The Party in Pics

This is my niece as we were working on the the greeting board for the party Friday night. She's pretty easy going and pleasant. Unfortunately we didn't start the movie until about 11:30 and she fell asleep about 15 minutes in. I guess next time....

This is my heart and flowers centerpiece for the guests of honor table. The other tables just had bunched up Hawaiian cloth under them.

This is the table of pictures.

This is the cool cake my SIL brought. I wonder how they make those icing pictures? Maybe I should google it.

Those are just random shots to give you an idea of the room. We used five large round tables. Notice how everyone is wearing their leis. I was wondering if some of those "good ole boys" were going to feel okay about wearing a garland of pink silk flowers, but everyone wore them. And of course there were a lot of the usual jokes, like, "You haven't been leied! You need to get leied." There was a glass door leading out to a patio with two benches for all the smokers, but a lot of non-smokers hung around out there for the first half-hour because the view of the golf course was nice and it was a gorgeous day: sunny and not hot or cold. It was just right.

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I was sort of a nervous wreck, but everything went very smoothly and everyone said they really enjoyed it. The food was good and the service was excellent. I thought it was funny that they always served me first. We sat at a table with the aunt and uncle that flew in and and a really old couple. Fortunately our aunt is very talkative so I let her run most of the conversation. It was funny to me to think I did all that. When I woke up Sunday morning I had the oddest pain in my extensor carpi ulnaris muscle. I couldn't figure out why it hurt, and I thought, "Did I do anything odd yesterday?" Then I laughed out loud as I was thinking, "Yeah, you did. You threw a big party at a country club!" I was telling my Mom about my arm pain and I said, "The only thing I did was hold a beer all day, but I always have a beer." She said, "Yeah, but I bet you were really gripping that thing." She's probably right.

It's Almost Party Time

I invited my 14-year-old niece to spend the night with us Friday night (or tonight if you are reading this on Friday). It's about time I got to know her better. I generally only see her at family events and she is not always at those because sometimes she is with her dad. I had also thought of doing some sort of "Happy Anniversary" thing in Hawaiian and then thought, "Hey! That's something cool we can do together!" I went to Michael's and thanks to a VERY helpful boy (Yo, Chris W., You Rock!) found these:
I also bought a dark green foam poster board for to put these on. (hee hee) Anyway I separated the letters from the flowers so I could spell this out:

I had to play with the contrast so you could read that, because they are just sitting on a clear plastic tray right now on top of the "party cloth." The weird thing was, when I dumped out the stuff to separate the flowers from the letters, I experienced the Clown Car Phenomenon. I ended up with enough flowers to half fill this very large shoebox:

I put the letters back in the orignal container and they took up almost a third of the space. I can't figure out how it all fit in there to begin with.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to having some quality time with my niece and getting to know her on a more personal level. Her mother and grandmother have both told me how excited she is about it. She has only one other aunt that lives in Colorado and I don't think they know each other very well. She's also going to help us with other party related matters and help me decorate. What I didn't tell my niece is that she has to watch my favorite movie with me. I know her mother doesn't like old movies, so I'm pretty sure she hasn't seen it, but I'd like to think that next week sometime, she will be humming "The Boy Next Door" or singing "Clang, clang clang goes the trolley!"

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And now for a totally unrelated subject complete with no segue whatsoever: Lily, the cat that can disappear, disappeared tonight and I always enjoy trying to find her. Sometimes I can't and give up and sometimes I get frustrated and shake a bag of treats to make her reappear. But that's cheating. Tonight after going over the house three times I found her here:

And Yet, Again

Yes, we are having weather. AGAIN. But this time it is not about our branches breaking off or our skylights being busted by hail. This one is an airport wait. My Sweetie's aunt and uncle are attempting to get here by plane for the wedding anniversary party and it is not going well. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining on my end. You all know I stay up 'til all hours, I just feel really bad for them. The plane was supposed to land at 9:14, then 9:24, then 10:21, then 11:47 and now the latest update says 1:15. They were diverted to Austin, TX and I guess they are just now reboarding or sleeping in their seats or something. It's 11:42 here (I know, my little clock there is on Pacific time, not Texas time) and their plane is currently scheduled to leave Austin at midnight to come back here. It will be only 4 hours late. That's Texas weather for you. That little line in the picture is the diversion route. I really feel bad for them and wish we could pick them up in an RV with two masseuses in it. But since we don't have any of that, I'm taking beer and lemonade.
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~~~~~Addendum~~We just got home at 3:45. I think that's the longest I've ever worn a bra when I wasn't in Vegas (19 hours!!!).

