1)It's me & pips second wedding anniversary!
2)to celebrate we're going to the Mets/Cubs game at Shea tonight. LET'S GO METS!!
3)I'm enjoying an Abita Pecan Harvest Ale. It's quite tasty.

1. Yesterday I got offered the job I wanted, writing for a video game. (5 month contract, starts Monday)

2. I bought these for myself in celebration.

3. I ate some frosting straight out of the jar ostensibly in celebration, but now I feel icky. I don't recommend it.

I saw my brother on Washington Square yesterday. I said hello and he ignored me. Smug little prick.

I'm going up to Albany tomorrow for a few days to see friends.

I did manage to see the Louise Bourgeois yesterday.


Happy cotton, pips and jonmc!

Yaaay jonmc and pips!

1. What to have for lunch, hmmmmmmm. Grocery shopping tonight may be in order.
2. Really need to figure out what to do with all these apples. Googling applesauce recipes now. Wish we had showed the kids how to look for good apples; a lot of the ones they picked are flawed.
3. Tonight, floor glossing at church (we hired somebody cheap to refinish the floors, and got what we paid for, naturally, so tonight some of us are putting another layer of varnish on the floor ourselves).

1. Fourth day sick. Boo!
2. Working from home. How hard is it to get 20 refugee youth in a room with some artists and teach'em theatre? Harder than you think.
3. Trip to Africa going to cost alot more than I anticipated. Yikes.

tps - make apple pie!!!

(I eat frosting out of the jar all the time. Only a spoonful or so at a time though. And only Funfetti frosting aka vanilla with rainbow jimmies.)

1. Today seems to be missing book day. The boss has been hunting all day. (Currently 5/6.)

2. I had my moment of missing hunt glory months ago when I discovered a set of 3 boxes that were mistagged. Since then, I don't search for missings. (Mostly because I'm not that good at it when it's not something logically gone wrong and I wasn't at the old place to know where things were put then when they came here.)

3. I've been using some of my awesome technical drawing skills (thank you silly HS class) to work on my plans for reorganizing the loading dock. It's a fucking madhouse out there. Plus it helps me stay away from everyone else because this has just been a bad week.

3a. I'm pissed that I was late to work this morning due to the fact they closed the main street that EVERYONE USES to get from MoCo towards the direction of APL. Spent about 30 minutes driving around Laurel very confused. (I hate this area. There were 4 traffic circles in about 2 miles. What the fuck?)

Happy anniversary, pips and jonmc.

1. I volunteered this morning in a different classroom. It was fun. I love my oldest son's teacher. She is so smart. So good. Love her! She can teach me a thing or two.

2. My husband and I have been riding our bikes all over town when the kids are in school. We just got in from a ride. It's windy out there.

3. We take our dog for a one mile run before we head out. She is the second fastest land animal.

TPS, apple crisp is an idea. I have an easy and delicious recipe if you want it.

1. Need to finish up the last of things to fix at the old house/condo we're selling. Closing on Friday after 15 months on the market, yay!

2. Running my first 5K on Sunday!

3. Gritting my teeth waiting for November 4.


P.S. TPS: make sure that you sand very lightly with 220-grit sandpaper before you put on a new coat of varnish/poly or the new one won't adhere.

Send it over LoriFLA,

octothorpe: I think the other guys sanded before they put the other coats of varnish on (I think, though who knows; that's what we get for hiring somebody's friend for a cheap price- never again!), so tonight we're just laying it down. Maybe that's a mistake for long-term wearability, but oh well.

1. TPS: make Apple Dapple Cake! I just love saying that name...
2. Happy 2nd to jonmc and pips!
3. The night class I'm taking is very long and boring, but I cannot get to sleep after I get in, so I'm missing the sleep component of my life - need more shut eye time.

Apple Dapple Cake looks great! How does one chop the apples- thin slices, chunks?

Good gosh, is it really two years?

1. Tomorrow I get my new fridge, at last! I've really missed my home-made soup, the cheap bulk-buys of trays of meat that go into the little ice box and my breakfast yoghurt.

