I, too, Am An Ass

2008 Goals

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:24:47 GMT

So what does it mean when I have no goals for 2008?

Well, since I have no goals, here's your chance to recommend some for me. Tell me, what you think my goals for 2008 should be. Of course, I retain the right to reject or laugh at them. :-)

APB- bright dress socks

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:01:22 GMT

My very metro brother has a knack for wanting impossible to find gifts. This year its brightly colored dress socks. I've exhausted everywhere I could think of. Anyone know where to find them in the Seattle area?

Smart children are a curse

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:01:24 GMT

The kids and I were chatting on the ride home today about what they want for Christmas and both agreed that they want a Wii and a DS. I think that's a bit too much so asked them if they had to choose one which one would they pick. I eliminated the option of wondersquid choosing one and J the other in an attempt to get both, as I knew this was the first thing they would try.

Wondersquid very intelligently analyzes the options and says that she would choose the DS... since she travels alot and would get more use out of the DS and besides we already have an XBox at home that she could play games on.

Next up comes J, he ponders a bit and very matter of factly states, "Wii." I remind him that if wondersquid chooses DS and he chooses Wii that they don't get both. He nods his heads and replies, "I know".

"So why do you choose the Wii?", I inquire.

And my way-too-smart-for-his-own-good, 5 year old responds...

"Because the Wii is something you would only get for both of us. We can get the Wii for Christmas and then for my birthday in January, you can get the DS."

"guys are weird"

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:47:06 GMT

So I'm at Kidd Valley and the guy behind me starts chatting me, obviously hitting on me. When the guy leaves wondersquid asks, "who was that?""

dunno

Why was he talking to you?

That's just what guys do

Guys are weird.

yup. Remember that

Children's toy coated with GHB

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:13:42 GMT

Here's a news story: Toys coated with Ghb The little plastic beads toy that you spray with water to make it stick together and make structures...well the coating that enables it to stick together converts to Ghb.

What genius thought, "Hey, let's put Ghb on a toy for children who are notorious for putting things in their mouth"?

Oddly, the toy has recently become popular with the party crowd... :-)

And now I know the rest of the story...

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 05:23:42 GMT

Cambler recently posted about how J had decided to join his sister and become a cheerleader and now I know why...

:-)

acceptability of the word "cholo"

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:08:18 GMT

So what's the current acceptability on the word "cholo"? When I was growing up, this was a derogatory, racial term applied to poor Mexicans (usually gang members) or those that had been "white-washed". It pretty much meant a half-bred dog. It wasn't obscene like n#@#$*r but was offensive like calling someone white-trash. My brother & I were going back and forth about it; he's heard it used recently as a sort of celebration of being hispanic. So...is this considered offensive or not now? I'm not connected enough to know how the word is currently received.

The context of the entire debate is whether or not Lean like a cholo is appropriate for a youth dance routine.

DeCal Girl Skins

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:37:01 GMT

Got the skin for my phone from DecalGirl a couple of weeks ago. It took some patience to get it placed correctly but overall I like it. The coordinating wallpaper is a nice touch although you don't see it that often since the phone is usually on the home screen. The skin seems to be holding up pretty well, given the fact that I haven't decided on a case for my phone yet, and just toss it into a pocket in my purse (which was a big motivation for getting the skin knowing it would otherwise get scratched up.)

I also got the Ultra Screen Armor. Except for the one spot where I wasn't careful enough and got a single speck of dust underneath, its perfectly clear with no distortation and I personally can't tell the difference from the unprotected glass.

And luckily for me, the skin & armor do seem to be cutting down the noticability of the finger prints for me so I'm a little less OCD about continually wiping off the phone. Now on to pick a girly pouch case with handle, a bluetooth headset and a car kit. If you have any recommendations...

Why I love my kids ...

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 03:54:34 GMT

while watching videos on my iphone with the kids wondersquid proclaims "now this is *our* style, mom, a singing hippo and a crazy butt slapping dog."

New Phone

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 22:20:21 GMT

So after much deliberation, I finally chose and purchased a new phone. I spent several months critically analyzing what aspects were the most important to me, researching several phones and got it down to two: the iPhone and the HTC Touch (touted iPhone killer).

