The New Small Talk

Maternity Madness

2011-04-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't written in awhile and for that I apologize. I've been busy being pregnant, amongst other things.

If you read this blog at all, you know that I very much enjoy swimming (and not just because of the weird people I see at the pool). Well this whole pregnancy thing has started to present a problem for my bathing suit, leading me to visit a local maternity store. Little did I know that I'd be entering a creepy club (kind of like the wedding industry!) where I'm told that if I don't have the proper maternity apparel and products, my pregnancy is likely to be a huge embarrassment.

Up to this point, the only maternity shopping I'd done was in the four racks of maternity clothes at Old Navy, where I was left to fend for myself, something I now very much appreciate.

Anyway, off I went to the real maternity store with my mother. The moment we entered, the salespeople stalked. They wanted to give me a lesson on how to buy maternity clothes, (You buy your normal size. Thank heavens I had professional guidance on that one.) and inform me that there's a pillow with straps in the dressing room that I can wear to give myself 3 more months of tummy. Really, I can't dis the pillow thing, it was awesome but kinda lumpy.

So I found my bathing suit and tried it on (with lumpy pillow). All was good and I headed to the checkout, blissfully unaware of what I was about to encounter.

The lady at the register was abnormally happy. I can only assume this is a result of having to deal with hormonal pregnant women all day who need to be handled with caution. I handed her my bathing suit, ignorantly assuming my single item purchase would be quick and easy. Not so, friends.

First, checkout lady asked me, in a much too happy tone, if I was covered on panties. Uhhhh. This question surprised me to say the least. Do I need maternity panties? Aren't my regular panties good enough? Why is this lady asking about my panties?? I gave her a blank stare for a few seconds, but that didn't dampen her happy demeanor. Finally, I mumbled something about being ok and we moved on.

Next, she asked if I had some cream they're peddling that's sure to prevent stretch marks and itching. I said no, and she said I should really start now to get the full benefit. We talked about this for way too long before she finally accepted that I wasn't going to buy any.

Next, she wanted all my personal information. I refused to give my phone number first, which sent her into a detailed explanation about how beneficial it is to register with them. Unfortunately, I fell for the $400 worth of coupons they offered and conceded in giving my address, but rest assured, they did not need my phone number!

Finally, after ten minutes of maternity talk and sales pitches, my swimsuit was rung up and purchased and the whole ordeal was over. Needless to say, I'm going to try to avoid maternity stores from now on. I'm confident that the selection of maternity clothes at Old Navy and Gap (devoid of maternity panties and pregnancy pillows) will do the job for the time being.

Pool Fun: Back from the Grave

2011-01-28T16:45:00.000-08:00

Back when the oldies at my mom's pool died or moved on to an old folks' home, I thought my days of pool entertainment were over. Luckily, I joined this pool near my work and though it started out slow, it now provides all the mystery, intrigue, and colorful characters I could ask for.

First, there's Hot Tub Playboy. He sits in the hot tub every day waiting for his women to show up. Hot Tub Playboy has two main women: Cell Phone Girl and The Quiet One. Cell Phone Girl periodically gets out of the hot tub to yell into her phone for 10 minutes. The Quiet One is, as one would expect, pretty quiet, but one time I saw Hot Tub Playboy pinch her butt.

Then there's Over-achieving High School Girl and her parents, Passive and Aggressive. She showed up in the fall with her Passive father who was attempting to teach her how to swim without creating small tidal waves by way of loving encouragement and plenty of joking around. She's gotten kind of better and joined the school swim team. Enter Aggressive mother. Aggressive mother, it seems, has been trained as a drill sergeant and can often be found holding a clipboard and yelling things like, "You're slowing down!" and, "10 laps left! Hurry up!!" I fear Over-achieving High School Girl takes after her mother as she now meticulously times her laps and yells at her father to keep careful track of them. I can hear her stop watch beeping beneath the water.

And finally there's snorkel guy, who was apparently never taught how to take breaths while swimming so he swims with a snorkel, never lifting his head out of the water. He could likely swim for years straight using this technique.

I'm thankful for all these characters, bringing my joy me with their weirdness and flirting. Without them I'd just be swimming back and forth, thinking only of my next lap. Instead I get to witness tiny pieces of their lives and entertain myself by giving them mildly insulting nicknames. I wonder what they nickname me.

I'm Still Here

2010-12-30T08:19:00.000-08:00

Wow, I haven't written since November 11th. That was a long time ago and given the subject of my last post you may be assuming that I've been busy hibernating, but in actuality quite the opposite is true. I haven't stopped doing stuff for a month now. It seems pointless to post photos on here since I'm fairly certain that everyone who reads this blog is also a friend of mine on Facebook, but I'm doing it anyway. So here's my month in photos.

I decorated my house

I made a ton of Christmas cookies

I made a wreath

It snowed

I got a new computer

I went to the zoo

Ok, it's true there are some pictures of my actual Christmas, but they're still on my camera waiting patiently to be transferred onto the computer. Maybe they'll surface someday.

Hibernation

2010-11-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling very impatient with our weather right now. Currently, it's 67 degrees on November 11th. This should not be.

The problem is, weeks ago when it actually got cold and I had to wear a coat, my brain went into winter mode. Now the weather wants me back into summer mode and I can't do it. Once I'm in winter mode, there's no going back.

It's at this time of year that I get excited about winter—the possibility of snow, the Christmas music, and most of all the guilt-free anti-socialness. But when it's 67 degrees out, it's not so guilt free.

The great thing about cold weather is it's an excuse to not have to talk to people. Don't get me wrong, I generally like people. But I also like to have excuses to be alone. Maybe it's too cold to go to the store, so I just scrounge up some mac & cheese for dinner. Or maybe the roads are too dangerous to go out for lunch so I'll just stay at my desk and watch Hulu.

This may be unhealthy but just like the bears, I like to hibernate. Except when it's 67 degrees outside, hibernation just makes you a jerk.

New-Fangled Computers

2010-11-04T06:06:00.000-07:00

What I'm about to tell you will unfortunately reveal the full extent of my dorkiness. But I'm going to tell you anyway, because it's really important.

Sometimes, on Saturday nights from 9-11pm, Scott and I watch Svengoolie. Only when we're not doing something cool, like bowling. What is Svengoolie, you ask? Svengoolie is this guy on Channel 26 the U who has been around probably since before I was alive, dressed up like a vampire. What he does is show old, sort of scary movies and kind of talks about them. Sometimes he sings dumb songs about them. Sometimes he does weird little skits about them. And always, at the end of the show, people throw rubber chickens at him. Also, he's from Berwyn.

I know, this sounds ridiculous. And it is. But I like the movies he shows. Oldies like The Tingler, House on Haunted Hill, and Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. And sometimes if you're lucky, they show a newer movie with swear words that are dubbed by Svengoolie himself. It's pure joy.

But the best part about watching Svengoolie is this commercial they show every time. It's for an exclusive Svengoolie t-shirt. The whole thing is ridiculous, but the best part is the old lady who shows up about 30 seconds in. I laugh till I cry every time.

Of Old Ladies and Bare Butts

2010-10-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

In an effort to get into better shape, I joined a gym where I swim every day after work. Swimming is pure joy for me, but apparently nobody else my age feels this way. Once again, I'm swimming with old people.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind swimming with old people. Most of the things I enjoy doing involve more old people than young people. And I understand that the pool provides the perfect exercise for their fragile bones.

A quality that I really admire in old people is their confidence. Gone are their self-conscious younger years. This is their time to do what they want, who cares what anyone else thinks? I can't wait till I'm old.

But this no-nonsense attitude makes for some ... special moments in the locker room. As a result of their old person freedom, they're not so concerned about covering up when changing in and out of their bathing suits.

Now, a young person can make the bathing suit change pretty quick, before too many people come wandering by. But old ladies, they take their sweet time. They need to sit down. They need to very carefully put on each article of clothing. And they'll probably want to chat, which is detrimental to the quick change.

One time, I walked by the hallway in the locker room that houses the little bathing suit dryer. Lo and behold, I got an eyeful of old lady bare butt. This woman literally stripped down at the dryer and threw her suit in. It takes at least a minute to get ones suit dry. One minute. That's a long time when you're baring your butt for the world to see. Thank heavens she at least had the decency to cover up her front with a small gym towel.

Not quite as extreme, but still funny, one day I was attempting to make my quick change after a swim when an old lady came and sat on the bench next to me, preparing for her long change. I went about my business, trying to get finished as fast as possible when the old lady complimented me on the lovely pink color of my bra. I had mixed feelings. I appreciated bonding with this old lady over pink things. I just kind of wished the pink thing wasn't my bra.

Toilet Coverer

2010-09-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, while on a little getaway with friends, an interesting and disturbing topic came up. It all started when I yelled at the boys to put the seat down after they used the facilities. We (the girls) needed to explain to them the painful consequences of a toilet left wide-open. Namely, that we will fall in.

This lead to a long and strange analysis of why girls don't check the toilet seat before sitting down and the conclusion (by the boys) that girls should be taught, from a young age, to check the toilet seat.

Clearly, that is ridiculous, but it did get me wondering why I don't check. Certainly there have been times when I have noticed the seat up. But there have been plenty of other times when I was oblivious and fell right in. Or worse, when the entire toilet cover was down, making for an awkward surprise.

Incidentally, I married a man who's very dedicated to putting both the toilet seat and cover down. I thought this was overkill. I mean really, who puts the cover down every time they go to the bathroom?

For the first couple months of our marriage I rolled my eyes at his excessive toilet covering. In an act of wifely defiance I refused to ever put the cover down. Then one day I dropped my tooth brush in the toilet. Now I'm a coverer.

The Boring Date

2010-08-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

So I've been married a couple months now and it's great and fun and all that jazz. But also, it's kinda boring. I don't feel bored because I so enjoy being with my husband, but the things we do together could more often than not be classified as "boring." Things like sitting on the couch doing nothing, going grocery shopping, cleaning the house. They're all boring things that I did before I was married, but now we just get to do them together which is great.

However, I think some people are expecting constant fun and excitement in marriage. These people are going to be disappointed. So I decided before any of you get married, you should take your significant other on a "boring date." It's sort of like a marriage test. You may or may not want to tell your significant other about this "boring date" or the reasons behind it.

I remember my first boring date with Scott. I was at his apartment and we'd made some average joe type dinner and we sat down to eat at the table. We just sat there, eating, not really talking, kind of staring into space. I realized that when we got married there would be many more of these moments. And I was totally OK with that. Successful boring date!

It's kind of like this bit of genius from Best in Show:

So don't be afraid of the boring date. Stay in. Sit together like old people. Clean the bathroom. Take an hour to discuss where you want to go for dinner only to end up staying at home. It'll be worth it when you're married and fully prepared for the boring times ahead.

Boring Date. Tell your friends.

Welcome to The Club

2010-07-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

Scott and I joined Sam's Club last week. We only really did it because they were running a promotion where we got a $20 gift card for joining. And when the yearly fee is only $40, that's a pretty good deal. So last night we made our first real shopping trip to Sam's.

For me, shopping at Sam's is a bit of an emotional roller coaster. I feel excited that I can potentially get a lot for my money. I feel angry because I can also potentially waste a huge amount of money. I feel disgusted by the 120 pack of Ho-Hos. I feel nauseous when I see the gallon jar of mayonnaise. And I feel a little terrified when I see how easily we spent $100.

So I'm trying to be very careful with my Sam's shopping. Many things I want to buy come in such large quantities that I won't be able to finish them before they go bad and I'll just end up wasting money. This must be avoided.

However, lots of the stuff I can buy there will last forever. Take our laundry detergent. I paid about $15 for a 140 load pack of powder detergent. That's almost 3 loads a week for a year.

Or our garbage bags. We purchased 150 garbage bags for $9. We only use maybe one bag a week right now. At this rate, we will literally have these same bags for 3 years. These are the bags I may use to dispose of the leftovers from my 30th birthday cake. Or our childrens' diapers. We'll have survived (or not) the end of the world in 2012 before we use up these bags. The world could be a completely different place in three years, but one thing's for sure: we'll still be using our 150 ct. drawstring Sam's Club Tall Kitchen Bags. And that makes me feel ... a little weird.

Disastrous Me

2010-07-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

So apparently I'm kind of a disaster. Not in a very serious sort of way or anything. Just in a way that I tend to create small disasters whenever I do something. I didn't really realize this about myself until I married a non-disastrous man. He doesn't spill stuff or knock stuff over or drop food on the kitchen floor. It's weird.

My worst offenses are in the kitchen. If I'm just cooking something in the oven, it's no big deal. Maybe I spill a little over the side, but nothing too disrupting. Stuff on the stove is a little more of a disaster. I may fling a little beef out of the frying pan or swish my pasta around a little too vigorously, requiring some post-cooking stove top cleanup. (Sidenote: I really like stirring things and sometimes I just get a little too excited about it.)

But by far the worst kitchen messes come with baking. Mostly because baking typically involves mixing some light, powdery substances that much too easily go flying out of the bowl and onto the floor, counter top, and/or me. Times ten if I'm using a hand mixer. Luckily, I got a couple aprons as wedding gifts.

But a couple weeks ago I found myself a new disaster waiting to happen: the garden hose. We moved into the house we're renting about a month ago and this hose as been sitting outside the back door untouched since then (and for who knows how long before we moved in). But this weekend I noticed that our flowers outside were looking a little sad after awhile without rain, so I thought it would be a great time to fire up the hose, while Scott neatly and quietly took care of some handyman jobs in the house.

I made my way outside and found the hose unplugged from the spout. No problem, just twist it on. When I felt it was sufficiently twisted, I turned the handle slightly and the water started without a problem. Then I felt a little moisture on my ankle and noticed that the hose was spraying a bit where it was attached to a second hose for extra length. It didn't seem to be leaking too much, so I turned the water on full blast. well, I apparently hadn't secured the hose to the spout quite enough and water began squirting out at me. No biggie, I turned the water off before I got too soaked.

That's when our neighbor (Howard?) noticed the disaster I was causing and came to my rescue. He helped me tighten the hose and even commented that washer in there must not be doing it's job which made me feel a little less dumb.

So with the water on and excessive leaking under control, I squeezed the nozzle on the hose and, happy day, water came out full force. Then I stopped squeezing. But the water didn't stop. No worries, a broken nozzle could be dealt with. So I went on my way watering my flowers, but didn't get too far on account of the 10 different knots that the hose was in. Despite this setback, I managed to water all my flowers.

I dragged the hose back to the door and attempted to untangle it, but considering it was wet and muddy I just ended up with wet, wet muddy clothes and a tangled hose. I finally gave up and went inside, leaving this mess in my wake:

Meanwhile, after we signed the lease on this house, I suggested on a number of occasions that we get one of the hose wrapper things, or at least something to hang it on. But Scott always insisted that we didn't need one. Strangely, even after my hose incident, he still insists we don't need one and that he can teach me how to properly roll the hose up. I'm pretty sure I can change his mind.

Cheap Weddings

2010-07-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

During my wedding planning days, I was constantly coming up with great wedding blog topics. I planned to write about all my brilliant money saving ideas, do it yourself projects, and about how weddings aren't about spending thousands of dollars on food and napkins and favors and stupid little things that nobody's ever even going to remember so why don't we just focus on the getting married part!! But now that it's all over I'm less inspired.

However, I thought I should just share with the world that I had a cheap wedding and that's ok. Well "cheap" might be relative, but in wedding world where the average cost of a wedding is $24,000, mine was quite reasonable. The wedding industry doesn't want you to think that this is possible, but it is. And here's how:

Rule #1. Pray. You're gonna need it. Also God makes stuff happen, so that's cool.

Rule #2. Don't listen to the wedding industry. It is seriously evil. It will make you pay double (or triple or quadruple) for everything just because it's for a wedding. It will also try to convince you that if you don't do things the "right" (most expensive) way, you're wedding's going to be a terrible embarrassment for you and your family. But it won't be. Do whatever you want. My reception was movie themed and I served popcorn and movie candy as appetizers. Tacky? Maybe. Delicious? Yes.

Rule #3. Don't listen to other people. Unless, of course, they are your finace or parents or whoever is helping pay for the wedding. But beyond that, just take everyone's opinions with a grain of salt. And there will be opinions. Hundreds and hundreds of them. From people you barely even know who think they know what your wedding should be like. They will criticize your brilliant ideas and tell you that you really need to include this one really little detail because it's sooooo important and everyone else does it. This was the #1 cause of any breakdowns I may have had while planning.

Rule #4. Go to Hobby Lobby. Seriously, I love that place. They regularly put their wedding stuff on sale and just going in there is inspirational!

