Flat Stanley Update #2, morning commute in Mumbai

I just adore how much fun Summer is having with this project. Let's face it, we never had thins kind of access to stuff when we were kids (Youtube? Hello what?) and I know my kid is not nearly as fascinated with the whole process as Summer and I are. We're dorks and we love it. Here's his latest quest, I don't know how to attach an audio file but if someone else does please let me know. The birds outside the flat sound like the ones they have at the zoo. Very tropical!



Flat Stanley's host had a few late nights of meetings and not a lot of fun stuff going on. But, even the boring day to day life in Bombay is fun and exciting!

* Stanley was invited to the Siddharth's (a co-worker of Summer's) wedding, this weekend in Bombay. Stanley will probably not be in town though, as we plan to travel to Nasik for the weekend. So, you'll see Stanley soon at either a wedding or on a road trip and visiting another city.




* Stanley plans to work late tonight, so he took his time this morning enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee and newspaper in the flat. Check out the attached audio file to hear what it sounds like sitting at this window.



* Stanley rode to work this morning in his first rickshaw ride! As you can see he was a bit frightened, it's very loud, hot, trafficky, noisy, and the cars and trucks get very very very very close. Stanley stayed safe in the back of the rick tucked away.


You can check out Stanley's adventure in a traffic snarl here (be sure to click HQ to view the video in high-quality playback!).

Flat Stanley Commutes to Work in Mumbai

OK this is what my good friend Summer wrote for the Flat Stanley she took to India for my kid (the title is hers too):

After spending an extra day and night in either San Francisco or Dubai, Flat Stanley arrived in Mumbai, India on Monday morning, April 13th.

To be precise, he was delivered here, to the corporate apartment for ZEDO, Inc. , located in Juhu (Bollywood), in Mumbai, India. He was unpacked, freshened up, and rested as he had some jet lag.

This morning, he:

* drove to work with us in typical Bombay morning traffic
* got some fresh air crossing a bridge over the Andheri (E) Train Station
* checked out a lady and some bright drying laundry on the side of the road
* was greeted by the watchman at the office
* and rested in the lobby of the ZEDO office in Mumbai

Note: Her luggage was lost for a night by the airlines (with Stanley in it). Also, she included the Google Map location/actually the drive to work for the kid. How friggin cool is she? She totally gets this project. Here's each picture for the bullet points. See the car mirror in the 2nd and 3rd pic? I love Summer, she rocks.






She took Flat Stanley to Bollywood. Bollywood! She asked if she could have him for a bit longer (of course) and she is going to take pictures of him in Amitabh Bachchan's house. Yeah I had to Google that name too. And then take a pic of him outside of Shahrukh Khan's house. Flat Stanley does Bollywood baby! Little Miss M's mom is going to think we're totally loopy. The only thing we've watched that's even remotely Bollywood is Bride and Predjudice. I've been told that's not really Bollywood but if ya'll like Pride and Predjudice this movie is hilarious.

My daughter has this nemesis

Stay with me here because this story actually has a purpose (and no, the picture is not the kid's nemesis, that's Flat Stanley). It's kinda back story so you can get the gist of the real story which will come out in my next post. And probably a few more after it because it's cute and well, entertaining. To me at least and well, it's my blog.

We are from a neighborhood without a lot of turn over. One of the bonuses of this is that the kids my daughter went to preschool with are probably, for the most part, going to be with her for awhile. It has it's up sides, we LOVE most of these children and they have great parents too. GREAT parents. There are then the downsides, one or two of the kids are atrocious. Spoiled in an ungodly manner. So much so that neither I nor the Hunny would take care of the child nor really wish it one anyone else. We're pretty relaxed when it comes to others, we don't really care if your kid is a bit wild. They're kids so you know, they only get one chance to be obnoxious and fun kids right? But these ones, no they are not anything anyone wants to sit in a room with.

This one girl that my daughter has been in class with in preschool is in her class this year, she's one of those. She was always in trouble in class, jumping up and down on the cots at nap time, causing all kinds of a ruckus in class. She wasn't in my kid's kinder class but apparently she had a rough time in kinder. This was so not a surprise to us. We had been invited over for dinner when they were class mates in preschool and we got to witness first hand what she was like at home. She said no to her parents a lot and basically did not follow any of their instructions. When they tried to get stern with her she'd balk and sometimes hit them. Oh yeah, this one is a real keeper, let me tell you. We never went back again and we never invited them over to our house. Which, in truth, is sad because we really like the parents. Won't do the kid though. Oh hell no. They are smart people, really really quite. The at home mom has a degree but doesn't need to use it because her husband makes serious cash. Plus they are from England, all their schooling was free. They are Indian, just with British accents. I think there grandparents are in India so they are maybe 1 or 2 generations removed. This comes into play later, bear with me on this ramble.

