Who's Your Daddy?

I would like to take this opportunity to rant about one facet of what it's like working in Corporate America during the holidays. But before I begin, I want you to know that I love children and nearly everything about them except their propensity for making messes. On Wednesday, one of the managers who works in the vicinity of my cubicle brought his twins to work with him for the day. It was cute at first listening to their giggles and high-pitched voices throughout the day because it certainly broke up the monotony. At first, I wasn'…

Brown Christmas

I attempted to make Anisette Christmas cookies this year from a recipe given to me from one of the residents at my mom's nursing home. I should have known I was going to be in for some major kitchen trouble when the recipe called for 8 cups of flour. I gathered all the ingredients and set out to make my first batch of homemade cookies. As I measured out each cup of flour, I was surprised that I needed to keep getting a bigger and bigger bowl. As I was on my 7th cup of flour, my heart sank as I realized there wasn' t any more flour in …

Parking Lot Blues

Last night I had to wait in the parking lot after work for 15 minutes while my windshield melted because I forgot my scraper. I did, however, have a state-of-the-art foam snow brum (European Design...doncha know) with a telescoping handle that when extended could reach across to Southboro. It kicks butt for cleaning off your car in heavy snow, but is no match for ice. Duh! So I stocked up the car this morning with a scraper, brush, windshield wiper fluid that can sustain arctic temps and wore my little Nanook of the North head-dress that cover…

Ocean's Twelve Review

Ocean's Twelve will perhaps be my last official 2004 paid-to-see-it-in-the-theatre movie. I should have taken my $9.50 and bought a Starbucks Eggnog Latté and a fancy cookie. Aside from Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and George Clooney looking good enough to eat (think expensive Starbucks cookie), I surprisingly found myself bored throughout many parts of the movie. It's not that I found the movie's plot difficult or hard to follow. I just felt kind of sleazy and voyeuristic watching these entire well-know actors getting paid to have the …

I Heart Huckabees

Written and Directed by David O. Russell Starring Jude Law (Brad Stand), Naomi Watts (Dawn Campbell), Jason Schwartzman (Albert Markovski), Mark Wahlberg (Tommy Corn), Dustin Hoffman (Bernard Jaffe), Lilly Tomlin (Vivian Jaffe) and Isabelle Huppert (Caterine Vauban) I don’t proclaim to know exactly what the heck existentialism is all about and I certainly don’t understand it any better after watching I (Heart) Huckabees, but it sure was a fun trip for 106 minutes. This is a story about the passionate conservationist Albert Markovski who see…

My Experience at the Polls

I voted last night after work and there was a tremendous amount of people at the polls. I stood in line for about 15 minutes as I was fortunate to leave work early because I had my Powerpoint class at 6:30. But upon exiting the polls I noticed there was a line of people snaking outside the school so I arrived at just the right time. A lady struck up a conversation with me while standing in line and was appalled that I was voting Libertarian. So I jokingly replied that Archie Bunker would call me a 'meathead', but she didn't get th…

Here's the picture of the grasshopper that was clinging to my Happy Bee antenna topper.

Happy Birthday! Minnie is two years old and we've had her a whole year. She is the love of my life (besides Spencer) and I've never seen a more expressive dog. 9/30/04

This is what Minnie looked like when we first adopted her on September 30, 2003. She weighed 16 pounds and was very thin.

Lesson Learned

Nature really can teach us great lessons to live by. I was walking around to the driver's side of my car yesterday morning when I noticed my little rubber yellow bee antenna topper had some strange whisker-like thing sticking onto its face. It looked weird and caught my attention. What the hell? There was a big green grasshopper attached to the face of the bee. I thought it was pretty odd that it chose my antenna topper as its resting place, but I didn't think too much more about it. I drove to work which is about 30 miles away in Fr…

Usher Rant

I can't stand Usher. If you don't know who this singer is then what I'm about to tell you won't mean a damn thing, but trust me...it's funny. MTV is always and forever playing his videos in the morning. When I see his video come on for that most annoying song, "Yeah" with all the flashy strobe lights...well, I can't change the channel fast enough. So Spencer was walking by one morning and said about Usher: He reminds me of Michael Jackson dancing in a phone booth. He's so right. And people make fun of …

Stinky Candy Delights Me

Spencer and I were doing a little shopping at our local Target. As we were in the checkout line, he mentioned in an off-handed sort of way, "Oh look, liquorice Altoids." I didn't pay any attention because he's always making up funny stuff to tease me when we're out and about. For example, we could be in the Domestics section of a store and he'd tell me they had a Marky Mark beach towel because he knows I'd FREAK OUT! But he said it again so I looked to where he was pointing and nearly lost my hand lunging over th…

Ironic Poo

Spencer was walking Minnie today when he noticed she was acting funny. She just stopped walking and was sitting on the ground looking odd. So he tugs at her chain a little bit to get her to start moving and as she started walking forward, she took one of her back hind legs and stretched it out underneath her so that it was sticking up in the air. Guess what? Poor little Minnie stepped in dog poo and had it on her back paws. Ewwwww.... When he told me about it tonight, I really started to laugh. Just the thought of how dogs thoughtlessly shit …

Sit and Stare

I just came back inside from walking Minnie. But before I came inside to put away the groceries, I sat out on my front steps with her. Nothing special about my porch-granite steps leading up to the front door. I was just sitting on my top stair relaxing alongside the evening breeze. I was thinking that I don't do this often enough-this sitting and staring. I listened to the crickets and the anonymous frogs making their night sounds and I started counting to 100 looking at the leaves on the tree in my front yard. I had to pace my counting …

Batman!

