i watched all of the first 3-4 seasons of gilmore girls religiously.  in fact, i was an early adopter of gilmore girls love, many years before many of my friends.  (this was a fact i enjoyed lording over late adopter sarah skean.  :)  )  and i saw many episodes for a second or third time in repeats.  i kind of got annoyed and dropped off near the end of the series, but still-- i feel i have sufficiently established my gilmore girls cred.

so we're playing trivial pursuit saturday night and i get the question, "on tv show the gilmore girls, what was rory's full first name?"  and i am KICKING MYSELF BECAUSE I KNOW THIS!  i know i know this!  yet i cannot for the life of me remember.  i'm like, aurora?  or was she named for her grandfather?  no, probably not, since her mom was estranged from her parents.  i could create rationale for all sorts of options based on my knowledge of the characters, but i could not actually remember the name!!!!!!!  and so on... my teammates had no clue so it was all on me.  for a pie, no less.

in the end?  did. not. get. it.

as soon as i heard the answer (um, she was named after her mother, lorelai) i was so mad at myself.  i knew that.

also, wtf?  lorelai was so freakin' creative.  was there a reason why she gave her daughter her own name?

i almost walked off the job today.  twice.

(i like that that makes me sound like a construction worker or something.  like i have a job that you "walk off.")

if i didn't desperately need both the salary and paid maternity leave i might have gone through with it.  so indescribably frustrating.  is there anything worse than taking the fall for another person's incompetence?  if there is, i don't know what it is.

me feet are so swollen my shoes hurt.  i am crabby as all get-out.  i have a 3-hr-long childbirth education class at the hospital tonight, which i am pretty sure will involve watching at least one video of someone giving birth, which in turn will make me retch in public.

what i would give anything to be able to do after a day like this is go home and down a bottle of sauvignon blanc all by myself.  somehow calcium-enriched orange juice doesn't have the same relaxing properties.

and... end vent.  thanks for listening.

i could barely tear myself away last night.  it's long, but i highly recommend saving the link and listening when you've got half an hour.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103794433

hey people.

ok for those of you who don't know yet, i am knocked up with twins.

now to the dilemma...  there are two cribs, a changing table, and a toy chest at IKEA that i want for la nursery.  they are affordable, simple and sized small enough for our wee house.  also the cribs convert into toddler beds which is awesome.

problem is, they can't be purchased online and shipped.  otherwise i would be willing to eat the shipping costs, since overall these products are SO MUCH cheaper than anything i could find locally.

so is anyone driving to chicago or MN (and then back to nebraska) in the next five months?  anyone have brilliant ideas regarding this?  i just can't foresee a time -- and maybe i am wrong here -- where i will be able to deal with 7hrs (each way) in the car, in my current preggo condition.

i thought about posting a craig's list ad looking for a "runner."  i'll pay someone for their time.

put your collective MASSIVE brainpower together and come up with a brils solution for me, k?  thanks!

I need girl scout cookies.
Anyone local have a hook-up?  There is nary a girl scout in my neighborhood or office.

lateness.

it is maybe my number one pet peeve.

although i should note that i am well aware that i am compulsively EARLY and let me assure you all that i in no way think everyone else on the planet should be as crazy about time management and promptness as me.

but i DO think being on time or just a couple minutes behind schedule is a reasonable expectation, particularly in a friendship.  case in point: yesterday i met a good friend (and non-LJ reader) for some pho.  now, i have a flexible and understanding boss, but i pretty much have to keep my lunch breaks in the ballpark of one hour, which is cramped if i'm meeting someone someplace that's not adjacent to campus.  but for a steaming bowl of pho on a january day, i would drive 100 miles.

so i am sipping my water and perusing the menu i know by heart, and said friend doesn't show up.  and doesn't show up.  we were supposed to meet at 11:30, and at 11:43 i called her cell to make sure she hadn't forgotten.  she hadn't, and was JUST ALMOST THERE!  five minutes later, she arrived.  she was super apologetic, as people usually are in this situation.  she had gotten a call just as she was walking out of her office.  a reasonable excuse, right?  except i was still annoyed because SHE IS THIS LATE EVERY TIME WE HAVE PLANS, AND ALWAYS HAS A REASONABLE EXCUSE.

could she not have called to tell me she was running late?  in our cell phone culture, is it fair to ask someone to wait 18-20 minutes alone in a restaurant without giving them a jingle?

i don't know.  i don't think so.  to me, lateness communicates several things: a. i can't get my shit together to be on time. b. i'm just not that concerned about politeness. c. i value your time less than i value mine, so i am ok with keeping you waiting as long as it's in the interest of my doing something important/interesting/fun.

i wasn't a bitch when she arrived, though i kind of wanted to be.  she apologized and i said, "that's ok, but i have to leave in basically 25 minutes so we're just going to kind of be rushed."  like a few minutes less of time with me was some kind of big punishment or something.  ha ha.

but again, i know i am kind of on the far end of the spectrum where this issue is concerned.  what do you all think?

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?
TRIED to get pregnant.( Beware... I am a gloom spreader! )

A few weeks before her 37th birthday, she adopted an infant from Guatemala. She pushes her around in a three-wheeled ergodynamic jogging stroller. She bought her monogrammed diaper bag after reading an article on Jennifer Garner in Real Simple. She charges her Panera bagels on her Banana Republic visa card. Don't judge her yet. She is learning Spanish. She knows she should go back to work in a few months but she really, really does not want to. Before the adoption, she took her basal body temperature every morning for years. At her baby shower, someone gave her a newborn sleepsuit that says "I was worth the wait," and she had to fake an allergy attack and go cry in the bathroom. She has a gay interior decorator. She has sexual fantasies about Charlize Theron. She knows her husband isn't all that crazy about having a brown child. She is learning to cook Malaysian food. She is learning new things all the time. It makes her feel purposeful. She needs to feel like she has a purpose.

in grading huge team proposal papers for my class today, i found massive plagiarism by my best group of students. we're talking two whole paragraphs taken word-for-word from a government agency's web site, and not even cited.

sigh.

i have to fail them for the entire paper, which is a big part of their final grade. they're good kids. suck.