labor day

Over this 2007 Labor Day Weekend I will be witnessing/participating in the following three very significant events:

1) My husband’s first days in his 40th decade (he turns 40 September 1)
2) The ritual packing away of my summer clothes
3) The fantasy football draft being held at our house Labor Day

The most important, hotly debated question regarding the draft?

Who's No. 1?
Who is fantasy's top player: Shaun Alexander, Larry Johnson or LaDainian Tomlinson?

I will let you know on Tuesday.

And so my beautiful internets…here’s wishing you a lovely Labor Day weekend.

Lunch Challenge

Sanna and I have an ongoing lunch challenge.

You all know Sanna right?

My best good friend since the 4th grade?

Say “Hi” Sanna

Here we are in 1996 - waiting for her boyfriend at the time to finish making us dinner....beef Oscar was on the menu. we were so cute and so young and so drunk..




But I digress…..as I was saying, we have a lunch challenge.

Nearly every day, I email Sanna what I’m having for lunch. This was yesterday’s challenge:

Jen: Today I am having an egg salad sandwich (from the roach coach) sun chips - french onion and a pepsi. followed by strawberry krimpets.

CHALLENGE

Sanna: turkey ham club from starbucks, one peach and one raspberry yogurt from Starbucks.

I’m never really sure who wins. The person with the most healthy and well balanced meal?

Or the person who has scraped the bottom of her snack drawer and fashioned a lunch from a can of tuna and lipton cup of soup and fortune cookies from a previous chinese lunch?

Either way, it’s a bright spot in both our days.


Today I’m having:

A Lean Cuisine meal - rosemary chicken – roasted chicken tenderloins in a garlic rosemary sauce, spinach and brown rice, Pepperidge farm goldfish, water and strawberry krimpets...again (because I have a whole box of them stashed in my snack cubby)

CHALLENGE!!

orange you glad i didn't say banana

I like the color orange.

Not particularly the blaze orange that hunters wear but all other oranges.

I have an orange skirt, orange wallet, orange and yellow plaid capri pants, orange trim on my new balance sneakers etc.

One of my favorite orange items is this mug that my mother got me for Christmas last year.


The mug says: ORANGE:

You are bold
Daring and a
Adventurous

You are fearless
Funny and
Cheerful

You love to talk

Your extroverted
and buoyant
attitude give you strength

I love this mug.

So imagine my distress to discover my beloved orange mug clutched in the dirty paws of my husband, who is CLEARLY not bold, daring and adventurous although he IS fearless obviously, since he dared to use my special mug, and he most certainly does not have a BUOYANT attitude (although he is definitely gaseous)

I firmly demanded that he unhand my orange mug and suggested that, in the future, he please use any of the other 25 mugs in the cupboard which are available for his personal use.

Perhaps the Giants mug that I bought him for Christmas might be a suitable exchange?

Now what have we learned from this story (other than Jen needs to practice her sharing skills?)

superficiality

Three very specific instances of my overwhelming superficiality:

1)Mandy Moore singing “Umbrella”. I don’t even LIKE Mandy Moore.
But she is singing the HELL out of this song.
I listen to this version at least four times a day.

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2) I'm seriously thinking of renting this Fendi bag.

This is actually a two part superficialty issue. I was watching Stacy London's Fashion Fanatic on TLC and to my amazement I learned that you can rent handbags and other accessories at www.bagborroworsteal.com

3) I don't watch Survivor. But I might start watching just for this:
His name is James Clement and his occupation is gravedigger. He can dig my grave anytime...ROOWWRRR!!!

The Hot August Night Party was neither Hot nor at Night…..discuss.

A pictorial review:

Our Gracious Hosts : Big Jim and Sue and Will (Sanna's Mom and Dad and nephew)


Sanna's Dave - he is tall and quiet and is a drummer in a band


Said Pow - Dave's Band



Sanna's Sister Johanna and Sue

Jimmy, Big Jim and Uncle Al - Jimmy is Sanna's older brother and I don't mind admitting that I had a minor crush on him growing up.



The food was on the picnic table - pulled pork sandwiches, chicken for tacos, corn on the cob, salad, cookies, endless amounts of food as only Sue can do.

The kegerator was doing a booming business.

The satiated guests were sprawled on the lawn listening to the live music when suddenly there was a commotion on the stage. The porch had torn away from its moorings against the side of house. The band had very nearly brought down the house!

All hands were called to save the kegerater, which was listing severely to the left.

This brought an effective end to the music portion of the evening.

Shortly thereafter the keg was kicked. In an ordinary family, this would have caused the party to come to a crashing halt. But Sanna's family are seasoned partyers so they hauled out the bottled beer and kept on drinking.

At that point, I called it quits and hied myself home with yet another Hot August Night under my belt.

deathly hallows

Over the weekend I finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.


