To illustrate for you why this ultrasound was so mind-blowingly fun, I’ll show you what the previous two were like.  Here’s the very first ultrasound we got at 6 weeks:

A whole lotta blurry nothing.

The ultrasound confirmed Squishy’s heartbeat, and that he/she was not a twin.  But that’s about it.  Reassuring to say the least, but not a whole lot going on up there.

The next ultrasound we had, at my first prenatal appointment at 8 weeks, was also pretty uneventful.  We saw Squishy’s heartbeat again, and imagined the baby looked bigger and more coccoon-ish, but still very blurry.  I swear, though, that if you look close enough you can see tiny little hands in this one:

Tiny little blur-like hands?

But then.  Then!  Came week 12, and the big nuchal-fold test that requires an hour-long ultrasound.  I was so giddy about this appointment I grinned the whole time I sat in that office.  Wes joined me in the room and we waited while the really nice ultrasound technician put the warm goo on my tummy.

Look at that face!

An image came into focus that we, to our amazement, were able to recognize as the profile of a face.  A face!  In my uterus!  And then, it got even better: The baby started grooving.  Dancing away, throwing the little hands up, kicking the legs, and having a really fun fetus party.  I laughed.  I had to!  I’d never seen the baby move before and now here was this miraculous little person shaking his/her little groove thing while we watched!

Every time I laughed the baby jolted a little, as though angry to have missed the joke.  Squishy refused to cooperate with the ultrasound technician, so we have no idea if we’re having a boy or a girl, but we have an extremely active little munchkin and for now that’s more than enough.  The baby passed all the tests with flying colors and definitely has two hands, two feet, and a cute little nose.

Honestly?  I couldn’t be happier.

So, I’ve been kinda into icebergs lately.  Can’t imagine why.  It’s not like I’ve been living in an inferno for the last week or anything.  Ahem.  Wes and I were watching the “Ice Worlds” episode of Planet Earth recently and I just couldn’t get over how pretty icebergs are.  This led me to believe that icebergs would be a swell thing to feature as my Thing That Does Not Suck.  Don’t worry though, I’ll pepper the pretty pictures with some fun trivia.

Do you feel cooler yet?

The process of iceberg formation is called carving, and when the icebergs fall apart it’s called calving.  No, they’re not turkeys or cows, so I have no idea why carving and calving were selected to describe the birth and death of icebergs.  Just go with it, yeah?

This iceberg is extra aerodynamic.

The air trapped in a fully formed iceberg could be as old as 3000 years old, which is pretty cool seeing as how that’s probably the purest air to be found anywhere nowadays.  The sound icebergs make when they melt is described as a fizzing sound.  This is caused by all the tiny little air bubbles escaping.  Incidentally, those air bubbles are also why icebergs are white.

Wouldn't you just love to sail through that arch?

There was a secret WWII plan, called Habbukuk, to manufacture icebergs to use as aircraft carriers.  I don’t think that one worked out, though.  Would’ve been cool though.

This week’s Thing dissolved me into unstoppable giggles, probably because the image is strange and vaguely unsettling and those appear to be the images I find most amusing.  It’s couched in a list of 15 creepy vintage ads, which you can find here.  All the ads are horrifying, there’s one Lysol ad in particular that made me shudder.

I just wonder, where was Don Draper when these ads were pitched?  Since when does a deranged baby make a good advertisement for root beer?  In what universe does sticking a woman’s head on a rug not make you Patrick Bateman?  To find out what in Sam Hill I’m talking about, you will, of course, want to check out the above linked blog post.

The image I selected for all of you is an advertisement for Pears’ Soap.  I can’t make the byline any funnier than Retro Comedy did, so I’ll just quote what they said,

“Pears’ Soap – now with such a soothing lather, you won’t notice that your baby has gotten into a horrible accident!”

Happy Friday, everyone!

Contrary to popular belief, I do actually leave my computer on occasion.  Sometimes I go for walks.  Or read books.  Or cower in the kitchen because dear goodness I look at the computer all day and really don’t want to look at it anymore AHHH!

Today is one of the cowering days.  It’s the Thursday before a three-day weekend that’s supposedly going to be filled with epic sunshine, and all I want to do is laze around eating a delicious chicken caesar salad and stuffing my face with fresh, hot, pillowy popovers.

In case you’re wondering, yes.  That is what we’re having for dinner tonight.

But!  I can’t neglect my Things That Do Not Suck Thursday duties!  I am, however, going to be a lazy bum about it.  This week’s Thing That Does Not Suck is…The 4th of July!  Yes!  Hotdogs and cheeseburgers and chips and dip and sweet, heavenly overindulgence.

The runner-up contender for this week’s title is, of course, the three-day weekend.  It’s nothing but wins as far as I’m concerned, so stay alert, don’t lose any appendages to freak fireworks accidents, and have the time of your life.  I’ll catch you on the flip side of this glorious celebration of independence, pyrotechnics, and BBQ food.

That said, this week’s Thing That Does Not Suck will be presented with even less fanfare than normal.  Because I’m tired.  Far too tired to be clever, and nearly too tired to be cogent.  It is with great fatigue that I proudly present to you the absolute cutest thing you will see all week: A baby wolf learning how to howl.

Turn the volume up and grab some tissues, guys, because this is far too cute to endure without sniffles:

This week’s Thing is so strange, however, that it caused a spontaneous smile to break out all over my face.  I tripped over it this morning and it’s been giving me smiles all day.  There just comes a time in life when you realize that what you never knew you were missing in your life was a gigantic necklace that spelled out something blatantly obvious:

I wonder what his underwear says...

