Happy Anniversary to the smartest, most attractive, most caring, and most loving woman I know. We always have fun together, no matter what we're doing.
Look, I realize that this blog sometimes skirts the line of "THIS BLOG IS ALL ABOUT MY CAT!1! LOLZ!!1!" at times, but I still had to post this.
Look at that face. That face is why I can't get mad at her when she does something bad or rotten.
For example, this morning she introduced a new game to the house. The name of that game is "Freak Me Out by Bringing Giant Huge Ugly Crickets Upstairs from the Basement to Chase, Play with and Possibly Eat."
This game was played twice this morning. And yeah, it's not really her being bad, but I certainly don't enjoy having these giant, freakish crickets showing up in front of the couch while I'm waking up and watching ESPN. Thank God for Amy the bug killer. Normally I'm not afraid of crickets. My bug fear is reserved for spiders, and rightfully so. But these crickets are worthy of some fear because of their size. Plus, Tuesday is one of those cats who follows her instinct and plays with her prey, slightly maiming it and removing legs at will.
So I'm stuck hoping she won't let the damn thing jump under the couch or some furniture before my favorite Minister of Death can come downstairs to dispose of it. Plus, I'd rather not come home each day to a house full of possibly hidden giant crickets, with her thinking we'd also like to play "Find the Giant Huge Ugly Cricket." It's more entertaining when we hear her thumping and skittering around the basement after the things.
Don't worry, Tuesday did not get scolded for this new game. In fact, we continued our reward system based on when she finds bugs in the house. She got a treat for each cricket found, even though she returned to the spot where the cricket was last seen both times to look around. She looked rather disappointed that we'd taken her fun away.
In return I fully expect her to deposit some of these crickets in our bed before we return home from work today.
Okay, photos of my recent trip to Boston are now in the gallery. Click here if you're interested in seeing total strangers at a wedding and wandering around Boston posing with animal statues.
Also, I figured I'd now let you folks see some photos of our house.
Click here to see what the house looked like when we first really toured it (the sellers' stuff is still in it). And then click here to see what it was like to rip out an entire house full of purple carpet and refinish some hardwood floors.
I recommend viewing all those photos in the slideshow viewer.
And as if that isn't enough fun and distraction for you Friday - here's more. Ever wanted to receive a phone call from Samuel L. Jackson? Now you can. You can make him call your friends with a customized message about them and the movie "Snakes on a Plane." Make it worthwhile, as you can only have him call a specific phone number once!
I disappeared to Boston for four days where I got to see a good friend get married. It really was fantastic to see lots of old friends again, and putting a bunch of improvisers together at one table for a wedding reception is more fun than you can imagine. I think we were "that" table to everyone else there.
Anyway, I miss Boston a lot. Such a great city, but yet it doesn't quite feel like home anymore because so many other friends have moved away from there now as well. Yet there are parts of the city that still feel "right," and so I miss that big city at home feeling.
I also miss walking as much as we used to. We were so tired from walking that we ended up just seeing a movie on Monday afternoon - "Little Miss Sunshine." Go see this movie, it's seriously one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I loved every bit of it.
Anywho, hope to have some Boston photos up once I find that darn USB cord I put somewhere with hopes of not losing it. Heh. In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of my cat pretending to be roadkill on my couch.
She could have just as easily been reacting to the debacle that is the current Red Sox losing streak, too.
Okay, had to push that craziness down a post. I can only look at that vivarin essay for so long. Truly bizarre.
Anyway, it's that time of year again - and thank GOD. Football! Woo! To me, it's the perfect time of year - baseball and football. I can always catch something good on TV.
Amy's gone and left me alone this week, which is always creepy in a new house. I'm a little unnerved by going into the basement alone, and to thwart any zombies/aliens/monsters upstairs waiting for me upstairs before I go to bed - I run full speed up the stairs yelling threats. I'm glad we have concrete walls between us and our neighbors.
