girls are weird.

25 August 2005

i'm it

Mark tagged me on this meme, and not having the imagination to come up with an interesting post today on my own, I shall respond to this instead.

5 CDs in your Player
CDs are like SO last year. Plus, I'm a cheapskate so I tend to get most of my music through friends in that newfangled mp3 format. Let's see...here are five recent(ish) albums on my iPod:

Lemon Jelly "'64-'95"
Snow Patrol "Final Straw"
Kaiser Chiefs "Employment"
Athlete "Tourist"
Fatboy Slim "Palookaville"

5 Movies You've watched Recently
This implies that we've actually a) been able to get out to the cinema without the baby and b) have time to watch a film. Here's a list of the one film we've seen in the cinema since Jack's birth and the rest have been on DVD or television:

Revenge of the Sith (our one outing to the cinema!)
LOTR: Return of the King
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (This was the first time I'd ever seen it, and I've never read the book. No, seriously.)
Matrix Revolutions (second attempt, managed to fall asleep again before it ended)
and um...we've got around 4 films on Sky+ that we keep meaning to watch. Does that count?

5 Nice Things That Happened To You Lately

Mom and Dad coming to visit.
Jack's naming day.
I still managed to lose 2 lbs. last week, even though I stuffed my face with cakes on Sunday.
We bought a new car. When I say "we", I mean "Paul", and when I say "car", I mean "MPV" (which is most certainly not a minivan nor a station wagon, thank you very much).
All of our lunch dates - we're so popular, doncha know.

5 MP3s on your playlist
First five songs on the iPod's "Assorted" list:

Outkast "Hey Ya!"
Fatboy Slim "Slash Dot Com"
Snow Patrol "Run"
Lemon Jelly "'79 AKA The Shouty Track"
Kaiser Cheifs "Everyday I Love You Less and Less"

5 Friends You're Passing This To
Anyone who reads this is more than welcome to take part. :)

[posted by: Lisa Durbin] --

23 August 2005

name calling

I think I was just as nervous as I was on our wedding day; maybe even more so. I paced around the hotel, making sure I hadn't forgotten anything (which is pretty much a given these days) and watching our guests arrive. Being the ultra hip family that we are (*cough*), I set up my iPod to play the introductory and closing music. As everyone found their seats, Lemon Jelly's "A Tune for Jack" played - which was probably only recognised by roughly four people, but everyone thought it was a lovely little ditty. The celebrant (or "the nice lady from the registry office" as I like to call her) said some opening words and asked us to step forward with Jack and state his name. We had decided to include an explanation about how we came up with Jack's name, which Paul delivered beautifully, emotionally. We read our promises to Jack, and Jack's supporting adults and grandparents also made promises to him. "Godfather" Russ and "Godmother" Gail each read a poem, and Heather played a gorgeous rendition of "Summertime" on the violin while we signed the certificate. As the ceremony came to an end, my trusty iPod played a song called "Crayon" by Manitoba (note the CanCon I managed to sneak in there).

It poured rain all day Friday and Saturday wasn't terribly wonderful either, but the sun shone brightly on us on Sunday. Jack fell asleep in his stroller and we parked him next to his mountain of presents, while we nibbled on dainty sandwiches and a decadently wonderful selection of cakes and scones. Jack was, unsurprisingly, the star of the show and happily snuggled into the arms of whoever wanted a cuddle.

Despite the odd looks we got when we said we were having a naming ceremony and the 40 times we heard "Do you realise how hard it is to find a 'Naming Day' card?!", everyone agreed that it was lovely ceremony. I'm so pleased that we had a special day in honour of Jack, and it fills me with pride to know that so many people love our little boy too.

(For more info about naming ceremonies, see http://www.civilceremonies.co.uk/naming.htm)

[posted by: Lisa Durbin] --

18 August 2005

family affair

My Mom and Dad have landed at Heathrow, undoubtedly with a suitcase full of presents for Jack. There was an email from British Airways in my inbox this morning suggesting that due to "recent issues" (i.e. sacking 600 catering employees), passengers should either eat before their flights or they may be able to receive some food at the gate before boarding. Personally, I'd bring my own picnic with me (do they allow you to bring food on flights?) and enjoy an airline meal-free flight. The flight over here was an overnight one for Mom and Dad, so they likely wouldn't have eaten anyway. Hopefully the baggage handlers haven't gone on strike again or else Jack's suitcase of pressies will sit at the airport for a good long while. At least planes are actually landing and flying today.

