Good & Fiery

One of my fave, fave candies is Good & Plenty. So I was game when Paul found a new addition to the family, Good & Fiery:

Now he's more of a Hot Tamale fan than me, but I thought the makers of Good & Plenty couldn't go wrong.

Ech, I was wrong. I'm apparently not the niche target they were planning on marketing this to. The combo of the artificial fruit flavors with spicy fire felt like a mistake. Like accidentally ingesting Lemon Pledge while eating a stale cinnamon tic tac. And it wasn't just me. I brought the rest of the box to work and I saw a number of folks try them, only to see their faces scrunch up while they pawed their mouths, like dogs do when they're forced to wear silly hats by their owners.

So unfortunately, despite a promising idea, I have to give Good & Fiery a C-.

Someone is getting married

and I made the invites! My sister is getting married in October and I was thrilled that she let me make the invites for the wedding. Here was an inspiration piece that my sister had, but she didn't care for the butterflies and glitter:


I created a multi-page invite including reply postcard and kept the color scheme of chocolate, light blue, and stone beige. I replaced the trees with allium flowers hand-stamped on white vellum:

Totally psyched that my sister and her man dug them!

The advantages of technology

When I was in college, there was a guy in my statistics class who sat in the front row and had a laptop. Since I was in college 20 years ago, having a laptop wasn't common at all. I remember one of my college send-off gifts was an electric typewriter (I typed on a manual typewriter through high school) and my dorm featured a typing room. Anyhoo, this guy could be heard typing away as the rest of low tech losers scribbled notes in our notebooks. One day, this guy sat in front of me and I discovered what he was truly furiously typing away at: Tetris.

I wonder if he's in the Connecticut state congress now:

(House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, far right, speaks while colleagues play solitaire on their computers as the House convenes to vote on a new budget for the fiscal year in the Capitol, in Hartford, Conn., Monday, Aug., 31, 2009.)

***If you can't see the picture, see it here.

Failblog.org is one of my favorite humor sites. Besides some great pictures and vids from around the world, it has further discouraged my desire to join FaceBook.

Lloyd "I love you"

What, what is that you're doing with your hands?

Just happened upon Say Anything on cable recently. I found this short homemade trailer on youtube with some other fave lines:



Boy, that movie brings back a LOT of memories. Has it really been 20 years?! Loved, loved that movie. I remember one of my roommates back in the day would play that movie to go to sleep by. I remember Lili Taylor's memorably stealing the scene with her song, "Joe Lies". I remember thinking, how could you not fall in love with Lloyd Dobler? Will I get a Lloyd Dobler? I remember that Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" is forever tied to this movie.

Funny yet kinda of sad though, now watching it as a parent, I'm sympathizing more with Diane's dad's point of view (minus the felonious stealing). Do I want my daughter flying off with a guy who, when asked about his future plans, responds: "What I really want to do with my life - what I want to do for a living - is I want to be with your daughter. I'm good at it"?

Man, I'm feeling a little old now.

Happy Birthday to my big girl

I had big plans to surprise the girl for her birthday this year. Made this banner and put it up early in the morning:

Piled all her presents on a table:

We were going to surprise her with breakfast in bed with these (but she ambled downstairs while Paul was out picking them up):

But she was still psyched for birthday and got a box of cool "stuff" from her grandfather: including a rose quartz butterfly, a bicentennial half dollar, and more stones to add to her growing rock collection--thanks Opa!

She also scored a bunch of neat things from her Aunt Jane and Uncle Prashant, including some great books, her favorite tea, a cool dream catcher, and a jeweled hairband that the girl had dropped serious covetous hints to her patient aunt:

The big present from me and Paul was the Wii system. We had told her if she saved up her allowance towards the Wii, maybe we'd pitch in the rest for her birthday. We're happy to say we made good, plus her Aunt Annabelle and Uncle Josh added to the loot with the MarioKart game (which she's been playing with her Uncle Josh since his Game Cube days):

My left coast home girls collectively gave her another fun Wii game:

We also gave her seasons 1 and 2 of Scrubs, which she recently got hooked on. We'll cap off the night with a few episodes and a little family slumber party in the living room. It's a good birthday.

There go Saturdays

Yeesh, college football season snuck up on me fast. I can't believe it's here already. It's still like, 90 degrees here. I've really grown to look forward to this season every year.

Raised by parents who didn't follow sports, I wouldn't have predicted how much I look forward to this season every year. In fact, sometimes I marvel how much I absorbed in the last 15 years with my Husker husband. But don't mistake me for one of those fanatics that rattle off stats. I will confess my recall about, say, Matt Ryan, in Boston College's amazing 2007 win over Virgina Tech, is first, that cameras were rolling as he was pacing the sidelines when he suddenly lurched over and vomited, then second, his killer 2 touchdown passes in the last 2 minutes of the game to win the game 14-10. So yeah...stats don't stick out in my head. Though I'm starting to absorb some of that without realizing it, thanks to waking up to College GameDay on Saturday mornings. I love starting off my Saturday mornings with Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso, and, now, Desmond Howard. I can't wait till the weather gets a little cooler and enjoy my tea and breakfast with them. Anyone want to join me?

I'm a fun mom

Velina was going to enter this contest entitled "My Fun Mom" (but realized too late the deadline had just passed) where you drew a picture and describe how fun your mom is. This is her drawing of us playing a game called "Scrambled States of America".

Sigh. I really have got to do more with the girl.