Rule #5. Ask friends and family to do stuff for you. Ok, this one's a little bit hard because some of us don't love asking people to do things or don't have a wonderful family who's always ready to help. Luckily, I am blessed with a great family and group of friends who were excited to help. I had my uncle's band play at the reception, my cousin and uncle sing at the ceremony, my bridesmaids put together my flowers and designed my invitations, my mom printed all of our invitations and programs, my friend Laura made my cakes, the list goes on. It was a team effort. But I much preferred working with my friends and family instead of random people that I don't know. It gave everything an intimate feel and saved money!

Rule #6. Do your research. This may be time consuming, but if you want to save money it'll be worth it. I looked at plenty of over-priced reception venues before finding the one we settled on which I randomly discovered on a caterer's website. I looked into wholesale flowers and found I could order them very reasonably from the grocery store. I perused paper sites and ordered samples to try out for my invitations. It's some extra work, but I was really happy with everything I found. And the internet can tell you how to basically do anything.

Rule #7. Don't be afraid to do things the "wrong way." Most of all the little wedding traditions everyone holds so dear are actually kind of dumb and certainly optional. If you don't get any meaning out of them, don't do them, but you're going to need some confidence. If you're the type to give in the peer pressure, this cheap wedding stuff might not be for you. I had my reception at a park district senior center. It even said "Senior Center" on the huge sign out in front. But I sucked it up because it was a really nice place and very reasonable. I didn't have an open bar. I didn't do a bouquet or garter toss. I didn't do everything the church wedding coordinator told me to do. I had a rather casual movie themed reception. I bought popcorn at the dollar store. Yes, I broke many, many "rules" but people had fun and I got married and that's all that matters!

Rule #8. Be yourself. I got lots of comments about how our wedding was so "us" and I really like that. It wasn't some impersonal event that a wedding planner put together. It was clear that we carefully picked each detail and our personalities came through in it. And most of the time the reason it was so "us" is because we didn't do what was typical. Just do what you think is fun.

So there you go. That's all I could come up with for now. Cheap weddings. Don't be afraid of them.

The Real Toy Story

2010-06-23T05:29:00.000-07:00

Last night, my husband (!) and I went to see Toy Story 3. It was great, of course, and I almost cried at the end. Then I felt really stupid for almost crying at the end because it's a movie about toys. Inanimate objects were making me cry and that's embarrassing. They were also making me feel guilty for leaving all my beloved toys in a box out in the garage. How could I allow these stupid movie toys to play with my emotions like this?!

So, to save you all the embarrassment of almost crying at a movie about toys, I'm going to summarize the Toy Story trilogy for you in very basic terms to make it as emotionless as possible. Warning: may contain some spoilers.

Boy gets toys
Boy plays with toys
Toys get lost
Toys get found
Boy grows up
Boy gives toys away
Toys get new owner
The end.

Ok, hopefully that put some things in perspective for you. I suggest that you see Toy Story 3 because it's good and lots of fun, but don't get sucked in!! Those toys aren't real, they don't have emotions, and they're not sad when you leave them in the attic or donate them to a daycare. Also, Ken is not that gay.

Taco Taco Bo Baco

2010-04-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

Last night I was doing some Sweatin' to the Oldies (let's not get hung up on this) and one of the songs that they were dancing/sweating to was The Name Game. If you've never done Sweatin' to the Oldies, they basically just have a cheezy band cover a bunch of old songs while Richard Simmons and his crew dance about to them. They also make the songs drag on and on so they're about twice as long as the originals.

So they were singing The Name Game and once they were finished singing the original version, they started throwing in random names to make the song as long as humanly possible and maximize its sweating potential. They went through a few weird 80's names and then came to "Taco." At first I thought nothing of this. Then I had an uncontrollable craving for a taco. While exercising.

Bad move Sweatin' to the Oldies! No doubt they've led many hopeful weight losers astray with their nonchalant mention of tacos during their work outs. I can't believe Richard Simmons himself didn't catch this horrible blunder. But it was the 80's and maybe everyone's mind was more on Taco the artist and not taco the food.

Barbie Is not My Role Model

2010-04-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

I would like to clear something up. Lots of people get all worked up about Barbie and her unrealistic appearance and superficial little careers and enormous boobs and so on. They say that she's a role model for girls and they're negatively affected by her unattainable figure and fancy career choices and that's why we're all fat and self conscious and insecure. I say no.

I spent countless hours of my childhood playing with Barbie and never once considered her a role model. She's a doll. Something I could dress up in ugly 80's dresses and give atrocious, non-reversable haircuts. Not something that gave me my self-worth or influenced my feelings about myself. I really didn't care if my Barbie was a flight attendant or doctor or garbage woman because seconds after I opened her, her "career" clothes were tossed into my ever growing mound of Barbie clothes and she was instantly as naked as the day she was born.

If anything, I projected my dreams onto my Barbies. Sometimes I'd make them singers. Sometimes I'd make them moms. Sometimes they'd be marrying Ken. And most of the time they were all three. I dressed them up the way I wanted in outfits that probably didn't match. I made them live out the little pretend life I chose for them.

It never once occurred to me that Barbie was skinny. Or that I should ever even look like that. Or that I should be a doctor because my Barbie was. She was just my doll that I could put lots of dresses on and make all pretty. That's what dolls are for. It's the people on TV and in movies that make me feel fat. Real actual living people. Not a doll.

I often wonder if the people who think Barbie is evil ever actually played with them as kids because they clearly have no understanding of the fun of Barbie. I suppose it's possible that they're just the Lisa Simpons of the world who, as 6-year-olds, sat around analyzing the affects their Barbies were having on them, finally deciding they were causing feelings of inadequacy before moving on to less offensive toys. This sounds like a depressing, boring childhood.

So everyone needs to just calm down. It's just a doll. Barbie was never such a destructive force until we made her one. Let's just let her be a toy instead of some big commentary on our society. There may be some young girls out there who have been adversely affected by their Barbie dolls, but if this is really happening, it seems to me that would only be pointing to a deeper issue. One that can't be fixed by something as simple as taking away a kid's dolls.

Ok, I will end my rant now. Let's just talk about how fun Barbies are. All my old ones are still in my mother's garage. I had a Little Mermaid one whose legs turned green after I took her in the bathtub with her fin on. It was worth it.

Then there was the one whose hair I cut so short (maybe by accident) that I started using her as a Ken doll instead. This sounds disturbing, but it's not. A little girl never ever has enough Ken dolls, so we do some crazy things out of desperation.

More recently, I've collected a few of the My Fair Lady Barbies. Scott bought me two of them a couple years ago for my birthday, shortly after we started dating. That might be when I knew I was going to marry him.

These are special to me because as a child I was obsessed with My Fair Lady and all I wanted was an Eliza doll. Apparently they were impossible to find in 1987, so I never got one. Now I have four. And it's heavenly.

Creepy Easter

2010-04-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

Here are some things that creeped me out this Easter:

This hilarious picture from Awkwardfamilyphotos.com

And this lamb cake that was left on our free food counter at work:

It's been there for probably 4 hours so far today and nobody has touched it except for when I pulled it out to take a picture and ate one jelly bean. This, of course, is unheard of as most food on that counter is gone within an hour.

When did Easter get so creepy?

Special Delivery

2010-02-18T15:37:00.001-08:00

Tonight I came home to a package waiting for me at the front door. It was some super cute shoes I ordered last week. Then, much to my horror, I noticed something sitting on top of my package: a baggie filled with dog poo. There was also a note that read:

It is against city ordinance to let your dog run around with out a leash. And leave turds in everyone's yard.

After laughing at the word "turd" for a few minutes, I realized I was going to have to remove this bag of poo from my package. The worst part was it wasn't even closed. It was just an open bag of poo sitting on my shoebox. I gingerly picked up the bag and placed it onto another package sitting next to mine, belonging to our famous, creepy, insane downstairs neighbors.

See, they're incredibly annoying and they just so happen to have this incredibly annoying dog. He barks all the time and they never bother to put him on a leash so he just roams free around the neighborhood. And apparently poos. Well, I've left many angry notes on their door in the past so I'm glad someone else is getting in on the action. Even if it does mean a bag of poo on my new shoes.

I'm A Mac. With A PC.

2010-02-03T12:53:00.001-08:00

I did something disturbing last week. I purchased my first non-Apple computer. This is disturbing because for almost twenty years, I've been a loyal Mac user. When I was about ten years old, my mother purchased our first Mac—a Macintosh Performa 630CD. Yep, it had a CD player. And like a 32MB hard drive. Pretty cool.

Anyway, since then we've had a couple other awesome Macs and I bought myself an iBook in college. Then one day, disaster struck and my iBook died. It's seriously dead. I've tried reviving it a number of times with no luck.

So I've been without a laptop for some months now and it's been painful. Once you get used to a laptop, it's hard to go back. So when my mother informed me that her work was selling some Dell netbooks pretty cheap, I was tempted. So tempted that I really wanted one. Mostly because they had a purple one.

So I did it. I bought a PC. I had some moments of doubt and painful guilt, but I got through them and was satisfied that I paid less than 20% of what a new Mac would have cost me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up on Macs,. I fully intend to get another one when I'm not also trying to pay for a wedding. Plus, my wonderful future husband (and not a Mac enthusiast like me) has assured me that someday I will have another Mac. And to appease me in the meantime, he fancied up my little PC to make it look, quite successfully, like a Mac. Brilliant!

Meanwhile, after this ridiculous iPad business, I don't feel quite so guilty about punishing Apple. When they're ready to come out with a tablet that can multitask, use Flash, and doesn't sound like it should be sold in feminine needs aisle at the supermarket, I'll be all over it.

Subject Line Stress

2010-01-31T07:07:00.001-08:00

For the past year or so I've basically stopped using subject lines for my emails whenever possible. Anytime I email someone who I know will open my email no matter what, I just leave it blank. There's such pressure to come up with a creative, clever subject line, that I just gave up (because that's how I roll). I also occasionally have to come up with subject lines for our newsletters at work which causes even more anxiety. I just couldn't take it anymore.

But this blank subject line business has started to make me feel boring and lazy, so I decided to go back to subject line writing. Only this time I decided my subject lines would be painfully literal ... not creative or clever. Oftentimes, this means that I don't even decide on a subject line until after I've finished the email so that I can come up with the most accurate subject line possible. Gone is the pressure to trick people into opening my email with a witty play on words or clever phrase. What you see is what you get.

I'm sure you're wondering, Couldn't this literal subject line writing someday become as stressful as the clever subject line writing? The answer is yes, maybe, but it's not as likely so quit bugging me!

So for now, I'm no longer feeling overwhelmed by subject line pressure and, I have to say, it's made me pretty happy. Now what to do about my blog post title anxiety ...

Cabin Fever

2010-01-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, I enjoyed my first trip to Galena, IL. The downtown was cute, we did a little shopping and some eating and some walking around. The most fun part, though, was the cabin we stayed in.

Our friend Matthew works for a fellow who owns a cabin in Elizabeth, IL, outside of Galena and we got to use it for the weekend. It's super cute and quaint, sitting on a dirt road. But most importantly: it has a hot tub.

Highlights of the weekend:

- Creepy Cows. On our first evening there we went on a night walk and ran into a herd of creepy cows. Maybe it was more the darkness that was creepy. Either way, they were in a field next to the road and soon we saw the silhouette of one of them coming towards us. Then we realized the entire herd was following us as we walked. I've never been so creeped out by cows.

- The Guestbook. The cabin had a guestbook with comments by others who have vacationed there. It was filled with stories of people getting locked out of the house in bikinis and meeting weird people, but the best stories were those of "Sue & Allen." Sue & Allen made at least 6 appearances in the guestbook and each one got longer and more disturbingly personal. We learned that they came to the cabin to get away from the busyness, "love each other" ("more and more and more ..."), and share many "special hugs." And each time, Allen lectured the reader about the need for peace and quiet and getting away. Thanks, Allen.

- Hot Tub. Yes, the hot tub was great, but it was even greater when the guys moved a small TV outside so we could watch What About Bob? in the hot tub. However, I do not recommend sitting in a hot tub for 2 hours.

- Trailer House. I was particularly entranced by this abandoned house with a trailer attached. Or was it a trailer with a house attached? I'm not sure. At any rate, it was abandoned and hillbilly and awesome.

Here are some other special moments:

Garbage Sled

2010-01-14T07:20:00.000-08:00

You know what's great? When something you pick out of the garbage turns out to be awesome.

Last spring, I went on a garbage picking extravaganza with some friends of mine. It was truly amazing and I plan to do it again this year. But anyway, during our garbage picking I grabbed this old wooden sled. It wasn't in the best shape, but I figured it could be fun.

So Scott and I decided it was time to fix this thing up and get it going. We sanded down the rustiness and spray painted the metal blades a lovely, bright red:

It looks pretty sharp and we just have a little more painting to do. Then we took it out and gave it a try. I thought the blades might just get stuck in the snow, but it turned out to be fabulous. We went pretty fast and it was nice and smooth, unlike those dumpy plastic things they have today.

I know, I'm pretty cool. And I didn't even fall off once!

The Naaaaaaaame Game

2010-01-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

I realized the other night that I haven't yet filled up an entire page practicing my married signature. If I was 12, I would have started like a year ago. I guess I AM more mature than most of you people give me credit for.

But anyway, I have to decide exactly what my name's going to be. I feel that Kim Clay is a little too short. So then there's Kimberly Clay, but Kimberly is an awful lot to write. Not that it matters that much. Usually when I sign for a credit card I just write a "K" with a squiggly line after it. Or if it's one of those stupid electronic things that never work, I don't even bother with the K.

But that's beside the point. I need to decide on a name. Kim Clay. Kimberly Clay. K Clay. KC. Mrs. Scott Clay. So many options. I need to start practicing.

Snuggie

2009-12-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

Once upon a Black Friday, I bought a pink Snuggie on sale at Sears for $10. It may be the best purchase I've ever made. It's pink and it's warm and it's a blanket with sleeves. Let's say I want to eat dinner without removing my arms from the warmth of a blanket. No problem! Or maybe I want to sit at the computer and brainlessly surf the internet without freezing do death. Piece of cake!

The first time I put on my Snuggie, my fiance laughed at me. He also laughed at me the second and third and fourth and every time I've ever worn it. But that doesn't change my love for my Snuggie. Or my fiance. I think we can all live together in harmony.

Yesterday I was lighting a candle and I almost caught the Snuggie on fire.

Here's a picture of Oprah wearing a pink Snuggie:

I'm not sure if it's legit, but I wouldn't be surprised if Oprah had a pink Snuggie. I'm not sure what to think about Tyler Perry and his zebra Snuggie.

Christian FAIL

2009-11-16T06:58:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I went to see Handel's Messiah at Moody Bible Institute. It was exceptional as usual. But one of the most fun parts was a brilliant conversation that came up in the car while trying to get out of the parking garage.

Moody has their own free parking garage and, as one would expect, it's filled with a bunch of Christians. While we sat in line for 15 minutes waiting to get out of the garage, we realized a painful truth: given the Christian aspect of this parking garage, we deduced that most people were trying to be nice by letting everyone else out of their park spots, thereby causing a monstrous backup in the parking garage. This is the problem with Christian parking garages.

This made me think of a website I recently discovered called "Stuff Christians Like" (yes, a parody of "Stuff White People Like"). I think it's safe to say that Christians like to let people out of their parking spaces. It makes us feel nice.

But this lead to a discussion about what other popular blogs Christians could parody (something that Christians also like). And then we came up with the best idea ever: Christian FAIL. Everyone thinks this FAIL Blog thing is so hilarious, but I'm pretty sure a Christian one would be way funnier.

So what is a Christian FAIL? We witnessed a great example when, while still sitting in the monstrous parking garage line, a car ahead of us refused to let someone out of their parking spot, even to the point of going around them. Christian FAIL. Then, shortly after that, we turned a corner in the parking garage to see a very Christian looking couple kissing. Moderately passionately. Holding a baby. In a Christian parking garage. Christian FAIL.

What are some other Christian FAILs? Maybe you forgot to write your tithe check last Sunday. Or maybe you ate your communion cracker right away instead of waiting for everyone else. Or maybe you mixed up Romans 3:23 with Romans 6:23. If I can come up with some good ones, I'm seriously considering starting a blog of them. The possibilities are endless!

Slurpee Pizza

2009-11-12T19:29:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time I wrote this blog post about the old people that hung out at my mom's condo pool. In the post I talked about people with potbellies who wear bikinis. As a result of this, I started receiving visitors on my site who had actually typed "Bikini Potbelly" into Google search. I then decided this phrase deserved it's very own post with that title to get even more "Bikini Potbelly" visitors, however misguided they may be. That's the general idea behind this post. I want to see who does a Google search for "Slurpee Pizza."

