LolaGeek

Another month, another set of bullet-point updates…

• I watched the 30 Rock finale twice. I was delighted by the ending the first time. The second time I really watched it and realized that everyone saying their goodbyes to each other was actually how they really felt about the actual show ending, and I did get a little misty…
• Watched the Super Bowl at home again, which is really the best way to do it because nobody’s interrupting the commercials. I actually paused the football parts, went and did stuff around the house, then came back to the TV and fast forwarded until I caught up to the commercials! (My favorites: Doritos with the goat!, genie granting wishes, old people getting Taco Bell, the one with Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen, and anything with a panda.)
• I was a little concerned about Katrina last week, because she was throwing up every time she ate. They all throw up a lot, so it wasn’t that unusual at first. And the first couple times, there were hairballs among the food she threw up, so I figured it was a hairball issue. But then she threw up a couple times without hairballs, and at that point it was like the third day of this, so I started to worry. Since she pretty much had no food in her stomach, I decided to see if she’d eat some straight tuna. She wolfed that stuff down and had no problem keeping it down! I sat with her all day (was working from home), and she didn’t throw up a thing, and hasn’t since. So… I think she was just being a brat and staging a protest against cat food.
• Survived the “blizzard” this weekend, which really turned out to be nothing here, but a lot of my co-workers in CT are still digging out from 2-3 feet of snow (not to mention power outages)! Heard we might be getting another storm next week though… Ugh. Weather is so inconvenient.
• Keeping up with my 2013 goals: about to finish my fourth book of the year, blogging more regularly… Didn’t send any notes last month, but felt weird about it since we just did Christmas cards. I’ll do double for February to make up for it.

One last note, I’ve started getting these terrible headaches when the weather changes. I often get a headache on rainy days, but the last two times it’s snowed now, I’ve gotten the most horrible migraine (seeing lights, feeling like I’m going to throw up, etc.). I assume this is related to the barometric pressure. I’ve seen a lot of friends mentioning that they’re getting headaches when it snows, too. Not cool, body, not cool…

A few months ago, I took a basket I wasn’t using, put a pillow in it, and sat it under the window in my office. Sacha was the only cat who figured out that this combination was the equivalent of a cat bed, and it became his special spot. On days when I worked from home, he would sit there all day with me. And I think he spent a lot of time there alone, too.

One day, I walked into the room and was stunned to see Katrina in the basket! She had figured it out too!



But Sach still wanted “his” basket. He did not seem too pleased that he had to share.



They couldn’t quite figure out how to make it work. First Sacha showed his dominance by just sitting where he wanted, despite the fact that someone was there before him.



Then Katrina tried to be the “top cat.”



But finally, they learned how to share!



(To be fair, the sharing thing is rare. As I write this, they are more in the position where Katrina is in the basket and Sacha is uncomfortably squished along the edge.)

I haven’t done an actual life update for a little while, have I? I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. A couple Fridays ago, my friend JK and I drove up to Perkasie for a Scentsy/Thirty-One party. The girl selling Scentsy was a friend of mine from college (who I hadn’t seen since college!), and a friend of hers sells Thirty-One, so they teamed up. It was fun to see my old friend again, and all the other girls there were really nice, too. I bought a bunch of stuff and actually got talked into hosting a Thirty-One party of my own, so that’s coming up in a few weeks.

GG and I went to see The Cabin in the Woods. I don’t usually like to go to scary movies, but there was something weird about the preview and I was curious. The movie was fabulous! Yes, it had scary/gross moments, but it was super original, hilarious, and really turned the horror genre upside down. (I’d see it again just for the Japanese schoolgirl scenes.)