Also - a question for those of you who live alone out there: How much can you talk to a pet before you're considered crazy?
As referred to in the previous post, I now give you what I write when on Vivarin. Again, it was freshman year, I was 18 - it made me crazy.
The Vivarin Essay:
"Hi, I'm really hyper, but I shouldn't be because I took the fucking vivarin over 5 hours ago and it should've worn off an hour ago but it's just kicking in and this is a really long run-on sentence that would make English teachers cry and want to kill themselves. I think this is going to be one of those stream of conciousness writings that we learned about all through high school English class. I always wanted to write a really cool one. So here we go. This is what is going on in a very hyper person's head as she types.
Okay, so first I was trying to go to bed early tonight, but nooooooo this stupid vivarin said, "hey, maybe i'll wait 5 FRICKIN' HOURS TO START SO THAT WHENEVER SHE TRIES TO GO TO SLEEP SHE WON'T BE ABLE TO." HEY CAPS LOCK IS REALLY COOL. IT LOOKS LIKE I'M REALLY ANGRY WHEN I'M WRITING BUT I'M REALLY NOT. OKAY YES I AM. IF I SAW A LARGE BOTTLE OF VIVARIN WALKING DOWN THE STREET I WOULD KICK ITS ASS INTO NEXT WEEK. NO, I'D WAIT TILL IT TRIED TO GO TO SLEEP AT NIGHT AFTER A REALLY ROUGH DAY AND THEN BREAK INTO ITS ROOM AND START SCREAMING AND YELLING COMPLETELY RANDOM THINGS THAT MAKE NO SENSE LIKE, "TOAST, CHEESE, SANITARY NAPKINS, BUTTER, MAD COWS, CHICKEN, IT'S SNOWING I'M CAREFREE, FUCK ME!!"
Ok, enough for the angry caps lock. What am I thinking now? I'm thinking why the hell did I ever like the group color me badd. i mean, i'm listening to their first CD right now and wondering, "What the hell was i thinking liking a group that has members who resemble george michael, snow, and kenny g?" they have some decent music but they sound pretty crappy too because they think they're all that but they're not.
what now? i don't know. I think I'm typing too fast because there's smoke coming off the keys of the keyboard.
I think it'd be really boring to be an oscillating fan. I mean, can you imagine just looking back and forth over and over and over until you think you'll puke, even though i'm pretty sure fans can't puke. I hope not because that'd be worse than having the shit hit the fan. can you imagine puke hitting the fan? gross, i'm thinking. anyway, I'd actually just like to have someone use the word oscillating in a sentence about me sometime. do you think you could work a word like that into an everyday sentence without people thinking you're a complete moron? try it. go ahead. i'll wait.
ok? I even tried it, but all i could think of is, "gee, i think it'd be fun to just be sitting there in one day in class and just start oscillating, you know?" i think I'd get beat up for saying that. hey, use it as a pickup line. "hey baby, you want to go back and oscillate?" you know, i think our fan is horny then. And who would want to be sitting there oscillating one day trying to do your job and keep the room cool and someone comes along and pulls on this little plastic thingy that sticks out on the top of your head and it stops you from oscillating all together. i mean, should someone else have the right to just stop my oscillating whenever they wanted? what if i wanted to keep oscillating? "Stop trying to control me you damn humans!!" I'd yell. But then whoever stopped my oscillating would probably get really scared because the fan just yelled at them and they'd throw me out the window. i think i'd be scared if my fan yelled back at me one day. Of course, if you take enough vivarin then anything will talk back to you. The keyboard here just told me to stop molesting it. I just threw my head back and laughed and said, "no."
Wouldn't it be nasty if that phrase, "I threw my head back..." was really true? that'd probably really gross someone out if they were sitting behind you and suddenyl your head hit them. How would you apologize for something like that? "I'm sorry Bob (or whoever your head hit, it's your choice), I was throwing my head back to laugh but it went a little farther than I expected..." Would that suffice? It might scare them even more if you were apologizing for beaning them with your head and you hadn't reattached it yet. So you're just standing there with your head in your hands (literally) and your head's apologizing for hitting your friend (or whoever was behind you) with itself. That would scare me.
