hel - pez dispenser of happiness

..as outlined in my hardass vaccination post:

The reason I expect you to inform me of your vaccination status if you want to hang out with the baby is *not* so that I can ban you summarily. It's so that we can then discuss, rationally, what infection vectors you've been exposed to.

Someone who's primarily been alone in their apartment for three days before coming over (and who hasn't been exposed anyone who's sick in over a week) isn't likely to pose a risk; the disease is contagious for a day before symptoms show up and for 7-10 days afterwards.

Someone, OTOH, who works in an office with 3 people out with the flu would be someone who I'd consider to have a high chance of being an infection vector.

So, yeah. It's a prelimary screening tool, not a final or summary judgement.

And not for the reasons you're imagining. Sure, there is no questioning my devotion to IKEA and ABBA.. but neither of them can compare to the Swedish awesomeness to be found in this story.

"A class at Gustavslund school in south central Sweden spent more than two years studying gender roles before setting sights on the 2008 Toys "R" Us Christmas catalog.

...

The class filed a complaint with Swedish regulatory agency Reklamombudsmannen, which is a member of the European Advertising Standards Alliance, arguing that the catalog modeled restrictive sex stereotypes."
(longer article at the link)

I'm really not sure what to think of Ontario's planned approach to the flu/H1N1.

Specifically, I'm really not that enamoured with the idea of waiting until December or January for the seasonal flu shot; there's a reason they normally roll it out in October. And since they're not starting the H1N1 program until November, by the time they get around to the H1N1, in all likelyhood, I won't be pregnant anymore. If it starts circulating in larger concentrations in October (not unlikely, from what I've read), I'm at increased risk of complications, with nothing to mitigate save staying hidden in my house.

This article makes me want to take a shower. Not because of the behaviour of the subjects of the article, but because the sleaziness of the reporter/editor/publisher.

So a former Conservative MP gets busted for DUI and possession of cocaine. So why in the hell is the article about his wife? Her looks. Her history in pageants. Her hometown, family, appearance on Rick Mercer. Her lapses in judgment. (And I'm not claiming she's perfect or wonderful or anything, but she sure as hell doesn't deserve a hatchet-job of an article triggered by her husband's arrest.)

Apparently the husband has gone to ground. So they're going after the wife. Seriously, Star.. this isn't reporting. It's tabloid muckraking at its worst, and unless you have evidence that she poured the drinks down his throat, planted coke in his car, put the keys in his hand and shoved him into the car, perhaps you should lay the fuck off her and do some actual journalism.

All my best to lovecraftienne and TG today. I'm sorry to miss the celebrations, but have a pile of work from Florida to start today.

I hope it's a wonderful day for you.

and 8 more weekends left before I go on mat leave. Which means 8 more weeks of work, two of which are long weekends, since my last week of work is the week of the Thanksgiving holiday.

So what did I do with my weekend? Friday night, the Paramour and I wandered the mall and I picked up an outfit for LC (lj-handle for the baby), and the Paramour picked up a pillow.

Saturday, I did some sewing prep work, ran some errands, and hosted emortimer and the_real_crispy for dinner and a movie night in the spiffy attic TV room. Great fun and food was had, and emortimer found out the extent of my preparation and was horrified.

And yesterday, emortimer and the_real_crispy and I went to pick up the crib I bought on Kijiji (after emortimer went out shopping for LC), and then I did sewing stuff and rounded out the evening with the Paramour, watching an episode of Penn & Teller's BS! followed by an episode of Connections.

The cool part, of course, is that my life and LJ is only going to get more excited once LC arrives. /sarcasm

Like that.

Oh.For.Fucks.Sake

Seriously?

I swear to god, you know that old saying "there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"? Apparently we need to add a new category "palin lies", because this goes beyond "damned lies" into a new level of deceit.

Shut up, you stupid bitch. Seriously.

or at least on either end of my weekend.

Friday night saw the Paramour and I making the trek out to Fergus to stay at my parents' overnight; Mom and Dad are in England and a) like someone to occasionally stay at the house when they're gone, b) have mail what needs to be picked up, and c) had some newly planted flowers that needed to be watered. Since I'm closer than my sister is, and I don't have a 3 year old to be disturbed by routine change, I was it.

