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We finally know that the little wiggler making my belly dance is a little girl. Funny thing is, we had a boy’s name all picked out. (And no, it wasn’t the name that didn’t get used when we named Cora.) But the girl’s name has been somewhat more elusive. We think we have one, for at least the first name, but we’re still debating the middle name.

Names are funny things. They give away all sorts of information about the parents. For instance, we’re not big fans of trendy names. In fact, if we think of a name we might like, we go out to the Social Security’s baby names page and check to see if it’s been a popular name of late. Names that rank 100 or higher (as in, there were 100 names more popular that year) do better than names that are more popular.

In picking names, we’ve also ended up linking names with the impressions we’ve had of other people we’ve known who’ve had that name. Names of girls who had bad reps in high school, or who one or the other of us had a reason to dislike, generally get axed off the list pretty quick.

And, of course, you really can’t use a name that’s the name of another kid you know. I like the name Samantha, but we’re friends with another couple who already have a daughter by that name, so it seems wrong to “reuse” the name. Not that we’re in favor of creating original names or spelling names in original ways, but I don’t want to “share” a name with someone too close to us.

Got a few more months to figure it out. I don’t think we’re obsessing about it, but it does occur to me that you do spend a lot of time thinking about names. Wonder how many folks have spent more time thinking about the name for their child than they originally spent weighing the decision to have a child? (No political commentary intended there… )

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I offered the director of our Vacation Bible School some assistance in creating “shekel bags”. Since the theme of the VBS is 33 AD (I think – don’t quote me on that), the kids get to shop in the “market” with shekels, and so they each get a little drawstring pouch/wallet kind of thing to hold their shekels (actually metal washers). The VBS director assured me that the bags are easy to make – something very important since my skill and experience with my sewing machine are minimal. She told me that, so long as I could run a straight stitch down some fabric, I’d have no problem.

She was right. I’ve had no problem making shekel bags. The problem is _how many_ shekel bags we need to make – and that’s the question I forgot to ask! The director’s projecting that we’ll have some 220 kids attend VBS, and each of those kids needs a shekel bag. Now, I’m not the only one sewing bags, but my stack of shekel fabric seems pretty deep. Took me about an hour and a half to sew 13 of them tonight, plus set up 10 or so more for sewing tomorrow. I had 15 already done, from previous nights’ labors. And I think I have another 30 to 40 to go, not counting the 25 I “outsourced” to my mother-in-law. (I’ll take ’em back if she can’t get to them – just was hoping to get two pipelines flowing, else I’ll spend a lot of nights over the next week and a half crouched over my sewing machine.)

The wonderful thing is that I’m getting to improve my sewing skill on a project that will help in a very small way with our church’s efforts to spread the gospel to our kids. I’m trying to keep that in mind as I grind away, one shekel bag at a time, and also remember to use it as an object lesson that total effort is the sum of the effort of all the tasks. In this case, it’s sewing one shekel bag, and then another, and then another, and then….

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I realized last night just how much rain we’ve been getting lately when I commented to my husband, “Hey, we didn’t get any rain today!”. I actually had to water my annuals out on the porch this morning… And there’s no rain listed in the forecast until this weekend. Stuff other than mushrooms might grow around our place again.

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A couple of days ago, I took a long look in the mirror as I was brushing my teeth. 23 weeks into this journey of body-stretching, my belly’s little turkey timer looks just about ready to pop. It’s one of those things they don’t tell you, that your belly button will pop out, will look as if it’s frantically seeking to escape your body like the buttons that strain your stomach after a way-too-large Thanksgiving dinner. And the rest of the belly is starting to look like a balloon nearing its boundary. But 23 weeks still leaves quite a ways to go, and I know from our first go-around at this (the balloon prize named Cora) that the belly balloon will somehow find a way to grow even larger. So far it’s just a balloon… 12 or 15 weeks from now I’ll be longing for that light balloon as I lug around a summer watermelon.

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Sucking wind, just to get a little bit of air into my lungs past the goo in my head and chest that’s fighting to expel any bit of pollen, dust, cat dander, or mold that’s entered my environment. My body’s giving its best bunker bomber impression – targeting tiny particles with near-lethal force. Problem is that the invaders are many, and my ability to hold out in the onslaught is weakening. Slipping away in my own snot…

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Last night, David Letterman offered his opinion that Martha Stewart should be cleared of any charges, and he also offered to pay any fines or charges for which Martha Stewart is liable. Now, mind you, Dave had just been stitched up on the air, due to a minor mishap on his finger, so maybe the loss of blood had something to do with his largesse. I agree that Martha’s getting something of a bum rap – one of the charges claims that she committed securities fraud by defending her ImClone trade. The theory is that by claiming that she didn’t do anything illegal, she was attempting to convince shareholders to hold onto the stock, and thus artificially inflated the price. This smacks of a “darned if you do and darned if you don’t” problem – defend yourself, and you’re presumed guilty of fraud. Don’t defend yourself, and you’re presumed guilty of insider trading. Pick your preferred fine and prison term.

I think the first new show Martha does after all of this is cleared up should include such things as: how to wallpaper a bathroom with ridiculous legal paperwork; how to print in mugshot in various shades of tepia; the recipe for a delicious cake, containing a file in the middle; and how to elegantly take the perp walk, umbrella in hand, as demonstrated by M truly. May she make mega-bucks off of the SEC’s ravings, and do so in an over-the-top in-your-face Martha manner.

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There’s a movement/concept/broadly championed idea of something called Design Patterns within software development. For those of my readers who aren’t familiar with the term, the idea is that there lots of basic problems that software tries to solve, and there are some commonly understood solutions to those problems. Usually it takes a certain degree of experience in the field to realize that everyone does X in basically the same way; design patterns are a way of writing down the way that everyone does X, the problem that the solution tries to solve, and what tradeoffs there are in using this particular pattern to do X.

The term actually originally came from a guy named Christopher Alexander, who recognized that architects use the same basic solutions to solve problems when designing buildings. For example (very rough), if you need a way to get from floor 1 to floor 10, an architect will usually provide some number of elevators, and those elevators will be in an easy to locate place. Wouldn’t be any good if you had to climb a fire pole to get up to the tenth floor, or if the elevator was hidden behind the bathroom. See, they pay us software weenies too much money to use common sense sometimes.

OK, enough explanation… There’re lots of techie books out there listing lots of patterns. My new fav, though, is a slice at dating patterns. What are some well-recognized patterns for getting a date? Well, there’s the Factory pattern: any good singles bar. And there’s the Decorator pattern: she’s great for loud parties, but dumb as a cabbage. Lots more… Geeks will appreciate the reuse of techie pattern names. Non-geeks (aka normals) will appreciate the description of the pattern, even without the context of the classic techie GoF pattern background.

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From one of the various often software-related blogs I frequent to get various viewpoints and ideas (in this case, The Fishbowl)
“If a tree falls in an application, and nobody is around to hear it, is it logged?”

Having one of those mornings where I’m desperately reaching for some kind of punny retort, but I’m knot coming up with anything. More coffee…