What now? I don't know. Give me something else to discuss. I'll look around the room for something, hold on. Ok, I found something. Why does the red person on Wheel of Fortune always get to go first? I never understood that. What if blue wanted to go first? I think Pat Sajak has plastic hair. Anyway, back to the red guy going first. I think they should settle who goes first by having all 3 contestants wrestle in applesauce. Why applesauce? I'm not sure, but I know it'd taste good if they shoved your head into it. So at least while you're suffocating you could decide whether or not it's Mott's or some cheap grocery store brand like Kroger's. That and the word applesauce just jumped into my head so I figured it did that for some important reason and that I'd better write it down. But after the contestants wresle, they would hose them off in the nude before everyone. I don't know why I just wrote that. Oh yeah, because I had gone for an entire page and not used the word nude or naked yet.
I'll bet you're wondering how I got the wheel of fortunate idea from just looking around the room. So am I. I saw the pencil sharpener and said, "hey, wheel of fortune can just suck my white ass." At least I hope my ass is white. I never really stare at it, you know because if i could then that would mea I could turn my entire head around. And if i could turn my entire head around then I wouldn't stare at my ass. I would spend my time scaring the hell out of the people walking behind me. Can you imagine just walking behind someone and suddenly their head turned around and said something like, "Oh don't mind me, I've just always wanted to see what my ass looked like while I was walking." That would freak me out. I'd make the exorcist jealous. Only I wouldn't want to spit pea soup out everywhere. I don't even like that kind of soup. But I suppose if I could turn my head 360 degrees then I would try it at least once at lunchtime just to clear the entire room. I'd be like, "look at me, I'm a sprinkler!" hey, you know, I could be a sprinkler too if I really wanted. I'd just be sitting there in my front yard going, "Fuck Miracle Grow, I can do it myself."
Enough with body parts, geez. I've only been talking about the head, though. There are lots of other fun body parts that could be talked about, too. I think it'd be awesome if I could just take off any body part I wanted to and replace it with another variation of it. You know how those action figures could take off an arm and put on a big missile launcher or robotic claw? that'd be cool if we could do that. "Hey, can someone help me lift this big heavy box?" I'd say, "Hold on, I'll go and put on my hydraulic arm to assist you." If someone took my parking place I could put on my little tikes' tow-away-arm and move their car myself. Don't ask me why I said it'd be a little tikes' arm.
Okay, what elst? you're asking. Let me look again. I think it'd suck to be a wash cloth. I've always thought that.
I've always wanted to ride in a dryer. It might hurt, but man, would that be a thrill ride or what? They ought to have human size dryers right by showers. Then after your shower you could just throw yourself in and dry off at whatever rate you wanted. Maybe tumble dry low is your style. Maybe you like it high, or for delicate. I'd be sure to use a fabric softener sheet, though. Otherwise i might wrinkle. Dyer-caused-premature-aging would suck.
I'll continue on with the hype over the upcoming movie "Snakes on a Plane."
While waiting in line to see the new Will Ferrell movie last week I saw the poster.
I have to admit I was filled with excitement.
And for you folks waiting on the Vivarin essay, I keep forgetting to dig it out. I have now written a reminder on my hand so I remember to look for it tonight.
I forgot to mention that I had my first Red Bull energy drink ever a week back. Or actually, my first ever two sips of Red Bull energy drink - that's all I could handle.
It tastes like liquified Sweet Tarts mixed with Mountain Dew and 20lbs of sugar. Probably has the same effect. In any case, two sips and I could feel my pupils dilating and hear my heart beating in my ears. Caffeine and I don't mix well. I used to drink Mountain Dew like it was water back in high school - until my stomach finally just said, "No, this is not right" and refused it from there on out.
