I Still Can't Believe It

I'm not a real big fan of my birthday mostly because I'm a big baby and don't want to get old. But also because it bugs me that somehow it's up to the person whose birthday it is to decide what to do to celebrate it. My position is that friends or family should take on the coordinating duties so as to relieve the celebratee of the burden of making a decision. Doesn't everyone hate making decisions as much as I do? Most years, someone will call and ask what I'm doing for my birthday and I would scramble to come up with something that sounded fun although, inevitably, I'd be in a sorry frame of mind to make such plans due to my "woe is me, I'm old" moaning. This year is different, I'm happy to report. Not only is JoySoy Habanero taking me, my Mom and Super Sue to a Cardinals game AND making sure I don't have to drive in an inebriated state Sunday night, but I also have a fantastic idea of what my family should do for me: have a pie ...

The title of this post means "These are my words" in Mohawk. On September 11, 2001, I was in Amsterdam. A lot of you know some or all of this story, but bear with me. Because of the time difference, it was late afternoon when I heard what was going on in NYC. I was on the way back to my hotel from the Van Gogh museum when a woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I was American. Upon my confirmation, she told me someone blew up the White House. That's all she knew. When I got back to the hotel, I went to the room I was sharing with my boss. The TV was on CNN and there was a note on my bed telling me to call my Mom and which room the boss was in and I should join her. I called my Mom, assured her I was OK, and then went to join the boss in the other hotel room. Besides my boss, there were four colleagues, two of whom were Mohawks and we all sat there, dumbfounded, speechless, and utterly incapable of hiding any emotion. That day, the five of us in that room knew th...

If I could take photos of my bruises that accurately reflected the depth of color and relational size, I'd probably start a bruise blog wherein I could diarize the comings and goings of my colorful skin. This week's soccer game left me with a couple on my arm and a lovely, huge, and frightfully painful one on my shin. It's so bad, I might have to sit out next week as the thought of anything even brushing up against it makes my eyes water. And sitting out fries my eggs...I pay to play so if I'm in town and physically able to be there, I'm there. What's more, I'm pretty sure my psyche is just as easily bruised. Maybe if I could, say, eat a lot of pineapple and that would cure my subcutaneous bruising, I could find some remedy for the bruising I take regularly to my soul? Something like rubbing shedded dog hair on my eyebrows would be good, lord knows I've got plenty of dog hair at my disposal. Don't get me wrong, most of the soul bruising is sel...

I have an admission to make, of which I'm woefully ashamed. Every time the movie Ghost Ship comes on TV, I watch it. If you haven't seen it, don't be surprised because it's not a very good movie. I guess the attraction is seeing the cast killed off in various spectacularly gruesome ways. And the ending is, well, the ending is bad like Mad Dog 20/20 when you're 15 - you don't want to drink it, but it's the only thing around and you've invested too much to turn back now. Recently, I had this conversation with someone, I believe my SIL, and she said the movie she always watched was Deep Blue Sea . In retrospect, maybe she wasn't exactly ashamed about watching it, but I felt those same dirty, i'll-never-get-these-two-hours-back feelings as from Ghost Ship. What fantastic fake sharks you have! I guess the truth about why I didn't appreciate DBS was because Karl Urban is in Ghost Ship and I find him dreamy but also like watching him die w...

This is a perfect description of how I feel at work pretty much every day. And this is pretty much how I feel about national politics. If you click on the image, it takes you to a pretty hysterically bad quiz about the differences between Bush & McCain. If you do well in the first two rounds, you get a quiz seeing if you can tell the difference between McCain and a partially rotten vegetable. DISCLAIMER: I'm an independant, which I believe means I think for myself - this may seem like a diss on the Republicans, but if you substitute any of the other candidates names on that banner, it applies just as well. Not trying to get into a political debate with anyone. Even though I haven't been traveling for work much in the last month, I've managed to stay wicked busy, mostly with the planning and preparation for being a bridesmaid in Anna's wedding last weekend. For anyone not in the know, Anna is a friend from high school who married another of my friends from high scho...