Pyramid Scheme Rant

Alright, let's just put it out there. I HATE pyramid schemes! Here are my reasons why:

1. Often the products involved are not the best - otherwise why wouldn't they just follow the normal route of being sold in major stores? Hmmm??

2. I HATE these pyramid scheme parties. It's not a party. Let's just call it what it is. You're trying to get me to buy something so you can make a buck. Under the guise of being my friend. What a load. If I want to buy something, I will hop in my car, drive to the store (yes this is life in Calgary) and BUY it. Without the jacked up price of paying a toll to all the people that came before you in the scheme.

3. The focus of any pyramid scheme, and the thing that draws suckers in is money. Like that is the only benefit you gain from joining up. In my opinion, if all your 'job' (if you can even call it that with these things) can give you is money, you're missing the point of life.

4. They are all 'get rich quick' schemes where hard work is not only not valued, it is actually laughed at and looked down upon.

This leads me to say, what is WRONG with the world?!

And that's my rant for the day. I may have to continue it tomorrow...

Back in Black

..or should I say Calgary. I just thought the 'back in black' line was catchy. We arrived back in Calgary 1 week ago. Or I should say, we should have arrived a week ago. Instead we arrived about 7 hours shy of a week ago. After a VERY long day in transit which involved dropping off a playpen during an expensive cab ride (one of Dave's pet peeves), delayed flights, missed connections [Craigslist anyone?], meeting up with friends in the T. (read T-dot) and getting home too late to get any food at the grocery store, we finally arrived HOME! Which inspired me to write a '101 reasons I'm glad we're home'. I'm not sure if I'll actually make it to 101, but I'll see how far I get. However, I was VERY sad to leave the east coast where I have lots of friends and family and so much to see and do.

In other news, our neighbors across the street, who were either running a brothel or a drug ring, have been evicted. It's much quieter around here these days. And lastly, for those who are interested to know, our Christmas tree is no longer in our neighbors' front yard. I have no idea how they got rid of it.

More to come on our recipe book and 101 list.

Recipe Book

T-4 weeks and I'll be in school. The week of August 15, I'll be in school from 8:30-4:30 the whole week. Same for the week of September 5. Did I mention Dave is starting clerkship in earnest August 1? It's hard for me to imagine how busy we are going to be this year. In an attempt to simplify one area of our lives (and to avoid either starvation or eating out all the time), we are making a 2-3 week dinner rotation. This way, there will be no 'what's for dinner?' dilemma. We've come up with a list of about 10 meals that will be in our rotation, and I'm in the process of compiling recipes and corresponding grocery lists. Stay tuned for those.

No More Dance Aerobics

So Thomas seems to be getting worse and worse when it comes to bedtime and sleeping. I'm sure we've probably done this to ourselves, but it has gotten to the point where you have to bounce him while walking around and patting his back, with his soother, sleep sheep, swaddled for like 45 mins before he will go to sleep. And that's after feeding him and bedtime stories. And I'm not doing it anymore. It's ridiculous. Does anyone have any wonderful suggestions of how to get him to go to sleep easier? He's 4 months old now and he still eats every 3 hours all night long - any suggestions on lengthening the time between feeds? Some people purport to have babies younger than him that sleep for upwards of 9 hours at a time. Are they lying? If they are actually being truthful, what is their secret? Is it too young for sleep training? We will be leaving in about a month and he's bound to be thrown off by all the travel and sleeping in new places, etc. Should I not even bother doing this right now?

How lucky am I?

Yesterday was our anniversary. Seems crazy that it's already been 3 years...until I was looking at our wedding photos and we look a lot younger! Anyway, Dave took me out for a delicious Indian feast. (Kim watched Thomas) Great food with terrible service...which is a lot better than great service with terrible food, which is more of the norm here in Calgary. We then watched 'The Social Network' - which we actually watched at Dave's parents' house since they have a big screen tv, the movie was free, and we got free snacks and babysitting service too. Oh and every movie in this city either starts in the hour of 7 or the hour of 10 - so not very convenient times.

Anyhow, Mark Zuckerberg is the same age as us and was a classmate of all the people from my class at Stuy who went to Harvard. And now he's a billionaire. The youngest person to become a billionaire. It's easy to think for a second, wait - what did I do wrong? But then I looked around me and thought, he doesn't have anything. And I wouldn't trade my boys for anything in the world. How lucky am I?

We're not in Kansas (or NY) anymore

Recent fb status update of a friend here in Calgary:

in great falls mt! shop til we drop time!

How sad is that? We live in a place that has worse shopping than Montana. Montana!

Living room update

I realized I haven't posted photos of our living room since it was far from done. So here's the update!

A close-up of the bench that Stew constructed. I did the seats. Lots and lots of storage for junk underneath. The only problem is that the window is really drafty, so it's quite cold on the bench.

Here you can see our refinished buffet. It was in its 'before' state in my last post about our house. Big transformation. And don't you like our floating shelf? You can see the doorway on the left leads to the kitchen and the one on the right leads to the rest of the house.


By the time I took these 5 photos, Thomas was screaming...