Saturday, August 30, 2008

Kids are dirty

This is probably the most restrained blog post I've ever written.

I so wanted to give a description of this woman, include the name of the restaurant and the kids' names.

It took every ounce of willpower to just make my point and leave it alone.

I guess the moral of the story is: If you don't know how to act in public, stay home.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Saying goodbye

It's never easy to say goodbye, but sometimes you just have to know when to let go.

Now is that time ... mostly because I can't hold on any more.

It's gotten way too small.

And I can't fit it into the pencil sharpener any more.



So today, I'm saying goodbye to my wee pencil, my dear tiny pencil that I've had for many months.

And because the thought of using another pencil is just ... too ... painful, I've decided against getting a new one.

Well, I have to have a pencil (I mean, it's not like I can write on my calendar in ink, can I? Puh-leeez.), but my new pencil is blue.




It makes the pain a little more bearable.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Some people need housekeepers, I need a ...

Do you believe in past lives?

I'm kinda on the fence about the idea of a person being reborn over and over again. But I do know that if I did have past lives, I wasn't a chick. I was most definitely a dude.

I say this because I've spent most of my life utterly confused on how to be a successful girl/woman/female person.

But I think I'm finally getting the hang of it ... after 38 years. But not completely

Every month, I'm surprised by my period.

It starts with "Oh my back hurts. Why does my back hurt?" Then Bill reminds me that I'm getting my period. Then I moan and fuss about having my period.

Every month. (Yes, my husband is a very patient man deserving much more than I have to give.)

Then there's the whole yeast situation.

It's like I'm always baking a loaf of bread or something. What is with all the yeast?

Am I doing something wrong that the yeast keep coming back all the frickin' time?

Itch and ick and 'the hell?

But the worse thing is my "bikini area" (I have to put that in quotes because the idea of me in a bikini is laughable. I've been wearing a swim skirt or long swim trunks to the pool for years. No one sees my "bikini area" unless you have an engraved invitation or OB/GYN after your name.)

And it's a mess. I've tried depilatories, shaving and waxing. It doesn't matter what I do, I get the bumps.

Why?

Why is that "area" different than the leg area just below it? Why does it have to be all up in my grill with its difficultness? I shave my legs every day and they never give me any grief. I've tried every at-home hair removal product out there and the bumps, they're a-comin'.

You know what? I'm sick of it. I've got other things to do — like tweeze my brows ... something that I totally understand and can do without injury ... hey, wait a minute.

I remember hearing that Jennifer Lopez has a personal eyebrow specialist that travels with her and maintains her eyebrows.

I think I need to hire a personal vagina attendant. You know, someone to mop it out, steam clean it and generally maintain that thing so I don't have to. She could have a bag full of tampons, Vagisil, Nair, etc. and work on it when I have free time.

That would be awesome.

I just asked Google if there was such a thing as a vagina attendant and it said no. Considering how many women have vaginas, I find that hard to believe.

Pink is the new black

Monday, August 25, 2008

It's easy to get the Wrong Impressions

Bill's band, the Wrong Impressions, played at our favorite local watering hole, the Quincy Bar, Saturday night.

They played well and rocked the hizzouse. The crowd was awesome and we all had a great time.

Wrong Impressions fans are awesome ... as are our friends — even if they are a little bizarre.

But if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, eh?

Friday, August 22, 2008

White on white: the latest fad?


I show this painting in my art appreciation class. It's a work by Russian artist Kasimir Malevich entitled Suprematist Painting: White on White.

Some people get all fussed up over such paintings.

But apparently white on white is the latest in teen non-fashion. Or something.

I'm still perplexed after going clothes shopping with Sean last week.

Click over here to see what I learned (oh, and for the record, koi ARE cool — I don't care what those teenagers think).

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Wordless Wednesday (on Thursday)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a day late with my Wordless Wednesday, but what's gonna happen? Are the Wednesday police gonna come get me? Oh wait, these are words ... there's no words on Wordless Wednesday even if it's on Thursday.




Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Hop away

After I pulled into my driveway, I swung my car door open wide. It almost hit our big butterfly bush.

By pure happenstance, I happened to notice a thing that had spent its whole life trying not to be noticed — a grasshopper happily munching away on the shrub (instead of "on the shrub" I had originally written "on my bush" but decided that sounded dirty. So instead of just moving on, I'm using this parenthetical note to point out that I'm a dirty thinker — which now seems to sad and kinda desperate.).
I pulled out my camera and tried to snap a few macro shots before it got indigestion and hopped away.

While I was trying to get the camera to focus on the tiny insect in the bright daylight using a digital screen that I couldn't see, I started wondering what was going through that little grasshopper's head.

When I first noticed him, he was eating. The longer I stood there and the closer the camera got, the slower he chewed until he stopped and focused his full attention on the camera.

Then I was done and I walked away.

Did he just go back to his lunch? Or did he start worrying about what that thing was and what it could have possibly done to him?

Does he now fear that I've irradiated his little grasshopper body causing malignant tumors to start growing on his exoskeleton?

