droller than thou.

soup it up.

Holy shit.  The Mister's Grandma and Grandpa are awesomely (kind of) famous!

I feel honored to know them.  And I can only hope that our marriage, too, can thrive on Grandma Edythe's advice.

gobama.

Yes.

on a promising start to a new semester.

Great news, everybody!  I think I may have found my next 2.5 Mortal Enemies:  

The first one is a sixty-something woman in my Photoshop class who, on the first day, was wearing purple Uggs (strikes one and two), spent a loooong time checking her email/eBay while the teacher was talking (strike three), and then spent the remainder of the day on a page filled with pictures of dogs wearing sweaters (strikes four and five).  

I consider the other two people as only 1.5 because (I hope) their awfulness is mostly based on working together, so they don't really get to count as two separate enemies.  Those ones are extremely geeky, recently graduated from high school guys who sit behind me in my programming class, making totally obnoxious and nerdy pronouncements.  They moved from the Merely Incredibly Annoying List (MIAL) to the Mortal Enemy List (MEL) when, after they heard me discussing my use of Safari (internet browser) at home, one or both of them guffawed very loudly, "Who uses Safari??  The only people who use Safari [mumble mumble mumble]!"  I didn't actually hear the last part because I had already begun the fuming process.  What kind of assholes do that?  My new Mortal Enemies, that's who.

Oh god, the horror.

top this.

If I had to guesstimate (which I hate doing), I would say that approximately 1/2 to 2/4 (and maybe even up to 4/8) of the things said by both my sister and me are direct quotations from/references to movies and TV shows.  Sometimes they're ones that any normal person should get ("69, dudes!"); frequently they're a bit more obscure ("So watery...and yet there's a smack of ham to it!"); and, once in awhile, they're our own weird perverting of an already somewhat obscure quote ("I love you Squarsha!  I worship you Squarsha!" or, the always popular, "Napkins...These are the most amazing napkins I have ever seen!").

So imagine how excited I was when this appeared on last week's episode of the always superb 30 Rock:

For those of you who don't remember the original pure awesomeness:

I have no idea if Tina Fey was responsible for inserting a Teen Witch reference in there, but I like to think so--just like I enjoy imagining that she was also the force behind the scene where Jack walks in on Liz singing along to Annie in her best musical theatre voice (I couldn't find a clip, dangnabbit).  You see, I like to imagine that Tina Fey (via her Liz Lemon persona) is my secret soulmate.  Even my Dad agrees.  But don't tell her that.  That's just creepy.  

operation: too much information?

I'm not going to beat around the bush, people: The Mister and I have commenced Operation: Get Me Knocked Up (AKA, Operation: With Child; AKA, Operation: In a Fambly Way; AKA, Operation: No Child Left Behind That's Not in My Uterus).  Phew.  That's a lot of colons for one paragraph.   

Needless to say, this endeavor has got me thinking on many topics which I had never heretofore (seriously) considered--things like co-sleeping, carrying slings, and how much I hate the name "Brayden."  I'm slowly discovering the plethora of great (and not so great) parenting resources on the the interwebs, including Babble, OhDeeDoh, and The Meming of Life (which are, btw, included in the former category).

That last site, which I linked to my previous post, has really got my gears turning regarding the type of parents The Mister and I would like to be.  It has also (shockingly!) had me reflecting on religion quite a bit--something which I usually try to avoid, as it only seems to work me up into a frothy rage.  Which is fun every once in awhile, but usually it just gets boring and produces way too much froth for my personal taste.  

So, of course, I have a lengthy post on the topic a-brewin'...but who knows when/if it will ever see the light of day.  For right now, I just wanted to let you know that a baby is hopefully in the (my) works.  I'm not sure if "I'm trying to get pregnant" is something one usually tells people--particularly strangers on the interwebs--but, jesus, we all know I can't keep anything to myself, particularly when it involves my genitals.  

Maybe for every month that The Mister and I don't "make a baby" we can just "make a creepily realistic baby cake"...Fetally delicious!

a recommendation. or two.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program of misanthropic bitching in order to recommend a really great blog: The Meming of Life.  It's by a guy named Dale McGowan, the author of Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers (both on my to-be-read-very-soon list).

That is all.

Oh, also, I made these amazing cookies* last week; I highly recommend them.  I was very excited because my version looked exactly like the picture in the book.  Huzzah!

*Note: The web version differs from the printed version (available in Martha Stewart's Cookies), and based on the online comments, you should definitely make the following adjustments: 1) Change the amount of molasses from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup; 2) Dissolve the baking soda into 1 1/2 teaspoons of boiling water.  Now go make cookies.  Yahweh commands it.

more tales of the uncool me.

In 1994 I was in the 7th grade.  I was also, as you may remember, somewhat of a dork.  My hobbies at that time included reading, writing absurd short stories about godknowswhat, watching Nick at Night, and bingeing on junk food whilst babysitting neighborhood kids.  1994, if you will also remember, was the year that Kurt Cobain committed suicide.  At the time, however, I had no idea as to who Nirvana was, nor did I care.  My favorite bands, if I remember correctly, were Ace of Base, Salt-N-Pepa, and Aaliyah ("Back & Forth," anyone?).

In addition to my aforementioned pastimes, I also spent quite a bit of time on the good old BBS, or Bulletin Board System.  For those of you too young or too cool to be familiar with the BBS, it was basically a chat room, accessible by dial-up and populated by people who were nerdy enough to be using the internet before it became widely popular.  It was here where I honed my amazing computer abbreviation lexicon--AFK, BRB, JK...I'm not sure if LOL had burst onto the party scene yet.  But you can be darn sure that my BBS friends knew when I was not in the immediate vicinity of my keyboard and when I was kidding, if not when I was actually laughing out loud.

One important aspect of the BBS experience was the GT, or Get Together.  This was an opportunity to meet the people you'd been forging intense, virtual bonds with in the chat room, and (unsurprisingly) usually ended in mild to severe disappointment.  (Wait, "Super8KoolGuy" is a gangly, pock-marked teenager?  Wait, I'm a fat twelve-year-old who's been flirting with the gangly teenager via BBS?  Ew.)

So.  Let's set the scene for the whole point of this Tale of the Uncool Me: The time, 1994; the place, my preferred BBS room; the players, some random BBS denizen and yours truly; the conversation, priceless:

Random BBS Denizen: (blahblahblah)...I'm so bummed about Kurt Cobain.

Me: Oh yeah--everyone at school was talking about him today.  Did he go to Jefferson (Middle School) or something?

RBBSD: Uhhhh...No. [clearly thinking I was the biggest retard ever]

Me: Oh. [somehow understanding that I was the biggest retard ever]

Nerd!

on partying hearty.

So, 2009.  We meet again.

This is how New Year's Eve went down at our house last night (hold onto your socks):

5:30-7:00    Special alone reading time (me on the couch with a book, The Mister on the interwebs)

7:00-9:30   Special together time (watching Phantom of the Opera [which is, by the way, a total shit-show; Minnie Driver is the only good thing about it])

9:30-11:57    Special alone time again (me sleeping on the couch, The Mister on the interwebs)

11:57-12:05   Special getting up off the couch/the interwebs and transferring into bed time (lying there waiting for all the goddamned fireworks to end)

It was a wild, wild night. 

One of my friends, who was informed of our evening in much less detail, offered up, "What, are you sixty or something?"  And, no, clearly we're not--because my around-sixty-years-old parents had a much livelier evening than us: they stayed up until midnight with another couple, drinking moderately and listening to '70s music.  There was even a disco ball.  

Quoth my father: "It was pathetic."

Happy Pathetic New Year, everyone.