It's Over

Is there anyone out there for whom 2006 didn't pretty much suck ass?

I haven't spoken to one person who is sad to see this year go.

'07 has got to be luckier.

Happy New Year!

Jen's Super Easy Black Bean chili

Mmm
Brown one lb of ground turkey and one med size spanish onion--diced. Don't forget the salt n' peppah.

Add,
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 small can of tomato paste
1 small can (8 0z) tomato sauce
1 can black beans
1 can niblets
1.5 tsb worchestershire sauce
.5 tsp cinnamon
1.5 tsp cumin
1 tsp cocoa
chili powdah to taste

I know you think i'm a freak for the cinnamon and the cocoa--but it makes the tomato much more smooth and yummy.

Cook till it's done.

Blog Review: Don Juan de Marco

Starring Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando.

You know, sometimes you just want to be entertained don't ya? This movie was really cute. Some people might call it a chick flick, but JK liked it, so it's not ENTIRELY a chick flick. I recommend you watch this when you want pure fluff and a couple of small giggles.

Well I was proud of all I had accomplished today--dishes, groceries at 2 places, next year's xmas cards (I went for funny instead of the simple yet elegant theme of the last few years). On my way home from Target I was stopped at a red light, and, sure enough--it was bound to happen eventually, I got rear-ended. DAMMIT! However, there was no damage to my car, even my eggs survived, and the Indian chick in the Acura SUV who hit me was very afraid of me. She begged me not to...what were her words? "Get me in trouble." No harm done. I think she had turned to look at her son in the back seat and didn't realize how close she was to me. Let's hope this is the worst traffic incident I have here.

Dallas - Season 5

This is for Ellen....

Good Times.

The Electric Company- Clumsy

The Electric Company - Ch

oh you have to have one of these....

The Electric Company ~ The Fiend

I always loved this chick's hair

The Electric Company - LY - Tom Lehrer

gotta have a Tom Lehrer

The Electric Company - Victor Borge - Audible Punctuation

OMG i forgot about this one!

Typewriter Guy - C (Classic Sesame Street)

Sesame Street: Jazz #7

The Electic Company - You drive me up the wall!

The Electric Company - Happy Birthday, Miss Jones

The Electric Company - Creepy Creature

omg

Electric Company - There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea

The Electric Company - Right On!

these are my fave's of course

The Electric Company - Easy Reader

these are for all of you who missed the electric company tribute on pbs a couple of weeks ago

The Electric Company - Grease - Rita Moreno, Morgan Freeman

omg, do you remember this?

VA-bound

So I was scheduled to go to Boston and take off there at 4, land at JFK at 5, Take off again at 8, and land at Dulles at 10:30.

WELL, I got to Logan at 11:30, so I went to the gate to check in my luggage and asked if they could possibly get me on an earlier, direct flight (which jetBlue does whenever they can) and the rather rude woman at the counter said " NO we are full to JFK today." I tried to explain that that was just the problem-- I didn't NEED to go to JFK for anything. But I could tell that she wasn't hearing me, so I accepted my fate and went to my gate.

At about 3:15 when my gate area was starting to fill up, I noticed that it was indeed getting VERY full. I went to the gate agent and asked if the plane was overbooked. He said yes. I said "I will gladly give up my seat to JFK if you can get me directly to Dulles." And he did! He SPRUNG into action, jumped on the walkie-talkie, handed me a boarding pass, and said "RUN."

So I ran. I figured I would have to go back to the airport at 10 to get my JFK luggage, but that was no biggie. I got on the 4:15 to Dulles and got actually HOME around 7. And guess what? My luggage made the switch with me! Even the guitar arrived without incident. My cab driver home was an Indian guy who said he had 47 family members at his house for Thanksgiving this year and was in Maine once when he went to visit his dad in Montreal. He said the plane stopped 3 times and picked up a total of 5 other people. That was in '86. He also said that when he drinks too much he just goes to bed so he doesn't do anything stupid--remind you of anyone?

I put my angel on my tree. I feel like I am at home. She is beautiful. Thanks RK......stupid emotions!

Note to anyone who might still want to get me an xmas gift:

My Amazon wishlist books are now prioritized. Happy shopping and congrats on being able to afford it! Please--buy used!

