How many Amy Larson's do you know?

I met someone today who told me it would be easy to remember my name because he had a sister-in-law whose name was Amy Larson. Great.

I knew my name was going to be extremely vanilla when I married Corbyn, but today, I realized how vanilla. After this comment, I went to Google and did a search for "Amy Larson". 9,470 search results. I wasn't patient enough to look through more than 3 pages, but I wasn't any of the Amy Larson's listed on any of those pages. I did a search under "Amy Guymon" (maiden name)... 47 search results. And several of them were me. I just share my maiden name with some defendant in Montana, but my married name??? Innumerable.

Welcome to the world of ambiguity. Ah, what a nice feeling.

Now, I guess I understand when Corbyn comes up with names like "Rocket" or "Indy" for our baby. He is trying to create a little uniqueness... no one will even need to hear the last name if he calls up and says, "Hi, this is Rocket..." Yeah, you'll only know ONE of those.

I am such a bad blogger...

OK, so my New Years Resolution was to keep this blog up to date, as defined by a minimum of two postings/month. Yikes! I failed on that resolution in April... only 4 months into the year.

So, my excuse... well, you may have noticed that I didn't post any pictures of our trip. Most of you probably know why... we didn't actually go on our trip. I developed this strange disease where you puke constantly, yet still somehow develop a beer belly... it's scientific name is Pregnantitis. (OK, that was dumb.) Yes, I am pregnant. And apparently, I am a puker. This came as quite a shock and a blow to my self esteem (I have always considered myself tough... uh, apparently, not so much.)

So, for the past seven weeks, I have been dealing with morning and evening sickness. And, as disgusting as it is to puke into the nice, clean public bathrooms at my work, I can't imagine how disgusting it would be to puke into third world toilets (or outhouses, depending on the area). So, the trip to Nicaragua and Costa Rica has been postponed until further notice. (Not to mention that I couldn't get the vaccinations for hepatitis, malaria, and typhoid you need when traveling in that part of the world and eating food from street vendors.)

So, now, back to the puking. (I know, it is disgusting and you don't care, but this has been a very new experience for me, so I can't help but talk about it.) Constant vomiting. I am proud to say that it hasn't prevented me from going to work - I have yet to miss a day. (I did, however, have to go home early one day because my projectile-force vomit caused significant back-splash from the toilet... yeah, basically, I got puke on my shirt.) It's all good, though. Things are finally looking up. On Saturday, I told Corbyn I wanted to go to Carl's Jr. to get a Guacamole Bacon Six Dollar Burger (85 grams of delicious fatness in that bad boy), large fry, and a shake - I was going to eat it all and not feel bad about it, because I was just going to puke it all back up later that night, anyway. So I ate, and, for the first night in 7 weeks, didn't puke. Figures.

What else? Well, my first prenatal doctors visit sure was interesting. You would think, with 2 sisters and 4 sisters-in-law, all of whom have kids, that I would be a little more prepared for what happens at those. Well, I sure wasn't prepared, and Corbyn, having NO sisters and no exposure to the pains/embarrassment of being a woman, was even less prepared. I guarantee that doctor had never seen someone vacate a room so quickly... I could barely convince him to stay in the room long enough to hear the baby's heartbeat. We did get to hear the baby's heartbeat, though. Wow. That is all I can say.

So, the official tally:

- 13 weeks
- Gained 2 lbs.
- Puked innumerable times (I wish I would have kept a tally of the number of times I have puked, but I didn't really think of that.)
- 4 days in a row of not puking
- Only 2 slurpee's consumed so far (I am so proud.)

I am sooooo funny...

So, you probably can't see the picture well enough to tell what it is... and that is probably a good thing. But it is my only proof, so I have to show what there is of it.

I came home from work the other day and Corbyn had a horrible headache. I told him the best remedy for a headache was a bath. It took some talking, but I convinced him he needed to try it. I told him to relax and I would get it all ready for him. (What a nice wife...)