I can only imagine what an entire can of Red Bull would do to me. I would think it might rival that one and only time I ever took Vivarin. Ashley knows all about that one. It was freshman year of college. The Vivarin took three hours to kick in, and by that time I'd already finished the big paper I thought would take me all night to write. I remember feeling nothing as I got ready for bed at 11pm, but then when I tried to lay down, my eyes would not shut and there was an odd grin plastered on my face. I felt half-crazed.
Commence personal anarchy for another four or five hours. All I remember about it is that after trying to work it off by running full-speed up and down the dorm hallway in my pajamas, Ashley thought it would be funny to sit me down in front of the computer to write down everything that came into my head. What came out was a crazy essay which I still have today. It's this freakish stream-of-conciousness that includes such topics as what I think it would be like to be a washcloth and a personal reflection on whether I could oscillate as well as your average, everyday oscillating fan.
Dear sweet mother of the lord it's hot here. I had the day off Tuesday and couldn't even enjoy much fun outdoors because of the sweltering heat. When it's already 85 degrees by 7am, you know life outside is going to suck.
I still played some basketball yesterday around 9am, but only lasted about 30 minutes due to my life flashing before my eyes. That, and the heinous shooting I was doing. I blame the heat.
The other night Amy and I went over to a friend's pool where we subsequently floated around like dead bodies in the water for a hour or so. It was delightful. I went again last night.
In other news, I've been exercising regularly since moving into the city and I love it. I'm always amazed by how much better I feel when I get off my lazy butt on a regular bases. Every morning I either walk or bike for about 35-40 minutes. I'm actually getting up around 7am daily without too much pain.
It used to be nice and cool at that time of day, but now it's already gross outside.
Anyway, I'm feeling better and getting into shape. Plus, I'm getting to recognize more neighbors who also rise that early in the morning. It's also an easy way to be regularly appalled at the level of trash strewn around our neighborhood. There's a nice bike path along a nearby waterway near me as well, but I don't always feel safe walking down that by myself. The bike path is sad though because the stream looks like hell. It's just littered with every type of trash you can think of, and then the other day I finally found a sign (partially hidden by a tree branch) stating, "Stay Out, water is polluted." That makes me sad.
I also almost had an old person moment yesterday. I was working from home because Home Despot finally showed up to install our exterior doors. Once they had left, I heard some chattering out front. I peered out the front window to the find three small girls playing in my front yard with pieces of carpet. They were rooting around near the edge of my patio, so I went out to see what they were up to. And I was honestly tempted to yell, "Get off my lawn!"
"Hi gals, what are you up to?" I asked looking down at them from the front porch.
"We're trying to make a fort," said the oldest one (maybe 9 years old). "We're trying to make this carpet stretch from your porch to this guy's so we can sit underneath."
They were holding five or six pieces of torn up carpet they rescued from a neighbor's home where the carpet was being torn out. If only they had been around a month ago, I could've given them more purple carpet than they could have ever imagined.
Anyway, not one to ruin fort-building fun (I used to do that sort of thing, too), I offered some tips and even helped use some heavy objects on our porch to hold down the carpet while they tried to stretch it to the other porch. It wasn't long enough.
So they asked for tape. I brought them some packaging tape and just made them promise to give it back. Then I went back inside because it was about 400 degrees outside. A few minutes later I peeked out through the window again to see the gals making this excellent grid of packaging tape strips between the porches. Then they would put pieces of magazine on top of the tape pieces. I guess they gave up on the carpet.
Minutes later there was a knock on my door, and when I opened it I found the roll of packaging tape sitting on my doorknob.
They even cleaned up after themselves after they were done with the fort construction. They've redeemed my view of some of the kids in our neighborhood.
Another great day in history...
I apologize
Photos and Fun
Anywho, hope to have some Boston photos up once I find that darn USB cord I put somewhere with hopes of not losing it. Heh. In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of my cat pretending to be roadkill on my couch. 
Snakes on an mf-ing plane!