The View From Kalamazoo

Can’t wait for this book to come out in September – both of my little devils darlings have photos in, much cuteness abounds.

Will have to buy for grandparents.

I spent my weekend moving furniture and clearing the debris field that was my daughter’s room. Colin now has his Big Boy Bed in place (and he’s very pleased with the sheets I found – construction trucks. “TUCK!”), the small dresser from his sister’s room (complete with more ‘tucks’ on the drawers – peel-off wallpaper border to de-girlify it a bit), and a re-arranged set-up. He’s all about his “B’Bed!”

Emma’s room involved Sat…Sun…last night…and is still ongoing. You haven’t seen a packrat like this kid – she’ll have an apartment in New York filled with 30 years of old newspapers, mark my words. Two garbage bags later there are still a few more boxes of toys to sift through (and at this point I was just trying to find the floor, bed, and get the obvious garbage out of there. there is serious sorting and more disposal of useless objects yet in my future) that have been in the basement (after she did something rude thing or another to get whatever toys she was playing with at that moment taken away).

What an unbelievable chore. I’d say a good 1/3 of her stuff is going bye-bye. Maybe more – especially if she gives me a ration like last night about how *insert high-pitched nasal whine here* ‘tiiiiiired’ and ‘booooooored’ she was with the process. And let’s not forget ‘Why do IIIIIIIIIIII have to dooooo it?’ [because it’s your stuff and you made the mess, little girl] ‘That’s miiiiiine!’ [it’s a toy from a kid’s meal. it was at the bottom of a box you haven’t been into in months. it hasn’t been important to you, it’s not important now and it’s going!] I’ve been SO enjoying the tongue clucking with the hip thrust out in indignation action (with fists on hips!), and combined with the classic eye roll it’s a winner. The neighbors likely think I’m beating her, to hear her hollering ‘NO!’ and crying and screaming when I toss something she cut up/drew on/otherwise half-destroyed.

I’m a mean mom! I make Emma….HELP CLEAN HER ROOM! This ain’t Clean Sweep, baby. It’s light a fire and watch it BURN! *muahaha*

So the other night Bri runs across this Boing Boing follow-up covering a blog entry about ‘sequels’ to songs: (some excerpts)

-How Are We Going to Get These Dogs Back In?

-Bust an Additional Move

-Seriously, Eileen, Come On

-Whoomp! There It Continues to Be

(There are lots of links to more.)

He can’t stop laughing and in-between chortles reads many aloud. So I started IMing him some that I came up with. He suggested I had to share, so here we go (keep in mind it was late, I was punchy, and the goal was making him make that hilarious noise he makes when he laughs real hard.)

Some are obvious. Some you might have to think about:

-Melody Captured After Daring Escape

-Rock n’ Roll Community College

-I Was Thinking About You (But Then My Girlfriend Came Back Into the Room)

-Ok- Now Justify My Career

-Child Support, Child Support

-Less Than a Proposal

-Everything I Did, I Did It For You (So I Turned State’s Witness)

-Late For Work, Late For Work

-Black or White (or Red or Yellow or Brown – So Long as They’re Pre-Pubescent)

-Carpathian Tragedy

-Never mind, I believe you

-Woman Slips Off Ledge After Dangling For Hours

-(Won’t You Shower) Funky Town

-I Didn’t Say “Simon Says”!

-Faith Alone Does Not Pay the Electric Bill

-Boom Boom (Let’s Get Out of Here Before the Cops Catch Us With the Bottle Rockets)

-I Wanna Go Home With Somebody

-Wasn’t Gonna Give You Up (But Your Mom Got Custody)

-Volume Has a Leak -There I Went Again

-Now That We’re Alone – Do You Want To See Something REALLY Scary?

-I Just Flunked Geography

-I’m Decomposing In Your Arms Tonight

-Mambo no.6

-Love May Not Cost a Thing, But Dinner at That Swank French Restaurant Certainly Does

-Wheel In the Sky Was Just a Traffic Copter

-Oops! They Caught Me Again

-No, Officer, That’s *Genie* In My Bottle…

-Livin’ la vida asila

-(My Heart Will Go On) So They Want To Pull The Plug

-Lunch At McDonalds

-Heel

-Should I Be a Little More Decisive?

-Do They Know it’s Yom Kippur? Diwali?

-Did You Exchange It for (the Right Stuff)?

-(Like a Prayer) is a Simile, Not a Metaphor

-He Ain’t Heavy (He’s on Slimfast)

-It’s a Minor Moral Transgression

-Who’s That Girl (Who Just Stole Your Car?)

-The Sun Always Shines On Only in Certain Areas Within the Arctic or Antarctic Circles

-Papa Sells Used Cars

-When the Going Gets Tough (the Tough Hire Assistants)

-We aren’t’ the world, We’re Just Egomaniacs

-I Just Called to Say I’ll Be Late So Don’t Wait Up

-White, White Toilet

And I want to add to the exhaustive list of supergroups that never were:

Simply Red Hot Chili Peppers

Jan & Dean Martin

Johnny Horton Heat

Crosby, Stills, Nash & (fine) Young Cannibals

Three Dog Night Ranger

KC and the Sunshine Band Aid

Culture Club Nouveau

Michael Jackson Browne

Shakespeare’s Sister Sledge

Camper Van Morrison

A coffee can make you forgetful: A cup of coffee each morning may wake you up, but a new study suggests caffeine might hinder your short-term recall of certain words. Caffeine made it harder for people to find a word that they already knew – the “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon.