But there is actually a story behind "Slurpee Pizza" and it involves me acting like a 12 year old boy which isn't necessarily a strange occurrence. What happened was, I was driving home from a Young Adult church retreat in Lake Geneva on Sunday night. As one would expect from a Young Adult church retreat, I had not gotten much sleep. When I don't get much sleep, I'm slap happy.

In the car with me was my fiance, Scott, and our friends Adam and Matt in the back. Somehow the conversation turned to the fact that when Scott and I get married, we were going to change our last name to Pizza. Mr. and Mrs. Pizza. We laughed about this and imagined what we'd name our children—Pepperoni, Sausage, Hawaiian, etc.

Finally that conversation died down and we moved on to my love of Slurpees. We discussed this for awhile and then I heard someone mumble, "Slurpee Pizza." Intense, over-tired, tear inducing laughter followed for a number of minutes. It was immature. And I'm still laughing.

Devil Frog

2009-11-03T06:17:00.000-08:00

Remember yesterday when I talked about making devil frog cookies? Well I got a little freaked out when I read this in my devos last night, only hours after writing about the devil frogs:

Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. (Revelation 16:13)

Weird!

Jack-o-Cookie

2009-11-02T18:16:00.001-08:00

This weekend Scott and I made some fabulous Halloween cookies. I always thought Christmas cookies were where it's at, but Halloween cookies are as good, if not better. I like them because you can be morbid without feeling guilty. I mean, when I made the devil frog for Christmas I felt a little weird about it. But devil frog for Halloween? Of course!

Scott is a creative perfectionist. This makes for some pretty sweet giant Halloween cookies:

I also got in on the decorating action:

Some cookies of note in this picture are the devil mummy ghost with red eyes (in honor of our viewing of The Mummy or old movie night), the polka dot moon, and Scott's witch's broom.

And we got morbid with a bleeding ghost:

Can ghosts bleed? I don't know. But this cookie fell apart so we figured we'd make the best of it. I would like to note that this was Scott's idea. I think I'm prouder than I should be.

Best Week Ever

2009-10-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

Last week was pretty much the best week ever. Of this year at least. It was the best week ever for two reasons: California and MuteMath.

First, California. A friend of Scott's decided it would be brilliant to get married in Yosemite National Park (which it was) and seeing as in order to get to Yosemite, one has to fly into San Francisco, we decided to spend some time there as well. This was especially exciting because 1. It was Scott's first plane ride and 2. It was the first time I've ever been west of ... IL. It's not like I haven't been outside of Illinois. I've been east a few times and to Wisconsin about a thousand. Just not west.

So anyway, San Francisco was fabulous. On the first day we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge.

On the second day we saw a few hundred sea lions.

And took a one hour cruise around the bay where we saw Alcatraz.

Then we went on a cable car up a really steep hill.

The third day it rained and we got wet, but we went to the California Academy of Sciences which had some cool animals including a bunch of butterflies.

The fourth day was our last day in San Francisco and we saw a bunch of random things we weren't able to see earlier in the week like ...

The Transamerica Pyramid

The Full House houses

And the city at night from the top of a painfully tall hill.

Then we moved on to Yosemite for a couple days. We hiked and went to the wedding and hiked some more and saw some waterfalls. It was basically amazing and the weather was perfect.

Finally, to top it all off, we went to an amazing MuteMath concert on Sunday night. Now, MuteMath never fails to entertain but this concert was especially crazy on account of the drummer and his antics:

Paranoid

2009-09-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of paranoid. Not about everything, just some random things. I'm not paranoid about flying, for example. However, last weekend I told a friend of mine that he'd choke and die if he rode a roller coaster with gum in his mouth. It could happen, I'm telling you.

I blame my mother for my paranoia and I recently found out that she blames her mother for telling her that she'd get trampled to death if she went to a Beatles concert. Also, my grandma's sister forbade her daughter from doing "The Jerk" for fear of her neck snapping. The 60's were a scary time.

One person who isn't paranoid is my future husband, Scott. I think this is a good thing. Like last week, my car battery died and I had to jump it. I was very concerned about this because I was convinced that I'd make one wrong move and the battery would either explode or electrocute me. In my defense, there are about a million warnings on the battery itself and then I read this website that told me the juice in the battery would make my eyes dissolve. How could I not be concerned about this?

But Scott reassured me by telling me that the only way I was going to get electrocuted by jumping my car was if I happened to get struck by lightening while doing it. Luckily, getting struck by lightening is not something I'm paranoid about. I think this is going to be a great marriage.

Finally, Some Happy People

2009-09-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, I haven't blogged for awhile. Stuff has been happening like getting engaged and planning a wedding. On a sidenote: The wedding industry is EVIL. They know you need them and therefore know they can be overpriced and mean and never return your phone calls. But I will prevail and stick it to the man, as I'm prone to do. Maybe I'll blog about "stick it to the man" wedding planning someday, but not today because I don't have time on account of planning a wedding.

Anyway, this morning I was pleased to literally stumble upon (using StumbleUpon) a site called LMyLife. I found it a refreshing answer to two similar sites, FMyLife, and MyLifeIsAverage, both of which are kind of funny but generally cynical and negative. Granted, LMyLife still has some obscene stories, but most of them are just random things that made the writer happy. Sometimes it's nice to hear from people who are actually happy.

In that vein, I will now share a story of positivity and happiness. Last weekend I was at Great America with my fh (future husband) and two friends. It was a fabulous day at Great America with very short lines and lovely weather. We came to the Superman ride which is a newer one and kind of a novelty because you lay on your stomach to simulate the feeling of flying. As expected, the line was a little longer for this ride—45 minutes according to the sign. So the four of us were standing there discussing whether or not to get in line and this energetic Great America employee came up to us with passes to bypass the entire line for Superman. He gave them to FH and I immediately because we have season passes. He made our two friends answer random trivia questions to earn their passes. So, we went up the exit ramp and when the next car came in, they stopped the people in line from getting on, so that we could jump on. It was basically amazing. I'm going to Great America again this weekend and I fully intend to try the standing-outside-the-ride-looking-pathetic method once again.

Bible Awesomeness

2009-08-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'm part of a fabulous small group where each week, anyone who wants to can share what they've been reading in their personal devotions and what spiritual insights they've gleaned from it. As a result of this format, we end up discussing a good variety of topics each week.

In our group, I've become known for a talent I have for picking out some of the more ... strange verses in the Bible. They're now known as "Kim Verses." I'm so proud.

I decided that it was selfish of me to only share these amazing portions of the Bible with my small group, so I thought I should share what may be the most awesome story in the entire Bible (besides Jesus dying for our sins and stuff) with the two people that read this blog.

It all begins in Judges 3:15. Israel is asking for a deliverer from the evil Eglon, King of Moab, and the Lord sends them a man named Ehod who, it's important to note, is left-handed. Ehud is quite the clever one and in preparation for meeting the evil Eglon, he makes a special double edged sword. He's also quite violent, as it turns out.

The awesomeness begins when Ehud meets up with the evil Eglon who, as the text describes him in verse 17, is "a very fat man." Haha! Ouch.

But wait, there's more! Ehud makes his way into the evil Eglon's private quarters to deliver a "secret message" from God and there stabs him so thoroughly with his sword that Eglon's "fat closed in over it." You can't make this stuff up. Ehud makes a quick getaway out the window, leaving the evil Eglon dead in his room.

BUT, this story doesn't get truly awesome until Eglon's servants come by, and finding that the doors to his room are locked, assume he's "relieving himself." Naturally. Then, in verse 25, comes the kicker. "They waited to the point of embarrassment, but when he did not open the doors of the room, they took a key and unlocked them. There they saw their lord fallen to the floor, dead."

Wow. I start to feel a little bad for the evil Eglon. First, he's so fat that the sword he gets killed with disappears inside his flubber. Then, while he's laying dead in his room, his servants are outside thinking he's having bathroom troubles. AWKWARD!

And awesome.

Pedi in the Nude

2009-08-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend my mother and I traveled to Lake Geneva, WI, one of my favorite places. It's full of memories for me—for the majority of my childhood, my grandparents owned a villa up there where we'd spend many weekends with my cousins and shop at the Sentry and watch Judy Garland movies and convince my little cousin that Methuselah was still alive and eat fudge and buy rings from the Treasure Cove that turned our fingers green.

The villa is gone now, but we still like to visit and on this particular visit my mother and I decided it would be fun to go classy for a change and get a pedicure. We made an appointment at this fabulous spa in The Abbey Resort, where we not only got our pedicures, but also got to use their indoor pool and hot tub. Good deal!

Since this place is so swanky, when you get there they give you a locker for your things and inside the locker is a most fabulously soft robe and some flip flops to wear as you wander about the pool and salon area. Not being the type to go to these kinds of fancy places, I did some preliminary research in the "Spa Etiquette" section of their website. (Yes they did actually have a section titled just that.) This is what the suggest re: what to wear to the spa:

We will never compromise your modesty. You will be given a robe and sandals to change into before your treatment. What you wear under your robe is up to you, our therapists will only expose the portion of your body that is being worked on.

Yes, I think they are insinuating that you may go nude under your robe. However, being the modest young lady that I am, I chose not to take that path and I wore my bathing suit AND shorts under my robe.

So as I was standing by the table of nail polishes waiting for my name to be called, there was another woman there as well, choosing her polish, maybe in her 30s. We casually chit-chatted about the polish, etc. when she came out with the truth. Our conversation went something like this:

Her: It's so hard to decide on a polish.
Me: I know, there are a lot of options.
Her: It feels really weird to have nothing on under my robe. I've never had a pedicure with nothing on!
Me: ... Ha ... Yeah
**Awkward silence while I pretended to be intensely focused on picking a polish color even though I already knew which one I wanted.

Yeah, nobody wanted to know that, lady. I didn't know what to say back. If I told her that I was normal and put clothes on under my robe, she would have felt weird so I just went along with it. Luckily for me, my pedicurist called my name soon after that.

A few minutes later, naked lady sat down just a few chairs from me for her pedicure and as I occassionally glanced in her direction, I noticed that she was a little concerned about flashing the entire room. Every so often she would look my way, probably to see how in the world I was covering myself up, but I wasn't given the fact that I was wearing shorts. She was probably horrified. She finally asked her pedicurist (is that even a word? I'm going to keep using it) for an extra towel to cover up.

Once I was finished with my pedicure I headed to the pool, making sure to completely avoid naked lady because she either A) thought I completely flashed everyone during my pedicure in a very obscene way or B) realized I did indeed have clothes on under my robe even though I led her to believe I did not. Either way, I didn't want to have another encounter with her.

Luckily I got out of there free and clear with one more fabulous Lake Geneva memory to add to my list.

Mini Kicks on Route 66

2009-08-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, my fun bf and I took a nice little road trip on Route 66 from Chicago to Bloomington/Normal. I'd always been kind of curious about Route 66 since there are signs for it along Joliet Rd. which is not too far from where I grew up. But I never bothered to do any research on it because ... that's just how I roll. Lucky for me, I now have a boyfriend who does do research, and my curiosity about Route 66 has been quenched!

So the bf and I had discussed a possible mini road trip, and then one day we were downtown eating at the Bennigan's on Michigan Ave. which was just about a dream come true for me considering all the Bennigan's in the suburbs are gone, and the Michigan Ave. was gone but now it's back, and I was so excited to go that we took a picture:

Anyway, back to Route 66. While at that particular Bennigan's, we were fortunate enough to get a lovely window table and we noticed the sign on the sidewalk, right smack next to the Bennigan's, that marked the beginning of Route 66. I was disappointed in myself that I had no idea that was even there. But this revived our Route 66 discussion and inspired us to act.

So Scott went to the library and got some books on the Route and we set off. We ventured back to the Bennigan's (unfortunately did not eat there) last Saturday morning and started our journey.

Our first stop beyond the usual Chicago suburbs was Joliet. Joliet is very proud of their affiliation with Route 66 (or the "Mother Road" if you're obsessed with it and write books about how to travel it).

Joliet also has a Route 66/Joliet museum. Someone inexplicably decided to charge for the Joliet part of the museum, so we skipped that which just left of some random Route 66 stuff to look at in the lobby area and the gift shop. We also sent this awesome email postcard to my mother:

Our next stop was at the Launching Pad Drive-in for lunch. It also happens to be the home of the "Gemini Giant," an enormous astronaut man holding a rocket.

After that we went through a series of extremely small towns including Braidwood, Gardner, and Dwight where we found a bank designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and and big windmill they seem to be very proud of. My favorite town was Odell, where we were informed by way of Burma Shave signs as we entered the town that they believe "everybody is somebody." We then came to what appeared to be their main attraction, an old gas station with a gift shop inside. As we left, more Burma Shave signs bid us farewell and encouraged us to visit the museum in our next stop, Pontiac, IL.

Pontiac was actually a cute bigger small town with a great Route 66 "museum" in their old Fire Station/City Hall.

Their "museum" (run by old guys who probably call Route 66 the "Mother Road" on a regular basis) consisted of a bunch of random artifacts from each town along Route 66 from Chicago to St. Louis, all displayed in glass cases, along with a bunch of manikins dressed up in old-timey looking garb, a little tribute to Steak & Shake which was starting in Bloomington, IL, and a bunch of random little junk from the movie Cars. It was borderline garage sale, but still great.

The rest of the City Hall building was filled with some antique stores and Route 66 Photo galleries in the upstairs areas. We quickly realized that these rooms upstairs used to be jail cells. I was particularly excited that they kept the toilets in tact.

After Pontiac, we headed down to Bloomington which we figured would be a good ending to our mini road trip, but it turns out there's absolutely nothing in Bloomington. So we hopped on I-55 and made our way back.

We did manage to run into a few of the same people who were clearly making the Route 66 trip, which made things interesting. Our trip down there took a total of 7.5 hours. The trip back: 2.5.

That Night I Swallowed My Mustache

2009-07-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

This is what happened:

Some friends and I ventured into the great city of Chicago last night to see the classic Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup. Part of the evening involved the Outdoor Film Festival people attempting to break the world record for number of people wearing Groucho Marx glasses at the same time, by giving each attendee a free pair of Groucho Marx glasses. As one would expect when they're giving out thousands of free glasses, they weren't of the highest of quality. But they were fun nonetheless!

As a result of their cheapness, they soon started falling apart, and after awhile my mustache fell completely off. I attempted many times to reattach it, but to no avail. Finally, we had to stand with our glasses on for 10 minutes in order to break the record, so I stuck the mustache into the nostril of my fake nose so I didn't have to bother with it.

I decided that having a mustache hanging out my nose would make for a hilarious picture, so I asked Scott to take one of me:

That's when it happened. I was laughing at the hilarity of said picture when I took a deep breath and SWALLOWED THE MUSTACHE. I sucked it straight through my mouth into my throat. I didn't even feel it go into my mouth, it was that quick.

Next thing I know, it's in the back of my throat and I'm realizing I could choke and die from this. I stopped to assess the probability of my death, and found I could breathe just fine, so I finished the job and swallowed it completely. From there, I remember Scott asking me if I swallowed it (yes!!) and then I turned and announced to the rest of the my friends that I swallowed my mustache. Laugher ensued and I hurried to find some water.

Looking back, it probably would have been better if I had tried to cough it up instead of completely swallowing it, but that would have made quite an awkward scene. And this makes for a much better story.

DQ Picture Fun, for Real This Time!

2009-07-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

One summer night at the DQ ...

Crosstown Classic

2009-06-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

I got to go to Chicago's own Crosstown Classic this year (my first time ever!) as part of my birthday gift from my awesome boyfriend! It was a great day even though the Cubbies lost :(

Frank Thomas signed Scott's ticket stub!

And Milton Bradley signed my awesome pink hat!

This was definitely one of the more fun Cub's games I've been to, and not just because we got some cool autographs. Having both teams just about equally represented really added to the energy of the crowd and overall fun-ness. And there weren't even any brawls or bad behavior. It's definitely worth spending the extra bucks to experience it!

How Much Is That Doggie on the Side of the Road?

2009-06-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

Every day on my way home, there's this person dressed up like a dog standing on the corner of Butterfield and Naperville Rds. advertising for Petland. He usually holds a sign for a "puppy sale" and jumps about frantically in extremely repetitive motions ... kind of like the puppies he's trying to sell.

For some reason this cracks me up every time I drive by. Usually I get stuck at the light, so I get ample time to stare and laugh.

