Leaving Las Vegas

I remember someone told me once that the movie, Leaving Las Vegas, was a chick flick. I don't remember who, but I hope that person burns in Hell. By the end of the movie, I wanted to slash my wrists. It was so depressing. It's basically about an alcohol who goes to Las Vegas for the sole purpose of drinking himself to death after losing his job. GEEZ! No uplifting message of happiness in this movie! Speaking of happyness, I don't know if I can ever watch Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith and his son in it. I'm sure it's a feel-good movie, but I am just sure I'll end up bawling my freaking eyes out most of the movie.

Anyhoo, we just got back from our trip to Las Vegas. It was a good trip. The weather was pleasant even if the stupid timeshare assholes were more plentiful than ever. I'm not an unfeeling jerk so I understand that they're just trying to make a living, but some of these guys were obnoxious. I got to the point where I would just blow past them without even acknowledging they were there.

We did the usual touristy stuff. We saw the volcano at the Mirage, the fountains at the Bellagio, the Lion Habitat at the MGM, and the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. I even got to touch a ray at the Shark Reef. We shopped, we ate, we walked until my feet and back were in agony. We had a really good time. We also went to the Price Is Right Live show at Bally's. We didn't win any prizes, but it was a fun show. Expensive but fun. Each ticket was $44. That's actually cheap compared to the other shows. It costs $100 to see Danny Gans. Who is Danny Gans, you ask? I don't know either, but he was voted Las Vegas's Entertainer of the Year.

Since I've been back, I've been suffering from muscle spasms in my back. It's so much fun when I lean over to hug Sylvia and get a shooting pain in my back. Or when I'm sitting at dinner and my lower back tightens up so much it makes me hunch over. Or when all of a sudden it feels like someone is shoving their fist into my back. I got a couple of muscle relaxers from Mom, but all the running I've been doing this weekend hasn't really given me any time to recuperate.

We had a party last night to celebrate Andrew's birthday (which is is on Tuesday) and to give us time to spend with our closest friends. I made a big pot of goulash and ended up with enough leftovers to fill a margarine bowl. I used almost 11 pounds of rump roast for it so there was a lot of food. Andrew went to the store and bought cake and cupcakes for dessert. Sylvia had such a good time because Andrew's friends, TJ and Robert, gave her TJ Bearytales for Christmas so she's been lugging that thing around the house. Plus they let her climb all over them like human jungle gyms. Normally any guy who gives my daughter attention will be subjected to my close scrutiny; however, TJ and Robert are a couple. I'm not really worried about them.

Well, enough for now.

The Pressure - It's TOOOOOO MUCH!!!

I gave in and switched over to the new blogger. So far it doesn't seem like it's that special. Rat bastards made me think it would be something special.

You said it would be special and YOU LIED!!! DAMN YOU, BLOGGER ASSHOLES!

No, I'm not on crack. I'm just really tired today because I went to bed late and my sister-in-law woke me up at 8:30 this morning.

Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow. Then the mad rush of the Christmas shopping season starts in earnest. I haven't bought a single Christmas present yet due to lack of funds, but I plan on getting a good start on Black Friday. This year, Mom is going too which should be fun. Let's see her morph into Oma before our very eyes. I bet she jerks a singing Dora doll from someone's hands. She's cold like that. God, I love that woman.

I am making a dessert for Thanksgiving called Merry Cherry Dessert. It has angel food cake, cherry pie filling, cherry gelatin, and whipped topping on it. I think my pancreas is quivering in anticipation. I can hardly wait to tear into it. It is a trifle-like dessert and looks deLISH!

Oh well, back to work. I have a report to write by the end of the week. No rest for the wicked.

Quick summary of last weekend

We had a really good time this weekend. Andrew, Sylvia, and I went to the Japanese Fall Festival at a nearby park, and I participated in a tea ceremony. It was a beautiful ceremony - or it would have been if all the goofy rednecks hadn't kept sticking their heads through the teahouse window to see what in tarnation was going on!

After the Japanese Fall Festival, we went to the Harvest Home Festival at my church which a HUGE fundraising event with carnival rides, games, beer garden, bingo, auctions, and all kinds of delicious food. Sylvia rode the ponies a couple of times as well as all the other age-appropriate rides. My friend, Rebecca, was there to help keep her entertained while we all played poker in the beer garden. It was a lot of fun playing poker against the parish priest, Father Tom. I do believe he had some divine help on his side - or he's just plain lucky at poker. I won 75 cents even though I lost a lot more than that. I'm just not lucky but I am a lot poorer today!

This is definitely my favorite time of the year. In addition to the cooler weather, there are all kinds of festivals. This weekend is Cider Days downtown which is a large event where they block off several city blocks of Walnut Street. The street is lined with street musicians, artists of all kinds, food, and dancing. I'm really looking forward to it!

