Calf Count: 3

Domino had her baby last night! No word yet on the sex - Mom and I are going to investigate soon. I'll report back :)

EDIT: 10:40am
Dang it, it's a boy. Mom was able to lay hands on his little endowment. The good news is Domino is looking great and he's a SUPER handsome little man. Red with all the white Hereford markings (face, chest, feet) plus a blaze of white in between the shoulder blades. No name for him yet, but Mom has decreed that Lucy's boy is named "Woody" (she's started naming boys after her friends' husbands).

EDIT: Pictures posted
I put up pictures of the three calves on our website. Album here.

Calf Count: 2

I'm here at the ranch with Mom on calf watch. Zelda had the first calf of the season on Sunday morning - Mom and Dad woke up to no calves, went to breakfast at the Lockes', and returned to see this new black and white cuteness having come into the world. It's a little girl, and I got to name her (I have permanent naming rights for Zelda's babies). This little one is Samus, "Sam" for short (her siblings are (Master) Chief and Zora); you might recognize the name as that of Samus Aran, the bounty hunter main character in the Metroid video game series.

And then yesterday Lucy gave birth to a boy in the window of several hours between Mom and Dad going back to Dallas and Mom and me coming back. He's pretty dang cute too and looks like his (this is a weird relation) nephew Linus (the smaller of Peanut's twins from the last round).

Domino has all the signs of impending labor and we're watching her closely. We really want to catch a cow in the act! Pretty much all the others look like they could have their babies within the next week.

Sam!

Save Friday Night Lights!

We love this show!
http://www.savefridaynightlights.tv/

Okay, I did my part - signed the online petition, made four postcards, wrote the letters to Ben Silverman and Jeff Zucker...so it isn't my fault if the show gets cancelled!

not a good week for sports

First I try to sub for our Aggie kickball team and we have to forfeit for only having 50% of the players necessary. Then my football game gets rained out last night. Dang it!

The good part about the football thing was, well, two things. 1) It was so cold and nasty outside, I was relieved to not have to play in it. And 2) I got to play more Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. I plan on making a whole post extolling the greatness that is Metroid Prime 3, but I'll just say now...it rocks!

Pene took Hello Kitty to play in the mud yesterday. If you are trying to remember what Hello Kitty used to look like, click here.

poor NBC

I just watched Knight Rider from last night...I'm embarrassed for NBC. First Bionic Woman and now this?

dang it

I would be proud of us only losing by a touchdown tonight in flag football, but we played a team that was a man (well, technically a woman) down. So barely losing when we had eight people to their seven doesn't seem like that great of an accomplishment. :/ The people that try and care on our team are getting discouraged, I think. The ones that only show up a third of the team and don't even try to make it to practice are probably oblivious. Oh, and let me say (this isn't just the frustration talking, I think) that the new ref we've had the last couple weeks, "old man" as I call him in my head, sucks. He isn't even watching the game. Grr.

letdown

I've come down from my read-a-new-fantasy-book high and it is sad. Yesterday I read the final book (#11), Confessor, in the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. It was actually really good. I've been reading this series for a third of my life - I bought book 2, Stone of Tears, in London the summer after seventh grade. Not all the books were perfect...1-2 were great, 3-5 pretty good, 6 amazing, 7-8 horrible, and then 9-11 were back to goodness. The final three books were actually a trilogy (The Chainfire trilogy) within the series and they were much much better than the previous couple books. One thing I loved about the last book was that it brought back some of the old characters from the beginning. Terry Goodkind is no George RR Martin to go off killing everyone you care about, but people do die, and he was gracious enough to not off anyone right before the end of the series. So yeah, I read the last three books of the series (Chainfire for the third time, Phantom the second, Confessor the first) probably within the last five days (I finished book 10 and read all of book 11 yesterday) and now I'm sad because it is over. I do have another fantasy series lined up though, fresh from the library. So I'll get over it.

Last night there were some crazy storms. I'm supposed to be helping out one of my flag football mates tonight by playing with his kickball team, but I wouldn't be surprised if the game got called off because of the rain.