Today when I pulled up to the light, I noticed some additions to the usual costume. The dog had acquired a bath towel, brush, and shower cap (covering only the top of one of his ears. A lot of good that's going to do!) all to advertise for "Grooming Appointments." So I took a picture:

So That's How Shoes End Up in the Middle of the Street ...

2009-05-27T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Date: Sunday, May 24, 2009
The Time: 11:30pm
The Place: Driving on Maple Ave. in Naperville, on the way to see Star Trek at the IMAX.

The bf (Scott) and I were driving along minding our business. Given the late hour, I may or may not have been a little slap happy and that may or may not have factored in to the rest of this story. As we were driving, I noticed a spider on the windshield. After observing it for a moment, I realized it was on the inside. And it was crawling closer and closer to me.

I was a little bit nervous, so I started looking for something to kill it with. Not having much luck, I went with the old standby (my shoe, a flip flop) and smushed the spider against the windshield. Scott suggested that I smear it a bit to make sure it's dead, which I did, leaving a nice trail of spider guts on the window.

Unfortunately, the spider's dead carcass was now stuck to the bottom of my shoe, and since Scott likes to keep things clean, I didn't want to put the shoe back on and let the spider get all smushed into his carpet. So I decided my best option was to open up the window, stick my shoe out, and let the wind blow the dead spider off.

So I opened the window and stuck my shoe out. However, the wind was stronger than expected and probably not even a second later, the shoe was gone. I gasped loudly and Scott asked if my shoe fell out the window (how did he know??). I then giggled for at least 10 minutes as we turned around, searched for it on the street, and pulled over to pick it up. I was a little bit concerned that someone had driven over it, but luckily, not only did it appear to be unharmed, but the spider carcass was gone. Done and done.

Garbage Picking Extravaganza!

2009-05-04T17:00:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, I went with some friends to garbage pick. This was no ordinary garbage picking though. It was garbage picking on amnesty garbage day in a very fancy-pants Chicago suburb. And it was more amazing than I ever imagined.

The evening consisted of about 5 of us, in 2 cars, slowly driving down side streets, stopping, picking, and moving on. Things got a little tricky when it got dark, but we still managed to find some good stuff. Next year we're bringing flashlights.

My car was so filled to the brim that the 2 people I had to drive home couldn't fit, and my roommate had to ride home in the back of the trunk. A nice way to top of an already exciting evening:

Yes, in the back of that car, you'll see (behind the roommate) a large wooden chair, an old wooden sled, 2 floor chairs, golf clubs with bag, some work bench thing, and a variety of smaller items. All in all, a very successful evening.

Chinatown: Chicago

2009-04-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

After my wildly successful (and slightly life-threatening) trip to Chinatown in NYC where I discovered the joy of knock-off purses, I've been wanting to try my luck at Chicago's very own Chinatown. Given my need for a new summer purse, the finally pleasant weather, and my new obsession with riding the "L", I made my sweet boyfriend take me down there for a shopping trip over the weekend.

I was pleasantly surprised with our Chinatown. It's fairly small, just one main street with lots of gift shops and restaurants and a little outdoor "mall" with some more of the same. But look at this fabulous gate!

But I know what you're all really wondering about: How was the knock-off purse selection?? Well, it wasn't nearly as exciting as New York's. There was only one store that really had a large selection, and there was a back room, but it was rather accessible and not really shady at all. Too bad.

Nevertheless, I found pretty much the perfect purse, and I would say our first Chicago Chinatown experience was a huge success!

Animals Living in My Car

2009-04-23T11:14:00.001-07:00

That's right, I have animals living in my car. I've never actually seen them, but they've made their presence known on two separate occasions, both ending with me having to pay extra money to tidy up their mess. Little devils.

Over the winter, the fan in my car started making terrible noises whenever I turned it on. I brought it in to find out that some stupid animal was hiding food in there.

But today's incident at Jiffy Lube really takes the cake. I was sitting in the waiting area minding my own business, when I notice a few of the Jiffy Lube guys staring under the hood of my car in disbelief. They waved me over and commented that they didn't know mice were so organized. This disturbed me. Then I saw it. An animal of some kind had made a serious home for itself in my air filter box.

On the left side of the box, was a lovely rectangular "bed" made of yarn and other soft things. It was perfect. Perfect enough to be creepy. On the opposite end, was a good sized stash of mostly whole animal crackers; some chewed on, some not. It was truly incredible.

I almost felt bad cleaning it all out after this animal had clearly worked hard to organize it all. But not really.

Easter Fun

2009-04-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

I have to say this was a great Easter! I played in the orchestra at all 5 of our services at church (2 Saturday night and 3 Sunday) which was tons of fun, and very moving. And my sweet boyfriend attended 4 of them. Such support! The only slightly sad part was that the orchestra was basically hidden on the stage behind some huge white screens. I guess it taught us a good lesson in humility :)

These large screens took up most of the stage and between them were these big gold doors that opened up at the end of the service when our pastor invited people who accepted Christ come up and walk through. The best part was the smokescreen coming down from the top of the doors with an image of Jesus projected on it. So yes, people walked through Jesus. At first I thought it was going to be kind of hokey, but it turned out to be really good, and pretty emotional. I cried more than once, even though all I could see from my position in the orchestra was shadows and feet.

After church, Scott and I finished up our fabulous bunny cake:

He's fabulous, I know. We brought him over to my family gathering in the afternoon which was lots of fun, especially with all the cute children we now have.

The highlight of our family time was when my cousin Christine sang a very special song for me. Christine is quite talented in her singing and guitar playing skills and has recorded some songs. So one night I had this dream that she recorded this Paul McCartney song, Mull of Kintyre, that I don't necessarily know that well but somehow it made it into my dream. Anyway, in the dream I was in the car listening to it and it was quite excellent. The next day, I sent Christine a quick message telling her she may want to consider this song for future recordings. So to my great pleasure, Christine found this song, learned it, and sang it for me on Easter. It was quite lovely.

The only thing missing from my Easter was a viewing of Easter Parade, but I am remedying that right now!

Tribute to Dean

2009-04-06T06:19:00.000-07:00

So I have this bowling ball that I love very much. It's name is Dean and I bought it at a garage sale a number of years ago for $5. I named it Dean because it says "Dean" on it.

It's been basically the best ball ever. It's nice and light, but it has a big thumb hole which was the main selling feature for me. It's also purple.

So I've used this ball with great success for many years. Yes, everyone thinks I'm a huge dork for having my own ball, but I don't care because every time we go bowling, by the end of the night, everyone loves Dean.

But this weekend during a bowling outing with some friends, disaster struck when Dean started chipping in the thumb hole making it very painful to bowl. I tried to cover up the chip using some bowling tape (see below), but it didn't help much.

I had to start using the other bowling alley balls which were sub-par and my last 2 games were a disgrace. I averaged like 30 pins less than usual.

I'm not sure I want to get a new ball. Dean has served me well. But if it costs more to repair him than it did to buy him, then that just seems weird. Plus, if owning my own bowling ball makes me a dork, I can't imagine what it would mean if I actually paid money to repair said bowling ball.

Benji the Hunted Traumatized

2009-03-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I was poking around in my Google Analytics (where I can spy on what people are searching for to get to my blogs) and came across a very interesting search term: "benji the hunted traumatized." This immediately excited me because I have seriously been holding on to this Benji the Hunted thing for like 20 years. I'm so glad to know that there's someone else out there who was traumatized by this devil of a movie!

What happened was one day, when I was approximately 4 years old, my mother thought it would be a great idea to take me to a movie about animals dying. I'm not sure that she knew there would be so much bloodshed, but there was. All at the beginning. So we had to leave like 5 minutes after it started. I truly was traumatized.

This horrific event has never left me. To this day my mother makes fun of me for it and on occasion will threaten to force me to watch this terrible, painful, disgusting movie. I've never hated a movie so much. Obviously.

Anyway, now that I've realized that there are others out there who were also traumatized, and have also not gotten over it seeing as they're just now doing a Google search for it, I figured I'd make a post about it. Hopefully other traumatized people will find this post and we can discuss our experiences. Kind of like a Benji the Hunted support group.

St. Patrick's Day

2009-03-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

I had a lovely St. Patrick's Day, as usual.

It started out with a very fun day in Chicago on Saturday to see the green river and the parade. I'd never actually gone to check out the river which is unfortunate, because it really is quite cool! Even with the huge mass of people, we managed to get a good spot and spent some time taking pictures.

The parade was good, but not quite as easy to see. We finally sneaked around to a decent spot except it wasn't exactly legal and the cops on horses kept yelling at us. But we persisted and ended up getting to see quite a bit. Then we almost got killed by some unruley horses and a giant Leprechaun balloon/float that almost fell on us.

On Sunday we enjoyed a traditional Irish dinner with some of the family. I don't have any pictures of the actual food, but I do have pictures of some cute kids:

On Tuesday, I celebrated the day by wearing some green (and my awesome big green ring) and getting a free Shamrock Shake at McDonald's with my coworkers. Except I got chocolate because, let's be honest, the Shamrock ones are kind of disgusting. Later in the evening I celebrated with the bf (Scott) by watching the St. Patrick's Day episode of The Simpsons and drinking Green River. Pretty much perfect.

Root Beer Barrels vs. Blender

2009-03-02T06:48:00.001-08:00

Last week through a series of emails involving my love for root beer floats and cookies, Scott (the bf) and I were basically challenged to create root beer float cookies for a get together with some friends on Saturday. Of course, we couldn't pass that up so we found a recipe online for them. I was a little surprised that a root beer float cookie recipe actually existed, but I shouldn't have been; everything exists on the internet.

Anyway, the recipe we found called for crushed up root beer barrels to be mixed into the dough so I ran to Walgreens and got like a 2 pound bag. We first tried to crush them up in a ziploc bag but it turns out that when they break up they become extremely sharp and the bag broke in 2 seconds.

Our next option was the old stand-by: the blender. Scott threw a few barrels into the blender and it seemed to work rather well. We were getting them down to a powder, so we went with it. After a few minutes, however, disaster struck when the root beer barrels blew a hole straight through the blender. Not a crack, not a ding; a full on hole. I had no idea these things could be so destructive. They're practically a weapon!

Luckily, God provided when we visited an estate sale the next day and found a mixer from the 1970's that included a heavy duty glass blender attachment. I don't think we'll have any problems with that one. Hopefully.

He Is Just That Into You

2009-02-23T11:38:00.001-08:00

Warning: I'll probably give away the ending to this movie (He's Just Not That Into You) in some way, so if you're really dying to see it then don't read this! But it turned out rather predictable and you'll probably figure out what's going to happen about 15 minutes in anyway.

Last year sometime my mother gave me the book, He's Just Not That Into You. I'm not sure what she was implying there, but I read it anyway and quite enjoyed it. Granted, much of what they talk about in the book doesn't relate to my and my squeaky-cleanness, (He's just not that into you if he's not sleeping with you?? I'm in trouble.) but it made an overall good point: if a guy likes you, he'll pursue you. I'd seen countless girlfriends obsess (I never have, of course) over whether or not a boy liked them, only to find out he just wanted to be friends, so I appreciated the bluntness of the book.

I was hoping the film would be as straightforward and honest as the book, but let's face it, that's just not the Hollywood way!

Anyway, I went to see it with some friends last weekend and it was basically a huge disappointment. Actually, the first half seemed to hold some promise. Good points were made, and sections were introduced with a line from the book (He's just not that into you if he's not calling you, and so on ...). But then, halfway through, things took a turn for the worse.

It followed a few different characters and their stories (which I did really enjoy), the main one being about unlucky-in-love Gigi, who befriends a fellow named Alex who sees what a dating mess she is and begins to give her advice, almost straight from the book. It was good advice, I thought, and it seemed to give her a much healthier dating life. But by the end of the film, just about everything he said went out the window and the movie itself reverted back to the kind of chick-flick that gives women the very same crazy ideas that the book has tried so hard to dispel. The title itself is generally misleading as pretty much every guy in the movie is into exactly who you're expecting him to be into. Except, ironically, the married man who was not into his wife. By the end it was just so confusing that we all ended up leaving the theater depressed.

Anyway, here are the top things I learned from watching He's Just Not That Into You:

- If you're with a guy who won't marry you, it's not that he's not into you, it's that he's not going to propose until you tell him you don't want to get married. That's the secret.

- If you do get your husband to marry you (against his will?) he'll cheat on you with a skanky girl from the grocery store, so don't push it!

- Women shouldn't care so much about getting married, gosh!

- There's no such thing as a good relationship without some good drama!

- If you think a guy may be acting like he likes you, you should come on to him. If he says he just wants to be friends, you should tell him that actually he wants to be more than friends, he just doesn't know it yet. Then date other guys until the first guy realizes he is into you and finally asks you out. Then live happily ever after.

- There's actually no way to know if a guy is into you, so stop trying!

Tuesday Morning, 7 a.m.

2009-02-04T08:24:00.000-08:00

That's right, I got up at the crack of dawn on Tuesday to take advantage of a free Grand Slam at Denny's. Actually, dawn hadn't even cracked when I woke up, which was disappointing. Anyway, I ventured out to meet a couple coworkers, Emily and Todd, at the Denny's by work. There was actually a line out the door. It was weird. Also it was like 10 degrees. Is this really what we've come to? Waiting in 10 degree weather for a free mediocre breakfast? Desperate times call for desperate measures!

Anyway, after about 20 cold minutes we finally got seated and all was well with the world. Seeing as it was highly unlikely that I would ever see a line out the door at Denny's again in my life, I took a picture:

I was so excited about this Denny's adventure that the night before I had a dream about it, except in the dream, this trip to Denny's included the entire company walking across the street to the Denny's and then gathering for a pre-Denny's meeting which I skipped out on in order to beat the rush to the Denny's.

I kind of want some Denny's now.

Evil Sigourney Weaver

2009-01-15T09:43:00.001-08:00

I've been having (and remembering) some really weird dreams lately, so I thought I'd share. This one's from a couple week's ago.

I was going going to be in a movie with I think Sigourney Weaver. (This was weird because a few weeks before I'd had dream where I was in a movie with Sigourney Weaver and I was sharing the Gospel with her. It's not like I watch a lot of Sigourney Weaver movies, so I don't know where that's coming from!) So I was in this room with Sigourney and we were discussing the movie and it turned out that she was pure evil and she would just randomly kill whoever she wanted to. She was very dangerous. So she told me that she wanted me to kill 2 other people who were in the movie with us ... one older man, possibly the guy from The West Wing, and a younger girl, possibly Claire Danes. I was afraid she was going to kill me if I didn't kill them so I killed them. But all I had to do to kill them was cut photos of them in half. Then I started freaking out realizing that I just killed two people, and I felt so guilty and I was worried I was going to get caught.

So the rest of the dream was me freaking out and trying to figure out what to do. I prayed about it and I felt very convicted that I should just confess, but then I knew I'd be in jail forever. I also kept debating if I should tell my boyfriend or my mother. I kept imagining being in the court room and trying to figure out what I could say to get out of it. I kept telling myself that the right thing to do was to just confess but I really didn't want to do that because then I knew that I'd pretty much never get married or have kids or anything and that upset me. But I knew I'd feel terrible for the rest of my life if I didn't confess. I also thought that by confessing, I'd be getting Sigourney in trouble since she was behind it all. But I still knew that I'd go to jail for a long time. So I debated with myself forever and then I woke up. I've never been so happy to wake up from a dream! I think I can say that I now have an idea of what it would feel like to kill someone. I don't recommend it.

Fabulous Saturday!

2008-12-11T06:38:00.000-08:00

So I have this great boyfriend, Scott, who's a big fan of surprises. I'm not so good at coming up with them, but he's very creative. So Saturday was our 6 month anniversary and I think he may have outdone himself on the surprise front.

The surprise involved me receiving clues about where to go to get the next clue. Each one had some meaning—either a place we'd been or something we'd talked about. I was scheuffered around downtown Naperville to each destination by our friend Matthew who took it very seriously, dressing in all black with a hat.

At first I was a little concerned about the whole scavenger hunt thing—it seemed like an awful lot of work. Plus I was going to have to talk to the people at each store and I don't really like talking to people. But it turned out to be incredibly fun.

My first stop was a chocolate shop where I got a gift certificate (woo hoo!). My next stop was Barns & Noble where I got a DVD of The Birds, one I've been wanting for awhile.

