Why scrapbooking is funny

It's funny because you find odd bits and pieces in tucked away boxes - things you'd never expect to find in a billion years. Like, for example, how many people can find this interesting tidbit about themselves on a torn off piece of a Pampers box?

Apparently on December 14, 1972 I urinated at 2PM and puked at 2:45PM and again at 3:05P.M

The logging of this clearly was a team effort as the urination log is in my mother's handwriting and the vomit log is in my grandmother's.

Why log this on the back of a Pampers box? We were so poor we couldn't afford scrap paper?

But despite all the urination and vomiting (I was a sickly thing), I turned out reasonably cute..




At the risk of being a showoff - how many people have this good Mommy & Me photos?! I looks like an ad for the Gap collided with some little girl who stole JFK Jr's coat.

DA BEARS!!!

WOW!

The Bears are actually going to the Superbowl after twenty-one years of succesive failure. I'm really shocked!

I also think it bears noting, though I only have two occasions in history of which to call upon, it always snows when the Bears win the NFC and go to the Superbowl. In 1985/86 they said it was Papa Bear's tears. I think there might be some truth to that, but, this year I think Waldy's tears are mixed in there too.

Time to watch Virgina Halas McCaskey hand the trophy over.


Suddenly, I miss Walter very, very much.

Sports & The City

OK, I admit it. I'm watching the Bears/Saints game and the weather is fair here in Florida. Not that I'm making any connection.

I'm moved to post because I actually heard a name outside of the usual context (Usual Context = some elaborate discussion about the 46 zone defense or any aspect of the 1985 Chicago Bears). Ron Rivera is the Defensive Coordinator. Ron Rivera? That's the best we could do?! Of all those guys, Ron Rivera is the only actively participating remanent of 22 years of formerly manhandling, earth shaking, booty rumbling defensive elegance?

Whatever.

It's not the same this year, by any stretch. For one thing, we don't have THIS this year:




Oh Jimmie Mac, when are you comin back? This photo is suprisingly not very dated looking, given it's 21 years and 2 months old.

But more importantly, this is is also what we don't have:
(clicky on the picture to see better detail in the picture - if you're interested. This is one of Jeff MacNelly's better toons)




Does this type of fandom even exist anymore? Has Chicago become too cosmopolitan to be good die hard sports fans? It might be. Oprah is thin, Bono is shopping at the three story Gap next to where the last good coffee shop was (Cambridge House, R.I.P.), the Park Hyatt swells over the street that leads to Cabrini Green which is getting torn down brick by brick. You look at your average Gator fan or FSU and they pretty much are not cosmopolitan type people. They like to paint their faces and get naked and this is why they are good sports fans.

The thing was, back in the day, Chicago would lose its literal mind on a day like this. I suspect there's a great deal of going's on in Chicago today and it's hardly shut down (I'm sure da Jewel is doing just fine). People change, times change, I wonder if Chicago is losing its identity slowly, or is it merely just that I'm losing my identity to Chicago?

I'm not saying that in the upper reaches of Northern Illinois or downstate there are Bears fans. But do da super fanz ex-zist any more, my friend?



edited: I spoke too soon - now they are talking about Ditka..Jim Harbaugh and Jim McMahon. But all Ditka centric. Barf.

Shoee, I ain't a freak after all

At least not based on the standards of this Yahoo news story. What a relief.

Migraines, one bad blurry eye and a malfunctioning debit card and a song I wish I had known or was recorded years ago as this could be the Single Girl's Consulting Anthem.. (apologies for being ultra mainstream American Idol kind of sappy)

"Home"

Another summer day
Has come and gone away
In Paris and Rome
But I wanna go home
Mmmmmmmm

Maybe surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
I just wanna go home
Babe I miss you, you know

And I’ve been keeping all the letters that I wrote to you
Each one a line or two
“I’m fine baby, how are you?”
Well I would send them but I know that it’s just not enough
My words were cold and flat
And you deserve more than that

Another aeroplane
Another sunny place
I’m lucky I know
But I wanna go home
Mmmm, I’ve got to go home

Let me go home
'Cause I’m just too far from where you are
I wanna come home

And I feel just like I’m living someone else’s life
It’s like I just stepped outside
When everything was going right
And I know just why you could not
Come along with me
That this is not your dream
But you always believed in me

Another winter day has come
And gone away
In even Paris and Rome
And I wanna go home
Let me go home

And I’m surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
Oh, let me go home
Oh, I miss you, you know

Let me go home
I’ve had my run
Baby, I’m done
I gotta go home
Let me go home
It will all be all right
I’ll be home tonight
I’m coming back home

Oh if only life was framed and lived like a snapshot of a lyric, if the hindsight came five years earlier, if you had the opportunity to know where not going home would lead.

