Hail To The Meek

A thunderstrom ripped through Oklahoma on Friday. I'd been at work about an hour, when BizP walked around the office, umbrella in hand. "Golf ball sized hail expected any minute. Y'all might want to move your cars." See, unlike The Golfer and his management buddies who park in an uncovered but semi-sheltered lot right next to the building, the rest of us peons park in an uncovered, wide open lot about a 1/2 mile away. BizP and OoRah decide to bite the bullet, pay the $5 for the day and move to a covered garage. They get to the end of the block, and it's raining pretty hard. OoRah decides, "Forget this, it's not worth it." and turns around. BizP lowers his umbrella to his waist, hoping to sheild at least some of the now-horizontal rain, and soldiers on. (Hee Hee - ironic word choice!)

Sometime later, I'm standing at OoRah's desk, discussing the merits of whether I should have moved my car, when BizP returns. A drenched, dripping BizP holding his useless umbrella at his side. He issues us a well-appreciated warning. "I'm going to be in the breakroom wringing out my shirt. You do not want to come in there for a while."

Three cups of tea later, BizP is still shivering. I offer him my jacket, which fits him much better than in OoRah's. "Hey," I tell him, "at least I have a nice plain blue jacket and not something girly." Through chattering teeth he stutters "Do you really think that matters to me right now?"

I walked over to BizP's desk to check out his gift from V which, due to his forgetting to bring it back to work Thursday and my being out for the reveal on Wednesday, I had not seen in person yet. (More on this later, V did an AWESOME job.) At this point I see a sight on BizP's desk which demands that I hightail it, mid-sentence, back to my desk to grab my camera.


Yes, those are BizP's shoes and socks- drying on his desk. The pulled out insert makes the photo, doesn't it?


Now, with the shoes on the desk, our intrepid explorer is running around barefoot. I couldn't resist a photo of that.

As I'm standing there, taking photos of his gift from V, BizP makes an observation that completely floors me. "Hey look, the pillow is absorbing the moisture from my hinder."


Dude. I can't top that.

I might come close, perhaps, by mentioning that there were no hail strikes within 10 miles of our office or vehicles on Friday.

Not. one.

BizP has decided that he doesn't care if there is a Vibe-hating monster loose in the city, or if all the concrete in all the covered garages suddenly disintegrates and the buildings collapse - he is never, ever, moving his car again.

If he starts home now, he might make it by Thursday.

Look Who's (Not) Talking

The following conversation took place the 3,238th time I took Princess potty while out and about one weekend.

Princess: "Mommy, how come you go potty every time I go potty?"

Mommy: "Because I have to go too. My tummy tells me when I have to go potty. Just like your tummy tells you."

Princess: "Mommy!" (said in a 'don't be ridiculous' tone.) "My tummy doesn't talk!!"

Mamma Mia

Excerpt from an IM conversation last month:

DA: So, do we have the Ren Faire this weekend, or can we put it off until later?

LPF: We've got Giggles' Girl Scout trip on the 16th, but so far open the rest of the weekends, we can do Ren Faire whenever. Why?

DA: Oh, nothing.

(time passes)

DA: You have plans on Saturday night.

LPF: Oh, ok. Given that Sunday is Mother's Day, I'm guessing I should keep my big nose out of it and leave it at that?

DA: Probably.

LPF: Gotcha.


Have you ever tried to plan an evening out, set up your oldest kid to babysit the younger kids, while having no idea where you are going? "Mommy, where are you going?" "I don't know. Out." "But where?" "I don't know. Out." "Daddy, where are you going?" "Out." "But where?" "Out." "But where?" "Kids listen! It's Mother's Day tomorrow - I Don't Know, and I Don't Want To Know until I get there!!!!"

