Film fest

This afternoon, Fred and I watched To Kill a Mockingbird with Annabelle. Long-time readers might remember Mike's sincere distaste for that movie, so it will come as no surprise that he didn't join us. Now we're getting ready to watch a DVD that he picked out . . . Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

All's well

Mike's experience with his wisdom teeth has been about as good as one could hope. He's not eating much, but he said that had today been a school day, he would have been able to go. So far he has had only 2 doses of pain medication today, and both times he has taken 1 Percocet instead of the 2 he is allowed at one time.

It's nice having Fred home again. He and I spent this morning running errands. Then we all watched the film Angela's Ashes this afternoon. Then Fred and I went to a cookout with some friends. Just a nice, quiet Saturday . . .

Paging the Tooth Fairy

Mike had his wisdom teeth taken out today. It all went about as well as could be expected. By the time we got back to Knox from Louisville and got his prescription filled, the local anesthetic was starting to wear off, and he was hurting pretty bad. Two Percocets later though, and he was feeling much better. Ice has also helped a lot.

I don't think he looks terribly chipmunky:



Anybody wishing to see his teeth can click here. If, on the other hand, you would rather see a picture of a cute kitten wearing a sweater, click here.

Lady in waiting

Can you believe it has been well over a month since Fred took off for Pennsylvania? He's coming home tonight for his first visit, and we're all quite excited! His flight was supposed to come in a little before 9, and now it's looking like it'll be closer to 9:30.

Tomorrow we're kicking off the holiday weekend by taking Mike to have 4 impacted wisdom teeth removed. I'm afraid this won't be a very fun weekend for Mike.

Internet love affair

Have I told you lately how much I love Zappos? In case you've never shopped there before, here's how it works: You buy stuff from them, and they ship it to you for free. If you decide you don't want to keep something you bought, they pay for the return shipping and refund your money promptly. This month, for example, Zappos sent 3 pairs of Vans slip-on shoes to my house, but only 1 pair wound up joining the family.

I bought a baby present on Zappos the other day (who knew they had so much more than shoes?!). When it arrived on Monday, the UPS man dropped off 2 boxes. I wasn't too concerned, I do occasionally order stuff and forget all about it (sleep shopping?), but when I opened the second box yesterday, I found that it contained a backpack that should have gone to a woman out in Washington. So I called Zappos to explain the situation, and not only are they having the UPS man come back to my house today to pick up the box, but they also sent me a $25 coupon to say thanks. How nice is that?!

I think I will eventually apply the coupon to the purchase of some really nice boots (when I've set aside enough cash to pay the difference). I heart you, Zappos!

Through the years

My friend Tess found the most amazing site where you can Yearbook Yourself. It's almost like a time machine!

Here I am in 1952:



In 1958:



In 1964:



In 1966:



In 1972:



In 1984:



And in 2000:



I'm not sure why my head shrunk in 2000. Maybe it collapsed under the weight of those bangs.

Driving my life away

I drove up to L'ville this morning to take Annabelle's Mac to the Apple Store because apparently 3.5 hours at the Genius Bar Friday night just weren't enough. They wound up keeping it for the day, so she and I drove back up there this evening to pick it up and arrived home just a little while ago. That's why I have nothing interesting to blog today, and I am too tired to seek out an LOLcat for your amusement. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Scenes from a birthday

Isn't technology grand? Fred was able to join us for the present opening, although he was not able to enjoy the brownies with us:



This was the present I was most excited about giving Annabelle:



In fact, I had a REALLY hard time not giving it to her yesterday so she could wear it to her bassoon lesson. Oh, well, next lesson then!

Thirteen is the toughest!

When Annabelle turned 3, no amount of discussion would convince her that she was not, in fact, turning 6 as Mike had done the month before. She adamantly insisted on a 6 candle for her cake and a plastic dinosaur as the decoration. This picture really sums up her immense satisfaction with the situation:



Happy thirteenth (not sixteenth) birthday, sweetie!

Touch THIS!

Look at me, blogging from Panera on my iPod Touch! Today is my day for Getting Stuff Done. So far I have dropped the car off for an oil change and learned how to get online using the Touch. More stuff to follow . . . This little keyboard is making me nuts.

Where did this week go?

I can't believe how fast time is flying. This week has just zoomed right by us. This time tomorrow, the kids will be one-third of the way through the first quarter. How freaky is that?!

I'm still recovering from how dorked up my sleep schedule got from staying up late to cheer for Michael Phelps. Last night I was asleep by 11, which was the earliest I've passed out in a while. I'm hoping for 10:30 tonight. After I post this, I'm going to turn off the computer and watch the last part of "Match Point" (NetFlix makes a fortune off of me because it takes me sooooo long to get through a movie) and then read myself to sleep.

See? Salt.

Remember ages ago when my mom joined the kids and me on what would come to be known as the hell-you-don't-know tour of Poland? We wound up taking a tour of a salt mine, and while I was there I bought some salt:



For the longest time, I didn't use it because this was, after all, special salt. Eventually though I decided that was stupid, so I started sprinkling it around. The whole time, I have been enjoying it and telling myself that when it runs out I will simply buy more on the Internet, because is there anything that's not for sale on the Internet?

