My new favorite term

Kate (Kayt) -noun, slang: A controlling, OCD, selfish...Um, well, not a nice person. After Kate Gosselin, reality TV star and over-all not-nice person.

Usage: OMG, she is SUCH a Kate!

It's almost worth turning old!

So, I'm 42 today. As Kathy says, that's nearly old as dirt. We decided I was old as topsoil, if not actual dirt.

And, yes, I do have mixed feelings about turning older. On the one hand, it sure as heck beats the alternative. But, periodically I stop and think, "Dang, am I REALLY 42! That sounds OLD!!!!"

But, there are benefits to birthdays. Besides getting attention and phone calls and cards and whatnot, periodically one gets something that just makes them laugh.

Like this:



Now I love Ramses. He's a great mascot. But, I think we all have to admit, that the real Ramses does not exactly strike fear into opponents hearts. Perhaps it's the blue horns, perhaps it's because he spends football games nibbling on bushes. Dunno. But if you want fearsome, go for the student in the Ramses suit, not the real Ramses.

PARTICULARLY when the real Ramses has a birthday hat on his head! I'm not sure why this tickles me so much; I think it's probably because Ramses has the same expression that he has when he's nibbling the bushes, or riding on a float in a parade, or, well, ANYTIME I've ever seen him!

One could, I suppose, call it placid. Lobotomized is certainly another word. Whatever, the picture made me laugh, and that's a good thing!

Where's Lassie when you need her?

There are so many nice, sweet, normal animals out there in the world.

And then there are the ones in my life.

So, I've got Jack, who's a needy boy, and who also likes to groom me. Including nibbling on me. At 4 in the morning, typically. Very odd, but it makes him SO happy.

There's Dusty, who likes to walk across my curtain rods!!!!

And then there's Tucker. Tucker, like Jack, is a needy boy, so he gets clingy when he comes to visit me. He also periodically gets TERRIFIED of hardwood floors, so sits at the edge of the carpet and whimpers.

And, apparently, sleeps in odd places:

Tucker's new "bed"

Now, Tucker has a perfectly good bed. Soft, fluffy, and even has raised edges so he will feel all snuggly.

He also has a pad in his crate -- again, nice and soft, and he's been known to crash there when he wants a nap.

But apparently, they were NOT what he wanted this morning!

Vampire Kitties

By now I'm relatively used to the nuttiness that exudes from Jack and Dusty. They are, as we've all recognized, the silliest, nuttiest, CRAZIEST velociraptors masquerading as cats in the entire world.

But they're really nuts now.

I was packing my lunch today, and went to grab an apple out of the fruit bowl. The apples are a smidgie old, but not too bad. But this one had odd little holes in it, so I grabbed the other one...

... which also had odd little holes in it.

Then I realized, they weren't just holes, they were puncture wounds. From teeth. Itty bitty little kittie fangs.

Yep, one of the kitties (I vote Jack -- he's the most food obsessed) went and BIT my apples. He obviously didn't like it (since he didn't eat it), but he then proceeded to bite BOTH of them about 10 times each!!!

Craziness.
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Most ridiculously redundant thing I've heard today

"It was re-ejected out"

Hmmmmm....

We're all cracked

David and his family were over for dinner last night; David is travelling this week, which means I'm dog sitting, so they had to bring Tucker and all his stuff over. It made for a reasonably loud, raucous, crazy evening: 7 people, 5 of them kids; one XBox; two computers; multiple cell phones (with their text messages); a TV; two cats and a dog.

Now, all of the kids are pretty OCD and anal retentive in their own little ways (yeah, and the grownups too -- the kids have to get it from SOMEWHERE). It makes for amusing situations at times, when there may be as many as 4 or 5 separate conversations at dinner, each led by a different child who is absolutely convinced that his or her story is of the utmost importance.

So last night after dinner, David and I were playing Rummy with Kirsten (his eldest) while Peter was watching the Steelers game. Now, sports happens to be what brings out Peter's compulsive genes more than anything; one of the best gifts he ever got was a magnetic board that allows him to track, week by week, the various standings of all NFL teams, with a separate section for the playoffs. He was very excited last night when Pittsburgh won, and came running into the kitchen all breathless, and announced "Pittsburgh WON!!!! Oh, and I've already updated my board!"

Amused at my son ('cause, yeah, we were all wondering when he was going to update his board), I looked at David and (rhetorically and jokingly) asked, "Does anal retentive have a hyphen?"

At which point Kirsten looked up and said, "No, it doesn't, but I really think it should!"




(NOTE: Yes, I went to dictionary.com to confirm that anal retentive, indeed, does NOT have a hyphen before actually typing it in this post!)
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Yay A!

Adrianne and I are both totally addicted to the Cake Wrecks website. Love it.

I've never yet gotten the nerve up to send in a potential wreck, but Adrianne has.

And today, she made Cake Wrecks!!!

To be fair, it wasn't a wreck; every Sunday Jen does Sunday Sweets where she shows examples of truly beautiful cakes; of late she's taken to asking her Wreckporters to send in pictures of truly beautiful cakes that adhere to a certain them. The pic A sent in was for a Fairies and Castles theme.

What fun! Perhaps I'll actually have to TAKE a picture of the various Harris Teeter wrecks I see, rather than just thinking about it....

My Goodness, this woman could take over the world!

I've blogged before about one of my favorite sites: Cake Wrecks. Great site, very funny, and full of cautionary photos for those of us who get a little creative with their kids' birthday cakes. It's written by a woman named Jen (no last name), who is, without a doubt, one of the funniest people I've ever read.

And, apparently, has enough of a following she could take over the WORLD (please read in your best Brain impersonation).

Yesterday she posted about being a finalist for a 2008 Weblog Award for Best Food Blog. At the time, 1,520 total votes had been cast, and Jen was in second place with 383.

Today, when I voted? 12,116 votes cast, and Jen's in first place with 10,172 votes.

Dang! Barak should've hired THIS woman to run his campaign!

(BTW: go here and vote for Jen!)

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AIGH!

I'm fighting some sort of nasal/sinus/allergy ooginess. In an attempt to keep myself comfortable, I went to the store to get some saline spray. I just grabbed the first one I saw, which was a store brand, because saline is saline, right?

Well, yeah, but packaging is, apparently, not packaging.

I had some errands to run, and when I got back to my desk, was feeling a little stuffy, so I opened my saline, unwrapped the "sealed for my protection" plastic band, and tried to squirt some up my nose.

THIS bottle of saline apparently has a feature where if you try to squirt it up your nose, the squirting mechanism immediately becomes clogged, so that as you squeeze instead of saline coming out the nozzle, the entire nozzle comes out of the bottle and saline sprays EVERYWHERE.

Yep, everywhere. Now, to be fair, I DID get some in my nose. But also in my hair, all over my face, on my computer, on my OTHER computer, on the wall of my cube, on my file cabinets, on the papers on the OTHER side of my cube, and so on.

Hmph.

Let them eat cake. Or at least laugh at it.

For some reason, I know TONS of people with September birthdays; nearly as many as April. Not sure what it is about those two months (or, I suppose 9 months preceeding them), and as my birthday's in April and my brother's is in September, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW!

But, yeah, I know lots of folks with September birthdays.

So, in their honor, and because we all need a little silliness on a Monday, two great cake sites.

The first comes thanks to Adrianne. She said it made her laugh out loud; apparently it did me as well, because my cube-mate kept looking at me funny!

The second was actually a link on the Cake Wrecks site, and links back to one of MY favorite sites, so must be included.