Spookalot

2007-05-03T16:33:00.000-04:00

IT'S FUN WITH ZOMBIES!
I learned some cool new effects in Photoshop, and I had my way with them!

Everybody gets to be a zombie!

Except for Jenny. She's too cute to be scary so I had to make her into a stitched up zombie doll.

Here I come Hollywood! I am putting myself out there for any horror project makers. If you want me to work for you, just let me know. I think I can fit you in my schedule....

2007-04-17T22:33:00.000-04:00

My fish died today.

All of them.

All 8 of them.

They were healthy, happy, absolutely beautiful goldfish with long 4 inch tails. I rescued all the pretty ones from the Oscar when they were bought as feeder fish 7 years ago, and a couple that made it through the night in her tank. I put them all in our pond, and they survived floods, droughts, heat waves, and stray cats. Two of them even had a little kid.

He would have been 3 inches long this summer.

And my baby, the calico shubunkin, is no where to even be found. I can't even bury him with his family.

Apparently, the de-icer that's been keeping them alive for the last 7 winters, lost control of it's thermostat and heated the water up to over 130 degrees.

My fish literally cooked to death.

There was steam flowing off the water like a hot tub. Their shiny scales had fallen off their bodies and there were just little holes where their eyes had been. Needless to say, the smell was quite strong.

I only recovered four bodies. Three gold and the one white guy. I believe I found the spine of the tiny baby. But the other two gold ones and my shubunkin must have inevitably disintegrated in the bottom sludge.

Earl and I are heart broken. It's a terrible thing to see. Not only were they part of our family for so long, but they had their own family starting. Earl swears we'll never use a heater again.

And we had no idea that they were suffering such a painful death. I hope they just fell asleep after the water got to a certain temperature, and didn't feel anything, but how will we ever know.

RIP my little friends. I am so sorry the fate you all suffered.

I know heaven has a big lake waiting for you.

2007-04-06T22:34:00.000-04:00

PETFOOD RECALL -
If any of you are looking for a pet food that is SAFE from the recall, may I introduct BREEDER'S CHOICE

Said and done - This is the world's best pet food.

My experience has led me to believe that this stuff, by far, is the best, healthiest, most natural pet food available. The Active Care formula has such amazing level's of Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate that it even impressed my vet. And the cat food is made with cranberries, cottage cheese, and avocados - what? Yes, that's right.

During this recall, I emailed Breeder's Choice to reassure me that my pets were safe. Not only did Sue, a Breeder's Choice representative, email me back that day to give me some peace of mind, but she continued to email me and answer my questions for the next three days.

It is NOT part of the recall - they don't even use wheat gluten. NO synthetic compounds, NO artificial preservatives, and NO bi-products... "All ingredients for any of our foods are from sources in the United States, except for New Zealand lamb. We do not have wheat gluten in our foods. Breeder's Choice is NOT involved in the recall by Menu Foods. Our products are safe and we take every measure necessary to insure that they continue to be safe." - Sue.

I told Sue about the foods and treats I feed my dogs and cats, and today, unexpectedly but gratefull, I received $10 worth of coupons for the Breeder's Choice products I buy. She gets a gold star from me.

Did I mention my animals scarf this food down? They love it!

www.breeders-choice.com.

Take it from me, this stuff is fantastic! And no, I'm not getting paid to say this although maybe I should be.

2007-01-18T12:26:00.000-05:00

It's come down to this, folks.

My very own, super duper, handy handheld, touch screen, electronic, portable backgammon traveling device.

Should be here in 5-7 days. I'm already itching something fierce.

2007-01-16T12:20:00.000-05:00

So Saturday I didn’t feel like myself. Okay yes, it was gloomy outside and we stayed up way too late the night before, but seriously, what I’m about to tell you may sicken your stomach…

I spent the entire day - the entireeee day - sitting in my chair playing Internet backgammon.

That's right.

First of all, I didn’t get out of bed until 1:30pm.

Second of all, I never got out of my pj’s. I just my sat my ass down in front of the computer and started playing. And when the game was over, I just started it again. I never turned on the TV, I never even turned on the lights. I just sat there with my little dragon lamp showing me where my keyboard was. I knew where my mouse was because my hand was stuck to it.

Once in awhile, while I was waiting for a worthy opponent, I would get up, walk 8-feet into the kitchen, put a load of wash in the machine or grab something to eat. So not only were my arteries rotting away from my lazy stagnant blood, and not only was my butt slowly growing roots into the chair, and not only were my legs stiff from not moving for so long, but my whole diet for Saturday consisted of water, cereal, a piece of pizza, some pistachios, and yes, some beer. Granted I did not drink the beer with the cereal because that's just gross. The cereal, I'll have you know, was Heart Smart and it was eaten in the afternoon time, so it was the first thing in my stomach before anything else because breakfast is the most important meal of the day. See, I did do some good for myself. The beer was much much later, wayyyy after the cereal. More like around the pizza and pistachio time.

Then, around 8pm, I got up to use the bathroom, and found myself back to sleep in bed, complete with slippers still on.

Sunday however, I manage to get dressed. I picked up dog poop, did more laundry, did the dishes, cleaned the family room, walked on the treadmill, and took out the trash. Then, I sat in my chair and played backgammon.

Which brings me to the question of - Why is it that I will finish the game no matter how bad I’m losing, but when I’m winning, my opponent always decides to quit the game before I can win? There should be some kind of electric shock I can administer through the keyboard so they are forced to stay until I have officially won. It’s just not the same if you can’t tell them to kiss your ass as you pull your last chip off the board. Mind you, they cant actually hear you, but it feels good to me just the same.

I ask so little from people.

Yesterday, Earl and I ate something bad at dinner time. I can’t tell you what exactly, but we suspect it was the coleslaw.

So Monday, I was paying for it big time. I must have gone to the bathroom 10 times at work. Brought back fond memories of the old colitis flare-ups. I was so spent by the end of the day, all I wanted to do was go back to bed. But I took my nap on the ride home, woke feeling better, and actually went to kickboxing class. That was a feat in itself because Monday’s class is an hour and a half long...

Why we push ourselves to work when we are sick, but then blow it all off when something more fun comes up, I'll never know.

I felt pretty good through the whole class, until the very end when we had to do a certain type of crunch… and let me just tell you, I was clenching. Something funny was starting to happen down there and I can’t even describe the sound it was making. Fortunately, it wasn’t a very loud sound so I was the only one who knew about it. As luck would have it, we changed exercises before anything crazy happened. And there’s no better feeling then when you know you're in the clear. Driving home my legs were kinda shaky, but I was going to be fine.

I went home, drank about a gallon of water, had a little dinner with a glass of red wine, and went to bed.

And there you have it. Four days summed up in one little post. And well, here I am today telling you about it so I guess it’s really five days. And today, my ass is killing me. But it’s a good kind of pain, like the one when you did a million squats and lunges the night before. Not the bad pain, like what you thought I was talking about. Yeah, you know the one.

I’m feeling like some backgammon coming on too…

2007-01-12T13:05:00.000-05:00

I was reading in my Popular Photography magazine about a woman who creates designs by duplicating a photo and then merging with itself into something that catches her eye. I thought it looked like fun, so I merged my moth.

You know, its kinda cool!

2007-01-11T10:17:00.000-05:00

The Actually's of a Perfect World -

Isn't it just so typical.

You budget in a simple oil change for your car...

And end up having to calculate in two new tires and an air filter.

Just once, I would like to hear,

- "Actually, your car is perfect and doesn't need anything done to it at all."

And while I'm at it, would it be so difficult to hear at least one of these actually's every month??

- "Actually, it isn't as bad as you thought. In fact, it's alot better than you ever could imagine."

- "You'd think it was fattening by how good it tastes... but actually, its got no fat or calories at all and you can have as much as you want."

- "I know you thought it was going to be really expensive, but actually, it's so cheap I'm not even going to bother charging you."

- "Actually, you over paid so now we owe you money."

- "You actually look younger than you did 10 years ago."

- "Did you actually think we were going to charge you for that?"

- "Actually, you were right and I was wrong."

- "We mis-read it, so you actually have all the time you need."

- "Actually, you just won the whole pot."

- "Turns out, too much exercise is bad for you so you are actually over-doing it.

- "Actually, we were hoping you wouldn't mind letting us pay for it."

- "It's actually healthier for you to drink beer than water."

- "It's a proven fact that blondes not only have more fun, but they are actually smarter than brunettes."

- "Sitting on the couch is actually better for you than walking on a treadmill."

- "Actually, you can retire when you turn 36."

- "There was a mistake with your mortgage. You actually own your house now."

- "Brad Pitt called. He actually wants you over Angelina."

- "Eatting less than one dessert a night can actually damage your stomach ."

- "By not having a degree in something, you've actually added 20 years to your life"

- "Donald Trump would actually perfer you to take the job."

- "The Government actually owes you money."

Hey, I can dream.

2007-01-09T09:48:00.000-05:00

We took a trip up to the farm on Sunday to visit with the folks and see the animals. Lucky us! We got to meet Davey, the newest baby. He was born on my grandpa's birthday, thus named after him. Hopefully that alone will keep this little guy out of the freezer. Hey Pop - Are you listening? OUT OF THE FREEZER.

Davey

daddy Lincoln

I was playing with some interesting angles with some of the picts. I think this one works.
Friend Jake

"I don't know... I don't think her diet is working. "

"NOOOO DON'T TAKE MY PICTURE!!! "

colorful daddy Lincoln

one of the ladies

um, somebody else...

and somebody else again

Ahhh, this is an easy one. This is Lucus.

And that's Lincoln chillin'

Lincoln again in his sepia mode. He's so talented. I think if he holds his breath he turns purple.

spooky barn. I love it.

That's about it. It was a good day.

Bye for now.

2007-01-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

And so it is almost complete. Tonight we said goodbye, tomorrow we put him back into the Earth. Like the song they played while we watched the slide show about his adventures with his one true love - fishing...

"It's something unpredictable, but in the end its right. I hope you had the time of your life."
-Green Day

Life is unpredictable. And I dont know if any of it is right, but it is what it is. I think Miles did have the time of his life. His smile showed it.

So now, make sure you do the same. New Years Resolution.

2007-01-03T09:08:00.000-05:00

Miles Patrick Danner, 41

Dear Smiley,
You were too young to have this end everything.
You had your whole life in front of you.
You had mastered a skill, you had two best friends, you had a girlfriend, you had a big family, you had a dog named Red, and you had a nickname because of the big grin you wore.

Then one day not too long ago, you had cancer. And lots of it. It was in some pretty bad places, like your lungs, your lymph nodes, and in your brain.

And in the blink of an eye, you had no time left and it was over.

But in the 41 years you did have, you had it all.

So here's to you, Smiley. Tonight we will say our final goodbye and try to understand, and accept, this whole thing. It's never easy to loose a friend, but it feels particularly hard when the cause was so harsh and mean.

I don't know why this happened to you. But I do know you will be painfully missed. I know the guys' yearly fishing trips will forever be a memorial to you. I know I will always have that image of you bouncing around on your stilts spackling our ceiling. I know you will never be forgotten by any of the people who had the honor of knowing you. I know you will always be remembered for your smile. I know your life deserves more than just a memory, but it's all we know how to do. I know you are in a far better place than any of us are now. A place where this is no cancer, or pain, or heartache, or tears. And I know one day, we will all join you and you will greet us with your smile and everyone will know, that's Miles.

Goodbye friend, 'til we meet again.

2006-12-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

So after a longggg day of being grumpy and on edge about everything and everyone because nothing seemed to be going right and the stress of the holidays and money was really getting to me, I could barely wait to get home to my comfy cozy safe zone -

Which is where I found my brand new hand wash sweater, the one thing I splurged on this season for myself... covered in cat puke.

So to make myself feel better, I found this recipe. You should try it. It's just what the doctor ordered. Trust me.

PS. I wrote it down the best I could.

Christmas Tequila Cookies

1 cup of dark brown sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 cup of granulated sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups of dried fruit, such as driedcranberries or raisins
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila (silver orgold, as desired)

Sample the Cuervo to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again, to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup, and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer... Beat one cup of butter in a large, fluffy bowl.

Add one seaspoon of thugar. Beat again.

At this point it's best to make sure the Cuervo is still OK, so try another cup just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of fried druit, pick the frigging fruit off floor...

Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers, just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the Cuervo to check fortonsisticity.

Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Check the Jose Cuervo.

Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add aspoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven.

Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not tofall over. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Finally, throw the bowl or something, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the dishwasher.

CHERRY MISTMAS

2006-12-01T11:28:00.000-05:00

Wow. Tis the Christmas season and yet, its 70 degrees outside. Not feeling too much like Santa is coming to town… at least not my town, which would be weird because it is Bethlehem. Rumor has it, Jesus was born somewhere around my block - but I think maybe it was the Spanish Jesus, pronounced Hey Zeus. But I hear Santa may be dropping the big white North Pole snow bomb on my brother in Missouri. So I’ll just have to trust that it will make its way across the country and give me a little some’tin some’tin.

Although as a homeowner, I'd rather have a low gas bill than a white Christmas. It's just wrong, I know. What has growing up done to me?

I don’t think anyone is reading this except Abi. Hi Abi!!

Blogging comes and goes in my book. I feel like it sometimes and then I totally don’t. I’ll have a million things to write about and then the next week, could care less about talking about any of it.

But I understand how annoying it can be to keep checking in and seeing the same stupid post day after day after day after day – so I’m a changing it now.

Our server is shutting down at work for updates at noon – I wont have much of anything to do for the next four hours. Should be exciting. I wont be able to post more stuff even if I wanted to. Tomorrow is another day, or so I’m told.

I got my custom made Christmas cards yesterday. I designed them in Shutterfly and I’m totally excited about mailing them out. I couldn’t afford to make a zillion of them, but I got some and they’re pertttty. I believe the template I chose is called Cranberry Snowflakes or something like that. Problem was, no body expects you to have as many pets as I do so I had to Photoshop some extra picture frames in. I hope the guys at Shutterfly recognized my brilliant talent and contact me for a job..

But there’s as much of a chance of that happening as having Tyra Banks notice you from her limo as you pass her on the highway and demand you pull over so she can sign you up as America’s Next Top Model.

Hey, anything can happen.

So now I’ve been interrupted to go take some pictures and email them out before the server goes down. So I must leave you.

It was short and sweet but maybe it will be enough to inspire me to post again tomorrow.

Later, Abi.

2006-10-12T13:29:00.000-04:00

Favorite quote of the year -

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely in an
attractive and well preserved body -

But rather to skid in sideways,
chocolate in one hand, wine in the other,
body thoroughly used up, totally worn out
and screaming ,
"WOO HOO what a ride!"

Words to live, er, die by.

Second favorite -

If you can't be a good example -- then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.

And there you have it.

miami-ink-mnt11FINAL500-350

2006-10-06T14:22:00.000-04:00

Yeah, that's right. I made this and I SENT it to them. What's up yo.

Hey, you never know! What have I got to loose?? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. They will either think its totally cool... or that I'm a total bitch loser.

But you'd get nowhere in life with out taking some risks, eh?

miami-ink-mnt11FINAL500-350, originally uploaded by spookalot.

ming

2006-10-06T14:13:00.000-04:00

MING
The Merciless - yeah, hardly.

ming-blur350, originally uploaded by spookalot.

bike-show9-06 045-350, originally uploaded by spookalot.

bike-show9-06 047-c350, originally uploaded by spookalot.

2006-10-02T09:50:00.000-04:00

Wha Zuppppp! Just hangin with the boys...
Yeah that's right. It's Amy sitting with Ami and Chris from MIAMI INK at the Chopper Expo in Atlantic City on Saturday.

I had been sneaking shots of them before I actually got to meet them. Ami said, "This one. She should be our photographer. And I like her shirt."

I'm sorry... Was that a job offer???

In this one, Chris thought it was funny to copy my feet thing, I'm telling Jen how to focus my camera, and Ami shows off the Acid Cigar Case that I had them sign. Hey, you get creative when you don't have any paper.

That's right. I'm cool. So cool I even took some shots for the girls in front of us and emailed them over last night. Thats also because I'm such a nice person.

Toot toot! Kick asssssss!

2006-09-25T13:13:00.000-04:00

Talk about Scary…

Yesterday, I let Ozzy out for one of his sunbathing sessions. He found a warm spot in the sun against the house and dozed off into bulldog bliss. He had been out there for almost 20 minutes when Earl needed to take the car and do an errand.

I forgot Ozzy was outside and Earl had no idea.

Earl opened the gate and backed the car out. Since he was coming right back, he left the gate opened. I stood in the window admiring my new car as it left the driveway, then started cleaning the house. Almost 10 minutes passed before I remembered –

I never let Ozzy in before Earl left.

A horrible sinking feeling washed over me as I started to run to the door, yelling OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD –

I flew open the door, jumped off the porch, and looked frantically over the yard –

And there he was still leaning against the house with his eyes shut.

I dashed over to the gate and shut it, then looked back at Ozzy who now had his eyes half opened and was lazily wagging his tail.

He must have seen that the gate was open but just didn’t feel like caring.

Had someone walked by with a dog or on a bicycle, it would have been a different story. He would have been out the gate and into the highway.

Just one night before, my best friend was telling me how Ozzy helped her get over her fear of dogs. We were both cooing about his incredible nature and loving character as he sat with his head on my lap. I shutter to think that if things had been different yesterday, that might have been one of my last memories of him.

I wish I could just pick up my house and move it away from the highway. I absolutely hate my road and worry constantly about the animals getting out onto the road. I’ve experienced my worst fear come true when neighbor’s dog ran out in front of an 18 wheeler right in front of our house. I have to constantly be aware of the latch on the gate being shut. Every time I let the dogs out, I look out the window to see if it is before I open the door for them. When I have guests, I go outside and recheck the latch incase it wasn’t closed properly.

And here, it was a matter of me actually forgetting that he was still outside when Earl had to leave.

I know every mother has gone through something similar, and knows all too well the guilt and horrible sick feeling from not paying attention. I just keep thanking God for the way it turned out.

Perhaps we are not supposed to dwell on the “what ifs” - because they can rip us apart - but in a way, the “what ifs” remind us of the gravity of the situation and how serious things can get in just the wink of an eye. We have to really appreciate being reminded of a lesson without having to suffer any serious consequences.

And believe me, I do.

2006-09-19T15:03:00.000-04:00

Its been a while since I blogged. What's new. I have had so much going on that it seemed impossible to be able to organize my thoughts enough to write it all out. But I found myself emailing Abi and Jen and other friends about it, and figured I pretty much wrote it all out anyway.

So here it is.

Two weeks ago -
My car is officially dying - just so happens I actually paid off my car loan this month too. I borrowed the money for the furnace from my mom and am paying her every month for that, but I have ended up spending most of it on the car. Last week we dumped almost $700 into the car - and its still broken because no one can tell what's wrong with it. I've been told its not worth putting anymore money in to it because I'm about to exceed the value of the damn thing. Soooo, I want to save what money I have for a down payment on something that actually works. Earl is in Canada for the week and won't be back until this Sunday, so I am having to deal with this car and getting to work all by myself.

But, after this morning, it's at the point that I am afraid to drive it at all. It started off by doing weird shit only on the highway, like its not getting any power or gas all of a sudden. The tactometer freaks out and the engine sputters like its misfiring. I brought it to the shop Tuesday, they worked on it and sent it home. But the mechanics can't tell if its an ignition or a fuel problem, so they have to try different things. I brought it back Wednesday still broken, they worked on it and sent it home. I brought it back Thursday still broken, they worked on it and sent it home. Friday I didn't have anymore money and just dealt with the problem. Then Monday I was on the highway doing 65mph, gave it gas, and I actually lost speed. It went from 65 to 50 and then kicked in again.

Since then, instead of going all the way to work with it, I've been driving 20 minutes to a co-workers house, leaving my car in his driveway and carpooling in with his truck. But this morning when I got to his street, my car died at the stop sign. That's the first time I had a problem off the highway. We thought it was a high rpm problem, you know? I started it up again, drove 10 feet and it died again. I started it again and drove it one block to his house, which is where it might stay until I can figure out what to do. I have the company van for the rest of the week to use back and forth, but it all comes down to getting something else as soon as Earl gets home.

Then I'll end up financing the new furnace on top of it....

Last Week -
I got the company van for a night. I have no problem driving it... but I had NO IDEA WHAT A PAIN IN THE ASS IT WOULD BE TO PARKKKK. Yes, I have a driveway. And yes, I have a chain link gate to squeeze through to get into that driveway. I've seen it done with other vans and trucks owned by others, but had I known what type of freaking insane angle you would have to start at, morph into, and complete to get into said driveway, I would never even had tried. I have two cars parked in front of the gate to avoid and many parked across the street to not hit WHEN TRYING TO BACK THE FUDGE OUT. Yes, out. Back OUT. I had to because I had the dentist appointment. BTW, do you know how freaking rediculous it is to try to park a big old work van in a tiny parking lot? As I pulled in pointing east, I had two choices. Pick the spot directly in front of me, or the one behind me at a 90 degree angle... hmmm. The one in front seemed like a good idea. Except that my back end was blocking half the entrance.

Did I mention I have no windows on the side of this big old work van? Which made it IMPOSSIBLE to pull out into traffic coming from the right up a hill. After deciding not to "just go", I had to pop my selt belt off and crawl over to the passenger window to look down the hill. WTF?? Who made this van? So imagine when I decided to PARALLEL park instead of attempting to pull into the gate again. Um, yeah. I couldnt see the end of the car in front, I couldnt see any of the car in back... So I pulled forward, backed straight back and thought I would just face the gate again. But that just wasnt going to ever work again for me. Then I wondered if I could back in. What was I thinking? I couldnt see the gate PERIOD. I thought I might have to drive around until I saw a spot on some road that I could just pull into. But I realized that on the other side of the road was a spot big enough for a car to have plenty of room and might just be enough for a van. Only one way to find out...

The best part was it was on the left side of the road which meant I could roll down my window and stick my head out to see what the HELL WAS GOING ON. After 10 minutes of an inch forward, an inch backwards, an inch forward, an inch backward (thank DOG it was an automatic) I got in there - all the while someone was having their fun watching me from their porch. I had literally one foot between each vehicle, but I did it. And when I got out I looked at the guy on his porch and said, " THAT WAS NOT EASY."

