Monday, June 23, 2003

I got to the office at 8:10 this morning. My hours are usually 8:30-5:00. I beat my boss in, so that was good. But I have a feeling the day is going to be a long one.

Mom gave me another picture of Harry to scan. Isn’t he the cutest?

Sunday, June 22, 2003

I think I may have been the last person to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I watched it this afternoon. It’s very cute.

Best line:

I don’t remember frump girl, but I remember you.

I love Disney World.

There, I said it. *whew*

I really, really love The Happiest Place on Earth™. So imagine my delight when I was surfing the channels and came upon Disney Unwrapped on the Food Network!

That’s a great show. But the Disney-fied version was fantastic. I took notes…

1.  When I’m at Disney in January, I must eat at the Chez Mickey buffet.

2.  One of my favorite places is the 50s Primetime Cafe. It was fun to watch the video of other customer family members getting harrassed about having their elbows on the table by their wait staff brothers.

3.  The secret to the “cooking like Mom’s” at that restaurant is the use of old Betty Crocker cookbooks. Who knew?

4.  The people who come up with the amazingly creative ideas are called “imagineers.”

5.  At Epcot, they hire “native ambassadors” (who come to the US on one year VISAs) to represent the various countries to lend authenticity. The chefs are all natives of the country, but in some cases they’ve had to Americanize some of the dishes to make them more palettable for uncultured Americans.  For instance, in France they “use less salt and strong flavorings” as the chef put it. Interesting.

6.  At Animal Kingdom there is a restaurant called Jiko, which means “The Cooking Place.” They got quotes from folks eating there. The best, “I thought we’d be eating crickets.” Heh.

7.  Did you know that Disney does weddings there at DW? They were showing these amazing wedding cakes, with Disney themes of course. One was gorgeous with silver Mickey symbols stamped into the sides like confetti. The base of each layer was wrapped in silver ribbon and there was a white chocolate Cinderalla’s castle on top with silver on the turrets. Totally hokey, but totally beautiful too.

The coolest thing was that they will do individual wedding cakes for each guest if you want. They showes samples and they were these miniature little duplicates of the enormous cakes. Very cool.

And that’s all I wrote down.

You know that Chinet™ commercial where they ask what Chinet™ means to you or what it says to you or something like that...they show the plates with hand written words that are supposed induce you to buy Chinet™ and Chinet™ only.

Does my use of Chinet™ show my affection for you?

Saturday, June 21, 2003

It’s a lazy Saturday. The Cooties had plans to meet up with a friend this morning and maybe go antique hunting this afternoon, so I have been home.

I haven’t done much:

1. Installed Photoshop on my computer. I still need to read up on the tutorial, because I have no idea how to use it. This ought to be good.

2. I just finished watching The House of Mirth. Excellent if depressing. I liked it a lot. And it ticked me off too...I’m thankful I live in the time that I do, because I wouldn’t have done very well in those repressed Edwardian days.

3. I just started the last load of laundry for the weekend.

4. I need to stop at the grocery store on my way over to my parents. We’re having a birthday dinner for Mrs. Cootiehog with friends and family. That should be a good time, although Jaynee’s birthday may get eclipsed by CootieGirl’s presence.

Oh, and I didn’t mention the glorious evening Marmie and I had with CootieGirl last night. The Cooties went out for dinner and a movie, so we babysat. She’s an angel...so sweet.

5. And now I’m quickly searching for how to do clickable smilies in my comments before I shower and head out.

Today is the first day of summer, and if you look really quickly over here you will see that it’s a beautiful morning. It’s a cool 60 degrees, low humidity, blues skies with the wispy white clouds that are sparse enough that that yellow orb, known in some parts as the sun, is shining brightly.

I’m almost afraid to mention it for fear that it will bring upon us the plague of gloom, doom, and wet that we’ve had pretty much daily since early April.

LATER (1:20pm): It’s raining again. Just thought you’d want to know that.

Friday, June 20, 2003

I asked about the comment-emoticons yesterday and got two responses. But I realized it was sort of buried in a random post and some might have missed the question. So I’m asking for your opinion:

Should I leave the emoticons out or add them back to my comments page? Do you like having them as an option when you’re commenting?

This is probably my last post for today, so fire away and I’ll check back tomorrow.

Happy Friday!

LATER: I’m at my parents’ house, waiting for Mom to get home from running errands and for the Cooties to arrive. So I’m taking advantage of the beautifully fast cable modem here. I’m so jealous. *sigh*

Two additional comments on the emoticons. Thanks. What I find interesting is the breakdown of votes. The two females that voted, voted in favor of the smilies. The two males voted against the smilies. I’m not too suprised by that.

It’s kind of like that Gatorade survey.

So I’m flipping around the channels while blog-reading and stumbled upon the end of A Wedding Story on TLC (too lazy to look for links, sorry).

The couple are Corbin and Sierra. Precious, no?

They’re getting married what looks like a public library. Romantic!

She started crying as she was walking down the aisle. Not the nicely feminine tears hanging on her lashes kind of crying, but full on blubbering and sniffling.

You’re on a really hot microphone here, hon. You might want to cut back on that snorting sniffling.

