t-gives 09

Thanksgiving is at Oxford this year!

You're invited, and here's what to expect:
a giant turkey!
cats in outfits! (hopefully)
hearing what other people are thankful for!
special guests from Long Island! New York! Baltimore! Washington! (some of them librarians!)
tiramizawesome! (jokes)
hanging out with people who aren't hanging out with their parents!
Ryan's story about a girl!
the DOG SHOW on TV!
parades with balloons!
not knowing where to sit, and not caring!

Now don't forget this thing is potluck. You're supposed to bring a dish, or a bottle of wine. Find the recipe, or buy the wine today - you know that state store will be closed tomorrow, don't be silly. 8pm.

Oh, AND Rob said he's bringing some new board games, and I'd really like to get together a craft so we can all make Thanksgiving headdresses, but no promises.

posta Rica

(Imagine a picture of a sunset over the Pacific here. Palm trees and everything. I didn't have a camera, and none of us did any internetting or anything, so instead, a Post-Costa-Rica update).
a list (of funny things), for old time's sake:

1. Taxi drivers that ROCK OUT to Journey.

2. A certain traveling companion fell hard for a "hot babe" at the hostel. Tiny, cute, Norwegian girl. Who wears her hood up the whole time. Because she has horns. Surprise!

3. Sarah wiping sand from her butt on my leg. Because I "didn't believe her" regarding how much sand was in her bathing suit.

4. Souvenirs from San Salvador. I'll show you someday if you're over. Pretty weird/funny/sexy. I bought two. One for our house (to show you), and one I will probably give to JB, because he has the most potential to feel uncomfortable about it.

5. Monkeys trying to steal a guy's underpants at the beach.

6. Lady wearing children's underpants as a hat, next to us on plane. Underpants featuring a print with a child who had horns.

7. Hotels with elaborate, daily changing towel animals. (Imagine more pictures here. Maybe soon.)

8. Beetlejuice. "Betlegeuce".

9. Getting stung by a jellyfish, and Sarah wanting to pee on my arm.

10. 16:3 (emails waiting when I got home:emails with TOP SECRET in the subject line).

4:2:16:0

(packing ratio)

dresses:sunglasses:granola bars:jeans

emails from my mom

"I think you might like the zip line trip more than volcanoes....lots of lava, black rocks, and maybe orange HOT lava."

b>g

Later tonight (really, it's tomorrow morning, but who's counting?) Ryan and I embark on a series of planes to that most central country of Central America: Costa Rica.

It's about time because things haven't been going super awesome:
I was trying to fix up my haircut. I noticed there was some cat hair in the clippers. I cleaned them. Forgot to put the guard back on, and started shaving my head. Bald. Just one strip.

My favorite best bike (which was really Kimmy's) got stolen Saturday night (after losing probably 3 or 4 serious games of Yahtzee). "Oh, now you can just ride your scooter more now, right?" Wrong. Scooter's in the shop. Same old problem, different diagnosis.

Aside from people making pancakes TWICE this weekend, the bads outweighed the goods. Hopefully the sun is shining at the equator.

news alerts

1. My newest body fail has gone from "probably" to "definitely", but with an A-OK for travel.

2. The Uniform Project had it's first death. My whole take on her is

a. it's kind of awesome that she's raising money for poor school kids
b. it's pretty dumb that she's promoting "sustainable clothing" by wearing only one dress, meanwhile exhausting closetfulls of accessories and shoes
c. she always makes a sideways smirky face

It's not fun and games anymore.

3. We're having Thanksgiving, if you want to come: wine, potluck.

4. There are no colones in Philadelphia. Tried to exchange money today, no dice.

5. (Not for the feint of heart) Swiss Cheese Man has a name, and it's Chris.

chandedeer

So, this idea developed yesterday, about making a chandelier out of baby deer: a chandedeer.*

(Imagine a tiered cake, covered with tiny deer cupcake toppers, but then flipped upside down, hanging from the ceiling, and with a light inside instead of cake).

