Ivory's Unfinished Thoughts

Pack of Angry Wolves...

2006-10-19T18:59:00.000-05:00

Got another bill for XXX from his dermatologist, even though I have called them repeatedly to tell them he doesn't and never really did live here. I'm guessin' they're beyond pissed and fixin' to send out the wolves on him.

Hey, wouldn't it be funny if they really did send wolves after him, like a pack of wolves just chasing him around Milwaukee? Hilarious!

I think the outdoors would be a lot more entertaining if every once and a while someone ran by with a pack of wolves chasing him/her. Maybe one rips the bottom of a woman's dress but she manages to get just a little bit ahead again. A lot of people are in debt. And it would be kinda like 'The Poppins' (If unfamiliar with this referance please see Arrested Developement, Season 3, Episodes 2-6 featuring Charlize Theron).

JP, do I love 'The Poppins', even if they are unregistered! So, I'm sure that I would be amused for hours, watching broke folks getting chased down by angry, debt-collecting wolves.

This chase scene should also apply to people who launder money, commit any sort of stock fraud and evade taxes just to keep it equal...people like Wesley Snipes. He's an action star (C'mon people, I've seen JUNGLE FEVER. He does not have a flare for the dramatic). They could film it. They'd make millions. It could be Weskey's comeback.

What about Martha Stewart? Wolves could chase her...and she could say, "And that's NOT a good thing." Also, why not throw in cheating boyfriends/husbands...Nah, wait. That would just be chaos in the streets. Said 'hunted' would then get off scott-free if they manage to survive for...let's say 72 hours or so.

All-Weather Babies...

2006-10-17T15:39:00.000-05:00

So, it's been a while...but in my defense, I have been a busy girl. I've been doing some major painting in my house, fighting with the weather which has either been blindingly dry and cold or soaking wet amongst other numerous things (made all new curtains for the living room and dining room, replaced the old crappy window seat wood, cleaned the chandelier - every single crystal cleaned by hand, so on and so forth.)

Anyway, I had to move Jezebelle's house from the spot it's been in for the last year and a half since we got her to the middle of the room, on the other side of the dining room table and away from the cats locked safely behind the bedroom door. This is giving her some major wiggins and she still has issues if you tell her to go to her house. I'm sure she won't be traumatized for the rest of her life for it, but the trouble is....I'm gonna move it again to the foyer right by Angus' house so that'll be like their own little room and what not...and it gives me the chance to get the gigantic puppy bed out of the newly redecorated turet portion of the living room.

I also decided along the way to get them toddler beds for beds, so I've been shopping around. There's one I really like the style of but it's like $100 more than I planned to spend and only comes in white. My search continues.

Today, a day the computer actually got turned on amongst the redecoration chaos, I decided to shop for the toddler beds online. If any of you have ever read anything of mine before, you know I have serious problems with online shopping (It's frustrating and I have no patience). I googled TODDLER BED...came up with Amazon so I decided to give it a shot first since it's usually one of the most frustrating sights of them all and if left till the end...my fist may go through my flat screen.

So, there I was at Amazon...only it hadn't taken me anywhere near toddler beds. In fact, it had taken me to baby cribs. Sometimes the brilliance at Amazon is priceless. They generally make it into the ball park with their search function (That is unless of course you search for Barbie like I was last Xmas and they offer you Twister - the game, not the movie...although, if they had offered the movie, it would have been just as bizarre.)

I moved the cursor to the amazon search bar, typed in toddler bed and hit enter. This time, there were toddler beds. I finally began my shopping. I thought I was on my way.

I filtered through the first couple pages with my mouth agape at the prices of some of these toddler beds. Honestly, I'm looking around for beds for my dogs so I'm tryin' to be frugal about it and still get something decent. I repeat they for my dogs...there's a high likelihood they'll be destroyed within a year and I'll be doing this again...I'm allowed to be a little cheap. And I'd like to think that children for the most part are better behaved and less destructive than my dogs, or any dogs for that matter, but parents, if you're paying upwards of a grand for a toddler bed which by it's name it's implied to be temporary, you should be taken out to the nearest child slave labor lumber yard and fed into the wood chipper by the eldest male child of the tribe!

It's absolutely ridiculous the prices of some of these beds...and then they don't even come with the mattress. And if you want a toddler bed that converts into a larger bed (generally full size so far as I've seen) that costs more, not that I'm looking for that option for the dogs. I'm just saying, toddler beds are a little pricey. I'm not really looking to spend more that $500 on two beds and that's including the price of the Sealy crib mattresses.

I dove in deeper on a few beds that I found intruiging and within my budget, ended up not liking most of them, but I did notice the bizarre descriptions.

Someone, please tell me why a paragraph about a toddler bed would ever need to include the phrase 'All Weather'? I expect descriptions for tires to say 'All Weather'...camping equiptment...maybe even electronics...but descriptions for what is essentially baby furniture...I don't think so.

What are you people doing with your children? Are there two year olds sleeping outside during hailstorms (no, really. the babies really like getting pelted with ice balls)? Did everyone at DCF die?

Why does it matter if the toddler bed is 'All Weather'? I can't even imagine the scenario. I guess if you were like a treasure hunter, or possibly...a...starship captain...never mind that one. Who the hell traipses through 'All Weather' with a toddler bed? I've heard tales of people that never saw the light of day from anything more than a closed window for months after having children, let alone experience even the remotest need for anything 'All Weather'. And I'd have to seriously question your parenting skills if your family is livin' in an igloo one year and a thatch hut in the middle of a jungle tree the next.

I'm a firm believer that if you have a baby or toddler...don't take it to the rainforest. Just get a babysitter. Or tell your friends ya can't go.

Are there people out there testing these beds in 'All Weather'? If so, I'd like to know how they hold up in a hurricane. If it's better than the levees in New Orleans, I think I'm sold. I figure they should have to at least be better than The Saints' stadium.

OK, I've said my piece, and now, after all this venting, I've actually come up with someone who could at some point in the near future be in need of an expensive 'All Weather' toddler bed...

Angelina Jolie!

Frakkin' BrAngelina! Dammit, they foil me every time!

Strange & Irratic Ears

2006-09-11T07:15:00.000-05:00

So, I was sitting here, bored out of my friggin' skull and pretty concerned that I'm melting when I decided to browse through the strange-ass MP3s and the like left on my hard drive...hmm, a pretty strange array if you ask me especially if you take into consideration my age, race and gender...not to mention my general attiude, which recently has been pretty pissy. Here's the top 10 of bizarro mix...

1 - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips (Why do I still love The Flaming Lips after all this time? Four words for you...Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. They're evil natured robots, ya know. And this is probably the most played track on my PC next to Fort Minor's Where'd You Go)
2 - Pinacoladaberg By Coconut Pete from the movie 'Broken Lizard's Club Dread' (As opposed to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville...What can I say? This movie has a really entertaining soundtrack. We have jungle rats?)
3 - All Cried Out by Lisa Lisa & The Cult Jam (Gotta love the slow jams!)
4 - Little Red Riding Hood by Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs (My mother used to let me abuse her vinyl collection starting at a very young age)
5 - Never No More by Patsy Cline (This can be blamed on Space: Above & Beyond and the really depressing episode in which this song showed up, not that there's anything wrong with Patsy Cline...other than the fact that I think she died before I was even a notion in my mother's head)
6 - Regulator by Warren G & Nate Dogg (Thanks BEG) [It actually was a three-way tie between this song, Snow's Informer and Positive K's I Got a Man]
7 - Murder She Wrote Remix by Chaka Demus (I knew a little girl, her name was Maxi...which now also just makes me think of Max on Dark Angel, not that this song ever popped up on that show...On a side note: This show eventually boiled down to Ellen Degeneres' 'Someone Might Marry a Goat' theory. Apparently the same logic that applies to republicans and gay marriage also applies to freed 'nomalies' and the general public)
8 - In My Wildest Dreams by Belinda Carlisle (Yes, the song from Mannequin)
9 - Get Naked by Methods of Mayhem (It's the dirty version and I can't resist Tommy Lee. I also have Fame 2002 and I actually watched Supernova)
10 - With You by Jessica Simpson (I have no idea how this even ended up on my drive)

It's fun to check in every once and while, sort of like stopping by to measure the level of mental and move it back to a safe area before it gets out of control.

It Just Keeps Getting Creepier...

2006-08-03T21:27:00.000-05:00

So, I was downstairs in the basement. This is an activity I generally don't engage in after dark with the creepy, possibly haunted house and all and the fact that there's that weird room with the heavy door and the hollow floor down there, but I needed to empty the dehumidifier cause I totally forgot to do it when it was still light out. So, I went down there and emptied the stupid thing so it doesn't sit filled and burn itself out. While I was down there, I thought, hell, while I'm already being brave I might as well sort some dirty laundry. And then I had to pee.

Using the bathroom in the basement is another something I never do. I think I've used that half bath once since we moved in almost two years ago and that was in broad daylight when I wasn't the only one in the house. The bathroom is really small and I have some serious claustrophobia. Also, this bathroom gets used a lot by hubby and his dirty handed friends and is for the most part not female cleanliness compliant.

Anyway, I go into the dinky, little room to basically hover over the toilet as opposed to sitting on the seat directly, making sure to lock the door behind me. For some strange reason I thought ghosts wouldn't be able to get in if the door was locked. Silly me.

I was about to commence the hovering, when the door flings open and bangs me in the knee. Yes, the locked door. The door I made sure to lock before I even unzipped. Creepy, yes, but since I never use that bathroom, I thought maybe the door lock was a little trickier than I had previously assumed. Once again, I locked the door, really inspecting the thing to make sure it was fully locked this time, which even involved me tugging on the knob to see if I would open it. And I couldn't.

So, I'm hovering...not like you needed to know that and the door which was fully locked to the point I could not pull open myself, flings open again. I literally hit the light and bolted around the corner and up the stairs making a horrible ruckus. The basement door was promptly closed and double locked.

Now, I'm totally freakin' out and since I don't sleep anymore, I'm just gonna be sittin' here all night freakin' out. And I swearm I don't care how much I have to pee, I will never use that bathroom again. I will walk four blocks to the Open Pantry before I do and use their equally not female cleanliness compliant bathroom.

Gateway to Hell...

2006-08-03T17:44:00.000-05:00

So, hubby is a bad driver. He has a lead foot and basically has a serious lack of concentration. He has a radar detector, but it's either quieter than his blaring talk radio or he just ignores it.

In the beginning of June he went to traffic court to try and save his driver's lisense after getting his umpteenth speeding ticket. The judge or whatever the hell she was gave him sixty days to enroll in a points reduction class and hubby who would've ordinarily said this class was going to be a waste of his time agreed to comply.

Unfortunately, in addition to being a bad driver, he is forgettful and a total procrastinator. His court is tomorrow...he called me at noon today to talk me into going down to Gateway to sign him up for the class.

Now, I have reminded and nagged at him about taking care of this for the last 59 days. I'd hoped he'd get on it. Alas, I got to be the one to walk into the Gateway student services center, after having not slept really at all for the last six days (something like a total of 16 hours over the last six days is all the sleep I've gotten) to deal with a system I appparently am just too retarded to understand while squinting...in the dim light and shaking heavily.

I stood in line at the fourth admissions desk (the other three bitches were apparently out to lunch) with no idea where I was supposed to be especially since hubby is not a real student. Point reduction is not a real class. I waited in this line for about thirty minutes behind a mother and her two Gateway bound children (how adorable) listening to the phone ring and go ignored. They did not pick up the phone once while I was there and I thought hubby was lying when he said no one was returning his phone calls.

Finally, I get to the front of the line just in time for the woman at the desk to put up her out-to-lunch sign and walk away from me as though I was clear and not standing right in front of her with an angry look on my face (this was the sort of look that could burn holes in human flesh). I was not amused and stated so, seeing as how I was the last person in the line. Bitch finally stepped back into place and helped me, telling me to fill out the top half of the form with hubby's information, the class number and then I should sign it at the bottom. She even offered me a pen.

I performed these tasks with my own pen when the one she gave stopped working and basically became nothing more than a weapon with which one could gauge their own eyes out, or someone else's while waiting in these ridiculous lines. But like I said, I had my own pen so I moved right along...until I got to the part where it wanted hubbys social security numer.

Am I supposed to know that? I imagine if I did it would just end up jumbled with all the other numbers in my head...and I wasn't about to write down what could be half my nazi grandmother's phone number and part credit card pin. So, I tried to call hubby...twice...to no avail. I said screw it and got in the registration line.

The woman at the desk was on the phone. I assume she had made this call as opposed to her having answered a call seeing as how they don't seem to know how to respond to a consistently ringing telelphone there at the technical college. She seemed perfectly pleasant though.

I waited for her to get off the phone for twenty minutes, fanning myself with the green registration form. Finally, a short brightly colored hispanic woman appeared in the next window. I thought she was my salvation at the other woman continued to flap her mouth at the phone. As my luck would have it though, this was not so much the case when I stepped over.

I asked her what I should do about not knowing hubby's social in its entirety (I know the last four but that's a bank account thing). She decided she was going to yell at me for having signed the form, telling me I couldn't do that. I told her the woman at the fourth admissions desk told me to. We then had to wait for the woman on the phone still flappin' her jaw so the hispanic troll could ask her if I could do that or not. Clearly, I had already done it and had been told to by the woman at the fourth admissions desk now disappeared to lunch. Woman on phone finally noticed she was needed and although did not end her conversation, merely put her hand over the phone and said that I could sign the form, which clearly I already had and had been told to do.

Hispanic troll then decided that she was going to further her bitch status by being snippy with me and telling me she would have to send hubby the paperwork through the mail as she is not allowed to give the information to anyone else (little did she know that just a mere four blocks away I was the one who opened hubby's mail). I needed proof he was enrolled for court tomorrow and she was not even being nice about being not helpful at all. She wasn't even going to give me a receipt for the check I clearly wrote.

Finally I demanded the receipt, snatched it from her hand angerily and stormed out of the building.

Da Plane, Boss! Da Plane!

2006-07-26T09:40:00.000-05:00

Ok so, it's not a plane...but it is a tattoo!

So, yesterday's tattoo excursion went on until shortly after one this morning, long after the place had closed and long after I had originally expected to be home...especially since we started with appointments for seven o' clock.

We got there, early, no less to find Steph (tattoo artist extraordiare) just starting a tattoo for a walk-in. It was the girl's eighteenth birthday...and her first tattoo, so there was slack cut. This slack quickly began to wear when various members of her family and random friends began popping in and out of the tattoo place to check in on her/harass her and she was whining about the pain and just generallly being a total wuss about the entire ordeal.

We sat there (Chris was looking through the design books searching for her perfect new soon-to-be tattoo) poking fun at said 18 year old girl. For quite some time we thought she might actually vomit, but no dice. After about an hour, Steph told us she was still gonna be a while, but that she had no problem staying late for us if we didn't mind the wait. She said at least another hour, so we booked to The 'Ho to get a drink since Chris hasn't been there since she was pregnant and put on bed rest.

At The 'Ho, I completely fascinated a pair of out-of-towners with tales of my possibly haunted house. This was me talking to Chris and Bob and the O-o-Ts eavesdropping and then finally getting involved. They were drunk as hell so screwing with them was fun since they at that point would have believed just about anything. I, myself, only half-heartedly believe the house is haunted and just generally try to ignore it.

We got back to the tattoo place at like ten after nine to find annoying girl still in the chair and still whining, not to mention once again looking like she was about to throw up. Poor stupid girl.

First off, one's first tattoo probably shouldn't be the most gigantic angel wings to be found across one's very tan (tight) back. This girl had no clue what she was in for and in the end had been sitting in the chair for nearly four hours. Also, when getting gigantic tattoo across one's back, one should not be allowed to whine when she literally had to sit in front of gigantic windows wearing nothing more than a bra (and this girl had some big boobs on her) to have enough space to accomodate everyone who came in to see her. And finally, I don't think one gets to bitch about the pain when there was four hours put in for really beautiful art for which the artist requested a fee of only $150.

Finally, it was our turn. Chris had at this point changed her mind several times about her tattoo design bouncing from 'something non-girly' to a fairy to a pin-up angel with giant breasts (this for some strange reason a request from Lil' Miss Maddy) and then back to a very non-girly giant black dragon which would take up her whole forearm and have her wearing long sleeves to work for the rest of her life, but at that point I wasn't about to argue.

Then, because I think Chris was being a big wuss, she declared I needed to go first. I hadn't had a tattoo for like three years, so I got brave and got in the chair. It was a cakewalk and I love my tattoo for which Steph only wanted $60. I told her she was being robbed blind considering I paid $100 for my last one and in comparison the last one was a little nothing tattoo that took less than an hour. There was some declaration that at her prices I would be getting tattoos every other day.

With me done and wrapped, Chris, friggin' exhausted since it was pretty late and she has that new baby and all, finally got in the chair, ready to pass out and got her gigantic black dragon. I also somewhere along the way (probably with the liquor and late hour) lost all concept of depth perception and tripped on a step taking a nose dive into Chris' knee...no damage. And then it was like ten after one and we were in a bad neighborhood so we got the hell out of there.

Tattoo is on my right back shoulder. The pic was the best I could do by myself. I will try to get hubby to take a better pic later...when he calms down enough from my going out and getting a tattoo without his prior knowledge and then coming home way late and waking him up so I could get in...and then keeping him awake with my insomniac with a new tattoo babbling when he had to be up at 4 am...but hey, I was starving and clearly I never sleep. I don't know what else he expected.

Insomnia - Part 1

2006-07-24T23:23:00.000-05:00

So, I'm still not sleeping...big surprise. Now, I've basically decided to just bypass the notion of even laying down especially since the headache that I've had coming and going for the last six days only seems to want to kill me when I slow down and try to relax. Said headache has had me chowing down ibuprofen like it's candy and that's basically tearing apart my stomach.

I keep suggesting in a very 'Arnold' kind of manner that it may be a tumor and BEG keeps reminding me that it probably isn't. She's probably right seeing as how it's more likely the result of my ever continuing sleeplessness, which I can only imagine is a result of stress (this last week has not been very easy on me with the 12 day old washer breaking and being replaced, the flood in my office due to a strangely leaking radiator, etc.) and anxiety.

Hubby suggested that turning the ceiling fan off in the bedroom may help me to sleep. It's not very likely since I'm used to the noise both it and the left-on-by-hubby TV make. He's been lulling himself to sleep with the same 10 documentaries for the last nearly eight years. I'm used to them, know them and could probably repeat all narration verbatim if I had to.

I'm also pretty used to the sounds of the ghetto...gunshots, bastard children riding power wheels from sun up til...geez it's nearly midnight and I don't think they've even slowed down yet, not to mention the schrill screams of angry baby mommas. This is mostly exaggeration. I really only live in like ghetto lite...but we do still live close enough to hear the occasional gunfire. Regardless, I'm accustomed to the general craziness of my 'hood.

In the past few hours I have uttered such memorable things as "I was going to put baby heads in the oven but my wooden balls are too big." (this actually does make sense) and numerous hilarious remarks about Suri Cruise (wherever she may be). Also, I reminded BEG that she hadn't watched Morley Safer (I have no idea if this is spelled correctly, but then again, I also don't really care).

Hubby made me watch the movie 'Marci X'...the edited for TV version on WE no less. Sometimes, I just don't understand him at all. I guess it was better than him forcing me to watch some fucking retarded documentary about that Japanese airport that I've seen like twenty seven million times already. But then again, I do actually own 'Marci X' on DVD.

I'm supposed to go get tattooed with Miss Maddy's momma tomorrow. I agreed to it earlier today, or now yesterday as it were and we supposed to go yesterday, but the tattoo bitch didn't call back in time. Now, as I'm sitting here, plotting said tattoo, I'm losing interest and having second thoughts. Tattoos are expensive (not that I can't afford it) and time consuming (not that I don't have the time...clearly, since my wooden balls are too big, I will not be puttng baby heads in the oven later today either) and I'm certainly lacking patience at the moment.

Paris Hilton Sings...

2006-07-19T05:23:00.000-05:00

Someone Snatch Tinkerbell Before She Records A Song!

So, I'm awake...and it's awfully friggin' early. Problematic? Why, yes, especially if you take into consideration that I am once again not getting enough sleep thanks to the ever rising temperatures and humidity and the fact that I'll need to at least be awake until like 10pm (current time...5:23 am) after having already been awake most of last night thanks to hubby sleep-ranting and thrashing about (he is also not sleeping well thanks to the weather) but ultimately not my biggest issue at the moment.

I turned on VH1, which is generally the course of things even when my eyes weren't pried open by the blinding light of my hubby turning on every switch he could find, madly searching the house for his Treo. His entire existence is in this device and he cannot function without it..or me. It's one of these things where I remind him to breath and the Treo reminds him to call me. There's a system in place folks and it's not to be tampered with. Regardless, I was basically aggravated awake to begin with.

I turned on VH1, for some reason with Fort Minor's 'Where'd You Go' (very nearly the most depressing song one can expect to hear first thing in the morning...Thank you VH1 for single handedly raising the suicide rate by usually playing this song back to back with Blue October's 'Hate Me' which is now as I like to call it the suicide anthem of 2006) already in my head, but alas, there was no Mike Shinoda/Holly Brook assault combo lulling me to tears. There wasn't even any sign of them, nor was there a whored out Nelly Furtado singing when instead she should have just spread her legs and filmed that for three or for minutes with the 1812 Overture playing in the background.

Instead, the very first thing I see is Paris Hilton, in black and white covered in sand and rolling around on a half naked man. At first I thought she had another porn video floating around and then for a moment wondered when VH1 started playing porn (I had this very same reaction last night when I saw Sci-Fi playing ECW wrestling). I gave this up around the time Nelly Furtado came to mind again. Alas, it was a music video...Paris Hilton's music video...and now, my brain hurts.

If you overlook the fact that Ms. Hilton is well, quite frankly, more suited for porn and on a good day, the mere act of her speaking is reminiscent of a chihuahua caught in a vaccum...with it's nostrils stapled shut...and the fact that her about to be a one-hit-wonder video is so clearly a blatant rip-off of Chris Isaak's 'Wicked Game' video, the song was just not that bad. It's sort of catching in the same way as famous hits of yor, like 'The Macarena' or The Children of the Damned's, er, Hanson's 'Mmm Bop' or even Pat Boone covering 'Crazy Train'.

So, Paris Hilton sings...or at least went into a recording studio and made some kind of noise they were able to clean up enough to call singing. If I had to guess, I'd say it was possible that it was actually Paris in the studio squeezing poor, little Tinkerbell forcing her to make squealing sounds into the microphone which were then fed into one of those SETI computers and turned into what sounds like singing. Either that or Ms. Hilton paid some loser who used to be on The MMC (someone who's daily life involves acts if voodoo against people like Justin & Britney) to sing for her in a Milli Vanilli sort of scenario.

This just goes to show that if you have enough money, a good engineer and have seen at least one music video from the early 90's, you too can record a song and find one-hit wonder fame (not that she needed it). Quick! Somebody get Jack Wagner to record another album!

Final Battle Mal & Not Fade Away Angel Part 2...

2006-06-12T09:37:00.000-05:00

So, here is the long-awaited sequel. Sorry it took so long, but I went on vacay.

Mal and Angel hide in the woods (which is really just a fake plant in my dining room) waiting for when they will strike...

And finally, the schoolbus they were seeking arrives (I'm 27 with no children...I own a Fisher Price

Little People schoolbus...deal with it). Time to strike down the wicked non-symboled My Little Pony...

Angel jumps in with some real cool Matrix style moves while Mal takes a more subtle approach with his gun...

Mal: "Give up this bus, pony!"

Pony: "Ahhh! Captain Tightpants!"

"Pony, I will riddle you with holes!"

Angel: "Did you have to stop so the bushwhoolie could cross?"

Mal: "There are pedestrian laws!"

Angel: "Since when are you about the law?"

Mal: "Fine! He's adorable and we can't go around killin' everything!"

Angel: "This is just like the evil rubber duck!"

Mal: "The duck is NOT evil and neither is the bushwhoolie!"

Angel: "You wanna cuddle him too?"

Mal: "Grrr arrgh."

And finally, Mal and Angel take a lesson on getting along from their good friend The Piv and they hug it out!

The Incredibly True Adventures of...

2006-06-12T09:01:00.000-05:00

'Final Battle' Mal and 'Not Fade Away' Angel...

So, BEG was down a couple weekends ago (uh-huh, uh-huh) and we spent an entire day shopping, mostly at the mall. Shopping for us generally means we go out, to the mall or whatever and raise all sorts of hell. We're loud and obnoxious and all about the mockery. It's not uncommon for BEG to yell profanities in Target at the top of her lungs (I've heard her yell, "FUCK" in Target more than a few times) or for me to yell for her about something from many aisles away. There also tends to be a lot of trying on clothing right out in the open, ala Courtney Love (This usually happens in HOT TOPIC).

Upon our arrival at the mall, post breakfast at the local IHOP, we found that the Suncoast Video was going out of business and selling everything off, super cheap. We were immediately drawn to the action figure section having found it just a few feet away from where it used to be. We oohed and aahed over the rack of remaining marked down action figures which included both 'Final Battle' Mal from the movie SERENITY and 'Not Fade Away' Angel from of course the TV show, 'Angel'. They had to be purchased (Even if only to make sure that Angel was accurately taller than Mal)...along with Willow, Tara and Miss Kitty Fantastico.

Returning home with our many unnecessary purchases (there were some 'Littlest Pet Shop' monkeys and turtles), found us busting into my Mal and Angel setting them free of their packaging, bought for entertainment purposes only having been so cheap and all and not for collectible purposes. Along the way, we got KP on the phone and there was some discussion about Mal doing naughty things to Angel with the screwdriver he came with (While being watched by Willow, Tara and Miss Kitty Fantastico) and there was some issue with keeping Mal's sword in his hand. We also oohed and aahed over the fact that Angel has the good rotating hands for better swrod action (yes, we are this easily amused).

So now I present to you, the beginning adventures of 'Final Battle' Mal and 'Not Fade Away' Angel...or in other words, what unemployed, clearanced out former TV star action figures do when they have no work to speak of...

Mal and Angel take a nice, soothing bubble bath together to start their day...but don't worry folks, they remain fully clothed!

Mal loves a bubbles bath...He also loves his rubber ducky!

Angel on the other hand hates rubber duckies. He thinks they're evil and he lives to slay them!

"I will slay you with my sword, duck!"

Mal is out of the bath, diving in the rescue his ducky before the sword of Angel can pierce her.

A fight for the ducks life breaks out and Mal does not have time to reach for his gun and his own sword is problematic, it won't stay in his hand...but he is sure he will win!

Mal has saved his duck and Angel will just have to learn to cut it some slack. He also has to learn to deal with the stress of being unemployed. It really seems to be getting to him.

As for Mal and his ducky? They're headed back to the tub.

