Clash of the Titans

I'm really excited because in about a week and a half I get to cheer on my beloved Nittany Lions when Penn State comes to Notre Dame. I haven't seen a Penn State game in YEARS. I really can't express how excited I am. Of course, I predict we will emerge victorious. Mountain lions eat leprechauns for lunch. It's a well-documented fact.

Release the hounds.

Through the use of a clever systems of ropes and pulleys, we were able to spring Mookie from the joint yesterday. Here she is with her new haircut.

My life is boring.

I've realized that while my days are jam-packed with things to do and accomplish, my life is boring. Take this past weekend, for instance. I was constantly on the go, but none of it was exciting or interesting. I had to take my daughter around to various parties and social events, shop for my parish picnic, set up and then work the parish picnic. I had something to do every second, but I can't point to any moment as being note-worthy. How mundane and average can a person get? Really. Oh, there is one thing that worth noting: We put our dog in the kennel Friday night because I wanted to get her groomed and then we figured we'd leave her there overnight because we had running around to do, and then we'd pick her up on Saturday. Anyway, I didn't bother to ask what time they close Saturday, just assuming we'd have plenty of time. We didn't have plenty of time and found out about an hour too late that they closed at 1:00. Anway, the dog is still trapped in the kennel and I won't be able to get her until after I pick up my daughter from school today. I felt pretty bad about that. I'm sure the kennel people are thinking we abandoned our dog.



Mookie calls us scum for abandoning her at the kennel. Either that or she's just mad at us for dressing her up in this ugly Hawaiian shirt. Hard call.

Warm as apple karaoke

I don't have anything to say about this week's karaoke post other than it's me singing Madonna's version of American Pie, so just eat it.


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Cold Medicine

Man, what is it about cold medicine? Damn, I am literally sitting here with my eyeballs rolling into the back of my head. I don't know how I'm even managing to type this right now. The funny thing is I'm actually typing better than I normally do even though I'm really, really wigging on the Dayquil. Do you think employers really prefer to have their people at work like this as opposed to them just staying home and resting? I really wonder about that because they all SAY they prefer it, but you know you always end up on the shit list if you call in sick. I don't personally, but I still don't call in sick unless I am really dead to the world. Mainly because even though I'm sick, that doesn't stop my daughter from having to be where she needs to be and if I have to get up and get her to school and stuff, there's not logical reason for me to stay home because I've already defeated the purpose by getting in the shower. My husband asked me this morning how I was feeling and I said crap and he said, but you fight colds better than I do and I said no, I just deal with it better and then he said he doesn't like it when I try to deny how he feels when he's sick and I said I don't deny how you feel when you're sick. And then he said, "Having you been running a fever?" And I said that I've felt warm but I just take medicine and get through the day and then he said he was taking medicine, too. Anyway, I don't know the point of telling you all of that other than to confirm what most women already suspect, which is that men tend to revert to a childlike state when sick. Conversely, I'm sure men resent the fact that we women don't have much patience with them when they are sick. Obviously, the world will now end.

Slug, slug, slug

That pretty much describes me over the last couple of days. I'm fighting some kind of sickness passed on to me from my dear, dear, dear husband. I'm on the Dayquil. You know from past posts how much I love the Dayquil. It just paints a nice little haze over the day. I thought I had some interesting stuff to say, but I can't remember any of it. I'm sitting and thinking and none of it is coming to me. Ummm, yeah, I don't remember anything. I think I'm going to get my husband to go watch Snakes on a Plane this Friday. Our daughter is going to go to this Parents Night Out thing at her karate school and I want to see SoaP. I love that acronym for some reason. Oh, here's something kind of funny. Actually, you probably won't think it's funny, I just think it's funny because it's my kid, but yesterday we're in the car and I asked her something that her teacher did that didn't make any sense like, "Why is she not letting you keep your colored pencils at school just because you've got more colors than she thinks you need?" And my daughter responded, "I don't know, Mom. Why does the sun rise in the morning?" Had to bite my tongue before asking, "Is that just your way of saying something doesn't make sense?" And she said it was. Then I asked her where she got that from and she said she just made it up, or maybe she got it off television. One of those two things, anyway.