Between me, GG, and the cats, it seems like we’ve had nonstop doctor, dentist, and vet appointments the past couple of weeks. In addition to Ivan’s dental issues (he is already back to normal, by the way), I’ve also been having some jaw problems that warrant their own post that I’ve been meaning to write. I have two more medical appointments on the calendar this month, and then hopefully we’ll be done for another year. But I am thinking of trying acupuncture, so maybe more other appointments will be added soon…

Last week I had a three-day meeting at work with our boss and three of my co-workers, from a total of four different sites. This could be nightmarish to some people, but our little fraction of our team gets along really well, we got a lot done, and I think it was a really good week. I was talking to GG afterward and was kind of amazed: our group overall is kind of dysfunctional, and past team meetings have been awkward and unproductive. But the five of us work well together, get things done, and also get along as friends. We spent all day together and then had dinners together too. Thursday was the last day of our meeting, and that afternoon a friend of mine, who was in a different three-day meeting this week, IMed me because ice cream and toppings for 30 people had just been delivered to her conference room, but her group had finished up early and everyone left, so did we want to come over? It ended up being a big reunion of everyone from our old department who was still on-site, and it was nice to have everyone together to catch up for a little while. That night my other PA co-worker had us all over for dinner (minus our boss, he had to leave right after work – probably a good thing!), which turned into a late-night drinking and cupcake party. Because GG was there, of course, and he could talk all night if you let him. Anyway, it was a great week and great to see everyone and also to be able to just sit in a room together and get stuff done.

Today was kind of a waste. I woke up at 8AM and had a horrible headache that only got worse over the course of the day. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon in bed, then finally felt well enough for about 15 minutes to brush my teeth, change, and move to the sofa, where I napped for a few more hours. I was starting to feel better around 4PM and ate some crackers, but even now, at 10PM, I still feel some traces of headache. Luckily, I was able to take some time this evening to do some of the chores I was planning to do today, but this was really bad, I had big plans and a lot to do today, and I really couldn’t get most of this stuff done. Maybe I’ll catch up tomorrow…

A couple weeks ago we took Ivan and Katrina to the vet for their regular checkup and shots, and learned that Ivan had a bad tooth or two that needed to come out. Poor boy. He wasn’t really acting like he was in pain, though it did kind of explain why he seemed to prefer his wet food to the dry food (he would still eat the dry stuff, though). So we made an appointment for him to get the tooth pulled.

Ever since we got home from the vet that day, he had a really bad case of goop-eye (which is the non-scientific term we use when the cats get conjunctivitis). He gets like this sometimes when he’s stressed out, and it always gets better in a day or so. But this time, it was just not getting any better. And if he thought his quick trip to the vet was stressful, he was about to get really stressed out when it was time for his dental appointment!

This morning was finally time to drop him off for his tooth extraction. I took him to the vet when they opened this morning, and they explained what they were going to do: preliminary bloodwork, then the tooth extraction, followed by some IV fluids (due to his history of kidney problems). And they would take a look at the goop-eyes.

They called me in the early afternoon to say he was just waking up, he did great, and we could pick him up after 4 PM. So when GG got home from work, we headed over to pick him up. Poor boy’s eyes were so goopy, I said it looked like he’d been punched in the face! We got some ointment to put on his eyes twice a day for the next ten days – that’ll be enjoyable. His bloodwork was all perfectly fine, and they said the levels of his kidney stuff were exactly in the middle of where they should be, so that was good to hear.

When we got him home, we opened the cat carrier, and he came stumbling out. He could barely walk! It was sad but kind of hilarious. He did eat some wet food (with extra water mixed in), and has spent the rest of the night stumbling around, following me around the house, and snuggling. He bumped his way all the way upstairs, and followed me all the way back down! He’s currently snuggled up next to me, which is all he’s wanted to do all night (except for the part where he fell asleep on the bathroom rug for a while to rest up before following me back downstairs; or the part where he used the litter box, apparently peed on his foot, and then regained strength by taking a rest on the floor next to the box).

My poor, poor boy… At least his eyes are looking a little better. And as I tried to keep telling him, now his teeth won’t hurt him anymore.