So their kid, Little Miss M, does not get along with my daughter. At all. They are always tattling on each other or complaining about each other. I'll come home and the kid has this list of stuff the little Miss M has done wrong that day. She's so bad she doesn't even get to sit at the desks like the other kids. She has her own, all by it's lonesome, right next to the teacher's desk. She has to go the principal's for misbehavior all the time. And apparently she's doing much better this year than she did last year. The last I talked to her mom she was going to be testing to go into the gifted program. I don't think she made it into it because she's still in the class with the other kids and doesn't get pulled for advanced anything. Her mom thought she needed to be in the gifted program because she was bored. I think she was bored because she was expected to sit and listen to the teacher. Novel huh? The teacher has been known to tell her that she is not in charge of the class a multitude of times. My god if my kid was getting that lecture there would be little girl head rolling.

Little Miss M likes to have all the attention and be in charge of everything. Not a big surprise considering that she's always been allowed to rule her home. Any other child that either a) does not agree with her little miss highness or b) completely ignores her or c) thwarts her rule by being more important/more popular than her is not on little Miss M's cool list. Needless to say I think my kid breaks all three of those rules with her. They don't get on well. At all. Almost competitive really. I'll be curious to see what becomes of the little Miss M when she gets older. Apparently she makes a lot of the other girls cry on a consistent basis and this can not make her very popular in the long run. It's very much like one of those Disney TV shows where it's all overly dramatic and woe is me but hey, it's the first grade. Just wait until jr high and high school. I suspect it'll only get worse. Oh and even better, her parents have another baby due this summer. We don't think it's going to go over well. Whatcha think?

Alright I'm done with the gossip, now you get to hear why I dragged it across my blog (other than just random amusement for us mothers who have seen it). They have this project in class, I'm sure many of you have heard of it, it's called Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley is a drawing of a boy that the kids mail somewhere to go on an adventure. You can read about the idea here:
Flat Stanley
It was a book originally written in 1964 by Jeff Brown but it turned into a project and I must say, I love the idea.

My kid wanted to send her's to her grandmother in San Diego and so we did. But I have a friend, my best friend from high school. She lives 50% of the time in San Francisco and 50% of the time in India, for work. Summer mentioned that she was maybe going to be able to go to Dubai this next trip to India but even if she doesn't I thought it'd be way fun to send another Flat Stanley to India with her so I asked her to take him with. She said she would and so I mailed out another to her a few weeks ago before she left for Mumbai.

Turns out she's like the BEST person to sent Flat Stanley with. She totally gets it and is really having fun with it. Like she asked how long she could keep him for. So for my next post I'll be showing ya'll where Flat Stanley has been for his first few days in India. And why I think little Miss M is going to go green when she sees where our Flat Stanley goes to in India. Yeah, it's all about the little things in elementary school isn't it?

Fast and Furious, a review

New model. Original parts.

Have ya'll seen the first one? Faboo I just loved that movie, like I said, I'm a closet grease monkey and can appreciate these things. The second and third one? Waste of time. Didn't even have the same cast in them and without Vin don't even bother talking to me. Waste. O. Time. Now we have the new model original parts, everybody from the first now in the fourth. About time. And do you just love that car in the pic? Yummo, love me some muscle car.

This one has everything in it that you'd expect. Fast illegally modified cars, muscle cars included. Gawd I love me some muscle car. Yeah I know, I'm Asian and should love the imports but really, nah. Don't forget the bad guys, drug dealers, illegal guns, hoochie girls, lots really. Very unrealistic since there were like 200 emaciatedly skinny girls mostly naked in shoddy parts of the city watching illegal car racing. Not one fat chick to be seen. Totally unrealistic. Trust me when I tell you, we got fat chicks in L.A. and they don't hide at home.

The plot line, pretty darn good considering it wasn't anything new and novel. The cars scenes: ROCK. Makes you want to go find yourself some souped up ass hauling car of some sort. It's also one of those movies you want to see on big screen. I watch previews and determine which ones we'll see in the theaters (precious few times we get to go without the kid) and which ones we'll just rent on dvd. This one was determined to be a big screen-er very early on. Oh yeah, fast cars and Vin Diesel? HELLO. I am not into big guys. I am not into big guys with muscles. At all. I like tall lanky men, brunette please. For Vin I make an exception. I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers. Shh don't tell the Hunney I said that. There were tons of skinny ass hotties with fake boobies in the movie anyway so the guilt factor is real low.

They managed to blend it all really well, flesh out the relationships better, and, I love this one, leave it open for a 5th sequel. The only character I didn't like much was Michelle Rodriguez's, she was just too ghetto for my taste. The good news? She's barely in this one. It's a tale of history, revenge, passion rekindled, all with no sex scenes and LOTS of speed demon driving. There's a disclaimer about 'do not try this at home' or rather 'on regular streets'. It comes way late though, like at the end of the credits late. It was my only complaint about the movie, they should have put that disclaimer sometime when people were actually in the theater to see it right?

