So, it's official: I'm pregnant! I took a home test yesterday and it was positive, so we went to the hospital to take a "real" test and that one was positive too! The nurse/midwife estimates I'm almost four weeks along! Crazy. Other than having tender chestuses (as one of my dear C! friends refers to them) and being a little more tired than usual, I'm feeling pretty normal. But I'm now eating lots more calcium and protein to help the baby grow healthy and strong ;-) And taking my special vitamins, etc.

Cowboy and I won't be announcing this until the beginning for April, because if I should lose the baby, well, we're both really private people and would rather grieve privately than have everyone and their cocker spaniel wandering around weeping and moaning at us. So I'll be blogging about being preggers from time to time, but keep these posts as drafts until such time as we make the announcement, and then I'll make them "real" posts and you can read back through the couple of months and check them out.

Anyway, pretty excited, as we've been hoping for this for almost a year now :-D Also a bit scared, cuz it's a big responsibility to raise a kid, and also pregnancy is weird and new and daunting, but if almost every single one of my friends can do this, I can too, eh?

Hey, check it out: it's a sort of wikipedia for Mankato, MN, the town where Cowboy & I used to live! I may have to actually add some stuff to this site, cuz they don't have some of my favorite haunts listed yet....

Tonight, after Cowboy went to work, I dropped by this little place here in Ruralsburg called the Media Warehouse. I hadn't been in there in years, as it's kind of a dangerous place for me to go -- they sell things I really love to buy. Like vinyl. And used movies. But now they also rent movies, and I wanted to see Gridiron Gang, so I thought I'd see if they had it there instead of getting it from the bigger rental place uptown.

I left thirty-five minutes later having rented a couple of movies and purchased only one record.

A Bobby Darin record.

One that contains twelve songs, only two of which I have ever heard before. And I only paid $12 for it! How divine!

This is number four in my collection of Bobby on vinyl. Two others I bought at the same establishment when we first moved here (before I even owned a working record player!), and one my mom found for me at a yard sale a year or so ago. But those three mostly had songs I already have on my 21 Bobby Darin CDs. Now I'm simply drowning in new Bobby music!

Well, maybe not drowning, but certainly basking. I've only listened to one side of the album, lying on the couch with my eyes closed and my head close to one of the speakers, letting the Bobbyness wash over me and savoring every snap of his fingers. I'm saving the other side for later. Can't gorge myself on the rare delicacy of new Bobby music all at once.

Oh yeah, Gridiron Gang was okay. I'm not into football at all, so mostly I wanted to see it cuz it stars Dwayne Johnson (who, you'll notice, is now getting billed as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, not as simply The Rock). I liked it about as well as Rudy (although Rudy was a better movie, probably), but not nearly as well as that most wonderful of football movies, Remember the Titans.

True love is letting your wife poke all the french fries to see which of them meet her very stringent specifications, then eating the ones she rejects.

"Brick" (2005)

So I just finished watching Brick (2005) for the second time. The first time around I thought it was decent neo-noir. This time, I think it's borderline brilliant. It's set in high school, but the characters speak noiresque patter, so they end up sounding a bit like Buffy characters gone very dark. And it's excellently cast, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, and Nora Zehetner as the requisite wounded PI, twisted baddie, and femme fatale.

During the extras, the creator, Rian Johnson, lists Dashiel Hammett as a big inspiration, especially regarding the dialog. The film got a special jury prize for "Originality of Vision" at Sundance. I've gotta say of all the indie films that went big at Sundance that I've seen, this is the only one that I've not only wanted to watch more than once, but seriously started to consider buying.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has grown up. It's pretty freaky seeing the kid from Angels in the Outfield, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and 10 Things I Hate About You be this grownup and emotionally locked down. His desolate eyes haunt me long after the credits fade. I'd love to see him and his 10 Things co-stars Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles do something together again now they're growing into their talents and pulling off heavy roles.

Guess what I discovered while working in Grocery last night? Mint-creme Oreos! Oh baby oh baby, I had to buy me a package right that same morning, and are they ever mintalicious! Cowboy won't touch them -- he says the smell of mint on my breath is overpowering enough, but I loves them, yes I does. Their only drawback is that the filling isn't quite a sticky as normal Oreo innards, so the cookies sometimes fall off a little when I dunk them in milk. But that's okay. They are marvy and I have eaten six already. That leaves lots more yet :-9 Oh, and I was really nice and got Cowboy a package of normal Double Stuf Oreos since I figured he wouldn't like the mint ones, since I usually don't buy them for him because I don't really like Double Stuf as much as regular ones. So he gets a tasty treat too :-D

So it's New Year's Day and I guess I'll make 3 resolutions that I've been thinking about a lot lately anyway. Maybe these will be do-able, better than my usual "lose weight" kind of vague resolutions....

1. Begin the second draft of my novel Josey
2. Exercise for ten minutes every day, either yoga or boxing
3. Wash all the dishes in the kitchen by Friday morning this week