What I outta be doin'

1. writing my outline
2. researching my paper
3. resting my achy eyes which sting
4. revelling (later) about the miasma of cool which has head-light-stunned me
5. sleeping
6. shooing stray cats off the balcony
7. reading the article, "Geography of the Blogosphere"

and we're off

Pictures of Ivo eating strawberries for the first time - today - he's quite suspicious - he doesn't seem to appreciate them so much for their food value as for their smearing value. We'll try again later... oh but it's messy;/

On Friday - 17 Feb - Ivo and I had lunch with Sho and Brendan before he took off for a semester in Brisbane. Ivo loved the non-spicy Thai food.

We've got to go outside and play - but first we need to get dressed. It's warm - I guess no winter for TaiChungers... Yesterday while walking around with Ivo, I had the miasmic sticky sensation of summer...

upkeep

trying to change fonts and fix this place up a bit

cat's eye nebula

teflon and tuna

Leonie and Cuy were down this weekend - very fun - a couple pics - I think tho none are loaded on the computer yet.

Like me, Leonie is a lapsed vegetarian/vegan. She hadn't eaten meat for 15 years or so until her pregnancy. I didn't eat it until Ivo was 41/2 months old. Both of us ate chicken 1st. Leonie craved it - I was just hungry. But with all that (possibly o-c stuff) in common and one year olds in Taiwan - we naturally got to talking about food. Much of the time - we can't know what kind of fish it is...

Fish-eating vegetarians eat a lot of tuna - so years ago, when my mom told me tuna was mercury-laden, I cried for months. Once I was pregnant, I researched and found so much contradictory info. Even in pregnancy mags and on websites - there was so much qualification - frequency schedules and kinds of fish , it was tempting to just disregard. I ate tuna once a month and then stopped. When I went back to work, still nursing, I started eating tuna around 2x/month. I stopped a couple months ago - b/c I could - and I was scared. So I was asking Leonie and she said they eat tuna maybe 1x/month. I told her I'd heard that just expensive tuna is polluted/dangerous and the tuna-for-the -masses/cheapy chicken-of-the-sea is ok. She said albacore is worse but all of it is bad.

We talked about salmon and fish n chips - farmed and wild - it's all effed up. I'm gonna do new/more research - but I'm pretty sure tuna's out forever - maybe a once/year thing... salmon I've gotta check on - and what all is the fish in its eponymous dish with chips??? Leonie says in Oz it's shark

Here's the dirt - and I do mean dirt - on teflon... DuPont chemical has gotten in trouble for hiding that they knew that carcinogens could transfer to food... Her are 2 sites to check out. An AP story sited on truthdig.org from 16 Feb 2006 called, Board: Teflon Chemical a Likely Carcinogen. The other is from Alternet, Making the Teflon Ban Stick - from 11 Feb 2006.

So - not really surprisingly - man-made chemicals are bad for you - very bad. Use some olive oil - demand antibiotic-free butter.

extend-o-bed

After the walls were finished for the 2nd time in as many months - we re-re-re-moved into the bedroom, making some changes - Ivo has a bed adjacent to ours. It's just a little bit lower but just as comfy-cozy. Brunswick-sheeted! He seems to really like it while waking. So far we've been as such for 2 nights - Ryan and I think it's nice for all of us to have more room - Ivo says 'what's wrong with sleeping ontop of eachother?' The first night he spent half his sleep in his bed. The second night he spent 10% of the time in his bed - objecting even to my turning around.

We've gotten our mitts on the 4th season of the Sopranos - very exciting! Makes me swear in a cruder than normal fashion, though.

Ivo's citizenship card

Ivo and Cuy Feb 06
Ivo is now in possession of the official document that legally proves he's Canadian. It looks like an old-style driver's license - easy to forge - no fancy schmancy watermarks, holograms or metalic/magnetic strips...Also - his picture is from when he was 2 months old and his height is listed as 55cm!
He's around 75cm by now.

I'll post a pic of the card this weekend.

Our first week back to school has ended. All 3 of us weathered it well. Only Ivo suffered a vomit-y day... well, we all kinda felt his pain... He's fine now. He's excellent.

Our walls were re-repaired+
+ (plus signs courtesy Ivo) So far they look6 3gre6at (numbers courtesy Ivo).
We're gonna move bedroom back and make an Ivo bed adjoined to ours -- we all need a little more room!

I have a song in my head that's about not waiting in line and uses all kinds of words that can be prefixed re-...so that there's double meaning of everything.

My class is going fine though I'm not excited about it and it's way not fun. Perfunctory. I'm looking forward to next semester! And a class where more than summarizing and defining...

Ivo wants to go watch tv - night night:)

Quail Hunting

So much has already been said about this, guns don't kill people, people with guns do... or they at least pepper them. I hope that Whittington will be ok. Cheney hasn't surfaced nor issued an apology. What I don't get is why this wasn't pinned on someone else in the hunting party in the first place.

timing

It takes a long time to download the video from ivo and the bbboys - so start it, go check yr email and by the time you frgot about it - it'll play!

happy vd!

Ivo and the basketball boys

Ivo and the basketball boys

Watch the video

This is from 4 February at a sports place in TaiChung.

More Pictures from New Dog Year

The warmest winter ever - currently wearing a tank top!

Happy Valentine's Day

While Doug and Gail were here, we returned to the shishi batting cages - with video games and shop - near Mitsukoshi. It's a popular spot for buying wearable souvenirs - Mom bought a bunch of stuff there last year.

Speaking of which - it's been a year since my mom arrived here and Ivo was so little. Wow - feels so clear and so impossible - that shifty changey nostalgia feeling.

Tomorrow is my first day back to work - Ivo's first day back to the babysitter - 1:30-6:30pm. Ryan started yesterday. So far so good.

So I'm gonna try to post a video of Ivo at the baseball games place. It's a great show of how he (1) loves balls (2) likes kids (3) goes after what he wants - but carefully. He's so cool - he kicks butt!

Wrapped up in a bow

Grammie and Grampie just took Ivo to the park by themselves - they brought him back sleeping like a baby! Yippee!

We are having a great time.

The other night we were talking about how having a baby has made us change our former free-time squandering ways. How just having an hour to do what you want or need to do feels like a gift. At the risk of scaring the few darling friends I have from coming by... We mentioned how sometimes visitors think this free time is still up for being taken for granted - and won't leave... Doug said when stuff like that happens the best thing to do is just to say, "Now isn't a good time." I think that's great but Ryan said, what if they ask why? Somewhere in there I said, tell 'em "Now's really not a good time, I just got my period." Still makes me laugh!