How I got my Blue Heron pen for free.

Here is my Blue Heron pen, which I got for free.
If you'd like to know how I got it for free, I'll tell you. This past weekend my family went to Frankenmuth, MI, which touts itself as Little Bavaria. It was an alright place, but kind of disappointing because it wasn't really a Little Bavaria; although, my husband did buy a cuckoo clock which he's apparently wanted his entire life, so at least he's been able to fulfill that dream. At any rate, Frankenmuth didn't really create a little snapshot of Germany because they didn't sell bratwurst on brotchen, I couldn't find a decent pair of lederhosen anywhere, and there was no gingerbread to be found. However, I did have the best egg noodles I've ever tasted at the Bavarian Inn Restaurant. So, while we're in Frankenmuth, we stop by the St. Julian winery store where they offer free samples and whatnot. My husband bought a bottle of brandy and I picked out a nice bottle of cherry wine which was really tasty. While we're checking out, the manager says something to the register boy about giving away the postcards to whoever wants them. I noticed there was also a selection of pens by the register and I said, "What about the pens? Are those free for the taking as well?" And the manager said, "Uh, no. But you can have one for a dollar." I said, "But I'd like one as a free souvenir." At that time, my husband asked the manager if they can ship to Indiana. While the manager was looking through the book I said, "Tell you what, ask me a question, any question, and if I get it right, you'll give me one of these pens for free." So he said, "OK, do we ship to Indiana?" And I said, "No." And he said, "Go ahead and pick out a pen." I did a little happy dance at the register and told the manager he was a cool cat. And that's how I got my free pen, which doesn't even write well, by the way. I would have been really pissed if I'd paid a buck for it.

In other news, my sexy American girlfriend has found a sexy Italian boy toy. Figures. Figures she'd turn her back on our love for a little peck and tickle from some buff, overly-athletic Casanova from Tuscany, to boot. How can I compete with Tuscany and the accent? I can't, dammit. I can't. Oh, the torment. Oh, the woe. What ever shall I do?

A karaoke by any other name...

The summer before my freshman year of high school, I attended a summer camp for the performing and visual arts. I was there for drama. Every year camp organizers ended the summer's activities with, what else, a talent show. While we all were required to perform some "class" project, we could also perform other solo or group efforts. A girl I new from middle school was there for piano and asked if I'd like to sing The Rose while she played the piano. I said sure. I always liked The Rose and thought singing for the talent show would be a nice diversion from the entire theatre thang. So I practised and sang for two weeks getting ready, but at the last minute she decided she didn't want to do it, so that was the end of my grand moment in the spotlight. Because, of course, I imagined everyone would reward me with a standing ovation. Our drama project was some improv on the Salem witch trials. I don't know how we came up with that one, but I don't remember it being particularly interesting. So here I am for my close-up Mr. DeMille, singing The Rose.

George, we hardly knew you.

George the parakeet is gone and Fred the parakeet has taken his place. I decided that George was too timid and shy and that he'd never make a good pet for our family, so we exchanged him last night for a more lively and curious bird. My husband had picked out George on his own and based his decision primarily on looks. However, after reading parakeet pages on the internet and leafing through the parakeet care book that my husband brought home, I came to the realization that George was just too frightened of life to ever feel cozy with the seven other living creatures using up air in our house. Plus, the little fucker clawed the hell out of my wrist and nearly bit my pinkie off when I tried to get him back into the cage after he managed a brief breakout.

While we were picking out the new parakeet last night my husband said he was sorry for doing a bad job of picking out the first bird. I said I was just surprised since my husband is an avid birdwatcher and has had birds as pets for many years of his life. He said he makes up for it though by having immediately recognized that Fred was a good-tempered bird. I said I recognized immediately that George was a bad-tempered bird with no experience with birds at all and my husband said what I immediately recognized was insubordination and that's what soured me to George. I don't know what he's trying to say by that.

Fred looks like this parakeet.




George looked like this parakeet.


















In my opinion, George was the prettier bird, but as we know, looks don't count for much. I also think Fred might actually be a girl because her cere is more brownish than blue, and that's apparently one way of distinguishing gender in the noble parakeet. Why does it not surprise me that the boy ended up being the pain in the ass?

My pants are really loud today.

The party's over.

I announced at my social life commission meeting that I want to step down as the committee chair person because I need a freaking break and a half. I've done it for two years and it's time for someone else to dot the i's and cross the t's. The only reason I originally agreed to do it is because my friend said we'd basically run it as co-chairs. I was really just agreeing to letting them use my name for figurehead purposes. Anyway, that friend quit the committee some months ago becase she was completely overwhelmed by the many responsibilities she has on her plate, and utterly underwhelmed by the level of support we were enjoying from the pastoral council and parish. There have only ever been a handful of us on the committee anyway, but there are really only two other members we can rely upon in a fairly consistent manner in terms of attending meetings and taking on responsibilities for planning our various social events. Even while my friend was still on the committee, it seemed like my life was dominated by church social life planning because most of the other members were very relaxed in their participation. I took care of thing because it needed to be done, but now I'd like to be one of the people who just shows up whenever I like and just stands around waiting to be told what to do. Actually, not really. I don't want to be chair person anymore, but I still plan on working on the committee. I'm just tired of having to keep track of everything. However, the thing that sort of broke the camel's back for me is that I happened to reschedule the meeting that should have taken place Monday to Tuesday because I'd forgotten about having the meeting on Monday and scheduled something else for that night. Anyway, one of the other people on the committee called me and complained that it wasn't right to change meeting dates since she had sent out an e-mail a couple of months ago with the schedule for all the meetings for the upcoming year and I said, "Well, I already sent the e-mail to everyone rescheduling so there's nothing to be done about it now." To which she replied, "We shouldn't do this."

I said, "If you still want to hold the meeting, go right ahead. I don't care, but I'm not going to be there because I didn't make arrangements for it."

Then she said, "No, that's fine. I won't be there tomorrow."

Fine, great, like it really makes a difference in the whole scheme of things. But I have to say I really resented the implication that I was somehow interfering with the group's progress by rescheduling, like I'd committed some grave sin. Anyway, that was the end of the line for me. I'm officially tired of running around like a chicken with my head cut off while others take a more leisurely approach. Someone else can worry about the details now. And that's all I really have to say about that.

In other news, it is girl scout cookie time again. The official sale begins today; although, I've sold a few boxes already. This morning my daughter informed me that I "have chosen the wrong path" by selling early. I tried to tell her I only sold boxes to people who have no other connection to girl scouts, but she wasn't impressed and it made me realize that my kid is smarter than I am. I'm proud of her for telling me I broke the rules. It gives me confidence in thinking she'll continue to do the right thing as she grows up and won't be easily swayed by the ne'er-do-wells (like me) floating around her.

Welcome to the zoo.

The zoo being my house, of course. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but yesterday morning we woke up with three pets in the house. However, by the time we went to bed yesterday evening, we had five pets in the house. In addition to the chinchilla, rabbit and snake, we now have a hamster named Smokey and a parakeet named George. It's kind of a blur, but I firmly blame the lazy workers at Meijers. We were at Meijers (which is a large department/grocery store here)and we were looking at the pets when I decided I just wanted to check out a hamster that looked particularly cute because my daughter was pining for a new hamster since Snoozer died. Anyway, I wasn't really thinking let's get a hamster but I wanted to check out the personality of the hamster we were looking at. Anyway, there was no one manning the pet department so I caught this one kid walking buy and told him I needed help. He said to pick up the red courtesy phone to get someone there, which I did. That phone rang like thirty times and no one bothered to pick up. So I walked over to where that same kid was leaning against a tower of boxes drinking a soda, talking to another kid stocking the dairy section.

"No one is picking up the phone," I said.

"Ah, man," he replied in an annoyed manner, "they're just being lazy. I'll go get someone."

I'm thinking as he walks away, I didn't see you doing anything to help me. I don't know how you could be calling someone else lazy. Anyway, after a couple of minutes he comes back and says he put in a call and someone should be there to help me. Well, I waited. I waited a long time. I waited so long I even picked up the red courtesy phone again just to see if that could speed things up a bit. It didn't. I saw that the keys for the animal cages were lying by the sink in the pet department and I asked my husband if he'd get upset if I opened the hamster cage myself. He said he didn't think that would be a good idea. So I searched down the boy that had been stocking the dairy section and grabbed him by the arm and led him back to the pet department and said, "I just need you to open the cage. I'd do it myself, but I don't want to get my husband all bothered."

So we get to the cages, he unlocks it and I get the hamster out and I told him he could leave the keys with me and I'd lock everything up again. He said OK. At this point, I was very annoyed and I was thinking, "I'm buying this damn hamster because I went to all this trouble to get it out of the cage." Anyway, as I locked up the cage and we started looking for a box to put the hamster in, the actual pet department boy comes running over saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but they've got me running all over."