This was probably the best side by side comparison I found. Done by a Windows Mobile guy but I found it very objective and liked that he did side-by-side step throughs of the various experiences so you knew exactly what it would be like e.g. pulling up a map on the Touch vs the iPhone. I went back and forth between these for quite a while and finally settled on the iPhone. The deciding factors were browsing and price. Indisputably, the iPhone has better browsing. Yeah, many major sites have mobile versions but the sites I need the most (checking schedules on my daughter's cheer team website, checking school newsletters, etc) don't and are pretty much unusable on the standard mobile browser. And with the recent price cut, the iphone (even with the mandatory plan) was more than $100 cheaper. Perhaps if "The Company" offered a better discount on the Touch I would have been swayed. That said the new HTC TYTN II p.k.a Kaiser soon to be known as the AT&T Tilt? with all the capabilities of the Touch plus 3G support, built-in GPS, slide out qwerty keyboard and tilting display was tops in my book, but at $300 dollars more than the iPhone even with "The Company's" whopping $20 discount, was more than I was willing to spend.

So after having it less than 24 hrs, I have to say I'm loving it. Browsing over Edge (at least in downtown Redmond) was surprisingly respectable. While waiting at a not lengthy stoplight in downtown Redmond, I was able to pull up my Facebook home to check friends' status and load my daughter's cheer team website. It was comparable, if not slightly better, than browsing on the phone over wireless at home with our sketchy cable internet service. I wouldn't use it for remote desktop (not that you could) but for std. browsing it was fine. The keyboard takes some getting used to and is definitely a personal fit kind-of thing. I recommend anyone thinking about one, play with the keyboard in the store for a while first. If you can't use the keyboard, it would be a deal breaker, since the phone would be useless without it. I can tell that cambler with his squarish fingers would absolutely hate it but after some initial getting used to it, I found I can be quiet proficient and quick with it. wondersquid with her much smaller fingers, I would have expected to be best at it, but oddly she struggled the most so its definitely a matter of personal fit.

The one thing that is already bothering me, however, is the very visible finger prints on the screen. As an OCD clean freak, who was constantly wiping off my old std cell phone, I should have better anticipated this. Hopefully, the skin and screen guard I'll soon be getting from DeCal Girl will alleviate some of this. I will be keeping a wiping cloth handy but with the sharpness of the glass screen, I can cope. And to be honest, I probably would have been constantly wiping off the Touch also, cause that's just how I am.

The return of "Cubed Ice"

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:58:23 GMT

No, I haven't let cambler attempt any more "fixing" :-) But if you listen to NPR, you'll hear a rerun of the infamous cubed ice in next week's Seattle Food for Thought. If you don't listen to NPR or aren't in the Seattle area, you can always catch the podcast when they upload it here. It will be a follow up to the Noisy Kitchens commentary.

costume help

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:31:34 GMT

Anyone know where to find Andalucian style clothing in the Seattle area? It's the often seen Spanish riding wear with the flat brimmed hat where the women typically wear their hair in a low chignon at the nape of the neck. Steven Meisel did a great shoot for Vogue in 2005 featuring this style.

boys are silly

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 20:48:14 GMT

I just spent 30mins with J doing what I can only think to call, superhero what if. What if Underdog had the force? What if Darth Vader came into our house right now but we had an ewok door? I completely don't grok why on earth one would actually want to consider these things.(Supposedly, Jason would escape through the ewok door and grab the Tie-Fighter ?! parked in the backyard and I would jump out the window into the Tie-Fighter. I have no idea what I'd be doing with Darth Vader while I was waiting for J to get our escape vehicle or why Vader would be at our house. However, I could see a similar technique being useful when the Jehovah's Witnesses come knocking.) But apparently this what he and the boys at school always do.

I've also learned that I do not do noises correctly. Apparently, my light saber sounds like a laser gun and my pirate sword is just stupid. The ewok slingshot also has its own distinct sound. My brain hurts. I think I liked it better when we had long discussions about how to redo my room.

