Digital Scrapbooking Commences

Before I forget, Happy New Year! I might not make it til Midnight so I'll say it now. I've decided to kick off the new year not with drinks and parties, but rather practical work gettng myself prepared for the new year! Starting it off right, like with a sparkling clean bathroom, a made bed, all laundry done (well, almost all) and even some painting projects completed (I LOVE spraypaint!!)

So onward -

Though I have some pinking shears, some acid free papers and other silly things, I don't have the patience or steady hand to do traditional scrapbooking. So now I'm trying my hand at digital scrapbooking.

My first project came by a bit unexpectedly - a friend of mine who shares a mutual crush with Ralph Fiennes emailed me today incredibly excited that he's got a page on MySpace. Well, if that IS his myspace page, he should be embarassed. But then I realized some of my most precious materials are from his Tony Award winning performance in Hamlet at the Belasco Theater in NYC.

I was fortunate enough to not only see it 11 (!) years ago, but got to meet him and get his autograph. So that picture, autograph and ticket stub are among my prized possessions as I'm SUCH a fan of his. Modern audiences know him, of course, as Lord Voldemort or the creepy guy in Red Dragon. I know of him from his Fat Nazi days in Schindler's List.

My next scrapbook projects are varied. The different ideas I have are:

1. U2 Popmart tour (groan, I know but I have SO much stuff!)
2. Switzerland (I have a lot of odd things actually on this)
   
3. Podere Ripucce/Tuscany (might do a movie too if I can figure out how to move videos onto my PC..I need a Mac. Stat.)
4. Toddler me in Thailand
5. Mike Bielecki & 36 Kids (a lot of material here!)
   
6. Spain
7. My mother (saccarin, but I found a lot of neat old photos)
8. My Rememberance box (this is where I'd take pictures of everything n my rememberance box and basically scrapbook it

Anyway - not too bad for a first cut at online scrapbooking.

(clicky on it to see the whole hog detail)

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead!

I'm a bit late to this, but Saddam Hussein was hung today. First I ever heard of him was when I was babysitting in Naperville, Illinois and the first Gulf War broke out. It caught me by surprise as my whole world at that time was some apple cart tort case (that is tort, not tart!) that I couldn't figure out and what the hell Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was supposed to be about. I was a freshman in college, and ill informed. But he's dead now, done and dusted.

I went to the International Food Market and found some Turkish gum that is suspiciously like my favorite "Viagra" gum (that's what we called it anyway) that I chewed religiously in Italy.



In search of finding that picture I found this, which is infintiely more interesting..



Video: Nipple_crazy_commercial

Another One Bites The Dust

At the end of every Bulls victory (and there were sooo many), a very subtle tune was played: Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust."

In the beginning of my junior year in high school, my friend Val came rushing into our "Consumer Education" class and informed me - with her white-girl corn rows flailing - "Michael Jordan got married!!" She brought me the newspaper clipping. Michael Jordan had married Juanita Vanoy in Las Vegas, of all places. What a shock for 7:45 in the morning -- the sun had barely risen over the stalks of corn.

Sadly, in what seems more and more like a pair of bookends in every marriage, they announced their divorce. 17 years and three kids later, another marriage bites the dust.



Of course, what freaks me out even more is that it's been seventeen years since I was a junior in high school. Given I watched Little Shop Of Horrors today and was able to sing and recall just about every bit of spoken and sung script in it, it just doesn't seem like that long ago.

Postscript: To make me feel even older, I just saw an ad featuring Dan Marino flogging Nutrisystem. Good grief, I thought only old guys like Tommy LaSorda did that. Oh wait, Dan Marino IS an old guy now.

So sorry and sad

I received a concussion recently and now i have a post concussion disorder of some kind. Hence, I've gotten more 'freed' up at work but the concussion has really taken me down energy wise and so forth.

Hence, not a lot of interest in writing emails, blog entries and my normal activities. Explains the huge never ending exhaustion though I definitely attribute that in significant part to post-go-live-catharsis.

Anyway, I'll get better eventually (even newts do) but for now I'm just kinda petering out a lot.

