Crève!

I Invented A Flying Car

2011-01-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

Not really, but I could have. If I was alive 100 years ago.

I've shirked my internet responsibilities in favor of my favorite pre-internet past time, reading. I spent the last week on H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a number of short story anthologies of the science fiction variety. Since I'm currently financially restricted to the free offerings of Project Gutenberg, I'm getting to see the present, recent past and near future through the eyes 100 years old or more. Thus, I am inclined to write words such as "thus" and equally inclined to dwell once again on my quasi-obsession of the failed future.
This lead me to the realization that I've actually done quite the opposite. In 2004, while writing my doomed-to-never-see-the-light-of-day novel, I predicted personal GPS devices, netbooks and the advancement of smart phones into what we know them to be today. In all fairness, all of these concepts were likely in the works when I fancied that I invented them, but still, I think I deserved the right to do a little w00t dance in my mind.
There was but one piece of fictional technology that I conceived that has not yet seen the light of day. For all I know, someone is working on it and it too may be available for mass use in years to come. I hope for the sake of anyone who goes to the cinema that my humble concept does not go the way of the flying car.
I envisioned technology by which one would be able to see an unlit computer or phone display in complete darkness. My invention began with night vision contact lenses that allowed the wearer to see as perfectly at night as in daylight. From there I expanded my fake technology to work with hand held computers that would appear blank to anyone other than the wearer of the specific lenses that were coded to the light frequency of the specific device.
Think about it. How cool would it be to go see a movie and not spend half of it blinded by the person two aisles below who thinks "no texting" is a suggestion rather than a rule?
Now if only there was a way to convince the guys that walk around playing music out their phone's speakers that the headphones they paid $50 were likely made to enhance the pleasurable aspects of listening to music whereas the phone's tin can speaker is an insult to the artist they clearly revere enough to tell the whole world that they listen to.
I may never drive a flying car, but in the event that my concept above never comes to fruition, don't think I won't have one of my robot minions give the theater texter a few etiquette lessons of the laser beam variety.

If You Aren't Already Inclined To Think Us Odd...

2010-12-24T18:57:00.000-08:00

...This is what I gave Jason for Christmas this year:

Yes, that is a drawing of our dog, Luke, attacking a zombie priest. I had an incredibly talented artist draw this for me. Her name is Silva Noir, and she is also the artist responsible for the sweet, sweet not.a.lion t-shirts for sale over on You Suck At Craigslist.

If you find yourself in need of amazing art at a very reasonable price, here's her website.

Merry Christmas everyone!

It Was A Dark and Stormy Christmas

2010-12-23T21:38:00.000-08:00

If you are unfamiliar with the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, click that link and become familiar with the awesomeness that is bad writing.
As I may have mentioned a few hundred times before, I used to fancy myself a decent writer, but I've spent a fair number of years not writing much of anything so I am surely rusty at the least. I also used to have an insatiable appetite for books. No really, dip them in an egg wash, coat with breadcrumbs and deep fry them, I guarantee they are as tasty as anything you might find at the state fair. But I also enjoyed reading them, yet this too was something that I had gotten out of the habit of doing. So a few weeks ago I downloaded the Kindle app for my phone and, being the cheapskate that I am, I've been plowing through the hundreds of classics that I downloaded from Project Gutenberg.
As I had hoped, reading has sparked my interest in writing once again, but I'm taking baby steps. I plan to submit a few deliciously bad entries to Bulwer-Lytton, then graduate to slightly less bad creative endeavors here. From there I may try my hand at a short story, or perhaps a novella. If I persist through to a full fledged novel I will have surpassed my own expectations several fold, for I thoroughly expect to crash and burn on stage one.
Writing takes practice, and surprisingly, bad writing takes far more practice. So consider this my first exercise. I've concluded, through no actual study, scientific or otherwise, that the detective fiction genre holds the record for having the worst opening sentences of all fiction. Really though, with detective fiction it isn't just the opening lines. There is a reason this stuff is parodied.
Paired with the fact that I did indeed promise holiday themed blogs, I now present:

Dead Reindeer Pull No Sleighs

Rudolph took a long drag off his fourth cigarette since entering his office less than ten minutes before. The Chesterfield was stale, as stale as a Christmas cookie in February, perhaps more so now that hydrogenated oils kept baked goods fresh longer than any comestible had the right to exist. He picked up the manila envelope that had been slid under his door at some point during the night and dumped the contents onto his desk. Surely the chief knew about this by now and would be calling him for a lead. This case hit close to home.
Dancer was dead.
Rudolph knew she had hit hard times since the layoff, and he was well aware that dancing wasn't the only thing she was doing down at The Jolly Pole, but the girl had a head on her shoulders and had always kept her nose clean. Sure, no one bought that line that she was only doing it to pay her way through med school, but The Jolly Pole was a class establishment, at least as much as an establishment that served watered down drinks to lonely businessmen looking to fuel their lonely motel night fantasies could be. But murder wasn't on the menu.
Rudolph cursed the day that Santa called them into the office only to inform them that they were being replaced by Sony's new old stock of Aibos and cheap pixie dust from China. If he hadn't lucked out and ran into the chief back in his beat cop days, and offered to sit atop his patrol car and blink his nose in place of the broken emergency light, Rudolph could have ended up in a worse situation. He thought about poor Cupid. Despite the foppish name, no one really had any use for a Valentine's day reindeer.
The door handle clicked and Rudolph looked up, expecting the chief to walk through with some lame line about cheap booze and red noses, like he had every day for the last 2 years. But the voluptuous silhouette that he spied through the frosted glass was not the chief, not unless the chief had hastily acted upon some hitherto unknown secret desire. With a deft motion, Rudolph swept the envelope and its sordid contents into the top drawer and crushed the Chesterfield into the overflowing ashtray.
Vixen.

She cast a sultry glance around the shabby office, barely concealing her distaste for shabbiness, before settling Rudolph with a smoldering look that would have made Texas barbecue out of any other reindeer. But he wasn't any other reindeer. He had a red nose and a memory like a bear trap, and he still didn't trust this dame.
"Rudolph, it's been too long." She flounced across the threadbare carpet and draped herself into the faded upholstered chair across from him. "You used to tell me that you couldn't bear to be away from me for hours, yet it's been years."
"Save it sister," he puffed through a freshly lit stale Chesterfield, "You're trouble and you know it and Dasher happens to be a good friend of mine. I can't say I didn't warn him, but he's a grown man who stands on his own four feet so if he gets hit in the tenders he has only himself to blame."
Vixen frowned. "Dasher, there's nothing tender about him anymore. All he cares about is that stupid business of his and talk of IPOs, ROIs and a bunch of other silly letters that I simply haven't the head for. Oh don't think bad of me! I'm as gentle as a lamb with him, I just wish he'd pay more attention. Sure he buys me nice dresses, but does he compliment me when I wear them? I should dress myself in stock quotes if I want him to pay attention."
"I'm sure you didn't come all the way down to skid row for a shoulder to cry on and those letters on the door say 'Detective Rudolph, Private Investigator' not 'Dr. Rudolph, Head Shrinker to the Rich.' So spill it."
"It's about Dancer."
Rudolph's blood ran colder than Santa's black, capitalistic heart. There was no way Vixen,wife of the most successful of all of them who ran with the A-list and had permanent reservations at the most exclusive restaurants in town, could have known about a murder that had only happened a few hours before. But it was no secret that there was no love lost between these two broads. Their cat fights back at North Pole were legendary.
"What about Dancer?" Rudolph's poker face would have made both Kenny Rogers and Lady Gaga proud.
"Don't play dumb with me. Who do you think slipped those pictures under your door?"
Rudolph raised one eyebrow and took a deep drag off his fifteenth cigarette. This case was getting more interesting by the minute, and he hadn't even had his first whiskey laced coffee of the day.

And there you have it, the beginning of some seriously bad Christmas pulp. Who dunnit? What did they do? Where the hell is this story going? Don't ask me, I didn't even think up this much plot when I started out. Feel free to imagine the rest, or not.

Raised By Tigers

2010-12-19T18:21:00.000-08:00

Check it out, and I'm not just saying that because my husband is in the band and made the video, it's actually pretty bad ass. And none of this is computer generated:
**Edit: Fixed the broken link. Switch the resolution to 720HD before watching. It looks a lot better that way.

Something About Christmas

2010-12-16T20:03:00.000-08:00

I promised some holiday-esque blogging, but I used up my best stories last year. This blog is making me a liar.
This is a odd year. Jason and I pooled our resources to create what we hope will be a fantastic gift for the folks we know, rather than work on a super secret gift for each other. Because of this, and because we finished almost a month ago, I've got leisure time that would normally be spent making mad dashes to the store on a daily basis. I wish I could say that this time is being put to good use, but in all honesty, I'm just sitting around reading stories on the internet and occasionally remembering to do dishes.
So until I can talk about the pretty spiffy gift, I'll just have to rack my brain for fun stories or post what ever weird observation I happen to make. That's how blogging goes, I guess.

Girly?

2010-12-11T19:41:00.000-08:00

This is not about Christmas. In this entry I question what it means to be a girly girl. Above is a picture of the most common obsessions of the stereotypical girly girl. While I own a purse and shoes, I would not say that I am obsessed with them. In fact, I've been carrying the purse pictured above for a whole year without regard to season or current trend. I do own more than one pair of shoes, but the loafers pictured here probably get worn 80% of the time that I am required to be shod in something other than sneakers. I don't like shopping for shoes and I absolutely loathe shopping for purses. In fact, I pretty much hate shopping unless I'm at a specialty grocery store.
Yet, I'm totally a girly girl. I have a whole closet dedicated to hair and makeup products (admittedly, I barely ever wear makeup, but I have it if I need it). I get manicures and pedicures when ever I can afford them. Spa manicures and pedicures, none of this quick polish change crap for me, I'm girly. I named my car (Dodo, for she is part of a now extinct tribe). I speak to my dogs in cute voices. None of them are chihuahuas or teacup poodles, but girly girls can have mutts, right? I work in the beauty industry. That should totally seal the deal.
True story: At my last job, someone sent me an email that began, "Dear Mr. (my last name)." I thought it was funny, seeing as my first name is never shortened to Chris and I have what I believe to be a feminine voice (okay, it's a step higher than Bea Arthur's, but still....). So I jokingly told my coworkers that my gender was being challenged, to which one of my friends replied, "I'll send her an email back saying you have boobies." Another friend countered with, "And I'll tell her I've seen your shoe closet, she may be right."
So it all comes back to shoes.
Well, nonexistent readers, come back from the depths of the internet and weigh in. Can one truly be a girly girl with a mere 5 pairs of shoes?

Christmas Creepy: Why Is Yo' Mouth So Big?!?

2010-12-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

I've developed a seasonal phobia. Blame it on the Burger King, or clowns, or the creepy painting in my doctor's office, or...well I don't know. But this guy does:

Yep, I'm scared of nutcrackers. Not all nutcrackers, I mean, those simple metal bars that one actually uses to crack open nuts are just fine. We even have sturdier version that has a vice grip and handle for all the pecans we get every couple of years. But these creepy fellas that crop up mid-November and stare in that condescending, Snidley Whiplas mustachioed way freak me out. Like they're saying, "Go on, I dare you to actually stick a walnut in my mouth. You and I both know I'm just going to fall apart or launch a walnut across the room."
The worst part is that most of these Soldiers of Satan aren't even functioning nutcrackers. They come in all sizes from tiny ornaments to life sized blow up sentinels of electricity consumption.
Beyond the nutcracker, I haven't found much about Christmas that I don't like. I suppose the whole "War on Christmas" thing annoys me. Personally, I don't care if a store emblazons their windows with "Merry Christmas", "Happy Holidays", "Happy Hanukkah", "Happy Kwanza", or even "It's December, Buy Stuff!" (though that would be awesome and if I ever own a store that's what I'm doing). The point to me isn't the name, it's the happy and merry part. I mean, come on, it's December, and in the northern hemisphere that means it's cold. People get crabby when they're cold so we need more happy and merry. And if blinking lights, mechanized snowmen and reindeer, pine trees, and electric bills that require a federal bailout make you happy, then I say awesome! Just pass on the nutcracker, okay?

Oh Tinker Tree, Oh Tinker Tree!

2010-12-02T19:58:00.000-08:00

How flimsy are thy branches!

Seeing as I had neither the time nor space to embark on my insane project of making a tree out of hangers tape and green lights, we put up the tinker tree again this year. We tried to add lights, but the end result was as disastrous as you would imagine. This thing doesn't stand up very well when it's bare. We did add some new decorations this year:

We had to represent Hanukkah, though I admit to having no real clue as to how one plays with a dreidel so I made up my own rules. Every time I spun and it stayed on the table I won. This is a very hard game to play.

I made this ~~snowflake cookie star~~ wood and glitter thing in 1978, which incidentally, is the year my crafting skills peaked. Notice how there's a drum in that picture, and the one above? Look at this next picture:

Look! Another drum! Obviously, I bought the drums because my husband is a drummer who now also makes drums, but seeing as there are so many on the tree, it has become a fair representation of our home (oops, I think I just heard Jason putting coal in my stocking). The airplane was added because it's about the same size as the plane I flew last year. Crowding the plane is an ornament I made last year. I told you my skills peaked 32 years ago.

Our local grocery store is now advertising that they have the freshest trees in town. Either I've been missing out on the culinary delights of Scotch pine souffle, or that's a thinly veiled advertisement for drugs. Given the grocery store in question, I'm going with the latter.

Someday I'd like to have a real tree, but I don't like the idea of cutting down a tree for the sake of one month of decoration, and I don't like the idea of a fire hazard/dog disaster in my living room. So one day, when we are rich, I will have a large house with an atrium, where I will grow a magnificent pine tree that I will decorate every year. Granted, this doesn't solve the dog disaster issue.

Cheapskate Splurges

2010-11-30T20:34:00.000-08:00

I'm that person who signs up for every membership card or rewards program, no matter how likely I am to ever set foot in a store again. I like discounts. I like free stuff even more. I got my newest pair of running shoes for $3 using a combination of clearance rack, credit card rewards, and a birthday discount coupon.
Today I used my $10 off reward from World Market. I only had one thing in mind that I wanted and it was $2.50, so I spent a good 45 minutes scouring the store for odds and ends that I could use. Below is the result:

Silicone mini-muffin molds, a teeny grater, 4 chocolates and stuffy crackers. I also got a pack of spinach gnocchi, but it threw off the feng shui of the photo.
My mother's birthday card can be seen in the background. She included some pictures to remind me that I didn't always have fabulous fashion sense. She emailed one of the photos to me, which I have included below, after adding a bit of artistic ~~MS Paint~~ high tech computer enhancements for the sake of decency:

For a kid in the tub, I'm having a pretty good hair day. That all changed around third grade.

The Tale of Frizzilocks and The Three Gadgets

2010-11-28T19:01:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time there was a girl who fancied herself a decent writer. She wanted to share her deepest, innermost thoughts with the world, so she started a blog. At first it was fun, her husband had given her a laptop so she could write her blogs almost anywhere.
But then she got her first smart phone and found that browsing humor sites from the palm of her hand was so much more convenient than lugging out the laptop, and blogging fell by the wayside. It's not that she didn't want to blog, but her phone, while smart, was very small and not the easiest thing to type on. Soon she was writing once a month apologies for not being more prolific. She promised that she would write more when she got a better phone, for at this time, the cell phone industry had made great improvements in multimedia applications and her contract was about to expire.
So the girl bought an android phone, with an on screen keyboard and voice recognition software. She wrote a blog post, it worked. But then she played with the phone for a while and found that blogging with a phone, even an android phone that knew what she was about to type before she did, was not as easy as it seemed.
And then, on Black Friday, while the girl was busy being very bored at work, her husband braved the crowds to find the solution to all of her problems. You see, Monday is her birthday, and her husband happens to be the most wonderful human monkey who has ever lived, so being wonderful, he could not wait until Monday to give her the gift. He placed in her hands a box. A smallish, lightweight box which contained a netbook, a 10 inch, three pound, Windows 7 enabled netbook that was not too big, and not too small.
There was much rejoicing. And the girl has no excuses, she will write, she will be funny, dammit.

The End.

Seriously, I got a netbook, how cool is this?
In other news...
OMG CHRISTMAS!!!
Okay, since I work in wholesale distribution, it's technically been he holiday season for me since August, and the stores started pulling out the green and red before Halloween. But now the turkey has been eaten, football has been played, and Elmo apparently took a dive, so Christmas is ON! The best part? WE'RE DONE SHOPPING! Seriously, finished that stuff today, here's the result:

No, that's not a pile of quilting quarters, thems is presents! No, I am not telling you what they are, but you'll find out.
Since I don't have to frantically spend the next month running from store to store, I plan to dedicate the next month to more crazy holiday themed stories. In the mean time, here's Luke, enjoying the comforts of a spoiled dog:

This is Just a Test

2010-11-10T22:31:00.001-08:00

Just checking my blogging capabilities with the
new phone. this next sentence is done using voice prompt. damn that works pretty well. Granted, it didn't capitalize anything.

50 lbs and $50

2010-11-10T19:42:00.000-08:00

I got a new phone yesterday, the LG Optimus for Sprint. An android phone for $50. Once i finally find a blogger app that works, I should be a little more wordy than I am now. Jason got the same phone today after spending about 3 minutes playing with mine, so if he doesn't like it, it will be all my fault. :) (not too worried, I found our last phones, the Palm Centro, and we had them for three years)
While playing with the phone, he snapped this picture of me:

Not my finest, I admit, dark circles under my eyes, no makeup, sweaty, what ever. But if compared to a picture from a year ago, I can finally show how much weight I have lost:

Mind, this is one of the better pictures. I'm not posting the one where I'm in pjs with my dogs and I have a double chin and my belly looks like Santa's. Please feel free to pick on my white "athleisure" Sketchers. I do not know why I thought those were a good idea.

Halloween Aftermath

2010-11-01T18:07:00.000-07:00

We had a grand total of three trick-or-treaters show up last night. Apparently this was pretty normal all over town. I suppose this has a lot to do with the sad state of the world today. No more concrete and steel playgrounds, no more delicious lead based paint chips to chew on, no more trick or treating. Kids today are soft, I tell you, soft!
Or not, the little jerks were probably terrorizing the rich neighborhoods or whooping it up at Six Flags.
On a positive note, I was smart enough to buy the good stuff, so we have snack sized packs of Goldfish, dark chocolate Kisses and Toblerone minis (oops, make that had Toblerone minis) to snack on this week.