I said, "Well, I took care of the situation myself. I just need you to write the price on the box."

As we left, I walked up to a manager and said, "You know, I'd like a discount on this hamster because I basically did everything myself to get it. I waited a long, long time for assistance, but it never came so I took matters into my own hands. I'm thinking lets take two dollars off the cost." And she said OK, go right ahead. So I did. The hamster ended up costing $7.99. I'm thinking I should have asked for at least three dollars off, now.

My husband said if I get that hamster, he's getting a parakeet, which he did, and that's how we ended up with two more pets. Now I think I made a mistake getting that hamster.

In Memoriam

Bryce
Jan. 1991-November 2005
(rescued from Missoula Humane Society, Dec. 1991)



My sexy American girlfriend lost her poochy pal Bryce a couple of days ago. Of Bryce she says: "Bryce's name, when I got her, was Lady Belle. I came to understand that Bryce had spunk and personality in addition to the grace of a lady. She became my father's dog and would paw him in the car if he stopped for too long in any location. Bryce had part of her left ear chewed off by coyotes and whenever she heard them howling she went and hid under the bed. She had straitions of color on her fur ranging from tan to grey to black and each leg and foot looked like she wore old-fashioned women's shoes because of the tan color. I had a dream about Bryce the night before I adopted her and I had a dream she went to doggie heaven a few days before she died."

A BRYCIE POEM

By Tyler, age 6

Octopus on Bryci's necklace.

Doggie on her head.

2 and 5 more dogs.

Keisha, Max, and Truffle

and the spotted China doggie

in the tree. Brycie is cute.

Brycie is beautiful. She wears

a red gingham bow. She copies

whatever letter I do.


Rest in peace, Bryce. Look after Snoozer for me.

Karaoke Fame!

When I was a kid I loved the show Fame. I loved the movie, too. I wanted to be one of the kids in Fame. I wanted to go to a performing arts high school. At the time that I really, really loved watching Fame, we lived in Frederick, Maryland, which is a suburb of DC. I heard that there was a performing arts high school in the city similar to the one in Fame. I begged my parents to let me audition so I could study drama. My father asked, "How are you going to go to school in DC?"

I said, "You can drive me."

"No, that's not going to happen," my father informed me.

"Why not?" I demanded. "It's only forty-five minutes to get there."

"It's not going to happen," my father repeated.

I hated him for refusing to drive me to school in the city. Of course, hated him in the way 14-year-old kids hate their parents when they won't let them do something they want to do. I couldn't understand how my parents could intentionally stand between me and Fame. Didn't they know how important it was to me? Didn't they know that I was meant to live my life on stage? Didn't they know that being an actress was all I wanted in life? They didn't know anything about me. They didn't want to see me live my dream. I should have been Coco, except for the dancing part. I was never much of a dancer. But, I'm not going to say I should have been Doris because she was so, you know, dumpy. If only. If only my parents would have let me go to school in DC. Why? Why? Why? OK, I'm too overwrought to go on right now. Here I am singing Irene Cara's Out Here On My Own.

Li'l four-eyes.

My daughter has started wearing glasses. She's quite excited and proud about the entire thing, but I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I've passed on my malformed eyeballs. In many ways it was inevitable that she'd need glasses because both my husband and I had to start wearing glasses as children, but I hoped. I hoped with all my might that she might be spared the back-breaking hassle of having to deal with glasses and contacts and bad vision. I've got very, very, very, very, very bad astigmatism. I imagine my eyeballs look something like a deformed grape. Anyway, my daughter has very slight astigmatism and, right now, she probably really only needs to wear her glasses for things like reading the chalk board. I'm encouraging her to take her glasses off when she doesn't need them so that her eyes don't become dependent on the glasses too quickly. I don't know that doing this will mean a hill of beans in the long run, but I have hated, HATED, having such messed-up eyes. I think about having lasic surgery but I'm a little afraid of it because if they screw up your eyes, that's it. There's no turning back. You have fucked-up eyes. End of story. I can't think of anything worse than going through something like lasic for nothing. Also, I've been told my pupils are too large, but that was a few years ago and, supposedly, they have better techniques for dealing with large pupils. I'll probably still look into it a little bit more, but I don't know. I did find out something I hadn't known: If your eyesight causes you to have headaches, it's probably due to astigmatism. That's what the eye doctor told me after she examined my daughter's eyes. In all my years, I'd never learned that.

Sexy American girlfriend.

Here is a picture of my sexy American girlfriend. However, her identity will have to remain a mystery to all of you because I don't want you to get any smart ideas and try to steal her from me. Because she's mine.

No candy for you!

Since I spent so much time complaining about my life in yesterday's post, I forgot to talk about how my husband has declared we will no longer pass out candy on Halloween. When I got home Monday night with my daughter, his first words as soon as we walked through the door were, "That's it. I'm done. I'm never passing out candy again."

"Why?" I asked, assuming he hadn't much appreciated the rain.

"Because they're all ungrateful little shits, that's why."

He went on to explain that just about everyone who came to the house was rude and ill-mannered. He said kids just plunged their hands into the bowl instead of waiting to be given candy and that only a couple of children said thank you. "They don't deserve candy," he said. I told him that as long as we're sending our kid out to collect candy, we're giving it away. But he's pretty riled up about the whole thing. I agree, though. Kids today are shits. At least a lot of them are. Obviously, there are good kids too, but it seems like an awful lot lack even the most basic in good manners. Is that the parents' fault? Yeah, of course. The kids can't learn what they've never been taught. Which makes me wonder why so many modern parents don't seem to think it's important to teach good manners.

Oh, and in my neverending quest to humiliate my siblings, here's a picture of my brother from his bachelor party weekend. This man is 31 years old, believe it or not.

Can someone gimme a break, I say, gimme a break?

Today, right now at this very moment, I feel stressed and completely out of sorts. I know a lot of this is just me feeling sorry for myself but I feel like there is just way too much going on right now and it's just getting harder and harder to keep track of things. Yesterday was Halloween, so we did the trick-or-treat thing, which was fine until it started raiing. But that's really neither here nor there. Only that it takes up valuable after work/ school time so there's no time left to do the sorts of things that need to be taken care of bathing my child, going over homework properly, paying bills. You know, normal stuff. Tonight I have to go with my husband to pick up stuff for a memorial mass at church tomorrow. My husband volunteered to buy food and whatnot for the reception afterward. Then, of course, I'll have to go with him tomorrow to help set the thing up. That in and of itself is not that big a deal because my husband always helps out with social life stuff I take care of at church. Part of the stress of this entire situation is that the person who is supposed to be in charge isn't doing what he's supposed to be doing and he's basically leaving everyone floundering to take care of things. This is the first thing my husband has done for this new committee he just joined and he's pretty sure it's going to be the last thing he does if the leadership is this fractured. So that takes up tonight and Wednesday night. Then Thursday night, my husband and I have to go to some charity dinner for his job. Again, that's fine. I don't mind getting gussied up for a nice dinner every now and again, but it's difficult doing this sort of thing in the middle of the week when your kid has school the next day and you have work and you have to try and find someone to watch your kid in the middle of the week. In the meantime, you notice, there's no time to clean house, make a decent meal, take care of the kid's school business, etc., etc. Like I said, mostly just me bitching about nothing of any great importance, but it's so interesting how all these relatively inconsequential things clump together into major baggage. Is that life or is that just me? Don't know and don't really have time to figure it out right now.

I tried to be all creative, but for some reason, Blogger won't let me upload pictures to the title line, so I had to fudge it a bit. So Happy Halloween to all you ghouls and goblins out there. Hope you have a great day of scary fun. I'm doing the usual, taking the kid out for trick or treating tonight. Make sure you check your apples for razor blades, yo. There are plenty of sickos out there.

Trick or Treat, you bastards.

Return of the Karaoke

So I got my act together well enough this week to get a song up. I hoped if I never mentioned anything about my failure to post this past Monday for last week, you'd just forget about it. Although, I know it must have been difficult for all of you. Anyhoo, when I was a kid we used to listen to the Carpenters all the time and we had one album, I think it was a greatest hits album, that got played an awful lot. So, I guess you could say we liked the Carpenters. I only found out as a teenager that they were mormon because when you live in Utah, they take great pride in telling you who all the famous mormons are. I was surprised, but not really. At any rate, here I am with my rendition of For All We Know. Enjoy!

Skype is the hype.