Last weekend GG and I drove out to NJ to visit MB and A. GG and A stayed home and played guitar all day, while MB and I went to lunch at her sister’s restaurant and then took advantage of the beautiful weather and took baby R to Grounds for Sculpture. MB has mentioned it many times, but I’ve never been and didn’t really understand what it was. It’s basically a huge sculpture park on the grounds of a former fair, so there’s some indoor areas but mostly it’s outdoor exhibits. A lot of the sculptures were done by Seward Johnson (of Johnson & Johnson), who is a sculptor and art fan, and created the park. Most of his pieces are realistic sculptures of people just sitting and standing around, and it’s sort of funny because you can sit with them, or they’re set up in places where you think there’s really somebody there. We had some fun posing R with some of the art.

There are also peacocks that are loose on the site, and R got to interact with them a bit. She toddled around after a beautiful white one, and it spread out its tail! I didn’t think she’d be able to catch up with it, and if she did get too close, I figured the peacock wouldn’t stand for it and would run away anyway. Nope – she grabbed a tail feather while the bird just stood there! But he did not look happy. As I did not want to see a baby get her eyes pecked out by a peacock that day, I did scoop her up and carried her around while we looked at the other peacocks sitting on their perch.

R is still the cutest baby and my favorite! After Grounds for Sculpture (and driving through Hamilton, NJ to see some of the other public sculptures in the town), we went back to MB and A’s house for dinner. We ended up hanging out kind of late, which I hadn’t wanted to do because I still had to get home and get ready for my business trip, so it was a bit of a late night, but of course we always enjoy seeing our favorite little family!

The rest of my week was all about work (and, luckily, was a lot of fun too). Two coworkers and I left on Monday afternoon for a week of meetings and stuff at our other site in CT. Usually we can get up there in around four hours, but because of a big accident on the highway, it took us more like six. We’d planned to drive about 40 minutes north to another town for dinner, but after sitting in the car all that time we didn’t really feel like it anymore. So we checked in at the hotel, then went to a nearby seafood place. The sun was just setting over the water when we arrived, and it was really nice.

On Tuesday we had team meetings at the office all day. The morning was just our training team, then we had a lunch break, and then the afternoon was a joint meeting of the training and compliance groups. We’re technically all one group now, but this is a recent thing – however, due to my position, I’ve been in both groups all along, so it was especially nice for me to have everyone together for once. There was a lot of good discussion, but as I’d predicted, nothing really got done, it was just a lot of talking and complaining. Still important for everyone to be able to discuss together, I think. Then we had a combined team dinner at a different seafood place on the water. We seem to always end up at this restaurant when I am up there. We had a lot of fun. The waiter was so strange – he kind of gave everyone a hard time, and joked around a lot. But in the end he turned out to be really funny. For example, one of the specials came with a “baby arugula salad,” and one of the ladies at our table was curious about this salad, but didn’t want the meal. He gave her a hard time and told her the arugula was only available with the special. But later, when he brought out desserts, he also brought her her own little bowl of arugula salad! Also, there is paper over the tables, and crayons, so we were having fun drawing things. In the photo here, she is posing with the arugula salad and a crayon drawing I did of her.

On Wednesday, I didn’t have any “official” meetings, so I just went about my regular business, working from the office up there. It was kind of fun! The office is all open, which is neat for once in a while, but I wouldn’t be able to work there every day. I also got to take advantage of their on-site IT help desk, because apparently I lost connection to the network and locked out my computer account! They couldn’t help me because I was not based at their site, though – they looked me up, saw what the problem was, and said, “But we can’t help you because you’re not a [CT site] person.” Then this other guy walks over: “And why aren’t you a [CT site] person?” I was like, “Um, because I’m a [PA site] person? I’m just here for the week.” They did phone the help desk for me, and they were able to help right away, but that was sort of weird. On Wednesday night I met up with another coworker who’d finally gotten into town, and we went out for dinner and a little walk around this coastal town. By the time we were done, my hair was a mess, what with the slight humidity of being close to the water all the time.