And now, just to be completely random, here's a picture of me and Sally wearing our most winning smiles:

I'm still trying to get a good picture to show off the weight loss, but there seems to be something wrong with my face in most of them.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T16:04:00.000-07:00

The Crystal Spider is ready to ~~eat~~ greet trick or treaters.

Have a happy and safe Halloween!

Out Of Touch

2010-10-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what is going on in the world around me. We ditched our television this summer, my commute is all of 15 minutes so I hear snippets of news on NPR. I don't read news websites very often and I haven't read the paper since I delivered it in 1988.
And I'm totally okay with that.
Of course, there are moments when this blissful naivete becomes apparent to others. Earlier tonight, Jason was showing me some Bjork videos he had been watching. About one, I asked, "Is this newer?" He told me no, it was around 2002. I realized that by newer I was thinking of the last Bork video I had ever seen, Bachelorette (which, by the way, Firefox does not believe is a real word). It should say a lot about her promoters that I even know who Lady Gaga is (okay seriously, bachelorette isn't a word but Gaga is?).
Not that this is a new state of being for me, a few years ago, I heard a lot of people talking about the Hilton sisters. This really threw me. As far as I knew, Daisy and Violet had been dead some years so the fact that they were making headlines meant something new was discovered about them. So I Googled, and found out that there were two new Hiltons, much more deserving of the title, Freaks, than the originals.
So how does this affect me? I'm not really sure. I suppose I could claim some sort of superiority over the masses for not having a clue as to what is happening on the Jersey Shore, but to be honest, it's not as if I'm filling my head with knowledge of more important or high brow matters either. Hell, I've been wasting most of my free time browsing Awkward Family Pet Photos .
What?
I have awkward pets, this resonates with me.

Happy Little Closet

2010-10-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

We finished the bedroom closet a while back. Here are a couple of pictures I snapped when it was still clean:

I'm pretty happy about it. So is the closet:

Dinner Imitates Dinner

2010-10-14T19:37:00.000-07:00

A vegetarian turkey burger is not unlike a poster of a knockoff Rembrandt, painted on black velvet.

The Definition Of Spoiled

2010-10-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

Jason went to bed at a reasonable hour last night. I stayed up until half past reasonable.
Sally saw an opportunity:

"I snooze, you lose!"

Hitchin' a Ride

2010-09-15T18:19:00.000-07:00

This is not the first freeloading grasshopper to hitch a ride on my windshield, just the first I was able to get a picture of.

He rode from Target to the Dollar Tree. Grasshoppers are bargain hounds.

Third Anniversary: Spiders and Meth

2010-09-13T19:23:00.000-07:00

Jason and I celebrated our third anniversary last Tuesday. Like every anniversary, birthday and Valentine's day, he did something amazing and awesome. The traditional list says this is the "leather" anniversary. Seeing as we're both pro-cow, he opted for the modern list, which says the third anniversary is crystal.
I can home from work to find the door covered in plastic wrap with a set of plastic hillbilly teeth taped to it. Jason informed me that we had a "problem" in the house. Here is the problem:

Apparently the Crystal Spider from the movie, Krull, came over to help out because Jason was busy. Unfortunately, the spider wasn't very good at decorating, opting to fling webbing all over the living room. The teeth on the door (pictured here below the spider's face) were all that was left of the crystal meth addict that the spider ate on his way over.
Jason bought me some lovely gifts, but the spider wrapped them in a lot of webbing (plastic wrap) so it took both of us to open them (Jason and I, the spider refused to help).
Unfortunately, my camera was dead when this happene so all the good pictures are on my phone and I haven"t had a chance to pull them off yet. I had some very lovely flowers, and Jason picked these for me on Saturday:

The spider is still hanging out in our living room. I don't think he's had many jobs since Krull so he's probably low on funds and thinks he can crash with us for a while. I'm okay with that, at least through Halloween, he makes a great decoration. As long as he doesn't leave crystal "surprises" all over the floor.

I'm sure there's people out there that think this is an odd way to celebrate an anniversary, but those people obviously don't know me too well or have never read this blog.

Ugh

2010-08-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

I suck at blogging.

It"s probably going to be a while before I start seriously writing again. We're still working on the house, it's 108 degrees, and honestly I dont have much to say.
But, I do have some big news...
SIZE 10!!!
I did it. Currently hovering between 175 and 180lbs. I'm stopping at 170, I doubt I can get much thinner without looking like a corpse.
More apologies for not keeping up with other blogs. I suspect this will change when I get a new phone or a netbook.
Sorry for being so meh.

The Big To Do Of To Do Lists

2010-06-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

I made a to do list this week that consisted of about twenty items ranging in importance from rolling my 401k over to bringing highlighters to work. The highlighters are in my purse as of this evening. Not much else got done.
I want to be a type A person, I really do, but something in my scattered brain just can't accept the fact that making lists and scheduling reminders is only the first part of the job and that I actually have to follow through with the tasks that I so neatly reminded myself of.

Does anyone else have this problem?

Apologies once again for my absence, we had a few weeks without internet.

Weighty Issues

2010-05-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

I've been asked to share my weight loss secrets. I'll be happy to do that, but first I should probably tell you that unless you are a sugar junkie in need of reform, this method may not work for you.
I'll get the ugly stats out of the way first, I'm not embarrassed by them:
October 2009
Weight- 226lbs
Size-16 (US)
Height-6'
Average daily beverage consumption:
Coffee with sugar and cream
40ish ounces Cranberry Juice
Starbucks Venti Mocha
Occasional soft drink or milk shake
Occasional water

Average breakfast:
Doughnut, croissant, burrito or nothing at all

Average lunch:
Too much food, usually of the take out variety; deli sandwiches, Chinese, Indian, McDonalds fries, etc...

Average dinner:
Pasta and bread played heavily into my diet and I had no regard for portion size.

May 2010
Weight-189lbs
Size-12 (US)
Height-6'

Average beverage consumption:
water
coffee with cream, little or no sugar, if I go to Starbucks I get regular coffee or unsweetened lattes
unsweeted soymilk

Average breakfast:
plain fat free Greek yogurt with Fiber One cereal or cereal with soymilk

Average lunch:
cheese, crackers, veggies and nuts or a sandwich on sprouted grain bread

Dinner:
protein heavy meals that typicaly revolve around a soy meat product and veggies, some carbs and fat usually in the form of cheese

So as you can see, the biggest difference in my diet was to remove a ton of sugar and carbs and replace it with more protein. The cranberry juice alone was an insane amount of sugar, each serving was 28g and I was probably drinking about 5 servings a day. That alone was about four times the amount that a healthy person should have. Of course, sugar does not have fat, but it does have calories, and as a diabetic, the amount of sugar I consumed raised my resistance to insulin ans lowered my metabolism.
Portion control was the next step. On a typical pasta night, I would heap pasta into a bowl and go back for seconds. I was eating roughly 3-4 servings. Even though I was eating whole grain, the amount I ate counteracted any positives that may have been. Now if I do have pasta, it's one bowl, a small bowl, and I fill my sauce with chunky veggies and "meats" so that I'm filling up, but on the right foods.
I don't count calories, but by monitoring my carbohydrate intake I don't have to. I also don't worry about fat, but I do control the amount of fat I eat. The easiest and probably most satisfying way that I do that is with cheese. My rule is simple, no processed or bulk manufactured cheese. Sure, the grocery store brick of cheddar is $2, but it tastes like plastic. By spending more money for less, I eat less, and usually I don't notice because there is so much flavor that I don't need to add a ton of cheese to my food.
Chocolate is the same. I buy nothing less than 85% cocoa chocolate which has little sugar, but much fat. Rather than eat the whole bar, or even half (which is the typical serving size), I eat a single square, two if I feel like going nuts.
I allow myself the occasional indulgence, but the key word is occasional. In the past I usually bought some sort of dessert almost every day.
I should also add that I eat no processed foods, no reduced fat or artificially sweetened items. I buy organic, whole foods when ever possible. When the recipe calls for butter, I use butter, not that heart healthy stuff that is likely made of motor oil. I also rarely go out to eat anymore. If we do go out it's for Indian or Thai, and I'd say we probably do that about once every 2-3weeks.
I do exercise, mostly walking and some weight lifting. I've started trying to run, but only when I know that no one can see me. I try to get 30 minutes at least 5 times a week. It's not much, but that's what is recommended for healthy weight management.
More than anything, the reason this works for me is because it's not a diet, it's a total lifestyle change and one that does not inconvenience me or make me feel like anything is lacking. Honestly, I feel that we have been eating much tastier food because of it.
I hope this helped!

Marimba!

2010-05-19T19:06:00.000-07:00

I had no idea that the marimba would be so intriguing!
(Cellar Door: Something funky happened when I accepted your comment about the marimba, it says it's there but I can't see it. Sorry!)

Here is the marimba, crowding my desk:

The story of the marimba begins with a trip to a local Thai restaurant that Jason and I would frequent mainly because we were too tired to cook or we had no kitchen. Jason always picks up a Green Sheet, a free classified ad paper, and look through the musical instruments section while we waited for our food.
On this particular day, about two years ago, he found an ad for a marimba. I didn't think he was serious about the marimba, but then he whipped out his phone and called the number in the ad. I don't remember if he scheduled a visit right then and there or if he called later, but the next Saturday we were driving to a Dallas suburb, about 40 miles from Denton to meet Mark, the marimba owner.
The first thing we noticed when we arrived at his house was a grand piano in the living room. Now, mind that this is a typical suburban neighborhood and the house was unassuming from the outside, this will be important to the story. The piano had 92 keys, a typical piano has 88. Above the piano were two ancient pieces of sheet music, hand written by Gregorian monks in a style that is no longer used. The other walls and all available shelf spaces were covered with a variety of old instruments. It was clear that Mark collected rare and antique instruments. He had a story for just about every piece that we saw. I don't know how long we talked to him before going into the next room, but we learned that his wife had recently passed away, but he was vague on that point. We didn't ask questions, of course, out of respect, but there were plenty of other objects and stories that he was willing to talk about.
At this point we were fascinated, but then we went through the kitchen into the back room of the house. The room was huge with high ceilings. It had been added on to the original house for one reason, which we could hardly miss, the centerpiece of the room was a full sized cathedral style pipe organ. He had got the organ from an old movie theater that was closing down and had it taken apart, moved to his house, reassembled, and then built the addition around it. I've never seen anything quite as impressive as the detail that Mark had put into building this room. It was like a museum. There were windows that looked into the inner workings of the organ, more instruments, books and sheet music everywhere, a staircase that lead to a catwalk attached to the original roof and another room behind the organ. We must have stayed for a few hours, just listening to stories about how he played organ for the church, histories of different instruments and the architecture of the room (massive cedar beams and ornately carved doors in wood that can't be bought any more).
After all that, Jason couldn't understand why someone who revered his collection like Mark had would ever sell a part of it, but he bought it anyway, and for what is apparently a good price (I'm not the musical instrument expert, he is).We joked that the marimba might be cursed, but so far nothing unusual has happened with it. I've tried playing it, and honestly, it's not too hard, even for someone as woefully unmusical as myself, it's set up just like a piano so if you can play a piano, you can play a marimba. Of course I just stated that my musical talent is nil, so my idea of success is figuring out "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" and "The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out."
Perhaps someday I'll stun the world with my mad marimba skills, but for now, it sits in front of my desk until the house is finished throwing problems at us.

Country Mouse, City Mouse, Townie Mouse

2010-05-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

Ask me where my ideal home would be located and I'd likely tell you New York, New Orleans, or perhaps Paris. I'm a City Mouse. I grew up in a small city, but spent most of my childhood within walking distance to parks, pools, corner candy shops and all sorts of fun distractions. Later, in my pre and teen years I was a short bus ride from a downtown filled with shops, restaurants and cool places for an eighties chick with mall bangs and neon belts to hang out. At eighteen I figured out that New York was a $10 bus ride away and suddenly my small city seemed smaller.
I never had the chance to live in NYC, but I spent as much time there as possible. I moved to San Francisco, then Dallas. Each move gave me a different perspective on city life, and the last eight years have afforded me with amazing travel opportunities so I've seen a lot of cities both large and small.
For me, the bigger the better. I'm at home in a place where I don't need to own a car and never have to shop at a mall or big box store. I love corner markets, cafes and news stands. The idea of living in the "sticks" where driving is mandatory as the nearest store is miles away has never enticed me. I've never wanted land, gardens or anything of the sort. I'm okay with concrete and roof top gardens and inner city parks.
Yet somehow here I am, forty miles from the nearest big city, a sprawling city with limited public transit at that. I buy my dog food at a feed store that occasionally has horses in the parking lot. We have more western apparel and supply stores than news stands. Am I a Country Mouse?
Had you asked me a few weeks ago I would have said yes, I am an exhausted Country Mouse who works in the "city" and has no time to lament country life. But I would have been wrong, because I do not live in a town or village, but in a city, a small one, about the same size as the one I grew up in, but a city none the less.
Perspective is interesting. Since I started working in town, I've begun incorporating exploring my city into my daily walks. within a quarter mile of my house is a grocery store, three drug stores, more pizza restaurants than should be allowed, a local coffee shop and a Starbucks, several hair and nail salons and a beauty supply store, a craft store, dollar store, Radio Shack, a few bars, three Mediterranean restaurants and a sushi bar... and a lot more. Sure, I have to drive to the mall for clothes, and I usually drive to the grocery store because we tend to buy more than I can carry home on foot, and I can't take the train to work, but if I felt like it, I could be writing this from a cafe table while drinking a latte.
I'm a Townie Mouse. It took a while, but I finally found my groove.
Does that mean I've given up my dreams of a brownstone, or a winter home in the Garden District, or a vacation flat overlooking the Eiffel Tower? Hell no! But if none of that should come to pass, I doubt I'll feel that I missed out on anything.

Back From Yet Another Hiatus

2010-05-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't figured it out, April was a pretty busy month for me. I would have loved to told the world about it, but frankly I had neither the time nor the space to do so. You see, part of what made April such a busy month is that we had a contractor come in and completely re-do the front of the house, which included knocking down a few walls, which meant we had to move out of both the living room and Jason's office, which meant my office is buried under the bedroom and a marimba. That made sense, right?
I didn't think so. Anyway, all that matters is that we have a shiny new house with insulated walls. Here's a picture:

The front porch is brand new. I don't have any pictures of what it used to look like, but trust me, this is an improvement. Here's a picture of one of the back windows that has yet to be replaced:

I'm pretty sure that's lead based paint flaking off there.
We're also close to finishing the main bathroom, and when the foundation gets repaired (again!) we'll have a nice new bedroom with a walk-in closet. Yay me!

I also started a new job on the third of May, which meant that April was ridiculously busy at my last job since I had to figure out exactly what it was I did and train others to do it. The new job makes me happy. I'm out of travel, and I took a pretty big cut in pay, but I no longer have to drive 35 miles each way. I'm 10 minutes from work, which gives me three extra hours each day to do what ever I want, or at least it will, once the house is finished.

And finally, I had my last A1C in April and I am at a 6.2 with a triglyceride count of 118, which is pretty awesome considering that when I was diagnosed in October I had an A1C of 10 and a triglyceride count of over 400. I've lost close to 40 pounds and I have just 10 more to go before I'm "normal." I do admit, I've been slacking a bit this week, but I'm on a schedule now. I will get there and I will stay there, dammit!

Finally, I apologize for not keeping up with everyone's blogs, this too will change. I miss you guys.

I Never Know When or Where Inspiration May Strike

2010-03-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

Make of it what you will.

Another Visitor

2010-03-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

We destroyed this poor fella's home today:

We didn't mean to. I had no idea he was living in a pile of wood that was left over from when we had the huge pecan cut down. The wood was intended to be fire wood, but it had sat there for so long that it grew some scary mold so we finally tossed it. I'm sure Mr. Lizard will find his way into one of the other trees, or maybe the shed, which is apparently a haven for lizards, squirrels, cats and god knows what else.
He too is welcome to stay. The dogs didn't seem the least bit interested.

The Reason My Mom Won't Visit Texas

2010-03-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

This little guy was hanging out in the bushes right at the top of the fence the other day:

Personally, I think he's cute, but I know some people have fears of snakes. I have a rational fear of poisonous snakes and the large ones that could swallow me whole, but this guy's alright. He was just hanging out, minding his own business until the paparazzi (that would be me) showed up.
Just a sign that spring is here, which is nice, considering our first day of spring brought snow. SNOW!!! In TEXAS!!!
Ahem...
Yes, spring. My second favorite season after autumn. A time when neither the heater nor the air conditioning needs to be on. A time when long sleeves are still appropriate, but jackets are not needed. I can walk the neighborhood without freezing or getting sunburn.
Of course I love spring rain storms, despite the fact that it means muddy paw prints everywhere.
So Mr. Snake, you are welcome to sit on my fence when ever you want, just mind the dogs, They think you have a delicious flavor.
Toads and mosquitoes, however, please find somewhere else to congregate, you give me the willies.

New Page

2010-03-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

I've added a new page housing all of the blogs that I had featured on the Your Blog Is Awesome site. The link is a little tough to see right now, but it's there, up at the top, right under the heading. I'll be changing the layout here soon so it should be easier to see.

Oh Hai-ku!

2010-03-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

A Puppy's Lament:

The Shark's Tale:

Carb-less Indulgence:

Also Worth It:

So If They Don't Go In The Ear, What DO They Do?