So, I've posed the question to the aforementioned Internet Librarians, about a good source for LOTS of deer. We'll see if they can do better than Etsy. I'm looking for quantity, bang for buck**. I want a thousand deer for ten dollars or something. The impossible dream? We'll see.

*depending on how this turns out...it might up an "upstairs hallway" or "craft room" type lighting fixture.
**pun not intended, but good.

IPL

If you don't know about Cha-Cha, it's this website/text message service, where you just ask a question, then someone looks it up and gets back to you.
A year or two ago, we were really into Cha-Cha. They'd answer any question, send you a recipe, whatever. Some of us (Ryan, myself, maybe Sarah?) even worked for Cha-Cha, learning their guidelines, answering people's questions.
Then it got really dumb.
They started paying a lot less, sending stupid jokey answers, and ADVERTISING to your phone, which was the worst.

[End Cha-Cha era.]

Last week, I needed a picture of a girl from Project Runway season 1, and all of us had kind of a hard time finding the perfect picture (thanks for your efforts Kim, Kelly, others).
Then Holly drops this bombshell: The Internet Public Library. You just ask a question, and little Amanda McKnight's are working all the time, just looking up answers for you! For free! For real! They have to give sources (that aren't wikipedia) and everything! How many good questions can we ask them? THE INTERNET IS AWESOME.

[Enter IPL era.]

cuts, aliens, perscriptions

On Friday, Kimmy and Lulu and I went and got fancy lady haircuts at Toppers Salon. Long story short - they were free haircuts.
Bryce cut my hair. I like it fine, and it's more sticky-uppy than before. He got Project Runway and ANTM confused, which was...confusing.
Here's what my hair looks like (kind of) after a daytime nap.

Mostly it was really nice to have somebody shampoo my hair.

We also might get our eyebrows did there sometime soon. Again, free. I'm not sure if these are services I'd pay for, but I will tip for them.

This weekend, we went and saw The Fourth Kind. Which was kind of X-filesy, a tiny bit Blair Witchy, and presented as a docudrama. I yelled at some girls in the theatre for talking/texting too much (and probably saved their life.)
Movie? Pretty bad. A lot of spinning. A character in this movie directed AND wrote it. Sounds unbiased and true...

I also found out this week that I might/probably have MRSA. I've been a carrier (incubator) for it since brain surgery, but now it looks like it's in me for real. I'm on 3 different meds for it (one goes up my nose!), and if I DO have the MRSA, I'll be better next week. In the meantime, I can't have prolonged skin-to-skin contact with you.
While I was at the doctors, I read the new issue of Cosmo, which has a lot of tips about avoiding H1N1. Like (for instance), the least-likely-to-get-the-swine-flu sex positions, greetings, and kisses.
Thanks, Cosmopolitan.

locks

Today is Kimmy's birthday.

The plan is Yakitori Boy. Kelly wants to wear a pink wig, and maybe someone else (JB? Greg?) will wear that orange camo shirt, so they can pretend they're Coppola-ing. I don't sing at Karaoke, cause I'm too scaredy cat, but we've got a few superstars in the ranks.

Also, here's a (birthday) picture of Booger wearing MLB's new hair.

As far as 'activity parties' go, there was also a killer roller skating party this weekend. (I fell on my head, pretty hard, but that was bc we were trying to show off.)
In life? More themes and rentals, please.

Later: movie review (spoiler: bad), first haircuts, more.

half tricks

You might remember such lessons from my archives as "how to set the table" (fork goes on the left - 4 letters each, spoon and knife, on the right - five letters around).

Today, another lesson:

WhiskEy? (from) UnitEd StatEs, IrEland.
Whisky? (from) Japan, Scotland, Canada.

Get it? The "E"s?

This one's just about spelling, or about spelling things that are from different places. Stole from the Kitchn. I also really like using stock images lately. Makes me feel like a copy writer. JK.

can't get enough

of Google analytics.