Burner Dyslexia and stuff

Does anyone else here ever do this? I do this ALL THE TIME. If you think a watched pot never boils, I can tell you it will boil a lot faster than an unwatched pot with the wrong burner on. All the knobs run in a line on the right of the stove. Why can't they design a stove with each knob next to the burner it controls? Why do I have so much trouble with this? Sheeesh! (And please don't mention the horrible pink tiles. They came with the house.)

Some projects I finished this past weekend:
These are my new house numbers I painted. I still haven't checked them at night. I should do that.

These little white (non-reflective) numbers on the mailbox were pretty much the only marker we had. We live at the top of a little hill right where the cul-de-sac starts, so everyone arrives from the bush side of the mailbox and the bush sticks out a good foot or more past the mailbox. I imagine those numbers are only useful for the postman. And last but not least:

I finally finished the photo board for the anniversary dinner this Saturday and those are all the loose pictures she gave me. I will take lots of pictures this Saturday after I decorate the tables and all that jazz. It's nice to finish projects.

My Birthday Weekend

I had a long and fun birthday weekend! Friday night we went to Mac's for dinner. I had been to my hairdresser and my hair smelled strongly of coconut so I made up a drink (I do that sometimes). I ordered a White Russian, but instead of Vodka, I had him use Creme de Cacao. It was good but I could hardly taste the coconut liqueur, because my hair smelled so strongly. I wanted to run into the grocery store on the way home for liquid soap, because like paper towels, I can not tolerate being out of liquid soap, and there was a table with gorgeous flower arrangements for only $9.99, so I bought those flowers for myself for my birthday. We were going to watch a movie when we got home, but My Sweetie fell asleep on the couch, so I finished the picture board project. I never did find more of the original ribbon, so I had to pull all of that out. I redid it with a matching pink rickrack. It was actually pretty funny - every time I used the staple gun, My Sweetie would pop awake for about 3 seconds, then go right back to sleep.
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On Saturday, My Sweetie went for a haircut and stopped at the sporting goods store and got us a fun yard game. I love fun yard games! You throw bean bags into the holes for points. It was fun! I did pretty good for playing left-handed. Once when I was retrieving the bean bags, I thought it would be fun to drop kick a bean bags back to My Sweetie but it went up into the tree. Also on Saturday, I painted my house numbers. Every year for my birthday I give myself a present and I have really wanted house numbers for a long time. I sprayed a few layers of primer on these wooden numbers and then the green. This was the first layer of green and it freaked me out because it looked nothing like the color on the cap. Fortunately after about 3 coats the color was darker, more of a Forest Green. Lastly I painted glass beads on top for reflection. We just put them up today and I forgot to take a picture and I haven't even checked them out in the dark to see if they actually reflect, but I'm glad to finally have some numbers up there. I don't know how delivery people found our house all these years. In the picture, it's the back of the numbers.

Saturday night, we went to the APV tournament at the ballpark in Arlington. It felt so cool to be sharing the same airspace as Olympic Gold medalists. The two ladies facing us are Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. There were also guys playing and all sorts of entertainment between matches including the drunk lady that slipped and fell on the bleachers about 3 feet from us. Of course, that made My Sweetie paranoid and he watched me like a hawk every time I got up to get a beer. It was a fun and different thing to do and was marred only by the bad bathrooms there.
Today, my actual birthday, we went to Main Street Arts Festival. Man was it crowded. My daughter met us there because she had to be somewhere at 6:00 and we were going out to eat from there. I thought this (below) was a really cool (and weird) thing so I took a picture and the artist came out of his booth and said, "Please don't take photographs." and I said, "But I'm a blogger!" Oh, and on the way in three different people were leaving and gave us coupons and I told them all, "Wow thanks! And it's my birthday!!" Two ladies at the Main Street store sang "Happy Birthday" to me. That was fun.