This weekend was fun. Matt had to work Saturday but not too late. We ate dinner at a local Lake Highlands eatery (which wasn't that good, but they are a bakery and dessert was yummy) and watched the movie Weirdsville, which was...weird. Then on Sunday we had a nice relaxing day and caught up on TV on the DVR. We went to the mall and did some shopping (I'd tried to buy jeans for Matt when Brian was here and failed miserably, the good news being that it made Matt have to go with me to exchange them for the right kind). Then we had dinner at Maggiano's, which was the first time either of us had been there since the rehearsal dinner. Afterwards we came back home and watched Helvetica.

Helvetica

We just watched a whole documentary about the font Helvetica. How awesome are we?*



*this post is not in Helvetica, but Arial, which is apparently the poor man's Helvetica

qwned

One of my favorite t-shirt stores online, Jinx.com, has a new shirt out that says:

Qwnage: pwning by a whole letter more

I think this probably applies to my football team in the case of being "qwned" by our opponents on Thursday. Our first game we played a very physical team (to the point of them being cheating punks, as they totally creamed Blake and me when we were on defense). Also classy, they were whining about a non-call on us for false start when we were losing by like four touchdowns with three minutes to go in the game. I guess we know how they win their games. Mom and Dad came to my first game, which was cool (although I wish we'd had a better game - at least they got to see me knock down a pass and make a pull). In our second game, we came out playing really well for the first half and went up by a couple touchdowns. Then we lost our momentum the second half (maybe we were tired) and they came back to win it in the last 30 seconds of the game. :( So now we're 1-4. Go Dallas Aggies! Six of us went to the sponsor bar after the games and tried to drink our sorrows away (well, mostly I was there for the team bonding, but some were definitely there for the beer!).

I also learned something very interesting on Thursday. One of our players we picked up mid-season (friend of a friend)...turns out he was one of my 8th graders, as in one of the kids in Ms Janik's 8th grade English class that I subbed for a lot. I was thrown off, 1) because kids change a LOT in between 8th and 11th grade, and 2) he has been going by his last name with us. But yeah, that made be feel old. Of course some of the other people on our team were surprised too that he is so young.

catching up

I actually have a lot to post about - imagine that! I guess chronological order is easiest...

Right after my post last week, I headed off to a new therapist. I haven't actually had much luck finding someone and my attempts had been rather half-assed anyway, so this was in the nature of a New Year's Resolution. Her name is Debbie Cooney and things went pretty well. In any case, I made weekly appointments for the next three weeks. So I'll just see how it goes.

On Tuesday, Brian flew into DFW for a visit. You might recall he visited last April from Indiana. We had a nice, relaxed time here. We spent Tuesday night at the ranch with Mom and Dad - grilling out, chainsawing, letting Pene run around. The highlight of that was probably Pene's attempts to get the cows to play with her by running up to them and away just like she does to the doggies at the dog park. We played lots of Rock Band (Brian is really good) and ate lots of good food. On Thursday night we went to my flag football game where Brian saw us lose to the Cock-n-Ballers but at least we did score a touchdown. We were somewhat mollified by learning that the other team has been playing together for six years. Friday night we grilled out our Christmas present from KPMG - sirloin steaks, crab legs and shrimp (yeah, guess who ate what). And then Saturday night Emily, Rick, and Luke came over for a Rock Band extravaganza, which was really fun.

Yesterday morning I took Brian to the airport, came back home for a nap, and then spent the afternoon watching TV with Matt. Then we watched the Super Bowl (I was SO rooting for the Giants because I like Eli and hate Tom Brady). I think our favorite ads were the eTrade baby ones, particularly the second one with the clown. Also ranking up there: the Bud Light ads and the tire commercial with the screaming animals (especially the cricket!).

Tonight Cousin Lisa and Miles are rolling into town to stay until Thursday, so I get to have another stretch of fun days with visitors. Miles is crawling now and I have to de-furball the floor this afternoon. =P