Cubed Ice no more

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:01:19 GMT

I'm saddened to report the death the rap star known only to a few as "Cubed Ice". No, I didn't take a bat to it; it died of natural causes. My guess is it had a heart attack as a result of cambler 's attempts to fix it. About an hour after he tried to "fix it", Cubed Ice stopped its chanting and resumed working as it had in its golden days. For an entire hour and a half, buttons worked as they were supposed to without endless prattle. Then, sometime during the night, it did it's final shut down.

I'm almost sorry to see it go. Afterall, we had built a relationship with our endless discussions. It would say "cubed ice ", I would say "Shut up." It would say "cubed ice ", I would say "stop talking to me!" (Like most of my discussions with cambler really.) After several hours, I really had thought we had something; that we were connecting. But alas...
...that and I can't get any damned cubed ice anymore.

Ice Cube ain't got nothing on me

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 04:21:19 GMT

For your listening pleasure, I present the new rap hit single, "Cubed Ice".
And no, this hasn't been edited. This is actually what it's doing.

And now it's time to play...

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:46:16 GMT

...the most annoying thing cambler has done. AKA The Diagnose My Fridge Game.

I'll start...

Anyone who's been to our house knows that we have a stupid computerized fridge. It has a computerized control panel allowing you to switch between water, crushed ice & cubed ice delivery options among other things. And of course, it has the voice option so the fridge will talk as you press various buttons. This is annoying in normal operating mode. However, the computer fritzed out about a year ago. We didn't bother fixing it since the important part (keeping stuff cool) still works. The problem with the computer is that panel is only operational immediately following a power surge but only for a few minutes. The kids & I have known this for quite sometime but apparently cambler was not in the know because... yesterday we had a power surge and he mistakenly thought the computer was fixed. And he turned the voice option back on. And then the computer froze again locked in it last set state. The problem is that part of the fritzing is that the fridge thinks the "cubed iced" button is constantly being pressed. And so now the fridge is repeatedly saying "cubed ice","cubed ice", "cubed ice","cubed ice","cubed ice","cubed ice","cubed ice"...you get the picture. Exactly 11 times a minute. Yes, I counted. Several times :(

And we can't turn the voice option off until the next power surge. I predict I will take a rolling pin to the computer in 2 days which would be precisely 31680 mutterings of "cubed ice."

And yes we tried a hard reboot unplugging the fridge from the wall.

Update: It is now averaging 1 muttering of "cubed ice" every 2 seconds. I may kill the fridge sooner.

Mojitos are heaven!

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:31:26 GMT

It can be 90+ any day when I've got mojitos fresh from my garden. A muddler is the best thing I've ever bought!

Nia

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 04:30:51 GMT

Anyone done Nia? I discovered it on Yelp and it's sounds intriguing...I think.

Parting shots

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:45:51 GMT

I have to say that I'm really going to miss my old manager. As a parting gift, he got me my own Louisville Slugger complete with my name branded on it. You have to love a manager who appreciates the value of keeping a bat in your office! I was going to come up with a list of first targets but figured it would be quicker to create an exclusion list :-) Feel free to add yourself.

What makes you smile...

Mon, 21 May 2007 00:59:47 GMT

When your 5 year old comes up to you and says, "Mom, I need some Math homework. Would you make me some?"

I got $#%$ peeped!

Sat, 19 May 2007 05:48:53 GMT

After having a horrible day , I pursued my usual cure-all which is to drown my sorrows in a tub of chocolate ice cream (I know how terribly cliche of me) and a craft project. So I'm in Ben Franklin and I get an odd vibe of this guy in the aisle next to me. He's busy with terra cotta pots so I brush it off as my bad mood reverberating back at me and continue on. A couple of aisles later, he's there again, and it definitely doesn't feel right so I scurry with the kids to an open section of the store. And then C quietly whispers to me, "mom, that guy just leaned back on the floor and looked up your dress." WTF?!! Of course, by that time, he was long gone. Sure, half of lj has seen me in my finest but its on my terms; you don't just go up and help yourself. The Jackass is lucky I didn't catch him, with the day I'm having I probably would have kicked his ass right there and then snapped his pic and posted his smarmy face all over the internet.

And yes, C was fully berating for not speaking up and educated that if anything like that happens you say something in the loudest voice possible.

UNDERWEAR!!!

Tue, 08 May 2007 02:23:55 GMT

No, not mine.

