What About Brian?

I watched “What About Brian” last night, since it took Grey’s Anatomy’s time slot (I guess they’re saving all of the new episodes for sweeps in May, since it looks like next week’s episode is a recap ep and not really new). I haven’t decided if I like it or not yet. Maybe I’ll watch tonight’s episode, if I can stay awake, before deciding. It had a very “Singles” feel to it, which I liked, but it was also very “L.A.,” which was somewhat of a turnoff. The whole story line about the couple with kids who never has sex – that’s such a cliché (although they did have three (!) kids who all seemed to be pretty little). And then the suggestion that they each sleep with other people to spice up their own love life – that was the part that seemed very “L.A./they only do that in California” type of thing. The guy from Legally Blonde wasn’t a very likable character so far (yeah right, a young Harrison Ford) and Rosanna Arquette just seems way too old for the role she’s playing (she’ll be 47 later this year in “real life”). I’ll give the show one more chance tonight before I decide whether or not to add it to the TV rotation.

Holiday Weekend

Even with the day off on Friday, it was a jam-packed holiday weekend. I cleaned for most of the morning on Friday, and then H. and I went to the grocery store, ate lunch and dyed Easter eggs. She was really good at it this year; a little rough with some of the eggs, but only one broke. She could really balance the egg on the dipper and get it in and out of the cup. Friday night, H. went to her friend J’s for a couple of hours so M. and I could go the viewing and funeral for my sister’s father-in-law. Back to the same funeral parlor we were at two weeks ago!

Saturday was another day of cooking, laundry and playing outside, since it was so beautiful, except for a very short shower in the early afternoon. J. came over to our house to play for a little while in the evening and the two of them were all over the place – four-wheeler, bicycles, swing set, tag and hide-and-seek. On Saturday night, we had Domino’s pizza for dinner. It was so delicious! And worth driving 15 minutes to pick it up. We were gluttonously bad when we had dessert before dinner, stopping for ice cream first, since H. had been asking for some since Thursday, and then eating our pizza.

I cooked a little more Saturday night after H. went to bed and then had to play Easter bunny. H’s basket was light on candy and heavy on little gifts this year. Of course, the Easter bunny made a basket for M. and me, too.

H. slept until seven Easter morning, which was great. She came into our room and said, “I think the Easter Bunny came last night.” She was very patient while I got the camera and video camera ready. Here she is waiting for me to give the all-clear signal. She enjoyed two Peeps at 7am, her first of many on Sunday, and then searched for the twenty Easter eggs I had hidden in the living room.

My sister J. and T. came early to help hide more eggs out in the backyard for a big Easter egg hunt for nieces K&K and H. H. helped Aunt J. put the prizes in the eggs. Everyone arrived on time at 2pm, except for my one aunt, who didn’t show up until 2:30, and the kids were dying of anticipation to look for the eggs. We were so lucky with the weather this year, finally.

I was exhausted by the time everyone left around 6pm. H. passed out on the couch shortly thereafter. I let her sleep while I cleaned up, and then woke her up to get ready for bed. Since she went to sleep early, I saw most of The West Wing, but taped it, too, so I can watch the whole thing without interruption.

Note: Once again, Blogger sucks. It won't upload my photos because the server is clogged. Hopefully, I can add the photos to this entry shortly.

Killing Time Before My Day Off Tomorrow

I think this sounds likes a cool idea. I’m sure it will take off now that it’s been profiled in the NY Times.

I hope this doesn’t ruin NASCAR the way corporate excess has ruined some of the experience at Camden Yards (and other ballparks, too, I’m sure).

Good for them! And Mark Tooley – what a tool.

"Politically Uncorrect." Try "Grammatically Incorrect." If it’s meant to be ironic, it’s not. It’s just annoying and I can’t even listen to it.

We recently had the Hallmark Channel added to our cable system. They might as well call it the sappy Western channel because every time I turn it on, they’re either running episodes of Little House on the Prairie or one of those movies with Izzy from Grey’s Anatomy, Love’s Enduring Promise Comes Softly or something like that (which are directed by Michael Landon, Jr., so you see the connection).

Easter Egg Hunt

My work had its annual children's Easter Egg Hunt on Sunday. It was originally scheduled for Saturday, but it poured down (some much needed) rain all day here, so it was rescheduled for Sunday. K&K were supposed to go with us, but they couldn't make it on Sunday.

H. looked so cute in the outfit I dressed her in for the occasion that I had to take her picture before she got all dirty. Here she is hamming it up for Easter (ha, ha).





The weather was a little bit chilly and breezy, but sunny. And the ground wasn't muddy at all, considering how much rain we had the day before. The two and three year-olds had their eggs on the mulch at the playground.







After H's age group was finished, she played on the jungle gym for a little while and climbed this very high and very steep ladder.





By Easter, she should be an expert on finding Easter eggs. She's having an Easter egg hunt at pre-school on Thursday and then we'll have a big hunt in the backyard for all of the kids on Sunday (if the weather cooperates).

edited: I have been trying to post this entry for two days. The first time, I had it all ready to go on Wednesday morning, when the Blogger connect died. When I finally reconnected, the pictures wouldn't load, so I just saved it as a draft. I got the pictures to load on Thursday, but then Blogger was down ALL DAY, from before lunch until 5pm.

Loose Ends

I've heard back from two of my three references so far and they both promised to complete the recommendation form this week. My NDM interview is scheduled for the afternoon of Monday, May 8th, which seems really far away, but I'm already thinking of some portfolio-type materials I can pull together for the interview, such as my sample lesson plan from the American Lit class I took last spring and some items I used for Junior Achievement.

Lucky Me

Luckily, this is not the surgery I had for my kidney stone. But lucky me, I'm in the 5% of the female population under the age of 70 that has had a kidney stone.

One More Step Forward

Yesterday in the mail, I received a letter from NDM with the next steps for completing my application package. I need to submit three letters of recommendation and also schedule an admissions interview.

Coming up with three recommendations is hard because I can't ask anyone I currently work with, since they don't know I'm working toward changing careers. So I just sent out three e-mails - one to a former co-worker from my previous job (who also happens to be entering the teaching profession herself), one to an English professor I had at UMUC last Spring, and one to the teacher whose class I taught Junior Achievement to in 2002 and 2003. Hopefully, all of them will be willing to complete the form and that will be my three.

This afternooon, I'll call to schedule the interview.

Defeated Again

Well, I managed to stay healthy for what, two and half weeks? I now have a killer cold. I was trying to fight it off all week with Zicam, but it caught up with me last night. I felt achy and stuffy last night and then I woke up at 4:30am with an unbelievable headache. I blame it on two things. One, a girl at work who came in last Wednesday with the flu - not just a cold, the fullblown flu- and probably contaminated all of us. And two, the priest at the funeral on Wednesday who was blowing and wiping his nose through the whole service. I knew I shouldn't have taken communion from him! I wouldn't be surprised if everyone who was at the funeral and took communion gets sick. And we all shook hands with him afterwards, too!

Now I'm just as guilty as the girl from work because I'm in the office today. I would have stayed home, but my boss is in today and he's been out of the office since last Thursday and he's out again next Monday through Wednesday. Plus, I have a newspaper deadline I need to meet today, so I really needed to be here. I need to go to the pharmacy at lunch today for more Zicam and special cold medicine for people with high blood pressure.

GO TERPS!!!

What an awesome game last night! Way better than the last three games in the men's tournament. Take that, Peter King (see item 10a).

Weekend

This past weekend turned out to be a pretty busy one. Friday after work, H. and I were visiting our neighbors who have a little girl the same age, J. When it was time to go home for dinner, they didn't want to be separated, so they suggested H. spend the night, if we thought she would stay. H. was all for it! So we went home to eat dinner and packed an overnight bag and went back. H. stayed the whole night and didn't even wake up during the night (although she was up at her usual early time Saturday morning). J's mom said they were up kind of late, giggling like teenagers. It took them awhile to settle down and get over the novelty of the situation before they finally fell asleep.