Spencer told me tonight that there was a bat in our kitchen. I was watching a movie high on Nyquil so it took me a few beats to completely grasp that we had a live bat in our kitchen. I crept quietly into the kitchen and the bat was hanging upside down near our Tiffany lamp apparently sleeping. (Spencer later said he first thought it was one of my toy's hanging up there) I phoned the Worcester Police, but they couldn't help me because they said an officer was already on a bat call across town on Salisbury Street. Great. So now what a…

Just Whistle

Right this very instant my next door neighbor is standing across the street from his house whistling for something. I noticed him doing it while I was sweeping my driveway. (It's my little way of physically recovering from mowing the lawn. Sweeping a broom in a repetitious manner really just helps me decompress from the physical exertion required to mow.) Anyways...He's still out there doing it. It's like he's calling for someone in the neighborhood and I just know it's not his dogs because they're chained up out back.…

Mom's Favorite Scratch Ticket

Scratch Tickets

My mother has discovered the joys of scratch tickets. This isn't good news at all. Especially for someone who suffers from manic depression. A niece who visits a beloved aunt (known my my mother at "the munchkin" because she's so small, dainty and cute!) at the nursing home occasionally buys the tickets and recently my mom struck gold with her ticket. Well, gold in the sense that she won twenty bucks. But for someone who is limited by the government to only getting $60/month, twenty is really like $100 to her. So now …

Where's The Beef?

Everytime a resident celebrates a birthday at my mom's nursing home, they get to choose a special Birthday lunch. Anything their heart desires--within limits both financially and denture-wise. Yesterday it was Helen's birthday. Now Helen is a very big woman. There's much of Helen to love and she LOVES to eat! The activity lady asks Helen in front of all the gathered residents waiting for their lunch, "What do you want to eat for your Birthday?" Helen thinks for a moment and starts to recite her wishlist: mashed potatoes,…

Dept of Public Works vs. The Aliens

Did you ever notice the similarities between crop circles and the Department of Public Works? Crop circles mysteriously show up just like those day-glow orange plastic cones you see out in the street. The DPW goes out into neighborhoods and randomly paints bright orange circles and triangles on pavement never to return again. What do they mean?These random street markings just show up exactly like crop circles. Do you think the city is trying to tell me something just like the aliens?

Company Ice

I was at the new Price Chopper last night on East Mountain Street in Worcester. I had bought a big ole bag of bing cherries and when I looked over at the lady bagging my groceries, I noticed she had this plastic bag sticking out of her shirt. She was saying rather loudly to the cashier how hot it was and that this bag made her feel "...soooo cool." I felt my fists clenching at my sides and I was just about ready to call the manager over when I realized it wasn't my precious bag of bing cherries she had stuffed down her shirt to …

Watch Out Thomas Edison!

Ever watch a TV show called "Invent This!" on TechTV? It's a show dedicated to inventors and each segment features a re-enactment of how the idea for the invention originated. I've got one. Why doesn't Purina or Iams invent glow-in-the-dark pet food? That way, when the dog poops outside in the evening, you'll see this brilliantly green glowing mound of poo and it won't be so hard to pick up in the dark and deposit into your Stop & Shop plastic baggy. It's a struggle being a responsible dog owner. Our bea…

Serenade At Midnight

I have this nice little cd/clock radio on my nightstand which allows me to play a nature cd that pipes the sound of rain all night long. It's relaxing and helps me get to sleep each night. I think I've played the cd so many times that it's finally burnt out. I've had this cd forever.So last night the cd wouldn't play so I had to try to fall asleep au naturel. But guess what? In all the silence, I started to hear twittering and whistling. It was so erie. I thought it might have been a bat just flying around doing its nightly…

Grass Is A Pain In The Ass

I've decided that mowing the grass is a pain in my ass. I don't remember last year being this high-maintenance. I've mowed the lawn every week this Spring and that sucks. Spencer says we should just salt the lawn. Kill everything. There's a house in my neighborhood that has their entire yard filled with decorative pebbles. Sure, a few sprouts of pesky weeds can be seen poking up amongst the stones, but overall it has a nice minimalistic look that someone like me can appreciate. I hate mowing the lawn. So today I've got to g…