Monday, October 29, 2007

just like heaven

i'm watching a biography of my man tom petty and his heartbreakers. total heaven. he is just beyond awesome. is it mean that i'm making aaron watch this show about my beloved tom? nah, he actually seems to be enjoying it too. don't tell anyone.

i'm going to post a couple way old pictures of our hayrack ride here and then go back to swooning.











Sunday, October 21, 2007

fun family





AA, look alikes, & irons

*yesterday while leaving the mall we passed the Sunny Shades 2 sunglasses kiosk at the mall. "oh my gosh!" i told aaron, "do you see that guy in the blue shades, sunglasses, and mullet." i waited until he said yes and then said, "let's go go go!" oh yeah, you guessed it-my buddy from AA. didn't spot me, thank goodness. must have been looking for some extra shades. his eyes are light-sensitive. didn't i mention? told me all about it.....

*want to a different furniture store today with the fam. i kids you not, after the salesgirl showed us around she turned to me and said, "you look JUST like a friend of mine from high school!" apparently i look just like a good friend of hers. go figure right?

*i am so frustrated. i don't iron much, so i've never seen much point in investing a whole lot of money in an appliance i only seem to drag out an hour before a holiday function. but every time i buy a $10 iron something always goes wrong and before long, even with my infrequent use of the thing, it's worthless. and so, not long ago, i accidentally ruined the latest one by ironing my carpet. how and why does one iron carpet, you might ask yourself? well, accidentally of course. i was going to press something briefly (my fourth of july bunting, if you must know. see, i told you i only use it for holiday functions) and i had to retrieve something so i plugged it in and set it in the corner of the floor of our seldom used dining room floor, which is carpeted. i didn't set it on the table just in case one of the kids came along and tripped on the cord of it, creating a huge disaster. unfortunately, in the time it took to return, i found the iron had fallen over and was stuck to the carpet. carpet burned, iron toast. darn it all. and because we hardly ever use that room, the carpeting was in the best condition until then.

anyway, so after weeks or months of wondering if i should get a $10 iron again or bite the bullet and spend the money on a nicer once, aaron and i found ourselves at the fabric store (well, i dragged him in there is more like it) and once in the iron aisle, he figured we might as well get am upgrade iron and be done with the whole thing. so we did. it was $40 but on sale for $35. and it has sat unused until the evening, when i decided that instead of using it as a footstool (andie drags the box out of my closet all the time and stands in it to reach the sink to wash her hands for the millionth time), maybe we could see if it is indeed worth the money. well, it's not. while sounding impressive for both it's ironing and steaming abilities, it does not highlight the fact that the iron sits in a base and it is the base that is plugged in and basically heats up the iron. WHAT??? it reminded me of the old days when you used to heat the iron up in the fire and then use it. ridiculous. and of course it didn't work. for the first 30 seconds of taking it off the base it was hot enough, but loses heat as you're used it and it's not "charged". stupid iron. and stupid me for buying it, keeping it for months and not trying it, not knowing where the receipt is now to return it. ugh.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOY!


woo hoo, it's my brother's 25th birthday! well, as i type this, it's his birthday for the next minute. i meant to post this earlier but it's been a busy day.

can't believe my little brother is so grown up! i tried to find a really embarrassing picture of him when he was a kid to post here, but my mother must have custody of those. in fact, i could barely find any old pictures and what i did find were mostly embarrassing photos of me. ...though that might indeed make a nice birthday gift to my brother....

anyway, boy, i hope it was lovely. wish were there again to celebrate with you!

and speaking of my brother, he's doing great in d.c., working in the advertising department of the Kennedy Center. very nice. and then, out of nowhere, you won't believe this: he met with the VP of programming at the Food Network all because of his little old blog. and he is in talks to develop a daily web show based on his blog! i know, i know, it's insane. they're still working out all the details but they're asking him to tape a few shows in NY coming up.

my brother the star.

maybe i should try harder to track down that photo of him when he was four in our mother's first communion gown after all....

happy birthday!

P.S. jay-okay, i know this is me in the picture and not you but i had to post it just to get a kick out of mom and dad way back when. with all dad's hair i remember thinking as a child that he was perpetually wearing one of those big Eskimo coats with the fur all around his head.

okey dokey, little updates on our lives....