2010-03-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

Admit it, you stick cotton swabs in your ears. I bet you even look at the swabs to see how much ear wax you pulled out. What? Only me? Well okay, but you do realize that despite the fact that the box clearly states that swabs are not to be stuck in the ear canal, most people buy them for this reason.
So if swabs are not for ears, what are they for? Let's look at the handy dandy pictograph from the back of my not-for-ear swabs:

Uh huh, I see. Detailing my tub. Like the little cardboard stick is going to hold up against lime deposits and god only knows what. No thanks, that's what the dollar store sells quick-erase sponges for. Seriously, those things are awesome. And if you are paying $3 a sponge for the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser then get your booty down to the Dollar Tree. You get two for a buck.
Wait, I'm not pitching products, I'm discussing swabs. What's next?
Cleaning the cookie crumbs from between the keys on the computer. Not bad, I can see doing that in a pinch, but really a can of air works a lot better, and you don't mash down the keys, inadvertently opening every help file and sending emails to your company's distribution list that say: gugsfgdhlfdhguyis....
Eye Makeup application. I've tried this, it doesn't work. Swabs will leave little Haley's Comets across your eyelid and you'll be blind from all the shadow that gets in your eye.
I'm going to say the next one is for applying antibiotics because the possibility that it's toothpaste or hemorrhoid cream bothers me. This one is okay, I do this as not to contaminate my antibiotics with cooties. Although, it's antibiotic, isn't it supposed to kill the cooties?
And finally...
What in the name of all things sugar coated is this? Either that's one huge swab or one tiny baby. In fact, I don't think that's a swab at all. I think this is what you call cross-promotion.
Let's take a closer look:

Ah ha! Mothers everywhere know that babies have wispy fly-away hair, but babies are far too young for Aquanet. By gently greasing your babies hair with a delicious chicken drumstick you not only get lie-flat hair, you get the added bonus of aroma therapy! Mmmm...chicken baby head!

*please note that I don't really eat chicken...or babies.

Music Theory

2010-03-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

Somehow it seems appropriate to write about music while being aurally assaulted by the Flaming Lips. No joke, they are about a quarter mile from where I sit and damn they are loud! Yeah, I know, free concert, and hey, if that's your thing then cool, but they're not my thing. Especially the song playing right now.
You see here's the weird thing about me: My life ambition up until the age of sixteen or so was to be a rock goddess. I used to own over 500 cassette tapes (thank you Columbia House!). I married a rock star.
Clearly music has had a huge impact on my life.

But I hate music.

No really. I do. Not just new music either. As it happens, those 500 cassette tapes? Mostly crap from the late eighties that I cringe to think about now. I've probably switched gears musically about fifty times in my life.
But I didn't write this post to complain about what is wrong with music. I'm simply giving you the background needed to understand my point of view.
This post is actually about what makes a pop song timeless...to me, at least.
Now, keep in mind that I'm skipping over the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elvis, Michael Jackson and all the rest of the "legends." What I have compiled is a list of songs, at least ten years old that still get frequent radio play, that I think hold up.
By all means, feel free to disagree with me. I am certainly not claiming any authority on the matter (please reference my "technical speak" below).
On with the list!

'Love Song' The Cure
Not their best, but I'm willing to bet their most popular. It's been covered, what fifty seven times? But none of the covers come close.
The reasons:
Jangly-clangly guitars (see that's a technical term); trippy, acid days of the sixties keyboards; Robert Smith's semi-suicidal drawl.
Yep, I spent a lot of my youth wearing black and writing poetry, but I think this song has universal appeal.

'Whiter Shade of Pale' Procol Harum
Covered twice, incorrectly I might add, that I know of. This is the number one most played song of the last 50 years in English pubs so in a way it speaks for itself, but I'll speak for it anyway.
The reasons: Trippy acid organ, I have a thing for that; Fantastically confusing lyrics; elements lifted straight out of classical compositions.
I once had a friend who told me that my love of this song was "a phase" that I was going through. I was 23 at the time. Twelve years later I still love it. So there!

'Cars' Gary Numan
I know, this song is steeped in eighties elements that should make it as dated as jelly shoes and Rubik's Cubes, but it totally perseveres.
The reasons:
Intentional minimalism; Kickin' synth bass; Short and too the point.
Think about it, a lot of pop in the eighties did minimalistic synth, but the songs repeated for a full three or four minutes. This song is almost four minutes, but it doesn't get bogged down with key changes, repeating choruses or the like. It's simple, and I like that.

'Under Pressure' Queen and David Bowie:
As stand alone acts, these two are disqualified as being in the "legend" category, but I'm taking this one out as it was a slight departure.
The reasons:
The contrast of Bowie and Mercury's voices play well against each other; More intentional minimalism from artists not known for that; The Epic crescendo that takes us to the end of the song, yet still retains the minimalist feel.
It's now been 20 years since a certain rap reject sullied the good name of this song, yet every time it comes on the radio I listen very carefully and count out the first eight notes. If it repeats at eight I listen, if a bastard 9th note slips by I reach violently for the tuner.

'Losing My Religion' REM
They may fall into the "legend" category, but REM has been off my radar ever since 'Shiny Happy People' (which, if I remember correctly, was the next single from the same record?) so I don't really know what the general consensus is on them. Like The Cure, this is not their best, but it still gets airplay...a lot.
The reasons:
Guitar/Mandolin/Sitar or what ever the hell it is, it's got a pretty twang; Excellent use of simple rhythm; Subtle key changes as opposed to the eighties gimmick of simply repeating the chorus a half step higher.
To be honest, Michael Stipe has a voice that annoys the hell out of me. But I'm a sucker for plink-plunk*, jingle-jangle, swirly music.
*I lifted this term from a review of my husband's band. This is probably the reason I love them too.

There are, of course, many others, but I think I've carried on long enough. Besides, I also wanted to list a few songs that do not stand up to the test of time, yet still get heavy rotation. I promise not to be as verbose:

'Burning Down The House' Talking Heads: Everything that I previously mentioned as being wrong with eighties pop.

'Come Sail Away' Styx: This song embodies what is wrong with Prog Rock. Not that I hate Prog, well, some Prog, but this song is epic navel contemplation material.

And Jason's additions, that I agree whole heartedly with: Anything by The Cars.

So how about it? Weigh in on what you think holds up, and what doesn't. I'm curious.

A Big Bloggy Mess

2010-03-05T19:21:00.000-08:00

It's pretty obvious that I have not had a lot of time to spend writing about what ever happens to catch my fancy as of late. I wish I could say that I've been busy doing very important things.
The truth looks more like this:
I wake up at 6:30am to be to work by 8:00.
I leave work at 5:00pm and get home sometime between 6 and 6:30pm.
By the time I've finished dinner, exercise and what ever housework needs to be done it is after 8:00.
At that point I've got roughly 2 hours to relax and rather than crack open the laptop I tend to whip out the phone and catch up on Lovely Listing or You Suck at Craigslist.
I then get in bed and if I'm lucky I get a few minute of Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins in before getting to bed.

Weekends tend to be spent catching up on housework, shopping or just vegging about.

I started this blog back in July for the sole purpose of documenting my trip to Europe, and once that was done I decided to just keep in the habit of writing. I used to write a lot, and it seems that I don't do that anymore.

Then I had this crazy idea to set up another blog that would be a portal for all the great blogs out there. It worked well for a while, and I've discovered a wealth of awesome writers, but in the end I failed. It wasn't for a lack of awesome blogs. No, I still have bookmarks that haven't been added. It's my fault. My inability to manage time for these things.
So very soon I will be dismantling Your Blog Is Awesome! and I'll be adding it as a feature over here. All of the awesome blogs will be listed in a side bar or some creative widget. I'll post a note about the merger over there as well.

Although it was a silly in joke between me and my husband, I think I picked a great name for this blog. Crève means "to burst" or as we say on the interwebs, "to go all 'splody."
Around here, crève currently means "to blog" and "a crève" is a blog post. It fits, my blog posts are a bit of mental explosion. I never know from one day to the next what I'd like to write about.

I'm going to try to organize my random musings into better categories, give them silly titles and proper tags. I'm not sure how long this will take but I will do it. I do know that I will be writing about music next.

And since this has been the most boring crève ever, I'll end with a joke, compliments of The Oatmeal:

What was Beethoven's favorite fruit?

BANANANAAAAAAAA!!!!!

You know you laughed.

Tax Tokens

2010-02-21T19:28:00.001-08:00

A couple weekends back Jason and I took his mom to our local antique mall, which is a really cool place that we don't frequent very often for some reason. One of the sellers had bargain bags, which are exactly the type of things I need to stay away from; bags of old things that may or may not have a value, often not. But being the type who is attracted to the word bargain, and odds and ends, I had to spend the bulk of my time there sifting through the matchbooks, buttons, military badges and what not until I found something.
What I found was tax tokens, little coins made of paper, metal and plastic with odd things written on them like "For Old Age Assistance."
The sales clerk had no idea what they were either, but they were $3 for a bag of about 50 so I bought them.
Apparently these came into being in the 1930s and were used in some places up until the 1960s as a result of states starting to charges a sales tax. They were used as change when the sales tax was less than a penny. As it happened, a 10 cent item with 5% tax would be 10.5 cents. A store owner would either have to eat the half cent and pay the tax, or overcharge the customer, which, considering sales tax began in the depression for most states, was not something the average customer stood for. So the tax token solved the problem. The customer would pay 11 cents and receive a half penny's worth of change in the form of tax tokens. Then, the customer could use the tax token next time they made a purchase for 10 cents.
Most of the tokens I have are from Oklahoma, which used both paper (during the depression) and two types of metal, brass and aluminum. Missouri has red and green plastic tokens that look a bit like poker chips.
Apparently there are some rare tokens out there, but alas, nothing in my bargain bags are rare, though I also scored both a Dallas and Beaumont City Lines bus token. Both date to the 50s.
So what am I going to do with these?
Make jewelry, of course.
Have I ever made jewelry before?
Of course not.
I'll let you know how that goes. In the mean time, if anyone can come up with another interesting use for these let me know, they're just too neat to have sitting around doing nothing.

In the same bargain bin I also found a bag of postal service pins that had three that said "follow the tiger" so I had to buy them for Jason, obviously, because his band is Raised By Tigers (and he simply won't change the name to Raised By Not.A.Lions). I also bought a book about making cheese at home from 1976 for fifty cents, how cool is that?

Memories Of Lucky Mud

2010-02-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

It is with great difficulty and sadness that I write this departure from my recent string of light hearted entries.
On Monday, Jason and I had to have or cat, Lucky Mud, put to sleep due to kidney failure. It was a decision that neither of us wanted to make. And neither of us has quite come to grips with the reality of it yet.
Lucky was 14 years old, and until a few months ago had the strength and playfulness of a kitten. There was no sign that anything was wrong until she stopped eating a few weeks ago. According to the vet this is not uncommon, especially in cats of her age. I know that she was suffering towards the end, and that she is no longer suffering now, but it is going to take me a while to come to grips with the decision.
Lucky Mud was not a friendly cat, or at least that was what Jason lead me to believe when we met. Despite my assurance that I wanted to meet her, Jason was weary as Lucky had apparently sent more than a few people to the hospital with venomous cat bites. She must have sensed the crazy cat lady in me because she was never anything but loving when I was around. I didn't even have to pet her, I would just hold out my hand and she would walk back an forth, earning her the name Self-Petting Kitty (original, I know).
She didn't have as much freedom in the later years as she would have liked. Luke, the boy dog, has no manners and thought that Lucky would make a tasty treat. Because of this she had to be separated from the dogs, but she was a smart and conniving kitty. When the dogs were outside and she had free range of the house, she would wander over to the couch, the kennels, the bed, anywhere that she knew Luke spent his time. She did it just to get to him, at least that's what I would like to think. Luke got into her room once. She kicked his ass. I was proud.
She used to play the piano. I think that was her code to let us know she needed food, or water, or time with the monkeys. I only just learned that Lucky was the first pet to "call" Jason monkey. It was a good choice, Lucky, and I am honored to be one of the chosen monkeys.
I know the hurt will subside, but like many cats and dogs before her, Lucky will never be forgotten.
We miss you, Lucky Mud, all of us, even Luke, in his own way.

Post-It Notes: The Glorious Coming of A Sticky New Age as Told By Abraham Lincoln

2010-02-03T18:47:00.000-08:00

Because Fanboy Wife asked so nicely...

Four score and several years ago, our forefathers had not the means to affix transcripts of high importance at eye level on ye old ice box. Freedom was at risk, liberty in peril. But in a desolate Vermont forest one late October night, one brave man soldiered forth into a new era of wifely nagging.
Postit McGloo was a proud man of humble means who found his fortune in a paper mill.
Through sheets and reams and bundles and bulk, Postit McGloo toiled tirelessly in hopes of one day finding a means out of the pulpy drudgery of paper oppression.
And so came the fateful day when Postit was called upon by the foreman of the mill (which was named Miller's Mill) to deliver a memo of grave importance to the owner of the printing press in the next town (Which was named Maple Press).
Unbeknownst to Postit, who had come to Vermont just 3 score hence, the mighty maples of the wooded lane had begun to sap. As Postit walked the wind kicked up, sending sprays of sap in all directions. Knowing that this memo was of grave importance, Postit had the fortitude and strength of mind to hold the memo close, exposing only the back to the sap and wind.
Upon reaching the Maple press, Postit noted that the owner's office was in a state of wild disarray. Memos were stacked on every chair, table and on the press itself.
Knowing as he did, that this memo was of upmost importance, Postit McGloo hesitated to simply leave the memo upon one of the many piles (the owner as it happened, had just stepped out). Postit gazed down upon the sap covered note and in a moment of heroic genious, pressed the sticky memo to the door of the office and took his leave.
As it happened, the printing press and the paper mill had been forging a merger and
thus the memo had cemented the deal.
In recognition for his bold decision, the new company, which was to be named Maple Miller's Paper and Print, added Postit's own name to the title, thus Maple, Miller and McGloo, or 3M for short. To this day, Postit's notes are one of their top sellers.

The Tragic Tale of Marco Polo As Told By Huckleberry Finn

2010-02-02T19:14:00.000-08:00

I'm not really sure what prompted this other than the fact that the origin of the game Marco Polo is rather unclear.

Marco Polo ya say? I reckon I've heard of 'em. Weren't he the feller that invented spaghetti?Funny thing fer food don't ya think? Long noodles that slither of the plate like Mississippi mud snakes, covered in a bloody sauce. Not that I can complain, what with my steady diet of possum, squirrel and the occasional nutria, spaghetti sounds downright gourmet.
Marco Polo.
There's a game called Marco Polo isn't there? I seen kids playing that game along the river banks. Yelling their fool heads off; MARCO! POLO! MARCO! POLO!
Ever wonder why they call it that? Why they call it Marco Polo and not Thomas Jefferson or Lewis and Clark?
Truth be told I done hadn't a clue until one night this fancy rapscallion shows up in my neck of the woods wearing city clothes and looking to off load some fancy New York baubles. Not that folk 'round here got much use for fancy baubles, but I reckon the ol' Widow Douglas' eyes was as big as tea saucers when she seen 'em.
I'm getting off the subject again aren't I?
So after a few glasses of Miss Watson's "medicinal" sherry, this ol' city slicker starts telling me the story about ol' Marco Polo.
See here, before his spaghetti days ol' Marco, much like yours truly, liked to have himself some river adventures. 'Cept that ol' Marco wasn't stuck in some boggy ol' Mississippi like I am, he had the gumption to river raft himself all the way to China! I figure that's at least a million miles from Missouri, maybe a little less from New York, which is where this Marco Polo feller was from.
Marco Polo spent a fair deal of time in China, lighting off fireworks and fighting karate style with them dragons. Eventually though he must have grown tired of the orient, or maybe he done come up with his spaghetti idea and wanted to get back to New York to write it down. Either way, Marco Polo got back on his raft and pushed himself back into the ocean with the rest of his buddies.
This is when the tragedy strikes.
One night, the ocean let loose with a thunderstorm the likes of which you ain't never seen. Threw Marco Polo clean of the raft and into the ocean. Ol' Marco tried to swim for it, but the wind was pushing the rafts away from him. He swam like he never swam before but just couldn't make it to the rafts. That's when he began to drown.
Meanwhile Marco's buddies tried to paddle back to where he was but the wind was just too much and they couldn't see worth a lick what for the rain and all. So they started yelling:
MARCO!
MARCO!
MARCO!
So about this time ol' Marco Polo reckons he's dyin'. He has water in this ears, water in his mouth, he's even lost a shoe and there's sharks circling. Just when it looks like ol' Marco's gonna die, he hears a faint sound.
MARCO!
MARCO!
MARCO!
By this time Marco is so delirious, that all he can think to yell back is his own damned name.
MARCO!
POLO!
MARCO!
POLO!
Well I'll be a son of a snake oil salesman if they didn't find him just as one o' them sharks was fixin' to swallow him whole. They pulled Marco Polo back onto the raft (but not before the shark got his leg, all the way to the knee) and high tailed it back to safety.
After that ol' Marco Polo spent the rest of his days inventing spaghetti, which was a hit.He became something of a hero for it. He was given a gold plated peg leg and I heard he even married the Mayor's prettiest daughter.
I still don't reckon that explains why the kids are yelling ol' Marco Polo's name, but I reckon kids don't have much sense anyway now do they?

Aimless

2010-02-01T19:48:00.000-08:00

I've been a bit out of sorts as of late, hence my absence from the blogging world. I'm not sure if it's the wild weather swings (low 20's, mid 70's, low 20's again...), The post holiday wind down, the extreme stress of work, or what, but quite frankly I have had nothing of interest to say for some time now.
I'll try to do better.
But for right now, I need some sleep.

I Planned to Write...

2010-01-19T18:59:00.000-08:00

...but I just stepped outside and it is about seventy degrees and raining lightly. I think I'm just going to sit out here and enjoy it for a while.

Well okay, I suppose I could sit here and write. After all, my phone is smarter than I am.

I had my follow up visit with my doctor on Friday and I'm doing really well. My a1c dropped from a 10.5 to 6.7 which puts me back in the range of normal (yay normal!). I've lost 15 lbs since October and I have about 20 to go before I am a skeleton...er...healthy. Yes, I admit I have been heavy and I am losing the weight for my health, but honestly, I will never be thin. I'm almost a size 12 right now but I doubt I will get much smaller because I doubt my six foot tall skeleton would even fit in a 10.
On the upside, I don't feel as if I've sacrificed anything to do this. Quite to the contrary, we have been eating better than ever before.
My next test is in April. I plan to be fit enough to get off the meds... I hope.

Greetings From The Fuuuuture!