OK, I am tres excited because I've downloaded Skype and had my brother do the same and now that we can talk to each other over the internet, I think I've discovered a way for us to record our conversations so we can start doing some podcasting eventually. Let me thank the people at Pottercast for mentioning Skype, which is what they use. Otherwise, I would have never found out about it. I mean, seriously, does it get any cooler than this? Unfortunately, since my brother just told me he works in a cubicle, this might complicate matters. Of course, what it really means is that I'm going to have to only do this in the evening or something.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

OK, I'm gonna play proud mama today. I just got my daughter's birthday pictures for this year and I just can't get over how old she looks in them. She practically looks like a teenager in them to me, so I am going to share her loveliness with you.



Bet you never thought you'd ever see a blonde Korean, now did ya?

Everything is just a fuzzy blur.

I was in the middle of a deep, deep dream when my husband woke me up this morning so I am feeling really out of it. I can't remember exact details, but I was in an apartment that wasn't mine, although, it once had been mine in the dream. What's really weird is was an apartment that I've dreamt before as being mine, but I'm talking maybe years ago. I think it's interesting to ponder the memory of dreams. Is there a part of our brains that holds onto past dreams like memories? When I woke up, I knew the apartment was an apartment I had dreamed before. It's not like I was having the same dream as before, but it was taking place in an apartment I had dreamt before. Anyway, there was a lot of weird stuff happening in this apartment complex. My daugther and I were in the dream together and we were going to different people's apartments. We ended up visiting some lady who was kind of like a gangster moll. You know, the kind-hearted type who didn't deserve to be running with such a dangerous crowd. My daughter and I went to her apartment for some reason I can't remember and she had all these pets. She had about four birds and a couple of cats and a dog. The cat was hooked up to some weird harness thing where it couldn't go more than a couple of feet away from its litter box and the lady, who looked a bit like Cathy Moriarity, was letting some of her birds out of their cages so they could fly around the apartment. While we're at her apartment, a couple of detectives show up to ask if we know anything about a boy who lives in the complex. Apparently, something bad had happened to the boy and it was a boy that my daugther and I had encountered earlier in the dream. The boy was always tormenting my daughter in some way, so when we saw him earlier in the dream, I basically told him to go back home and leave my daughter alone. So in the dream when the detectives show up, I asked what happened to the boy, but the didn't tell me, but I told them that he was not nice to my daughter and that he always gave her a hard time and then I encouraged my daugther to tell them the sorts of things he would do to scare her. But my daughter was too intimidated to talk to them about it, so I told them the stories she had told me but in the dream I felt like it wasn't good to be telling them the stuff myself because, maybe, they wouldn't take it so seriously. Anyway, it was weird.

I've got to meet with my daughter's teacher later today for a parent/teacher conference. Nothing bad, everyone's got to do it at the end of the first quarter. My daughter got her first report card yesterday and she was bummed out because she got a 2+ in one of her subjects. In the primary grades, her school grades on a system of 1-5, with one being the lowest and 5 being the highest. All the rest of her grades where pretty good. She got a couple of 3's, some 4's, a lot of 4+'s and a few 5's. But, of course, she's only concentrating on the 2+. This is one aspect of her personality that I struggle with a lot because I don't like people who use one little set-back as an excuse to not try at all. So she sees the one bad grade and proceeds to act like she's not smart and is stupid and is never going to be good at math. Does she say, "Well, I've got to work harder and get that grade up."? No, she just says stuff like, "I'll never be able to do it." It's really hard for me to keep my patience when she endulges in this sort of talk because I really have no tolerance for it. I try to tell her that it doesn't mean she'll never be able to do it, it only means she'll have to work hard to get better at it. She's only willing to keep up with something if it's easy, and that really, really frustrates me to no end.

I've let you down again.

So I didn't get around to doing my karaoke recording over the weekend. Sorry, so sorry. But damn, dudes, I've got a life and all. My daughter's birthday party was at Build-a-Bear and she had a great time, then everyone headed back to our house for pizza, cake and ice cream. It was all good until I couldn't take the kids anymore and I chased them all out to the playground so the grown-ups could enjoy some conversation. My parents got my daugther one of these Nintendo DS things, which are basically like the new Gameboy. I don't think my daughter truly appreciates how much my parents spoil her. I couldn't beleive they got her one because those things aren't cheap, which is why I refused to get her one. She got a Gameboy Advance from my sister for Christmas and that was all she needed as far as I'm concerned. But you know these kids. They "need" every new-fangled device that comes out. Anyway, we got her the Nintendog game she wanted for it which is basically like a virtual pet sort of game. She raises and trains a dog. She picked the Chihuahua version and named her dog Nacho. The whole virtual pet thing is OK as far as I'm concerned because you don't have to take them to the vet and there's no shit to pick up.

Karaoke Postponed

Sorry, sorry, sorry. But between the pumpkin patch and catsitting and making arragnements for my mother's 60th birtday bash and preparing for my daughter's birthday party tomorrw, I just couldn't get around to doing a karaoke recording. So, to make up for it, I'm putting up this video clip that my friend sent me which is pretty funny and apropos for Halloween. So here it is and come back Monday when I hope to have the karaoke post up for your listening pleasure.

Boo

Yesterday evening, my husband asked if he could have the pleasure of taking me out to dinner on the 22nd and I asked why, what's the special occassion and he said, "Uh, our anniversary." So now you see why the karaoke post isn't here. If I couldn't even remember my anniversary (which is our 11th anniversary, by the way) with everything I'm trying to keep straight right now, you can see how singing took backseat to everything else.

What the...

K, when I got to work this morning I found my office door wide open and my lights on? It's weird, but it had the same shock value of coming home and finding my front door open. I was like, "What the freak is going here?" I went in and looked around, but nothing seemed out of place. I'm hoping it was just the cleaning crew forgetting to turn out the lights and close the door. But I'm still somewhat peturbed by the entire thing. If it was the cleaning crew, I think this place needs to get a new contract because the people cleaning the offices right now don't seem overly competent. I noticed they didn't even vacuum the carpets for months on end. I finally called and complained when I came in one day to find a mess of paper shredding that had accidently been spilled the day before. The fact that it was still there the next day indicated to me they hadn't even bothered coming into the room. Because if they had and just left that mess there, that's crappy job performance. Anyway, when I called building maintenance to ask how often they're supposed to vacuum, the guy told me every night and I told him that wasn't happening by any stretch of the imagination. Anyway, I've noticed since then that the floors seem to get vacuumed a little more often, but it's still not often. I've vacuumed the floor myself in the past if I can snatch hold of a vacuum every now and again. If I don't mind cleaning, then the people being paid to do it shouldn't mind, as far as I'm concerned.

Last night we did the pumpkin patch with my daughter and her brownie troop. It is absolutely amazing how excited a gaggle of little girls can get over the prospect of a hayride and pumpkin picking. What's not amazing is listening to that same group of excited girls sing the girl scout friend circle song over and over and over again. The only thing worse than that is then listening to them sing a song about the continents 50 times over afterward. Do you know how piercing the singing voices of little girls are? Yeah, by the end of the evening, I had a line of blood dribbling from my right ear. I think they popped my eardrum. It was fun though because I got to roast my marshmallows. That was a good thing.

So it's like this...

I have so mastered the art of getting around the office by just pushing around on my chair that I believe I can be confidently dubbed the Dorothy Hamil of chair maneuvering. And I'm serious. It's really about the ability to push and turn at the same time that defines the expert, which is me. If chairnastics was an Olympic sport, I'd get the gold for sure. But enough of my chair mastery. We have to go to a pumpkin patch tonight with my daughter's brownie troop. Last year it was pretty cold, so I hope it's not so frigid this time around. The best part about going to the pumpkin patch is that they let you roast marshmallows at the end. Mmmmmm, roasted marshmallows. I might have to pick up my own bag so I don't have to share with those greedy, grabby brownie scouts. Bitches.

I was reading a little bit about the recovery efforts in New Orleans and I'm still just amazed by everything that's happened down there. Now they say this Hurricane Wilma is, like, the biggest hurricane ever. Big reason why I don't live along the southern coastal regions of this country. I can't imagine living in an area where I've got to constantly evacuate. What about living down there makes it worth it to people? It seems like the entire planet is being plagued by massive natural disasters over the last couple of months, which can only mean one thing: Armageddon! I believe this entire year was a Nostradamus prediction, if I'm not mistaken. I'm going to go rent that Orson Wells movie to double check.

Well, Madonna would know, right?

So Madonna thinks most priests are gay, huh? Why does that not surprise me in the least? Because I'm sure she's in the know when it comes to that sort of thing. Just like Sean Penn knows more about world politics than the president. I don't know how you could even be offended by a comment like, "Most priests are gay," because it makes just about as much sense as saying most men are gay, or most women are gay, or most celebrities are gay, or most bakers are gay. So what I'm basically saying is, it's stupid. And even if it is true by some strange, Twilight Zone twist of faith, who the freak gives a damn? I mean, her comment is good for the laugh just to get an even better understanding of how crazy Madonna is. I like her music and all, but she's just plain lost it. She and Tom Cruise should get together and discuss their respective religions and world views. I'm sure that would be a fascinating conversation. Of course, she'd probably come out of it saying, "Tom Cruise is gay." But we already knew that, didn't we?

