gone daddy gone
does this video kick ass or what? is saw it this morning for the first time. it's both funny and cool. i love when they are crawling up the chick's leg!
od·ys·sey 1 : a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune 2 : an intellectual or spiritual wandering or quest
does this video kick ass or what? is saw it this morning for the first time. it's both funny and cool. i love when they are crawling up the chick's leg!

does anyone remember the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert from the early 90s? I remember being glued to the TV and watching every moment. the annie lenox and david bowie performance totally blue me away. well, of coure "we are the champions" did too . . . but this is the one i think of whenever i think of this song or the concert.

anyone who knows me knows i love museums. not only do i like seeing interesting things from other cultures or wonderful works of art, but i love the concept of the exhibits that they put together. in chicago i always used to go checkout the "special exhibits" at the art institute and field museum when the new one came two or three times a year. as a member of the field museum, i also used to attend the lectures they would have occasionaly in the evenings. sometimes they would have professors from the University of Chicago or well-know historians or explorers come and give a lecture. a few times the curators of the exhibit would have a lecture and explain everything that went into creating the exhibit. those were SUPER interesting.
i just found out about a new exhibit that is currently in paris right now. i belive next year it will be headed to north america - in montreal. it is called "Il Etait une Fois Walt Disney" ("Once upon a time, there was Walt Disney"). the concept is very interesting. it does not just showcase lithographs or original drawings from the disney artists, but also the art that inspired them to come up with their pieces. in fact most of the items on display are actually the "concept" pieces for the disney cartoons, not the actual drawing that ended up as part of the movie. And people who have already attended are calling it "one of the greatest animation exhibits ever."
What brings the whole thing to another level is the very concept of the exhibition: it is a quest to understand what works of art (especially European ones) inspired the art of Disney artists. Based on the seminal book of Dr. Robin Allan, Walt Disney and Europe, the Grand Palais exhibition displays works by the greatest European masters, like Gustave Dore, Heinrich Kley, or even Breughel, German expressionists and French architect Viollet le Duc alongside Disney concept art, layouts and backgrounds. And as all of you know, Disney's artists works do not pale in front of those of those masters. In fact the association is mind-boggling: if you are a layman, the quality of the concept artists' works become even more obvious and you start understanding that Walt had some really outstanding individuals working for him, that he was not the only one who drew everything and that the Studio was far from being a factory. If you are a Disney enthusiast you are bound to be stunned by connections with famous or less famous works of art from the past that you were not aware of.
Check out an article about the exhibit, a slide show with lots of artwork, and a video and even more artwork. The show runs through Christmas in Paris.


okay, is it pathetic or cool when i think i find an obscure band online and the next thing i know they are performing on an online reality show? i somehow found the scissor sisters and their song about a month ago online and had it as my myspace song for a few days. i thought i was all cool and they were unknown. sadly tonight i realize that my dreams of coolness are all false. the scissor sisters are singing on dancing with the stars on ABc! and what the hell is that guy wearing? they suck live. i am positive they are just lip-synching.