Since that one artist didn't want photos taken, I stood way back to take this picture, because I fell in love with the blue cat. How cool is that?

This last picture is of Bass Performance Hall taken from the parking garage we were in. If you look at the end of the street there, where it gets dark, that's the crowd on Main Street.




I think next year I will not have a birthday weekend. It really wore me out. I think next year I will just celebrate my birthday, like normal people.

Stupid Wednesday

I had to go to J.C. Penney yesterday to return My Sweetie' s birthday present (a lovely watch that loses time, is not a good watch), so I decided to do some bra shopping. I've said many times that I hate shopping in general, but I really hate bra shopping, which is why I really needed some new bras. However, I do love a bargain. I discovered these Ambrielle bras which are only $28, which is pretty inexpensive as far as bras go, but get this: They were "buy one get a second one for 88 cents!" 88 cents! I know! I was pretty happy to find such a great deal since I woke up stupid.
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Man did I wake up stupid Wednesday morning. I have my alarm set for the radio to come on and it usually scares the bejeebus out of me, but not yesterday. I woke up groggily thinking, "What is all this noise?" Well this noise was the radio and it had been blaring for 1 hour and 1 minute before I even noticed it. I should know better than to stay up too late on Tuesday nights, but I am stupid like that sometimes. Fortunately, I got ready in plenty of time and left at the usual time. I did feel a little cranky and didn't call the biting dog people, because I was sort of hoping he would run out. It was a little chilly so I was wearing jeans and my suede Rocket Dog shoes which seemed aptly named for sending a little dog into orbit, but he was smart and did not run out.
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After my route I stopped at the grungy bar that I always stop at for two beers and I usually give her $5 in adavance ($4 for the two beers and $1 tip) and when I reached in my pocket, there was no money. I had left my money at home! Because I woke up stupid. Fortunately I sort of know the bartender. I had to mail my parents' mail to them and didn't want to charge $2.59 at the post office so she let me tip her $5 on my card and she gave me $3 back. I thought that was a good deal for her, but a lot of people won't do that. It was also Catfish Wednesday and that little place didn't seem like they would even accept credit cards, so I called them and they did and I was glad because Catfish Wednesday was actually last Wednesday, but I couldn't eat there last week because of the hand doctor appointment and I wanted my catfish!
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Then I got lucky with the bras, so that was also good. After that I went by On the Border to ask what happened to the guy that had helped me with my basketball brackets and he had been let go and no one knew how to contact him. I was going to give him $20 for his help, but I don't know how to find him. Besides, I didn't have $20 with me anyway, which I had forgotten, because I woke up stupid.
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I feel a lot smarter today.

My Brain is Konfoozled

I remember talking to my Dad back in 1991 after Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and all that grossness came out. Dad said, "I thought I had seen everything, but this, this is beyond my comprehension." He was 55 at the time. I was only 30, but I said, "Really??!!? There is nothing a human being can do that will surprise me." I don't know if it was because I had read so much about Hitler's holocaust or because I was born with a certain cynicism, but Dahmer's crimes didn't really seem that surprising to me. I had already read and heard so many horrible things, which in literature is elegantly called "Man's inhumanity to man" that I was already jaded at the tender young age of 30. But I guess I was only inured to horrible physical and political acts, because now, now, I have discovered something that is really freaking me out.

I imagine everyone has seen some form of these cat pictures with odd misspellings and made up "wurdz" on them. But did you know they are translating the Bible into what they call "lolcatspeak?" As my Dad would have said, "I thought I had seen everything." Here is some of the first book of Genesis:

At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1
6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.