So close and, yet, it still doesn't mean a hill of beans.

Now, was that a game or was that a game on Saturday? I'm no Notre Dame football fan by any stretch of the imagination, but even I got into the game toward the end. How could you not? That game was everything college football is supposed to be in terms of excitement and good, old-fashioned fun. Of course, all the ND fans in town were devastated, but it is just a game. However, I am so, so sad about the Penn State loss. I was really hoping we could have an unbeaten season since Joe Pa deserves at least one last killer year. Oh well.

It was interesting being in South Bend over the weekend, though, because so many people came in for the game. There were more limos and private jets coming in than for the Oscars or something of that nature. Everybody was getting all hyped up, spreading rumors about the celebrities in town. People were saying everyone from Jessica and Nick to Angelina and Brad were in town. I think maybe it was just Martin Short, in reality. Oh, I guess Joe Montana came in for the pep rally on Friday. Other than that, I'm not really sure who came in for the game. But it was definitely a high-energy weekend.

We're catsitting for one of my grad students and it's been an interesting night. We have a rabbit and chinchilla, and the cat apparently spent a lot of the evening scaring the shit out of the critters. My husband said he heard the chinchilla barking and generally spazzing out, and the rabbit stomping his foot in his cage. so he got up and tried to carry them down to the basement so he could get some peace and quiet, and since he was only half-conscious while doing this, dropped the rabbit cage, spilling all the contents of the cage onto the floor. I was awakened at 5 a.m. to very loud cat howling and the sound of the shop vac. Anyway, now the rodents are in the basement. The cat is not and everything should be OK. Hopefully.

Karaoke Lightbulb.

This has been a pretty busy week for me, so I wasn't able to do one of my normal karaoke recordings. Buuuuut, since I love you all so very much and I know how desperately you wait for these little posts every Friday, I have quickly recorded me singing a little ditty from a musical I did in sixth grade called The Electric Sunshine Man. It was a musical about Thomas A. Edison and his revolutionary contributions to modern life. What I have here is the beginning of the opening number. I would have sung the entire song for you, but I can remember more than what I've got here, so please enjoy The Electric Sunshine Man. I hope listening to this song inspires you to visit your local library and learn more about the life and times of Thomas Edison, a true American hero.

More than a mouthful is just too much.

This is not exactly a new story, but one that must be read to be believed.

Snake bursts after gobbling gator



An unusual clash between a 6-foot (1.8m) alligator and a 13-foot (3.9m) python has left two of the deadliest predators dead in Florida's swamps.

The Burmese python tried to swallow its fearsome rival whole but then exploded.

The remains of the two giant reptiles were found by astonished rangers in the Everglades National Park.

The rangers say the find suggests that non-native Burmese pythons might even challenge alligators' leading position in the food chain in the swamps.

Clearly, if they can kill an alligator they can kill other species
Prof Frank Mazzotti

The python's remains with the victim's tail protruding from its burst midsection were found last week. The head of the python was missing.

"Encounters like that are almost never seen in the wild... And here we are," Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

"They were probably evenly matched in size. If the python got a good grip on the alligator before the alligator got a good grip on him, he could win," Professor Mazzotti said.

He said the alligator may have clawed at the python's stomach, leading it to burst.

"Clearly, if they can kill an alligator they can kill other species," Prof Mazzotti said.

He said that there had been four known encounters between the two species in the past. In the other cases, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw.

Burmese pythons - many of whom have been dumped by their owners - have thrived in the wet and hot climate of Florida's swamps over the past 20 years.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4313978.stm

Published: 2005/10/05 21:42:54 GMT

© BBC MMV

Oh...my...God!!!

I killed a cockroach in my kitchen this morning. I can't quite believe I'm sharing this with you because you'll now question my ability to keep a clean house. This is the first time I've ever seen a cockroach in my house, and with ever fiber of my being, I swear this will be the LAST time I see a cockroach in my house because I am going to kill the little bastards with the wrath of me hunting cockroaches. Which is very big, very frightening, and very wrathy. Sadam Hussein? Forget Sadam Hussein. He's an amateur compared to the chemical warfare I'm going to unleash against those buggers. They will be sorry they defiled the sanctity of my home. Actually, they won't be sorry because they're going to DEAD. So they'll be incabable of experiencing regret. But that's OK by me. After I pick up my daughter from school today, it's straight to the store to buy every cockroach eliminating spray known to man. And then the day will be mine.

My shirt stinks and what's up with Adam Curry's hair?

My shirt stinks and I don't know why. It's been awhile since I've worn it, but I don't know why that would make it stink. I had my husband spray the back of me with Febreeze, but I can smell the stench off the front. I hope I'm the only one who can smell it. I'd be pretty embarrassed if anyone else could smell it. Notice, though, that while knowing my shirt stinks, I didn't actually change it. I mean, I ironed it and everything this morning, so I wasn't going to make the effort a vain one. So I'm wearing a stinky shirt.

As far as Adam Curry's hair goes, why is it straight and blonde now? Remember when Adam Curry was a VJ on MTV and he looked like Leo from Fame? Now he's sporting the polar opposite of his 80's hair. Is he ashamed? I think he looks stupid with his hair the way it is now. Mainly because you know he's spending a lot of time on it to get it that way and once you're married and have kids, I don't think you should be spending that much time on your hair because that means you're not spending time on something more important. I'm a girl and I spend too little time on my hair. I'm probably just jealous that he gets to spend so much time on his hair when I can't. Actually, I am jealous that he can spend more time on his hair. I hate Adam Curry and his fancy hair.

My family drove to Michigan this weekend to visit one of my husband's aunts. He hasn't seen her since his father died when he was six. We also visited his father's grave, which is also the first time my husband has been there since his father died. It was pretty emotional for him, I think. He said he felt very sad about being there but he was glad to have gone and now he wants to try and get up there at least a couple of times a year. We tried getting some information from my husband's aunt about his father, but she seemed somewhat reluctant to give us the really juicy stuff. My husband is hoping she'll loosen up a little bit more as we spend more time with her. Since the only way he can really get information about his father now is through someone else's experiences, it makes it difficult to put together a full picture. My husband says his mother didn't ever speak much about his father as he was growing up, which is a real shame as far as I'm concerned. But I'm glad our daughter finally gets to connect with family members on her father's side. She told me before went up that she was excited about meeting these new family members because sometimes all the Korean people are just too much.

Karaoke in a bottle

This week's song is one of my favorite Police songs. The Police being my favorite group of all time, and if you don't agree with me, just keep your piehole shut and there won't be any violence. But seriously, I love this song and I've used quotes from it to start off several high school theme papers in my time. My one real sorrow in life is that I never got to see the Police perform live. I was fourteen or fifteen when Synchronicity came out, and then they broke up shortly after that. Needless to say, I was a little too young to go see them previous to the break-up. Oh the tragedy. Oh the injustice. So here I am singing Message in a Bottle.

You just never know what's going to smack you in the face.

I can't believe Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are pregnant. Well, I can believe they're pregnant, I just can't believe they'd go around telling everyone. How pregnant can she be? I didn't really want to make big news of it until I was at least through my first trimester. But, what, she's probably only two weeks pregnant or something. One can only guess because I have no idea when she's expecting. What I find more interesting about all of this is Tom Cruise's de-evolution as a sex symbol. Most people are like, "What? Eeeww." I can remember a time when some women might have said, "Ooooh, she's having sex with Tom Cruise? She's so lucky." I don't think anyone is calling Katie Holmes lucky right now. Not that I care whether or not a person has premarital sex or not, but I do think it's somewhat tacky to go around telling the world you're going to stay a virgin until you get married and then get knocked up before you get a chance to walk down the aisle. That's just poor breeding, as far as I'm concerned.

As my husband was telling me the news of the impending birth, he said that the news was reporting that Scientologists don't believe in pain medication during birth and that the mother is not allowed to scream during delivery because it will upset the baby. I had drugs when I had my daughter and I still screamed. Not easy to turn off the screaming during labor. What the fuck is wrong with these people? Of course, it had to be a man who came up with that stupid-ass rule. Don't scream while you're experiencing the most excruciating pain you will probably ever experience in your life. You know, that's fine as long as the woman gets to squeeze the man's testicles while she's holding in he screams. If the guy doesn't scream, then it's a fair deal.

I'm a pepper, you're a pepper...