So there it sits for the night. Getting out of the spot tomorrow morning has to be easier...

My coworker I've been carpooling with said I could use his wife's car to bring home so I can give the van back tomorrow. THANK THE GODS. And then I will attempt to wheel my pathetic excuse for a motorized vehicle home Friday after work and be careless for the whole weekend.

But after the "van thing", thats okay with me.

Yadda yadda yadda.

This week -
And so it comes to an end - the anxiety, the stress, the drama of it all. All thanks to one little 2-year old Honda Civic that was just begging to come home with us. Her name is Vicky cause she's very Civ-vic-ky and she has only 23,000 miles on her with a - get this - 100,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty to boot. A two year old vehicle with a warranty like that. Who could say no??

I found her through cars.com (awesome site!) and of all places, she was at a Chevy dealer. All by herself. The only Honda on the lot. She got nasty looks from all the Chevy's cause they were jealous of her reputation. And they wanted her gone.

So we came and got her and now she sits next to the Cavalier, and they talk quietly amongst themselves about the ways of the world. The old tired Cavalier tells her tales of travel and of the hard roads that lie ahead, and the little Civic just smiles gently and says, that's okay, I'm built to last.

Um. Okay, so there you go.

Chevy threw two new tires on the front on top of everything. I guess Chevy isn't all bad... Did I mention the check engine came on again in the Cavalier as we were driving to the dealership?

Yeah. Nuff said.

2006-08-28T16:29:00.000-04:00

Who Dat?

2006-08-25T10:08:00.000-04:00

MUSHMUSHMUSH - forewarning...

A few days ago, Earl and I were discussing what to do for our anniversary. He asked if I just wanted to do dinner, flowers, and a card, but I wasn’t sure I was in to that and asked what he felt like doing.

He said, “Oh I don’t care. These things aren’t important to me. It’s all about what you want to do.”

Of course, I got all offended and thought how could this not be important to him. He explained that “I” am important to him, not so much individual days. He doesn’t even celebrate his own birthday.

Thank goodness I celebrate it for him. I celebrate absolutely everything I can. Life is too short not to take every opportunity to have a party.

Then I thought about what he said, and it’s true. There is a difference between men and women when it comes to special occasions. I’m not saying every guy, but usually it would seem that the man is the one who needs to be reminded that it’s his anniversary, or Valentine’s Day, or his gal’s birthday. And he is usually the one buying the flowers and the card while she gets herself pretty to give him the one thing he wants most…

Why? Because as Earl explains it, guys don’t want flowers, or cards, or candy…

However, a man can realize that his girl does – She wants something, if simply not just acknowledgement that is a special day. That’s when it becomes more important to understand that when a guy does all those things because he knows its important to her, then that’s what love is all about.

We woke yesterday morning to rain. That in itself was ironic because it was pouring the morning of our wedding. I heard Earl say, “Damn! Its raining!” I said that’s okay, we aren’t getting married outside today. As we were driving to work, the fog settled in the hills just like our special days four years ago. Soon enough, the sun came out and the clouds disappeared.

At lunchtime, Earl came into my office and said “Ready?” I assumed we were just going to the pizza shop or something, but that was not nearly the case…

For the past 2 WEEKS, he has been planning something special because he wanted to make the day extra perfect - for me.

The car was waiting out front and we jumped in. But instead of turning right towards the pizza shop, we turned left. Then I started to wonder what he was up to. We came up to the Stirling House and I thought that maybe we would pull in there, but we did not. We headed up the hill and into…

The Great Swamp.

And any of you who know me, knows that is where Earl and I first met 17-years ago. He drove us right to the very spot where we first lay eyes on each other and parked the car. I got out and took a couple steps into the lot. It was like a movie playing in my head. I could see the cars, what we were wearing, how we were leaning against the cars, everything. So could Earl. He went over and stood right where he had been so long ago, and I did the same. It was just like yesterday.

This wasn’t the first time we had been back, but it felt like it was. Every time feels just as special as the last.

Earl handed me one of the most beautiful, most sentimental cards I had ever read -I actually had tears reading it.

Then he popped the trunk and took out two chairs that he had snuck in there the night before after I went to bed. He pulled out a cooler and told me to follow him. We went back a little ways and set up our chairs under the tall trees. To our right was the edge of the swamp. It was completely covered in big, vibrant green plants and pink flowers. To our left was a meadow full of tall grasses and an old wooden fence. We faced each other in our chairs and put the cooler in between us like a little table. He opened the top and took out a bottle of champagne, strawberries and chocolate sauce, shrimp cocktail, a wedge of brie and sun dried tomato crackers.

Simply put, I was blown away. I couldn’t believe that he had been planning all this for two weeks.

Then he said, “Oh and by the way, you don’t have to go back to work today.”

We ate, drank, and listen to the cicadas and frogs for about 2 ½ hours. The weather was a perfect 75 degrees, there was no humidity, and the sky was as blue as Earl’s eyes - and suddenly I realized why he was so upset when he woke up to rain.

Around 2:30, we packed up shop, lifted a stock of golden rod to plant back in my garden, and grabbed a handful of dirt from the lot where we first laid eyes on each other to put in my cabinet at home next to our wedding picture.

After we arrived in Bethlehem, we went into the historic side to the cigar shop on Main Street and picked him up a couple of his favorites. We headed down the cobble stone sidewalk and found ourselves in the Brew Works ordering humus and beer battered chili cheese fries. The Brew Works brews all their own beer right there, so its always interesting to taste the difference between their stuff and the stuff I usually drink. In other words, don’t even try to order a Miller Lite there. I washed my humus down with the Golden Summer ale while Earl had the ESP, an English style ale. Before we left, we bought one bottle of their Pumpkin Ale to try later simply because I’m a freak for pumpkins and there was a picture of a jack-o-lantern on the bottle.

Earl thought even though our day was outstanding, and the last couple anniversaries were fun too, tailgating Nascar with champagne and lawn chairs and having a midnight picnic in the park, nothing could compare to the San Francisco trip I planned our first year when he got to watch his 49ers play. But to me, I thought yesterday was the best yet because it was all from his heart. He thought out every detail all on his own and had it take place in the most memorable of places–

And it was all for me.

That, is nothing short, of priceless.

;)

2006-08-24T11:19:00.000-04:00

TO MY BELOVED HUSBAND,

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BABY!

ONE True Love, 17 YEARS together, 4 YEARS of marriage, on my mind EVERY MINUTE, and FOREVER & ALWAYS in my heart.

I love you.

:)

2006-08-22T13:41:00.000-04:00

Earl ripped his toe nail off at work the other day.

Well, not "off" really. It is still on a hinge of skin down by the cuticle - looks kind of like a flip top nail now. Can we say OUCH??

How, you ask? Hand truck, backing up, tripped over a box behind his foot, hand truck kept coming, off comes the nail.

Its the toe next to the big one, whatever that one is called - the pointer toe, I guess. Or - the little piggy who stayed home.

I got the honors of bandgaging it up for him.

On a happier note, I have discovered that my life will come to an end by the means of poison. Always good to know these things.

You scored as Posion. Your death will be by poison,

probably because you are a glutton and are around

so many people that it would be easy to get

away with it.

Several important people in history share your fate.

Posion

80%

Suicide

80%

Bomb

73%

Gunshot

67%

Disappear

47%

Accident

40%

Suffocated

40%

Eaten

27%

Natural Causes

27%

Drowning

20%

Disease

Stabbed

Cut Throat

How Will You Die??
created with QuizFarm.com

2006-08-14T10:30:00.000-04:00

TWO WEEKENDS - ONE POST.

Oh boy.

Don't you worry none. It moves faster than the Delaware.

Saturday the 5th, we went down to Musikfest and saw Alice In Chains. THAT was an amazing show. Damn good, I must say. It was just a little odd used to seeing a colored fella with an afro singing instead of a blonde Irish looking junkie. The audience was singing nice and loud, but no one was moving or dancing. Except for our group. We were dancing, you can be sure. The chics behind us were singing so loud and off key, one of our friends dared me to ask them a question...

me: "Excuse me. Do you know who sings this song?"
chick: "What?"
me: "Who sings this song?"
chick: "Umm duh, Alice In Chains!"
me: "That's what I thought."
chick: "Umm, you do know you're at an Alice in Chains concert, dont' you?"
me: "Umm, you do know that was a joke - don't you?"

I was supposed to say, after she told me who was singing - "well then you should let them sing it" but I didnt feel like getting into a brawl.

It wasn't just me that noticed the crowd sucked. Alice did too. And to show their disproval, they didn't do an encore. Once they were finished singing, that was it.

Do you remember when Howard Stern punished the audience by playing "Send In The Clowns?" Well, instead of an encore, Alice did the same thing. "Send In The Clowns" was playing over the speakers as we exited the field.

But they were punishing the others - not us. We were good fans. Just so you know.

Then on Sunday, we rented a towncar and J & M joined us to see Poison & Cinderella. What? Who?? I know, I know. J and I are totally stuck in the 80’s. Earl and M just came along for the ride.

The town car was a last minute idea of mine because no one wants to get stuck driving after a concert. I called two rental places, both quoted me the same price, but I went with the one that spoke English and booked it for 4pm Sunday.

Well - Can you believe that car-guy-son-of-a-bitch called me back at 11:45pm Saturday night to tell me that I had been misquoted and it would be almost double what we thought? He assumed that I would have no choice but to accept this because it would be almost impossible to find another car at such a late time. Ha! He assumed wrong because I told him no thank you and called my back-up Indian guy - who I woke up out of bed – but I had no choice. He understood my situation and agreed to be our driver for the same price we originally had been told.

And you know me, I sent a nasty email to the first car people telling them they should have eaten their mistake – funny thing though, I never got a reply.

Something to consider too – renting a town car is a good thing to do for a concert, but remember, the town car usually drops you off and goes away, so you wont have a car to store anything in…

Well you cant go sit in a parking lot before a concert without beer and sandwiches, right? So we brought some but in a Styrofoam cooler. That way, in case we lost the cooler, it wouldn’t matter. Unfortunately though, we weren’t able to finished all the beer or the food before the concert started. Just as we were looking for places to hide our stuff, J’s coworker just happened to be parked in the same lot we were sitting in. She said we could put our cooler in her car. Needless to say, we never caught back up with them afterwards… sooo bye-bye leftovers.

By the way, that concert KICKED ASS.

Well, our band kicked ass. We weren’t there for Brett. I mean, poison schmoison - we wanted our CINDER-freaking-ELLA! Hell yeah baby. At least that’s what my shirt said (did you know that Wal-mart was selling Cinderella shirts?? I never thought I’d see the day.) Anyway, they were AMAZING! And I am proud to say, I knew every word to every song they sang.

Now for this last weekend -

Forewarning - During the month of August, do not expect to easiely find inner tubes to float down the Delaware river in.

I learned this the hard way on Saturday.

Earl, J & M, and I decided to go a-floatin’ down the Delaware sometime last week, but waited until the morning of to look for tubes. Obviously, we thought we could just run out and pick some up – but that was not the case. It took me 2 ½ hours to finally end up with two snow tubes.

I went to Walmart, then KB Toys, then a pool store, then Sports Authority (who had two but wanted $80 a piece for them), then Dicks, then another Walmart… the whole time being on the cell with J to see what they were finding out by them. Finally, Leslie’s Pool Supplies sold me two snow tubes at half price (because they are winter items) and J & M ended up with a big floating triangle thing and a blow-up kayak.

We all ended up meeting at the bridge in Easton around 4pm. It was then that we realized that we weren’t even sure where to drop the second vehicle off at that would bring us back when we were done floating. We decided to actually make the bridge the ending spot and drive upstream to the boat launch to begin our float. By the time we got to the launch and blew our tubes up, it was about 5pm.

Not a good start.

But the day was perfect, the sky was clear and blue, and the river felt like bath water. So in we went and started to drift – very very very very very slowwwwwwwly.

It was so relaxing. We had our drinks, we had our friends, and we had the perfect day. We looked like one of those beer commercials with good friends having a special time... What more could you ask for? Well, how about a little current. Just a little one. Please. Nope, nothing but glassy, quiet waters.

Of course at some point, everybody ended up in the water. When’s the last time you swam in the Delaware? It was so nice. But eventually, as the sun went below the trees, it got a little chilly in the shadows, so we pretty much stayed in the water the rest of the trip.

Thankfully, someone brought flippers to help with our drift. I strapped them to my feet, wrapped a beer cozy around my hand, grabbed the rope that we were all tied to, and began to tow us down the river.

Lets just say I got my exercise for the day.

We finally saw our destination, but never seemed to get any closer to it. That’ll happen when you’re moving a whole 4-miles an hour. By now it was almost 9pm, it was completely dark, and we were freezing and hungry. So M was sent on ahead in the kayak to fetch the truck. The rest of us paddled ourselves to shore, climbed our wet selves out into the cold air, and lugged the tubes and triangle up the hill to the road. M came by with the truck blasting with heat, and we all piled in with our deflated floaties.

Lessons learned?

1) Don’t try to buy your tubes in August
2) Don’t try to buy your tubes in August the same day you want to use them.
3) Don’t get on the river after 4pm.

At least we’re prepared now for next time. Oh yeah, Abi - I finally bought the spray sunscreen like you said. Good stuff man! And just in case you're wondering, I slept really, really good that night.

Sunday, I had to run out and get Aspirin for Jack. He ran from the family room into the living room - that's when I heard a loud YELP. He forgets that he is not a young pup anymore and tends to over do it sometimes. Poor bubs. His back right leg was pretty lame. The Aspirin seem to help, and I massaged his leg several times through out the night. We even let him sleep on the bed with us souly because he wanted to. Seriously, who's going to deny a lame dog what he wants? Not us.

We also got to watched the Musikfest fireworks from our roof. Actually, Earl was on the roof. I was out on the sidewalk pulling weeds. I don't know why I can't just sit still.

Would you be surprised if I told you when I came out the front door, there were two 15-year olds making out against my house?

I didn't think so.

She was very pretty and he was a punk. Both gave me the look of death for disturbing them. Yeah, sorry kids for walking in on your groping session against my house. All the while I was sitting in my family room watching TV, this was going on against the same wall. That's disturbing. And such a shame, too. Because as they walked away, I thought to myself that by the end of the summer, she'll be pregnant. And that kid she's with won't give a damn and will move on to the next one.

On a different note - I made my famous Chicken Marcella for dinner. According to Earl's belly, this is one dish I can ace.

So there you have it in a nutshell. See? I told you it moved faster than the Delaware.
What did you do this weekend?
:)

2006-08-08T13:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, two pit bulls killed a chihuahua.

That, they say, is not "news".... News would be "Chihuahua is killed after attacking two pit bulls."

Where did this happen? Among many places around the country, yesterday it happened over yonder by me. The story is tragic. My heart sank reading about poor little 6-pound 5-year old Jinx getting torn apart by two unconfined, non-rabie vaccinated, unlicensed pits. I feared for my own dogs.

Why? Well not because I hate Pit Bulls. I hate the people who own them and don't know how to raise them correctly, or confine them properly, like I do my own dogs.

After reading stories like Jinx's, most would think "ooo oooo such evil, evil nasty monsters."

But I ask, who were the owners of these pits and where were they while their dogs ran around to wreck havock on poor Jinx?

The answer, my friends, is that the pits were own by one 19-year old boy and one 20-year old boy who did not even live in the same house. Neither had the dogs confined, neither were around to see their dogs roaming free, and neither were responsible enough to keep their dogs in their own yards.

Every.
Dog Owner.
Regardless Of What Breed You Own.
HAS To Be.
A RESPONSIBLE Pet Owner.

End Of Story.

If you own a German Shephard, know how to raise it properly.
If you own a Border Collie, know how to raise it properly.
If you own a Rabbit, know how to raise it properly.
If you own a Python, know how to raise it properly.
And if you own a Pit Bull, know how to raise it properly.

Before you buy any dog, research what the breed requires to be happy and healthy. Pit Bulls need exercise and love. Too many - TOO MANY - are owned simply because of their "reputation" and I am so SICK and TIRED of these IGNORANT and IRRESPOSIBLE children owning any type of dog.

ANY dog roaming free has the potential of getting into a fight. Especially when you own a breed that is known to be "dog-aggresive".

In my area, almost every male teenager I see - is walking a pit bull. Do they have any freaking idea how to care for this breed?

My answer is NO. Just read the papers.

It is my opinion that after so many problems with Pits, one should have to have a permit to own one. You need one for a turtle, why not a Pit?

The permit would state that you have been through so many hours of being educated and tested by the state on the proper rearing of such an animal. This alone may deter many from getting involved with Pits to begin with, possibly reducing incidences like Jinx's and even worse ones I'm sure you've heard. As it stands now, a litter born in anyone's basement is a welcome invitation for the next idiot to be "cool" without realizing the responsibility behind it.

A dog’s behavior that suggests cruel or misguided upbringing may result in a psychological evaluation of the owner, the home, and living conditions. Misguiding or improper raising of such an animal would be considered a potential threat to the well being of others, and fines or possible jail time would incur.

The soul purpose of the permit would be for the good of all. It would protect the owner from an improperly raised dog. It would protect the dog from a uneducated, ill intentioned, and/or negligent owner. And it would protect us neighbors from a misguided and/or maltreated dog's behavior.

This may seem like a lot to go through just to own a Pit Bull, or any other breeds with such a reputation. But there are just too many incidences of violence to ignore. Besides, if you truly loved and respected the breed, you would do it.

Because it is not the Pit Bull that needs to be punished.
It is the Pit Bull that needs our help.

Knowledge is power. Do yourself a favor - watch this - link

As a matter of fact, everyone who wants have a CHILD - should have to have a permit before having it. Perhaps in your town, you may not see the need for this - but in my town, almost every 14 to 15-year old girl has a baby in her belly or in her arms.

The penelty for her not getting a permit before getting pregnant? No welfare. And there isn't a single official who would grant a 14-year old a permit to reproduce.

Obviously I haven't all the answers or thought this out completely, but it sounds like a good idea to me
;\

2006-08-01T09:41:00.000-04:00

Today is going to be 114 degrees with heat index. Tomorrow will be hotter. Of course, the thermostat in our air condition that cools the whole downstairs died, so the unit freezes if you leave it on longer than 30 minutes. I haven’t had a chance to get a new thermostat, so in order to keep 4 cats and 2 dogs cool, I have locked them all in the bedroom while we’re at work today. There, they have everything they need, including 2 air conditioners, one fan, a TV (sorry, no cable), food, water, kitty litter box, and a queen size bed to lounge on.

We had to stop and get gas before jumping on the highway. I paid, Earl pumped, and we both stood there sweating while the price of gas went up another penny.

I looked him and said, "You know in about three months or so, we're going to be standing here freezing." He just kind of looked me.

We ended up being very late to work because some crazy bad traffic. We didn’t want to run the air in the car because the traffic was already sucking up all our gas, so we had the vent on with the windows down. At 7am, it was already 84 degrees. They say it feels more like 91, I say, whats the difference? Its freaking hot. The engine was getting very warm, my back and legs were sticking to the seat which carved pretty fabric lines into my thighs, and my temper was shooting out the sun roof. We were moving 10 mph for 5 miles straight of bumper-to-bumper morons. Finally, we got to the cause of the back up -

A stupid freaking electric sign announcing lane closures - this. Saturday.

WTF? It's Tuesday people. I'm just trying to get to work. I don't care what lanes are closed on Saturday.

Finally, we get to work. I marched right into my office and sent an email to the highway commission. How do I know their email address? Because they’ve been sending me emails about meetings and stuff regarding the highway. Ha. Like I have time for that. I guess they got my email address from my EZPass application, and now that I have line of communication open with them, you can bet I will use it.

Here is my email.

“PLEASE, I beg you. Do not put any distractions up on the highway during rush hour. Particularly, ELECTRIC SIGNS.

This morning, Rt. 78E was backed up for at least 5 MILES because of an electric sign right by the 287Exits. The sign informed us that there would be lane closures on Saturday.... Like any of us care. We're just trying to get to work. Besides, there isn’t any traffic on Saturday. We appreciate the head's up, but send us an email about it or put in the paper...

BECAUSE THIS SIGN caused 5 MILES of back up and we didn’t move more than 10 mph the whole time on the HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR.

In case you haven't noticed - COMMUTERS HAVE A.D.D. We get distracted by our own radio, lawnmowers in the median, garbage on shoulder, the same exits we pass everyday... Please don't expect us to be able to read and drive at the same time. We simply cant handle signs with the pretty lights.

Less distractions = less traffic, less fender benders, and less road rage.

The highway commission needs to do everything in its power to NOT cause any more traffic than there already is.

Please.... TAKE DOWN THAT FREAKING ELECTRIC SIGN. Because even though we read it today, we'll have to stop to read it again tomorrow.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,
Tired 78 commuter.”

Will it do any good? No. I don’t expect it to. No one ever listens to the people anyway. But it made me feel better writing it.

So, how was your morning? Is it warm by you???

By the way, my word verification was "potzow". I like that. I think it means "gadzooks" or something similar. For instance, "Potzow! Did you see that?!" or "Holy potzow it's hot!"

See? It works both ways.

;\

2006-07-31T13:23:00.000-04:00

CLEAN

Illustration Friday -

Brothers Q and Ming, 3 years apart and inseparable.
:)

2006-07-28T12:05:00.000-04:00

Ummm....

And....

So what?

It's going to be a long weekend.

Did I tell you? I have given up on people. I am done with all but a handful of them. If its not the failure to use the all to easy turn signal, or pulling to the side of the road when needing to stop, its pretending I simply don't matter. And I will tell you right now, I do. Perhaps I just expect more than I should.

At least that's what Dr. Phil said.

Dr. Phil said that I am the type of person who others see as sensible, cautious, careful and practical. He said they see me as clever, gifted, talented, but modest. He said I am not a person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but I am someone who is extremely loyal to friends I do make and I expect the same loyalty in return. He said that the people who really know me realize it takes a lot to shake my trust in my friends, but equally that it takes me a long time to get over it if that trust is ever broken.

That's what he said.

I shall become a hermit and live atop a distant mountain among the wildlife. I will hand out VIP passes to just a few of the lovelies. All others will have their vehicles towed so dont even try to climb up and apologize for being on my list. And soon, I will have the polar bears in charge of everything.

