Sunday, April 16, 2000
Baby shopping
(originally written on Tuedsday, April 11, 2000)
I actually went to Babies-backwards-R-Us. My friend Lorie is having a baby shower and everyone (including guys) were invited, as I think she has more male friends than female friends.
She was registered so that helped. It was actually quite painless. Entered the store. Next to the customer service desk was a kiosk—an embeded computer with touch screen. Press here to start. Type in the name (bad point—keyboard presented was in alphabetical order not QWERTY—very annoying), found her record, hit print and a few seconds later seven sheets of printout describing what she wanted.
That was the easy part. Hard part was actually finding stuff on the list.
Now, those that know me will find it rather difficult to believe that I actually did this. But I don't hate kids. I mean, if they're cooked just right … ha ha only joking.
But I'm amazed at just the amount of stuff you can get for a baby. Special rash prevention diapers. Special formula bottles. Pacifiers. I did not realize the extent of specialization in pacifiers. Nor baby mits (now when did they become popular?).
Makes me wonder how we ever survived as a species without it?
Never fold a kangaroo
I wrapped the presents for Lorie's baby shower and I wanted to do something … different for the bow.
I have an interest in origami, and one of the books I have gives the
instructions for folding a kangaroo and baby and I thought that would be a
nice bow; something that is different. 
So I grab the book and some origami paper. Quickly glancing through the book it looks easy enough.
Until you actually do it.
Since this is the third work in the series to be made from it, instructions for folding the bird base are not given.
Instruction between steps one and two of kangaroo and baby (nice).
I've found that the instructions for origami tend to follow the Unix man page model: it makes sense once you know how to do it. But if you don't know how it works then getting from (say) step 23 to 24 may take some time.
Step 23 is making one of the last folds for the head of the kangaroo. Okay,
I see a valley fold here, a mountain fold there but how does that get from
the illustration in step 23 to the illustration in step 24? That one step
alone took me more than an hour to get.
My first attempt ended up
looking more like an aroused male mutant kangaroo than a female kangaroo
with a baby.
It only took me four hours to make the bow.
Baby shower
So I arrive at Lorie's baby shower. There's some concern that she may not show up since she wasn't feeling well the day before, but eventually she showed up with husband in tow (and baby still in womb).
I'm not sure what exactly I expected, but it was fun. And, unusual for a baby shower (I'm guessing) is that there were more males than females at the party.
And Lorie did like the origami kangaroo I used as a bow.