As luck would have it, I recently ran out, and it turns out that there IS something that is not for sale on the Internet. Polish salt. Damn.

Edited to add: Oh, look what I just found in the Polish Yellow Pages! I've sent an email. Cross fingers!

Who invented online pizza ordering?

I want to hug that person. I hate calling strangers on the phone, and I especially hate dialing for pizza. They always ask if you can hold, but it never seems that saying no is an option.

Look, Audrey put my pizzas in the oven at 5:07:



Now I've got a new update alerting me that William is on his way here with the pizzas. Go, William, go!

I wish I could cook supper like this every night. Just tell the computer what I want and watch while unseen hands do all the work.

Is synchronized swimming an Olympic sport?

I'm too tired to create my own material, so here is an lolcat for you. Maybe Olympic, maybe not:

Going nowhere fast

We spent $500 monthly on gas in June and July of this year. Some pitiful fraction of that is attributable to Fred, but Fred is a pretty low-mileage guy, given that I can see his old office building from my window. Not what you would call a huge commute, you know? My poor minivan, on the other hand, racked up the miles this summer--driving to and from Alabama, back and forth to E'town for play rehearsal and performances, back and forth to Louisville for haircuts, bassoon lessons, and general shopping and eating.

Know how much I've spent this month on gas? Sixty bucks. And I've still got a quarter of a tank left! Admittedly I started the month of August with a full tank of gas bought the end of July, but still. That's a pretty hefty drop, don't you think? All I'm doing now is driving to and from the high school to get Mike after cross country practice, driving just off post once a week to take Annabelle to her musical theater class, zipping her over to her piano lesson once a week, and making the occasional trip to the commissary. The dance studio is probably 5 miles away, but everything else is well within 2 miles of the house.

I bought this current tank of gas on the 8th of August, and I hope I can make it last until this Friday. We go back up to Louisville that afternoon for another bassoon lesson, so I'll definitely need to fill up then. As if I needed more incentive to stay home!

Literary cat is obnoxious

With Fred gone, I use his half of the bed as a storage area of sorts. It's good for holding stacks of laundry, the TV remotes, perhaps an empty popcorn bowl, and of course a book. Last night when I was ready to go to sleep, I set my current read face-down on Fred's side of the bed and drifted off. Sometime in the middle of the night I was awakened by the sound of Eddie viciously attacking my book. I swatted him away and went back to sleep and thought nothing more of it until tonight, when I picked up the book to continue reading:



I'm glad that was my book and not my face. We didn't name him after Edward Scissorhands, but perhaps we should have.

Light at the end of the tunnel

I've been working on a pretty big indexing project for the past couple of weeks. The first week was fairly laid back, and I kept figuring to myself how much I needed to do to get it done by the deadline, which I thought was next Monday. Then somewhere around this past Tuesday, I happened to look at my calendar and realized that no, the deadline is Saturday, not Monday. I had a bit of a panic attack and then started working twice as hard as I had been.

I finished it up just a little while ago. This will actually turn out for the better because now I have my weekend free to get stuff done around the house, but it's been a tense few days getting to this point.

Cross country

There's a nice write-up in today's post newspaper about the start of the high school's cross country season. Of particular interest here: "The boys team features two returning runners—Robert Barrasa, who was in the top five runners in the region last season, and Mike Taylor, who earned the most improved runner award last year."

The article also includes this photo, which is regrettably tiny:



That's Mike, fourth from the left and wearing a light blue shirt (that was Fred's in the early 1980's--it's vintage!).

Not much to report

I've just been working a lot lately. I have a big project in and for some reason I thought it was due next Monday. Um, no. It's due Saturday. So the rest of this week will be pretty intense, but the weekend should be nice and relaxing once I get the project turned in.

Naked ladies

It'll be interesting to see what sort of pervy traffic Google sends my way for that post title. But I'm not talking about REAL naked ladies--I'm talking about flowers.

I have this little corner of my yard that is kind of the bulb graveyard. During the winter I love to buy forced bulbs such as tulips, daffodils, etc., and let them bloom in my windowsill. When they've done their thing, I stick them out on the back porch to finish fading away, and then eventually Fred digs a hole and sticks them in that flowerbed. It's always a mystery as to what will come back up!

Last spring I had a huge mess of foliage that I chalked up to be underperforming hyacinths--lots of greenery but no flowers:



This past week, I had some mysterious flowers that I don't remember ever seeing before come snaking up out of the ground. No leaves at all, just long stems and pod-like buds that turned out to be some sort of lily:



I found out the other day that these mysterious beauties are called "naked ladies" or "surprise lilies" (which is accurate but not as kinky sounding). According to the Louisville paper:

The surprise lily is the more common in our area, and it is fun to own and operate. Its green foliage boils up in spring, then disappears. Just when you've forgotten about them, up pop the rose-pink, amaryllislike blooms on leggy, 2-foot stems.

Yep, that's pretty much what happened here!