Then you'll be sorry.

Not you. The guy sitting next to you. Yeah, you know who you are.
:

2006-07-19T16:01:00.000-04:00

I would like to announce that for the first EVER....

I won at Scrabble....

By using all 7 letters...

On my very first turn...

What was the word, you ask? Well, I will tell you. It was -

SADISTS

8 points (double letter on the A)

And I almost did it again in second game. And yes, we did play a second game, you see, because the first one was over so fast, because I WON, right away, with SADISTS.

I'm curious though. Is there another word I could have spelled? Anyone? Anyone?

;)

2006-07-17T20:47:00.000-04:00

Okay girls, I can officially say now, as I have just completed my first class with my new shock absorber, that it was worth every penny. And how many pennies was it, you ask? To answer your question Abi, it cost... OOoohh just... $40 beans. Ewwwww. Well, maybe it wasn't worth EVERY penny. Maybe I would say it was worth... $32.49... but not $40, cause I still felt some tissue tugging while doing 40 jumping jacks, but it kept me solid doing everything else. I'm happy with my purchase and recommend the product. I give it too boobies up.

And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, read the post below - AND BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THAT WEBSITE.

You must, you must, you must. You must protect your bust. Hahaaa.

;\

2006-07-17T14:11:00.000-04:00

I am so excited. A while back, Earl sent me a website regarding the new SHOCK ABSORBER SPORTS BRA. I found it to be exactly what me and my poor sore boobs are desperately looking for. I’ve come to realize that while Wal-mart may be the ideal place to buy some things, it is not any girl over a size “C” sport’s bra headquarters.

It took me months and months to justify spending more than $20 on a quality sports bra, but the more I have to watch them try to knock my self out, I realized that no price is too much for comfort.

I discovered that you can purchase the SHOCK ABSORBER through Victoria’s Secret, so yesterday, we headed to the mall to see if it was all it was cracked up to be.

Now, I know I said I would NEVER buy from VS again. Their overpriced stuff is made from solid gold crap. But I believe that they are only a retailer for this product, so I figured it was okay to walk in and buy something from that wretched store.

And that's what I mumbled walking over the dirty pink carpet – “blah blah blah… wretched store… blah blah.”

Earl, of course, was torn between checking out the new Xbox games next door and going into Victoria’s with me. Ultimately, Victoria won but only briefly. He stayed long enough to help me find the sports bra section, then headed out to do some man shopping.

I grabbed my size, found the dressing room, figured out how the whole criss-cross back action thing worked, and then put it to the test with the ultimate challenge - jumping jacks.

I was satisfied. Very satisfied in fact. Yes, you bounce. But not very much and it was a very comfortable fit. I grabbed one more, made my purchase, and joined Earl next door in the game store.

Me: “I got two”

E: “Did you do some jumping jacks to make sure?”

Me: “yes.”

E: “I knew you would. I was standing here looking at the games thinking, right now Amy is doing jumping jacks in the dressing room”.

Me: “You know me too well”.

Tonight, I have an hour and a half kickboxing class. I will get to see just how well this miracle “maximum support” bra works. I can’t wait to see how much I don’t bounce while I’m bouncing around. I'll report back later to let you know how I do.

If you are interested in seeing why this product convinced me to give it a try, check out their website – Although, do yourself a favor - do not view with boys around. It very well may replace their favorite magazine...

SHOCK ABSORBER

:0

2006-07-14T10:06:00.000-04:00

I'd like to take a moment to sing y'all a little diddly in regards to people throwing meat and other items over my fence...

Ohhh Lord, wont you buy me, a tall vinyl fence - My friends allll have wood ones, I must make a-mends. My chain-link, is too short, and made up of holes... Ohhh Lord, wont you buy me, a tall vinyl fence.

Thank you.

Not much new to report. Just the same old same old. I’ve taken some time almost every evening to do something in the yard to make it look nicer. Its always the perfect temperature and just so beautiful out around 8pm, so if I can pour myself a nice glass of Merlot and pull some weeds or transplant something or arrange some rocks by the door, then why not. It’s my time to relax. After devoting the first 10 hours of my day to my job and then another hour and a half to working out, I find this time to be therapeutic and very much my highlight, and I’d rather unwind in my garden then sit on the couch and watch TV.

Yesterday in sword class, my fellow swordster was telling me that she had been out for two weeks after being bit by her neighbor’s Pit Bull. She pulled the bandage back on her calf to reveal two of the largest, darkest, deepest puncture wounds I’d ever seen. It made me gasped.

I asked her how it happened, and she said that after a few times of the Pit Bull breaking the short chain the owners had it on, they decided to give it a longer chain. The problem was, the chain was now long enough for the dog to come right into her yard. So when Sword Girl went out to mow her lawn, the pit just crossed over and got her leg.

Now, Sword Girl is a wonderful animal lover. She does not hold anything against the dog. In fact, she said it was horribly hot and muggy that day, and the lawn mower was loud and scary, and thinks the dog was just in a bad mood or something.

In the past, she has helped to catch the dog after it has broken loose. She has feed it cookies and befriended it. But all this made no difference when it decided it didn’t want her to be mowing her lawn. In fact, the bite was so deep into the muscle that the hospital could not stitch it, and ended up leaving the two punctures open so it could heal.

So not only was Sword Girl out of commission for two weeks but she paid her own medical bill – the owners never even offered to. She is not going to sue either as she wants to keep peace between them, or something. Nor did she do anything more about it than report the attack but only because the hospital made her. In fact, the only thing the owners did was shorten the chain again - but only after Sword Girl asked them to do so.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, the dog has been loose three times since it bit her just 14 days ago. She even had to call the owners to come get the dog off her porch.

Her other worry is for her own German Shepard. Pit Bulls are dog aggressive, and if this particular one is willing to bite a human, then her Shepard may be in danger if left unattended outside.

I applaud Sword Girl’s self-control and kind heart. I only hope it doesn’t make her sorry in the future if anything else happens to her or her Shepard.

As any good mom would admit, I could stand being bit myself, but if something were to threaten the life of my kids, you could bet your sweet ass I would not hesitate to correct the problem. If this incident ever happened to me, I would certainly not be so nice about it. It would burn my britches to know that the Pit’s owners might get away with out learning a lesson from all this. I would not be upset with the dog, but I would be outraged with the ridiculous, irresponsible, ignorant owners. Yes, things like this do have a tendency to happen, but for God's sake, be apologetic and offer to help rectify the situation. People like that should be banned from owning any animal ever again. I have to wonder what they let their actual children get away with.

And without question, my medical bills would be coming out of their pockets.

I do not believe that all Pit Bulls are bad. I believe it has to do with how they are raised. I know plenty of Pits that are just dandy dogs. I think any kind of dog can be bad if in the hands of irresponsible pet owners. Pit Bulls have a bad reputation. Are they all a bit unstable? Perhaps. I don’t know. Would I own one? Probably not. But I’m sure if I ever did, I would not have a problem with it getting loose or have it biting people.

It all comes down to this - If you own an aggressive canine, whatever breed, who is proficient in the art of escaping, do something about it.

This is all just so typical for people in my area. They do not understand common sense or have any inkling of courtesy or remorse for any wrong doing on their part. They simply don’t see that anything is ever their fault. And they all seem to own Pit Bulls.

Why is this? How were these people raised? One can’t help but to see the pattern here. If the people are like this, how could you expect their pets to be well behaved?

Am I being a bit harsh? Hey, I calls it as I sees it. In the words of Forrest Gump – “Stupid is as stupid does”.

And that's all I have to say about that.

;)

2006-07-10T12:02:00.000-04:00

Hi all! Guess what? I'm feeling better! Yeah!! After eleven days of feeling like yuck, I'm finally feeling more like my old self again. Thanks to the world of medicine, I guess.

I felt good enough to clean my porch, clean my driveway, clean out the fridge, clean out from under the kitchen sink, clean the pond filters...

Which brings me to -

The most disgusting thing this whole weekend.

Okay. I may be over exaggerating a bit, but tell me this doesn't make your skin crawl.

I’m working in my yard outside when I hear a slight buzzing sound. I turned towards the walkway that leads down to the pond and noticed a few flies circling around. I think, ‘Oh no, please don’t tell me there’s something dead down there.’ Reluctantly, I peep down the walkway… and see this thing lying there.

It’s a good foot long, fleshy, meaty and covered in about 1000 flies – hence the buzzing sound I hear. They are undoubtedly laying their little maggots in it.

At this point, I can’t even tell what it was. It looked like a rabbit, or something. But as I got closer, it started to look more familiar...

What? Is that a… a… Oh my God. That’s disgusting.

Yup. It was a ham bone. Sitting on my walkway.

Thankfully, I could tell it was not more than a few hours old. But had I not noticed it right then, it would have sat there in this heat, getting more and more rancid and rotten and full of death and worms and my dogs would have eaten it and then gotten in bed with me and licked my face.

Now, my walkway is a tight squeeze between my house and my fence. My Spanish neighbors, you remember the ones, live on the other side of the fence. They are the only ones that would be able to throw anything over. There is no possible way for anyone else to throw anything even near there. Just them. And it just so happens that they had a party that day that lasted hours and hours and hours. Now, I can’t prove it, but I just know that one of them or their drunk friends were cooking and decided to get rid of the bone by tossing it into my yard for my dogs.

Some may think, “well aren’t they considerate for thinking my dogs might like a juicy ham bone.”

And if they had asked, I would have said, “Why thank you. They would love it. Hand it to me and I’ll give it to them. By the way, how old is it?”

The problem lies in the way they just decide to do whatever they please. From parking their car in front of my driveway so I can’t get out, to coming in to the yard to get a ball and leaving the gate open, to throwing their meat scraps over the fence. What if I were to hand their 3-year old a piece of meat through the fence without asking them first? Of course I would never do that. It’s not my kid to feed and I don’t know what he’s allowed to eat. But it’s the same thing.

It’s just rude and gross to find a part of dead animal in your yard. Who knows how long it would have sat there if I didn’t notice it yesterday. Sitting there rotting, festering, covered in flies - attracting RATS and God knows what else.

And of course I can’t help to even think that perhaps they actually hate my dogs and poisoned the damn ham.

I shutter to think.

Needless to say, I shoveled it up, flies and all, tied it up in a bag, and tossed in the garbage.

Yo esse, don't chuck your meat at me. If you want to be nice to my dogs, ask me if they can have the bone. Don’t just throw it in my yard.

So, am I over exaggerating? Am I being over protective? I dont think so. I go with what I feel, and I feel grossed out and angry, and above all - amazed that some people just don't have a clue.

;)

2006-07-05T22:04:00.000-04:00

I’ve been trying to stop myself from running around like a nutso so I can post something, but I wont listen to me and just keep on going. I go and I go, even when I don’t feel well… and what does it get me?

Bronchitis.

But before I go into that, I just want to let you know that this post may appear long, but it flows fast and has a couple yummies at the bottom as a reward for getting through the whole thing without falling asleep.

You won't fall asleep. I promise.

Soooo back to the bronchitis....

I knew something was wrong but I didn’t stop long enough to figure out what. Ain’t that always the way? I just knew that as long as I popped some Liquid Gel Advil, I could do what I needed to do. So from last Wednesday till today, I dealt. I just coughed and sweated and wheezed – I’m sorry, “rasped” (wheezing, I’ve been told, is what you do when you have pneumonia) and felt my eyeballs want to fall out and avoided touching my skin cause it hurt and went to bed wondering if perhaps I would die before I woke up again.

No worries. I had Advil.

So after a long holiday weekend, I woke up this morning to go to work for the first time since Friday afternoon, and well, I felt like death.

And lucky me, it decided to RAIN right before we left. Now, it started to RAIN at 6:40am, and by 7am, I looked out the kitchen window to see a raging river of muddy water rolling on the road. It looked like an entire universe of chocolate milk was a-coming down the mountain. It was incredible to see how much water can fall in just 15 minutes. We got in our car and started off to work, driving through it all. At the main intersection, the force of the water popped the manhole cover up to a 75-degree angle, and hit it so hard that it made a 4-foot fountain in the center of the road. It was quit impressive, yes. But it was also pretty scary knowing your house is in this mess, and you’re about to leave it for 8-hours to go to work.

This rain never once let up the entire ride into work. I couldn’t do more than 30-40 mph the whole 55 miles in. There was so much water on the road that I could feel us going in and out of hydroplaning. And the rain was so heavy on the windshield it was almost impossible to see what lane I was in.

Needless to say, we were late to work.

But I had to go. So I went. And I called the doctor first thing and said, “I’m sick. Do something.” And he did. He told me to come right in, listen to every piece of lung I own, gave me pills and wrote me a note to go home. I told him that I couldn’t go home because it took me so long to get in. Plus, I work with my husband and couldn’t really just leave whenever I felt like it. So he scribbled out today’s date and wrote in tomorrows, and made me pinky swear I would stay home in bed. Okay, we didn’t really pinky swear but it was implied, I’m sure. But before the HMO timer went off, I tried to squeeze in a couple more requests, like…. “What do you think of this bruise?” and “Can I get my cholesterol checked real quick? I want to see if my oatmeal is working.” But his response was that he was working emergency and that I have to come back (and pay my co-pay again and miss more work) if I wanted to get stuck with needles… so we skipped that.

Somehow I will blame my high cholesterol on him, trust me. See, I tried and he refused. Hence, not my fault.

I got back to work and handed my boss my note.

Get this… He told me I could do whatever I needed to do to get better, and if I wanted to leave right then, I could. Well hot damn. Except… I have an deadline on Friday for something and needed to get as much done as possible now… cause my doctor told me I wont be in tomorrow…

But, not to let something good completely slip by, we did leave ½ hour early. Just to, you know, please the boss.

We hit the bank to cash my paycheck, but the bank teller was brand spanking new and it took her 30 MINUTES to do it because she had to help everybody first even though we had been waiting longer and then demanded to see ID but wouldn’t send the canister through the shoot thingy so we could send it on over and then wouldn’t give my check back when Earl said SCREW IT we would come back later, which meant we had to park the car and go inside where we could watch her count. each bill. one. at. a. time.

So even though we left a little early from work, we still ended up getting home at the same time.

Of course, the road to home was blocked off because of flooding and there were no detour signs to tell us what roads were opened. We EVENTUALLY found the roads that were not flooded and got ourselves home.

Which is where I am now. Typing. Looking forward to sitting in bed all day long tomorrow because I have been instructed by a physician to do so.

Oh well, okay then.

However.

On a totally different note….

My sad news to report is that our beloved Oscar, Miss Panama Red, took a turn for the worse a couple days after her tank cleaning, and was very unfortunately unable to recover. She died sometime early Saturday morning.

We had done everything we could to help her and make sure the water was at correct levels, but apparently she was suffering from something unknown to us – quite possibly even simple old age. I cried for her and buried her pale body under the Rose of Sharon bush with everybody else we loved of fins and feathers. I placed a cross atop her grave and thanked her for stay with us, wished her well on her journey to heaven, and asked the bugs to go gentle as they returned her back into the Earth.

Mind you, I am not making light of this. I am not trying to sound humorous, that is just how I write. We loved our Panama and this was a great loss to our family. She has been with us for 8 years - though we thought 7 before and realized that no... no, it has been 8 - and there is a definate empty space in our home, and the tank, without her. Everytime I walk by - she is not there. And everytime I visit the garden, there she be. Not in water, but in dirt ~ somehow not right, but necessary. And she is with the others now and I know she had a good life... as best as she could have had in a big glass tank... and she was loved. Very, very loved... more so than any carnivorous fish in any South American river ever could have been loved.

Perhaps even more mournful - Poor man Dempsey has not left the corner since she passed. Amazing, I have to say. This Dempsey, as mean as he is, was most certainly in love with his Panama. We thought forever that he tolerated her because she was twice his size. But in the end, he did not leave her side. In fact, and I kid you not, when she was in her worst hours, she would start to fall to one side. The Dempsey, being next to her, would go up under her belly and stand her back up. He never left her till the end, and the corner in which I found her is where he remains. It is oh so sad to watch. I just want to hug him.

Panama Red 1998-2006 Swim to heaven, my dear friend. It's upstream.

But wait. I don't want you to go away with that tight squeezing "I just swallowed a walnut" sensation in your throat, as even I am choked up yet again. To make you think of something happy, I will show you the moon from Sunday night.

Now doesn’t that feel a little better?

:)

2006-06-27T12:45:00.000-04:00

OKAY! It seems you all DO want to see the miracle of birth. So here ya go. Enjoy.

The beautiful mother to be is Hoya. She had a happy and healthy baby girl and I have a fuzzy new neice.

Don't forget to check out Molly sneaking in to the picture. She's very curious about what's going on. Remember, minature donkeys are pretty much a cow's super nanny. Their jobs are to lay a hee-haww smack down on big bad beasts, so I guess she's just making sure everything is coming out okay.

What? No screaming?? No "breathbreathbreath - hoohoohoo"...
Hey, maybe we should try standing up.
--------------------------------------------------------
I included close-ups of the action shots so you don't miss out on anything...

Yoooo donkey. You wanna stop staring and give me a hand??

Well?? Does she look like me... or the bull?

------------------------------------------------

Causeeee, I can't see her yet....

----------------------------------------------------
I'm a-lookin' Ms. Hoya... She's got Lincoln's nose...

--------------------------------------------
But your eyes, I think.

See now? Being slapped on your ass is far better than dropped on your head.

----------------------------------------------
Ahhh! Baby girl! A little gooey... but definately a natural red head.

------------------------------------------
These Highlands are so calm. Hoya didn't even break a sweat. And she certainly didnt mind mom helping baby girl stand up.

Hey lady... You mind?? Can I.... can I at least get my bearings first? Quit pushinggg....

----------------------------------------
Standddd..... upppppp......

I feel like stick cow... aren't my things supposed to bend or something? Please don't let go...

-------------------------------------
The first hello.

Oooh... I know you!!! Watch the head... little sore.

As of yet, baby girl doesnt have a name. But I'll let you as soon as she does.

:)

2006-06-26T15:07:00.000-04:00

To add to the happy ending of the Sara story, I called today and found out that she tested negative for feline leukemia and AIDS, and the vet will keep her and the kids in foster care until the kittens are ready to be adopted.

How cool is that?! That story just keeps getting better and better.

This morning started off with a scolding by Mr. Clean (a.k.a. the garbage man). He was a very tall, muscular, bald guy with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. I forgot to the drag the can out last night so was doing it this morning when the truck pulled up. I had a couple bags that wouldn’t fit in the can, and this apparently made me “over my limit”. He said he would do it this time, but only this time, and I apologized and told him it would never happen again…

It’s the only thing one can do when being reprimanded by such a person.

On Saturday, we celebrated Earl’s 34th birthday. He was up at 4am to go fishing, and I was out the door by 11:30 to get my hair done. I was delayed because of some sort of festival in town. I believe it was Puerto Rican Day - again. As I got in line to make a left turn through the intersection, three cop cars drove up and blocked the lane I wanted to turn in to.

Here is the chitter-chatter in my brain:

Oh freaking hell. Now I’m going to be late. Okay, so I cant go left... I can just go straight… fine. Let’s go…. We aren’t we moving… Why aren’t we moving? We are just sitting here… in this lane…. the lane we cant turn from… while the lane on my right is moving forward through the light… why aren’t we merging into that lane… Why are just sitting here??? Look at that! The cars behind me are backed all the way up to the Comfort Suits! Okay, the light just turned red… we better start moving when it turns green… Its green, here we go… why aren’t we moving… what is the major malfunction?? Who’s at the front of this line??? Hey you…. hey asshole! Merge your car… WHY wont you MOVE your car?? Red light… okay, green light…. WHY ARE WE STILL SITTING HERE??? I can’t get over… no one will let me over… why wont anyone let me over??? DAMMIT… the light is red again… now it’s green…. WHY ARE WE STILL SITTING HERE???? WHAT THE FUCK???? OH BLOODY HELL!

I finally caught a break in traffic and got in the right lane. Then the light turned red and I stopped right next to the poop head who refuses to merge. He appeared to be a little Paraguayan man, or something. There was a woman in the back seat eating a lollypop with her window down, so I took the opportunity to inform her of the problem her vehicle is causing.

“WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING THERE??? YOU CANT JUST SIT THERE!! YOU HAVE TO MOVE YOUR CAR! YOU ARE BLOCKING EVERYBODY FROM MOVING! YOU CAN NOT JUST SIT THERE!!”

She looked at me and pointed at the cop car blocking the lane.

“IT DOESN’T MATTER - YOU HAVE TO GO STRAIGHT THEN. YOU CAN NOT JUST SIT THERE. YOU HAVE TO KEEP IT MOVING. YOU ARE BLOCKING EVERYBODY BEHIND YOU!!!!! MOVE YOUR CAR!!!!….

GODDDDDDD!!!!!!”

To my surprise, she actually nodded her head in agreement. Wow, I thought. I think I won! The light turned green. After I waited for the two cars running the red to get through, I floored it. In my rear view mirror I could see the Paraguayan car changed its signal from left… to right… and mush itself into moving traffic.

Thank God. Everyone in traffic that day can send me thank-you notes in the mail. And that’s all I have to say about that.

I had an hour to calm down while getting my hair done. The shampoo girl massaged the stress right out of my scalp. Getting your hair done is total therapy.

I left from there and headed to Wal-mart for Earl’s birthday presents. I soon became very frustrated with my shopping experience. I simply couldn’t find anything I was looking for, and it seemed to me that Wal-mart’s selection had diminished. I found him a pair of sandals, but ultimately had to go next door to T.J.Maxx for everything else.

At T.J.’s, I found him a pair of sneakers, a fishing hat with a wide brim, and a snazzy new wallet. Then stopped and picked him up his favorite tequila and some cigars, and headed on home.

Around 7pm, two other couples joined us and we went out to eat at Pickles. The food was way too expensive and not even that great - in fact, the best part of the whole meal were the freaking pickles - but the conversation and the company was priceless. Oh, and I just remembered, I had them wrap up two slices of Snicker Pie for Earl’s birthday cake that we never got a chance to eat… Guess I know what’s for dessert tonight. Going out to eat is so much fun and we will definitely not wait so long to do it again – somewhere else of course, with better, cheaper food… like Taco Bell.

