Just dropped off two huge garbage bags of packing peanuts at a local ups store. A couple of customers were just wrapping up as I handed the bags over to the employee, she said: “Peanuts for Recycling?” I said “Yup.” The female customer asked “are you going to throw those away?”

I just… wow. First off, why would anyone bring two huge bags in to a store just to trash them (and wouldn’t the store charge me then?) and secondly, we had just verbally confirmed they were going to be reused/recycled.

Ah well. Guess we all have our moments.

I never thought of the ultrasound as being what it actually is. As we went into the appointment I was thinking “woot! We get to find out the sex and see actual features, versus the 21mm peanut-sized first ultrasound.” Of course the medical reason is to make sure everything is there and healthy.

So they go around and document everything with pictures and measurements. In fact we have to go back because out of all 30-50 measurements our daughter (still weird to type that!) wasn’t in a good position for an accurate cerebral measurement.

The entire time I’m desperately trying to make out more than the basics on the monitor… trying so hard I’m somehow suppressing my breathing and blinking (obviously, to a degree.) I tell ya, the expert skill of the person (nurse, doctor, idk?) getting the scans was blindingly clear. About the only time I was 100% sure of what I was seeing over those 45+ minutes was when we were looking at the spinal cord, the head, or the heart.

Was hoping to post pictures and possibly a video but the angles just aren’t that great. So while we found out the sex in about 3 seconds we never did get a great shot of the face. Also was surprised they used 2D ultrasound for almost everything, seemed like 3D was almost just an extra, although we did end up trying it too.

I asked if this was average or on the harder side and pretty much got a scowl from the otherwise very friendly pro. Think we just got a tad unlucky, our daughter was comfortable and wasn’t gonna move, and that was that.

Now, to decide on a name!

When I was in high school I really sucked at doing homework. Not necessarily accuracy but speed. It took me quite a while but I figured out why. Music.

Particularly loud music. I actually don’t listen to much nowadays, but every now and then I decide to start something up. I’m not sure how to relate this but I am not a casual listener. From when I start I fuss around a little bit until I find a song that… grabs me. Then I turn it up a little. A little more. Keep on going.

My other senses begin to subtly shut down but I don’t notice. Must turn it up more. If it’s a good piece I like to turn it up so loud it makes me blink my eyes and smile at the sheer volume. When I was young music this loud was an outlet for the overflowing raw emotions; the music literally pounded me into submission. Into a state where I could be normal.

Now that I’m a relative old fart I don’t need music to beat me into shape and make me normal. Yet my core still responds to it. If I’m listening to a piece with emotional power I shut down other senses and get a pressure in my chest. Sometimes my skin tingles. Often when I just begin listening I must close my eyes – it is the oddest thing to have such a powerful chemical reaction that the logical parts of my brain have zero control over. (Not saying emotion is rare or new, only that such a strong reaction occurring with music having no specific attachment to an event is unexpected) I literally cannot open my eyes for a little while I am “taken.”

Throughout high school I would not have events as I describe here, but music still gripped me. I ended up spending almost as much time fiddling with which song is playing and the volume as I did actually thinking about homework. So while my classmates would have about 3 hours of homework a night it was closer to 4 or 5 for me, until I hit senior year and was writing way more on the family computer out in the living room area. Then we achieved a rough parity – some types of work remain astonishingly easy for me and others the complete inverse.

In college I figured out the music was distracting me and I didn’t need it as much, so I switched to listening to music only while enjoying myself.

Today, I wish I had more music in two categories: the rare type I can actually kind of have in the background (cannot have lyrics and must be very low key,) and the charged type I can revitalize myself with every month or two. Sometimes I forget how much music is a part of me.

First off I just made a post over at markandsarareinmuth.com, so read that first! As I said over there I finally got on top of things, and my registrations with godaddy.com were expiring. I chose them initially because of price (years ago,) but lately I really haven’t liked their ads or policies relating to privacy or disputes. With many issues it was time to find a new registrar.

Initially I discounted by then-current webhost, nearlyfreespeech.net, because I don’t like having all my eggs in one basket. I was contemplating gandi.net because of their excellent privacy policy and dispute resolution, not to mention prices, but I couldn’t pull the trigger due to them being in France. In very small amounts because I have zero knowledge of french laws, but also because I didn’t like the idea of all requests having an extra 150ms added on to them. Yes, I could have used DNS servers in the states but meh… it just didn’t click.

I ended up using NearlyFreeSpeech because they also have excellent privacy/dispute/prices, are here in the US, and their private domain registration is a notch above anyone else’s that I researched. (yeah there is a difference, however small it may be.) I highly recommend NFS, they are perfect for getting your feet wet since you only pay for what you actually use (there is no monthly fee.) Arguably they might be perfect for high bandwidth material too, but I don’t want my registrar and web host to be the same company, so I moved to MediaTemple, whom I’ve been very happy with when I’ve used it on behalf of my clients. Plus retailmenot.com has a code for 20% off for the life of the service (!)

This summer I’m going on a mammoth road trip and will probably get a new camera for it, and I wanted gobs of bandwidth so I could throw as much online as I felt like without thinking about what it might cost.

Thirty-seven calls, 24 emails in and 21 out in the process of closing on our first home. 37 is not counting callbacks but does include a few business calls; 46 is the number with callbacks. What a day!

At one point I asked our broker what he thought of a new development and he said he had literally never seen anything like it. But that nowadays we’re in uncharted territory so that’s been happening more often lately. Lenders are getting uptight about things they didn’t use to care about.