And here is some of John 3:

An Jebus sed, "Ceiling Cat has invisible haus, u gots 2 borned agen 2 see it."
4 Nicoteneus sez, "wtf d00d? How doez dat werk?"
5 Jebus sez, "is da truth, u hafta be born agen wif waterz an spiritz an stuffs.6 Flesh givez birf 2 flesh, but teh spirit gives birf to spirit, k?7 Y r u so konfoozled?8 Is lyke wind, it doz its own stufs an u dunno how it werks, but is all ok, amirite? Is like that!"
9 Nicoteneus sez, "I doez not get it." :(
10 "Den ur not gud teecher," sed Jebus. "Lez flame tnak his b4se!"11 "Ok, iz da twoof. We says sum stuff dat we sawed, and teh peeplez is still konfoozled.12 I ben talkin bout teh stuffs on urf and ur still lyke, 'whut?' so whut bout Ceiling an stuffs?13 I iz da only wan whos gone to Ceiling so u haves 2 trusts me, mkay?14 I gots 2 b lifteded up lyke Moses an his snakedy thingy,15 coz if u beleeves ur not gon be ded! Eternal lifes, u can has it!

I seriously don't know what to make of this. Is it good? Is it bad? To me it's just really freaking weird. Here's the site if you want to check it out. I just really don't know what to think. And I thought I had seen everything.

Perspective

Last weekend when my husband turned 41 he said, "I'm old." Well, of course, that irritated me a a little because if he's old, then I'm old plus 6. Age really is a matter of perspective. I remember thinking 19-year-olds were old when I was 6. And when I was 19, I thought 30 was old. And when I was .... okay, I think you get the gist. The thing is, I've decided to never say I am old because I know it will just irritate someone who is older than me. There will always be people who are older than me just like there will always be people who are younger than me. That's always true except the day you are born (no one younger) and until the day you die if you are one of those record-holding oldest people that live to 116 or whatever they are living to these days.

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I will always seem young to my mother and I will always seem old to my daughter, that's just perspective. And that's okay because that makes sense. But if my husband thinks he is old, then he must think I am old (plus 6).

This Is Getting Old

Wednesday night after I posted about my thumb, I was reading blogs and listening to the radio and after the second big weather alert came on I started watching the radar screen on the TV in here. It did not look good. About 3:00 I went to the big TV in the living room because it has full cable and I could watch the special local network weather channels. They were LIVE, which meant they felt a need to inform at 3:00 a.m. That's not good. About 3:15 I woke up My Sweetie and we watched for about 15 minutes as the rain started to pound and the wind whipped up and then POOF! The power went out and about 2 minutes later the alert sirens went off, so I jumped in the closet. It was all very loud and there was some small hail, but no big pounding hail like last year. All the whooshing and pounding rain lasted about 20 minutes or so. We went out to the car in the garage to check the radio and the giant vertical line of storms had moved on so we went to bed. The power popped back on just before 5:00. I was smart and had unplugged the TV so it wouldn't come on and wake us up, but just all the regular house sounds like the ceiling fan, fridge and whatnot coming on woke me up.
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When My Sweetie got up he checked our yard and roof and said we only lost one large branch from our big tree in the backyard. He went on to work and later when I got up and opened the front door, I saw all this in my neighbor's yard:

So I grabbed my camera and snapped a picture and decided to check out our backyard. This was the big branch he saw:

But what he didn't see was the REALLY BIG branch that was still hanging in the tree:

This is the spot, high up in the tree, it snapped from, but it is still hanging on by a few strands of wood:

Around 5:00, I drove to the drugstore and there were branches all over the place and some trees just snapped right off about halfway up. I wish I had taken my camera, but as I was at a light, I remembered my phone and snapped the picture at the top of a mangled carwash. (It's my first phone pic on my blog.) There was a really mangled used car dealership, but the picture did not come out well. My friend Carole had a lot of damage to a Maple in her front yard. All we lost in the front was a lot of mistletoe from our trees, but that is a good thing.

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I really feel bad for the one house I passed. There was the tree in the yard with a little circle of flowers around it, but about 5 1/2 feet up it was just a fresh wood point, like a manic giant had whittled a crude spear tip. And there were no branches in their yard. I wonder where their treetop went?