Yeah.  There you have it: What may be the lest helpful necklace ever constructed by the hand of man (or woman).  Apparently this guy’s name is T-Pain.  I don’t know what he does, or why he was there, but I don’t really think that’s important.  What’s important is that this guy wants you to know what’s going on.  With this guy, you know exactly where you stand.

Imagine with me, if you will, some of the other necklaces he might keep at home…

• Hungry For Dinner (For fancy dinners out at nice restaurants)
• I Haven’t Showered (He’s very responsible to let us know)
• I Have Teeth (Just in case you fail to notice thanks to the spinners or whatever he has in his mouth)

As long as there is weird crap like this floating around the universe, I think we’re all going to be just fine.  Recession, nuclear Armageddon, whatever.  Forget about it.  Because you know what?  When aliens are desiccating what’s left of our culture after they finally land to explore our planet, the only thing that will be left will be that necklace.  From it, they will deduce that we were a planet of gigantic, majestic creatures who were wiped out after a worldwide natural disaster.  And then they’ll make a movie about cloning us and putting us in a park, wherein we will escape and, naturally, consume and destroy everything we find.

What?  What’s that you say?  I feature something every Thursday or something and that’s why I’m crawling out of the woodwork to write a much-belated blog post?  Nonsense I say!  I’m merely motivated, and disciplined, and not at all crippled by a hugely crazy work project and whine-inducing headache.

No, I don’t believe me either.

I played hookey last night, hoping that by taking a night off and going to bed early I could get back into the groove.  It didn’t work, because I had a dickens of a time getting myself to the keyboard today.  It doesn’t help that we just started watching a really cool show called Dexter.  I love it, which makes pulling myself away from the TV to blog a bit more difficult than anything ever really needs to be.

As much as I love our new show (even a paltry four episodes in), however, I have bigger fish to mount on my wall and brag about.  This week’s Thing That Does Not Suck is a bit dichotomous in nature, because it both sucks and does not suck.  It does not suck because it’s glorious, and delicious, and the best idea ever.  It sucks because it isn’t yet available all over the place.

It is with the pride of a conquering hero that I present to you this gift, borne over from the dry, arid land of California.  This long-awaited culinary delight that will delight your belly and take it easy on your poor beleaguered wallet.  It is…

Yogurtland, brought to you by the tenacious reporting skills of myself and my little brother.

This mecca of frozen yogurt (aka Yogurtland) is a truly revolutionary idea.  It’s a store that empowers you to completely customize your frozen yogurt.  Imagine, please, a wall of 30 or so knobs, each of which dispenses a different flavor of frozen yogurt.  After you dispense your yogurt to your heart’s content, you turn to a self-serve bar of toppings.  The toppings range from fresh fruit to sprinkles to cookies and everything in between.  You heap the perfect combination of toppings (knowing in your heart you could use all 50 toppings and no one would care) and then stagger over to the register, where they charge you by weight for your delicious confection.

This?  Is what we’ve all been waiting for.  Creamy, delicious, sort of healthy (if you go for the fruit toppings), and an undeniable treat.  If you ever have a chance to patronize one of their locations I highly recommend you do so.  Don’t worry, I scoped them out and can vouch for the deliciousness.  I took it upon myself to visit their store twice while I was in California.

Thanks to the heat and my insane craziness at work lately, I have had next to no time to troll around the Internet looking for fun things to show off to you.  Sorry about that.  In lieu of a lame post about how I have no Thing That Does Not Suck for today, I thought I’d leave it up to you.  I’ll propose some things that I think definitely do not suck, and you guys can pick for yourself.

Ready?  Set?  Rock the vote!

Giddyup!

According to the guy who took these pictures, these are real.  I guess there are a bunch of wild chipmunks that live in his parent’s backyard and those chipmunks have become quite friendly over the years.  Friendly enough to go on a date with a wookie, I guess.

This is exactly like Lady and the Tramp.

But not friendly enough to resist being horrified by the fierceness that is a rampaging Ewok.

Can't you just hear the little chipmunk scream?

There are very few creatures brave enough to be friendly in the face of an irate Ewok.

Grrrrrr.

When I was young I used to have this recurring nightmare in which I went bowling with friends and the party was broken up when a terminator robot busted into the bowling alley and slaughtered everyone.  I escaped the building and hid under a car until the terminator removed his head and rolled it under the car, whereupon it exploded and I woke up.

Knowing this, you’d think that I hated the terminator movies but you’d be wrong.  I have no idea how old I was when I first saw a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger stroll into a bar to the tune of “Bad to the Bone,” but I have loved the movies ever since.  It’s been approximately one million years since I watched one, but I still hold a very dear place in my heart for those movies.

As a result, this week’s Thing That Does Not Suckis a no-brainer: The new Terminator movie.  I’d always been curious about what the post-apocalyptic world of the future the first movies hinted at looked like, and now I get to find out.  I have no idea whether or not the movie is any good, but I have to be honest: I’ll probably love it even if it’s terrible.  What can I say?  We all know I’m a sucker for action movies of dubious quality.

Also, it certainly doesn’t help that the movie stars Christian Bale.  I have a lot of respect for him as an actor after watching what he did to himself to star in the movie The Machinist (dude, I’ve never seen a living person get that skinny).  I think he’s terrific in the Batman movies, I adored his performance in 3:10 to Yuma, and I think he was creepy as could be in American Psycho.  He’s a fine actor, and I have faith he’ll make the new Terminator movie look good.

The extra-special treat?  The movie muckety-mucks in Hollywood must have known how much I love the Terminator movies because they decided to release the movie right before my birthday.  How sweet, right?  I can’t think of a better, more thoughtful gift from them!