Weekend 7.28.07

First...Happy 5th Birthday Jack! I can't believe my nephew is five already. He's getting so big!!

This weekend I went out with the Barcelona group (plus some) on Friday to the Continental. I've never been there, but it was really fun! We took over the outside space, grabbed some food from Feast and had a good time. It was nice to see Rose and Matthew again.

Saturday my mom picked me up to go out to the suburbs for IKEA and scrapbooking...yay! IKEA! We didn't buy much, but I found a dresser that I really like. Hurrah! Now I just need a big car to transport it--$150 to ship? Yeah, not so much.

Scrapbooking was fun too. I'm so far behind (June 2003!) and desperately want to catch up. Maybe I can convince people to do the 12-hour class with me in August? Maybe? Takers? (oh, and I can't remember where this mosaic is in Philadelphia? Anyone know? It's so pretty and in the lobby of a building...somewhere...)

Edit: the Mosaic (the right side in the picture below) is the Dream Garden by Maxfield Parrish and Tiffany


Sunday morning bright at early (6am), Mom and I left to go back to the city for the Teb's Troops Walk. It was a 5K race (well, walk for us) for Melanoma. What a beautiful day. While everyone else ran and competed and raced, Mom, Liz, and I strolled along the lakefront. I'm pretty sure we were the last ones to finish (behind baby carriages and a girl that was about 9, but we enjoyed ourselves.


After the walk, we went to brunch (Toast!) and I crashed out for a 4 hour nap. Lucky for me, Sadie was so tired from playing with my mom's dog, Dakota, that she took a 4 hour nap as well.

The rest of the day consisted of 90210 reruns and Dead Like Me Season 1 (yay Netflix!).

I need another day in my weekend.

Harry Potter Update

So, I've decided not to write anything about the Harry Potter book on this blog--I don't want to be anything like my annoying roommate.

But I CAN say...it was a fabulous book and will make an amazing movie. And while I'm sad that it's over, JKR wrote a spectacular series that will be given and read to my children (nephews, maybe?).

Loved it. And I'll be reading the whole series again sometime soon.

Reason 812 on Why My Roommate Needs to Move Out

I found a note this morning on the coffee table:

I've blurred it out because I'm NOT an ass. It's the "ending" of the new Harry Potter book. The note on the left is my response. It says:

"If you were trying to ruin the ending for me, it didn't work. #1: I finished the book. #2: This [the note] is wrong."

WHY would you do that to someone. And if you WERE going to do that, at least check your facts.

Dumbass.

Testing...

A friend from work has asked that I post my mini-recaps online so I'm going to test the "white text" thing-a-majig to see if it works...

This currently says nothing because I'm just testing...duh.

So my question is...who of you out there will FREAK OUT if I do this? There are only about 2 of you reading, but if I put my thoughts and mini-recaps online, will you be able to handle it? I know I have a problem not reading stuff that's whited out, but that could just be me...

I'll wait until tomorrow until I post anything at all. Hopefully I'll be done with the book by then. :)

Squee!

I got the book yesterday and am currently about half-way through. This morning I SERIOUSLY considered calling into work today to finish it. I'm a little obsessed at the moment.

But it's REALLY good so far. I'll post (non-spoilering) thoughts about it once I'm done.

Smoke the Bone Mystery 2007

Yesterday was the annual "Smoke the Bone" rib cook off at Lemmings and it was a lot of fun, as usual. There were 17 entries this year and tons of additional pot luck items to nosh on while the ribs were cooking.

As usual, unless you cooked ribs you probably weren't going to get to taste any, but lucky for me, Chris brought in a sample for those of us non-grillers.

(Hee. Chris looks silly here)

And now the mystery...because of a disqualification (don't tell the judges what's in your sauce, silly!) the numbers were all moved up one, so if you were #8 before, now you're #7. The problem? Well, after sitting at a bar and cooking ribs and drinking beers for 7 hours, some people didn't quite get the memo about the number adjustment. So the winner was either this guy (Josh):

Or this guy (Paul):
My money's on Paul.

The judges:

The grillers/smokers/rib cookers in action:

Jeff announcing the winner with Cox presenting the trophy:

It was a fun day and for the first time in 3 years, my food was all eaten! Hurrah! Thanks to mom and Gramma for the Lonnie's Blintzes recipe.