But that's it. Other than that I think most people who like fast cars and Vin will love it. Just look at the car in that photo. Damn that's a hot car...

Loving

Stephanie over at Chocolate and Whine had a post up of things she is loving. It's a good positive step for her, she's been having it rough and sometimes it's hard to see good things when you are wallowing in the bad. Ever notice how much easier it is to wallow in the bad? One of the many bad qualities we have as humans I think.

Anyway she invited us to follow and list the things we are loving. I'm going to go one step further and include my variation on some of the things she listed too...

Summer
Damn I had forgotten just what the heat is like in Texas. We've had warm days on and off for the past month at least but they really were just warm days. In the 80's mostly and here that's just spring. We had one day last week where you walked outside and BOOM it hit you like a wall. And I thought "Oh yeah, now that's what I'm talkin' bout!". That's summer in Texas. Lots of people don't like it and I know there are days where it is annoying but it feels good. Like a huge warm bankie and your skin tingles. No I didn't always like the heat but I've lived in the snow belt for a bit and I'll take the sun, even the raging heat, anyday. BTW, for whatever reason (Mother Nature is pms-ing?) it was ass biting cold today damn it.

The smell of spring
The smell of spring in every place I have lived has been different. Maybe that's because the native plants in So Cal, Nor Cal, Metro Washington DC, and Texas are all completely different. Surprised? I didn't think so. Seriously, like big time. Here in the hill country of south central Texas it smells like grape Kool Aid, no lie. It's the Texas Mountain Laurels that are just a wonderful plant that thrives in our desolate climate and still manages to produce these scrumptious flowers that bloom in falls and look like wisteria but smell like grape Kool Aid. I love them. Occasionally you get a whiff of jasmine too, it does well in our area. They are all almost done blooming (as are the Redbuds, gawd I love those blooms), soon it will be the crepe myrtles. They don't have any smell that I know of but they sure do look pretty. Make a huge mess but look pretty in the mean time. They don't do as well here as they do in the true south but they do well enough.

As long as I'm on smells I'll let you know about one of those strange ones I always had a thing for. I don't know if I spent too much time as a vet tech or I'm just odd. Probably both actually, but I love the smell of those corn chip dog feet. Strange much? Yeah. I've loved my dogs throughout my life (tyrannical as they all have been) and when they are content and lying on me on the couch/bed/someplace they are so not allowed to be, they get warm and happy and smell like corn chips. It's their feet, I know it but it's still a happy dog smell so I like it. It's a dog person thing I suppose. BTW, not all dogs have the same smelly feet. I've noticed that german shepherds don't have feet that smell like corn chips. Another reason they are not my preferred breed I suppose. That and the hair, gads.


The Jeep
Again, I'm following Stephanie's lead on this, just with opposite taste. She loves her Corolla, I had to choose between a Corolla and the Jeep when I was buying the car. I tried to love the Corolla, really I did. I owned a 4 Runner and I think Toyotas are fabulous cars. The Corolla just did not do it for me at all. That drivers seat was the most uncomfortable seat I've ever felt in a car (I used to own a 1960 something International Scout so that is saying something no?) and it had no guts what so ever. I just could not go from a six-er to a four banger. I tried but no, I couldn't give up the power. I learned to drive in a truck, had a car for my teen years and it was a cute little car for a little teen girl. After that I had maybe 1 more car and then went back to trucks. None were 6 cylinders though. I didn't move into a 6 until I bought my first automatic in 2002 or so. Again, a truck. I didn't like the hubby's first Jeep, I was too pregnant and it is not made for short pregnant people. Oh lordy no.
I am not pregnant now so I have the pleasure of starting off on the right foot in my relationship with our new Jeep. Now mind you what I love most about the Jeep is not necessarily the Jeep itself. It's the Jeep courtesy. Everybody waves at you when you are in the Jeep. They start up conversations with the kid when she's in the back and the top is down. It's so cute and really fun. When other people in Jeeps (CJ's, not the hard top version either) pass you they always wave or give you a high 5 from a distance. It's like belonging to a club. Like owning a cool car rather than a minivan. It's so not the mom car I should be driving. For that alone I love it.

Going to grown up movies with my Hunney mid day
We don't get to do it often, we normally go with the kid because well, she's our kid and she's normally with us. My mother decided she wanted to spend this Saturday with her so the Hunny and I got a chance to go see grown up movies. It was Fast and the Furious, I have a thing for cars ya know. Given half a chance I'd be a grease monkey and I'd be a damn good one too. It was good and we loved the adult outside time together. I'll review it for ya'll soon, promise. It was good.

