amberica | Recent Entries

I don't want to have to hose this place down after allowing strangers in here.
(OK, I should say "mostly" friends-only. There are some public entries, as you can see, and older ones are mostly public, but lately I've been just defaulting everything to FO, so comment to be added and I'll consider you.)

Hi LJ... I found two websites today that I never knew about before - both with discount yarn prices (holla!!) I got a referral code for one of them, so you can get 10% off at The Dizzy Sheep - Merry Christmahannukkwanzakah y'all!

I put the details over on my knitting blog because, you know...YARN!
http://amberjoyknits.blogspot.com/2010/12/inexpensive-yarn-merry-christmas-to-me.html

Me. Right now., originally uploaded by Amber Balch.

Here is a picture of me, which I took about 3 minutes ago, and where you can see that I'm not in the mood to smile because I'm tired, my throat hurts, my ears and jaw and head hurt, and I feel really pretty sick and want to go home, but I have to meet with some vendors who are coming later this afternoon to visit and take me out to dinner, which I also don't want to do.

I bought some new bedding online at Kohls.com yesterday and I ended up getting a really good deal on my stuff. All the bedding is on sale right now, and the prices are hard to beat, but I went to www.retailmenot.com (BEST SITE EVER, I use it all the time when shopping online) and got a coupon code for an additional 15% off my entire purchase, plus the shipping was free for any order over $75!

Item	Orig. Price	Sale Price	My Price
Catalina Bed Set (Queen)	$299.99	$134.99	$114.74
European Square Pillow (I needed a couple, to go with the new Euro shams in the bed set. I've never had Euro pillows before! I might get a couple more later on...)	2@$19.99 =$39.98	2@$9.00 =$18.00	2@$7.65 =$15.30
Heated Mattress Pad (Queen) For winter, not for now! This is an amazing deal. Normally electric blankets, which are cheaper than the mattress pads, go for at least twice this much!	$139.99	$49.00	$41.65
Total	$479.96	$201.99	$171.60

DUDE! Compare the original prices to my final prices, and I got 64% off my total order - over $300 off!! (Well, I forgot to add sales tax, but that doesn't change anything.)

I really hope the bed set works out. I've been looking high and low for a new bedspread or comforter that would be just right, and it's been a lot harder than I expected. I want to use it as an inspiration piece so I can go on to paint and redecorate our bedroom (finally). Really looking forward to that. :)

A joint Harvard and McGill University study of over 170 countries found that only four countries in the world don't have some form of paid leave for new mothers: Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Lesotho, and the United States.

Pathetic.

The FMLA allows most working women 12 weeks off for maternity leave, but this is unpaid and can cause a dip into poverty that may be difficult to get back out of for many women. Some women can't even afford to take their FMLA leave because of the lost pay.

But now there is a chance for this to change. The US House has a bill in the works that would give mandatory paid maternity leave! Read about H.R. 5873: Family Leave Insurance Act of 2008.

Moms Rising has made it easy for you to contact your congressional representative and ask them to support this bill. Just fill in this form, and then be sure to tell your friends!

I know at least a couple people on my Friends List might be interested!

Win the Essential Babywearing Stash from Along for the Ride (one Beco Butterfly, one Hotsling baby pouch, one BabyHawk Mei Tai, one Zolowear Ring Sling, and one Gypsy Mama Wrap)

(Just in case you don't know, he's the hot shot on the tricycle with car wheels ;)

Yesterday I was trying to tell my husband that I saw our neighbor doing some yard work. But it came out like this, "I saw Eric sweeping... no... not that... what's the word for when you sweep things around the yard?" Jon paused and tried to think of what I could possibly be talking about, then he gave me a puzzled look and said, "Uh, are you talking about using a rake?" "Yeah!! That's it! He was raking leaves into a really big pile! It was this big!"

But then the conversation pretty much dissolved, because that's about the worst word-loss I've had in quite a while, and we couldn't stop laughing. I'm still laughing. "Sweeping things around the yard" LOL!!!

( It's like a big-headed alien jumping around inside me! )

I was going to just keep quiet for another couple weeks, but whatever. I don't want people worrying about me. I'm not depressed. I'm not sick. I have just been highly hormonally moody, and I've only been writing here about the bad moods because I actually didn't want to talk about anything, but sometimes when the bad mood hits, I gotta get it out somewhere.

Hey, guess what everybody, I'm 9 and a half weeks pregnant. There, I said it. So get over my mood swings, I'm absolutely fine, it's very normal. :P Jon is quite happy and has been very caring, and is really helping out a lot, both around the house and in those non-tangible, emotionally supportive ways. Also, he's got the patience of a saint with all my mood swings, irrationality, food aversions, etc, etc, etc. I gotta good husband. The best. Couldn't ask for better.

I don't really want congratulations right now because I am sick and tired and it would just irritate me, in the way that being congratulated for contracting influenza while having the worst PMS ever might irritate any normal person. Woman. But you male readers should just trust me on this.

Argh.

I did not want to make this "official LiveJournal announcement" until I'd hit the second trimester, but I don't want people thinking that I'm getting all depressed and whatnot. I'm just really sick and don't have a lot of time or energy for writing stuff on here. Plus there's a lot on my mind lately, but most of it has to do with pregnancy, and that's not something I wanted to write about just yet.

Rest assured, I do log in here daily, and I do read every single post on my f-page, so you're all still in my thoughts. I just don't say much lately and probably won't until I start feeling a little better.