Does he think he had a close encounter with an unidentified metal box?

Does he think that a big, square bird tried to eat him until the giant, blond thing jammed it back into her purse?

I hope I didn't irritate his acid reflux.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

One of us needs to shut the hell up

Actual conversation I just had:

Me: Oh yeah, I have those letters on my desk.

Me: You're so stupid.

Me: Yeah and you're talking to yourself.

Me: (whispering) Stop now.

First day of third grade

Margaret started third grade yesterday.

She's attending a brand new school.

The first day of school is always hectic and discombobulating, but we all survived. Last night as she was tumbling into bed exhausted, she said she couldn't wait to go back today (phew!).

I interviewed Margaret about her first day at the new school. Here's what she had to say.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Monday quickie (Updated!)

It's the first day of school.

For all of us.

Mar's starting 3rd grade (there will be more on this tomorrow). Sean started his senior year of high school ... um, how is that possible. And the college starts today, so Bill and I both are back to teaching (only this semester my class is online ... oh yeah baby).

But we enjoyed our summer:

Bill on his cruiser. He loves his cruiser.

The only problem is that it doesn't fit on our roof bike rack and he won't put it in the back of the car in case it gets dented or afraid or something.

UPDATE: I totally forgot to mention that I took this picture while I was riding MY bike. Actually pedaling and trying to steer and taking pictures.

It's a miracle I'm still alive.

Go me!


Mar with her sweet bean face.


Mar making her Quincy dog face.

Friday, August 15, 2008

But at least she didn't drink and drive

Texas police say 12-year-old girl drove mom to bar

LONGVIEW, Texas — A 35-year-old Texas woman has been jailed after police say she made her 12-year-old daughter drive her to a bar. Police in Longview say they watched a minivan turn into a driveway without signaling on Wednesday and bump into a home at a low speed. They say the car was driven by Jennifer Lynn Rosenberg's daughter.

Police say the girl told an officer she had just dropped her mother off at a bar. They say they found Rosenburg at the bar and that she admitted having her daughter drive her there.

Rosenburg remains in the Gregg County Jail on a $2,500 bond. A jail official declined to say whether she had an attorney.

A spokeswoman for Child Protective Services told the Longview News-Journal that the agency is investigating.

But isn't that why we have kids? To drive us to and from the bar?

Wha'?

Thursday, August 14, 2008

And then life steps in

So, yeah, it's been one of those years.

I could list all the turmoil and upheaval, but where's the fun in that.

Instead here's this:

The newspaper I've worked for almost 7 years is being sold. What that means for me is ... Uh, I dunno. We have no idea what's going to happen.

At lunch today, Bill and I were talking about it.

Me: Do you see me NOT worrying about it?

Bill: Yeah. And it's kinda freaking me out. I mean, YOU KNOW how you get.

Me: I know and I'm totally not getting like I get. Weird, huh?

Bill: Are you drunk?

Me: I'm pretty sure that no, I am not drunk.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Vindication?

Bill feels vindicated because two Abba songs are in John McCain's top 10 songs list.

I disagree. I think it makes a scary turn from "cute and gay-ish" to "just ain't right."

Dork-o-rama

I took this picture of Bill and I on our way home from dinner last night.

Notice our sunglasses.

Yes, we are wearing the same glasses.

Because we're dorks.

Wha'?

Oh yeah and here's a picture I took of our kid yesterday at lunch.

Sad but true, we're dorks on parade.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

A gift for my husband

Saturday night, our dear friends hosted a birthday party for Bill.

We had a great time enjoying the weather and our friends. We rode our bikes and we had cheesecake.

It was great fun, but there was no remarkable stories. Nope. Just a nice barbecue get together.

That's all.

There's no video of me jumping out of a tree house in an attempt to ride the zipline. Which is good because otherwise you might have seem me not zipline, but instead you'd see me fall on my ass in front of a group of "friends" who hurt themselves laughing (I'm looking at you, Laurena).

Oh wait.

There is video.



But I totally did that on purpose.

For Bill.

For his birthday.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Happy Early Birthday, Bill!

Looky what Bill got for his birthday!

He couldn't get just a regular cruiser, he had to special order the chrome, stretched cruiser with all the spokes.

Because it's cooler.

Losing rank

So I wrote yesterday about our dazzling third-place victory/loss at Geek Who Drink.

I was wrong.

We didn't come in third even though we took the prize and spent it on deep fried things.

No, we came in not-even-close-to-kissing-your-sister fourth place.

There was an error in the scores. You can see more pictures from Tuesday and read about how we lost dismally over here.

Fourth.

Whatever.

I'm over it.

I mean who cares?

Look at my tiny pencil.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Geeks Who Drink Week 3

Last night marked our third trip to the Rockslide for Geeks Who Drink.
And guess what?

We won again.
And by won, I mean that two other teams scored more points than we did.

Alright. That's not a win.

We were the second-place losers last night, with the kissing-your-sister finish of third place.
I feel obligated to mention that the winning team cheated.