A Cowboy Angel

A blogging girlfriend of mine, Kim from Cowboys, Kids, and Sunsets, has posted lately of a tragedy in her close world. A young friend of theirs has passed. A husband, father, friend, cowboy and she is doing something to help out his wife and sons. A fundraiser, a donation of sorts to the family. Kim has created a beautiful glass pendant that comes with a poem written by A Cowboys Wife to commemorate him and his life. She calls it A Cowboys Halo and the pictures are of the front and back.

I just love this pendant, it's made of glass so I can actually wear it. FYI I am allergic to metal, it's a terribly annoying allergy that makes it impossible for me to wear earrings and most jewelry, oh and belt buckles too. This though, I can wear. Plus it's just beautiful and while I did not know Brad I know that his family needs all the love and support they can get at this point in their lives. I danced with death when I had my aneurysm and the support my family got from our friends was incredible. Our friend Candace gathered up all of the parents and got donations from them for food and gift cards for my hubby and kid while I was in the hospital and I tell you what, we could not have survived with out them.

For this I am posting her help for her friends on my blog too, getting the word out there. I encourage you to do the same, pass the link along to anyone you think might be willing to help. The pendant and poem is selling for $20 and Kim has the link on her blog. I'd do the link-y thing if I were computer savvy but alas, it's beyond me.

I finally went there

I avoided it for a good long time but it was on sale so I figured it was now or never. If you haven't noticed (and I don't know how you couldn't) I don't do anything to the pictures I post. It's not because I don't want to, it's more a lazy point. I'll take pictures, I used to even download the pictures. Now I just pass the camera to the hubby and have him upload them to his Photobucket account so I can access them on any computer in the house. I.E. I can sit on the couch with the laptop like the lazy ass I am and post from the reclining position. I know, it's bad.

The laptop I use is a wee little 15" Dell from, 2002? It's old. It has no memory, like 512 maybe? Not enough to put Adobe on, too big. The poor thing is going to kick off and die at any moment. It's battery doesn't last 5 minutes when unplugged so it's a laptop but it's permanently plugged in so not very 'portable'. Kinda sad excuse for a laptop but it's my fav. I love it to death and I will cry when it dies. Trust me, you'll hear it from whatever far reaches you are at when the time comes.

So Costco had a coupon last week, $30 off Adobe Elements. I have always known I need to eventually make the big leap form no picture modification whatsoever to whatever the hell it is people do to make their pictures look pretty. OK not really but damn it everyone else is doing it right? I actually mentioned to the hubby, not 1 day before I saw the coupon, that I would like to get it for my birthday (it's in May, one must plan ahead if one wants to get prezzies that one likes). When I saw the coupon it was like, oh hell just get it now because damn, $30 off? Hell yeah! I'm a girl, it was a sale, it had to be.

I've owned it for a week now. It's still in it's box, downstairs even. I told you I'm lazy. There is a reason though, I can't figure out what computer I want to put it on. We have 2 desktops upstairs. "Mine" and "His" and they each serve their own purposes. Mine was hand built by me, it has no speakers so no one uses it. The kid and the hubby play games and that requires sound so they use his Dell. I use the laptop. My desktop is mainly there for storage of photos because that's where I used to download them all. I should really just get a 1T or 2T portable hard drive and download all of those pics huh? You'd think I'd just go with installing it on that computer but there's a catch. The hubby wants a newer computer to run the newer computer games that his Dell is too old and slow to support. I will then transfer all of those photos to the Dell.

See the dilemma? If I put the Photoshop on the Dell I won't have much access to it until the hubby moves up to a nicer pooter. He doesn't get one of those until he gets a new job with a 'real' paycheck.

I tell you what. When I get this thing on a computer I'll let ya'll know. Then you can totally make fun of me for having a Photoshop 3 versions out of date. Deal? Yup, this is me, get used to it.

I know I've talked about the old hood before

but there are just some times when you see something and it all comes back at you. I posted awhile back, ok maybe it was just this past February, about the old hood. It was, however, more of a criticism of how it isn't all that. That wasn't entirely true, it's kinda all that. Sometimes. I was on Facebook and an old classmate of mine, like really old, like elementary school old, like what omg almost 30 years ago old. Yeah I know, I am just that old. He had posted a steam of like 35 pictures of my old hood. And when I say hood I mean exactly where I grew up. Like I have baby pictures of me in the sand and on the jettys there.