Personally, I can't wait until The Pussycat Dolls dolls come out. I think that Mal and Angel should take them out on dates! Also, Angel should think Nicole is E-V-I-L and try to slay her. Ooh! Maybe we could find a Shakira doll on eBay...

I know there's a Michael Knight action figure around here somewhere although I think it would only be more homo-erotic since the ass of Knight's painted-on pants wore off a long time ago from sitting in the damned 'KIT' car! There could also be a possible 'Mal & Angel's Adventures with Gumby' series on the way.

Stay tuned for Part 2 when Mal and Angel team up to steal a schoolbus from a symbol-less My Little Pony...

Fake You!

2006-06-06T16:28:00.000-05:00

[There was a very entertaining picture to go with this post of a flame hand, giving the finger, but since Blogger is being terribly uncooperative, I had no such luck getting it into the post the million and one times I tried to upload it.]

Huh. Fake is like Cake with an F. Nevermind.

So, I absolutely loathe the fakeness in the world, faux concern for others and the like for the most part. It drives me nuts and since it doesn't really matter anyway and since they're not really doing anything to help, only saying things to make themselves look better and make themselves feel better, which is really a lot of work (people, it's tiring to be a do-gooder), I can't understand why people bother. No one really cares. I mean, sure, I feel bad for people, and they're are some I concern myself with more than I should and others I should care more about, but don't...whatever.

I also loathe the programmed response. Without fail, a day spent shopping has me hearing the phrase, "Have a nice day" or "Enjoy your afternoon" more times than I'd like. Cashiers don't really care if you have a lovely afternoon. They probably don't even want you to. It's just something they're supposed to say and after saying it so many times, it just comes out without thought. They might as well say, "Fuck off and die!" when you're walking away from the check-outs.

"Enjoy your meal" is another one. I don't know about you, but the employees from McDonalds really have no business saying this. It's a friggin' saw dust burger on a mangled bun. It's not a steak dinner at a fancy pants restaurant. My expectations of enjoyment are not that high for food wrapped in waxed paper, food that's probably been sitting under a heat lamp for a considerable amount of time. What they should really say is something like, "Don't choke on an onion snibble" or "Try not to cut yourself with a ketchup packet." It's just more honest.

Third, I hate it when you run into someone and they're all up and clearly pretending to care about what you've been up to when really it's just going in one ear and right out the other and said person is more than likely having an inner struggle trying to figure out what your name even is. Drives me nuts! "What have you been up to since [insert lame more than likely school or work related event said person knows you from] ...blah, blah, blah." I swear it's gonna be a bad day for whomever asks me that question next.

You could give them any ridiculous response you want. In ten minutes when they're standing in line to pay for their gas, they're not even going to remember. They'll remember they saw you, maybe for a day or two. Maybe they'll even tell another person who also had been at said lame event or knows you from somewhere. The fact that your answer was crazy won't even make them remember.

You could literally say, "I've been spoon-feeding Wallabies (that doesn't look right...hmmm.) sent here in a time machine from 1972." They would think you were crazy right then, and say something like, "Wallabies (once again, does not look right)?" People, when one word turns into a question, and it also happens to be a marcupial, it's not a good situation. To screw with them a little more you could look at them all crazy like and say, "Yes, from 1972." I would personally walk away at this point, just to leave said person a little more creeped out by me, but then again, I am a bold girl.

If they remember anything substantial at all it would be like, "I saw so-and-so the other day. He/She is working at the zoo or something now." And then said people would congratulate you, even though you are not there, on doing well and for having gotten such a great job.

So, here is a list of question, most of which get asked more often than not, for which I will make up stories to answer...

Where are you from? I am generally pretty honest about this one, but since it doesn't matter from now on, when asked such a question, I will respond by saying things like, "Gnome, Gome, Alaska." Thank you, guys at Broken Lizard. Or maybe, just maybe, I'll say, "I don't know." and act like I have amnesia or something. That would be hilarious.
More times than not, when I am outside, holding the hose, trigger in hand with water coming out, directed at my new sod and/or gardens, a small, not white child will walk up to me all cautious like and ask me what I am doing. From now on, I will tell any such child that I am feeding the bugs in my garden so they grow big and strong and eat your dog so I never have to listen to it bark all night ever again. I will tell them I am growing a legion of hell-mouthed raised beetles given to me by my wicked, evil crone of a mother-in-law (she does live in OH, near Cleveland) to kill my enemies and leave this ghetto a quiet, peaceful place again. They will grow as large as rhinos! Insighting fear in the hearts of children is awesome.
What have I been up to since [insert lame event mentioned above]? "I take a lot of pills." 'Nuff said about that. Of course with the people I have met in my lifetime, someone is bound to say something like, "Hey, who doesn't?" in a very agreeable kind of way.
"Why'd you do that?" This one I get from a lot of people and especially my hubby. Why did I do that? I was dared. The birds told me to. I saw it in a dream. It doesn't matter and why do you care? Most of the time something I've done is something so crazy or so time-consuming to explain (the complexities of me are just insane) why should I bother to tell the truth?

Stinky Mimes...

2006-05-30T08:43:00.000-05:00

I wanna live where this is necessary, people just wandering around...in traffic...in the desert...while hoola-hooping. I would laugh my ass off if there was an actual death or dismemberment that brought on this sign, some poor hoola-hooper just minding his own business, hooping around the desert and then splat...mowed over by a high-speed vehicle in the night (I'm assuming this would have happened in the dark as the desert is poorly lit at night and one could surely see a person with a hoola-hoop in the daytime...epsecially if they're not blind...Blind people should not be driving cars...unless they're Stevie Wonder, but that's another issue altogether).

I can only imagine the campaign that was launched to get this sign put up. I'm thinking the speech that nailed it home was something like this...

"Dammit, people! Bill WILL BE remembered! He couldn't do much, but he could hoop like no other. It was magnificent (in a very James Lipton kind of way) the way his hoop would go 'round 'n 'round! Ted Speederman has taken that away! This kind of carelessness must be stopped! No more hoopers will die!" (Viva la revelution! Chant, Chant, Chant!)

This would really only be funnier if the pedestrian representative was a mime, although, I have no idea how that would be conveyed on a street sign. Mimes are so quiet and sneaky you may not see them coming. Sure.

Trust me, people. You can always tell when a mime is coming. They have sort of an odor (I'm totally kidding), although I suppose you wouldn't smell that while carelessly racing through the desert (uh-huh, uh-huh) but I bet you could easily convey that on a street sign. I think it would go a little somethin' like this...

Nevermind. My fabulous artist rendering looks more like the ghost of a mime...a Scooby-Doo style villian maybe. Ahh, but the sign would still work if the ghost of a mime was haunting this particular stretch of desert road. On the flipside, my mime pedestrian representative could also pass for a mime puppet, possibly a possessed mime mariennette.

Either way, the entire concept of the hoola-hooper crossing is hilarious...and sort of reminiscent of when the deaf girl got run over by the train while text messaging...although after all the broo-ha-ha that discussion created, I will not be drawing the sign for that.

P.S. I think Katrina Kravy is slowly turning into Allison Gillman. If you live near Milwaukee, you know who they are.

Where's 'Slater' When You Need Him?

2006-05-26T11:39:00.000-05:00

So, I watch/hear a lot of daytime TV...mostly on TNT. I really don't and haven't had time in years to watch a lot of the primetime and later night TV I would have liked. Basically I catch the shows I missed...years later, in re-run. Lately, I've been watching both hours of 'ER' (although, I actually still watch this on Thursday nights and BTW: WTF? was up with that season finale?), both hours of 'Judging Amy' (Because I came to realize this show wasn't nearly as sappy as it seemed when it was on) and then suddenly because I'm lazy, I just stopped changing the channel when 'NYPD Blue' started right after 'Amy'.

I actually watched 'NYPD Blue' when it was on, right up until Jimmy Smits died. The addition of Rick Shroeder scared the bejesus out of me, so I stopped watching and thus also missed the loss of Mr. Silver Spoons and the additions of Mark Paul Gosselaar and Esai Morales (Can anybody scream, "RICHIE!" from a bridge as well as he can? I don't think so. Sorry, I had to get a LaBamba reference in here somewhere). The re-runs I'm currently watching on TNT have both MPG and EM. Mmm...or so I thought.

I've been watching the 'NYPD Blue' re-runs for about three weeks now. Luckily, like 'ER' this show was on forever and one can easily pick it back up after a long time away. Nothing ever really changes, I guess is what I mean. Plus, along with EM and MPG, they also got Charlotte Ross, and as a child who grew up with a mother that watched 'Days of Our Lives', I remember her as Evie (daughter of Shane)...and then from failed (although it wasn't given much of a real chance) show 'The Heights'.

Everything was going well. MPG is still ultra-adorable. He even looks like he fits in with the cast and for all intents and purposes, he's not a horrible actor, nor was he a horrible addition to 'NYPD Blue' (EM on the other hand could have spent more time with less clothing on, but hey, it was what it was). MPG as Detective Clark even seemed convincing doing cop things and hangin' with Dennis Franz...

Anway, Sipowicz and Connie were having a battle for her sister's baby and planning to get married on the sly. MPG got a new girlfriend once the whole 'framed' thing went away and his dad died. Just swell...until yesterday.

MPG as Detective Clark was mostly naked, pouring honey from a honey bear (was there a need to drag the poor bear into this) on his mostly naked new girlfriend's back and licking it off. This would have been fine if it had been anyone other than MPG, formerly Zack Morris...wholesome, wholesome Zack Morris. I literally started to feel queasy and had to look away from the TV until it was over.

No one of the original 'Saved by the Bell' cast should be licking anything off of anyone in prime time or whatever...except for Tiffany Amber Theisen, whom actually wasn't a part of the original cast but anyway (I got over the trauma of her being naughty when she joined the 90210 cast and basically lost her mind). It was one of the most disturbing things I've ever had to witness, especially since no matter how old he gets, MPG will always be Zack Morris to me and like I said, wholesome. Where is Slater when you need him? Even the homo-erotic tendencies of his relationship with Zack Morris were less detrimental to my fragile mental health than seeing MPG licking the back of a half-naked woman, adult themed TV or not! I think I would have rather just seen Dennis Franz's naked ass again...at least that didn't mess with my childhood memories as much as the honey licking thing.

Wooo-Hooo!

2006-05-25T09:26:00.000-05:00

The writer of this blog has been stricken with Spring Fever. She is feisty, her brain is lost and she is unable to sit still long enough to write a long-winded post about anything, and even if she could, it would be further delayed by her constantly looking out the windows to her right, out into the sunny world around her. This may also involve her leaping from her desk chair to dive out said window as any pre-thought of 'door' wouldn't be thought of quick enough. It's seventy two degrees, the sun is shining. Said blogger will return though. This is Wisconsin and good weather never lasts for as long as one would like. We are expecting rain later tonite, so maybe said blogger will finally be able to slow down long enough to finish at least one of many started and abandoned posts/drafts just sitting in the bin mocking her. Until then, said blogger will be starting and abandoning many other projects she feels are urgently goddamned important at the time or possibly taking photos of 'Final Battle Mal' and 'Not Fade Away Angel' riding around on extraneous My Little Ponies and battling the evil, stinky monkey kitch (not to be confused with John Madden's Itchy Monkey).

Live Birth Under Water...

2006-05-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

[83 is an excellent number. I like the way it looks. Sorry about that.]

So, here's the second installment of, "Sometimes, My Mom Just Scares the Crap Of Me" (Remember the last time...when she sent me the picture of the dress made all of unwrapped condoms and I had oh, so many unanswerable questions? Ahh, special times.)...Or what I am now calling...since we're right on top of it, "Happy Mother's Day Mom! Sometimes, You Really Scare the Crap Out of Me".

I was sitting here, thinking about what I should do. I figured it should be something good and productive seeing as how I've been up for quite some time now and have not accomplished one single thing all damned day. I was watchin' some 'Little House', pokin' around the internet...pretty much the same old, same old.

I went to check in on my e-mail, one of the few things I've bided my time with today and there it is, an e-mail from my mother...with an attachment. I opened it, thinking that it would be something lame and very nearly 47 year old-ish humor. That's the sort of thing she generally sends and it's because she has a mailing list, like many people, that I, like so many others out there, get to be right at the top of simply because I am her offspring. She's careless with the internet and thus is why I pay the fine Norton anti-virus people to protect me.

It was a video clip, but I had to click through an astounding number of 'forwards' just to get to what essentially amounted to a public television played commercial with a man waking up 'the morning after' in a cage at the zoo to find a monkey humping his leg and spanking his ass. Apparently, this was all the result of the man having had too much beer the night before and something about how he should have had root-beer instead. This commercial was for IBC Root Beer, or whatever the fuck it's called.

First I wondered what's with the man and the monkey? Was this supposed to make me want a frothy, cold root-beer? Never once in my life have these to things ever even crossed my mind in reference to root-beer.

And what the hell happened to public television. Had they lost their minds? Did they think sex could sell root-beer to their viewers and thus make them a good chunk of change in the Ad Dept.? Couldn't they have just had another pledge show/auction? BEG would buy stuff. And what were they thinking in getting this ad...an ad that clearly is all wrong and improperly geared, especially on their station?

This concept will never win over the beer drinkers. They will not switch from beer to root-beer just as they aren't likely to switch from ESPN to PBS anytime soon. Secondly, IBC people, they will not switch to root-beer because continuing to drink beer might mean they will wake up from a black-out to find a monkey humping their legs.

Beer drinkers would go to the zoo to taunt the monkeys into humping their legs for the sheer fun of it. No real beer drinker wakes up from a black-out in the zoo. The beer drinker had already been their to rile up the monkeys long before this jack-ass. The beer drinker is already gone and on his way to Der Waffle Haus to meet his stinky, grubby friends to go wading through the mucky swamp all morning. And no real beer drinker watches public television anyway.

Hardcore root-beer drinkers watch public television, IBC in particular. So IBC you're trying to appeal to a market you already have. The commercial should have been a dorky guy waking up with a hot chick to remember, because he had root-beer and not beer the night before, exactly how he got there. Root-beer drinkers remember things, which is exactly what the original commercial expressed in it's sort of terrifying way.

But, in the end, there was the fact that it was funny and I could see why it was out there floating around in my mother's reach...and finally, why she had e-mailed it to everyone she's ever possessed an e-mail address for.

A little while later though, I was still slacking and dropped in on my e-mail again to see what was goin' on. I got another e-mail from mom. It also had an attachement, but this time, there was cause for concern. This new e-mail was sent only to me...

She does this occassionally, sends me something she doesn't send to anyone else and it's usually the most peculiar crap she could come up with and generally has me worried for her safety. I'm tellin' ya, that condom dress was on the very low craziness end of the wacko scale. Often times, these e-mails have me wondering if I should get her a helmet and a bus pass just in case.

I can tell you this also, the second e-mail's attachment is also a video clip and that I haven't watched it yet because I'm still stuck back at the title...'Live Birth Under Water'. God only knows what the hell it could be. Knowing my mother, it could actually be a live underwater birth...and that's just not something I need to see. So, for now, I live in speculation.

Happy Mother's Day, mom. Be surpised when you open that box and see the helmet and bus pass!

Desperately Seeking Schwartz...

2006-05-10T15:52:00.000-05:00

Why don't I have 'Spaceballs' on DVD? I have like 500 other DVDs, and that's not an exaggeration. Why isn't that one in the collection? It seems like a movie I should have. And what worries me more, I don't have it on VHS either...so there's like no 'Spaceballs' in my general vaccinity.

And why all of a sudden do I desperately need to watch 'Spaceballs'? It seems a little strange to me. I don't believe this has ever been a crisis before...wanting to watch that movie and not having it I mean. It's not like I have said, done or seen anything, etc. to have encouraged Spaceballs to pop up in my head. And why the hell hasn't it been on TV lately?

TBS, Why aren't you airing 'Spaceballs' every two hours like you used to in the good ol' days? Where are my three chances to watch, TNT?

Where is my Druish princess? Where's my 'Spaceballs' desert pick and my 'Spaceballs' toilet paper. Where's my statue on the beach and mocking 'Planet of the Apes'...apes. Where else can you see Dick Van Patten these days?

Sometimes you just need to see a slimy, little alien in straw hat, claw out of a a man's chest and woop it up all Vaudeville style. Sometimes the desert needs to be combed. And sometimes ya just need Schwartz...

That's An Ostritch!

2006-05-06T17:30:00.000-05:00

I don't like that I live in a world where every two minutes, The Bionic Woman tries to sell me a mechanical bed via the television. I don't know what they're tryin' to acccomplish, but I also don't know anyone who would buy a bed from the TV, let alone Lindsay Wagner. Does she even need a bed? Does she sleep? Why don't you just sign up The Incredible Hulk to sell Avon door-to-door in full 'Hulk' mode?

I also don't like that I live in a word where a product/tool called 'The Luma-Tweeze' exists and I can own it for just $19.95. How picky do you have to be to need a lighted, magnifing tweezers?

That's an ostritch!

Can someone please tell me when the new Enya CD became the so-called perfect gift for Mother's Day? It's more like the perfect gift for someone with insomnia. My mom works. She might be tired, but I really don't think she needs an Enya-induced coma for Mother's Day. Even these cats can't handle it...

So, there was blog-surfing. I saw on some religious freak's blog that their headline is actually, "...Been there, done that, NOTHING compares to Jesus!" WTF??? NOTHING compares to Jesus? I've had sex...and ice cream... Orgasms and Hagen Daaz win over church any day. Also, if this 'NOTHING compares to Jesus were true, Sinead O'Connor would have been a completely different type of person. I like her just the way she is...tearin' up pictures of The Pope and all and with her neo-nazi boot camp look! This of course only got stranger when I clicked the number it told me to and was taken to another blog. That one's latest post was titled, "Been There, Done That". Apparently everyone was over everything yesterday. And then literally the next time I clicked it was KP's blog and her post about how it's okay to spank her (very literally, I suspect) for not being more on top of her blogging. The blog-verse is such a special place!

I am a little worried about the number of people out there blogging about the Tempra-IC (Instant Cool) self-refrigerating beverage can though. It's just baffling (16, after I started counting). Don't people have anything better to do? I hear there's a line forming to spank KP as I blog this. And secondly, the entire idea of this much technology for a beverage can really freaks me out. Tomorrow I'll probably wake up in an 'I Robot' kind of world and there'll be a Cylon sitting on my front steps waiting to impregnate me with a programmed-love-child...and wouldn't that just be too much? The speed at which the world around me produces new technology now days is just insane! Geeks! Slow down a little. I don't want a toaster shaped baby! I don't even put my soda in the refrigerator!

I'm not sure if this is technology moving forward or backwards. But hey, who doesn't love LEGOS?

Also, disturbing to know, while watching a 'Kate & Allie' marathon (don't ask), Chip was rattling off statistics. Back when that show was on, there was only one murder in this country every two and a half hours! Hmmm. Maybe they should revive the show and get the country back on track, although, after having suffered through the 'Annie on Broadway' casts version of how mentruation works many times in my youth, I don't know how well I'd take to seeing that girl that was Jenny ever again.

Cheap swords? I'm sorry, but I think if you're gonna buy a sword, it should be quality. Swords aren't a place for skimping to save a buck or two...and you never really know when a swarm of dragons may show up on your block!

And finally, I don't have even the faintest clue what this is, but it's Japanese and it scares the bejesus out of me! Those damned wacky Japanese!

Uninspired Rescue...

2006-05-05T11:59:00.000-05:00

I was google image searching the word 'RESCUE' the other day looking for inspiration for the TV show BEG and I have been developing for like a year now and this is the very first picture that came up...

This was named 'Rescue'. Clearly, this is just the head of a moose. I do not consider this a rescue. The word 'RESCUE' implies that something has been save and is still viable. This moose was definitely not rescued, as it is just the bloody head. It should have been named 'Souvenier' or 'Kept' or if you want another 're' word...recovered. Not rescued!

This is the second picture that came up...

This photo was also named 'Rescue'. Seriously, whom were they trying to fool by naming it that? This girl is shopping. She isn't saving anything. She isn't rescuing the pants from the racks of the evil store empire. They're probably just having a sale and if she's saving anything it's money. Buying the pants and taking them out of the evil store/mall has no effect on the pants. The pants do not care where they are.

So, needless to say, I was not inspired to do anything for the TV show...although, I did go on a shopping spree for new spring/summer clothing and shoes today, so maybe I was inspired afterall!

Assault on My Senses...

2006-05-04T09:02:00.000-05:00

(Dually posted on 10th & Park)

Dear People outside of my house (let's say those within a five house radius to mine),

It's warm today. My windows are open so I don't have to spend another dark gloomy day feeling like I am suffocating (this does not mean it is not still dark and gloomy). They are open to air out a large stuffy house that has been all closed up since the end of November. They are NOT however open so you can just fucking assault my senses.

It's cool if you want to listen to your slow-jams or your gansta rap. I don't mind. I even like some of it...when it's at a reasonable volume and not blaring to fight with someone else's respective slow-jams/gansta rap and the ten gillion pimped out rice-grinders you people instist on racing around here all day and night long.

It's a wonder Sammy is deaf. Yeah, you people know Sammy. Don't pretend like you have no idea what I'm talking about. The man lived in the house next door to mine for eight years now and he can't hear a damned thing.

It's not necessary to have a sound war. It is also not necessary to yell out to your homeboy Javan when he is all the way down at the other end of the block with his stereo thumpin' away. Javan cannot hear you! The only reason I can hear you is because you chose to stop right outside my open windows and scream for him at the top of you lungs...not once, but seven times before you finally gave up and walked your fat ass down there!

Also, while we're still on the topic of loud. In the middle of the night, it's hard to make the distinction between gunfire and fire-crackers. I think if you're going to make the loud sounds and disturb us all anyway, you should begin doing so by yelling either FIRECRACKER or GUNFIRE. At least give the white people a chance to duck since we clearly have no idea why you continue to shoot at each other and break beer bottles over each other's heads.

I don't think we want to know. Just go about your business and leave us out of it. This new rule also applies to those of you who think it's ok to bounce a basketball lazily down the sidewalk in the dead of night. I don't know why you do this. I don't want to know. Just yell, "BASKETBALL!" and get on your merry way.

Next, in the long line of my many senses you wreck on a daily basis all warm weather season long... It is just not necessary to fire up the grill every night. No one needs that much grilled meat...if that's a name that can be applied to any of the things you're grilling. On a side note, if whatever you're grilling is not traditionally thought of as a farm animal, I am not interested. I don't care to eat the raccoon you shot digging through your garbage last night (BTW: You should have yelled 'GUNFIRE'. I almost peed my pants!).

And once again, it was NOT necessary to yell down to Javan that you shot the raccoon. Javan cannot hear you.

The Most Unconvincing Contest Ever...

2006-05-01T18:46:00.000-05:00

So, I was sitting here on the phone with BEG, at my desk with a brand new bag of Cheetos Puffs. I was getting ready to open it up, but since it's rude to chew on the phone and generally makes talking and understanding difficult I waited...reading the stuff on the bag. I do this a lot. No shocker.

This is what the front of the bag looks like...

I notice they're having a contest of some sort, so I read the pretend 'Cheesy Tribune' Chester is holding on the front of the bag. This is what it says...

Cheetos Recipe Stolen??? I'm confused.

If the recipe was stolen, how did they make the Cheetos currently in the bag. Pretty hard to make something without a recipe and if it isn't, why are they looking for the recipe? Why is it important enough to have an entire contest about if they can already make them and don't really need to recover it?

Let's say the recipe, which BEG tells me practically doesn't even exist (she saw a show on TV about how they make the puff Cheetos...she's such a food network junkie), is missing, are the Cheetos in my bag right now, Cheetos that have been laying about at the Cheetos factory for a while, from before the recipe was stolen? I don't want old, Cheetos. They could have bugs or something.

Who the hell would even want to steal the Cheetos recipe? Does Chester now have some arch-nemesis out there, stealing recipes and trying to build his or her own bigger and more bad-ass cheesy poof empire? I shudder to think. Was it some covert, ninja operation? Did they sneak in, by the light of the moon and frolic around the Cheetos plant searching for the already pretty much self explanatory recipe which had been kept in a locked glass case under the watchful, but sleepy eyes of Sam the security gauard, who I can imagine has now been let go because of his life-altering screw up?

It's Cheetos, people. Nothing about them is life-altering. They're just tasty.

This is the most unconvincing basis for a contest ever. Recipe stolen? Whatever. They could have at least come up with a better story. Hell, they could have come out and said terrorists have taken over the factory and we need to rescue Chester and the puffs supply. I could've gotten on board for that one.

Save the Tiny Turtles!

2006-04-27T09:25:00.000-05:00

I know I shouldn't do this cause a lot of people could care less about what other people dream and I honestly wouldn't do it, except for it was just a little too creepy, the things going on in my head while sleeping, to not discuss...

So, last night I had one of the strangest dreams I've had in quite some time...considering I don't generally sleep. I'm think last night's strangeness can be attributed to the fact that right before bed I got hungry and ate some leftover lasagna and garlic bread (yes, I brushed afterwards) and the fact that I have been watching entirely too much sci-fi programming, namely 'Battelstar Galactica', for my own good [BTW: 'Scar' from mid-second season is hands-down my favorite episode of the series, followed very closely by season 1's '33', but please keep in mind I am still trying to dowload the rest of season two, so I have yet to see it].

Anyway, it was a tripod assembleage (Me, BEG and KP) on some sort of cruise ship (actual cruise ship...c'mon, we can't all live or live in our dreams, on the battlestar, although said cruise ship was capable of air travel...but not space travel). We were packing shit up (this could be because BEG has been weeding out her undersirable clothes, which is something I need to get to myself before my closet takes over). I was also seemingly suffering from some serious shoe-loss paranoia and I kept going through my shoe collection (yes, it is a collection) to make sure every shoe was present and accounted for. I suppose that Walter (my white Angora) can be blamed for that one seeing as how he recently chewed my favorite red strappy shoes to bits while I wasn't paying attention. Little bastard!

For the most part, this is all relatively normal. All things that can be blamed on some other curcumstance in my reality-based existence piling up in my head and getting to me when I sleep. However, here comes the strangeness...

For the entire duration of the dream I was either carrying around a dish of six, tiny turtles (you know, the ones you can't buy anymore cause the government is just as afraid of Salmonella as BEG-Sorry BEG!), or carrying the dish or tiny turtles around trying to save said turtles. This was all because every time I put the damned dish down, my dog would appear out of nowhere (Angus, the gigantic Golden Retreiver) , knock the dish over and start chewing on the poor turtles. Then there would be some screaming for hubby (these would be the only times he was present in the dream) and rescue of the turtles...which survived every single chew attack. Boy those little buggers were resilliant.

