gaspode's brain detritus

Has already demonstrated a decided joy at screaming at 4am, a love for her car seat, and ten tons of cuteness.

September 7th has nearly left us, so our daughter is officially "late". Of course, late is a complete misnomer, given that the whole 40 weeks thing is just an estimate (arbitrarily decided in the early part of the 20th century), but there is still something about having a concrete date, and not hitting it.

We are being assiduous with our application of completely unvalidated home remedies to induce labor. Nicely summed up with "hot sex, hot food, hot bath". Somehow my taste buds have adapted because on Friday I wolfed down a vindaloo that my husband couldn't eat more than a bite from.

At least she didn't come yesterday on my birthday.

Obama's coffers have been filling since Sarah Palin attacked him repeatedly in St. Paul last night.

An Obama aide confirms Drudge's report that Obama has raised about $8 million from more than 130,000 donors and is on pace to raise $10 million by the time McCain reaches the stage tonight.

UPDATE: Obama spokesman Bill Burton says, "Sarah Palin's attacks have rallied our supporters in ways we never expected. And we fully expect John McCain's attacks tonight to help us make our grassroots organization even stronger."

via

You know, I rarely actually write anything about politics, never here, and rarely on the community blogs I frequent. It's primarily because I'm not the best writer in the world, and usually because someone has said what I want to say better than I could anyway. But all morning I've been dying to write something about Giuliani's speech last night. I haven't been able to formulate a good way to write it without sounding like it's straight out of the metafilter echo chamber. so I'm not going to write one here. But this comment from Douglas Rushkoff's blog, quoted in the thread, sums up what I want to say.

I felt a bit nauseous watching the Republican convention last night. I’m very much a give-the-benefit-of-the-doubt kind of guy, so I try to listen to the arguments people make even when they’re made in over-the-top or patronizing ways. Sometimes it’s good to distinguish between the rhetorical devices and the underlying substance. Even people who use manipulative language sometimes have an important point beneath their persuasion techniques (ads against smoking, for example).

I usually don’t feel uneasy when I put those filters on, but last night - during the Guiliani speech - I realized I was no longer filtering a speechwriter’s intentional manipulation; I was trying to look beyond real hate. These folks were gritting their teeth, shaking their fists, and smiling the way gladiators do when going into combat against barbarians. And this is the incumbent party. The ones currently in power.

What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear: community organizing. Community organizing is energized from below. From the periphery. It is the direction and facilitation of mass energy towards productive and cooperative ends. It is about replacing conflict with collaboration. It is the opposite of war; it is peace.

A few weeks ago we went to a Yankees game (our last of the season, our last in the old Yankee Stadium). Unfortunately, the start of the game was delayed by a thunderstorm. We hadn't gone inside yet to meet our friends, and were standing under cover outside the stadium, eating pizza, when I overhead this conversation between a little boy (around 9 or 10) who was there with his dad, and a friendly stranger who was chatting to him.

Man: So is this your first time to Yankee Stadium?

Boy: Yep

Man: Well, I was talking to A-Rod earlier, and he said he'd hit a home run for you!

Boy: ...

Man: How'd you like to see A-Rod hit a home run and win the game?

Boy (to Dad): But you said A-Rod's a choker! You said he doesn't hit home runs at the right time!

Me: heh.

Is that at 38 and a half weeks of pregnancy, I still don't have an outty.

I decided to take my leave from 2 weeks before my due date. This seems atypical for most of my colleagues, who work right up until the due date, or until the baby makes its presence known, whichever comes first. I am lucky in that I have a lot of sick days saved up, as well as vacation days, as well as (and this is really the most important thing when you are a post-doc) an understanding mentor. From talking to an acquaintance who is on the post-doc committee at my institution, there are plenty of mentors who are vehemently opposed to their female post-docs taking more than a few weeks total off for maternity leave. Interestingly enough, many of these seem to be female themselves, and who have had children. The whole "I had to be back at the lab bench in 4 weeks, so should you" mentality. Per the US government, I have 12 protected weeks for maternity leave (they are of course, unpaid, unless one is in my situation with a lot of sick leave owing) and I intend to take every one of them.

That said, this whole two weeks before the due date thing seemed like a good idea at the time (I can make and freeze food, relax before the inevitable months of sleeplessness, do last minute baby-prep stuff), but I realise that it does lead me to do one thing: eat. I am a boredom-eater from way back and combine that with the hunger of the end of pregnancy and an incredible ramp up in my already quite high baseline level of sugar craving, and I'm left with a manic desire to go to the corner store and buy all of the candy bars in sight. Eating a lot of fruit has curbed the cravings, but it's just not the same as half a pack of circus peanuts.

And then yesterday there's a post on Ask Metafilter: Why is the Olympic medal table different in American media?

On every website I look at for Olympics news, there is invariably a medals table. And, except in one instance, the medals table looks how I expect it to look: in order of gold medals. So China is first. But this is the way that I have always seen the medals table represented!

The one exception is the NBC website (although I don't look at any other USA websites), which lists the medals in order of total won. Which, as of this writing, has the USA at the top. Back in the day, this would have annoyed me incredibly, and probably instigated a rant about US-centrism and blah blah to tedium. Now, it just makes me smile. Aw, America. You need to be first, don't you? It's been hard going the past few years, looking down the barrel of decreasing influence in the world, and obvious contempt for the fucking around in the Middle East. You need that little boost. I kind of want to give the US a hug now.

In other news, New Zealand is having a fucking awesome Olympics. Go Kiwi!

My friend Jan sent me this. Hee hee hee.

and just so as to not make it two baby-related posts in a row... today's xkcd is particularly awesome for those of us who completely nerded out in middle school and high school (and onwards...)