Casanova Frankenstein

It is aliiiiiiiiiiiive!

Life has been really busy, as you've probably guessed by my absence. Big changes are afoot. We're still waiting to find out about Germany, but the decision is supposed to be made at the end of this month.

I'm still stunned by what a glorious summer we're having, and enjoying every minute, though (to the children's minor chagrin) we are still doing some schooling (Homeschool Lite ^_^ ) so they don't turn into puddingheads.

We watched Mystery Men this weekend, which was a riot and, IMO one of those heretofore unappreciated gems in manner of The Princess Bride (as Bridget Jones might put it.) I mean seriously, a guy who can only go invisible when no one's looking? And a guy who can shovel better than anyone else? Too funny! The title of this post is a reference to the villain in the film, who I was sure was James Woods, but turned out to be Geoffrey Rush. Be forewarned, though, you have to be able to deal with fart humour to appreciate this one. (You already knew I never claimed to be sophisticated.)

I'm reading the second book of the Thursday Next series - VERY funny - and listening to Atonement - great so far! I was listening to Atlas Shrugged, too, but the digital download expired (well it's a little over 52 hours long and you only get it for 2 weeks) and I had to go back on the waiting list. I've read that book so many times that my original copy fell apart, yet it's always even better than I remember it. Maybe it's better just to return to the hard copy anyway, since I have another audiobook to listen to. The reader of Atlas drove me slightly batty. I looked him up and he's "the Golden Voice" of audiobooks or something like that, but he reads (this one at least) like he's preaching a sermon and it makes me a little crazy. I figured out, though, that if I put him on 1.5 speed, it's less crazy-making, PLUS it goes faster, so I can fit more in. ^_^

I'm also working on a new book while finishing up rewrites of the first. This one's completely and utterly different, so it's a refreshing change for me.

To top it off, I wanted to share this amazing vid. It gives me goosebumps every time. Especially when the whale sharks come looming out of the gloom to glide silently by. Here's a link to the creator's other Youtubes.

Write On

I am still alive, but I've become unblocked in my novel, so I've been hammering away at that. Hooray!

Gogofishy turned NINE yesterday! We did balloonorama again, went swimming at the Milford pool with BG and her kids and then came home for a curry lunch (Fishy's favourite food in the world - he's definitely his Mama's boy!) Some dear friends came over for dinner, cake and presents later on. We've known this family since CA, and fate brought us together again here in MI. Fate rocks. They have celebrated birthdays with us for about the last 7 yrs or so.

Prawn's scuba suit is the bomb. I think everyone wants one now. It's great to be able to go to the deep pool, which is on the other side of the wall from the fun pool, and swim and dive and use the diving board. (The deep pool is colder.) Prawn is getting pretty good at diving off the side, and Fishy figured it out yesterday, too. I've showed them how to do a "watermelon" but no one's brave enough to try that, yet. I got a huge reaction from a bunch of day camp kids that were there yesterday, though. ^_^ It occurs to me that everyone I have ever talked to about the "watermelon" trick has no idea what it is, so I'll explain that it's basically a headfirst cannonball. You jump as high as you can (preferably off the diving board) and tip so that you'll enter headfirst in a tight tuck, arms wrapped around your knees. If you do it just right, it makes a BIG splash. I suppose I am the only mom at the pool who is insane enough to do this (or perhaps the only one with so little dignity.) Come to think of it, I'm sure I make a spectacle of myself at the lake, too. Tough rocks; I'll play if I feel like it. ^_^

On a completely unrelated tangent, I found this fascinating. It's so hard for me not to think of Big Dog as having a mind of its own. I'm especially impressed by how it rights itself after being shoved, and when slipping on the ice:

Flesh, Blood and Fire

Not necessarily in that order.

The other day I wanted the kids to make notebooks for the Ancient History class we're doing. Sluggie, having other plans was less than enthused, so like any mom, I tried to come up with a way to make it fun. As we all know, fire makes EVERYTHING more interesting, so we did this.

(Fishy used one of the Blems to make a scroll)


I heart how they came out.