M. and I had the whole evening to ourselves and most of Saturday morning, too. By the time I went to pick H. up, I had three loads of laundry done, had made all of the beds, swept the kitchen floor and cleaned the inside of the van. H. and J. still didn't want to be separated, so the four of us all went to the dollar store for Easter dinner paper products, among other things, and lunch at Chick-fil-A. With a promise that they could play together after they both took a nap, we finally tore them apart (you wouldn't think that they see each other every day at pre-school). The sleepover must have worn H. out because she took an almost four-hour nap, waking up just in time for dinner. Then J. came over to our house for a little while to give her mom a bit of a break for the day. We'll have to try having J. spend the night at our house one weekend.

I watched The Wedding Date while M. watched drag racing Saturday night and it was quite awful. I thought it would be a good chick flick to watch by myself, but I'm not even sure why I finished watching it (because I paid to rent it, I felt like I had to watch the whole thing). It was like large chunks of the movie were missing. I couldn't follow how they made the connection from one scene to the next. And it was short - barely an hour and a half, so there was definitely time for more character development or involvement. Not recommended at all. Serendipity, which I watched earlier on TNT while H. was napping and had never seen before, was much better.

On Sunday, H. and I went to my parents' house and spent most of the day shopping - Target for Easter candy, Kohl's for Easter decorations and a new pair of tennis shoes (or sneakers, as they say here in PA) for me (I bought a pair of Skechers - I feel so cool!) and the jewelry to store to get my engagement and weddings rings repaired (which I should have back by this weekend - I feel naked without them). We didn't get home until almost 8pm and I had to rush to set the VCR for The West Wing, which I'll have to watch later this week, but I don't know when.

Today, it's off to the library after work and pre-school, and then the next few days will be a little hectic. My mom's uncle died on Saturday, so the viewing will be Tuesday night down in Baltimore, then I'll probably go back for the funeral during the day on Wednesday.

Where Things Stand Now

So here's where I am on the road to my new adventure. Because my bachelor's degree is in Communications, I needed 9 additional credits to meet the Maryland state requirements for teaching English (luckily, I had taken a lot of English classes as electives in college). So in the Spring and Fall of 2005, I took four online classes with UMUC, which I loved, to bring myself up to code, so to speak. I even voluntarily took a math class in case I decide to teach in PA some day. (Maryland only requires 3 credits of undergraduate math to teach at the intermediate level; PA requires 6.)

After completing these classes, my original plan was to enroll in UMUC's Resident Teacher Certification program this Spring. Two other requirements for this program were to take and pass both the PRAXIS I and PRAXIS II exams. I took both last year and passed (I was sweating bullets on the math section of the PRAXIS I), even earning a certification of excellence from ETS for my score on the PRAXIS II in the English content area (props to me!). I sent in my application for the RTC program, but much to my disappointment, this year they changed how the program was organized and there was no way I could work it into my schedule. Previously, you enrolled in online certification classes for the Spring, culminating in two weeks of student teaching. You could then begin teaching in the fall as a fully paid teacher, but the teaching experience was a mentored, supervised experience. And this experience could take place in one of several counties in MD or in Baltimore City. After the year-long teaching assignment, you would be certified, However, the new program eliminated the two weeks of student teaching and now the supervised year of teaching only takes place in Prince George's County. Living in southern PA, I just couldn't commit to driving to PG County every day for a year.

So this Spring semester was a lost semester. I applied to the teacher certification program at Loyola College and was recently accepted. I have also sent in an application to the College of Notre Dame's Accelerated Certification for Teaching (ACT) program and I'm waiting to hear about my acceptance there before I make my decision where to enroll. With both programs, I can start taking classes this summer. I think I will be able to complete the Notre Dame program more quickly. ND offers two summer sessions instead of one, so I could complete six credits out of 21 before the fall semester starts. Also, ND only requires one semester of student teaching. Loyola's program is more credits and requires one semester of observations one day a week and then a whole semeseter of student teaching (I need to keep working my regular job for as long as possible before I make the transition to teaching - and a lower salary). Believe me, I created a whole chart comparing the two programs! And both programs offer the opportunity to put the certification credits toward a master's degree, which is another long-term goal.

So between now and May, I'm just in a holding pattern, waiting to hear from Notre Dame before registering for classes in one of the two programs. But I'm very anxious to begin!

Thoughts on a Friday Afternoon

• I can upload photos to my blog from work now. I didn’t used to be able to do that because of our firewall. I’ve probably been able to do it since Blogger reconfigured how you upload photos, but I never bothered trying until I had that photo of H. to post. A new way to procrastinate!
• Do you think it’s strange that there are three different commercials airing right now using three different songs by the Go-Go’s ("Vacation" for Priceline, "Head Over Heels" for Pantene and "We've Got the Beat" for Papa John's pizza)? And just for the record, changing the lyrics to “We’ve got the meat” for Papa John’s is totally disgusting.
• I’m very excited about the release of the new Dixie Chicks CD on 5/23.
• As of this moment in time, I am completely caught up on scrapbooking – from H’s birth to the present. Let me enjoy it while I can; it won’t last long. (Not to mention all of the photo projects from the past that I have in mind.)
• Spring happened yesterday. It wasn’t just the nice weather (finally!), but trees that weren’t blooming yesterday morning were starting to bloom and color by the time I drove home in the evening. Although we also desperately need some rain around these parts. That would really make things start to green up.
• I’m hosting Easter this year and I think I’ll have to get the Peeps paper plates and napkins that I saw at Walmart the other day. Apparently, there are quite a few Peeps novelty items on the shelves this Easter. I’ll have to check out Target, too, this weekend.
• To add to the Chick-fil-A, Starbucks and Home Depot that recently opened here in small-town America, we now have a Rita's, which opened last week, and a Domino's, opening this weekend. It will be interesting to see how the Domino's fairs. All of the pizza places around here are local places, with the exception of Pizza Hut, and don't deliver, I guess because the houses are too spread out to make it economical (and it would be a stretch to do it in 30 minutes or less). With all the new buildings and housing developments, it should work in the area around Domino's now.

A New Adventure

I've decided to to chronicle the newest phase in my life here (instead of in an originally planned separate blog) - my mid-life crisis. Actually, I'm contemplating a career change, one that has a huge online journal presence, and I wanted to join in. Last year, I began working toward becoming certified to teach high school English. I'm doing this for both selfish (holidays and summer vacation) and unselfish (a naive ambition to make the world a better place) reasons, but the more I think about and the closer I move toward the end goal, the more I know this is what I really want to do, even though a lot of people think I'm crazy.

I'm still in the very beginning stages of the process and it's slow going at times, but things should pick up speed this summer and I want to be able to document all of it. So come along for the adventure!

Celebrity Look-Alike?

My sisters and my mom keep telling me they think H. looks like the young actress, Sofia Vassilieva, who plays Eloise in the TV movies. (Now older, this is the same girl who plays the daughter Ariel on Medium.) I just don't see it - Sofia has brown eyes and H. has blue, and H's lips definitely aren't that full (although she does have full lips, and I don't know where she got those from!). What do you think?

H.













Sofia, aka Eloise



And no, I did not stage this photo. When I saw that picture of Sofia on imdb.com, it made me immediately think of a very similar picture that I took of H. at the end of last summer. It's just a coincidence that they're both wearing orange, posed under a tree with purple flowers.

NO MORE KAY SCARPETTA NOVELS

The above headline is a note to myself, a reminder not to give in to any more books in the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell. I swore up and down the last time, after Blow Fly, that I wouldn't read them anymore, but on my last visit to the library, the latest in the series, Predator, was on the New Books shelf, so I checked it out along with Trace, the prior book in the series and one I had avoided reading. Well, I should have left both of them there. It's really sad how far downhill this series has gone. All of the main characters are completely unbearable, especially Pete Marino. Back when I used to read the new ones as soon as they came out, there was usually atleast a year lull in between books. Reading these two back to back was worse. In Trace, Lucy's company The Last Precinct is still up and running and her right-hand man, Rudy, is a main character and the only person Lucy trusts. In Predator, there's no mention of The Last Precinct or Rudy; instead, Lucy and Kay are running a National Forensics Laboratory that the local police in Florida are just all too happy to have butt in and do all of their crime scene work. Completely unbelievable and inconsistent!