The entire tripod was a mission to save 6 tiny chewed on turtles. This is not something we have ever done or even spoken of (except for that one time when that wayward turtle wandered into my yard and we all thought the vulcan brought it to me) in reality. In the dream I kept taking them to the kitchen staff of the cruise ship for fixing (Probably not the best plan with the kitchen staff and all) and they kept wanting me to get KP to fix their computer, although the woman with the broken computer was the woman that played the blonde nurse married to Aaron on 'Chicago Hope'...a show I haven't seen in like a millenia.

Nevertheless, we built a suitable tiny turtle habitat, complete with faux trees and...Phat Boys Die-cast cars (I do collect these...cause they're adorable...and flat).

I literally woke up with a WTF? sort of feeling. The tripod doesn't save tiny turtles, especially tiny turtles no one is even allowed to legally possess anymore. Savin' the tiny turtles really isn't our thing.

If we had been out drinking in my dream and possibly taunting young waiter boys or taking an impromptu trip to the very non-local porn store or even perhaps had been using a disposable camera found in BEG's backseat to take pictures of a bloody, dead animal strategically placed on the sidewalk, I would have said, "Sounds like us." Hence not the case and now I'm wholly disturbed.

BTW: Check out http://paranormalstories.blogspot.com the renter on Eric's Panic Blog. She put of my tale of ghostly occurances and some pictures I submitted

It's a 'Tom Zarek' Disco Dance Party...

2006-04-20T09:47:00.000-05:00

Look out, Apollo! When the terrorists start to dancin'...

So, yesterday I was purusing the internet for yummy pics of Jamie Bamber who for all of you that don't already know, plays Apollo on Battlestar, is English and is also quite adorable and nice to look at when he wears nothing more than a falling off towel...

'Nuff said...or unsaid as it were.

Yes, in the absence of and my impatience for new episodes, or even the re-airing of the nine I haven't seen, this is the sort of activity I have reverted to. There was also some discussion with BEG about how I like it when he touches the big board...

Mmm...Apollo and the big board! Gotta love it when he dry erases!

Okay, so now that we've covered the new Apollo (Trust me, we really would rather have him uncovered - There was also talk of a well-written letter to Sci-Fi requesting that his wardrobe be depleted to nothing but the falling towel or checking to see if on the off chance next season's costume budget was running low and offer them the suggestion of giving him a uniform with no pants)but we'd rather have him uncovered...and preferably doing something naughty with Starbuck...hmm...maybe on a raptor...but that's a whole different blogpost...

I was googling 'BSG Apollo' and I kept getting all these pictures of the old Apollo and Starbuck action figures from the original TV show. That's all fine and good and was to be expected, but they both seem to be in disco positions. Were they disco-ing? Was that part of their appeal. I know Apollo's seventies style mullet is quite huge and lifelike (Richard Hatch still has this hair-do...it's not just a hair-cut...it's a 'do) and I assume that was part of his appeal as an action figure. Even the Cylon Action figure could be accused of disco action.

At first this only mildly concerned me, but the more I saw and the further this google shit went on the more and more creepy me and BEG got as girl-type humans from middle-class families.

Somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted a new Apollo and Starbuck action figures (Once again so they can smack each other around and do naughty things - Imagine if they did exist, I would have them and they both would've been repainted and changed by now). BEG and I started to chat it up about this, pow-wow style like we usually do under such dire needs for new BSG action figures. It came up that we could buy these old Apollo action figures and re-paint them to look like Richard Hatch's new BSG character, Tom Zarek. I was all, we need to do this because they'll never make a 'Tom Zarek'. I started to google BSG action figures, finding all these disco style posed Apollo-s and Starbucks again and became increasingly amused. I know this was probably intended as a serious action move, making the most literal of the words 'ACTION FIGURE', but to me...still looks like good ol' fashioned disco goodness. And thus the plotting and scheming for 'Tom Zarek's Disco Dance Party' started. BEG said something about it being live from The Astral Queen, their first duty as a ship unhinged from the rest of the fleet and full of hardened criminals, was to build a disco ballroom. Hell, the resistance built a regulation size Pyramid Ball court. Why not a disco ballroom?

So, now I'm set forth on a mission to buy some old school Battlestar disco action figures of Starbuck and Apollo, re-paint them so Richard Hatch's likeness is wearing the prisoner jumpsuit he wears in the new Galactica as terrorist/activist/prisoner, Tom Zarek and then I will build them a decent diorama of a disco so we can act out 'Tom Zarek's Disco Dance Party'...Live from the Astral Queen's newly built disco ballroom...on film. Of course I have to file down the chins on the Hatch-es because now aged, he seems to no longer have a definable chin. "Hey, Hatch! Get that excess skin removed. You're freakin' me out!" Anthony Edwards actually suffers so badly from this disease, regression started at birth and his face seems to be just caving in altogether. It's sort of sucking back into itself... Shit! I am way off topic...Back to the big board...

Hmm...Big board...

If you have a mildly abused Apollo from childhood hanging around, collecting dust in a box somewhere or from teenhood when you bought him at a garage sale cause you thought it would be fun to actually hang him and he's been hanging on a action figure sized noose (I know my friends and I wrecked many knight-rider toys bought at rummage sales...and lets not forget when Pokey got licked), give me a shout so I can start constructing the party.

Also, Sci-Fi was playing a marathon of the original Battlestar either yesterday or today and I was reading the descriptions of the episodes, which are often similiar to new BSG descriptions and titles, but when thinking about it, I was actually thinking about old Apollo and Starbuck, both men once again, but in terms of their newer versions' relationship, boy and girl and how they flirt and slap each other around and it was really...well, it was really something else.

I leave you with this...

Found somewhere on the internet along the way. I had nothing to do with it. If it's yours, you know who you are and I applaud you. Clap! Clap! Clap! I'm sorry I'm an idiot!

All Around the Mulberry Bush...

2006-04-17T09:48:00.000-05:00

So, I've been thinking about this. I've been sick. Cut me some slack.

When on Earth, does a monkey chase a weasel around a mulberry bush? When are these three things even in the same place. I'd have to think the zoo would be the most likely bet on finding at least two of the three things. Does the zoo even have weasels though? I don't remember, but then again, it has been quite a while since I've been to the zoo. Suppposing they do have weasels, I'm sure they are without mulberry bushes. So literally, you would have to go to the zoo...with a mulberry bush (try not to look suspicious and supposing you can find one) and abduct both a monkey and a weasel...and we all know how unruly monkeys can be. It all ends up like the stupid shit they teach in foreign language classes. I took many years of highschool German, not to mention short terms stints with French, Spanish and yes, friggin' latin. Trust me, this nursery song plays out like a bad French lesson where for some reason a monkey is riding a bicycle. It's incredibly arbitrary. Might as well just sing things like "All around the ghetto the INS chases illegal immigrants"...it's just as not likely. Or "Up to the top of the condemned building the po-po chases a meth-freak"...although entertaining...also not likely,and in the end, the meth-freak is more likely to jump from the structure than give up. I have to say, speeders...they don't give up when they're geeked! Give 'em a square peg, a round hole and a bindle of glass see what happens. By god, the peg, square or not, is goin' in that hole, even if it requires whittling. How about, "All around the hot, hot desert G-Dub chases Osama Bin Laden"? At least that shit exists and has as of now, been going on for years. At least it gives children some sort of grasp on reality. And what is this business about the cheese standing alone? Why isn't the weasel chasing the cheese? It is a rodent isn't it? We're led to believe that while the monkey is chasing the weasel around said bush, there's a hunk of cheese just off to the side, not tempting either one of them. I have to imagine that you could get a monkey to eat cheese. Cheese is tasty! I could gather an entire team to stand with the cheese. Me and mine...we're all cheese-backers...cheese-heads if you will. It's Wisonsin for the love of JP! No cheese is ever alone here! Hmm...cheese!

It's All About the Butter Lamb...

2006-04-12T22:15:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday, after all this time of still being sick, I decided to stop being a slacker. I decided that since the poke hole from the eight inch needle jabbed into my abdomen last Thursday morning for a surpise biopsy of sorts was practically healed, I may as well try to be normal again, even if there is pain and I constantly wanna take a nap no matter where I am or what I'm doing. I got my ass up off the couch, compiled a ridiculous shopping list, which involved going to the bank and buying the new LL Cool J CD (after the release date kept getting changed and I had already made many attempts to purchase this CD even with the 'featuring Jennifer Lopez'). First, I head to Walmart to get the crap I generally buy every time I go to Walmart. I like that I have a Super Center and don't really care how Walmart treats their employees so long as I just have to go to one store to get everything I need. Walmart could torture their employees all medieval like and I would praise Joe Pesci and/or Sam Walton for being able to get a lamp, fourteen yards of ginham, and a goldfish all at the same store, saving both time and money! I don't even care if the goldfish is American or not or if their collection of American Flags were pressed in Taiwan. The less I have to shop, the better it is for all of mankind and possibly some as yet unknown alien races. Anyway, I go to Walmart, thinking everything will be dandy seeing as how it's a Tuesday morning and sort of rainy and gross. I think I'll just be able to get in and out quickly. This did not in fact happen. First, I was gonna get my birth control pills since Miranda said I could take them without stopping for the bleed. The Pharmacy was a mob scene though. Old people and small, angry Mexican women with moustaches thicker that Adama's and six or seven bratty kids apiece all clinging to their stretch pants-ed legs. I take a democratic vote amongst myself and decide in favor of the candidate for a tota psychotic break should not linger in the midst of this chaos for very long and change my mind about the pills. I'll take the hit and bleed if it means I don't have to stand around the Walmart pharmacy with some of the scariest and possibly sickest people on the face of the Earth, not to mention some of the most ancient and crusty, some with wheelchairs and canes even. I decide to browse through the new music rack and see if the new LL was one that had to be edited. Alas it was not. I snatched it up with the knowledge that I had just been saved a trip to Best Buy which no doubt would have ended with my walking out with the entire 'Stargate' thus far. I walk in to Best Buy and my brain just falls out of my head and I wander around with the checkbook rambling incoherently about Sci-Fi. Unfortunately, on my way out of the entertainment dept I grabbed Daniel Powter and saw the new Pink CD which was in fact edited and now would have me once again headed towards BB and muttering something about how there is just never enough Sci-Fi available to me at a moments notice and purchasing more depressing Patsy Cline, this, a behavior that can only be blamed on 'Space: Above & Beyond' and the depressing frakkin' episode with all the Patsy Cline and death. So, I resign and put Best Buy back on the list, headed for the parusal of the Walmart Fabrics & Crack department. I end up gathering 11 different fabrics, most of which are blue. Blue is my favorite color. This was bound to happen. I tell you, the two chicks that work in the department are some of the most ghetto bitches I have ever had to deal with. Their fingernails were so long and claw-like that they could barely operate the scissors to cut the fabric. Then they broke the tag gun thing. I waited patiently though. Finally they finished. I grabbed the rest of the stuff I needed and headed for the checkouts. It seems everybody and their cousin was there buying shit for Easter as though stores are going to run out of food by the end of the week and Easter will be totally fucked. It was madness. I had a lot of stuff so I got in line behind someone who had slightly less. She was pretty much my only option and she was a woman in Walamart Super Center on a Tuesday morning buying four, yes, four butter lambs, which by the way, are obscenely priced. It is a mighty fine thing to have a butter sculpture of a lamb on the Easter dinner table though. Mock sacrifice with a butter knife is a hell of a lot of fun. Plus, it just seems to taste a little bit better and make the world seem just a little more bright when the butter is shaped like something other than butter. Personally, I think the original butter slab design is inferior and that from this day forward all butter and butter-like substances should be shaped like animals. I think butter fish are an excellent idea. Anyway, I'm standing their, waiting...and waiting...and waiting, eyeing the KitKats, which I was out of but not close enough to grab them yet. Two freaks who had no business being together, meaning that he was a middle-aged biker, leather and all and she was a frumpy ghetto girl dressed all gangster boy and if I had to hazard a guess on her age, I wouldn't have said she was more than seventeen. Together, they were in line behind me to buy one bottle of Tylenol. This becomes creepier though because I did think for a minute that he was her dad, but then they started making out as a little, old German women gets behind them. LOGW didn't seem to like them so she kept trying to get them to go over to the self-checkouts. Creepy Couple of the Damned were resistant to her old lady pushiness. She put on the full-court press and finally, instead of just relocating to the self-checkout, slam down their one bottle of extra-strength Tylenol Geltabs and flee the store. And so LOGW is now right behind me and she's totally scoping out what's in everyone's carts and not being even remotely slealthy about it. She notices as I get to the conveyer belt that I have a large stack of fabric. I know this is not going to end well for me. She says in her thick German accent even though she's probably been in this country long enough to have lost it by now, "Oh, you sew." in a very accusatory kind of way as though the fabric is for making neo-nazi concentration camp garb and I'm the new Hitler. I said, "Yeah." very cautiously as though she might start freaking out at any second. Instead she says, all accusingly again, "When do you find the time to sew?" There I was, not wanting to be rude to the LOGW by not answering her, but also surrounded by sweaty, angry, poor people and the truth is, I don't work and don't have to. I said, cautiously again, this time for fear of a tar-feather icident incited by snot-face toddler toting brown people who probably aren't even legal (It's great to be an American), "I don't work. My husband does." Luckily, I'd managed to say it quiet enough to keep the others from tackling me and still loud enough for LOGW to hear me. Next thing she says is, "You like blue." while scrutinizing my pile of mostly blue fabric. I could only manage a nod. There's no telling what old folks are capable of and even less telling when their old and tiny and German. They're fiesty and they don't take shit from anyone. Also, some of them are just a little bit out of their minds...I blame The Holocaust. Anyway, I realize that this woman is in what seems to be the longest line anywhere to buy just a value box of knee-highs and some meds. Why didn't she go to the self-checkout? Why did she choose to hang with me and scrutinize my soon-to-be purchases? I'm like a crazy, old person magnet these days. Finally I get my turn and my attentions are forced elsewhere. LOGW knows this and leaves me to tend to my check writing. I get out of Walmart and head for the bank, which is just down the street. However, I always drive right passed the bank and have to turn around and go back. This time I was dtermined to not miss the bank. I get stuck behind a car with no brake lights and am instead forced to pay attention to the car in front of me, shooting the getting-it-right plan right out the window like a boogied tissue! I miss the turn, and have to them turn around in lunch traffic on an extremely busy road. I made it out alive and made haste for Best Buy. Got there, grabbed the Pink which was conveniently located right in the front of the store and got in a checkout line. I always end up in the same happy, black woman lane and she's all cheery and shit about working at best buy and the free weeks of magazines speel. I had to halt her, having heard it from her before and having just heard her tell it to the two customers that'd been in front of me in the line. Strangely there was a man with a girl baby dressed all in pink behind me. After Best Buy I headed for McDonald's drive thru. I figured some I-Don't-Have-Cancer McNuggets were in order. By this time of the day, the line was long and the temperature outside had increased dramatically. I had definitely left the house wearing too much clothing and was now sitting in the drive thru taking things off and discarding them on the passenger seat. I even turned on the A/C. I booked home with my nuggets just in time to see Sammy and James standing around at the end of the driveway, doing their thing. Old men are hilarious...especially when they're already drunk and one of them has a lisp and a southern accent. Regardless, I knew I was in for a lecture from Sammy for leaving the house. It ended up being something about how I'd waited for him to leave and then snuck out cause if he wasn't here, he couldn't stop me. I think it's adorable when he gets all crazed about my sneakiness as though I had actually plotted an escape. I'm not that covert when I go to Walmart. Sorry, Sammy. Anyway, he called me hard-headed like he usually does and I finally got to come in the house and eat my celebratory McDonald's. However, I realized that while out, I had missed the last episode of 'Judging Amy' a show I have watched from the beginning now on TNT because surprisingly it isn't/wasn't as wholesome of a show as I had been led to believe (Tyne Daly is priceless as Amy's mother and the entire family goes nuts the last two seasons). When I turned it on, I was right in the middle of the second ep they play in a day and it was the pilot. The show had started all over again. Dammit! So, now I'm watchin' it all over again from the beginning, two episodes a day. Actually, even if I had seen the last episode I'd probably still be watching it over and over and over again. Two words...ADRIAN PASDAR... I rest my case. After the 'JA' fiasco, I listened to my new CDs. All three are awesome. I highly recommend Daniel Powter and Pink, if you're an angry girl. I really didn't have a whole lot of faith in Powter but I have to say the album is fantabulous. It reminds me of Maroon 5. I think I listened to it like 5 times. Of course, Pink's 'I'm Not Dead' is totally for the Kelly Clarkson fans. I love new music and this time it really panned out well. These two albums I can listen to straight thru without skipping any of the tracks. It was like a new music Tuesday miracle!

P.S. If you ever get the chance to see 'Austin City Limits' with The Flaming Lips and The Shins, the lips half is definitely worth the watch. There are people in animal suits and the lead singer poors blood on his head while wearing an American flag as a cape while they perform a Black Sabbath song. I love The Flaming Lips.

BEG's Birthday Butterfly Quillow...

2006-04-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

How I Seemingly Built a Cocoon...

So, about two months ago, it occured to me that it would soon be BEG's 27th birthday. Hmm, I thought. What should I do? What should I do? This was hard cause when I have a quandry, she's the one I call. Couldn't very well call her about her own birthday present.

It was around this time that I busted out all my stray fabric to start cutting it into quilt pieces just to get rid of it. Trust me, I have like my own personal fabric store upstairs in one of the many spare bedrooms, so this was quite an undertaking. Anyway, I was like, "I'll make her a cool quillow." She had been telling me how she couldn't find the one her mother had made her a while back. So it was practically a perfect plan...unless your a psychotic perfectionist like me! BTW: For those of you not acquainted with the quilloq concept, it's a blanket that folds into a neat, well-contained pillow.

I busted out the graph paper and colored pencils to work out a very BEG design. She likes butterflies and the color green. Easy enough, or so I thought. The design process took considerably longer than I had planned and was harder since as mentioned, she is like the other half of the design team and when I got trouble, she's the one I call. I struggled without her creative input. CPs were shitty and old, so I went out and bought two new sets (I think I actually did a post about that) and got back to work. It took about a week and had started as mostly a whim, caused by my fear that she would freeze to death in The Great White North and her of course having lost or misplaced her other one. After much work, designing and re-designing and modifying this is what I came up with...

The design was for a 19 square by 19 square blanket, making it 97 " x 97". Big enough for a queen size bed if she wanted to put it there, making the pocket a great place for her fur kids to hide, or alternately, in the hopes that she finds someone who likes her (her words), it's big enough for two and the pocket is big enough for two sets of feet. Also, since she lives in a dinky apartment with not a whole lot of room for furniture, I figured if it was big enough folded correctly, she could toss it on the floor for an impromtu seat for someone. There was ultimately a lot of thinking that went into this and without BEG's assistance no less.

So, I set out to find cool fabrics. I'm like a mad-woman at a JoAnn Fabrics. Most of the fabrics I bought were faux suede and similiar, so there was also big plans for it to be toasty warm...saving her from ever freezing to death in The Great White North, as mentioned earlier.

This was a lot of work ahead of me as the pattern for the blanket and the pocket for the reverse side, which the blanket gets folded into called for 386 fabric squares. This was a lot of cutting and omigod was my hand tired. Thank JP for sharp Fiskars!

With all the squares cut and organized by row in neat little piles on my dining room table, I got crackin'. I wanted to make sure that it was done for her birthday when KP and I go up there to poke at her cause she's the first of The Tripod to turn 27...not that me and KP are too far behind! But alas, there was a problem.

I had to crack and call her about the damned thing. I needed input on the backing color. The cat was out of the bag, but in the end, I don't know that it's such a big deal. If it was staying here, I would've put a black back on it. We decided on white for her house. I got about this far before the mystery sick showed up...

And so it sat. And then there was my sitting in the hospital all day last Saturday and well into the night, coming out with no more info than I had when I went in. Sunday, I decided that I might as well get to finishing that dang quillow since it was just a few short days until departure for BEG's birthday festivities and at least it allowed me to control something!

Monday, I finally got to it all assembled, complete with tickle-knots (anchor knots). It was around this time that it occured to hubby that it was like a cocoon that opens into a butterfly. I guess he was sort of right...

So, there it is. Finally done and ready to go. It even has it's own protective plastic zipper bag. I'm so proud of myself. The damned thing is heavier than hell and it was no easy feat with the sick and the dogs and the fact that I was basically protecting the white back with my life to keep it white. Plus it weighs a ton and there was really no easy way to deal with laying it out flat. But still, so proud!

Saturday Night Fever...

2006-04-03T10:05:00.000-05:00

Ok, so there was no disco, no Barry Gibb...or evenTravolta in a white polyester suit (Although, I may have seen Donna Pecso, but then again it could have just been a CPR dummy), but there was actual fever, not to mention numerous other things and I did somehow manage to boggle the minds of an entire ER staff...Some of them might still be banging their heads on the walls...

Hello boy and girls and I think six ducks of varying ages in a remote Utah location. It's been a while, and this time the Sci-Fi Immersion program had nothing to do with it...not really at least...unless one can catch something from the future via a Sci-Fi TV on DVD streak. Read on for that tale, but first, there are a few things I'd like to stop and take notice of. #1 - Yes, this is post #69, and I should be doing something hellaciously wicked with it. I tried. I 've been thinking about it since I saw that it would be post #69. Alas, there was illness and I was sidetracked. These things happen...and they really like to happen to me...all the time, even if I'm already in the middle of 15 things going on all at once, all of them annoying (guess where that line came from and win...not a friggin' thing!). I didn't come up with anything, so post #69 remains even Tatum-Free (check BEG's 69th post on 'Plural'...it's been a while, but it's crazy with Tatum!), but read on for my post #69 story of how I spent all day Saturday and well into the night boggling the over-educated minds of an entire ER staff and only got to stay sick in return...It was sort of an 'I went to the ER and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' kind of tip only there was no t-shirt...I do expect a hefty bill coming in the mail though...any time now...

So, last Monday I started to feel kinda crappy. This was your general sneezing, itchy eyes, stuffy nose kind of crappy and I really just assumed with the wack-o weather we've been having lately, that it was just my allergies kicking in. Thank you mold!

As the week progressed though, I started to get worse. I started to get other weirdo symptoms that would come and go and I thought by Wednesday that I had gotten a UTI. I fear this because I had Polynephritis back in September and I certainly did not enjoy it. I wanted to nip it in the bud right away, but my insurance from hubby's newest job (oh, yeah, he doesn't work for the Japanese anymore...too many whores looming about I think) wasn't set to kick in until Saturday.

I called up the doc's office to find out what I should do. They said to push fluids and what not and take it easy. They made me an appointment for this coming Thursday...although I don't know how they thought I'd ever be able to make it that long.

Anyway, Thursday and Friday I pushed fluids. I really hate cranberry juice and as I've learned once again...not really a fan of water. But I digress. I also started to get really tired and bitchy. This wasn't pleasing anyone around me.

Friday night, hubby brought home pizza and we settled in to watch some BSG. Pretty quiet. Pretty low-key. Only, I get this sharp pain in my chest and my arm went all funny. I shook it off. I am only 26 years old and my heart has always been fine. I won the family lotto in the heart dept and basically I am the only one with a good heart...well, so far as health goes...when it comes to anything else..it's kind of black and icky, but still we move on...

Around three, Saturday morning, I sat upright in bed, wide awake. My head was pounding. I couldn't see a thing and I was freaking out, like a panic attack. Then there was some projectile vomitting and frezing to near death. I drank about a quarter of a can of coke, felt better and went back to sleep.

Saturday morning, I woke up completely exhausted and feeling like I was going to die. I took a shower, thinking it might help. It did not. I took my temperature. No fever...although I was sweating buckets and still feeling like death was coming for me. I continued to push fluids and feel like crap, gaining a seriously bad pain in my right side as well. This went on until around two when I took my temp again...and there it was a fever of 101.9! Creepy!

Hubby was at work (where else would he have been?) and I didn't really feel like going to the ER down the street where people have been known to die for what seems to be no apparently good reason and I really didn't think I should be driving the car anyway so I called my mom. She came to get me and hauled my ass back out to Waukesha to the ER out there.

The entire way there, my chest hurt and my arm was all funky again. I started to consider the notion that maybe I had had a heart attack. Mom took this opportunity to remind me that Gramps (her dad) had a heart attack when he was 28. This only really helped to freak me out more and then I recalled the VH1 'Behind the Music' of John Mellacamp and how he'd had that massive heart attack and only thought he had the flu. Here's where I started to think I was really going to die.

By the time we got to the ER, my blood pressure was all out of wack and the place was totally packed. I had to hang out in the waiting room. There was a massively bad car accident and many people vomitting (the sounds of yacking noises could be heard everywhere around me). I was literally in the waiting room for so long that I declared that if I was still waiting there on Monday I was going to steal a wheel chair and roll down the hill to my actual doc's office.

Finally, they stuck me in a room. A crappy one with no bathroom. Last time I got a room with a bathroom. This pissed me off especially with the fact that I had to pee every 27 seconds with all the fluids I'd been comsuming.

First, since I thought I had a UTI or something that had progressed to something worse, they made me pee in a cup. They also took six tubes of blood, did an EKG cause of my heart wackiness, and checked my pulse, blood pressure and temp about a thousand times before the tests came back. When there were results, there was no UTI. The EKG was fine as well. All they did come up with was the fact that my white count had practically doubled. Instead of 9,000 it had jumped to 19,000. This was apparently cause for great concern, although right now, I have no idea why.

The doc and many nurses that had joined up in the search to find the reason for this were beginning to baffle. This was not cool as just down the hall, the car accident guy was dying and then he did. They were already defeated in one case, having lost a patient. I somehow became their mission to prove they're a good ER staff as I was pretty much the only one left in the ER at this point. There had also been a shift change and although maintained my fist doctor, two more were added and there were new nurses.

It was around this time I got an IV and it was decided it could be my appendix, so they ordered a cat-scan and also a pelvic exam. At the mere thought that it was my appendix and that if it was I would have to stay in the hospital, I started to freak out. I don't like the hospital. I had no plans to camp out any longer than the ER visit that seemed to never want to end.

The nurse came to fetch me to take me to another room for the pelvic exam where I was alas without my underwear, up in stirrups and had one of those obnoxious hospital blanket that's not really even a blanket thrown over me. Next thing I know, four new nurses and another doctor barge in and declare I have to get up because they think they should do the cat-scan first. A nurse ran interference with the so-called blanket and the door just in case another team of experts wanted to barge in while I was putting my clothing back on. At this point the mormon tabernacle could've barged in to look at my cooch and I wouldn't have cared. I was like 'I've been to summer camp!' the blanket cover is not necessary!

So there I was, wandering around with a pack of nurses down to a cat-scan in just underwear, a hospital gown and my argyle knee socks. I was a sight to be seen. Had the cat-scan. Then I got the very non-pleasure of having my pelvic exam, the first I've had done by a man doctor. At that point I wasn't even caring about that. Instead I was thinking about re-arranging the furniture in my room to better suit my liking and since it didn't seem like I was leaving any time soon.