For those of you with kids old enough to shed teeth, you will be able to share in my delight at Prawnie's loss of a dangler. You know, one of those teeth that's gotten to the point where it's horribly askew, but it just won't let go. Sluggie and Prawn were playing the in the basement yesterday and all of a sudden I heard raucous laughter. Then Prawn came up, looking like this: (squeamish people should scroll past quickly)


Sluggie had accidentally smashed the tooth out of Prawn's face with her hand. I say "accidentally" but I know how much that dangler was bugging Sluggie, because I heard her trying all kinds of ways to cajole Prawn into yanking it out or letting her do so herself. So I kind of wonder. Anyway, it's out, so hallelujah for that! I found this next pic on the camera just this morning. I'm assuming Sluggie took it. You can see the new tooth already. (No that's not blood on Prawn's fingernails. :-) )

And finally, after 6 yrs I went to the doctor for a complete physical. The good news is that my pulse and blood pressure and pap smear and all that junk were great. The bad news is that I have high cholesterol. (genetic, I guess) The urf news is that I have to get my first mammogram. I thought I got to wait until I was 40, but I guess they recommend them earlier now. At least it should be blogworthy.

So in the week that I've known about my cholesterol, I've been making dietary changes. The big bonus is that the extra pounds I've been wanting to shed have been falling off, so hooray for that!

I totally forgot to ask about this random dark patch, though. I noticed it a month or so ago. One of my friends has some a lot like it on her cheeks and says hers are "age spots." Is that what this is? It's not a spot I missed with sunscreen because it's been there too long. I completely forgot to ask the doctor about it. It's not scary or anything, I'm just curious. I guess it's kinda hard to see in the pic, but it's kinda hard to see in real life, too. Oh, and please ignore my racing stripes. If you look closely, you can see part of my pussy in this picture. (the orange one >^_^<)

It's Summer

and I'm reading, reading, READING!!

Right now I'm in the throes of the following:

Lamb (absolutely hilarious!)

Elric: Song of the Black Sword (recommended many times over by a friend and proving to be very interesting, indeed)

The Forest House (I loved The Mists of Avalon, so this has got to be good, right?)

and the audio book The Secret of Lost Things.

Our second library's summer reading program has kicked off, which is the one that has an adult program, too.

And last weekend, we went to the beach for the first time this year. It was gorgeous. Now it's too cold, but I know there are lot of great beach days ahead of us. Ahhhhh, summer! :)

Picture This (Part 654)

We found some plates that were made somewhere besides China! (Italy in this case.) MuNKi is semi-embracing my desire to get completely mismatched dishes. My logic is that we can get a bunch of interesting stuff and if something breaks, we simply find another interesting setting. I know stacking won't be the greatest, but who cares? MuNKi liked these enough that he bought a bunch, though. I don't think he's quite on the same page I am.

Lamb's ears. Not deceptively fuzzy. They really are as soft as they look.

I wish I could make the lilac one scratch 'n' sniff.

Cookies, cookies, cookies! They look better than they tasted, IMO. But MuNKi liked them.

This tastes pretty good though. ^_^

So if you put chive flowers in a jar of vinegar (with some plastic wrap under the lid to prevent corrosion) . . .

it turns into this!

Emmett is always such a help in quilting.

He's practicing for his role in the upcoming Puss in Footwear here.

Trillian, on the other hand, contents herself with helping to change the lightbulbs.

Tashiya brought only one of her three babies this day. (Or maybe it's Winona. I'll have to ask Mollusc.)

Awww! Who could say no to a face like this? Well, besides Egan. ;-) (photo credit goes to Mollusc)

And yeah, I'm being brave and posting a pic of my haircut.

I think I look slightly less liney outside. Thanks to Mollusc for the first pic and Fishy for the second. :)

If

If I were to get off my lazy ass (well, ON it, I guess would be more appropriate) and make a new post, it would go right here.

And if I were to post pics, they would probably be about here.

And here (but further down.)

But I'm too lazy.

My soap is curing in the kitchen. The whole place smells like spearmint and it's just lovely.

I made more cookies from the Martha book and chive vinegar (for consumption) and lemon/orange vinegar for the laundry. What a shame I'm too lazy to post.