The dialogue in both books is stilted and repetitive. Lucy, Pete and Kay live in a cocoon where everyone around them is evil and against them and out to get them. The way they treat other characters in the book, even the good guys (see Pete and Reba's relationship in Predator), is pretentious and induced eye-rolling from me on several occasions. And I can do without all of the descriptive text about how many expensive cars, motorcycles and other "toys" they all own. Again, pretentious.

So let's move on to some much better books I've read since then. Starting From Square Two is the second novel from Caren Lissner, author of Carrie Pilby, which I read back in 2004. I don't know why it took me so long to read this one, I guess because I needed to request it as an ILL from the library, but I finally did and breezed through it on Tuesday and Wednesday (it was the book I took with me to the hospital). If you're not reading Caren's blog, Addled Writer, you should be.

I also discovered a new author this week, thanks to a comment in an online chat Jennifer Weiner posted. Sarah Dessen is a YA author based in North Carolina and I just finished Keeping the Moon, which I read in about two hours yesterday. She also has an online journal and website, so check her out. I like her, even if she is a Tarheel fan. As part of my renewed interest in the YA genre, I plan to spend the next few weeks devouring her other five books (my library branch has all of them but one, which I'll have to get through ILL), maybe even before her new one comes out some time in April.

Also, right before I lost myself in the insane world of Dr. Scarpetta and friends, I read Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. If Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird is one of your favorite characters in literature (as she is for me), then go read this book. You'll love Swede as much as you love Scout.

That brings me up to 17 books read so far in 2006.

Back to Normal

Almost. I'm officially stone-free. I had my surgery yesterday and it went very well. They put me to sleep around 10am, I was awake by 11am and home by 1pm. They showed me the stone and I'm really glad I didn't have to pass it. It was larger than they thought it was. And FYI, kidney stones don't look like small, little round pebbles or stones. They look more like rock candy, sharp edges and all! Once I was home, I ate some lunch, took a two-hour nap and then pretty much felt as good as new. I didn't even stay home from work today. So hopefully we can get back to business as usual around here instead of this turning into a sick journal!

Update

Back to the doctor yesterday for another x-ray and consultation. The stone is still there and has moved some, but still has to move some more to get into my bladder. Since I'm young and healthy, the doctor would prefer that I pass the stone, but since he could sense my high level of frustration, I'm now on the surgery schedule for Tuesday, March 21, which seems really far away, but atleast there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

And This Too Shall Pass

No news to report. Still trying to flush out the plumbing. I saw the urologist at 11:30am on Friday (actually, that was my appointment, time, but I didn't see the doctor until almost 12:30pm) and he wanted me to try and pass the stone over the weekend. I didn't. (It was a long weekend.) Now I'm waiting for his office to call me back to see what the next step is.

I lost my patience with this whole thing in the middle of watching Grey's Anatomy last night (that's what I get for watching a medical show in my condition). It may be similar to labor, but I was only in labor for six hours, not a week plus!

Also, for the record, if you picture Ben Stiller in about 20 years with a head full of gray/white hair, that was my urologist, both in looks and personality. Seriously.

I'm Very Thankful That I Have Health Insurance

I realize there are people out there with a lot more serious health problems than me, but I would really like to make it through a whole month feeling healthy. Is that too much to ask? As I write this, I am in the process of passing, or not passing as the case may be, a very large kidney stone. I'm waiting for a phone call from my doctor about an appointment to see a urologist some time today. All week, I thought I was fighting off a urinary tract infection, but when I didn't feel any better by yesterday, I called the doctor back and she saw me in the afternoon, then immediately sent me to the hospital for a CT scan. I had to wait for the results and the doctor's exact words were, "You do have a kidney stone, a very large one, probably too large to pass." My options were to check myself into the ER or wait until today to see the urologist. I wasn't in excrutiating pain, so I opted to wait for the appointment today instead of spending god knows how many hours waiting in the ER last night. So I'm at work, not feeling that bad, just waiting for the phone to ring. I don't have any meetings today except for one at 1:30 that I'm supposed to chair. I can pretty much guarantee that my appointment will be at 1:00 or 1:30. But I've already made back-up plans if I need to leave.

I think I get to blame genetics, atleast partially, for this one, too. My younger sister Vanessa has had kidney stones since we were in high school and she gets about one a year. My older sister Jenn had one several years ago, but that was her one and only so far. I'm hoping my experience is more like Jenn's. And I'm trying to look on the positive side - I went through natural childbirth, surely I can handle this, right? Logically speaking, it's the same concept of a big thing being pushed through a much smaller hole. I'll just keep telling myself that, especially since Vanessa told me that passing a kidney stone can be worse than childbirth.

Right Place, Right Time

Friday night, I finished reading Forests of the Night by James W. Hall. I have never read any of his books and picked this one up because it takes place in the Great Smoky Mountains. Well, actually, it mostly takes place in Cherokee, NC, which borders the Park, but close enough I guess. I've always wanted to visit the Native American village in Cherokee and see the famous play, Unto These Hills, but we've never been able to squeeze that in on any of our trips to the Smokies. Anyhoo, the book was okay, but didn't make me want to rush back to the library and pick up one of his others. The beginning was very rushed and didn't really give me enough time to care about the characters. The second half was better, but the backstory that helps to solve the mystery was a little convoluted.

The one cool thing was that several times throughout the book, the main character references the old movie "Mildred Pierce," an Oscar winner from 1945 starring Joan Crawford. To be honest, I had never heard of or seen this movie. So after finishing this book Friday night, on Sunday afternoon I was flipping through the channels and lo and behold, "Mildred Pierce" was on TCM as part of their "31 Days of Oscar." So I watched it, since it was a somewhat central part of the book I had just finished. What great timing! I missed the first 10 minutes or so, but it wasn't a bad murder mystery. A little predictable, but enjoyable, with a strong female lead surrounded by a bunch of loser men. (Side bar: Throughout the entire movie, the woman playing the character of Ida looked really familiar, but I couldn't figure out who she was. Turns out, it was a very young Eve Arden, Miss McGee from Grease.) Even better, it was followed by "Gone With the Wind" in all it's uncut, commercial-free glory and I was able to watch a fairly good chunk of it throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening.

It's Official

I'm old. Barely a month after my 34th birthday, there's no denying it. As of today, I start taking medication for my high blood pressure. Like my dad, who started taking it in his early thirties as well, I'll probably have to take it for the rest of my life. I went to the ob/gyn on Tuesday and at 9 o'clock in the morning, my BP was a whopping 164/96, the highest reading yet. I haven't done so great in the exercise department, but I really had been watching what I eat, especially salt, and even lost 7 lbs. since my last doctor's visit in September. So the ob/gyn recommended I see my primary care physician as soon as possible and I was able to get an appointment this morning. I have to go back in a month to see if it's working and if we have to adjust the dosage, etc. My theory is that the last couple of years were a great crashing together of baby weight, slowing metabolism and genetics, not to mention my couch potato lifestyle. It took awhile, but it's finally hit home that it's time to get off my bum and help this along a little bit more. No more excuses!

Snow Day



Like most of the Northeast, we were hit with quite a storm last night. I think we got about 12 inches; it's hard to tell with all of the drifts. H. was very excited about the snow. I don't remember getting a really good weekend snow last winter, one that she could really enjoy, but she was up at 6:30am and wanted to go outside. I managed to hold her off until about 10:30am, when we finally went outside. We tried to build a snowman, but the snow conditions weren't right. The layer on top was too soft and powdery. Then we walked up the street, before it was plowed (it was quite a hike up the hill) to play with J. The two of them sledded down the little hill in J's yard. I even went down it a couple of times, too. The plow finally came down our street around noon and they did a great job. We walked back home for lunch and a nap - both of us!