Then I went to Starbucks where Santa happened to be visiting. I went up to the counter and they told me I had a hot chocolate coming, but Santa had the envelope with my clue in it. Fabulous. I've always been slightly terrified of people in costume ever since I had a few bad experiences at Chuck E Cheese. But I sucked it up and went to talk to Santa. He handed me a candy cane and asked if I had been good. I said of course I've been good, what kind of skank do you think I am?? Actually, I didn't say that. I just played along and exchanged pleasantries and then told him that I was Kim and he was very excited to give me my envelope. Then I got the heck out of there. (I found out later that the Santa thing was not Scott's idea as the Santa was not even there when he went there earlier that morning. The girls at the counter had the brilliant idea of getting Santa involved.)

I had some trouble figuring out the next clue, but I finally realized that it meant a manicure/pedicure for me. Woo hoo!! So we headed over to the nail place where I very much enjoyed having my nails done while Matthew and I chatted. Poor guy.

The next stop was Chuck E Cheese where Matthew gave me a cup of tokens and we played Skee ball obsessively. One of the machines was broken and wasn't giving us tickets so we got a lady to fix it. She opened it up, piddled around in there and then closed it and walked away while it started spewing a massive amount of tickets out. Sweet! I bought Scott some great pirate gear with those tickets.

I couldn't figure out my final clue so Matthew finally just had to take me there and I met up with Scott at the Riverwalk. He had some lovely roses for me.

So overall it was an amazing morning. We followed it up with a delicious dinner at Wildfire and a trip downtown to see Wicked. At Wildfire, we had this middle-aged woman as our waitress who thought she was real cool with her short spikey hair. She asked us if this was our first time there and we said yes and then she asked where we were from. I must have had a "huh" look on my face and I somewhat reluctantly told her Naperville. She addressed my look of confusion by explaining that if it's someone's first time to this restaurant, she assumes they're from out of state because pretty much everyone from the Chicagoland area has been there, it's just that popular. Good heavens, woman! I'm sorry that I'm poor and haven't been able to eat at your fancy pants expensive restaurant until now. I think she got the picture when we paid with our Lettuce Entertain You gift card.

Yes, Barbie IS Realistic

2008-12-03T11:25:00.000-08:00

I visited my local Target today to purchase a gift for our toy drive at work. I decided I wanted to buy a Barbie because I just love buying Barbies and I really have no one to buy Barbies for.

I picked up a very nice Vet Barbie and then realized that I should grab a Ken doll too, because as a child I was always short on Kens. It seems most girls run into this problem. We get lots of Barbies with their cute outfits and accessories, but somewhere in there forget to get some Kens. Who are your Barbies going to marry if you don't have enough Kens??

Anyway, as I scanned the aisle for a Ken, I was dismayed to find only 2 Ken options: Beach Fun Ken with real hair and Beach Fun Ken with plastic hair. So, out of the approximately ten thousand Barbie dolls in this aisle, there were two Kens. I was disturbed.

Then it hit me: this Barbie aisle is a painfully accurate reflection of real life. There are millions of beautiful, successful, bikini wearing women in this world all chasing after the same two hot guys in swimming trunks.

When I discussed this with my boyfriend, he, as usual, had a solution:
"Well the problem is all the Barbies want a Ken. They should learn that there are plenty of good GI Joes and Batmans and guys like that if they'd just look past their own isle and into the next one."

I'm not sure if that's exactly profound our not, but it sounds good.

So the next time someone lectures you about how unrealistic Barbies are, don't believe them! What better way to teach your daughters the harsh realities of life and love? There aren't many things more realistic than a bunch of large breasted, skanky women who can't find husbands.

Dear Baskin Robbins: It's 30 Degrees Out, Give It Up Already!

2008-11-18T18:11:00.000-08:00

This evening as I drove along 63rd St, I noticed a suspicious figure on the sidewalk up ahead. I was a little concerned that it might be some sort of axe murderer or alien. But lucky for me it was just some poor Baskin Robbins/Dunkin Donuts employee dressed as a giant ice cream cone in 30 degree weather. Since there was a bit of a backup at that spot on the road, I had ample time to watch this poor sap wave and hop up and down incessantly. As I sat in the car watching this scene, it became increasingly hilarious to me.

First of all, why the heck is Baskin Robbins trying to sell ice cream when it's freezing out? If they're so desperate to make their employees dress up in idiotic costumes, I'd think that a life size cup of coffee would be much more effective.

Secondly, it was approximately 6pm and in these parts at this time of the year, it's basically pitch black at 6pm. Forcing your giant ice cream cone wearing employees to stand outside isn't exactly effective when no one can see them!

The most comical part was that this poor person would not stop bouncing around and waving. At first I thought it was so they'd look super happy and excited about their ice cream cones, but then I realized it was probably because they were freezing cold and couldn't stop moving for fear of freezing to death.

So after watching in astonishment, the humor of the situation overtook me and I laughed until I cried. I was disappointed that I didn't get a picture, so I drove back maybe 15 minutes later to find the poor girl inside packing up her ice cream cone costume with absolutely no customers in the store.

Don't give up ice cream cone girl! Maybe you'll have better luck tomorrow.

Feet!

2008-11-18T10:22:00.001-08:00

I really like feet pictures. I like them because they're different and fun. Also, it's a good way for me to be in a picture without actually having to be in the picture. Also, I heard that my mother once made a movie about feet, so maybe it's genetic.

Anyway, today I'm going to showcase my feet pictures. I'm sure there are more out there, but these are the ones I found on Facebook. They're mostly from the last 6 months and I think they do a fine job of chronicling the good times I had over the summer/fall.

Scott and I at a beach in Michigan on July 3rd. I think this is my favorite feet picture.

At the bonfire on the beach the same day.

In New York's Fashion District in August. I don't think this was meant to be a feet picture, it just happened.

Me, Scott, and Matthew during a shopping trip to the Outlets.

Scott and I hiking in September I think.

In Kouts, IN

At the bonfire in Kouts.

Halloween!

Scott and I at our church's Young Adult retreat.

Creeeepy

2008-10-20T11:15:00.000-07:00

So last night I made the mistake of watching The Ring on TV. I had already seen it once and it basically terrified me, so I'm not sure why I thought I could watch it again. But I was stupid and sure enough, it totally freaked me out for the second time.

Since I was pretty disturbed, I was looking forward to reading my Bible before bed, figuring it would calm me a bit.

First, I read a couple chapters from Zechariah and I came across this in chapter 12 verse 4:

"On that day I will strike every horse with panic and its rider with madness," declares the LORD.

Creepy!! If you haven't seen The Ring, part of the story involves a stable of horses that go nuts and jump into the ocean. This did not help to calm my nerves! I sat there for a minute, quite weirded out and then moved on with my devos.

My next stop was Luke 14. I was happily reading about Jesus healing people when I came to verse 5:

Then he asked them, "If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?"

Heavens to Betsy! Basically the entire movie revolves around people falling (or being thrown) down wells.

So that was basically disturbing. What is God trying to tell me?? Probably to stop watching scary movies.

Inside A Hayfight

2008-10-17T14:11:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering, this is what it looks inside a hayfight:

We had a lovely fall weekend in Kouts, IN. It involved apples, pumpkins, bonfires, and hayrides. Pretty much perfect.

Fifties Facebook

2008-10-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

The other day my bf (I don't like the word boyfriend. What else can I use?? That's a whole other blog post. We'll just call him Scott for now.) and I were discussing the intricacies of the Facebook relationship status. (Good news, we're in a relationship.) But really, it's pretty intense. It can easily cause an unnecessary amount of awkwardness, especially when you go from pretty much anything to "single." Or from "in a relationship" to "it's complicated." Or when you request to be "in a relationship" with someone who was not aware you were anywhere close to being in a relationship. Awkward!

But it can also be a blessing, seeing as you don't have to bother getting the word out about your new (or terminated) relationship yourself. Just let Facebook do it! So convenient. This led me to wonder what in the world people did before Facebook. How was this information released and passed along? Then it hit me ... this is the Facebook of the fifties:

Up next in the "Facebook and Relationships" series: Friending your significant other's family members: Do or Don't?

Dick Cavett Confusion

2008-09-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

This isn't really that funny but I'm posting it anyway.

Last week I stopped by my favorite library (Downers Grove) and picked up a few audio/video items. One of them was The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons, featuring Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon. Needless to say, I was pretty excited about this find.

Tragedy struck, however, when I popped the DVD in and was devastated to find that it was actually Dick Cavett: Comedy Legends Disc 4. NOOOOOOO! I've already seen that one and I was so looking forward to some Paul Simon.

So yesterday I headed back to the library intending to make a quick switch and be on with it. I first headed over to the DVD section to see if I could find the case for the DVD I had. Tragedy! It was checked out. I knew this wasn't going to help my chances of seeing some Paul Simon in the near future.

I knew if I wanted any chance of seeing Paul I'd have to do something drastic like ... asking the librarians. There are a number of reasons I wanted to avoid this scenario:

1. I didn't really want anyone to know that I actually checked out The Dick Cavett Show on DVD. Why am I admitting it on this blog then? Well, because now the librarians know. And if they know, everyone might as well know.

2. Librarians kind of scare me. Sometimes they're mean. And they're just so quiet. What am I supposed to do with that?

3. Librarians are old. Old people get confused. I knew I was going to confuse the old librarians and I did.

So back to the story. I marched up to the desk and explained the situation. I told the librarian that the set that went with the DVD I currently had was checked out, but she didn't really listen to me and rushed to grab all the Dick Cavett DVDs off the shelf.

I was still hoping at this point that there had been a mass mixup involving all of the Dick Cavett DVDs and maybe the one I was looking for was in some random case, instead of just being switched with the one I had. But alas, the librarian opened every single one with no luck. Rock Icons was safely tucked away in the Comic Legends Discs 3 & 4 case in someone's home.

This fact did not occur to old librarian, however. She couldn't figure out what was going on. I tried to explain to her many times that the case it was in was checked out, but since Comic Legends Discs 1 & 2 was still on the shelf she was very confused.

Finally after like a half hour and some assistance from a younger librarian, they figured out the issue, and I left empty handed and disappointed. Now I have to go back and find it sometime. In the meantime, I'll just have to be happy with low quality Paul Simon videos on YouTube.

Flying Monkey

2008-09-16T20:09:00.001-07:00

Finally!

McDonald's Thinks I'm RIGHT!

2008-09-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

So last year, McDonald's gave away these Wizard of Oz toys in the Happy Meals. They were cute and fun to collect and I was very pleased. I only had one complaint: They included the Wicked Witch of the East in the line up. I just didn't understand that decision, so I challenged it in this strange letter I wrote to them in a moment in insanity and silliness.

Fast forward to ... today. I'm perusing the McDonald's website (don't ask why) and I notice they're bringing back the Wizard of Oz dolls. Sweet! I was very excited just to see the new ones they came up with, and even more elated to find that they added a Flying Monkey to the set—the very character I suggested to replace the Wicked Witch of the East in my awesome letter.

This just proves the power of letter-writing. It gets things done! Also, it proves that I control McDonald's. I wonder what my next letter should be about ...

Give Me My Monitor!!

2008-08-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

Heavens to Betsy.

Many, many months ago, it was announced that we were going to have somewhat of a technology overhaul at work. All this really meant was that we were getting new computers and/or monitors. Seeing as I got a new computer fairly recently all I've been expecting was a new monitor which was very exciting to me since my current one is pretty ghetto.

So I've been waiting kind of patiently for my amazing new monitor, but today was the last straw!

In the past couple of days, it's been obvious that they've been really making the rounds with the new computer stuff, so I was beginning to get hopeful that it might happen soon. However, it's been nothing but disappointment as they've just passed over me.

Then, this morning I was walking out of my office and I see a new monitor in the EMPTY CUBE down the hall. EMPTY CUBE! Are you kidding me? So just minutes ago, I see one of our IT guys hooking up the new computer in the EMPTY CUBE and I asked him, "Is this EMPTY CUBE getting a new monitor before me?" He said yes, and then acted surprised that I hadn't gotten one yet and told me "it's coming." Whatever. Then I asked him if I could move into the EMPTY CUBE while I wait for a new monitor in my real cube and he just laughed awkwardly. It wasn't a joke.

Crazy Man

2008-08-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Part of our last day in NYC was spent exploring Central Park. There were a few main sites we wanted to visit in the park, one of them being Strawberry Fields, a memorial to John Lennon.

They had this fancy little spot on the ground where people left roses for John. It was actually quite lovely.

Surprisingly, we hadn't run into very many crazy people in New York. Things had been relatively normal. Until we started hanging around this memorial.

This pot-bellied fellow seemingly came out of nowhere and started babbling on about how the sun was shining directly down on the "Imagine" thing on the ground. It had been raining for most of the morning and this was the first appearance the sun had made in awhile. He was very excited that it was shining straight down on Imagine, as if it wasn't shining everywhere else too. Then he broke out into Dear Prudence. Then he started just quoting lyrics from Imagine.

I wasn't too shocked at this point. I mean, a little crazy talk and some random singing happens at basically all my family's gatherings. I can deal with that. But when he exclaimed that this spot was the center of the universe, we got a little freaked out. I think Marc's face in this picture says it all:

Yes, that's pot-bellied crazy man behind him.

BAT!

2008-08-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

Holy Crap. Bat. Bathroom. Terror!

Friday night at approximately 2 a.m., I encountered a BAT in my bathroom. It was in the cabinet next to the toilet. The doors to the cabinet where slightly open, and I heard some commotion inside, so I peeked in and saw a small black figure struggling. I completely flipped out and ran out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. I just stood behind the door in my bedroom for a few seconds while I calmed down. The bathroom is right next to my room and I can see in a little bit from my room, so I cracked the door open and peeked out just in time to see a BAT flying out of the bathroom. HOLY CRAP!

I kept thinking of the Office episode where they have a bat in the Office and I could just hear Dwight yelling, "BAAAAAT." Hilarious.

Anyway, for the next few minutes, I periodically opened my door a crack to peek out and then closed it. Every time I looked out, I could see or hear some flapping. Then finally I heard it flapping around directly above my door and I vowed to stay in my room forever.

Meanwhile, I was really disturbed that I had left the light in the bathroom on, along with some other things unfinished, and I felt that I needed to alert my roommate to the situation. I cracked my door and yelled for her a couple times and then called her cell phone which turned out to be in the living room. No luck.

Then I called my mom. She was half asleep and didn't have a whole lot to say. Her main advice was to just go to bed. I asked her if it was ok that I left everything on in the bathroom and she said yes. I'm pretty sure she just wanted to go back to bed.

I decided my only option was to write a note to explain the situation to my roommate and slide it underneath my door. It would be directly in front of the bathroom so when she got up in the morning she'd see it. Brilliant plan, I thought. The note went something like this:

Dear Grace,

The light in the bathroom is on because there was a BAT in the cabinet next the toilet and I had to run to my room for cover. BEWARE!! Also, sorry I didn't flush the toilet, I had to get out quick.

So I slipped it under the door and tried to go to sleep. My dreams where overtaken with bats, but I think I got a little sleep.

In the morning, I heard Grace walking around the living room. While I was laying in bed wondering if she got my note or not, I heard her walk out the front door. CRAP! ALONE WITH THE BAT! I took some comfort in the fact that she seemed to just be out for a jog and would be back shortly.

Seeing as she had been going about her business all morning with no running or screaming, I figured the bat was safely tucked away somewhere. I poked my head out the bedroom door and looked up since I'd heard it fly up there. Sure enough, it was there, perched right above my door. I freaked out again and hid in my room where I started looking up bat info on the internet. That turned out to be a terrible idea when I started reading about rabies and toxic poo.

Grace finally got back and I cracked my door open and asked her if she got my note. She said yes and that it was all clear and then she went on to completely ignore me. All clear? Did she think I just made up this bat stuff?? I finally had to emerge from my room and run to the kitchen where I explained to her that it was not "all clear" and showed her the bat was sleeping above my door.

After freaking out for a little while, we decided to call our friend Brian who lives down the street. We figured he might enjoy removing a bat from our apartment. Alas, he was out somewhere, but he did suggest calling Animal Control. Oh yeah ... Animal Control.

So we called Naperville Animal Control and they came out in like 15 minutes and removed the bat. It was great. Then I cleaned out the cabinet in the bathroom and found the hole it came through.

Now I think there are bats everywhere. In fact, right now I'm eyeing a very suspicious looking hole in my ceiling at work. I think I need to plug that up.

Best Conversation Ever

2008-08-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

This is why I love my mom:

Moe: i saw the perffect man at whole foods
Me: really??
Moe: well he was just some race i'm not sure what. he reminded me of the kid in the jungle book all grown up.
Me: ah
Moe: i couldn't stop staring at him
Me: was he waring a loin cloth
Me: LOL
Moe: but i always loved that movie
Moe: that would have been better
Me: so grown up Mowgli is your ideal man?
Moe: yes
Me: good to know

She's weird.