On Thursday we had our huge all-hands meeting. On one hand, it was kind of cheesy and scripted/staged, but on the other hand, it was actually pretty good. Also, I got to see a lot of people I rarely get to see (like my coworker from England who was in my group in our last company, too, and brought me a huge bag of British chocolates!). And I got to meet a lot of new people – both new people in our group who are based at other sites, and people I’ve been working with for a while but had just not met in person yet. For the first half of the day, we randomly chose numbers out of a basket and had to sit at that table number, which was actually a good way to get a mix of people from different groups at each table. But for the second part, we did get to sit and work with our own groups, so I got to be with all my buddies. Most people left after the meeting on Thursday, but I had to stay for something on Friday, so I wasn’t going anywhere. I ended up going to dinner with my boss and two good friends, which was really great. It’s always good to get a chance to get your boss’ ear for a while (plus he is a super great guy), and it was actually cool because the four of us are all from different sites, so this type of get-together would almost never happen. We went to S’s favorite local restaurant, which specializes in “Mediterrasian” food, sort of an Asian/Spanish tapas place.

On Friday morning, I was back at the office to help run a big presentation – we had over 200 people online! Everything went amazingly, and I’m glad I got to be there in person to help present. Afterwards, my two traveling companions and I started back home. We did stop for lunch, but still got home in about four hours. I took an epic afternoon nap, then went out to dinner with GG, and got online to do a little work I hadn’t had a chance to do with the spotty and slow hotel internet connection.

GG did a good job of holding down the fort while I was gone, but the poor kitties were pretty stressed out that I wasn’t there. They spent most of their days hiding from GG, except when it was feeding time. And they were throwing up all week. Poor babies. It took them about a day to get used to me being home again, but as of this evening, the three of them are all snuggled up and relaxing with me. I’m glad they’re happy now, but they really need to be able to survive for a week (not even a week!) without me!

How bad was my week? Last Saturday morning I found out someone in China had tried to charge $500-some on my credit card. Luckily, the credit card company caught it, canceled my account, and sent me a new card. In the meantime, I had no CC for the week. (You can read a little more about this in the coda I added to my eShakti review, because I have a hunch how my number got loose in China.)

Monday was fine, GG and I enjoyed the last day of our four-day weekend by going shopping at Target and the Plymouth Meeting mall, then having PF Chang’s for lunch.

On my way home from work on Tuesday, I drove over what looked like a square black tar patch on the highway. But there was a loud “thud,” and suddenly my “low tire pressure” light came on and my car made a rumbling noise while I drove. I pulled right over and got out to take a look. One of the back tires was completely flattened. And while I had a sense of what to do, and knew where my spare tire was, I didn’t know if I had a jack, or how all that really works. So I called GG. And then I called his dad. And they both came to rescue me :o) His dad brought the big jack he uses to work on cars in his garage at home, and had the spare put on in just a couple minutes. And now I know what changing a tire entails! As we were finishing up, a PennDOT tow truck showed up to make sure everything was ok. (I guess seeing three cars pulled over is a sign that something is wrong.) I rolled home on the spare, and went out first thing Wednesday morning to get a new tire. Amazingly, they did not try to sell me any additional tires or services. The place that I went has a history of being very slow (as in, it could be you and one other person waiting there, and your car takes three hours – true story), but I was actually done in less than an hour. They had the exact tire I needed – one of them. Maybe that’s why they didn’t try to sell me a pair? And my FIL called later in the day to make sure all had gone well with the replacement. He is awesome – a definite bonus to being married to GG.

While getting ready for work on Wednesday, we discovered some cat had left a little present for GG under his drawing table. “Present” meaning “poop.” Luckily it cleaned up pretty easily, and I left the door shut and window open to air out the room. While working from home all day, I kept hearing banging noises like the cats were messing with something. I finally realized that it was the wind blowing the closet door in the room next to me. (At one point I turned around to yell at the cats, and they were actually all sitting together right behind me, obviously behaving.) I stayed home from band practice Wednesday night because after playing last week, my pulled muscle was really killing me (you don’t realize how much you use your abs just for breathing!), so since I was finally just starting to feel better again, I figured I should heed the doctor’s advice and “take it easy.” I used my free evening to catch up with work, since I’d felt behind all week.