It's Snowing

Snowflakes are falling outside, beef stew is cooking in the crockpot, H. is taking a nap and I'm scrapbooking. Just about the perfect day.

Book Reviews

A few thoughts on some books I’ve read so far in 2006:

• Last Lullaby by Denise Hamilton – third in the Eve Diamond series. I started off 2005 with the first novel in this series, so I guess I can’t go wrong by starting 2006 the same way. I enjoy these novels because I learn something new every time I read one of them. Coincidentally, Jenny was reading The Jasmine Trade at the same time and did not care for it and ironically, the same situation cropped up in another book that I just read, Buried Diamonds. This is the fourth book in the Claire Montrose series, more of a cozy mystery series than I usually read. I read the third one way back in 2002 and I guess my tastes haves changed because I found this book very slow and boring. There was a horrible transition from a scene at the end of the chapter with a dog getting poisoned and taken to the animal hospital in the afternoon and the next chapter beginning in the middle of the next night with someone getting shot. I actually went back and read it twice because I thought I missed something and even checked the page numbers to make sure pages hadn’t been torn out. Not only was the transition poor, but to voice the same complaint as Jenny, you didn’t hear a thing about the poor dog for the rest of the book.
• The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. This is the follow-up to the much-loved The Secret Life of Bees. Eliza hated this novel, which surprised me. It wasn’t as good as Bees, but I didn’t hate it. It was very much up my alley of loving any kind of Southern women’s fiction, along the lines of Anne Rivers Siddons, one of my favorites.
• Crosscut by Meg Gardiner, the fourth in the Evan Delaney series. I love, love, love this series, even though it’s a little over the top in some instances. Evan is a strong heroine and I love the relationship between her and Jesse. I’ve had to buy all of these books from bookcloseouts.com since they aren’t available through any of the local libraries, but they are well worth it.
• The Rosary Girls by Richard Montanari. This serial killer novel set in Philadelphia had a surprise ending that really threw me, which doesn’t happen often. Overall, a very engrossing book, but with a few holes. I’m not really sure why the author introduced the side story of how the main female character was an amateur boxer on the side, other than to let the reader know that she’s a strong character. After a boxing match at the very beginning of the book, it’s never brought up again. Also, a major secret about the main male character is resolved much too easily and didn’t sit too well with this reader.
• Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty. I haven’t read a YA novel in ages, but this one was recommended on Joshilyn Jackson’s website and sounded interesting. I breezed through it in about three hours yesterday. It’s written as a diary by high school sophomore Jessica Darling, interspersed with letters to her best friend, who moved to another state at the beginning of the year. Jessica has a great voice and the dialogue rings very true. My only one small complaint is that if I hadn’t known there was as sequel to this book, I would have been disappointed by the ending. Otherwise, I liked it so much that I put in a request this morning for an ILL so I can get the sequel, Second Helpings, as soon as possible.

Music to My Ears

The summer concert schedule is starting to heat up. It was announced this week that Brad Paisley is coming to the York Fair in September. I may have to move Hayley’s birthday party up a week, but I’m getting my tickets this Saturday.

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw will open their new Soul2SoulII tour April 21 in Columbus, Ohio. Only a few dates have been scheduled so far, but the tour is sponsored by Hershey’s, so I would expect a date at Hershey Stadium or the Giant Center (hopefully the Giant Center, since it rains everytime I go to a concert held in the stadium).

On the Road Again

I drove over 500 miles this weekend! I took a half-day off from work on Friday to drive to S’s and we went into Philly to see the George Strait concert, with opening acts Miranda Lambert and Tracy Lawrence. The show was awesome and our seats were excellent! George Strait was on stage for just about two hours; he could have sung for hours more as far as I'm concerned. We hadn't seen Tracy Lawrence in concert for ages and he was still as good as ever.

I spent the night at S’s and drove home Saturday morning, getting home around 2pm. I didn’t have time to stop and check out the new Cereality on the PA Turnpike, but I definitely will the next time. I was home long enough to go to the grocery store, then I had to get cleaned up and M. and I went to my work’s holiday party. We weren’t going to go this year since I already knew how busy I was this weekend, but with the fire and everything, I thought it would be a good idea to go. We actually had a good time and stayed until about 9:30. H. spent the night at my mom and dad’s, so it was strange being in the house without her Saturday night.

I was up bright and early Sunday morning to drive halfway back to Philly for my college friend D’s baby shower in West Chester. The shower was a very nice event and she received a ton of cute little boy clothes. My thoughts will be with her all day on Wednesday when she’s induced. I made it back home around 3:30pm, just a few minutes after my parents and K&K had arrived with H.. I missed her so much! I hadn’t seen her since I dropped her off at school Friday morning. Everyone stayed for dinner, which I threw in the crockpot before I left for the shower – perfect!

I haven’t done this much driving in a long time. I had lots of thinking time, listened to some CDs I hadn’t listened to in awhile (including all George Strait and Tracy Lawrence on the way to Philly on Friday to get me in the mood) and also came up with a cool idea for a new scrapbook. I need to flesh it out a little bit more, then I’ll share.

TV Shows on DVD

One of my wishes came true - the first season of "Life Goes On" is coming out on DVD in May. That would make a good Mother's Day present! I'm also happy to see the first season of "Grounded for Life" as well as "Charles in Charge" (shut up!) are forthcoming. But please tell me why Lifetime is putting out DVDs of "Strong Medicine" and "1-800-MISSING" when they haven't done anything with the much-better series "Any Day Now?"

There and Back

I feel like Lois Lane at the end of Superman II, after Superman has erased her memory and she sits down at her typewriter and says, “What’s happening in the world?” The new year is off to quite a start and I don’t even know where to begin.

I came back to work on the third, after eleven glorious days off over the holidays. A short week was even shorter since I took a half-day on Friday the sixth so N. and W. and I could go the annual weekend-long scrapbooking event in Gettysburg. We had a great time again this year, our second year. N. stayed up all night the first night and I think W. stayed up until 4am both nights. I only made it until about 1am both nights, but I accomplished a lot, getting halfway through my 2005 family album (January through the beginning of July). This time last year, I was finishing H's first-year album. Since then, I've completed my 2004 family album and an album of our honeymoon.

Being away for the weekend throws off the whole schedule and I was planning on catching up as the week went on. My birthday was on Monday the 9th and we celebrated with cupcakes that H. picked out at the grocery store. Then on Tuesday, everything changed. Just before lunch, there was a small explosion at work and we all had to evacuate for a couple of hours. It wasn’t very serious – the sprinkler system extinguished the fire before the fire department even arrived – but we spent the rest of the day following up on the incident.

We skipped tumbling class that night since I left work later than usual. Around 9pm, M. was out in the garage and heard an announcement about an explosion at work. That couldn’t be right; they must have been talking about the incident from the morning. And there was nothing on any of the TV stations. He heard it again while I was trying to find out more information, but I didn’t believe him. Finally, I called the fire department and they confirmed there was a second explosion, much worse than the first. So I spent the rest of the night on the phone until the 10 o’clock news, when I saw the first pictures of the fire. Based solely on those pictures, I thought there would be nothing left. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well Tuesday night.

I talked to my manager on Wednesday morning and went in to work at 10am to a satellite office we had established down the road. Amazingly, no one was injured in the fire and damage was contained to a small area, only about 5% of the entire facility. The next few days are a blur of crisis communications plan implementation. I worked until 8pm on both the Thursday and Friday after the fire and went in for a little while on Sunday, too, writing press releases and updating our corporate website. I had to call my mom and have her come over on Saturday to help me because I was feeling so overwhelmed. I was behind after the weekend away and now I was really behind. She helped me get our very dry, fire-hazard of a Christmas tree down and I was able to catch up on the laundry, too, plus put the rest of the Christmas decorations away. Last week was a little better, although we couldn’t return to our offices until Thursday and we still have to carpool from a satellite lot for a little while longer. I also had to go to a funeral viewing on Tuesday for the mother of a friend of my mom’s, which messed up the tumbling schedule again, so we did tumbling on Monday and Thursday to make up for the two missed days.