Remember the good old days when werewolves endorsed soda? Yeah, good times, good times. I don't know what to talk about today. My colleague Renee says I should talk about the vendor fair we went to today, where we got all kinds of free stuff. The biggest prize of the day was a huge yardstick. It's actually more than just a flat stick, it's like a yardclub because it's thick and square and looks more like a samuri sword than a measuring device. It should prove quite useful in doling out punishment in the house. We got free cookies, too. And they were warm to boot. I also got free cake. I'm on the Nutrisystem right now, so I'm hoping the cookie and cake don't do too much damage. But, you know, you only live once, so what the heck. How am I supposed to turn down Bailey's Irish Cream Torte, I ask you? It's like expecting someone to stop breathing or something. Crazy talk is what it is. Plus, it was just a small piece. A crumb really. The cookie was big though. Renee helped herself to the free hotdog and chips, but I passed on that. I got a free light up yo-yo. That was pretty cool. I wish I could do yo-yo tricks. I always wanted to do that walk the dog move. I don't know how one learns to do yo-yo tricks, but it would be pretty cool if I could.

I've decided my daughter will start taking guitar lessons. It's dawned on me that she's not really very disciplined and I think taking guitar lessons will give her some of that. She needs to understand that sometimes you do stuff for no other reason than you have to and you've got to see those things out to the end. I told her my plan yesterday. She'd rather learn the bongos, she told me. But I explained I didn't think I'd be able to find a bongo teacher. I gave her the choice of guitar or piano and she chose guitar. I would have made her do guitar anyway because I don't have room in my house for a piano. So I just put her on the waiting list at a guitar place down the street from where we live. Hopefully, it won't take too long before they can take her in. The lady asked me if I preferred a certain teacher and I told her I just need someone really, really patient because my daughter likes to spend a lot of time explaining why she can't do something as way to try and get out of doing something. The lady said all their teachers are patient. We'll see, we'll see.

Yo want some yo-yo tricks I got yo yo tricks for you all day long

So you want to learn how to do yo yo tricks huh. The thing that most people don't understand with yo yo tricks is that they are really easy as long as you truly know how to yo-yo. The secret is mastering the stall
once you can master the stall you can do any yo yo trick you want to do. the stall is throwing the yo yo down and making it stay down until you flick your wrist and the yo yo rides up the string. To master the stall you must first master the toss. to toss a yo yo you do not just let it go from your hand and sort of push down for momentum. To properly toss your yo yo you must hold it in your hand palm up with the yo yo facing the sky, center groove lined up with the finger the string is on. (I use my middle finger because it helps me keep the yo yo centered an important thing later). next you fling the yo yo down over that string finger (imagine the girl from my cousin vinny describing her biological clock but more fluid and down ward not sideward). You have thrown the yo yo down the palm is face up. as you have thrown down the yo yo smoothly not jerkily roll your hand over so your palm is facing down. At this point the yo yo should be spinning at the bottom of the string "stalling" you can stall for a second or for as long as you want, or the yo you stops spinning at which point its not stalling any more its dead.

In order to make the yo yo race back up the string all you have to do is swiftly but not majorly hard is snap your finger or wrist up. and the yo you will ride up the string. That is the basis for any yo yo trick. Now. . . for your fateful walk the dog. Stall the yo yo as discussed above. as its stalling at the bottom of the string simply mildly drop it on the ground in front of you and walk along as the yo you rides on the ground and sucks up line. when you want to fully rewind the yo yo pull up with your arm then as the yo yo comes up into the air. put your arm down towards the yo you to sort of make it "defy gravity" and suck up the line without tension so you can get it all reeled up then throw it again. Its as easy as that. Next week join us for the other fundamental base for all other tricks. the pendulum.

Till next time kids!, keep on yo'in!

Podcasting addict.

That's me. I'm listening to PotterCast with Melissa Anelli of the Leaky Cauldron. I also listen to MuggleCast with the boys from MuggleNet because they're funny. I'm finding these podcasts much more accessible than going to the websites because I can do other stuff while I'm listening, like writing this post. Isn't that just super cool? The MuggleCast boys make me laugh because they're teenage boys and they're silly. I like listening to them yell at each other because it reminds me of the kid from Trekkies who yells at the friend who calls him in the middle of his interview with Denise Crosby. That's what the MuggleCast boys are like when they talk to each other and one says something that one of the others doesn't agree with. I listen to the podcasts through iTunes. Also, there's one episodes of MuggleCast where one of the boys says, "Guys, guys, guys." And that makes me laugh because there was this one boy I knew in high school who used to always get dumped on by the other boys that I hung out with and they'd do things like wrap him up in a blanket and he'd frantically yell out, "Guys, guys, guys," because he couldn't breathe and stuff, but it was funny to me anyway. So, I would highly recommend listening to either one of those podcasts. Once I figure out how to get my own podcast up and running, I promise to be just as entertaining. I just have to figure out how to score the interviews with some famous people. I was thinking about how to try and interview Sean Astin because he's supposed to make an appearance at this Roasting Rudy event that's taking place here in South Bend next week, but it turns out it's just going to be a video feed appearance so I won't be able to corner him for an interview. I was devasted by the news, I assure you. We don't get many famous people here, you know.

Another Monday. Please God, let it end.

I'm talking about the work week, of course. I'm starting to think Mondays should be banned because I hate them most of the time. Did I tell you how they opened a Build-a-Bear in our mall over the summer? This is something I've been dreading because my daughter LOVES Build-a-Bear, almost as much Pokemon. Anyway, up until they opened the local store, she's only been able to go to Build-a-Bear during our infrequent trips to Chicago or DC. That was pretty good as far as I was concerned. Now, the constant and easy lure of Build-a-Bear has overly excited about mall trips. I hate the mall, so it's good that I don't go there very often; otherwise, I would come to hate the mall pretty quickly if I didn't already as I do, which I've just mentioned. What is this all leading up to? Well, she's having her birthday party there in a few weeks. I booked the party about a month ago and she's been checking off the days until her party. She did a happy little dance on Friday when she realized it was finally October.

"I am now in my birthday month," she explained to me.

She has never been more excited about a birthday party in her life. Really, I think she's been anticipating this party more than Christmas morning. I don't know what it is she thinks will happen other than she'll end up with a new bear, but she's pretty familiar with the routine at the store. In fact, we were just there yesterday and she used some money she'd saved up to buy a new animal. It won't even be as if it's been a long time since she's been to the store before her birthday, so I'm pretty amused by her enthusiasim.

Me, waiting in line.

Karaoke Rock!

So here we are with that special, special song I promised you last week. My daughter picked it out for me, although she refused to sing with me. Apparently, she's the management and I'm the talent, so there's no mixing of duties to take place. Anyway, there's no good way to prep you for what you're about hear, but let me just say for those about to rock, I salute you. This is, by the way, Goofy Gober Rock from Spongebob Squarepants, The Movie.

Daily Dancer Interview, Part V

Here we are back with your favorite booty-shaker, Daily Dancer, for the final installment of my in-depth interview. It's been great getting to know the man behind Daily Dancer and I hope you have also learned a little something about his gracious nature and generosity in the process. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Daily Dancer for answering all the questions I threw his way. He never flinched once. That's a real man for you. And before I get all choked up with emotion and everything, let's get on with the show.

KC: Five years?!? What are you waiting for? Seriously, what are you waiting for?

DD: Do I have to answer that question? You know that she will be reading this, right? All I can say is that I am waiting for the right time to come. Regardless of when I propose to her, I love her very much and love being with her.

KC: What type of games are you interested in developing? Shoot 'em ups? SIM type games? My Little Pony? Also, what are your thoughts on the heavily male-focused video game industry? I know there have been recent attempts to gear more games towards girls, but they seem kind of lame to me. What do you think?

DD: I am more into games from 10-15 years ago, back when side scrollers and top-down RPGs were at their peak. I have always wanted to make such a game, but with a great internal design, of course. No hacking for me! As for girls' games, they are probably lame because of stereotypes. The game makers assume that girls will enjoy playing games about makeup and clothing. Even more significant is the fact that these games do not have much of a market, so the top gaming companies devote their budgets to the more-popular shoot-em-ups and sports games.

KC: What is your opinion on the recent events surrounding Hurricane Katrina?

DD: These things happen in the world. It is sad to think about people losing their homes and families. But, with all these disasters, it is often easy to forget the people who go through these hardships on a regular basis. Think about the people in poor countries, or on the streets of your own city, who have lived homeless and hungry for years. Why do people often jump to help the people who had more in the first place, rather than the people who never ever had much at all?

KC: You spend a lot of time dancing to requests on your blog, but what type of music is your favorite type of dancing music?

DD: My favorite dance music is the same music I dance to most frequently on my blog: hits from the 80's and 90's.

KC: What do you regret most in life and why?