I had been cat-scanned and tested for every STD known to man, not that I thought that I had any. Married. Have no real reason to think I was catching anything.

The cat-scan showed nothing, other than the fact that I have a large ovarian cyst. Not alarming. It's been there for about five years (this was the last cat-scan I got the pleasure of having). It is bigger now and this is what they attributed the pain in my side to since they found no infection of any kind anywhere in my abdomen. Also, no STDs as previously assumed.

It was around this time they called my actual doctor and got him out of bed and basically just anyone on the staff who wanted to started coming in really just look at me in some kind of terrified awe since they couldn't seem to locate any cause for my white count having doubled in size. Also, since every time the original ER doc came in he looked completely defeated, the head ER doc was brought in on the case.

They started checking like every inch of skin on my person, checking my nail beds and drawing fluid from my knee, thinking there was a joint infection. They even slapped one of those 'INFECTIOUS' caution signs on my door on the chance that I was contagious.

I was like a human pin-cushion. They also seemed quite interested in continuing to take my blood pressure, pulse and temp every ten seconds like it was all they could think of to do. They messed with the thermometer so many times in my room over the duration of my stay, it actually stopped working altogether and they had to bring in a new one from elsewhere in the hospital.

Finally, the original ER doc came in, completely defeated and said, "Chest x-ray.", thinking at this point I might have pneumonia or lung cancer or some shit! So I got to march with my team of experts down to x-ray in my undies, gown and argyle socks. There were three chest x-rays, which they declared to be completely healthy. I think they expected worse than what they got considering I am a smoker.

I drew the line at the mention of spinal tap. I wanted no part of it, especially since I already seemed to have had a complete physical with the exception of say a mamogram and said spinal tap and they had come up with nothing. I swear, I was checked for everything from mad cow to prostate cancer, not that either were bound to happen not having a prostate and all and not being a really big meat eater and there was absultely nothing but the white count that was mysteriously doubled in size. My blood pressure had even settled and my temp had even returned to normal I had been there so long.

I demanded to be freed, which they did tried to fight me on. I wasn't having it and possessing the capability for logic that I do, I reasoned that they apparently couldn't help me. I was cranky-tired, hadn't had a cigarette in like 8 hours and really wanted a beverage that wasn't water and contained some kind of caffiene. So they were defeated.

They pulled the IV, which was really starting to bug me and they gave me a paper that basically said to see my doctor this week. Duh! I already have that Thursday appointment coming up on my way out of town to see BEG for her birthday. The paper also said I shouldn't have caffiene, smoking or sexual activity. I was like, "Fuck that!". My lungs are extraordinarily clear for a smoker as they've told me, so fuck it, I'm smoking and the caffiene...unless they want the bodies to start piling up around them, there will be mountain dew. Also, I will be fucking my husband since they couldn't find anything wrong with my female parts!

Upon my re-dressing, I actually declared something to the affect that when I got home, I was getting myself a Travolta style bubble suit. Not so attractive, but it would keep the germs and bugs out!

It's now Tuesday. I'm still hella tired. Still have the cyst pain...hoping the fucker will just rupture and get it over with already cause at least I've been through that before and since it's not infectious, it should be no big deal. So who knows? Maybe actual doc can find something on Thursday!

Sci-Fi Immersion...

2006-03-27T10:10:00.000-06:00

Khrysten is unavailable for blogging purposes right now as she is currently involved in a program to immerse her self in everything Sci-fi... No, seriously. I know, I haven't blogged in...days. I've been a busy girl.

I watched 'Earth 2'. Done with that now. It's a pretty good show for all 21 episodes there were of it. I suggest the purchase of the DVDs...but if you do, know that the last two episodes in the set don't actually belong at the end. Kinda screwed with me for a minute, but then I figured out where in the story they actually did belong and everything was better.

Then I watched the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica on DVD having been unable to watch the show on TV like a normal person due to dogs barking and hubby yapping in my ear. Awesome show (duh!). Love that Starbuck! There was also a lot of screaming at the TV in hopes that she and Apollo would just fuck and get it over with already...never happened. Also, having watched seasons 1 & 2, I am now kinda screwed since I'm up to season 3 but it just ended and re-runs are nowhere to be found on the Sci-Fi channel. How long am I gonna have to wait for the DVDs?

Watching it for the second time to catch all the stuff I missed the first time due to dogs barking, hubby yapping and college dropouts having impromptu keggers. Also working overtime (meaning my brain wont stop) on the Sci-Fi show BEG and I are working on.

Anyone know where I can get a good deal on the 'Babylon 5'? Watched parts of it back in the day (there was a boy involved) and liked what I saw from what I actually saw (there was a lot of groping and mauling going on). Would like to see the rest! Could get it at my Best Buy, but they never seem to have season 4 and when I ask them why, they just look me (a 26 year old girl in the Best Buy freaking out about 'Babylon 5' season 4 around eleven on a Tuesday morning) like I'm on something.

Drop me a comment if you have an idea or a suggestion on another Sci-Fi show I may enjoy. BEG is already trying to sell me on 'Farscape' and she probably will.

BTW: Here's what I've already watched and in the order they were watched...Firefly/Serenity, Space: Above & Beyond, Cleopatra 2525 (whatta hilarious disaster this was especially for Gina Torres. I would only suggest watching this if you have no other alternative in the Sci-Fi-verse and if you like to laugh hysterically), Earth 2, Battlestar Galactica Seasons 1 & 2

And since I should mention this now that I'm editing, very nearly the complete 'Babylon 5' (I'm missing the spin-off 'Crusade' but it will be ordered by the time I get to where it should be watched in the grand scheme of B5. Hell, who doesn't love Daniel Dae Kim?) arrived on my doorstep yesterday making me a very happy girl with a lot of TV time ahead of me!

Where'd They Go?

2006-03-20T09:11:00.000-06:00

(Men, you might want to duck and cover...I'm whining about my boobs disappearing!)

I was used to being the totally fit girl who weighed 148 pounds. I had big boobs and am 5'6.5" so weighing that much was never really a problem. I was happy...with my big boobs and no one ever guessed that I weighed that much anyway. It wasn't like I was fat. I eat healthy, for the most part (let's face it, we all need some junk food every now and then). And I was perfectly content. I'm not one of those women that goes around whining about gaining a pound or two. It's not worth it when you think of everything else in life. Thanks yoga.

Then came the start of the surprise weight loss around November of last year. The pounds just started dropping off and by New Year's for no understandable reason...other than I never sleep and run around like a chicken with my head cut off during all the hours that I am awake, I was down to 127 pounds...and the boobs started to disappear. Men, please know that the first noticable place a woman loses weight is in her chest and it's a cruel joke when it happens, especially if you're one of the rare young women like me that has gotten perfectly content with the way they look! Fuck you, yoga!

So, all yoga activity was suspended and I haven't even touched the new yoga mat hubby bought me for Christmas. For the last three months or so, I have also been eating everything that isn't nailed down in the hopes of gaining some weight back...or at least my boobs. I wieghed myself this morning and I have not gained back one single pound. In fact, I probably have dropped a couple more since currently I am currently bloated, surfing the crimson wave. The boobs seemed a little bigger a couple days ago, but the wave is probably to blame for that as well.

All I want is my boobs back, really. Bra shopping is a pain in the ass...especially when one's chest is now down to a high A-cup from a high C-cup (this was big for a girl of my build...it was sort of a Love Hewitt, is she gonna fall over from the weight of her boobs kind of thing). If this keeps going they're likely to go inverted...and wouldn't that be a sight? I am totally lost without them and at this point probably really don't even need to wear a bra...but I was raised by a mother who was all 'never leave home without it' because it's in poor taste.

Seriously, it's disturbing and I have a lot of fine lingerie that will never be worn again if this shit continues. Lack of boobs is making me bitchy and evil, even though most people are tellin' me I look fine and shouldn't worry about it. Some even say it's cause I'm getting older. WTF?

I come from a long line of large breasted women and a lot of them are finely framed like me. And all of a sudden I'm like an outcast. Everyone else got to keep their boobs until the day they died with the exception of one great aunt who had breast cancer...but even she has fake replacements now that are just as big, if not bigger, as her real boobs were.

Arrgh! Miss Maddy's mommy keeps offering the fake ones she had for Halloween...not that she even remotely needed them then and not the she will ever need them again (having babies, whether they live or not is sort of her thing now). I don't want fake tits! I want my real ones back for the love of Joe Pesci!

BTW: I have started up my 10th & Park blog, which can be found on the top of the link list to the right and although it's not very pretty currently (KP will be workin' on the template and is working on the template for this blog), there are like four post now and no readers so far as I know, so check it out please if you have the time. It's all about the shit that goes on in my neighborhood...and most recently Shortleash kicked my dog!

'Angus Bathoon is a Fat Kid!'

2006-03-19T18:56:00.000-06:00

And is there a place where I can get colored contact lenses for my dog?

So, for yesterday and the Saturday before the dogs (one per appointment) have gone to the vet for their annual check-up and shots. Jezebelle was the last dog we had to the vet before these appointments and that was in the summer when she broke her toe jumping like a maniac hopped up on angel dust from the couch to the ottoman to keep Angus from getting her rawhide. The vet doesn't like me. He actually told me that I ask too many questions. Sorry, I need answers. I can't be plagued with wonder about why the stuff for Angus' ear smelled and looked like and came in the same kind of tube except one was longer like the stuff he had for his eye and why if they were the same did I have to buy both? If you don't tell me, I will sit and ask myself these sorts of questions and go insane! Anyway, I had started to fret a couple days before because I knew that Jezebelle did not react well to leaving the house and driving in the car the last couple times I have been in the car with her and hubby was always there with me. I had never taken her in the car all by myself. Hubby said he would go also. She was seriously well behaved and didn't pee on or vomit up anything. She sat still looking out the window and was my perfect, little angel. She also behaved for the vet...until he tried to clip her nails, but still she received nothing but praise for her health and behavior. Woo-hoo! I thought it would be smooth sailing from here. Angus' appointment was yesterday. I set the alarm for seven am and went to sleep only two wake up around two am having to pee so badly I thought I was gonna explode...not that you really needed to know that. So I hit the bathroom and headed back to bed only to have the godforsaken owl that lives in my barn hoo-hoo me to near insanity. I literally put the pillow over my face and not to drown out the noise but to suffocate myself so I'd never have to hear it again! Finally, I fell back to sleep. But at precisely five am, hubby's cell alarm starting going off, waking me again. I tried to ignore it for about fifteen minutes but that really didn't work so, I got up and tried to turn it off. This not only had me leaving the comfort of the warm, comfy bed when I had barely slept at all but also the bedroom where the temperature is livable...let's just say I'm never gonna get hypothermia in the bedroom! Because hubby has one of those ridiculous TREO 650 phones I cannot figure it out. I'm a girl. It's too complex for something that isn't so necessary. Basically trying to operate the thing just hurts my head and I say things like, "Why do you need that?" a lot. I do know how to make the alarm snooze though, even if it does only do it for like ten or fifteen minutes. I head back to bed, hoping for crash for a little bit longer, or at the very least, regain the feeling in my toes (Are they supposed to be blue?). The cats had already noticed I had gotten up and had left the room. They had also noticed that it was light outside. Arrgh! Have you ever tried to share a full size bed with another person who sleeps like a crash victim and three cats, one of which, weighs 48 pounds, keeping in mind that all three cats want to be fed right friggin' now? It's brutal...and a lot of the time one of them ends up tossing me on to the floor. We're getting a new bed though...just as soon as we can figure out which the largest is we can get up the back stairs. Anyway, the alarm was going off again and so on and so forth so I crawled out of bed and into the day (sort of like 'Samara' from The Ring...except my hair is much, much shorter. I washed got dressed and washed my hair, let the dogs out, fed the cats, bitched at hubby 'cause he has so many pairs of shoes and they all seem to live in the kitchen. You know, the usual. We got Jezebelle into her crate because she knew we were only taking Angus in the car and she had to stay home. She was going nuts but we got Angus outside and into hubby's truck. Of course, he had to sit on the front seat with us, but he was mostly well behaved...if you don't count the puddle he drooled on leg of my jeans. We get him to the vet where he as a clearly large dog is weighed and is found to be 105 pounds. Not surprising. I actually thought he weighed more. Huh. The vet, while handing the dog treats like they're candy (hmm...nevermind) tells me my dog is fat and should weigh 20 pounds less than he does. I could not imagine my dog weighing only 85 pounds. In general he is a big fuckin' dog. So my dog is a fat-ass according to the vet and is supposed to lose some weight by his next appointment for Lymes booster shots on April 15th. I am actually so surprised the man didn't try to sell me diet dog food. He's such demon! This prompts hubby to start saying things to the dog like, "Angus Bathoon is a fat kid!" which is who he was named for as they told me when I got him as a puppy he was going to eventually be a very big dog and now the statement is actually true. There was some laughter, but I squashed it. Don't want to give the fat kid a complex. We left the vet and headed for the bank drive-thru, which should really be called the drive-thru puppy cookie store. Angus only tried to eat the teller once and she still gave him three cookies. We were like, "Maybe this isn't so good for the fat kid." Angus really didn't have any interest in the cookies though. I don't think he was barking at her, ordering her to give him cookies. I think it was just because he really wanted to eat her. He's a little feisty. We get home. He was mello-pup for the rest of the day yesterday...really didn't even want anything to do with peanut butter or Tyra Banks. Strange, I know, and I assume it's from the shots. Last night, while hubby was off doing some work, I was watching this story on Animal Planet about how a lot of Dalmations aren't marketable because their eyes aren't blue. I looked at Jezebelle who is Dalmation-Pointer and she has brown eyes. I wonder if this is why she was at the shelter and was deemed to have behavioral issues (hyper-activity and general craziness...she also posses the ability to jump five feet in the air without a moments notice and for no apparently good reason). I started to wonder if she would like contact lenses and then if and where there was a place that made contact lenses for dogs like a place that caters to Hollywood pooches. Then I wondered if you could even get a dog to wear contact lenses. It was all too much! Today, I got up late (nine-thirty am) and then hubby wanted to take both dogs to the dog park. I usually protest because it's just a filthy fucking disaster and then they come home muddy and smelly and I have to give them baths...and Belle fucking hates that. I decided that if I said no one more time, especially now that they had gotten all their shots again, hubby would divorce me. Si we loaded into the truck and headed to the dog park, which is a gigantic chunk of land that was donated by someone and is surrounded by water on three sides. The dogs love it. Angus was running too fast and took a dive, sliding about three feet on his face. He got right up though and headed back to play with the other dogs. Jezebelle loves to run and she loves to sniff things so you can imagine she was losing her mind. They played for about an hour, making lots of short-term friends and then we lost Jezebelle. Hubby and Angus went off to find her and didn't return for twenty minutes, in which time I was sniffed repeatedly by a Rotweiler that apparently had no owner and another man came out of the woods with a dog, a man I had talked to earlier, asking me if I was looking for a dog. I told him my husband had gone to look for her. This man then told me my husband had found the little black and white dog but had now lost the golden. How does a grown man go into the wood with one dog seeking another and come out with another, the one sought? Finally the dogs were wrangled up and put back in the car as the muddy, disgusting messes I expected them to be. We stopped at McDonald's on the way home, hubby strangely thinking the dogs were mellow enough to be able to go through the drive-thru. This was not true. Both dogs, who were in a comatose staight in the backseat of the truck until then, rose barking and tried to eat the drive-thru speaker box. I think they though there was a woman inside. When we got home, I of course got the pleasure of giving the dogs baths because hubby gets frustrated easily, espcially when he has no idea what he's doing. Belle's bath went surprisingly well. She didn't escape the tub once and she didn't really even fight. Angus on the other hand was so worn from the weekend's activities thus far I had to lift him into the tub. He, of course, was covered in thick smelly mud and protested the entire time. Both dogs have been rather comatose this afternoon so I thought it would be a great time to try to get them accustomed to the cats again. Lately, we've been working with Boo who is so laid back it's not even funny. It didn't go well. Docile puppies turned into crazed lunatic puppies and Belle kept trying to bite Boo's ear. Arrgh! What a long weekend! And now I'm off to watch 'The Sopranos'.

Does That Chinese Man Even Play the Tuba?

2006-03-18T16:21:00.000-06:00

And Not Getting Touched By The Hand of God...

Omigod! I am so sick and friggin' tired of commercials for car dealerships on the TV. I just saw one that was "Are you looking for a new car?" asked by voice-over while a montage of used cars is played only to have the commercial end with my finding out finally that this car dealership is literally so far away from where I live I couldn't even get a bus there (I assume this is the mode of transportation of people who don't already have cars out to dealerships to look at them) and then start the whole ad all over again. This gets better. This commercial also involves a Chinese guy holding a tuba and trying to sell used cars. Oh, and you can't understand a word he's saying! I am yet again having a session of angry letter writer with myself, and it would go a little somethin' like this...

Dear TV Ad Guys @ VH1,

I am writing mostly in regards to the commercial that is reapeatedly played involving a crazy, Chinese man trying to sell me cars from 250 miles away from my house. Have you seen this commercial yourselves? Disturbing to say the very least. Does he even play that tuba? He doesn't play it in the commercial. He just holds it. What the hell is it for? But this is not the only reason I write. I am sitting here in my living room trying to enjoy VH1's 'Storytellers: Bruce Springsteen'. Yes, I know this might make me lame, but I don't care. I enjoy his music and he is rather witty. Also, I like that he's so turning into Bob Dylan. I have thus far enjoyed the parts of the show I have actually gotten to see. But there's a big fat problem. Every ten seconds there's an ad on and you're askin' me if I'm shoppin' for a new car and I tell you no, I am trying to get all the springsteeny goodness I can right now. There are no cars in my living room and although the TV is large enough that the cars are very nearly life-sized, please remember I am inside watching The Boss by choice and not out shopping for a car! And when you play a commercial for a car dealership nowhere near to where I live, it irritates me even more! This literally is the fifth time I have tried to watch this entire show and every time this same thing happens. You start socking me with this wack-o-loon Asian and I end up changing the channel (By the way the way this also happens when I'm trying to watch 'DMC: My Adoption Journey' and I still have yet to see that show in it's entirety). Do you think The Boss is gonna sell some cars...used ones? I struggle to understand why you would do this. Playing the same commercial over and over and over again is not making me want to buy a used car. It really only makes me angrier and I'm not so pretty when I'm snarling! I love Springsteen. The man is beautiful but in a really rugged, dirty way. I'm a chick, on a Saturday afternoon. I am your target. Where are the Hagen Daaz People? Where are my promises for a great new season of 'The Surreal Life' in which Alexis Arquette is turning into a woman (sorry. I thought she already was)? Why aren't you trying to sell me the KT Tungstel CD (It's been hours since I heard 'Big Black Horse...')? I tell you, someone try to sell me a tampon or two (or maybe some footage of Hulk Hogan trying to buy some) or I'll go insane. I can't take aanother 15 second bit with a strange Chinese man with a tuba trying to sell me a Datsun from 250 miles to the north, where I suspect they are having a snowstorm right about now. You could have, at the very least, gotten an actor, a Chinese one even, to play the part of the dealership owner. I can't understand a word the real owner says, but he seems awefully damned happy. This. Also not good. It makes him seem a little bit shady. No one wants to by a car from a guy who could be a serial killer psycho or child molester. Can't pack the kiddies up and go 250 miles to buy a used mini-van when one of the kids could get 'touched' and not by the hand of God. So, please, no more! Play these ads in the early morning when no one is watching TV and the few that are have started their day (these would be people with actual jobs who could afford said used cars, no problem). They may even be thinking about buying a new car and even if they're 250 miles away, it could still give them some sort of idea about the kind of car they want to get. And you could feel proud of yourself for still trying to help.

BTW - Candy Lovers: Further Candy research has proven the Milky Way Bar by M&M-Mars to be not only a tasty candy, but also much, much easier to get into than the Kit-Kat. I have eaten several Milky Ways in the last couple of days and I have enjoyed all of them in a timely fashion.

Stop Mocking Me HB!

2006-03-15T16:07:00.000-06:00

A candy catastrophe already in progress...

Why is it so friggin' hard to get into a Kit Kat these days. Well, first off they changed the wrapping from the old, foil with paper around it way, which was already tolerable and really didn't need to be changed (tree-huggers, sorry, but I would trade some trees for candy. I like candy), to this very shiny plastic crap that it is damned near impossible to tear. It actually stretches when you pull on it. You have to get a blow torch and a ski mask just to get into the thing and by then you've already wrecked the candy and you're probably standing in a room that wreaks of burnt chocolate...and that's just not a good smell. Really, this new wrapping is not helping me get to the candy in a timely fashion and sometimes a girl just needs a crispy wafer in milk chocolate to go with her daily viewing of 'Beverly Hills 90210' on Soapnet. I love that I have this channel and also that they play this show. It's a sickness I think. Can't help but love the dramatically quick twists and turns of the modern day, soap opera...the shows seem like they're Madlibs for romatics. Hilarious! It's like, "Jenny was in a skyscraper when suddenly there was a goat at the door and a glue bottle was stealing her cousin Tony's baby from Harlem". I cannot believe it! This Kit Kat is still not open! Someone get me a chainsaw and a lobster trap. In the time it's taken me to open this, I could have eaten the actual cat...Boo even, and he weighs fifty pound (BTW: I love the picture to the upper left). Finally, with the help of the kitchen scissors I have gotten into the candy...and it ain't so pretty. I'll still eat them though. That was what this was all about wasn't it...getting the candy. Mmm, Kit Kat! I swear I am totally going to write a strongly-worded letter to H.B. Reese Candy Co. in regards to my disappointment with their choices in candy peddling...the first rule pf which is, or at least should be...MAKE IT EASY & FAST TO GET INTO (no one gains the kind of happiness candy brings by just hanging out with it and knowing they have it)! It'll be something to the effect of...

Dear H.B. Reese Candy Co.,
I am writing in regards to the really harsh shit you've done to the wrappers of your very tasty candies. You have now made it nearly impossible to enjoy the crisp, chocolatey goodness of a Kit Kat. The crappy new wrapping, which I think is some form of new government plastic that cannot be breached even if it was wrapped in explosives and I handed the trigger over to someone with a twitch (that would be entertaining though.) is not something you can just tear into easily. I don't like the idea of having to wage war against candy. Also, I don't necessarily enjoy the idea of befriending and going to war with a guy with a twitch. I understand that the old way with the foil and paper was also not something that could just be torn into, but at least that was just two flaps, one with a just a little dab of glue, and with the shawdy quality of the glue you've been using the last couple years, there was no challenge at all. In the time it took me to get to the candy, most of which was spent snarling and cursing at the candy and heartily tugging on the wrapper, often in the spot you suggest, I also had to take a trip to the kitchen to get the scissors to enjoy candy that I had sitting right in front of me. Candy people, I shouldn't have to get up from my desk and walk across the house the long way just to have crisp wafers in milk chocolate when they're already on my desk. And to top it all off and basically kick the dirt of candy deprivation in my face just one more time, you have actually printed on the wrapper a series of white arrows with the phrase, 'Tear Here'. Your mocking me H.B. and I really don't like it. Also, could you please stop coating things in white chocolate. They don't sell well. A lot of people only say they like white chocolate, for appearances I guess. Keep coating your famous canides in white chocolate and eventually, it will bankrupt you (financially. I imagine the morals of your company have been gone for quite a long while now). And where will we get out candy goodness from then? Shady dealers in dark alleys? $50.00 for a bar? You don't want to be responsible for creating the next CRACK do you? I didn't think so.

Isn't It Ironic?

2006-03-13T08:53:00.000-06:00

[No actual Alanis is required for this post...thankfully!]

So, I was all pepped up for some more ghost-hunting, especially since the whole 'Ring' thing (see Light Distortion, a couple posts ago). I busted out the camera to take some new pictures about the house just to see if anything suspicious showed up, ready to write a new post, a sequel to the last ghost-hunting post. I start snapping pics around the living room and low and behold...

THE GODFORSAKEN CAMERA BROKE!

It started making all sorts of noise, and I looked at the pic and the screen was all locked up. Then it started beeping and turned itself off. I was like 'Oh great! The ghosts have killed the camera!'

I poked at it for a while, trying to get it turn back on. Also there were some choice words said about the people at Olympus, although I know the camera is like 3 years old and could probably be replaced, but I haven't found one I like yet and am toying with the notion of getting a video cam or at least on that does both video and stills (current cam only does 7 minutes of video with no sound). Also, very few days go by when I don't use the camera for something.

So, I popped the batteries and put them back, trying to turn it on again. I got the same beping and the same turning itself off again. Popped the batteries and tried a few more times. This didn't really help, except for around the fourth time, the screen said CARD ERROR, but all flashy-like.

I pulled the card, and put it back. Ooh, this seemed to change things. The camera even let me take a picture...And then it started beeping again and turned itself off!

It was basically decided that the card was fried. Couldn't even read from it (Goodbye 168 pictures still on that card). Ironic, once again, that I was hunting for ghosts when this happened.

You know what though? If there are ghosts, they are too old to know anything about Office Depot, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. And as a girl who cannot apparently be without the digital camera, I ran out and bought a new card yesterday.

Digi-cam is all better and works like a dream again. Clearly I win this round! 'CASPER' can bite me!

Little Old Men In Big Boat Cars...

2006-03-09T15:05:00.000-06:00

The Story That Came Along With The Haircut...

So, now that we've all taken the time to ooh and ahh at the new shortage of hair on my head and the fact that it's now bright red, I thought I'd tell the story that came along with beginning of the adventure for a clip, perhaps it was the adventure...or perhaps PURGATORY has now installed a probation officer type service (Like maybe I died somewhere along the way here and don't remember, should be in hell, but it was all full up, so they let me out and every once and a while I have an appointment with PURGATORY, a day of just such immense bullshit to remind me that I'm an asshole, a Purgatory parole officer if you will...there I go, writing my own religion...DO NOT FOLLOW ME!)

Anyway, I get up yesterday morning pretty friggin' early so far as my wake-up habits go and all creeped out because the first thing that popped into my hazy head was that I was going to get my hair cut very short and it was quite long. I had a teeny-tiny panic attack moment and then finally got out of the bed to face my fears.

I let the dogs out and let them run around for like an hour then stashed them back in the house just as Daniel Powter's 'Bad Day' started on VH1. I lit a cigarette and said, "Shit, today might actually go well. Unfortunately, VH1 was having some issues with their A/V and only half the video played. Then there were some screeching noises and the screen went black with a old-style horror movie buzz, like it was mocking me and saying, "You have just entered the twilight zone filled." After checking to make sure it wasn't the TV and seeing that VH1 still didn't work, I turned it back off and headed for my coat. I should have known then that dark clouds were about to roll in.