2010-01-11T07:22:00.000-08:00

It is the year 2010 and while we aren't dosing ourselves with Soma, burning books, terraforming mars, or mating with alien ooloi; one cannot deny that this is the future. Big Brother is more of a bad Soviet Russia joke (in Soviet Russia YOU watch Big Brother) and no one I know has replicant sheep invading their dreams, but we are here.
Wanna know how I know?
Wanna?
Well since you asked, I am blogging from my 5oz "smart" phone (so please forgive the typos). Yep, in the future technology is smart. Smart phones, smart cars, smart grid infrastructure. Brains I could only dream of possesing right at my fingertips.
And what to I do with this power I posses? Why I browser failblog of course. And lose a little more of my grey matter with each click through to the comments.
Perhaps the visionaries of the past, aka the scifi authors of the 50s-70s were on to something with all that doom and gloom about humanity relying too much on technology. I admit to texting when I could easily call, and honestly I haven't memorized a phone number since 1999, but I still haven't embraced all technology. I still prefer brick and mortar to online shopping and I do not social network.
But damn if I'm not wasting a lot of time playing video games.

On a completely different subject: I have reopened Your Blog Is Awesome so please poke around.

*Bonus. this post refers to five pretty well know works of science fiction. If you can name them all you win your choice of a flying car or jet pack.
**edit: six actually, but one is very obscure. If you get all six you win the talking spaceship computer of your choice.

Shocking Weather We're Having...

2010-01-05T18:52:00.000-08:00

It has been cold.

Cold and dry.

I wear a wool coat.

My car has cloth seats.

Yep, I'm going somewhere with this.

While having static filled hair flying everywhere and inevitably ending up in my eyes or mouth is pretty horrible, that is one nuisance I can deal with. The little static shocks that one gets when getting out of the car, or opening a door are another story entirely.
I have an irrational fear of static shock. This is time of year when I look like an obsessive compulsive spastic. I have a formula for degaussing myself that involves getting out of the car carefully, avoiding contact with all metal parts. I shut the door by pushing the window glass. Once I am safe I quickly tap the hood of the car with the flat pads of my fingers. This distributes the shock evenly and quickly closes the circuit that I am creating.
Even after this ritual though I tend to find myself doing a strange dance when faced with metal door handles. I reach out, hesitate, pull back, reach out again, close my eyes so that I "don't see it coming" and again do the weird tap/degauss maneuver before opening the door. People probably think I'm strange.*
It's not just outdoors. I purposefully do not have a spring mattress because I have been shocked while changing sheets. I just bought a new cotton blanket because the "fleece" one I had been using sparkles like a vampire when I pull it out of the dryer. I never enjoyed the rub-a-balloon-on-your-head-and-make-it-stick-to-the-wall game and I certainly did NOT enjoy the rub-your-feet-on-the-carpet-and-poke-your-older-sister-with-static-hands game.
The only other thing in the world that makes me this nervous is the glaucoma test at the optometrist that blows a small puff of air into the eye. Luckily I only have to deal with that once a year.

How about you guys? Please tell me I'm not the only person in the world scared of static...
Please?

*they are probably right.

You Say You Want a Resolution...

2009-12-30T18:17:00.000-08:00

Well, ya know...We all want to change our ways.

Okay I'm going to hell for that one.

As you might have guessed this post is about New Year Resolutions, or rather it's not. I'm not big on them to begin with and I do believe that like most humans, I've never actually stuck to one.
I suppose I could go with the usual; lose weight, stop smoking, save money...
I'm already losing weight on doctors orders and if I obsess over the last 25 lbs it simply won't come off. I'll likely make 200 more attempts to quit smoking but if I think about it I'll sabotage myself. And as for money, I'm not even going to pretend to be optimistic about my chances of paying off my debts.
Rather, I've decided to focus this year on the things that I can not change and why they don't bother me. Or at least why they shouldn't bother me. So let's get the nit-picking started!

1. My Crooked Teeth
As far as crooked teeth go, mine aren't that bad. I've got a pretty obvious snaggletooth on the left up there, and a couple of chipped and filed down canines. I've never actually put a lot of thought into it until a dentist commented on them a few years ago. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit offended, and I'd also be lying if I said that I didn't get a wee bit self conscious about my teeth after that. But have you ever seen anyone with artificially straight teeth? It's frightening! I'd rather have my goofy grin than look like a Geico caveman or that guy who used to sell motivational videos on infomercials.

2. My Schnozz
We will actually reference this picture for many of my flaws because despite them, I happen to think I look cute in it, so there! And just for the record, the not so ironic mustache that I'm rocking isn't on this list seeing as it is something that I can get rid of and do regularly. I've just been lazy and cold and channeling my inner artist.
Anyway, as you can see my nose takes up 90% of my undersized head (see flaw #3). Though it was enhanced by a few tumbles I took as a child, genetics were already working against me before I got that bump you see on the bridge. I admit that yes, I have obsessed over this in the past. I clearly remember one Thanksgiving day that my brother set up the video camera to record dinner and the whole family laughing when we replayed it because the angle of the camera had me in profile. But I've never considered the possibility of a nose job. I had two friends who have had them (one was necessary, she had horrible sinus problems and talked like she had a cold all the time, the other was a stupid, stupid insecurity issue that actually gave her nasal problems) and just seeing the bruises afterward scared the crap out of me.
I'll keep my schnozz, and delight in the fact that it only makes my Alan Rickman impressions that more believable.

#3. My Tiny, Tiny Head.
As a young child I was very skinny and long with a big ol' pumpkin sized noggin. I ambled about looking like a lollipop until I was about 10 or so then I grew into it. Then I just kept growing. By the time I reached adulthood I was nearly six feet tall, no longer thin, very broad shouldered, yet I still had the same head that I had when I was 5. Most people have a forehead, I have a three head. Maybe a two and a half head. What's more, my tiny facial features are smooshed up together right there in front. I'm the polar opposite of a Bratz doll, yet just as freakish and alien. But that's the cool part: I look like an alien.

#4 My Gray Hair
Okay, so there's only about 10 strands and yes, technically I could change that with a $5 bottle of Miss Clairol, but the can of worms that would open is not worth it.
From the ages of 12 to 30 I never saw my natural hair color. I've had every color of the rainbow on my head at one point or another and just about every rebellious haircut known to man, and many that I just made upon the fly (these usually involved alcohol and dull safety scissors). I decided enough was enough and I'd keep my original color for a while. Then one day I was looking in the mirror and saw a silver thread stuck to my hair. I tried to brush it away and it wouldn't move. I picked it from my hair and realized that it was attached. I actually got excited. I want gray hair, but only if it grows in nice, like a single white shock ala Lily Munster, or all white like an evil villain. If it grows in salt and pepper or steely gray I'm totally going old lady blue.

#5 I Am Blind As A Bat
You see those glasses up there on my head? That means that I totally could not see anything more than 6 inches from my face when I took that picture.
I do wear contacts, but since I got prescription sunglasses I've been lazy about wearing them during the week. I refuse to entertain the thought of Lasik until they find a way to do it without slicing into the eye while the patient is still conscious.
The upside: Objects wearing glasses may appear smarter than they are.

#6 I Am Not Naturally Photogenic

But this doesn't bother me in the least. Why? Because I have a digital camera and I can take 100 photos and simply delete the embarrassing ones before anyone else can see them. Yes, the photo above, which I am calling a "bad" photo of me because of my shiny huge pores and Prince cira Purple Rain 'stache, was the best of about 30 bad pictures. Do you think I'm going to share everything with the world? ;)

So a Happy New Year to all of you and may you love everything about yourselves no matter what. And please, PLEASE be careful out there if you are planning on partying. Be safe!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T20:32:00.000-08:00

First off I would like to say Happy Holidays to everyone and I hope that your day is wonderful!

Second, I would like to say that I am not someone who dreams of a white Christmas, but it seems that we have one none the less.
This Picture was taken at about 5pm Christmas Eve:
I'll now remind everyone that I live in Texas and that it was 70 degrees yesterday.

I'm very grateful that work was extremely slow today and I was able to leave early. Otherwise I would have been driving through this and I'd likely still be on the road six hours later rather than writing this.

So at long last it is Christmas and for my last Christmas story of the season I'd like to share the gifts that Jason and I made for each other this year.
Our first Christmas together was not even a month into our relationship so we didn't really do presents, but our second Christmas was also our first as husband and wife and that was the year that we started our tradition of making presents. That year we each made one set of chess pieces for the other so we had a complete, yet stylistically different set. Last year we each built a game for each other. This year we each made a work of art.
Jason actually made five different and completely awesome works of art:

This picture was made with wood dye and pourable plastic. He made everything, including the frame. This photo does not do it justice at all.
The photo below is of a wooden box with a light inside. On the light is another piece made with the plastic and green nylon fibers from a duster:
Melted styrofoam on plywood, again, the picture doesn't do it justice:
Oil paint that has been heated and cracked. Again Jason made the frame as well:
I'm beginning to think this one is my favorite, that is if I had to choose. It's a drinking glass filled with styrofoam and plastic on a base of sculpted foam with an led light:

By comparison I slacked. I'm rather proud of the box I made though. I chose the sheet music lining because Jason is a musician (an extremely talented one at that):

I'm a hack artist and fancy myself more a craftsman so I went with a kaleidescope:
Actually, I made two because I wasn't sure how either were going to work. It's impossible to made wooden tubes:
A view through the scope:

Next year, we have decided, we are going to pick something that we can work together on. The secretive nature of these gifts has been a lot of fun, but we tend to see very little of each other during the holidays because of them.

Now go carve your roast beast, deck your halls and may your day be merry and bright!

Additional Information Supplied By Dad

2009-12-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

I was talking to my father the other day about the stories that I've been putting up here and he gave me some amusing information to add to them.
From the story about the Christmas socks where I mentioned my little brother's voice activated truck: At that time my two brothers shared a bedroom and my oldest brother frequently talked in his sleep. Apparently he would speak loud enough to activate the truck, which would wake my dad from a dead sleep.
I do not remember this but my bedroom was down the hall and my parent's shared a wall with my brothers' room. I do however remember a doll that my sister had called "Baby Boo-Hoo" that would cry if its pacifier fell out of its mouth. I shared a room with my sister at the time and would frequently wake up to Baby Boo-Hoo crying for her mama because my sister had shifted enough for the pacifier to fall.

From yesterday's elf story: My father supplies that my sister also had an irrational fear of her dolls coming to life and attacking her while she slept. I do vaguely remember this part only because I remember one highly amusing night when my sister would not calm down. My mother had come to her wits end trying to pacify my sister and decided to take an alternate route which involved saying "Oh my gosh! What's that in your closet?"
Before my sister could scream my mom opened the doors, pulled out a couple of dresses on hangers and proceeded to hum the Star Wars Cantina song and wave the dresses around as if they were dancing.
It worked, my sister was cracking up, I was cracking up, my brother had come in to see what was going on and was cracking up. I'll wager getting us back into bed was a disaster though.
So if anyone wants to know where I get my smart ass from, it's hereditary.

It's Not Christmas Until Someone Gets Sick

2009-12-21T19:24:00.000-08:00

Around my house there has always been a tradition that no one really likes at all. In fact we've strived to avoid it, but it just keeps happening.
I am of course talking about the tradition of someone, and sometimes many someones, getting sick just in time for Christmas.
Now truth be told, I actually have had the more unfortunate affliction of having had a cold or sinus infection that took away my sense of taste on many a Thanksgiving, which I deem far worse. But I've had my share of Christmas crud as well.
When I was one year old I had the measles which was a direct result of the MMR vaccination. Fortunately I was too young to remember and this information comes from my mother, as well as faded snapshots of tiny me with a lumpy, sad face.
A year or two later (again, well before true memories began to develop) I had apparently eaten an entire box of cherry cordials at my grandmother's house and spent Christmas night alternating between throwing up and sobbing to my mother, "N-no more Ch-chocolates ever!" I apparently forgot saying this very soon after the fact.
Of course later in life there was another incident of over indulgence, this time in the form of far too many screw drivers and stupid coffee with Irish (the half and half essentially didn't sit too well in a stomach full of citrus acid).
But it wasn't just me.
One year when my youngest brother was about 2 years old he got into the anisette cookies at my family's Christmas eve party. Although he was acting extremely silly, no one actually expected that a two year old who acted like a drunk was actually drunk. My mother, who spent the night holding my brother over the toilet, claims that he smelled like a hobo on a cheap ripple bender. What's worse is that all day Christmas he seemed fine, but later that night mom was holding him over the toilet again. She suspects that he may have squirreled some of the cookies away in his pockets for later consumption.
I can't be certain, but I think at least one of us had chicken pox on Christmas.
My father has a great story about how he came down with double pneumonia on Christmas because my mother and grandmother needed him to take them Christmas shopping. Neither had a license at the time and he was already sick, and in his own words; "I got to go to the hospital only after the shopping was done." Priorities, dad, priorities.
This past week Jason has had to take the cat into the vet for an upset stomach, and one of the dogs in for a cut on her lip and a cortisone shot. I am hoping that the this spares the two legged family from any further disasters.

So is this just my family or has this happened to you as well?

The Sinister Elf

2009-12-17T11:34:00.001-08:00

This is a terrible tale of Christmas terror! (oooooooooo!)

I have been googling for weeks to find a picture of this little guy:
I had hoped that my mother still had him somewhere but she claims he has finally met his demise. For all I know, this is the very ornament that plagued my family for years. This was the only picture I could find of him and it was on an auction site.

My mother claims that she purchased the elf ornament at one of those in home gift catalog parties that were popular in the 70's. You know, like Tupperware and Party Lights and those parties that sell items that are shipped in discreet brown paper packages?
My sister claims the elf fell through a portal from hell.
We had had this ornament for as long as I can remember and it never really bothered anyone until one year when my sister was about 12 or 13 and she decided that the elf was evil. I don't remember how it came up, but I remember her walking over to the tree, declaring him evil and popping him out of his pine cone with intent to toss him in the trash.
The following day the elf was back in his pine cone, staring off into space and clutching his harp.
"Hey Shannon, I thought you were going to toss the elf."
"Holy $#!& I told you he was evil!"
Again she took him from the tree and tossed him in the trash.
And again, the elf was back on his perch the following day.
Several more attempts to rid us of the cherubic spawn of Satan produced the same result.
My sister eventually decided it was useless and that we were all doomed. She stopped trying to destroy the elf and he lived among us for many years to come (well, with the exception of that one year that, inspired by Sweet Valley High, I convinced my mom to let me decorate the tree in all blue and silver ornaments. I wish I was joking).
Was he truly a powerful force of evil?
Was he a misunderstood and benevolent guardian angel?
Or was he simply a slightly dated and off beat ornament that a teenage girl might have felt sorry for and rescued from the trash every night?
The world may never know*

*until they read this post, that is ;)

The Gift of Warm, Dry Feet

2009-12-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

When I was ten my family moved into a house on the same street as my grandmother. It was a dead end street that became a steep hill about half way up. Grandma's house was close to the bottom of the hill and ours was at the very top. Having grandma's house so close was great seeing as grandma had HBO (which was a very big deal back then in the age of Star Wars and Fraggle Rock), a microwave, and spoiled us in the usual grandmotherly way.

Looking back, this was a sweet deal for us, but not so much for grandma, who worked the third shift at IBM and probably did not appreciate being woke most every day at 3pm because we didn't want to walk up the hill to our own house where we would have to do homework and eat vegetables. We wanted microwaved pizza rolls, string cheese and afternoon cartoons. Plus in the winter she would drive us up the hill rather than make us endure what felt like a sub-zero hike up Mount Everest.

Christmas was pretty convenient during our five year stay in that house. After the novelty of our presents wore off (This typically took 5 to 10 minutes for my brothers, maybe a whole half hour for my sister and I) we children would be shooed off to grandma's house where our parents would meet us once they cleaned up the ribbon and wrapping paper carnage (and likely had a cup or several of strongly brewed coffee).

Now, to be honest, I know that we were not the richest family, in fact at that point I think my dad had just started the job that put us into middle class, but I never once felt that my Christmases were lacking. We all had piles of presents and stuffed stockings. And while mom, dad and "Santa" would bring us lots of toys and games and the occassional package of undies, grandma would usually get us each one over the top gift.

Sadly, I'd be lying if I told you that I remembered all of the gifts that my grandmother gave me (with the notable exception of my very first pair of Jordache jeans). But I will always remember the voice activated RC truck youngest brother once recieved, if only because we had to endure him yelling "LETS MOVE IT NOW!" at the top of his lungs nonstop until the blessed day the batteries died.

On one particularly cold, wet and snowy Christmas, after the lasagna had been eaten, grandma handed out our presents. Each of us had an identical puffy package. We ripped into them with childish glee and each pulled out a package of socks. White tube socks to be precise.

Grandma and our parents both braced for responses that might have ranged from a polite, yet disappointed thank you to a not so polite temper tantrum.

I don't think anyone was expecting our somewhat unusual, yet genuine reactions.

"SOCKS! YES! THANK YOU GRANDMA!!!"

All of us ripped open the plastic packages and kicked off our shoes and pulled on the heavenly cotton-poly blended tubes of warmth.

For what ever reason, whether we lost them, destroyed them or simply had not done laundry, none of my siblings nor I had any clean socks to wear so we simply went without (much to the embarrassment of our parents). Which of course meant that all the way down the hill we had snow hitting the bare flesh of our ankles and packing into our shoes.

We had foiled the plan.

"Well, I guess you won't be needing these."

Our "real" gifts were Christmas cards with a crisp new $50 bill in each, which was awesome...

But so was having dry, warm feet.

Well No, He Doesn't Sparkle...