DD: I do not have any regrets that stand out. Everything that goes wrong turns into a learning experience.

KC: What is your proudest accomplishment?

DD: My proudest accomplishment is finishing my Masters degree in Computer Science. Working on my Masters thesis was extremely difficult, but it made me learn about how I work best and how to persevere.

KC: Are most people who know you surprised you would do something like this blog (if they know about it, that is)? How do you think most people in your life view you?

DD: I think that many people would be surprised by my blog. I think that I am generally perceived as quiet and shy. But, when I get a chance to perform, I always let my inner star show. You should see me do Karaoke! I see that you like doing Karaoke as well. :)

KC: Who designed the logo for your Daily Dancer t-shirts?

DD: A friend designed the logo for the shirts. He did a great job on the body hair.

KC: Were you ever nervous about dancing on the internet? I can detect a significant level of loosening up as your blog progresses, so I'm wondering if you are gaining more confidence as you continue to do it.

DD: I was never really nervous about dancing on the Internet. Maybe the barrier of the Internet makes it somewhat easier.

KC: If this ends up being the last round of questions, is there anything in particular you'd like to tell the Daily Dancer audience?

DD: I would like to tell the Daily Dancer audience "thank you" for giving me an audience to dance for. I enjoy dancing for my fans, and I love reading their comments and e-mails.

<< previous interview, Part IV

Snoozer is dead. Long live Snoozer.

Well, that thing we have been expecting for some time now has finally happened. Snoozer the hamster is no more. He died yesterday and my daughter is sad. Very, very sad. We realized he was dead right around bedtime and it looks like he just died in his sleep. He looked pretty peaceful. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but this hamster was creeping up on three and a half years of life, which is a long time for a hamster. He had huge tumors on his underside and half his fur had fallen out. One of his back legs was paralyzed. But he kept going. You'd hear him on his wheel every night. He was a nice gentle hamster. Most hamsters are ornery, but Snoozer was always very gentle and he never tried to bite any of us. We told our daughter we're never getting another hamster because we will never find a nice hamster like Snoozer again. Also because I don't want anymore animals in the house. So he's in the freezer right now because my daughter wants to make a casket for him so they can properly bury him on Saturday. I'm not supposed to tell you this, but my daughter cried quite a bit when we told her the news. She specifically told me, "Mom, don't tell your blog I was crying." See how easily I betray her? Maybe tomorrow I'll put up a picture of Snoozer if I can dig one up.

I am also going to try podcasting. Here is my first, although modest, attempt.

Rant day

I'm going to complain today about why I don't really have much respect for most academics. If you are an academic, I suggest you stop reading right now because you're probably going to get pissed off. Anyway, the primary reason I don't respect academics is because an awful lot of them have no view of the world around them. They are so focused on their one little, itty bit of knowledge that they have completely lost touch with the fact that they are the only person in the world who probably gives a damn about that one little, itty bit of information. What I probably resent even more is that they take that incredibly limited knowledge base and then justify an entire life of arrogant behavior upon it. Wow, you know everything about one obscure medieval manuscript. Yeah, that gives you bragging rights. I mean, come on. That doesn't really mean a hill of beans in the whole scheme of things. Can you change a flat? Can you you get a kid up and out the door in ten minutes or less? Can you speak to strangers in a social situation and not have them walk away thinking you're a complete tool? Yeah, I didn't think so. Are you saving lives? Do you even know what a deadline is? Yeah, I didn't think so. Sometimes I think there must be some sort of indoctrination akin to the sort that takes place in medical school with these ivory tower dwellers. They are conditioned to believe that their "immense" brain power just puts them leaps and bounds above the rest of society, when in reality, they're pretty stupid when it comes to everyday life. In conclusion, let me just say that the world would probably be a much nicer place if all you self-absorbed "thinkers" would just shut the fuck up for two seconds and try to actually listen to the shit you spew. Try and actually relate your life to the world around you a little bit. You'll most likely find you're just as insignificant as the rest of us.

Another blasted coldsore.

If you haven't been able to guess from today's title, I've got another stinking coldsore. I don't know what sparked it this time. I don't remember being exposed to bright sunshine anytime recently. Maybe it's because I've been feeling a little under pressure at work. So it's back to popping acyclovir. We did our trivia night over the weekend and my team only came in fourth, which isn't too shabby. But we were never close to taking top honors, so it wasn't nearly as exciting a night as last time. I have to say, they got a little harder with the questions this time around. But like I said, we didn't embarass ourselves or anything, so that was alright. One of the categories was college fight songs and we had to listen to sound clips of different songs and write down which school they belonged to. I don't know about you, but all fight songs sound the same to me, so I was like, "Don't even expect me to have any input on this one." And they did all sound the same to me. Drums, trumpets, cymbals. Quite frankly, I don't know that I'd even recognize the Penn State fight song if it started playing.

My husband starts his new job today, so he was a little excited and nervous. I have to say I feel nervous and excited about it, too. I'm excited for him to have the opportunity to really do the sorts of things he's been wanting to do and I'm nervous because I want him to feel like he's in a good place to work. I have to take my daughter to the petstore today to buy a pinkie for her snake. This will be the fourth one and I have to say it gets less disturbing watching the snake eat the little mouse with each subsequent feeding. It's funny how long it sometimes takes the snake to finally get his jaws around the mouse, though. It doesn't seem to be something he has a lot of instinct about. Sometimes he trys to start eating it my grabbing it on the side rather than the head or bottom. I don't know, it's funny to me but maybe that's just normal.

Karaoke Dance Party #57

So here we are with another installment of my super popular karaoke Fridays. I'm going to try to have an extra special song for you next week that my daughter is helping me with. It will be hot, let me tell you. But today, we just have me singing Lone Justice's Shelter.

Oh hey, guess what? My husband had my car detailed yesterday and it's sooo nice to have a clean car again. I'm the primary child transporter, so my car was pretty filthy. What with all the discarded craft projects and Cheez-It crumbs ground into the upholstery. Anyway, before I left for work yesterday morning, he told me to take his car so he could clean my car. When I get home and see how clean the car is, I was really impressed. I was thinking, "Wow, he did a really good job." But then I looked a little closer and saw just how clean the car was: shiny tires, no dirt or sticky debris anywhere inside the cup holder, pristine upholstery, and I realized, "He didn't do this. He got this detailed."

He came out and asked, "How do you like the car, huh?"

Immediately, I responded by asking if he got it detailed. And he sheepishly admitted to it and said, "I did it as a surprise." Anyway, it's just as cool. I don't mind that he had it detailed. Although, for $90, you'd think they would've cleaned out the chocolate wrappers out of the map holders in the side of the doors. There were some left in there. If money changes hands, it better be cleaner than the day I bought it as far as I'm concerned.

What to talk about.

What, what, what? Do you know how it is that you can only win a mega-lottery amount if you live in a trailer park? Why is that? What is it about trailer park dwellers? Living in a trailer park also guarantees that your house will be crushed by any wayward tornadoes. So you either lose it all in a natural disaster or you win it all in the powerball. Just can't decide if it's worth it or not. So everyone is clearing out southern Texas in preparation for Rita. It'll be interesting to see how much people have learned from Katrina. I wonder if the entire place in blown to bits if people will be sending donations with the same fevor as they did for Katrina. I'm not bad-mouthing everything that's been done for Katrina victims, I just wonder if it will be hurricane overkill by the time Rita takes care of business. I don't know if there's anywhere in the world that's worth it for me to live with the constant threat of total annihilation from hurricanes or floods or whatever. We do get a lot of tornadoes here in Indiana, but I live here against my better judgement anyway, so it's not like I'm getting something out of it. If I could live the same life somewhere else, I would in an instant.

Oh, this is the depressing thing I realized the other day: My daughter is an Indiana native. It's like a burning knife to the heart to understand that fact. She called soda "pop" the other day. That's what everyone here calls soda. They call soda "pop" in Utah, too, and I hated it just as much when I lived there. Anyway, she called it pop and my ears started to bleed.

"No," I said, "it's soda."

"OK, soda," she said.

I don't know why it bothers me to hear pop, but it does. I don't know, maybe because it sounds kind of red-necky.

Hey y'all.

