Mosaic Life

I’m an auntie!

Yesterday morning I became an aunt to two beautiful little babies. Introducing Dawson and Rylan Streetman:

Dawson Cameron was born at 6:36 a.m., weighing 6 pounds, at 19 inches long. Dawson spent the next two hours kicking and flailing around, seeming quite happy to have room to do so.

Rylan Michelle was born two minutes later, weighing 5 pounds and 11 ounces, at 19 inches long.  Rylan just laid there looking around calmly, perhaps happy that she was no longer being kicked in the head by her brother.

Brandi and the babies are doing very well, healthy and happy. Cam is enjoying his new role as a father, looking forward to diapers and the lack of sleep.

I’m so excited about being an aunt. The babies are absolutely adorable, and I’m so glad that things went smoothly. Yay, they’re finally here!

P.S. Brandon also had a birthday yesterday. Before you go thinking his birthday, being usurped by the twins, went unnoticed, he had two birthday cakes, got more presents than usual, and had a birthday get-together. So his birthday was well-celebrated. Happy birthday, sweetie! Love you!

End of the semester

I’m so engrossed with German right now that when I heard a bird chirping outside, I swear it sounded like, “fertig! fertig! fertig!” Which means the bird is finished with whatever it was doing, which was probably pooping on my car some more.

More later, after the craziness is settled.

Hear me out

Okay, you guys know that I’m totally not an activist in any sense of the word. Well, I never was anyway. But the older I get, the more I care about things in regards to politics, which can be bothersome because apathy is so much more convenient. But I strongly urge you guys to go to save the internet.com and click on “Tell Congress to Save the Internet” and to do so forthwith.

So here’s why. It’s all about keeping Net Neutrality. I’ll quote the site’s information because they’re better at saying it than me:

The consequences of a world without Net Neutrality would be devastating. Innovation would be stifled, competition limited, and access to information restricted. Consumer choice and the free market would be sacrificed to the interests of a few corporate executives.

On the Internet, consumers are in ultimate control — deciding between content, applications and services available anywhere, no matter who owns the network. There’s no middleman. But without Net Neutrality, the Internet will look more like cable TV. Network owners will decide which channels, content and applications are available; consumers will have to choose from their menu.

The free and open Internet brings with it the revolutionary possibility that any Internet site could have the reach of a TV or radio station. The loss of Net Neutrality would end this unparalleled opportunity for freedom of expression.

The Internet has always been driven by innovation. Web sites and services succeeded or failed on their own merit. Without Net Neutrality, decisions now made collectively by millions of users will be made in corporate boardrooms. The choice we face now is whether we can choose the content and services we want, or whether the broadband barons will choose for us.

Okay, I realize that that was long, but still. I’ll summarize it for you. Net neutrality = good. Big companies making it so that if you pay a lot, you keep getting fast service (that you’re used to) and you can go to the sites that you’ve always been able to go to, and if you pay less, your service will be slow and you will be limited as to what sites you can visit = bad. It would mean taking away the freedom that we presently have online. So go to go to save the internet.com. Do something.

Aw yeah, personality test

I bet you guys didn’t know I’m a free-wheeling visionary. That’s right. I am.

I did think a few points weren’t too far off:

- You take a practical approach to people, not getting too involved in their feelings—or their business.
 
- At the same time, your acceptance of others leads you to be understanding of their life circumstances, even if you don’t quite understand their emotional reactions to some things.
 
- Although you have a wide circle of friends, you’re very discerning as to whom you can trust.
 
- You’re not rigid in your beliefs about the world, and you don’t want to impose your perspective on others, but at the same time, you know that plenty of people don’t always act responsibly.
 
Yeah. Interesting stuff.

Baby (Babies?) Watch 2008

So it turns out that my sister’s twins aren’t as eager to be born as it seemed. So, a c-section has been planned for April 29th (though a c-section is not necessarily ideal, the doctor recommended it because one baby is breech and they often have complications with twins). That means that I will be an aunt on or before Brandon’s birthday. Oh, and my final exams are also that day. So it could be a busy one. The babies will be considered full-term as of next Sunday, so things are going really well. I’m just ready to meet my new niece and nephew and I’m sure my sister wouldn’t mind not having to lug around 12 pounds of baby. Not that she’s not enjoying the beauty and wonder that comes with gestation.

So yeah, exciting stuff.