By this Saturday, I was completely wiped out and I think my body was trying to tell me that. I spent all day yesterday on the couch with a fever of 102 and could barely move. There was nothing else wrong – no stuffy nose or sore throat. I think it was just sheer exhaustion. I felt completely back to normal this morning. So now I’m back and ready to resume regularly scheduled blogging. I have a book entry I need to post about my first two reads in 2006 and some outdated pictures from the holidays, plus this weekend will be a busy one with a concert, work party and baby shower - all in less than 48 hours!

Kidisms

M. was home sick today. When H. woke up this morning, she went in to see him and he said, "Daddy doesn't feel good today." H. asked him, "Did you drink some liquor?"

I can only attribute this to New Year's Eve, when M. and I had a few strawberry margaritas that we made at home. We made one for H. without the alcohol, and when she wanted another one, we told her she couldn't have one with any liquor in it because it would make her sick. Two weeks later, she remembered this. I'm sure she went in to school today and said, "Daddy's home sick because he drank some liquor." I'm expecting a phone call any minute.

Fun Phrases

My new favorite phrase is "thigh girth."

Hopefully, I'll have a real entry up soon, with an update about the situation at work, plus the big scrapbooking weekend, which seems like it was a million years ago after the week I've had.

To Do List

Things I Accomplished While I Had Off Work for 11 Days:

1. Baked two batches of cookies with H. on 12/23.
2. Obviously, celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, both of which were really great this year.
3. Made cookie cutter birdseed ornaments with H. to hang outside for the birds and the squirrels on Christmas morning (much messier than it looked on the Today show).
4. Completed a scrapbook of our honeymoon (from back in 1998) on 12/28.
5. Installed an external hard drive on the computer to back-up my photos and music.
6. Installed an internal CD/DVD-ROM drive on the computer since I could no longer burn data CDs on the existing CD-ROM drive. (This required taking the computer apart to install it internally and I was actually able to do this without any problems. I was quite proud of myself.)
7. Returned H's duplicate toy gifts to Walmart.
8. Made homemade spaghetti sauce and cooked dinner for 7 on 12/29 (when we didn't get to go to Dutch Wonderland to see the Christmas lights because of all-day pouring rain).
9. Installed and loaded music on my new, free iPod Shuffle.
10. Made strawberry margaritas on New Year's Eve (after getting carded at the liquor store - ha, ha!).
11. Watched the 40th anniversary edition of The Sound of Music (the color was spectacular - I wish I had a big TV to watch it on) and the DVD of The Dukes of Hazzard movie (really, really terrible).
12. Returned ill-fitting Christmas gift clothes to Kohl's and bought new ones to replace them.
13. Hosted two play dates for H.
14. Uploaded 100+ pictures from the month of December to have prints made.
15. Watched Days of Our Lives every day but Wednesday the 28th (and had to call my sister several times to ask clarifying questions).

And honestly, I felt like I didn't do a whole lot but watch TV and lay around on the couch, playing the Disney Memory card game with H. But I guess we managed to squeeze in a few fun activities. Now it's back to work and school and the regular routine.

The Fruits of My Labor

Here are a few gifts I made this year:

Seven pillowcases for the nieces and nephews on Mark's side of the family. Two Disney Princesses, two Strawberry Shortcake, two Spiderman and one Lizzie McGuire. I made these all this morning.














Stolen directly from the pages of the holiday issue of Martha Stewart Living, these very cool cookie cutter Christmas ornaments are for my sister and brother-in-law. I had seen these Hawaiian-themed cookie cutters but didn't really think my sister could use them for anything. Then, my mom had the Martha Stewart magazine and there was this great idea for making ornaments from cookie cutters. So back on Thanksgiving, I stole a few of their pictures from when they went to Hawaii and had copies made and here is the result.

Elrod Hendricks 1940-2005
Longtime beloved Oriole dies at 64

I was completely shocked to read the above headline and article just now in this morning's Sun. It's so sad - and today would have been his birthday, too. (Proving once again that you are more likely to die in the two weeks before or after your birthday than any other time of the year. John Spencer died four days before his birthday last week. Start paying attention to celebrity deaths and you'll see how often it happens.) Elrod Hendricks lived in Randallstown and my junior year in high school, he spoke at our class ring ceremony and handed out the rings to my entire class. I think the Orioles and the city of Baltimore are really going to miss him.

Kidisms

While shopping on Sunday, one store had a display of stuffed polar bears that moved - one large one and four cubs. After we counted the baby bears, H. and I had the following conversation:

H: Is that the mommy bear? (Pointing to the large bear holding a cub).
Me: Yes, it is.
H: Where's the daddy bear?
Me: Maybe he went out to look for something to eat.
H (completely deadpan): Or maybe he's dead.
And then she just walked away.

I can only blame the Disney movies and their demise of one parent, usually the mother. She recently watched The Lion King. Maybe that's why the idea was in her head.

Ninny Update

Two nights of sleeping and no problems! Can it be true? If so, that will be the best Christmas present ever for me. She asked for it once each night, but we reminded her that she didn't have it anymore because we gave them to Santa and that was it. Yeah!!

Breakthrough

We had some exciting happenings today! H. and I went to the mall to finish up our shopping and to visit Santa. For the last couple of weeks, I've been prepping her for the visit with Santa, hoping we could get her picture with him. All along, she's been saying that she would stand in front of him, but not sit on his lap. Okay, that's good enough for a picture. In the car on the way to the mall, we talked about Santa again and practiced what she was going to say when he asked her what she wanted for Christmas. After this, a few minutes went by and she said, "I want to give this to Santa." I turned my head to see what she was talking about and she was holding out her ninny (her pacifier, which she is extremely attached to). I asked her if she was sure and she said yes, even after I explained that she wouldn't have one when it was time to go to bed tonight and she would have to sleep without it. She said yes again and that she was a big girl.

So we got to the mall and waited in line to see Santa. When it was her turn, she walked right up to him and handed over the ninnies (there was another one in the car, so we gave him two). It was so cute! Santa said, "We do something very special with these," and he hung them on the Christmas tree. (There were a few others hanging up there, too.)

Then H. told him she wanted "Dora toys" for Christmas, but would not sit on his lap or even stand in front of him to have her picture taken. She was done, thank you very much. I think she was a little traumatized by giving up her ninnies, since as she was getting back in the stroller she said, "Can we go home now?" And seeing Santa was the first thing we did at the mall! But she was a real trooper and I bought her a Dora nightgown to wear tonight to celebrate her big accomplishment. Let's just hope I'm not up all night because she's crying for her ninny. (I did scour the house once we got home and found two other ninnies, which are now hidden away in the medicine cabinet, just in case, but hopefully this is the real deal and we can finally get rid of it.)

Winner!

The coolest thing happened to me on Saturday - I won an iPod Shuffle! Some time in the fall, I had filled out a tear-off card from a display in the grocery store (for some product I don't even buy) and voila, a few months later, a free iPod arrives in my mailbox. I haven't set it up yet (that will be my reward for turning in my last paper of the semester, which is due tonight by midnight), but I'm anxious to load it up and see how it works. Good thing I decided not to ask Santa for one.

2005 Reading List

Well, I guess it's time to post this, since I don't know if I'll able to squeeze in any other books between now and the end of the year. Maybe one or two after Christmas, since I have the week off. The return to school really put a dent in my free time and reading, but of course, I did finally get to read some classics that I had long neglected. Even though I didn't read as many books this year as last year, the total balanced out to a book a week, which isn't too bad, considering how busy it seemed like I was. Some highlights: I plowed through two new series that I love - see Denise Hamilton and Meg Gardiner below - and read quite a few sad books about 9/11. I finally started Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan series (long overdue) and read one George Pelecanos book. The links below are to previous posts with my thoughts or comments about the books. (I really slacked off in this area, after getting off to a good start at the beginning of the year.)