More Than a Bumblebee, More Than an Ant. . .

So much has been going on! We went to see Eddie Izzard on May 20th, which was great. First we ate at a topless restaurant. I didn't really get it, because everyone was wearing clothes, but our server announced that it was a "topless-style restaurant" so I feigned understanding and considered removing my top. No one else did, though, so I followed suit and remained overdressed. The place where we ate was directly across from the Detroit Opera House, where Eddie was playing, so after our meal, we meandered over there and gawped at the goodies. MuNKi asked to see a shirt in a Women's medium, which earned him all kinds of weird looks. Now that is incredibly silly, because it's EDDIE IZZARD, Man, and why WOULDN'T a guy be buying a woman's shirt? But I digress.

Here's the thing. iPhones should be banned from Opera Houses. So should innattentive bitches who (for some unfathomable reason) don't want to be there anyway and insist on playing with said iPhone throughout the entire show, thus scarring the retinas of everyone behind her with the blinding glare of the screen. How I wanted to give that chick an iSmack in the back of the head! I mimed doing it once or twice, but she didn't seem to pick up on my wrath vibe.

There was a mass (OK not mass, but largish) exodus from the show a few minutes in. I'm not sure whether it was Eddie's weird theories on God (doubtful, since Detroit is such a Godforsaken place ;-) ), his disappointing lack of drag, or the fact that they had wandered into the wrong theatre. It wasn't one of those "we're season ticket holders and we had no clue what we were in for" things, because Eddie wasn't included in the season package. Maybe they had already seen it all on YouTube.

Our Memorial Day Weekend included a day of soapmaking with the lovely Erica and her friend, the Soaping Goddess, followed by too much fantastic guacamole (made by the Soaping Goddess) and a barbecue, followed by a ceremonial scorching of marshmallows over a fire, and the sacrifice of many of said marshmallows to the Fire-Pit God. My children love fire. They love putting things into fire and taking them out again and then, yes, putting them back in. (in a sort of Eeyore-with-his-balloons-and-honey-pot way, but with quite a bit more drama) They love using toasting forks until the prongs glow like a cauterizing eyeball-gouger-outer, and they love flaming marshmallows. Mollusc had to get hosed off a couple of times. (She's my dainty one. OK, not so much.)

Monday brought the arrival of people I had never met before who had come to stay the night. OK, so I was a little stressed about that. But it all worked out.

And then, somehow, some strange how, it was Wednesday. I'm not sure what happened there. I do know that I should go see if MuNKi has managed to make the 3rd period of the Wings game appear on the wall.

I also have some bars of soap that I plan to sniff a lot and try not to eat.

Chop Shop

I need a haircut. Just in the last week or so, my hair suddenly reached the point where I can't stand it anymore. I've been trying to figure out whether I can get 10 inches lopped off (so I can donate) and still pull it back, because I can't stand it in my face either. It seems like a waste to get less off and not donate, so I'm having them whack off 10" regardless. Now I have to surf some sites and figure out if there's any sort of cut I want to aim for. Like they'll look the same on me, anyway. Ha. Maybe I'll just do a Britney.

Prawnie and Fishy are testing today. They know their stuff, but of course Nervous Mama is hoping they don't seize up for the test. :)

Willoughby Wallaby Weenis

the elephant went to Venus, Willoughby Wallaby Wuranus, the elephant saw Uranus.

Yeah, we've been having too much fun with that song. I laughed so hard I nearly wrecked the car on the way to the co-op, and I can't even remember what we came up with that set me off.

Tonight's Little Kid class was pandelirium. 23 kids. Oy! Actually, it was fun, and not too crazy. I don't think I screwed anyone up, and I remembered everyone's name, so that's good. :) To be honest, kid names are easy for me; it's the parents' I can never remember. It was also the traditional Monday night DadFest, which it hasn't really been pretty much since I mentioned here how I enjoyed perving at them. So obviously they found my blog and were horrified and made a pact to mostly stay away until now. Bummer.

