Destined for Stardom

Made it through a whirlwind weekend and now need a rest but, alas, I'm back in the saddle again.

Friday night, I worked until after eight and then took the kiddos, while I was in a state of utter exhaustion, to see local teen band 441. These talented kids write and play mostly originals (except for some notable songs like Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl?) and the crowd is chock full of youngsters dancing and holding giant poster board signs. I felt like I was at the filming of teevee's fictitious Big Time Rush except that people actually like 441. Band aside, I loved watching a) the break dancing elementary school boys and b) the pseudo-hipster parents rockin' out (i.e., a pathetic mirror to my own aging soul).

After taking the boys to swimming on Saturday, I finally made it with my girlfriend Gretchen to the George Eastman House to see the Taking Aim: Unforgettable Rock 'n' Roll Photographs Selected By Graham Nash exhibit just before its run in Rochester ended. I'm so glad I made it! As Gretchen said, every museum should have The Clash playing in the background. I couldn't agree more. The photos were fascinating. I even liked the quotes on the walls . . .

I want to get a real camera and spend a year recreating all of the photos with my kids and girlfriends. I think I'll start with my favorite Neko Case picture (taken by Alice Wheeler); but, it'll star me and my boyfriends -- when they're old enough to drive.

It was nice having a girlie day. Shopping at the Parkleigh Pharmacy (buying nothing), lounging at Starbucks on Monroe, looking for fun stuff at Archimage and finally buying a delicious chocolate ganache cake for Grannie Annie's birthday at Goodness Cakes.

On our way home, we stopped to take more pics of the snow monsters. Note the one from last week is now fully colored and in the process of eating someone!

Word Up

I was just creating a Wordle image for a presentation to depict graphically just how fragmented our client's industry is. Afterward, I decided to throw my whole resume into the Wordle application to see what would happen.

Watching the Detectives

Last night Son #1 needed snuggles to fall asleep. He was all jacked up about playing his saxamaphone three times today in a series of school concerts. "Mama, it's as exciting as Christmas Eve."

Well, thank God he has that going for him now that the cover was blown on Santa earlier this month. The kids figured it out after discovering Santa's wrapping paper in my closet. Neither was too upset although Son #1 was like the penultimate sleuth. "That verifies Tommy's suspicions, as well."

Son #2 was very offhanded in his approach. "Yeah, I figured as much." A clear lack of concern there. However, a day or two ago, he offered up the following incongruous statement, "I'm beginning to think that the Easter bunny may not exist either."

Go figure.

Trading Places

Every once in a while (i.e., a dozen or so times per day), my coworker Jennifer and I get a bit jealous of someone we know or read about. A client with the proverbial money tree in his yard. The woman who found out she's Oprah's half sister (ka ching). Or today's 20+ year old entrepreneur who just graduated from RIT but also started her own business and made millions . . .

Envy is never, ever a good thing to allow to fester -- especially when we each have so much to be grateful for.

The other day, as I was driving along the snow swept highway to visit a client and feeling a little down about absolutely nothing, an old Nik Kershaw song came on the air and the lyrics made me laugh. "I got it bad, you don't know how bad I got it. You got it easy, you don't know when you've got it good."

Wouldn't it be good to be in your shoes even if it was for just one day?



In a semi-related note, why are Nik Kershaw and Marshall Crenshaw inexplicably intertwined in my synapses?

Venus Envy

Shrieked in our family room last night, "Dude, I just Saturn Uranus."

Fashion Crime

For ages now, I have been thinking of starting a blog in which I would shop once/week at a store with a crappy brand image for fashion (e.g., Sears) and I would limit myself to items on the sale rack. I wondered if I could find crazy bargains and still look good (relatively speaking!) or if it would be so confining that I would begin to look like a character in Mudflap Bubbas' old life.

On Thursday, I was running an errand and briefly stopped into the Dress Barn on an ancillary scouting expedition.

The findings are shocking: The Dress Barn fashion is a) actually worse than I ever imagined (and I'm pretty imaginative) and b) much more expensive than my middle American budget can afford.