First off, I want to give a shout out to my brother for taking care of posting for me yesterday. I've been feeling kind of overwhelmed lately and haven't been able to devote much time to the whole blogging thing. I'm sure you appreciate the break from me as well. My brother is much funnier than I am. He should post more often. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean? I don't really have anything interesting to talk about today. We have a parents meeting at my daughter's school tonight to start learning about her first confession. This is in preparation for her first communion in the Spring. I haven't been to confession myself in an awfully long time. I should go, but it seems hard to fit in. I'm sure I'll have to do some sort of confession during this entire thing with my daughter. The main thing that freaks me out about confession isn't even telling my sins. I'll tell that to anyone who listens. What makes me nervous is that I'm never sure when to start saying the act of contrition. Most of the time the priest just starts praying over you and you're supposed to do the act of contrition at the same time, but that just seems rude to me to talk at the same time as the priest. Also, I don't know the act of contrition by heart, so I'm afraid I'll mess it up. I should just take a little card in with me then it wouldn't be such a big deal. Why don't I have the act of contrition memorized? Because I don't go to confession that often, haven't you been paying attention? So that's my great shame. I'm all flumoxed by the act of contrition part and I'm very self-conscious about making a fool of myself in front of the priest. It's not rational, I know. OK, I just discovered it's possible to eat too many Hershey kisses in one sitting. And too many is 10. Excuse me while I go ralph.

Hail to the Redskins!!!!

Ok Ok Ok

I admit it I was putting out some negative energy by the second half of the game. I was just feeling a little pain in the notion that we were going to have another one of those seasons. But with 2 minutes left in the game they brought me out of the pits of dispair and threw me onto the field of victory!!!! The Skins came from behind to beat the Dallas Cowboys 14-13 The world is a good place and God loves me! Go skins go! go skins go!!!!!!


They almost made me drink last night but luckily I didn't I feel both happy and not hung over today which is the best thing in the world!!!!

The draught has ended!!!!! after ten years the skins have beat dallas in dallas!!!! wooo hooo!!!
Now lets see if we can actually get an offense!!!! PS the refs last night had to be paid off by Jerry Jones...

Now I return you to my sisters blog. Everyone needs to cheer for the Redskins

Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Victory!
Braves on the Warpath!
Fight for old D.C.!
Run or pass and score -- we want a lot more!
Beat 'em, Swamp 'em,
Touchdown! -- Let the points soar!
Fight on, fight on 'Til you have won
Sons of Wash-ing-ton. Rah!, Rah!, Rah!

Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Victory!
Braves on the Warpath!
Fight for old D.C.!

That really wasn't any fun.

I stayed home sick today and it really wasn't any fun. I became increasingly bored and restless as the day wore on and I wouldn't say I enjoyed it at all. Usually, I like a day of rest, but this one didn't seem to do it for me. I woke up with a headache that felt like it was going to blow my head to smithereens and my entire body just hurt. I'm feeling OK now, so it'll be back to the daily grind tomorrow. What did I discover during my day off? Daytime television really sucks. This morning I watched a movie/mini-series called Little Dorrit, which was based on a Charles Dickens' book. It was in two parts. The first part was done from the point-of-view of Mr. Clennan and and the second part was done from the point-of-view of Amy (aka Little) Dorrit. Each part was its own movie, with each part lasting about three hours. I came in on the last hour of part one and was sufficiently sucked in to continue watching when part two started. I enjoyed it, and as with most Charles Dickens' adaptations, waited until some great deus ex machina would be revealed to make the entire story fall into place. I'm in the last ten minutes of part two when, suddenly, the satellite signal goes out because there's a thunder storm passing over. When the signal reconnected, the credits were rolling. Does that suck major donkey balls or what? Yeah, it does. Anyway, although I suspect Amy and Mr. Clennan live happily ever after, I don't know that they live happily ever after. Stupid satellite signal. How do we spy on other countries if the weak-ass signal can't even make its way through a thunder cloud? Answer that one for me, will you. I will confess, however, to watching this entire Kathy Griffin tribute that was playing on Bravo. They showed her reality show and then a couple of her stand-up acts. She's actually pretty funny and all I want to know is if she can make a living bad-mouthing celebrities, I should be able to make a living bad-mouthing all the normal people I encounter in my life because, really, normal people are just as screwed up as celebrities. They just don't get the same press.

K, K, Karaoke. Karaoke. (I'm rapping. Can you tell?)

OK, here's me singing Englishman in New York by Sting, who I have loved since I was 15. My husband thinks I would leave him for Sting, but I wouldn't. But I still love Sting. The first time I saw Sting was during his Dream of the Blue Turtles tour. I was 16 and there was a lull between Roxanne and Message in a Bottle, so I screamed as loud as I could, "I LOVE YOU, STING!!!" And he smiled, which means he heard my voice. I was pretty jived after that because Sting heard my voice. HE HEARD MY VOICE! Before that concert, I'd also written a poem for him which I wanted to put in a glass (well, probably plastic) bottle and then throw up on stage to him. I was going to put my name and address on it because I was certain once he read it, he'd be so blown away by my talent that he'd want me to write songs with him. I never did find an acceptable bottle, so all my dreams were dashed that night. But at least he heard my voice.

P.S. I just realized I sound like a lounge singer here.

OK, this is totally funny.

Here's Britney's new baby in his first photo, courtesy of American Idle.

Ain't he just precious, y'all? With the little ciggy and bottle of Jack. He gonna be just like his daddy.

Praise the Lord. Halleluiah!

Yesterday my husband found out he got a job he interviewed for a couple of weeks ago and we are all ecstatic about it. I'm especially ecstatic about it because there's a lot of stuff about our life that will be much easier now. For starters, my husband's new job is actually in the town we live in now. For several years he's been commuting about an hour and a half away from town for work. Now, he'll only be about five minutes from home. Needless to say, with gas prices being the way they are, it really couldn't have happened at a better time. It also makes life easier for me because that means there are two of us in town now who can take care of the occassional school emergencies that come up every once in a blue moon with our daughter. I've been the point man for everything concerning our daughter because I've been the only one easily accessible during the day. Now we can spread the love a little bit. Also, it means we can eat family meals. Usually, my daughter and I eat dinner because my husband gets home too late, and then he just eats by himself when he gets home. He's going to be assistant vice president for administration and operations for a credit union in town. He was a regional investment officer for the bank he just left. I'm pretty happy about the situation.

Disappointment in Paradise

Why can't anything we want end up the way we want it to end up? What am I talking about? I'm talking about my new iPod Shuffle. Guess what I found out yesterday. You can only download songs from one computer. If you try to plug it into a different computer than the one you originally downloaded from, you've basically got to erase your entire song base before the new computer will recognize it (the iPod). I've got two computers with different music and I can't just download some songs from one computer and then download other songs from the other computer. AAARGH!!! The fantasy is ruined. Ruined, I tell you. Other than that little glich, the iPod works GREAT! I used it yesterday when I went running and I was very pleased. It's just the downloading issue I've got problems with.

So I'm currently in the process of getting my daughter hooked on Judy Blume books. Reading Judy Blume books is an indespensible rite of passage for young readers as far as I'm concerned. I can't even tell you how many times I've read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Not that I'm starting her off with the hardcore stuff, mind you. We've just finished Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing and are currently reading Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great. If you're a girl and you're not familiar with Judy Blume books, I can only guess that you're an alien from another galaxy. My daughter is really enjoying the books. I've told her a little bit about what Are You There God? is about, but I'll have to wait before I go too much into what Deenie is about. For those who don't know, Deenie is about a girl who has to wear a back-brace and deals with life's troubles by masturbating. My girl is only seven, I think she can wait a few more years before she discovers the world of masturbation within the pages of a Judy Blume book.

Who's dat? Who's dere?

Do you ever feel like you've been sucked into a vortex that fucks up the entire space-time continuum so that when you're spit back out again you're not sure where you are or who you are or whose life you're living? That's kind of how I feel right now for some strange reason. I feel really harrassed lately, like I can't take a little time for me. It's probably because school is back and everything's back in gear. But I really feel like I've gone from 0 to 150 in about ten seconds. I haven't had time to read the blogs I normally like to read and it feels like I've totally lost touch with reality because of it. Isn't that weird? I guess it's like missing episodes of a soap opera. One day Ellie Sue is pregrant with Billy Bob's illegitimate baby and then the next time you tune in Ellie Sue has been murdered by her son's psycho girlfriend who was jealous of his Oedipal yearnings.

Anyway, I've got to cut out. I have to start working on my daughter's Halloween costume. She wants to be a Pokemon trainer. Probably no one will be able to figure out what she is and that'll really piss her off because she doesn't have a lot of tolerance for people who can't immediately recognize who she's dressed up as. I think she considers it some kind of intellectual defect on the part of the guesser. Oh yeah, my husband's going to be a garden gnome.

My man treats me good.

Guess what? My husband bought me an iPod Shuffle over the weekend. Isn't that swell? This way I don't feel guilty about getting it because it was a gift. So I've been putting music on it and playing with it and generally enjoying my new toy. As I've mentioned before, I only need it for jogging, so it's perfect. I actually can't wait to go running tomorrow so I can use it.