I also kicked one of the fathers in the butt tonight. I don't know what came over me. It was just a reaction. He put out his hand for a high 5, and thinking it odd, but not wanting to snub him I went for it, so of course he pulled it away (shoulda seen that coming) and my natural reaction was to smack him and kick him in the butt. (lightly! lightly! Not hard. I'm not mean like that.) Yikes. I don't think I offended him, though. I hope not anyway.

I watched PS I Love You last night, which, while being a glorious ManFest (including some full backal nudity) and pretty entertaining, probably did not garner the sympathy from me that it was supposed to for the main character. She was just such a high maintenance, neurotic bitch that I thought her hubby was better off dead. But there were bits that reminded me of my dad (the knowing the end is nigh stuff) so they were a little tear-jerky. Harry Connick Jr.'s character was bloody entertaining, too. ^_^

I got a new book called Garden Spells that I'm loving, and I finished The Camel Club, which was fantastic. The twist on the terrorist attack was brilliant. I'm also listening to Twilight, so I'm finally finding out what all the hoopla is about.

Oh, and the Master taught us a new Black Belt one-step sparring tonight. I can't wait to show MuNKi. It's cool!

The Six Word Memoir Meme

Nothing I could write would be a poignant as Hemingway's 6 word story, which, as legend has it was "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." IMO that's his most brilliant work. (To be honest, I haven't liked any of his wordier stuff.) But since I was tagged by the lovely Claire, I'll give it a crack.

Here goes.

*clears throat*

*cracks knuckles*

*gets sidetracked and cleans the fridge*

(You know, if that was shorter, that would sum up my writing process.)

~~Disgustingly happy family junkie loves creating~~


Oh look! A chicken! (hey that could be another one for me, and only 4 words cuz I might get distracted after that. . .)

Green Grow the Rushes-O

Sluggie got hit on in the library yesterday. She came to me all giggly and embarrassed about a teenage boy who had asked her to come sit by him at the computers to play Runescape. In case you have trouble keeping track Sluggie is my 10 year old. :-P It's really incredible to watch my girls climbing onto the cusp of womanhood -- carefree kids one moment, and so grown up another, with all that giggly in-between stuff thrown in for good measure.

May is here in typical Midwest fashion. You'd think that with 26 years experience in the Midwest, I wouldn't be foolish enough to think that after the first 80 degree day it would never be cold again, but I'm still learning. We had our classic warm teasers and plunged right back into the 30s. Today we're back in the 60s. At least it's heading in the right direction.

The tulips are blooming. I had kind of forgotten about them.







































And some little pinky white things are out, too. I don't know what they are, but they make enchanting little faerie carpets through the grass and woods.





































The Littles are playing outside, though it's thundering now. Excitement runs high!

Mollusc got braces and a palate expander on Tuesday. She's still at the "can't chew" phase, which totally sucks. Hopefully she'll be able to chew in a week or so. Food suggestions are welcome!

Busy

~It's been so long since I made clothing that when I made shirts for the Bigs on Saturday, I cut out the sleeves wrong, so the stretch doesn't go around the arms. :-P Fortunately, they are wispy girls and can still wear the shirts. ^_^ Now I just have to get the FOE on the necklines without screwing it up. When I got out the FOE yesterday, a bunch of it had died an untimely death. I guess it had been curing in my stash for far too long.

~It was snowing when I woke up Sunday morning. Bleh.

~Strangers only come to my blog to look at my sister's panties.

~My appreciation for Jane Austen continues to grow. What a brilliant woman!

~My appreciation for audio books continues to grow as well, since I can "read" without guilt while I do otherwise completely mundane and painfully boring tasks.

~We're back to "abuse week" at TKD. Urg. But I feel good when I'm done (once I can breathe again.)

~Xavier is wunnerful!

~I had my picture taken with a little boy from my Monday evening class today. Awww. :)

~I got an adorable (hand drawn) picture of myself from a little boy in my morning classes last week.

~I have been exposing my children to the Young Ones. (Irresponsible parenting, say you. They'll finally understand all the things I say, say I. ^_^ )

Come On In and see the NEWS!!!!!!

