Geek Habitat

Quaking Aspens in full golden glory, at peak this week per the National Park Service.

Beautiful, beautiful and again, most beautiful weather.

Photos galore! (Too many to post, but Justin has graciously spent some time this evening assembling some photo highlights.

Bull elk bugling and butting antlers with rivals, guarding their harems from transgressors, sometimes just thirty feet from your eyes.

Several feet of fresh power snow to walk through like a geek who’s never seen such a thing, because she hasn’t (not that much, up close and underfoot, anyway!) at the high mountain elevations.

We are heading to Estes Park, Colorado (the “Gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park”) on the heels of a winter storm. It’s going to be brrr….brrr….brisk out there, but we’re looking forward to our first vacation together in a full year. Last year’s vacation was to our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. (And, yes, we still owe everyone more photos from that trip!)

Estes Park, Colorado, Current Forecast

Poor Heide! Twelve days in space, including a grueling spacewalk and an added day in space with hours of robotics work, and then press junkets when they get back on the ground. In case you missed it, STS-115 Astronaut Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper passed out twice during a “Welcome Home” ceremony in Houston.

Since I’m lazy, here’s what I wrote in an email to my Mom, who “broke” the story to me. I’ve been on a CNN boycott of sorts ever since all the news started to eerily revolve around pregnant women getting knifed, newborns stolen, and now, one that died apparently after someone cut her womb open and removed her unborn baby (which died as a result.)

I’m trying to get our money’s worth out of our $32 one-month fetal doppler rental, so brace yourselves. I’ll probably post more of these before I package up the unit and send it back to BabyBeat.com.

Heartbeat at 12 weeks 5 days

This one is awesome because the heartbeat is loud for about 85% of the sound clip because Sprout must have been very close to where I aimed the doppler, rather than hiding out away from it.

Well, I slept through this morning’s pre-dawn landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on Runway 33 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Thanks to the wonders of the ‘Net, however, I have now watched all of the coverage which NASA TV rebroadcasts on landing day.

Our BabyBeat Fetal Doppler rental unit arrived today, so I fired it up this evening and started methodically scanning my lower abdomen to locate Sprout’s heartbeat. It took about ten minutes, since I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV. I kept finding my own heartbeat thanks to aiming the doppler at a major artery, and I believe I even heard the characteristic “wind blowing in the trees” sound of blood flowing in the placenta. Finally, after even Justin had tried to locate Sprout’s heartbeat, I found it — a little to the right of where my OB found it at last Thursday’s checkup.