Lunchtime

I may have mentioned how frigidly cold it is in my office. If I haven't... it is cold! Don't get me wrong, I like having air-conditioning in the summer. But I don't like 3 air vents blowing frigid air on me all day long. The thing never cuts off. It's like there's on and off and no thermostat attached.

Anyway, to avoid this I decided to walk down to the grocery store and pick up some lunch and warm up outside. In the 90 degree weather. So as I was walking down the street, for some reason I was really reminded of Vermont. Maybe it was the walking to get lunch, or the sticky hot air, or something else completely intangible that only my miswired brain could pick out.

Vermont's a cool place. At least the parts I saw of it were. Which included Middlebury, Burlington, and the Ben and Jerry's factory. It's beautiful there in the summer. Everything's green and there's plenty of ice cream. It also smells like cows. The whole state smells of cows. I spent 7 weeks there and I still never got used to the smell of cows. It also got hot in the summer. Everyone I talked to before I went there for the summer said "Oh it'll be so beautiful and cool!"

Um... no. It got sticky hot same as any place else. What I did notice though is how fast the weather changed in August. It had already started to get that fall-ish cool feeling in the air before August 15th rolled around. And it had been like Florida just two weeks before.

So I'm rambling. I apparently had a nostalgic binge need for Vermont.

After I picked up lunch, which turned out not to be the salad I had gone after but Hot & Sour Soup with some Shrimp Toast from the Chinese place I passed on my way to the store....I turned around and headed back to my office.

First step in the doorway... AH!!! The blessing of air conditioning. Is anyone else hot?

Other people's stuff

Not much new with me so I'll point you at some other person's site I like to read.

A site called In Passing, was featured in a Playboy article. No I didn't read it! Kind of funny what you hear everyday,

They're everywhere! They're everywhere!

Ok what's with the babies? We now know about 8 couples that are having or have just had a baby this year. I like babies a lot but MAN! What did they put in the water this year???

For you folks reading that fall into the category of friends of ours that are expecting.... CONGRATULATIONS! We're really happy for you!

But did you all have to do it at once?

Guess who's back? Shady's back. Tell a friend.

Funny song. Funny video.

Anyway I'm back again after a very exciting week last week. I think everything's calmed down again. New license, new glasses, new cards, and what I don't have already is on it's way in the mail.

We went to Great Falls on Saturday and had a lovely time with our friend Ann. I got to play with my camera which I haven't done for a long time, and we got to wear our dog Arrow completely out. Always nice when you have a VERY hyper lab and you get back home and he sleeps the rest of the day.

I also got to go shopping on Sunday which is always fun but I have the problem of remembering that I'm no longer a size 4 like I was in highschool. I also have a hard time realizing that the stores I used to shop in don't really suit my style anymore. I kind of expected them to grow up with me instead of sticking with their demographic. Ah well.

So apparently shit does happen

My purse was stolen yesterday. Aside from the nightmarish feeling of it all, it's been a huge pain in the ass. I must've spent 5 hours on the phone yesterday. Calling the police, calling building management, calling the bank, calling credit lines, calling social security....

Tomorrow I get to go to the DMV to get a new license, then to the Social Security Administration to get a new card, then to ....

I would've rather given the jackass a wad of money than having to deal with all this.

Hang on to your money folks!

For those of you that wasted money on "Glitter", "Crossroads", or "Planet of the Apes"...here's another winner to look out for. Britney Spears in an upcoming, inspirational new movie, in which she encourages a former NASCAR racer to get back into the game. Sounds like a remake of "National Velvet" to me, but with cars instead of horses.

Well as Andy said "At least she'll be hitting her target audience." And at least she's not as annoying as the Olson twins. Yet.

Exquisite dead guy. Rotating in his display case. Exquisite dead guy. Hanging from the sky.

I've been a little remiss

Sorry folks (all 11 of you reading). I've been slipping out of my blogging habit of late, so time to re-new!

Fun story for today? Disney's new movie "Lilo and Stitch." Now, I'm a fairly big Disney fan. I try to see their new movies every year. But they seem to have problems when they go "ethnic." Pocohontas for example SUCKED. And this new one doesn't look promising. An alien landing in Hawaii and learning how to surf, hula and say "Cowabunga." Doesn't seem stereotypical to me at all....how about you?

Of course then I read on Yahoo the disturbing news that Spam is so popular in Hawaii that McDonald's is actually market testing a Spam breakfast combo. Among other local favorites...Spam sushi. Maybe Disney isn't as far off as I think.

The good old O's!

They won! It was a great game.

We got there just as the national anthem was being sung (badly) and as these Army Paratroopers were sailing down into the stadium (VERY cool). We got our very orange freezer mugs and found our seats. We were in club level seats on the first base side (yeah, I didn't skimp on these) and could see everything beautifully.

The one drawback (and believe me there was only one)? It was disgustingly hot yesterday. It got up to 95 and with the humidity we had a heat index on 105. We all got a little sticky. But who could complain when our boys were playing so well? Well except for the fifth inning when they played horribly. But we'll ignore that fact becaues it made for a thrilling extra inning play.

Baseball's a terrific game and so much more fun when you're actually there watching it with other people. Plus there's the food. Of course you need to bring about $1000 extra bucks just for food because water is $4 a bottle and it only goes up from there. But you can't go to a game without having your beer and your hotdog. Or your nachos, or whatever your preference is. I'm a hotdog girl myself.

Plus when you're at the stadium you get to watch the people. In case you hadn't guessed, this is one of my favorite pastimes. There was the little boy in front of me who was probably about 5. He thought it was completely necessary when drinking from a sports bottle to lean all the way backwards. His head hit my knees everytime he was thirsty. Then there were the 30-somethings that came in and sat behind us and were trying desparately hard to be teenagers again. And the woman two rows up who should have been cut off way earlier than she had been, because she stood up and literally fell on her ass. Hard. She stood up laughing and just barely managed to get herself into her seat before slumping over onto her comrades.

It was an incredibly fun night. The game was a very thrilling game, the seats were good, and we hard a sound effects guy that wouldn't quit. Literally. I think there was maybe 2 minutes of silent baseball the whole game. Plus whenever I go to a baseball game I think of the movie Bull Durham. It's just a good funny baseball movie. There was one point in the evening when the Padres were up on the mound talking to the pitcher that was particularly reminiscent of a scene from the movie.

Now the fun part. The extra inning. Are we going to be here all night? Please please please just let one of them hit something. Get a guy on base. Then there was that beautiful hit where the whole stadium held it's breath. Will they catch it? Will it go foul? It's outta here!!!

As we were leaving we started following the mob out towards the stairs, but decided it would be easier and a whole lot cooler to stay inside and walk around to the 3rd base side where we'd parked. We had walked about 20 feet past two stadium workers before turning around and deciding to come back the other way. One of them stopped Andy and demanded to see his ticket saying he was allowed on the club level. The game was over at this point. What were we going to see? Were other people not allowed to shop at the nice shops on club level? Andy started trying to explaining that we had walked in front of him about 10 seconds earlier and had not come in off the street. I dug out our tickets and flashed them in front of the guy and he backed off. I guess that was just his job. And he's very good at his job. It doesn't matter what time it is, or if the game is over. His job is checking tickets. It's his job! The poor guy was about 80 years old, so if it makes him happy to have a task to do and do it no matter what, then God bless 'im.

Sniff Sniff

Going to see the Oriole's tonight. It will be my first game ever without Cal Ripkien. But I get a free freezer mug!

BTW, for those wondering, the Pear Cider was good, not as good as the original but way better than the Granny Smith version.