I made that yummy creme de menthe cake from the Chinaberry cookbook again. It's gone already.



But you can still have a virtual bite.



Then I made these from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion



They're basically just oats, brown sugar, corn syrup, butter and vanilla, with chocolate chips, cocoa butter (my substitution for shortening) and walnuts on top. They didn't get a great reception, but they're disappearing anyway. They seem better on the second day.

For our Ancient History class, Fishy made a scale model of the Ark. (Noah's, not "of-the-covenant.") He was going to make it out of Play-Doh, but changed to this paper print-out model when that proved too awkward. Whether you are into arky stuff or not, I find it fascinating that there are hundreds of cultures around the world that each have their own world-wide flood legend.


It's really hard to glue something made of paper that's so long and thin. ^_^

Sluggie compared 3 flood legends from different cultures (China, Egypt and Greece), Mollusc drew a scale model of the ark, and Prawnie made a lapbook about Paleolithic People.










I have a new project in the works: a Wheel of the Year quilted wallhanging. I have yet to decide whether it will be circular or octagonal. I want to be able to turn it throughout the year so that the current season's wedge faces right-way-up.

So far I have these fabrics for Mabon, and Imbolc or Ostara:



And finally, the BIG NEWS! Meet MY NEW BABY Xavier! He is soooooooooo lovely. He sews like buttah. I'm in love. :) The adoption fee was only $75. His mother had to give him up because he had too many siblings. He's currently slightly disabled because he has no feet, but I plan to remedy that tomorrow if possible. Welcome, Xavier!!



My other machine (a Singer from Sam's) has served me well for at least 11 years with no servicing at all. My big girls will inherit it, but it needs reconditioning, because right now when I use it, it goes DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK instead of hmmmmmmmmm. They have yet to name it, but I suspect it will be something like Boromir or Aragorn or Legolas. ^_^

No Pictures!

I took some today, but as I'm worn out and in bed, I'm not posting them 'til tomorrow. Instead, you get this random smattering of stuff.

Emmett has to get a chest x-ray tomorrow because he needs to have his teeth cleaned and he has (most likely) asthma, so the vet has to figure out how to safely knock him out. In the meantime, Enya is in the early stages of kidney disease, so she needs prescription food. Sigh.

Perhaps because of these things, I dreamt that MuNKi got a new, super-high-paying job (that he actually liked) and we were moving to Boston. Additionally, I had to strangle to death a woman who was trying to kill us all. (I think.) It didn't work very well. I could tell, because she was talking to me while I was trying to strangle her. I was pretty squeamish about the whole thing, so that may be why I did such a poor job. It would be nice to be able to say that she had a very telling name, such as "Housework" or "Vet Bills" but she didn't. I'm just a weird person with weird dreams, I guess.

And now, Ear Candy.


This song should be the anthem for the current (or perhaps any) Presidential Race. I ignore the vid and just listen.




And this one is just fun in a totally geeky way. I'm not generally a rap fan, but this partly musical and partly bad rap with some fun lyrics.

Sunday Smattering

I'm off to play the grocery game in a few minutes. 3 of my kids have actually asked to come with me. At least one has wanted to come the last few times, which pretty much stuns me, because I loathed grocery shopping as a kid. Well, except at the ironically named "Dairy Lane" in Hong Kong (which, as far as I know carried no dairy products other than Klim and some ice cream) where my sis and I would go upstairs and read books like The Joy of Sex, or Sphinx (a trashy novel about a woman with 6 breasts), tucked into a LIFE magazine.

Speaking of shopping that I loathe, my favourite jeans have blown up. I have 2 pairs and they both blew out at the knee last week. :-( The ones I'm wearing right now also have a rip at the corner of one of the bum pockets. I can tell, because MuNKi keeps sticking his finger in it. All of this means that eventually I'm going to have to suck it up and buy new jeans. Which is basically pure torture for me. I SO envy guys, who can fall in love with a pair of jeans and still be able to buy the same exact ones 30 years later. AND they can buy them to length. SO not fair. Sigh.

If only I could go upstairs and read smutty books while someone else bought my jeans for me. . .