i hit the motherload last night. i came home from work and there was a huge box of scrapbook stuff sitting by my door. of course i paid for it all, but i forgot about it. i treated myself to four awesome kits from homegrown scrapbooks about 6 weeks ago when i got a bonus.but when i never got my stuff i figured that i never really placed my order online. so i bought other stuff. so imagine my surprise when i got my package yesterday. i spent like an hour going through it all because it was the best and rarest stuff that i haven't found anyplace else yet.
this prompted me to do some purging or all my scrap stuff. i have SO MUCH stuff. i went through all my paper and have a huge stack of papers i don't like anymore. literally, it's about 7 or 8 inches high. and all good stuff. it's just that i have duplicates or i've already used some of it for other layouts. i now realize not to buy so much. but when it was new to me i bought alot of random packs of paper instead of just picking out paper i like. it's actually changed alot in the past years. so i kept one sheet of the things that i might or definately will use. and the rest is in the pile. tonight i'll go through the "embellishments" which are stickers and other stuff. when i was buying kits there were always some of those too.
i can't figure out what to do with it all. one friend told me to just hold onto it, but i'm not a pack rat and i'd rather buy new later. there's something clensing about knowing that i only have stuff i like instead of stuff i like being trown in with a bunch of junk. i wish i knew of someplace i could give it to. maybe someplace who likes to do things with paper crafts. there really is alot of nice stuff. i'd post it online to give to someone just starting out, but paper is really heavy so it'll cost me to ship it! and, there is so much that it will take up two large priority mail boxes!
oh well, i feel good that my stuff is getting organized! i can't wait until i have time to play again.
yeah, yeah, yeah! i got everything upand running this morning. the reason i'm so excited is that i coded a site three years ago that was so flexible it allowed me to move it to another server with another URL and still run every little part of the with no application changes. yeah me! that means i did it right :) PHEW. big exhale.
well, even with all this work i was able to watch dancing with the stars. i gotta tell ya, i am loving jerry springer. he is not the best dancer at all - but his performances are always the best. this week he danced the tango as a james bond character. he cracks me up. i want him to stay around just to see what he will do each week. i kind of feel bad for willa ford. she's just gotta go. she's a good dancer, but i just don't like her personality. she's falling in love with her dance partner and they keep making reference to it. out of all the girls, I like sara evans, the country singer, the best. harry hamlin did really well this week. he just doesn't stand out as much as the others. i'm still all for joey lawrence to take it all. He is and awesome dancer and he has a great personality during the interviews and stuff. he looks like he is having a blast. the judges reamed him though because he didn't capture the entire dance or something like that.
oh man, i just had the best lunch! and the best thing about it is that it was all kind of random and came together. last night i made some angel hair pasta with a jar of artichoke pasta sauce. BORING but i was working all night and did not want to go to get fast food again and that was all i had in the house. i got fancy and added some clams. i made the whole pound, gave some to the dogs with their dinner and i still have a huge container of it. so the doggies will be getting some more.
i just got a somewhat exciting email! i have several of my favorite photos posted on my flickr profile. i love flickr because you can search for photos on any topic and you get results from all the millions of people who have photos posted. for example, if you search for chicago, you'll get over 630,000 photos. And some of mine will be in there too!

today we take down our old site! sounds easy but there is a ton of configuration we have to do on the back end. the customers will see a "site is down until 10/2" message and we will switch the URLs so that our employees can still get to a version of that site. i think it will be a total disaster. the first of many disasters of this coming week.
i'm totally giddy/punchy. i've been living on coffee and chocolate for the past several days. i coded all weekend! around 9pm last night i just got sick of looking at it all and turned everything down and watched Midsomer Murders before i fell asleep at 11. so at least i actually had a good night's sleep last night.
the reason i had to code all weekend is becuase they dropped some entire new functionality on my lap at the last minute. so instead of addressing known issues, i get to add more! makes no sense to me at all. that is so annoying.
i think i'm so flustered about this project because i have no control over it. i'm not the lead and i'm used to being the lead. i see a million things slipping through the cracks that i would have had accounted for. but oh well, i just need to let it go.
okay, back to coding! it's gonna be an interesting week.


it's kind of hard - but totally fun. you can zoom in and out. some of the answers just leap out at you, but i haven't gotten very far yet. if you cannot click on it, it doesnt need solving. remember, the theme is "Dark Movie Titles" so that does not mean they are always horror movies.
can you find them??? click here to play
the cybercrop i was participating in for most of the week ended yesterday. there were so many more things i wanted to do but i just ran out of steam. i still have a bunch of inspiration from alot of the challenges and classes that i didn't get to. i missed the final cybercrop party last night because i was working ALL DAY and NIGHT coding things. I'm coding all day today too but i checked the boards today and it ends up I WON something! i won the pre-crop challenge which is a really good honor because it was actually judged and my name wasn't just randomly picked out of a hat.