[And I thought I was just a stressed-out, over-tired spaz…]

Steven Hawking: I was wrong: After almost 30 years of arguing that a black hole swallows up everything that falls into it, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking did a scientific back-flip today.

This just in…Hell freezing over…

Crazed surgeon amputates penis: A Romanian surgeon underwent a fit of madness while operating on a patient’s testicles and instead cut off the man’s penis and sliced it into three pieces, hospital officials said.

[that must be what happened to my career]

The most important medieval illuminated manuscript found in Britain in living memory is at the centre of a battle between leading museums.

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge lost out to the John P Getty Museum of Los Angeles when the manuscript, now known as the Macclesfield Psalter, sold for £1.5m at auction this summer.

Michigan Pronounciation Guide.

I say ‘Geez-Louise’ and ‘Geez-o-Pete’. I am a Troll, but can affect a pretty convincing Yooper when asked (think Fargo with a head cold). I drive like a typical Michigander on the freeway, thanks (so get the hell out of my way, and yes, turn indicators do come standard on all makes and models, chucklehead).

I also do a rollicking Cartman impression. Fear me.

Yes, I have mostly tried to avoid anything too annoyingly political here…but I just have got to share this.

Warning: poltical

Caveat: bipartisan

Safety message: Please swallow your coffee before you play it. Thanks

Speaking of confetti, my wunnerful co-workers just sang and presented me with a lover-ly gift bag containing chocolate-y goodness.

I had arranged a combo birthday all-signed-card event for my boss and one of my co-workers just before I left on vacation (the dates of which included, conveniently enough, my birthday)…and when I came back and made it through that first week without anyone bursting into song I thought I had gotten out of it…

Nope!

They lurve me. S’nice….(You must try the dark chocolate pretzels if you find yourself in Kalamazoo…they are way addictive…)

It occurs to me that the one-year anniversary of this blog came and went on June 3. I was at a conference panicking over the paper I gave the following day, so I’m not surprised I missed it entirely.

I’ve read a few things, said a few things, posted a few links. It appears I have far more readers than I would have thought had enough time on their hands to spend any on this brief, shining example of the mundane – I don’t know whether to be flattered or astounded…both, I suppose.

So, a little late (like nearly every birthday card I send to friends and family) I’ll toss the confetti. *whee*

NASA’s first ever artist in residence: Laurie Anderson

(I may be a geek. I admit that. But she is SO COOL. As an art student I saw a photo of her in one of my textbooks – performance art on the streets of NYC, the photo showing her standing on a block of ice, playing her violin while wearing her ice skates (not this photo, but this is the performance). When the ice melted, the performance ended. I was hooked. I owned this album (tape, actually. later eaten by the hungry cassette player in a ’78 Cougar), I went to this concert at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit. Yes, my friend, I am a geek, a big, big geek.)

This is the time. And this is the record of the time.

Funniest I’ve read in a while. Even my inner cynic chuckled, and that’s no small feat.

Kalamazoo?: Well, the road block has moved so that it might inconvenience someone else. I realize I ran into it in the K-College neighborhood, too. Bollocks.

Cranky sinuses meet General Tso’s Chicken. Talk amongst yourselves. Mingle.

I’ve been lax, I know. You, my disturbingly large and mystifying readership, deserve better.

I haven’t said much about my happy trip to MO – but it’s likely damn uninteresting. (Actually, I think most of my life and what crap I post outside of links and news items is pretty uninteresting to the world at large, but it appears people still read this anyway. It’s my bandwidth, I can cry if I want to…?) Had good beer, enjoyed good conversations, ate good food, only gained 2 lbs. Saw friends I haven’t seen in years, caught up over good coffee with real cream. I met many dogs awaiting homes and even this crabby cat-person wished she had a dog-friendly home…Brin is a really wonderful dog…

Don’t think that I’ve been slacking off on my gym-time just because I haven’t been waxing prosaic about the joys of the military press, either. I recently spent more quality time getting my butt kicked from here to the moon by the deceptively smiley Olga (who trotted that damn medicine ball out again…and in case you were wondering, dumb bells + stair stepper set at the highest level = !sucks!!). I’m back on my own until I can scrape together more cash for personal trainer time. Paying for Emma’s tutoring is more important, and I figure, not counting the monthly membership, I’ve paid about $14 a lb. so far, so I’d better lose a heckuva lot more without paying mucho dineros for more training since that cost analysis is just insane.

Maybe I’ll get around to posting more about my self-induced half-hour of hell 2-3 times a week some time soon. Or not. I was still the same weight today as last week – time to get back on the wagon. Maybe getting behind it and pushing it up a steep hill would be better cardio…

Will save useless rants about blogs, the Academy, and Important Decisions No One Is Supposed To Discuss Openly for another day – the newest installment in the “My Crappy Year” series by I.M. Boring will just have to wait. And in case you were waiting patiently for my comments re: the Vatican report on Inquisition…A lot of people had already said most of what I wanted to say before I had any time to blog on it, so I won’t bother, now.