What is Miss Scarlett Doing?

Today during one of my meetings, I found myself wondering what Miss Scarlett is doing today at the kitty spa?
She's probably not playing with a camera cap, but I like to think she is.

In other news, we had an awesome time on Sunday with Anne and Nic in Cincinnati. Anne and I have been friends since early in our freshman year at UK. I was washing clothes and getting ready to move from south to north campus, and Anne wanted to watch X-Men on the TV set. The rest is history. Nic is also awesome, and Anne and Nic together just multiply their own separate "awesomeness". Anne, you two are TOTALLY welcome any time to Anchorage!!!!

Yesterday, I got to go to Dave and Busters in Cincinnati with my work team. Did you know that there is a curling equivalent game called "Table Shuffleboard"? I am totally addicted and thinking about how I can make one in my house. The worst part about going to D&Bs was...THEY TOOK OUT BATTLE TECH!!!!! Can you believe it? My entire video-gaming world collapsed. Other than that, we played all sorts of insane games, from flying an airliner to shooting people to bowling on a ship (not as easy as it sounds). As usual, I was very bad at most of them but I really like playing all of them!!!!

This weekend, my little brother (who is not little by the way anymore of course) is getting married!!!! After the wedding, we fly back to the "Good Land" of Anchorage on Sunday.

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Anniversary!

Six years, Six days, in 06...
Frank and I finally had our anniversary dinner today at the Winds Cafe in Yellow Springs. Frank and I shared a bottle of wine (Old Plains Cab...very very good), and had a really great meal. The lime-marinated Barramundi was just incredible, and the raspberry gateau with a brown sugar icing was just..phenomenal. If you are ever in Dayton Ohio, it's well worth your while to take a trip to Yellow Springs.

Floyd
Did anyone watch the greatest single-day performance in Tour de France history on Thursday? Floyd Landis is a bike-riding monster!

Thunderstorm
There are very few things to me as comforting as sleeping through a thunderstorm. It's like nature's lullaby. I like the sound that the rain makes as it hits your window, the rolling thunder, and the flicker of light.

Have a great weekend!

Starlings, Tater Tots, Space Invaders

Sorry for not blogging in a while. Frank and I are now in Dayton Ohio, our second stop on our midwest tour.

Fried Potato Miracle
Between the travel and losing about 8 lbs, I have developed an icky feeling in my stomach. Absolutely nothing has sounded tasty to me except for Tater Tots today. Guess what? The Tater Tots cured my stomach woes!

Attack of the Birds
Fairborn is under aviary siege! There are HUNDREDS of starlings in the backyard. For those of you who don't know, starlings can be pretty destructive. They are also pretty loud. However, they are also very smart -- did you know that they can mimic car alarms and human speech patterns?

Thursday Fun
Ever wanted to play a game of Human Space Invaders?

Thursday Variety

As usual, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are very hard days for me so I tend not to have blogging enthusiasm. This of course was exacerbated by prolonged baseball exposure. Hopefully a two-day baseball hiatus will help this condition.

In the meantime, just a few fun links for your Thursday:

Looking Smart for Lazy People
Since Sudoku is really just one big multi-dimensional system of equations, solve Sudoku (Without even thinking!) by using an algorithm.

Enlighten us, Ted
More series of tubes humor from our pal Ted Stevens.

Karaoke Overload!
After her trip, Anne is SICK of Karaoke!

Anchorage Happenings: Quoth the Raven...
A Raven apparently picked the wrong substation to perch on, causing a two hour power outage on Wednesday morning. Also, a moose calf played in someone's sprinkler in Spenard.

Happy Thursday!

Gooch gets it done

Sorry that I didn't blog today, but I was really tired after watching baseball. Apparently, the game can go on forever, as the White Sox and Red Sox demonstrated last night. Yes, that's 6 hours and 19 minutes of baseball. Ouch!

In the end, I think even Boston was relieved that Tadahito (Gooch) Iguchi ended the game!

Friday Antics

After a long day of being a playmate to Miss Scarlett, talking on the phone, and typing on the computer, Mom and I went to see a movie at an actual movie theater. The movie we chose was "The Devil Wears Prada"" with Meryl Streep.

