I can't help myself

An update on yesterday's post - there are multiple royal baby twitter feeds you can follow.  Daniel's been keeping up with The Royal Foetus.  He thinks the British spelling lends an air of authority.

Anyway... the whole thing reminded me that I never finished posting the last of the pictures from our trip to London - specifically the ones from the queen's birthday parade.  You were invited to that, right?  No?  She must have made a typo in your e-mail address on the E-vite.

Although you do hear people complain about their tax dollars going to subsidize Kate Middleton's fabulous hair and Prince Harry's all-night foam parties, for the most part they seem to get into the whole Royal Family thing...

Lego Royal Family

 We went back and forth about going, but the birthday parade was actually pretty cool.  There was much marching around and playing of brass instruments and pomp and circumstance and that sort of thing.

Giant Irish wolfhound

Bagpipers

Our camera battery was dying, but I really wish we'd gotten more pictures of these guys.  It was a marching band playing while riding Clydesdales (? - I know nothing about horses).  It's hard to tell, but this is a picture of a guy playing two huge kettle/tenor drums mounted on horseback.  Behind (in front? I can't remember) was an entire mounted marching band.  Sousaphones.  Everything.  It was impressive.

And then the important part... our brush with royalty.  Kate and Pippa(?):

And the queen and Prince Philip:

Yeah, you have to take my word for it, but it was them, I swear.

For completeness, here's a few other pictures we took during our last days in London when we ventured up to Baker St.

Daniel at the Sherlock Holmes Museum:

Subway tiles at the Baker St. tube entrance that I evidently thought was worth wasting precious camera battery on.

News from the most important baby in the world

If you just can't wait 8 more months for the baby obsession to begin, Will and Kate's new baby-to-be already has its own Twitter feed.

My favorites so far are:

From what I can tell so far, the internet is just a place where people talk about me. I love it! But wait what's love? #royalbaby

The iPad mini was developed solely so I would be able to Tweet my gestation live from the womb. So, that's why that exists! #royalbaby

and

I may not have bones yet, but I'm already more important than everyone reading this. #royalbaby #sorry

I think my own baby's twitter feed would read something more like:

Stretched leg. Didn't get very far. #Chelsea's baby

Stretched leg. Didn't get very far.  #Chelsea's baby

Stretched leg. Didn't get very far.  #Chelsea's baby

Stretched leg.  Didn't get very far.  Will now try punching. #Chelsea's baby

Hiccup.  Hiccup.  Hiccup.  Hiccup.  #Chelsea's baby

Stretched leg.  Didn't get very far.  #Chelsea's baby

Christmas gifts for the mad scientist in your life

Two words: university surplus.

Know someone with a corpse they'd like to re-animate?  Give the gift of an AED training defibrillator.

Have a friend with a mind-controlling satellite they just haven't been able to get into orbit?  How about this theolodite survey scope?

For the relative who is always talking about building a new evil lair here's a nice transit scope to survey rocky islands in the South Pacific,

and a bus shelter so no one will ever suspect anything is there...

For the hobbyist who is always out in the garage tinkering with his giant robot, there's a Powermatic drill press

this thing that's just described as a "cutter"

and a "folder with right angle attachment".

If you ever wondered where the James Bond villains got all their cool stuff, now you know.

37 weeks

Full term!

Even though the baby hasn't made any indications that he's ready to come out any time soon, it's exciting to think that it really could be any time now.  I alternate between being nervous about parenthood and desperately wanting the baby to be OUT.  Today the latter is true.  My stomach and lungs feel like they are being crushed, and I feel like my abdomen is ready to explode like that scene in Alien.  And it itches.  I feel every bit as big as I look in that picture.

The fruit of the week is the winter melon.

[source]

  I don't think I've ever seen or eaten a winter melon before.  According to Wikipedia it's mainly grown in South and East Asia so either The Bump is trying to reach out to an international audience or it's running out of fruit.  I only have pumpkin, watermelon and jackfruit left to go.

What will you give me if I promise NOT to get you one for Christmas?

[source]

Because for the low low price of $1200, a Japanese scientist will sell an expectant mother a 3-D printed model of her fetus.  It even comes with a mini version that can be used as a cellphone trinket.

Not today

I was stressing about coming up with something interesting to write about today,* but then I saw this

and laughed and decided "Who cares?".  Not that I'm walking on the moon or anything, but sometimes life has to take priority over fixating over writing about life.

*The most interesting thing that happened today is that part of me has grown so large that I nearly had a wardrobe malfunction in the middle of a meeting.  We're talking Janet Jackson-style wardrobe malfunction.  Yikes.  I do plan to do a follow-up on my time-tracking experiment soon, but I've been trying to get extra work done in the evenings, and that cramps my blog/internet style.

NOW the baby has everything he needs

Forget Pat the Bunny and Goodnight Moon, thanks to my friend and co-worker Kerri we are now the proud owners of:

This helpful introduction to the subject follows the characters f and x on an adventure through the alphabet.

I don't know if I'd be sad or proud if our baby bypasses "mama" and makes his first word "hyperbolic".