Example: Marled Hooded Sweater Coat -- originally $49.99 | now $25.00

Their own site says, "Operates a chain of off-price women's apparel stores." But twenty five dollars for that? Is that "off-price" or just "off-fashion"? Is that affordable when half of all U.S. households generate income less than $46K per year?

So I have to rethink my middle Americana chic shopping blog. I'm not sure I want to drop $1300 this year on a load of crap just for the challenge.

Gone Daddy Gone

I was on a WebEx this morning when the host's cell phone rang. Wait, I recognize that xylophone!

Snow Monster

Every morning during the winter months I pass the incredible snow monsters on Highland Avenue. They're usually brightly colored (food coloring?) and awe inspiring. Yesterday, I finally stopped. The snow sculptor was on a ladder fixing the larger of the two so I grabbed a quick picture of the unadorned creature to his left.

Isn't he great?

I asked the dude on the ladder if he's an artist. Nope, he's the chef at Rooney's! (Yum!) Art in the kitchen; art in the world.

I'll have to walk up the street at lunchtime and see how the other leviathan turned out.

Nuttin' Honey

Tip #1 on how to make a fourth grade boy totally crack up: Call your wife "honey."

Did you just call her honey? Ha! I've never heard that one before!

Arrogant Bastard

I posted a few years ago that I really enjoyed the Arrogant Bastard Ale I had at the Dinosaur.

Today, the hubby brought a bottle home. More than the beer, I love the copy.

"This is an aggressive beer. You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or the sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it’s made in a little brewery, or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow beer will give you more sex appeal. Perhaps you think multi-million dollar ad campaigns make a beer taste better. Perhaps you’re mouthing your words as you read this."

As if that wasn't funny enough, their "Questions or comments?" section says:

"If you don't like this beer, keep it to yourself -- we don't want to hear from any sniveling yellow-beer-drinkin' wimps, 'cause this beer wasn't made for you."

I am not worthy.

Mystery Solved

I ran into a friend a week or two ago who I had last seen at a Christmas party where he had clearly tied one on. He said, "My memory is a little fuzzy but I didn't forget you jumping rope with the Christmas lights." Say what?

At a wake this afternoon, I finally heard the story. Two of my wilder girlfriends, who usually wear ornament earrings and blinking necklaces/rings/etc., were standing together at the holiday party and everyone kept commenting on how understated they were this year. (The holiday tiara wasn't enough apparently.) Finally, one grabbed all of the Christmas lights and wrapped them around her body just to get people to shut up. When she couldn't mingle against the wall all night, she then had her friends trying to find an extension cord. Somehow, as it does, it turned into a full-on, double dutch, jump rope contest indoors until someone landed on a bulb and it shattered. 

So I have to ask myself: why do I always leave too early?

Verily Verily

I stumbled upon the Books Ngram Viewer in Google labs that allows you to graph words or phrases published in books over time. As one does, I began wondering when phrases like "Abraham begat Isaac" and "Rehoboam begat Abijah" became less common than phrases such as "Dude, where's my car?"

Answer: sometime in the mid- to late-1970s.

A Day Without Goals

What a great day to sleep in and read the New York Times: A Day Without Goals. Love the pun. What a cutie.

Read the book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton yesterday. This snippet, about a day in the life of employees at a multinational accountancy, struck me as particularly poignant.

These achievements will no doubt lose some of their significance with the perspective of time. Three years from now, the diary of the afternoon of the twenty-ninth of July will have become almost unintelligible, when it had once been sharply divided into pressing hour-long increments, devoted to appointments with colleagues whose very names and faces will have grown indistinct.

Sad but true. If I try to remember what was so important that I never made it to girls' weekend in the Hamptons late August two summers ago, I cannot for the life of me begin to imagine. But it certainly was seemingly critical at the time.

Ah well, must go to bed on time tonight so I can awaken early, go swimming and be in the office by 7:30 a.m. so I can meet my pressing deadlines, in billable increments, for clients whose very names and faces will grow indistinct soon.