Thursday was supposed to be a fun day because a lot of my friends were going to be in the office on the same day, which rarely happens – I call these “perfect storm” days. But, it turned out some people weren’t there, and I was so busy with meetings I could barely leave my desk all day anyway. So it was a dumb day.

Friday I worked from home again, and then GG and I had made plans to go research car stereos for him, and then get dinner. So that was our date night :o) When we got home, I watched Fringe and tried to watch Portlandia, but I fell asleep. Luckily, we record it, so I put on the recorded version, and promptly fell asleep again. Finally, I forced myself to watch it a third time in my half-awake state, just so I could say I’d watched it and go to bed.

We woke up this morning to a winter wonderland! Well, three or so inches of a winter wonderland, at least. We went out first thing to clean off our cars and shovel. That was a mistake – shoveling killed my pulled muscle again. I knew it would happen, but I would have felt like a mega slacker if I’d stayed in while leaving GG to do everything himself. He finally forced me to go inside when I told him I was hurting. (I think he just wanted me to get in and get cleaned up so I could make us the blueberry pancakes I’d promised.) I’ve spent the rest of the day watching TV and napping, with random bouts of housework in between. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer, melting any remaining snow and ice on the streets, so I will try to be more productive then.

Even though we had no plans in advance, we had another lovely weekend. On Friday, I had my site holiday party at work. It was good (though not as mind-blowingly amazing as last year), and I got to see a lot of people I don’t usually see, which is what I was hoping for. After work, I decided on a whim that I wanted to try this restaurant I’d heard of, Melt Down, that specializes in grilled cheese sandwiches. Google Maps couldn’t really find the address, nor could our GPS, but the site links to a Bing map that seemed to have the right address, so we used that and headed out. After driving for an hour through bad evening rush hour traffic, it was clear that we were not headed to the right place. GG called the restaurant, and apparently nobody there knew where they were to give us directions. But they told us the name of the store they were next to, and the GPS could find that address, so we eventually made it there. And now that we know where it is, we’ll definitely be back! I had the Brie Melt Sliders and GG ordered the Ham & Cheddar Melt, which were good on their own but also delicious with the dipping sauces (our favorite was the Truffle & Garlic). GG was fascinated with their old-fashioned milkshake machine, but we didn’t order any this time – maybe next time, now that we know where this place is!

After dinner, we decided to stop by the mall that was nearby, since neither of us had been there before, and maybe we could find something to get for dessert. I jokingly said that we should get an Orange Julius – the joke being that just about every Orange Julius on the east coast is now closed. Guess what – there is a combination Orange Julius/Dairy Queen at the Montgomery Mall! It was a Christmas miracle! We ran across the mall to the food court to get our drinks before this one went out of business, too. Then on the way back to the door, we stopped by a bookstore that actually was going out of business, and picked up a few Christmas gifts.

GG went to work for a little while on Saturday morning, so I built some furniture and rearranged a room. I’m very happy with how it turned out! When he got home, I suggested that we go out to lunch, and then hit up HomeGoods for some more Christmas shopping. This shopping trip was a big success – GG had never been there before, but I think he’s decided it’s now his favorite place for gift shopping. And we got some pillows there that Katrina is completely obsessed with – I think because of the feathers inside? The rest of my day was spent relaxing in preparation for SNL, which was another good episode, Jimmy Fallon was great.

Today has been my day to catch up with chores and food shopping, laundry, vacuuming, all that stuff. I had to finish up early because there’s a lot to watch on TLC tonight: “My Big Fat Gypsy Christmas,” “Geek Love” (awesome and currently in progress), and “All-American Muslim.” Then I’ve got to get to bed, this is going to be a busy week both at work and at home…

Wow, east coasters, did you imagine you’d experience earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes all in the same week?!