We're having Jack's naming ceremony on Sunday. For those of you not in the know, this is like a non-denominational christening for unwashed heathens like us. We felt it would be hypocritical (and offensive to those who attend the church) to go to a church and make promises about Jack's religious upbringing, when neither one of us is religious. Although christenings are "the thing to do", I don't see a point in them if you don't hold any religious beliefs. Luckily for us, the modern world has brought us naming ceremonies. It's led by someone from the registry office (like our wedding). We will make promises to Jack, explain how we came up with his name, do some readings (a Celtic blessing and another poem about children), name his "supporting adults" (Godparents) and they will make promises to Jack, we sign things while my fabulously lovely friend Heather plays "Summertime" on the violin, and then we scamper off to stuff our faces with cake, scones, and sandwiches for an afternoon tea. Around 40 people are coming, and thankfully this time, I don't have to worry about my corset digging into my baby bump.

Think sunny thoughts for us, please.

[posted by: Lisa Durbin] --

16 August 2005

lightweight

So I had a cup of coffee recently for the first time in at least ten years. I met Heather and Becca at Starbucks and I had a hankering for a cafe latte. And it was good. Feeling a new enthusiasm for the bean, I bought some coffee yesterday and whipped up a cafe latte at home. I think I may have gone a touch overboard with the coffee or the brand I bought has added crack in it, because at 1.00 this morning, I was wide awake and could hear my own heart beating. I slept sporadically, waking throughout the early morning from various bad dreams. Even now, hours later, if you jumped out from behind the door and shouted "BOO!", my heart would very likely burst out of my chest like a baby alien.

Note to self: three scoops per small Bodum could kill me. Less coffee, more milk next time. Or decaf. Or go back to tea. Ow, my head.

[posted by: Lisa Durbin] --

11 August 2005

veggin' out

Tesco makes me hate food shopping. Actually, any major supermarket makes me want to run screaming these days. I used to loathe grocery shopping during the evenings and weekends because it was always so busy. Hurrah, I thought to myself. I can now go shopping during the day when it surely must be a lot quieter. I've come to the conclusion that every supermarket in my county is a mass meeting place for the Very Annoying and Idiotic. At 2.30pm on a Thursday afternoon, Tesco was absolutely heaving (and I purposely use the term "heaving") with people. No matter what section I go to, someone always stands in front of me as I'm just about to go for an item, and remain perfectly motionless until I shout out "EXCUSE ME!" and squeeze through the 2cm between their lifeless body and the shelf. People like to stop suddenly in front of me for no apparent reason or abandon their trolleys in the middle of the aisle as if they suddenly remembered that their houses are on fire. People stop to have a chat side by side, causing a traffic jam of small screaming children and confused old people.

The problem is, I am passionate about food and cooking, so grocery shopping should be a treat for me. Why is it that every other country in Europe still has markets, fish mongers, butchers, green grocers, and bakers while we're stuck with aisles upon aisles of plastic-wrapped hell? Granted, markets etc. do exist in this country and there are probably some excellent ones lurking somewhere, but they are far from the norm. I am fortunate enough to have a fantastic local butcher but for everything else, it's supermarket city. So in an attempt to get something both local and decent, I have signed up for an organic box scheme. Imagine my joy and delight when this was delivered to me today:

Every week, we will receive a beautiful box of local organic fruit and veg from The Cambridge Organic Food Company.

Feeling much better now, thanks.

[posted by: Lisa Durbin] --

09 August 2005

who the what now

Yesterday at the gym, an ad came on TV for something which should be applied to the "intimate feminine area". Now to me, this is one of two places: my shelf in the medicine cabinet where I keep my various creams, potions, and elixirs, or the cupboard under the sink with all the cleaning products.

I have no idea what smearing Vagisil on either one of these locations is going to accomplish, though.

[posted by: Lisa Durbin] --

05 August 2005

not even worthy of the bird cage

The Independent published this rather pointless article about blogs today. In a nutshell, it says "There are a lot of blogs out there. Here are some excerpts that we've copied from a few 'quirky' blogs, with links to the sites. We can't be arsed to a) write a decent article that actually makes some sort of point, b) inform the authors of these blogs that we will be quoting them, or c) inform the authors that we will include links to their sites that our thousands of readers will click upon, thus eating up the blog's entire bandwidth quota in the span of an hour." Or words to that effect.

Unfortunately, one of my lovely bloggy friends has been included in this article and had to remove her blog as a consequence (she is in the article under the baby blog section). To quote from her site (and thus saving her some more bandwidth by not encouraging readers here to go there directly):

This site is offline until further notice.

The Independent newspaper decided to publish an entry from this website today. Obviously they do not have to ask permission being that the internet is in the public domain, but it would have been perhaps courteous to have notified us, if only for the sudden increase in site traffic that it generated.