1. The Jasmine Trade by Denise Hamilton
2. Twelve by Nick McDonell
3. China Lake by Meg Gardiner
4. High Country Fall by Margaret Maron
5. My Antonia by Willa Cather (English class)
6. Sugar Skull by Denise Hamilton
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (English class)
8. Garnethill by Denise Mina
9. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (English class)
10. The Big Sea by Langston Hughes (English class)
11. Entombed by Linda Fairstein
12. Suspicion of Rage by Barbara Parker
13. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (English class)
14. Most Wanted by Michele Martinez
15. Mission Canyon by Meg Gardiner
16. Drama City by George Pelecanos
17. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (English class)
18. Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan (English class)
19. Paradise by Toni Morrison (English class)
20. Hard Truth by Nevada Barr
21. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (English class)
22. Render Up the Body by Marianne Wesson
23. Cold by John Smolens
24. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
25. Missing Justice by Alafair Burke
26. 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn
27. Jericho Point by Meg Gardiner
28. Night Fall by Nelson DeMille
29. Fade by Kyle Mills
30. Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
31. The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank
32. Shadows by Edna Buchanan
33. Rococo by Adriana Trigiani
34. The Hundredth Man by Jack Kerley
35. Baltimore Blues by Laura Lippman
36. Devil’s Corner by Lisa Scottoline
37. Case of Lies by Perri O’Shaughnessy
38. Charm City by Laura Lippman
39. Absent Friends by S.J. Rozan
40. Blood Hollow by William Kent Krueger
41. The Innocent by Harlan Coben
42. Innocence by Kathleen Tessaro
43. The Death Collectors by Jack Kerley
44. If Looks Could Kill by Kate White
45. Rituals of the Season by Margaret Maron
46. To the Power of Three by Laura Lippman
47. Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare (English class)
48. Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons
49. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (English class)
50. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (English class)
51. Close Case by Alafair Burke
52. Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner
53. Macbeth by William Shakespeare (English class)

Kidisms

Conversation with H. at 6am this morning:

H: "Tonight, I want to watch that movie with the bad witch. Where she tries to take the pretty red shoes. The Wizard of Oz. " (The Wizard of Oz was on TBS several times this weekend and we watched some of it before bedtime on Saturday night. Also, H. was a witch for Halloween, so she's keenly aware of witches right now.)

Me: "I know we watched that movie the other night, but we don't have that DVD. I think K&K have it. Maybe we can borrow it the next time we're over there."

H: "Or we can get it at the movie store. Tonight."

Please keep in mind that she's only 3!

I'm surprised she even wanted to watch "The Wizard of Oz" at all, considering that since last Sunday the 6th, we have watched E.T. every day, sometimes parts of it twice a day, without fail. She's obsessed with E.T.! She finally relented and watched some of The Grinch movie (which led to the E.T. obsession in the first place, since she saw a preview for it on the Grinch tape) on Sunday, so it was pretty much a whole week of E.T.

Also since Sunday, I think her thoughts haven't been able to keep up with her vocabulary. Suddenly, she's been using the word "something" (or sumpin', as she says) an awful lot, I guess when she can't find the word she's looking for to express herself. I'm pretty sure she wasn't doing this at all on Saturday, but there was the word "something" a lot on Sunday and every day this week.

Bad Karma

My bad day continued yesterday, even after the redeeming lunch. When we got home yesterday evening, I went to put some of the groceries in the downstairs fridge. I opened the door to the basement and heard a noise like the washing machine was running. It couldn't be running since we just got home. I went all the way down the steps to find that a pipe had broken in the laundry room where the water comes in from the well. The water was spraying upwards across half the laundry room. The whole basement should have been flooded, but by some miracle, I had left the lid on the washing machine up Sunday night and the washer was filled to the brim with water. That's atleast 15-20 gallons of water that should have been all over the floor! The five-gallon trash can full of dryer lint on the floor next to the washer was also full of water. It was truly bizarre how it was spraying almost directly into the washer. Otherwise, we would have had a huge mess on our hands. Mark shut the pump down and called his plumber friend, who arrived in 15 minutes and repaired the broken joint on the pipe.

This is the third plumbing incident we've had in less than a year, maybe even six months. Both of the pipes under the kitchen sink burst back in August, a pipe connected to the dishwasher was leaking down through the ceiling of the laundry room before that, and now this. I'm starting to wonder if we need all of our plumbing replaced before we have a major incident.

Oh, and I cut my thumb on a knife while washing the dishes last night, too.

Not A Good Start to the Week

I woke up as usual this morning, got in the shower, etc., then I was standing in front of the mirror about to dry my hair when I noticed something just above my left hip. I thought it was a mole that was irritated because it was really dark, but upon closer inspection, I realized it was a TICK and it was EMBEDDED in my skin. Of course, M. was already gone for the day, but luckily H. was still asleep. I was surprised at how calm I remained as I went to get a tissue and the tweezers, even though I was freaking out in my head. It was hard to see and reach, because it was just far enough towards my back instead of on my side, but with some maneuvering, I did manage to get the blood-engorged sucker (engorged with my blood!) out of my skin. This was followed by an all-over body check for any more. It was all I could do not to wake H. up and check her from head to toe. (Well, that paragraph should get me some interesting keyword hits from Google.)

Needless to say, I had the heebie-jeebies for the rest of the morning and since I couldn't get a good visual angle on it, I wasn't sure if I had gotten all of it out and whether or not it was a deer tick. Once H. woke up, I had her get dressed right away while I examined her. I was like a mother gorilla checking her for nits. She was clear. I can only guess that the tick found this host on Saturday when H. and I were playing in the yard in the afternoon, including lying in the grass. Which really gives me the creeps, because I changed clothes at one point on Saturday and took a shower Sunday morning. We were out in the yard Sunday morning, too, but just on the swing set, so I guess it could have found me then, too.

I dropped H. off at school, then headed straight to the doctor's office, which opens at 7:30am on Mondays, thank goodness. I pleaded my case and they were able to see me almost right away. The doctor I saw, not my usual doctor, was very nice. I did get all of the tick out, which was good, and it was a deer tick, a female, which was not good (I had saved the tick in a tissue and baggie to show the doctor), but better than if it had been a male. As a precaution, I have to take a course of antibiotics to ward off any potential Lyme disease. What fun! And no surprise, my blood pressure was through the roof when the nurse took it - 154/100! I think I was having a partial panic attack.

My day improved slightly at lunchtime. I dropped my prescription off at Walmart, then had 30 minutes to kill. While wandering around, I found that the Dora dollhouse I had on layaway was marked down $10 (!) and I found a copy of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas on DVD in the bargain bin for $4.88 (hee, hee!) (Note to Christian Slater: It makes me sad to see so many of your movies in the bargain bin.) So maybe I can salvage this afternoon.

Happy Halloween

H's New big Girl Room

Hayley's New Big Girl Room

H. is home sick today with some kind of stomach flu (fun!), but it gives me some time to update the site and add some photos.

Here is the bedroom as it looked when we moved in 6+ years ago. A good shot of the "Pandas Playing with Beach Balls."



And now, the new room. Ta da!



We still need to find some things to hang on the wall and I'm on the look out for a bulletin board, some picture frames and lampshades, but it's mostly done.

"On Their Own"

The Baltimore Sun has published a fascinating, four-part series called "On Their Own," which follows two Baltimore City high school students during their senior year. In addition to facing the challenges of attending an inner-city school, the two students are also homeless. The series is inspiring, heartbreaking, frustrating and hopeful. All of the problems that plague inner-city life are present - drugs, gangs, crime, absentee parents, etc. That these two young men could still get up and go to school every day without parents there to push or guide them is an inspiration. Neither of them would have made it without assistance from several very involved teachers as well as the principal.

As detailed and complete as the series is, it also raises more questions than it answers. What can be done to save Baltimore's schools (breaking up the overly large high schools was a step in the right direction)? What can be done for homeless teenagers who are in limbo between a foster-case system that caters to younger children and adult shelters that don't want to take in teenagers? What can be done to make students strive to envision a life beyond their own crime and drug-riddled streets, a vision that includes earning a high school diploma as the first step? It is well worth your time to read this very memorable series of articles. You won't soon forget the two young men profiled and many readers have already posted messages to the Sun's message board asking for updates on their progress.