Then we headed out for drinks at the new night-club/sports bar that opened up in the reconstructed part of the old steel mill. It’s the first taste we got of the new “pre-casino, everything has to have a steel mill theme, Bethlehem”. I have to admit, the club was way cool. What’s funny is you’d never know it was there as it just looked like the steel mill factory from the outside. Inside, they kept the industrial steel mill look with steel beams and pipes and stuff everywhere. And this club was HUGE. There were giant TV screens everywhere (two of them as big as my car), a restaurant, and an upstairs bar. And that’s just from what I could see from where we were standing. It was packed full of rich college kids spending mommy and daddy’s money on liquor. I think that besides the owner, we may have been the oldest people there. But it became apparent after our first round that this too, was way too expensive for us to enjoy for too long.

But I have a feeling that the prices were so high for a reason. They want the preppy college scene, not the locals. Except us, we’re good locals. They’ll be more than happy to take our all money.

This was the first night club I had been to in years, and it was exciting to be out. I’m just not used to paying that much for a drink. One of the most refreshing things was that it was a smoke-free club. I could breath, which was really nice. But soon enough, the group headed outside to the smoking patio. It smelled like either like a high school hallway or a dorm room out there - I can’t decide which one.

We moved on from that place to a small private club where the beers were a reasonable buck apiece. Same beer. One third the price.

Eventually we went home and chilled out to some music and more drinks.

It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do something like that. It felt really good to be social, but not so good on the wallet.

Needless to say, we spent Sunday festering. I managed to work out for an hour and 45 minutes, trying to get rid of all those pickles. It really is a shame - Even if the food is less than great, we still get to keep the calories. They should come up with a pill or something to fix that.

So there’s the weekend in a nutshell. Sorry there were no pictures folks. I still need to get a little diggy that'll fit in my purse for occassions like these. Oh man, now I'm pissed I don't have any pictures! I need to get a freaking camera.

Anywhoo, what did everyone else doo?

Incidentally, I was wondering if you guys would be interested in seeing some pictures from my folks farm of one of the calves being born. Some find it icky, others find it beautiful. I, of course, find it beautiful. So I will post them if you would like to see 'em. Heck, I might post them regardless. Its just so amazing to see how fast these babies are up and walking. And Molly the donkey is there the whole time helping. What a good donkey.

2006-06-23T10:33:00.000-04:00

Sara, Smudge, Smidge, & Stretch

My intention after I got to work was to check my email, drink a couple cups of coffee, and at some point, post what happened at the shelter yesterday. I noticed last night that nobody had read about it, so what was the rush?

But then Abi came along this morning and she did read what I wrote. She left such a great comment that it gave me chills up my arm. Why? Because she understood what I was feeling about this whole cat thing and I couldn’t wait to post about it.

I am happy to report that I feel so good, so much relief, so content, and so full of hope now for Sara and family. What relieved me from my anxiety of uncertain fate?

The shelter did.

It is a wonderful place.

First though, let me back up to when I got home last night. I had already called the shelter and they asked me to be there by 7pm. I said I would, provided Sara was still in the basement. I walked down the stairs and looked around with anticipation. Out popped a little tri-colored head from the TV stand. What a relief. She had finished the whole bowl of food from the night before, so I placed some more at her feet while I got the carrier out. I explained to her that this was for the best and how, if things were different, I would keep her. She chewed a couple crunchies, rubbed in and out of my legs, chewed some more crunchies, rubbed again...

Just look at the little poutty mouth. How could you not help such a face?

I moved the cabinet door back and found the kittens all huddled up in a big ball. Sara came running over to see them too and was not at all upset I was touching them.

She went back to eat and I picked up the blanket full of kittens and placed it in the carrier.

As I had hoped, Sara just walked right on in to the carrier and lied down to let her kittens nurse. What a good mom.

I couldn’t have asked for her to be anymore cooperative. She trusted me, and that was the best thing I could ask for. I only hoped she wouldn’t change her mind once I moved the carrier outside.

I picked it up and left the basement through the crawlspace, set it down by the pond (possibly where the kids were conceived??) and stopped to see her reaction to all this. She just kind of looked at me, gave a little meow, and turned to check on the kids.

“I think we’re going to be alright, aren’t we.”

We got in the car and started out. I had forgotten how much in the country the shelter was. Sara started to get a little nervous after a few windy turns, and started to pant and claw the carrier. But Earl talked her down with a calm voice, telling how she was lucky to get out of the city, and that was enough for her. Watching how well she responded to us made me so confident that she would find a good home soon enough.

As we pulled into the shelter, the first thing I noticed was how much nicer it looked than the last time I was there. My initial reaction of the facility before was that it was kind of plain, sort of bland, and it was what it was - a concrete structure full of cages and unwanted animals. A good place that was very sad.

But today, it seemed so beautiful. Nice landscaping, nice attractive stone building with a big screened-in cattery right in the front. We got out of the car with the carrier, and I pointed out to Sara the many cats lounging out on the jungle gyms inside the cattery. I’d like to have one of those in my house, actually…

As requested for health purposes, I set the carrier down outside with Earl and went in alone to fill the paper work out. I was so excited to see the inside had also been beautified with bright, cheery colors, photographs of successful adoptions and drawings from children of their new pets. There were at least 10 people inside adopting animals - it was like heaven. Camcorders everywhere. What more could anyone ask for?

The shelter gals came out and had a looksy at what I brought them. As I guessed, Sara was not yet a year and the babies were one week old. I learned a little something too when they were writing down what they were exactly. Tabbies have swirls. Tigers have strips... So they became an orange tabby, a buff tiger, and a gray tiger.

I was expecting that they would want a name for mom, that’s why I called her Sara. But they also needed names for the babies - unisex names since they’re too young to tell what they are yet. There are too many Smokeys and Sunnys in the shelter already, so the gray one became Smudge, the orange was Stretch, and the buff was Smidge.

I also made sure they put down on Sara’s card that she was extremely affectionate and a good mother. I thought that was important for everyone to know.

I met the vet who said that the babies were too young to get the distemper shot yet, so she was going to take the whole family home with her, which is the house next door, so she could give them the overnight care they needed. By this time, I was feeling really good about this whole decision.

And being that the shelter was completely computerized, it was easy for them to give me the information on what happened with little Koi. I was nervous asking for fear that I was going to hear something I didn’t want to… But what she told me next made my entire year. I brought Koi to the shelter in December of 2003 – and she was adopted just three months later in March.
I almost cried. In fact, my eyes just welled now typing this. I've wondered for almost three years now if she was okay, and now I know.

Although just a month or two old, Koi was feral. If she could adopt out, I was more confident than ever that Sara, Smudge, Smidge, and Stretch had all the hope in the world.

I was also given all four ID numbers of the cats so if I wanted to, I could call to and see if they had a clean bill of health or to see if they had been adopted.

I left with a great big smile on my face.

Later that night, after I had sprayed bleach all over the basement just in case, the clouds rolled in, the thunder started up, and the rain came down in sheets – and all I could think of was that Sara and the kids were dry, safe, cozy, and in good hands.

Here's to Sara. God bless her. She will always have a place in my heart.

2006-06-22T13:33:00.000-04:00

So as you know, my job last night was to kick the stray cats out of the basement and board up the window so they can’t find their way back in.

Only, it couldn’t do it. Not these strays.

I wasn't sure how many strays had found their way in. I knew the little calico kitty was a new resident as I had seen her coming and going out the window. I was hoping she was the only one…

At first I didn’t see her. I had looked around, called for any felines to show their faces, and then started to board the window up. Of course then I heard a little noise and found her in the cabinet of an old junky TV stand we have been meaning to throw out.

The lighting was in that corner was very poor, but I swore I could see something else in there with her.

Tryyyyy…. Three babies.

Great. Justttt great. Now what?

The good news is Sara, as I have named the calico kitty, is a very nice cat. She is not wild at all and judging by her itty bitty size, appears to be less than a year old.

See what happens to young girls when they live on the streets? They get knocked up, give birth by themselves, and are forced to live in TV stands.

She let me pick her furry babies up, who don’t even have their eyes opened yet, and put a blanket under them. Then I left her some food and water so she could nurse them proper.

I know, I know. Don't feed strays. But I figured, she' s here, she's not going anywhere, she has babies.... so... might as well, right?

I think I’ve have gained her trust - which is good - because tonight after work, provided they are still there, I will bring the whole family down to the no-kill shelter by me. This is the same place I brought Koi, ironically enough another calico, when I found her in the pond. If I just place the blanket with the kittens in the carrier - Sara will go right in. Right???

Keep your fingers crossed.

It’s really the only thing I can do for them. I mean, I don't know anyone who wants a family of cats, I can’t keep them, I won’t keep them, and I don’t want to keep them. I have 4 cats and 2 dogs already whose health is my main priority, so for their sake, Sara and family have to leave the basement. Shutting her out is not even an option anymore, and leaving them be, is unthinkable. My animals would never leave the basement door alone if they heard those kittens crying. Ultimately, I fear they will all suffer the inevitable fate of city strays - road kill or disease. Fortunately for everyone, the shelter is no-kill, so aside from asking my mom if she wanted them first, this is the best I can do.

Incidentally, mom said its tempting, but not this time as Lucas would surely eat the babies.

So why do I feel so bad?

Probably because of the whole “future uncertain” thing. Once I drop them off tonight, that’s it. I can only hope they will find happy homes, and I am giving them the best chance I can.

I still think of little Koi Koi and wonder if she was ever adopted… the only thing I can do is just assume that she was and is living a fine life somewhere nice.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

You'd think this shit would get easier the more you do it. When will my hide toughen up so I can just do what I need to do and not get all mushy about it?

2006-06-21T14:10:00.000-04:00

First there were deer, then were kittens, now there are rats.

You may remember a story I told a while ago about the big buck that came running down from the hills, crossed the highway, jumped our fence, ran through our yard and crashed into the goldfish pond in the back. Although I never got to see any of this actually happen, my neighbor did. I only got to see the end result, which was a whole lot of hoof prints and a pond full of upside down and broken plants. I guess he didn’t think there would be a pond in his way. Then again, I never thought we had to worry about deer in South Side.

Then a winter or two ago, I found a wild calico kitten in my goldfish pond. Long story short, Jack scared him in there and he was trying to stay afloat and swat at the dog at the same time. Luckily, I was outside shoveling when I stopped to wonder where Jack was - and that is how I found this wee kitty. I reached my glove in, the cat latched on, and I saved her little life. After she was all dried off, fed, and had a good night’s rest in our warm kitchen, I took her down to the ASPCA. They told me they needed a name for her card, so I told them to call her Koi.

And now, last night there was a big old fat rat floating face down in the pond. It kind of freaked me out because I have never had to deal with a rat... alive or dead. Mice, yes. Bugs, of course. But a rat? Never. So I shoveled him out while Earl held the bag. Sweet Pea and her mom were watching through the fence, and Earl thought maybe this was not something a 5-year old girl should see... But mom assured us that Sweet Pea was strangely interested in life and death and how it all works. Her favorite show is the Discovery Channel and she is just full of questions, so this should be fun for her to see.

I felt bad for the rat, thinking that it must have been thirsty and tried to get a drink, fell in, and couldn’t climb out. Man, what a horrible way to die. But you would think that a rat should be able to swim... I mean, don't they live in the sewer and all? Plus, the pond has big rocks and stuff in the middle that it could have gotten onto.

A rat stranded on the island in the middle of the pond - now THAT, would have been a great picture.

But then I remembered hearing that rats get really thirsty after they’ve been poisoned - so perhaps he was dying, and that is why he couldn’t get out. That, or one of the stray cats already had their way with him and he was hurt.

Who knows… he’s dead now. Poor guy.

Oh well. Just another day in the life of a goldfish pond in the city.

The good thing that came out of all of this was that it inspired me to spend the next 3 ½ hours cleaning my yard – not that my yard had anything to do with a rat being drowning in the back, but it made me feel better to cut the grass, trim the hedges, chop down the thistle, weed both gardens, reset the accent lights on the timer, move the tires under the house, hammer down the loose end of the picket fence, cover the old shingles with a tarp (makes it look more like we're "under construction"), stack more junk in the pile for the dumpster (ie. the rusty firewood holder cause we don't have a fireplace, and the frame from the mirror because it's ugly), hose down the driveway, and clean the sidewalk up.

Now tonight when I go home, I have to kick the stray cats out of our basement. I bolted the crawl space shut and now they found their way through the window. Sneaky bastards.

You know, for a lot of pavement and buildings, I sure have my share of wildlife in this town of mine.

2006-06-19T20:30:00.000-04:00

I seem to be getting into the nasty habit of staying up too late because of a project I'm not starting early enough.

Does that make any sense?

Last time it was the turkey, now it was fish tank cleaning.

Earl and I started cleaning the 55-gallon fish tank around 6:30pm. Why? Because it STANK poopy ass.

Nasty nasty dirty yuck big bad poopy fish. All two of them.

We would have started sooner but were too busy ~~eating~~ drinking at the neighbor's picnic.

This wasn't just a water change folks. It was a full fledge cleaning. The thing looked like someone dumped bog water into it. Smelled like it too.

We've been bad gods.

And of course it was worth it because NOW the tank looks AMAZING and I can sit and stare it for hours, avoiding any chores or work of any kind that one might be inclined to do.

So yes, we started the project at 6:30pm. First we had to transfer the two fish into another tank temporarily while we got the main tank squared away - which meant we had to find another tank and clean it, which took forever all on its own.

What kind of fish do I have, you may ask? Some of you already know, but incase you don't or forgot, I will tell you. We have one crazy ass, drama queen, ram my head into the glass and break my jaw not once but twice Oscar and one very mean I'll kill anything that isn't bigger than me but please don't forget to notice my pretty cheeks Jack Dempsey.

The Dempsey is a tough 7-year old and can handle anything you throw his way. Needless to say, we weren't worried that he'd even blink an eye moving to a new tank.

But the Oscar worried me a little. She is also 7-years old, but is either bipolar or manic depressant - maybe a little psycho, too. Once, when she was more pissy than usual, she backup into the far corner of the tank and swam 100 mph into the other side. This resulted in her first jaw breakage. It was really quite amazing to see. I think she might have been trying to break free to eat the cat. When just enough time had passed for me to think that this was a once in a lifetime thing, she did it again and broke it even more. She is surprisingly resilient and has adjusted quite well to her new look.

So that's her crazy side. She is also desperately trying to achieve some sort of drama queen award. It's hard to believe that such a cute baby (only the size of a quarter she was) turned out to be such a big fat pain in the arsh. If you even so much as add water to the tank, she floats at the top sidewise like she cant breath. A water change will get her to flop over and play dead for hours. Once while feeding her, I shut the lid too hard and all her poop shot out. Yes, I literally scared the shit out of her. I've tried to reason with her, explain that her god is only trying to help. I even told her the story about the boy who cried wolf, but to no avail; she simply does not listen. So naturally I thought moving her to another tank for a spell should kill her for real.

Earl however, had more confidence and thought by dumping 70% of her old water in the spare tank that she might think god just changed the scenery a bit. Guess what. He was right.

So now it was time to start the bucket brigade, and scoop the water out into the kitchen sink. I lost count how many trips it took, but there's a new trail in the carpet.

It took us over 4 1/2 hours to clean this tank. And let me just tell you, it's damn heavy too. Do know how hard it is to clean scum off glass without using soap? We scrubbed and scrubbed.

And scrubbed some more.

Everything got cleaned; the pebbles, the toys, both top filters, the hood, the light, the gargoyle...

I got my fair share of accidental hose in the face, sponge slippage into the hair, and yes, there were some fish guts in the mouth - it's unavoidable, unless you keep your mouth shut, which I did, but it still gets in there.

Then we replaced all the carbon and ammo stuff, set up the under gravel filter so it actually worked this time, arranged the rocks, plants, toys, the gargoyle...

Finally, we got to start the bucket brigade again. We put back the 70% old water so the bios would still be there, and snaked the rest from the faucet.

Thank DOG for snakes, that's about all I can say.

Then the grumpy old fish moved out of their motel and back home into a wonderland full of oxygen. The Oscar never once fainted or exploded. Okay, maybe a twitch or two - but really, I am so proud of her. And now not only can they see where they're going but so can we. So refreshing.

So there you have it. 4 1/2 hours of stinky fish gut and pond scum story telling.

But you can see how lovely our little underwater friends have it now.

A face only a mother could love.

How's about a little kiss?

I'mmmm too sexy for my cheeks, too sexy for my cheeks...

Pisst... Dude... there's like, a gargoyle behind you...

run away run away!

OXYGEN RULES.

Niceee tank, eh? So zen like. And the set up is very Feng Shui.

2006-06-16T20:30:00.000-04:00

Okay so yes. I did post a bunch of funnies that were emailed to me. That’s just fine to do in my book because they made me laugh and that’s a good thing to share amongst friends.

But now, I have something to tell you about ME. Yes, me.

Last Sunday, I decided to defrost the 21 lb. turkey from the freezer because I needed the room. I set it in the fridge and figured I had a couple days to go before I could make it.

By Tuesday, I had forgotten about it.

Thursday, my eye caught a glimpse of it on the bottom shelf. I gasped, and then I did what every does to see if it was thawed.

I poked it.

It felt like a soft, out of shape fat child and judged it must have been completely thawed around Wednesday sometime.

I really don’t know how long birds can be thawed out before going bad, and the last thing I wanted was to have to throw this yummy portly corpse out - because among other things, I don't like to think that anything, even a turkey, would die in vain - so I found myself with no alternative but to cook it. That night.

Yes. If I had been more organized or less forgetful, I would have marinated that beast Wednesday and put it in the oven Thursday BEFORE I went to class at 6:30pm...

And perhaps, I might have even skipped class so I could take care of this mess.

But I didn’t. And I'm not, so I went, and I did.

I went to class, swung my sword around for an hour, left at 7:30 and then headed out for a quick store run for a turkey bag, which is essential on nights like this one.

I ended up checking out with a turkey bag, a can of gravy, two super monstrous artichokes, some fresh "poultry" herbs, a can of creamed corn (ewwww blah – Earl’s) and a little thing of sour cream.

Then right before I exited the store, I realized I needed buttermilk because I suddenly didn’t think that I wanted "baked" potatoes with my turkey even though they were easier, but everyone knows you have to eat mashed potatoes with turkey because of the whole gravy thing.

So back around I went and grabbed the buttermilk, which I was surprised that I didn’t buy in the first place because I remember heading towards it after buying the sour cream but was distracted by something, most likely Ho-Ho's (cause they be right there) and never got to the milk section. But anywho, I had the buttermilk now and stupid me didn’t even realize it was only $.82 and used my check card to pay for it...

So off I went with my turkey making groceries, when suddenly I noticed it was now 8:23pm.

How the hell do you spend almost an hour buying less than 15 items? I don't rightfully know.

I get home, wash my hands, and start prepping the bird.

Poultry is about the only thing I can cook, for real. I can even experiment with new ideas because I am comfortable with it. Earl leaves turkeys and chickens in my hands, while he does absolutely everything else that one would eat. I was so thankful when he offered to do the mashed potatoes because mine always turn out like potato pudding. Go figure.

I washed the bird and then attempted to squeeze my hand down his, er, thorax or whatever that is, to grab the gizzards –

I TRIED to get my hand in there. For a big ass bird, he had the smallest of cavities. I had use my left hand - because it is smaller - and still had to take my rings off. I thought I might have to dislocate my thumb to get in there, but eventually I got the junk and pulled it. Then I stuffed the herbs and some butter patties under his skin and gave it a turkey massage really good. Finally, I put his ass in the bag and tossed him in the oven…

…At 9:10pm.

Earl was already done with the potatoes and I had the artichokes ready on the side. The turkey bag directions predicted the bird would be done in 3 – 3 ½ hours, so we started watching Running Scared, the newest DVD out at Blockbuster.

Little side note: KICK ASS MOVIE PEOPLE. RENT IT RENT IT RENT IT.

Around 12:10am the bird was done –

May I remind you all, this is yesterday - in other words - it was THURSDAY and YES - WE HAD TO WORK THE NEXT DAY.

So incidentally, Earl never made it to 12:10am. He fell asleep and never got to experience the wonderful turkey goodness fresh out of the oven.

Can I just tell you how strange it was to be cooking so late on a school night and then eating a whole Thanksgiving meal after midnight by myself? And yes, there were biscuits.

I did not however make gravy. I am not a good gravy maker - although in my defense, I have never really ever tried - but I am perfectly capable of eating turkey without it.

Earl thinks that sacrilegious.

I guess then, technically, I could have eaten that baked potato... although I must say that Earl's mashies were the best EVER.

But it was ALL just SOOO GOOOOD. Very good. All of it.

I went to bed at 1:40am.

And then I woke up at 4am because my brain started thinking without my permission. Don’t know what it was thinking, but it was.

I slept in until 6am.

I predicted that it would be an early Friday night – But here I sit at 9:15pm blogging about this (9:45 editing it) and am WIDE AWAKE

Guess I’m not as old as I thought I was. I can still party like the best of ‘em. I am looking forward to staying up until AT LEAST… 11pm.

hehe.

2006-06-16T10:18:00.000-04:00

An Oldie but a Goodie...

Many have experienced the confusion of traffic accidents and had to summarize exactly what happened in a few words or less on insurance accident forms. The following quotes were taken from the forms and published in the “St. Paul Dispatch” July 26, 1977. Keep in mid these are actual attempts made by policy holders to describe how and why their accidents occurred:

Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.

The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intentions.

I thought my window was down, but found out it was up when I put my hand through it.

I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.

A truck backed through my windshield into my wife’s face.

A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.

The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.

I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.

In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove in to a telephone pole.

I had been shopping for plants all day, and was on my way home. As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision. I did not see the other car.

I had been driving for four years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.

I was on my way to the doctors with rear trouble when my universal joint gave way, causing me to have an accident.

As I approached the intersection, a stop sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.

To avoid hitting the bumper of the car, I struck the pedestrian.

My car was legally parked as I backed in the other vehicle.

An invisible car came out of nowhere, stuck my vehicle, and vanished.

I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat, I found that I had a skull fracture.

I saw the slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced of my car.

The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.

I was thrown from my car as I left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cow.

The telephone pole was approaching. I was attempting to swerve out of its path when it struck my front end.