**aaron got a new truck. we used to joke frequently about aaron's penchant for new vehicles but he's actually had this truck for about three years and that's a pretty long stretch. for him. about three years ago, we found out we were expecting andie and immediately decided my fun, bright, sporty, yellow, did i say fun? mazda protege was no longer family material and it was time to submit to the stage of life that requires a minivan and.....get a minivan. so, we found said vehicle, had it for a couple days and then brought it back to the dealership for the teflon-type coating they were going to coat it with (fat lot of good that did three years later, my van is nearly identical to this one). anyway, we had just bought this van and were picking it up a couple days later when aaron walks by a truck and falls in lust with it. buys it on the spot. what kind of people go pick up their new van and within ten minutes exchange trucks?? in the time that i've known aaron he's had five vehicles and the running joke when i'd call him was that he was at the dealership. but, he'd had this truck the longest and i came around to support him in trading it in--car was over 100,000 miles, starting to shake a lot, rust problems, a new one would be a great write-off, blah, blah, blah.

but it's all good. the new truck is bright red! that's my favorite part. i can't tell you anything about the brand, or the horsepower, or "torque"-whatever that is. it's shiny and new looking and i'm sure it'll take aaron and his construction jobs approximately a week until the inside is cakes in dust and dirt. yesterday he went to a truck place to ask about some truck something-or-other (did i mention i don't know anything about truck stuff? and i tend to zone out at the mention of sparkplugs and rotors) and whadaya know, his barely relinquished old truck is sitting there, all waxed and detailed, looking brand new. it was the only teeny, tiny remorse aaron had about giving it up and starting over again. but then he got in the nice, shiny red truck, with more room in the back for the kids (cuz it's all about the family right) and he was happy.

so, all's well that end's well with the vehicle situation. though i was a tad jealous after riding in the pristine truck cab. but as if he read my mind aaron jumped in next to me and scheduled my mom-mobile for a detailing tomorrow. yay!

**i must have a totally generic face or something. people often tell me "you look just like my friend _____!" or they outright mistake me for someone and for some reason, even though it's by no fault of my own that i'm no so-&-so, i'm the one who gets embarrassed, on their behalf, and turn bright red as i awkwardly explain that i'm not the person they think i am. just this morning at andie's school a chatted casually with another parent and then she studied my face, "you look really familiar." i returned the statement--mostly because i didn't know what else to say. sometimes it's true, i'm pretty good with faces and can usually at least identify a person by the context of how i know them but not usually their name. but i'm sure i just look like someone this woman knows.

yesterday i dashed into a furniture while the kids were at school scouting out overpriced, fancy stuff that a person with two young kids (moi) has no business owning at this point in time. i was barely through the door when this scruffy guy comes right over to me, asking, "are you barb?" i verify he's talking to me and kindly tell him i'm not, but ironically, it's my mother's name. apparently i look like someone named barb he knows from AA. i proceed to blush, or course, and tell him that i get that a lot, people always think i resemble someone they know. he proceeds to tell me half his life story-he worked as a carpenter for $7/hour for years, asked his boss for a $.50 raise and his boss fired him. wishes he could go back but he was, after all fired, and then he has issues with his spine and is on disability. this to happens to me all the time. i find myself in bizarre situations like on a plain or naked in a waiting room where people (you know, come to think of it, it's usually men, and men who i've never met before who engage me in strange conversations and i find myself doing a lot of "uh huh", "oh really", a couple "that's really interesting"s) talk and talk and i wonder how i find myself there. in college i called it "the burden of being cute". i'm friendly and harmless and enjoy meeting new people and i resemble someone you know. so, come introduce yourself and ask me about AA. i love it.

i remember a quote that goes: "I am a part of everyone I have met." and it's exactly how i feel. kind of keep you on your toes.