For more New York trip stuff, Todd posted quotes from our trip which I think are completely hilarious, but probably aren't actually that funny if you weren't there. Also Marc's been posting daily accounts of the trip with pictures that are significantly better than mine. I'm even in some of them!

Adventures in Chinatown

2008-08-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

Possibly my favorite part of the New York trip was the search for fabulous knock-off bags in Chinatown. I didn't necessarily go the with the intention of looking for a purse—we were really just going for dinner. But once I saw all the wonderful counterfeit products out on the sidewalk, I started to get the itch. Lucky for me, Kate also wanted to shop a bit, so off we went.

I'd never experienced the underground counterfeit world, so I really had no idea what the protocol was, but I was ready for an adventure!

The first couple of stores we went to weren't anything special—mostly just touristy junk. Then we ran into this little gem.

There was no way I could resist that, so we headed down the extremely shady stairwell and took a look inside. Unfortunately there wasn't as much pink as I'd hoped. The walls were pink and covered with an array of "designer" sunglasses and random ipod accessories. Kind of boring. Then the young Asian clerk asked if we wanted to see their selection of "Tiffany" jewelry. Finally, something interesting, but no purses.

Todd, Kate, and I continued on our journey while the others wandered a bit behind us. While we were passing one store, a young Asian man started waving us in. He looked very excited and we couldn't help but check it out. We were assuming he just wanted to show us something in the store until he made his way to the very back of the store, opened up a slightly hidden door in the back wall, and insisted we go in.

It was while I was passing through this door that I thought I might never see the outside world again. Nevertheless, I had to see what in the world was back there. So we traveled through a very small room, then through another door and into knock-off purse heaven.

I'm not really up on designer purses, so I was really just planning on going for a Coach purse. Classic. Sure enough, hanging on the wall were dozens of Coach purses. There was one I really loved but it was a little bigger than I like and it was $50 which is more than I wanted to spend on a fake Coach purse. So made our exit and set out to find more shady back rooms.

We stopped at a few more stores where Kate and Sara both found purses (not from the back room!) so I was starting to feel a little bad making everyone walk around more. Finally, we came to one more store that seemed to have a good selection of purses. I went in to look around a bit and finally they invited me to their back room. This one wasn't quite as big as the first one, but it had pretty much the perfect Coach purse for me; a very happy ending to our first day in New York.

New York in A Nutshell

2008-08-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

I went to New York last week and it was amazing!! I have some individual stories that I'll post later, but I wanted to start with a run down of our week. I went with two coworkers, Emily and Todd and his wife, Kate and a former coworker, Marc and his wife Sara. Marc grew up on Long Island and we stayed with his parents who still live there. They were wonderful and took good care of us.

Marc did an exceptional job of organizing the trip. I think he should do it professionally. There was a website involved where we could give each possible site a star rating. It worked very well, and I think we got to see just about everything we wanted.

We spent 3 days in New York City, broken up into lower Manhattan, upper Manhattan, and midtown Manhattan. On our first city day (lower Manhattan) we hopped onto the Staten Island Ferry where we passed by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was kind of surreal actually seeing the Statue of Liberty in real life for the first time. Very cool!

Then we took a nice walking tour where we learned quite a bit of history. Our tour guide was a young fellow in grad school I believe. You could tell he wasn't completely confident, but he had a lot of good information and interesting history. Then there was the "sidekick," a small middle aged New York man who felt the need to interject his own knowledge throughout the tour. It was a little annoying and our poor tour guide was definitely annoyed. But at least it gave us something to laugh at.

We took a nice little stroll on the Brooklyn Bridge and then headed into Chinatown. Turns out Chinatown is amazing. We had quite an adventure looking for knock-off designer purses which I will write about in a separate blog post. It was great, that's all I can say.

On our second city day, we walked around through Central Park a bit, passed by some famous museums, and then headed to a Mets game. Central Park was fascinating to me ... it's basically a woods inside the city. It's pretty much brilliant.

Our third city day was my favorite. We started out in Times Square which is basically madness. We visited a fun M&M store and took a tour of NBC studios and Grand Central Terminal. We also went back to Central Park to see the rest of the sites there. Then the main event: Mary Poppins on Broadway! This was my first Broadway show ever and it was everything I could have wanted. They changed the story quite a bit from the movie which was a little disappointing, but as an overall production it was incredible.

We ended the day with a fun trip to the top of the Empire State Building.

The rest of our time was spent running around Long Island. We visited the Hamptons, Teddy Roosevelt's home and grave site, and a couple lighthouses. It was beautiful and relaxing.

We were also treated to a true-blue seafood dinner by Marc's parents. It was lots of fun, but I felt a little sad about eating my lobster which I named Buster. Poor guy. He was delicious.

I took way too many photos, but if you want to see them all they're here:
NYC Day 1
NYC Day 2
NYC Day 3 Part 1, Part 2
Long Island Part 1, Part 2

Summer Fun

2008-07-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

I had a fabulous 4th of July weekend and I neglected to write about it. So here we go …

On the 3rd me, my BF, and some friends went to see the Fireworks on the lakefront. I’m not sure what possessed me to make another appearance at the Taste of Chicago. It’s ridiculously crowded and a huge pain and the fireworks were pathetically short. Plus, they left the lights in the park on during the fireworks. And we had a group of drunk people in front of us. And I had to use the port-a-potty! It was rough. I did enjoy the walk back to the train station with thousands of other people walking right down the middle of the street. I thought there might be a riot, but luckily things stayed calm.

At one point before the firewords, the drunk girl in front of us turned around and very drunkenly asked what setting she needed to put her camera on to take pictures of the fireworks. We didn’t really bother helping her because I don’t think she would have been able to hold the camera still enough to get a decent picture no matter what setting it was on. Shortly after that, one of her drunk male friends stumbled through the crowd to get back to their spot and then announced that it was impossible to get through and he, “stepped on like 18 people’s feet” in the process.

Moving on … on Friday (the 4th) we went up to Michigan with some other friends. They rent a pretty fancy house with a private beach. It was a lovely day of just hanging out on the beach. A good chunk of our time was spent staging this photo:

I’m not sure I want to explain. In the evening we had a fabulous bonfire on the beach and shot off some fireworks.

The next day we headed down to scenic Kouts, IN, my roommate’s home town, for a service project. We painted her parents’ neighbors’ house. When I say neighbors, I mean the house half a mile down the road, past the cornfield. It took forever to paint the house and I wasn’t sure we were going to get it done, but we finally finished just as the sun was going down. Afterwards we enjoyed a hayride which involved my roommate’s dad on a four-wheeler pulling a group of us on a trailer which, incidentally, had no hay. It’s just not that time of year. Nevertheless, it was excellent.

Stevie Wonder

2008-07-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

I saw Stevie Wonder in concert on Saturday at the Taste of Chicago. Stevie was amazing. The Taste was kind of like hell.

We got there early to get a decent spot on the lawn in Grant Park. We put our blanket down and hung out in the sun most of the day. An hour or so before the show started, I walked over to the food area to get some dinner and I almost didn't make it back. The street was packed and people could hardly move. About a half hour before the show, approximately 2 million people showed up in Grant Park and it didn't really matter where we were at on the lawn anymore. There were people everywhere.

Stevie sang for almost 3 hours which was awesome. I didn't know many of the songs he sang in the first half and then Jesse Jackson showed up and we got a short sermon. We really couldn't understand much of what he was saying anyway. Then Stevie started singing his big hits and things really took off. Everyone was singing and dancing and it was way fun. I'm ready to see him again! Here are some photos ... and a video:

Weekend in the Country

2008-06-18T10:24:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I visited a good friend in North Carolina. It was a very pleasant trip, and I got a little dose of some country living. Actually it wasn’t much different than life in the Chicago suburbs except there were hills, and you have to drive at least a half hour to get anywhere good. My final evening was spent at a true blue country farm located in the middle of nowhere, complete with goats and barn cats and crops and even a scarecrow! It was fabulous.

Anyway, there were a couple of enjoyable observations from my time there. First, the accents weren’t too bad, though they were definitely pretty strong. Incidentally, the most hilarious accents belonged to two young girls I spent some time with; ages 3 and 6 I think. They managed to turn most one syllable words into two syllable words with ease. For example, “off” was “ow-off,” “dog” was “dow-og,” “where” was “way-ere,” etc … It was quite impressive really—I’ve never heard such interesting speech come out of such small people.

The other very important thing I learned is that a barbecue in Chicago is different than a barbecue in NC. Actually, it’s not “a barbecue” there, it’s just “barbecue.” Barbecue consists of barbecue pork only, topped with this weird tomato-based coleslaw on a bun. It was quite delicious except for the coleslaw which I’m never a fan of.

McDonald's Miracle!

2008-06-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

So last night in bed, sometime between asleep and awake, I started thinking about upcoming trips to the beach and how I'll want to bring my camera. I brought my old camera to the beach a number of times and just threw it in my beach bag so it ended up getting a bunch of sand in it. I decided I did not want this to happen to my new camera so I resolved to get a case for it; nothing special, just something to protect it a little. I'm pretty sure I contemplated for quite some time on exactly what kind of case I wanted, but I don't remember any of the specifics now. I just remember really hoping that when I actually woke up, I'd remember that I had this thought.

Fast forward to approximately 12:30pm today. I was eating at McDonald's with Emily and another coworker. Emily and I had both purchased Happy Meals and I was bitter because she got a new, cool Kung Foo Panda toy, while I as stuck with a left over Speed Racer toy. This isn't the first time I've been bitter over McDonald's toys. Anyway, my toy was this stupid pouch thing that I really didn't want. I've already gotten several Speed Racer pouches in various sizes. But upon closer inspection of my new one I had an epiphany: my camera would fit perfectly in this pouch. So I got my camera and sure enough, it fit just right. It's like this Speed Racer pouch was made for my camera. You can't tell me that God was not involved in this. I'm not sure what the lesson was. Maybe he, too is concerned about my camera staying sand-free.

Meanwhile the rest of my evening was not such a success. My shopping endeavor this evening was a complete disaster. Then on the way home, I was desperate for a Frosty Float from Wendy's, but when I pulled into the Wendy's by my house it was closed because of a power outage. Seriously? I guess God is not so keen on the Frosty Floats. He clearly hasn't tried one.

Summer!

2008-06-02T18:07:00.000-07:00

It's finally kind of summer and I'm excited.

I almost died this weekend jumping into the freezing cold pool. My roommate and I stopped by my mom's to try out the pool, but alas, the heater is not working. So it's freezing cold. Nevertheless, my roommate jumped in. There's this crazy lady there (this is my mother's description. She's not really crazy, just super friendly, but in my family, friendly=crazy.) who swims all the time and she went on and ON about how proud she was of my roommate for jumping in and how excited she was. I thought she may post a photo of Grace on the front door of the clubhouse. Anyway, she got out quickly and that was that. But later as I sat in the sun on the edge of the pool I became very hot and decided it would be funny if I just rolled into the water. This was bad idea as I believe the hypothermia set in instantly. I was in the water for approximately 2 seconds. And that was my first swim of the summer.

Luckily, I made it to Centennial Beach on Sunday. My friend and I jumped in with the goal of at least swimming a short distance to the nearest wall. By the time we got to the wall we weren't too freezing cold so we continued around the pool and had a nice swim.

In other completely unrelated news, I recently read this amazing book called Mama for President: Good Lord, Why not? That's right, Mama from Mama's Family. It was on the free book shelf at work and, I ask you, how can one pass up such a fascinating book. So, Mama came up with an entire campaign plan, with slogans such as "An Old Broad for A New Day." Also, she wants Martha Stewart to be her secretary of defense. Brilliant. I'd vote for her.

Hush, Hush Sweet Stylist

2008-05-03T10:04:00.000-07:00

This morning I went to Cost Cutters to get my hair cut. I like Cost Cutters because it doesn't feel quite as ghetto and some other cheap places and it's literally two minutes away from my house. It was a pretty busy morning and there was this one rather friendly middle-aged man (definitely the type that would be offended that I just called him middle-aged) who was rather smitten with the one super friendly, too dolled up for her mediocre job at Cost Cutters stylist. He insisted that she cut his and his teenage son's hair instead of having the overweight goth girl or the super casual, just got out of bed blond girl cut it, even if it meant waiting longer. Now I know it's not uncommon to ask for the same person if you like them, but when you're going to Cost Cutters and you have basically no hair, it's a little funny.

Anyway, I had the super casual blond girl cutting my hair and she was pleasant and did a good job, but as usual, she awkwardly attempted to make small talk even though it was clear I wasn't really interested. This has always been a pet peeve of mine. Frankly, I really don't care to engage in pointless conversation with the person cutting my hair. I have a hard enough time making conversation with my own friends! This annoyed me so much that, many years back, I came up with what is possibly my most brilliant business idea ever: a salon with no awkward small talk. The only questions the stylists will be allowed to ask are concerning one's hair. If the customer wants to start a conversation they're welcome to, but they can rest assured that their stylist won't ask them thoughtless questions about where they work, where they live, and if they have a boyfriend.

It even has a name: Sheer Silence.

No Really, Google is the Antichrist

2008-04-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

I've said it before, but I really mean it this time. Google has officially come out with Google TV Ads. This is really disturbing to me for some reason. But also totally cool and I kind of want to make one.

Meanwhile, I know I haven't written on here in quite some time, but nothing interesting has happened. Right now I'm watching Neil Diamond on American Idol. I'm pretty sure I can't possibly get any lamer than that.

The good news is our crazy neighbors downstairs are getting kicked out. We finally called our landlord to complain about their insane fighting and plethora of crap strewn about, and he agreed and actually called them "the devil." Excellent. They should be out this month.

Mem'ries, Light the Corners of My Mind ...

2008-04-14T18:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a bit of a trip down memory lane, and it got me thinking about some of the things I was obsessed with as a child. I figured you all might enjoy some insights into my early years. They may help explain why I am the way I am today. Maybe.

1. The Great Muppet Caper. This was my first memory lane trip this weekend. I was hanging out with my cousins and they happened to have this film, so we watched some of it. I was a little surprised that I remembered every moment like it was yesterday. I was intensely obsessed with this movie as a child, I’m not sure why. It's actually the only Muppets movie I’ve ever seen which is a crime, I realize.

2. Only a Boy Named David. There was this guy that I was in love with when I was approximately 4 years of age. He was probably in his 20’s. His name was David. I loved him dearly. In Sunday school we sang a nice little song about David and Goliath, but I thought it was about my David. Incidentally, I ran into him this weekend and my feelings for him have not changed in 20 years.

3. My Fair Lady. Possibly my most influential obsession and certainly one of the main reasons for my current love of old movies.

4. Red-headed Comedians. I have hundreds of I Love Lucy episodes taped from the marathons they did every New Year’s Day. I’m not sure I love it as much now, mostly because Ricky is such a huge disgusting jerk. I also loved The Carol Burnett Show, and basically wanted to be her. My favorite part was when she came out and talked to the audience. Lucy and Carol are the reason I told my 5th grade teacher that I wanted to be a comedian when I grew up.

5. Tom and Jerry. Wow, I loved Tom and Jerry. Still do. I’m not sure what I love so much about it seeing as basically every episode is the same. Tom chases Jerry, Jerry outsmarts him, Tom looks stupid. Pretty simple. But I spent countless hours enthralled by it. I think I liked that there was no talking; I could just listen to the music and watch the action. That’s really all I need in life. Ironically, since the cartoon was produced by MGM in the 40’s, I’ve come to find that many of songs they used in the show came straight out of some of my favorite MGM musicals! Amazing.

Crazy Neighbors: In Pictures

2008-04-04T20:10:00.000-07:00

I decided to take some pictures of the various items that our crazy neighbors leave all over the place.

This is the newest addition to our garage; a collection of outdated political signs. These were never placed anywhere near our home during the actual elections, so I can only assume that they went around and stole them from other people's yards.

This is just a collection of various items.

That carpet cleaner in back is the only thing in the garage that belongs to us.

This is the side of the garage, featuring some ghetto old bikes, a motorcycle, some tires, and a garage motor.

I live in the Naperville ghetto.

St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-18T20:30:00.000-07:00

I had a very nice St. Patrick's Day, despite the fact that I had no corned beef :(

It started on Sunday with Old Movie Night: St. Patrick's Day Edition featuring one of my favorite movies, The Quiet Man. We enjoyed some festive goodies, drank Green River, and (most of us) dressed up all green. We looked very festive, I'd say:

Monday afternoon CTI took over the McDonald's across the street where we enjoyed some free Shamrock Shakes. This was my first Shamrock Shake and it was good, but I couldn't finish it because it made me a little nauseous. But it was fun to crash the McDonald's with like 50 of my coworkers. We really confused the regulars.

