Haaaaaaaaaappy Biiiiiiiirthday... toooooooo P!

Happy Birthday, P! And welcome to your mid-30s. :)

All blog readers are invited to P's official birthday dinner Friday night. We'll be dining at Sun Wah BBQ, then it's off to dessert at George's!

The Holiday, Part One

There is something I LOVE about walking into a Starbucks and discovering the holidays are here!

What is it...?  The sweets and the calories?  (Like the 450 calorie grande egg nog latte)  The spending of money?  The meaningless gifts?  ("Here's a gift from Starbucks!  What?  You don't drink coffee?  Who doesn't drink coffee??")

I really think it's something about the graphic design that gets me.  All the red and white.  Sort of vintagey.  Clean and sparkley.  It makes me think of homemade mittens and paper-wrapped packages and pretending not to notice that there's way too much rum in the eggnog.  It's like I grew up on the Dick Van Dyke show.

OMG, why won't our cats do this?

I am such a loser. I always tell people that I'm not a "cat person", I've just been waiting for as long as I left home to get a dog but have never been able to. But I do love cats. Not always our cats. But anyhoo, on my google home page I have the "Funny Cat Photo" widget. Every time you log on a new funny cat photo. Some are hilarious. Such as the one here.

Why won't our cats tolerate such costumes?

New great room colors

I was home the last two days (off after 8 straight days of hell at work) and wanted to do something around the house. So it took me two days but I painted our great room and hallway - the bulk of the painting that needed to be done in our condo. Before it was a "sage" (more like mint) green with a dark green accent color. It looked like something your grandma would choose. So we chose antique copper, basketry and chocolate swirl. Ehh?

(By the way if you click on the picture you will see it enlarged)

Holy Sh**, don't try those moves at home!

This has got to be the weirdest / coolest dance / sex / fight routine I've ever seen. Please no one suggest doing this themselves as they will get HURT. I imagine broken necks and other injuries.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD, MADELEINE!!

This morning at 2:53 A.M. (PST) our new niece, Madeleine Louise, joined us! So in her honor I thought I would see what other significant events happened on this day in history.

Sorry, Maddy, until today November 5th was not too exciting. But just so that some day you know what else happened on this day, here goes:

1605 Gunpowder Plot: Catholics try to blow up English Parliament. Plot uncovered & leader Guy Fawkes hanged - England now celebrates Guy Fawkes Day on November 5th (exciting!)

1875 Susan B Anthony arrested for attempting to vote (it's never too early to start... vote Democrat!)

1912 Woodrow Wilson (D) beats Theodore Roosevelt (Prog) & President Taft (R) (see, voting is exciting!!!)

1935 Parker Brothers launches game of Monopoly (when you are old enough to play, your Uncle will teach you how to throw the board when you are losing)

1955 New Vienna Opera house opens (we'll go there some time but first I'll teach you German)

1987 Iceberg twice the size of Rhode Island sighted in Antarctic (we'll all try and make sure that by the time you grow up there are still icebergs)

Oh yeah, and in 1977 Your grandma was 15 days away from bringing your favorite uncle into the world!

And who do you share a birthday with? Well, if someday you enjoy the smooth, adult-contemporary sounds of Simon and Garfunkel, we'll know it's because you share Art Garfunkel's birthday. And Corin "Corky" Nemec... unfortunately, you missed his short-lived "Parker Lewis Can't Lose".

So, you see, Maddy you've just taken a boring day and made it much more exciting.

Madonna can still make fun of herself

g

The End is Night(sic)! Part Deux

As you may have heard, Denver got 18" of snow last week.  There was a lot of news about it early in the week (including more than one phone call from my mom making sure I knew about the upcoming storm since I never listen to the local weather.  Since I walk to work, she pictures me getting stranded in all types of severe weather including wind.).  And you never know how seriously to take the local weather report.  Even last week, they were using their gravely serious tone of voice to warn about a blizzard that promised the potential for 2 feet of snow in the Denver metro area.  Hm.  But then they qualified it saying if it turned out to be an upslope instead of a downslope, we'd have spring-like weather.  It was a crap shoot.

Speaking of crap shoots, I was a little put out considering I had to FLY OUT OF DENVER ON THURSDAY.  TO LAS VEGAS (hence the "crap shoot" reference).  Considering getting to DIA is a trek in and of itself, AND considering I am a nervous flyer ANYWAYS, it all added up to way too much anxiety on my part.  I couldn't really fully enjoy my TWO SNOW DAYS (well, officially one and a half, but I took liberty with the first one and called it earlier than work did), even though I had company (and had a lot of fun walking to the store, eating sweets and playing Scramble together). 

Turned out because the snow was expected and didn't dump in 2 hours as per usual, the drive to the airport wasn't actually that bad.  But THEN, there was a breach in security.  Then, our plane had encountered a bird strike on the way in and they had to do a mechanical check.  And then, of course, we had to de-ice.

But, in the end, it really wasn't that big of an ordeal.   THANK GOODNESS.