Christmas Wrap-up.

What a lovely visit home I've had. Wild Willys, crazybitches, another sloppy drunk xmas eve (NOT ME THIS TIME), and I even got to have a cocktail with the crazy Burgoynes. The only down part was that I didn't get to see LTL and the Callahan gang, and that I didn't run into Beav while running the roads.

Highlights:
Jake and Timmy (who has a nice soft-shoe shuffle) live and unplugged
Chocolate Cheesecake bars
Thurlow hospitality (who wants a Volcano Bowl?)
I can almost play G!
Guitar from the Kilbys
TONS of Starbucks bucks
Family, laughing, and hugging and kissing kids.
Ramming the roads w/Snoop
pommegranate martini and the hopes of seeing Avenue Q w/Stanley in '07

Blog Review: Talledega Nights

You know, we were all in the mood for mindless nonsense, so when this movie arrived in the mail we were all truly thrilled. However, the movie was a disappointment to me. Although the first half was as mindless and sophomoric as I had hoped; the second half had to get all "bad guy turns good" and moral-y and I HATE that in a movie. It was like they had a plan for 2 hours of trashy movie, which they set up in the first part, then some movie exec said, um, no, ok now what we need you to do is turn this into a feel good movie, and the people writing it didn't want to do it, and didn't try very hard. I give it a 2.

MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmm comfort food. i watched Nigella make a shepard's pie for her xmas special i think. Reminded me of the one RK had in Alexandria with the very beefy potatoes.

Trust me, I cannot wait to BE home. In less than 24 hours, my planes, trains, and automobiles quest begins.

Speaking of which, no movie review?

Last night we went to M's bball game (cats lost unfortunately) BUT we got to enjoy the xmas routine 2 times! It's AWESOME!

After that we had dinner at a movie at the Thurlow's. We watched Talledega nights and I made shephard's pie which was YUMMO! Sometimes plain ol comfort food really hits the spot doesn't it?
Can't wait to see you Jen.

Well that wasn't actually my "secret santa". That was just a rich guy who knows I wanted something and has money to throw around. You know some of those people and have gone on some nice trips with them if I remember correctly, so quit yer bitchen.

Today was our actual Secret Santa thing....and i got a $20 Starbucks card. The trick was to buy the person something that began with their initial..."shorey" "starbucks"...it worked for me. My person's name was rose and her middle initial is "p" and her last is "b" so i got her some roses and some peppermint bark.

Secret Santa

A guy I work with felt bad that I couldn't afford my ipod since I bought tires last week.

He bought me my ipod. How sweet is that.

I love Scrubs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20Of_mna-Rs&eurl=

MAN, what a day. I only slept 2 hours last night--I could NOT get comfortable. So, half awake I got ready for work--I even put on a skirt, which I rarely do. Get outside, oh, yeah--flat tire.

Now, I was GOING to buy myself a new ipod for christmas, but no. I had to buy two new tires today because when i saw the tread on the inside of the flat one I knew it wouldn't last through any snow.

So I went upstairs, threw on jeans, went back down and could NOT get the second lugnut loose. Yes, I jumped on the tire iron. Luckilly for me, Oscar, a dude who works here, was crusing around in his little golf cart doing something so I could flag him down and ask him to loosen the lug nut. He ended up changing the tire for me, concerned that I would be late for work. He was very sweet.

So at lunch time I took my car to the tire joint and bought two tires. blah. But my steering wheel doesn't bounce at all now--it's amazing how you realize how horrible something once when it isn't there anymore. I really needed tires.

So, in other news, a chick at work is giving me a TV (she just bought a 50" plasma), so tonight I moved my TV and Tivo from the living room to the bedroom. I bought a shelf thingy for 19 bucks...so now i have my laptop on the stepstool beside the bed, and a 19" tv with tivo in my bedroom. I seriously may never get out of bed again. my boss even told me today (because I was so tired today) to sleep late tomorrow and "come in when I feel like it."

Ah...good ending to a tumultuous beginnning.

Holla at your boyz

YouTube - Scrubs Music Video -- Guy Love

For all my recently discovered fellow Scrubs fans!