DA told me to dress semi-nice. Slacks fine, but jeans probably ok too. I erred on the side of dressy and wore slacks with a plain dark turtleneck sweater. I did my hair and even wore make-up. (pause here to let you all recover from the shock.) I didn't poke around too much as I enjoy a good surprise, but I did skim the paper and didn't see anyone I recognized playing in the area that weekend. The only thing I could think of was a comedy club. Given that most clubs have a 2 drink minimum and DA can not drink at all, I grimly anticipated having to get sloshed.

Thankfully for us all, that was not the case. :)

We went out to eat (Tostado Nachos at TGIFridays - yum!), then headed to downtown Tulsa. All the way into downtown, parking the car, and even all the way into the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, I had no idea what we were doing. I saw many signs at the PAC for the upcoming Wicked tour. But that's not until July, I thought to myself, so we can't be seeing that. (Note to DA - I wouldn't mind seeing that if we can swing it.) We were in the theater, walking down the aisle to our seats before the big sign on the back of the stage finally told me what I was in for. "The Ten Tenors".

Once I got past the fact that the name of their tour is not a real word - Nostalgica? - I had a wonderful time. They do a mix of Opera, Broadway and Rock music, and the show was fantastic. I truly enjoyed every moment. It was probably about a 2 hour show, with a 20 minute intermission between. My opinion? I could have stayed another 2 or 3 hours if they would have continued singing for us.

Two interesting notes from the show:

1. How fun is it that out of all million or so songs to come out in the 1980's, they chose our song ¹ as one of the 5 - 7 for their 80's medley? (Yeah, I just saw the show and I already forgot how many. So sue me.)

2. Okay, who in their right minds throws an ABBA song into the middle of a Queen song? ² Sure, the lyrics fit perfectly and it was only 2 lines, but it was definitely the most unexpected moment of the entire night.

If you have a chance, go see the Ten Tenors. If you are a music fan and are even a little bit open to opera, you will thoroughly enjoy yourself. I'm sure the DVDs will not be quite as good as the real thing, but I do intend to add all their DVDs and CDs to my christmas wish list.

¹ Eternal Flame by the Bangles
² "Mamma Mia, here I go again" from Mamma Mia inserted into Bohemian Rhapsody. No, seriously. I'm not kidding. They really did.

Blinding Us With Science

A recent IM conversation with my husband. We changed our home phone to Voice-Over-IP a while ago and he was looking at our account online. Apparently you can access your voicemail as well as see all incoming and outgoing calls to that number.

DH: hmm who is 918-555-1234
LPF: sounds familiar
DH: they have been calling quite a bit
LPF: doctor maybe?
DH: no don't think so
(at this point I am Googling the number to see who it is)
DH: called as recently as 2:08pm yesterday plus a bunch around 1:42
DH: on june 5th
DH: oh crap
DH: its me
LPF: ah
LPF: I knew it sounded familiar!
DH: :)


Turns out it was his work number. Remember way back before speed dial when you used to actually recognize not only your own phone number, but friends and family too?

Dude Looks Like A Lady

With long, straight, limpish hair and a tendency to abuse the snooze button in the morning, my daily hairstyle for the last several years has consisted of a single ponytail positioned high in the back of my head. This keeps it out of my eyes, and with that much length I can still pull hair in front of my shoulders if I want shaping around my face. But for whatever reason, I made a styling effort the other morning and wore my hair down to work for the first time in several months, possibly years. Certainly the first time at this office. I looked good and I felt girly.

The security guard in our building is required to see our badges every time we walk in, even though he sees me every morning and probably recognizes me by now. Today, of all days, he suffered a slip of the tongue.

"Good Morning sir. I mean ma'am. Good Morning Ma'am."

** facepalm **

Adding insult to injury - I told BizP about Security Guard's slip, and he dang near fell off his chair. I would have smacked him for finding it so funny, but the poor guy already couldn't breathe.


As if this was not bad enough. Later that day I went into the restroom to comb my hair. In front of the mirror, under apparently much BRIGHTER lights than I have at home, I found - 7 long gray hairs. Are you kidding me? Where have those been hiding? And why did they come out to play today of all days?