That's life.

But This Year Goes to Eleven

Well, Christmas has come and gone. And so have most of my memories. I meant to post over that week but I was either busy with relatives and parties or asleep.

In addition to having a fabulous time with family and friends, highlights of the week included:

1. The dance-off at our neighborhood party where Son #2 took his shirt off and swirled it in the air like a Chippendale's dancer while slapping his butt. Um, not sure where he learned that . . . 
2. Watching all of the kids at the party breaking open the Christmas crackers to find they were filled with non-kid items. "Yea, I got nail clippers!" Or "Hey, what's this?" (Answer: a shoe horn. Awesome!)
3. Two signed contracts not to wake us up before 6:00 a.m. on Christmas day that were reneged upon at approximately 4:00 a.m. by one and 5:00 a.m. by the other. 
4. A very sweet note left for Santa (see below). Santa responded with his own note including details of the beer he shared with daddy along with something vile about flatulence. (The lesser known perils of riding in a sleigh behind nine reindeer.)
5. The loot. And boy was there loot. Drums. iPod Touches. Xbox Kinect and Xbox Live. And much, much more. (Heigh-ho, heigh-ho . . . )
6. Sledding in Mendon Ponds Park. God's natural half-pipe. 
7. Culminating, thankfully, with the neighborhood New Year's Eve party which was very quiet this year (vs. years past). 12:01 a.m.: time to go! 

Looking forward (I think) to what 2011 can bring.

MYOB

Last night, Son #2 coined a new phrase: MYObesity.

After I recovered from laughing, I said, "Wow, you are clever" to which he responded, "Yeah, I've got a lot of hook, line and sinkers." I see a future in writing captions for the Daily Show.

Do they hire nine year old boys?

The Owl House Review

Owl House is a very, very, very fine house . . . vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free in a charming old house (not Hooters).

My girlfriends and I went out last night to Owl House which has been garnering a lot of fabulous press lately including many yummy comments on Facebook. As someone who loves herself a cheeseburger but wishes she were a vegan, I just had to try it. After watching Food, Inc. a while back, I've been yearning to find great tasting yet good-for-ya (and the livestock) food. And, it's the New Year: time to eat well, right?

On Google, it has 31 reviews and 4.5 stars from sources such as Open Table, Beer Advocate, and TripAdvisor. Pretty impressive, huh!

On UrbanSpoon, it has 10 reviews and 5.0 stars. A perfect record.

On Facebook, it has over 1300 fans including six of my friends. Ah but not the friends I was with last night.

One word: Meh.

But first, our waitress was one of the best servers on the planet. No joke. Charming. Smiling. Affable. Helpful. Calm. Patient. Absolutely perfect. She was imported from Vancouver by way of Toronto or some such. Loved her. And the rest of the front of the house. It's a very warm and friendly atmosphere.

The food was, technically speaking, yucky. The cornmeal crusted, smoked tofu? Deep fried to a greasy perfection. I awoke in the middle of the night with stomach pains. The crunchy tilapia tacos? Flavor-for-flavor, identical twin to the smoked tofu. In a blind taste test, it would be impossible to differentiate between the two. I could go on but I cannot be bothered. Lentil burger? Okay when drenched in garlic mayo. Sirloin steak sandwich? Grizzle galore. A Sarah Palin favorite.

The best foods that we tried? #1: Grilled flatbead with fig, pear and goat cheese. Delicious. #2: The smoked trout hummus. #3: The rosemary & cracked pepper fries. (Because who doesn't like fries on a new year "diet"?)

Would I go back? Oddly enough, yes. It still contains the promise of something more. The whisper of health that better selections from the menu may have offered. Maybe, just maybe, the "real" chef called in sick and we were there on an off night? Or they have since cleaned the deep fryer? (Ack.)

Keep ya posted.

The Joy of Growing Old

I just had to pick this up from the newsstand over the holidays. Date stamped the week of my 46th birthday. Let life begin!