*****
UPDATE : I won again at the Grocery Game. Today's stats:

$280.64 worth of groceries for $97.51. Huzzah! I saved $183.13, which is close to twice as much as I spent! :-)

So Much to Say. . .

. . . and yet I realise that most successful posts are short and sweet.

It snowed a whomp-ass lot of snow here. We've gotten maybe 9 or 10 inches and I think it's still going. Naturally, I was forced to get my stuff on and go play in it today. I mean, how could I not? So whilst MuNKi wrangled the snowblower and cleared the driveway, I built snow forts with the kids. Pictures will have to come tomorrow, but it was pretty good weather for it, since it was 34-36 degrees F while we were out there. We've really got to get one more big pair of gloves though, because one of our "pairs" consists of 2 left hands, and Mollusc wears the same size I do now, so at first I wore one of Fishy's gloves and one of the 2 lefts, which got cold in a hurry, and then MuNKi gave me the other big set and wore a giant Air Force mitten and an oven mitt. ^_^

After snow play, it was time to make Buckeyes, since the garage is perfect for the setting-up process in this weather. I have to stop making those. They're so yummy I'm forced to eat them even when I'm full.

From there we proceeded to a fabbo supper from MuNKi's new cookbook (it was even the recipe shown on the cover there) and a viewing of some episodes of Red Green (another of MuNKi's Christmas presents.) I have to say that I really am benefitting from his gifts as much as he is. ^_^

Oh, and we had a fabbo trip to WI last week. We were spread pretty thin over the various familial units at times, but it was a great adventure all around, and we even got together with our friend Frank Sommers and a bunch of his girls, upon which he presented us with 2 copies of Going Great White. (Insanely clever people will click on "Buy DVD" in that linked page. ^_^ ) MuNKi and I watched it tonight and it's a scream! It totally kicks Best of Show's ass. I mean TOTALLY. MuNKi and I are credited, so we can have our own IMDb pages if we want, though MuNKi will have to use his middle name or something, since his has already been sucked up by another famous actor. ^_^ It was funny and cool seeing ourselves in a film. ANd, yeah, I want to do it again. :)

I keep getting stuck and unstuck in my novel. What a painful, yet alternately joyful process. :-P

Oh yeah, and we're down to just the one car now that MuNKi's work has reclaimed the work Jeep. Bummer. And I lost his cell somewhere in WI, too. Possibly in a snowbank. At least it was broken, so it's not a hugely huge loss. Or so I tell myself. I dunno what he's gonna tell the folks at work, though. Urf. Well, screw 'em for taking his car away. That's like a massive pay cut, so yeah, screw 'em.

For Your Eyes Only

I think this will be the last year I'll be able to make something for The Prawn in plain view without arousing her suspicions. It probably helps that she's used to seeing me make a mess with scrappy stuff on the table. It also helps that there has been such an incredible scrappy mess on the table that she probably can't even see what I'm up to. :) I think I've finished the recipe books. All that remains is to load the recipe pages into the little albums. Yes albums, plural, because there are an ungodly number of them and I had to break them down into Stove Recipes, Blender Recipes, and Sandwich Maker Recipes. This will mean nothing to those of you whose households are not graced by the presence of fuzzy little Webkinz, but they will mean the world to Prawn. I hope. :)

So now, in my weird and strangely pleasure-delaying ways, I have put the very last disk of Going Postal on pause, stepped away from the final stage of the project, and sat down with my computer to blog. The kids are in the basement with a friend, playing some strange and exciting Pirate Ship game they've invented. I know there are swashes being buckled, because I saw an armory load of wooden swords and shields getting dragged down there. Hopefully there won't be any severed limbs to deal with. The crew ate lemons just before going to sea, so at least scurvy isn't going to be a concern.

I could take this opportunity to make some secret things with lovely secret fabric I bought the other day, but I fear that the crew will likely pop upsatirs to dry land at the most Inopportune Moments, and unlike The Prawn, the others suffer from Insatiable Curiosity whenever I'm sewing. So it will have to be a matter of Secret Midnight Sewing, I think. In the meantime I'll make more Christmas gift bags. I seem to have given away rather a lot of them, and I'd rather be flayed and hung from the yard arm than resort to paper.

