Time, Time, Time

Woke up this morning thinking about what it would be like to have a time machine. Wouldn't it be cool to go back and redo things, take the opportunities? How hard would it have been for me to pull out "Silent Night" for my boss at the Christmas party instead of letting a moment pass awkwardly frozen?

I'm pretty sure I would mostly use my time machine to cancel out mistakes. Like don't comment on someone's tailgating if there is no actual accident. I think eventually, given enough time, which I would have, I'd probably end up canceling it too far.

Spinning Wheel

Hamsters are nocturnal. Just thought you should know. (The pet store should've had a big sign.)

E spent his birthday money and they are cute. The camera is broken. They're like this except one is brown. They don't have names yet, both girls.

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Mashup I am not going to make: "Hamster Dance" and "Oh, What a Night"

Love in the Time of Algebra

I dropped my son off at school this morning and saw a boy and girl walking down the road, holding hands. How cute! How scary!!
8th grade.

You MIght Be a Chemist...

...if you win first prize in a chemistry contest!

Here is Z and little bro, E. Z won a chemistry quiz and he's going to the Nationals in Philadelphia in June! I am so thrilled. It was exciting. At the end of five elimination rounds, two kids were tied. So they had a tie breaker. That was also tied. On the seventh round he came out ahead. We are going to be chemistry studying fools now!

Projecting

Having trouble with a project. My boss just told me to split it apart and continue forward with the 90% that is fine and set the other 10% aside for more work later. Wow, that was so obvious and helps so much! : ) Will do. Right after lunch.

Life is Like a Box of Shrimp

(This is just Zatarain's with some okra and black beans, but it was yummy!)

I read an article about Wolfgang Puck's L.A. Bistro. (Couldn't find the article, here's a link to some reviews.) It's supposed to be a hybrid restaurant, with fast food at breakfast and lunch, then become a fancy restaurant at dinner time. I don't think it's going to fail, but I'm not sure it will be a raging success either, because it's too mixed up. (Actually, this idea could work with the right transformative lighting.)

I started thinking "The key to major success, is cohesion of theme."

It's an interesting thought, but I'm not sure if it's right. Helpful for designing a product. Helpful for living? Okay, my theme will be: eclectic.

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Mashup I am not going to make: "Green Acres" and "Black Velvet"

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(New Category!)
Cheap Thrills: Put your car keys in your other jacket pocket.

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"Funniest" thing I saw today: We were driving on the highway and a car was weaving in and out of traffic, trying to get ahead. He finally got ahead alright. We watched as a cop pulled him over. He got a $100 driving lesson.

Camel Back

When you're carrying an armload of groceries and someone says, "Here, take this box of straws." and you can't hold it all, you never drop just one thing. Usually, it all goes flying.

Detroit Rock City

I had fun commenting about my first rock concert on 17 Seconds, a really neat music blog, by Ed, a teacher in Scotland and also a worldwide music aficionado.

I hope no one minds, I'm going to copy it here and fire up a meme:
"What was your first concert like?"

(Adam and the Ants was my) first concert without parents. First was really when my dad took me and my brother to see the KISS Dynasty tour at the Pontiac Silverdome in '79 for my brother's birthday. I helped him with his Peter Criss makeup and it looked awful. We were not the youngest kids there by a longshot. The stage was so far down it was more like a movie. It was so loud the seats were thumping and we kept tearing bits of paper off our popcorn bags to try to make earplugs but it didn't work very well [unsic]. My dad bought us some for $5 each. KISS' first song didn't sound very good and the audience started chanting "Bring back Cheap Trick! Bring back Cheap Trick!" This went on for a few minutes. I couldn't believe it. Well, Cheap Trick were really great and everybody loved "Live at Budokan" and it's much easier to recreate a live album onstage than a slickly produced one. But KISS won us over, I think Gene Simmons blew flames or something. I think I remember Space Ace came down on ropes or a platform or something and my favorite song was New York Groove. Also, we lost the car and had to walk for miles through closely spaced lines of traffic and wait two hours for everyone else to leave so we could find it. Not a good time for my dad who had to do all this while listening to 2 kids whining "I'm tired!."

Tag, you're it! :)

If You Can Dodge an Oven...

My son Z just told me about his dream: He dreamed he was in a baking contest. He baked muffins then frosted them white and sprinkled nuts on top. Then he rode a conveyor belt into an arena where everyone threw their muffins at each other!

"_______ City"

Circuit City is changing their name to "The City". I always liked the name "Circuit City". I imagined in five or ten years I'd be visiting their showroom to look at row upon row of shiny new robots.

Why are they doing this? Maybe electronics don't have circuits anymore and this name is now as cool as "Analog Town"? ("Chip City" would soon lead to a common nickname along the lines of Taco Hell and Burger Thing...)

Is it to save us the trouble of uttering one extra syllable? Just like Prince's symbol, it won't work: "You're going where?" "You know, to the store that used to be called Circuit City." See, that's 14 extra syllables right there.

Well, as confusing as it will be for customers, it will be great for the employees. "I've been City Manager for about five years. I think I'm ready to run for mayor."

Go for it! : )

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Mashup I am not going to make: "Proud Mary" and "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt"

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Funniest thing I heard "today": I was driving my son to school Friday and he said "Mom, the city finally did something about all the potholes. They turned them into bumps!"

Mmm, Candy

Tastes exactly the way I remember eating crayon tips!

There's a whole blog about candy called Candy Blog. Very cool!
Found the link on The Velvet Blog.

Cartesian Product

This post was supposed to be good. I jokingly said my 100th post would be good and that tripped me up a little this week. I wanted to write something important, with sentence structure and everything. But now I figure I'd better just show up.

A while back, like two years ago, not handling transition well, I remembered a book I read in high school about a guy who threw away every idea he had so he could rethink and reorganize his beliefs. I found Discourse on the Method and started reading it again. I saw the first thing he put back was God. That helped me the most. Then after four pages of "if I smoosh it flat is it still a ball of wax?", and putting aside any nominalist vs. realist debate, I just wanted to scream in the book's ear "Dude, it's wax!". And then the book fell apart in my hands.

But it's been helpful to turn things over and look at them, to notice the silly things I believed when I was six. To put things out there and question them. To say to myself, what kind of mom are you if your kids are so lacking for attention they sneak up and pull your grey hairs out? {FLIP} Are you kidding me? My kids are so loved. {FLIP} Well, you could do a better job with their haircuts. {FLIP} Okay.

Sometimes all you have to do is write something down to see if it works. T or F, Sweetheart of America = Anchorman Gravitas.

I realize I don't believe that people are fungible, interchangeable like mushrooms. I think we all have special skills that should be prized and that what we have in common is our kindness, loyalty and willingness to show up.

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Mashup I am not going to make (contributed by Z): "Horse Racing Song" (William Tell Overture) and "Take A Chance On Me"

Songs From the Brood

One of my most favoritest people had her baby boy last night! This reminded me of songs I used to sing to my babies:

"...There's a shadow hanging under me, I'm twice the woman that I used to be, Oh I believe in pregnancy."

Dat Da-Da Da-Da Dat-Da, Dat Da-Da Da-Da Da, Dat Da-Da Da-Da Dat-Da... "Formula!"

"Shake your bootie, shake your bootie, shake your mitten, shake your mitten, shake your bonnet, shake your bonnet"

"One way, or another, I'm gonna find ya, I'm gonna gitchee-gitchee-gitchee-gitchee!" : )

Safety Note: You don't actually shake their head when you say "shake your bonnet", you just ruffle it gently. ; )