Like most large cities there are neighborhoods in San Diego that are each very distinct. Since I had never been anywhere else as a child I did not know how wonderful and unique Ocean Beach was (we all call it OB, there's a bunch of different beach communities in San Diego). Ocean Beach is very small, it's the upper west side of a peninsula that is part of San Diego. If you have ever driven interstate 10 west it turns into interstate 8. The very very end of interstate 8 is where OB begins. And not far off from that is where you'd hit the Pacific Ocean. I'm talking like 6 blocks and then it's ocean. Back in the 70's it was a kinda of hippie place, the co op that existed back then that my mom and I stocked shelves at to earn groceries still exists but it's sleek now. Not the funky patchuli and wood place worked by stinky dread locked hippes that I remember. It is home to San Diego's last head shop, The Black. The owner actually lived 2 houses down from us for awhile when I was a kid. OB is so hippie that in 2001 Starbucks rented space there to open a store and it was seriously protested. Seriously. It didn't work though but then again neither did most of that hippie crap from the 60's and 70's. Go figure.

What I remember though is being a child of a college student and a working dad and everyone hung out and smoked pot. All the time. I didn't know parental types did anything else to enjoy themselves. All this kid-centric stuff we do out here in suburbia? None of that. The back yard bbq's served brownies that we kids couldn't eat. It was different but none of us kids knew it was different because we didn't know anything else right? I had forgotten how poor we were too until another elementary school classmate reminded me. He was talking about how he'd spend the day collection cans and it would get him enough money to buy dinner. And I thought, damn we were really poor weren't we? Ah well, you can't control your childhood of days past.

The up side was OB really was an amazing place and we had available to us some absolutely beautiful places to enjoy.

This is the OB pier, the longest pier in San Diego. This is the north side of the pier, all of OB's beaches are north of this pier.


This is the view of the south side of the pier, the tide pools reside here if you are there at low tide. I really have got to take the kid here someday, tide pools are awesome.


See here, this is further in the tide pools...


All those lovely crevices hide a variety of life form, see...


As you move further south in the terrain becomes cliffs, Sunset Cliffs to be specific. Not all are accessible by walking down from the pier. Sometimes you have to scale the cliffs. These areas have wonderful surf spots and beaches that are unknown to tourists and can only be reached because someone was nice enough to tie a rope to a big big rock that you could use to repel down the side of a rock formation. Yeah I know, just ready to hop down one of these cliffs aren't ya? It's worth it though, these places are lovely.
Here's a little blurb that explains the names of these little 'beaches':
Garbage Beach at Ladera Street is named for the large amounts of odiferous kelp among its rocks. Built-in stairs lead down the cliff to this beach. Beware; the descent is very steep. Two other beaches — No Surf Beach (Hill and Froud Streets on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard) and New Break Beach (south of Point Loma Nazarene College) — have no identified route leading down to the water’s edge. Trails to these beaches exist, but finding them can be challenging.
Challenging, hah, you should try it when you're dragging a 3 yr old and all of the crap one brings to the beach with said nugget. Precarious at best.



No place is without it's faults, growing up in OB was obscure at best. I just saw these photos and I swear it all cam back to me. We lived a 15 minute walk from this beach. I spent most of my childhood on this beach while my mom surfed, this beach could entertain me for hours. Good thing too.

Tech-ing with Dad

The night before a day at the paintball field is usually spent
1) Gathering all needed accoutrement, both clothing and marker related, to make the day worth going. You forget your air tank, batteries, knee pads or cleats and forget it, you might as well turn around and go home. Forget your mask? Why did you even bother getting in the car? When we lived in San Diego our home field (the ones our friends own) was in Ramona. A 45 minute drive out to the middle of NOWHERE. You for get something you didn't even bother driving home. You just hung out with people and socialized because by the time you drove home the day was over so you might as well make some friends. We are 'seasoned' enough players that we no longer (normally) make big mistakes like forgetting our masks or cleats. Airtanks, well we have extras. And 2)The night before, after everything else has been packed up or set out, is then spent tech-ing the markers. Our paintball markers are electro, they kick ass but are also very sensitive and need occasional tweaking.

Our paintball markers of choice are AKA, mine is a red Featherlight Viking, his is a gray Excal. Mine even has a name, she's Valerian. His has been broken for going on 3 years now. We have a friend who is a higher lever of marker tech than the hubby is. The Excal has programming issues of some sort, in other words it's not some mechanical problem we can fix. On Saturday I finally got the hubby to re-assemble the Excal and I sent it on to California to get tuned up. Yay! That was the only thing keeping me from sending that marker off for 3 years. It's been in pieces and the wires would break if I just stuck it in a box like that. Our friend will fix it up nice though and it'll be awesome. The hubby had been using an 06 Angel Speed for the past year or so. He used Valerian 2 Saturdays ago (yes, I let him use my marker, yes I stayed home and watched the children for 2 Saturdays in a row) and has decided that it's time to go back to AKA. I suspect Valerian will be seeing a lot more field time which is good. Lord knows I won't be using her anymore. Brain surgery + paintball = bad.