Ghost hunt, the fourth

So we went on a ghost hunt this past Saturday to a couple of cemetaries. They were working on getting us into this old opera house that supposedly has activity, but that didn't pan out; although, they're still working on it for a later hunt. That would be cool. This being my second cemetary hunt, I don't think I'll be making a habit of going on too many of them, mainly because they're not very exciting. We did do some EVP recordings in the first cemetary, but they've got to listen to them on the computer before we know if we got anything or not. If you think you won't feel stupid talking to the air, asking questions like: "When did you die?" "Did you have any children?" "Where's the money?", then you're wrong. Because you do feel stupid. I asked the spirits if they thought we were attractive, so we'll see what they think. Here is a picture of something unusual I got at the second cemetary. I don't know what it is. Here's the first picture:



And here is a close-up of the object in question:

OK, Blogger's not letting me upload the second picture, so you're going to have to wait awhile.

OK, here it is, finally.

Just because it's so friggin' funny

An unforgettable round of Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Air Karaoke

What ever happened to Air Supply? They were everywhere in the early '80s and then, poof, they were gone. It was weird. There was no gradual decline, they were just gone. They were such a weird looking duo, the tall, skinny guy with a hooked nose and the small, stumpy guy with the bad perm. A real testament to juxtaposition. OMG! OK, I just got this picture off their website. This is what they look like now.



Wow, it's amazing what nearly thirty years can do to a bloke. Anyway, today I am singing All Out of Love just for you.


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First day of school

So my daughter is back to the daily grind and I'm back to getting up at 5:30 in the a.m. Yeah, that kind of sucks, but I do what a mom's gotta do. It figures that the first day back I'm ready to start killing people by the time I pull up to my daughter's school. First, we end up hitting every red light on the drive, then when I turn onto a street by the school, one of the lanes is closed so that slows things down and then when I pull into the cue, some yoho up front is taking ten years to get their kids out of the car, so I very enthusiastically tell my daughter, "Get out of the car here because this person is taking forever." Anyway, I park the car so I can take in the bag of school supplies that won't fit in her backpack. I don't know about you, but does it seem like kids need a shit-load of school supplies nowadays? I remember we had to get some notebooks, some pencils and pens, some crayons and safety scissors, and that was about it. I had to buy hand soap, three rolls of paper towels, boxes of kleenex, several varieties of pens and highlighters, ziploc bags, drawing pads, glue sticks, book covers, pencil bags, gym shoes, and more for her this year. It's crazy. I don't know how families with more than one kid can afford it.

I Can RUN!

Went to see the orthopedic surgeon who did my knee. He says the knee is looking good, but I told him I still have pain. He asked me if I've been jogging yet and I said, "You haven't given me permission to run yet, but I did go running with my friend a couple of weeks ago." He asked me how it went and I told him I didn't try to push myself or anything, so it was OK. He told me to start jogging every other day for 10-15 minutes and just keep increasing as I feel I can. So cool. I told him I asked my daughter to watch me while I ran to see if I was doing it and then I told him that she said, "Mom, no, really you're just walking, but you're moving your arms like you're running." I was running.

Over the weekend, my daughter and I went peach-picking at a local orchard, and it was a pretty good time. My friend picked 55 pounds of peaches. I don't know what she's going to do with 55 pounds of peaches. Make a lot of cobbler, I suppose.

Lion and the Karaoke

What can we say about Sinead O'Connor? She's definitely traveled a different path from the rest of us. I loved her first album, and then started liking her less and less with each subsequent album. Now, anytime you hear anything about her, it's tinged with craziness. Poor Sinead. I guess she could never quite escape her wretched childhood. Anyway, enough sadness for Sinead, here I am singing Nothing Compares 2 U.


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The horror, the horror.

I just enrolled my daughter for the upcoming school year and, horror of horrors, they put her and her best friend in different classes. I don't think these people understand the true darkness they've unleased upon themselves by doing this. The two kids have been together since kindgergarten. When my daughter found out, she simply said, "I knew this day would come." And there was enough foreboding in her voice to send a chill down my spine. No lie.