The rest of my weekend consisted of wine and Harry Potter (#1) on Friday and a fun party at The Spot with Jamie and the POC (totally a new rap group) on Saturday. Photos of that are on Facebook. Be my friend and maybe you can see them! :)

Sigh

Slurpee > Stupid People

I feel better.

Well, betterish. I AM at work still.

Rant

The irresponsibility of some people drives me CRAZY!! UGH! I can't understand how when you have so little responsibility in your life that you can shirk one of the two things you have to do. Especially to someone who has had your back through it all.

AND THEN to be all passive aggressive and blame that person for the fight in the first place!!! HELLO? If you hadn't SCREWED UP then we wouldn't be having this discussion at all!!

AHH! And to think that I double-checked to make sure that I could proceed without error and got the okay.

Now I'M screwed and it's not my fault.

Except I'm at fault for trusting someone that has proved over and over again that they can't be trusted.

I'm so over it. OVER IT.

People suck sometimes. I need to remove the bad people from my life and live in a world of happiness and trust and responsibility.

It's not that hard, man. You're 33. You should know how to deal with this stuff by now.

GROW THE HELL UP.

I need to punch something. (or someone)

Emmy Nominations

So, the 2007 Primetime Emmy Nominations were annouced this morning and once again, it seems I'm watching some very poor-quality shows. Not that this was surprising!

My favorite nominations?

Outstanding Choreography: SYTYCD Ramalama (bang bang) Amazing dance that everyone is STILL talking about from last season. Yay them!

Outstanding Original Song & Lyrics: "Dick in a Box" from JT & SNL and "Everything Comes Down to Poo" from Scrubs. Not because of the "outstandingness" of either of them, but just because when it's announced, the presenter will have to actually say poo. And because I enjoyed Dick in a Box. Mostly for the costumes and the dancing though.

Supporting Actor in a Drama: Masi Oka as Hiro in Heroes. Heroes needed more love, but I'm glad that Masi Oka got some recognition. I'd have preferred an outstanding casting Emmy, but whatevs.

In other news, it rained last night. A lot.

And Sadie says "Hi!"

Stalker

So I'm totally a blog stalker. I think it's becoming a bit of an issue.

It's reached the point that when there's no new info on someone's blog I'll just go back to the beginning and read all of the archives--I'm currently in July 2005 of a friend's blog and have been reading it for AT LEAST 4 hours (over the course of a few days). I've also started RE-READING someone else's blog. That's just crazy.

The thing's I'll do to avoid work. Copyediting sucks.

Weekend 7.14.07

So tired. I blame Liz.

Baby shower for my friend Erin this weekend. It was really nice to see her again--it's been WAY too long since we've chatted. She looks great and happy. Aww! Yay Erin!

Went to see Frisbie at Doubledoor Saturday night. Good show. Fun stuff.

Sunday I went to Lemmings to catch up with Liz since she was out of town for a week. I missed that girl!! Our two drinks turned into 6 hours. I can't play like that on a school night anymore.

(and no pics. Kind of bummed about that. Eh, too tired to really care right now)

12 of 12 July 2007

My first 12 of 12 (great idea Chad!). And I've discovered that my life revolves around work and my dog. Or at least it does during the week. :)

2:23am: It's hard to see, but my downstairs neighbor both had a random dance-off on the sidewalk outside the apartment and a 30-minute argument thereafter. My windows were right above them and I woke up and heard every word. Although I'm not sure who won the dance-off.

5:42am: Sadie wakes me up just before my alarm to play by throwing a toy on my face then licking me until I wake up.

6:35am: Morning walk around the neighborhood

7:51am: Finishing up my daily crossword with a little help from Wikipedia (only two clues!).

10:27am: Working. Today I got to play with highlighters!

5:37pm: Work day is over and waiting for the bus to go home.

6:58pm: After-work walk around Palmer Square

7:32pm: Mmm...Dinner. So healthy.

8:31pm: By the power of Tivo, I'm able to watch and re-watch So You Think You Can Dance's dance numbers. This one is the opening (which, eh). It was the results show. Poor Shauna.