How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving by David Richo
Termites - Life's Ultimate Architects
in this video oprah pumps her own gas. it's kind of funny because she has no idea what she's doing . . . she hasn't pumped her own gas since 1983! sometimes i feel like her though. i just don't get how to do the most simple things cuz my ex used to do them and i've never done them before. my most recent episode was when i tried to move my piano myself . . . i almost tipped it over on it's side! i was pushing from the top of it and i should have put my weight in the middle of the object. I caught is just in time but i strained my wrist a little bit in the process.




the nominees for the american music awards were announced today. i don't pay attention to this one as much as i do the grammy's the oscar's and the VMAs. but it's interesting all the same.
oh my god, anna nicole smith is just plain nasty! not as if there was any doubt after watching he make a fool out of herself on her tv show. but come one. she had a baby the other day in the bahamas. her 20 year old son went down there to spend time with her. he died of mysterious causes - they are thinking maybe he was legally taking a deadly combo of medication but have to keep working on the autopsy. they ruled out homicide and suicide. anyways, she SOLD thae last pictures taken of her and her son. She made $650K for it. that's just disguisting. the pictures are from the night before he was found dead. that just turns my stomach.











It's time to dust of those stamps and have some Stampin’ Fun!
We all have them but don’t use them nearly as much as we should! My challenge is for you to bring out your stamps to create a title, add accents, make embellishments or even make your own custom pattern paper! Have fun and be creative with this.



wow, the cybercrop at cropper's cottage began today and the it looks like one of the best cybercrop's i've ever participated in. the challenges are really inspirational. they are more than just "do a layout using circles."

oh my god, my bird just flew out of the house and flew away. he flew into some of the neighbor's palm trees. he's green so i could not find him. when i'd walk by he'd squawk so i could tell the general direction he was at. i finally found him up at the top of the palm tree but i couldn't get to him and he wouldn't come down. and you can't exactly climb palm trees cuz they have no branches.
oohh, men in trees was soo good tonight. i friggin love that show. clips looked good for next week too. and then i flipped through to see what else to put on, and the princess bride is on. i LOVE that movie and i haven't watched it in so long. or course i own the dvd, but i feel like just watching it on tv - commercials and all.

my co-worker's wife emailed me last week and asked if i would sew her daughters girl scout patches on her vest for her since she doesn't know how to so. she was nice and offered me a $15 scrapbooking gift certificate but i didn't want to take anything monetary. i figure i'm just doing her a favor. she wanted to give me something so she told me she and her daughter would make chocolate chip cookies.






well, it's a weekend again! and i have a ton of shit to do this weekend too. i like it better when i don't have anything to do, but oh well.
i found a new community online called cropper's cottage from a scrapping blog. they are having a cybercrop that lasts all next week. it's REALLY a nice one. with tons of stuff going on all week.

“More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours,” the 65-year-old Mr. Dylan sings in “When the Deal Goes Down,” one of the songs on “Modern Times.” Compare that to these lines from Timrod’s “Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night”:
A round of precious hours
Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked
And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers.
love, love, love anna sui's prints and babydoll styles.





Finally! they posted the picks from the Michael Kors 2007 spring/Summer Collection. The show was at 11am yesterday and i kept checkign all afternoon and evening but they would not post the pics. This morning i took a work break to be able to slowly go through and look at each item.






there are two stray dogs out in our parking lot this morning. they are so cute! i guess they have been bugging people all morning and not letting them get into the doors at work. when i saw them they were wagging their tails and stuff i feel so bad for stray dogs. stupid owners! one dog had a collar but no tags. my work is near a bunch of old trailer homes and the community is economically depressed so i often see dogs just running around the street on my way to work. i think they got in somehow and are not trapped between the fences. they must be starving! someone here has to call animal control . . . this makes me sad. i hope they find their owners and don't put them down.
i had to watch an entire hour of dancing with the stars again tonight just to find out who got offed. Tucker Carlson is the one that got axed.

whitney houston finally decided to get divorced from bobby brown. i think everyone will be routing for her and hoping for a comeback. at least alot of women will. everyone blames bobbie brown for getting her into drugs which were the downfall of her career. now supposedly she's clean, and she's getting rid of bobby. so if she goes into the studio and make a new album, many people will be curious to hear her golden voice again. i will give her more or a chance - i've dismissed her over the past fiew years just cuz she's so been so wierd.
now who the hell would wear this? this is the part i hate about fashion shows . . . so many un-wearable things. i know fashion is art - and i appreciate it. but what's the point of fashion if you can't wear it. sometimes i wonder why those designers don't design tableclothes or placemats instead of dresses.


