A new year, a slightly new look. I got tired of the weird border-line thing that only worked in some browsers. But overall, things will stay pretty much the same.

You probably noticed on Monday the new addition to the sidebar - the Pregnancy Calendar. It seems to me that the two questions pregnant women are most asked are, When are you due? and How far along are you? Which really mean the same thing. I'm using the doctor-standard 40-week scale there. I have quibbles with that scale (not the least of which is that for the first two weeks of those 40 weeks, a woman is not, in fact, pregnant at all) but it's a standard. If you want to know how long I've actually been pregnant, subtract two weeks.

I'm not posting my official Estimated Due Date that the doctor gave me. For one thing, I have a quibble with that, too, and my private bet is about three days later. But only one in twenty babies is born on its due date, so I don't want to get fixated on either of those dates. We're just telling people the second week of August, which is close enough to make no nevermind.

So to speak.

I had my first actual visit with the doctor last Monday, and it went well, I thought. He was nice, didn't even blink at my weight, and was sort of funny. I think Matt was less than thrilled that I was complaining about cold instruments, but really, there's only so much that can be done.

The doctor gave me a clean bill of health, and the next exciting thing that will happen is that my next OB visit, toward the end of this month, will include our first ultrasound/sonogram. The doctor promised us pictures of "sort of a blob, with arms and legs."

Our very own blob!

New Year's was good. Jeff came up on Sunday to stay with K.T. and Kevin, and Rachel came down from the Den Of Iniquity And Bad Traffic that is D.C. on Tuesday to stay with us, and we trooped over to K.T. and Kevin's early Tuesday evening to exchange Christmas presents.

Before Christmas, we'd been talking about the Must-Haves - the things we were going to buy if we didn't get them as gifts. I think everybody got at least one of those items for Christmas, which is really neat. It was a neat feeling, too, to hear someone say, "I'm going to get this for myself if I don't get it as a gift," and be able to think, "Hey! That's what I got them!"

After we exchanged presents, we ate party food and watched K.T.'s new Brotherhood of the Wolf DVD - which was a much better movie without the distorted soundtrack that we'd had to endure in the theater.

Greg and T came over toward the end of the movie, and then the bunch of us sat around talking until midnight. (So much for the wild parties of our youth, eh?) It didn't help much that Kevin is fighting some variant of the Mongolian Death Virus and pretty much looked and felt like death warmed over all night.

We had meant to do some gaming on the First, but between Kevin's Mongolian Death Virus and my sleepy apathy and Rachel and Jeff's admitted movie ignorance, we wound up just sitting around watching movies instead. We actually do plan to game tonight, though.

But in the meantime, I'm back at work and not especially thrilled about it. At least I got some nifty books for Christmas that will keep me occupied.

And now that the new year is here, I can once again post my journal entries in the morning (yay!) and hop on IRC during the day. (YAY!)

--Liz