(no subject)

Goddamn. I didn't think I wouldn't be able to tell.

I think it was a very faint positive. It probably shouldn't have been so faint two full weeks after my hypothetical ovulation date. So maybe I was briefly pregnant, but it's failing.

Or maybe that faint vertical line was just wishful thinking, huh Rivka?

Update: I picked it out of the trash. Now it's clearly positive. Big blue plus sign. Of course, the kit says very clearly not to read the test after the ten-minute window.

Update Update: Courtesy of peeonastick.com. "This test can be an excellent early detector, but is known to develop dark false positives after the 10-minute limit. The + shape can be hard to read." Sigh.

On the other hand, some of the sample positive results are very, very faint. And I really did think I saw a second line.

Argh.

(no subject)

It is entirely the fault of our exchange student, Maria, that I've had a inane but catchy Romanian pop song stuck in my head all day.

Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma, nu ma iei
Nu ma, nu ma iei, nu ma, nu ma, nu ma iei..

Curse that multiculturalism! I begin to think that social conservatives may have a good point.

Notes for the alt.polycon 12 restaurant guide.

Phillips' Restaurant, at the edge of the Inner Harbor, offers a "Crab Pot" for $49.99, which they claim feeds two. Here's what you get, in a big enamelware kettle:

- 8 steamed blue crabs generously dusted with Maryland-style crab seasoning, The crabs were described as "mediums" but seemed more like what I've been sold in the past as "larges." They had a surprising amount of sweet, flaky meat on them.
- 1/2 pound of steamed jumbo shrimp (maybe 18/20s) with onions.
- 1 pound of steamed mussels.
- Two medium-sized crab cakes, their "standard" version bound with a small amount of cracker-meal filler.
- Two ears of corn-on-the-cob.
- A large portion of lovely, creamy-textured boiled new potatoes.
- Melted butter in vast quantities, tartar sauce, and cocktail sauce.

It easily served all three of us. We ordered cups of cream of crab soup all around, but needn't have - as it was, we left 1 1/2 crab cakes behind. (They were fine, but they were the least impressive item in the kettle.)

We sat on the outside patio, watching night fall over the harbor - the lighted boats moving slowly to and fro, the neon signs making shimmering reflections in the water. It was a perfect meal for Maria's last night here.

There are so many things that we wanted to do, but never got around to. I didn't find out until this last week that she's interested in space, or I would've talked wcg into giving us a tour of the Goddard Spaceflight Center. We didn't get to the Smithsonian Zoo or the National Aquarium. We didn't go to Annapolis. We spent twelve hours in New York City, for heaven's sake. She never had time to teach me to make half the Spanish recipes we talked about.

She'll just have to come back next summer, is all.