Sometimes I play a game where I pretend that I don't actually know anything about my job and see if I could, as a complete stranger, read my work e-mail and my calendar and have it make any sense at all. 

Then I realized that YOU GUYS don't have my job! So maybe it would be fun for you to play this game as well!  Everyone likes games, right?

Actual titles of meetings I've attended recently:

1. Best Practice TW PPQ (1 hour)
2. Good/Bad Characters & error messages (30 mins)
3. Copy vs. reference discussion (1.5 hours)
4. Get (re)acquainted (30 mins)
5. CIQ spec clarifications (1.5 hours)
5. Reviewing the CIQ interface's page def screen (1 hour)
6. Client ROI on AM (1 hour)
 
Is it not clear that I contribute to the betterment of humanity every single day?

Is it not clear that I cannot have a meaningful discussion with anyone outside of the cube farm about the daily goings-on at the cube farm?

This list of meetings represents six and one half hours of my life that I will never get back. 

Yeah, I'm getting bigger.  And as an added bonus, sometime over the past week my hips appear to have turned slightly outward, an unsolicited biological trick which prevents me from walking normally.  Basically what I've got goin' on over here is sort of a pregnant woman's mini-waddle. 

I'm obsessed with this new development because I swore when I became pregnant that I would not be one of those waddle-footed preg-o women who weeble around the cube farm looking deeply maternal, yet I cannot for the love of God almighty force myself NOT to do the mini-waddle.  I'm sure that more than one of my co-workers has watched me from down the hall in weird series of attempts to STOP the waddling, which is perhaps even funnier than the mini-waddle itself.  And to top it all off, I'm not even that large yet. So go figure.

What's even more disruptive than the mini-waddle is what goes on in the master bedroom of this home these days, which includes lots of rolling around replete with grunting and groaning. No doubt these are examples of exactly the kind of behavior that got me into this fix to begin with, but that information is neither here nor there.  My point is that trying to turn over in bed when you are 7 months pregnant is like trying to turn a bus around on a city corner.  

To further complicate matters, did you know that there are "Best Practices" (as we say on the cube-farm) for how to sleep with you're pregnant? To quote my doctor: "Sleeping on your left side is better than sleeping on your right side, and sleeping on either side is better than sleeping on your back." 

Now you probably don't pay much attention to the side that you sleep on, but let me tell you that once a doctor tells you which side you should be sleeping on, that side automatically becomes the most uncomfortable side ever to sleep on. Even though you have probably slept on that side quite comfortably up to that point, the very moment the order leaves the doctor's lips you feel constrained and resentful.  Sleep instructions?! Sleep is the ultimate freedom! You can do what you want when you're sleeping!  Huh! Telling me how to sleep.  Who does she think she is? 

I will tell you who she thinks she is: she thinks she is protecting the blood flow from your aorta to the baby by encouraging you to sleep on your left side.  She thinks she is reducing the chance of undue pressure on the blood vessels located behind your uterus by encouraging you to stay off your back.  Okay fine. What ever.  So in an attempt not to suffocate either myself or my child, I have to monitor my sleep positions -- while I'm asleep.  The good news is that there little danger I could accidentally awake to find myself sleeping on my back, since there is no longer any position change I could embark upon that might go undetected by myself, Fabulous Husband, or a Richter scale. 

Because Fab Husband and I both think that getting more than 3 hours sleep might be important before the baby comes, we recently migrated into the baby's room, where the pre-marriage waterbed still resides.  Today's lesson?  Pregnancy + Waterbed = Full night's sleep.

That's it for now. I'm going to finish watching a Lifetime TV movie entitled Terror In The Mall. 

A movie called The Aviator is up for a bunch of Oscars.

I don't know anything about this movie, but I can tell you this: in spite of the fact that it is apparently an Oscar-worthy movie, I can't think of a more boring title for a movie and therefore I have very little interest in seeing it. Where is the drama in such a title? Why not just call it "The Plumber"? 

Here are some title changes that might encourage me to see this movie:

1. The Aviator in My Bed
2. Finding The Aviator
3. Serial Aviator
4. Rick Springfield Is The Aviator
5. The Aviator Next Door