All right, we're committed to this. We just bought our first real baby swag.
Carly and I went with some friends to a baby junk show last weekend and it was awful. Just... awful. I always expect, when you go to an aggressively marketed show where the keynote speaker is Rosie Pope, who has made a fortune out of duping people out of their money for useless baby shit, that we will be aggressively pandered to. And almost as soon as we walked in the door, people were handing us flyers and brochures and asking us for our email addresses for raffles and BIG PRIZES and other nonsense. I'm reasonably certain that we don't need a doula or placenta encapsulation, but it was kind of interesting to see the gadgets and things that really do seem to work. One guy invented a backpack/child carrier for older kids to stand on your shoulders at a concert. It was really neat, and the guy who was hawking the things looked like a real hacky-sack professional.
I was really turned off by the voracious nature of the beast, though. There was a great photographer there who had a great deal for baby/maternity photos, but we didn't want to buy into it right away. Carly asked if she could have a flyer or a business card and he just smiled at her and refused. "No, we don't give out our cards. You buy the package now or... no." So yeah, fuck you, photographer guy. That kind of shady marketing makes me think that what they're really doing is trafficking children from the Balkans.
But there was this one thing... one thing that, when we were frightened away from the Britax display with the TERRIFYING CARNIVOROUS ROBOTIC TALKING CARSEAT, we found quite surprising: The ERGObaby child carrier. It's basically one of those backpacks for hauling babies around, but designed to carry either on the front or back. The young woman at the booth was friendly and put up with my random questions, and she said, with apparent candor, that the things are great and they sell themselves. She admitted she regularly carts her 25 lb kid around in the thing and barely notices he's there.
Then, today, I get an email about a sale at REI.com, and decided to see if they have one of these baby carriers. Lo! and Behold! they do. And 25% cheaper than Amazon. A quick survey of craigslist shows that these things sell for about $115 new, $90 new. I bought it for $86 (plus tax) and get to pick it up at the REI store in SoHo.
So, that's it. We're committed to this thing. The return period will pass before the kid is born, so... guess we gotta have the thing.
One more thing: PLACENTOPHAGY is just a limited form of cannibalism.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Two out of three ain't bad
We're just over the line for the third trimester, and timing couldn't be worse.
I've been in the market for a new job for about the past year. About as soon as I got status where I could start applying for promotions in my agency, I brushed up my resume and submitted dozens of applications. Lots of them were rejected because I didn't fill out the stupid application properly on usajobs.gov, or because my resume didn't quite hit the notes that were needed for the job. A few were bounced because of some random nonsense, such as:
Me: "I don't understand how I didn't meet the requirements for this job, as the listing says that you need to have experience creating policy and standard operating procedures, giving advice to upper management, and so on. The first paragraph of my resume says that I developed policy for three programs and worked closely with upper management on all of them."
HR: "Well, we didn't really know what you meant by 'developed.' That could mean anything."
Me: "Well, when you develop a piece of land, YOU PUT A GODDAMNED HOTEL ON IT AND GIVE PEOPLE JOBS. It's not really ambiguous."
But lately, I've gotten some interviews and was even offered a job in Cleveland on the strength of my resume alone. I couldn't take the Cleveland job because it wasn't really a promotion, and we can't justify moving halfway across the country for a lateral move. However, I've gotten some good feedback on other opportunities and there's a decent chance I could get a job at our regional office in Vermont or in good ol' Washington DC. Additionally, Carly's being headhunted by a couple of agencies, and things are all very exciting. But most of those opportunities would require that we move somewhere else, and almost all of those opportunities are likely to pop in the next few months.
We're also having a baby in a few months. So... yeah. Not sure how this is going to go down.
What we are doing is finally cleaning out the second bedroom and organizing for when the baby does decide to make an appearance. Carly's having the "we're not ready" dreams, and we both have weird dreams about talking babies. We have scheduled birthing classes, daddy classes, hospital tours, a baby shower/tea party, and some other stuff. The hardest part is going to be trying to find a place for all my Legos.
Last thing: My old man turned 64 yesterday. In his honor, this:
I've been in the market for a new job for about the past year. About as soon as I got status where I could start applying for promotions in my agency, I brushed up my resume and submitted dozens of applications. Lots of them were rejected because I didn't fill out the stupid application properly on usajobs.gov, or because my resume didn't quite hit the notes that were needed for the job. A few were bounced because of some random nonsense, such as:
Me: "I don't understand how I didn't meet the requirements for this job, as the listing says that you need to have experience creating policy and standard operating procedures, giving advice to upper management, and so on. The first paragraph of my resume says that I developed policy for three programs and worked closely with upper management on all of them."
HR: "Well, we didn't really know what you meant by 'developed.' That could mean anything."
Me: "Well, when you develop a piece of land, YOU PUT A GODDAMNED HOTEL ON IT AND GIVE PEOPLE JOBS. It's not really ambiguous."
But lately, I've gotten some interviews and was even offered a job in Cleveland on the strength of my resume alone. I couldn't take the Cleveland job because it wasn't really a promotion, and we can't justify moving halfway across the country for a lateral move. However, I've gotten some good feedback on other opportunities and there's a decent chance I could get a job at our regional office in Vermont or in good ol' Washington DC. Additionally, Carly's being headhunted by a couple of agencies, and things are all very exciting. But most of those opportunities would require that we move somewhere else, and almost all of those opportunities are likely to pop in the next few months.
We're also having a baby in a few months. So... yeah. Not sure how this is going to go down.
What we are doing is finally cleaning out the second bedroom and organizing for when the baby does decide to make an appearance. Carly's having the "we're not ready" dreams, and we both have weird dreams about talking babies. We have scheduled birthing classes, daddy classes, hospital tours, a baby shower/tea party, and some other stuff. The hardest part is going to be trying to find a place for all my Legos.
Last thing: My old man turned 64 yesterday. In his honor, this:
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