This past weekend was a monumental event in my life and our unborn baby’s: Our first Def Leppard concert.

Def Leppard is John’s favorite group. If you had asked me six years ago, before I met John, who Def Leppard was I would have said, “Whoosat?” But now I not only know who they are, I know a lot of the words to their songs and could sing along on Friday night.

Us before the concert started. (That’s me 36 weeks pregnant.)

I got us the tickets for John’s birthday in July. We went to one other concert together this year, to see Dashboard Confessional at UVSC last spring. We were sure that John, at the ripe then-age of 28, was possibly the oldest person there. Definitely a Generation X thing.

It was quite a different story at the Def Leppard concert. There were all sorts of people of all ages from every demographic. In fact, we were on the younger side of the fan base. However, I did see several families who brought their kids–and their kids could sing along just as well as their parents.

Since it was a rock concert–and a concert featuring groups whose hey days were the 80’s–we saw all sorts of attire that outside of the concert arena might be considered fashion faux pas: leather pants, leg warmers, orange hi-tops, mini skirts and leggings . . . you name it, we saw it.

We arrived early and got dinner from the concession stands–cheeseburger for John, chicken parmesan hoagie for me, and a lemonade between the both of us. Then we got in our seats and enjoyed the perfect 70-degree weather until the first act started. First up was Foreigner.

Then we had Styx.

And–finally!–Def Leppard.

Oh, man, the crowds went nuts when they came out. They were really fun to hear in person.

Def Leppard doing an accoustic piece.

Wesley even danced around a bit in the womb. Apparently he’s already a fan.

Last night we bought a crib. I picked it out myself during a quick scoping-out trip to Baby Depot (part of Burlington Coat Factory).

I have to say that the price of cribs is astonishing. On average, they cost about $200-400. Spending $400 on some wooden slats just seems enormously outrageous to me, especially when you consider that you have to purchase the mattress and bedding separately, at additional cost. And if you want to buy a themed bedding set (like “Bee My Baby” or “Day at the Zoo”) you should be prepared to dish out at least $150. And, of course, if you get the themed bedding set you’ll probably be tempted to buy the matching lamp, mobile, pillows, baskets, nursery organizer, stuffed animals, etc., for hundreds of dollars more. What’s wrong with a couple sets of plain sheet sets and maybe a blanket?

Anyway. Back to the crib. It’s Simplicity Chelsea in honey and cost $159.99 plus tax.

It’s a simple crib compared to some of the other models, but that’s probably why it was only $159.99. I feel like it’s a good size and not too over-the-top like some other styles I saw. The next day I showed John a picture of the crib online and he said, “Why not?” So I went back and picked it up last night. The box barely fit into my car’s trunk (I scraped up my elbow, knee, and ankle trying to cram it in). And it’s still there because I need John’s help to pull it out again.

So. We’re officially People Who Own a Crib. For a baby. Every piece of furniture or clothing we acquire that was formerly foreign but now normal and necessary reminds us that we really will be having a baby in two more months.

My birthday was last week and I received five electronic birthday cards, all from people I work with. Number of real-life cards received: Zero.

It’s not a big deal to receive birthday salutations via email, but since e-cards are inherently impersonal I think people should at least try to make the e-card seem like it’s personal.

E-card Do’s and Don’ts:

1. If you’re going to send a birthday e-card to an employee on behalf of the entire department, please be courteous enough to remove the birthday person’s name from the generic list of employees on the card.

2. While you’re at it, please also correct the typo in “From your friend’s at [name of organization].”

3. If you’re going to create a birthday card in Microsoft Publisher, instead of emailing the Publisher document to the birthday person and letting her open it in Publisher (assuming she has the program installed) and scroll through the card’s four pages in draft format, why not just print it out and give it to her the old-fashioned way?

Besides being baffled by the sense of e-cards, I had a good birthday. My parents came into town and we ate very good ice cream cake from Cold Stone (courtesy of my sister). Another year down!

In looking at this blog’s archives, it came to my attention that our Dream Shard Blog is exactly two years old. It came into fruition on August 2, 2005. Why my husband decided to create a blog on my birthday when there are 364 other perfectly useable days that don’t require pampering your wife with attention and gifts and cake–which pampering presumably should take up most of the day–I have no idea.

In any case, the Blog survives! In the first post John wrote the following:

“Whenever a new blog is created, one always has to wonder–Why? What is this blog going to add that isn’t available anywhere else? Or, in this digital age of information, what information is going to be aggregated of import?

