Monkey House

I recently entered an online contest, and was the lucky winner of 1000 business cards from AllBusinessCards.com. The contest was hosted by Jan Cavan over at Dawghouse Design Studio, a wonderful designer from the Phillipines. She graciously also offered to design the card for anybody who did not have a design they wanted to use.

I did not have a design! Since this blog went live, and since at some point in time I hope to do some freelancing (but am not entirely sure what that freelancing might involve, though it will certainly be writing, editing, or web design-related), I decided to go with a generic “Monkey House” card that both Mama Monkey and I can use for whatever purpose. In truth, I’ll probably never get through 1000 cards, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to tell Jeremy at AllBusinessCards.com to just send 500. Stupid me! Still, I’m grateful for the 1000 and will do my best to use them.

Here’s a quick shot of the cards, with my point-n-click:

cards from AllBusinessCards.com and Dawghouse Design Studio

Small update, on two related points–

As you guys (anybody reading this blog) already know, we have opted to have a home birth. Part of our plan is to use a birthing tub (AquaDoula is the brand name) for comfort, muscle relief, and if Alie feels like it, the delivery itself.

Tubs need water.

Water source is ensuite faucet.

Ensuite faucet to tub requires hose.

Hose to tub requires adapter on faucet.

Now, most (all?) faucets have a screw-on aerator attachment. You know the thing I’m talking about. Little mesh baskety-dealy that prevents the water from coming out in one forceful gush… in kitchens, people unscrew these for attaching Brita filters. Yeah. We broke that. I broke that. In all fairness, it was seized onto the faucet with about 20 years of corrosion and mineral build-up. Same thing happened to a colleague of mine not too many months ago, so I know I can’t be the only one.

But either way, off to Home Depot. And if you’re off to Home Depot, might as well do it right. That meant getting a new faucet, shut off valves (had to go back a second time as I got straight when I needed angled), and braided supply lines. Add to this a “new” sink we already had! Since we hated the beige one that was in there (and happened to have a white one that we got for free not too long ago), changeroo time.

For possibly the first time ever, I can say that although breaking the faucet sucked, the actual renovation was a complete success. No drips, nothing broken, no problems!

Some parting statistics:

- Filling the AquaDoula takes 55 minutes with our faucet. That’s a long time to be running water. Felt guilty.
- Heating the AquaDoula to 95 or so degrees Farenheit takes 18 mother-effing hours. Needless to say, we didn’t get to enjoy the fruits of our labour that night.

So, nothing major to say. Mostly, gearing up for the baby involves the gathering of material goods and resources. Here are a few recent developments:

• Installed our car seat and had it officially inspected. Missed getting poured on by a deluge of rain by about 2 minutes
• A friend of a friend sold us a bucket-load of great stuff for a bargain. Can’t wait to see our little one in the jolly jumper, though that’ll be a few months off yet
• There was a recent flea market of baby/kid stuff. Again, loading up for cheap. Y’know, I’m glad we’re not too posh for previously-loved items. We’re getting stocked right up!
• Workin’ on the name lists, though the girl name list is much shorter. And no, we’re not planning on sharing those names until the naming is complete

Still working on the maternity pics, sort of. As in, I’m not REALLY working on them, but I know I should be. Found a pretty cool site that allows for some neat editing online (ie. no need for Photoshop!).

The word “unique,” by definition, means exactly this: “one of a kind.”

Imagine saying to someone, “Wow, great outfit. It’s very one of a kind.” Or “Hey man, you have a REALLY one of a kind songwriting style.” It makes no grammatical sense.

Is it one of a kind or not? If it’s kind of like something else you’ve seen before, it’s not unique, period. If it’s kind of like something you’ve seen before, but with something different to it, then it has a unique approach (or whatever). And if it’s truly one of a kind, such that you want to enthuse about it, it’s “unique”.

Not “very” unique. Not “really” unique. Just unique.

Rant over.

A colleague/friend of mine and his wife are photography enthusiasts with a fair bit of good equipment. They were looking for opportunities to build their experience in photographing people, so we happily volunteered our time for a photo shoot (read as: jumped at the chance for free maternity shots!).

I haven’t had a chance to putz around with them yet (the free session for obvious reasons did not include dozens of hours of Photoshop retouching!) but here’s one of the nice “belly” pics:

Do Not Open Until June 7, 2009

More to come!