Friday Funnies

For your enjoyment - How to Dance Properly. I like "Elaine Ripped Me Off" and "Hanging Out... Casual." Make sure you read the commentary at the bottom of the page, too. (link via groovygrrl)

I'm feeling a little more accomplished than I did last week, although I'm still majorly behind at work. (Hmm, I wonder why. Check the date and time of this post.) I've already finished my Shakespeare homework for the week and hope to do some more math tonight. And, as of right now, I'm completely on the ball with Christmas shopping. That's right, I said Christmas shopping. I went to Walmart on Wednesday and made a toy layaway for H., with a few other miscellaneous presents thrown in for K&K. H's big present this year will be the Fisher-Price Dora Dollhouse. It has a million accessories, so I thought that would a good answer whenever anyone asks me what to get her for Christmas. "Well, I got her the Dora Dollhouse, so any of the accessory sets would be great - living room, bedroom, swimming pool, etc." Nice and easy! And my mom has already bought her this for Christmas, so I put one game on layaway, but that's another good thing to be able to tell people as a present idea.

H's really into her baby dolls right now. She changes their diapers and puts them to bed and pretends that they're sick and need to be taken care of. She has lots of doll accessories, but not a decent crib, so I'm going to order her one that I saw in a catalog some time soon, so that can be another present to check off the list. Last night, I pulled my Cabbage Patch dolls out for her to play with and she loved them, maybe because they're a little bit bigger than her babies and they have hair. It made me feel really old when I saw the 1984 and 1985 dates on their bottoms.

I need to find a new hiding place for Christmas presents this year. Last year, I hid them in the dowstairs bathroom with the door shut, but now that H. is potty trained and actually uses that bathroom now, I need a new spot. Maybe somewhere down in the basement, but there's not a lot of room to manuever as it is.

Funky

I've been in some sort of a funk lately and I'm not really sure why. I'm starting to wonder if I have adult ADD. (Is that possible if you didn't have it as a child?) Or I'm just completely overloaded. I can't seem to finish anything I start or get started at all on some projects. And this is across the board - home, work and school. I've reached the point where I have so much to do, I don't know where to start, so I end up doing nothing. I have many unfinished projects at work (in addition to some other weird stuff that's going on there), I'm so far behind on my math homework I'm not sure when I'll be able to catch up, and I think I'm grouchy because I don't have any time for reading (check out the sidebar), or watching TV or other hobbies right now and I'm not getting enough sleep.

Part of the problem is that I need to stop overbooking myself so much, even if it is something I really want to do. (Even though I should start doing it now, maybe I'll make it a New Year's resolution.) After this weekend, things are looking pretty good scheduling-wise, so maybe things will ease up a bit.

Because of H., school and hobbies, I've significantly cut back on my TV viewing. I've only added one new show to my viewing schedule (Reunion on FOX, which is on tonight. And because I've only chosen this show to watch, I"m sure that it will be canceled and then I'll be too far behind on any other new, hip shows that I'll be totally out of the loop.). I can't watch any 8 o'clock shows, especially dramas, because we're usually finishing up bathtime, getting ready for bed and reading stories to be in bed at 8:30 (on a good night). Then it usually takes another half hour to pick up the mess from the day, straighten up the kitchen and do atleast one household chore, like a load of laundry. So that brings us to 9 o'clock to finally sit down and watch TV. But I've also had to cut out a couple of 10 o'clock shows (like Medium on Mondays, although we usually have football on now anyway until about 10:30) because I really need to go to bed before 11pm atleast a few nights a week. And in the middle of all of this, I'm supposed to be doing 30+ math problems every week and struggling my way through Shakespeare while participating online!

Okay, I'm glad I got all of that off my chest. So now I'll leave you with a funny toddler story before I sign off. The other day, as we were riding in the car, there was a motorcycle in front of us and the driver wasn't wearing a helmet. H. noticed and said, "He's not wearing a helmet." Then she paused for a minute and continued, "That's bad choices." And she was very adamant about it. This is something they have been learning about at school - not wearing a helmet, not buckling up, etc., are all "bad choices."

The work day is over and I'm off to the Goodwill Store to see if I can find something appropriate for The Awesome 80's Prom.

Just Another "Sine" That I'm Getting Old

The scientific calculator that I'm using for my current math class is the one I've had since junior high. I went online today to see if I could find the user's guide for it, since I've forgotten how to use some of the functions and it was causing problems for me last night while trying to do my homework on exponents. I don't think it's a good sign that my calculator is in the "Datamath Calculator Museum." Maybe I could sell it to this guy.

Get Out a Hankie

If you gotta go , this is the way to go. What an incredibly sweet story.

Out of Touch

Jeez! I take the day off from work, so I'm away from the computer and the Internet all day and I didn't really watch any TV today either, and Britney has her baby and Kenny & Renee break up!

Who Needs Pictures

I do! Here are some photos from last week and this weekend.

Tuesday was the first official day of pre-school, so here's H's "first day of school" photo. I do believe this is an all-Old Navy outfit - shirt, skort, shoes & socks!












N., W. & I went to see Brad Paisley Saturday night at the Baltimore Arena. The show was really good, a little short, but still good, since we finally got to see B.P. in concert. It was the annual benefit concert for Cystic Fibrosis, which always has a top-name headliner, but it's probably set up a little bit different from the regular tour show for whoever is performing. Brad Paisley was very entertaining and of course, easy on the eyes, too.









While I had my girls' night out, H. spent the night with her cousins, playing Bratz, painting, and other fun stuff.








Coming soon - before and after pictures of H's new big-girl room.

So That's How They Did It

My question about how the newspaper staff at the New Orleans Times-Picayune continued to publish the newspaper has been answered.

Study: Housework helps with hypertension

This must be some kind of cruel joke. I'm just going to pretend I never read it.

Dazed

I feel guilty going on with regular day-to-day activities when things are so atrocious and devasting in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf. The New Orleans Times-Picayune is still publishing online (and how they are doing this, I don't know) and definitely has a more local angle you can't find with the national networks. I'm spending way too much time online, but the situation is changing so drastically every day and it's so overwhelming, I want to stay informed. I think it's easier to read the news reports than to watch the evening news coverage. I pretty much cried all through dinner last night, especially any time they showed a baby or small children.

Just my two cents - if you're having trouble deciding which charity to donate to, my sister felt that the Salvation Army was the most helpful organization to her after Hurricane Isabel, so I sent my money their way. First hand experience speaks volumes. (The money collected at Walmarts around the country (and ours already had a collection bucket out on Tuesday) also goes to the Salvation Army.)

My mom is coming over this weekend to help me paint the other bedroom. We bought H. "big-girl" furniture last weekend, which is on order, but should be here shortly. If it's here in time for her birthday, that would be great, so everyone can see it. You can check it out here. (We ordered the twin headboard (no footboard), the dresser with mirror and a nightstand. The sleigh bed version was gorgeous, but would have taken up too much room in the tiny 8 x 10 room. I'm already worried about fitting in the dresser, but we'll have to make it fit.) I've been trying to get a little bit more done in that room each night this week (when I can tear myself away from CNN), including packing up stuff that is mine that I have no where else to put (except in boxes in the basement) and removing the "panda bears playing with beach balls" border paper left behind by the previous owners. The plan is to paint the ceiling white and the walls with Kilz (to cover up the not quite Pepto Bismol pink currently on the walls) on Saturday, let it dry overnight, and then paint the walls half pale yellow, half peach the following day. Tonight I need to spackle in all the nail holes and M. needs to disassemble the daybed.

Keep New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in your hearts and minds and let's hope we see some positive stories coming from there this weekend.

