gobble gobble

Not much going on...Thanksgiving was fun. I invited Rob & Kimber over too, so there were 8 of us in all. Rob knows my brother-in-law and 'small world' - they live about 6 blocks down from me. Rob is an ex-marine and my brother-in-law is ex-navy so whenever they get together they tell stories that just crack me up. We had Thanksgiving at my mom's house. She's mostly unpacked but they bought some new furniture that hasn't arrived yet. All in all, it was fun times.

We also had a pot-luck at work the Tuesday before. Everyone brought something and there were some yummy yummy dishes. I made stuffing and a choc chip cheesecake. One of the girls actually thought the cheesecake was from Marie Callendars! Ha. It's a really easy recipe but it tastes great. This weekend I'm going to make about 10 batches of cookies to hand out at work and the neighborhood. I found some interesting recipes to try. I'm trying to write down all my fav recipes in two spiral books (one for desserts and one for reg food). Most of the recipes in there right now are from friends and family. I have a GREAT toffee recipe from Adam in StL, the old pizza and french bread recipes from my grandparent's bakery, and some Italian cookie recipes from my great aunt. If you have any good 'family' recipes, email me!

(Btw - Jason - I added that 'cat litter' recipe. Can't wait to try it!!!)

funny

Got this in a forward from my Aunt...kinda relates to my problem with religious hypocrites:

An honest man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The tailgating woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects. He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. "I noticed the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian Fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car."

Jarhead

Forgot to post this earlier...last weekend Sarah and I saw Jarhead. It was a really interesting character study of a ground soldier during Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Not so much a 'war movie'. We both really liked it. And the part where Jake Gyllenhaal is only wearing a santa hat on his head and over his privates was a pretty good scene.

Dentist aftermath

I was at the dentist's on Thursday for 4 hours. That's right....4 hours. I am SO thankful I bought that mp3 player. There's no way I would have made it out of there with my mind in one piece if I'd had to listen to the drill all that time. They numbed me up so good I didn't feel a thing, and today I'm just a little sore. I'll have to go back in a couple weeks to get the permanent crowns put in. But, so far so good.

A trip to the dentist

Ok, I now officially feel old. I was having some pain in my lower jaw, so I went to the dentist. Turns out my old silver fillings from two cavities I had when I was a kid are finally getting loose. But, there's not a lot of tooth left so they'll have to file down the two teeth (back molars) and give me CROWNS. Ugh. It's gonna be hella expensive too, even though my insurance will cover 50%. I'm taking the whole day off of work for it (at least it's a good reason to use up sick time). So that'll be on Thursday. And, fun fun - I get to be AWAKE for the whole thing. It's not something they put you out for. Great. I don't mind the pain - it's the noise of the drill that always gets to me.

So, to cheer me up, I decided to buy a little mp3 player that I can listen to during the procedure. I didn't want an ipod because I don't like how itunes totally changes your song libraries. I got a little 1GB Sansa Scandisk mp3 player that I could use Windows Media Player on. It holds 200 songs, and for my use, that's enough for me. It was on sale too! Unfortunately, the first one I got did not want to work. It would load 24 songs and then my computer would just say 'cannot find device'. I played with it for three days and then gave up. I exchanged it for another one at Best Buy today and this new one works great. It loaded up all the songs in 20 minutes and now I'm good to go. I'll just blast the music at the dentist. I tried to load all my loud music - Rob Zombie, NIN, Nirvana, Blondie, Queen, Disturbed, Marilyn Manson, INXS, and a lot of random singles I have. I even have Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 - love that song.

Pandora

All right, most of you are more savvy than I, so I'm sure you already heard about this..

www.pandora.com

It's a site where you type in a favorite band name or song title, and it creates a custom radio station with bands and songs of that type of music. It's AMAZING. I think I'll be listening to this a lot when I'm on the computer. check it out


***edited to add: ok, I've been playing with this site for about 30 minutes and I can't get over how cool this is! I typed in Disturbed, Gravity Kills (cool STL band), The Cure, and Yaz (fun 80s band) and the playlists it's giving me are unreal. The Gravity Kills list already gave me a couple bands I'd never heard of but really liked. I'll have to check if the server at work will allow me to listen to this. I'm just flabbergasted that someone was creative enough to make a site like this happen. And, it's really easy to use. Just - wow.

Happy (early) Thanksgiving!

http://www.msn.americangreetings.com/view.pd?i=382219626&m=1652&rr=

Turn on the sound, baby!!!

Komen Austin Race

This morning was the Komen Austin Race for the Cure to raise money for breast cancer. It's an event my company always participates in and we had 37 people signed up to do the race/walk. We were supposed to meet at 7am to walk over together and since the race is downtown, I wanted to get there early. I am very uncomfortable driving downtown so I wanted to get there early enough to figure out where I had to go. I left my house at 6am and the usually 30-40 minute trip only took 18 minutes. So, yeah, I got there hella early. That was actually a good thing because the streets I'm most familiar with were blocked off. I ended up parking .7 miles from where I needed to be (yes I mapped it when I got home). But, it was a nice walk to the event and I got this pretty picture from the 1st Street Bridge.

And here's a good picture of the crowd. There were a ton of people! Even after we got done with our walk, there were people still just starting to head out. I'll definetly do it again next year.

Panda Checks

I've had these checks scoped out for three years, saying these are the checks I'll buy when I get a house. I've been good and waited a whole extra year! But, I'm tired of using up my old checks dammit! Aren't they so cute??! Ok, I'm getting them today. I've written 100 checks in the past year, so these will last quite awhile. Hey, when you've collected something for 20+ years, you've gotta have checks too!

Reunion pics

I was cleaning up some piles of papers and found the BCHS reunion pics. I made doubles, so I have an extra set. I know I sent everyone digital copies, but the real photographs came out a bit better. Let me know if you want any. I was a good girl and wrote on the back of my set - the date, event, and everyone's names. Now I'll be able to figure out who everyone is 50 years from now.

I'm just going to put this one in cause I love it so much. It's photoshop Jason and his coffee pot of vodka.