Oh, they’re somewhat redeemed - reception at a lovely winery. Centerpieces are stacks of library books with bookmarks as party favors.

So what...are they editors? Writers?

Best man is holding the mic like a rap star for the toast - hand on the top of the mic and holding it on his mouth - you can’t understand a word he’s saying.

I’m done…

1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short?  I used to say straight, but now that it’s longer it’s got a little wave to it if I let it air dry. When it’s short it’s stick straight. As for length, it’s long - just past shoulder length.

2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime?  How hasn’t it changed. I’m not a trendy dresser, but I am a trendy hair-er. I get bored with my hair, so it changes a lot.

3. How do your normally wear your hair?  Depends on the occasion. For work, I wear it down, nicely styled. On the weekend it’s usually in a ponytail or hidden by a baseball cap.

4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like?  I wouldn’t change it. I just got it cut a few weeks ago and I like it. It was all one length, I had some long layers cut in. It took a lot of weight off and gave it some extra body and bounce. I like it.

5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened?  Um...several. I cried, went back for a new cut to minimize the damage and then just waited for it to grow out. Fortunately, I have never had a bad perm (when I got them) or color disaster (despite being cheapo and doing that myself).

I’ve added a new about me page here (link at right). I moved two posts from the old about me page over. I’m thinking I may try to do a new 100 Things list for my 1 year blogiversary.

In any case, if you’re a newer reader and want to know more about me, go take a look.

Kirby arrived a little after 8pm - WHAT??? But...but...what about The Amazing Race?

That’s what a VCR is for. So I taped last night’s episode and went out for dinner with him. We got home a little after 10pm. He did end up spending the night because of the rain. He’s still sleeping in his room and will probably be here until about 9am, so that changes my plans a bit for the morning, but that’s OK. I’m just happy to have a day off from work.

And the rain is another story. Yesterday, The Weather People™ said we’d have a mostly sunny weekend. Not so, rain today - heavy at times with flash flood warnings until 8pm tonight. High temp of 70. Not that I’m complaining about the temperature - I am happy it’s not in the 80-90 range, which is usually is by this time in June. And we’ll have more rain tomorrow and probably Sunday too.

We’ve been kidding around at the office about building an ark. We’ve each taken on part of the tasks - I’m to gather the lumber. LW is to start rounding up the animals (two by two, of course). The Boss will decide who gets to be on the Ark with us (families are a lock, it’s other folks we’re worried about).

I think that’s all I have to share for now. I need to get a cup of Joe now that’s it’s freshly brewed.

Thursday, June 19, 2003

...Until I leave the office and begin a long weekend.

*pause to answer phone*

Kirby is in the area tonight, so I’ll probably be having dinner with him. That will be fun, as usual. He said he won’t be staying tonight, so I’ll just need to make sure I get home in time for The Amazing Race at 8pm.

Tomorrow I plan to work on the blog a bit in the morning. I want to create my About page and look into adding emoticons to my comments. To my regular readers, do you miss the emoticons from my old blog or not? I do, but if you hate them, feel free to say so and I’ll leave it alone.

I also plan to super clean my apartment - launder my linens, vaccuum under the beds, clean the closet, etc. And I need to stop at a store to complete my sister’s birthday present. If you think about it, tomorrow is her birfday, go say something kind to her.

In the afternoon I’ll be heading to my parents for the Cootie visit. Blogging may be light for the weekend as I’ll be spending lots of time stealing the baby from my mother’s arms.

*I’m on the phone with Kirby again and can’t finish the post*

This week’s This or That Tuesday

June 17: Reading

1. Newspapers or magazines?  Neither. If I had to choose, I guess it would be magazines.

2. Books-on-tape or regular books?  Regular books, although on a long drive audio books are great.

3. Paperback or hardcover?  I like to own the hardcover, but prefer reading paperbacks.

4. Fiction or non-fiction?  Fiction.

5. Sci-Fi/Fantasy or romance novels?  I am a girl - romance.

6. Borrow from library or buy books (either new or used)?  I prefer to own books, but I have no problem borrowing them from the library if I can’t spend the money. The point is to read the book, right?

7. Subscribe to magazines or buy on newsstand?  I used to have subscriptions to a couple magazines. It’s cheaper than the newsstand.

8. Current best-sellers or classic literature?  Current best-sellers. Although I like to read a classic every once in a while.

9. Read books once, or re-read favorites every so often?  I have a few that I like to re-read. But I’m a one-timer for the most part.

10. Here in the U.S., we have two hot best-sellers...former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s memoirs, and the new Harry Potter book (coming out June 21). If you had to read one, which one...Hillary or Harry? Why?  That’s easy - Harry Potter will be read by me. I have no interest in Hillary’s book. I’ve read the previous four HP books and loved them.

I talked to the POC I was dealing with at the PD’s office this morning. I managed to pass the hotel-for-the-kid buck to her.

I’m very happy now.

And today is meatloaf day up at the Big Toe™. YUM.

Oh, and I have tomorrow off, so today is my Friday. Woo Hoo!

One more thing to be happy about...it’s TARsday! Woo Hoo²!!