It's Fashion Week in NYC right now. The designers are all showcasing their Spring 2007 collections. I subscribe to some fashion blogs and have been trying to watch the new collections each day. i used to pay more attention when i sewed. I was always looking at the colors and shapes and trying to see how designers made the clothes. Once I learned what is involved in pattern making, i could see things in the clothes that i never noticed before. and the runways became more an artform to me than a shopping experience.








i'm watching the two-hour season premiere of dancing with the stars. i don't really have any shows i watch right now so i'm up for this one. i miss american idol! so this will do. the bad things about these shows are that they take up two tv nights each week. one night for performances, boys are dancing the cha, cha, cha and the girls are dancing the fox trot.
our new website, phosphate florida, launched today. it has so much info about phosphates - i wish someone gave me the info when i started working here! i would have made my understanding of this business so much easier.

i have a dentist appointment today. i have not gone to the dentist since i've moved down here and my teeth are in severe need of cleaning. only problem is, i hate the dentist. the sound of the cleaning machine and that drill just strike the fear of god in me. however, this new guy uses lasers to fix cavities. so you don't even needs any anestesia. i'm hoping i don't have any, but if i do, at least i won't have to deal with the sound of that drill. now if they could only use lasers to clean my teeth . . .
i'm not into tv as much as some people. i don't watch any of the sitcoms - just a few hour long dramas and reality shows. So even though I don't know most of what is on the airwaves, Death Watch '06 at Brilliant But Cancelled is looking like alot of fun. it's kind of like an alternative to fantasy football. In this game, you guess which new series will get the axed first. If you are correct in your picks, you could win a flatscreen TV as the grand prize. they also give away iPods as weekly prizes.
okay, so giving into this september 11 thing, and being the geek that i am, i found one new reminder from that day that resonates with me. this may not mean alot to most people, but it does to me - probably because of my involvement with the internet industry. check out the google homepage from 9/11.

Among the top 200 queries on Tuesday, news-related searches were 60 times greater than the number of news-related searches conducted the previous day.
More than 80 percent of the top 500 queries conducted on Tuesday were related to the terrorist attacks.
At 6:51 a.m. on Tuesday, more than 6,200 queries for "cnn" were conducted on Google. Between 6:26 a.m. and 7:06 a.m., the number of searches for "cnn" averaged approximately 6,000 queries per minute.
Other searches with instant peaks that day were "Nostradamus", "World Trade Center," "Osama bin Laden," "Pentagon" and "American Airlines." Richard W. Wiggins compiled more information on Google that day.
Each year, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 socially significant news stories of social significance said to have been missed, underreported or self-censored by mainstream press in the US. Here are this year's picks:
so, here it is 5 years from 9/11. when i came into work today there were a bunch of people gathered around the flag pole in a moment of rememberence. i'm not sure how i'm supposed to feel today. i didn't know anyone effected by the tragedy. i feel horrible about it and actually, maybe it's becuase i'm kind of in a funk today, but i really hate it. i hate that our world has had to change so much. that now we are at war. that i think about it every time i fly. that when i'm a large gathering space i wonder how many people would die if there was a terrorist attack at that moment. that every month we hear about some terrorist attack somewhere in the world, or at least a threat. those things used to happen - but to others, not to americans. and the truth is, there is a very small chance that i will ever be involved in any terrorist incident. i'm middle-class gal in the suburbs.
there was an earthquake in the gulf of mexico this morning around 11am. I can't remember what i was doing at that time, i was probably still in bed or something. i was probably still in bed or something. i didn't feel it. i guess they felt it in ocala which is a few hours north of me so i should have felt it too. even if i did, i'd never associate an earthquake! i'd just think i was dizzy or something.
The earthquake, centered about 260 miles southwest of Tampa, was too small to trigger a tsunami or dangerous waves, the agency said. The USGS received more than 2,800 reports from people who felt the 10:56 a.m. quake.
Scientists said it was the largest and most widely felt of more than a dozen earthquakes recorded in the eastern Gulf of Mexico in the last 30 years.
my "cold" must be more than a cold. it's been about a week now. i can't breathe. so what will it be this time... bronchitis, respitory infection, sinus infection? how fun.

