I had also received an absentee ballot in the mail from Arizona, printed out in my maiden name, which I was really tempted to send in, as AZ is a swing state. But then that whole �personal ethics� thing got in the way. Darn.

:::

It has been very slow here at work as of late. After working hard to push a proposal out, I suddenly find myself (as does the rest of the office) with nothing to do. And when I say nothing, I really mean N-O-T-H-I-N-G. It�s painful, really. Maybe I�ll be able to come up with a few ramblings here.

As far as my future plans here, I still don�t know, really. I get 12 weeks off for maternity leave, but the truth is, in my heart of hearts, I would love to stay home permanently. Well, at least until the baby is in school of some sorts. There may be an opportunity to work from home and only come in to the office a couple of days a week--our work is flexible like that--but I haven�t discussed it with my boss. I figure I�ll wait and see how I feel once the baby is here. For all I know, I may be begging for some work after a few months at home.

Financially that would be tough, but J will only have one more year of school left before he graduates and is working (yay!), so it�s not impossible. Right now we basically live off of my salary and use student loans to pay his tuition and books, etc. We�re already taking out thousands in student loans anyway, so what�s a few extra thousand at this point? Ha. Probably not the most responsible way to look at it, but it�s the reality.

:::

I�ve been watching the show Biggest Loser lately. Of course it is entertaining, but in a very unsettling kind of way. The contestants on the show range from mildly overweight to obese and are split into teams that compete with each other to lose the most weight. In true Survivor-esque style, one participant is voted off the �losing� team each week. There are a lot of things that bug me about it.

1. Someone gets voted off. Seriously, where is it written that in order for a show to be successful, someone has to get kicked off? It didn�t happen on Real World; in fact, it made it more interesting to keep everyone on and see how they resolved conflicts rather than just kicking the person causing the conflicts off. Plus, on this show, everyone is working hard. Everyone wants to lose weight. And to kick someone off who is emotionally vested in something that is extremely emotional in the first place simply because they may have gained more muscle than the other person or not had as much weight to lose to begin with is wrong to me.

2. The way a freezer-full of the contestant�s favorite foods is displayed in the voting room. I�m sorry, but to me this just makes me think that the producers really believe that people who are overweight got that way by stuffing their faces with fried chicken, or ice cream, or whatever they have in those freezers back there. How insulting. There are so many factors at play in a person�s weight other than the type, or even the amount, of food they eat. And what? You think that they�re going to be unable to resist going over there, ripping open the door, and chowing down? Please. Stupid producers.

3. The way the show portrayed the second-week weigh-in. At the first weigh-in, each contestant lost a huge amount of weight. Up to 22 pounds, for one man. Wonderful, yes, but really a reflection of pounds of fat lost? No. Then this week, reality set in and the losses were only around 2 or 3 pounds. One contestant even gained weight. And they�re just letting the contestants be devastated by this. Grrr. I was so mad when they didn�t even explain this extremely logical event. First, the first week�s losses were mostly water-weight. Second, they are gaining muscle! They are working out heavily with weights, and for a few weeks, the muscle gain is going to balance out any fat loss. Third, they really need to go by inches lost, not just pounds. Healthy people who work out regularly weigh more than skinny people who do not. But they are, in fact, in much better shape.

4. Shut UP, Ryan! Man, this guy bugs the crap out of me. He is the �can�t-you-take-a-joke� guy. At the last elimination, in order to justify a mean remark, he says, �Hey, we�re not curing cancer here.� No, you�re just curing diabetes, and heart disease, and high cholesterol, not to mention dealing with an EXTREMELY sensitive issue for many, many people. Idiot.

I don�t know if I�ll keep watching the show. I probably will because there is nothing else I like to watch on Tuesday nights, but if it keeps pissing me off, I�ll have to refrain.

:::

I finally got some pictures formatted. There are two of Milo and one of my 17 week baby-belly. The ones of Milo just crack me up. Heh. Crazy cat.

He doesn�t really liked to be picked up unless we�re carrying him around upside down. Then he will either completely stretch himself out and just hang there, or do some kind of yoga move.

The Zen Master hard at work. I have no idea why he loves this.

17 weeks! It totally looks like I�m trying to stick my stomach out as far as possible here. It�s true that I can�t wait until I really look pregnant, though.

before ~ after