We had pizza, watched TV -- including introducing the Paramour to Treehouse in the form of Dragon and the Backyardigans (which was entertainment in itself) -- and we hit the local Zellers where I scored 30 baby wash cloths for 10 bucks. Saturday morning, while he slept in, I did all the errands around the house that we were there for, and then we headed back to KW in the early afternoon.

On Saturday night we attended an absolutely fantastic party to warm the deck of our friends, who are coincidentally neighbours of zanate and the lovely quingawaga. The deck was very nice, I met an old university roommate of the Paramours, and was suitably awed by the host's bar setup and his TV-like presentation skills while mixing cocktails.

When I got home that night, I discovered that a landscaping build day had been called for this afternoon. Since I promised Grover that I'd come out to help once they started the landscaping (that is, once they were no longer working with solvents), I talked to the Paramour about the best way to arrange that into my day... we'd had a date arranged for dim sum today and I didn't want to cancel that, however the build day started an hour before dim sum opened. We arranged to go at 11, so I missed the first 2+ hours of the landscaping, but I had tasty tasty dim sum. And, as it turns out, the restaurant is closing tomorrow for their annual holiday, so I wouldn't have been able to go next week.

The afternoon was filled with helping other people pull up grass, scrape up old mulch, and lay down blackout. It was also filled with more sun than my sunscreen was adequate to the task of, and ended when I started to feel like throwing up. So I called for a ride, came home, and showered and slept for 3 hours. I'm still stiff and sunburn-y, but more human feeling. Thanks to everyone at the build day for being understanding of my slower pace and wall-hitting.

Now I'm making rice and reheating the cheesy tuna mixture for on top of it and I suspect I'll round out the evening with some Dr. Who. Or maybe some Gilmore Girls. Or possibly both.

Tomorrow is my monthly family-doctor-prenatal appointment and tomorrow evening I'll be back in Fergus. After last week, I suspect this one is going to drag a bit.

My company closed today for the holiday, which has split my week up nicely between the "oh good god I think I'm going to have to kill both you, creator of this document, and whoever at MS was responsible for the pain of trying to write large document sets in Word" part and the "getting do New and Interesting documentation stuff" part. Happily, those are listed in chronological order, so tomorrow will involve no user guides from hell.

The only drawback to doing Canada Day on Canada Day, then, is that there is no long weekend in my immediate future.

So today, I slept in, did laundry, and mowed the lawn. That's right, we Canadians know how to do a holiday right...

I also discovered that my neighbour had indeed taken down the laundry line, I suspect to more easily have access to the back yard when he periodically mows it for me if I've been remiss/busy. I hadn't used it up to the point where he took it down, since a) May was stupid rainy and b) I kept forgetting to get clothes pins until the Paramour picked me up some. Thus, he thought that no-one was using it.

It's back up now, and he was kind enough to help me with the back yard by doing the edging with his much-more-butch-than-mine weed whacker. To thank him, I gave him a jar of the strawberry jam I made on Saturday at the_nita's place.

After that, the Paramour and I went up to Waterloo, to hit the Shoppers and Home Depot gardening centre (former to buy, latter to browse), and then stopped for fries at Sonny's, where we saw a big, loud something at the top of a power pole go pop, make a weird yellowy-green flash of light, and smoke a bit. On the way out, we noticed that, unfortunately, it'd killed one of the birds that were hanging out on the power lines.

So tomorrow it's back to work. I was originally supposed to have an appointment on Friday to see my family doctor, but it got switched to Monday. Thus, I have two days to work on the new Flash demo and proposal for the bright and shiny new way of doing documentation that I want to switch to. (Yeah, we will please leave aside any comments on the lack of sanity involved in proposing a wholesale change in the product documentation three and a half months before my maternity leave starts, 'k?)

As an aside, I realize that, to the casual reader, I probably haven't been posting much. I have been, but mostly on the filter I have set up for the pregnancy/baby, which I've figured is of limited interest to most. If I'm wrong about that, and you've been pining to hear about prenatal visits, ultrasounds, and swollen feet, let me know and I'll add you.