They were cheaters because they were drinking water — except for that one guy who had a glass of wine.

One glass of wine is not going to make your team as stupid as we of the many beers.
But thanks to the emcee, Ninja Dustino — who is looking quite pretty with Sarah on his head — we had a bunch of laughs so we'll take our third-place win/loss and drink to it.

And for your viewing pleasure. Below is some rare footage of the Amazing Bill Halen and his magic napkin (yes, this is what we do while we're waiting for the quiz to begin).

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Forget Murphy, welcome to Sean's law

In January I wrote about Sean's run with some bad luck (and the results of bad decision making). It seems that Sean's bad luck (which is based on his bad decision making) is here to stay.

A couple of months ago Sean was in an accident with his POS car. Sean was initially cited for the accident and his mother finally had enough. She had the shitty car towed to the dump (in her defense, that car was well overdue for a date with the auto shredder, in my opinion).

After an investigation into the accident, the police reversed themselves and decided that nobody was at fault.

So Sean was in the clear ... but he had no car through no fault of his own.

Since then, he and his mom have been saving money for Sean to buy yet another car (this would be number three and the kid hadn't even turned 18 yet).

While we were on vacation, Sean called to see if we'd consider selling him our 1988 Pathfinder.

We bought this car a couple of years ago from our friends who walk every where. Their cars are more monuments than transportation, it seems. So the car had very few miles on it (I think the odometer read 87,000 — fer reals). Bill used it as his car until he inherited my mom's old car this spring.

I wanted to keep the car as a backup. Just in case something happened to Bill's car, we could just throw it away and he could go back to the Pathfinder (What? Cars are disposable, no?).

But Bill pressured me to consider selling it to Sean.

I said no and then thought about it some.

We didn't need a third car and Sean's been doing well lately and not getting into trouble so I decided that he could BUY the car from us.

We bought the car for $2,500. I told Bill that we'd sell it to Sean for $1,750 and not a penny less.

$1,750? That's an odd price, eh? I decided that I'd be happy with half the price we paid which is $1,750, right?

No, stupid rivetergirl. $1,250 is half.

Poor Sean, he had to pay $500 more because his stupid, evil stepmom can't do math. Plus I'm not one to admit my stupidity so I stuck with my $1,750 price to which he agreed.

Friday, he bought the Pathfinder for $1,750.

Monday the car started on fire while he was driving to work.

Really. On fire.

See, while our friends still had the car they had a gray squirrel stow away from a camping trip. The squirrel ate every single wire under the hood and made a nest in the air conditioning ducts.

Our friends had the all the wiring replaced, but they didn't notice the nest until they went to use the air conditioning and it started to smoke. By then they were over that car and just worked around the nest.

We could still use the heating and cooling only we had to turn it all the way on or all the way off. Any of the other settings would create a formidable campfire smell inside the car.

We told Sean about the nest and how to avoid starting the car on fire. But he's almost 18 and knows better than we do, so he drove to work with the a/c on low.

And it started on fire.

Luckily he was able to cut a hole in the plastic, put out the fire and remove the remaining squirrel's nest from his new-to-him car.

Lucky kid, huh?

Distracted

OK, I am utterly distracted ... too distracted to blog ... almost.

First, I'm working all the time during my work days now.

Yeah, I know. Let's all take a moment and feel sorry for poor rivetergirl.

Then there are all these neat Internets out there that soak up all my free time.

First there's Facebook — where I can organize my Web presence. This so appeals to my anal nature (don't say, "anal nature").

Then there's ReverbNation. This is kind of like MySpace, only not because it's Reverb Nation.

And now Stereo Fame — which is a game you play by listening to music. How awesome is that.

I wish my job was to do that stuff all day.

Friday, August 01, 2008

Getting linked

OK, so.

Yeah.

I have to admit that I do look at my site meter regularly. And by "regularly" I mean several times a day.

I don't have lofty aspirations for my wee blog, but I think it's very interesting to see who looks at my page and how they ended up there.

For example, one person in Kansas googled "Whitey McWhiterson" and found me.

That is beyond awesome.

Also I get a lot of people who have googled "Fruita Fat Tire Festival" and found the picture of me sitting on the toilet.

What can I say, I'm classy.

But today I noticed referrals from a link I didn't recognize. I clicked it.

Boy howdy was I ever surprised to see this Web site.

I mean, what kind of juvenile guy creates a blog dedicated to — in his opinion — The Most Bangable Blog Babes?

Apparently MadDog is the kind of juvenile guy who would maintain such a site.

I messaged the link to Richie who said I should wear the title proudly. But how does an old, chunky chick say she's been voted a "bangable" (so charming, no?) blog babe?

Apparently with a satin sash which I will be embroidering at home tonight.

Farmer's Market


******************************************************
So it seems that if you view this blog in Firefox the ReverbNation widget shows up fine, but if you Safari, it gets truncated.

Not sure if I can fix this. Might have to just nix it. But I'm gonna think on it a bit first.

Thanks for the input.