This evening I paid a visit to my mother and came across the remnants of her St. Patrick's Day celebration:

Yep, that's a beer bottle in her treadmill cup holder.

Leap Day

2008-02-29T15:45:00.000-08:00

I figured that I should post something today since this is the last time in four years I'll be able to post an entry on February 29th. Seeing as I don't actually have anything of value to say, this will probably be a little random.

So what does Leap Day mean to me? Basically nothing. In fact, I probably would have ignored the whole thing if it weren't for our "Leap Day Party" at work, complete with refreshments and about 50 people trying to cram into a conference room that typically seats 20 comfortably. I stayed in the hallway with the cool kids.

I've been reading a lot of memoir type books lately thanks to the "free book" shelf at work, which is quickly becoming my favorite workplace destination. As a result, I often summarize things in my head the way I would if I was recording them in my very own memoir. It's weird and a little bit annoying.

In other news, I'm pretty sure I offended my roommate last night when I chose to go in my bedroom and watch the New York Philharmonic playing in North Korea on PBS instead of hanging out with her and watching Food Network or some such channel. She seemed taken aback when I announced I'd go watch my orchestra show in my room. I was surprised that she's not yet realized that in my world, music often trumps socializing. Not to mention, I'd heard about this performance on the news earlier that day—it was rather momentous for a U.S. ensemble to play in North Korea—and I knew they'd be playing one of my all time favorite songs, An American in Paris.

They played splendidly and watching it made me long even more for Ravinia season (a.k.a. summer). I can't wait to catch some fabulous concerts this summer; hopefully they'll have a Gershwin night! It also further cemented An American in Paris as a front runner for my favorite song ever. I listened to it again on my way home from work. I think I blew out my speaker. Unfortunately, It wouldn't be the first time I blew out a car speaker listening to classical music. What can't I blow out my speakers with something cool?

That's all I got.

U23D

2008-02-23T07:46:00.000-08:00

I went to see this U23D movie last night with some coworkers at the Imax. Yeah, it's a U2 concert in 3D. Having never been to an actual U2 concert, I figured this would be a fun, and it was. I'm not sure there was a huge need for it to be in 3D, but that made it a little more realistic than just looking at a flat image. You get very close to the band and you get to see every little detail ... I'm not sure I ever wanted to see Bono that close up, but it was cool. They're pretty amazing in concert! And we got to wear those fabulous glasses. It would have been even more fabulous if they had made Bono style 3D glasses, but I guess they're just not as clever as me.

The only disappointment was that they didn't sing a few of my favorite songs such as "Mysterious Ways" and "Desire." They basically sang all their songs about how terrible the world is. They're good songs, but it takes some of the fun away when Bono is telling you how evil everyone is. Bono, we get it, you hate America and everyone is lying and evil, bla bla. Then they sang "The Fly," which I love, but they threw in all these 3D words flying (haha!) toward the audience telling us that everyone's lying to us and our lives are basically a sham. It was very distracting I thought. I just wanted to see them perform the song. But everyone I was with thought the words were fabulous, probably because they were just about the only fancy 3D effect in the movie.

Despite all this, it was still way fun! I really wanted to clap at the end of the songs, but nobody else was except a few weird people in the front. So I refrained.

If You're Bored ...

2008-02-21T06:08:00.001-08:00

I was introduced to a fabulous site, Blogger Play. It just runs a slideshow of all the photos that are currently being uploaded to Blogger. If you find one that piques your interest, you can click on it to be taken to the blog it's posted on. The only problem I've had is basically every picture I've clicked on has been from a non-english site. Doesn't really do much for me. Apparently we english speaking folks don't have any interesting pictures to share.

Give Me a Head with Hair

2008-02-11T10:05:00.000-08:00

I was a little disturbed yesterday while watching Millionaire Matchmaker (yes, it’s slightly disturbing that I was even watching that show in the first place, but it’s not the most disturbing part). On the show, the matchmaker chick gets a group of women together, talks to them, tells them everything that’s wrong with them, and then picks one to go out on a date with one of her millionaire clients. She was right about most of the things she criticized about the women; they dressed slutty, wore too much makeup, ect… But then she crossed the line. She told all the girls with curly hair to straighten it. The reasoning behind this is that a man wants to be able to run his hand through her hair.

I’m sorry, but there is just no way I’m going to straighten my hair for a man. If he doesn’t like it, he can go find himself a boring straight haired girl.

Plus,

1. I’ve tried straightening my hair and it doesn’t work out. I just have too much hair.

2. I regularly get compliments on my beautiful curly hair. They generally come from 80 year old ladies at church, but I say a compliment’s a compliment, and they make me happy.

This is not to say that my hair hasn’t been a huge pain for basically my entire life. As a child I pretty much hated it. I remember one time when my mother got a brush stuck in it. It was painful and it took forever to get it out. I remember another time when I was in my bedroom trying to make my hair look presentable and I got so mad, I chucked my brush across the room and nicked off a corner of the wall.

Also, when I would go to get my hair cut, my mom would always try to pay the people the adult rate even though I was like 6, because I had an abnormal amount of hair. I’m pretty sure I had more hair than my mom at that age and she didn’t know how to deal with it. This led to a number of painfully ugly hair styles from about age 4 to 23.

But, finally, I’ve come to (kind of) love my hair. I’ve figured out how to keep it in line (sometimes). Plus, a little while back it suddenly became popular to have curly hair so they came out with a million new curly hair products. It was great. For a short while I was so completely in style and there were endless numbers of products to suit all my curly hair needs. But then everyone realized what a huge pain curly hair is, and straight hair came back in. Even still, I know that in another 20 years curly hair will make a comeback. And I’ll be cool once more.

Facebook: Seriously?

2008-01-29T13:40:00.000-08:00

Ok, I admit it, I’m basically addicted to Facebook. I’m mostly addicted to updating my status with clever little messages that I’m sure nobody thinks are funny except me. It’s fun. But that’s not the point of my post today.

Every day when you sign into Facebook, on your little news feed page in the right-hand column there’s a new gift of the day. It’s a cyber gift that you have to pay $1 to send to a friend on Facebook. I can’t imagine why anyone would do such a thing, but people must buy them or they wouldn’t keep making new ones. If I wanted to give a friend a gift worth $1, I’d go to the dollar store and buy them a noah action figure or some socks. Not a tiny picture of a teddy bear to put on their Facebook page.

I don’t usually pay attention to the gift of the day, but today I saw something most disturbing when I signed into Facebook. Typically these “gifts” resemble real life gifts such as flowers or balloons, etc. But today, I’m not kidding, the gift of the day was a turkey baster. Who, in their right mind, would spend $1 to send someone a Facebook turkey baster? I’m pretty sure I can go to the dollar store and buy a real turkey baster for the same price, and whoever I give it to will be much happier to get a tangible turkey baster rather than a picture of one that can only be viewed on their Facebook profile. Facebook really went off the deep end with this one.

Walgreens Guy

2008-01-17T16:01:00.000-08:00

Tonight I went to Walgreens to purchase some milk and chocolates. I stepped up to the register to be greeted by a rather jolly young man. I'm not the real friendly type so I just said a simple hi as he rang up my items.

As I was fiddling with my credit card, I got the feeling he was staring at me as he bagged my chocolates. It kind of creeped me out and I didn't dare look up for fear of making eye contact and having to start some awkward small talk. So I fiddled with my credit card until he was done bagging my items at which point I figured I could grab the bag and leave without more than a "have a nice night."

I was sadly mistaken. As I grabbed my bag and was about to leave, he spoke. The conversation went something like this (Note: I was wearing a fluffy pink scarf from Gap):

Walgreens guy: Is that scarf all wool, or a mix?
Me: ... ... Uh ... I'm not really sure. It's probably a mix.
Walgreens guy: Yeah, I bet it's like 90% wool and 10% cotton. Then you get the warmth without the irritation.
Me: Yeah, it's not too itchy. (Trying desperately to walk away)
Walgreens Guy: Yeah, then it's probably not all wool.
Me: Yeah.

Then I left.

P.S. This is not Walgreens related, but my roommate walked in while I was writing this and said, "I was a little worried about you, there were some huge footprints going up the stairs with manly looking shoe prints. I thought maybe someone broke in!" Nope, those were my huge feet and manly shoe prints. Thanks.

Updates

2008-01-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

I haven't written anything in quite some time, mostly because I have nothing to say. But here's some stuff ...

I think my downstairs neighbors are selling printers on the black market. Today, when I pulled into the garage, I was a little surprsied to see a large Xerox copier shoved against the back wall. Who keeps a copier in the garage? Then I realized they've been accumulating a number of electronics as of late. Their ghetto car in the garage is filled to the brim with inkjet printers. There must be at least 15 in there. Plus, there are like 5 or 6 printers sitting around on the floor. Who needs all those printers? On top of that, there are maybe 10 brand new, still in the plastic car batteries stacked on the floor. At least that makes sense with their whole used car dealership thing. And there still are a number of cars parked in the driveway, but luckily, no more on the front lawn. Also, the other day, I stepped in their dog's poo in our yard. I was not happy about that.

I saw two movies last week: Sweeney Todd and Juno. Sweeney Todd was disturbing, but kind of interesting. There's lots of fake looking blood squirting everywhere. And I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Johnny Depp singing. It was a little weird. Juno was pretty fabulous, I thought. The humor in it was just my style. I'll probably see it again.

As a result of the stupid writers strike and a sale on Amazon.com, I purchased The Office Season 3 on DVD. It's great. I'm getting a little obsessed. They have so many deleted scenes for each episode that they basically make up an entire new episode. They also have some excellent extras. My favorite is called "Kevin Cooks in the Office." I love Kevin.

Christmas in Pictures

2007-12-26T17:36:00.000-08:00

My Christmas weekend in pictures.

In an effort to fill the gaping void left since the crazy house in Downers Grove is apparently no longer being excessively decorated, I went in search of some good Christmas lights. This is the best I could find:

My kitty took over my bed and my cozy down comforter

Cute kid

My white elephant gift in the dumpster

My cousin and her husband tend to get really unusual (crappy) gifts from his parents, so this year they gathered them all, threw them in a big bag and gave them as their white elephant gift. Everyone was curious about it, but nobody was picking it so when my turn came around I took one for the team and chose it. In it were a number of random items. There was a brand new knife set and some cookie cutters that I kept. Among the dumpster items where some barbeque flavored peanuts that may or may not be 5 years old or more, a taco tray, a number of ugly candles, and a basket of fruit. I ate one banana and dumped the rest.

Christmas at CTI

2007-12-22T08:13:00.000-08:00

It's been a magical Christmas at work. I decorated my cube:

I put up some nice lights and the fabulous pink Christmas tree that Emily gave me. My Wizard of Oz people are decorating it.

Then some unexpected visitors showed up in our Nativity scene on the filing cabinet:

Yep, the dinosaur is eating the lamb and the monkey is smoking a cigarette. They're courtesy of Todd. A couple days ago, a few of us just moved around the regular Nativity pieces ... Mary turning her back on the baby Jesus, Joseph running away, etc. Some ladies came by and saw it and were appalled. They put everything back, so we decided to step it up with the addition of a dinosaur. Then a monkey. Then something most disturbing happened. A coworker walked by and noticed the dinosaur and proceeded to explain to someone else that whoever did it was copying Mr. Bean. NOOOOO I was screaming to myself in my cube while listening to his grossly mistaken explanation!! I hate Mr. Bean!! I'm terrified that something I've been involved in is now being compared to Mr. Bean's idiotic antics. To make matters worse, this same coworker sent the following email to others sitting in our area:

Some folks are wondering why there's a T-Rex with the Nativity scene on the filing cabinets by the CT copier.

Mr. Bean fans already know the answer. But for the initiated, here's the (very funny) explanation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z42AxgFMb8k&mode=related&search

No, no, no, we are NOT copying Mr. Bean. Todd just had the dinosaur and we thought it would be funny! I desperately want to tell them the truth, that it was us that did it and it's not because of stupid Mr. Bean, but I won't.

By far the best part of Christmas at CTI for me, personally, is the acquisition of my own office. Temporarily. I've had an office mate for quite some time, but she moved on to another job and now I have the place to myself. What's more, the office is still divided with our cubes so there's a big cube wall blocking the doorway. I'm completely hidden. No one even knows I'm there. This makes it ideal for napping and breaking out into dance whenever I feel like it. And I do feel like it. Regularly. And for the next two weeks, we get to wear jeans every day. My job is the best!

Stupid Writers

2007-12-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

These dang writers on strike are driving me nuts. I've been trying to ignore the whole issue, but now it's gotten out of control. We all know they're making substantial amounts of money, living in their fancy California homes, going to their fancy Hollywood parties. I don't feel bad for them. Plus, there hasn't been a new episode of The Office in forever and I'm getting cranky!

The only way this could be a good thing is if it goes on forever and Hollywood implodes. That would be cool. But until then, I'm just going to be bitter. Or maybe this is my chance to finally break into the comedy writing business.

Theater Weekend

2007-12-10T13:02:00.000-08:00

This weekend was basically amazing.

Friday night I saw Meet Me in St. Louis on stage at Drury Lane for my company Christmas party. I was a little nervous that it would be a huge disappointment, seeing as it's one of my favorite movies, but it wasn't bad. Of course the girl that played Esther was no Judy Garland, but still, I enjoyed it.

Saturday I saw The Phantom of the Opera at the Cadillac Palace Theater. It was amazing. More amazing than I thought it would be. I'd seen the movie and I have the soundtrack, but this is the first time I saw it on stage. Way better than the movie. I also came to realize that basically everyone in this musical has severe mental problems. Except maybe Raoul. But really, the fact that he keeps hanging out with crazy Christine says something about his own mental state, I think. The Phantom is insane for obvious reasons (not that I'm not a little bit in love with him at times). Christine thinks that her father sent her an Angel of Music that she's never seen, but has taught her to sing. And she thinks this is perfectly normal. Does her deceased father have any idea how crazy he made her? They're all nuts. I actually feel a little nuts for enjoying it so much, but I can't help it. It makes for an entertaining show, and the music is great.

To top it all off, on Sunday I had the pleasure of viewing Meet Me in St. Louis on the big screen at the Tivoli. That's right, two Meet Me in St. Louises in one weekend. Doesn't get much better than that!

Santa

2007-12-02T15:12:00.001-08:00

As promised, here is a picture of Santa as seen at Wynonna: Tribute on Ice.

It's a little dark, but you get the idea. He definitely saw us taking pictures of him, but I say if you have white hair, a long white beard, and wear a red sweater, you must expect people to take pictures of you!

Here's a picture of the ice skaters, just for fun.

Sick!

2007-11-26T10:54:00.001-08:00

Tuesday before Thanksgiving:

I went into work feeling a little funny. As the day went on I started feeling downright crappy and, seeing as all my work was done, I went home. I don't get sick often and I'm just not used to it, so I decided to stop at Walgreens on the way home to pick up something to make me feel better. I perused the drug aisle with no idea what to buy, so I just went with some Cold/Flu stuff. I wasn't sure exactly what I was coming down with, but I figured that would cover everything.

I got home, took my Cold/Flu medicine and tried to desperately to nap because that evening I had tickets for Wynonna: Tribute on Ice. I did not want to miss that.

A couple hours later, I got up and felt pretty nauseous. I prayed (I really did) that I wouldn't feel nauseous anymore. I really wanted to go to Wynonna. I thought maybe a shower would help, so I got in. And then God answered my prayer. There's really no way to say this delicately ... I puked. In the shower. 3 times. Everything that was inside of me which, incidentally, was mostly stuffing that was left over from our church's Young Adult Thanksgiving dinner.

The problem is, I never throw up, so it's rather disturbing to me when I do. I'm still not really over it. On the bright side, I didn't feel nauseous anymore. I did feel weak and shaky and I couldn't decide if I should go to Wynonna, but finally my mother convinced me to go. I know what you're thinking, shouldn't my mom have convinced me to stay home and rest? No, not my mom. She knows what's best for me.

And she was right. Wynonna was amazing. Also, Santa was there (pictures coming soon). I would have been devastated if I had missed it.

Unfortunately, this all led to me not being able to eat dinner on Thanksgiving. And I may never eat stuffing again.

Computer Paranoia

2007-11-15T10:20:00.001-08:00

My computer at work has severe paranoia.