Also, it was Wednesday morning so the world outside was sure to be overrun by old people (Sorry old people, but you drive badly and always seem to be in the way, not that I am impolite to you in any way) barely doing the speed limit, driving some of the most gigantic cars I've ever seen in my life! Where do you keep getting these cars? So in other words, the crash of the VH1 and Daniel Powter's 'Bad Day' was really telling me...You have just entered the twilight zone and it's chock full of folks in their twilight years.

There are two easy ways to get to the general shopping areas in this city, but from my house both require starting out on the same road. This road is quite narrow. There are two lanes, but they allow street parking which definitely impedes the usage of the second driving lane, so everyone just generally drives in the one. Herein lies the trouble...

I get stuck behind a boat car driven by an old man who maybe doing 22 MPH in a 35 MPH zone and he was in fact taking up both lanes, making it impossible to get around him. This is a busy area so I and the people behind me couldn't even take the chance of passing in the on-coming lane. Sorry, no one here wants to die via head-on collision with a city bus.

There was a lot of horn usage (this is what it's for) from both myself and the people behind me. This didn't seem to get us anywhere except for the fact that every time someone laid on the horn, the old guy slowed down and made matters worse.

Finally, I see Taylor Avenue which cuts across to the road the shopping is on, and I see that old guy doesn't have on his left or his right (as old folks go, it really could be either one) directional. I thought this was my chance to get out of the driving thru hell cycle. Not so much!

Old man in his boat car with just as elderly female passenger, veers back in front of me without any directional into the left turn lane. He then proceeds to slam on the brakes to avoid death by on-coming city bus. I nearly rear-ended the psycho old-fuck because not only was he driving like a douchebag, it was also raining and screwing up the road in general.

I ended up having to follow this crusty old fart all the way to the friggin' Walmart, where he had plenty of trouble making the left turn into the parking lot, so much so that myself and five others cut across in front of a speeding semi just to make some progress.

I had learned my lesson at this point. No more following. I actually went to the opposite side of the parking lot, to park and go in through the door opposite the old folks, hoping to never see them again. But not even bucking the system (I usually park on the other side and go in the other door) didn't stop the maddness!

I get in the Walmart and mosey over to Costcutters (yes, I got my hair cut at Costcutters. There was a reason for this, but I don't have the time to explain now) and talk to the chick when low and behold, asshole old couple from the boat car of doom walk in at a snail's pace. Apparently they had appointments. And now things get worse...

Old fuck decides that he is going to yell at me at the top of his lungs in the Walmart/Costcutters. What was he yelling and making a hellacious scene about you may ask...My driving skillz and ability! Had he been anyone else, I would have let loose the hellfire. I have a bad temper and little or no patience.

I kept my mouth shut though, especially about his making a mockery of the road. Don't argue with old people. I know better, even if they don't have a clue in the friggin' world! Finally he shut up and I thought, very foolishly, we were done and the day could just go on as though none of it had happened.

Now, the Costcutters in the Walmart is small, like the size of the bathroom. They have all of three chairs. There was already one old lady in there reading a magazine and monopolyzing two of the three chairs. I sat down on the third. Old fuck then marches over and declares that I need to get up so his wife has a place to sit. I refused.

You may think this evil of me seeing as how I was raised better and she was quite an old lady. And I would have, if I had been treated slightly better, given her the seat. At that point though, it was pretty much to hell with the way I had been reared with goodness and I declared she could stand until she fell over from exhaustion...or death!

So, I got my haircut, obviously. Then I grabbed the other shit I needed. On my way back to the check-outs, this additional old woman in one of those super high-tech, high-seated joystick controlled wheelchairs came out of nowhere at high-speed, as though she was out of control and rammed right into the side of my cart slamming it into my hip. There was pain, but I didn't swear at her or anything, not even when she didn't even say she was sorry.

Out of nowhere, original old fucker appears and starts yelling at me again, telling me I should learn to respect my elders and be more careful. I was concerned at this point, any time I turned around he would be right behind me to yell and curse (oh, yes! there was plenty of cursing coming from his ancient mouth) at me for things I had little or nothing to do with really.

Finally, I checked out and got back to my SUV. I got inside and smoked a cigarette which then reminded me that I was running low. I started her up and headed for Kwik Trip, only to see that my least favorite old persons were now turning their boat car of Satan into the lot!

I literally stopped my car at Menards and waited for them to go the fuck away. I didn't want another run in with ancient cursing man. One good open-palmed swat from me could have taken his head clear off his shoulders and I didn't need to also go to jail for him!

I'd like to think that he was suffering from some kind of dementia that made him act this way. If that was the case though, he really had no business driving a car. So people, if you have old people you love, keep an eye on them, they could be a handful if left unsupervised!

Also, I have taken a vow that there will be no more venturing out on Wednesday mornings especially nowhere near Walmart or any other place (grocery store, etc.) where there may be hoardes of elderly folks shuffling (not running) amok!

Hair Yesterday...Gone Today!

2006-03-08T12:47:00.000-06:00

So, I got all my hair whacked off (total: 18 inches)...

And of course, it wouldn't be me, if it weren't also a completely different color than it was when I woke up this morning...

Hubby doesn't know yet...I thik he might freak a little...or well, actually, I think he, amongst several others, might freak a lot...So, I guess I'm gonna be a fiesty, little red-head for a while!

Donuts, Tax Credits and The Pope...

2006-03-03T12:11:00.000-06:00

It's all about assorted goodness...

So, we'll start this post by saying that Wednesday night, I went into the kitchen for some leftover beef stew (I really wanted donuts, but there was a small issue of hubby having not come home yet, due to his having locked his truck inside the shop while changing his oil) and in trying to get a spoon out of the silverware drawer, I broke the kitchen. I reached in and pulled the drawer handle, and pulled the entire front of the drawer right off. This was disturbing. Apparently I don't know my own strength. I also apparently didn't know how important the front of the silverware drawer is the the silverware drawer. It's pretty necessary, especially when it comes to actually keeping the silverware and utensils in the drawer.

On a strange note though, as soon as the drawer broke, the oven seemed to start functioning like a real oven and not one that has been off in temperature by just over one hundred degrees since we moved in here. Can't figure that one out, but then again, the house may or may not be haunted...so clearly, we have our problems as assorted as they may be.

So, instead of donuts, there was leftover stew and bread. This was already getting a little old, but regardless, I settled in and watched the rest of season 2 'Arrested Developement' (Hilarious!) and then started watching season 2 'Dead Like Me' on DVD, while waiting to see if hubby would ever manage to free the truck and come home. This went on 'til damned near midnight, which for a Wednesday, was pretty late, but he and the truck did return home safely (with the oil changed) and understandably, this had already not been the typical Wednesday.

So, yesterday, I did practically nothing. Well, I did stuff but it was stupid shit like laundry and other assorted cleaning. Still wanted the donuts though. Hubby called and was all "What do you want to do tonite?" At this question, I had to consider the mostly nothing I had been doing already and how that seemed to be working out quite well for me. I did want to watch Walk The Line though having bought the DVD on Tuesday. He called me back again a little later asking a whole bunch of questions about the museum and their hours. I found this a little strange until I figured out why he was asking.

A couple weeks ago when BEG and Wendi were down, BEG and I were discussing going to the museum because their having a showing of Pope stuff, Pope memorabilia throughout the ages if you will. Hubby basically just spent the entire time laughing and mocking us for even thinking we were gonna do this. There was also some argument from him about how we would just go to mock and make asses of ourselves, how we would not take it seriously. He just thinks me, my cohorts, and our crazy schemes are retarded...not in a silly kind of way either. Like he literally stops and takes the time to consider how competent we are. And if not that, at the very least, he resigns to our simply being female...the gender from which this sort of behavior is to be expected. Hubby only finds us entertaining about 10% of the time.

And then this last Friday night when we were fighting, the topic of what we are not calling "The Pope Show" came up again...basically in the same manner of we would misbehave and act like retards when everyone else would be their for real reasons. I'm sorry if we think Pope is hilarious and mockable. It doesn't mean we can't be interested.

So, this is why he was asking me about the museum. He decided we should go this coming Sunday. I was acting like an asshole throwing all the shit he'd been giving me about it back at him. This inspired him to sing Marylin Manson's 'Dope Show', but in a very "We're all stars now...in the Pope Show" kind of way. And he's worried we'll mock!

The third time he called, I declared he better bring me donuts! And not just donuts, Dunkin Donuts of the non-powdered sugar, jelly variety and it better be quick! You don't mess with a girl when she wants a donut...or anything else for that matter! He said he'd bring them, but that he had to stop by formerly mullet-headed tax woman to get the tax shit. I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to wait a bit longer for the tasty, jelly goodness.

The fourth time he called was to rant and rave because Tax Woman made a four thousand dollar mistake on the taxes. He was irrate and I probably would have been too, but then again, I was fixated on the theory that donuts were coming my way.

You see, we live in a historic home. I've mentioned this before. When we were planning for the new roof we found out about the historic home state tax credit shit. It was a long and trying process, but everything was approved to get the credit which was like 25% of the cost. The roof went up and we paid the bill (please keep in mind a 6,000 square foot house does NOT have a small amount of roofing and literally it could have been worse with some of the estimates we got). Tax Woman apparently put the credit in wrong. She put it through as a federal credit when it should have been a state credit, since our house is not used for profit and it came back as a $250 credit as opposed to the three to four grand we were expecting.

Hubby got home...without the donuts (damn him!) and furiously scoured the internet looking for the info Tax Woman wanted proof of to fix it. Everything was sorted out, hubby calmed down and I even went easy on him for the lack of donuts. I only made a couple of snarky comments along the lines of "A donut would sure be good ride about now". He got the point and knew he's done me wrong.

So, we watched Walk The Line. It was wonderful. I'm a big Johnny Cash fan so it was like Christmas for me. Plus, Reese and Joaquin were excellent as they usually are. I have yet to find a movie in which either of them suck even the remotest bit.

After the movie, I declared to hubby that I had told BEG I would go up to her house for her birthday. I know this is still a month away, but he needs to be warned early and repeatedly. He was all, "Is she gonna come down for the pope thing?" I figured she wouldn't if he wanted to go this weekend, but I told him I'd ask. He then decided that maybe we should wait to go until she does come down. Whatever. This only really ended up spurring him to suggest that I fly up to her house for her birthday.

This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard seeing as how it cost about $100 in gas and about four hours of time. He looked on Expedia though.

There was actually a $587 roundtrip from Milwaukee to Wausau (and back of course) which took nine hours because literally the plane would just keep hopping back and forth over Lake Michigan, kaing stops during the flight. Like I said, this was the dumbest idea ever, but he's always right their with the money trying (although he barely ever succeeds) to make my life a little easier! BTW: If you are someone who gets on this plane...you are stupid and you deserve to have your time and money wasted...I hope you get motion sickness and have to try to puke in one of those little in-flight, paper vomit sacks! There was some more lack of donut harassment and then we were off to bed.

Hubby woke me up this morning to tell me he loved me and to kiss me goodbye, which while still half asleep, I don't respond to so well. I'm not a morning person and please don't wake me up to tell me something I already know...but this is our morning ritual. He tells me he loves me and that he's going to work...I mumble back, sometimes not even remembering I did it, that I love him too and to be careful.

This morning however, after the usual bullshit and with him back on his way out of the bedroom, I myself, still half asleep, yelled, "Bring me donuts!" really loud. This caused him to come back, laughing at me. I was like, "At least I said I love you and to be careful before I yelled about the donuts!"

I better get some friggin' donuts tonight!

A Little LIGHT Distortion...

2006-03-01T12:13:00.000-06:00

Or 'Before You Die You See the Ring'...

Pic property of of Dreamworks and clearly not used for profit, just my own superstitious meanderings, which sometimes seem to get the best of me!

So, here's a little bit of the insane silliness that is me and my brain working overtime due to circumstances I had absolutely no control over. Let me just say, I was a little bit freaked by the sheer coincidence...

Not so long ago, on the night before the whole pink hair dye tragedy, I watched the movie The Ring. It was nothing new, I had seen it before and HBO was kind enough to play it for the umpteenth time and keep me busy for a little while. This is nothing particularly special...unless you take into consideration the events that followed and my own superstitious nature...which certainly wasn't helping.

So, the day after was when the pink hair dye went wrong and I, of course took some pictures of the disaster on my head, the one usable photo of the bunch ending up in that particular post to show how well it did not go and can be found somewhere on this blog and is really not the point right this second...

The other photos, the seriously screwed up and not even remotely usable photos brought one thought to my mind...Before you die, you see the ring. They were stashed in a separate folder to wait out the next seven days just to make sure (I know it's been longer than seven days, but I had forgotten about them until I came across them again this morning, whilst searching for something else)...

Here they are...now that I am officially not dead...

You can imagine my surprise when I uploaded these pictures from the digital camera to the PC and saw what they looked like...having just seen the movie about watching a movie that then distorts your face in any and all pictures taken of you afterwards. I had a 'Holy Samara Morgan' moment! As this was happening, hubby was laughing. I, of course, temporarily allowed my brain to get away from me and thought I might die in seven days! Clearly this did not happen and it was probably just the sunlight beating into the room through leaded glass windows that caused all the distortion in the pictures.

I'm not an idiot. I don't take horror movies seriously, although some I won't watch in the dark or by myself (And Samara Morgan was one of the scariest little bitches ever in a horror movie), but I think we all have those sort of moments. Everyone is capable about freaking out and I think I had every right seeing as how the movie goes and all and how my life seemed to be turning out like it!

Also, there is the fact that I live in a house that may or may not be haunted...the jury is still commiserating on that one.
I just kept the pics with the intent of this post (although the intention was to get it up sooner). It's not like I was waiting for a phone call or for Samara her self to crawl all gooey-like out of the big TV to get me!

Anyway, I thought it would humerous to share this with ya'll...see if anyone else would've freaked out if something like this happened to them.

Blather For the Masses...

2006-03-01T10:26:00.000-06:00

So, I'm in a blathering kind of mood and there were a lot of haps yesterday. Plus, venting might help me to understand some of those involved and their particular motivations for doing the ridiculous things they do. There's a new post up on Part Deux, another google image search post, but at behest of the people who like our brand of mockery, so check it out (http://Pluralofapocalypsedeux.blogspot.com) and there's a new renter there too, so check her out too, if ya can (The last one sadly went almost completely ignored, poor thing). BEG has 'Fruity Oaty Bar' shenanigans over at http://pluralofapocalypse.blogspot.com, so check that out too if you'rs a Firefly/Serenity fan and need a fix of the goodness. Also, it's Ash Wednesday...not that this affects me or the post. Just thought I'd give a shout out to all the religious folk. I might as well also give a shout out to Wendi (spelled correctly), since she's probably reading along. And now on with the blather...

#1 - The idiot college boys kept me awake all night last night. Apparently, Park Ave. is now a really cool drag/street race strip. These boys have tricked out rice grinders and were tearing things up for most of the wee hours of morning (from like 1-4 am). They've never done anything like this before and although they are college boys and make noise, mostly I just notice it when they're banging whichever plastic girl happens to be there at the moment (Unfortunately, my huge front window in my living room, which my desk is in front of, looks directly into their living room and their shutters are barely ever closed!). I imagine the chaos only stopped when it did because the head idiot is a UPS boy and probably had to go to work...

...which brings me to #2 - Yesterday, I was making beef stew, from scratch and if you've ever done this, and I'm not talking the crock pot method, you know this is a lengthy process, not to mention, something one actually has to pay attention to the entire time it's stewing and brewing. So, I was making the stew and I was a total mess. The dogs were running around around the time the school children start making their way home. So there was stew and constant flipping out and barking on the part of the dogs. I'm stirring the stew and by chance looked out the back window (the motion detector had not gone off for some reason) and I see my UPS guy (not the idiot from across the street). I was like ,"What the hell is he doing here?" on my way to the door with the dogs now freaking out because the motion detector had finally gone off (I assume it was me in the house in front of the window setting it off and not actually UPS guy and such is my life). Apparently, hubby had ordered some stuff, so there were boxes and dogs and dogs barking and trying to eat UPS guy as though they have never seen him before. This is shit I deal with everyday (you should see it when the FED EX guy shows up), no big deal. In the midst of the chaos though, UPS guy starts hardcore hitting on me as though he doesn't know I'm married, as though I'm not a total disaster from the stewing adventure which was still in progress and as though I have the time to flirt back whilst carrying heavy boxes and trying to keep the dogs from eating him. Finally, he left. I concluded it was the smell of meat that brought all of it on...although he is generally a pretty flirty kind of guy, so whatever...and now, we're up to...

#3 - The things delivered by UPS man and ordered by hubby. I knew the one box was expected. The rec room has a separate heating/air system and the blowere motor was shot. Hubby had ordered a new one over the weekend. No big deal. I couldn't fathom what was in box #2, since the only other thing I know he bought via the internet over the weekend was his new tool box (the old one have been completely destroyed last Wednesday in a tragic losing a wheel and then tipping over while being moved to a new location...oh yeah, did I mention he changed jobs again? He did.) and I knew it wasn't the new tool box. Anyway, I put the boxes on the dining room table so hubby would be sure to find them when he eventually came home and then I pretty much forgot about them save for the few times I had to yell at Angus to stop chewing on the corner of the bottom box. Little did I know, box 2 contained the new trackball to replace the old one which had gone to hell in a handag after seven long years of being fondled.

This thing is gigantic, nearly twice the size of the last one and although it functions properly, I'm having some trouble adapting to the entire idea of it. KP, if you thought the last trackball was a pain in the ass, you ain't seen nothin' yet! Oh, whoa is me! And now on to...

#4 - Gossip! Gossip! Gossip! Jamie is apparently in jail for hitting someone with the car. I would say his car, except for it wasn't his car...he doesn't even have one, or a driver's license for that matter due to the last time, two years ago when he backed out of his driveway on New Year's Eve and ran over and woman and killed her. Will this boy ever learn? (Sidenote: Although, he should have been far more careful due to the whether, he was found to be not at fault for that woman's death. It was a blinding snowstorm and she was well over the legal blood alcohol limit and wandering around in the street).

#5 - I have found fault (other than the space cheese) with 'Space: Above and Beyond'...in the form of the very special Christmas episode of 'Space: Above and Beyond' (Disc 3, ep 2 "River of Stars"...be warned if you haven't gotten this far yet). Yes, there was one and it was all about the schlock! It was so sugary that I actually had to abandon the DVD watching spree and resume watching season 2 'Arrested Devolopement'. No schlock on that show! I will resume watching 'Space' when my teeth stop feeling like they're rotting out of my head. Although, in said very special x-mas ep, Vansen bought Hawke his very first Christmas present and then had to spend the time explaining the holiday to him. There was almost kissing, so I'm still hopeful.

See, just blather. Nothing too important!

Old Friends & Cherry Pie...

2006-02-27T09:25:00.000-06:00

NOT THIS CHERRY PIE...

THIS 'CHERRY PIE'...

(This picture was borrowed, for the sake of this non-profit post from Cherry Pie's official website www.cherrypie.org)

So, about a month ago, I get this e-mail (said e-mail has been altered to make it fit here, and to remove actual names. Plus it was in some gigantic font that even I didn't recognize and wasn't very cooperative with the blogger)...

Help the freak celebrate the big 30! Saturday February 25th at Bub’s Irish Pub in Germantown. OTTO will ring in a new milestone in his life in STYLE! My favorite local band “CHERRY PIE” will be playing so DON’T miss it! CANCEL your plans, HIRE a babysitter, SELL your tickets, CHANGE your dinner reservations, MORTGAGE your house, or SELL your plasma if you have to! DON’T miss this. I want an event for the ages! The story of this night will be told for generations. Be a part of HISTORY! We’re gonna party like it’s 1989. Come dressed in your best 80’s attire (you won’t feel out of place). Tell your friends, tell your family, and tell your friends’ family. It’s a public setting so anyone may attend. This is not an invitation; merely information. Bub’s Irish Pub is located on Main St. in Germantown. Directions can be found on Mapquest. No RSVP required and NO GIFTS!! Just show up and have FUN! The show is scheduled to start at 9:30, but you may want to show up semi-early (the parking isn’t great). It will be fun!

The actual e-mail was sent by hubby's best friend, Otto (not his real name...but it fits...you figure that one out!) in regards to his 30th birthday celebration.

Now, hubby and Otto have been friends since like...birth. It's the strangest friendship ever and it's completey surprising to me that it even still is...not that they fight or anything. They're just really in different places in their lives now...but they're still holding on...nothing, not even me, can separate these two yahoos.

[Some backstory...I met hubby, Otto, Carl, Chris, Jeff, Kev, Keith (prev. 3 are actually relatives of mine who I didn't know or meet until just before high school and the latter two are twins), Lee, Steve, Paul and Tim...a close group of friends. Some I met right before I started high school and the rest was shortly into the first month of high school because I already knew the others. They were a tight knit group and I got sucked in, one of only two girls (other than Chris' older sister, Jen) allowed to infiltrate the system and be equal...and I am now the only original girl left in this pack (other than Jen) having survived a lot with them over the last 13 years. In this time, there have been feuds, marriages, divorces...people retiring to their nuetral corners for years at a time since the high school days...we're not a tight group anymore. I think Carl, Tim (I do still see him from time to time though), and Lee have been completely outted from the group, Paul moved to Scotland his junior year of high school (I was a Sophomore then) most of the former boys now have children (few have just child). Everyon'es a grown-up now and sometimes sticking together is a little harder than anyone ever thought it would be. Obviously, I see Otto...he is hubby's best friend...and he's easier to take now that I've finally gotten him to get rid of the mullet...of course he does wear make-up and leather pants quite often now). But literally, the others I haven't seen in years...since the last Cherry Pie outting, and that was just a few of them and that night did not really end well...and rest I've seen at like Walmart...four years ago!]

Good Ol' Otto was really askin' a lot...especially since we are a really dysfunctional group now that we're all older...like I said, not so tight-knit anymore...So, here's how this went...

Hubby and I spent very nearly all last week not together and not speaking to each other. Don't be alarmed, we do this a lot. We fight for weeks at a time and nothing ever really gets resolved...it's more like it just fades out until it's time for the next brawl. This is how we function. It's well known. We are an explosive couple, and both of us are really stubborn with really bad tempers.

Friday was pretty much the culmination of this latest battle royal. We were both drunk. It wasn't good, but like I said, it ended like it generally does and we're ok for now...And then it was Saturday, Otto's 30th birthday, the day of 'Cherry Pie'...

I got up...way too early it being a Saturday and all and so did hubby, both with hangover remnants (I had a headache and was tired and hubby had a sour stomach since he usually mixes liquor with stupid shit like jalepenos. I threw on a hoodie and some jeans, which were too big due to the gigantic weight loss (no, I have not managed to put any of the weight back on which means I'm generally just freezing my ass off). I figured since I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Otto and have been harassing him about his love for 'Cherry Pie' for a couple years now, I could just wear that to the show and save myself the time and trouble of finding something else to wear.

We had some bullshit errands to run like get the truck washed and the oil changed and take some paperwork to the tax woman...

Tax Woman Story...which makes me a total asshole: The woman that does our taxes is hubby's friend Bear's mother-in-law. She is a perfectly wonderful lady, probably in her late fifites, early sixties and last year when I saw her for the tax fiasco, she had a mullet. Not only that, but she also lives in a trailer. I have nothing against people who live in trailers...although, I do have plenty of mullet issues. Anyway, hubby recently took her most of the paperwork she needed for the taxes and while they were talking, she told him that she had cancer and was going through chemo. This sucks. So, Saturday, when we went out there to take her some more paperwork she ended up needing, hubby went in and came back out and said she now had a wig on. The first thing out of my mouth (here's the part that make me an asshole...drum roll please...)..."Is it a mullet wig?". It's not funny. I know that, and so does hubby, but we both cracked up laughing. Of course, later I was talking to BEG about the tax lady and basically she said the same thing, so I don't feel so bad about it anymore.

Somewhere, in the midst of errands, I started to feel better and decided that I probably should buy something new to wear to 'Cherry Pie'. I mentioned the words 'BLACK' and 'Slinky' and hubby's eyes went all googley and we set off for the mall. At the mall, it was 'live model' day which is the most hilarious shit ever. There were many, young girls in windows taking a lot of harassment. There was a lot of laughter and a big guy just screwing with the girls in the window at DEB...I should probably mention that of all the live models in the mall, DEB had the less than good ones...you know, the ones that aren't really cut out for modeling.

Anyway, with hubby and not a girlfriend helping me pick out something to wear, you can pretty much guess what kind of smutty attire I ended up with and just how little of it there actually was...

Toxic Jeans: They're awesome. They fit well and they're super comfy. Buy lots!!! They come with their own sand paper....

Anyway, so I was a little skanky and definitely far away from my usual jeans&hoodie combo. We live like an hour away from the bar where 'Cherry Pie' was playing so we ate dinner and piled into the truck at like 8pm, on our way into the unknown...sometimes these group outtings end well and sometimes they don't...

Seeing as how we were both still tired and not feeling so great and haven't really hung out with many of the people we expected to see there in like years as mentioned previously, we formulated a plan. Neither of us were going to drink excessively...I wasn't going to drink at all (it's not really my thing anyway) and we were going to leave around midnight for home...this is not exactly how it went...

It was like exactly 9pm when we got there and then it took like a millenia to locate a place to park the huge truck which makes parking problematic on it's own on a normal day. Otto wasn't lying when he said the parking was sucky. We ended up on a side street like five blocks away. Apparently all Germantown has to offer on a weekend is a strip of bars and little or no place to park. Maybe they're trying to force people into car-pooling or the designated driver thing. Whatever!

We paid the cover charge, got inside and started hunting for familiar faces, first finding Jen (Chris' older sister) and Rachel (Chris' wife of about six months whom I hadn't ever met since theirs was a wedding I decided to skip for reasons I won't be sharing here. I will say though that no one should just settle). They were all decked out in their eighties gear, which included LA Gear and they both closely resembled Debbie Gibson, poofy bangs and all.

Then I saw Steve, who used to be my 'adopted twin brother' and whom was the last of the folks that have been seen in passing at Walmart. After that and some liquor, more had arrived (the group has newbies and is quite a lot larger now) and we all started falling back into the old swing of things. It basically turned out like none of us had ever been apart and especially not as long as we all had been. Otto was definitely having a good 30th birthday.

I was pretty happy, having always been the youngest of this bunch, to find that I am no longer the baby in the group. Someone else is much younger and it was sort of not-so legal for him to have even been in the bar...but that's all I'm sayin' about that. He wasn't drinking so I don't know that it was a terrible thing he was there.