2009-12-13T17:13:00.000-08:00

But his name is Bela, which is kind of like Bella* right?
Tis the season and as such, I'm going to dedicate all of my blog postings for the next two weeks to telling amusing stories of my family's holiday antics ala Gene Shepard.
So how does Mr. Lugosi fit into all of this?
I'm starting with a very recent story. So recent in fact, that it happened today. You see, somehow over the last 15 or so years of my life I have become a reluctant collector. This comes from having unusual tastes, friends with unusual tastes, and many, many geeky friends who do in fact collect things such as dolls (excuse me, action figures) and movie/TV show related items.
It started out innocently enough when, as a fresh faced 18 year old out in the world for the first time, I snagged an extremely part time position at a local movie theater. One of the last free standing, single screen theaters at that! Any movie posters and reels of film trailers that were passed up by the full time staff were mine for the taking.
One poster in particular started the collecting "craze."
The Nightmare Before Christmas.
No one had paid much mind to House of Cards, Bleu, or any of the other "art film" posters gracing the walls of my apartment, but then I acquired The Nightmare Before Christmas and suddenly my birthdays were full of gifts in homage to not only that film, but to most everything Tim Burton or those of his darkling ilk made.
Then one day I bought a Star Trek Barbie and Ken set, then a Breakfast at Tiffany's Barbie, and suddenly I was collecting dolls. Not just any dolls though, only collectible, stay in the box dolls that were slightly off beat.
Fast forward to the last 5ish years of my life when I realize that I have far too many dolls suffocating in their plastic packages. I've given many away to people who I trust to to give them to their kids, who will take them out of the boxes, give them punk rock hairdos and love them in the destructive way that only a child can. I thought about ebay and Craigslist, but to be honest, I didn't want the headache of trying to sell these things only to end up with a couple bucks.
So today I rounded up the remaining toys and headed out to the Toys for Tots drive at the local Toys R Us.
I walked up with a full garbage bag, lawn sized at that, to the two marines in dress uniform and their eyes bulged a bit.
"Is everything in here new?"
"Well the boxes have never been opened, but some I've had for years."
I handed over the bag, and I think that for a minute, one of them was going to thank me for my generosity, when the other pulled out the top box, a Bela Lugosi as Dracula 12" collector series doll, beautifully done in black ans white. I then got a puzzled look.
"Um, vampires are very in with teenage girls." I gave my most winning smile and walked as casually back to my car before they went through the rest.
Here is a list of donation items that I remember off hand:
Nosferatu 12" doll (same series Bela came from)
James Bond 12" doll from Dr. No, complete with guns and Martini shaker and glasses
12" James Dean from Rebel without a Cause
12" Outer Limits character from episode The Sixth Finger
John Stewart Green Lantern action figure (which, seriously, someone bought me because I though that the fact that his name was John Stewart, like, the Daily Show host, was funny. I didn't know anything about the comic beyond that)
Crazy Harry Muppet action figure
A Goth Girl Bobblehead
Mr. Spock 7" action figure

I just made some aspiring fanboy's Christmas extra special.

*Please note that I have never actually read the Twilight series or seen any of the movies.

Believe It Or Not I'm Flyin' A Plane!

2009-12-08T18:54:00.000-08:00

Okay you were supposed to read the title to the tune of the theme song to The Great American Hero, which was a television show in the 80s that was far less memorable than the theme song.
Ahem...

Anyway...

This is me!I have to say that flying an airplane was the coolest, yet most terrifying thing I have ever done in my life.
Originally I was scheduled to have my lesson at 9am on Saturday, but we ran in to some slight complications. Like the plane not starting. It was below freezing and there was a bit of ice and frost on everything. I was told to return at 2pm, when it was supposed to warm up a bit.
Of course I would pick the coldest day of the year to have a flying lesson!
Before finding out that the engine was too cold, Bob, the instructor, went over the basics including how to operate the rudder, how to get into the cockpit without falling off, and why none of these gauges shown below are really important at all (okay they are, but they weren't at the time. It made sense somehow):
I wasn't prepared at all. I had been under the impression that I'd be learning a lot on the ground. I was wrong.
All of the lesson was going to be in the air.

We came back at 2pm.
Hooray! The engine started.

And then it stalled.

But it started again.

I admit that at this point I was a little freaked out and asked Bob if this was going to happen in the air as well. He said no. I wasn't sure that I believed him.

This is the airplane, a Diamond 20 or DA20 (link has a lot of technical info on flying these) or "a popsicle stick with a cockpit" as Jason called it.
Mr. Airplane has a slightly bored expression.

My first hands on lesson was how to taxi the plane to the runway. The rudder is guided by left and right foot pedals with brakes at the top. I was told to follow the yellow line. It seemed easy enough. Not really. Trying to drive with ones feet is a lot like playing THIS GAME. I was swerving all over the place.
Bob got us off the ground and handed over the controls at about 1600 feet, and told me to bring us up to 2000 and level off. Once again this was easier said than done. I've played a lot of video games in my life, and while I may be well prepared for the impending Zombie Apocalypse, I never did have a knack for any of the flying games. Or driving with a joystick for that matter. The slightest touch would send us up, down, right or left and every gust of wind was like a category 3 hurricane. Did I mention that I just ate lunch? I didn't get sick, but I admit that my stomach was more than a little queasy during the flight.
Despite the sensitive controls it seemed that when ever I was supposed to be making a turn I had a hard time getting the nose going in the right direction and could not get used to being nearly sideways for some of the turns. I'm pretty sure anyone listening in was having a laugh as I was apparently channeling Keanu Reeves (woah!).

The further I get from the experience, the more I want to do it again. Who knows, maybe I will. But I've got to work on the "look."

Pilots don't wear pea coats* and dollar store Jackie O. sunglasses.
*I think that's the navy actually.

Warning; Scattered Thoughts Ahead

2009-12-01T19:32:00.000-08:00

We're supposed to get ice tonight.
This is Texas. This is not supposed to happen!
Okay, who am I kidding, we've had at least one ice and snow day a year since I moved here from the land of the ice and snow. Ugh, did I really just quote Led Zepplin? Did I really just do it on purpose? And while listening to Blue Oyster Cult, on purpose.

I'm slightly out of sorts.

Seriously.

I had a week off of work and it turned me into the laziest person on the planet. I was supposed to finish all of my Christmas presents and I'm not even half done.

I did make this amazing little wonky tree out of dowels, pvc pipe and leftover holes from a hole saw cut:
We've decorated it, but I haven't taken a picture yet. It's about 4 feet tall with the 'star.' It's very Charlie Brown Christmas.

So I've moved on from Blue Oyster Cult to Pink Floyd, a much better choice. My favorite band of all time, actually. Though perhaps I shouldn't be listening to "The Wall" as I've been having very vivid nightmares lately.
Listening to music is distracting. I'm not the kind of person who can do two things at once. But I felt that 2 weeks was too long to go without a post, and at the same time I really need to go through this pile of terribly old and scratched compact discs to see what can be salvaged.
There's also a pile of materials on the table next to me just begging to be turned into something worthwhile.

In completely unrelated news; Saturday I am going to learn to fly.

No, I'm not going to take a bunch of LSD and jump off a building.

I am actually going to learn about and possibly fly a light body aircraft.

This was the other anniversary gift that Jason gave me and I am just now getting around to/getting the courage to actually take the class. It's something that I've always thought that I wanted to do. Well, always at least ever since I got over my crippling fear of flying that I had until my early 20s.
Jason is going to take pictures from the relative safety of the ground. I'll post them here. Wish me luck!

More Kitchen Bliss

2009-11-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

I've been kicking around the idea of separating this blog into separate blogs about different things, such as cooking, travel, crafts, etc...
But then I realized that would be more work and I scrapped the idea. Once I have a bit more free time, around the beginning of the year, I do want to dedicate certain days of the week to blogging about different things. In the meantime, I'm going to share some more scenes from my kitchen.
First up in the squash soup that I mentioned in a previous post:

I use a base of onion, garlic, celery and carrots with some pepper and sage sauteed in butter, then add some vegetable stock. The butternut squash is steamed until soft and mashed into the mixture. Cream is added at the end to thicken slightly and lighten the color. The cheese you see in the back ground is Cabot's extra sharp cheddar and gruyere, though I can't remember the brand. We picked up this island over the weekend from, of all places, Big Lots. It's bamboo with a stainless steel surface, and gives us the extra cabinet and counter space that we so desperately needed.

And because we now have a huge fridge and ample cupboard space, we can go to the grocery store and buy enough produce for the entire week. And because I have a digital camera, I can waste 5 minutes artfully arranging the produce and snapping pictures of it:

Here is the side table which holds the Star Wars cookbook. Yes, it does say "Wookie Cookies and Other Galactic Treats." How cool is that?

A close up of the freshly harvested pecans. Sadly, most of them are wasted as it is physically impossible to harvest the sheer numbers that fall off the tree out front:

Ingredients for a cheese sauce that I put over broccoli, cauliflower and brown rice. We ate it before I could snap a picture. I just like the color composition in this one...
Tonight's special treat:
Banana Bread!!!

Relatively low in carbs and sugar. I used one tablespoon of raw sugar (vs the cup that the recipe called for) and substituted the flower with a mixture of Fiber One cereal, oats and milled flax seed.

Very delicious with tea.
My kitchen "experiments" have been working well so far. I have lost a small amount of weight, but more importantly, my blood sugar has decreased dramatically.
When I was diagnosed, I had a fasting level of 175. In case you don't know what that means, a normal person would have a reading between 80 and 120. I was getting readings of 240 after eating. I'm now on only one pill for control and I am getting readings right around 110 and only going up as high as 150 when I eat . I'm not "over it" yet, but I plan to get to where this is completely under control without medication, and without ever ingesting artificial anything.
I go for my next A1C test in a few weeks. The first one was a 10, which is very, very bad. I'll post the results of the next one here as well.

Excuse For Not Blogging #3845

2009-11-14T21:43:00.000-08:00

Sewer backed up and spewed vile unmentionable waste all over the unfinished bathroom.
I wish I was joking.
I hope to get back into the swing of things soon.

Happiness is...

2009-11-10T20:14:00.000-08:00

...having a husband who thinks I am the best cook in the world. I love cooking and I love food. Well, obviously I love food, I didn't get this physique from rice cakes and celery ;)
I was hoping to show off a few of my creations here today, but apparently the absolutely beautiful pictures of my butternut squash soup were eaten by my sd card so it's a Mexican fiesta themed blog.

First up is a simple tortilla casserole:

It's not pretty, but it's delicious and is packed with nutrients in the form of spinach, mushrooms, onion, peppers, black beans and quorn meat crumbles. Using less tortillas and cheese (about half the amount you would find in a similar restaurant dish) also keeps it low in carbs and fat.

Cilantro and lime...

...are not only photogenic, but an absolute must have for any Mexican inspired meals that I make. I'm way more of a fan of Pacific coast or Baja style dishes than Tex-Mex. And it's healthier too.

Our convection oven recently crapped out and rather than spend a lot on a new one we got this inexpensive toaster oven ($35 at Target):

I love that it's stainless steel so it matches the motif of my kitchen. I also love the glow, it's somehow comforting.

Tonight was fajitas. I had to take a picture of the peppers and onions because the colors were too pretty:

And from last night, I bring you "Lucky Mud Luvs Nomming Asparagus:

Huge Refrigerator is HUGE

2009-11-03T20:17:00.000-08:00

Jason and I acquired this behemoth from his mother last year. It sat in our garage until recently, owing to the fact that until recently, our kitchen was a hole in the middle of the house.
Last night we went grocery shopping, I mean REAL grocery shopping. For the last several months grocery shopping was a small, sordid ritual of buying what we needed for that night's dinner. Last night we bought everything we could think of to stock up for at least one Kroger-free week. We used a trolley instead of our usual hand basket. My car's spacious trunk wa full. We bought 5, FIVE loaves of bread (good, sprouted grain low carb bread) and 4 cartons of soy milk! It took both of us two trips to unload the car.
And this fridge...
...still looks empty.

The Invisible Blog

2009-10-28T19:31:00.000-07:00

Good lord it's been two weeks since I've had anything to say?
Well, that's not true, I've had plenty to say and most of it peppered with four letter explicatives.
A lot of crap is going on here, especially the newly diabetic stuff. I think I have a pretty good game plan as far as diet and exercise goes, but I'm in serious need of some medical direction. No really, my doctor just about tossed a glucometer at me and kicked me out of the office. So that's pretty much what I've been up to.
That and making some sweet sweet boxes.
One of the local "Up In Smoke" cigar shops sells their empties for a dollar each and the money goes to local charities. I've donated $16 so far.
Here is an faux art pic of said boxes after being stripped on their cheap fasteners and most of the stickers:
Most are made of cheap basswood or something similar, very soft wood that gets powdery when sanded.
Here's a close up showing how some of the printing is stamped into the wood:

Perfexion X, I think I'm going to leave this on here, it's so...something....

I've been sanding them down and painting or staining them and adding cork, felt, or paper to line the insides. Most of these were made before Jason bought a belt sander so I had to hand sand or distress the wood over the stamps. The belt sander makes the job a lot easier:

Finished products. These are going to be Christmas packages. If I get really good at refinishing them I may try to sell them. I'll have to find some nicer hardware though. The local craft stores have a very limited selection and the hardware stores do not really have anything small enough.
Jason and I are going to check out a woodworkers store in Addison this weekend. I'm really excited, so is he. He's been making drums and they are absolutely beautiful. If he lets me post some pictures I will.

I've also been annoying Luke:

Why? Because he lets me. Only Luke would sit still long enough to let me drape him in ivy, or be comfortable in his boy-dogness to allow me to tie a pink polka dotted ribbon around his neck.

In other news, somewhat sad news, the European vacation is likely canceled. Mostly due to the fact that I'm newly diabetic and still working out what drugs I need to take and coming to the realization that the swine flu could indeed kill me now. Partly due to money as well, but more because of the medical uncertainties. But, because I got such a great response to my scavenger hunt challenge, I promise to do something awesome to post here.
In the mean time I'm going to sit back with a cup of unsweetened soy milk and catch up on your blogs.
I promise not to stay away so long next time.

Too Damned Busy!

2009-10-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

As you can see, I've had little time to write lately. And I apologize to those of you whose blogs I follow. I am reading, but usually on my breaks at work, through my phone, so I have no comment ability. I promise to give you all some love soon!
We've been full steam ahead on the house renovations, I've been making nifty boxes for Christmas presents, work has been insane and I am likely diabetic, but that's okay because I've lost six lbs in two weeks by cutting out the carbs AND Lindt makes a 90% cocoa chocolate bar that only has 3 grams of sugar per serving.
On top of that I'm gearing up for our trip to Europe which is only a month away and I am so very not prepared. I know, poor me, right? I should explain that I am not a rich jetsetter. Earlier this year I randomly won 4 free tickets to Europe in a Northwest promotion and I wasn't going to waste any of them. The trip in June was my first trip off the continent ever, this will be my second and unless some more free tickets fall in my lap, I think it will be a long time before trip number three happens.
So here is your mission, dear readers, should you choose to accept it:
Give me a scavenger hunt for my trip! Think of something crazy and random for me to photograph and I will do my very best to find it and post the results here when I return. We are going to be based in Brussles and plan to visit Bruges, Lille, Calais, Paris and Amsterdam. And no, I have no plans to photograph hash bars or prostitutes in Amsterdam.
Be creative!
Now I'm off to catch up on your awesome blogs!

Realizing The Dream

2009-10-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

Well alright, it wasn't quite six lbs, but I finally made mashed potatoes in my kitchen with my mixer! Skins on, a dash of pepper and bam! Potatoes.
I'm rather pleased with life at the moment.

Groan, Shuffle Shuffle, Groan, BRAINS!!!

2009-10-05T20:24:00.001-07:00

So what's up with Zombies? Seriously, zombies are the new "it" creature of the night.
I'd like to blame sparkling vampires for this, really, I would. But I think there's a deeper rooted cause. The economic crisis.
Think about it. What's so great about zombies? Wouldn't you rather be a glamorous vampire or a fierce werewolf or even a witch? Zombies are weak. I should know, I play a lot of Castlevania and zombies are a level one enemy which means they die when you breathe on them.
But in all seriousness, or as serious as I can be talking about zombies, I think the allure of zombies is the fact that there is no allure. Zombies are brainless, soulless reanimated corpses whose sole purpose in life...er...death...is to eat brains and make more zombies, kind of like the Borg, but without the hive structure and cyberpunk accessories.
We are living in dark economic times. Who in today's world can relate to the rich, aristocratic vampires living in castles? Dracula certainly has enough money to avoid forclosure, but the mcmansion owners don't. Who can relate to the predatory werewolves? I'd venture to say not even the hot shots of Wall Street, these days.
And that leaves us with zombies. Soullessly, mindlessly plodding along with the crowd, performing the same redundant and meaningless task day in and day out. The unemployed, the under employed, everyone who has taken a pay cut to avoid a lay off, who can't relate?
Personally, this is my favorite zombie of them all:

Angst? Moi?

2009-09-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Okay so I let slip in the comments of another blog that once published a book of awful angsty poetry, and one Ms. Glory von Hathor has called me out on the comments of my previous post.
I'm not sure I want to post some embarrassing poetry here just yet. After all, this is a happy and upbeat blog, innit?
BUT...

I am perfectly willing to embarrass myself with some photography! So here is a picture of me back in my poetry writing days, to give you an idea of exactly how awful and angsty it is:

Ah yes, back when I didn't have a nose. Tragic, that was. I remember the mishap at the hospital when they did the nose transplant and accidentally gave me a third eye:

And in all fairness, the book is still available. It's called The Monster and The Machine, Temperamental Musings of a Reluctant Poet. It's over priced. You are better off picking up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but you get the idea.

So This Is A Week Late...

2009-09-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

...but Deemack left a pirate joke in the comments of my Talk Like A Pirate Day post which made me chuckle. It also made me think of the pirate joke that once inspired my whole office to become pirates every time they were frustrated.

It's a PG-13 joke.

A pirate walks into a bar, with a steering wheel sewn to the front of his trousers. The bartender comments, "That doesn't look very comfortable, why do you have a steering wheel attached to your trousers?"
The pirate replies, "It drives me nuts!"

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

Feel free to tell a joke in the comments, the world needs more funnies. Keep it clean-ish :)

What Have We Been Up To?

2009-09-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

I'm in pain. Serious pain. I have soreness in places that I didn't know exist. My absence from the blogging world this week is due to the reason I am so sore. We are almost done with the kitchen and we have been working our butts off. Actually, Jason has been doing 200% of the work so I shouldn't complain, but last night we grouted well into the wee hours of the night and I paid for it today.
We began serious work over Memorial Day weekend, 2007, with a bathroom renovation that was supposed to be a weekend project:

This is what we had at the end of the weekend. Rotted subflloor, lead pipes, rotten insulation, rotted piers. The bottom picture shows the laundry room, bathroom and a bit of what would become my office. The original bathroom dimensions were 4ft by 4ft or something equally small. We used the fact that we had to cut out so much rotten floor as an opportunity to extend to a full bath.
About a year later we were done, and then it was on to the kitchen and back room.
This picture of Luke shows the horrible linoleum that was the previous kitchen floor:
I have pictures of the completed bathroom, but I can't find them :(
Here is the evolution of my office:

The last picture doesn't look al the way in, but it's better that way, you don't need to see the chaos. Not too shabby though right? That's Jason's guitar, Penny's just trying to look cool posing with it.
The kitchen used to be Galley style, smack dab in the middle of the house, with claustrophobic cabinets that sat too low leaving only about a foot of space to work on the awful yellow tiled counter tops. I don't have any pictures, I wish I did. It had a crazy copper tiled wall which might have looked nice in another room, but not this one.
We knocked out a few walls and put up a cedar support beam. We're planning on doing cedar trim throughout. I picked the color, it's Valspar's Paris Green. The opposite wall is going to be a slightly darker accent color that will run the entire length of the kitchen and living room.