So now when the hubby sits to work on his paintball stuff with tools the kid has figured out she can disassemble her toys with the same tools. They must have sat at that dining room table for 2 hours tech-ing. Please note, that is a lovely dining room table that has probably been used, 5 times in 3 years. Maybe. We have a breakfast nook with a table that seats 4. 5 if we drag in one of the tables from the dining room. As far as I'm concerned tech-ing on it is great, it's almost useful. I don't know about ya'll but with the advent of the breakfast nook I think we've made formal dining rooms a redundancy. Father-daughter tech bonding time? Makes the dining room worth it.

OH! I promised a picture of the kid without all of her front teeth. How do they eat!?

Master Peeps theater...

(the image is called Peep show and yes, I just stole it off the www somewhere)
Go, look, admire...
I just love what some people can do with candy
Cake Spy Master-Peeps theater
I also have an old fav, since I am a scientists and can appreciate experimentation for the sake of, well, experimentation. Behold, Peep Research:
Peepsearch
Scary results to say the least.
And have you seen what Bakerella has done with them recently? Ah the artistry!

Reviews!

A friend of mine runs/has a website, Comicsonline.com, which is less comics and more games/dvd kind of message board. He gets pre-release dvds and has a group of people review them and put their reviews up on the website. The dvds are free promotionals from the companies, oddly comic sellers don't do this so the 'comics' part of the forum isn't as prominent as you'd think from the name. The hubby and I have known this friend since high school and at some point last year we volunteered (he asked us maybe?) to review some films for the site. Some of these movies are mainstream, others are more obscure. All are free so it's no real hardship for us. We're movie freaks and well, we need little to no excuse to write (really obviously I don't) so this is a no brainer for us. We have had old things like the newly released digitally remastered Breakfast a Tiffany's (I'd never seen it and I didn't realize she essentially played a call girl, interesting) and new things that are absolutely horrid like Marie and Bruce. That was just an awful waste of 90 minutes. We last did Marley and Me which was cute. Nothing I'd go pay money at the theater to see but cute none the less. Oh and we reviewed the IRC Goth Cruise, I think that was our first. Kevin (the site owner) knew we were goth in high school, he picked us special for that one. We loved it, a total classic for anyone who has ever been in the scene.

Saturday night we watched movie another to review, The other end of the line. It was ADORABLE. Total chick flick but the hubby, you know I always say I married a woman. He loves chick flicks so it's all good. This one made up for the last 2 we watched and had to review that were terrible. I highly recommend this one to everyone out there. It's so funny even your respective other will find amusement in it. The story is about a call center girl in India (that does an amazing American accent) who has a client that she kind of falls for over the phone. She does not tell him she's in India, instead she says she's in The City. For those of you not from California, San Francisco is never referred to as SF, San Fran, or Frisco. Never. Ever. It is always called The City, capital T capital C. I have no idea why, even us Southern Californains who have no respect for Nor Cal call it The City. He ends up going to The City for business and asks if he can meet up with her. She accepts, goes there, wimps out and meets him accidentally after deciding to go home without seeing him. They hit it off and it's lovely and then, of course, it all falls apart because he finds out she was lying.

Her family came looking for her in the US and it's the same hilariously embarrassing encounters of the worst kind like you'd expect. Little side humor that you get in movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding (another great flick, if you haven't seen it do so). There are somethings that cross all racial barriers, family you'd like to hide in the closet being at the top of the list.

This is the trailer, I watched it after I saw the movie and I swear it is like the whole movie in micro form. If you think it looks cute here you'll love the movie. Well I think you'll love the movie any way.
Watch the trailer then rent it.

Guilty pleasures.....

I try to not splurge all that often. I try, it doesn't always work. We get Starbucks coffee every morning at work, delivered by the pharma reps so it's not like the practice pays for it or anything. It's only supposed to be for the providers (the doctors and the nurse practitioners) but they never ever finish the stuff. I sometimes partake because I kind of straddle the line between 'them' and 'us'. Your average medical assistant or any assistant in a doctors office has a high school degree and something like 6 months of training. And by training I mean they know how to take blood pressure and temperature, the rest they just muddle through and get to know what their doctor wants. Kinda scary huh? Since I have a college degree and years of experience at what I do I fall into a sort of middle ground. I am 'in charge' of the mass spectrometry department there, population 1. We'll eventually hire another person but I'd only be a supervisor to them by way of seniority and really nothing more. So when I feel like I want a cup of coffee I don't bother with the nasty stuff they brew for everyone else, I go for the Starbucks.