Jen and I pretty much camped out with Otto on the dance floor, asses shaking, singing and screaming at the top of our lungs to 'Cherry Pie' waxing Poison, Warrant and other hairbands of late...not that we were the only ones...'Cherry Pie' has a pretty big following. And to everyone's complete surprise, their was only one instance of a breast escaping from my practically non-existant shirt and that really only ended in my flashing Jenna (a new edition to our group, currently cheating on her boyfriend part of the group with another member of the group-Oh, the drama!).

I gave a little speech/toast for Otto on his 30th, which basically was something to the effect of, "I stopped fondling my mouse and keyboard...put on practically nothing and came out to call you and dirty, old man..." Of course this was then followed by Jen (She is the eldest in the group, already well-passed thirty) giving hubby a lecture about letting me out of the house dressed like I was. She was drinking quite heavily as we all resorted to this sort of behavior, so it didn't take her too long to get over it and rock on!

'Cherry Pie' was awesome! They have greatly improved since the last time I saw them and have since replaced their drummer. All in all it was great, old school fun with old school friends! There was only one instance of one of us getting in another of us's face for being a dick (not sayin' who) and after a while and some more liquor, it really didn't matter that so-and-so had resorted to his evil, back-stabbing bullshit ways! So-and-so is such a girl (but really a man).

It was also the first time I had ever seen the men desert the men's bathroom and get in line with the ladies. I can only imagine what kind of tragic disaster took place in the men's to get them to flee and wait in a line that just continued to grow longer and longer as the night went on. It was nearly impossible to pee...but then on the flipside, it was also really busy and nearly impossible to get a drink at the bar (hubby went on many solo missions to bar from which he took a long time to return).

The original plan having been totally blown all to hell and all of us either mostly drunk or unable to walk a straight line, hubby, me and Jen hopped in the truck, freezing our asses off and abandoning Jen's car, and we drove her home, where she promptly vomitted in the kitchen sink. Poor girl! Hubby and I then booked back to Racine and to the Taco Bell, getting in the longest line I've ever seen at a Taco Bell. Got home, chowed and crashed out.

Yesterday, hubby laid on the couch like a veal for most of the day, watching the Nascar race...mostly because he had spent Saturday night head-banging and what not and couldn't hold his head up too good. I was without hangover, but was still pretty tired. We did go out to fetch some stuff and hubby bought me this...

...returning me back to my geek-girlness, safely returning me to my sci-fi love and my pc, like I had been some kind of trampy Cinderella the night before.

All in all it was pretty fun. My throat was sore, I smoked too much and I had a funny pain in my heel from the heel of the boot I wore to the show. Apparently I stepped too hard on it at some point in the night 'cause all day yesterday I could feel it like I still had the boot on. I got back in touch with a lot of folks I hadn't seen in quite a while and got to relive some younger day silliness. I also got to remember why we were all friends in the first place.

Plus I got to wear my leopard print, pimp coat!

Space: Junkie & Beyond...

2006-02-23T10:36:00.000-06:00

And Perhaps Pusher...

So, yesterday I went out to fetch stuff like a pack mule (the truck was full and I had to haul everything by myself) and was also in search of non-residue window cling sheets for the printer. I couldn't seem to find them anywhere. Is no one carrying this sort of thing anymore? The ones currently in the windows to break the sunlight don't match the room anymore and it's really got me buggin'!

I tried Target, Wal-mart (where they were purchased last time, a year ago and where I got to spend some time with the old folks Wednesday patrol...the stores are theirs until the bus loads 'em back up!) and came up with nothing. I got back into the car with my stuffs, most of which I hadn't intended to buy, but then again a girl like me can never just walk past a rack of new hoodies and not buy at least three. I sat in the truck and smoked a cigarette trying to think of other places I might be able to get the window cling sheets. It took a while for me to formulate that Best Buy should be my next destination (I hadn't been there in a while), but luckily there were some good tunes on the radio...which leads to the first trauma, or second if we're counting the lack of window-cling stuff...

I pull out of the parking lot and was rockin' out to the radio and then suddenly there were sirens...

Yes, folks. I was pulled over...again. The funny part of this was that I was essentially pulled over becuase I was rockin' out too hard (Apparently this is suspicious behavior at 11 am on a Wednesday morning...I assume the loudness of my steroe was just preventing him from enjoying his donuts!). For this I reasoned that when the radio plays something like It's the End of the World as We Know It (This was then followed by Weezer's Beverly Hills), one must crank it up, sing loud and off-key and rock hardcore! Mr. Officer man was not amused. I thought it was awefully hilarious that I had been pulled over for rockin' hard...on my way to Best Buy...where I could just fill the car with music and rock even harder. I was let go with a warning...like this has never happened before!

So, I get to Best Buy (a store I should never be allowed in alone with a checkbook/credit card under any circumstances. I go in for the most innocent reason, but once I get inside something always derails me and I end up losing my mind) and it was like a ghost town...it being like 11 am on a Wednesday morning and all. There, I found that they now only sell photo paper and regular printer paper (this would be where the derailing comes in). The bastards!

Following tradition, I lost my mind and started poking around. Just me and the boys in the Sci-fi DVD section and then me and the boys in Sci-Fi TV on DVD section. Literally, it was me and like five boys between the ages of 18 and 22 traveling about the DVD section like a pack of gypsies. There was plenty of chatting, and giggling (on my part...this is why boys like me...I have actul evidence of this...I'm always so happy!) and also many recommendations.

I ended up with 'Space: Above and Beyond' the complete series, all 23 episodes in my hand. I was just looking at it, but then again, got derailed when one of the boys finally managed to locate what he was looking for and we all had to do a happy dance and praise the Best Buy and their merchandise. Then I bid farewell to the boys and moved along with my Best Buy experience and with 'Space: Above and Beyond' still in my hand.

I picked up a couple other things ('Dead Like Me' seasons 1 & 2 and the movie Kingdom of Heaven 'cause lets face it, I'll watch just about anything Orlando Bloom shows up in. He could do a cameo at the local DMV and I'd get in line) and ended up, accidentally also purchasing 'Space: Aboce and Beyond' a show which I knew nothing about (seeing as how it was on in 1995/1996. I was younger then and had better things to do with my free time) but was highly recommended by the boy sqaud I was wandering with.

I literally didn't even realize I had it until I got home (a path that was driven proper and just above the speed limit with the radio at a decent volume as to avoid getting stopped again). I carried all my shit in and was looking through the stuff got from Best Buy it being the most important bag and all and bright yellow. And there it was...taunting me.

Watch me! Watch me! Watch me! Shirk responsiblity and just stick me in the DVD player (if you can find a spot...it's pretty full). I refrained though.

Instead, I e-mailed BEG, my sci-fi geek girl guru to ask her if she'd seen it or if she even knew anything about it. She was the same age as me when it was on so I wasn't sure...but then again, she is my sci-fi geek girl guru. She is the one responsible for my 'Firefly/Serenity' addiction and mostly anything Joss Whedon has layed his golden fingers upon (maybe we should just worship JW instead of JP...but then again, JP does travel with a baseball bat...I don't imagine Joss does).

She got back to me basically telling me she had never heard anything about it and I should probably just return it and get my money back. I was still unsure and left the box of DVDs on the coffee table to taunt me for the rest of the afternoon.

I tried to work on our own sci-fi TV show...a work in progress and now temporarily hindered by my coming and going writer's block and sudden urge to check out 1995/1996's version of scace via 'Space: Above and Beyond'. What a day, filled with tiring resistance and then complete and utter surrender to the box which contained all 23 episodes...

So, I started watching...and didn't stop for the whole first side of the disc. By the end of side A, which had the first four hours of the show, I had realized a few things...It was 1995/1996...space...was a cheesey thing back then, so most of the actual space action is one big cracker and spread fest...tastey though. Also, the show seemed to be some kind of space soap opera (this is bad for a girl who loves sci-fi and whom was recently put back in touch with the going-ons of 'General Hospital' since they have now gotten to the end all be all of perfect GH coupling...Sonny Corinthos and Emily Bowen Quartermaine!) and I will watch just about anything that involves sexual tension between a brooder with a serious chip on his shoulder and strong convictions and a chick with her own special issues (Hence the Sonny Corinthos/Emily Qaurtermain thing and my love for 'Firefly')!

At this point, I was completely sucked in and had to forgo my issues with the cheese of space and future and had to flip the disc to watch the last two eps of the first disc (Plus, I needed to know if Hawkes was ever gonna nail Vansen). Luckily, flipping the disc for me really only means that I had to push a button on the remote and wait for it to start...but the time seemed endless, waiting to find out what the hell will become of Vansen (Kristen Cloke, famed by playing Ms. Lewton in the first of the three Final Destination movies), West (I have never seen this guy before...must not be getting too much work these days) and Hawkes (Rodney Rowland...completely adorable). But then it finally started and I was once again appeased by space drama (I swear, in the future, everyone has a chip on their shoulder).

3 Main Characters...West, Vansen and Hawkes. Pic taken from The Wikipedia

This show, for what it was, in the time frame it was made was brilliant. They're fightin' all the time against two different enemies. They have a traitor to his own kind in their midst, brainwashed for what he is. And this really adorable, feisty guy...

Roddy Rowland...hmmm!

Where is this guy hiding now? He definitely needs more work. I bet he's even tastier now that he's had time to age another decade. I swear, if our show ever pans out, we're gettin' this guy even if I gotta write a special part just for him so he can yell and be feisty and shady and buck the system! Wooo!

So, it seems there isn't a spacey show I can't pass up. I'm a junkie. But I suppose there are worse things on I could be addicted to than sci-fi. American Idol comes to mind, but thank JP, I have little or no interest in other than the initial auditions 'cause I like to watch people suffer. It makes me laugh. And then there is the notion I have to fuck Simon Cowell just to see what he'd say afterwards (yes, I am that brave).

Later, I will resume my tour of 1995/1996's idea of the year 2063 and all it's dramatic and sketchy goodness. And I will also try to fight BEG's urge to run out and purchase Farscape (this is a show I haven't gotten into yet, but seems she loves it).

And soon, when I see BEG, I will play the part of pusher. Oh, yeah, girl, it's my turn. So get ready! Hubby isn't gonna be safe from this one either!

Strange Love...

2006-02-21T09:01:00.000-06:00

Or Alternately, Why Does My Dog Love Tyra Banks???

This is a story of a love stranger than that of Foofy-Woofy Flava Flav and Gita...

So, when I get up in the morning, I usually turn on the TV (Not strange at all. I imagine many folks do this.) and if Headline News, which is the channel that goes on when the TV goes on, doesn't have anything entertaining on, I change it to VH1. Often times when they stop playing the very few over-hyped music videos that they actually play, I am already totally involved in something and I forget to change the channel. Since I continue to not really pay attention or do but don't have time to take care of it...ever, VH1 ends up staying on the TV until like 2 in the afternoon when I habitually change to The Hallmark Channel to watch back-to-back episodes of 'Little House The Prairie' (This is a whole different weirdness I don't really want to talk about right now).

If this was your FX, or TNT or even Hallmark kind of channel, this wouldn't present such a problem...well, not even problem, really, just immense strangeness between my 18 month old Golden Retriever, Angus and one, Tyra 'Big Boobs' Banks. Those channels at least play ancient mundane TV and seriously, sappy crap movies...I swear there's a new Hallmark Channel original movie every twenty seconds or so...and none of them, if you can imagine this, are original...or still better, believable. But still, 'Murder She Wrote' and nine hours of 'Mash' everyday aren't going to hurt anyone.

VH1 on the other hand plays things like 'Celebrity Fit Club 3' for like an hour a day where you can Young MC and Chastity Bono work together to sheds some serious poundage and mock Gunner Nelson (Or alternately watch Gunner freak out about getting what was basically a hair trimming), and 'Inside Out - Kimora Lee Simmons' where you can watch Russell and Kimora Lee Simmons little girls Ming and Ioke do things like throw away expensive silverware because they have absolutely no concept of what things are worth because their parents give them everything they want when they want it...and pick their noses.

I have no problems with either of these shows or any of the many other like them aired on VH1. I find them both to be quite entertaining. Although, I do sometimes wonder why they haven't gotten that one guy whose left from Milli Vanilli and someone like...Leif Garrett to do a show where they live together, all odd couple style. Why haven't they given Leif Garrett a show yet? That man is money in the bank. And I still have yet to see 'Remaking Donny Osmond' (Isn't it just about time for him to try to make another come back all Soldier of Love style), but this is not the point!

Strangely though, and I don't have a problem with this show either (I can ignore anything), they will also play all-day marathons of 'America's Next Top Model'. This means hour after hour of half naked girls prancing around supposedly for a future modeling contract with Tyra 'HOLY HOOTERS!!!' Banks as their ringmaster. Herein lies the immense strangeness that I have been charting.

Such days when they play this show, like the last two days for instance, start out like any other day - Dogs runningin amok and making a lot of noise to a VH1 soudtrack filled with a little Beyonce and a whole lot of hawking their 'You Oughta Know' Artists to the point you buy said artists CD just to get the songs out of your head. It's like mind control...well, it is mind control...until it's time for the spree of Tyra and her boobs to begin. As soon as it starts, Angus stops whatever psyhotic-puppy activity he's invovled in, crawls up on the couch and actually watches the entire marathon from beginning to end (Or until 2 pm when 'Little House' is on) and does not move. No, I have witnessed this enough times to know, he is not sleeping.

Not only does he watch Tyra and knockers, he occasionally salivates a gigantic puddle where he lays, tongue hanging out of mouth and howls at the big TV as though he is serenading her with romantic, nails-on-the-chalk-board style, puppy crooning.

Now, let me tell you, this dog is generally nothing but energy and naughty all day, but as soon as Tyra pops up on the screen he is all about the trance state. He gets all googley-eyed and quiet like Tyra is his guru or some shit like that.

I have no troubles with this...except for the fact that I hear a lot of things like Janis Dickinson making her self out to be more than she is or ever was. In fact, I enjoy the fact that Tyra makes a good puppy-sitter. I just don't understand it.

Why does the dog love Tyra so? Why does this only work with her on 'America's Next Top Model'? Why doesn't her talk show affect him in the same way? I just don't get it!

Is it the fact that she barely wears anything? Or the fact that she seems to constantly be over-reacting to everything, or over-acting as it probably really is? She is quite the drama-queen, but I guess some people will do anything to make a buck (look at Anna Farris' career).

It's actually gotten to the point now where he reacts to her hearing her name. I say 'Tyra' and he tilts his head the same way he does when I say 'Peanut Butter', which is the thing he loves most in the world. Is Tyra just as good as peanut butter? Is she just as nutty?

Arrrgh!

The Eve of The Daytona 500...

2006-02-18T19:14:00.000-06:00

And Why Turning Left and Going in a Cirlce Isn't Really a Sport...

So, here we are on the eve of Nascar Nextel Cup's very first real race, the Daytona 500. Yes, I know this crap has been going on for the last week or so with all the time trials and qualifying and some small obnoxious and mostly irrelevant races and practices. I'm not your standard moron. However, I am a child of a family obsessed with auto-racing and happened to have married a fan.

I have been tortured with this red-neck so-called sport my entire life. My grandfather, now deceased, but mostly responsible worked pit crew and sometimes fire safety at the now called 'Milwaukee Mile' which I don't even think the Nextel guys even race at...ever. My mother grew up with people like Kyle Petty, Alan Kulwiki and Davey Allison (yes, I also know the latter two are dead. I actually went to one of their funerals. And the third, still living, should...go away...or at the very least, get a friggin' haircut).

I have never understood the fascination. I don't get it. It must be a girl thing...however, my mother is a really big race fan...so I don't really know. For the love of JP, even BEG's cat Schmutz is a Nascar fan, pawing the TV when she sees Jimmy Johnson...like she really knows who he is and follows his career, like a human.

Anyone can drive in a circle and turn left...or right depending on which race it is...but it's generally a left thing and the win generally goes to one of four or five hick idiots who couldn't get a clean word out of their mouth if their life depended on it (Seriously, one needs a Ward Burton to English dictionary to understand anything that comes out of this man's mouth along with a wet-nap to clean away the amount of saliva he flings forth when speaking). It's even easier to do this in the case of the restricter plate when everyone is basically starting from the same point. I don't see this as a sport since it's mostly based on chance and the only real danger is one of those red-neck farm boys dying in a fiery car-wreck. It's not like any one of them couldn't have died in a horrendous tractor accident...or something involving a combine.

I can follow it, for the most part...it is a little trickier to keep track of things now that Nextel seems to change the rules every ten seconds. I understand 'The Big Red Trailer' which I actually think is yellow now, Tony Stewart's thug ways (he's such a mook) and can for the most part tell you which driver is which from hearing them talk (here we are, right back at Ward Burton) or from seeing them on the screen.

Hell, I even have a driver to root for...Hermie Sadler. Of course, he never wins and most of the time doesn't even make it into the race, but at least I try. Plus, he used to drive the pink Zapf Doll car, which as a doll-maker and collector (yes, I know this is such a ridiculous girly thing for me to do, but hey, I am a girl and all) and that's just adorable. A grown man driving left in a circle in a pink car. Plus he's sort of workin' a Casey Affleck kind of appeal to me.

This is all from years and years of Sunday afternoons spent with this crap blaring on one TV or another in various locations. I never intentionally learned anything about Nascar, in fact, clearly I am not even a fan and am mostly against the entire idea of this so-called sport.

So, seeing as how tomorrow is 'the big kick-off' to a whole new set of rules (changed by the lovely folks at Nextel, of course) that I don't even understand, I decided I would put forth my list of things that would make Nascar more of sport/challenge and make it way more entertaining for those of us who now have trouble following Nextel's ridiculous changes...or just more entertaining in general...

#1 - Snakes on the track...

BTW: This picture really seems to get around seeing as how I found it on like 12 different blogs.

Put some snakes on the track, really really mean, hungry ones. They don't even have to be poisonous...just really slithery and evil and possible crafty enough to attack pit crews. Hell, why not just put them in the pits...the drivers are supposed to slow down anyway...

Plus, signs like this make the track more entertaining to read.

#2 - Hot, Flowing Lava...

Open the floodgates and let the lava flow. By all means, build a track in Hawaii. These boys have life way too easy. They don't have enough obstacles. Plus this would also mean more tire changes and more chances for footage of pit cew guys battling really mean, hungry snakes.

#3 - Tire Damaging Spikes and Nails...

Adding spikes like the ones pictured above, a variety of nails and screws and maybe even some of those wrong-way tire slashers you find at airports and stuff would mean more wrecked cars and wrecked tires. Fun for the whole family and again, more chances to see the crews fighting snakes in the pits.

#4 - Oil Slicks...

Pour some Penzoil or Mobil on the track and take in all the slip-slidin' action. Hell, this could turn into the official slip n' slide of Nascar, which is just fine cause it means more money and they seem to have an official 'one' of everything.

#5 - Snipers...

Snipers hiding in the bush and in the stands, shooting at the drivers. This would be like a CNN junkie's dream come true. Who doesn't want to see your weasel-faced Gordon types dodging sniper bullets for the win? I know I do.

#6 - Hitchhikers & Hop-Ons...

Toss in some people trying to get somewhere or people who just want an easy free ride and viola! you have 'Extreme Hitchhiking'...a whole new sport to capitalize on. Plus I think it would be hilarious to see someone try to jump onto car going upwards of two hundred miles an hour. Just remember to hang on tight!

#7 - Chinese Fire Drills...

I think the drivers should be required to get out of the car every...seventeeth lap and run around the car. Commotion! Commotion! Commotion! Alternately it would also be hilarious if they had to get out and swap cars at random. Since no one seems to have any clue what's going on anyway, does it really matter if Earnhardt Jr. is in the #8 car or not? Let someone else take the burden of a famous father for a few laps...it's not like they take that long anyway.

There are, of course, many other possibilities. These are obviously just a few. Stand-up comic Kathleen Madigan who is hilarious, has suggested in the past that they move the beer stands to the infield so spectators can see the drunks trying to cross the track to get beer. I'm right there with that plan also. Makes it more fun for the fans, really gets them involved.

So, for now, I say farewell, so I can compose a list of things I'd rather be doing tomorrow than watching the race and for many, many Sundays after that. Fans, I hope it's a thriller and non-fans, I'm so sorry you have to endure this holy day torture. Lata - K

I Saw the Light...

2006-02-14T12:39:00.000-06:00

And it hurt my eyes!

New glasses, and of course what's left of the terrible pink hair.

So, after putting it off for like six years or so, I finally got around to getting new glasses (as seen above). I know, I slack. Anyone I know can tell you this. There's always something more entertaining to do that get an eye exam and pick out new spectacles.

Here's how it went...Hubby got up on Saturday morning and shortly after, he decided he was going to do the dishes. I had no problem with this since I hate washing dishes. It's like the bane of my existence.

He walked into the kitchen and ran into the kitchen table. After that he proceeded to throw down his badly scratched two year old glasses and went on a tyrade about how we were both getting new glasses and that was going to be the end of that. I found this behavior quite adorable since he is usually not this decisive.

So, we set out to get eye exams and glasses. This did not go well. Apparently everyone wants to do these two things around this time of the year and no one had openings in their schedules...not even Walmart. We ended up at Stein Optical in Kenosha (Like a 30 minute drive from where we live), but they only had one open appointment, not that they seemed to have any other customers the entire time we were there, except for one guy who just came in to pick out new glasses. Anyway, hubby insisted that I take the appointment since my glasses were older and because he had dragged me into this anyway.

I thought that he should take it since his glasses, although only two years old and he is technically right on schedule so far as glasses are concerned. Let's just say that my six year old glasses and their plastic sunglasses clip faired quite a lot better with only two small scratches which were not even in my line of sight than his two year old glasses. You couldn't even see through his that's how bad they were scratched up. This was followed by a brief argument and then my eye exam, which was technically incomplete because one of their machines was broken.

New sunglasses, which are a cranberry color, not that you can tell in the picture.

My eyes actually improved, which is why my old glasses had recently started to bother me. So I picked out new glasses and sunglasses, which I just picked up this morning. Yes, I know this is not good Valentine's Day activity, but whatever. I'm boycotting this year I think. And will apparently spend the rest of the day adjusting to my new lenses since they are quite a bit different than the old prescription.

I also did some other shopping and errands, like picking up the first season of 'Grey's Anatomy' which came out on DVD today and was on sale at Walmart. I've literally only seen the last two eps and find the show to be rather involving...much like LOST. So I had to know what went on in the first season since I'm all sucked in by Dr. McDreamy now.

Like Sayin' Rabies is Better Than Botulism...

2006-02-10T09:27:00.000-06:00

So, after the chaos of being literally locked in the house all day yesterday, me and the pups were pretty worn by the time hubby finally got home and unlocked the door. Jezebelle went outside immediately and refused to come in for quite a while. Angus, as per usual played outside with her but didn't really seem to care either way.

It's not very likely he knew he was locked in. He's a dog. How much can he possibly understand.

After playing outside, they came in and were pretty mellow. Eventually, they both passed out on the couch with hubby watching 'Top Gear', which is a show I just get the point of, but after the day I had listening to Belle bark at the back door, I was just happy for the quiet time to finish up work on the design for BEG's quillow. The quiet was soon to be disturbed though, and by a most hilarious statement made by hubby.

He says, "Khrys, look at this." So I turn my desk chair around and see the Belle is all curled up at the end of the couch. She is totally passed out. Hubby then cuddles her and says...

"Oh Belle, your just like a daughter we have to take care of."

I immediately started laughing. She's like a daughter we have to take care of? What does he think one does with a real daughter? The word daughter sort of implies parents, which implies parenting and thus 'taking care of'.

He was all, "You know what I meant." I declared that I apparently did not, but then again it had been a long day thus far and it was possible that my brain wasn't functioning all that well. I decided to stick to my guns though.

So, what does hubby do? He decides to bust out the well known theory that I have been passing on for years...If I had kids, I would leave them at a bus station. He does this because he thinks he will at least come out even. He thinks that I say this because I am just as clueless as he is when it comes to what to do with a kid. But he still has no idea what he's talking about.

I have no parental skills. I don't want children. I'm not good with them. I know this. I was actually told by a teacher in high school after having taken a child development class for the easy A, that I was going to be a very bad mother (not a Bad Mutha like SHAFT). Needless to say, I did not get the easy A I was looking for in that class. After taking home the mechanical recorder doll and tossing it in the closet for a whole weekend, I didn't even pass the class.

It was just a doll. I knew that then. It didn't matter to me...this is why it ended up in the closet. The idea of leaving them at a bus station with some money would be in the hopes that they would find a better life with someone more suited to be a parent, not because I couldn't raise a child if I had to.

Keep in mind this is all hypothetical. Don't get your panties in a bunch. I have no children and there are no plans for them ever. There's also plenty of birth control in my life to prevent such an occurance. Plus, if there ever was a child, I swear on a stack of...DVD boxes to the movie Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag (I worship Pesci, remember. Not God) that I know better and would not actual leave said child/children at the bus station.

It's just a joke. It's funny. Ha! Ha! Ha! He still thinks he can use this against me though.

I explain to him...once again, how retarded he is...or at the very least how misguided he is. But he declares he would be a better parent than I would be.

Was I supposed to laugh at that. Neither one of us are suited to be in charge of tiny humans. We can barely handle the dogs and cats running amok around the house...and the house is gigantic. Plus, hubby likes his toys way too much. I like my freedom and what little sanity I have left in my possession. His saying he would be a better parent is pretty much be like saying rabies is better than botulism!

Needless to say, this debate did not end last night...and it'll probably never end, seeing as how there won't actually be children to test this on. Damned hypotheticals!

There's No Escape...

2006-02-09T09:07:00.000-06:00

So, this was supposed to be a very hilarious and entertaining post about my colored pencils and how I was recently convinced that gobblins were stealing them and chewing on them, and how I actually went out to the store last night with a list that had on it, 'Colored Pencils...That Don't Suck'. But now, instead, and much to my dismay, we're gonna chat about how I am literally locked in my house!

First off, yesterday we had a freak snowstorm that out of nowhere, dropped five inches on the ground. In my neighborhood this is quite terrifying since they don't bother to plow or salt and almost everyone in my city drives like a maniac. It was also garbage day yesterday, which didn't help. The lack of helping was noticed around the time the garbage truck slid (I didn't really think this was possible) and hit a little red car down near the corner. Then Shortleash, who drives a large Dodge missed his driveway while sliding and ended up parking his truck angerily and mostly on his neighbor's front lawn. Sammy got his car stuck down at the corner and was pushed away by Zack in his UPS truck. Sammy was apparently having a liquor and lottery ticket emergency.

I was supposed to go out and get hubby a lottery ticket, amongst other things, but I decided against it around the time the garbage truck hit the car. I decided the lottery was not worth dying over. BEG backed me up on this notion.

So instead, I hung out and designed quillows (a quillow is a quilt that folds into a pillow for all who don't know), which would be where the graph paper and colored pencils came into play. I would rather take the time/waste the time drawing the patterns up than spend all the time working on the actual product only to find out that I hate it in the end. But there I am with the logic.

