September 5, 2000

Bear, Fish, and a Visitor

Only in Colorado. Was at work and there was a sign written on the white board in the break room about a guy at work that baked blueberry muffins last night, and while he was in the process of it, a black bear came and tried its best to get into his house. He postulated that it was 'cause the bear smelled the blueberries. It was only the police car and lights and siren that finally chased the bear away. He swears he's not baking muffins again until it's winter and the bears are safely holed up.

Feeling really bad this morning. Just vaguely queasy, tired, and ill and it's not 'cause I skimped on sleep all weekend, that's for sure. I wonder if it was all the sugar in the cookies.

Took me until lunch to actually get feeling better and it was eating chicken and stuffing and drinking a large amount of liquid that really seemed to help. Wow. Amazing what real food and liquids in quantity can do.

Work is still mildly overwhelming. I just feel like I'm completely in over my head.

The good thing, this afternoon, was that I got a call from Dr. Henry's office! Hoorah! They said that the baby is completely free of obvious genetic defects! Hoorah! No Downs syndrome! Also there's no extra protein in the fluid itself, so there's no spina bifida and no other open skin areas that they can detect. So the fish is 'normal'.

It was such the relief. It was the one thing I was most worried about as it was the one thing that was completely out of our control and, as Gretchen pointed out, being an engineer, I hate having even a chance of failure. And failure in this case would have much more dire consequences. Luckily it didn't happen.

That was well worth celebrating.

Another cool thing was that an old friend of ours from Seattle showed up for an interview here. So we took him to Santiago's and bought him dinner and then took him home to see the house. The food and home brew went well together, and I drank root beer and had their tacos, which were really yummy.

It was very interesting talking with him about the whole process, about interviewing, about the possibility of moving. Made me remember all the things John and I had to deal with, emotionally, before we could decide to actually move. It was such a hard thing to even think about pulling up all our roots and change everything in our lives. Give up all our friends, routines, and social life and think about starting everything new again. It seemed so monumental on that side, and it's all still pretty large from this.

I was reminded of some of the things I've lost in the move. The ease with which I used to go to the Bay Area is now a bit more grueling a trip, at least on this end of things plus the cost of the tickets has at least doubled if not quadrupled as there used to be lots of sales on fares from Seattle to the Bay Area. I don't have nearly as many friends here, but am gradually building a base of them.

Good things to remember to address on the whole.

It was really nice talking to him as I went through a number of the things that I really do like about Colorado. Longer winter days, more sunshine is actually really nice. This last summer was so different than the summer before, that I believe it really could be an anomaly. And I won't be pregnant, most likely, for the next one, which would be nice.

All in all a good thing. Whether or not it works out for our friend, I guess I can honestly say that, so far, it's worked for us. The other good thing about the visit was that I didn't really have time to worry about the wedding this coming weekend at all.

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