Red Ryder BB Guns

Well Christmas has come and gone. It seems to start so early in the year but then ends so bloody fast. This year, as you know from the posts I've managed to squeek out, it's supposed to be a modest year for gift giving - no importance placed on the Red Ryder BB Gun but rather on giving and sharing with those deeply less fortunate.

I'm very pleased to report that while I did get some wonderful pressies this year, I also know that between my contributions and the ones from my friends, I raised (to my knowledge) over $600 for the Fistula Foundation and Doctors Without Borders. Not only that but another friend of mine gave gifts this year that benefit St. Jude Children's Hospital. Liz Clairborne partnered with them and so one can get a nice objet and make a contribution to a wonderful organization. She told me she thought about it in conjunction with what I was doing/campaigning for this Christmas - which is the key. Just putting out the suggestion of your Christmas gift have meaning can be contagious. Another one of my friends who is a bit more wealthy asked for Red products and got the iPod Nano Red and in turn gave me a gift card for Gap so I could buy more Red for myself.

I went to Christmas Eve service with my grandmother this year and the message is - as it often is - how Christmas gets lost in the concerns of the moment and "how" we celebrate. But, it was very rewarding to stand there and realize that did not apply to me this year. I know I can do more and I am energized and motived infinitely by the opportunities to just see and do things just a bit differently and make the world a better place.

In a video I watched, Warren Buffett told Univ. of Nebraska students that the greatest challenge their generation faces is the common knowledge and application Nuclear Technology and how to control that. I'm surprised he - or Bill Gates sitting next to him - did not have the answer to that problem: Reduce desperation in the world. I know I'm committing intellectual fraud by using Hitler as an example but Hitler came to power because the Germans were emotionally, financially and culturally desperate. Desperation is oxygen to bad decisions, following the wrong leader. It's why people sell their souls to the devil. Reduce desperation and how will the next madman come to power? Mad men need desperate people. So by sharing the wealth, even our relative wealth, is one powerful combatant. Educated, enlightened, fed people who are respected do not follow mad men. People who help people become educated, enlightened and fed are true leaders. It's the perfect system, so why does no one do it?

Anyway, in many ways this is the best Christmas I've ever had despite some obvious changes from years past. But if you can turn something ugly into something beautiful, well, who can argue with that?

So, onto the New Year! Gotta think of resolutions to break!!!!

Happy Christmas

Will be offline for a while - as I have been. But, I hope one and all have a safe and happy Christmas!

ENORMOUS thanks and hugs to all my friends who have made donations to The Fistula Foundation and Doctors Without Borders in lieu of giving gifts. You just don't know how profoundly happy that makes me!!

Once I get around to my Christmas cards (and I'll republish it here) everyone will know, but I've donated $450 to the Fistula Foundation which will take care of a woman in Ethiopia in full as describted herein:

While $450 isn't enough for one night's stay in most hospitals in the United States, it is enough for Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital to provide one woman with restorative surgery, postoperative care, and classes in health and basic literacy while she recuperates. It's even enough to provide her with a new dress and bus fare home.

My God I Love U2!

Is it a testament to my perseverence or a testament to the prolific catalog of Saturday Night Live episodes that it's taken me six freakin years to finally see the Val Kilmer hosted SNL special from December 2000. The curiousity and drought ended this morning - thanks and praise be to TiVo.

While I shan't dwell on the particulars of how I missed this the first time around, I will sum up. I was in Zurich? New York? London? the weekend of that SNL special (I suspect Zurich because I don't remember many weekends in NYC or London that year). I knew U2 would be on so I begged my sister to videotape (YES, videotape) that SNL show. I figured it'd be pretty painless for her since she likes Val Kilmer. She taped it and even let me know that U2 were very good on it. Before I flew home, I heard that it was the best live music performance on SNL and for the first time in SNL history, a musical act received a standing ovation during and after the performance. I was so excited to see it!

