So, yesterday was a rollercoaster...

Lemme tell ya' little story 'bout a man named Carl...

For starters - and the most important part of the day - we had our 20 week sonogram appointment yesterday morning at 9am. We usually go in the afternoon, but figured that if we were one of the first appointments, we shouldn't have as much of a delay. Oh how wrong we were.

At 9:20, the tech called us back to the sonogram machine. We'd brought along a DVD-RW because they had told us that both machines could record the sonogram onto DVD for us but we needed a DVD with RW capability. Turns out that the machine we were on only took VHS, but luckily the other machine was open so they moved us which was nice.

Everything went smoothly, the baby looks healthy and is right on schedule and we found out that we're having a boy! This was a pretty surreal moment; you have to stop calling the baby "it" and assign a gender. Specifically, it's a moment when the reality of the whole experience really hits you full force and you start having more fully formed thoughts about the arrival date and setting up the nursery and getting everything ready and the list goes on. At least, that's how it was for us. And it's a wonderful feeling indeed.

So after all the measurements were taken and the sex determined, it was time to pop in the DVD and record some of the sonogram for posterity. But the DVD didn't work. Try again. Still no go. Turns out that the recorder is a DVD+RW and we had a DVD-RW disc with us. Grrr. Luckily, a previous patient had brought in a box of DVD+RW discs and left some behind so we used one of those. More on this later.

After the sonogram, they led us to a second waiting room where we sat for about 20 minutes and chatted with people sitting around us in various stages of pregnancy. When they finally called us and put us in a room, it was another 20-30 minutes before anyone came in to see us. We met with one of the staff midwives who was originally from Wales and then we were on our way to the appointment desk. By the time we walked out it was almost two and a half hours later.

We drove home and Misha scooted off to work to salvage what was left of the day and I hunkered down to wait for the TWC guy to install digital phone. After our last phone bill from Bell South, the $39.99 flat fee for digital phone with unlimited calling nation-wide didn't seem like a bad deal.

About 2pm, I got a call from a company I've been interviewing with and they extended me an offer. It was generous, with an annual incentive bonus and regular merit increases, good benefits and 401k with matching. Unfortunately, the HR gal had called on my cell phone which has a habit of noisily disconnecting after 3 minutes so she offered to call me back on my house phone. About 30 seconds into the second phone call, the doorbell rang. Doesn't the cable company have the darndest timing? It's either 2 seconds before the end of the 4 hours window they give you, or it's when you're occupied doing something important like trying to accept a job offer or sitting on the can. We agreed that she would call back in 10 minutes and the TWC guy got to work. 10 minutes later, he's still futzing with jacks and jumpers and HR calls back. She suggests that I try her on her cell phone after TWC leaves. Is it possible to blow an interview after they make an offer?

So it's been a good day so far. We're having a healthy baby boy, I've got a job, we've got cheaper unlimited phone. Whoo-hoo! So I call a friend quickly to give him the news and midway through the phone call, it starts to drizzle outside and the phone crackles, hisses and goes dead. 30 minutes later after holding for TWC Customer Service and getting transferred a few times, they tell me that I have a bad jack and that to use the phone I'll have to plug it directly into the modem. Which means that only 1 phone in the house works right now until another tech can get out to the house today. Grrr. But at least we have a phone.

At this point, I decided to scan the sonogram images and pull the video from the DVD to my PC so I can host it online somewhere. Trouble is, the DVD player on my laptop seems to keep freezing for 15 seconds every 10 seconds of playback. Worse, my software can't find the video at all and is creating 0K MPEG files instead of ripping it like it should. Looks like even though we did get some video to record on the DVD, it was faulty somehow and completely unviewable. Grrr. But luckily the scans worked and came out nice.

I ran a few errands and then got home a little bit before my wife. We had decided to go out someplace nice for dinner to celebrate that we knew the sex of the baby and that I had been offered a job. She started looking for steakhouses in the area and I went into the other room to get my shoes and saw our pug Clyde chewing on an SD Card case. No idea how he got this item, but the alarming thing was that it was empty and that I didn't know if it had been empty. Wracking my brain, I remembered that there was a 16MB card that came with our camera and I thought I remembered keeping that card in the case. Worse yet, our dogs tend to battle over toys until one of them ends up with the item and gets sole chewing rights so there was no certainty that Bonnie hadn't eaten the card. So, dinner was scrapped in lieu of (ANOTHER) trip to the Animal ER to get "the kids" x-rayed. Grrr.

Luckily, after another 90 minutes, both dogs came up clean and we happily paid $250 for the knowledge that no surgery would be necessary. We drove home, grabbed McDonalds on the way since it was already 9:45 and we hadn't eaten dinner yet, and caught the rest of Last Comic Standing and went to bed.

Great day, frustrating day, long day, busy day. Whatever, I'm glad it's over. Of course, today's not looking much better considering the chunk of carpet that's now missing courtesy of our little mutts. I should have listened to Nancy Reagan when she said "Just say no to Pugs."