Before we could get to the movie though, we had to watch about a half hour of commercials and previews. I had no idea how totally "out" of it I was until I saw the commercial for "ringbacks", which apparently is music that you can configure so people calling you on your cell phone can listen to Busta Rhymes or whatever while wating for you to answer your phone. Do we really need things like this? Is the normal "ring" so inconvenient for folks that we have to entertain them while they wait the extra 10s for you to pick up?

Anyways, the movie I thought was pretty good, although it lacks humor and ends without completely tying the loose ends or driving home the message, leaving the viewer kind of confused.

Befuddled, we left the theatre and went to Chili's across the street. As we came to the door, a young lady with a headset enthusiastically opened the door for us, gretting us with "HI! WELCOME TO CHILI'S! :) :) :)". I couldn't hear the smiley faces, but she was so perky you knew they were there. We followed her as she bounced over to a table, and told us "HERE YOU GO! ENJOY YOUR DINNER!!!! BOB WILL BE YOUR SERVER TONIGHT! :)!". Then Bob came by "HEY! WELCOME TO CHILI'S! HOW ARE YOU TWO LADIES DOING??? CAN I START YOU TWO OFF WITH ONE OF OUR FAMOUS MARGARITAS?". That was just the start of it. The flair in that restaurant was suffocating. I am a pretty relaxed gal and enjoy happy employees like everyone else, but even I was thinking "TONE IT DOWN :) :)!".

Today, we've had fun shopping. My parents have had a pretty awful wireless connection, so I got a new nerd puzzle to figure out in the form of a wireless router. It's working great...except for the fact that the Tivo refuses to recognize the new signal, which is making me very irritable. It was interfering with the White Sox game, so I stopped working on it for a bit.

Oh, yes, I know you were worried, but the White Sox are most definitely playing today. They are losing to the Red Sox, and we are in the 9th inning. So, this means we have to do all of the innings this time, which is unfortunate.

Have a happy weekend!

Tubes?

UPDATE: Mom pointed out that not everyone knows who Ted Stevens is. Ted is the senior senator from Alaska, and is on the Commerce Committee in the Senate.

Oh Geez. Ted Stevens explains the miracles of the Internet.

My favorite quotes:
"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially."

Hmm. Maybe tell the staffers not to send you the entire internet as an attachment.

Another one:
"And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes."

Tubes?????

I don't know about you, but I think perhaps Ted should not be on the committee amending a telecommunications bill.

Running, Fire...Baseball Baseball Baseball Baseball Baseball

Do Run Run Run...
Yesterday, Dad and I found ourselves in Lemont Illinois. No we weren't there for the Cialis Western Open, but for the Lemont Freedom Run. We signed up for the 10k and got ready to run amid the horrid music (MC Hammer, again???).

Lemont, I believe, is the only hilly place in Illinois. Hilly courses mean you get the ying of the downhills but unfortunately the yang of the uphills. At the beginning of the race, I felt pretty good and ran an 8 minute mile. Then there was a problem I noticed while fumbling with my ipod. I could not feel my fingers, which is a good sign that my body's underpowered cooling system was not holding up so well. So, I pretty much bonked around mile 3 (I should have done the 5k!).

Dad did great and looked like he'd barely run. However, he had almost 15 minutes to rest before I got to the finish.

Baseball Baseball Baseball Baseball...
Apparently the White Sox play every day in Chicago, and, to my delight, it is always televised. I have given them all nicknames to make it easier (they look all the same with those white and black outfits). My favorite players are now Juan "Boo-Boo" Uribe and Brian "Puddin'head" Anderson, who is not from Wright State by the way (that would be Brian Anderson from the Royals), and Bobby "Bagga Doughnuts" Jenks. Today, we are in the top of the last inning and apparently if the Orioles don't score three runs, I will be spared the bottom half of the inning. So I am root root rooting for the White Sox and Bagga Doughnuts Jenks.

UPDATE: Bagga Doughnuts came through!!!

Famous Ancestors
Now that I am watching all this baseball, I found out that it's in my blood. We come from a long line of White Sox fans, including Captain Stubby, of Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers. He is the lead singer on the infamous White Sox Fight Song (there's a link at the bottom to the audio file).