The one saving grace that day - Princess.

I got in the car after work, and told DigitalA about my day. He, of course, laughed. A good 10 minutes later, after having apparently spent much time investigating and pondering, Princess pipes up from her car seat behind me. "Mommy, your hair isn't gray. It's just tangles."


Awwww ... I love my little girl!

Top 10 Signs Your Blog Is Neglected:

10. You agonize for days to come up with a complete top 10 list, nearly quitting with only 8 items.


9. Your blog password is still l33t-speak for a tv show that went off the air in 2006.


8. One word - Tumbleweeds.


7. All the stories in your "to blog" notebook happened over 9 months ago.


6. Tap tap tap. Is this thing on?


5. Your weekly pageviews drops by more than 100%, driving users from every blog you've ever linked.


4. Your children have aged 4 years since your last "recent pictures" post.


3. Embarrassing stories about you appear in another person's blog more often than your own.


2. You want to track down the owners of the 2 resilient IP addresses that still check your blog everyday so that you can call them up and apologize in person. (L and Em - I'm sorry.)



And the number one sign that your blog is neglected:


1. Your username is LadyPatsFan. ;P




Hopefully this post is a sign of better (or at least more frequent) blogs to come. Stay tuned - same bat channel, some bat time to be determined at a later date.

Oops, I Did It Again

As if I don't have enough on my plate, I have decided to attempt Project 365 this year. I've been doing it since January, and so far, so good.

Project 365 has been around the photography world for several years, but has really taken the scrapping world by storm this year. The object is - take a picture a day for a year. Now, I'm a mom and a scrapper, you'd think I already did that. But believe it or not, there are days when I don't pick up the camera. But most of the time, I've been able to manage a picture a day, and an extra here and there to make up for any "missing" days.

I obviously won't be posting a picture to my blog everyday. I'm just not that organized. But periodically, as I finish them, I'll post my weekly layouts so you can see what types of photos we've been taking. Some photos will represent what we did that day. Some photos will represent something we do or use everyday. And some will just be cute things the kids do. I'm very interested in seeing how this looks when the year is finished.

Here we go!

JANUARY

I've decided to scrap my pictures in weekly layouts, with an additional monthly "cover sheet" so to speak. For January's monthly summary, I used close-ups of just part of the photo - kind of a teaser for what's to come. I used the larger photo blocks to spotlight some of the highlights of the month.

WEEK ONE

I'm following a Sunday to Saturday week, and 2009 started on a Thursday, so there are just 3 pictures for week one. This week's layout is a single pager, and will appear opposite the January summary page if I ever get this project printed or bound.

WEEK TWO

Starting with Week 2, my weekly layouts will be 2 pages. This week was a lot of everyday life shots - Squeegy hiding from the camera or playing with the dogs, an IM conversation between DH and Stringz, Giggles' Girl Scout patches, and Princess being cute.

WEEK THREE

Tuesday's photo is just Stringz standing by my desk, but the journaling is him explaining to me how they extracted the DNA from a strawberry in science lab that day. Giggles had a field trip to the aquarium with her Girl Scout troop, Saturday started Girl Scout Cookie season.

WEEK FOUR

Most of week 4's photos are everyday life - dinner, the fish, the cats - but it ended with my trip back to NH for my dad's 60th birthday. I was only able to back for the day, flying in Friday and home Sunday, but it was SO NICE to see family again. I can't wait until we can bring the kids back east again.

WEEK FIVE

This week we had an ice storm, our first dusting of snow, and Stringz became a teenager.


Credits: All the January pages were created with the Giggle kit by Digitreats.
The templates are:
January: January Template by Digitreats
Week 1: Project 365 Template 01 by MOriginals
Week 2: Project 365 Template 01 by Digitreats
Week 3: Project 365 Template 03 by MOriginals
Week 4: Project 365 Template 01 by Brenda Smith
Week 5: Project 365 Template 02 by Just 2 More Things