And here's a picture of the amazing husband in motion, without whom none of this would have ever got done, or at least, without whom this would have been done half assed and would have fallen apart already:

And here's me, looking like I did a lot of work, when really I just like making a mess:

We are so close to having a kitchen that I can almost taste six pounds of mashed potatoes!

Avast!

2009-09-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

Ahoy Mateys!

This be Talk Like A Pirate Day!

So I drew you a pirate in MS Paint:
My maiden name sort of means pirate. okay it doesn't, but in 3 different Eastern European languages it means, boat maker, boat master an one who takes power by force, so I combined them and got pirate. Which makes my middle and maiden name Holy Mother Pirate!
I'll stop being a dork now...

Random Photography Dump

2009-09-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

I see a pig, a beagle and several badgers. What do you see?

My idea of doing pot on the couch.

I want this. I have a credit card. I am exercising self control.

Can you spare some change?

Not Photoshopped.
Do you know what it is?

Not a meth lab.

1 million internets if you know what's cooking though.

Penny Hates Accessories

2009-09-18T18:47:00.000-07:00

In the previous post Sally is wearing a Heart Guard reminder sticker on her head. I sometimes put these on the dogs heads because we administer the medicine (or special treats as they are known) to all the dogs at once which means I really only need one sticker for the calendar.
Penny does not appreciate it when Luke and Sally try to embellish their wardrobes with any accessories and will attack them in a way that says "get that off now!" Penny understands that dressing up dogs is terrible (but dressing up AS a dog is adorable), but she's not content to leave it at silly costumes, collars are fair game as well and Luke usually loses his in the yard once a month.
So here is a picture of Penny attacking Sally's collar because she has noticed the sticker on Sally's head. Penny does not realize, however, that she too is wearing a stupid accessory.

Can You Tell Me What I'm Thinking?

2009-09-17T19:27:00.001-07:00

A while back, Jason and I were having a rather sleepy conversation about the random crap people post on Craig's List. Somehow this topic melded with the fact that Sally probably has no idea what is going on in her own head. So we imagined that Sally would put an ad on Craig's List that read something like this:

Can You Tell Me What I'm Thinking?

Date: 2009-09-17, 9:15PM CDT
Reply to: kindadumbdog@craigslist.org

I don't know, but I really want to know. So if you know, could you tell me? If you tell me, then I will know what I am thinking. This is a picture of me thinking.

Location: the smallest kennel
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests, unless those interests are squirrels, water, sticks or bone treats. Table scraps a plus.

PostingID: 12345678

Please feel free to tell Sally what she is thinking in the comments.

A Story of Ferocity

2009-09-15T19:01:00.001-07:00

Sally Sue, or Zazzaloo as she is better known, is not our most graceful mutt, but she is definitely the sweetest and best at snuggles . She is typically well behaved, or as well behaved as I have come to expect our dogs to be.
But the other day I found something that really sets off the fierce in Sally; a paper tube:
As you can see, having a white couch in my office, which is near the back door is not a good idea, especially when it's raining. Luckily that's a cheap Ikea couch and the cushion covers are machine washable.
Apologies for the quality of the following video, I have very poor lighting in the office. For your viewing pleasure, Sally, and I am speaking to her through the paper tube:

Mod Podge Is My New Best Friend

2009-09-13T18:53:00.000-07:00

Okay I know the last post was Wednesday, but I still feel the need to apologize for staying away. I have a lot of blogs to catch up on as well. To everyone I follow, I haven't lost interest, I just can't comment using my phone's browser on some of your blogs.

Since rearranging the office I have been a crafting machine. I was able to bang out quite a few Christmas presents, pictures will follow after the holidays. I can show these, paper tea lights:So simple, and so pretty! All I did was cut some designs into small pieces of scrap cardstock, glue a piece of vellum to the back and wrap around a 1 1/2" piece of PVC pipe and glue. Once that dried I coated the whole thing in matte finish Mod Podge for strength and visual effect.
The tea lights are LED, Dollar Tree sells them 2 for $1.

I seriously do love Mod Podge and I love it even more when I have a 50% off coupon from Michaels.

Tis the season for it. It's rained all weekend and the temperature has finally dropped to a level in which humans can exist so I'm in a great mood and ready to create. My husband took his mother and godsons to a baseball game last night so I spent a frivolous few hours wandering about the local craft shops. I picked up some fabric and paper remnants. Remnants make me happy for some strange reason. Probably because they're never big enough to be daunting. I have an entire bolt of white broadcloth sitting in my office, that is daunting. Remnants mean little projects and little projects are great because they can be little failures, or big surprises. Either works for me.

In other new, London is out of the picture, but it looks like Jason and I will be exploring Belgium, France and the Netherlands by train in about 2 months. I am VERY excited and can not wait. My stomach rumbles just a little every time I think of Europe. Cheese, chocolate and beer. Perhaps this time I really DO need to try and lose 10 lbs before we go. If nothing else I do need to get walking. I don't want to have to spend a small fortune in bandages like we did on our last visit!

Our Best Worst Anniversary Yet

2009-09-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

Monday was Jason and I's 2nd wedding anniversary. You knew this of course, if you read my previous posts about our surprise celebrations for each other.
We decided that since Monday was a holiday that we would not work on the house and have a nice day off together doing fun things.
Jason woke up early and went out to get us coffee. When he came back, he set the coffee on the bedside table and woke me up. Now, there are two things to note here: I am not a morning person and I am blind as a bat. While groping the table for my glasses I knocked over the coffee which went all over the floor, the bed, the wall and the table.
This set the tone for the rest of the day.
We had planned to have a picture date. Normally, we would go into Dallas or Fort Worth or another large city center to do this, but Jason thought it might be fun to go out to the desolate country and snap some photos. We hopped in the car, drove for several hours and came to this conclusion: Desolation does not make good photo material. We saw nothing, but not enough nothing for fantastic picture taking.
We went back home and did a few things around the house and then went out to dinner. Jason made reservations for an Italian restaurant here in town. We dressed up pretty and went out.
It was terrible.
Now, I understand that because both of us are Italian, he grew up in Chicago, me in New York, we both had grandmothers who cooked very well, we're both good cooks and we've been to Italy and had "real" Italian food, that we might be just a little biased.
But there was no justifying this. An Irish Mexican with 3 working tastebuds and a TV Dinner fetish would have said this was awful.
After dinner I suggested trying to find a copy of the final season of Battlestar Galactica since the local Blockbuster does not have it in stock. I found it at Best Buy for $45. I could not justify spending that kind of money on something we would watch once. So we went home.
All in all it was a total failure, but considering we had already got the sweet and funny celebrations and gift giving out of the way, neither one of us minded, we know there will be many, many more :)

I need your help again

2009-09-08T21:13:00.001-07:00

Hey folks,
Your Blog Is Awesome is suffering. The "next blog" link is putting me into an endless loop of the same three blogs and I've got a handful of people who have not yet given me permission to link their blogs. So if you've got a blog you want featured, or know someone who does, let me know. I want this to work. I don't know why, I don't stand to profit from it but dammit, it's my small contribution to the internet and I want it to take off.
Ahem, that will be all.

No Really, I Don't Eat Tofu Mashed Potatos

2009-09-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

I call myself a vegetarian for lack of a better word, though true vegetarians apparently have an issue with this seeing as I do eat fish, though rarely. I've heard the term "peschetarian" used before but if I said that I'd have to explain my diet to half the people I meet so vegetarian it is.
It's quite simple, if it walks, I don't eat it. Everything else is fair game.

The title actually refers to a comment a co-worker jokingly made last Thanksgiving when I mentioned that we'd be making a Quorn Turk'y. But this leads to the the fact that a lot of people assume that I eat tofu by the truckload, and only tofu.
It's called vegetarianism for a reason: vegetables. I eat them, I love them, they are delicious.
And yes, I cook them. There are many wonderful dishes that can be made without meat, not just salads. Also, there are quite a few companies that make a vast array of vegetarian "meats." Everything from Italian sausage to chicken cutlets and lunch meats. Tofu is nice, but it has it's place, and that is usually in Asian dishes. I don't chop it up and shape it into little t-bone steaks and serve it with a side of potatoes and snap peas, really.
Psst: pasta is a grain, and grains are okay too. Spaghetti can be made without meatballs, really it can.
I would have thought that this was common sense, but there was this one time when I was part of a potluck lunch where I was assured that there would be vegetarian options. It was a Mexican themed lunch. When I got there I found all the fixings for tacos including lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream, meat, beans with meat in them, and a bag of carrots that looked quite out of place. I made a lettuce, tomato and cheese taco. I later found out that the carrots were there to accommodate me. Incidentally I contributed $5 to this pot luck. A can of black beans is 75 cents, a box of rice a roni Spanish rice is $1.50, just sayin'.

So with that said, there's a few things I have to get off my chest:
I'm going to eat what I eat and you should not be offended. Don't tell me "it ain't a meal without meat." Yes, someone said that to me once. The irony is that it was made by a woman who takes the bible at face value, while she was scarfing down bacon, which I do believe comes from an "unclean" animal.
I know there's a lot of militant vegans out there but I am not one of them so I do not resent your cheeseburger. I can not smell the "dead flesh" on you and no, it does not make me feel in any way superior to you so please, eat what you like. In fact, I like cheeseburgers too. Here is a picture of my cheeseburger collection:
Okay so there's a Filet O'Fish in there too, but it fit with the aesthetic I was going for.

For the record, that's not the oddest of my Cubicle decor, this is:

It's blurry, I know.
It's Bob Barker...
who would like to remind you to spay and neuter your pets...
And no matter how much they beg..
they can not has cheeseburger.

The're in Aisle 11...

2009-09-06T20:51:00.000-07:00

Slide locks, at the Home Depot. They're in Aisle 11. They have several different varieties, sizes and colors to fit any and all door that you might need to keep shut.
Incidentally Home Depot also stocks screws and screw drivers which can be used to install these magical slide locks.
Home Depot also has "knowledgeable" employees who will gladly tell you how to install a slide lock if you are unsure of the process.
Yet...
...all of the stalls in the women's restroom have broken locks.

Thank You!

2009-09-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! Thanks for the encouraging words on the last post about my crafty endeavors. In all honesty the flowers are not as complicated as they look. They are made out of used copy paper and painted with water based acrylic paint and held together by glue.
Once I get some time to sit down and make them again I'll snap some photos and put up a tutorial.
I might have another successful project to show in the future as well, but I can't say anything now because they will likely be Christmas gifts for family members who read this.
Sorry about the lack of posts recently, I'd write more now, but I am very, very sleepy.*

*So sleepy that I just posted this on the wrong blog. Going to bed now....

How Crafty

2009-09-03T20:07:00.000-07:00

I just spent my evening rearranging my "office." I'm only about half done, I have a lot of crap. Which leads me to the point of this blog.
I've become one of those crazy craft ladies who can't pass up the clearance aisle of the craft stores without picking up something, no matter how unlikely I am to use it. Seriously, I've got tons of paper, fabric scraps, several types of glue, magnets, grommets, exacto knives and scissors aplenty, wire, string, you name it, I probably have it.
Unfortunately what I don't have is time, or very much talent. The one thing I have 100% no talent for is sewing, yet I insist on trying, and I end up with a tortured lump of cloth and thread.

Occasionally I do come up with a gem or two so to make myself feel better I'm posting pictures of my not quite fails.

I'm particularly proud of this purse, which is made out of a cardboard granola box, some vinyl and cotton fabric. The closure is magnetic:Of course, I tried to recreate this, thinking that it would make a great gift idea. Not so much. The next attempt turned into Franken-purse.

The only thing I really have a knack for is paper flowers. They take a while, but usually turn out pretty cute. I made these a long time ago for work. I thought I had a picture of the bouquet, but it must be on my phone. I'll post it if I can find it:

Thanks for putting up with my need to show off!

So That's What Steam Punk Means

2009-09-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

No really, I didn't know. This term, Steam Punk, kept showing up in craft forums, gaming forums and today it showed up on You Suck At Craigslist. So I finally went out to the big bad webs and looked it up. Apparently the origin of the term is contested, but it refers to a style that combines the Victorian era with anachronistic technology such as airships, automatons and all matter of clockworks.
I'm down with that. To a point.
I love robots, especially the robots of the "future" that were supposed to take over the world by the 21st century. Robots with tin faces and cogs a plenty. Robots that made strange clank woosh clank woosh! noises when they walked. Robots that spoke in terrifyingly monotone voices. The kind of robots that caused panic and inspired the career of Isaac Asimov.
And I'm rather fond of the Victorian era which is in many ways not unlike modern times. The rise of the middle class pushing the poor into worsening circumstance, technology advancing at a rapid pace, the rise of the occult and new scientific insights into psychiatry and psychiatric medicine. Yep, the Victorian era brought us Sigmund Freud and Aleister Crowley (That's Mr. Crowley to you, Ozzie!). And fashion, we can't forget about the bustles and petticoats and corsets. This was the era of "it hurts to be beautiful."
So merge these two things and you have Steam Punk. Cool, like I said, I'm down with it.
Except the goggles, what's up with the goggles?

For more information on the future that never was, please visit Your Blog Is Awesome!

Six lbs Of Mashed Potatoes

2009-08-31T20:27:00.000-07:00

I miss cooking.
We have been renovating the kitchen for a while now and we are getting to the point where we can see the light at the end of the fridge, er, tunnel.
As August comes to an end I am already thinking about pulling the sweaters out and not running the air conditioning. Of course, being in Texas I'm a little premature in thinking this way. We may not be breaking 100 anymore but we still have a month, at least, of summer. But we've had a particularly hot one this year and I am so over it. I'm ready for the chilly nights and rainy days.
And I'm ready for some good old fashioned autumn cooking!
Since returning from Europe, Jason has done most of the cooking, and can he cook! He has made some incredibly delicious dinners and as much as I appreciate the fact that he does this so that I have more of my evening to myself (I commute an hour each way, he commutes 5 minutes), I can not wait to witness the power of our fully armed and operational battle sta...umm..kitchen.
The Kitchen Aid stand mixer will be put through trials, not just mashed potatoes. I'm talking home made pasta, hearty vegetable stews, squash soup, every kind of bread imaginable, home made cheese, cakes, cookies...
I suppose I'll have to start exercising again, won't I?

Creve, The Back Issues

2009-08-29T19:42:00.001-07:00

I'd like to draw your attention to this comment-less post. Not that it's fabulous or anything, but I was actually curious to see how many of you recognized how many of the fictitious cities I listed.
I enjoy creating silly little games and I'd like to do more, but only if they are enjoyable.
Who knows, if this ever gets terribly popular maybe I'll even give out fabulous prizes...

So what's up? Should I keep the games or keep taking pictures of spicy sprouts on my bathroom sink vanity?

That's right, I said bathroom...I love home renovation!

Awkward Stoplight Moment

2009-08-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

You know what I'm talking about. You pull up to the red light wait patiently for it to change, notice that the opposite light has changed to yellow, now red, and you start to drive for a millisecond before you realize that your light is still red, only the left turn arrow has turned green.
You stomp the brake and try to look all casual, like your foot just slipped, or you were jockeying for position, hoping no one noticed.
I totally noticed.
And yeah, I totally just did that too.

Anniversary Part 2

2009-08-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

Today was the day that I had planned on surprising the husband with an early anniversary celebration. As I mentioned previously, he beat me to the punch on that one, but I went ahead with my plan anyway.
I got up and went to work, as I usually do, but instead of my usual 8 to 5 I worked 8 to 11, which gave me most of the day to run around and gather the necessities for my plan.
Considering the theme of cotton, and considering that we have 3 dogs who often do not listen to the "off the bed" command, I felt that a new sheet set was in order. I strongly suggest Home Goods for all your bedding needs. Everything is so inexpensive and not "irregular" like Ross.
A few hours shopping and one delicious bagel later I headed home and set my trap. Here are the pictures, which tell the story better than I could:
This is about 2 yards of white cotton, tacked to my ceiling on one side, and gathered with a ribbon on the other. The ribbon is tied to a small hook with a simple bow. As you can see, one end of the ribbon hangs down...

This instruction card is attached to the ribbon at eye level. In the background you can see the Kitchen Aid mixer, Jason's gift to me. It makes six pounds of mashed potatoes. Six lbs! I can not wait to try that. Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, "Please pull ribbon." Why? Well...

Here is a view of what lurks up top. 800 cotton balls! Do you see where I am going with this?

Of course it wasn't just a plain white sheet, that would be boring. Of course, in hindsight, I should have written on it before hanging as to avoid the ransom note look.

Eight hundred cotton balls is not as much as I imagined it would be.

And in case you are wondering, I got Jason a manly gift from Lowes as well. (insert Tim Allen noises here).
AND...
Jason got me something else, it's a surprise, but I will definitely be blogging about it in the future. You will be jealous!

Oh yes, and thanks to Milo for finding this hysterically appropriate youtube video:

Tis the Season

2009-08-27T19:21:00.001-07:00

September is almost here which means I am about to be extra busy. September through February is not only my busiest season at work, but it's also the time of year that encompasses every family member's birthday, our anniversary, my parents anniversary, plus 4 major holidays. On top of all that we are planning another trip overseas, this time London and Amsterdam.
On top of all that, I promised my husband that I would start writing again. He has a bit more confidence in my abilities than I do since he seems to think I'm going to write the next Harry Potter or something.
If this sounds like I'm trying to make excuses, well, I am. I'm not abandoning this blog by any means, but my posts will likely be shorter for a while.
I'm still going to try to post a blog a day on Your Blog Is Awesome, as long as I can keep finding awesome blogs.
Stay in touch! I promise some especially good posts, especially after the holidays when I can post all of my failed attempts at home made gifts!

Even Penny Can't Resist The Pull Of The Internet

2009-08-27T19:15:00.000-07:00

I get up to check on the kitty and I lose my spot! Hey Frigglesnitz, I think she's checking Gonzo out! Go Penny the Cougar dog!