9:28pm: More TV and playing computer games on my laptop while throwing toys for Sadie to chase. I'm a multi-tasker.

9:31pm: Finally hung my photograph from Barcelona on my wall. I love this picture.

10:14pm: After our evening walk, Sadie and I usually sit on the front porch for a bit to watch the neighborhood.

12 of 12

12 of 12 is tomorrow.

And of course I'm having camera troubles today. We'll see how it goes. :)

CAMERA UPDATE

I didn't send it off for repair. I think it's ok. Maybe. I've used it a few times since "the incident" and it seems to be working well.

I'm still a little worried, but I think it'll be fine. The LCD is a little screwy, but that's so expensive to fix it just seems silly to send it off when it still works.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Besides, now I get to point out the the pink Hawaiian Punch stain on the wrist strap for all of eternity. :)

Test shots:

Oh, and did you know that there's a VitaminWater group on Flickr? That's crazy. There's a group for everything on that site.

Does She Bite?

I get asked this question a LOT when walking Sadie around my neighborhood. Children, adults...it doesn't matter. It really surprised me how many people's first thoughts when approaching a dog is that they're going to attack. Sadie's really a sweet dog.

Really. I promise. :)

Happy 4th of July!

Ah Chicago. I love that you like to be different.

Chicago has their big firework celebration on the lake on July 3rd--which is convenient for most of us that have the day off on the 4th so we can enjoy holiday fun and then sleep in the next day!

Every year, a group of us heads out to the lake (by the Petrillo Band shell, specifically) to see the show. This year was no exception except that our group was a little smaller than normal. We ate junk food, played cards, and drank random alcoholic drinks.

I, of course, had the camera out and took more pictures than necessary, but that was until...THE INCIDENT.

When handing the camera over to a friend, it got dropped into a full cup of Hawaiian Punch. Oh alas! The camera did not like that. It refused to work for the rest of the night.

Now it's ok, but it'll squeal when on and the LCD screen is funky, but it DOES take pictures. And the ones that I had on the card were fine. But...no firework pictures for me.

The camera's getting sent off to Canon today to see if they can fix it. We'll see how much that costs...I'm hoping since I've only had the thing for 2 weeks they'll take pity on me and say that it's under warranty. But since it was dropped and didn't just "stop working" you never know. Fingers crossed!

But the night was fun. Drinks, friends, and fireworks in the park. Good times.

On the 4th itself, we had a big brunch of greasy food that was spectacular, and my neighborhood went crazy with the fireworks for about 3 hours. CRAZY, I say. I've never seen so many fireworks in such a small area. I think I'm lucky no bottle rockets went in my window.

Sadie did not like it. :) But she's fine.

Weekend 6.30.07

Big weekend. Lots done.

Friday night was Terri's birthday so there was much celebrating and fun-having and ping-pong playing at the Happy Village. It's a great spot for the summer as their back/outside area is large and pretty. And the beer is cheap.

Liz and I walked home and along the way passed Wicker Park. For some reason we always have to play a little in the park if we're passing it on the way home. This time we avoided the slides (we had a problem with rainwater/dew last time we went sliding) and focused on the random statue man with a broom and a top hat. After a few photos and some giggling, we ran away and went to get some Mexican food. It was good.



Saturday morning we went to IKEA (love!--I got some Bastis, a Dold, and a Signe), Petsmart (spoiled pup) and the grocery store. Then off to see Jamie in Dirty Girl. It's a kid's show and was really cute. Giggles galore. Outstanding 80's references and a spectacular cabaret solo from Jamie/Yolanda.


After the show, it was off to see Foreigner, Styx, and Def Leopard at Tweeter. Good lord. That was a fun time. The show was fun, of course, but the people-watching was spectacular. I really really really wanted to bring my camera, but the thought of losing it was too much. Good stuff--mostly people my mom's age freaking the ef out and being drunk and dancing all to Styx. There were excited people for Def Leopard as well, but that makes more sense to me.


Sunday was a quiet day. Walked Sadie at 8am, napped from 10 to 2, then off to see Knocked Up at the Logan. I love the Logan. $3 movies, cheap(er) popcorn. When you can see a fairly recent movie and get popcorn and a pop, all for under $10, it's a good time.

Then home to watch more 90210. The cable is still out.