2. I just cleared out a whole load of stuff for a charity collection tomorrow, including a huge, bright pink suitcase, one of those rigid hard-sided ones. It's packed with clothes, glassware and ornaments (the breakable stuff all wrapped in bubble wrap). I had a lot of wine and beer glasses, some really nice ones, that I will never use again. I kept some good crystal glasses I'd been given as a wedding gift, but I have no more need of the rest of it.

3. It's that time of the year when, the minute I've swept my yard, it's full of tree-related crap again before I've even gone back inside and shut the door. Not just leaves, but these horrid bumpy little round things that fall off the oak tree (no, not acorns, these are like little gnarled round things about the size of a cherry).

Happy Deuce, jon and pips!

1. Having dinner with friends tonight. Yay! I fear that one or more of them may say something nice about Sarah Palin and I'll have to flip over the table and leave the restaurant in a righteous fury. Actually, I'm kind of hoping for it because that would be so fun.

2. It has taken a long series of e-mails with the mister to hash out a plan that will allow me to get showered, dressed and to the restaurant by 7. Motherhood can be profoundly degrading sometimes and I mean that in all seriousness.

3. The strike is over (for now), school is back in session (for now) and so far I loooove the girl's new teacher. She sends brief notes on cheery paper with bullet points and subheads. Yay! (Last year's teacher would send home meandering, typo-filled epistles that would leave me shaking the paper and crying,"What is your POINT?? What do you want from me??!")

TPS - I cut it into chunks/cubes. The apple doesn't melt away (YMMV, depending on how firm the apple variety), so I prefer something smaller which makes it just a small notation when you're eating the cake. Makes good loaf cakes for sharing, although I usually make it in a bundt pan and eat the whole thing! What!? It's good for you - apples!

Octothorpe: congratulations! I ran a couple of 5ks a couple of years back and they were the best thing ever. Seriously. I never thought I was capable of such a thing. You will feel so good when you're sprinting into finish!

(Just don't forget to stretch afterwards -- I got caught up in the beer-and-chili party they held for the runners and forgot to stretch and I could barely make it up stairs for several days.)

1) present, volunteering, officially not depressed

2) confused about how to make a living in the Ozarks

3) wishing I had a fairy godmother to wave a magic wand and transport me to Portland (preferably with a job and a place to live)(or at least someplace urban with good food and better pay)!

Happy anniversary, Pips and jonmc!

1. Slept in this morning, was awakened by a phone call from my childhood (and current) best friend. She lives on the other side of the globe these days, so we usually email rather than calling. We spent hours on the phone today as she got ready for bed and I made breakfast and started my day. Was glorious!

2. Must start my first paper of the new semester today.

3. Thanks to disabling back and knee pain, I'm lurching around like Frankenstein's monster. My first self-prescribed treatment (take it easy, baby myself, administer gelato and dark chocolate as required) did no good, so I'm trying another approach: exercise vigorously, both physical therapy and lots of walking. It seems to be working; I'm still stiff, but can move around without gasping in pain. Yay for mobility!

update to update:

1) happy 2nd pips & jon!

2) have had so much caffeine already that I'm seriously afraid i might explode.

3) now have attention span of a goldfi... ooh looky, chocolate saltwater taffy!!

4) CHOCOLATE ON MY PANTS WTF?!

o right 3 points and not-shouting... man I need to go drink some h2o and flush da system.

HAPPYANNIVERSARYHAPPYANNIVERSARYHAPPYANNIVERSARY - - - HAAAAPY ANIVERSARY.

1 - Three o' clock coffee break
2 - I'm in ur general liability policy excludin' ur maritime ops.
3 - Hoping I can coffee my way to the gym tonight. I skipped last night, but tomorrow I am taking Inert Friend to Yoga. I didn't realize it was Power Yoga night. I'm not telling her. Hee.

