I just found this yesterday and immediately fell in love. A little program called Desktop Earth that makes desktop backgrounds using satellite images of the earth. The kicker is that it can update them too, from every minute to hourly.

I love seeing the lights from space and seeing where people tend to live. It can also have clouds, which makes weather patterns much more apparent. Obviously, the bright lights indicate issues with overpopulation and excessive research usage in places, but it is still a pretty sight. It reminds me of being on an airplane at night except on a much grander scale.

If you’re not using Windows, you can get a still image to use as a desktop background from the same link. Attached is an example of the Americas at midnight last night.

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It was really nice to meet someone and know that there was a lot of common ground.  Like our unschooling support groups, I easily let my guard down and avoided the teeth-gritting moments that occur constantly when dealing with mainstream parents.  The sucky part is that Arun lives in Australia.  Which is cool if it weren’t 10,000 miles away and ridiculously expense to go to.  So the next time we meet might be … in India.  Two years from now.  Thankfully these cool internet tubes will let us keep in touch.

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Researching skinny wallets was kinda fun - there are several options available. I considered 4 options:

1. the JimiX | $16 | 4.3″ x 2.7″ x .6″. This was the most technically interesting option. Plus, I could yell out Kick me in the Jimi ad nauseum.

2. the Slimmy | $32 | 3.8″ x 2.9″ x .3″. The most expensive but elegant option.

3. the All-Ett European | $15 | 3.75″ x 3″ x 1/32″. The cheapest, fugliest option with the worst name. All wtf?

4. the Fossil Front Pocket Wallet | $25 | 4″ x 3″ x ?”. The leather looked old-school and thicker - not slimmy. Just there for comparison with something more traditional.

Besides shrinking the wallet and freeing my butt, I had two other practical considerations, both relating to the move to Costa Rica. It had to fit comfortably in a front pocket since CR is chock full of pickpockets and it had to fit Costa Rican currency. Turns out the currency is almost identical to US currency in size, so that part was easy. Some other wallets not on my list were knocked off because they were too large to fit in a front pocket.

I decided on the All-Ett (wtf) European, because I’m cheap and don’t give a crap about the style of a friggin’ wallet. I also picked up a smaller card case from them for another $5. They charged $2.05 in shipping, which mostly paid for the plastic packaging sleeve since the wallet shockingly arrived in a regular envelope. The wallet & card case are made of thin, rip-stop nylon. Think pragmatism over style, by a HUGE margin.

Following are some pictures of both with a ruler (hard to read, but hey - I tried). Note that the Wtf European is empty til the end.

This pic has my old, now empty wallet in the background, the Wtf European filled with all necessary items and the pile of unnecessary crap.

Here’s the new skinny wallet with all the unnecessary crap next to it. It was a little tight to close due to some of the cards that I can’t get rid of yet, like 2 cards needed for entry to work. That’s why I got the card case (and also to carry business cards). The wallet thinned out a lot when I just took the cards and stuck them in the card case - which is nice since a lot of times, I need either cash or a card but not both.

The card case is empty here, but here’s a list of the contents of my fat wallet replacements:

In the All-Ett European: cash.

In the card case: 2 credit cards, subway card, 2 proximity/ID cards for work, driver’s license, 2 health insurance cards and 1 triple AAA card. Oh - and one … receipt.

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We took the kids to one of the best streets for Trick-Or-Treating that I have ever had the pleasure to go to. It was great. We all had a great time. M was into which kinds of candy he was getting. J was into the lollipops. I particularly loved looking at all the houses with their amazing decorations. If only I had the money to invest in that kind of festivity!

On the way home, what was on the minds of Arp and I was how many little girls were costumed as princesses, brides, or other sorts of “girly stuff”. Of the thousand people we saw (this was a happening place!), I only saw two girls in non-girly attire: My J, in her Creature From the Black Lagoon outfit, and a two-year-old in a fantastically accurate police outfit (which I complimented, of course). From the point of view of a feminist, I’m finding this fact more than a little troublesome.

Why are so many young girls dressed as princesses? Frankly, I’m repulsed by it. I’m guessing the reasoning is two-fold. Either the girls actually really wanted to be princesses, or their parents pushed them toward the choice. Actually, in both cases, I’d wager the parents pushed it. Even if you have a child who wants to be a princess, I’m guessing it’s likely because you have chosen to fill your house with those sorts of items - princess videos, princess-themed toys, etc.  Or in the other option, I’m guessing the parents direct their daughters toward the “girl aisle” of the local costume store.

What do parents do this?  Do parents really want to push their girls into the role of princess?  What the heck are we trying to say to our young women?  Do parents really want their girls to sit around waiting for a rich man to rescue them and provide a life of “happiness” in a castle away from the masses?  Having seen the “girl aisle” for costumes in Target, I quickly found most of them to be uninteresting.  Some items were actually rather whorish.  I swear, you could actually change up the size on a few of them, put them on a woman on 42nd street, and have someone propositioning her within 2 minutes.  Gotta love that for Halloween.  “Hey Honey!  Look!  Want to be a prostitute for Halloween this year?”

Let me go on record as saying that I don’t ban princesses from my home.  We have a few Disney movies, such as Beauty and the Beast.  But we don’t give them undue emphasis either.  If my daughter wanted a CD player, for instance, I wouldn’t pick the pink princess-themed one just because she’s a girl, or some other such idiocy.  But yet I’ve been to people’s houses that have 2 or 3 year old girls and a house filled with princess-themed merchandise.  You can’t tell me that a two-year-old drove her parents to buy all that princess crap.  The parents have to be taking the lead.  It’s time we stop doing it, don’t you think?

Here’s one more pic of me and my girl.

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What are my symptoms? For quite a few weeks, I was obsessed with the fear that I was having twins. The morning sickness and fatigue has been a lot worse for this pregnancy, combined with the fact that I began showing at something like 8 weeks. I’ve also been incredibly hungry, which I don’t remember from the first two pregnancies. It just all feels incredibly different. So I brought up my fear that I was having twins at my first midwife appointment. She kind of reassured me. I mean, I’m not even vomiting that much, so it’s not like I have hyperemesis. It’s just that it feel so different from the first two times. I keep catching myself wondering if there is something wrong, just because things are not like my first two pregnancies. Typical Third Baby Syndrome, I now know.

I also have a strange amount of fear surrounding birth this time. My first birth was in an in-hospital birthing center, and it went pretty well. For my second birth, we planned a homebirth, and it went wonderfully. I think the second time, I was just so happy to be staying at home that I really didn’t have any fears entering labor. This time, I have worries. What if I have a hospital transfer (in Costa Rica, no less)? Third Baby Syndrome strikes again. My plan: I’m going to try to focus on the positives. After all, planning a low or no intervention homebirth is going to increase the likelihood of a normal, natural birth. I’m also in the process of getting some Hypnobabies CDs to reduce my stress and focus on positive pregnancy affirmations.  Finally, I’ve ordered a copy of Birthing From Within from my local library, so that I can do some wrestling with my fears and some art that connects me with my baby.

On the hunger: Arp tells me that he remembers it from the first two pregnancies. I asked him the other day, “What if I eat us out of house and home?” He says, “You asked that the first two times, and we still have a house, right?” That made me feel better, too.  And every time I walk up, showing him my huge belly, saying, “Look at this belly!” he says, “It’s great!  I love it!”  I am a lucky woman, indeed.

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