Archives for March 2009

1. Today was my second bake sale to raise money for the breast cancer walk. Amazing that even with the craptastic economy, people were so generous to donate towards an amazing cause. I’m impressed.

2. I spent all day yesterday baking. You know in Forest Gump, when Bubba’s listing the eleventy-billion ways to serve shrimp? That’s how I feel when I list everything I made for the sale – lots of sugar, chocolate, and holy cow, I went through about two dozen eggs yesterday.

3. Peanut butter cheesecake brownie bites? Yum.

4. New music this week – The Matt Nathanson EP on iTunes. He does a version of “All I Have to Do Is Dream” – and I love it. But I loved the original, and I don’t think he really tweaked it too much.

5. Pumpkin got sent to time out at school the other day for refusing to wear her hat outside. Kid is definitely in a stubborn phase right now. I remember this from The Princess, but boy… not fun.

6. Spring Break is coming up at The Princess’s school. All the other families are going on amazing vacations – and I feel badly for not having anything planned, but I just wasn’t planning on it. Will have to come up with some fun things to keep the kiddos occupied so they will be distracted from the fact that we’re not going to Florida like so-and-so’s family.

7. I’m hungry. And if I see another cookie right now, I might be sick. Pass the Cheetos.

8. Are there any good movies coming out? I think there’s one for kids coming out this weekend? I am so behind on that stuff.

9. I am still working on “Wonderwall” in guitar lessons. I learned the rest of the song today. It’s pretty fun to learn a WHOLE song (that isn’t a Christmas carol) and even cooler is that the guys in Oasis aren’t that great of singers, so I could even sing along… and even if it was bad (AND IT WOULD BE), it would still be about right.

10. I just downloaded the Weather Channel application for my phone. This means that at the touch of the screen, I can see what crappy weather we have. Fun times.

It’s easy to love them at the first grade level, I think – but last night’s conference for The Princess was FUN. We spent five minutes listening to how much the teacher adores The Princess and the rest of the time talking about second grade, college sports, graduate school programs (not for The Princess – I feel like I need to clarify that while it was a GOOD conference, she’s not Doogie Howser). It was a very mellow meeting, and most likely the highlight of my day. My favorite part was hearing about how well my daughter reads, though. If she loves reading, it will carry her so far.

First of all – holy cow – when I asked people what song they hate people would list songs and I would think to myself, “Well… that’s not that bad.” (Case in point: I can still appreciate “Ice Ice Baby”).

1. “She Drives Me Crazy” Fine Young Cannibals
2. “Waterfalls” TLC
3. “Butterfly Kisses” (gaaaaaaaaaaack)
4. “Viva la Vida” Coldplay (the only way you can get me to turn the radio off is for this song to come on, and it’s still getting a TON of airplay)
5. “Who Let the Dogs Out” Loooove that the daycare plays this for the kids so Pumpkin sings this one. Frequently
6. “Macarena” I can still DO the Macarena, but, the song is the biggest earworm ever. Someone starts singing it and FORGET IT
7. Basically anything Beyonce sings

Other contenders based on the people I know – “Tubthumping”, “Oh What a Night”, “Mambo #5”, and from my mother, “Having My Baby” (which IS a pretty repulsive song).

Tiff did a cool post for “10 Things Tuesday” of the Ten Songs she Hates, and since I love a good MeMe, I was thinking, “Awesome! I’ll do this too.”

Only… I could only think of two.

“Waterfalls” by TLC and “She Drives Me Crazy” by Fine Young Cannibals.

I love music – that is not new-news, but only two songs? That can’t be right. Must revisit this question again in the morning. After coffee.

Ever since I heard about the Kindle I was iffy about it – while I love the premise – bunches of books with you everywhere you go without actually having to carry bunches of books – I am one of those people who actually LIKES the feel of books. I like to hold books, I like cracking open a new book, the smell of books. I truly felt like reading books on a gadget would take something away from the whole experience for me.

(Plus, the Kindle price tag? That doesn’t help).

So, I was kind of curious when I saw that there is a free Kindle app for the iPhone. I “bought” it and put it on my phone, and “bought” a Kindle format book (“Little Women”, if you must know – I’ve never read it and swore I’d read it for my 101 Project). I did all this a few weeks ago.

And…

I think I’ve read the equivalent of four pages of the book.