These are just a few of the Things That Fell By The Wayside whilst I read Deathly Hallows:

Laundry – I am down to my last raggedy pair of underpants and if I don’t do laundry soon I’ll have to resort to that age old remedy of wearing a pair of my husband’s shorts. And don’t tell me you’ve never done that in a pinch!!

Pantry – We need the staples: bread and milk and Oreo cookies

Birthdays – my nephew Jason turned 7 on the 11th and I owe him a birthday gift. Other people with birthdays in August include 1 father, 1 sister-in-law, 1 grandmother, 1 aunt and 1 cousin plus a grand-parents anniversary - 62 years. What do you get a couple that has been married that long? I’ll tell you. Gift certificates for dinner's out, baby. Any time Gma doesn’t have to cook is a good time for everyone. Except Aunt Jane, who at 50+ years of age still goes to her mother’s for dinner.

Netflix Queue – up next – Sunset Boulevard - Norma Desmond: I *am* big. It's the pictures that got small.

Personal maintenance – desperately need hair cut and lip and brow wax. We are getting a little wild and woolly. And someday I think I’ll get up the nerve and go all Brazilian just so I can say I’ve tried everything once.

Watching reruns of The Office – why hasn’t anyone told me I should be watching this show?! It’s brilliant. And I will admit it right here and now, at first I was strangely attracted to Dwight, but Kevin is growing on me.

Anticipating the party that I’m going to this weekend. It’s the annual “Hot August Night” at my friend Sanna’s family farm. Ostensibly, I’m going to the party because I was invited and I want be sociable and see people I haven’t seen in a while, but really I’m going to vet her new boyfriend. I must needs subject him to the rigorous “Are You Deemed Good Enough For My Best Friend” questions. We shall see.

Making ice cream in my kitchen maid. I had to go all over god’s little acre to find Heath bars. So this had better be the best damn ice cream EVER.


As a final note – late last night I was watching Larry King interview Priscilla Presley. Her face looks like it is made of plastic and could melt if gets too close to the sun.

take a ride on my "train of thought"

This is how my mind is running right now – thanks to the Prednisone…..

ESPN was on in the living room Saturday afternoon.

They were talking about the Kentucky Derby and they mentioned the Queen of England

My mind immediately goes to the thought that the Queen loves horses in all shapes and sizes.

Then it roams to the fact that the every time we ever see the Queen at ANY occasion she is wearing a dress or skirt.

Which leads me to think about the Queen having to shave her legs.

Which THEN makes me think….does the Queen shave her legs?

Does she sit in her gilded bathtub and bring out the Lady Bic and the shaving cream?

Or does she goes au naturel? And if she does shave her legs, does she do the whole leg or just to the knee?

Perhaps she has someone shave her legs for her? Isn’t that what Ladies-in-Waiting are for?

If I were Queen of England I would totally have someone come in and shave my legs for me. Wouldn’t you?


Now aren’t you glad you came along for the ride?

twitter me happy

"to the left, to the left

all my thoughts in a box to the left"

look to your left.

i'm twittering now.

i have my brother-in-law the "amazing chris webb" to thank for this new level of internet insanity.

linky-loos

1)on july 30 we celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary.

2) just remember you heard about alison krauss and robert plant here first

3) i'm currently crushing on dita von teese.


4) much to my surprise, delight and mystification, there was a package from amazon.com on my doorstep when i got home from work on friday. for one brief second, i thought i had mistakenly ordered TWO Deathly Hallows, one from barnes and noble (which i had received on the previous saturday and was patiently sitting on my bookcase waiting for me to finish the half blood prince), and one from amazon.com. iwas frantically wracking my brain as to whom i could pawn off the second book when commmon sense suggested i just open the box. and i found an Amy Sedaris book and an Absolutely Fabulous DVD had come unbidden to me from my good friend jess jones. now we are crushing on her a little bit today too!

5) from my netflix queue i am watching the office. WHY haven't i been watching this regularly? i'm also watching A Touch of Frost, which is a British cop show and i'm strangely attracted to David Jason, a short, balding, mustachioed, middle-aged Brit.

6)This little Kitchen Aid beauty has a place of prominence on my kitchen counter (she is tangerine)and she has a friend who, with the assistance of Ben and Jerry is going to help me make Coffee Heath Bar Crunch® Ice Cream

i'll let you know how it turns out

ashes

My mother-in-law’s ashes are sitting on my mantel.

The fact that they have been up there for several weeks doesn’t bother me in the least.

What is bothering me is that my mother-in-law’s ashes are sitting on my mantel in a cocktail sauce container.

My first thought when I saw my husband put the container on the mantel was “I wonder if she even liked shrimp?”

I might be a little dead inside


Note:He was not responsible for putting her ashes in that container. That would be his clueless sister.