1. Happy 2nd, pips and jonmc!

2. Sperose, don't sell Funfetti short. It's not just jimmies in there, they're more like tiny little creamy rainbow sugar bombs. I bought my SO an amazing birthday present that totally trumped anything else she had ever received, but it was subsequently bested by our neighbor, who dropped by with a Funetti cake. She melted.

3. Nothing's going on for me out of the ordinary, so the above two points are for others and mine gets crammed into one. Dog class this evening, and keeping my fingers crossed I can make the Chicago meetup Thursday night.

Happy Second Anniversary, Pips and jonmc!!

1. Absolutely glorious weather outside right now!! Light breeze, sunshine, my favorite fall weather.

2. Lunch with Mr. V today. It's nice to spend part of the midday with him.

3. Finished house cleaning, nearly done with laundry, and I've got my feet up now!

not to compete or anything, but it was our 6th anniversary yesterday. Pips and jonmc picked a great time of year to get married!

Congrats jonmc and pips (belated congrats to Redvixen and the mister)
1. Spending waaaay too much time planning a New Year's vacation to Vegas, but...
2. Found three definite places I want to eat at while there
3. Bought tickets to go to Brazil in March. Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay!

1. Go the job that I applied for to stop office bitch (AKA Cruella) from getting it
2. Scared shitless about being "officially" in charge of the whole team. Too. Much. Pressure
3. Also excited about having the authority to make things happen that way I think they should.

congrats to jonmc and redvixen

P.S. TPS: make sure that you sand very lightly with 220-grit sandpaper before you put on a new coat of varnish/poly or the new one won't adhere.

But PLEASE be sure to use extra cinnamon, otherwise the apples will be gritty. Trust me, I learned this the hard way.

1. I have very, very bad rat karma. It is only going to get worse over the next couple days because of what is going on up there [*points*] right now. I'm not even going to tell you about it, because I'm afraid it makes me a horrible person. I'm not sure what else to do about it, is the problem, except sit here and be a horrible person. I'm sorry, little rat. I really am.

2. The girlfriend now spends Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in the Bay Area, attending to her latest educational pursuit. There is an adjustment to be made, and it's not going as easily as I'd like. In fact, I think I don't like it at all.

3. There is no 3.

I don't like nuts, so can I make Apple Dapple without them? Should I substitute something else into the recipe?

TPS: So far, I've made it w/out nuts (heh!) and it's fine. You can add rasins, and I often do. Don't ask me how many, I just add "some". Heck, come to think of it, cut up apricots would probably be OK too.

1. I went for a lovely hike this morning, through eucalyptus groves and down by the ocean.

2. I was able to go on a hike this morning because a bunch of my clients ended therapy with me. Half of them because they said they felt so much better they didn't need to come in anymore (yay!) and half of them because they said I wasn't helping at all (sigh). I know that (a) I can't be all things to all people, and (b) people sometimes aren't ready for the kind of work that therapy requires, and that's ok, because they'll either figure out another way through it or they'll come back when they are ready, and (c) that I am competent and good and all that, and (d) providing free therapy is all well and good, but people by and large tend to put little emotional value on things they feel have no monetary value and therefore free clients blowing me off is rather to be expected from time to time, but (e) it's hard not to feel a little ego-bruised.

3. I now have a headache. I think it's hunger related. But I am tired from hiking on sand for two hours and don't really want to deal with making lunch right now.

Already two years? How time flies! Happy Anniversary!

1.)Tomorrow I am finally getting my car! I am so excited! It will cost me some bucks to get the title transferred, etc but otherwise free! free! free!

2.) My son called last night-he is finally at his new duty station in Cheyenne,Wyoming. Anybody out there got any recommendations re apartments in the area?

3.) My father turns 70 next week. My folks had me young, so even tho I am almost 50 myself, this seems strange. He's not even OLD.

1) Had my teeth cleaned. Mmmm. Clean teeth.
2) Shaved my legs dry. Don't do it.
3) Put lotion on irritated legs. Again, do not do this.

OUCH.

1. etc.
2. etc.
4. etc.

I forget what 3. is.