We've started reading Swallows and Amazons again, which I don't think Fishy and Prawnie remember much at all. The Bigs are enjoying it more than ever, as am I. I think the combo of S&A and watching Pirates III is what spawned this latest seafaring game. If you haven't read it, all I can say is that this is a series I wish every child could read. One of my Desert Island picks for sure. (you know - if you were stranded on a desert island and could only take X books - perish the thought!)

Enough pleasure-delaying for now. I'm off to see what finally becomes of Mr. Moist Lipwig.

Stuffity

Since Tuesday's post I have:

~ Been informed by MuNKi that there is a pole-dancing class starting at the gym where he and another TKD friend lift weights. (And OMG, BG and I are getting mileage off the pole-dancing jokes, LOL!)

~ Taken a spinning back kick to the chin (thank goodness for my mouthguard, or I'd be concussed.)

~ Taken a spinning back kick (I think, or maybe a spinning outside kick -- it's all a blur) to the nose (I need to work on this whole getting back farther thing, LOL) but I DID land a gorgeous counterkick a half second later. Only then did I feel that I'd been hit in the nose (pretty lightly.)

~ Been scrapping like crazy trying to finish a Webkinz cookbook for Prawnie's 6th birthday (1 week from today! OMG!!)

~ Watched Casino Royale again and marveled at how delicious Daniel Craig still is

~ Made a ton of cookies

~ Finished listening to Deception Point by Dan Brown (very good) and started listening to Going Postal by Terry Pratchett (OMG freaking hilarious!) I do this while scrapping -- multi-tasking. Hooray! Mollusc is developing quite an appreciation for Mr. Pratchett, too. :)

~ Finished re-reading The Subtle Knife and started re-reading The Amber Spyglass (the 2nd and 3rd books in the Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman)

~ Laughed a lot

~ Battled a zit trying to grow in my eyebrow

~ Dug wood splinters out of my thumb

~ Tried to determine whether those are really shiny blonde hairs or *gasp* grey ones (I swear they change in the light.)

~ Gotten my glasses fixed so that I no longer have red marks on my nose and headaches. (No, not red marks on my headaches. . .)

~ Done the opposite of coming from behind in yet another Scrabulous game (Simon/Winters is deadly, let me tell you.)

~Decided that my mundane list of stuffity stuff is probably already too long. ^_^

Stormy

The wind is howling 'round the corners of the house tonight, trying to sneak in all the nooks and crannies. Unfortunately, it's pretty good at blowing right through the window by the couch where I'm sitting right now. Urf.

We had quite the adventure today. I think all the pics are slurped into the computer now, so hopefully tomorrow I will relate all. Very cool. :)

I have no trouble believing recent reports that average temps have been falling since 1998, as it's bloody cold out. But it's a nice way to welcome in December.


PS: if we're playing Scrabble, it's your move. :)

Saturday Already?!?

I find many things running through my head just now, though none of them really make sense or will be of interest to anyone. But it's my blog, so I shall spew it anyway.

Thanks to magnetic poetry words (but not Magnetic Poetry™ words) and a sleepover friend, we have a new definition of the word "rainbow" at our house. The sentence posted was "When my foot runs on soft jam I rainbow" I bet you can guess what rainbow means. It's much akin to having a Technicolour Yawn, 'yoffing' or 'shouting soup.'

I went shopping with Fishy just a little yesterday. I was mainly after wee trees for the kids' rooms. Somehow I ended up with a cool little kitty hideway and some other stuff, too. The lines weren't major, even though there were few checkers. Today, however, I went to Joann's to get thread for my recently booming TKD patch-sewing-on and pants-hemming biz (which still feels like highway robbery, though I'm not complaining) and ended up putting it back and leaving empty-handed because the line was so looooooong. Fortunately the trip was still successful in the Christmas and birthday present realm because we hit Tree Town Toys in Ann Arbor, which has no end of cool stuff.

I might have more to say, but I can hear Christmas Vacation starting without me, so I'm off.

Later, Dudes!