This website was decided as a slightly humorous method of letting our friends and family know how our much-loved baby is progressing in the world. As anyone with children will know, these first few months pass by in a whirlwind and it is hard to remember when milestones were reached and cherished moments happened, so it was also a way for us to keep our own record of our baby's development.

Unfortunately, as a result of the Independent article, a number of people commented slightly unsavoury remarks about the content and style of the site. Again, we realise that the site is in the public domain, but it was a harmless site with no offence caused to anyone - or so we thought. To discover links to photos of our son, with insulting comments about us as his parents, was hurtful to say the least.

So for the time being we are taking the site offline. As the saying goes, today's news is tomorrow's fish-and-chip paper, but until that happens we don't want people being able to abuse us or our child.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank those that did visit our site regularly and who enjoyed its content.

The Site Owners

This was a sweet blog written from the point of view of a (rather cute, if I do say so myself) baby boy. It was totally harmless, lighthearted, and like my baby blog, a means to keep track of the millions of milestones and to help keep family and friends informed about the baby. She wasn't vying for the Pulitzer Prize for literature, for Pete's sake. Yes, blogs are in the public domain and you can't stop people from using material from your site in whatever manner they want. Should a newspaper like The Independent know better? In my view, yes. I think it's a bit pathetic to take the piss out of a blog like baby Matthew's. Go laugh at my dog blog (it's been done before), or have a giggle at the latest celebrity blog, but when someone feels that they have to stop blogging because of undeserved harsh comments, something has gone terribly wrong. This argument that "everyone has a blog and they're all ridiculous" misses an important point - we should encourage anything that gets people to read, write, think, and interact. No matter how banal someone may think it is.

[posted by: Lisa Durbin] --

03 August 2005

edible ponderables

I don't understand artichokes. After you peel off the tough outer leaves and dig out the choke, you've got something the size of a sugar cube on a stem. Don't get me wrong, I really like the taste or artichokes; I just suspect that you're getting ripped off when you buy them raw. Since fresh produce tends to be charged by weight, I think you should be allowed to bring in the edible bit of artichokes after preparation and pay accordingly. Same goes for asparagus - snap off the woody ends before you get to the checkout. Might as well shuck fresh peas, take the stone out of avocados, and take all the wilty bits off heads of lettuce before you pay, too. Um...but you didn't read that here. *wink*

After watching a program on channel 4 about the dire conditions in which our livestock is kept, I was reminded why I became a vegetarian 18 years ago. Obviously I had forgotten about these chickeny horrors because I started eating meat again, but now I feel the need to be more responsible for the food I ingest. I will not go vegetarian again, due to the fact that one cannot live a life free of any animal cruelty simply by not eating meat. Well that, and I really like meat. I have, however, vowed to buy free range and organic when I can. After seeing the segment about "hock burns" on chickens (the ammonia from their waste leaves a mark on their legs when they become too lame to stand) and actually seeing these burns on row upon row of chickens at my local Tesco, I quickly ran for the organic section. I used to joke that free range meat was crueller than factory farmed meat because killing a happy animal was just mean. ("Have a beautiful meadow to frolic around in, some lovely food, clean water, all the space you want - and then we're going to kill you and wrap you in clingfilm.") Now I do see the point of eating something that had a decent life and was kept in humane conditions.

Of course the true key to living a happy life free of cruelty is to stuff your face with chocolate and Green and Black's ice cream. Obviously.

[posted by: Lisa Durbin] --

01 August 2005

day 67

So, Orlaith "Look At My Boobies" is gone and has been replaced by Kinga. One question: why? There are two weeks to go, she is never going to win it, and she is unbearable to watch. She makes you plead "Keep it on! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE KEEP IT ON!" We all breathed a sigh of relief when Makosi chose not to bring Kinga into the house a few weeks ago, and then we let out a collective gasp of horror when we saw her in the diary room about to enter the house last night. Oh, the humanity.

A lot of Big Brother is making me cringe and turn away from the television like I'm witnessing a really bad first date. In the outside world, Craig would be drugging Anthony and keeping him in a secret room in his basement. Instead, we are forced to witness the poor lad endure daily maulings by a deranged hairdresser (who surely must be making the gay community cringe as well). Derek is becoming cattier by the day which might have been entertaining, but sadly he is also becoming more boring. As more housemates are evicted, he may have to resort to bitching about the garden gnomes...to the other garden gnomes. Eugene is so painfully geeky that he makes Bill Gates look like Samuel L Jackson. Makosi's weave is turning into a demented tribble and her "look at me, I'm going to pretend to cry now" act has become tiresome.

But will I stop watching it? Goodness no. How else will I feel superior about my own life if I can't mock those on reality TV?

[posted by: Lisa Durbin] --