I was unable to stop in time and my car crashed into the other vehicle. The driver and the passengers then left immediately for a vacation with injuries.

I was sure that the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the road when I struck him.

And while I'm at it - here's another good laugh:

9 Things I Hate About Everyone

1. People who point at their wrist while asking for the time.... I knowwhere my watch is pal, where the hell is yours? Do I point at my crotch whenI ask where the toilet is?

2. People who are willing to get off their ass to search the entire room forthe T.V. remote because they refuse to walk to the T.V. and change thechannel manually.

3. When people say "Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too". Damnright! What good is cake if you can't eat it?

4. When people say "it's always the last place you look". Of course it is.Why the hell would you keep looking after you've found it? Do people dothis? Who and where are they? Gonna Kick their asses!

5. When people say while watching a film "did you see that?". No Loser, Ipaid $12 to come to the cinema and stare at the damn floor.

6. People who ask "Can I ask you a question?".... Didn't really give me achoice there, did ya sunshine?

7. When something is 'new and improved!'. Which is it? If it's new, thenthere has never been anything before it. If it's an improvement, then theremust have been something before it, couldn't be new.

8. When people say "life is short". What the hell?? Life is the longest damnthing anyone ever does!! What can you do that's longer?

9. When you are waiting for the bus and someone asks "Has the bus comeyet?". If the bus came would I be standing here, dumbass?

2006-06-13T16:18:00.000-04:00

Hello there.

I have nothing really to talk about. I just got done reading Jenorama's blog and Abi's blog, and they have so much going on to post about. No offense to the others, I just ran out of time to read everybodies. Abi even gets to show us the chickens on the sidewalks. I don't have any chickens on my sidewalks. She just moved to the Keys (and I mean the warm ones down there under Florida) so there's the whole moving thing, settling in thing, finding cool new things thing, etc. And Jen, well she's in Canada AGAIN, only this time my brother and my nephew are with her, and they are having hotel and pastry adventures.

Me?

I sat in traffic this morning, got to work safely, sat at my desk for 8 hours, am about to leave for the day to sit in more traffic, will go on my treadmill for a bit, will look and/or think about the projects around the house that need completing, eat a Lean Cusine, and go to bed.

I'm ready for something fun to happen...

Anyyyy day now...

Okay. Maybe tomorrow.

elephant-softlgt

2006-06-09T10:03:00.000-04:00

No, Elephants Don't Grow In Massachusetts

elephant-softlgt, originally uploaded by spookalot.

Illustration Friday - JUNGLE

2006-06-07T10:15:00.000-04:00

I was just talking to Z about the rocket scientists over at the Discovery Channel - thought I'd post it for ya - if you care to read a little some'm some'm .

Tonight, supposingly, is the season premiere of A Haunting on the Discovery Channel. I say "supposingly" because oddly enough, the people who are in charge of the episode guide of the DC dont seem to have a calender in front of them.

I wrote my first email to them when they said "A Haunting" is on Fridays when in fact, it seem to be be on every day but Fridays. What gives? They replied to my email with, "Unfortunately, the A Haunting series is not available for purchase yet."

My second email was regarding the new dates they have listed for the new season - If you go online now, you'll see that it says "New episodes of A Haunting will premier on Thursday July 6th." - essuz me ese, I believe Thursday is the 8th. I mean it would have been great if it was the 6th. You know, 6/6/6 being the date for the new season. And to make it more confusing, they if you click on "episode guide" it says "New episodes of A HAUNTING return Friday, June 7, at 10 p.m."

- What the fuck year are they talking about??

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/haunting/haunting.html

Anyway, I'm going to try and see if it starts tonight. It is the 7th, afterall. I did sign up for the mail reminder too so we'll see what happens.

So anyway, I thought I'd post this atrocity.

Yeah. That'll teach 'em.

2006-06-06T09:36:00.000-04:00

Bonjour mon chéri. Je c'est, Maurice.
Je dois vous dire - vos yeux sont si beaux, comme français jaune croustillant frit noyer dans le ketchup chaud et la sauce de fromage avec un côté agréable de jus de viande brun sur un jour de l'été chaud. J'aimerais les manger pour vous.

translation:
Hello my darling. It is I, Maurice.
I must tell you - your eyes are so beautiful, like crispy yellow french fries drowning in warm catsup and cheesy sauce with a nice side of brown gravy on a hot summer's day. I would love to eat them for you.

2006-06-05T11:08:00.000-04:00

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a couple days now but haven’t actually sat down to do it, which makes it very hard to read.

But here I am taking a few minutes of my precious time to get this out there. Finally.

It’s nothing huge, just a thing that happened that was weird and creepy, and just, well, strange.

So it was like 3:13am last Thursday. Earl and I were asleep, for the most part, I guess. See, I turned over towards him and kind of sort of woke up a little, or at least enough to open my eyes, but I’m still not sure why I even did that except that it just goes along with the rest of this strange story –

I found him lying on his back with his arm extended straight up, index finger pointing at the ceiling.

He was quite asleep. And I apparently was not far behind, because in my brain, he was not just pointing at the ceiling, but he was also holding a rifle.

That’s right. That’s what I saw. He was holding it horizontally. So naturally, I was curious.

Me: What are you doing?
Earl: What do you mean what am I doing?

In that second, I realized I must be asleep. “I’m sorry. I’m asleep. I thought you were holding a rifle”, and then I rolled over.

Surprisingly, he was not as curious because he didn’t comment back.

As I lied there falling back to sleep, my brain was trying to sort out what exactly just happened. I mean, I was pretty certain he wasn’t holding a rifle. The fact that we don’t have a rifle to hold, much less have one to be in bed with us, was proof enough - but I was pretty darn sure he was in fact, pointing at the ceiling – But when you’re asleep, its very hard to rationalize these things so I was stuck trying to determine which part was real and which part was in my head. I mean, was his arm even up at all? Did I imagine everything?

It is a very strange thing to not be able to remember what is real and what isn’t. It was just like coming out of anesthesia – or going into it - and not knowing what the hell is going on.

I was however, determined to remember something about all this to ask about it in the morning. My mouth at the time was just too asleep to say another word out loud. So I tried to go over it and over in my head, but I keep falling into unconscious land and never got through the whole story. Not even once.

I slept deep and hard for about 30 minutes, when something else woke me up. This time, it was a noise. It was coming from my side of the bed - my corner and a little bit under my corner, to be precise. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that I was most definitely awake for this one. It woke me up right out of a deep sleep, and kept me awake until it stopped about 40 seconds later.

It was the sound of bed springs – rrree rrree rrree rrree – over and over and over again. The best way to describe it would be to imagine a little kid jumping up and down on the bed. At least that’s what I pictured at the time. I sat up, heard it loud and clear, looked around the floor, even poked my head under the bed.

Of course, there were no little kids to be found.

Like I said, about 40 seconds of this passed, and it stopped. Not much for me to do about it, so I went back to sleep.

In the morning, I asked Earl about the whole arm thing. He indeed, was pointing at the ceiling. He remembers doing it, but he has no idea why. He just kinda found himself pointing. And we both found it was odd that I woke up because of it.

He was not however, holding a rifle. That one I pretty much figured out myself.

I then told him about the bed springs rree-rree’ing, which he did not hear, and blamed it on too many scary movies too late at night.

The strangest part of this wholeee story is that for once, Earl The Skeptic, was set back a bit with his own personal experience that evening, which after a brief spell of not being able to really explain it to himself, eventually confided to me.

Earl had gone to bed a few minutes before me that night. While he lied there, he felt what he assumed to be a cat, jump up on the bed, and walk across his legs.

Me: But there weren't any cats in the room.

Earl: Exactly.

That's why it was very wrong feeling. We had been purposely locking the cats out of the room ever since the air conditioner we put in the bedroom window had no faceplate.

He said he dismissed the sensation when it happened because he’s used to cats being around – but as soon as he realized that he knew there were no cat bodies in the room, it became disturbing.

He also admitted to hearing what sounded like the clicking of the closet doorknob latch as it was being opened.

So that was that night.

Last night, Earl and I were having a hard time staying asleep. It was 4am and we were both tossing and turning. I got up to get some water from the bathroom. As I was standing there, I heard what sounded like Earl yawning.

Now, Earl yawns pretty loud so it didn’t seem weird that I could hear it from the bathroom. But something struck me odd in that it didn’t seem to be coming from the direction of the bedroom.

I came back to bed and just threw the question out there, “Did you just yawn?”

Earl: No, why?

Me: Because I heard you yawn, but you were like, somewhere else.

Earl: It was probably the neighbor.

Me: What?

I’ll have to remember to ask my neighbor if he was yawning at 4am.

So all this could be nothing. But it could also be something. Who knows. I need a tape recorder. I need to catch me some EVPs.

2006-05-31T08:52:00.000-04:00

In case I forgot to tell you guys before, Happy Memorial Day! And YEAH! We had a beaUtiful day! For once. Usually it's rainy and cold. But not this time - it was 94 degress and blue skies! At least for most of the day. It started to get a few clouds in the later afternoon, which is fine considering how hot it was. Then early evening, we had a brief rain shower to cool things off. What a great weekend! We ate hotdogs and BBQ things, drank some cold beer and I took a few pictures...

Check out these colors! It really was just as green as what you see here...

Earl and I have never been to this park before. It's in Bethlehem, but I have no idea how to get there. We went with a couple friends after the first park we visited was too crowded and I need to figure out how to get back.

We had a few other friends join the picnic.

What? Who? Me?

These Mallards have a girlfriend, who is not pictured, obviously. She has fishing line wrapped around her leg :( I flagged down a cop to ask them who takes care of the birds, and he said "nobody". He said the ASPCA doesn't care about ducks, but if I wanted to try and catch her to get the line off, then by all means, go ahead. You ever try catching a duck? Not easy. We never did catch her and she is still limping around. I feel so bad because one little cut would relieve her agony. Unfortunately, the foot isnt looking good anymore and you can see where the circulation is being cut off. I fear she will loose her foot from the ankle down if someone doesnt help her. Do ducks have ankles? All I know is if she does, she wont before long.

I dont care what people say about Canadian Geese - I think they're beautiful and the always come around when I have the camera out.

Nice cloud show after the shower!

This little guy was sharing some of our potato chips.

I think he has a French accent...

Babies are getting big!

Okay, so these two weren't in the park. They were sleeping on the dryer. The point was that the gray cat doesnt allow any of the other cats to get that close to her, so this was a rare shot. But afterall, who can resist a big fat Siamese?

So there you have it. Sorry I havent posted in so long. I wonder if I even have any readers left. I've been a little busy, I guess. But think everyone slows down a bit with blogging as the weather gets nicer. The posts may get fewer and far between, but the content is more exciting with all the stuff we're out doing. Right?

2006-05-23T14:33:00.000-04:00

Yup. That about sums it up....

I got these pictures in an email - chances are you got 'em too. I thought they went pretty well with my redneck episode from yesterday.

I personally think Rednecks are ingenious thinkers. I didn't say they were genius... Just very creative imaginations. And I believe I am guilty of a few of these things myself.

Not this particular creation, however.

Redneck Bass Boat - looks a little unsturdy... but okay. Perfect for those of us on a budget.

Redneck Gas Grill - not a bad idea, I tell you what.

Redneck Horseshoes - if I cant get a ringer with these, I should just give up now.

Redneck Lawnmower - now that's what I'm talking about!

Redneck Weather Station - I've been using similar concepts for quite some time now.

My personal favorite - Redneck Pet Carrier - I've used empty Busch boxes for worse things.

Redneck Gingerbread House - this pretty much describes my yard... except I don't see any spare radiators sitting around. Where are the radiators?

Redneck Wedding Reception - I wish I looked that good in my dress. At least I had cows at my wedding. And for our anniversary, we drank champagne from flutes while sitting in lawnchairs at the Nascar.

Redneck Cat - I have four of these. This is why the dishes are never done when I get home.

Redneck Guest Bedrooms - okay, where else should they sleep?

Redneck Palm Pilot - see? they came up with it first.

Redneck Powerball Winner - Sooo, what's the problem?

See? Ingenious. May be a little rough around the edges, but pretty damn creative. You can call me a redneck, but dont you dare call me a hick.

2006-05-22T13:09:00.000-04:00

For those of you unaware of the great state of Pennsylvania laws on beer – you can only buy six packs and twelve packs from a six-pack shop. You cannot however, buy two twelve packs at the same time. You must purchase only one twelve pack, carry it to your car, and then come back and purchase the other. Why? No one knows, but it’s the law. If you wish to purchase a case or larger, you must go to a beer distributor. There, you can buy as much as you want and walk out with all of it at once. Now that’s more like it. So if you want a case of beer and your friend wants a six-pack, you have to go to two different stores. And up until recently, you could not purchase any beer on Sundays unless you went to a somewhere like a pizzeria where they could sell it to you in singles or six packs. But times are a changing - some beer distributors are now allowed to sell until 5pm on Sundays but you will have to pay cash for it. Don’t worry, there is an ATM located conveniently inside.

And FYI, in case you are wondering about the other good stuff - should you wish to purchase wine or liquor, you must go to a State Store and use either cash or credit. So God forbid you have another buddy with you who wants a bottle of tequila. That’s three stores you need to visit, my friend. But not on Sundays. Never, on Sundays.

Why exactly I felt the need to explain this to you, I have no idea.

So I’m walking into the beer store on Sunday, when I spied a very large gentleman with slanted head, one big eye, one small eye, one long leg, one short leg, and one toof. And yes, he was wearing overalls. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Wrong Turn”, you might get a better idea of what he looked like. Force of habit had me flash him a smile when I looked up at him. I hope he didn’t think I was coming on to him. I ran my card threw the ATM, paid for my beer, and walked out to the car which was parked next to this gentleman’s pick-em-up truck – license plate: “O-BUBBA”.

I kid you not.

God, I love this state.

And if it couldn’t get any better, as I pulled out of the parking lot - I cross my heart and swear to you - I passed Wiley Nelson walking to the beer store. And yes, he too was wearing overalls.

2006-05-18T08:52:00.000-04:00

Monday 6am - flipped over tractor trailer spills 40,000 hotdogs all over east bound lane of rt.78. As we are traveling east bound, resulting in 2 hours of traffic. We arrive at work an hour late.

Monday 4:30pm - two more tractor trailers crash in the West bound lane directly across from the hotdog spill that is still being cleaned up. As we are traveling west bound, it takes us 3 hours to get home.

Tuesday 6am - accident on east bound lane resulting in 2 hours of traffic. We arrive at work one hour late.

Wednesday 4:30pm - tractor trailer accident west bound lane. It takes us 2 hours to get home.

Thursday 6am - heavy flow for no apparent reason results in us being 30 minutes late to work.

Total paycheck damage so far this week - 2 1/2 hours.

Total time spent at home not including sleep - approximately 9 hours.

Total time in the car - 9 1/2 hours.

Something is wrong with this picture.

I've decided to move to Florida and work for Abi, just as long as she lets me live inside the office so I dont have to drive anymore.

2006-05-15T12:51:00.000-04:00

Happy Mother's Day!

2006-05-08T11:35:00.000-04:00

Thar be ogres in them dar woods. Arggggg.

Today, I am distressed. Actually, as of Saturday, I have been distressed.

I can’t remember if I told you before, but the dogs and I have discovered a BEAUTIFUL new trail in our woods. It is GORGEOUS. All windy and curvy and filled with good stuff. Its is even well marked with red markers on the trees. It’s a real trail, folks. Bike people even use it.

Why Amy, that doesn’t sound very distressing at all. Why so blue?

Well, let me just tell you...

I pick up the red trail off my usual path. I have only been on it twice and we have yet to discover where it actually starts. But from where we get on, it takes a full hour to circle back around to where we started. By then, Jack is leading the front and Ozzy is lagging behind and breathing like Tony Soprano. So for sake of Oz, we hop back onto the usual path and head home.

But this new trail, as it turns out, crosses to the left – to what we shall call, uncharted territory. I never even knew there was anything to see over to the left. But there is, and it’s a wonderful, enchanted world of green forest with colorful butterflies, fields of umbrella plants, fragrant flowers, and singing birds.

There’s a point where the trail becomes the mid point of a slope. The trees sway in the breeze behind you, to the side of you, and below you, and here you truly feel to be in the “middle of it all”. Here you can stop and take it all in. Here, the trail overlooks the rest of the woods below and the river can be seen off in the distance. Here is where we stop and take a deep breath and smell nothing but honeysuckle. And it is so quiet. The only noise is the wind blowing through the trees and the birds singing. This is where you could sit and meditate. This is where you could lay yourself down and take a long nap. This is what they talk about when they say “magical.”

What a great trail.

But alas, now I can no longer cross to the other side.

For on the other side, in the middle of the magic, dwell ogres.

And contrary to popular belief, ogres do not live under bridges; they live in a pile of rubble under a bunch of blue tarps next to one of those tall antenna things.

My first experience on the trail revealed this huge eyesore buried down the hill from where we stood. I thought, “Oh how awful that someone would dump all that garbage in the middle of the forest”.

My second experience on the trail revealed the ogre who lived there, who stepped over the trash while carrying an antenna from a house and headed down the hill – away from us.

This made me very uneasy.

I mean yes, he is going the other way, but suddenly I felt like I could very well, for real, be in danger out here.

I didn’t know if he saw me. I didn’t know if he was a mean man. I didn’t know if he was alone. I didn’t know if he knew shortcuts to get to where I was.

I didn’t care to really get to know him that well.

At least I had my dogs with me. But there have been times that I did not. I do always have my cell phone on me, thank dog. And now, I will always have my mace on me, too – or - ogre spray, as I shall call it.

I see the beginnings of a “Lifetime Movie” here.

So we finished our walk and found ourselves back on the regular path, where we ran into one of the bikers that frequent the woods. He stopped to catch his breath and said to me, “You know, there are some tarps back in there that have homeless people living in them. I don’t think that’s the best place for you to go.”

Ah, thanks bike guy for looking out for me. “I saw the tarps. And today I saw a man over there. Is there more than one?”

“Yeah, I think there’s a couple. But you have a pit bull with you. You’d probably be fine, but why risk it?”

“Well, actually he’s an American Bulldog, but he does look vicious. And I don’t think we’ll be walking over there anymore anyway. Thanks for the heads up.”

I say this to him, yet at the same time I’m wondering if Ozzy could fester up the energy to attack anybody. Also, I wonder why poor Jack never gets any recognition. Is he invisible? Am I the only who can see this other dog with me? This 80 lb scroungy mongrel I have tied to my wrist? Every one always comments on what a nice looking dog Ozzy is, but never says a peep about Jack.

Actually, I take that back. One time we passed a man with his little son. He grabbed his kid, pulled him in close and said, “That dog just ain’t right”.

Poor Jack.

But in a case like this, Ozzy might be good looking, but Jack looks insane. What’s scarier?

By the time we got back down to the road, Ozzy was too tired to even crawl under the guardrail. We had to continue down until the guardrail ended so he could go around.

Me thinks the bulldog lacks athleticism.

I checked to see if we could get down to the river so they could cool their piddles off, but there were too many pricker bushes in the way, so we hopped in the car and started home.

And who do you think we passed on the road?

The ogre was walking back to his den... and I got to see what he looked like.

He was very big – like, 6’3” big... with a big scruffy head and a big fluffy gray beard. I thought for a second that maybe this might actually be the infamous Bigfoot... But he didn’t have a furry body.

He was however, still carrying the house antenna.

And I just can't stop wondering just where he was taking it to... that he ended up bringing it back home from... Perhaps it just wasn't the right antenna for... his friend's house... or radio... or cell phone... or something. Or maybe it's his friend and he was just taking it on a walk...

Perhaps one day we shall stop in and have tea, and he will reveal the answer. Until then, you're guess is as good as mine.

2006-05-05T10:52:00.000-04:00

Today. I am bored. My mom used to say that only boring people are bored. I don’t think that’s true. I don’t consider myself boring, but I do consider myself extremely bored.

I can believe I still have 6 more hours to go at work.

Its such a nice day out too. What’s worse? Being at work when its gorgeous out, or being at work when its rainy and miserable out? When its nice, all you can think about is getting outside, doing all the other things you could be doing besides working. But you can't, so you sit all day. Then you feel like snacking. Because you're bored. If you were up and moving around, you wouldnt feel like that. So you get up and walk around. But then you eventually end up back at your desk. And you eventually start thinking about snacking again. But then you think about bathing suit season coming and how unprepared you are, and how the snacking will not help that at all. Then you sit and fight with yourself and your urges, and wish that you didnt have worry about this stuff and just be happy with what you look like and just do what makes you happy.

But you cant, because you arent.

When its crappy outside, all you want to do is curl up on the couch and fall asleep. But you're at work, so you can't, and all you do is feel like snacking. Comfort food. Like me endulge in some salty chips to make me feel better about being here instead of on my couch asleep. And why the hell not? Its miserable out and misery loves company.

So you do, because you can.

Its so hard to concentrate on either days... so when exactly is the perfect day to be at work? Let me rephrase that - When is the perfect day to not be bothered by fact that you are at work and not feel the urge to snack for any reason because you are perfectly content just the way you are?

I just don’t think there is one.

2006-05-03T09:52:00.000-04:00

This morning didn’t start off as good as I had hoped. We actually left the house on time for once, only to find the highway shutdown between PA and NJ. We had to swing back around and figure something else out, which just seems so typical when you are on time for anything. Now, wouldn’t you think that when there is a major problem on a major road, that the radio people would increase the traffic report to twice as often? I would think. But they don’t. In fact, we couldn’t find a traffic report the whole ride back and actually had to go home to turn the local channel on the boob tube to find out what the problem was and where exactly.

Of course our service was down. What’s next? Wait, don’t answer that. So I sat and spun the radio dial back and forth until someone decided to give me a report while Earl listened to the traffic on the Sirius – which makes me ask - how come Sirius only gives traffic for Philadelphia and NY? What about my area? I have a major interstate too, fellas.

So anyway, we figured out another way to take and got to work over an hour late. My paycheck should now suck next week. Great. Boy, déjà vu from last week when this same thing happened on that stupid highway.

Oh yeah, and when we finally got to work, everyone was complaining that they couldnt connect to the server. They all just sat around and waited for me to get in, when all any one had to do was look at the monitor, and see that the server wasnt logged on.