Fire in the Sky
Batavia Fireworks were AWESOME! They had smiley-face fireworks. Coming back, we had some issues because some kid decided he had had too much holiday and held his own grandmother hostage in her house, right on the road that everyone needed to go on to go home. How inconsiderate of him to do that --didn't he know that this is the biggest traffic night of Batavia, and my Mom needed to go to work in the morning?

Orange Ya Glad?

Why Illinois is Green
Today, Dad and I started the day with an early morning run to test his new personal GPS/heart monitor. It sounded like a great idea at the time -- it has been hot, and I have had trouble adjusting to the jungle-like conditions of the Midwest. However, it was not only hot, but by the time we turned around we were in a downpour. There's nothing like running three miles in wet and muggy clothes to make you run a negative split :).

Orange!
Today, Mom took me out to Randall Road to reacquaint her daughter to the wonders of midwestern commercial goodness. Along this one road, you can just about buy anything you ever wanted, at any box store you ever thought existed.

After a lunch at Chipotles (YEA!), we went to Dick's Sporting Goods. Walking into the store was like stepping into another dimension. The store was two stories tall with a huge amount of techy merchandise, but they were playing the "hits" of my youth -- like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. No joke. I couldn't help it and had to do the Hammer dance (Stop! Hammer time!).

I got an entire orange hiking outfit, complete with hat. When I wear it, I kind of look like a creamsicle. No, I am not Dutch, but seriously, I've spent so much time in my life in black that I think it's time to balance my wardrobe out a bit. Unfortunately, I tend to have a one-color mind so orange will be the new black for a while. Plus, have you ever seen a sad creamsicle? Probably not.

Oh, and tonight we are watching -- suprise -- a baseball game. This one is the White Sox and the Orioles. The White Sox are not playing very well and are going to lose. The sad thing is I am starting to remember the names of guys, although I still get confused about the rules. Right now is the last batter of the game -- Jim "Big Boy" Tome, and I'm secretly hoping that it's the third strike, but don't tell :)

Planes, Wine, Melee!

Watching landscape go by, like credits on a movie screen...
I am in Illinois now, but by the time you read this, Frank will be in Ohio working for the Air Force. The overnight flight was, as usual, uncomfortable. The unpleasantness was exacerbated by Frank's dry skin and, in my case, being in the middle seat, which always makes me cranky. At hour three of five, I started counting all the songs that have to do with planes on my ipod out of boredom.

Here are some of my favorite air travel-related lyrics. Can you name them without looking at the links?
1) "Out of the farmlands and into the grid/ the plan of the city was all that you saw"
2) "Out on the tar plains, the glides are moving/all looking for a new place to drive"--OK this is not a plane lyric, but it feels like it's about airports.
3) "I got me a pilot, she's going my way/if she's got wings, if she's got wings"

Happy Birthday!
Last night, we went to a restaurant called Villa Verona. This Italian restaurant sits in a little house in Geneva, and they make great Italian food.

Dino, our waiter, buttered us up by singing "Happy Birthday" to me because he did not think I was 21. He was lying of course but it still felt good!

Melee!
One of the traditions we have when Frank and I come down is playing "Smash Brothers Melee" while drinking a nice red wine. Melee is a game where you fight rounds with four other players, and it's an incredibly fun game to play with friends and family.

We all have our favorite players. Mom always plays Princess Peach, who floats very well and has a wicked kick. Frank always plays Kirby, a pink cream puff that can inhale other characters and take their powers. My favorite character is Jigglypuff, who is a pink jiggly-puffy creature that can sing other characters to sleep.

Of course, none of us really know what we are doing and just press buttons until we find something that works. That's part of the fun of the game. This is also why my fingers hurt today when I type.

Hincapie!
The Tour de France has started! While the lack of Basso and Ullrich is very unfortunate due to Operation Puerto, there's already a lot of excitement in this year's race. Thor Hushovd won the prologe but was cut badly by an oversized cardboard hand in today's stage, and Hincapie is in yellow (only the fourth American ever to wear the Maillot Jaune).

Well, back to baseball. The Cross-Town Shootout is happening in Chicago, and I am obligated to pay attention so that my parents let me watch the Tour coverage later tonight. In the yearly shootout, the White Sox and the Cubs play each other in a seven game series. Baseball takes forever to play!

Happy Holiday Weekend!