There's One Born Every Minute

I just read this article from yesterday's Baltimore Sun and immediately wrote a check and dropped it in the mail to the assistant principal. I also included about $10 worth of "Box Tops for Education" that I had accumulated, but never dropped off anywhere. I think this is a situation where every little bit helps, so I hope it does. It's a shame that situations like this even exist to begin with in our public schools. (If you're interested in helping out, too, the mailing address for the school can easily be found online.)

Odds and Ends

It's already August 16 (Elvis Death Day) and I haven't posted at all in August. Shame on me! The usual excuse, we've been busy since returning from vacation. Lots of children's birthday parties to attend, plus I just started planning Hayley's for September. My new addiction to iTunes is taking up most of my computer time at home. I'm trying to cram in reading a few more books before my next round of classes (math and Shakespeare) start the day after Labor Day. I'm hosting a small scrapbooking workshop this Saturday. I actually went to the movies on Sunday, the first time in three years, to see Must Love Dogs. (The movie industry is right to be worried about declining attendance. On a Sunday afternoon that was pushing 100 degrees there were only about 10 of us in the theater. All women, by the way, and yet the usher felt it was necessary to walk up and down the aisle with his flashlight three or four different times.)

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September is shaping up to as busy as June was - Brad Paisley concert, scrapbooking flea market, Hayley's birthday and party, back to school, various doctors appointments (easier to schedule when my boss is on vacation) and an open house at work (the first one in seven years).

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Somehow, without even realizing it, I just read back-to-back books titled The Innocent and Innocence. They couldn't be more different. The Innocent is the latest from Harlen Coben. I've liked all of his standalones (I've never read the Myron Bolitar series), which are fast-paced and tightly written, usually with a slight twist at the end. This one wasn't one of my favorites. It required too much suspended belief on the part of the reader and you could spot the surprise ending well in advance. Innocence is the second "chick lit" book from Kathleen Tessaro, but I would say it's a little darker than most chick lit. I loved her first book, Elegance, which I thought was very creative, and her second offering didn't disappoint. Likable, well-drawn characters, with a happy ending, of course.

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I still owe you a vacation round-up with photos. It's coming.

Mountain Reading

I only read three books on vacation, which is kind of sad. It should have been more, especially with an almost ten-hour car ride both ways, but I got bogged down with book number two and should’ve given up on it, but didn’t.

I finished Laura Lippman’s Baltimore Blues, the first in the Tess Monaghan series, in the car on the way to the Smoky Mountains (after reading some magazines on the first part of the drive that I had been stockpiling). I’ve been meaning to read this series for a long time, but the fact that my branch of the library carries all of the titles in the series except for the first one is the only plausible explanation I have for not getting into this series sooner, especially after I loved Every Secret Thing so much. This first book in the series was good, not great, but that didn’t stop me from reading #2, Charm City, after vacation (and finishing it today during lunch) and I definitely think I’ll work my way through the rest of the series. The thing I liked least about Baltimore Blues is how much Tess mocks Baltimore. As a local, I feel she should be more like the people she mocks (a Baltimore accent, eat seafood, etc.). She comes off as more of an outsider to Baltimore than someone who was born and raised there.

Vacation book #2, the one that slowed me down, was Devil’s Corner by Lisa Scottoline. I have read all of the books in her “all-female law firm” series and really enjoy this series set in Philadelphia. But for some reason, I just couldn’t get into this book at all, which is considered a standalone novel, but still features a young female lawyer, an AUSA, in Philadelphia. The story moved very slowly, after a fast-paced opening sequence, and dragged on for way too long. The romantic side-story was too convenient and unbelievable. The friendship between the two female main characters, one black and one white, was more realistic and interesting, but couldn’t carry the entire novel. I read this book every afternoon while H. was taking her nap and still didn’t make very much progress. And considering that we didn't have very many cable channels to distract me, that’s saying a lot. I finally finished it the night before we left.

That left me free to start Case of Lies by Perri O’Shaughnessy on the long ride home. This is another series that I read, the Nina Reilly series set in Lake Tahoe, and another one that I really enjoy. This is book #11 in the series and it didn’t disappoint. Based on an interview I read at Bookreporter.com, it may be a couple of years before we see Nina Reilly again, which will seem like a long wait. But Case of Lies was definitely better than Devil’s Corner, since I finished it before we made it home.

TV Notes

The only negative about our vacation was the cable TV in the chalet we rented. I called it "less-than-basic cable." We had all of the Big 4 networks, plus UPN and the WB, but the rest of the few cable channels we did have were very random. We had both E! and Style, but no MTV or VH-1; we had The Golf Channel, but not ESPN. And we didn't have any news channels, which was very odd, so we felt more out-of-touch than we usually do on vacation.

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Don't you hate it when you come home from vacation and your cable system has changed all of the channels around? Actually, they only changed four, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. All 3 sports channels - Comcast SportsNet, ESPN and ESPN2 - used to be all in a row - 38, 39 & 40, very convenient. Now, ESPN and ESPN2 are 35 & 36, with Turner Classic Movies interrupting the sports flow at 37 before getting back to Comcast SportsNet. 39 & 40 are now Sci-Fi and The Cartoon Network.

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Starting Monday, Lifetime will be airing reruns of The Golden Palace until September to compliment their classic reruns of The Golden Girls (which I watch all the time). I'm sure Oscar-nominee Don Cheadle is thrilled to be reminded of this acting gig. When we were in college, we actually used to watch "The Golden Palace" on Saturday nights before we would go out. (It's not as geeky as it sounds. Atleast we were going out later!)

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I taped the Lifetime movie "The Dive From Clausen's Pier" last night, since I've been trying to go to bed before 11pm, but who knows when I'll get to watch it (I still need to watch the Elvis mini-series I taped back in May). I also want to watch the "Beach Girls" mini-series that's starting on Sunday. I'll decide after the first two-hour installment if I'm committed to the whole five weeks (unlike "Into the West," which I gave up on after the first hour and a half. It was a little too gory for me.).

Greetings from Gatlinburg

We're back! We made it home from vacation around 7pm Friday night. The car ride was long both ways, but we survived and had a great time in the Smoky Mountains. More about our trip to come.

Americans: U.S. Transit Attack Inevitable

I've been saying this ever since I took the train from Baltimore to NYC back in December. I printed my ticket from one of the credit card kiosks, so no one checked my ID to see if it matched the name on my ticket. No metal detectors or X-rays for passengers or luggage. Even if you've never been there, you can imagine how crowded and busy Penn Station in New York is on any given day. And it's underneath Madison Square Garden! The explosives the bombers in London were carrying weighed less than 10lbs each. Imagine if they had all been together on the same train instead of in four different locations.

National Park Scorecard

In searching for vacation information, I came across this article from the July/August 2005 issue of National Geographic Traveler. How sad that my two most favorite parks are ranked "Rock Bottom," while the one that's closest to us in proximity is ranked barely above that at the bottom of the "Facing Trouble" category. I wasn't surprised that GSMNP was on the endangered list, not just because of the pollution that threatens the park on a daily basis, but the gateway cities do leave something to be desired in terms of environmental protection. As much as I love visiting Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, it does bother me how the restaurants and shops in Gatlinburg go right up to the park border without any type of buffer zone.

However, I was surprised to see Shenandoah at "Rock Bottom." I think the ranking is more based on environmental conditions than the gateway cities. We've stayed in Luray (central gateway) and Waynesboro (southern gateway) and drive through Front Royal (northern gateway) on the way to Luray. The town of Luray, with a Super Walmart and other "suburban amenities" is a good five miles away from the entrance to the Park and is not overly developed, in my opinion.

Also, I disagreed with the low ranking of Mammoth Cave NP, another park we've visited. I thought it could have been higher, although water pollution is a serious issue. We were there during peak season of early August of 2000 and I felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. The day we took a 7-mile canoe ride on the river we never saw another person. The two gateway cities are very small and underdeveloped and closer to the highway exits than the park boundaries. I'm not really sure how to interpret the "trinketization" comment.

The summary at the end of the article shows how embarrassed the US should be that our parks are doing so much worse than the ones in Canada, which are better funded and do a better job of putting environmental concerns before people.