davejenbarnes

I have been using a Canon Powershot S200 Digital ELPH, on loan from my brother until the return from our Virginia/Washington D.C. trip, as my camera of choice. It is a very easy-to-take-pictures-with kind of camera. With my Rebel, I know I’m taking pictures, you know I’m taking pictures, the whole world knows I’m taking pictures… but with the little Powershot, I know I’m taking pictures, you may think I’m taking pictures, but the whole world… well, I could be playing with an mp3 player or some sort of PDA so who cares about pictures?! The Olympus D-450 digitial camera we have been using takes wonderful pictures but is not nearly as covert. I’m sure my brother will want his Powershot back eventually, but for the time being, I am having fun.

We have our first photo outing planned and it will be 100% digital. David has agreed to go downtown with me to get pictures of Austin and the Capitol for our little website here. I would like to do something on the first page… with a picture of the Capitol and pictures of downtown are always fun… even if soley taken for an artistic purpose. I look forward to tomorrow.

Becky and I and Amy, a friend of Becky’s, and Mary, a friend of Amy’s, all met at Becky’s house yesterday. Music ties us all together, though we are all in different stages of our studies. I, the lowest on the totem pole, and probably the youngest of us four, am not currently studying music besides to learn a 3 minute long offertory piece for church to be performed on July 11, 2004. Becky is studying at UT working on her Masters degree in Horn Performance, french horn, although I have been told by many horn players that there is not much french about it. Amy, an oboist, I believe is working on her Doctorate. I bet it’s in oboe performance, but I’m not completely sure… could be education… but I am betting it’s perfomance. And Mary, who I met last night and is a lot of fun, is studying for a Doctoral Conducting degree also at UT. But surprising as it may sound, we did not meet at Becky’s house to discuss anything musical! Nope, not one wit of music, no, not one.

The meeting at Becky’s house only served to get all four of us in the same place at the same time so we could all pile into the Nissan Maxim Becky drives. Yes, it is missing the last “A” on the trunk and therefore only spells Maxim! I chuckle every time I see it.

So Becky drove the Maxim to the “ghetto” HEB where we all stocked up on candy for the movie we were about to see. Oh, yes, did I mention that the title of this post refers to the MOVIE, Mean Girls, not the three other girls I was with?! Well, yes, then, it refers to the movie … which was an entertaining movie for a group of four girls on a Wednesday evening who can still remember what it was like to be in high school. It wasn’t totally accurate because who in high school shows that much cleavage, or even, a-hem, has enough to even know what cleavage is? but it was accurate with the cliquish, gossipy, syrupy-thick-selfishness that is high school. They even nailed the junior-year-crush. Well, at least for me… but did I mention the cleavage?

The movie was set in Evanston, Illinois. I’ve even lived in Evanston, but the life they portrayed is vastly different from the graduate housing life I lived at Northwestern. For one, I don’t remember cleavage running rampant like a disease with no cure, but apparantly the girls at North Shore High have a bad case of it. It made me uncomfortable, just so uncomfortable and it was distracting. I would NEVER let any child of mine wear the clothes that were worn in that movie. Dirty diseased distracting uncomfortable clothing. And it wasn’t just the students in the movie with the distracting uncomfortable cleavage!! Yes, the cleavage-disease had infected even a TEACHER!!

At last, long last, the movie ended with a pair of Walker Brothers Pancake House gift certificates being given away, which is totally the BEST place in the entire WORLD for pancakes and which also took my mind off of all the ridiculous cleavage long enough to last into the credits.

Today was my 2004 annual pap smear and exam. Dr. S was very encouraging about my health and becoming pregnant in the next 6 months. He was confused because in our talks in November, I had told him we would like to start trying around January of this year and he thought we had stuck to that plan… but insurance research has made us a little wiser and we have pushed back our officially trying month to September. We will not be disappointed if it happens before September, though, and he assured me that it would be okay to postpone the bloodwork and all the tests until I was covered with David’s insurance policy in September if we were to become pregnant before September to help save on costs.