Mind you I don't normally drink coffee. At all. The hubby is addicted to it. Bad. He went to his mom's house for a week and after day 3 of drinking their coffee in the morning he was looking at his eyes in the mirror and realized he had dark circles underneath. Turns out she had switched to decaf and didn't tell him. It hurts you know, cutting a man off his addiction. Me, if given a choice I'll take decaf. Neither makes a difference for me, I just use a bit of coffee for taste. Did I mention that the box of Starbucks comes with a cup of creamer? Here's my usual coffee mix:

20-25% coffee
20-25% sugar
the rest of the cup is filled with creamer
then I heat it up for about 20 seconds in the microwave because the creamer is cold and liquid coffee candy tastes best hot.

I am lucky that no one else uses the creamer in any quantity of note because then I might feel guilty. Well maybe not but still. I don't know what the calorie content of this liquid is but I bet it's higher than it's caffeine content. I think I should be embarrassed about admitting I do this about 3 days a week but really, it's only bad if you add a donut. The hubby's favorite coffee drink is a Starbucks venti white chocolate mocha. Do you think that is a higher or lower caloric content? According to the website it clocks in at 470 calories, 170 from fat, 150 mg of caffeine. Wow. A regular blend coffee from there had 5 calories and 330 mg of caffeine. They don't list the creamer, huh interesting. They list milk though as 260 calories, 60 fat. I'm going to make a blind guess here that cream is going to be higher than that, whatcha think? Yeah. My mix seems to have the same caloric content as the hubby's but with higher caffeine content. Oy maybe I should switch to decaf before I become an addicted....

Last weekend

We don't have a lot of friends here, no time I suppose, so our rare weekends we have together (hubby has that stupid schedule of 4 days on 4 days off so it's not often) we don't really do much. This past weekend we were BOOKED. The hubby wanted to go paintballing with a friend from work (who brought his 12 yr old son too) and the last time they went they took his friend's 5 yr old daughter too since the wife was at work. I decided to be nice and tell them they could leave his girl with me and the kid so she didn't have to be bored senseless all day at the field. I can be nice. Sometimes. As long as the hubby doesn't get used to it.

So his friend and the family he belongs to came over Friday night to work on their paintball markers (those damn things always need work) and I got to meet them all. See, I invited a kid over to take care of her and I didn't even know her. It was a milestone ya'll, mark it in your calendars. The girls got along well and partied all night. Really, like until midnight when they left. She was dropped off the next morning when the boys came over to pick up the hubby and the girls played all day long. It was nice, I didn't have to do a damn thing really. Just an occasional feeding. Hell they were easier than the dogs. When the boys came home they took their kid, went home to clean up, then all came back over for dinner and hung out all night long. Their daughter wanted to spend the night and I volunteered to get pizza for everybody (I love Costco pizza, cheap and HUGE) so back they came for another all nighter. Yeah we were on a roll last weekend. The girls we managed to get in bed by 10:30, they were tired. We all stayed up a bit later since we were making their son a D&D character.

Oh yeah did I mention my hubby's co-worker was like his brother from another? Which is terribly funny. My hubby has another guy friend (known since high school think) that we refer to as the ex-wife because they are just like a married couple but since they are both married we had to come up with another title. This new friend fits same kind of role so now we call him the hubby's girlfriend. That's just wrong isn't it? Especially since they work at a prison together. See how wrong that is? So this new girlfriend, he's played Dungeons and Dragons too. So guess what? We are now starting a campaign. At least this time we'll probably be able to go all the way though it since they both have the same schedule and the kids aren't a problem. Girlfriend's son will be playing with us and the 2 girls will be occupying themselves doing whatever. As long as there's no blood I don't care.

By Sunday night though we had to go to another party, a bbq at another friend's house. It was cool, I brought the cupcakes I had the girls ice when they were with me all Saturday. I used food coloring to make them pink, green, blue, yellow, and purple icing out of cream cheese frosting so the cupcakes were very psychedelic. Hey it was entertaining and they tasted the same. We brought over the hubby's paintball guns and a plethora of hoops to play with. In the pic he's teaching one of the kids how to shoot at the target, my hoops are laying all over the place (I'm hooping to the right you just can't see me) and the girls are plotting in the background. Girls do that.

This weekend seems to be looking much like last weekend only the bbq will be at our house on Sunday. It's the hubby's birthday so he may (or may not, who knows) go paintballing again. I may or may not have more than one girl child this weekend. All I know is that I'm planting my other 4 roses. We managed to fix the sprinkler line this past weekend that we broke while cleaning out the front flower beds the previous weekend. Every single time we work in that yard we hit something, the neighbors cable line, the sprinkler, the sprinkler line, the sprinkler wires, our yard is like a minefield 3 inches down. Why they didn't bury them a bit deeper is beyond me. We are now the masters of underground sprinkler repair. Necessity is the mother of invention. Or maybe learning by destruction, ya got me.