I couldn't find my ancient colored pencils and was convinced that they had been stolen by gobblins. I did eventually find them though and found also that they are all crappy and brittle and chewed up. Like I said, they're ancient. So I put 'Colored Pencils...That Don't Suck' on the list of things to get at the store when hubby and the gigantic truck came home to get me there safely.

He got home, very early no less and we departed for the bank and the store. We found that literally it had only snowed as much as it did in the city and harldy at all outside of it. Damned lake effect weather!

All errands were completed, including the purchasing of lottery tickets and colored pencils that don't suck. I also got more graph paper on which they have changed the color of the lines from blue to green and this is really irking me. I imagine I'll get over it though.

...That Don't Suck!

So, this brings us to this morning when I woke to find that I had literally been locked in the house by hubby, who claims he accidentally stuck my keys in his pocket and left. He has my house keys and my car keys...and is more capable of losing them than anyone else I've ever met.

Exhibit A: The Locked Deadbolt

This probalby doesn't seem problematic to anyone, except I have one of those deadbolts as seen just above, that has a lock on both sides and thus the door cannot be opened...especially since hubby also has the spare key, having given his to one of his friends (now in Indiana) many moons ago when he was staying here. Keep in mind that when hubby and his brother installed said deadbolt, I declared it would be problematic. I was right. They should have listened to me.

So, the backdoor is locked...and will not open again until hubby returns with all the keys...if he returns with all the keys.

Hey Look! There's my car! Too bad it's outside!

The not having car keys thing really isn't such a big deal. I really didn't have any plans to go anywhere today, having completed all my errands and shopping last night, but the door thing is a serious pain in the tookis seeing as how we have dogs and they need to go out every now and again.

Fortunately, this is my house and there is another way out that doesn't involve the backdoor or putting the dogs on their leashes (which they are not fond of) and making them pee in the front yard (which they refuse to do). Alternate route is also something the little one seems to not enjoy though.

Alternate route involves going down and through the basement, up a different set of stairs into the rec room and out that door, which apparently is the route the dogs will be taking all day, much to their dislike. Well, Angus doesn't much care, but then again he doesn't much care about anything other than his rawhide. Jezebelle on the other hand is losing her mind since the basement steps are very steep and she knows she's not supposed to be down there. Needless to say, she was carried down after being chased around the first floor for ten minutes of freaking out and then carried back up after she was outside.

Hubby has been called numerous times and yelled at, but BEG, being sub wife and all, if you want to yell about this, you know where to find him later, since I know you'll be just as pissed about this as I am.

After the dogs going outside catastrophe, I tried to calm down and check my e-mail. This activity only led to my PC telling me that my network cable was unplugged numerous times. It was not. The PC was lying or confused. After some poking around, I found that my router is totally thrashed and no longer functions. It has now been bypassed and internet activity resumes as normal, as does quillow design since none that I did yesterday met my high standardss...and it's not like I have anything better to do.

Also, we did not win the lottery! Surprise, surprise!

The Hair Catastrophe of POST 50...

2006-02-05T11:55:00.000-06:00

Or Why You Shouldn't Trust Hot Topic Employees...

Not a happy camper...

So, at the suggestion of Sin (Yes, this is what I call you cause it's easier than trying to pronounce all those 1's you got in there.) I decided that my hair should be pink and I set out to find Manic Panic hair dye. This was no easy feat to begin with.

First, I am 26 and 1/2 years old and have not touched MP in like a decade, having switched to an actual hair-dresser to have my hair dyed bizarrely...and well. Secondly, I live in a very black-oriented area...I would imagine the dark folk have no need for Manic Panic...not when they can just buy funky colored hair and have it weaved in (Most of the women in my neighborhood are black and have very short hair for this very reason). Third, there was a lot of guff from hubby who thinks wanting to dye my hair pink is my way of rebelling against something (This was the same guff I got last weekend when I decided I should be blonde).

Let me tell ya, I have nothing to rebel against anymore. I rebelled enough in my younger days and have very much earned my freedom from the norm. I have actually prepared a list of reasons to give him now whenever he thinks I'm doing something to be rebellious.

Anyway, I couldn't seem to locate Manic Panic in my general area and was about to give up when hubby decided he wanted to go to the mall/Sears for an air hammer. I decided it would be the perfect opportunity to see if the Hot Topic had Manic Panic (I thought they did, but couldn't remember and then their website wasn't working for the most part so I still couldn't really figure it out).

So, we head out to the mall. Sears did not have an air hammer good enough for hubby and this made him angrier than it should have, but then again, he does have a tendency to stress out and overreact to damned near everything that isn't going exactly the way he wanted it to. I declared 'Hot Topic' and we fled Sears in search of the dark hovel where I have spent much money (enough for them to get more and better lighting...not that they have). We get there and HT Boy told me that they had it and directed me to the case and the girl behind the counter. Unfortunately, all the MP they had was blue and purple.

Counter girl suggested RAW hair dye in Candy Pink. She also declared that it was better than Manic Panic and that she had used it more than MP. Stupidly...I took her word for it...and also bought numerous other things like the RAW White Out bleach kit, a Hoodybag, Superman belt buckle (hubby's idea), belt to go with it, and a 'Punisher' decal for the bug sheild on hubby's gigantic truck (which by the way, I recently got to move twice and was also not an easy feat). After that, we left the mall and hit Home Depot in search of the perfect air hammer, which was also not found there although one was purchased and the fence gate has now been lowered so Jezebelle cannot escape and then we went to the grocery store.

Got home, and was expecting to find that my mother and brother had already arrived...but they hadn't so we unloaded the groceries and I made Chili and numerous other things. Then finally they got here and me and mum started the hair processing extravaganza.

First, there was the RAW White Out. We followed all the directions exactly including keeping the hair dryer on my head for a whole hour (this was like being on a helicopter). This product worked very well. It lightened and evened out the color excellently. I would recommend this kit to anyone it worked so well.

Next was the dye. The instructions were a little bit of a pain in the ass and specific but not really. They were followed properly as well, but this process did not end well as seen in the above picture.

My hair, which is hair that cannot be killed is perfectly fine. However the color as seen above is not good, not the color it was supposed to be and certainly not even remotely even. I literally could have gotten the same or even better results dying my hair with Kool-Aid (Yes, for all of you that are going, "What?", it can be done)...and the entire process would have smelled better!

Then today, I was poking around on the internet and found a bunch of reviews on the dye. Apparently it's only marketed by Hot Topic and no one seems to have any luck with the particular color that I used...not that the other colors are without their faults, 'cause they all seem to have problems so far as reveiws go. Reading these reviews just made me want to go back to Hot Topic and bitch-slap the counter girl. I refrain from doing this only because all the reviews I read of this color dye say that it will be gone without staining by the fourth wash. So, if by the end of the week the blotchy pink isn't gone, then there might be some smack-down...and I think I might take some of my homies with me!

In other strangeness...

My mother called me last week to see if I wanted copies of some pictures she got from my grandmother (her mother, the nazi grandma). I was busy so I really didn't want to talk or deal with it so I was just like, "Yeah, copy whatever ones you think I should have!" But since this is my mother we're talking about she had to hang on the phone and tell me what every single on of them was...not that I cared or had the time right that second...until she mentions that she also has some pictures from 1965 when she was in Vogue magazine. I was all, "What...what are you talking about?" Then there was a brief explanation which really wasn't helping stop the flow of questions in my mind. It was apparently some junior-bride thing and the photos were taken at one of my great aunt's weddings. How is it that I, a female, managed to live twenty-six and a half years without knowing my mother was in Vogue...even if she was only 6 years old at the time? You'd think she might have mentioned this at some point, especially since my uncle used to do shoots for Seventeen when I was younger and he was less gay than he is right now. The strange shit you learn about your family...

The momma in her Vogue spread.

As we can see, I am not quite as well-behaved in wedding attire as The Momma is. Of course, I was also younger and Nazi-Grandma taught me to make funny faces whenever there was a camera pointed in my direction. BTW: This was when I was the glower girl in my insane (yes, she's actually had 2 or 3 breakdowns) godmother's wedding.

Secondly, there was a gigantic, very wayward turtle in my yard on Thursday afternoon. I don't know what the hell it was doing in my yard in the first place since I have no water or anything like that for it. Also, it was quite a ways away from water being a slow-moving turtle and all and I live four blocks off Lake Michigan. BEG named it 'Manny' from far away in The Great White North. Of course she also thinks it was a gift of love left for me by The Concrete Guy. She may or may not blog about this. I don't really know at this point. Anyway, there's some debate as to how it got into my yard and why the hell wasn't it hybernating. Some think it was here the whole winter and that The Concrete Guy disturbed it and wrecked its home. I think that it just crawled in when the gate was open. Who knows.

And 3rd...We're now playing a life-size, reality version of 'Where's Waldo' since Shortleash seems to have gone missing. Miss Maddy and her mommy are around, however Miss Maddy's Daddy's truck has not come back home since Tuesday morning. Trouble in paradise? I think so, but since I'm not about to get in the middle of it, I haven't gone over there to find out what's up. If I do figure out anything, there might be more on this later.

Blonde Now...

2006-01-29T20:57:00.000-06:00

So, it was another crappy, dark rainy day and I decided that it was a good day to be blonde...and now I am!

1/30/06 - BLONDE UPDATE:

So far, this blonde is not having any more fun than I was having as a brunette which is not to say that she isn't having any fun at all cause she's having plenty...just not anymore now that I'm blonde...also, it seems I did all that work to essentially turn my hair the same color as the dog's...

Look Boss! Da Plane! Da Plane!

2006-01-24T10:54:00.000-06:00

So, just yesterday, I learned how truly unqualified I am to go to the airport...and this was just a trip to fetch hubby from his week-long stint in PA (Yes, he was there and had to endure it when the Steelers won. I'm not a football fan or anything, but Go Steelers...or some shit like that). I wasn't even going anywhere which I can only imagine would've sent me screaming into the night.

When hubby got deposited at the airport last Monday, it was the first time I had been to the airport in like 5 years (Literally the last time I was there was like July '01). Everything had changed. They did some pretty heavy remodeling since 9-11, I think. The signs were all confusing and everything, but we did manage to get him to departures with only one minor problem...there was a security guard snarling at me (hubby's back was to him) when I kissed hubby goodbye on the curb. This didn't seem right to me, so the PDA was cut short and I got the hell out of there.

This is when I learned I was totally qualified to leave the airport. Piece of cake. Yesterday though, going back to fetch hubby, was a completely different story.

Hubby ended up working all weekend so he could come hme early (He was supposed to come back 1/26/06) and he was really excited. Lucky for him, he picked a day when I hadn't already been awake for 60-some hours and could actually see straight. If he hadn't, he would probably still be at the airport.

Anyway, he said to just look for the sign that said 'arrivals' and that's where he'd be. I said I would be there to get him. I also remembered how much they frown on curbside PDAs so I decided to keep my tongue in my mouth and head out.

First, we had this freak snowstorm (6 inches) a couple days before. I hadn't left the house since the snowfall and basically in the days that had passed since, the snow had been melting a little at a time during the day and re-freezing into ice at night. I spent about an hour chiseling my car out of ice and then was on my way.

Hubby called when I was just about to the airport to tell me that his plane had landed, but that they were still on it, waiting for an open parking space. I was all "Otay panky." But really, is it that hard to park an airplane? I'd think you could just park it anywhere and little people will get out of your way. I went with it though and continued on my mission of retrieval.

I got to the airport just fine...but this is where I learned just how unqualifed I am to get into and exist inside of it.
First, everything seems to be moving at the speed of light at the airport. Is this new? Was everything always this fast? It certainly doesn't help the girl in the bright yellow SUV looking for the 'arrivals' sign he husband spoke of and had claimed, at that point, would be his eventual location. I don't know how you're supposed to be able to find anything, let alone read the signs with twenty fast-moving cars behind you honking their horns when you're apparently going to slow for their liking. I swear, I nearly had an anuerysm from all the pressure of seemingly being in the way.

After a near panic attack and deciding it was probably in my best interest to drive faster, I nearly ran over an entire flight crew in 'Baggage Claim' when I missed a stop sign. They didn't really look like they wanted to give me directions after that, so I kept going. I nearly missed another stop sign just a few feet away, but I managed to slam on my shitty brakes, making them squeel, just in time to avoid side-swiping an airport shuttle pulling away from the 'Baggage Claim' curb. Clear of the shuttle, I put my foot to the pedal and sped out of there.

I still couldn't find 'Arrivals'. I found 'International Arrivals' but I didn't recognize anyone there, which was probably a good thing, cause if I had I probably would've picked up whoever it was and fled the airport leaving hubby to fend for him self. And there weren't any cute boys there either, so hubby was not in gright then of being traded in for someone adorable and easier to pick-up from the airport.

After leaving 'International Arrivals' I mistakenly took another tour passed 'Baggage Claim'. The flight crew I had very nearly taken out only a short while before was still waiting there...snarling at me. Seems they still weren't ready to forgive me for their near-death experience, so I once again didn't stop to ask them for directions to 'Arrivals'. I continued passed them at a decent pace showing that I had matured since my last pass and was not likely to take them out.

I still couldn't find 'Arrivals', and once again wasn't paying enough attention, and I ended up in the 'Hourly Parking' ramp. This was not a good idea either, since I didn't have any cash on me (I was beginning to pray to Joe Pesci that Hubby had some kind of money with him) and with my sunglasses on, it was too dark. Apparently, I was driving the wrong way, which caused a foreign man (East Indian I'm thinking) to literally stop his car in front of my SUV (as though I couldn't have just driven over it and him) and proceed to yell at me at the top of his lungs sending the echoes of his voice throughout the parking structure! This scared the bejesus out of me and pushed me towards that panic attack again. Finally, he left me alone and I nabbed a parking space with enough time to spare to actually have that back-burnered panic attack and smoke 2 cigarettes back-to-back to calm down.

I'm such a space cadet sometimes. I should just trade the SUV in for a nice Schwinn. At least I'd be less suspect on a bike than tooling around scaring and nearly killing people in my bright yellow SUV. Who can you kill with a ten-speed?

I watched a plane land with 'NWA' on the side. I don't know what this really means, but all I could think of was Dr. Dre. I assumed the airport also frowns on bustin' rhymes, so I kept that to myself, as well.

Hubby finally called me again and I told him where I was and that it wasn't entirely my fault. I regailed him with the entire story of my not being able to find 'Arrivals' and apparently also not being able to tell my ass from a hole in the ground. He said he'd just meet me at the car to save me the embarrassment of having to drive around anymore. This is why I love him.

So, he gets to the car. I was still reeling from the crazy foriegn man yelling at me. Hubby loaded his stuff up and decided he was going to drive (at the speed of light). He also decided we were going to find 'Arrivals', which in the end was really 'Baggage Claim', an area I knew well already and where I was definitely not liked by the dwellers. Luckily, this time around, the flight crew had already departed, so we were not snarled at.

And finally, I got to go home, which was certainly easy considering how good I am at leaving the airport. Not that I don't have to do this shit all over again next Monday morning when he goes to Virginia!

MORAL OF THE STORY: I am not qualified to go to the airport, and secondly, never listen to a man when he gives you directions('Arrivals' sure sounds like 'Baggage Claim' to me). He more than likely doesn't have a clue what he's talking about anyway!

This @!*# Is Bananas...

2006-01-19T20:49:00.000-06:00

B-A-N...A-N...A-S!

Dear Mrs. Stefani-Rossdale,

I am writing to remind you, as you seem to have completely forgotten, YOU ARE A WHITE GIRL FROM ANAHEIM! Furthermore, you are a white woman married to a white man, British no less, and you are expecting your first child.

This is all good. We love Gavin and want you two to have babies like crazy! Of course we'd also like to see Gavin...naked...alot...But that's a talk we'll have some other time.

You are NOT, I repeat, NOT black (Or Asian for that matter). You are not from 'Da Hood'. Your skin is hella pale and no matter how many gangsta rappers you hang with, you will always be white. Even the brown guy you dated for so long wasn't black...

Tony Kanal of No Doubt is of East Indian decent and lived the first twelve years or so of his life in England and then moved to California with his parents in 1981. Not black. More English than anything else! What's up with Gwen and the British boys?

It was adorable for a while, your taking the time to embrace modern, African-American culture ...and hair-dos. Your fans have kept quiet and have cut you the slack for your journey, for whatever reasons you may have had for starting it. I, myself, suspect that large stacks of cash were what caused you to take the first steps. Anyway, some of them even still buy your records.

It was even cute when you started your own clothing line...how P-Diddy of you...and hanging around with your weird Asian posse, The Harajuku Girls...

...who by the way completely freak me out! I am so confused on this one and have so many questions that I don't even know where to start. All I really know for certain is that they go where you do and sometimes they wear mouse ears. I imagine you're trying to be obscure in the public eye, stranger than strange in a low-key high maintenance kind of way. Monotony for those expected to be crazy but still missing the mundane consistences of a normal life.

My friend, BEG wonders if they are your own personal Asian Girl Menudo. If this is true, I imagine we'll be seeing one of them later on as a Latino song & dance superstar...Yes, I know they are female and Asian, but I also imagine them to have magical powers in this Menudo/Ricky Martin scenario.

Regardless, P-Diddy by the way has a posse/entourage! He is black. He's a pimp!

You know what, Gwen? Your not P-Diddy, or whatever it is he's calling himself these days! You're not even Don King...although, your hair is sometimes reminiscent...

See what I mean?

It has been suggested that your time with R&B singer Eve is to blame. It has even been said that Eve is like the gateway (drug) to blackness. I tend to believe this true, but 'Rich Girl' is still a great song.

Let's see...This is the progression of events...

Oh, so wholesome and cuddley.

Still wholesome, hangin' out with Larissa Oleynik. Who's more wholesome than 'Alex Mack'?

You got a little angsty when you and Tony broke up, but it was still completely adorable seeing as how you're a while girl from Anaheim and all. Just thought I would remind you again.

You got thru your angst and came back with excellent pink hair. Very old school Gwen. Awesome!

And none of us will ever forget the glam.

ENTER EVE and the release of 'Rich Girl'.

And then the addition of your weird, little Asian posse. What's up with them? I just don't get it. They haunt my dreams...

Then...KABOOM...You're all sorts of Ghetto. Screen-printing the bling right on to the clothes I see. Well, who has the time to put on a necklace any way, a large, heavy one no less. Wow, you're probably saving yourself from suffering from neck-strain caused by wicked weighty bling. Anyway, I wouldn't have used this particular picture except for the irony in my having found it on blackvoices.aol.com. See where I'm going with this? See how far your faux blackness has spread?

Yep, it pretty much seems like innocent looking Eve is the culprit...and thus, is the gateway (drug). Although, at this rate, it seems more like you want to be Alicia Keys...you even got the hat part right...

I have taken the time to see what you would look like and have tried this out for you...it did not go well as you'll see. Brown does not look good on you...Plus, Alicia Keys...NOT BLACK!!! Well, OK, she's half...but that's still way more than your not at all, except for in the scary picture below...

Now that we've covered your descent into black magic, your wiggerness if you will, we'll move on to the consequenes from such behavior...

1.) You're makin' Gavin look bad...

This is how Gavin should look. This is how we like to see Gavin. Well, really, we'd like to see him nude as mentioned earlier, but once again, still a story for another time...

Either way, naked or clothed, this is how you're makin' him look, like some trailer-dwelling, drunken country bumpkin! And we just can't have our Gavin lookin' like poor, white trash. He's British!

2.) You're about to be a mother. This, left un-checked, could end in the result of your naming said offspring something insane like 'Bling-Bling Kashmir' Stefani, or 'Colt .45' Rossdale. Go back to the boys of No Doubt and give the baby a proper name befitting his or her British-American heritage. Maybe something like Ethel or Mildred for a girl or something of the like for a son.

You will not be raising a future pimp. The baby will be just as white as you and your pastey, and stil ungoldy hot, English husband. This world doesn't need Ali G. the sequel either.

Stop before you start gold-capping your teeth, and don't worry if your cravings for watermelon and fried chicken linger. It's probably just pregnancy cravings and not a sign from above telling you that you really are black...cause you're not!

3.) You're only making yourself look foolish at this point. No one's buying it anymore. It was fun for a while, but as mentioned earlier in my letter, but now, it's time to stop 'The Gwen Train to South Central. Take out the brightly colored cornrows and go back to The Tragic Kingdom.

In conclusion, Gwen, we loved the ska. Even the punk phase was a good rip-roarin' time. Once again, you're not P-Diddy, Don King, Alicia Keys, Asian, etc. You're not black. The only person whiter than you is Marylin Manson! Please go back to Cali and get the band back together...

Also, I now know way more about the freak-show that is you than I ever intended to!

P.S. On the same note, could we please get Mariah Carey some much-needed liposuction? And could someone please tell Chris Cornell that's he's not Bruce Springsteen?

The Menagerie...Part Deux

2006-01-19T11:19:00.000-06:00

I worked on the new couch's slip-covering yesterday on no sleep at all. I got all three cushions covered, and then after having been awake for something like 65 hours (don't be alarmed by this, I never sleep...like Samara Morgan, except not as creepy), I promptly fell asleep on the new couch. It's pretty comfy.

I have finally gotten some sleep now (about six hours), but I'm still not rested enough. My reflexes are still a little lacking and I keep dropping stuff (I probably still shouldn't be operatiing heavy machinery like the car). Hopefully the couch work will continue on today though.

Anyway, I took some new pictures of the pets...'cause they're so friggin' adorable and all, and sometimes they just do cute things.

WALTER

BOO (aka The Notorious B.O.O)

The true fattness that is BOO! Yes, he weighs 50 lbs.

MINA

JEZEBELLE

ANGUS

Ottoman Revamp...

2006-01-18T03:56:00.000-06:00

So, I originally bought this ottoman at Goodwill like year and a half ago for like $3. In it's originality it was 50's pale pink vinyl and only ten inches tall.

After we moved into the house, I took the damned thing apart got rid of the nasty vinyl, got new taller legs and added more foam, making it 16.5 inches tall. After that it was covered with plain fabric and then a turquoise denim slip-cover to match the rest of the slip-covered furniture (It basically looked like a turquoise cube).

Now, it's completely different again. I tried to work on the new slip-cover yesterday afternoon, but there was too much math to do (seam allowances for the new plans and such - I hate fractions) and I got all frustrated like I do, so I had to walk away from it. I assumed that it would sit around and rot before I actually finished it. But I couldn't sleep.

So, now, at four in the morning....the ottoman lives and it totally revived and purrty! I think I might add some plaid fabric-covered buttons to the pillow top still though. It really could go either way and I am way to over-tired to be making those kinds of decisions right this second.

I'd say I'll sleep on it, but considering that I haven't managed to go to bed yet, it's not very likely!

Next project...slip-cover for the new couch! Wish me luck!

The Mother of all Strangeness...

2006-01-17T11:34:00.000-06:00

Picture credited to BBC News

My mother works for the health department. She also works at the STD clinics and what-not. This is all fine and good, but my mother is slightly off her rocker and has been for as long as I can remember. Since I was about 15, she's been passing out condoms to me and my friends and basically preaching statistics on accidental pregnancy and spreading the word about getting STD tests and such.

It was a little embarassing when I was younger. My friends would come into the house and she would give them the suspicious, brown-paper lunchbag of condoms and discuss their troubles. I am an adult now though, an adult with a latex allergy and I have learned to live with her crazy, open ways. Plus, my friends always appreciated that she was this cool about their having sex especially when their parents would have killed them.

My mother has also made friends with a pack of cross-dressing men (most of which are gay, not that I have a problem with this) and a nutty, lesbian, vegitarian clothing designer. So she's gotten even more open when talking about sex and the like...if that's even believable. These men hang out at a bar a couple blocks away from my house and she is always trying to get me to go with her to drag shows there. I always suggest that she take Nazi-Grandma, but because Grams is who she is, this never pans out.

Anyway, recently (in October), my mother had to have a complete hysterectomy due to a very large (baby-sized) tumor growing between the muscle layers in her uterus (this was an on-going ordeal for over a year and a half and included one other previous operation to try to shrink and kill said gigantic tumor). She was off of work for quite a long time, and as the busy-body she is (this is where I get it from) was quite unhappy in her recovery. But now she has returned to her post, her drag-queens (one of which she works with) and resumed her safe-sex insanity train.

So, a few days ago, she sends me this picture via e-mail...

http://kqe.de

She thought it was entertaining to see that someone was being creative...which of course, the dress is a very creative use of condoms...but for me...it just brought up all these questions like...

Why would one need a dress made of condoms, out of the package no less?
Assuming and hoping that these are not lubricated, where the hell did they find this many condoms not slathered with spermacide?
With all the latex allergies these days (myself included) who the hell can even wear said dress?
Is someone planning on wearing said dress?
If so, where is said wearer going wearing a dress made of out of the package unlubricated (hopefully) condoms?
With as faulty as condoms tend to be under normal circumstances, how long is said wearer expecting this dress will stay in one peice?
How are they dealing with the fact that latex is really smelly and sweaty?
Does said dress have lining?

KP once gave me a bouquet of condom roses that she and A1 made themselves. They were still and their packages though and the bouquet was actually really pretty. But that was mostly a gag thing...I think. Latex allergy aside, I could never imagine wearing this dress for any duration of time and actually being comfortable. Let's hope it's just creative and arty and that no one will actually be putting the scary thing on.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

That's My Timmy!

2006-01-16T14:14:00.000-06:00

TIMMY! (Yelled in a very 'South Park' kind of way!)

So, my little brother was over this weekend, visiting and playing Madden with hubby.

His name is Tim...Timmy! Although, I actually have called him 'Tummy' since I was like 14 or 15 when he hit his first growth spurt and was suddenly bigger than me. He's gigantic...as far as I'm concerned...and I remember when he couldn't even see what was on top of the refrigerator! But I can still beat the crap out of him...which is sort of my duty as the eldest.

He's 21 now, which is so friggin' hard to believe considering I still remember where I was and what I was doing when he was born and he actually was smaller than I was at birth. He's actually turning out to be a pretty good person...although, after having grown up with him being a little pain-in-the-ass I would never mention anything like that to him.

We also don't really look anything alike...although we do have the same nose. He looks just like The Momma and I look like the other half of the union that we just don't speak of, meaning our father. I am the luckier of the two of us though, even if it is only because I didn't end up with the widow's peak hairline like him and my mother's side of the family!

Anyway, I decided that I needed actual photographic evidence that he is like a foot taller than I am and I'm 5' 6.5". No one ever believes that he's that he could possibly be that much bigger (He's nearly 6'5" and weighs somewhere around 230 pounds)...also, no one ever believes that I am the elder of the two of us. So hubby took some pics around the time lil' bro decided I make a pretty good arm-rest (this would be what caused the scene in the above picture).

In conclusion...Tummy is the biggest little brother ever! He's freakishly tall in comarison to the average person.