So, here is my manly husband, in the bathtub complete with candles, bubble bath, and scented salts... I hope you all laugh as hard as I do every time I think about it.

Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving

That was the banner Heather made me to console me on my 30th birthday. Corbyn and I went riding our motorcycles for the first time this year the day before my birthday. I always overestimate how good of shape I am in... I woke up on my birthday feeling every day of 30, but far from flirty and thriving.

The good news... Corbyn and I leave on our vacation of Friday. 10 days in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I should definitely have some awesome stories and pictures when we get back... we'll see if they top the last trip down there. I think a cat falling through the roof of an airport is pretty hard to beat, but we'll see. That is the beauty of these trips... you never know what is going to happen. :)

Oh, and the other good news... we will finally be finishing our rolls of film that have our last trip to Cabo on them, so I should have TWO vacations worth of pictures to upload. I am sure you are on the edge of your seat.

I stumbled into the wrong session...

So, I am the Omniture Annual Convention right now, sitting in a session that is flying COMPLETELY over my head. Omniture is a web analytics tool... I consider myself a power user, so I attend the advanced track. (I am not arrogant, I swear. Heck, I was even invited to be on the Customer Advisory Board for them. It's like if your high school teacher recommends you to be the Sterling Scholar... such a big deal to... well, a couple people.)

The title of the session "Advanced - Using API's to get the right data in the right place". So, I am fully aware of the fact that I do not have a degree in Computer Science, but in my online marketing career, I have been around a lot of code. I can read some of it... heck, I can even write some. I was even ranked the 3rd most advanced Excel user in a previous session, since I know what ctrl/shift/enter does. (I was beat out by some Visual Basic reference. Dang VB.) I know what an API is... I am excited Omniture just announced the availability of an API... I know all the cool stuff that can be done with an API. So, all this leads me to believe that I am smart enough to attend this session.

The fact that I am typing on my blog right now should indicate to you how much I overestimated my own smartness. SOAP, XML based HTTP post, a bunch of symbols and functions I can't type fast enough to capture... I have no idea. It is all going right over my head. I should have known by the fact that I was the only woman in the room. But, it isn't too uncommon... I didn't think much of it at the time.

So, why don't I leave, you might ask? I made the critical mistake of sitting in the middle of the row. And at the front of the room. Geek on the left has his laptop open, geek at the right has his laptop open. There is no room for me to get by without causing some major commotion. And, if I were to leave, all the computer geeks in the room would look at me and think, "I knew that chick didn't belong in here." If a sit here and type, they all think, "Whoah. That chick knows code."

So, I suffer for all womankind.

SQL Server 2005

My work was upgrading to SQL Server 2005. Since I am the business owner of the website, I had to be on-site to sign off that it was working to my approval. The upgrade began at 9:00PM Saturday night and we finally left at 4:30am Sunday morning. Several pizza's and pitchers of Vanilla Coke into the night, we were all feeling a little punchy. While the DBA's (Database administrators) finished up their work, I teamed up with the Ecommerce Manager and QA Manager to write a little song about our efforts that night. Keep in mind that experts say your best work comes when you first wake up in the morning and we were coming up on our 21st hour of sleeplessness. Enjoy.

Happy February 29th!

Yeah, so, I realize this posting is a few days after February 29th, but surely you didn't expect me to take any of that precious day to type something on the computer!!!! Definitely not! I took the day off work in celebration of the momentous occasion. I am 29 and February 29th comes only once every 4 years. I really, really wanted to go buy a lottery ticket, because I am pretty sure it was the luckiest day of my whole life, but practicality (or Corbyn) took over and I realized the frivolity of driving so far just for a $1 ticket. So, I missed my chance to win the lottery. I blame practicality (or Corbyn).

Karen, Joan, and I went with our husbands to lunch... It was Corbyn's first outing with us all. Hopefully, I had sufficiently prepared him and he wasn't too shocked with how funny (aka. annoying) we are when we are together. It was a good time.