Why...

We have encountered this phenomenon before, and Erinne encountered it again today. Something happens when you combine these three things:

• Old women
• Your baby
  
• Grocery stores

When Erinne took Ada to the grocery store today, an old woman (see what I am getting at?) approached her and asked "yours or your mom's?" (i.e. is that baby your daughter or your sister). And then, realizing she had offended Erinne, she said, "uh, I like her hat" and walked away.

So, I understand having a baby makes people act strange around you. Also, the grocery store is one of those places that Erinne goes without me a lot, so I can understand that that contributes to questions related to her being alone.

But, why old women? Why?

Frickin' Awesome Barbecue Sauce

I copied and pasted from here: http://www.theveggietable.com/recipes/bbqsauce.html

Ingredients	2 T sesame oil 1 c onion, diced 4 T ketchup 3 T Dijon mustard 2 T soy sauce 3 cloves garlic, minced 2 t molasses ¼ c balsamic vinegar 1 t salt ½ t pepper
Directions	Heat the oil over medium heat, add onions, and sauté until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients and cook, stirring frequently, for 30 minutes.

Stupid

Eight Ways In-Vitro Meat Will Change Our Lives

A quote from the article: ...a cheaper, healthier, "greener" protein...

As if we don't have this already!?

So, it's actually easier to spend a ton of effort and resources figuring out how to mass produce healthy, economical, green meat than to just convince people to consume other sources of protein?? This follows the trend of technological solutions to problems that should be solved with policy and changes in behavior. This is so stupid. Stupid. And it keeps happening.

It's stupid.

Vegetable Juice and Stock

We bought a juicer off craigslist today. $180 brand new, and we got it for $40. Erinne had carrot and apple. I had carrot, apple, beet, celery, and whatever else I could find. It's a centrifugal juicer, which isn't as efficient as the other kinds, so we had a lot of pulp leftover. I decided to learn how to make vegetable stock, and here's what I learned...

When you cut up a vegetable, there are always inedible parts that you throw away. Don't. Save them in the freezer to use for vegetable stock later. Celery leaves, the ends of carrots, onion peels, basically everything is useful (don't use potato peels, they make it starchy)! The ratios are not important. Cook everything for, I don't know, about an hour, then strain. I might not ever throw away vegetable scraps again!

EDIT: Ok, technically I will still be throwing away the scraps, but only after I've used them.

Today we had Chipotle... twice

On Halloween, Chipotle gives you a free burrito if you dress up as something off the Chipotle menu (most people wrap themselves in aluminum foil), but they only do it from 6 pm until close. We wanted to go to the Farmer's Market this morning, which would be pretty exhausting, so we weren't sure if we'd be up for a second trip later that evening; each trip is over a mile of walking, and that can be pretty tiring when you're caring a baby and produce. But we really really wanted some Chipotle burritos.

So, I had this brilliant idea... we buy a couple burritos on our way home from the Farmer's Market, and then if we feel up to it we can go get the free burritos later. See, this way we at least get to eat some Chipotle, and maybe we also get free burritos. Win-win.

I'm very full right now.

Elimination Communication

We decided before Ada was born that we wanted to try Elimination Communication. We went into it with no expectation of catching all or even some of Ada's pees and poops. It's fun to try, and it's far less stressful to try this out now than potty training will be a year or two from now. There's no notion of success or failure, and there's no pressure on Ada to perform.

We've recently seen some unexpected results. In the past couple of days, Ada has pooped/peed in the potty 3 times. She has also been staying dry while sleeping.

We haven't noticed any visual cues for when she needs to go, we just take her and hold her over the potty after the following situations

• When we change her diaper. Babies sometimes don't like go in a diaper that's already messy, so they hold it until they encounter the fresh air.
• When she wakes up. The need to poop can wake a baby up, so we take her to the potty when she wakes up.

I say "we", but really Erinne has done everything and I just write about it.

DotA

While browsing a few Wikipedia articles, I discovered that Valve has hired IceFrog, who has been developing and maintaining Defense of the Ancients (DotA) since 2005, and that we may see Valve produce a DotA title...