Gee. What a concept.

And now on to something completely different, I treated myself to an everything bagel with butter for lunch yesterday. I knew it was a bad thing to eat, but I was craving it so I ate it. I justified my choice by promising to have a salad or something carbless for dinner. Well, as it turns out, we ended up at Wendys. Did I get a salad there? Um. No. Does anyone really eat salads from fast food places? I hear they have just as much fat as the burgers anyway. I had the new friscata sandwich, or whatever its called. And it was pretty good, in case youre wondering.

I think that after three days with this sore throat that’s it moved up into my head cause I be a-suffer’n today. At least my mouth feels better after having a couple fillings put in last night. They were right up front, which I’m not used to, and the Novocain actually hurt going in. My eyes teared up as he was injecting it, and I thought to myself “don’t you cry, you sissy!” For the next couple hours, the whole right side of my face was numb, all the up under my eye. And let me just say, it is a very strange sensation to feel one nostril and not the other. Earl said I actually looked like I had a stroke or some serious botox because nothing moved on the one side. We had a party watching me try to drink something. After it wore off and the itching went away, my jaw was sore from having my mouth open for so long but my teeth felt all right.

While I was at the dentist, I told the good doctor and his gentle hygienist, when they didn’t have their fingers in my mouth, that I had a dream that my tooth fell out. I had to bring it in to have him put it back. They said it’s so common to hear such a dream, only usually all the teeth fall out.

What’s up with that?

Consequently, I asked my dentist where your tongue is supposed to be at night. Interesting question? Perhaps. But do YOU know where your tongue is at night? I have found mine several times resting behind my teeth. This is not good. Even I know that. And my dentist agreed. Although he never officially answered my question (maybe even he doesnt know!), he did say more or less, what does it matter. If you're asleep, there's nothing you can do about it anyway. This did not satisfy my curiosity. When I was young, my orthodontist taught me how to train my tongue to swallow correctly. I am determined to train my tongue now to sleep correctly. So, I started asking around, and no one was quite sure where their tongues were at night. One guy said his rested on the bottom of his mouth. This seemed rather uncomfortable and I could not see my tongue agreeing to stay there all night long. Finally, I went online for the answer. I found a very informative website here that let me in on a little secret...

"Often, the tongue is in the neutral position: forward, directly back of the two upper front teeth, and pressed against the roof of the mouth. This is excellent!"

Oh good! To my pleasant surprise, this is where my tongue has decided to rest during the day. Hopefully, I can train it to stay there at night now.

But anyway, back to the dentist office...

My dentist and the hygienist went on to discuss the previous patient and his severe periodontal disease. They had been encouraging him to use a water pick before he loses all his teeth. The idea that there are people out there that have no clue how important it is to take care of your teeth really struck the hygienist strange. She thought maybe the patient didn’t understand English because he didn’t seem to get the whole water pick and teeth maintenance discussion. But the good doctor informed her that he understood perfectly because he was, in fact, a professor and has a perfectly fine brain that is capable of understanding such things. He’s just lazy, or something. If I didn’t have so much stuff in my mouth, I would have chimed in that perhaps he is just one of those people who are incredibly book smart, but not very common sense smart... But again, I couldn’t because my mouth was full.

Haha. None of you know this but I originally said, "one of those people who is incredibly smart" which is incorrect and makes me sound alot like George W.

But all this brings me to the question of the day – although if you would like to also answer where your tongue is at night, you may -

Do any of you know what your dentist looks like?

Could you identify him if he passed you in a store? I could tell who he was if I saw from the eyes up, but from the nose down, he could be anybody. I have had many a dentist and I’ll be damned if I don’t know what any of them really look like. Why? Because they never take that face mask thing off. Even when we’re discussing my next appointment, he’s got it on.

Anyhoo, just a question. Hope to hear your thoughts.

Oh, and prayers are appreciated for me and my cold.

2006-05-01T22:05:00.000-04:00

I played this weekend! It was a gorgeous day!! Nothing but blue skies and mid 70s. We were at Nockamixon State Park. Earl and S were fishing while I was let loose on the world to take pictures. Here's a few for you to see.

See Abi? I did play with that cute little button!!

2006-04-28T19:43:00.000-04:00

Okay, this I just realized its been 18 days since my last post. I am afraid to say that because of the time elapsed, this post may have a tendency to travel. Alot. To places that have nothing to do with each other. Because my head is full of various things. At this time. So here we go.

Well so, it wasn’t the ice creams fault. In fact, it had little if anything to do with the ice cream. But thank you all for the care and concern. Actually, it was the crank shaft censor – again. That little bastard of a part has gone twice in two years. Although the cost to repair has doubled in that time (perhaps they just used a higher quality one this time), it still was an affordable fix.

That was last week.

This week – it was the coils.

Yes, that’s right. We broke down - again - Wednesday morning as we were going to work. Fortunately we had not gotten too far from Bethlehem when we lost a cylinder – again. We were able to ride on three back to the garage and leave it there for another day.

$220 later, we had new coils and it seems to be running pretty good – knock on wood.

But I believe I specifically requested that no extra expenses can occur this month because April is the worst month of the year for us and there isn’t a penny to spare. And here we go with two car repair bills one week apart from each other.

Which part of my ass will I pull this $220 out of? Your guess is as good as mine.

Oh yeah, and about two hours after I picked the car up, the “check engine” light came on….

Sigh.

I was going to enter a photo contest with a big grand prize of $25,000, and spent two weeks picking the pictures to submit, when I realized that the contest is limited to NJ residents.

Fudge. Finally, the one good thing about being a NJ resident and I'm 9 years too late.

So I found a great contest for PA residents…. Only I found a week after the entry deadline.

Dagnabbit.

Trying to cheer myself up, I read an article on the front page of our local newspaper because it had a great big picture of a elderly black lab on it. It was entitled “Goodbye to Belle”, which should have been my first hint. Okay, I could guess how the story would end, but I was really expecting at the very least to get a heart touching tear in my eye and become inspired to enjoy every minute of life... Sadly, the story told of how the writer of the article had to help get the cancer ridden Belle into the back seat of the car so the owner could take her to the vet to put her down. It ended with her putting her head down and falling asleep - that was it. Nothing more. No words of hope, or grace, or anything.

Why did I read that article?

So check this out. I got this from Dr. S, my good friend/vet about one of the vets that used to work at my animal hospital.

The reason Dr. S sent me this article was because awhile back, I brought Q in unexpectedly for a scratched eye. Dr. S wasn't in, so Dr. Makem was the vet that saw Q. She put Q on meds for his eye, telling me she thought it might be a cold even though I told her he was playing with the other cats and it just happened. The next day, I saw Dr. S and told her about Q's eye. I showed her the medicine, which prompted her response of, "Why did she give you this?? This is for Herpes!"

Here is the newspaper article that Dr. S just emailed me! And may I say, Holy Shit Batman!

"Vet faked euthanasia, Bucks lawsuit alleges Couple accuse clinic of sedating dog, giving it to another person."

By Steve Wartenberg
Of The Morning CallApril 28, 2006

"As the tears flowed, Dana and Gary Ganyer thought they were watching the euthanasia of Annie, their beloved 2-year-old German shepherd with increasingly frequent and debilitating epileptic seizures."

Copyright (c) 2006, The Morning Call - READ this article!!

2006-04-10T23:39:00.000-04:00

Where have I been. I have no idea. I feel lately that I just have nothing to say. I think this is a thing with me. I go in and out of blogging about everything that crosses my mind and then not blogging about anything at all because I dont feel like it. Thats usually when I'm entralled with something else, like taking pictures and playing with Photoshop.

I still dont have anything to say, aside from my car doesnt like me anymore because it waits until I am finished grocery shopping and have ice cream in the trunk before it decides it doesnt want to start.

Now, its been doing this off and on for a little while. It only happens when I turn it off for less than a couple hours and then try and to go somewhere. It sounds like it wants to start but cant find that last spark it needs. Usually, if I wait a little while, it will eventually start. But when ice cream is in the trunk, it decides that no, it definately is not going anywhere and I have to wait for someone to come help me push start it.

By the way, did you know you can sit in a parking lot for a full hour trying to start your car and have no one come over to see if you need help?

The fear of being stranded some where has really taken a toll on my freedom. I am afraid to even go to class now. And you know something, for some reason it seems the car only dies when I'm in it. So yesterday, I left her at the doctors all day yesterday so they could figure out what the problem is. Not only could they find nothing wrong, but it started every single time for them. Of course. They said unless it wont start while its in their hands, they wont be able to figure out whats wrong. The good news now is that today she died in my company's parking lot. I called those auto guys up and told him to get their greasy buns down here fast to catch her while she's down. I'm still waiting for someone to show.

Boy for having nothing to say, I sure spat out alot of words. Hey, I found a post I started one night about a week or so ago. I see no reason why not to post it now, since I cant think of anything else to type about.

Enjoy.

Okay, maybe it's the Merlot talking, but I just had a crazy thought for a post. I was getting ready for sleepy time, when I thought I'd check my email really quick. My sil Jen wrote me a little note about my last post, and of course I had to sit and reply back. Thats where the idea for the post came in. Actually, I had two ideas.

Number one - what scares the bageebers out of you??

Off the top of my mind, I say BEARS, ALLIGATORS, & SHARKS.

And I'm an animal person, for crying out loud.

Oh yeah, DEMON POSSESSION. That one's a real nail bitter, too. Is it real or not? Don't know, just know I don't want anything to do with it.

But holy cows, the nightmares in my brain.

Number two - what you would do if you found yourself in the middle of one of your fears? Or, if you have already, what did you do?

So that was my conversation with Jen. It was about these things.

Being that I don't find myself swimming in the ocean or wadding through the swamp on a regular basis, and I am not planning on pissing off any demons any time too soon, I do in fact, find myself in the woods alot.

I worry about having my dogs in the woods with me for fear of BEARS coming after moi - and then how I worry about being alone in the woods with no one but Mr. Canon and Mr. Cell Phone - for fear of BEARS coming after moi...

Is that silly... or what?

There is a possiblility that one day, we will come in contact with a bear. There is a better possibility that the dogs would not run the other way, although they would if they were smart, and would actually attack the bear. Well, Ozzy would attack it. Jack would just stand there and scream at it. Knock on wood I never have to deal with this because the thought of what might happen to them if they ever got loose on a bear makes me barf. While some may say to drop the leashes and save myself, I know that that would never happen. I would pick up my dogs in both arms and run like hell.

But what if Mr. Canon and I were completely alone in the woods with a bear? Its hard to imagine what I might do first, but I would hope that I would not throw my camera at it. I would hope would think ahead and grab a stick or a rock, but not Mr. Canon. MY TRIPOD. Okay now THAT I would throw at it. Better yet, swing fiercely at it. And I most likely would have some pepper spray on me somewhere. Hey, I live in South Side. Somethings you just have on you.

So what about you? What are you scared of and do you have a plan of action?

2006-04-10T13:41:00.000-04:00

I had a good weekend. Does it show?

Click to make larger.

These were taken last Saturday around 6:30 pm. The dogs and I were buried deep down in our favorite woods. It was just starting to get dark and these wild beasts that were attached to my wrist were itching to go left and right and up and down at the same time, which made it rather difficult to take a steady picture.

This brings up my latest dilemma;

Do I - Leave the dogs at home and go out with just Mr. Canon and me, which would inevitably ruin our trip from being haunted by visions of sad little puppy faces that have been embedded in our flash cards forever.

Do I - Just take the dogs and leave Mr. Canon at home, knowing that I will suffer immensely from missing something amazing and wonderful that would have surely been that money shot I've waited my whole life for.

Do I - Take the dogs first, then go back without them to shoot, only to become completely exhausted from all this running around, resulting in me not ever wanting to do that again.

Or do I - do what I did on Saturday and take everyone out with me at the same time, knowing darn well that dropping the leashes would leave me forever dogless thus being not an option, and thussssss....

The result - While half my shots were crooked and messy and very doggy wobbly, I did manage to get a few good ones...

Too bad my battery ran out before I could get anymore.

And what a beautiful evening it was turning in to. I was in a t-shirt and was so perfectly comfortable. The very next day, it snowed.

Spring is one stange monster.

I'll post more later.

2006-04-06T22:37:00.000-04:00

Oh and by the way, I was watching the Discovery Channel the other day, and they were talking about hurricanes and tsunamis and super hurricanes and super tsunamis and so on...

Do you know what two items Walmart sells the most during panicked times of severe nature disasters?

# 1 - BEER
and, are you ready for this?

# 2 - Poptarts
Esssuz me, ese?

Beer - okay, yes. I mean, hell yes. What else are you going to do while floating for hours on top of a piece of someone's elses house?

But POPTARTS?

By all means, WATER should have been number 1. And so should toilet paper and batteries and those kinds of things. But they didnt even come in as number TWO.

POPTARTS DID.

I'm thinking, maybeeee people buy poptarts instead, cause theyyy... cannnnn... what - Be eaten cold as well as hot. Are wrapped in pretty silver packages which are, most likely, water proof (not that I ever tested that theory) and could be used to reflect the sun and attract the attention of a rescue plan flying by. They probably last a long long time too, not as long as Twinkies, but long. And hey, its not like your going to be floating around for more than a year anyway, right? Or maybe its just because its America's favorite comfort food. I dont know. Is it? It isnt mine, but maybe there was a poll done that I missed and poptarts won. And are they the original poptart or those new Toaster Studel ones with the swirly frosting on them? Perhaps it doesnt matter.

I'm kinda embarrassed by this poptart thing. I can take a pretty good guess that wasn't the answer in any other country.

Hey, whatever makes us happy, right?

2006-04-06T21:46:00.000-04:00

In The Fog

2006-04-06T15:37:00.000-04:00

Storm in the hills of Highland

click to make larger.

2006-04-05T10:31:00.000-04:00

APRIL SNOW

Once upon a time, about 15 years ago, we had a massive snow storm in April. We all remember it as the "Easter Storm".

Last week, kids were walking around in tank tops and shorts...

Today, we have this -

I'm sending this one below to Ghosthunter so show them all the orbs I caught.... Its like a ghost orgy out there. BWHAAHAHAA. At least Jason and Grant can't say there dust balls.

So that orb picture was taken at 10:15 am. I just took the same one now, at 10:50am. Wow! Could I be any more exact as to where I was standing??

It's freak'in stick'in.

And the sky seems a bit darker...

Should be a fun ride home later. I'll keep you posted what we're up against here.

Seems that Friday, my day off, is going to be 65 degrees with thunderstorms. Huh - back to 65 degrees in two days. Well, I can't wait for the boombooms. If its gonna rain, it better thunder cause then I can watch scary movies all day with kettle corn popcorn and some nice Merlot. If it refuses to be sunny, then thats my idea of a perfect day off. Sunny days are good to have off too because you have lots of energy to get things done and you can be outside to enjoy the weather. But days like today are equally as good cause you can be inside and be warm. In fact, I could go for some of that corn and wine right now...

I think I think every day is perfect to have off. Yup, I'm pretty sure that's the case here.

2006-04-04T21:07:00.000-04:00

WELLLL thanks to two Lowe's gift cards I was able to replace my bathroom faucet as soon as it started to drown my bathroom! Usually, we have to wait a month for things to get replaced around here, even when there is water involved.

May I pleasseee introduce you all to..

My brand new Price Pfister Ashfield Collection rustic brushed spicket -

Isn't she the most beaUtiful thing you ever did see?! Ahhh it was love at first sight! Truly was. She's just so classy. And different. And farmy. AND CURRENT! BIGBIGBIG step up from the 1970's thing I had in there. AND she matches the finish on the shower head. I love it when things come together. Because of the gift cards, we could actually afford this baby. Don't tell anyone, but we actually paid what we would have for one of them lesser quality gadgets... But no one has to know that...

Now we just have to redo the entire rest of the bathroom to compliment the faucet....

Ha! Remember that commercial where they ask the designer to build the room around the fixture?! Yeah. Exactly. You thought they were nuts, me too. Not anymore.

Earl is installing her now, as we speak. I'm so exciting. It's like waiting for a baby to be born. Do people ever name their fixtures, you know, like they name their cars?

Uh oh. I hear him growling. Better go see what's not fitting.

Okay PHEW. False alarm. IT'S IN!

I can't wait for my first visitor to have to pee. Let's just hope they wash their hands.... Heyyy wait a minute... Ewwww I don't want their nasty peepee hands on my new faucet. I might just put in an extra sink so they can wash their hands FIRST before they wash their hands.

Now I'm starting to sound like that other commercial where the woman has a fancy dinner party but wont dirty up her new sink so makes her guests eat with paper plates and plasticware.

Okay, so apparently I'm even a little more excited about this new addition than I was when I got my new vacuum cleaner. Well, maybe alot more but hey, at least I really do appreciate the finer things in life... But I'm not going to kiss it good night. I promise.

At least, not everynight.

2006-04-04T11:03:00.000-04:00

Hello all! It's been awhile I know - and no Abs, its not because TAPS is filming Ghost Hunters in my living room - although darnit all, I wish they were. Nope, but I have been busy just the same...

Geez lets see how many things I can link in one sentence...

So here is where I must toot my own horn. TOOT TOOT. I must, because who knows when I might be able to ever toot it again...

For those of you who don't already know, I finally got published! I sent my dandelion photo to Indigo Leaf Magazine awhile back. Well, as it turns out, they wanted to not only use it on the cover and but it became the inspiration for that issue's theme of "Breathe". Which in turn, deemed itself the name for my photo. I don't think there could be a more appropiate title.

So go check it out! Meanwhile, I am enjoying my 15 minutes of fame for I know that soon enough I will be replaced by the next featured artist. Such is life.

Where is that butler anyway? How long does one have to wait for some service around here??

2006-03-29T11:14:00.000-05:00

JUST A QUICK REMINDER...

That's TONIGHT, people.

Cant wait to see what they were doing in my hometown in NJ... That's where I SHOOK Jason's hand... Remember???

Perhaps they were investigating the B-ville Library... Or all River Road tales... Or maybe somebody was having a problem in their house...

After 3 long months, it's finally March 29th. Soon, soon, I shall know.

BWHAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAA.

2006-03-28T20:14:00.000-05:00

Let me go.
Let me go to where I need to be.
Out in a meadow with the dragonflies.
Out in the tall strong grass with the whispy tops and feathery seeds.
Among the fragrant petals and mighty wings, the strong limbs and piercing eyes, the warm wind and pillowy clouds.
Let me go to capture time,
to freeze a glance,
a steal a stare,
an ear shutter,
a tail flicker,
a wing flutter.
Let me go away from what holds me back, from what others believe I need to do.
Let me go.
Leave me be.
Let me be free.

Hey thereeeee.

How you do'in? Folks, all I want to do is take pictures. Unfortunately, I have to go collect a paycheck at this place I work at, which leaves me little time to do what I want to do. I'm sorry I have been distant. Thank you all who worried about my whereabouts! I feel much loved.

So first you got a little poem. How lucky you are. Now here you can see, I have been creating things that dont exist again. And of course, you get a choice of black & white...

Or color.

And now for some actual events -
Here we have my fish. They appear to be awake after a long hibernation. The Shabumkin is the calico and my favorite little guy. He was coming up to eat and actually balanced himself on the heater coil to get the pellets. Sometimes, luck is on my side. Dont forget to click on the picture to make it bigger...
Go on.
It's worth it.

I love these tails.

I have also discovered that there is a critter living under my house. He or she has dug some holes of good size in my garden. What kind of burrowy creature dares to live in South Side? We have yet to see, but he better leave my fish alone.

And one more for good measure -

I know Q has put on a couple pounds since the kitten food has been out... But I believe he may suffering from what we shall call, "foodbag syndrome".

Gotcha, you fat bastard. All that hard work at keeping the kitten food out just for the kitten. I should have known you were up to something after you proceeded to get bigger instead of smaller.

Anyway, there you go. Oh and Earl had a good fish story too. He caught a muskie, although he wasn't fishing for one. It came, it bit, it cut line, it left. Poor Earl.

So as you can tell, I have not disappeared... I would like to, but they just wont let me.

2006-03-20T19:28:00.000-05:00

Happy first day of Spring!

It wasn't a very good first day for me, however.

1) I was extremely busy at work and actually ran out of time to finish everything I wanted to.

2) Around noon time, I started to get back that brain cracking headache that I've had in the front of my forehead since Saturday (the one I thought I finally got rid of Sunday night).

3) Then while Earl drove us home, I was on hold with Verizon for over 20 minutes trying to get a tracking number for our new wireless phones. But the longer I sat on the phone, the worse my headache got. The movement from the car, the hold music from Verizon, the tiny volume from the radio, the sunglare - it was all TOOOO MUCH. So on top of everything, now I was car sick. The Verizon guy kept coming back on telling me that "the online sales department is experiencing usual heavy volume" and "I'll just go ahead and put your on thru...." Another 3 minutes would pass and he would come back on and say the same damn thing.

FINALLY, I finally got my tracking number and wrote it down on.... something... which made my car sickness even worse.

Then I called FedEx who had apparently already stopped at the house so now it was up to us to pick up our package.

So THEN I had to call one of our friends to ask them how the hell to get to the FedEx building. He's listing names of roads, rights and lefts, this and that - All that THINKING was killing me.

When we reached the FedEx building, I had already lost the paper or whatever it was that I had writen the tracking number on. How the hell can you loose something you had just written on? Worse yet, I couldnt even remember what I wrote it down on. I dont know if it was the headache or my extreme lack of short term memory, but I could not for the life of me remember what it looked like to even look for it. I found myself standing at the counter searching my purse and pockets for something I can't even recollect.

That's tough.

Luckily FedEx didnt need it and gave us our package from our street address. I then figured that since I was not planning on going to class for fear that my head my burst and my tummy may turn itself inside out causing my bottom to explode, that it would be a good opportunity to stop by my friend's house to delivery the oh-so-cute-little-furry-soft-pink-terry-cloth-slippers-with-the-daisies-on-the-toes and the set of three teeny-weeny-matching-pink-hats-with-the-baby-bunnies-on-them-that-said ..... hop!- after-the-bunnies-little-bunny-feet-for-her-itty-bitty-little-bald-head that I found for her baby at Wal-mart.

Thats when I realized I didnt have them with me.

