alexist

According to the calendar, spring began yesterday.

So why was it snowing when I woke up? This is London, too--snow in January is an event!

(It's stopped now. Just wet. :/)

She who misses her oral surgery consultation will be told that she can't get another one until 19th April. D'oh. My fault. At least this one is at 16:20. I've discovered that all appointments must either be before 10 (so I don't go back to sleep after Aliza's bottle) or after 13:00.

Our phone is acting flaky--no dial tone and I can't call out. It rings when I get a call, but when I tried picking up, nothing. The other extension (we have 2 cordless phones) is AWOL as well! Duh. Luckliy I guessed correctly that "out of area" was my mother. She bought Aliza a Pesach present: a soft-toy Seder plate and an "I Love Matzah" bib. Hey, at least she didn't get her the Ten Plagues finger puppets... (Yes, they exist.)

See here, with added snark:
http://www.jewcy.com/product_type/kids/toys

(Jewcy is not normally my thing, but hey, it's what came up on google)

hey, better pics AND 2 varieties of Ten Plagues toys, PLUS Mah Nishtana finger puppets!
http://www.jewishbazaar.com/BAZAAR/PassoverChildren.HTM

Speaking of Her Maj, she outdid herself yesterday. The explosion dirtied her, her onesie, the blanket I had wrapped around her (all her sleepsuits were in the wash, see yesterday's laundry mixup) and possibly me--I wasn't 100% sure but changed anyway. She got a full bath this time. :-)

I have no energy today.

I'm convinced Aliza's sleepsuits shrunk in the wash. There's no way she's grown this much this quickly--3 weeks ago her feet didn't reach the footsies, now there's only 1" spare! At least these aren't expensive so if I do have to buy new ones it's OK... I think the problem was that I accidentally washed them at 60 instead of 40 :/

What I should do:
Tidy, hoover.

What I want to do:
Curl up in bed.

What I am doing:
Sitting on the sofa, uploading photos to Flickr (I like the multiple image sizes... and it's easier to use than iWeb since I have an export plugin, and I can lock photos if I want to, and organise them more easily, etc. Not sure about a full switchover though. I don't have enough bandwidth to do it all now anyway and I don't feel like paying :P ) and watching ER.

Even catching up on web forums seems like effort today. I think I'll put down the laptop and cuddle the baby...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute

Says it all really :-)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/garden/22impact.html?8dpc

Yeah. Living in an apartment in NYC, and doing it for a book... and going to ridiculous extremes. Sorry, but people like this make me want to say "GET A LIFE!" I'm not into this whole concept of parading one's environmental virtuousness. It's all "look at me and how wonderful and self-sacrificing I am!" Please.

(Think about the impact of "nothing grown more than 250 miles from New York City". Ever. No spices of ANY kind. No citrus fruit. I wonder what kind of cooking oil they use? Olive is out, as mentioned. New York doesn't have many big field crops--no rape or soya. Too far north for peanuts. I suppose sunflowers grow around here; they're native to the eastern US. And i wonder if their neighbours appreciate the home composting. "no carbon-fueled transport" means no public transport either. I wonder how he's coping with local wheat, as well? New York state grows soft white winter wheat. It's not suited for breadmaking. All our hard wheat is grown in the Plains states. At least we grow it, I guess, and New York produces a decent variety of crops. It would be fun trying this in some parts of the country, that's for sure.)

Today's discovery: West of the Rockies, butter is the wrong shape!
http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/landolakes/27231/ has a pic of Western butter. Weird.

Eastern butter is this shape:
http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/324357/2/istockphoto_324357_food_sticks_of_butter.jpg

(Non-Americans: A stick of butter is a standard measurement in the US--1 stick is 4 oz, and they come in packs of 2 or 4.)

Wackos. It's not enough to call Hellmann's mayo Best Foods ;) This would totally confuse me. European butter did my head in at first--it comes in 250g blocks. I'm used to eyeballing butter for most cooking, so I had to adjust when I moved. Ounces and spoons are marked on the label for US butter but not European, too! (some brands have 25g segments marked, but they're quite close together so it's easy to be off.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter has dimensions, but they screwed up: Eastern butter IS packed 2x2. (Someone mis-copied from Cook's; I'm a subscriber and checked the original.) Some margarine is packed flat, though

It's one thing when I say 'poo' and 'wee' in relation to a baby. But somehow, it seems wrong actually seeing it in Pampers marketing. Yeah, faeces sounds clinical, but....

also, on the page title it says "babys". Ugh!

(And it doesn't list Size 2 for the Baby-Dry ones, which is interesting because I bought them several times... Size 2 is available in both New Baby and Baby-Dry.)

Side pedantry note: I spotted that "diarrhea" was spelt wrong on the whiteboard in House tonight.

Oh, and the Guardian decided "Caesarian" was a correct spelling. It isn't. It's "Caesarean". Common mistake, but nonetheless, one that should be caught by a spell-checker. And while we're at it, "Cesarean" as a new American spelling? NO! Yes, ae and oe are normally conflated to e in AE, but in this case it's derived from Caesar, and no one spells it Cesar--so the correct spelling remains Caesarean.