Congrats on your win this week, RK...isn't it the first win for you? I have been taking care of Mila this week--it is HARD to be a working wife, let me tell you! Notice to whoever is cursed enough to marry me--I will not be working. I will, however, cook and clean and sleep a lot and read and eat ice cream.

NFL Update week 14

The weekly winner is RK!!!! Hooray!

Weekly total
RK 9
JK 8
Jen 7
Leigh 5
Amy 5

It is interesting to note that in every game (cept Atlanta) where we all picked the same team, that team lost!

Grand Total
JK 96
RK 94
Alo 89
Jen 88
Leigh 88

Blog Report: Mini-Deppcathalon and bakeoff

Amy came Friday and we watched "The Secret Window" which i rate as "better than a night of PBS" but not better than cats.

Saturday a.m. GG came and baked Susan's, then Amy and the kids made sugar cookies, chocolate crinkles and candy cane pics. We watched Edward Scissorhands and Pirates one. Is that it? I think so. The cookies were AWESOME. Check RK's recipe blog for pix and recipes.

I hear the smke alarm--Cheryl! Dinner's ready!

THE MUSEUM OF BURNT FOOD

The Story of Raffaello

So I was at EE. I don't remember exactly why but I needed something I couldn't find anywhere. I was fighting the crowds, in one aisle I saw this woman with a CART FULL of little white boxes...I thought "oh some people are going to be THRILLED to get some Wal-mart crap for Xmas"......but i didn't see what it was.

Well she happened to be behind me in line. I turned to her and said "I'm sorry to bother you, but what are all those white boxes?"

"OH MY GOD!" she screamed. Then, to the man she was with (her son I assume), she said "Open a box and give her one. (To me) You won't believe how good this is." Turns out it was a piece of candy made by the same folks who make Ferro Rocher, only these are called Raffaello. They are white chocolate dipped, milk cream in the middle, with an almond, sprinkled with coconut. This woman comes to EE to buy them ALL every christmas because she can't get them any other time of the year. She had 21 boxes. After I ate one and said they were, indeed, pretty good, she took a box out of her cart and handed it to me. What a sacrifice. So now i have a little dish of Raffaellos sitting on my bar, and every time I look at them I crack up a little.

see how large a snowball you can make?

my high was 1807

http://www.armorgames.com/games/armorgamessnowball.html

see how large a snowball you can make?

my high was 1807

http://www.armorgames.com/games/armorgamessnowball.html

snowball fight anyone?

http://snowball.agency.com/

...and I agree with you Jen. Yahoo TV is now completely useless. Which is too bad because they used to get to advertise to me several times every day. Now I use www.tvguide.com

Well, I bet you'd be safe buying "Brothers" because no one would ever thing of getting that for you for Bucksmas, that's what i WAS GOING to get everyone, but then I found something much better. I love cereal for supper. I wish I could have that every night (except for Sunday which is (obviously) chicken night).

What's Bitchin'?

OMG I hate the new Yahoo TV interface! It doesn't work! It doesn't even load! Why did they have to go gunk up something simple and reliable with crap that just simply doesn't do ANYTHING?

Thank blog it wasn't the South Park person effing up the blog! So my boss is out today--her 20 year old daughter is having her 2nd kid--don't get me started.

This weekend I'm doing a HUGE clean because I have company coming and I'm going away for xmas and I hate coming back from vacation to a messy house. I'm getting out the big guns. Chemicals, magic eraser, and swiffer...

My zyrtec isn't working on my allergies anymore. I'm not sure what to do. Maybe I should take 1 every 12 hours? It is sad. I sit at work and sneeze all day. Then I go home, and I'm ok because I have a big-ass air purifyer, but then I wake up at 5 or 6 completely stuffed up. It's a nightmare--I don't want to go to an allergist, but I am considering it.

Last night for suppah I had chicken and squash. It was very hearty and wintery.

And I love Edy's Frozen Yogurt "Blends." I'm not sure what they're blending--the first ingredient is skim milk, and the third ingredient is cream, so it's not "health food," but it is lower-calorie than ice cream and tastes JUST LIKE Schwan's chocolate ice cream--that is enough for me.

