8 Days to Baby Day! (38 Weeks and Six Days Pregnant)
“Language shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about.” – Benjamin Lee Whorf
I only got to sleep in a tiny bit this morning. I had to be up at seven thirty so that I could be ready for when Mike arrived from the post office to look at our mailbox situation.
Mike arrived and, as we had expected, the mail carrier did not give him the keys. So he had to return to the post office, get the keys and come back to the house. At least it was nothing worse than half an hour of extra driving for him. They could easily have lost the keys or something.
Turns out that the lock was just full of dirt and that Mike was able to fix it without a problem. We have a working lock again. Now we can get our mail daily and even order stuff again from Amazon. I’ve been waiting to put in orders because I was concerned that nothing could arrive here.
LG, Sharp and some unknown Taiwanese television maker have been slapped with a massive fine from the Department of Justice in the US for price fixing LCD panels (this falls under anti-trust.) LG’s $400m USD fine is the second largest in US history after a $500m USD fine to Hoffman – La Roche in 1999, also related to anti-trust. Large corporations who have been negatively impacted in the past are Dell, Motorola and Apple who buy parts from these companies. The way is being pathed for some pretty significant lawsuits from these large buyers. In time, hopefully, this action will be reflected in a lowered cost of LCDs on the US market. The cartel may continue to operate overseas.
In interesting financial news, oil was approaching $57 USD yesterday and today is almost down to $55! Oil futures in London are down to $52. Gas is going to be getting quite a bit cheaper in the weeks to come, it would appear.
Dad IM’d me to let me know at 9:11 this morning that he was headed out the door to start his drive down to Peekskill. He has a massive carload of our furniture too including the rest of our dining room chairs and Dominica’s nice leather recliner. I am guessing that with this trip he must be beginning to actually see a dent forming in his garage. This is a lot of stuff that he has managed to move.
Today is the full moon so tons of superstitious people will be thinking that today is the day that we are going to go into labor. Of course, the only known study of the issue, this one being from the NIH, shows that there is no statistical difference at any lunar phase and that there is no correlation between the full moon and natural labor. Check out “Labor Ward Workload Waxes or Wanes with Lunar Cycle, Myth or Reality?”
While on the NIH website I also found this useful information about treatments for TMJ, which I and a few others in my family have.
This morning I discovered the Swimman – water proofed Apple iPod Shuffle designed to be worn and used while swimming. That would be awesome. Having IT Conversations pumped to me while I am swimming would be a much better use of my exercise time that just swimming. I’ve been concerned that since using the train I don’t get as much iPod time because I read normal, paper books. I swim for three hours or more per week so having the Shuffle would not only help to pass that time more quickly but would make it more enjoyable and give me a chance to catch up on the latest conferences.
Last night on the train I managed to finish reading “The Victory of Reason” and tomorrow on my ride in I plan to begin reading “The Day of the Barbarians.” I ordered some new books from Amazon today as well. I felt that I could order them now that we are able to get mail again. I got “The Ruby Way, 2nd Ed.” and “Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Ed.” I also decided to give Amazon’s electronic copy, read online serivce a try and bought the digital copy of “The Ruby Way” for just $4. Now I can always reference it whether I am home or at work. That’s pretty handy.
Dominica was out at her midwife appointment for almost all of the morning. She had to be downtown at ten thirty and did not manage to get back home until well after one thirty. It was a long day but she managed to see the midwife, go grocery shopping and hit CVS to pick up a prescription. (Technically, don’t you pick up the prescription from your doctor and pick up the medicine from the pharmacy while dropping off the prescription?)
I found out today that Hershey’s manufactures a chocolate product called cocoa mulch which, and I hate that I have to point this out, is completely toxic to dogs and will often kill them if they ingest it. This mulch smells like chocolate because, well, it is chocolate, and since chocoloate contains theobromine which is poisonous to dogs the mulch is toxic as well. No one should ever use this product anywhere where a dog could be exposed which includes seeing-eye dogs. It is really inapporpriate for home stores (you know who you are) to carry a dog poison as an everyday mulch product. Next step is to fortify the mulch with melamine.
Dad arrived at the house around three thirty. That means that he made the trip in roughly six hours even in constant rain and fog. His trips are seeming to be magnets for bad weather.
Dad managed to get a lot of stuff into his car for this trip. The large printer stand that is going to the basement, two dining room chairs, Dominica’s recliner, our large humidifier and much more. We still have a bit to put away from the stuff that came from Newark. We are quite behind at this point.
We spent the evening just visiting and relaxing in the living room. We are all really exhausted today. I was going up and down the stairs a bit as I had to work from the office for a while.
We all decided that we were way too lazy to cook or even to go out for food so I looked on line and we found a pizza place that delivers to Chapel Hill and we ordered in a pizza. We ordered from the pizza and Italian place located in the Beach Shopping Center. They brought a menu for us. It turns out that they have a pretty extensive menu. That will be very handy.
We watched some of McHale’s Navy, the classic black and white television show from 1962 and the Mary Typer Moore show via Hulu and PlayOn on the PS3.
Katie is all set to swim with Dan and I tomorrow over our lunch break. It has taken her almost a month of trying to get her office to get her set up with her swimming pass.
We were all very tired and went to bed quite early, around nine thirty. I will be on Wall Street tomorrow.