We have also decided to go with the more-expensive-monthly HMO insurance which will cover more all-around. We see it as paying more monthly to keep us out of a big debt later (i.e. a big bill for birth) and also 100% coverage should something go terribly and expensively wrong.

I started off the weekend pretty much alone. David had to go to the Region XVIII TMEA meeting at Pflugerville High School and then to lunch with the CPMS and GMS staffs and I had fun with Mambo and a camera. Who knew we have the MOST PHOTOGENIC CAT on Earth?!

On Sunday, we hung out with the Millers. We saw a turtle and Shrek 2 and Mark, Becky, and I (in the Nissan Maxim — it’s missing the “a” for Maxima) met Dave back at our place for Dave’s excellent pizza. (Dave headed home early to get a head start on the crust)

There is only one minor problem with my upgraded version of WordPress… and that is the login link tries to find the file back a directory (not in the current /wordpress/ directory) but that’s easy to get around. I have editted pictures from this weekend and am anxiously awaiting the posting of them, but I am first going to poke around version 1.2 to look for the photo stuff that was added… ***taps fingers together in the manner of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons*** Well, I found it, but I am still going to upload my photos in the old way… maybe before our first child is born (which will be awhile since we haven’t even started baking yet, so-to-speak) I will clean up the files on this site and totally re-organize the behind-the-scenes mess that this website is slowly becoming.

Check back for pictures!

Dad Knight, I thought you’d get a kick out of this: Apparently, during our trip to Virginia/Washington DC in a few weeks, we will be able to witness the middle of mating season for the cicadas. Not just any cicadas… cicadas that wait 17 years between mating seasons! I will take pictures if we see any!

I have been so into this particular journal this week. It’s a direct reflection of my conversations with my husband. We are currently deciding between the high-option PPO and the high-option HMO. The HMO will cover 100% of costs (birth costing us only $140) while the PPO will cover 90% of costs and the birth will cost us around $1000. The difference is $100/month deduction from David’s paycheck, and when I explain it so simply, the PPO seems like the cheaper of the two deals… I mean, $100 extra bucks in our pocket each month and $1000 for the birth versus an extra $1200 taken out every month but only $140 for the birth… but my mind keeps going to the “what-if” department and checking out a new horror novel to scare my heart. The HMO has no deductibles… the PPO does… the HMO doesn’t have a “network” but the PPO does… the HMO seems like the best decision in the long run, especially with the possibility of complications, but I really do not know which we need to choose!

Out of curiosity, I have begun to keep track of my base body temperature on a Basal Body Temperature chart which I created using Word (with the insert table feature). There were a few questions I had, but I think I’ve got it right… first of all, there are these “special” thermometers in Wal*Mart labeled just for Basal Body Temperature so I figured you had to take your temperature … well, you know … down there. I mean, if they sold a “special” thermometer just for that purpose then you probably wouldn’t want anyone else using it or… heaven forbid! …sticking it in their MOUTH! Not their MOUTH!

As it turns out, it’s just a ploy to make more money off desperate women who do not have the intellegence to do further research and find that any thermometer is good for the job because it’s just a regular temperature taking… just like if you woke up sick one morning. Of course you put the thing in your MOUTH, yes, just under your tongue… just like when you visit the Dr.’s office and they take your vitals. But some of those “special” thermometers come with a timer so you can take your temperature at the same time every day, which I found out is the other really important thing! the SAME TIME ladies, do you hear me?! If you wake up at 4:30 am one morning for a band trip with your husband because he is a band director… and try to take your temperature OF COURSE it will be 2 degrees lower than normal! It’s 4:30 for crying out loud!

The last (and by far biggest) band trip of the school year was to Fiesta Texas and involved sixth through eighth graders. David estimated there were around 300 kids but I think there were more like 250ish. Here is a slideshow of my pictures from the day, or if you prefer, just the photo album. We had a good time and everyone stayed safe.