Just because it's funny

A friend of mine e-mailed me this picture under the heading: Why Kids Should Not be Left Alone. I think that pretty much says it all.

Magical Karaoke

When I was a kid and my parents got our first VCR, they also bought a copy of Xanadu for us to watch. To say my sister and I loved watching Xanadu is a major understatement. We'd come home and watch that movie every day after school. This went on for a very, very, very long time. We loved the music so much, we tape recorded the songs from the television so we could listen to the soundtrack whenever we wanted. I drew endless pictures of the Muses from the movie because I loved their outfits. How could you not want to wear an outfit like this?



Yeah, pretty damn hard to resist. Anyway, here I am singing Olivia Newton-John's Magic from Xanadu.


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Not in the mood

I was going to talk about what the medium told me, but I'm not in the mood because I've talked about it too much over the last couple of days answering people's questions about it. I can only think about one thing for so long before I get completely bored with it, so maybe next week I'll delve into the secrets of my reading. My ghost hunting friend Lisa went to Waverly Hills Tuberculosis Sanatorium over the weekend. It's in Kentucky and has gotten a lot of attention lately as a really haunted location. She said she thinks she saw a shadow person and maybe heard something, but isn't absolutely sure on that one. She took gobs of pictures, but only got orbs. There was one series of three shots, though, where it looks like the orb is moving away from her, so that was pretty cool.

My ghost hunting group went to an abandoned insane assylum the first Saturday of my vacation, and that was an interesting experience. I chickened out and only got about three rooms deep into the building before I went back out to my car. Something in me just made it impossible for me to go any further. Although, considering I was carrying a bottle of holy water and wearing a scapular around my neck, you'd think I would have been braver. This is what I find interesting, a couple of members of the group are cradle Catholics who are now Wiccan. Once I pulled out my holy water, they were in line with everyone else getting some so they could bless themselves before going into the building. I think this just goes to show that when it comes to battling spirits, Catholics are pretty much the champions.

Here are some pictures I took. I have to say the place was pretty damn spooky.

OK, I just tried uploading the pictures and there's something wrong with Blogger, so you all are just going to have to wait.

OK, picture uploading is working again, so here they are.

I'm back, I'm back.

Just got back from vacation. Coming back to work is a bummer, of course. I was in a small town in Pennsylvania the last few days, attending a bridal shower for my friend's niece. My friend's husband couldn't make the trip and she didn't want to make the drive alone, so she invited me. It was pretty relaxing and her family was very warm and welcoming. I could not live in a town that small, though. It only has about 3500 residents and the nearest Target is almost two hours away. That's about as close to Hell as I can imagine getting without actually being in Hell. On Monday, we went to this little village named Lily Dale. Here's a little information from Budget Travel Online, just so you can get the jist of this place:

At a strange little village an hour south of Buffalo, talking to the dead is a way of life. Founded by the Laona Free Thinkers Association in 1879, when spiritualism was an obsession of America's elite, Lily Dale attracted legends such as Susan B. Anthony, Mae West, and Harry Houdini. Today, "the Dale," pop. 500, unlocks its picket fences each summer to admit soul-searchers. (This year: June 25 to September 5; visitors pay $7 for every 24 hours they visit; 716/595-8721, http://www.lilydaleassembly.com/.)

More than 30 residents of this tree-shaded town are clairvoyants who purport to help people connect with departed family, friends, and spirit guides. On their gingerbread-trimmed homes, look for signs soliciting private sessions ($50 to $75 for 30 to 60 minutes).

Take the gravel path at the edge of the village into the Leolyn Woods, past the tilted, moss-covered gravestones of the pet cemetery, and into the towering old-growth forest where "message services" have been held since 1898.

At 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. each day, mediums "serve spirit" to believers sitting expectantly on benches. Also try the free 4 p.m. service at the tiny Forest Temple nearby. The pamphlet at the Healing Temple on East Street admonishes, "Spiritual healing is not a substitute for medical treatment." But daily at 10:30 a.m. and 7 p.m., men and women in white stroke the invisible energy fields of ailing visitors.

Anyway, we went there for the afternoon and had some readings done, which I'll talk about tomorrow because I've got too much catching up to do right now, so until then.