A Baby.

Kael Matthias Johnstone.

Born 7 pounds, 10 ounces and 20.25 inches long on February 19 at 1:17 AM.

11 hours of labor, 13 minutes of pushing, no pain meds.

I now need to lose approximately 20 pounds. Hooray Wii Fit?

-Caitlin

Concerning Pie.

From least to most delicious.

Least delicious: Pumpkin pie. I’m sorry, fans of pumpkin pie. It smells wonderful, but after the first bite it tastes plain strange and makes me naseous. I’ve tried a number of pumpkin pies, and they all have the same effect. Ick.

Any kind of berry pie. I love berries by themselves, but in pies they’re always too tart.

Pecan pie. I hate pecans, but the caramelly stuff surrounding them is great. On a similar note, peanut brittle without the peanuts would be awesome.

Apple pie. We have now crossed the line from pies I don’t like to pies I do.

Lemon meringue pie. The lemon part is some of the best stuff ever. I’m not overly fond of the meringue, though.

Dutch apple crumb pie. The buttery, sugary, cinnamon-y crumbs make this pie exponentially more delicious than its crumbless counterpart.

Coconut cream pie. It’s mild and sweet and loaded with whipped cream and little crunchy bits of coconut. Nom nom nom.

Most delicious: Chocolate cream pie. Rich, dark, cold chocolate balanced with cool, sweet whipped cream. And if it has an oreo crust, well, that’s just tangible perfection.

(No, there’s absolutely nothing interesting going on in my life to write about, so yes, I have resorted to ranking pies.)

-Caitlin

A Manly Sport. Also, Catfish.

We went to the Portland Rose Garden this fine evening and watched a bunch of enormous guys beat the stuffing out of each other with sticks. Apparently this is called “Lacrosse.” It was full of manliness.

At one point during the game, I pondered the fact that it would take a huge number of catfish to completely fill the Rose Garden. I really don’t know why I thought of that, but now I’m curious, so…

The Rose Garden has a roof that is 210,000 square feet and is 140 feet tall at its pinnacle (source). I’m not going to make this overly complicated because I’m feeling pretty lazy, so I’m just going to take 210,000 and multiply it by 140 to get an internal volume of 29,400,000 feet cubed. Then I’m going to make that an even 29 million, which is still quite a bit too high, to account for the rounded shape of the roof which makes the surface area of 210,000 considerably greater than it would be if it were flat.

Catfish vary greatly in size, but on average are between 3.9 and 5.2 feet long (source). I’m going to be lazy and use 4.5 feet as the length of a catfish. I’m going to be even lazier and say that catfish are approximately cylindrical in order to more easily calculate the volume of one, and guesstimate that the diameter of a 4.5-foot-long catfish would be about 1 foot. Therefore, the volume of a catfish in cubic inches is pi times r squared, or 36 pi, times 54 (4.5 times 12 inches is where that number came from), for a total of 1944 pi, which is 6104 cubic inches or about 3.5 cubic feet. (Why did I convert to inches first? I have no idea.)

29,000,000 divided by 3.5 is 8,285,714.

Given my extremely high estimate of the Rose Garden’s volume, plus the fact that I didn’t account for any solid objects (walls, seating, etc.) within the Rose Garden, 8,285,714 is too many catfish. A round 8 million is almost definitely still too many… But in any case, I think it’s safe to assume that completely filling the Rose Garden with catfish would require, well, a lot of catfish. Millions of them. Certainly over nine thousand.

If I did something stupid when calculating stuff, let me know. It’s midnight and I didn’t double check things.

-Caitlin

Leggings are Not Pants.

We went to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) on February 1st to see the new Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, which was pretty neat. But that isn’t what this post is about. This post is about people-watching, which OMSI happens to be most excellent for.

Firstly, I would like to say that fat people are great. They are frequently jolly and almost always fun to hug (assuming that they are hygenic), and I have no issue with fat people. I do, however, have an issue with massively obese people who wear skintight, skimpy clothing. I do not wish to see your rolls of fat, many of which are literally individually larger than my thigh, escaping from over the top of your eight-sizes-too-small miniskirt and protruding from beneath your spandex tube top. It’s gross.

Another thing that is gross is when people wear leggings as pants. Wearing them under skirts or dresses is one thing. I’m not a fan of the style, but neither does it anger me. Wearing leggings as pants is another thing entirely, unless you have the body to do so, and not a single person I’ve seen wearing leggings as pants does. In fact, every single person I’ve seen wearing leggings as pants has been at least moderately overweight, and the leggings only serve to accentuate their blobby curves of fat by squeezing them in awkward ways. I don’t understand why they can’t wear jeans. Srsly.

I also don’t understand the sorts of people who let their 7-year-old daughters wear teeny-tiny skirts and tight tank tops and makeup. I understand the desire to be physically appealing, yes, but what kind of parents want their prepubescent daughters objectified in that manner? Not to mention that it just looks completely ridiculous, since they’re, y’know, prepubescent.

On a topic that is dissimilar in that it does not involve clothing but is similar in that it involves people I’d like to smack, I attended a city council meeting with my dad on Monday. Certain people on the city council want to spend $300,000+, not including land value which is another $270,000 or so, on a new skate park. The city of Wilsonville does not have that money to spend, but a certain woman on the city council is adamant that a new skate park is absolutely required. Her logic, or lack thereof, went like this:

“We need a new skate park.”
“Why?”
“Because the old skate park is unsafe.”
“Why is the old skate park unsafe?”
“Lack of visibility. If somebody falls and gets hurt, nobody will see them. Also, vandalism.”
“Serious vandalism?”
“Well no, not really. But there is a hole in the side of one of the ramps.”
“That’s because it’s made of wood and is eight years old.”
“Well, lack of visibility is still a serious issue.”
“How so?”
“Because it’s not highly visible. People will fall and get hurt and nobody will see them. And if it’s more visible, vandalism won’t happen either.”
“That does sound pretty serious. Maybe we should close the park until a new one is built so that nobody will get hurt during that time.”
“Well, it isn’t that dangerous.”
“It isn’t?”
“Well, no. The police have the area pretty well covered.”
“So it’s not dangerous due to location?”
“Not really.”
“Then why don’t we renovate the old skate park instead of building a whole new one?”
“Because it’s not a good place for a skate park to be.”
“Why not?”
“Lack of visibility. And vandalism.”

/facepalm

Her other main argument was that “Every kid I know has a skateboard, so a skate park is a necessary asset to the community.” As my dad says, “Every kid I know has a bicycle, but you’re not building a velodrome…”

What’s frightening is that the majority of people on the council agree with her opinion of the necessity of a new skate park. So they’re likely going to spend $300,000 that they don’t have plus $270,000 worth of land to make the estimated ~870 potential skateboarders in Wilsonville happy, when we already have a functional skate park and the library is closing due to lack of funding. Genius, guys.

People bug me.

-Caitlin