this is so funny. jimmy and rosalind carter are on the paula dean cooking show. at first they checked out his farm, then she had him helping cook up some quail. she calls him mr. jimmy - it's so cute. he wore an apron that said "hail to the chef." rosalind, jimmy and she made some pecan dessert and there was was flouring the table and cutting out little squares of dough. when she asked where they normally ate dinner they said on tv trays in front of the tv. that's so normal! i love it.


i recently joined a forum called MY SCRAP SHAK and they're having a "Fall in Love With Scrapping" contest there, so I decided I'm going to try and participate. hehe! I doubt that I'll get all the challenges done as I'm already a week behind. But it might help inspire me to get through my huge backlog of scrapping to do. i have to finish my cruise, do all of hawaii, san fran, chicago and the rest of my summer. all and all there are probably about 30 layouts just from that i want to do and get in my books.
my pantry is empty so i was putting together a shopping list this morning. i have been eating a lot of junk food lately and i feel like cooking again. it bums me out though because i always end up with so much food. i miss cooking for someone. and with someone. i just saw some awesome muffins on tv that my step-kids would have loved. i used to find new recipes that i thought they'd like and then cook them up and it would make me feel so good when they'd tell me they liked it. but i don't have that anymore. i suppose i could invite some friends over, but i miss just staying in my pjs all day and cooking and it being part of the day, and just relaxing on the couch and watching tv and eating with a buddy.
since i've been sick, i haven't blogged about my san fran trip last weekend. here are some highlights. . .





finally, at 11:09 am I got myself setup with a working environment! i can actually do some work. i feel like the most non-productive employee in the entire united states of america. except of course for those city employee that are on the payroll but actually don't do anything. now i'm going to have to kick ass all weekend long to get caught up. i'm about 2 weeks behind and we only have 3 weeks until go live! but actually, I only have about 10 hours of work to get through.
i had a stack of mail sitting on my counter today. I didn't go through any since i was gone last weekend and the mailbox was full from the past two days that i have been sick. i have a few questions . . .
i'm so excited for my friend linda! i went into her office this morning to tell her i was back and we were talking about work for a few seconds and then she turn around in her chair with her left hand out and told me she go engaged on her birthday this past weekend! i am so damn happy for her. she is older and has a grown daughter. she's beeen on her own for several years and is a tough woman. she is someone i really look up to. we started working together in chicago and we moved down to tampa together. she's like a mother figure and has me over for all the holidays and includes me in everything so i don't have to be alone. when she met anthony i could tell right away how happy she was. the two of them totally light up around each other, even when they are doing the dishes. she was totally surprised! me too but i don't count. they will probalby have a wedding in april - after the holidays. they are going to "do it right" with a chapel and nice party. i am just so happy for them both. it is so nice she has found someone to spend the rest of her life with after being alone for so long.
wah . . . i'm miserable. deep, annoying cough, loaded sneezes and a runny nose. they actually sent me home from work cuz i was totally spreading germs. i started getting sick saturday night when i was out in san francisco. it really kicked in sunday night and my monday i was trashed. i was bummed because i couldn't even play with my buddy's son, which i was really looking forward to. i just didn't have the energy for a 3 year old and i also didn't want to get him sick. i did however climb up inside the mcdonald's playground with him and almost passed out because my lungs were all full with gunk and i couldn't breathe. and that shit isn't as easy as it looks. i think it's so cool that kids have so much fun eating chicken mcnuggets and running around in the park for about 15 minutes. it's a total american childhood experience.
so excited i'm going to san fran for the weekend but the travel stress is already starting. this morning the news said that the air travel on the east coast may be all messed up due to the hurricanes. i may be able to make it from tampa to miami with no problem, but i may get stuck in miami if my san fran plane is supposed to come from someplace else that can't take off. and since my flight isn't until 6pm, i'm afraid of the backup effect.