Good News? Bad News? You Decide.

Those are the actual hypodermic needles at the hand doctor's office today. One was novocaine aand the other was cortisone. The good news was that he did it somehow with only one needle. I didn't watch so I don't know how that works. But it hurt like fu[g?]! And it hurts right now. There was a groovy space where I was sitting in a bar drinking beer afterwards and the novocaine was all going on, but that passes as everyone knows that has slobbered and bitten their tongue after going to the dentist. On the bad news side, it is not fixable really. He diagnosed me with osteoarthritis. My Granny had that and her hands got really bad, but she lived to the age of 82 and I don't plan to get near that.

Above is a close-up of the 1 1/2 inch needle from Hell. I guess some good news is I won't need surgery until way down the road when my thumb becomes gnarly and deformed, if I live that long. It's a pity, all this, because I use my thumb quite often and I rather liked it fine until the last 4 or 5 months. Now, not so much. The good news is I now have a somewhat logical excuse to drink beer all the time (since a lot of people don't understand anxiety). I can say, "Hey! My thumb! It is not good! I'll have another beer! Please place it near my left hand in case I forget." I liked Dr. Hand Doctor even though I didn't know who he was until he left. The business card my regular doctor had given me had 4 names on it. Before I left I asked the nurse to circle his name on the card for me. He was the third one down. During the shot process which seemed to take 18 hours, I was "counting" and alphabeting" out loud to distract myself and it went something like this: 6, 12, 14, 7, 127, 91, d,e,b,z,y,x,52,71. Dr. Hand Doctor said, "127? Do you know any good jokes?" I said, "I know a million good jokes, but I just can't tell one right now, 37, 14, 8, 2, 17." If he thought I was weird he can just take a number and join everybody else.

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When I was in the waiting room my phone rang, but it is a new phone and my brain still has not filed the ring, so I looked at that lady sitting closest to me like, "Why aren't you answering your phone?" Then I realized SHE was looking at ME like "Why aren't you answering your phone?" Sure enough, I glanced in my purse and it was my phone ringing. I think I should call myself from the home phone tomorrow a few times and try to memorize the ring. I tried to download a BEP song a few weeks ago, but it went to my husband's phone because that's how I roll.

I wish they had let me pick a color for my new hand thing. I would not have picked "Sallow Yellow." That little band-aid strip part? That's where the metal strip is. I'm looking forward to wearing it through airport security.

The Icky and the Good

Warning: Do not read this while eating or if you are easily grossed out:
I was having a good ole time out in the yard prepping all my pots for flowers. I have a system that involves pulling out all the old roots, pulling out all the spring weed growth, and putting most of the old soil into a big tub that I have already filled with peat moss. I recycle the old soil with peat moss to use as a base and then I use new potting soil on top. I am also excessively pigeon-toed. I always say I have Fred Flintstone feet. What happened was, I got my Mom's toes and she wears a size 10 and my Dad's feet and he wore a men's 7. And my feet are flat and duck shaped. Seriously, I could win an ugly foot contest. Or all them if there were such contests. I always had problems with my pigeon-toedness. When I was little, I'd run excitedly and trip over my own feet. As an adult I have stabbed myself in the heel many times with the other foot, but heels are rather tough. Today, I was sitting on the edge of the deck, turned to stand up and walk across the deck and my left big toe nail slashed into my right foot. At first I just thought "Ouch!" and kept walking but thought, "Man, that really hurt!" and then I looked down and there was a giant open crater on my foot. My first impulse was to throw up and my second impulse was to faint (because I am the queasy type) and my brain got confused so I did neither. But I felt all gibbly goobly and went into thought mode. My first thought was, "I need to get a beer and a towel and a Band-Aid and the Neosporin and some paper towels and take a picture for my blog and go to the tub and rinse this thing out." In the picture, the part on the left is just blood. The crater is on the right. I couldn't bear to actually touch anything to the giant open crater, so after I rinsed it really well, I put the Neosporin on the Band-Aid and put that on. Man that was gross. But what was even grosser, was after I rinsed it, and had the Band-Aid on, I thought, "I wonder if that giant layer of skin that is missing from my foot is still stuck under my toenail?" Eeeeeeew. IT WAS! Ick ick ick. Then I felt all flooby again so I decided not to think about it. I continued planting flowers and occasionally glanced at the Band-Aid which was slowly being soaked with blood. So I decided not to think about that anymore, either. My Sweetie got home while I was still planting flowers and I told him about my horrific ordeal. He and I are opposite on our queasiness factor: insects make him queasy and blood and gore make me queasy so when I held up my left toe (the evil one) and showed him the giant piece of skin stuck there, he snatched it out and tossed it in the yard. I hope none of you were eating while you were reading this.