So, in sum, I'm pregnant and that's why I've sounded so pissy lately. We're due at the end of April 2008. I'm sick of moodiness and so-called morning-sickness (it's really an all-day and all-night affair), which all my books assure me really will go away after 14-16 weeks at the longest... I'm hoping even sooner. The 12th week will end on October 11th, and we're going to have a doctor's appointment that day and hopefully hear a heartbeat, which I'm hoping will signal not only the end of the first trimester, but the beginning of the time when I'm supposed to not feel sick and tired and moody anymore (until the third trimester).

I'm starting to feel like I'm rambling so I'm going to stop here now. Just pretend you didn't know about this until I get out of the first trimester please, ok? Thanks.

ETA: Oh, also, happy first wedding anniversary to us today!

OK, my dad is weird and has disabled embedding for this video, but please go see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_u-tTLLrxE (He has asked me to share it with people. It's silly.)

OK, not really scientific... but if you are reading this, please answer at least with a yes or a no...

DO YOU GET ONION TEARS?

I ask because I thought everyone did, but tonight as I was chopping an onion and screeching, "Onion tears! Onion tears! Aaaiiiieeee!!", Jon wiped my eyes and dabbed my nose with a tissue and said he thought he was immune to onions. So I challenged him to stick his face down by the cutting board and take a big whiff... which he did!! And nothing happened. No tears, not a sniffle, nothing.

That is SO not fair! I'm the one who cooks around here, I should get the powers of immunity. :(

So, do YOU tear up when cutting an onion? Please be honest, this is for ~~pesudo~~science

OK, I'm sure the geekier of my friends (you know who you are, admit it!) have already had a lot of fun with the new Street View on Google Maps, right? Only a handful of big cities are available right now, but I was able to get within a block of where I lived when I was out in Queens, NY, which was kind of cool.

So anyway, I've been turned onto a couple sites that have some of the weirdest/funniest images from this new thing, and they are great fun! I've seen Google Sightseeing and Streetviewr so far. What's especially cool is that I found an art installation, called "Passage", which was at Burning Man two years ago, and now lives in the Bay Area!! Originally, there was fire dripping from the mother's hand into the child's hand, and flaming footprints in the ground behind them as they appeared to walk towards The Man. VERY beautiful. It's so neat to see them again in a new location, even if they don't have all the fire around them.

The other cool thing is that there were some images of police investigating a homicide, but those images have now been removed. You can still zoom out and go up or down that street, but the images directly around the crime scene are now just black. WHOA.

Other crime scenes are visible, but they are less extreme, such as speeding, urinating in public and (possibly) breaking and entering (what is going ON there??)

So yeah... If you have some spare time and want to see some true slice-of-life stuff, check out Google Sightseeing and Streetviewr.

ETA: Oh, and I almost forgot, Wired has some stuff too.

u gotsa wii? Go. Register. It's a new site but a nice idea. Just needs more members

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I had a headache yesterday that started at about 9:00 am and lasted alllll the way until I got home from work, probably about 6:00 pm. After discussing it with a friend, we decided it was a tension-type headache and not a migraine or anything else that might have been serious. Despite that, it hurt. And made me miserable.

It started off almost like a sinus headache - kind of under my eyebrows and at the bridge of my nose. It spread into my cheekbones and jaw, the bones behind my ears, down the back of my neck, and into my shoulders and upper back. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Maybe the teeth-gnashing is what caused this in the first place.

It got better when I got my daily hubby-hug, which usually involves a vigorous backrub that gets the blood flowing back into my shoulders. And then I went to empty the dishwasher and he just got up from the living room and came in to help me! I didn't even ask for help! So that was nice.

And then I made cranberry salsa chicken with rice and HOLY CRAP that stuff was good. And then we went downstairs to play some Zelda on the Wii and the still-kinda-new 100-inch projection screen. Oh yeah. Did I forget to mention that when we got it a week or two ago? Tee hee hee! Our downstairs rec room is turning into that "Lair of Big Boy Toys" that every man dreams of. Plus my piano and fireplace are in there, so I kinda like it too.

OK I'm done now.

Jon just sent me this screencap. I'm dying. It's hysterical. Read it carefully. ( Best Error Message EVAR )

Random Nietzsche quote
+
Random Family Circus cartoon
=
The Nietzsche Family Circus

Srsly, omg.

D'ya ever go to Google News? I'm there all the time watching things happen. Check it out sometime if you haven't - it's a good meta-news thingy. I especially like the Sci/Tech section and the Health section. And that's where I found this apparently very scary headline.

( DO YOU DARE? )

( Wait, you have to GUESS first! )

Current Mood: high
Current Location: my living room (yay day off!)

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Left Brain, Right Brain

My Psychic Hokey-Pokey

Recent Entries

Friends Only

A little gift for all my Knitter pals...

Me. Right now.

Screamin' Deals

Family Leave Insurance Act of 2008 - Pass it on!

Drawing for FREE baby carriers!

Why my husband rocks

Baby ate my brain

Hey Wow, LOOK!

Oh whatever.

Belle's Morning Run

Please help my scientific research!

Gotta love Google!!

does you gotsa wii?

ASCII Bear

In which I complain about a headache and then prattle about a couple other things

THIS IS SO FUNNY!!!!

I likes these kinda comics

Scary freaking headline

Guess what I did this weekend