Sometimes they give up, and there's nothing you can do

We have a dog in rescue right now, a very hard case. The original foster parent gave him up to another foster parent that takes the hard cases. Ms. E is does of a lot of stuff in the rescue and has a really hard job. Her heart is totally in all of the dogs and the hard cases, the really sick ones especially. Puppies that have incurable heart problems, old ones so cranky they can't stop biting people or other dogs. In this case the dog has inflammatory bowel disorder (IBD). His tummy gets so upset he can't hold anything inside him long enough to absorb any nutrients. I've had a dog like this in the past. He wasn't such a bad case though. This poor guy got to his present foster home already emaciated, we don't know how long he'd been like this and ultimately, it doesn't really matter.

His present foster mommy hand makes his food and make sure he eats at least 3 times a day. I asked the all important question, that is, Does he want to live? Her answer was 'sometimes'. Not exactly what I wanted to hear but it isn't always. That was last week. Today she had even harder news, we don't think he's going to make it. He has once again stopped eating, he's anemic, and his intestines are filled with fluid. She says he smells awful. I think it's because he's dying on the inside. Kind of like what happens with parvo virus only in slow motion. Really, can you blame the guy for not wanting to live? He's in pain and the only thing that will save him (eating) is causing him more pain. And really there's no cure for IBD, it is one of those things where you find something they can eat, give them steroids long term to help with the inflammation, and hope for the best. We think this guy is just too far gone and his system will not stabilize.

We didn't want to see this prognosis. We were hoping we could get some weight on him and get him on to making him more stable. His foster mom right now is devastated. She just lost her own dog not too long ago and it's just too raw a time for her. But this is why we are in rescue and this is why she gets the hard cases. She is close enough to them to know when it's time to let go. No one wants to make the decision to put a dog down but we also don't want to keep it alive if all it is doing is suffering. This is why the first thing I asked her was if he wanted to live and why I was not thrilled with the 'sometimes' answer. Not all of the volunteers in rescue are experienced enough to know when it's time, that is why she gets the hard cases. It takes its toll though and one person can only handle so much. I wish this one had enough fight in him for the long haul but it seems as though he's too far gone.

These are the trials and tribulations of rescue and why the people you see in it are all crazy. Big hearts but really, we're not all up there you know?

Random observations (and whatnot)

So I have yet to get that picture of that HUGE hole in my child's front whreteethshouldbe space. We were busy yesterday trying to come up with her last homework assignment. They need to come up with a team name for their class during the field trip. Texas, where everything is related in some way shape or form to sports. We are bucking that trend though. She wanted to use the teacher's name, like Mrs. T's team or something. I told her she should call them Mrs. T's minions. She was talking about how the kids could get a bit raucous so that's where my idea came in. And yes, she knows what a minion is. We let her watch 1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode (YES WE DO watch it, own every episode too, don't even start with me) Once more with feeling, it's the musical episode. It has a demon and lesbian sex (no pictures though, just the suggestion) so it's not something we let her friends watch when they come over but it did give her an introduction to demonology. And less than normal couples. Yes, we have discussed the idea of homosexual marriage with her (we are proponents of it) so that she understands what they are talking about when bumper stickers say stuff like Marriage's biggest danger is divorce or somesuch. Those stickers make no sense to a 7 yr old kid without giving her some back story. OK and all this so that you know my kid is writing her teacher that she thinks they are obnoxious kids and should be called minions. If Mrs. T thought long enough about it though that would make her the demon. I like her, lets hope she just automatically dismisses our idea, yeah? OK yeah.

Today's observations:

1) Baby Phat's small scrub pants are a true size small. Unlike Cherokee scrubs that are more of a m/L. Trust me, there's a difference.

2) During that time of the month I am a true size medium. I know, this is so stuff you want to know right?

3) The combination is kind of amusing. The fact that I find it amusing should bother me. It doesn't. Makes it harder to go pee because my hips are just way too wide for this pair of scrubs but at least my belly is not. Odd how that works....

4) Subject change, I find Jeep Courtesy to be fun. I love the fact that when I drive with the kid and the top down all kinds of people talk to her too. Driving with the top down is like putting up a sign that says "I'm cool, you want to talk to me because I rock". It makes little to no sense to me but I like it.

5) Did you know those converted mini coopers with the Red Bull can on top have Red Bull inside that they will chuck out the window to you if you want some? That shit is expensive, I'm surprised they aren't stalked more often. I saw one yesterday (from California no less ) with 2 little blonds inside (if I were tacky and brutally honest I'd say 2 ditzy blonds but I'm only slightly pms-ing today) and people were totally pulling up to them in traffic and getting all kinds of free Red Bull.

6) Red Bull should do that with Jeeps instead of mini Coopers, we'd have the corner on the cool market. They've done one as a VW but it was a hard top. They need to do it topless, that is where the cool factor is at.

Kinda scary the things I find entertaining isn't it?