Walla...Window Seat!

2006-01-12T20:57:00.000-06:00

So, it isn't actually a window seat. Well, I wouldn't suggest trying to sit on it at least especially since it's basically just the one remaining MDF board in the box window where former owner had five shelves (Clearly the others have been taken down).

This one remained because the idiot former owner actually cut into the window sill to attach the brackets for this now warpy piece of MDF. Plus it's a box window so the window seat angle works. There is a real, and functional window seat in the foyer/staircase area where the curved window is, so it also fits because of that. It also makes the fact that I can see the radiator a little more tolerable.

Anyway, hubby took the other shelves out before we even moved in and this is actually the second time this faux window seat has been decorated, but nonetheless, it's done now and matches the dining room. Also notice, I have made and put up the curtains...although I got derailed by the dogs so the little window is still lacking its valance.

It's fun how damned handy I am with a sewing machine. I also added some leafy stuff to the vases on the top of the mantle.

All in all, I'm down to just paint in the dining room. Although, I eventually have to turn a 9.5 foot tall, thick cardboard tube into a fake tree. Should be entertaining...not to mention I still haven't actually decided where I'm gonna go with it when it does get done. So many places...

And then there was hubby, wondering what the hell I was doing with the camera again...

So, I put the camera away again.

Work in Progress...

2006-01-11T10:45:00.000-06:00

So, I have been decorating and redecorating and plotting and scheming (BEG has been in on this too since she's brilliant and creative). I was working on my front doorway (I have a lot of front doors so there is some space in between them), which was one of the areas affected by the old roof's water leak and has some water damage from before we moved in, my foyer and staircase area which I hadn't really done anything with since we moved in over a year ago (I had properly hung curtains over the large curved window and had made a pad for the window seat of the same window), my living room and my dining room which now has my dining room table in it (Up until New Year's Eve the table had been stored and went unused in the rec room)

Thus far, it's coming along nicely. The front doorway is finished, although, I may repaint it because I dont' know how crazy I am about the current green. I think it should be pale pinkish to offset the green. Also, I should probably stop using it for storage of canned beverages. Here's pics...

The reason there are two oval rugs on the floor is that this space has many angles (old Queen Anne style house) and it's awkward in measurement. I like this rug but the larger version was too big to fit into the space. I do plan to sew them together and tape them down...when I get around to it.

The front door window curtain used to be a Martha Stewart decorator table cloth and table topper. I found it on clearance for $3 at Kmart last weekend and couldn't resist the challenge of turning it into a curtain, especially since it matched so well with everything else I had already gotten for the space, not to mention it was just the one window which is rather small in comparison to all the other windows in my house and the cloth was big enough to work with. The ceiling light sconce has also been changed to something more tolerable and the ancient lightbulb has been replaced with a 60 watt flourescent spiral bulb...so the lighting doesn't suck anymore.

Anway, I am also almost done with the creation of the dining room. Although most of the walls are still primer white and I can't thus far decide between soft, pale green or light butter yellow for the walls. Here's some pics of the room in progress...

This picture has hubby in it. He has a thing for posing strangely near the fireplace. Anyway, this pic is only being posted because 'The Face in the Mirror' has made another appearance. Damn ghosts! [BEG, if you can't see it, it's on the right side of the mirror in the picture where it always is]

We've gotten a new area rug. The dining table chair seats have been recovered. Actually, there's some other stuff that has been added and finished since these pictures were taken a couple days ago as well. I will post new pictures when it is all finished though.

I also changed the lightbulbs in both chandeliers, which was no easy feat. Apparently they used to have crappy 25 watt chandelier bulbs in them. Now they each have 4-60 watt GE Reveal bulbs in them and they are super bright. More light makes them more tolerable...but I still hate them.

The living room area still hasn't even really gotten anything done yet, other than my continuing effort to continue and finish primering all the walls. We did buy a new couch last weekend, which is now being stored and unused in the rec room so I can get the slip-covers done (I have dogs...slip-covers are necessary).

So, all in all, it's still a work in progress all in an effort to be ready for the Tour of Historic Homes next fall. Yes, I live in a Historic home and it's big and fancy-pants and if I had it my way I'd go funky art gallery style...but I do have to contend with hubby, the time period in which the house was built and the damn people in charge of the tour...thus the new English Country/English Garden motiff we're working on!

BTW: I have posted a new 'Dammit, Dick!' on http://pluralofapocalypsedeux.blogspot.com Read it, it's funny!

Box of Hammers Theatre Presents...

2006-01-05T11:59:00.000-06:00

Girls Gone Wild...

This is the newly appointed '9-Iron of Naughty'. This was decided and inducted by myself without the other two legs of The Tripod because they are both sleeping as it is very, very late. I'm sure they'll go along with it though. They'll go along with just about anything that has 'naughty' in the title. Picture compliments of someone with really ugly carpeting, since I couldn't actually find hubby's clubs to take a pic. Anyway, it's like 'The Bat of Accountability' and 'The Raquet of Redemption'-s rich, snobby cousin.

Since my most recent post, the latest allowed peek into my life and the lives of the other two legs of The Tripod, I have literally been bombarded with e-mails. 65 of them to be exact. No wait. 66 & 67 just arrived. Yes, I know. It was surprising, even to me, especially since I already get about 250 e-mails throughout the course of the average day.

I have carefully read each and every one of these e-mails from beginning to end. I have considered all the information which they contain and don't contain, and here's what I've come up with...

All the e-mails are from men/boys, whatever. Well, okay, really really stupid men/boys, whatever. I say really, really stupid as in, they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground and would never be inclined to make the distinction, at least not as long as there's hair to be grown on their palms and enough free internet porn to literally keep them glued to their seats. And because very nearly every e-mailer inquired as to how they could go about subscribing to my 'service'.

I have a 'service'?

www.explodingdog.com

This was a little confusing and I had to think on it for a minute or two, try to decipher caveman speak for 'Girls are pretty'. Finally, I figured out what they were referring to as my 'service' or what they thought it was at least. And then, once again, I had to ask myself...

I have a 'service'? Hmmm.

No, chronic masturbators who would yank off to virtual fish just so long as they wiggle about sufficiently. I don't have a 'service'!

I have a weblog. There is no subscription required. It's free for you to browse at will, I swear. I don't pay anything to anyone to babble here about all the mundane shit that goes on around here and the craziness seeping from my brain. Why on Earth would you pay to read about it? FREEdom is sort of the point of blogging afterall.

Most of all, it's my life.

Ocassionally, there's fun or something entertaining to report. Sometimes, it's even racey and naughty (this is where the newly appointed 9-iron comes in) and sometimes, it even involves nudity. Generally though, it's not all as colorful as our New Year's Eve debauchery or that night I spent in the Japanese whorehouse which incidentally also had Japanese karaoke.

BEG, KP and I are not always all over each other and not in our reality based frames of mind. In fact, very nearly all the time we are no where even remotely near each other and are connected only by long distance phoning and the internet.

Wow! The Tripod in actuality is really as retardedly shaped as hubby has suggested.

Ocassionally, we break from our nefarious plotting and scheming to read books and go shopping. We have ho-hum existences for the most part.

Don't get me wrong. We're a tossin'-caution-to-the-wind sort of bunch. We're usually down for whatever, whenever. But still.

Often times, BEG is the only person I talk to in a day other than hubby and he's often times the only other human I see for days. I do laundry and get the oil changed in the Isuzu. I clean the bathtub and wipe up cat puke as disgusting and everyday as these activities may be.

Not actually me cleaning a table. Sorry. I don't pictures of these sorts of things.

There is nothing HOT or WILD about making coffee or pledging the tables. My house, as large and as capable of it as it is, is not a den of sin. Well, not constantly anyway.

Irregardless (For BEG), we are not girls GONE wild. We've just always been like this, whatever 'this' may be.

It's not like the pictures I posted from New Year's Eve were smutty and nothing I had to say about it was particularly wild (mildly amusing and long-winded perhaps). We all managed to stay fully clothed for the entire duration of the weekend...except for of course when we weren't (I was naked. I did get laid. I'm not gonna lie because that would just be stupid. Can't speak for anyone else though).

Also notably, I have not gotten one single comment or e-mail about the mostly naked picture of myslef uploaded very, very early this morning in a fit of insomnia. Apparently, the attraction only exists when we're a variagated, and yet, fully clothed trio!

So, in conclusion, if you feel it necessary to jerk-off to fully clothed, adult females having a harmless, good time, by all means, stroke away. Hey, scream my name if it helps (lesbians, this goes for you too!).

But for the sake of Joe Pesci (prayed to by at least two members of The Tripod) and all that is holy (pepperoni, summer sausage, dead fish in the mailbox, etc.), don't e-mail to tell me about it and ask to pay me for it. Enjoy a free thing while it's around.

I could take your money, mostly because you deserve to be made fools of, but it's too easy. You already look stupid enough and the amusement I get from that is quite sufficient payment! Fall any further down the scale and you'll never have any chance of meeting a real, live 3-dimensional girl to touch your parts for you!

Until next time my silly, little friends...

The Skee-Doo of Smut remains safely tethered to it's dock. And please remember, a wise man once said, "Wherever you go, there you are." (Sorry, I have had that stuck in my head for days).

-IV out

Fun With Photoshop...

2006-01-05T03:35:00.000-06:00

Lame, I know, but I had a lot of time on my hands today and will for the next couple of them! Plus it gave me something to e-mail hubby while he's away.

FISH & THE 70'S BUSH...revised

2006-01-03T10:46:00.000-06:00

So, for the sake of New Year's and much debaucherous celebrating (although I'm not sure the new year was what we were celebrating exactly) The Tripod was in full assembly, meaning that all three legs were in the same place and there is actual photographic evidence of this for the first time since my wedding. Clearly, an event such as this does not happen very often.

Our celebration was to kick off Friday night with a girl's-out dinner and then drinks at Landmark. The night ,in fact, almost didn't happen due to a freak blizzard in the day in The Great White North.

I woke up from yet another strange dream on Friday morning around 9:30. This time there weren't any zombies though (although I do still blame BEG for the constant zombie dreams lately. She's such a zombie junkie). It was actually about my living in pumpkin house like in the children's story, and the raccoon that once ate the actual pumkins from my last residence's front porch, yes they were the pumpkins covered in hubby's blood from when he needed to get stitches from slashing his hand with a filleting knife as his carving tool, kept biting off chunks of the house and eating them. So weird.

Maybe I should stop eating things like donuts and summer sausage before I go to bed. Maybe I should just stop eating them altogether. Or maybe this is a fortelling of a future giant raccoon attack! Either way, I'm so in if Geraldo will be covering the event(s). And if he's wearing chaps and rubbing ointment on the bellies of chubby baby squirrels, there's no telling what I'll be capable of!

Omigod! I was all sorts of straying just then! Back to the original topic...a fully assembled Tripod and their weekend of chaos and grrrrr!

Anyway, I got up from that strange dream and then BEG called with a displeasing weather report from The Great White north. It was snowing something fierce and she didn't know when or if she would be able to flee The 'Sau for the first time in months.

This was so not cool. I actually had a terrible sight in my head of BEG sitting, freezing in her apartment and starving because she'd planned to not be there so she hadn't gone to the store for food, but hey...it's not like we have any control over the terrorist weather machine and I would try to make it to her and save her ala Dennis Quaid's character in The Day After Tomorrow saving Jake Gyllenhal (I don't care if this is spelled correctly) from the library.

She was all, "I'm gonna go check Wendy's pets and see how the roads are. I'll let ya know." And then we hung up. I myself had realized not so much earlier that the office still had not been tidied up and she would have no where to sleep if she made it.

I decided to bank on her making it and started to clean the office, which duals as her very warm bedroom when she's down. It had gotten a bit out of control with the rapidly approaching and passing holidays and my recent need to actually work on and finish projects. Hubby kept him self busy making a really pointless and time consuming graph of our heat efficiency in comparison to this time last year, which was just after we'd gotten here and were still leaving the door open all the time to move stuff in and out. He was harassed about this sometime around color coding for clarity and then he quit it.

Around 2:30 pm, BEG called back to let me know that the roads were fine. Apparently all was not fine with Wendy's fish though...

www.toothpastefordinner.com

...and BEG had to give them a proper burial at sea. We briefly mourned the loss and then she was on her way down. I started to wait and realized a couple hours into it that I was starving my ass off since I had not eating anything yet. Finally, she called again from the road and let me know she was just an hour away and also starving.

We booked out of my house nearly right after her arrival, both starving and ready for The Tripod dinner and other coming weekend festivities.

Along our way to The Outback for dinner, we decided to start our own fight club...except without fighting since girls just aren't like that and the few that are dangerous and belong in a nut farm. They don't just mean to fight, they mean to kill.

Wow, veering off-topic again. If this was a driving test, I would so be failing already.

We decided on Knit Club, not that I can knit or anything. Someone my dumb fat aunt knows was supposed to teach me and then she got sick and didn't. I also bought a pc instructional cd but never got to it. Regardless, It was funny and I think it had something to do with making soap when the conversation originally started.

The weather was super shitty, freezing rain and the roads were a nightmare, but we made it to The Outback and found KP had already masterfully scouted and snagged us a table in the bar so we could smoke at will (There's a system to getting a smoking table...it involves stalking and snarling and pretty much general contempt). This was followed by drinking, eating and torturing in a way only girls can, our poor, little puppy-like, twenty-one year old waiter Stephen and many overhead explanations of his 'FLARE' not to mention our consistent mockery of it.

Due to my new Nicole Ritchie style stick figure personage, BEG and KP kept demanding I eat more. I ate a lot in the first place and then me and KP shared dessert, which there was too much of for either of us or us together even to actually finish. Plus the pecans made it kind of gross. Some nuts are just better in theory.

...And I just took some time out to think about poor nut execution...which led to a shelled peanut in an electric chair...moving along now...

It was concluded, sometime around the time when KP's wrongly very rare steak arrived that everything involving The Tripod leads back to fish. I don't remember why or how this one even started but everything after that all weekend ended up back at fish when reversed. It's like we're psychic or something. Also, the things that didn't lead back to fish, led back to having something to do with a 70's bush.

There was much discussion of Stephen's trainable 'puppy' qualities and putting him on a leash in the same fashion as the former 'Puppy' who has now been outed from the circle due to the fact that he turned out to be not-changeable at all. We had a leash handy (a gift to me from KP) so it wasn't so far off. There was also contemplation of lubricants with Stephen's young and into masturbation boy input and other refinements and trying to convince Stephen to come out with us when he got off work.

He was reluctant since he already had plans to go to an underage party and especially since his younger love interest was just a few feet away, but then he decided after much coaxing and reminding him that he was 21 and had no reason to go to an underage party, he and a friend would meet us at the bar. And then we were out of there and on our way to The Landmark.

Arrived at the bar, got drinks, poked at the internet jukebox. We totally misplaced the existance of Stephen in our heads temporarily when BEG started playing Pat Benetar for me and we had to pow-wow about which Duran Duran song we'd like to hear. When we remembered like an hour into it, we looked around for him and his friend (BEG was the only one who bothered to look at the friend when Stephen pointed him out to us at The Outback so she was the only who knew what he looked like). They weren't there. Whatever!

We hung out for a bit chatting with other friends there. I actually climbed a booth and over Neil's head because the dumb-fucker refused to move (He actually said, "But I'm comfortable here."). KP followed suit. It was hilarious.

Stephen never actually showed up and if he did, we didn't see him or remember him or whatever. I imagine he may have been there but we were sitting at a table, us three girls, surrounded by six extraneous men. They were little boys and probably too imtimidated to show their faces.

Also there was the perfect strange grouping of people that came in together. BEG decided that all they were missing was an indian in full head-dress. This too was hilarious considering it was an a man and woman, parent types, a butch foreign lesbian, a lipstick lesbian, an extraneous middle aged woman that really didn't look like she belonged with them and a small Asian man. Too funny!

We got the hell out of there, taking KP back to her car. BEG and I returned to my house to find hubby, his friend Otto (He looks like Otto from The Simpsons, but without the hat and bus) and Shortleash camped out in my living room, mostly drunk and playing video games. The house was still relatively clean though so my week spent cleaning for the parties had been for nothing.

BEG and I exchanged Christmas gifts. It was splendid. I got her DDR 3 with the dance pad for her X-box and she got me the gothy Tinkerbell hoodie I wanted but couldn't ever seem get in my size from the Hot Topic. There were other gifts, but these were the most important.

Since there was a lot to be accomplished first thing Saturday, Shortleash booked home (Yeah, I know, all the way across the street), Otto crashed on the couch (I suspect extreme laziness prevented this one from leaving), BEG hit the cot and me and hubby our bed.

Saturday morning we got up with much, much party supply shopping to be done. I figured out that there was no way BEG's small car would fit all the necessities so we took my SUV and we headed out on our journey for everything under the sun apparently.

First, we hit Target since there was still a shortage of lampshades in my house and Coke products were still on sale. I bought a bunch of shit I wanted, but didn't really need including two, yes, count them, two, My Little Pony Butterfly Island Adventure playsets. Also, there was another hoodie I didn't have and knee socks to match (Yes, there were knee socks I didn't already possess)!

This was followed by Walmart where very nearly everyone was swearing and feisty about the general state of the store and their lack of open and properly functioning check-out lanes. Then Best Buy, McDonalds for much needed re-fueling, and then the grocery store for all that we may have missed at the other stores. All but one store involved two full carts (I'm not counting BEST BUY since I only went in for one thing and accidentally spent a small fortune on other umpulse buy stuff) and my SUV was packed to max capacity.

It took three of us to unload the car and just about an hour to put stuff away or as away as it was ever going to get in a house preparing for two gatherings one of which was that very night. Then we prepared for the New Year's Eve festivities by sitting on the couch and waiting. This was followed by the arrival of KP, Christmas gifting with her, and then after moving some furniture BEG and KP played DDR.

Hubby had rigged the laptop to the big TV and for some reason (I say this because we live in WI) we were listening to KROQ. That song, which I don't hate, by Deathcab for Cutie came on and we chatted about how it was a terrible and scary band name. This made KP bring up how back in the day, I had declared Green Apple Quickstep to be the end of band names when they showed up on the Basketball Diaries soundtrack. This is also the portion of the evening when it was decided that if we ever started a band it would have to be called FISH & THE 70'S BUSH, although, I'm not quite sure which, if any of us are 'FISH'. After that, Shortleash, Miss Maddy's Mommy and Little Miss Maddy finally showed up.

Miss Maddy's Mommy is knocked up again so she basically just hung out and watched TV or rather the Windows media player on the big TV. BEG played My Little Ponies with Miss Maddy and my pregnanat Midge doll was busted out for our mocking of it and the hilarity of Little Miss Maddy playing with it. Midge at one point actually gave birth to a rabid little tykes puppy at one point (for more on this please see http://pluralofapocalypsedeux.blogspot.com) And then they left since the mommy had to work on Sunday.

I think the birth of the puppies was what caused BEG to start hitting the bottle. Although, she did take the time to clean up all the toys and then yell at Shortleash about babysitting his kid all night. Of course, Little Miss Maddy loves coming over to my house because I give her whatever she wants and we actually pay attention to her unlike her own people.

It was around this time we had a group weigh-in. I think this was mostly due to everyone harassing me about my new stick figure personage and BEG calling me 'Ms. Ritchie' or 'Nicole'. As it turned out, I had lost another eleven pounds. This only seemed to make the natives more bitchy about my current weight loss situation. Anyway, we moved on.

Here are some photos of what came. Also, I think this is only the second instance of all three legs of The Tripod being photographed together...

This is The Tripod actually behaving...and I think I may have been freezing

Also behaving...for the most part. KP eyes are closed as they usually are in pictures. I think she secretly longs to be Asian.

This is the group fondle. There was a lot of this going on all weekend. Fondling each other...fondling ourselves!

BEG enjoying the spoils of Shortleash's trip the the most gigantic liquor store ever!

Clearly, me. Although I'm not sure why I was doing this. Not too sure why we are the way we are in any of the pictures, however I do know that there are more pictures of my underwear and my making funny faces than anything else.

Funny faces made by me...

Jazz hands...

There seems to be no real explanation for this either. However, fairly entertaining.

There was a call to Tyler made by BEG and KP, and a strange message left on Andy's voicemail from me. It was something like, "I don't know what to do. I'm panicking!" which was then followed by a few seconds of argument amongst the legs of The Tripod. This was all because Shortleash was flipping his shit on the phone with someone in my kitchen and he was being loud and distracting.

Also, there was suspicious ghost activity. You see, Shortleash and I had accidentally poured one too many glasses of champaigne and that glass got left on the newly moved into the house dining room table. Shortleash walked all the way passed the table talking on his cell on the table side ear, got all the way passed and about a foot a way and the wrongly poured glass flew off the table and hit the floor. Strange. This was declared, the work of my ghost(s).

Anyway, Sunday was the party involving family, to which thirty or 33 people were invited and for which BEG and I had done all the shopping the previous day. We, three spent all morning cooking for practically no one since only like fourteen people showed up, most of the invitees having come down with some suspicious illness at the last possible second. I don't believe any of them and neither did anyone else.

We kept praying the cross-dressers would show, but we couldn't get a hold of them when they were called. We should have sent hubby to the gay bar to round them up and lead the way back here. It would have been hilarious if nothing else.

There was also fighting and arguing with my bastard, gay uncle who decided it was polite to come into my house with his husband and just start disregarding everything I had to say and poking around in my stuff. Thanks to him tormenting my dog (Belle) she peed in her crate and was mental having never been around so many people here before. He was asked to leave her alone several times and to not give her table food, but as I said he's a bastard and disregarded everything I had to say. He also called KP rude when she lit a cigarette. I was all. "This is my goddamned house and we're smokers!" I don't remember having gotten the memo about the world now revolving around him but then again, The Tripod was also very busy all morning as stated with food prep for 30.

This insanity caused me and BEG to start drinking and we were literally giving away tri-plates of food to whoever we could find outside, namely Sammy and Ronnie. Yesterday, Ronnie declared, 'Damn those white girls can cook!' Apparently he was also interested in getting more, but was too polite to ask.

Oh, by the way, we made some fancy-pants stuffed shells (three trays worth) and garlic butter boneless chicken breasts. Plus there were fried red tomatos marinaded in tequila and other assorted goodness and standard party foods. My mother brought barbeque in the often traded back and forth crock pot.

Anyway, my mother did the dishes for me, which is cool since I HATE washing dishes! They are the bain of my existence! Finally, everyone left which was a welcome relief and it was declared that either we are just not doing this second party next year, or we are getting sworn statements from everyone claiming they will attend.

It was too much work and mostly for nothing. We basically could have spent the time we spent cooking for the assholes, making a splendid breakfast for the ones that actually counted and had a quiet morning of relaxing after the night before spent really partying.

Post asshole departure, we camped out, snacked (there was some taco dip abuse when Otto tried to put the lid back on the tray and instead it went flying into the air raining down shredded cheese and olives) and watched a streak of funny movies and then Serenity. We were in bed by 1 am which was good since none of us had really slept since Thursday night.

Hubby and Otto made breakfast for me and BEG on Monday morning. I think this was sort of a payback effort for all our hard work having gone basically unnoticed by everyone but the two of them. KP missed this, having gone home Sunday night. Sorry, KP. If it's any consolation, I broke the tooth the dog cracked in half on a piece of bacon and now need far more dental work.

BEG left for home around noon and was followed shortly thereafter by Otto. Hubby and I resumed our search for properly fitting lampshades. I still don't have any!

And thus ends the holiday tour of madness! Next up, January 8, the seventh anniversary of me and hubby (not the wedding anni though, this is just how long we've been together this time around). It's completely surprising there hasn't been more bloodshed.

Apparently, Now I'm It!

2006-01-03T09:47:00.000-06:00

Or one of the 'It-s' tagged by BEG. So here it is...

Four Jobs You've Had in Your Life:

Dental Office Go-To Girl (Made some coffee and zapped some tools. This job also could have been called 'Culver's Taste Tester' seeing as how the dental office was right next to a Culver's and I spent more time there, eating than at the actual office.)
Walmart Cashier (Lasted for just about three months and ended with me calling to tell them I was never coming back ever again.)
Head Baker @ a Cookies By Design branch (Quit to follow hubby.)
Dollmaker/My Little Pony Customizer (This is stuff I still do if I can find the time.)

My favorite not an actual job, which was really more of a favor I did for a friend was clean up some lyrics on an infamous trouble-makin' female's last album. This singer/group shall remain nameless, although, I did get a shout out in the liner notes and writing credit). For a good long time I was an unofficial Pizza Hut employee. Also, I write smut and have saved many relationships.

I mention this stuff since I don't technically have a job currently and haven't for about five years or something like that. So my employment history is a little bit sketchy. I'm not a worker. I'm a thinker and planner. I'm like Van Wilder except I of course have breasts and have never willingly worn a toga.

Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over:

Garden State
The Girl Next Door
Napolean Dynamite
Anything by Broken Lizard

Of course now we could also add National Lampoon's Van Wilder and Serenity to the list. Others would be The Salton Sea, Garage Days, and the Resident Evils.

Four Places You've Lived:

Waukesha, WI (53189)
Waukesha, WI (Different Zip Code - 53188)
Racine WI
In my own head...this is really more of a mental placement

Four TV Shows You Love to Watch:

Arrested Developement
LOST
That 70's Show (I love Hyde)
Stacked (Don't even ask...I think it has something to do with my being mystified that Pam Anderson and Christopher Lloyd are on the same show and it works...also it's on right after That 70's show...less channel changing.)

I used to watch more TV but then most of the shows I watch either ended, got cancelled or were put on hiatus (Six Feet Under, Sopranos, Carnivale, Wonderfalls, Tru Calling, etc.). I watch Entourage, but it's currently done with its season.

Four Websites You Visit Daily:

Consumption Junction (www.consumptionjunction.com) Thomas is hilarious and has the same amount of hate for the state of Ohio and love for conjoined twins as I do.

Okay, I'm all over the place. I read a lot of Blogs...do they count? There's Ebay...if I have auctions.

Four of You Favorite Foods:

Dill Pickles
Mashed Potatos & Corn
Boston Cream Donuts
Any sort of pasta (I'm not too picky about this.)

Four Albums You Can't Live Without (At Least For the Moment):

Eminem's 'Curtain Call'
Kelly Clarkson's 'Breakaway'
The Essential Simon & Garfunkel
The Black Eyed Peas' 'Monkey Business'

Four Places You'd Rather Be:

New Orleans...if it was in better shape
Savannah, GA (I have a sweet spot for this city.)
Jamaica (I have a notion to run away from my life and move there to live on the beach.)

Sorry, I couldn't come up with a fourth place I'd rather be.

I think I'm supposed to tag four other people now, however, all the people I would have tagged have already been tagged with this by BEG, so I'll let her have all the fun.