So we went home, where I found a letter from RCN threatening to suspend my cable service because they think somewhere along the way I missed a payment - which I know I have not. Well that just made me furious so I dialed them up even though my head was whincing and splitting in half, but the hold time and the music was way overbearing and caused me to hang up prematurely with the attitude of I'll deal with it tomorrow.

So we assembled our new shiny new phones and charged them up, only to have to get back on the phone with Verizon because they would. not. activate. After 10 minutes of "I'm sorry for your wait ma'am but I'm still checking on that", I was told to hold off until midnight to try which means I had a shiny new phone that I want to call people on, and I had to instead, sit and stare at it.

I could not exercise because my head was crying out for a good whack in the crown to be put out of its misery, and my stomach was somehow still sitting curled up in the floorboards of the car, and the only good thing I could think of was a) at least I can wear my pretty blowed out straight hair for one more day because if I had exercised it would have gotten ruined, and 2) at least tomorrow I can still give my friend the oh-so-cute-little-furry-soft-pink-terry-cloth-slippers-with-the-daisies-on-the-toes and the set of three teeny-weeny-matching-pink-hats-with-the-baby-bunnies-on-them-that-said ..... hop!- after-the-bunnies-little-bunny-feet-for-her-itty-bitty-little-bald-head....

That is, if I could find them. I dont know where they are. I looked and I looked for over an hour and can not find them. I have now come to the conclusion that I must have forgotten they were in the bag and used it as the garbage bag in last night dinner preparation...

And yes...

Threw it away.

And not that I would have dug them out of garbage and tried to brush the sauerkraut off them, but this morning was trash day anyway, so they're gone. The little bunnies ....hop! away to the dump. Hopefully some trash digging mother with a new-born baby girl - 'cause they be pink - will find them and get good use out of them.

And now all this typing is about make my eyes bleed and fall dripping from their sockets so I must stop this too.

Bye for now.

2006-03-14T08:58:00.000-05:00

I woke up at 3 a.m. this morning and had this conversation with myself:

me: Man its early
me: Yeah but its Friday
me: Oh yeah, cool.

I woke up at 4:00 a.m. this morning, wandered into the bathroom, found the toilet seat in the dark, and had this conversation with myself:

me: Uuuugg sooo tired.
me: Well thank dog its Friday
me: Yeahhhh

At 6:00 a.m., the alarm clock is buzzing. Apparently I had been hitting the snooze since 5:10 a.m., but I don't remember doing that. I rolled over and had this conversation with myself:

me: You better get up. Its way late.
me: Whatever. Its Friday.
me: No it's not. It's Tuesday.

me: .............. What?
me: It's Tuesday.
me: .............. It is?
me: Yes.

me: ............... That's not very nice of you.

2006-03-13T15:39:00.000-05:00

Illustration Friday - topic:

Tattoo

The actual tattoo is towards the bottom. Although I never thought of it as a "large" design, others seem to think so.

For Illustration Friday, I've turned it into more of a collage.

Now. I would call THAT a large tattoo.

2006-03-10T19:29:00.000-05:00

All I can say is -

CAN'T I HAVE ANYTHING TO WATCH ANYMORE ON SUNDAY NIGHTS??? Everytime I get a favorite show that I watch religiously...

IT GETS CANCELLED.

CHARMED - Has been CANCELLED for the next season. This is it for my little witches. No more soup for you.

Well. I love my little witches. I actually, from time to time, have dreams about being part of their "power of three", only I make it the power of four, and we not only fight demons together but I am a friend to a sister in need. Last time it was Piper. She was horribly huge and pregnant and I was trying to console her by telling her she wasn't that big. The time before that, it was Pheobe. She was upset with her love life again, and in between dodging fireballs, I was giving her advice about staying strong.

Gee. You think I need some more girlsfriends in real life? Maybe mom could pop out a sister for me real quick. She's only what? 65? She could still do it... okay maybe not. But perhaps having just a brother wasn't enough for my fragile female subconscious.

Well, it appears that after this season, my dreams will be the only place I see the old Charmed ones again - together, that is. I'm sure they'll all move on and do their own thang...

Just remember girls, you wont have any superpowers anymore so be careful.

How depressing.

Well what can you do. It happened to Buffy. It happened to Angel. I'm sure it will happen to Supernatural. And after this season, it will be the fate of The Sopranos.

Hell, not to sound cheezy or anything, but even American Idol will be done after this season.

I am doomed. DOOMED I tell you. Everything I like. Gone.

Damn you Les Moonvez. I hate your guts. Leave my shows alone! And while you're at it, leave Howard alone too. Who do you think you are anyway? The GOD of media? Well you're not. Howard is. So go away and let me watch (and listen) to whatever the hell I want.

This is all pretty pathetic. I didn't even think I "had" any "shows". Not like the "people" I "work" with who "have" "shows" "every" "night". I'm never home to watch anything! I'm always at my classes when stuff is on. I only had a couple shows here and there!

And he has to go and take THEM AWAY.

JUST LEAVE ME MY GHOSTHUNTERS!!! That's ALL I ask. Besides, its on the Sci Fi channel, you stupid Moonvez guy, you cant touch it. It's mine.

All mine.

2006-03-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

Its that time again. Time to start looking for a new car.

Man, just when you think you'll get to enjoy some months without a car payment....

See, our little Cavalier is having some, er, problems. We have six wholeeee payments left on it. In other words, soon it will be paid off and I was looking forward to being able to catch up on some other bills...

Yeah, I wish.

I dont know if little Cavalier will still want to drive me around too much longer. Maybe if I just give it some extra love, or new wheel bearings... or a new engine, or something.

I have to say, they just dont make cars like they used to. My old Cavalier lasted 10 years and gave me 241,000 miles of hard labor. That car was a tank. This one? Not the same. Its only 5 years old with 170,000 and its falling apart.

But at least this time, we're able to shop around for a new car. Last time, when the old Cavalier was on its last wheel, it drove us one last time from NJ to PA safely, got us to the dealership where we said, "give us another one of these", which they did and offered us a whooping $50 for our old one, which we refused, and then drove its final run back home. A few weeks later, some silly kid showed up with a flat bed truck and gave us $200 for it...

BUT I would never have bought a new Cavalier had I sat in it first. Hey, we were desperate. So you do what you gotta do. You know?

So like I said, we're shopping around. For the last 3 days I've been comparing vehicles. As of today, its a toss up between the Toyota Corolla and the Nissan Sentra. I would go out and buy the Corolla this minute. The Corolla is bigger, prettier, and more fuel efficient. It cost less too. And... its a TOYOTA.

Totota = good car.

IF I HAD MONEY? I would buy a Honda Accord.

IF I HAD LOTS OF MONEY? I would buy a Acura.

IF I HAD TONS OF MONEY? I would buy a completly restored GTO or Charger and drive it around town just for fun.

But I dont. So I wont.

Hubby likes the horsepower in the Sentra better. Hubby needs HORSEPOWER, 6 SPEED MANUAL TRANSMISSION, BIG ENGINE, yadda yadda, yadda.

I need FUEL EFFIENCY, SAFETY, SPACE, RELIABILITY, blah blah blah.

OOoooo then you go with the HONDA CIVIC!! Yum! But wayyyyy to SMALLLLLL. Holy crap. Its smaller than my Cavalier, which has Earl and I fighting for elbow room every morning. Did I mention its too expensive too?

Corolla people. Say it with me. Corolllllaaaaaaa.

So its a 1.8 L instead of a 2.4.
So its 164 hp instead of 175 hp.

Its reliable, it gets 34 mpg, it has ROOM, and we can afford it. Even after adding a spoiler on the back.

I keep you updated on our progress. Any opinion on these cars? Good experiences? Bad? Let me know!

UPDATE:

I've been doing some more thinking....

Lunch time today, I had to have someone jump my battery. Thats when I saw my engine and was reminded that my Cavalier is a 2.4 L. I knew that, just forgot about it. The thing is, I have never felt that my car was crazy "powerful", and so it was at that time I realized that if a 2.4 was okay, then a 1.8 certainly will never do.

So the SENTRA is a little worse on gas... but it has everything else we want. Hmmm.

This is going to drive me nuts. No pun intended.

Can we say SENNTRAAAAA?

2006-03-09T09:51:00.000-05:00

Illustration Friday - topic: INSECT
Phewww! Got to this one just in time! Although, I'm not sure if a spider is really an "insect", but rather an arachnid... which is kinda an insect. Oh whatever. They're all bugs to me.

2006-03-02T10:12:00.000-05:00

I am feeling much better today. Apparently, I woke up on the right side this morning. I blame my good mood on the winter storm coming. Winter storms excite me. They shake the normal boring day up. Plus I love the snow. It makes everything so quiet and clean.

So like a little kid, I woke up and looked out the window to see if it had started. The ice was beginning to fall but the snow wasnt here yet. Still, the ice was not bad enough to call into work. Damn. I was hoping to catch an extra hour of sleep. They say its only supposed to get worse, so prehaps I'll be able to come home early.

Here's our forcast:

So now I sit and wait to see how bad it's going to get. Its a tough call when you live so far from your job. You cant justify taking the whole day off if the weather isnt a factor yet. You have to play it by ear and see how it goes.

The other reason my mood is brighter today is because there was NO traffic. All the schools are skurd of the weather and are closed up tight. Parents had to stay home with the chillins, and I imagine many others just took the day off. Good. Stay home people. Because MY ride in was PLEASANT. See the difference it makes in me? Well, except for the few SUVs who thought they were tanks and darted in and out of the rest of us. The roads are slippery, you morons. An SUV doesnt mean your tires are built out of metal grippy claws.

So cross your fingers for us. It would so nice to get out early. There's nothing sweeter than curling up on the couch with your honey, your pets, some kettle corn popcorn and a good movie during a snow storm.

What's your weather like?

2006-03-01T10:01:00.000-05:00

If I could have, I would have shut the alarm clock off, rolled over away from it, and gone back to sleep for the rest of the day.

Today I definately woke up on the wrong side.

Today I don’t care about anything I have to do.
Today I don’t care about what other people have to say about anything.
Today I have no patience to listen to the same crap spill out of the same mouths if they aren’t ever going to take advice and do something about it.
Today I am PISSED OFF that the weatherman can’t stick with one prediction, and that the radio says something different than what weather.com is saying.

Today I have absolutely. Had it. With those fuckers. On the highway. That cause traffic.

And today, I can’t STAND the people I work with. And that's who this is about, just so you know.

Stop it.

Stop going on about your problems day after day after day. Look. I told you what to do about it. If you’re not going to listen to me than stop complaining to me about it. If you insist on continuing to be stupid about everything, then go far, far away from me and be stupid.

Stop bothering me with the same set of instruction for the same task I’ve done everyday of my life here at this job. I know how to do it. Now get.

Stop telling me to not let the traffic bother me. I’ve been in it for 9 years as opposed to your measly 3. You are still a traffic virgin. It is BOTHERING me because there is no reason for it and there are too many people on the road and nobody knows how to fucking drive. They don’t remember how to accelerate, or break, or merge, or use turn signals, or to ignore any pretty flashy lights on the shoulder, or how to get over to their exit before its too late, and they don’t understand why it isn’t necessary to slow down to 20 miles below the speed limit because a cop is sitting on the side.

Stop ruining the whole pot of coffee by making it three times stronger than it needs to be. If you want expresso, go buy a cup.

Stop asking me 'how's it going', 'what's going on', 'how's everything' - you don't really care how I am so don't pretend to.

Stop playing the same freaking songs on this disgusting radio station. I could list all the songs they play on two hands.

Stop flushing the toilet before you sit down on it. Thats just stupid.

Stop telling me we’re going to win the lottery this time because we have over a hundred tickets. We never win.

Stop telling me you hope the day will go by quick, because it won’t and your only making it worse.

Stop telling us you have a medical problem and need to use the restroom every 30 minutes. You’re doing your make-up and fixing your hair - we see you - you’re wasting time and you know it.

Stop talking about breakfast sandwiches. I forgot my bagel stick on the counter at home, which is dog food by now. That’s just salt in the wound.

Stop it. Just stop it.

Okay. Now that I got it all out, although I’m sure I forgot some, I think I can start to feel better any minute now….

Anyyy minute now…

Mmm Hmm.

2006-02-28T18:31:00.001-05:00

In case any of you are planning on winning the lottery tonight, I hate to disappoint you for you will not. It is simply not your time yet. Because you see...

It is mine.

This is no "Once Upon A Time" story. This, my friends, is the real deal. Still, with all my millions, I will not live fancy or proud or boostfull or materialistic. I want a nice, humble little cabin on a lake so Earl can fish and I can take pictures. Remember all the times we were asked where we would like to live in those questions about ourselves that get passed around? My answer has always been,

"I want to live in a cabin on a lake full of bass, in a meadow by an enchanted forest, surrounded by rolling hills and mountains, and just a few miles outside of a cool city with a happening nightlife."

Well, I am proud to announce you are among the first to see my new humble abode...

Please try not to stare....

We'll start off with the outside. To experience it for what it truly is, I have thrown some shots in of both winter and spring.

Some shots from the only road... Please note the rolling hills and mountains. The meadow is just beyond the road here.

And now from the lake! Yes, that's right. The LAKE full of BASS.

See? ENCHANTED FOREST!

Ahhh, the quaint little porch. Or, is that the WRAP AROUND deck... always wanted one of those.

The front door...

Lets go inside, shall we? Just step over the dog. We're all pretty laid back around here.

The dinning room table. Earl doesnt care for the chandelier. I have to agree. Boy, new homes are so much work.

A touch of nature in the old stair case!

Some shots of the patio, spring... winter...

My favorite room... the Kitchen!!

There's that chandelier again. For real guys. A teepee? Come on.

Of course no kitchen is complete with a breakfast nook!

The bathroom is a little bigger than the one I have now.

Here is where we will entertain our guests. There is a complete bar with a nice pool table.

Mmmmm, and dont forget the hot tub!

I believe I will be doing most of my blogging here... The view here is just to freaking HOT! I mean, very inspiring.

I know you're all dying to know what it will look like during the holidays so I've thrown a shot in of the living room with the Christmas tree up.

Well, there you have it. A sneak peak at our new place. I hope you all like it because you're all invited to a BBQ just as soon as it gets a little nicer out.

Good luck to you all in the next lottery. As you can see, I needed this one for myself. But it feels so good to finally get what you always dreamed of. I think I figured out that there will be some change left over for Earl's bass boat and a new car for me. After all, my Cavalier is getting kind of tired so it would be a smart decision. Not that I will have to go anywhere. Like. To work, or anything.

BWWAHHHAHHHHHHA.

*knock on wood*

2006-02-28T10:56:00.000-05:00

The bad new is, I thought it was lotion and rubbed it all over my nose.

It smelled good, like cucumber melon, and my nose was falling apart from this stupid cold.

The problem was, it wasn't lotion.

It was hand soap.

Not even nose soap.

Badder part, I didnt realize it until the next day. Now my nose looks like there's another nose underneight trying to peel its way out.

Word to the wise, read labels.

2006-02-27T14:44:00.000-05:00

Illustration Friday - topic: TEA

Thaur be dragons in me tea.

2006-02-24T10:56:00.000-05:00

Alright see? No designs in this one... But I still have to come up for something for Illustration Friday. The topic is TEA, so I'm giving that some thought... well as much thought as I can with Vicks in the brain -

I'll explain.

It’s Friday. Holy cow. I didn’t even realize it was Friday. I have been so sick with this freaking cold since Monday that I’ve lost track of time. I think I caught it from KathyHowe cause it sure sounds like what she had and I made her a poem about being sick so yeah, I think that’s where I got it.

Last night my cough was so bad that I was waiting for little chunks of my lungs to start coming up. Really. I was looking in my hand afterwards for any remnants.

I believe the “cough” is the worst part of the cold. Unless of course you have special bonuses like an earache or something. Nothing besides an toothache is worse than an earache. But the “cough” makes you shake and want to puke and that just adds to the misery.

I stayed home Wednesday to try and recover. Slept most the day away, I did. In fact, I’ve slept a lot during this cold. Last night, Earl asked me if I was going to my class. I of course was not, but it made me realize for the first time since Tuesday that I had not so much as thought of class or exercise. I worked out Monday morning and Monday night, even though I felt this thing in my chest coming on. But the days and nights were just too foggy and I have been so preoccupied with feeling like shit. Exercise never ever crossed my mind. I find that fascinating.

I’ve watched more American Idol than ever and even watched that Skating With Celebrities. May I say that Kristy Swanson and her partner did an outstanding job last night.

So. That’s about it. Colds make everything so complicated. I keep forgetting that I cant eat a cough drop yet because I'm still drinking tea. The consequences would be disgusting. And I want some SOFT tissues dammit. Ones with lotion in them. Is that too much to ask for? I took some Vicks 44, or 45, or whatever its called and now I have total space head. Its even hard to type. That stuff makes you very la-la-ish.

Its kinda nice.

You don't know how many times I have gone back and corrected my typing on this one.

2006-02-22T16:48:00.000-05:00

Perhaps, I am going... here.

2006-02-21T21:05:00.000-05:00

Hmmmmmm.....

Where am I going with this.

abitest-8

2006-02-21T08:54:00.000-05:00

And yet, it progresses still.

Abi has pointed out some things I needed to work on and I'm SO glad she did. Boy, am I starting to UNDERSTAND things more instead of just blindly trying to create. Abi, whether she realizes it or not, is my beloved mentor and I lurve her to death for helping me. The stuff she's shown me in just one day after attempting this piece has changed the design into more of a mature representation of it. Yes, the swirl is gone although if you like that one still, Jen, you can have it for sure.

Abi explained the whole WOW factor of Photoshop and how people are drawn to pretty swirly things, but this design is demonstrating more professional technique (well, as professional as I can get right now). Abi, being the pro that she is, could instantly detect what I was using in the first two and suggested other ways to make it look more skilled. So in other words, it is the same but different. It grew up, if you will. But to each their own. It may turn into more, you never know. I dont know. Who could possibly know? They each have their own uniqueness about them.

I think I'm going to have to buy Abi a puppy.

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to continue on through this little journey of mine and give me your input - I promise not to cry, right Abs? Constructive criticism may be hard to handle but it's necessary to see if you're ~~seeing~~ feeling what I'm trying to get you to ~~see~~ feel.

I promise not every post will be about a design, although I can't promise there wont be a little one slipped in at the end (hey, they're fun to look at right?) and there will still be just simple photography tossed about - It's when you can't tell the difference between the two, besides the fact that roads don't normally just get sucked into space, that's when I'll know I'm getting somewhere.

Fact is, I'm gonna learn things and I'm gonna throw them out at you. You may see some pretty ugly messes, you may see some disturbing images created from the bowels of my brain. But some day, we may find that diamond in the ruff.

abitest-8, originally uploaded by spookalot.

2006-02-20T09:55:00.000-05:00

Illustration Friday - topic:

Song

“A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
- Maya Angelou

print-lehighswirl-upright1-350

2006-02-18T16:30:00.000-05:00

Amazing. You can come back the next day and think, why did I do it that way? and sit down to make something that can't really exist in the first place look more "realistic". Amazing.

print-lehighswirl-upright1-350, originally uploaded by spookalot.

print-lehighswirl-350

2006-02-17T19:55:00.000-05:00

Now I'm getting it...

print-lehighswirl-350, originally uploaded by spookalot.

2006-02-17T16:06:00.000-05:00

THIS IS A TEST. THIS IS ONLY. A TEST.

Did you know how much I like my sister-in-law? Well I do. Very much so. Did you know she showed her karaoke-krowd my pretty ring which means she talks about me to her friends and that makes me pretty sure she likes me back. Did you know I get insanely jealous when I see her post comments daily on other people’s blogs and not mine? Well, I do. Did you know that I almost posted a picture of a fish hook to see if I could catch her as she flew on by to somebody elses blog? Well, I did. Almost.

Did you know I could spell karaoke yesterday but not today? Today, after 7 tries, I had to let spell checker correct it.

Did you know that it’s Friday and I have no desire to do anything but go to sleep early tonight? Its not because I’m getting old. No, it’s more like I have been so tired all week and it just seems like a good idea. I was only able to get myself up once this whole week before the sun came up to work out, and even though I still managed to get to a few evening classes, I feel like a fat pig.

Do you know how hard it is to get out of a “tired, good for nothing, lazy ass, fat pig” funk? Very hard. For some reason, dill pickle potato chips don't seem to help at all.

Do you know that my birthday was almost two weeks ago and my best friend still hasn’t said anything? Did you know that her birthday is coming up and I’m not sure what I feel like doing about it?

Do you know that I have no idea how to ask for a Power Ball ticket?

Did you know that when I first moved to PA and had to pump my own gas, I wasn’t sure how to tell when the tank was full?

Did you know that I have two favorite colors and I’m not sure what to put down on these quizzes that asks for only one? Did you know they are yellow and blue?

Do you know this Intelligence Test I got involved with from The Crooked Trail took me three days and the help of my husband, a bar full of drunks, and finally the Internet to finish it? And now there’s a part 2. Freaking. Dang it all. I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

Did you know that I have been calling Best Buy every day for weeks hoping to get a stupid Xbox 360 Premium game system. I even tried to bribe one of the employees to let me know when one finally freaking comes in. Funny. He hasn't called me back yet... And don't you dare suggest EBay. I'm sick of that place. Besides, I dont want to pay $200 more than I have to only to get a box with a brick in it.

Did you realize by now I have nothing really to blog about?

Go on. Tell me what you did know and what you didn't know. Then ask if I know something about you. See? This could actually work.

Lata Flava

sanfran-350-crp

2006-02-16T09:54:00.000-05:00

I don't find myself taking too many pictures of city life - Although there are many interesting things that happen there, I am partial to the type of wildlife that grows fur and walks on four legs (for the most part.) But here I caught myself walking the streets of San Francisco and this has become one of my favorite shots...

sanfran-350-crp, originally uploaded by spookalot.

For our first wedding anniversary, I bought two tickets to a September 49er's game against the Browns in the one and only 3Com Park... It had always been a dream of his, one that he never thought would ever come true. Plus, I thought the tickets would be appropiate being that your first anniversary is supposed to be paper.

