Stardust

MJ and I have been going out on Monday nights, since that and Sunday were the only nights she had off, and even though she has Tuesday nights off as well now, we've been sticking with Monday out of habit. So, yesterday she's looking through the movies to see if there's anything worth seeing, and she calls me over to look at them. Now, here's the awesome part, Stardust was listed. I knew it was coming out, but I didn't know when.

Any other Gaiman fans (Berserk) know how stoked I was about this. It took a little bit of talking MJ into it, but she went along and was not disappointed.

I'd recommend this one to anyone, especially fans. The cast was great, the adaptation was great. Two big freakin' thumbs up!

School's on

This post is coming from the computer lab at my new school. So far it's going alright. I've figured out some of the bus schedule. It takes almost two hours, including the drive to the bus stop and a short walk from downtown, so I need to get my mp3 player squared away. I've got a pretty tight schedule on Mondays and Wednesdays, leaving me 15 minutes between classes, but today, and Tuesday I've got plenty of time to work over my reading assignments, check email, and look around campus between classes.

Overall, it shouldn't be too bad, but I've got to work out a couple kinks in the routine still, and all this walking with my books is going to take a little getting used to. I know I'm coming here from a couple months at a metal shop, but I'm getting different sore muscles from this. I should be good after a couple of weeks though.

I've got a couple of philosophy classes, and a couple of English classes. One of the philosophy classes is an intro, and the other is about logic and arguing, so watch out. My philosophy teachers are the most unusual teachers I believe I've ever had. I wonder if they are all like that. One of my English classes is an introduction to fiction. That one looked fun. I tried writing a book a while ago, but realized I didn't really know what I was doing.

I've got a class on pre-columbian and colonial meso-america. It's required here that everyone takes one multicultural (non-white) class, and this one seemed like one I might actually take just for the content. The first day included a lot of talk about how bad white people have been, and a little talk of what still needs to be done to fix things. I was hoping to avoid that. This will be my second day, hopefully it will be a bit more about pre-columbian and colonial meso-america, and a bit less about affirmative action, reparations, and African slave trade.

In other news, MJ is doing pretty well as far as this whole pregnancy goes. She's got a different position at work. It involves a little more responsibility, and a little less lifting. Also, it's four ten hour days, instead of five eights. This wasn't just one of those moves they do so you can keep working while you're pregnant either. It's one of those ones that you apply for and hope you get. I'm all kinds of proud of her.

I wish I could say that the morning sickness was gone, but it is at least reduced. There's been some dry heaving this morning, but nothing for a few days before that. She's handling throwing up a lot better than she used to. Still more reasons to be proud.

Baby Pictures

Everyone meet your new grandchild/niece/nephew/child-of-a-friend.

I took the morning off of work today, to go with MJ to a prenatal checkup. They were hoping we'd be able to hear a heartbeat this time, there wasn't anything to hear on her last visit.
They couldn't find it this time either, so they sent us to the hospital for an ultrasound, resulting in two beautiful pictures of our baby. Nice as these are though, you should have seen the moving picture on the screen. I can see why they have a hard time getting any still shots better than these, but we could see the baby moving around, the heart was beating really fast, and you could see all the ribs, the arms and legs. He/She was all curled up in a little ball, which is likely why we couldn't hear anything.
So, I never made it to work. By the time we were done work was over. I called in and everything, so I should still have a job there for a couple of weeks before school starts. MJ had to call in too. The soonest they could get us in for the ultrasound was 2:00. So, here are the pictures anyway. There's just the one child. Don't be confused by the multiple shots.

2.5 x .25

Apparently, I haven't mentioned to everyone that I cut steel now, instead of inspecting fire extinguishers. The job usually runs better than the old one, but not so much today. One of the pieces of steel I cut is two and a half inches by a quarter inch. It's far from the heaviest most difficult stuff that I cut, but today it's my least favorite. It's just thin enough to have quite a bit of spring to it, but plenty heavy enough have a little power behind it when it springs back at you. If you grab a twenty foot length of the stuff by the middle, and toss it onto your table, the middle part which you grabbed it by, it seems, is likely to spring back and smack you on it's way down. Without sharing all the gory details, I'll just say that this piece of metal is number one on my list of the worst things I've smacked myself in the nuts with.

That was the morning. Later in the day, I gave myself a nasty blood blister on the palm of my left hand. It's half an inch, by an eighth. As much as that would normally bother me, it pales today.

So, here's to better days, and healthier nuts.