Now the thing to understand here is that my sister tapes TV shows and movies the way my mother took photos: Something important is going to get chopped off. Somehow, the tape fiascoed in a way I don't particularly remember but I got to see the first performance and the brilliant Horatio Sanz/Jimmy Fallon/Chris Kattan/Tracey Morgan red sweater Christmas song. So the actual performance of "Elevation" that made the normally unimpressionable NY SNL crowd rise to their feet was lost.

The show had been on Comedy Central before but like a sinister tease, it also lopped off/condensed the show to an hour rather than its normal 90 minutes and "Elevation" was a casualty of that.

But tonight I finally saw it! And at the risk of sounding like a crying, silly, panty-throwing, Bono-marry-me type girl, it was worth the wait of years. And even having seen Elevation itself performed live up close and personal a few times, this was an amazing performance. The best part was when Mr. Bono marched through the crowd, interspersing the words of Lennon: We all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun!

I managed to actually scream (and omg, here I am 34 years old) when Bono threw his arm around Val Kilmer standing offstage and totally in key and beautifully integrated, threw his voice down and sang, "Baby come on and light my fire" and returned seamlessly to Elevation.

Yes, I'm MIA on blog for weeks/days more or less and I come back with paragraphs on U2. But I'm very much involved right now in getting my offline life in order. Things are going GREAT at work and socially but I need right now to get my physical home in full order. I've made a lot of changes - thanks to a gift card given to me by my employer for our retails stores in thanks for the work and vacation I've had to give up. Though I will say, it hardly pays the debt to a life ignored for so long but it's better than nothing. I'll try to take pictures soon.

I need to dye my hair. I don't have any greys but I want darker hair.

Rightio, off to make home a better home.

I hate Macy's

So Macy's brings some sort of improvement to Marshall Fields, right? Riiiight. Before, Marshall Field's sold the Raclette Grill I have wanted FOREVER and now that they are Macy's they no longer have it. Lovely. So, now I have all this raclette cheese and no Raclette grill. And the only merchant who sells one in-store is Williams Sonoma and it's $40 more than it should be there. Target sells some very nice ones but they are all on-line only and also kind of pricey. It's a rip off - it's a pancake grill with some trays. I might try doing it using a conventional stove and a non-stick skillet but I'm SO annoyed. I wanted to have this for Christmas so I can take it to my grandmother's for Christmas Eve dinner. I thought it'd be easier than trying to cook there or try to cook here and move food over, it's also part "entertainment" and definitely better than trying to go out. It's a good little way to make sausages (Brats or Polish or Keilbasa), little gherkins and stuff. I've been hanging onto this nonsense for quite awhile now.

I just might do fondue except I have lost so many parts to my fondue pot that I probably would have to get a new one anyway in which case why not just buy the damn raclette grill.

Anyway, lots to blog about really but again, no time to get it all together. Big Christmas work party tonight and i had to have my yard re-sodded. It cost an arm and a leg but my neighbors - whose yard I'm taking a picture of today - does not mow their lawn, lets their dog piss and crap in my yard and then their neglected weeds and funk infected my yard so bad that that the entire back half and side died and overran with weeds. I could have gotten a fleet of raclette grills for what this is costing me, not to mention the incessant spraying that I will have to have done to keep their weeds from infecting the new lawn. The upshot is, they guarantee this sod for life. Hopefully for my life and not the life of the grass, lol.

Oh I wish I bought a condo instead.

So, plenty to write about my St. Augustine trip. I might be going back up there soon to pick up some things that I got a rain check on (such amazing deals - 40-50% off CLEARANCE and sale prices!). What a great weekend city, so much nicer than I remembered it to be. The best part was because it was so cold it had this great wood-burning smell to it. I felt like I was in some odd blend of a Spanish British city. Which..I was.

Anyway - more later. Too much to do today..

Quote this famous Christmas dude:







BUSY BUSY BUSY!

Not fallen off the face of the earth

..just been atrociously busy w/ work and then an un-plugged holiday. I'll catch up soon.





But in the meantime, here are two priceless pictures that might say more of American than any journal or editorial.





I call these, American As Seen From A Bubble Gum Machine
(Click on picture to see them in full U.S. Of A. Glory!)

Hee Haw Redux:

Freedom of Choice: