All I want for my birthday...

...is for Ewan to come home safe. He's in Iraq right now visiting the British troops.

Okay, I also want to win the lottery, have a magic elf hang the rest of the drywall at my house, have KK sing Happy Birthday Auntie Sunshine on my voicemail and, um, world peace. Not necessarily in that order. But I'll settle for my boy getting home with all his pretty pieces.

Oooh, I just figured out how to get the videos I tried to load last week to finally show up. Just had to hit "publish" again, go figure. See them below.

Overachiever

I'm going to make an attempt at uploading some videos too.

The quality on almost all of these is Extremely Crappy. Annoying little clicking sounds going on. They're all from the little video deal on my cheap camera, which I usually don't even realize is on. Explains the 14 two-second videos I just erased. These were all too cute or funny or something to delete though. Now if I could only figure out how to rotate them.

I've two others that still haven't worked. One is from Jboy's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", he played Mustard Seed and actually danced! The other is from Christmas Eve about four or five years ago. Macaroni and his cousins Malcolm and Jack did their own little rendition of Lord of the Rings, or Lord of the Dorks more accurately. Wish I could get them to load.

Photos, links & Netflix reviews. Oh My!

Finally got some photos uploaded. Lots of Ruby and some from the first day of school. We've got an awesome spider living in our front yard, but I haven't gotten a very good photo of it yet.

Going for a walk with Auntie Sunshine

"Enough photos, let's go!"

"Move it!"

Happy now.

Macaroni, Grandma & Ruby

I love the drawing in the background, it's Macaroni and Paul Wellstone.

My little chef

The oven is shocked...it's not a frozen pizza!

Macaroni was very proud of his Tofu Fish Sticks from

the Vegan Lunchbox & his cool new lunchbox

4th grade

He's a senior?!?!?

That blob is our spider. We need a name for her.

Not much else going on. Freaking out about the loan because we need to hang a shit load of drywall before we can close, and although I subscribe to This Old House and have a mad crush on Norm Abram, I don't know how to fix anything.

I'm reading The Killer Angels and really loving it. Counting down the days until the cruise and kind of half assed planning the trip to Europe. It doesn't sound like Heather (and maybe her friend Angie) can make it for Hogmanay but maybe we can hit Up Helly Aa instead. Although that's more than twice what I wanted to spend on a tour it sure looks like a blast. It all depends on when we get tickets to Othello. I may end up going all alone.

Netflix reviews:

Origin: Spirits of the Past

It was pretty good, 3 stars. We really like Japanese anime but this one had a sort of dumb ending.

Sudden Manhattan

I loved the late Adrienne Shelly in Waitress so I rented this one, which she also wrote, directed and starred in. Very cute, quirky movie...four and a half stars...and this dude looks a lot like Nathan. Who I really want to see in a beard now.

Mystery Train

Five stars, loved this one. Jboy loved all the Japanese and you can never go wrong with Buscemi. Favorite quote: "You got any more of those Japanese plums? Or other exotic fruits from around the world?"

Hope it sticks!

I quit drinking soda to help my imaginary boyfriend stop smoking, by osmosis or something. Very cute little interview of him here talking about how he quit.

Finished watching Buffy...took 42 days to watch 144 episodes. Actually 146 because I had to watch OMWF and Tabula Rasa twice.

On to Angel now. I have no life.

Happy Birthday Mandy!

Sweet Seventeen this year. Crappy photo from her scavenger hunt party last year.

TIME agrees

100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME

Deja Voodoo

It just hit me that Jboy is a senior at my old high school. I've been well aware of the fact that he's a senior and that I'm freaking old, but I just realized that he's sitting in the same building, eating in the same lunchroom, might even have the same locker. Too. F'ing. Weird.

He was super excited when he got home yesterday. Four AP classes! Physics! Piano! Piano because they cut Japanese, which sucks, but yea!piano!

He also found out that there will be a Quiz Bowl team again this year. Man, things have changed. I'm sure I was not only NOT excited about my classes but I probably spent the evening of my first day as a senior either nursing a hangover or working one up. I love my nerdy kid.



Okay...Macaroni had a good, although much less "woo hoo" first day of school. He's very easy, teachers dream. He was excited to make Tofu Fish Sticks for his lunch when he got home from his dad's house. I took a bunch of photos, will have to post them later.

I also took photos of the spider in our garden. Ha, I called it a garden. Anyway, the spider has been working up a little nest of some sort, basically covered the top of a dead lily with thick, white webbing. He's been there for awhile and you can usually see him sitting in there. Well, his very artistic girlfriend showed up last night and spun a huge, gorgeous Spidey-style web in between two dead lilies, about two feet apart. Insane. She's at least the size of a quarter, maybe bigger. Macaroni is sure she's poisonous because he watches the Discovery Channel and if you watch Mythbusters then obviously you know everything there is to know about spiders. I ran in the house to grab my camera and ended up leaving my keys in the front door. It reminded me of this photo from another blog I read.

I'll be in my bunk

My imaginary boyfriend at the Venice Film Festival. He's so pretty! More here.

Immune to public humiliation

So I just re-read my post from the beginning of August. The one in which I thought stating my goals out loud would help me follow through with them. The only thing on the list that I've actually been doing is watching Buffy. Like a heroin addict. And I'm not exercising while I watch either, because that stupid glider is so squeaky I can't hear all of the hilarious dialog.

Jboy is a little worried about me. It hasn't even been a month and I've watched 108 episodes. Watched 14 of them on Saturday. Buffy is like crack, especially when your arthritis hurts and you're crabby and don't want to look at another human being. Except James Marsters.

I have done everything I can for the loan, just waiting for the underwriter now.

Besides hanging out in Sunnydale, I spent the weekend with Mandy and Jboy. We went to the dreaded Mall on Saturday night to see Superbad and were all so tired when we got home that we just crashed. No girlie sleep over stuff. Mandy worked Sunday and then yesterday the three of us went back to the Mall for a little last minute school shopping. Jboy got a couple of cute shirts/sweaters. He's very into stripes this year. Mandy tried on lots of jeans, shirts, shoes and bras and we ended up spending an obscene amount of money on a pair of jeans, which is both her back to school and birthday present. And still obscene.

Last night I got a very special delivery that is now on it's way to my bestest friend. And then I watched more Buffies.

Netflix review: Macaroni would have to write the reviews because all we've been Netflixing lately is Mythbusters. I love that he loves this show. Nerds are hot.

Superbad was very funny and completely inappropriate for me to be watching with Mandy and Jboy. Nobody should have to watch this movie with their parents. Starts out with a conversation about porn and never slows down. It kind of reminded me of watching Weird Science with Shayne and Shannon and Lisa after stumbling home from a party in high school, but in a really dirty Colin Ferrell kind of way. There's a whole peni$ montage that almost had me crying I was laughing so hard. I think my opinion of the movie may have been way different if the kids weren't with but I loved it. Mandy and Jboy did too. And how freaking cute are these kids?