I cannot wait for my Tim Horton's MOCHA. Is the TH in Brewer open yet?

I STILL KNOW IT JENN!!! FIXED!!!!

Hooray for me!!!! I fixed the blog!!!!! Now Leigh, you can post your photos again, because they're cute. The problem was one of those damed Amazon links (my bad). I'll put all the extra features on at a later time because I'm too wound up and irritable to deal with it right now (while at the same time, happy I figured it out). It's an emotional rollercoaster really. In the meantime you can feel free to tell me what color you would like the blog to be.

The advice I got was that there may be a link that's too long or an image that is too big. So. I obviously deleted everything suspicious. I'm working on it for God's sake!!!!

Obviously, it sucks.

I STILL KNOW IT JENN!!!

I don't know what's going on but no matter what I do this blog won't work correctly. Perhaps blogger is having some problems. Here you have the basic blog with NOTHING done to it and STILL the sidebars are at the bottom. Any ideas?

Notice:

For the winter, I have purchased The Brothers Karamazov for my reading project. If you ever wanted to KIND OF be in a book club because you like the IDEA of it, but don't really want to discuss the book with anyone else, either because you don't get symbolism at all and don't like to feel dumb, OR because you think your OWN opinions are really the only ones that matter, this might be a good time for you to read the Brothers too. Then you could say your book club is reading it, but you don't have to actually talk to anyone else about it, unless you want to, but if that's the case I recommend you do not discuss it with me (see reasons above).

NFL update

Weekly Winners"
Alo 12
Jen 11
Leigh 10
RK 10
JK 8

overall totals
JK 76
Snoop 73
Alo 72
rk 72
Jen 70

The gap is narrowing......

Blog Review: MJHS Chorus concert

Wonderful! What a great group. Mr. R does a GREAT job, and I couldn't believe the number of kids in that chorus. Kudos!

Happy Birthday MOM!

RK has your present.

Congratulations grammy Theresa for getting your cards out so early! Hers is the first one I got. So, I consider myself decorated for the Holidays. I got my garland and pointsetta up and I have a card. Now before you yell at me, remember, I don't do decorating, I'm easing myself into it and besides I DID try to get my kids to make me some snowflakes but they were too busy.

I haven't touched the thing. I WANTED to fix it but was afraid I'd screw it up more.

17 days until I come home! I'm excited, and if Amy didn't hate it so much, I would INSIST that we have shit-on-a-shingle for Christmas.

A-lo, thanks for the pictures.Now, since I also had all the food, I don't feel like I missed a thing.

NOW...

WHO screwed up the blog???? Where are the links??? where are they avatars and the tag??? What the hell did you do??? I hope you saved the template before you went screwing around with it. If you didn't I probalby have it someplace.

I STILL KNOW IT JENN!!!

make sure you make the cookies thick and soft--that's how i like them...not that i'll be there, but i'll be there in spirit.

Doesn't it just make you so happy to find the PERFECT xmas gift. I believe I found that for my sisters. I can't wait to see their little crying faces when they open their pres's. I wonder what tree I should put them under......

Just to be clear, you can still come on Saturdays, you can make cookies if you want to, I'd love to have you. We may even watch Movies, it's just that I'm not doing any planning for an event. I'm not planning a meal or snacks or buying any fancy decorations. That's what "Deppcathalon is cancelled" means. Amy is still going to come and make some cookies with the kids.

photos

thanks Alo, I love those photos of gg and the kids and also Dad and boy. Cute.

Amazon.com: Drake's Funny Bones, 10 In A Box, 12.5 oz: Gourmet Food

Amazon.com: Drake's Funny Bones, 10 In A Box, 12.5 oz: Gourmet Food

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SNOOP!

Eat, drink, laugh, and enjoy the spirit of the DANCE!

You are SO jealous. I think I make a pretty snazzy south park kid. Of course i had to have my Terrence sweatshirt, since they didn't have a Pat's logo..... 

What would you look like as a South Park Character?

http://www.sp-studio.de/

Now HERE is a gift for the person that has everything...

Event Notice:

Due to lack of interest, Deppcathalon and cookie baking is cancelled. Maybe we'll do it another time folks.