I hate it. Everything I thought I would not like about the Kindle is exactly what I don’t like about the Kindle app. And, yeah, I’ll leave it on my phone for those times I’m sitting somewhere and I’ve forgotten to bring a book (like almost every time I go to get an oil change for the car), but, as for actually BUYING books for it? I’m sure I’ll pass.

1. I just finished reading “Handle With Care” by Jodi Picoult. If you are a fan of her books, you’ll probably like this one too – though it made me cry more than most. The book is about a family whose daughter has osteogenesis imperfecta (OI – aka brittle bone disease) and reading about the bone breaks – wow…

2. So weird to not have guitar lesson yesterday – my whole day felt a little bit off kilter. It’s alright – I had plenty of work to do instead, but, it’s definitely a part of my routine to have that to look forward to.

3. Music I’m loving – I have loved the few songs I’ve heard from “Slumdog Millionaire”. I still haven’t seen the movie – but love “Jai Ho” and “Latika’s Theme”. Awesome.

4. I almost wrote this post in haiku and realized I didn’t want to work that hard.

5. On Tuesday, I picked up some new shoes for The Princess. When she got home, we realized they didn’t fit and ended up going back to the store to swap them for a bigger size shoe. Shoe shopping with my daughter? Not the most pleasant experience.

6. Pumpkin’s preschool let her visit the four year old room yesterday and she was THRILLED. She didn’t want to leave her big kid friends at the end of the day, and was quick to point out to me repeatedly that SHE is a big kid now too. Makes me smile. I try to let her flex those big kid muscles enough so that she truly feels like she’s able to do more things – even when it comes to pouring her own (red) KoolAid. I let her do it because she’s so proud of herself when she’s done (Besides, she’ll help mop up any spills, though she almost never spills).

7. American Idol the other night – wow, that was a whole lot of Michael Jackson music. Surprised at some of the song choices – and surprised there were so many lesser known songs. I did end up with “PYT” stuck in my head for an hour or so afterward.

8. Currently the sun is shining. It almost doesn’t matter that it’s so cold when I have sunshine coming in my window. Don’t get me wrong, if it were 75 and the sun were shining, I’d love it… but it’s just nice to see a blue sky.

9. How had I not known about “Big Bang Theory” until the other night? I caught most of the show while I was waiting for “How I Met Your Mother”. Very funny.

10. Wheat Thins are not a food group on their own but they totally should be.

Awhile ago, I posted about my friend’s nephew – since I’ve posted, Little Man had surgery to remove all the medical doodads going into his body, including the Hickman line as he was suffering from a pretty ugly fever and an infection of some sort.

Since the removal of the Hickman line, his white blood cell count is going down which is awesome news – means the infection is going away. He is now a week behind in his chemo protocol, but his family thinks he may start again next week.

His spirits are definitely better with the dissipation of the infection – but Little Man still has a tough road ahead of him, so please continue to keep him in your thoughts.

The Electric Company + Wyclef?

I like it.

1. After spending most of the lesson working on Green Day, we moved over to “All The Small Things” by Blink-182. Soon, we’ll move back to the other stuff – but it was a nice diversion anyway.

2. Tomorrow is the 97th birthday of the Oreo cookie. Celebrate accordingly.

3. Yeah, it’s “American Idol” time. Nice that they let that big ball of crazy, Tatiana, come back. Girl can’t go five minutes without crying. Fun stuff.

4. It finally felt warm around here today. Winter lasts far too long. I actually tend to avoid watching the weather – especially because at this time of year, it’s just depressing to see temps in the single digits all those days in a row, but man it feels nice today.

5. Song of the week seems to be “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire.

6. The Princess’s fish still seems to be absurdly bloated. I still am really hoping the fish just needs to lay eggs or something, otherwise… there’s something not quite right with it.

7. This morning, rather than stopping at Starbucks I swung through the MickeyD’s drive through for a cappuccino. It wasn’t good. At all. Bleeeeech.

8. Whoever invented the fan that goes on the treadmill? Sheer genius.

9. I recently had some of my pictures from the 365 project put into a Shutterfly 8×8 photo book. It was awesome and came out looking pretty neat even considering I’m not a hardcore photographer by any means.

10. It took me a month and a half to read “Catch-22” and two days to read Chelsea Handler’s book. I just cracked open “The Count of Monte Cristo” and have already decided to take it easy with that one… Like, maybe, two pages per day? You get a book that big and it’s not even comfortable to hold. No fun. (I just went to look for TCOMC, and I can’t find it. It’s probably being used as a paper weight somewhere).