Here's the good part: Kansas won! I won $420!!!! I think the last thing I won was a pink plastic flute when I was in third or fourth grade at a Girl Scout Bingo game. Well, if you don't count casino wins (but hey, the losses at casinos SO outweigh the wins!). I thought it was cool that the top prize was $420 because my birthday is 4/20. I'm going to send $100 to St.Jude's Childrens Hospital because that was my deal with The Universe. So I have a hole in my Fred Flintstone foot, but I have some money coming and St. Jude's will get $100. It's not all bad.

The Weekend

I finally bought flowers today (Sunday I mean, it's 3:00 in the morning here). Every year I wait until I know it won't get cold again and not only that, but I am going to a hand doctor on Wednesday and if I need surgery I want to get it as soon as possible, so I figured I better get all my flowers planted right away. We also bought some nice mesh patio chairs to replace our old tired and hail-damaged green resin chairs. And it was official "coming out day" for my poor old legs as I wore shorts out in public for the first time this year. When I first started aging, I once went a whole summer without wearing shorts. I figured the public shouldn't have to be subjected to the creepy veins and whatnot. And this is Texas, which gets very hot. I must have been insane. I remember the next year thinking, "What the hell was I thinking?" It's not like I am tying people up and making them look at my leg veins. Or maybe I just had leg "vains." When I was younger my legs were one of my best assets. Ah, those were the days. Anyway, I'll take some pictures tomorrow (today, actually) after I get my flowers potted.

Saturday was My Sweetie's birthday and we were originally going to go to Dave & Busters, but around mid-afternoon, he decided he'd rather stay home and watch the Final Four. (That's the last four teams playing in the college basketball championship, for those of you who do not know what that is.) That was fine with me, because, A) It was his birthday and he can do whatever he wants and B) Those two games were very important for me if I am going to win the money and C) Christopher Walken was hosting "Saturday Night Live." I had all the "fixin's" to make beef fajita quesadillas, so we also had a great meal. And both of my picks WON!

Not only did I have Kansas to win that game, I have them to win the whole tournament. And because I am a Duke fan, Carolina is our ARCH RIVAL, so that game was particularly sweet. We danced and marched around and whooped and high-fived for about 15 minutes after the game was over. I hope I don't jinx myself here, but if Kansas wins tonight, I win around $400. On a $10 buy-in. The worst case scenario is I come in 3rd and win $20. And SIXTY people are on my brackets. Woot woot! On the downside of Saturday night was "Saturday Night." Christopher Walken has always been one of our favorite SNL hosts and he was terrible. In every skit he stood there shamelessly reading the cue cards and never even glanced at the other actors in the scene. Yeah, he's 65, but if he didn't want to bother to learn his lines or has lost the ability to glance at a cue card and say his lines, he should not have hosted. I was glad My Sweetie fell asleep on the couch and didn't see that.