What happened was, my work computer broke on Tuesday. Well, it got some virus that wasn't detrimental, but should be removed. So Computer Services told me it was going to take an entire day to fix and asked if I had any vacation days coming up. I didn't, so I just decided to take yesterday off. I have a million vacation days to use up anyway.

So I come into work this morning and I have a brand spankin' new computer. Brand new for our company anyway, which means it's probably a few years old. I was very pleased nevertheless, considering my original computer was about a million years old and still had Windows 2000. I always knew the only way to get a new computer around this joint is to break the one you have, but I'm not computer savvy enough to break my computer without it looking intentional. Luckily, I managed to break it unintentionally ... or so they think.

My new computer is great. It's fast and it has Windows XP which is slightly less ugly than Windows 2000. But still ugly. Anyway, it has only one issue: Extreme Paranoia. This thing won't do anything without my consent. For example: I went to open an Access file from our company network. A little window popped up asking me if it was OK to open this file, seeing as whoever I got it from could be attempting to destroy my computer with their shady Access files. Of course it's OK to open it! I clicked through all the folders, found the specific file, and double clicked on it! What kind of idiot does this thing think I am?

Then I made the mistake of trying to use Outlook. I can't make a move in Outlook without it questioning me. Am I sure I want to open this email? Do I know that this email has an attachment that may ruin my computer beyond repair? Am I sure I want to view the images in this email? Do I know who this email is from? Am I sure I even want to receive emails? It might just be safer to use the phone.

Perhaps I can understand where it's coming from if it's aware of the plight of its predecessor. But I'm to the point where I don't even read the stupid warnings, I just click through them, thereby defeating the purpose. It's like the boy who cried wolf. It's just going to keep asking me about the most ridiculous things and I'm going to keep dismissing it until one day when there is an actual threat and I ignore it and my computer explodes. And I get a new computer.

Harriet Carter

2007-10-31T15:50:00.000-07:00

You know when you go to a garage sale and you wonder where in the world these people got this junk that they thought was cool for about two days and then wanted to throw away once they realized how embarrassing it was that they even owned it? I found the source ... Harriet Carter. I discovered the Harriet Carter catalog yesterday at my mother's house. It's incredible. I want to know who orders from this catalog and why. But apparently people do order from it as it's been around since 1958. Here are some of my favorite items:

I'm pretty sure if I was awoken by monkey sounds, the last thing I would do is laugh.

I like that the description specifies that these can be used for a "boy's birthday celebration." These lights are not for girls!

Weekend in Pictures

2007-10-29T13:59:00.001-07:00

I had a rather eventful weekend, and I took a lot of pictures. It was fun. You'll notice that I'm not actually in most of these pictures and that's the way I like it.

On Saturday morning I headed out to Indiana with my friends to visit my roommate's parents' farm. On the way, we stopped at an apple orchard. Apparently we were a little late in the apple picking season as all the apples were either picked or on the ground.

Luckily, we got a tractor ride, so it wasn't a waste.

They also had some spectacular pumpkin and apple cinnamon donuts.

We then stopped at the Albanese Candy Factory. They offer a tour of the factory and we were excited to get started, with visions of a magical Willy Wonka-like experience running through our heads. We were quickly thrown back into reality when we realized the "tour" consisted of a ramp leading up to some windows where you could look into the basically empty factory. I think I may have seen some gummy bears on a conveyor belt.

The disappointment over the less than impressive tour was quickly remedied by the fact that they let you sample any candy you want to. A very nice feature.

After we were all satisfied with our candy choices, we headed out to the farm for some chilli. This was followed by a ride in the back of a truck (for the true farm experience) to go see the cows.

Then the cows ran away and we went back to the house to prepare for our bonfire and hay ride.

I do not have pictures of the bonfire or hayride because it was dark out and I was sick of taking pictures. After that, we settled in for a movie and went to bed. I don't think I really slept all night.

Sunday morning we had fabulous buscuits and gravy for breakfast and we headed home for church. Sunday evening my roommate and I hosted our monthly Old Movie Night. This month's feature was Psycho. My roommate had the brilliant idea of squirting ketchup all over our shower. So we did.

In case you're wondering, I'm in a 50's housewife dress. It was my Halloween costume. Old Movie Night was a huge success as was our ketchup covered shower. However if you're considering copying our brilliant shower idea, keep in mind that a large amount of ketchup squirted in a small enclosed space gives off a vomit-inducing odor.

Mystery!

2007-10-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

Last Friday when I came into my cube at work I noticed a yellow award ribbon tacked to my bulletin board. This was definitely a new addition to my cube. It said "Good Eater Award" with a picture of a monkey eating a banana. I'd never seen this ribbon before in my life, it just magically appeared in my cube. I naturally assumed that it was left by coworker Todd because he is obsessed with monkeys and he's caused a disturbance in my cube before. However, when I confronted him about it, he denied it. I'm still assuming he did it though, mostly because I don't really have any other ideas.

Anyway, Wednesday morning when I came in there was another bulletin board gift waiting for me; a kind of scary football guy wearing a pink tutu. I don't know what that's about. I'm kind of hoping that there are more to come and when complete, they will uncover a secret message of some kind. But somehow I doubt it. I don't think anyone who has a picture of a football player wearing a tutu is smart enough to pull that off.

This morning I received yet another gift. It's a button that says "Not Until the 10th." Don't know what that means exactly. If it's referring to October 10th, it's a little late.

Mutemath

2007-10-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

I feel the need to publicly declare my love for Mutemath. They're basically all I listen to these days. I saw them the other night at the House of Blues in Chicago for the second time and it was fantastic, as expected. The first time I saw them, I only knew one of their songs because it was on American Idol (yeah, I watch American Idol. Shut up), but some coworkers were going and they strongly encouraged me to come. They insisted it was the best live show I'd ever see, and they were right.

Here is a sampling of what goes on at a Mutemath show:

- When the drummer comes out on stage, he puts his headphones on and then duct tapes them to his head. He gets a little hyper. So hyper that he broke is drum pedal in the second song.

- The lead singer plays a variety of "instruments." My personal favorite is the keytar. He also has a little keyboard/piano thing that sits front and center on the stage; sometimes he plays it, sometimes he does flips over it, and sometimes it's played like a drum by various members of the band. In the final song, he ends up playing an inexplicable piece of machinery that is sort of played like a guitar but basically just plays sound effects. Also, the lead guitarist plays his pedals sometimes.

-As you can see in the video, there is general destruction of the stage and everything on it at the end of the show. They weren't quite as destructive this time as they were the first time I saw them, which was mildly disappointing, but I think I'll get over it.

So there you have it. Mutemath does not disappoint. We may have stood a little too close to the speaker and I think I might be deaf now. But it was worth it.

Crazy Neighbors, Part 2

2007-10-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought the neighbors couldn't get any crazier, I came home the other night to be greeted by a pick-up truck on the front lawn. I believe this officially makes us the Naperville hillbillies.

Meanwhile, I found out that they do own a used car dealership in Indiana, hence the plethora of cars parked in any available open space on our property, now including the front lawn.

To top it off, the other night I was watching TV, minding my own business, and I hear quite a bit of yelling and fighting below me. About a half hour later, the high school aged girl that lives below us rings my doorbell and asks to use my phone to call her dad who I knew from a previous conversation was in Indiana. So I let her use my phone, she gets the answering machine, leaves a message in another language (most likely Chinese or something, the mom is Oriental), then leaves. I debated whether or not I should ask if everything was ok, but she didn't seem upset and I didn't want to get involved. An hour or so later, my roommate comes home and I tell her this slightly unusual story and she informs be that the girl is sitting out in the backyard with the dog. So I'm pretty sure that this girl fought with her mother, possibly about the annoying dog, and her mom threw her and her dog out of the house. I really have no evidence that this is what happened, but it makes sense.

To top that off, I saw the dad yesterday at church. He breezed right by me, and I'm not sure if he saw me, but I didn't say anything because I forgot his name. Now I feel like I to be nice. Not that I was planning on being mean or anything ...

Go Cubs GO!

2007-09-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

I would be remiss if I didn't write something about my beloved Chicago Cubs today as last night they became Division Champs. Good job, guys. I wrote about my feelings towards the Cubs back in June when I went to a game.

The most fun part is watching the crazy fans on TV. They're so hopeful. It's not that I'm not excited. It's just that I don't get my hopes up much anymore. I simply try to enjoy the winning when it happens.

You Might be Obsessed with Apple if...

2007-09-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

I was looking at a website today and on it, someone was giving away irises. At first glance, I got a little excited because I thought it was an Apple related product...an iRise. Something to place your monitor on perhaps, fashioned to match your beautiful Mac. Much to my dismay, I soon realized they were talking about the flower.

Crazy Neighbors

2007-09-25T09:35:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry, but this post is strictly for complaining purposes. You don't have to read it if you don't want to.

We have some crazy neighbors ("we" being my roommate and I). These are the people that live below us. We live in a cute little house on the top floor. It's very adorable and I love it, however we can't seem to get away from weird people.

When we first moved in, there was a couple living below us that we spoke to maybe once. We never really saw them coming or going from their apartment, but we know they did because their car was gone sometimes. They also had a car sitting in the garage with all flat tires. They had an aquarium and some garbage cans sitting behind the car in the garage. When they moved out, I opened the garage one day and the aquarium and garbage cans were in the exact same spot, but the car was gone, as though it had magically been lifted out of the garage without disturbing anything. I can only imagine this may really be what happened seeing is the car had no working tires.

Anyway, now we have a new family downstairs consisting of 2 parents, a daughter who's probably jr. high or high school age and a little boy who's maybe 7. He's always playing outside by the garage. I've almost hit him with my car maybe 10 times now. At first, they all seemed fairly normal. When they moved in, they had two cars; a ghetto old pick up truck and a van with lots of dents. Then one day, another ghetto old car appeared. Then another. Then one day I pulled into the garage and there was a nasty old Jeep parked in their spot that I'd not seen before. That adds up to 5 cars. They have 5 ghetto old cars packed into our small little parking area behind the house. I imagine they won't be bringing anymore cars home only because they won't actually fit anywhere!

Then, the other day my roommate came home and informed me that they had a dog on a chain out in the backyard and he was sitting on top of his dog house, Snoopy style. I was a little surprised that I'd not seen or heard this dog at all. He just magically appeared. Kind of like their cars. Is there going to be another dog tomorrow? Probably. Anyway, I didn't really care about the dog thing as long as it wasn't annoying, and it hadn't been, so fine. Then, this morning, 4 a.m., I hear freakin' barking in the back yard. I thought for sure they would hear their stupid dog barking, but either they didn't hear him (which would mean they're all deaf), or they chose to ignore it and he continued barking for at least an hour.

During this hour, I went through many options in my half asleep head. I considered going downstairs, knocking on their door, and insisting that they shut up their stupid dog, but I was too lazy and it's kind of creepy outside at night. Then I thought about calling the cops. Then I thought I'll wait till the morning, knock on their door and tell them I'm going to call the cops if it happens again. Then I came up with what I believed to be my best option. Go Seinfeld on the stupid dog and take care of it once and for all. This was clearly the most fun and violent option. I just needed to find a Newman of my own. Apparently I'm a very angry person at 4 a.m.

Garage Sale Fun

2007-09-15T15:32:00.001-07:00

This morning I shopped a few garage sales with my mother and my friend Emily. We found one particularly impressive estate sale in an old house with lots and lots of old (and some weird) stuff.

I enjoy estate sales immensely because you get to actually go through other peoples' houses; houses that usually belonged to an incredibly old person and are filled with furniture from the 70's and gaudy wallpaper. Such was the case at this particular house. It was amazing. I was highly successful at this sale; I purchased The Wizard of Oz sountrack on vinyl, a cubs pennant that's gotta be from the 60's, and a People magazine from 1985 with Bette Davis on the cover. Amazing finds, I know.

Anyway, the best part of the estate sale was not what we bought, but the disturbing conversation we had with a fellow shopper. Emily and I had made our way into a small bedroom inside the house filled with a bunch of clothes and other random junk. There was a very small closet with a few clothes items hanging inside, one of which was some sort of fur shawl type thing. While we were rummaging about in this room, a woman came in, maybe in her 60's, and started trying on this fur thing. She was rather pleased to find it and starting telling us this story about how she once bought a very small fur shawl for $.50 at a garage sale for her granddaughter to play dress up in and she went on to sell it at an antique store for $30. She was very proud of this and told us the story a number of times while we smiled politely.

After she stood there staring at herself in the mirror wearing the shawl for a few minutes, her husband showed up in the doorway and their conversation went as follows:

Woman: Honey, should I buy this?
Man: -grunt-
Woman: Remember when I bought that really small fur and sold it at the antique store for $30?
Man: -grunt-
Woman: What if I get naked and wear only this?
Man: -grunt-
Me (in my head): WHA?!

The rest of it was kind of a blur (I was mostly in shock) and Emily and I desperately looked for a way to exit the room. Somehow we managed to get out of there without bursting into fits of laughter (or throwing up).

We finally checked out and got in the car where we could laugh sufficiently. We found out that my mother was in the next room during all this, heard it all going on, and laughed out loud.

A bit later on, we arrived at a "multi-family" garage sale which actually only consisted of two houses. Somehow we'd gotten back on the subject of the naked fur lady and as we got out of the car and walked towards the garage sales, we were joking and giggling about this poor woman and her uninterested husband. Seconds later we looked up to see that our very own naked fur lady was at the garage sale next door. I sincerely hope she didn't hear us talking, but if she did I don't feel too bad. Perhaps she will be more discreet next time. Nobody needs to know about her kinky fur-filled sex life.

One Movie I Will NOT Be Seeing

2007-09-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

If I have to hear about this Mr. Woodcock movie one more time, I think I'm going to vomit. It all started the other day when I saw a preview for it on TV. I was disgusted, but I didn't worry about it too much seeing as it looks to be possibly the dumbest movie ever and hopefully I would never hear about it again. I was terribly, terribly wrong.

Part of my job is formatting a Movies Newsletter. As I started looking through the new movie reviews to go into the newsletter today, much to my dismay I found that Mr. freakin' Woodcock was part of the lineup. This doesn't really surprise me as we review most new movies. Of course, we did not give it a good review. But still, I had to hear about it again, which was unfortunate. And I had to see the poster image which was even more unfortunate. Out of good taste, I'm not going to post this image here.

So I finished my newsletter, hoping to never have to hear about this movie again, when I find an email sitting in my inbox from New Line Cinema informing me that "Mr. Woodcock is now in theatres." Fabulous. Thank you for letting me know.

Now, why do I hate this movie so much? Besides the fact that it basically slaps you in the face with obscenity, what really upsets me is that it insults my intelligence and the intelligence of the entire world. If the mere title is so painfully obvious in its attempt to be funny, that it turns out completely unfunny, what are we to expect from the movie itself? Do we really have to be so blatantly obscene in order to be funny these days? Is this the only way we can get attention? It reminds me of this exchange between Bart and Homer Simpson one day when Homer is looking after Moe's:

Bart: I'd like to speak to a Mr. Tabooger, first name Ollie.
Homer: (excited) Ooh! My first prank call! What do I do?
Bart: Just ask if anyone knows Ollie Tabooger.
Homer: I don't get it.
Bart: Yell out "I'll eat a booger"
Homer: What's the gag?
Bart: Oh, forget it...

When you have to be that obvious about a joke, it's not even a joke anymore!

Needless to say I do not plan on wasting my money on this film, nor can I fathom how anyone would want to, though I imagine there are millions of 12 year old boys out there (and possibly adults with severely underdeveloped senses of humor) who cannot wait to see it. I pity them.

Why Can't a Woman be More Like a Man?

2007-09-06T17:36:00.000-07:00

So I've had a few ... interesting conversations with some of my girlfriends lately, and today while listening to my My Fair Lady soundtrack, I actually found myself relating to Henry Higgins. I think he was onto something. While I don't necessarily approve of his women-bashing, and most of the things he praises about men are completely untrue, I have to agree with him on this: women are too dramatic. I'm a girl and I can't even deal with the drama! It's just not me.

Why did I turn out this way? I really have no explanation. I have too much common sense, and let's face it, most women don't make sense. And they confuse me. So when they get overly dramatic, I just nod and smile and try not to make them feel like they're crazy, but it's honestly hard sometimes.

Now I'm not saying that I haven't had my fair share of girly moments, because I have. But I quickly realize that I'm being irrational and I snap out of it. It's not that hard. And I'm not saying that men are perfect by any means. I'm just saying that women could stand to be a little more like men. And certainly men could stand to be a lot more like women, but Henry Higgens didn't sing a clever song about that.

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