I dedicate to this post to all the chicks on the road. May your flights be comp upgraded, may your outbound be long and your inbound be short, may you make Platinum this year, may your 1st class salad not be Caesar, may you never taste a Milano cookie again, may you get reclining exit row, and may you make your success be defined by more than all of that.

Up & Coming Sabbatical

I got NOTHING done today that I should have. This weekend has been a farce of an attempt at actually getting things accomplished so I could have a more sane week.

SO, that said, I'm informing one and all to consider me "out of town" if not out of country next weekend. Imagine I'm on a cruise with only sporadic access to email! I will be doing some digital scrapbooking..in part. My two projects are to do something with the DDFC picture and the other is the long promised My First Haircut one for my friend Lala's daughter that I've been promising to do. And, I'm going to work on a real scrapbook - pieces of which I've accumulated over the past few weeks culminating in an $11 kit from Wal Mart today that sort of merges it all together. It's a wee scrapbook, not one of those big ones but a smaller portable version. I'm going to try to do Italy and London in those for starters.

Well I'll probably blog once more before next weekend but if not, no one should worry if they don't hear from me. I'm totally going to be signing off next weekend.

Good Tidings We Bring

I got a little 'calculator" thing from the Red Campaign. You plug in the Red campaign items you've purchased and it tells you what you bought has really bought. Then you get a card:

So by pandering to my greed and sense of style, I've been able to help two hundred women. By tapping into my sense giving rather than receiving this Christmas, I've COMPLETELY paid for pre and post op care, surgery, some education and a new set of clothes for two women in Africa. It took so little and changed almost nothing in my life. That makes you really consider, doesn't it, how great the need is when one can do so little and yet impact so many.

That has motivated me to come out of my blogging reclusiveness to post that good news. I'm not dead, I merely have a post traumatic concussion issue which makes me excessively tired. I sleep very hard these days and I definitely am getting better but it's not easy for me to write. I got home relatively early this evening (if 7 is relatively early) and began burning DVDs to clean out my overburdened TiVo. I transferred last year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction for U2. I loved Bruce Springsteen's brilliant and very entertaining speech, which you can read here if you are so inclined.

But a part of Bono's speech brought me to tears, I'm not sure if I ever really noticed this part the first time I saw it. I probably should have saved this post for MLK Day but I frankly probably won't remember to do it (I have a broken brain, after all). What brought me to tears is I either already knew this story (which I don't believe I do) so much as I knew what the point of the story would be. At this point in his speech, Bono had used 'Kodak moments' to describe each member of the band but was saving the best for last - Adam Clayton. This Kodak moment is centered around the song "Pride", which I typically refer to as a "cookie break" song (so overplayed that it's time to have a cookie rather than sit there and watch/endure it). The third verse which Bono refers to in this speech is (with poetic license against historical facts)

Early morning, April four

A shot rings out in the Memphis sky

Free at last, they took your life

They could not take your pride

Anyway, this is from Bono's speech at the induction:

Third Kodak moment. 1987. Somewhere in the south. We'd been campaigning for Dr. King, for his birthday to become a national holiday. In Arizona, they are saying no. We're campaigning very hard for Dr. King. Some people don't like it. Some people get very annoyed. Some people want to kill us. Some people are taken very seriously by the FBI. They tell the singer that he shouldn't play the gig because tonight his life is at risk, and he must not go on stage. And the singer laughs. Of course we're playing the gig. Of course we go onstage, and I'm singing "Pride (In the Name of Love)" -- the third verse -- and I close my eyes. And you know, I'm excited about meeting my maker, but maybe not tonight. I don't really want to meet my maker tonight. I close my eyes and when I look up I see Adam Clayton standing in front of me, holding his bass as only Adam Clayton can hold his bass. There are people in this room who'd tell you they'd take a bullet for you, but Adam Clayton would have taken a bullet for me. I guess that's what its like to be in a truly great rock and roll band.

OK, I'm going to land of nod now. InspiRED.

Buon Anno! Bonne Annee! Ein glückliches neues Jahr!

Happy New Year!

I didn't make it past midnight - not from a lack of trying but I had been sick and was working on so many projects simultaneously that I just gave out and needed to sleep. Either that or Christina Aguilera put me to sleep since she's the last thing I remember about 2006. How scary is that?

I'm burning my bayberry candle today. This little card says "This New Year's candle comes from a friend. On New Year's day, burn it down to the end. A bayberry candle burned down to the socket brings good luck to your life and money to your pocket."

Heh, we'll see now, won't we?