merry christmas

merry christmas one and all.... ho ho ho mmmmmm...... hee hee

snotty

changing my nickname from buffy to snotty. week ago today started coming down with a cold and i still have an over abundance of snot. i like to see how many disgusting noises i can make trying to get rid of aforementioned snot. i know, tmi... sorry. but this has been my life for a week and it's only fair you get to be a part of it. i'm a giving type person like that.

those who say dogs can't see tv don't know my lily. when she was a little puppy i was holding her in my lap and she sat there looking at the screen for a good 5 minutes. volume wasn't even on. well the definitive piece of evidence happened this weekend when was flopped on the floor when some commercial came on. she sat up staring at the screen (had a bright blue background and a guy with a bright orange shirt) and she barked and barked till it ended.

several weeks ago i bought some beautiful yarn at the yarn store to make this super cute felted (wool yarn that's washed so it fuses together) purse. funny part is i don't know how to knit. that's not really entirely true. i can knit a simple scarf, but that's it. the purse requires someone who knows what they are doing. maybe if i fall asleep with a knitting show on tv i'll learn through osmosis? i can't begin to imagine what i was thinking in buying all this stuff. it will be my project over christmas to learn how. my incentive will be that i promise to post a picture of it afterwards. now i have to.

pappies

had a good weekend. decided to take friday off and my dad came down so we would go around to some air museums. first stop was the cavanaugh museum at addison airport. mostly ww1 and ww2 planes. we were told that the pilot of the plane in the pic still comes by about once a year. they say he sits alone in the cockpit of the plane for about an hour not saying a word. must be bittersweet memories he carries with him. second stop was american airlines museum. it was anti-climatic as most of it was under construction. however, there's a flight simulator you can sit in and an old braniff pappy sits in there with you to guide you and show you what to do. i flew us under the golden gate bridge and in for a smooth landing, unfortunately i drove us right off the runway, into the grass probably killing all on board... oh well. at least no one had to freeze to death or be eaten by sharks in the bay, right?

fun day came to a crashing halt when we came back to my house to find my dad's dog having destroyed my blinds in the kitchen. apparently he has separation anxiety. good thing he's cute!

how do i do it

i go to the video store tonight to rent a movie. since it's a new release, the shelf where they should be is empty. drat. i go to the front to see if it's available. after looking in the 'to be restocked queue' i walk up to a clerk and oh so casually and completely innocently ask "what are the chances of me getting knocked up tonight?" as soon as it comes out of my mouth i was horrified. not skipping a beat, the cute video guys says 'well, my shift ends at 10:00.' i turn beat red and make a hasty exit.

in other news, my dad is in washington state visiting his relatives. he came across some cool old family photos at his cousin's house and scanned a few. the man in the middle is my great grandfather's father. he fought in the civil war. why do they always look so freakin' sad and depressed? is it the clothes perhaps? i'm so glad someone invented the word 'cheese' so that folks would smile in pictures.

maniacal waver

on my way home from work tonight i was driving behind a guy in a big pickup truck. he kept waving frantically at me and i thought 'who the heck is this guy?'. ..... then i realized the crazed waving arm belonged to that of a large dog's bushy tail.
geez.. and here i thought i was being hit on.

geriatric giraffes

just read in our local news about the world's oldest giraffe, Hildy, dying this morning. she was born and raised at the Dallas zoo. i remember seeing her and feeling the same now as i did then: sad. sad that she never knew what it was like to live in the wild. granted animals in captivity live longer than they would in the wild as they are protected and have health care, but does it make it right? and how would you miss what you never knew? not to mention the smell.. you ever take a big whiff by the elephant and giraffe enclosures?
here's a cool thing to do next time you go to the zoo. at the orangutan cages, open your purse and hold it out for them. they will come down and try to see in your purse. it works everytime- tried and true. their curiosity gets the better of them and they can't help but look. they'll sit and stare in to your purse for as long as you let them. i bet they just want a breath mint or a kleenex perhaps. they just need to adopt a grandma.