(My Other Sweetie)

A $Rant$

I've been wanting to do a post about this for a long time and I hope I haven't already because I have been blogging for a long time and I drink a lot of beer. One of my biggest pet peeves is when People or some other magazine or "Entertainment Tonight" reports on some celebrity's million dollar wedding or party and some knucklehead writes in and says something like, "I think it's a disgrace that [insert name here] would spend all that money on a party when it could feed people all over the world." or something to that effect. HELLO?!? Do these yahoos think the money is shredded and thrown into the ocean? When someone has a million dollar party they are paying for food, food servers, flowers, decorations, music, etc. etc. The florist pays people to arrange their flowers and drive their vans, the food servers and cooks are being paid, the musicians, the decorators and everyone that works for them. The money goes all over the place down to the guys that wash the dishes and vacuum the carpet afterward. When a celebrity has a million dollar party they are sending money out into the economy instead of letting it sit in their Cayman Island or Swiss bank account. Why am I the only one that gets this?

Random Somesense

I guess in a lot of ways, I am like a guy. And that's good when it comes to fixing things, changing tires etc., and using logic over emotion, but it's not always so good when it comes to going to the doctor. I mentioned in an earlier post that I finally made an appointment with my doctor to get a referral for a hand doctor for my thumb. The thumb that has not been good for like 4 or 5 months. Well my thumb has been killing me lately and I was all mad at myself for waiting so long, but then something good came of it. I made the appointment last Wednesday (meaning not this most recent past Wednesday) for an appointment tommorrow (Friday) because my doctor is apparently VERY popular. Well, what happened was, since then I have developed a new problem which, although I am not a doctor, I play one in my house, is a urinary tract infection of some sort. I said a while back that I would not discuss peeing, but since this is medical pee, I gave myself an exemption. I mean I would never post about doing mushrooms in 1979 and waking up in a park and peeing on a duck. Because that would be wrong on so many levels, the first of which is it didn't happen. Although ducks feathers do repel liquid. But really, that's neither here nor there. And I promise it really didn't happen. (No animals were harmed in the goofiness of the last couple of sentences.)
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So what I'm going to do is cause a lot of problems for random strangers. When I go into the doctor's office, they will call me back to hall 3 to weigh me and when they do, I will say, "Uhm, since I made this appointment, I have had a bit of pee trouble and will need one of your little pee cups." This is what causes delays in doctors' offices. A hand doctor referrral probably should take about 10 minutes. But now I will have to pee in a cup, describe those symptoms along with my thumb symptoms and wait for the results. My bad. And in case you thought doctors just overbooked like airlines, you were wrong. Well, in most cases.
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Speaking of airlines, I booked my Vancouver trip (YAY! YIPPEEE!) in early February and although my next trip is only 13 days later, I did not book our flights until today. Unfortunately the best flight to Wilmington, N.C. leaves here at 10:05 a.m. That will seem like nothing to most of you but I normally sleep until noon except on Wednesdays when I have to get up at 8:30. So on THAT day I will have to get up at 6:45 and that will be horrible. Fortunately I can sleep on a plane quite easily. But 6:45? Ack! Maybe my Vancouver trip will help turn my clock around a little bit. I normally wake up earlier on vacations and Vancouver is already 2 hours earlier, so if I can stick to that, maybe that 6:45 a.m. wake up won't be so bad.
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On a lighter note, it was lizard city around here today. I saw these two guys just outside my garage side door by the garbage cans. Or maybe it's a guy chasing a girl?

Then from the same spot where I was standing I saw this guy, through the garage door windows, on top of my mailbox:And this is just a cute picture of Barney from tonight. Although he weighs 15 pounds, he still acts like a kitten and is always chasing his tail. Tonight when he caught his tail, he somehow also caught his foot:

A Tornado in December?

I don't know how many of you have DVRs, but I really really love my DVR! After my husband went to bed tonight I watched a silly show I had recorded and I was recording something else at the same time. I started thinking about how TV viewing has come such a long way. I'm old enough that we had 3 stations and they went off the air at midnight and played the national anthem. And that was that for TV watching for the day. There were no VCRs or DVD players. Or cable, or anything. Then we got a few independent channels. And at Halloween one station would do an all night spook spectacular with all the old classic horror films. That was an EVENT. But I think I've probably posted about this before.
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But what I hadn't thought of before was when the VCR first came out. This sounds so stupid now, but when a good movie would come on TV, we'd try to record it without the commercials. You know, hit record, then stop, then record after the commercials and so on and so on. That seems so remarkably stupid now. I guess it took a while to figure out that it was MUCH easier to just fast forward during the commercials. But here's something even dumber: The first time Star Wars came on regular TV, we recorded it. Well the night it aired Texas was having weather. And when Texas has weather it's a very big deal, so the entire movie had weather alerts running under it, weather maps in the corners and occasional pre-emptions with dire predictions of even more weather. So when we'd watch the recording after that we'd forget it was a recording and jump up and look out the window. I really love my DVR.

