Vacation!

I hope you all are in the mood for some board games, because I totally am. Liz and Zack, you might want to bring Settlers. Just sayin'.

Also, WalMart game. It's on. I am the only undefeated cousin thus far. I am the Aunt Debby of the cousin WalMart game. Fear me!

Ornamental turtle!

If my co-workers heard me snorting with laughter the way you only can when you've been trying to laugh silently and have failed miserably at doing so, it's because of this video. What? I was on my lunch break!

Dad Life from Church on the Move on Vimeo.

So, this is hilarious.

This is one of those brilliant things that makes you wonder why no one has done it before. You know those overly-perfect, super-styled photos in various home decor catalogs? This blog takes those photos and imagines the lives of the people living in them, to hilarious results. Delight in it.


Hi Nancy, it's Elaine. I'm going to be a little late for lunch. I can't find my hat or my back-up hat.

No one could ignore the obvious racism of Elaine's side table arrangement.

Elaine was not amused by Gary's passive-aggressive response to her request to "garnish the cocktails."

Taco in a bag!

It's Thunder in the Valley weekend, which means I get to wear jeans and sneakers to work and go out to Central Park at lunchtime in search of festival food. It's a nice perk, considering that I have a nerve-wracking horror nightmare associated with this event.

Today I had my first walking taco. Have you even had one of these? It's pure genius! You take an snack size bag of Fritos or Doritos, crush them up a bit, and add taco meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. Grab a fork and you've got a tasty, delightful treat all contained in a little bag. I really hope the person who originally thought of this is a millionaire or, like, has really wonderful stuff in his life, like an awesome family and easy access to an Ikea.

I feel the Earth move under my feet...

So, I'm sitting in my office and everything sudden felt like it was swaying. For a second I thought I was passing out or my friend had snuck up behind me to shake my chair, but it wasn't that. My entire desk was swaying. Then I heard everyone around me saying, "What the heck was that?" and "Oh no, I am NOT dying here." I think we might have had a small earthquake here in J-town.

I have always wanted to feel an earthquake, so I'm hoping that's what it was. It was very mild, but I have to say, I'm still dizzy.

UPDATE:

The earthquake was an 5.5 that happened in Canada and we felt it all the way down here. Any other Pennsylvanians feel it?

Can someone please explain to me what the crap is going on with the French?

I have no idea who this man is.

So, apparently the French soccer team at the World Cup has imploded in a most spectacular fashion. I'm not going to pretend this doesn't please me a little, but I simply don't understand what's going on. I looked up various media reports and I have worked out that one guy got kicked off the team, one guy called some other guy a traitor (not sure if either of those guys are the one that got kicked off), someone (perhaps a coach?) has resigned, someone threw his stopwatch into the bushes, someone wrote a revolutionary manifesto, and someone on the team just flat-out called some other people on the team "stupid". I'm pretty sure the team is refusing to train, and I'm certain that various corporate sponsors have pulled out. So, you can see how this all adds up to madness on an international scale. These are grown men behaving this way. Hideous. Humiliating.

Delightful.

But also? Confusing. What's so confusing is that all the media reports are written as though I'm supposed to understand who all these people are and why they're hurling stopwatches and writing manifestoes. French names are being thrown around like beer bottles at a Philly Eagles game and I have no idea who anyone is. Except Nicolas Sarkozy. I know who he is, but I don't know why he's involved.

Can anyone explain this in a rational, understandable manner?

Pizza!

Tonight I used yeast for the first time. It was intimidating. Thermometers were involved.

In the midst of kneading.

Now, that's a nice looking crust.

A little sauce and a lotta cheese. I used a mozzarella/provolone mix.

I added some sliced campari tomatoes and some fresh basil. My kitchen smelled so good.

Yum!

Well, that was a bust.

I write this from my parents' house. Julia had a great time during the movie watching portion of the sleepover. She had an even better time during the play with Aunt Ali's books, iPod, vases, lotion, make-up, and memory card portion of the sleepover. It was the sleeping portion of the sleepover that didn't go over so well.

She laid down for about ten minutes (chattering the whole time) and then popped up, hopped down from the bed, and declared, "I want to go home now." What followed was a two-hour siege in which she alternately screamed to be allowed to go home, and played with my books, iPod, vases, lotion, make-up, and memory card while screaming to be allowed to go home. I felt like a prison warden, and finally around 1:30 AM, I relented and drove her home. And let me tell you, she was so tired (she actually said to me, "Aunt Ali, I'm so tired.") but she fought to stay awake during the ride because she didn't trust that I was actually taking her home.

