industry was devastated in 1898 by a virus infestation. Around the turn of the century, the Japanese took over the annual growing and exportation of Easter Lilies to the United States, and continued to dominate the U. S. export market until the start of World War II.
• Current U. S. production began with a World War I soldier, Louis Houghton, who brought a suitcase full of hybrid lily bulbs to the South coast of Oregon in 1919. Houghton freely distributed bulbs to his horticultural friends and neighbors. With World War II, the Japanese source of bulbs was abruptly cut off. As a result, the value of lily bulbs sky-rocketed and many who were growing the lilies as a hobby decided to go into business. The Easter Lily bulbs at that time were called “White Gold,” and growers everywhere attempted to cash in on the crop. By 1945, there were about 1,200 growers producing bulbs up and down the Pacific coast, from Vancouver, Canada to Long Beach, California
• This lily is the traditional flower of spring and is highly regarded as a joyful symbol of beauty, hope, and life. Each holiday is marked by cherished traditions that bring joy, comfort, and warmth, and provide continuity from one generation to the next. Easter has its share of traditions: egg decorations and hunts; gift baskets and chocolate bunnies, sunrise church services, parades, and, of course, the Easter Lily. For many, the beautiful trumpet-shaped white flowers symbolize purity, virtue, innocence, hope and life — the spiritual essence of Easter.
• The cultivar most commonly grown for U.S. markets is the “Nellie White.” It is named for a lily grower’s wife and has large, white, fragrant trumpet-shaped flowers.
• Despite a sales window of only two weeks, Easter lilies are the fourth largest crop in wholesale value in the U.S. potted plant market, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
• One of my BFFs just had a gorgeous baby girl named Lily!

and here is some Easter trivia:

• There is an Easter Peep eating contest held each year in Sacramento, California.
• A commercial laying hen can now produce up to 280 eggs each year
• Each year witnesses the making of nearly 90 million chocolate bunnies.
• I can single-handedly consume enough Easter candy to feed a small village.

Look alike meter

I was perusing some friends’ myspace pages tonight and I saw Erin’s look alike meter, so I thought I’d play along.

Check out our results:

I should whip this out the next time a stranger asks me if Jackson’s mine. But then again, this is the same program that claimed that I look like Barry White.

Happy Intercalary Day

Happy Friday everyone. It’s February 29th which means it’s Leap Day!
Here are some fun facts while I plug away at my deadlines.

According to infoplease:

Leap years are added to the calendar to keep it working properly. The 365 days of the annual calendar are meant to match up with the solar year. A solar year is the time it takes the Earth to complete its orbit around the Sun—about one year. But the actual time it takes for the Earth to travel around the Sun is in fact a little longer than that—about 365¼ days (365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds, to be precise). So the calendar and the solar year don’t completely match—the calendar year is a touch shorter than the solar year.

And how’s this for exclusivity:

• According to the Honor Society of Leap Year Babies, about 200,000 Americans were born on Leap Day
• only 0.0684% of the world’s population are Leapers

Leap Year Day Babies

per 1461 people… 1
per million people… 684
in the USA… about 200,000
in the world… about 4 million

Procrastination Meme

Since procrastination can be considered an art form, here’s a meme on 100 things you didn’t wanna know (thanks Susie):

How Not to Greet a Sleep Deprived Mom

This morning, before a friend even said hello he looked me up and down, and zoned in on my limp, long hair.

Picking up a section of my hair, he studied the length and texture as if I wasn’t in the room. He looked up and smiled and said, “Wow. You look like such a hippie today. Is that the look you were going for?”

Um, yeah. In between the spot cleaning the pee accident on the bed and hastily stuffing my sterilized pump parts into its case, I specifically thought to myself, let’s aim for Janis Joplin today.

Happy Friday!

Racing Stripe

Have I mentioned that Jack has telogen effluvium?

Don’t worry. It’s totally normal. In fact, I bet many of you probably had the same thing at his age.

Almost every day, we hear the wisecracks about Jack and Jeff having the same hairline. While we find the hairline similarities amusing, the harder I seem to laugh, the bigger the bald spot gets.

Let me direct your attention to the back of my kid’s head.

Jeff affectionately calls it his racing stripe since the bald patch extends from ear to ear.

Lovely, huh?

Jack will be 4 months in just a few weeks and it seems as he gets older, the more hair he loses. It’s totally normal for kids to be bald on the back of their heads since they spend so much time on laying on their backs.

The fact is, baby hair loss is so normal that Babycenter says that babies often lose their hair during the first six months. About 5 to 15 percent of hair on the scalp is usually in the resting phase at any one time, but stress, fever, or a hormonal change can cause a large number of hairs to stop growing all at once.

I read that we can try to alternate a baby’s sleeping position, but balding happens quite easily, with very little friction along the scalp. Therefore there is little a parent can do except wait.

Beyond the facts, I feel like Jack’s exaggerated head rocking and rooting as he falls asleep in his crib is going to make him completely bald in no time. He shakes his head so hard you’d think he has his own mosh pit in his crib.

There could be worse things than a big bald spot. Yet, with his dark hair, it’s so hard to hide the backside of my temporarily follically-challenged boy.

But never fear, they sell everything for babies. Really, they do. If worse comes to worse, I think we’ll go with the The Bob.

That way, he can match mommy and people at the grocery store won’t ask if he’s mine anymore.

And he wonders why he gets THAT look

Like I do every night, before bed last night I was busy with my nightly pumping ritual and preparing bottles for the kid. After pumping, since we have no dishwasher, I always sanitize the pump parts in our microwave sanitizer. Since I use bottles made by a different manufacturer than the sanitizer, sometimes all the contents don’t fit properly.

In a maniacal frenzy, I was bound to make the 5 bottles, lids and pump parts fit so I only had to sit through one 4-minute microwaving session, rather than two.

I shoved and shook, rattled and rearranged but the damn bottles would not fit. After a little bit of talking and convincing myself that it’d be fine if I microwaved the overfilled sanitizer, of course my smart ass husband walks in to witness this fine animated sequence.

“You alright in here? It looks like you’re herding cats!”

I mean, really? What do you say to that?

Playlists and packing lists

In between the mad dash to finish a stack of work and put away 3 weeks worth of laundry and crossing things off my packing list before we leave at 2am tonight, I remembered how imperative it is for me to prepare a playlist for the roadtrip.  Because you know, some things are just THAT important.

The whole playlist significance stems from our many roadtrips from driving back and forth when Jeff and I did the long distance thing twice and then of course, with the many drives down to Va.  If you’re familiar with longass roadtrips, especially through rural Va., you know how Godawful the radio can be.  So, yes, playlists are important for our sanity.   Back in the day, we did mix tapes <sigh>. About 6-7 years ago when I first moved up here, I began burning cds for our playlists.  But now, in the age of digital convenience and ipods, playlists live in infamy within our itunes library.

So here I am, updating my iPod with a new playlist for our trip home to Va.  I should mention that Jack appreciates music that makes him move.  In fact, Jack gets a big kick out of Soulja Boy’s song and dance 😉

Anyway, randomly, I remembered that we received a couple of baby cds as gifts.  (The “no crying and wellness” tag words sold me.)  I loaded the cd into the computer and imported the songs, but all I could do was laugh at how much this kid has infiltrated our lives, INCLUDING the sacred playlists.  So, in between Jeff’s Johnny Cash tunes and my Justin Timberlake songs, I’ve officially added You are my Sunshine and If You’re Happy and You Know It to our iTunes repertoire.

Yet another indication that there’s no turning back…