“Hopefully such questions will be answered more fully in time, but suffice it for now to say that I hope to add my own viewpoint over many topics ranging from technology (the profession in which I am employed) to literature and world events. Perhaps just as important, I seek to post those things which I stumble across which are of [some] value to myself, particularly those which took longer to discover.”

Little did John know that his blog baby would be gradually overwhelmed with posts by his wife, and the mature, intellectually stimulating topics he had intended for the blog’s audience would take backseat to his wife’s ramblings of everyday-ness.

Well. Even if the blog hasn’t lived up to its original purpose I hope our family and friends have at least found some genuine pleasure in reading up about the latest, ever-scintillating happenings in our Robinson household.

Happy Birthday, Dream Shard. Oh yeah–and happy birthday to me, too.

Well, we bit the bullet and got our two-year-old cat Kyra a friend this weekend. After extensively considering Kyra’s current situation where she’s alone most of the time, and when she’s not alone she’s shadowing me as if I’m her only friend in the world (scary notion), we concluded that another kitty friend would help.

We read up about introducing established cats to new pets and found that resident cats will take better to kittens than to older cats. So on Saturday we hit Petsmart and adopted a four-month-old male kitten we named Grayson. He’s gray with white paws and a white chest and blaze. He purrs non-stop and is constantly kneading everything his front paws touch, even the linoleum. If you know Kyra, this kitten is nothing like her in personality. It probably helps that he’s been in a shelter and has been handled before, whereas Kyra was a bit of a wild one when we got her and not even weaned from her mom.

Next to Kyra, Grayson is so tiny. I forgot how small Kyra used to be. We introduced him right away to a “safe room” (the downstairs bathroom) where we set up a little towel bed, food, and kitty litter box. That was to help him get adjusted to his new environment. The book we’ve been using as a guide said to give him a couple of toys and once you hear him playing with the toys, it’s a sign that he’s getting settled. Well, about fifteen minutes after we put him in the safe room the bells in his toy ball were tinkling. We’ve let him out a few times (when Kyra’s not around) to roam and get used to his new surroundings. He scampers everywhere and sometimes his rear end gets ahead of his front end, like he hasn’t quite mastered running yet, and it’s pretty cute to watch. He sort of reminds me of Ducky from The Land Before Time the way he scrambles around.

Kyra doesn’t like him yet, but that’s normal. We’re following the book’s advice to introduce him gradually to her and let her get used to him. Hopefully before long she’ll be looking after him like one of her own. Or at least stop hissing at him long enough for us to feel safe putting them in the same room together unattended.

Here’s a picture of him. We took about fifty pictures of him, not because we’re obsessive like that but because he was such a bundle of motion that nearly every shot was blurry. This picture is one of about two that turned out in near-focus.

Last year when I was in Madison for work I found the greatest blue Dansko Lolita sandals–but they were all sold out of my size because their mega end-of-season sale had been the week before. I was totally bummed, and this year I was determined not to miss any more end-of-season shoe sales. I’ve been thinking of getting some new Birkenstocks, since my wonderful blue suede ones from my high school days have definitely seen better days. (Although I still love them and forever will.)

So a few weeks ago I contacted a local comfort shoe store and found out when their end-of-season sale would be and put the dates on my calendar. I didn’t know the details of their sale, but I knew it started today at 9 a.m. and was called their Three-day Door Busters Sale.

I took an hour off work to go. I got there about ten past nine and already it was a madhouse. The store is small, and it was cramped with tables piled high with boxes and narrow aisles and women, women everywhere, their purses dangling off their elbows, carrying three shoe boxes at a time and precariously balancing on one foot to try on a fourth pair. Crazy as it was, I felt kinship with them. These were my people–people with an eye for good, comfortable shoes at a good price.

I beelined for the Birkenstock table, which was a good thing because they were featured in today’s Door Buster sale and the boxes were being eaten away quickly. I followed the example of the women carrying three boxes at a time: If I found something I liked I picked it up and held onto it, even if I wasn’t sure I would buy it. As kinsfolky as I was feeling, it’s still every woman for herself at a shoe sale.

I finally decided on two pairs: One Cozumel Navy Blue Silky Suede

and one Orlando Golden Brown Birko-Flor.

The Cozumel was $60, marked down from $110, and the Orlando was $40, down from $80. So I saved about 50% overall.

I haven’t told John yet, but I know he’ll read this blog post and hopefully he’ll take note of how much money I saved in the long run and possibly remember that it’s my birthday next week.