Our Hurricane Irene prep started on Thursday night, when we went to Costco to get flashlights, batteries, bottled water, and some non-perishable food. All reports were telling us to prepare for a strong storm, followed by potentially a very long time without power (could be weeks), and possibly without water. Lots of people had the same idea we did, stocking up on water and camping lanterns and such, but it wasn’t really crazy there.

On Friday, a work friend and I went to the supermarket at lunch, and it was pretty busy. The store was almost out of bottled water, and the lines were pretty crazy. We started checking the weather forecast obsessively, checking the progress of the hurricane. I continued preparing for the storm by getting some things done that required electricity, like running the dishwasher and doing laundry.

Since there wasn’t really anything to do on Saturday but sit around and wait for the storm to hit us, GG and I decided to go out for lunch. While we were out, I suggested we go to Walmart, purely for entertainment value. I pictured people going crazy, fighting over the last jug of water, stuff like that. Walmart turned out to be surprisingly quiet. I’d invited people over (some people invited themselves over) in case their power went out and ours didn’t, so I figured we should stock up on a few more non-perishable snacks. I saw a coworker there, she had the same idea I did, to get more snacks. Then we went back home and watched the news, as the sky grew darker, the wind picked up, and the rain got heavier.

I did a couple other things I wanted to do while we still had electricity (vacuuming, putting laundry away). While I followed along with the storm on TV, Facebook, Twitter, and our local Patch site, I saw people mentioning various power outages. Our lights remained on. Around 11:30, they called a tornado watch for our area, which means that no tornadoes have necessarily been sighted, but conditions are right for there to be one. GG and I trooped down to the basement, until the watch was over. There actually was a tornado through our area!

Then we learned the tornado watch was actually through 5 AM. We gathered a few important items, set up a litter box for the cats, and made a little bed with a sleeping bag, pillows, and a blanket, and went to sleep on the basement floor. That was so uncomfortable. Maybe before the next tornado watch, we’ll invest in an air mattress (I want one anyway), because a cement floor is not meant to sleep on. The cats curled up next to us, though, it was cute. (And just let me add, it was almost impossible to get them down to the basement. We don’t let them down there usually, so when we tried to lure them down there, they were so confused!)

We set an alarm for 5 AM. Luckily, there were no more tornadoes, and the watch was lifted at that time, so we packed up and moved back upstairs. To get the cats back upstairs, since it was almost their regular breakfast time, I just pulled out the food to feed them. Katrina and Sacha came right up, but I had to go down and drag Ivan back upstairs. As I went to pack up the things we’d brought down with us, I noticed a small puddle in the corner near where I had a plug strip. Then we found a couple more small puddles on the other side of the basement. The smaller ones we cleaned up with a towel. The larger one was just deep enough to be able to use our small electric pump. And that was it! I think that’s an acceptable amount of water to take in, considering it was a hurricane.

So we cleaned that up, then went to bed in our bed, which was luxurious after the basement floor. Then we were rudely awakened by a phone call at 8 AM with a recorded message telling us to stay inside if we could until the early afternoon, so they could clear debris from the roads. Not that we were planning to go anywhere anyway!

I had bacon in the fridge and thought it would be nice to make some pancakes, but I knew we had no eggs, so I googled a recipe for eggless pancakes. Then when I got to the kitchen I discovered we had no flour, so I used corn meal. And our milk had gone bad, but I had half & half, so I used that plus some extra water. Despite not having three main pancake ingredients, they were actually pretty tasty. A little dry and crumbly, but good.

So overall, Irene was not too bad for us. A little water in the basement that is completely dry already, and a bunch of leaves and small branches down in the yard, but no other damage. There has been a lot of flooding around the area, so I know we lucked out. And there are many people all up and down the coast who have suffered major damage from the storm. So I wouldn’t say it was a “disappointment” by any means. We were just very lucky; it could have been much much worse.

