Bike

My bike passed 300 miles today on the way to work, so now it's up to 309. The car is holding at 250 or something, I think. It's also getting colder every day. I've started wearing a long sleeve t-shirt, which is less ideal for the ride home, but still ok. Very soon I'm going to need gloves and then something to protect from the wind. My co-worker who lives just a few blocks away was going to ride in w/ me tomorrow, until his wife told him he can't w/o a helmet. (Those crazy wives.) He's been saying that he'd start riding his bike for a month or two now, and by the time he gets a helmet, it's going to be too cold do to it anymore. (I have no plans to go crazy and bike into work when it's only 40° in the mornings. 65° with a 20mph wind is plenty cold for me already!)

Gasoline

Yesterday, for the first time since about August 12th, I bought gasoline. Shannon hasn't purchased any either. I suppose the one loop hole that I am exploiting is that the new car came with a whole tank of gas. But, a month and a half w/o gasoline is pretty impressive. Shannon's car still has a bit in it, too.

The Big Bang Theory

Shannon and I watched the first episode of "The Big Bang Theory" on CBS the other night. We enjoyed it thoroughly. It's about a pair of guys who are both nerds and geeks, who happen to have a good looking girl move in across the hall, who is thoroughly non-nerd/geek. (She's a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory!) Mostly, the show is good for Leonard and Sheldon bantering back and forth about nerdy things. You should watch it! It's great. I'm thinking I need my own board where I can do QM with string theory doodles around the edges.

Bailey Cereal

This week, in my continuing effort to feed myself, I've returned to an old Brazilian favorite: Bailey Cereal. It's Brazilian in as much as it was invented in Brazil and it's ingredients are available in Brazil. It is not Brazilian in as much as it was invented by an American (Elder Bailey) and, to the best of my knowledge, no Brazilian has ever eaten it. Anyway, I'll provide the recipe.

1 cup oats (approximate) (The instant kind that require little to no cooking.)
2-3 heaping teaspoons chocolate milk mix. (You know, Nestle Quick, or reasonable facsimile.)
1 banana, sliced.
8-12 milk crackers. (for alternate, see below)
1 cup milk (approximate)

Directions: Put oats in a bowl (or, if you want to be more authentic to it's creation, in a pot, because there are no cereal bowls in Brazil). Add chocolate milk mix. Mix. Add banana slices, mixing to cover bananas with oats, to keep the slices from sticking together. Add milk, as much as is required for cereal-like consistency. Break up milk crackers with hands, or drop them into the bowl and smash them a few times with your spoon. Don't add the crackers before you're ready to eat, or they'll get too soggy.

Note: In America, there are no milk crackers. Remember, this is a foreign dish. Acceptable alternates include Nilla Wafers, or some plain cookies that Mother's makes which I am unable to identify more completely at this time. Anyway, they're more like cookies than crackers, and they're there to supply a little bit of crunch.

So that's what I've been eating lately. A kickback to my breakfasts in Brazil that I had every day for about a year.

Get the rabbit ears . . . .

As it turns out, I'm the father of something with a face, a body and a big brain! Not that it's a surprise on any one of those three. According to the doctor, Wombsly is 4.58cm from head to rump. That's a bit under 2 inches, for those of you who are metrically challenged. One perk to all our doctors visits, is that we get a lot more ultrasounds than most people. I'll leave the other picture for Shannon to put on her blog, the one where you can see that I'm also the father of something with limbs!

While on the topic, I'd like to say that ultrasounds seem to be a lot clearer than I remember them. Maybe ultrasound technology has gotten better over the years, so the pictures really are clearer. Or maybe with age, my ultrasound reading gene finally kicked in, so I can see what people were pointing at for all those years. Or maybe all the time I spent staring at electron microscope images improved my skill at finding something to look at in grainy black and white messes. You be the judge.

More football

This is another football post, but I'll bury it behind another post here in a few minutes.

Big Ten football (which I will call the Big 11 from here on out) is one of the better con-jobs out there. Somehow they've convinced the world that because they play each other competitively, they must all be good. I site OSU and Michigan being 2 of the top 3 teams in the nation after their game last year, and then getting clobbered in their bowl games. The top 10 teams from the Big 11 this year are OSU and Wisconsin. Look at their non-conference schedule. The Citadel? UNLV? Youngstown State? Akron? Michigan (whose problems this year have been well documented) beat Penn State in one of the most boring games ever. And Michigan State let Notre Dame score. Twice. But I guess that's what college football is all about. Play well for a decade or two, then find some other schools that were also good, and play each other in your own little club forever, while telling the rest of the world that you're still the best.

Football

Much to Shannon's disappointment, today was a Saturday in September and that means college football.

- BYU looked pretty decent today, for three main reasons. First, they were only -1 on turnovers. While that isn't great, it means you at least haven't killed yourself so badly that you stand no chance. (-2 per game coming in.) Second, 8 penalties for 65 yards. It's a bit sad that this is an improvement, but it was. (Averaging 10 flag for 83 yards) Third, it's AFA, so they didn't throw the ball 40 times. As long as we can play teams that won't throw deep repeatedly, we'll always stand a chance.

- Against Oregon St., AFA, and UNLV, the UofU scored 19 points. Total. Against UCLA (the "11th best" team in the country at the time) they put up 44. Stats haven't been updated with todays games yet, but based on those three outings, Utah would be tied for 118th in scoring offense with Florida International. They would be ahead of only San Jose State and Notre Dame.

- In a related topic, BYU has the inside track on the MWC championship right now, but really, there doesn't seem to be a single team that isn't capable of winning against anyone on a given night. The U can destroy UCLA and then get wiped out by MWC doormat UNLV. AFA handed both Utah and TCU losses, but lost to BYU. What are the odds of every single team ending 4-4 in conference?

Bridge to Terabithia

It's actually too bad this book isn't bad, because I could have made a really good "Bridge to Terriblithia" joke. However, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson is actually an excellent book. It's a Newbery Medal winner and deservedly so. It's a children's book, it's easy to read and it's only about 125 pages, so it's easy to sit down and plow through in a day or two, and well worth your time if you never have (like me).

I knew that they had made a movie of this recently, but didn't realize that there was also a made for TV version made back in 1985. With both of them, particularly the new movie, I find myself wondering how on earth they could have made the movie, and imagining that the movie wouldn't be nearly as good as the book. The book isn't really about Terabithia, or any imaginary CGI adventures.

Instead, it's just a story about a poor kid on the east coast, and a year of his life. It's not terribly grand, or important in the big scheme of things, but it's still a great story.

Sympathy weight

We made the big announcement on the blog a week ago or more, and then I haven't said a word about it since. Just the other day I was reading something in a church manual about journal writing and it encouraged us to focus on good things. Not that you can't mention bad things, but if you write them down, you'll just focus on those forever. So, why haven't I said anything about the pregnancy? Well, let's see if you can figure that out on your own.

In a semi-related note, lots of people gain sympathy weight when their wives are pregnant. Well, in a new form of that, I'm loosing sympathy weight! Shannon's body has decided to try to store all it's food outside the stomach, rather than inside, so in the last month she's lost 10+ pounds. To show my support, I've also dropped 3 or 4 pounds in the last month. It's probably a result of me being suddenly forced to cook for myself again.

Goin' Down

Here's a musical selection for you all. The sound isn't real great, but it's the best I could find on youtube. Pretty much everyone needs more Micky in their lives.