Then when I got her home, I put her in the guest room with me since everyone else was asleep, but she woke up and would not believe me that I had brought her home. I had to turn on a light to show her where she was and that only resulted in her crying to go to sleep in her room. She was terribly specific for a dead-tired two-year-old at 2AM. So I had no choice but to take her in to Jen and declare the whole experiment an utter failure.

I was kind of afraid Jules wouldn't be talking to me this morning, but she's apparently harboring no ill will and is excited to come back and watch movies at my house. However, she's made it very clear that she will not be sleeping there.

A very cute houseguest

Tonight Julia is having her first sleepover. So far we're at the Rosenthal scene in The Great Muppet Caper and we're on our second bag of popcorn.


Of course she wanted to sweep my floor. She loves to clean. Crazy little pumpkin. She also got into my lip gloss, which was to be expected.


She loves her snacks.


She is also fascinated with the little bingo-ball Magic 8 Ball toy J got for me in Chicago. She spun it and spun it through most of the movie.


Soon we'll be attempting to go to sleep without Mommy. Your prayers are appreciated.

I may have overdone it.

My weekend was awesome, but I may have overdone it with the sunshine because this morning my face has started peeling. My face, people. It's not pretty.

I need to go to the Indian Ocean. Who's coming?

I was playing this geography game the other day. One version had you name all the countries on a continent and another gave you a list of capitals and you had to come up with the matching country name. I killed on Africa (Where in the World fans, unite!) but when I played Asia, I missed one country both times. And it was the same country: the Maldives. Capital city, Male. Ooh, was I annoyed the second time when I missed the same country!

So, I decided to read up on the Maldives since I have clearly suppressed this nation from my memory, and here's what I decided: I must go there.

Why, you ask?

Because this is what their sunsets look like:


Case closed.

Claire and Bender could be grandparents by now. Think about that.

Sure, Sloth love Chunk. TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO.

Do you subscribe to Entertainment Weekly? The "20 Years Ago This Week" column regularly horrifies me. Like, worse than the wretched and off-putting "Stephen King's Weird and Freaky Little Opinions" column. (That may not be the exact title.)

This 20 Years column is a weekly shock to my system. Really, Pretty Woman is 20 years old? That was two decades ago I wanted to dye my hair red like Julia Roberts and my mom put the kibosh on that whole scheme? Really, that was 20 long years ago that Milli Vanilli won their bogus Grammy?

I can no longer read the magazine while I'm eating, lest I choke.

My initial shock came last year, when someone mentioned that Say Anything was 20 years old and I scoffed that this must surely be a mistake. Then I realized that not only was Say Anything actually 20 years old, but even worse, it being released in 1989 meant that anything from the 80s was at least twenty years old. Twenty years was the SMALLEST amount of old that 80s stuff could be.

The horror.

And then I turned on some Peter Gabriel and tried not the think about it.

Oscar doesn't look grouchy. He looks kinda psycho.

So, you may know from my photo blog that Julia's Oscar balloon had to ride home from Philly in my car. I had dinner with Jen, Jules, Melis, Brian, and Drama Club Eric tonight, so I took the balloon to give it back. I thought I had anchored it pretty well toward the floor of the backseat, but I guess it dislodged itself. So, picture it: I'm driving along and in my rearview mirror I see this face rising up slowly from the floor of my backseat:


GAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Look, I know it's a cartoon balloon (How many of you spontaneously started singing Elton John's Levon just then?) but all I saw was a psychotic face rising up out of my backseat and for a split second I screamed in fright. Then I nearly wrecked, and took almost two miles to calm myself down. That split second may have been the greatest terror I have ever experienced.

I know now that if a murderer is ever really hiding in my backseat, I will die of a heart attack before he ever gets his hands on me. I can only hope that he's horribly disfigured in the wreck that is sure to follow, but not too disfigured to serve a life sentence for manslaughter. I want my vengeance, even from the grave.

I'm a little ashamed at how badly I want to see this movie.

That is all.

Except for this: I got to open a brand new jar of peanut butter today and mess up that smooth surface with my spoon.

It's the little things, people.