Colin Meloy Concert

We had a great time at the Colin Meloy concert last night. For those of you unfamiliar with him, he’s the lead singer of the Decemberists. For those of you unfamiliar with the Decemberists, get your act together. They rock the hizzle. Laura Gibson opened for him, and though she has interesting choice in clothing, she has a beautiful voice. One of her songs was featured in a Humane Society commercial that you can hear here.

We actually were able to get pretty close to the stage, which is nice considering that when we saw the Decemberists at Chastain Park last July, we were oh, say, 150 feet from the stage. But not this time. No, this time we were close enough to see how recently Colin Meloy might have shaved. For the record? His chin looked smooth as a baby’s behind.

How did we get to be so up close to the front? We stood up for over three hours. That’s right. And near the end, we were saying things like “we’re getting too old for this” which is awful because we’re too young to be saying that we’re too old for anything except maybe High School Musical or Chuck E. Cheese’s. 

Apparently Meloy started a group, Musicians Against the Calling Out of Freebird (an audience member made him the t-shirt). This group is quite necessary, as I recall some drunk guy at every smaller concert that I’ve been to yelling out, “Play sum free bird!” No Freebird last night. I can’t remember all of the songs he played, but I do recall the Sporting Life, Crane Wife #3, Apology Song, Kingdom of Spain, A Cautionary Song, Tristan and Iseult, Cupid (cover of a Sam Cooke song he sang with Laura Gibson), and of course, Mariner’s Revenge. 

Ich liebe meine Stadt!

I noticed that when I’m writing something for German class, I often sound far more positive than I would if I were writing in English. Not because I’m trying to sound happier or less sarcastic, but because it’s easier.

One of the first assignments was to write 300 words about my hometown. With my very childlike vocabulary, I described a charming small town with conservative, happy citizens who smile and wave, old houses with pretty flowers, and forests with trees that change colors in the fall. It was far easier than talking about the downsides of living in a small southern town, like gossip, two-faced people, a lack of things to do, and having Walmart rule as the only shopping place.

And now we’re learning about the German version of the prom. And the lesson asks what American proms are like. Seriously, it’s hard to say positive things. The tacky dresses, the awkwardness, the lame music.  I suppose the best way to sum it up would be to say “Sie konnten nicht mich zahlen, um zurück zu gehen.” Or something like that.

Trivial vs. News

So I’m taking a Survey of Broadcast Media, and of course, I hear a lot about how Americans only want to hear about entertainment news. We’d rather hear about Britney Spears flashing her nether regions than the people dying in the war in Iraq. And when it comes to “real news,” anything that isn’t sensational gets pushed back to the end of the news segment.

Of course, all of that is true. The news gives us what we want. But why do we want that? Why don’t we want to hear about the important issues rather than the superficial? I’d argue that it’s part of self-preservation, at least psychologically. No one wants to think about things that are tragic and unfair in the world when there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s mentally taxing. Plus, if we want to see gore and hear about atrocities, we can always watch a violent movie and then brush it off because it isn’t real. With the news, not so much.

For instance. The other night in class we learned about this story that got pushed to the back of the nightly news so that most people were asleep when it came on. The story was about how some of the hospitals that America has built in Iraq aren’t finished; the sewage is all messed up, they can’t afford to power the hospitals, they only have one oxygen machine for the NICU so that babies have to share–that’s right–take turns getting oxygen. Oh! And this nice truck that America donated to them, which has an American flag and “from the American people” written on the side, and has new wheels and a new coat of paint (they were told it was new), is actually over 60 years old. They had to crank the thing up. So the claim that we’re over there spreading democracy and trying to help seems all the more like an unconvincing facade; we only want to look like we’re over there for a noble cause. But here’s the thing. There’s nothing I can do about that. I don’t have the money or the equipment to help finish the hospitals. And all it does is make me sad and annoyed. Yeah, I can “do my part” by voting, and I will, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t feel like enough.

So yeah, I do prefer to hear about trivial things. I haven’t gotten to a point where I don’t watch or read the news (I have CNN, BBC, and Yahoo news on my RSS feed), but I’m getting close.

Flower patterns from the 30’s

You know that commercial where Milla Jovovich and Carmen Hawk (yes, I had to look up their names) are talking about their new line of clothes at Target? I overheard Brandon lecturing the commercial last night.

Commercial: It’s like art nouveau flower patterns from the 30’s, but like how they used them in the 70’s?

Brandon: Who are they? That’s so ambiguous! Use the passive! 

Now I ask you, doesn’t that make you envy me for having such a cool husband? One that’s more concerned about grammar than how lame the commercial is and how brilliant the creators of the “ironic” clothesline think they are?

He’s mine, ladies. All mine.