savory thoughts

it's always said that you should never go to the grocery store hungry. primarily because you'll buy lots of food you wouldn't have ordinarily purchased, just because it sounded good. i have a different reason: lip licking. casually strolling down the aisle looking for your favorite rice a roni flavor when you spy something that just sounds good. then, to your horror you realize you are licking your lips. it's so not cute, but completely unconscious. so embarassing.

desenex and you

i'm declaring a moratorium on the phrase 'it is what it is'. you don't hear this uttered in a moment of shear elation. "you just won the $100 million lottery- what do you think!" "well, it is what it is..."
it's such an easy out- you big loser, you just lost, is there anything you'd like to say? "it is what it is."
how bout you grow a back bone and say what you really feel? "i'm a total douchebag and this whole situation sux."

i've traveled quite a bit the last few weeks. i've been through lots of airports, and my bare feet have traipsed across many other bare feet thanks to rich@rd reid. the one thing that goes through my mind as i stand in those lines is.. if you can pee in the shower to kill athletes foot, dont' you think for your own protection you could pee in front of the scanners? i think this is a perfectly reasonable offer. either that or i could just wear sox i spose.

good news bad news

bad news: this is NOT on the new cd
good news: awesome acoustic version with a 12 string

bad friends and warm cookies

i am a bad friend.. i really am. i don't intend to be, but sometimes i just get in weird funks and sort of check out for a while. my friends call me, but i don't return the calls. i fully intend and expect to, it's just that tomorrow becomes the next day, and then it's a week later. it's like as soon as i walk in my front door i close off the world. it doesn't make any sense because i love seeing my friends and hanging out and am so glad when i get to see them.... maybe i need prozac? i still have a presciption that my dog annie used to take - it's doggy prozac called chlomicalm... think that would work? she was only 6 pounds, so how much harm could it do? i'm kidding of course, but it blows my mind that we give human drugs to dogs. once when my dachshund was sick, the vet told me to give her pepto bismol- and i'll be damned if it didn't work! and she liked it too... even better!

sad news about the bunnies folks..... none of them made it. checked in with the girl who took them in and she said she thought one of them (she named him baxter.. i bet he could speak spanish) would make it as he had opened his eyes, but sadly it wasn't meant to be... drats.

here's something completely ridiculous that happened to me on my recent business travels- we had an aborted landing coming in to boston last tuesday! a fog bank made a sudden turn and settled over the run way as we were coming in- i looked down and saw the run way 15-20 feet below us and suddenly the pilot revs the engines and we start climbing... i cried when we landed the second time. felt like such an idiot, but geezus that was scary. fortunately the ride back last night was flawless.. i even was upgraded to first class. mmm.. warm cookies straight out of the oven.

Funny hippo song

don't know what happened in post below.. but here it is again.....

Funny hippo song

Yes it's a minute of your life you'll never get back, but you'll thank me later. as long as we are on the subject of animals.. do this.. it's too funny...

http://www.clickpix.de/horses.htm

my heroine

have been by the pet store a few times to check on the bunnies, but the girl hasn't been there. rats! i think lily can be officially deemed a hero now (or is it heroine) as she has saved the bunny's lives. over the weekend, i found the mother rabbit taking a dirt nap behind the spa. don't know what happened to her, but those babies surely would have died without her. all this death and dying and sadness really had me thinking. and i came to one conclusion.. life's too short to buy cheap toilet paper.

