Midweek odds & ends

• Older Nephew's (Pregnant) Wife's bloodwork came back with no red flags (yay!).  Later the same day, they made things Facebook & Instagram-official and posted ultrasound photos.  She is almost 14 weeks now.
• BIL has already ordered the furniture for his forthcoming grandchild's nursery. Even dh said (privately, to me) that might be a LITTLE premature (although he's not going to tell BIL that!! & the furniture WILL take a couple of months to arrive). 
• Speaking of babies, I made some notes for a post that never got written after the recent birth of the world's most famous newborn:  the royal baby, aka Baby Sussex, aka Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. Mostly it was things being said on TV that raised my ALI hackles. On CBC News Network, one middle-aged female host commented on why Meghan might have wanted to hold off on the first public appearance, saying, "Ladies, you ALL know what I'm talking about!" (Ummm, no, we don't.)  Another female host was heard to say, "Are we REALLY making all this fuss over a baby??  We ALL have babies!"  (Ummm, no, we don't.)
• The media comment I loved most was a woman expressing admiration that Meghan was daring to wear a WHITE dress, two days after giving birth!  ;)   
• Side note:  "Archie??!!" (Just writing it, I hear Edith Bunker's voice in my head, lol.)  
• I am both horribly angry & horribly depressed over the news coming out of the U.S. lately. All I can say is "The Handmaid's Tale" is SUPPOSED to be fiction... 
• The weather has not been helping my mood. It's gradually getting a bit milder (albeit still not quite capris & sandals territory) -- but it's been mostly grey, grey, GREY.  Even dh admits it's been getting to him...!  It's our long weekend coming up this weekend too -- the traditional kickoff to summer.  We'll see...!  
• I still love my condo -- but I've been thinking that anyone with a high intolerance for noise might want to think twice before moving into one. There's been the usual construction noise (from the townhouse construction project behind us and the highway widening/rapid transit project in front), the ongoing thump-thump-thumps overhead, the barking dogs in the hallway going to & from the elevators (and then outside as they're being walked/exercised). We also seem to have a new baby/toddler living down the hall (guess how we know THAT!). The night the Raptors won Game 7 & moved on to the next round of the NBA playoffs, I nearly levitated off the couch from the sudden loud shouts emerging from more than one neighbouring unit. ;) We occasionally get woken up late at night (and not just on weekends!) by the sound of people partying on a nearby balcony.  (I overheard every word of a conversation about mortgages one night... it was 3 a.m., and my window was not even open! I'm willing to cut young people some slack on a Friday or Saturday night, but 3 a.m. is way too late for this kind of crap, even on a weekend!)  And the other night, we were awakened at around 12:30 a.m. by the sound of a young woman screaming & crying outside, and looked out the window to see two cop cars parked directly below us. Still don't know what that was all about...!  Funnily enough, most of these things really don't bother me (much), and certainly bother me less than the neighbours' dogs barking at all hours did when we lived in our house. But when you start listing it out like this, you realize everything you put up with...!   
• Hiding out at the movies on Voldemort Day, dh & I found ourselves counting the number of ads:  SIXTEEN (16), including DURING the coming attractions (but not counting the "please turn off your cellphones" and "please don't kick the seat in front of you" PSAs, or the ads during the "pre-show," which really is just one big long ad itself, isn't it?).  I know I am dating myself here (what else is new, lol), but I remember the days when there were no ads, just the coming attractions. And I remember when they started introducing ads and people used to boo & hiss at the screen. This went on for quite a while too. I suppose we knew even then that resistance was futile :p  but it's sad to see how what began with one or two pre-show commercials has turned into SIXTEEN...!!