**kids are good, nothing big. excited for halloween. i bought them adorable alligator and ladybug costumes but i have a sneaking suspicion that both are going to want to be power rangers. they both just got transformers yesterday, andie's was something called barricade but she kept calling it "carrot cake". wished aaron hadn't told her the correct way to say it-kids' speech impediments are so cute. kieran is loving school and all his new friends, tonight went to Family Reading Night at his school, which was ironically sponsored by the local PBS station and promoted a lot of TV shows, but was really fun. kieran instantly saw a schoolmate when we arrived and tackled him to the ground. ahh, boys.

so, that's us this week :)

Sunday, October 14, 2007

uh, wrong number

so, i'm a little sleepy today. i awoke around 3am to a prank call from my hair stylist's husband.

ironically, i went to sleep pretty early least night, falling asleep while trying to work on my laptop. i've been staying up way too late most nights spending time on the computer and other nights aaron and i have worked on catching up on season 3 of "The Office".

i'm trying to figure out my new cell phone (woo hoo, i love it too--it's a t-mobile dash) so i had it on my nightstand. around 3.30 am i woke up to it ringing. it was a local cell number and it looked familiar but since my previous phone was stollen and i have none of my numbers, i wasn't sure who it might be. i croaked, "hello..." "hey! i can't believe you answered!" said a male voice. and i promptly hung up. i wasn't surprised when the phone rang again. i pressed the button to ignore the call but then waited. i imagined that the guy called back, heard my name on the recorded voicemail number, realized he had the wrong number and hung up. but about three minutes later my phone beeped that i had a message. pretty much completely awake now i grabbed the phone again and listened, " joanna! i can't believe you hung up on me!" i heard him through some music and what i had originally assumed was a bar or a party. at almost 4am. but after stating his disbelief for the second time i could tell it was simply music playing and then he started rapping along with some music. from time to time he would yell, "YEAH! YOU LIKE THAT??" and then the music ended and he says into the phone, "don't hang up, wait for it.....don't hang up" presumably forgetting that we weren't actually connected. and then he'd play another song and start rapping with it. after a couple minutes with my ear to my cell phone in the dark, wondering what in the heck i was listening to, aaron asked, "is that aaron w?" aaron is also the name of my stylist, amber's husband. aaron sleepily says next to me, "remember how he called you a couple times in the middle of the night and would yell rap music?" i had indeed completely forgotten about that--my hair stylist's husband called a couple times in the middle of the night, after drinking a bit, and would blare loud rap songs and would sing along with them in the messages. completely harmless, just a bit odd. amber, or course, was horrified by it but it was a while ago when it happened and i hadn't even remembered until aaron reminded me.

so, anyway, after that i just couldn't get back to sleep so i turned the computer back on and continued what i had been working in before i fell asleep. it was a strange night. can't wait till i go in for a trim and have something fun to talk about. and see marlene--your husband only fell asleep at the table during dinner with us, it could be a lot crazier-he could be calling my cell phone at all hours and screaming the words to rap songs ;)

such is my life.

blonde in a bottle

blonde in a bottle


Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha!
Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games.

mobile blogging

mobile blogging


Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha!
Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

d.c.

man oh man, we are back from our whirlwind trip to d.c. to visit my brother. let me go back to a week and a half ago, kieran coughing, andie suddenly gets pink eye, both alternating fevers, kieran attends only 1.5 days of school for the week, culminating in sending him off in his carpool thursday and he tells us "i can't hear out of my ear". we pick him up at lunch, rush him to convenient care and then we hop on a plane! there were some other minor details in there (like me getting pink eye in both my eyes the day we left, yay)

but luckily, d.c. was awesome, we saw the lincoln memorial, the zoo, the vietnam memorial, mount vernon, and my little, baby brother's office at the kennedy center. oh, and whole foods. may times. it was really fun and i even took a few pictures of the produce. we just don't have cool grocery stores like that here. when we weren't visiting tourist sites we were eating out or playing with flarp. we aren't exactly classy people.

anyway, we had a great time and i'll be posting pictures.

and get yourself some flarp. it's a party.

Monday, October 01, 2007

quote of the day

"Kieran, did you enjoy your lunch at school today? Wait! You didn't go to school today!" said by me at the dinner table this evening.


not one of my proudest moments, but if you want one of those you'll have to ask me about the time i asked a buddy in a wheelchair what size shoes he wore when his legs were amputated above the knees. yep. sometimes i just don't think before my mouth opens and junk comes out of it. heck-most times!

kieran was indeed home from school today, he's had a pesky cough and we had him checked out. no bronchitis but ear infection and some asthma issues, but he's doing pretty well and is excited to get back to school!



Health Care Management MBA
Health Care Management MBA
Online MBA
Online MBA