high bunny drama

i left out a small detail about lily's bunny... there used to be two of them. but in the past few weeks, there's only been one. i assumed something happened to the first rabbit, but as it turns out they were boyfriend and girlfriend. i let the dog out this evening and she makes a b-line for the herb garden. she's head first in the rosemary bush and I knew immediately this wasn't going to turn out well. sure enough she pops out with something in her mouth. my mom and i corner her and pry her jaws open and out flops a tenny tiny baby bunny!!!!! i start running around the yard in a panic- what to do what to do.. so I get my witts about me. get a box and scoop the poor little wet thing up and put her in it. i knew of course she had to have siblings so back i go to the rosemary bush. sure enough, two more. let me tell you, these things are WICKED cute... look like little chipmunks- they have their hair (they're about 2 1/2 inches long) and their ears are starting to grow longer. what the heck do you do with baby bunnies whose mother is probably NOT going to come back now and who you can't put back in the nest as the dog will get them again. I throw them in the back of the car and zoom down the street to the animal shelter. it's friday night at 8:30- CLOSED. i call animal control as i'm leaving the shelter and they don't know if they'll come (the operator tells me) if the animal isn't injured. at this point i don't know if the bunny pried out of lily's jaws will make it. in desperation i stop at the pet store at one minute till close hoping they might have numbers or something! well these are some lucky bunnies, because Kristine tells me "i'm the small animal caretaker and i know how to take care of them" . relief! poor little defenseless things! and so cute!! i wished in retrospect i had taken a pic but in my panic to get them to safety i forgot. it even looks like the little runt that lily carried off will make it too (i hope).
so here's to Kristine - THANK YOU!
as for lily- i'm so disgusted.. i know she's a dog and that's what dogs do, but i was so horrified!

zucchini babies

my dad is an avid photographer. by avid, I mean he takes lots of pictures and by photographer, I mean he has a camera. altho to give him credit, he does have an interesting eye for what he thinks is art. he recently sent me a picture of a zucchini he grew. it reminded me of my youth and living in washington state. because of the mountains surrounding the valley (at one time active volcanoes) the land yields amazing produce. my grandmother would grow zucchinis the size of small babies. as a 4 year old child, my idea was to dress up said zucchinis any push them around in my baby carriage. i tried to do that with the cats, but they would never stay in the carriage. zucchinis stay exactly where you put them as long as you don't put them on a hill.

lily

my baby sister lily. she's a cavalier king charles spaniel and very energetic. her hobbies are playing with her toys (knows them by name), eating her chew sticks, eating dryer sheets, eating books, eating plants and oh yeah, chasing bunnies and birds. there is construction going on behind the house in the greenbelt and has apparently stirred up the rabbits. one of which has taken up permanent residence in my mom's back yard. this, fortunately, has provided HOURS of entertainment for lily. when she's not looking for something to get in to, she stands sentry at the back door hoping for a bunny glance. when she does see one, she goes nutty. i was telling my friend alyssa that she sounds like a chimp- you know that screeching noise they make when they're excited- that's what she does... one of these days i'll capture it on camera. i don't know what she'd do if she were to catch one though. silly lily, rabbits aren't for you!

whimsical ditties and amusing anecdotes

fine. i give up. all my friends are doing it, so i will too. i will join the land of the bloggers.
a friend of mine and i long ago were going to write a book of whimsical ditties and amusing anecdotes. that never came to fruition and was long before the time of the internets.. so enter blog stage left and now maybe i have a venue? will see how it goes... be kind, i'm fragile.

so it goes something like this- the really cute maintenance dude was walking out for the day at work:
he: good night
me: takealickanick!!

yep....

this is my track record, and one of the many reasons why i'm in my late 30's and never married. i believe my brain wanted to say "take care, have a good day", but it didn't quite work out. it's been 10 years and my friends still don't say goodbye to me without saying 'takealickanick'. when I first met these friends (at work) and we were all getting to know each other, i'd tell stories of my family. one story i was relating was of my brother. i told them what a pain in the neck it was to provide food for him because he's a vegetable. the horrified looks on their faces made me quickly realize that they didn't know me that good yet... my brother was a vegetarian. i explained myself and their immediate relieft was obvious... oops.. sorry about that guys.
i've never tried to take life seriouslly, but sometimes you're forced in to it.

i have a baby sister. she's one and a half and is really sweet. her name is lily. she's black and white and has super soft long ears. she likes to look out the window waiting for bunny sitings. she also likes to eat books. but i'll tell you more about her later- and a picture or two.