The 49ers lost, of course, but it was an amazing feeling to be sitting there with them while they were losing. I can remember taking our first step into the stadium and how breathtaking it was! It was also a surprising 95 degrees in the Bay, which is not too common. Did we have hats or sunblock? No - but I had lots of football stickers all over my face so the tan lines were very interesting and Earl had a great excuse to pay $30 for a 49ers baseball hat.

We had box seats just a few rows back from the end zone. I had my new (at the time) 35mm Canon Rebel EOS Ti and a 300mm zoom with me to get shots of the game. Got a couple good ones too but its hard when fans keep jumping up in front of you. They spill your beer alot too.

I always like to brag about this being one of the cooler ideas I've had. I mean, how many wives buy their husbands football tickets on their first anniversary? Yeah, I'm still patting myself on the back for that one...

Although Earl lived in California briefly when he was a just a wee baby boy, he hadn't ever revisited nor had I ever set foot in that great state. I definately would recommend San Fran to anybody looking for a great vacation. It was a fun town with LOTS to do and see! Just try not to leave your $50 worth of chocolate in the taxi cause you'll never see it again.

And who knows, I may just take some more pictures of city life. Bethlehem is a pretty crazy little town too - guess I could start there.

2006-02-15T13:53:00.000-05:00

Happy belated “Hallmark Holiday”, as its been called (too true Granny!) But you know something, anytime I can buy a card that says “To My Husband”, I’m happy to do it. I LOVE spoiling Earl and even though I buy him little prizes every time I go grocery shopping, Valentine’s Day is just an excuse to fill a little gift bag with some special treats that he normally doesn’t get… and perhaps some flannel heart boxers… and maybe even a dancing hamster that sings “I’m Too Sexy”.

We were planning on just doing cards, candy, making a nice dinner at home - you know, nothing fancy. However, when we left work last night, he drove to TJMaxx to see if there was something there I might like – jewelry wise. TJMaxx has some nice stuff, but neither of us saw anything we liked. So he suggested we go to the real jewelry store next door to see if they have any sales….

I’m a tight ass. Stingy as they come. I don’t want to spend money, I hate spending money. I HATE MONEY PERIOD. So you can imagine ME, in a JEWELRY STORE. I’m all like,

“No, too much.” “What?? That’s too expensive.” “No.” “No.” “No way.”

I was probably what someone would call ‘a nightmare of a customer.’ Every time I showed interest in something, the jewelry guy would pull it out, I would turn over the price tag and say, “Sweet Jeebus, its that much?!”, and then he would say, “No it’s not” and punch numbers on his handy dandy calculator and tell me it’s only $xxx.xx, to which I would roll my eyes and walk away.

I had in mind for awhile that a pair of diamond earrings would be nice to have someday, but the little itty bitty microscopic pairs where $325 – “no they’re not – *punch punch” they’re…. $310”. I couldn’t even seem them, how could they be that much? I think I would lose them in my ears.

But.

There was… this ring…

MMmmm.

Caught my eye it did. And I fell strangely in love.

Black pearl, 6 diamond chips, white gold.

I've never really even been much of a pearl person. I know how sensitive they are and what it takes to keep 'em happy, but this one - this one really fascinated me.

The setting is the most unique I’ve ever seen. That’s what made it stand out from the rest. That and the color of the pearl with the white gold was so impressive. They called the style “contemporary” and although I don't consider myself contemporary, I was super drawn to it. Firstly, because I’m a sucker for silvery things. Secondly, I’ve never had a black pearl before so it was intriguing. And thirdly, it was completely different than any other piece of jewelry I have ever owned.

I asked how much, punch punch went his fingers, I said “too much”, and walked out the door.

Earl was baffled. He thought the price was quite reasonable, but I guess in my eyes, if it’s more than $10 – it’s too much.

Later that night, Earl said he could tell I was still thinking about it. I said I couldn’t justify making such a purchase. What happens if I get it and then the car breaks, or the pipes burst, or the roof caves in? Besides, I got a treadmill for Christmas. How could I get something else just a couple months later? But he insisted I needed to have it... That life is not about money... It’s about things that make you happy... Its about him wanting to buy me that ring simply because I liked it... Actually he said, "I'm getting that ring for you tomorrow" and that was about it, but he implied the rest.

I can spend money on someone else a lot easier than on myself, that’s for sure.

Today at lunchtime, my husband walked into my office, placed a little box on my desk, kissed me softly and whispered Happy Valentine's Day.

I’ll give you one guess what was inside...

Isn't it different?! I love it. I love Earl.

I still hate money.

And somehow a pair of heart boxers a dancing hampster doesn't seem like enough anymore.

If anyone has a Xbox 360 Premium for sale, I'll buy it from you right now! They're harder to find than a virgin in South Side.

2006-02-15T11:28:00.000-05:00

I cant stop thinking. Thanks to Abi, I've learned cool new stuff and now everytime I turn around, I start creating things. Forgive me for throwing these at you. I'm just going with it, trying to come up with something that makes sense.

bubblespider-600

2006-02-14T09:23:00.000-05:00

Hey, it could happen...

Right?

2006-02-13T10:22:00.000-05:00

Be forewarned, this post rotates counter clockwise.

I had to slip this in really quick. I forgot to tell you what I did today when I wrote this post, so here you go - I woke up at 5:11am because Ozzy was threatening to poop on the floor. He ate too much of his bone last night and I think his tum tum was yucky. He made that funny noise he makes when he's pooper is full, so I got up to let him out. I could have gone back to sleep for a whole 20 minutes, but whats the point. I jumped on the treadmill and got a full 30 minute workout in along with some crunches and push ups. I'm proud to announce that I am up to 23 real man push ups! I try to add one more each day if I can. Although I usually chicken out and do girly push ups in class (really because Instructor makes us do 45 of 'em - dont worry, I'm not that crazy. They're broken into 3 sets of 15 with over head extensions in between to exhaust your triceps), I like to impress myself and do the 'real' ones at home. Hopefully nothing will get in my way of getting to class tonight. Its a good one - 1 hour 1/2 hours long.

Well well well. Seems as though winter is actually upon us. Wasn't sure, being as two Fridays ago I had the windows open cause it was 62 degrees. But yesterday, finally, we got over a foot of fluffy cold white, perfect snowman-making, snow.

And no, as much as I wanted to, I did not make a snowman for I did not have me mittens (so yes, I shoveled with bare hands) nor did I have me boots (because the snow ate them and I had to wear me sneakers) . That, and me dogs are skurd of snowmen....

Oh, and I checked. None of the snowflakes were the same, just so you know.

I like the snow. It should snow in winter. If it doesnt, it worries me. Even more so, if its 62 degrees, I get all panicky. It should not be. This is not Florida. This is Pennslvania. We have cold temps during winter and we have snow.

So I was more than happy to be shoveling on Sunday. It kinda sets my world all straight and stuff. Eventually though, one can only shovel so much. I parked my ass on the couch for the remainder of the day and watched movie, after movie, after movie. Whatever came on next, that's what I watched. I saw Jersey Girl, Captain Ron (again), Nothing To Lose... I can't even remember them all anymore. My bum was moments away from growing roots in to the cushion and developing bed sores. The fact that I have been training Jack to retrieve beverages from the fridge and Ozzy to make more popcorn, although they haven't quite caught on yet, is not helping matters.

Good thing I went to the grocery store on Saturday because I wouldn't of had enough popcorn to get me through that. As you might expect, the store was PACKED with desperate people looking for bread, milk, donuts, scotch tape, whatever they could grab... you know, just in case the snow swallowed up their houses and dingos came for the children, and fire rained from the sky, and mountains moved across the sea... for the next two whole days. These poor people might starve to death, you know.

Hell, all I wanted was a nice london broil and some popping corn.

Some how, however, I came home with a cart full of food. Perhaps it was the mass of people running through the aisles with pounds of crap piled high in their carts. Maybe I felt the need to feed too, I don't know. Suddenly I found myself fighting for the last box of chocolate chip cookies. One never knows when you'll have a cookie fit in a snow storm but dammit, I was gonna be prepared for one. It might not seem like good exercise, but when you go grocery shopping with nothing more than a mental list, you seem to find yourself hitting the same aisles over and over again at opposite ends of the store. I decided I wanted taco's, so I grabbed the taco kit, then scampered to produce for a head of lettuce, then ran to get the beef, then hit the dairy section for sour cream, then back to produce for a tomato, then back to dairy for cheddar...

Yeah baby, I burned some calories.

Thursday I REALLY burned calories. I went to sword class like always, but this time found myself being the only student to show up!

Yup. It was me and the instuctor. Me. And the Instructor.

The instructor.

And.

ME.

Oh God.

At first I wondered if it would feel awkward, but no, refreshingly, it did not . After all, the two of us are friends, so why should it? I actually had a great time! We did 1/2 hour of sword and then as per my request, another 1/2 hour of heavy bag, and then finished up with some crunches. By the end of class, my face was so red it looked like a stop light. And my stomach - my stomach was all kinds of sour. Why? BECAUSE. Usually we do 1/2 hour of cardio and 1/2 hour of body sculpting stuff. This time, because of my request for bags, we just did an hour straight of hard cardio.

Barf.

But it felt really awesome and I was pretty proud of myself for sticking through it. Ha! What choice did I have? I think she would have noticed if I sat down, and I'm too proud to wimp out. Besides, it was particularly obvious when I screwed up my sword technique, I wasn't about to let her know if I was tired.

Which I wasn't.

Really.

Yup.

So that's about it. I hope you didn't trip from going backwards so fast. At least you know what's up and that's whats important.

2006-02-13T10:15:00.000-05:00

Illustration Friday - topic:

Simple

originally uploaded by spookalot.

Yet so complex.

2006-02-08T20:18:00.000-05:00

TODAY I...

Today I actually let myself sleep through my 5:30am workout because I thought I deserved it.

Today I turned down a fresh buttered roll for an apple.

Today I got angry with someone for having a more organized retirement plan than me, mostly because I don't have one.

Today I got irritated with another someone for telling me about the great deal he got on insurance - and no, it wasn't the gecko.

Today I discovered that I may be experiencing PMS.

Today I felt the need to eat many honey pretzels.

Today I daydreamed some more about becoming a famous wildlife photographer.

Today I was annoyed by someone's advice to roll my property taxes into my equity, or whatever he said. Probably because I don't have any real equity yet.

Today I watched a familiar face pass away and get carried out on a stretcher under a blanket and slid directly into a hurse. I've never seen that before.

Today I ate too many rosemary and olive oil triscuits because I was out of honey pretzels.

Today I thought there were many people I work with that needed to be extinguished.

Today I wanted to punch someone for telling me that he pays all his bills online because he insinuated that I didn't when I do.

Today I was delayed on my commute home and missed my class.

Today I had to drive both ways to work.

Today I got Wendy's for dinner for the first time in about 7 months.

Today I made a mental note that the chicken nuggets are better than jr. bacon burgers and I don't ever need to buy them both again.

Today I realized it wasn't Thursday.

Today I verified that is more fun to be bad than it is to be good, although being good is much more gratifying.

Today I had a pleasant conversation with Columbus, Ohio.

Today I got to email with two of my favorite blog friends and got to know both of them a little bit better.

Today I was asked about being a lord of war, although I consider myself just a mere princess.

Today I wondered if American Idol was on because I have nothing else to do because I'm home for once because I missed my class and ate Wendy's for dinner and washed it down with some beer.

....What did you do today?

2006-02-07T14:45:00.000-05:00

So now I’m done with my long weekend. I’m trying hard to catch up on work left behind but finding it more fun to get distracted with playing Ms. Photographer and stuff. Why should I snap out of long weekend mode? What for?

I had a really nice birthday despite having to share it with the Superbowl...

Congrats to all you Steelers fans – again. Seems you guys have FINALLY tied with us 49ers in super bowl rings. Took you long enough…. Hehehe. Whoaaa don’t get your panties in a bunch, you guys have more of a chance of getting there again next year. Look at where we stand…

Ok.

Stop laughing.

Unfortunately, my best friend was too sick to make it up Saturday night for my b-day par-tee but we still had 6 people come by. I had gone to BJs that afternoon to find some snick snacks to go with the tequila lime wings. The table was graced with veggies and dip, chips, Tostitos and salsa, mozzarella sticks, pot stickers, and wings w/blue cheese. Unfortunately, the cocktail weenies didn’t make it. They had an accident with a hot oven. But the rest of the spread was plentiful... Too bad nobody really ate anything.

What?! Is everybody on a diet or something???

Well, except for moi. I had my way with the veggies and dip. But besides the wings and pot stickers getting eaten all up, the rest was untouched. That’s okay, I thought, anything left over will go back out on Sunday for the Superbowl…

So then Sunday comes… and… well…Sunday was about all that showed up. Everyone else had other plans. I told people about coming over for Superbowl in January. How much more of a heads up do they need for crying out loud?? Sheeshhh. Unbelievable.

You know, I shouldn’t be telling you all this. You’re gonna think I’m some sort of loser who has bad parties. THAT’S NOT TRUE. I have GREAT parties. It was just this one time. I swear! And Saturday. But that’s it!

Hold on to your seats cause I'm jumping back to Sunday morning. I gots myself woken up with a sweetttt back rub from hubby, and then treated to a nice Ho Burger down at the Ho for lunch served by the ho himself Matthew McConaughey – okay, maybe it was someone who looked like him but it was my birthday so if I wanted to believe it was him I can.

So as you can see, I had a great day anyway even without Superbowl fans in my living room. Who needs ‘em anyway...

Yeah so around 4:00 we went off to somebody else’s party to find some, and there they all were, drinking their beers, eating their spinach dip and MONKEY BREAD, gathered around the TV – in somebody else’s house.

Hey. Less clean up for me. Oh. Not to mention plenty of dip for dinner.

Anyone up for some appetizers? Come on over. I have some and I’m not afraid to share. I'll even make Merit's dip so we can have a choice. I was saving her's for next weekend, but what the hey.

2006-02-02T21:42:00.000-05:00

Go to class and work out tonight...

Or...

Run to BJ's and grab wings for Earl's famous Tequila Lime Chicken Wings for Saturday's birthday party and Sunday's Super Bowl/Birthday party, then kick shoes off at home because Friday is a vacation day and eat my weight in pistachios and beer...

????????????

It's hard to type with salty nuts on your fingertips.

Just so you know.

And riddle me this - How can you workout when you are staring at a FOUR-day weekend in the face?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Besides, do you know how hard it is to find chicken wings before the Super Bowl in the home state to one of the playing teams??? I had to go tonight.

And yes, I got ALLLL my work done so YES I have vacation days FRIDAY (tomorrow) and MONDAY and YESSS I have the LONGGGG BIRTHDAY WEEKEND I WANTED.

Thank you thank you. I appreciate your cheers.

And THANK YOU to all those who have wished me well FOR MY BIRTHDAY for I am a HUGE birthday celebration whore and need to bring attention to my BIRTHDAY to anyone and everyone when the time is appropriate and that time is now. Now being the time and the time is the fourth day before because the number is four and four shall be the number.

Up until four, I am quite. EXCEPT, to celebrate others whose birthhh day has come about. For you I cheer. But THIS weekend, my friends, is MY birthday. So come. Come and celebrate my birthday month, for I will celebrate yours. Truthfully and sincerely, I will.

I will.
I have (if I know about it)
And I always will.

It is the day you were BORN. As in - HELLO. I am here. Here I am.

So unless that is a bad day for you, then you should always recognize your "day" because it is the one day in the year that is YOURS.

REC. O. NIZE. IT. BEYOTCH.

Just don't make it a holiday cause that would make you a Satanist.

PS. I can send you the famous Tequila Lime Chicken Wing recipe if you want it. That, or you can bribe Merit to give it to you because I sent it to her during the recipe exchange thingy… even though I got recipes for Skillet Sensations and Jello.

2006-01-31T12:16:00.000-05:00

Illustration Friday - topic: Glamour

1: "Magic influence causing a person to see objects differently from what they really are; witchery. A magic spell.

2: An exciting and often illusory and romantic attractiveness; especially : alluring or fascinating personal attraction

I know, I know. But I couldn't help myself.

Right then. Back to work.

2006-01-30T11:56:00.000-05:00

I know I'm behind in posting and just as behind in visiting....

No excuse to give you for that concerning the weekend. I was... you know... busy. But now, although I would love to talk, I am busting me bum to get a whole lot of work finished at work, including the largest of our three ads out a whole day early, so I can take a -

NICE...

LONGGGG....

BIRTHDAY...

and SUPERBOWL...

WEEKEND.

I've got this Friday and Monday off just so long as I can get my work done.

Mark my words. It will be done. *Get those pom-poms in the air people. I'm gonna need 'em!*

Then I can post. And visit. And post and visit and visit and post.

So hang in there kitties, I'll be back.

Hey, I'm gonna be 35. I can do this shit. But if the suffering is just too much and you need my precious words to inspire you throughout the day, then you can read the post before this one. You know the one - it's the one I wrote on Friday that nobody read... Yeah. That's the one.

2006-01-27T10:41:00.000-05:00

Silliest question ever -

Stupidest answer ever.

Coworker: "How does your dog know that your cat isnt another dog?"

Um. Well duhhhhh...

Me: "Because - Its a different species - Dogs arent dumb - Cats smell different - Um - They can tell - Cats dont look anything like dogs - Er - They just know."

Yeah. Stupid ass question.

And I can't really answer it.

2006-01-26T08:47:00.000-05:00

I finally remembered to take a picture of the print our folks gave us.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, you can read about it here. For those of you who don't want to read about it, I will explain briefly...

Mom and dad gave us a digital recreation of the sky the night of our wedding. It is the exact star map and new moon shown August 24th, 2002. And there was some star stuff going on that night. The print reads,

"A brilliant gibbous moon rises into the summer night with the stars of Pisces. Perseus, the hero, and Andromeda, the princess, shine together in the mid sky. Polaris marks North in Ursa Minor."

The hero and the princess - How romantic and appropiate.

So anyway, here it is -

And a close up -

Looks just like a real photograph, eh? (It does, really. Any pixeling you see in this image is a result of blogger quality.) The print was created by a company I believe is called Indigo Prints (but I have to double check that too). Mom gave them the date she wanted to recreate and location of Chain Saw Hill, emphasizing that it is in the country. Indigo was able to find out exactly what was in the sky that night and created tree tops to duplicate the farm land. It's an amazing gift, very personal and unique. I would recommend it to anyone looking for something special to give regarding a important date in time.

Next, we have furry babies....

Because what post is complete without furry babies?

And here you can see that Salem has finally given in to the kitten being part of the family. We're still working on Widgeon. She's going to take some persuading.

Well thats it for now, but you know me and I'm just full of crap to blog about. So check back later, I'm sure something else will be up.

2006-01-24T10:08:00.000-05:00

We'll call this one... Par - Oooo - SHOOOTT!

OKAY. What would YOU do?

Start blowing really hard upwards? Hope the gators will get tangled in the parachute? Make like Jeebus and run on water?

Abi?? A little help here Ms. Skyqueen? You da chute specialist girlfriend. Ever been in this situation?

2006-01-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

So our dinner at the Japanese Steak House went well. And Dad whispered in my ear, "When are you going to mom about the cat?"

Son of a... "It is you! You are D."

He just smiled.

And no, I never really got around to talking to mom about Ming. We were preoccupado with the hibbachi guy tossing our meat around. He was straight from Japan and his name was David.

Um, thats not very Japanese, yo.

But he knew what he was doing and chop chop our shrimps and chickens. Although he did not light his hat on fire like the other chiefs, he did throw the utensils around and flipped pieces of zucchinis off his spatula, actually expecting us to catch them in our mouths. I hate that part and they do it everytime. I, for once, caught the damn thing. Everyone else's kept bouncing off their teeth. Yeah, we all looked attractive doing this.

David took a fancy to mom and gave her extra noodles and rice. He called her "mama" alot, "rightttt mama? You can do it mammaaa" and squeezed the bottle of fake catchup at her. She jumped, of course. We all do the first time. David had a nice bandage around his finger from a little mishap with the knifes but we had faith in him not to loose a digit in the scallops.

There were a lot of birthday people there that night. Everytime they had to celebrate one, the disco ball would spin and a posse of Japanese would come out banging metal plates together singing Hapee Bufday to Yu. I told my family if they did that to me, I'd cut them.

Mom and D, as he shall now be called, gave E and I (see, I can do it too!) the most amazing gift. I wish I blogged this at home so I could read to you what the print said, but now I'm at work (shhhhh!) and cant remember everything. Still, I want to tell you about this, so I'll do my best -

It was a digital print of the stars and the moon from the night of our wedding on top of Chainsaw Hill.

This meant ALOT considering the stars out there in country-town USA were the main reason we chose that hill. It's like a planetarium at night and I wanted everyone to see how amazing it looked - But of course as our luck would have it, we had torential down pour for most of the wedding. Funny I say that because some say it's good luck if it rains on your wedding day. I say that they only tell you that so you don't freak the F out. And if it is good luck, than Earl and I got an entire lifetimes worth in one shot. Eventually, the rain did stop. Fog and mist settled in the rolling hills, Lucus the dog kept the guest well herded, and the Highland cows came out from the woods and moo'd everyone. Finally, the moon emerged and shared the sky with a heavenly blanket of stars. We drank from goblets, were offered brotherhood by sword and protection of the gargoyle. The only thing missing were some kilts and a bag pipe.

Such a night to be remembered. So this print meant so much to us. Apparently, our moon was "new", which was something I had tried to remember recently and couldn't. The print also identified the constellations that were visible that night. I see that Pisces was pretty active... Man, who would have known? How beautiful is this gift! I didnt even know you could do something like this.

Take this hint - If you ever need a heart touching, make you cry, golf ball in the throat kinda gift - this is the one. When I get home, I'll take a picture of it and show you. It's THAT cool.

For the rest of the weekend, we did alot of cleaning. Saturday night Earl decided it was time to take all the plants down in the living room and wash the windows. Huh? Well when he decides to clean, I'm not going to stand in his way. Unfortunately, I was not in the cleaning mood. I forced myself to tidy up the hall where the drywall was but other than that I wasnt into it. I was in a sit on the couch and do nothing funk, and those funks are the hardest to fight.

Sunday I went grocery shopping and got the stuff to make my famous lasagna. That took all night. Um, thats about it.

Boy what a GREAT post. Well I had to check in. Not much to report. If I think of more, I'll add it on.

How was your weekend??