Enough of this excitement – I’m ready to go back to work for a little peace and quiet! (Oh, but there’s quite a bit of flooding near my office… we’ll see if I can get there tomorrow! Rivers are expected to crest sometime tomorrow…)

* How many “Come on Irene” comments do you think were made regarding this storm? I think a lot.

I was awakened at 4:30 yesterday morning by some liquid splattering across my face. I quickly realized that a cat had just been peeing in the middle of our bed and continued to pee as it jumped off the bed, spraying across my face. SUPER YUCK. Also, totally unacceptable. Of course by the time I was alert and had a light on, he or she had run away, so we have no idea who it was. All three of them are suspects. They each have their motives and certain other weird behavior in their history.

I have owned cats my entire life, and have never had a cat who sprayed on the bed. I know it’s kind of a common thing for cats to do to show they’re displeased, though. But any cat I’ve heard of who does this does not do it while people are sleeping in the bed! That is the worst part!

So I immediately threw all the sheets in the wash… and both GG’s and my pajamas (we both got splattered). Our memory foam mattress topper was unfortunately beyond saving. But luckily that did protect the mattress from getting ruined. Not wanting to leave the bed bare all day, we made sort of a mat of trash bags taped together to protect the mattress. On my way home from work, I picked up some of those pee pads you get for incontinent old people or kids who wet the bed, and I’ve used six of them to completely cover the mattress, with our sheets on top. So this way, if it happens again (but it better not happen again), I’ll only have to wash sheets and the pads should protect everything else… We hope.

No bad cat behavior last night, though they did wake us at 4:15 AM for a weird snuggle session. Maybe they were apologetic?

In other news, I have this huge project at work that’s supposed to be wrapping up this week. I’ve been working on it since February, but wasn’t really involved in the development part of the work. Now that we’re at the end, everything is in my hands, and of course there have been problems at literally every step of the way now. And some of the people who I need to work with are just so unhelpful. I explained my timeline and when I needed to have the work finished to one of them and they literally said, “Oh, well, it’s nice to have goals.” Though I have to say, the majority of my coworkers and the people I have interacted with on this project have been so amazingly helpful, despite numerous challenges.

* The title of this post is of course a reference to one of my favorite ATHF characters, MC Pee Pants. “I want candy, bubble gum and taffy…”

This week…

• Checking Twitter on my phone one last time before bed on Sunday night, I saw that the president was about to make some special announcement. So we got up and caught the whole Osama thing.
• Tally Hall’s new album “Good & Evil” became available for pre-order, but it was a special set that came with a vinyl record and a trophy. I just want a regular CD… so I will wait. Clips of all the tracks were briefly available on Amazon, and I’m super excited! (Also, still very excited for Lonely Island’s “Turtleneck and Chain,” and moderately excited about TMBG’s “Join Us.”)
• I spent some time wondering how the cats select which spot they’re sleeping in for the day, and why they choose weird and different places every day. Case in point: Katrina almost never goes near the cat tree, this week she was all up in there.
  
• Two band practices in one week?!
• GG made a baby … out of clay … for some upcoming comedy gigs. (You may recall that he did this “fetus in a glass of grenadine” routine a couple years ago when he was doing stand-up. Well, junior is back!)
  
• My face holes are healing up but still not ready to appear in public yet. I’m getting pretty good at band-aids, though.
• “30 Rock” ended its season with a weird reference to “Lost” and potential foreshadowing of the series’ cancellation (?)
• “Fringe” ended its season with an amazing episode and potential foreshadowing of the series’ cancellation (?) – the glyphs spelled out NO MORE (!)
• We had a very good band concert on Saturday, but I think this whole “switching from Sunday to Saturday” thing will be short-lived – expect us to go back to Sunday concerts starting next season
• SNL shockingly made multiple Osama jokes but no references to the Royal Wedding (not even the hats!)
• I finally caught a cold, but hopefully it goes away as quickly as it came on