My husband also brought home a chinchilla for our daughter last Friday. A lady was giving away her pet chinchilla because she's moving to North Carolina. My daughter's been wanting a chincilla for a long time, but I refused to let her get one because they cost too much money. So when my husband called from work Friday and said he'd seen the ad in the local paper, I told him he could go take a look at it. Needless to say, she was pretty excited about it. So having given away the guinea pigs only a couple of weeks ago, we're back up to a pet head count of four. I don't know how this happens.

Karaoke Friday (I gave up on trying to be creative.)

Hi, how are ya? Welcome to another installment of KC's Karaoke Friday. I went back to the karaoke machine on this one. It's Madonna's Beautiful Stranger. I've done Madonna twice now, but only because the karaoke machine only has a limited number of songs I've ever heard of in my life before, which is why I've been using the karaoke function on my stereo for most of my songs. Anyway, enjoy.

Now that we've gotten through that part of the post, can I tell you it's 3:30 in the freaking A.M. I woke up and I can't get back to sleep, so I'm posting. This has been happening to me a lot the last couple of weeks, I wake up and can't go back to sleep until an hour before I'm supposed to be up. It pretty much SUCKS because then I'm all groggy and thick-headed the rest of the day. Oh, I got the pictures back from my brother's wedding, so here are a couple like I promised.

This is my brother and his new wife.

I'll do more later. It's almost 4:00 and I want to see if I can get a smidgen of sleep before I have to be up in an hour and a half.

OK, I'm up now. Here are a couple more photos from my brother's wedding.
Here's a picture of my brother and his wife eating food. Really they're smiling and pretending to eat food.

Here's a picture of my parents.

And here's a picture of one of my uncles with a fairly decent size gaggle of women from my family.

Nothing New

It's Thursday and there's absolutely nothing else that makes today different than yesterday other than that. The school meet and greet thing was OK last night. I got to sit in a midget chair at a midget desk for half an hour, so that was good. And by good I mean not good. My daughter's teacher said my daughter is such a "darling girl." Which is true when she's not bugging the crap out of me. Funny thing happened the other day. Every Monday my daughter brings home her schoolwork from the previous week for us to look at and one of her writing exercises had a sentence she'd written that said something like: "I really like my new blue shirt." However, she'd left the letter "r" out of shirt. What drew my attention to it was that the teacher had underlined the misspelled word in green and then wrote the correct spelling above it. So I started laughing pretty hard because it's funny. And my daughter asked why I was laughing so I pointed to the misspelled word and I asked her what it said and she responds, "shit." And I'm like, yeah, remember that's one of the bad words I told you about, and then I laugh some more. Of course, then my daughter was frantic because she thought she was going to get in trouble and starts saying, "That was an accident. I didn't mean to do that." And I said that I knew it was an accident but it was still a funny accident. I'm sure it gave her teacher a little jolt when she first saw it, though. Kids are funny.

Why don't you talk to me?

Why don't any of you ever leave comments for me? I'd like to engage in conversation. I'd like to know your thoughts and opinions. I'd like to get to know the real you deep down inside. Let's dialogue and think outside the box. OK, I'm sitting here eating "New York Style" Bagel Crisps and I see they are made in Bulgaria. I don't think I've ever seen anything made in Bulgaria before. I thought all that came out of Bulgaria was summer labor for Wall Drug. Interesting. But getting back to what I was talking about. Speak to me, people. Speak to me. I'm listening and I care. I really, really do care. Really. I'm serious.

I'm really sleepy today. I don't know why. We have Back to School night at my daughter's school tonight. We go and meet her teacher and eat some cookies and drink some kool-aid. That kind of thing. The city tore up some of the equipment in the playground across the street from my house and we've been watching to see what they were going to put up to replace it. They tore down a slide, monkey bars, a ball hoop thing and a small climbing structure. Yesterday I think they finished installing the new equipment and all they put in was a small, baby slide, a fiberglass dinosaur on a giant spring and a merry-go-round. The merry-go-round is cool, but the rest doesn't make up for what they tore up. I hope they're still going to put in some kind of climbing structure or something. If they don't, then they've totally gipped the kids in the neighborhood.

Sad news

Heard some sad news over the weekend. One of the ladies on my social life committee lost her newborn baby. They had to deliver early because an ultrasound showed water on the lungs and they didn't expect the baby to live, but it's obviously still very heart-wrenching. It's the woman who I don't much like, the one who never really helps. But despite not being my favorite person, no one deserves to have something like that happen to them. She's really had a crappy month because her mother died a few weeks ago, too. It just makes you realize how precious life is and how you can't take for granted any of your loved ones because you don't know what tomorrow brings. I just put a condolence card in the mail. I don't know what I would do in a similar circmustance. Losing my child is the only thing that really scares me.

Karaoke Vendredi

OK, I know today's title isn't too terribly creative, but you try thinking of five bajillion ways to say Karaoke Friday. Anyway, one of my many not so secret dreams is to be a rock star. If someone were to come up to me and say, "Hey, would you like me to make you a rock star?" I'd say yes. So, I spend a lot of my karaoke singing pretending to be a rock star and this week's song is one of my favorite pretend-to-be-a-rock-star song. I imagine I'm performing in a HUGE stadium and people are waving lighters at me and I'm breaking some sort of public deceny law. So here I am singing Stone Temple Pilots' Plush.

By the way, I witnessed the fury of the praying mantis this morning. While I was sitting there eating my yogurt and Grape Nuts, I look over to the tank and the praying mantis is hanging from a branch directly above one of the hapless crickets when, BAM!, he snatched that cricket up faster than a greased pig on a slip-n-slide. I called my daughter in and she watched it for a few seconds before she said, "This is really disgusting."

Unfortunately, my husband was in the shower, so he missed most of the action. He did comment on the irony that the only person in the house who wasn't too terribly excited about watching the praying mantis in action was the one who ended up seeing it. What can I say? C'est la vie.

On a grimer note, last night was the first time I got a chance to sit down and watch the news a little about Katrina and I have to say I was shocked by the video. People walking around in thigh-deep water carrying around garbage bags full of stuff. You know, I really can't imagine what it must be like to lose everything like that. Of course, this is something that's been happening for as long as people have wanted to live in areas vulnerable to natural disaster. But there is something about what's happening in New Orleans that seems so different than other post-hurricane stories we've seen in the past and it's all about the human element. I can't believe people are shooting at rescue teams. I can't believe--in this country of abundance--we are not getting the necessary aid to the people in need. And explain the looting to me. Where are they going to take all the stuff they've stolen? If they're in the city, I'm assuming they don't have anywhere to take it. It's complete pandemonium, it's like watching something on another planet. All I can say, is lets just pray for all people in need down there.

Daily Dancer Interview, Part IV

Have I got what you want? Oh you better bet your sweet bottoms I do. More, more, more Daily Dancer exposed. Will we find out when DD and G tie the knot? Will we find out who is DD's animated doppelganger? How far is DD willing to go for money? Keep reading to find the answers to these and more intriguing questions.

KC: So when are you and G getting married?

DD: Getting married? I have not even proposed yet, even though I have been with that wonderful person for almost five years. But, that time will likely come in the not-too-distant future.

KC: What type of software products are you interested in developing?

DD: Growing up, I have always wanted to develop games. Over the years, I have made many tiny demos, and I have come up with lots of ideas, but I never completed anything substantial. Other than that, I am interested in developing anything that challenges my design skills, as opposed to forcing me to hack together tedious code.

KC: I find it interesting that you have so many artistic (read "abstract") interests yet make your living in a field that relies more on logical, mathematical thinking. Do you feel that the two sides of your brain are in constant struggle with each other?

DD: Not really. Software development is not really mathematical unless the application calls for it. It is, however, full of structure and hierarchy. Artistic talents like dancing and playing music are similar in the sense that they involve large routines/pieces that can be broken down into smaller, more detailed, parts.

KC: Do you think you'll ever play the guitar for us? I think people would like to get a glimpse into all your talents. What do you say?

DD: That is a strong possibility. Maybe as a bonus video?

KC: Which cartoon character did you identify with most as a child (or even now) and why?

DD: Well, my serious, over-analytical, side identifies with characters like Brainy Smurf. My naive and immature side identifies with characters like Sponge Bob Square Pants. Growing up, I was a big fan of The Chipmunks. I have a bit of each one of them in me.

KC: If somebody offered you a million dollars to go full monty on your blog, would you do it?

DD: I would consider it. But, for now, I am keeping my blog clean as a whistle. Well, except for the occasional partial strip-tease and explicit lyrics...

KC: How does G manage not to laugh when she's filming your dances? Also, now that we know you haven't learned how to do the windmill move, I really, really think we need to see you give it a try.

DD: Maybe she is so used to my craziness that the novelty has warn off? And the windmill move is still not out of the question. I must look it up.

<< previous interview, Part III/ next interview, Part V >>