Epic Husband Is Epic

2009-08-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

My husband and I's 2 year anniversary is coming up soon, September 7th to be exact.
I had a plan...
You see, birthdays, anniversaries and other celebratory moments are made ever more special with Jason around. He does everything big. And he has the element of surprise. I would love to post the picture of the Valentine's day where he rented a giant heart costume and jumped out at me when I came home from work, but he has other ideas about what should and should not be posted on the internet.
Instead, here's a couple of pictures from our first anniversary:

The first anniversary is paper. The entire livingroom was gift wrapped and that is 24 rolls of toilet paper that our dogs are enjoying.

I decided that this year, our cotton anniversary, I was going to get him. I scheduled a day off of work without telling him and I was going to decorate proper.
He beat me to the punch AGAIN!

As I was leaving work, I received a text message from Jason, asking me to pick up a t-shirt from a local printer. Apparently this was supposed to be a new shirt for his band (which is called Raised By Tigers, yes this is the link) but he was stuck at work and could not get it. He tells me that the shop would be closed but that they would leave it outside for me.
Now, to a normal person this would sound suspicious, but the town we live in is very laid back and I wouldn't put it past a local shop to do this. Now to get to the shop, I had to deviate from my normal way home and drive past Frenchy's Lawn Service, which is something of a Denton icon. Frenchy has a fleet of bright orange trucks which are parked all over town and are often used as billboards to promote local businesses, support the troops, and often times they are simply "happy ads", announcements and well wishes and the like.
Can you see where this is going?
As I past the Frenchy trucks something caught my eye, it was my name. This is what I saw:

I kept my cool, didn't drive off the side of the road or anything, picked up the shirt (which was folded up and sitting next to the door), and drove home. Needless to say, my husband's car was in the driveway, he was not, as he claimed, stuck at work.
There was a white cotton cloth stuck to the door. This was a sign that there was more to come. This is what I saw when I opened the door:
The entire living room was covered in cotton sheets and t-shirts.
There is a story about the t-shirts that I should probably not share with the world but I will. You see my husband, being the smart one, thought it was best for us to take our relationship slow in the beginning. I was extremely impatient and wanted to spend all of our time together attached at the face. There was one such evening when I went over to his house expecting some serious snuggle time, but he had other plans. He was sorting his t-shirts to put some into storage. I spent the evening listening to him tell the story of each shirt.
After that night I hated t-shirts.
He claims the t-shirts were to stop him as much as me.
I still got him in the end, and I'm lucky I did. I have the best husband ever.
And I will get him back, maybe not for the anniversary, but there's Christmas, Valentine's day, his birthday....
And of course I'll blog about it when I do.

Travel Agent Humor

2009-08-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

I spend eight hours of my day sending business professionals from a certain global corporation all over the world. I'm not complaining, I got into travel because I like to travel, have traveled a wee bit and feel I can offer something extra to the weary Blackberry Jockeys of the world.
In the course of a typical workday I generally come across something that amuses me, such as a funny name, or National Car Rental's slogan; Go Like A Pro. Another source of amusement is the interesting juxtaposition of certain airport codes.
Like I mentioned in the last post, there are some three letter airport codes that are funny all by themselves, however, there are some that require a little help from their friends.
For example, LAX, the code for Los Angeles, does not seem very funny by itself, but if you were to book a direct flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles, your ticket would show: MEXLAX.
Some of the funniest, unfortunately, never appear as there are no direct flights. Here's a few examples:
Marmul, Oman to Nomad River, Papua New Guinea: OMMNOM
Derby Field, NV to Cat Island, Bahamas: LOLCAT
Omega Airport, Nambia to Derby Field,NV: OMGLOL
Hot Springs, AR to Sembach, Germany: HOTSEX
Sembach to Burtonwood, UK: BUTSEX
Dumai, Indonesia to Burtonwood: DUMBUT

And yes, it gets more childish than that.

The Snack That Bites Back

2009-08-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

No one ever heeds the warning until it is too late:

Oddball Vacations: The List

2009-08-24T18:45:00.001-07:00

In an effort to not spend too much more time on this silly trend, I'm going to list a slew of places that you should visit in list form.
For some reason inspiration hit me on the way home from work today and I have 3 separate and very different topics to blog about and I need to get to them before I forget about them.

Moving along, here is the list:

Walla Walla, WA: Do I have to explain? Is there a cooler name? Well, yes, keep reading.

Darwin, Minnesota or Cawker City, Kansas : Both lay claim to the World's Biggest Ball of Twine.

Sioux City, IA: Rather, Sioux Gateway Airport, which has the 3 letter code SUX. Be sure to buy some SUX merch while you are there.

Oxford, NS: The Wild Blueberry Capital of Canada. Also home to this Blueberry Man statue that looks like the love child of Kool-Aid Man and a Smurf. Somewhere I have a picture of one of my friends sitting next to him but it hasn't been digitized yet.

Fukuoka, Japan: The only Airport code better than SUX is FUK

Iceland: It's good enough for Bjork! Ok, maybe it's not so weird, but Bjork is so Iceland makes the list.

And here's a bonus feature: Places you can't go (because they are fake):

Hogsmeade
Bedford Falls
Shermer, IL
Metropolis
Liberty City
Quahog
Smallville
The City Of Townsville
Duckberg
Hyrule

How many of these do you know? Post your scores in the comments!
10 points each for a possible 100%

Oddball Vacations 2: Going International

2009-08-23T19:55:00.001-07:00

Today's vacation destination is Småland, Sweden.
What's this, you ask?
A province in the south of Sweden known for two things, barren soil and the birthplace of Ikea!
Among other attractions, Småland has 3 national parks and many beautiful traditional farm houses. And Sweden is a nature lovers paradise.
Getting to Småland from most places in Europe is relatively inexpensive thanks to low cost carrier, Ryanair. For the rest of us it may not be as frugal.
For the rest of us, Here is a low cost option: Go to Ikea.
No really, Ikea is like an amusement park for grownups. There's a huge parking lot and you never can find a spot close to the gate, er, entrance. Once inside there are maps and catalogs and pencils and order forms and and and....whew! I'm excited already. Don't forget to get in the long line for the bathrooms before ascending the escalator to the showroom!
Once inside the showroom you are in for hours of thrills. Go ahead, sit on the POÄNG chair and bounce to your hearts content!
Lie on the beds! Assemble a virtual kitchen!
If your hungry you can opt to dine in the restaurant or pick up a treat on the go at the snack bar.
And let's be honest, even if you walk away with an entire new living room set, it's still cheaper than a Disney vacation.*

In writing this I remembered this little gem of a cartoon: Weebl and Bob go to Pikea. Watch it for the funnies! Don't forget to click the "next" link for the exciting conclusion.

*No, I am NOT joking about this

Oddball Vacations

2009-08-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe not terribly oddball, but indeed places you don't often think of in relation to the word vacation.
The first destination of this series is Scranton, PA. A small city in northern Pennsylvania which until recently lived in mild obscurity to anyone who did not live in the area or those who had never played Sam and Max Hit the Road.
Nowadays Scranton's limelight shines as the birthplace of Vice President Joe Biden, and the setting of NBC's The Office.
I admit, I've never seen The Office, at least not the version set in the states, but I did happen upon this Trip Advisor review that didn't make a lot of sense to me until I wiki'd the place and discovered the connection to the show.
So what would make Scranton a great place to visit?
Well, you are asking the wrong person if you want historiinfmous PAcal sites, museums, area attractions and the typical touristy stuff. For that I suggest the Scranton Wiki Page.
As a native of Binghamton, NY, a city 60 miles north of Scranton, I'm going to tell you about the fun that can be had off the radar.
First of all, lets figure out how you are going to get there. If you are flying, you will fly into Scranton Wilkes-Barre airport, which has one of the coolest airport codes I've ever had the pleasure of plugging into a GDS: AVP. Yep, Scranton's got Alien fanboy cred.
If you're driving in, chances are you will get to see some of the more infamous PA town names like Intercourse and Blue Balls. Personally I like the sign on I-81 that says "JIM THORPE EXIT 1 MILE." Poor Jim, he can't go any farther along the interstate.
There was a great sign a while back, but from what I understand, when they renamed the exits they changed it. It was for two towns and read: Shamokin Pottsville. Yes! The internets win again! Someone posted a picture of the sign HERE.
Lodging in Scranton is not 5 star, or even 4 star, but the econo-class hotels tend to run in the $40-100 range so you still get a bargain.
So what do we do now that we're here?
I suggest shopping. Pennsylvania does not have sales tax on clothing, and Scranton has some of the most fabulous Goodwill and Salvation Army stores around.
Ok, so that was my 18 year old self talking. They also have many malls and Carbondale, a suburb, is one giant strip mall.
Scranton is a very Catholic town, much like New Orleans. But Scranton, and many other Pennsylvania cities, like Eerie, has a who different aesthetic. There are crosses everywhere. Think Verona in the 1996 Romeo + Juliet, or Ozzy's living room. Photography enthusiasts will love this.
Scranton is also rife with urban legends. As a former mining town there are ghost stories galore.
What? You thought I would pick a town without supernatural underpinnings?
Just wait, I'm sending you on a road trip now.
Like I said, Binghamton, NY is 60 miles north. Take a drive up to the town that is not only the Carousal Capital, but also The former home of Twilight Zone creator, Rod Serling. And say hi to my folks while you are there :)
I suppose I could also tell you that this part of the country has great skiing in the winter, and tons of festivals and farmers markets as well.
But just for kicks, I'll tell you to stop at the Pump and Pantry for gas and hot dogs. Because that's what I do.

Is Your Blog Awesome?

2009-08-21T21:56:00.000-07:00

I've started a new blog called Your Blog Is Awesome!
The premise behind this is that it will be a portal of sorts for blogs that are good, but under the radar. Please take a gander and submit your blog, or a blog you think is awesome.
I'll be back to musing here very soon. The next topic is going to be oddball places to vacation.

In the mean time, enjoy this picture of me giving Luke some sage advice:
"See, if you make that face too much it will stick that way...look at me!"

More Silly Picture Fun

2009-08-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I'm pretty sure these are all I've got...

...for now!

Taken at a convenience mart near my home:

So very zen.

OM NOM NOM!!!

I can think of many things to nom, but in my experience walls are a bit dry...
Get it?
Drywall!
Ah contractor humor!

In this tough economy, we all need to pinch our Pennys:

"Please don't pinch me. Have some coupons instead!"

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week!

Lost in Translation

2009-08-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

First of all I would like to apologize for my weekend absence. We are nearing the finish of some kitchen renovations that have been going on longer than they should and I merrily spent the weekend covered in thin set mortar.

On task!

I have for your viewing pleasure today a collection of photo observations* into the hilarious nature of our everyday. Please enjoy!

This was in the hallway at work on one particularly rainy day:

I Get the reference, but I've actually never seen the movie.

Taken at Starbucks the other day:

I really wanted to ask which one was the whole banana, but alas, of the 4 kids working 3 were young males who might have taken me to be a creepy cougar, which is creepy.

Meanwhile back in Rome:

I figured this to be a John Lennon/Yoko Ono reference or something like that but it turns out to be some lame viral sticker quest.

Taken on the south side of Binghamton NY in November of 2006:

My best guess is that the parents of a teenager will only let him/her drive the car with this warning. Either that or it's a disgruntled buyer who went to Carfax a little too late.

Taken on the highway, yes, we were stopped so no, I wasn't doing anything dangerous:

If you are unable to read it, the truck says "YODA, INC"
Do or do not, there is no drive?

And finally a lil' dose of Engrish found, where else but your friendly neighborhood Dolla' Sto'!

It says: "Blood friend is used come to visit, convenient, clean dust prevention, dispense with escape from shoe vexation."
This is a package of thin plastic sheaths that you put over your shoes to prevent dirt from getting in somewhere. I bought them when we were sanding the hardwood floors.
I'll not expound on what the first statement sounds like it is referring to. I think you can see it too, at least if you are a woman. But clean dust prevention? I'd like to prevent all dust, not just the clean kind!

I've got more of the same so stay tuned. Meanwhile I'm going to go escape my own shoe vexations!

*All photos have been taken by me but I won't complain if any of them turn into some silly meme or anything.

The Internet Is Still Useful

2009-08-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

I'm going to take a break from travel for a moment to get back to the internet. In my previous posts I talked about how the internet helps me waste time. Truth be told, I was planning a semi-rant on how I feel that the internet has dumbed me down. But a completely random and spontaneous moment of silly googling I realized that the internet is still an educational tool.
While powering up the computer I invited our oldest dog, Penny, to sit on the couch with me, telling her that we could look at pictures of puppies. Yes, I talk to the dogs, and I dance with them and make up songs about how much the smell. Anyway...
I told Penny that we would look at puppies that look like her. Penny, you see, can not have puppies, and she was 2 years old when Jason rescued her so we do not know what she would have looked like as a puppy. Incidentally, Jason kind of hates when I do this because it makes him want more dogs. Which is, of course, part of why I do it, I'm mean and being mean via adorable puppies is the best kind of mean ever!
We've thought that Penny is a German shepherd/greyhound mix. She's got the pointy greyhound face but has the shepherd ears and longer hair. I've googled all of our dog's mixes before to see how accurate the assessments have been. Until today I had found a few greyhound/German shepherd mixes that look like penny, but no other white dogs. Today we happened upon the Swiss shepherd. Almost all of the pictures we found look just like Penny, save for some very minute details. Compare this set of images from Google search to the pictures of Penny on my post about her. Almost identical!

See, the internet is still good for finding random information that you didn't even know you were looking for!

New Orleans Needs You!

2009-08-11T18:51:00.000-07:00

I'm going to preface this post with a bit of shameless self promotion. I don't know exactly how many people are reading this blog and I'm not terribly fussed because I'm not making money on it or anything. However...
The following post is very important to me and I would appreciate anyone who reads this to pass along the URL so that others can read it. No, I do not work for the New Orleans Visitor and Convention Bureau, although that would be my dream job, it just happens to be my favorite city in the world and I'm frightened at what could happen to it if people assume the worst.

There is a lot of misinformation about post-Katrina New Orleans and it needs to stop. New Orleans is not dead yet, but fear and ignorance could kill it pretty quickly.

Yes, it's true, the city has had a centuries long history of being dangerous, full of criminal activity, and has been lauded with the title "murder capital of the world" on more than one occasion. Name a large city that doesn't have problems. Heck, Las Vegas is just as riddled with mob lore, high crime rates and poverty, yet millions flock there all the time. The point is, any place can be dangerous, it's a a matter of using common sense.

Now I am also going to preface this with the fact that the one time of year I would not recommend going to New Orleans is during Mardi Gras. Or, if you do go, stay off of Bourbon St. Nothing, in my opinion, is more of a powder keg waiting to explode than a six block stretch of city street packed beyond capacity with drunken rabble-rousers of all walks of life, many of whom don't care much for each other, and many of whom are likely armed (this IS the south) or just plain dangerous (like the 250 lb college boys too strung out to know their own strength).

There are also several other city wide events, like the Jazz festival, that bring in crowds. These events tend to be a lot more tame, but bear in mind that finding accommodations may be harder and you may spend a lot more than you would have otherwise.

Now that I've scared the bejeebus out of you, let's move on to the myriad of wonderful that is the Crescent City (note: the Big Easy is not a term used by the locals).
If you've never been to New Orleans I can not accurately describe it to you. The best I can come up with is imagine a place as laid back as the Caribbean, as sophisticated as New York, as hospitable as Southen Hospitality is supposed to be, as foreign as Paris, with as much character as the west coast and as warm and welcoming as a Snuggie on a cold night.

The first thing to consider in taking a trip to New Orleans though is when to take the trip. If price is an issue, I highly recommend a summer visit. Flights and Hotels are going to be a fraction of the cost at any other time, and there will be less of a crowd. Do keep in mind though that there is a reason you are getting this deal. Summer in New Orleans is miserable. Temperatures generally hover around 90 degrees with 100% humidity. Considering that the majority of your time will be spent outdoors exploring you may want to rethink this.
*I will note, though, that we went to New Orleans in July of 2007 and spent many a wonderful meal downing fried, greasy, carbohydrate and transfat filled food. I came home 10 lbs lighter than when we left.

Spring and fall can still be warm, but bearable, and winter is usually perfect with temperatures ranging from the 50s to low 70s with the occasional cold day thrown in. You will pay more for a hotel, but you will still find rates to be some of the most reasonable in the world. Also these are great places! I've never had to "settle" for a cheap motel in New Orleans. I recommend Trip Advisor as a great resource for finding hotels. They offer reviews, ranking, pictures and videos all by their members. I tend to take the reviews with a grain of salt. Remember that people will complain 90% more often that they will compliment. I find the pictures to be the most helpful. If the user pictures show something entirely different than the hotel website does, I'm not going to stay there.

As with any trip, research is must. Be prepared to create a complete itinerary prior to the vacation, and then be prepared to detour from the itinerary often. The CVB (Convention and Visitors Bureau) is a fantastic resource for information, photos and most importantly: discounts and coupons. Arm yourself with coupons for everything, even things that you think you might not be interested in. You never know, you may change your mind once you get there.

The city itself is divided into several districts, as I am sure you are aware. As a visitor, especially a first time visitor, you will want to find lodging within the French Quarter, Garden District, and some sections of the Central Business District. There are also some great properties in the Warehouse District, Arts District and Riverfront, but unless you are familiar with the streetcars and well lit pedestrian areas , or you are the type to turn in early, I would shy away from these. Not that they are dangerous, but they are not as well traveled. The "dangerous" areas are going to be residential neighborhoods, so you have no fear of accidentally booking a hotel in the "bad" part of town, because really, there are no hotels there. There are hotels in the suburbs though, and unless you plan to drive and pay a lot for parking, I would stick with something in the city.
I strongly suggest staying in a French Quarter/CBD hotel near Canal St, but south of Bourbon St. In this area you can find 4 and 5 star properties along side economy class options and you will be in a safe, well lit area close to everything, but far enough away to get some sleep at night.

New Orleans taught me to be a tourist. It's true. I've previously prided myself on going on "non-touristy" vacations and finding something other than what is expected to do. This explains why I have never been to the Statue of Liberty, Empire state building nor did I ever visit the World Trade Center, despite growing up less than 3 hours from the city. I was too cool.
And in the beginning I was too cool for New Orleans as well. I went on a few occasions and simply walked the Quarter, searched for hidden gems like coffee houses and bars, walked the streetcar tracks as far as I could along the river, and other things like that. I had a fabulous time each visit, but I really did miss out on a lot.