Also, internet challenge:
Anybody out there who's really good at the internet? I need a largish picture of Nora Caliguri. With short hair. By 4:30. Just so you know, it's impossible.

on the SEPTA strike

I'm gonna come out and say it: I don't mind the SEPTA strike.
So far, it hasn't inconvenienced me at all. Now I always bike to work (because the traffic is kind of bananas, even if you're on a scooter) and back, even up the 5th street tunnel!
While biking, there's no need to worry about a bus running you over - so those giant "bus/bike" lanes are huge and safe.
I've also been doing tons of pilates and yoga (okay, pilates and yogilates) this week, which, while it doesn't seem directly related, has suspiciously coincided with the strike.
So, to me...I'm pretty sure it's fine. Until I have to get somewhere and it's pouring or something. Then I'll be mad.

loads

Good news: the strongest, most manly men we know took broken washing machine out of our basement last night AND some weirdo (probably) from Craigslist took it from the curb.

Since there's no Sports tonight (sorry everybody), doesn't someone want to invite me over to your house to watch a movie or a hundred episodes of television while I do my laundry? We'll only pause so I can switch loads. I'll buy Mexican food.

Seriously. My room is starting to smell. Like a boy's room.

crack

This is kind of weird.

I recently realized, that I have kind of a favorite thing? (Besides popcorn, going to the movies, MLB, haircuts, etc). This is ever since I was a little kid, but I just realized that I always do it, and it might not be totally normal.

Say I'm making something. Baking. Well, fake-baking, like from a box? Brownies or muffins or something? The BEST PART is putting the eggshells in the empty box (because the garbage is so far away, the box is right there, and I'm just not used to garbage disposals) and then squeezing the box so the eggshells crack like crazy.
It's so satisfying. Little things.

to-do, soon!

double last weeks pilates time of 8 minutes
finish inventing portfolio, just in case
eat so much Texas Toast
finding a day my library is actually open*
probably some sort of sports-viewing, right*?
haircuts (real ones!)
rollerskating parties*!?

*maybe more on these subjects later.

people look bad when they're sleeping

I had one of those really dreamy nights. And woke up with this AWESOME idea of taking my picture everyday when I woke up. Something about seeing a progression of haircuts or something, kind of like those girls that do "This is what I wore today" blogs. Anyway, I woke up (a little), did this, and then went back to sleep. Eventually got my act together, got to work, remembered to look through my phone, and found this:

I have the best ideas in my sleep (not). Like the "coke habit" costume, and that note I once wrote to Melissa.
I wasn't even able to lift my head up, or open my eyes (but somehow did get a light on?). Do not expect this to be a daily feature.

ASD

It's been a while since I went to the movies. This will be short (unlike the movie).

If you really liked Boondocks Saints, you'll probably really like Bookdocks Saints II: All Saints Day. See? That was like a Netflix recommendation, but for the future, because you can't get that second one on Netflix yet.

If you didn't care about the first one, you probably won't care about the second one either.

There was a lot of cheering though. From the audience. At the Riverview.

we did Halloween

we did it so many nights in a row.

First this geekadelphia.com party at SugarMom's. There was a lot of good costumes there. People who really like video-games really know how to do it, I guess. Also really good nachos.
The next night was Twin Peaks party, again with lots of outfits/participation/appropriate foods. Marilyn and I were Johnny and Audrey Horne.

Outfit changes, hurrying in case Septa striked (struck?), etc.
The last night (actual Halloween) was pretty good too. My mummy costume got another wear, we all got to wear face paint, and my giesha outfit got really filthy, which means it was probably really fun too.


Lately: talking about which iPod to get (Nano? Touch?), going back and forth about haircuts (as usual), wearing moccasins, making bad and good decisions, annoying people about shared-art-project due dates, etc.

I stole all these pictures from Marilyn's bookFace and Leslie's. Thanks for taking having cameras, taking pictures.