Apparently, C has now hit the age where I am not allowed to say the word, underwear, out loud in a department store. And to show what a kind, compassionate and understanding mom I am, the word of the day is...underwear. Work it into your posts knowing that you're helping to contribute to many years of therapy. :-)

Go forth and use it boldly.

Imagine...

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:34:30 GMT

Imagine Clark Kent's dismay when he heard that Lex Luther will be his editor at the Daily Planet.

Monday

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:24:41 GMT

Today has been a bizarre Monday, particularly since it started on Sunday.

Late Sunday evening, it suddenly hits me that I had left my ipod at work. This of course means that my ipod is most certainly gone since anything of value gets stolen at work. My only hope is that with three people sharing an office, any would be criminal would be too put off by the clutter to attempt to search for anything of value. I approach my office Monday morning with a mixture of dread and hope, quickly scan the office to realize my fear that my ipod is no where to be seen. With nothing to be done about it, I dock my laptop and start it up. Too frusterated to stare idly at my monitor while I wait the 8 minutes for it to boot up (which I might add is a significant improvement from the 15 it used to take on XP), I take to tidying my office. I collect a stack of papers which had been knocked off my filing cabinet and under my desk to find... my ipod. I immediately realize that this stack of knocked papers upon which my ipod had been placed had simultaneously caused me to forget my ipod, abandoning it to certain death, and saved it from its would be demise. I figure the only thing to set the world right after such an irony is a bagel with cream cheese.

I get to the cafeteria to find that on Monday, the first day of the week, when everything is supposed to be freshly stocked, they are out of cream cheese. Fine, I'll have it plain just toast it please. Minutes pass while I wait for my bagel to be toasted when the bakery guy calls out to me that he's dropped my bagel on the floor and do I still want it? Ha, ha, funny , just give me my bagel. He has to repeat the message three times before I realize that he's not joking. WTF? Sure, I'm not one to scoff when I drop something at home and will often quickly blow on it (which I know has been scientifically proven to do nothing) and eat it anyway. But, it strikes me as complete madness that food service staff would announce across a crowd of people that he dropped my bagel on the ground and do I still want it. Do I look like someone who wouldn't mind if you threw her bagel on the floor? Why not ask the guy behind me who also ordered a bagel if he wants it? No thanks, I'll take another.

With all the yin and yang of the morning, I'm looking forward to picking up J, who's always excited about the smallest things, from preschool. He had been nagging me everyday last week to sign him up for hot lunch, I finally got him signed up for this week and so of course wanted to hear all about...Big wet tears start tracing down his face and over quivering lip he sobs. "I told you I wanted to bring my own lunch." The crux of the matter is that I actually stood there in the parking lot for several minutes replaying the past week wondering if somehow my addled brain scrambled it up and I got it all wrong. I snapped out of it and was immediately annoyed that my 5 year old was actually making me doubt my sanity. I put him in his carseat, slammed the car door and snapped, "I've already paid, you're having hot lunch all week. Tough."

*sigh* There goes mother of the year.

Of course, at this point I realize the day is not yet done with me and I'm dreading picking up my melodramatic 8 year old. What could it possibly be... crazy hat day was cancelled and I forgot to send her with a hat? Nope, nothing happened, school was boring, oh and could I watch her practice tonite? I then go into my long account of the rest of my day and how I can't watch practice tonite because first I had to pick up J at his school and then drive 30mins to pick her up to turn around and drop J off at physio a block from his school where I just was to drive another 30 mins to drop her off at practice and then turn immediately around to pick J up from physio and drop him at home to come back and pick her up from practice. Through the rearview mirror, I see her begin to roll her eyes and in her 8 year old impression of an exasperated teenager sigh, "I have no clue what you just said. All it was was a bunch of heres and theres." Precisely, I've been driving for two hours and still have two more hours of driving to do. And then, in her 8 year old wisdom, "Oh yeah? Well if you're going to be driving for 4 hours straight, shouldn't you be half way to Oregon by now and not exactly where you just left?" Out of the mouths of babes....

Yes. Do you want a bagel?

you know you're sick of snow when...

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:52:37 GMT

cambler requests a flamethrower to clean the driveway and you actually consider it.