My advice: Take the tours.

Especially the tour of St. Louis Cemetery #1. Remember how I said that New Orleans is not dangerous if you know what you are doing? This is the best example. St Louis #1 is not a dangerous place, per se, but the narrow walk ways and large crypts provide pickpockets places to hide out. More likely though, without a guided tour you may be accosted by an opportunist who will offer a guided tour at a discount. Don't do this. I am all for the free market (yeah, yeah, I know that's something of a lie, but that's another rant), but you are not going to get an informative tour and you will likely be encouraged to behave disrespectfully. Not to mention that you will miss out on some very interesting information and some amazingly heart wrenching stories of a more personal nature. I recommend Haunted History or Save Our Cemeteries for the best tour with the most accurate information. Both of these groups are established and dedicated to the preservation of not only the history of New Orleans, but it's continued existence as a safe and fun place to visit.
Please also note that St. Louis #2 is not recommended as there are no tours and it is in a rougher neighborhood and a bit run down though restoration efforts are in the works.
Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District is safe for private exploration, provided that you treat it with the same respect it deserves, though again, a guide is going to provide insight and entertainment that you will not get by merely walking among the graves.
The most beautiful cemetery is in Metairie, which is not accessible without means of transportation, but there are some tours that will take you from the city center out there.

Since I've mentioned Haunted History, I highly recommend their walking tour of the Quarter. I do, however preface this with a warning that haunted history does not necessarily mean strictly ghost stories. The tour gives you the true or speculated to be true stories from which the ghost stories sprang and one of these stories is a truly gruesome tale of a twisted woman and the cruel and unusual torture she inflicted on the slaves in her home. Speaking as someone who spent a great deal of her life as a "goth" and horror enthusiast, this gave me nightmares and creeps me out just thinking about it.

Moving away from the macabre, there's a lot more to experience here in the French Quarter including, rather, especially the food. No trip is complete without a bowl of the Gumbo Shop's finest, or a true po'boy. And for the meat eaters there's the muffuletta, which is a sandwich, not a spell that allows you to speak without being overheard ;)
Beignets, the French "doughnut" like pastry are a must and the best are to be found either at Cafe Du Monde or Cafe Beignet. I will warn you though, do not enter either establishment and attempt to eat said pastry while wearing black. They put enough powdered sugar on these to kill a diabetic. You can ask for a plain beignet and add your own sugar. You may get a funny look but they will do this for you.
As a coffee addict I have to of course mention the coffee and chicory blend that is brewed here. It's like nothing else. Order a cafe au lait and add just the slightest bit of sugar if you need to.
A great way to spend a few morning hours is in a class at the New Orleans School of Cooking. Not only do you get to take home some amazing recipes but you get a huge meal, free beer and yet another colorful glimpse into the local culture. Classes are $27 but they offer discount coupons on their website.

Here I have only scratched the surface of what New Orleans has to offer. There is also steamboat tours, architectural tours of the Garden District homes, even tours of the 9th ward and other areas affected by Hurricane Katrina*. I could go on but this blog has gone on longer than planned already.

*Yes, the residents of New Orleans WANT you to take this tour. They want you to see first had what happened, and more importantly what has NOT happened (ie: recovery) in the years since.

At the end of every tour that Haunted History offers, the tour guide takes a moment to solicit the crowd with the following (paraphrased) message:
If you have enjoyed this tour and found the information to be entertaining, please, tell others. Without you we do not exist, and our city suffers.

Though I do not live in New Orleans, nor do I work for the city or its tourism groups, I give you the same message. New Orleans needs you. Get beyond the misinformation and get yourself down to New Orleans. If the tourism shrivels up and dies then I won't have my favorite place in the world to go to ever again.

Thank you for reading, and please pass this along.

A 3 Day Vacation

2009-08-11T17:11:00.000-07:00

So I've crunched the numbers on a couple of vacations versus stay-cations and have some very interesting results. Unfortunately, as I started writing this it became a full on travel brochure for New Orleans, so I'm going to skip some of the details and go straight to price. Tomorrow I'll spend some time talking about the millions of reasons why New Orleans is the best place in the world.
For the sake of this experiment let's say that my husband and I are going to take a long weekend beginning on Friday August 21st until Monday August 24th. Our options are to stay in town and entertain ourselves, or take a trip somewhere within reason. We have narrowed our destinations down to Orlando, Savannah and New Orleans.
I figured we would fly out on Friday and return on Monday so we are going to need flights, 3 hotel nights, dining and entertainment for each option.
If we are staying home we are going to need a lot of entertainment, and probably one night in a hotel so that we can feel like we're actually vacationing.
Before we begin I do want to say that yes, there are alternative options like camping to consider. If that is your thing then by all means, do it. I do not camp.

Let's start with New Orleans
Flights: $400 for two adults (going after labor day on Southwest would reduce this to $260 total)
Hotel: $79 per night for the 4star Westin Canal Place.
Transportation to and from the airport and trolley rides to Garden District: $100
Breakfast for 3 days: less than $20 with Cafe Beignet coupons.
Lunch: $40 for two days, one day will be included in an activity.
Dinner: About $50 because dinner is often the overlooked meal on vacation and tends to be lighter than lunch.
Haunted History Tour: $16 with coupons found HERE .
New Orleans Cooking School Classes: $24 with coupon online.
Tour of St. Louis #1 cemetery: $12 on Sundays with Save Our Cemeteries or $16 with Haunted History.
French Quarter, St. Louis Cathedral, LaFayette Cemetery, Garden District homes, art galleries and more: Free
Total cost for New Orleans: About $850
(Truth be told, I probably wouldn't do that many paid activities, but I was trying to make this a "typical" vacation.)

Orlando is next, and I've got two vacations lined up, one with the mouse, and one without:
Disney Vacation:
Flights: $350 for two.
Hotel: Motel 6 Kissimmee Main Gate West $25 per night.
3 day Park Hopper pass for two: $542.
Breakfast: included in room rate
Lunch $75
Dinner $100
Disney Total: $1142 Aprox.

Universal Studios Vacation:
Flights: $350
Hotel: Renaissance Orlando Resort at SeaWorld $89
1 Week Discounted Universal Park pass: $99 each (same price as a two day pass)
Lunch $100 (likely this will include a trip to downtown Orlando where there are nicer restaurants)
Dinner $100
Universal Total: $1015 Approximate.

Savannah:
Flights to Atlanta: $450 for two (flights to Savannah were about $600 each right now so this is a better deal)
Rental Car: $130 for 4 days plus gas (about $50)
Parking $30
Hotel: Doubletree Hotel Savannah Historic District $109 per night.
Breakfast: $30
Lunch: $100
Dinner: $150 (this will likely include a trip to Paula Dean's The Lady and Sons for some fried goodness)
Haunted Pub Crawl: $10
Trips to Tybee Island, Bonaventure Cemetery and walks around the historic downtown: free
Savannah Total: $1231

Now let's see how the stay-cation adds up:
Now keep in mind, I can't just go to places I would go to every day, that is not a vacation. And in fairness, I am not going to include an estimate of the extra money I would spend shopping with those extra days off
Museums: $10 for DMA , Nasher and Modern. Kimball is free
Parking: $10 near most
Six Flags: $31 each with online special.
Parking $15
One Night at the W Dallas: $299
Dallas Aquarium: $20 each
I would have added a Mavericks game if it was the right season. I tried to check on the prices of Rangers tickets (even though I don't like baseball) and could not get the page to work.

And I'm out of fun things to do here in Texas. Total cost: $496. Plus I still need to eat, drive my car to all of those places and use my own air conditioning because it is 100 degrees here now. So let's add an additional $200 to this for a total of $696.
I'm not sure who is going to agree with me, but I'm willing to put in the extra $150 to spend that time in New Orleans. And I am also down with throwing $400 on to that to go to Savannah since I have never been there before.
To me it's just worth it to get away. With a little more time to prepare (remember, I came up with this idea last night), I'll bet I could reduce the cost on all of those trips. I'll go more into detail on how to get the best deal later. Tomorrow I'll start with New Orleans. I'll even have some nice pictures.

Staycation, Schmaycation!

2009-08-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

Today NPR started a series on how to take inexpensive vacations. I sighed. I don't even remember the one from this morning but this afternoon there was a guy who was going to take his family on an Alaskan Cruise, but after finding out it would be $4000 he decided to take them tubing in Oregon.
Really?
Okay, I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with that, though really, the reporter was not making it sound fun at all. He sounded like he was scared witless, and not physically up to the challenge either. And he never mentioned how long the cruise was or how long he was planning on tubing in Oregon. Most Alaskan cruises are 7 days minimum. Did he honestly expect his kids to enjoy bumping down the same river for 7 days in a row? Did he do anything else with them? How much did that cost? Did this Pacific Northwest dad bother to check out cheap flights to Anaheim and summer discount tickets at Disneyland? Did he bother to downgrade from a luxury cabin into something more reasonable or ask for any discounts?

About 10 years ago I started taking a minimum of one vacation a year. The only rule was that it was a true vacation. I could go anywhere as long as it was farther than a day trip from my home. I've been a happier person for it.
Admittedly, now that I am in the travel industry this is a lot easier and I do get some deals that are not available to the general public. However, there are deals to be had, and sometimes going the cheap route isn't as cheap as you might think.
In fact, everyone's excuse for not taking a vacation is exactly why you should! That's right, the economy. It sucks, you're broke, I'm broke. But guess what? The travel and tourism industry is broke too! As I type this, there are 3 and 4 star hotel rooms in New York City that are selling for $99. These are rooms that would normally sell for $400 or more.
Okay, $100 too much for you? Have you seen the redesigns that economy line motels like Motel 6 and Econolodge have done? Some of these places look no different than a Marriott or Hilton business class property, yet they maintain rates at about $50, depending on the area.
And hotels are just the tip of the iceberg. There are deals to be had on all manner of attractions at a lot of different types of destinations. You are on the internet right now. This is your best resource for deals, coupons, advice and testimonials.
And then there's me!
I'm going to spend the next couple of days talking about ways to have the vacation of a lifetime without digging yourself deeper into debt. In the process I am going to convince myself that there is absolutely no reason that I should not go to London this fall because I may never have an opportunity like that again.
Tomorrow I am going to start with a cost comparison of a "staycation" in our local area (Dallas/Ft Worth) versus a vacation in New Orleans, Orlando and Savannah so stay tuned.

Come On Shake Your Body Baby Do The Conga!

2009-08-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

I know you can't control yourself any longa' !!

Sorry, I was looking through my photos and found this one that I took a few years ago. Anyone got a better caption? Maybe I should feature silly photos and see what captions people come up with. I think I will!

So I do believe I have some answers to some questions I had asked on previous blogs.

Paris or New Orleans which was posted HERE are as follows:
A. New Orleans
B. New Orleans
C. Paris
D. Paris
E. New Orleans
F. Paris (I knew the American flag would stump someone. It's on the Best Western hotel. If you look again there is also a French flag.)

And Last week I posted this guy:He was photographed on a beach on Mustang Island, near Port Aransas, TX.

That's all for now. Stay tuned. I'm not done with the internet yet, but I think I'm going to start a series on vacationing now before the summer is over.

Lets Kick It Old School!

2009-08-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

The other day I was thinking about how the internet has changed in it's short life span. I thought to myself, "Wow! Back when I was a kid using the internet.." *record scratch noise*
Wait, what was that?
Oh yeah, that's right. I was an ADULT when the internet was ushered in as a tool for the general public.

Damn

I feel old right about now(funk soul brotha!).

So um, yes where was I? Ah, yes, the internet early years, 1994 to 2000-ish.

I remember the first time I used the internet. I was in college, fall of 1995 and I remember accompanying some friend or other to our schools computer lab*. My friend sat at a computer and I hovered near by, looking awkward, afraid to sit down lest I be yelled at for wasting prime realestate (I may not have yet known about the internet but I did now a LOT of computer geeks). Even at my most unawkward I tend to stand out, especially when standing in a room full of sitting people (I am tall and back in those days I dressed rather like a homeless bohemian punk vampire). This caused me to catch they eye of one of the lab monitors, who was the spitting image of George Costanza from Seinfeld. In fact, I don't think anyone knew his real name. Everyone called him George.
George told me it was ok to sit, so I did, and proceeded to ask me if I ever used the internet. I had not, as I did not have a computer at the time. He then flipped the switch to turn on the "computer" (it was a monitor, but I didn't know this at the time), and there was the internet, in all it's orange and black monochromatic, text-based glory! I learned how to access my student email and within minutes, another friend, also in the computer lab at the time, emailed me my very first email ever....ready for it?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>remember these?????

THE NEIMAN MARCUS COOKIE RECIPE!!!!!!!

Yes, I am not kidding. That was the first email I ever got. And if only it was the last of it's kind....sigh...

As I learned about the wonders of Yahoo and Gopher search engines, looking up articles on all matter of literary academia, I realized this internet thing was PERFECT for an over achieving literature major who was determined to get a PHD in record time.
Then one day our school got a new shipment of shiny new Windows 95 running computers with super sweet VGA monitors and BOOM! The internet had PICTURES!!! and GIFS!!!! I saw the hamster dance**, emoticons that actually turned into smiley faces, and god only knows what else. My IQ was on a slow and steady decline.
Then one day someone showed me IRC, anyone remember that? Internet Relay Chat. Yep, the old chat room, or channel as they used to call it.

Of course I thought it was amazing at first. I could talk to anyone in the world who had a computer. Think of all the amazing things I could learn about different cultures, different places. Heck, I could even ask people about their universities and see if I really wanted to go there.

Sigh, youth.

It went more like this:

Internet stalker: a/s/l?
Me: What?
Internet stalker: age sex and location
ME: 21 female, NY
Internet stalker: r u hot?
Me: no, the computer lab is actually kept quite chilly.
Internet stalker: ur funny lol, want 2 cyber w/me?
Me: wtf?
Internet stalker: i am kissing you seductively
*Me has left #cyberstalker

Yep, chat rooms. I spent a lot of time discussing religious philosophy, getting spammed off channels by bots, and trying to avoid basement dwellers who wanted to test out their smooth keystrokes on me.

Then there was Napster, and the Napster Bad cartoons.
And Troops.

Ugh, remember frames?

Here is a link to some vintage web design.

!!!!!WARNING!!!!!
The next link may actually CAUSE epilepsy! Click at your own risk!!!!!

THIS is the worst website ever.

So tell me, people of the webamatubes, what were you doing in the early days of the 'net?
Any AOL users? Did anyone have WEB-TV?
How many people remember Juno email only service, or NetZero when it was actually free?
Did anyone else use a 14.4 modem? How about a 28.8?
I want to know!

*True story, out school's mascot was the Hornet. The intranet site for class registration was called the HOR-NET. Say it out loud.

**warning, not actually the original hamsterdance, but the closest available incarnation on the web.

Epic Ode to the Internet

2009-08-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

Hello my fellow interweb friends!
I've decided that I'm going to spend some time discussing the wonder that is the World Wide Web and how it has affected our daily life.

Also...
I am starting a movement. A movement of awesomness. Within the week I will be cobbling together a second blog with the details. Please tell all of your friends, especially friends with well written, yet under served blogs, because they will like my movement.

On to the 'tubes!

My first installment of web-musings is a song. This song is set to "My Favorite Things."

As you read along, feel free to imagine it being sung by Julie Andrews, Diana Ross, or Björk:

Overdubbed cartoons and captions on kitties

Crying transvestites and sweets that aren't pretty

Crosseyed and mulleted pictures of kin

This is why the interweb's made of win

Weird ginger crooners and deco fly swatters

All that you need to know of Harry Potter

Cartoons that charm with a big silly grin

This is why the interweb's made of win

Dead reptile retail and slang definitions

Snark at the office and tragic ambitions

Things that can never be unseen again

This is why the interweb's made of win

I like turtles!

And the eighties!

Happy Lobster Death!

Just click on this link at your own risk and this

Is why the web is teh best!

tee hee!

There Is A Story Inside Me...

2009-08-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

But it doesn't appear to want to come out right now.

It's about vampires.

Vampires are very popular right now so it would be in my best interest to write it.
Of course, I started writing my story 5 years ago, and vampires were very popular then as well.

Come to think of it...

vampires were very popular while I was in college...

and high school...

and middle school...

even grade school.

My mom watched Dark Shadows before I was ever born.

Perhaps vampires will remain popular long enough for me to write my book.

In the mean time though I should probably read that sparkly vampire book. If for no other reason that to avoid a possible faux pas, like, for example, giving one of my characters the same name as a sparkling vampire (my character was human, but I'm going to miss that surname that means "young animal").

Ah well, some day, someday.

In the mean time, here is my favorite vampire:

I am sick

2009-08-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

I'm sick therefore I am a big baby and I am not blogging today.
Please enjoy this pelican in my absence.

Extra bonus interweb points if you can figure out the location where this pelli was photographed.

Yes, I just said pelli.

Amen.

14 December 2006

2009-07-31T19:08:00.000-07:00

When I met my husband one of the things that I drew me to him was his description of a perfect date being one where both people spend a day looking at the world through their respective camera lenses, then share their pictures with each other to see the world through each others eyes. We had our first camera date on the 14th of December 2006 in the area around Thanksgiving Square in downtown Dallas.
We both took a lot of pictures, which turned out to be a lot of pictures of the same things. The difference being that he had a lot of close ups and attention to detail, where as I tended to point the camera up and take in more of my surroundings. This truly says a lot about us and out personalities. He is very detail oriented where as I tend to look at the bigger picture. It forces us to meet in the middle where we can actually do good work together.
I was recently reminded of this by a friend who mentioned the date to another friend as a way of explaining why I had over 700 pictures from my last vacation, and most of them were not recognizable as tourist attractions.
Then last night I was transferring pictures from one computer to the other and I found the pictures I took and thought it might be nice to post some of them here.
I only have my pictures because at the time Jason was not getting discs made when he developed his film.

World's largest soft serve ;)
(a church actually)

If you glance quickly at this one it looks like a couple of candles.

Yes, this church is tiny.

The ceiling.

Throwing caution to the wind!

Yes I can find the beauty in the bleakness of modern design, thank you for noticing!

So pretty, I wish some would grow in my back yard.