More Ribbon, Please

I've barely mentioned that I've been very busy putting together a 30th wedding anniversary dinner for my In-Laws. They were married in Hawaii 30 years ago this April 29th. To some of you ladies this probably doesn't seem like a big deal, but I am no event planner. This is all pretty new to me. I have reserved The Winchester Room at a local country club, picked out a menu, picked out flowers for centerpieces, and sent the invitations that I made myself (I am a graphic artist by trade in case you forgot, although I haven't worked in 9 years). I will have a display table for photographs. When I went to my In-Law's house for Easter, I picked up the pictuers my MIL wants on the table. Well, she had a handful of loose (unframed) photos, so I decided to make a photo board out of the Hawaiian print cloth that I'm using under the floral centerpieces. I always see these things on HGTV so I figured, "Hey, that looks simple!" Yeah, my brain is simple.


I went to Home Depot and bought a 24" x 24" piece of plywood. I had some batting already, and I had the cloth. The first picture is the back of the plywood with the batting already stapled down and the cloth underneath. The next picture is the finshed board and I was so happy everything went so well. Well, what happened was, when I laid out the ribbon to figure out the criss cross pattern, I realized I did not have enough ribbon.

Saturday we went back for more ribbon. I bought all they had. Today, I started working on the layout of the ribbon, was feeling good and had a plan. Everything was going great and then... And then I ran out of ribbon. Arrrgh! The third picture is my unfinished photo board. I have a doctor appointment on Friday to get a referral for a hand doctor because my right thumb has become almost useless and painful to the extreme, so I will go back to see if they have restocked. If not, we will go on Saturday to a different location to get the ribbon.

In case you don't know what a photo board is, the 4th picture shows you how it works.

Also on Saturday, we went to Party City and bought 35 pink silk flower leis. They wore pink leis at their wedding so, I thought it would be fun to hand them out to the guests. This is what 35 pink leis look like in a pile on my couch:

And at the fabric store I found this heart wreath foam thingie and made a little tube with my Hawaiian fabric to cover it.

Except for the pain in my thumb, I'm having fun with all these projects, but my advice to you is: If you ever get the insane desire to make a photo board, make sure you have about 800 thousand yards of ribbon and that's probably 6 kilometers if you live in Canada.

Yeah, I'm gonna say no.

I've mentioned many times that I watch HGTV a lot. And I mean A LOT. There has been a terrible trend in the last year or so to put chandeliers everywhere. Bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen sinks. But what bothers me the most is when they take a ceiling fan out of a bedroom and replace it with a chandelier. I am VERY hot natured and I live in a VERY hot climate. If a designer came into my house and replaced the ceiling fan in my bedroom with a chandelier, I would slap them silly and hold a sharp pointy object to them until they put the fan back. And then I'd make them hang the chandelier in my garage. Because that would be cool.

3 2 4 1

I thought dyslexia was something you started out with and worked through and lost over time. I started out fine. I was a star in elementary school. I did pretty well in junior high. I did some fine work in high school. I graduated Cum Laude. Between all my spoonerisms and other weirdnesses, today I noticed something really odd. My Dad was an insurance salesman and in North Carolina all driving infractions have a point value that affects your insurance rates. When he was teaching me how to drive he made a big deal out of what he called a "rolling stop." He said they saw that every day on their customers' records. He always told me to count to three when I stop at a stop sign. Today I stopped at a stop sign and realized that I counted, "3, 2, 4, 1." I laughed at myself and then two hours later, I did it again.