Yesterday was a bit of a bummer. It's hard to believe that it has been 5 years since the terrorist attacks, and the anniversary brings back unpleasant memories for everyone across the US. I was pregnant at the time so I was very hormonal and very emotional. I still get a bit emotional when I think about it too much. It is hard not to be, I suppose, with all the bombardment of images by the media the 6 months after it happened. In between repeatedly showing people jumping to their deaths and the buildings collapsing, they were also trying to give parents tips on how to explain to their children about the scary images. We just couldn't get away from them. Even driving down the street was a reminder because there were bumper stickers and window stickers on every other car. I'm just waiting for Congress or whoever to decide that September 11 should be a national holiday. Let's give the bank tellers another day off!

***I didn't feel like retyping all this so I simply cut-and-pasted all this from an email I sent my British friend. HA! There's laziness for ya.

OH the drama!

I've been emailing back and forth with my friend, Kristian, for almost a week. Her live-in boyfriend, surprise-surprise, turned out to be a jackass. And guess who has to pick up the pieces? All of us around her. They've been living together since this past May, and last week, he started acting physically indifferent then disappeared for two nights in a row. He's a bouncer at a strip club so what do you wanna bet he's getting a little sumpin-sumpin on the side? Well, she's an emotional wreck because not only is this guy an ass, but she's been off her Lexepro for a couple of weeks.

Sooooo . . . I will probably spend quite a bit of this weekend with her if she actually decides to move out. What a mess! This girl is constantly embroiled in some sort of HUGE drama. Last December, against my advice, she married this guy (a completely different guy) then decided that she didn't love him. She was absolutely miserable. To top it off, an ex-boyfriend whom she says she was in love with is wanting to get back together. She decided to see if she could work things out with her husband. She "fell in love" with this guy, Mark, then decided to move straight from her husband's home into Mark's apt.

Now this guy is acting like a twat. She gave him another chance after last week, and what does he do? He blows it less than a week later. He promised her that he would be home by 2 p.m. after the bar closed. He came dragging in around 4:30 in the morning then got pissed at her for calling her mother while she was all upset about him not being home. So now he says he doesn't want her to have anyone help her move out and threatening to throw her shit out by the curb.

I'll say it again. This guy is a twat. A dirty, bug-infested, itchy, stanky twat. Yet all I hear from her is how much she loves him and believes he loves her, but he's just depressed because of all the stress he's under, blah blah blah blah.

She's going to have to grow up and quit picking the assholes who dump shit on her because I don't know if I can keep being the sympathetic friend for the rest of my life if this is what I am going to have to hear from her.

OH the drama.

John Mark Karr - Weird Fuck

BOULDER, Colo. - Prosecutors abruptly dropped their case against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, saying DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene despite his repeated insistence he killed the 6-year-old beauty queen.

In court papers, prosecutors suggested he had a twisted fascination with the little girl and confessed to a crime he didn't commit.
Karr, 41, will be kept in jail in Boulder until he can be sent to Sonoma County, Calif., to face child pornography charges dating to 2001, authorities said. Earlier in the day, the sheriff's department announced Karr had been released.
The move came just a week and a half after the schoolteacher was arrested in Thailand and put on a plane to the U.S. in what was regarded as a remarkable break in the decade-old murder mystery that had cast suspicion on JonBenet's parents.

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I was afraid this would happen. I just knew that the DNA test results would come back and show that he was just really fucked up in the head. I feel really badly for JonBenet's family who really had their hopes up that this murder mystery would be unravelled. It looks like it never will be.

This is why I don't blog too often

I WANT TACOS!

I want tacos. Thanks, Ronnie. Of course, I'm always in the mood for Mexican food (yeah, yeah, your wife's not Mexican, I'm aware of that now shut up). I love to take Sylvia over to Cielito Lindo's for some chips and salsa then a big-ass plate of burritos. Covered in guacamole. Holy shit, they make some killer guac! Best I've ever had!

I'm trying to figure out how I managed to be so open minded about food. My parents hate anything with a little bit of spice, and they DEFINITELY won't eat sushi. That's another food I constantly crave. The salmon sushi which is rice topped with beautifully fresh RAW salmon. Sounds nasty, but it's beautiful to behold and then scarf. It tastes yummy. To me, sushi is some of the most beautiful food to look at. It's got a variety of pleasing colors, and you KNOW it's healthy. Seafood, rice, and veggies wrapped in seaweed then dipped in a mixture of wasabi and soy sauce. Ok, the soy sauce isn't that healthy due to sodium, but it tastes soooooooo good.



Anyway, enough about food. I'm tempted to hit the fridge, but the only problem is that I desperately need to go grocery shopping. We paid for a trip to Vegas last week so there wasn't a lot of money left for frivolous purchases such as food. Now, don't get me wrong. Sylvia has plenty of Fruity Pebbles and dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. I just need to restock my pantry w/the staples. It just forces me to be a bit more creative with all the ground beef in the deep freeze.

Well, my eyeballs are starting to ache with the need for sleep. Time to crash.

Fine, are you happy now, Ronnie? I posted another blog entry.

Waiting for my dinner

Well, I'm waiting for a late supper to finish grilling. My head is aching, and I think my eyeballs will explode so this will be a short blog tonight. Sylvia, thankfully, is in another state. I'm not used to having her so far away from me. I considered asking a guy at the grocery store if I could hug his kid. Yeah, I miss the little rat. She sounds like she's having fun. Apparently Uncle Ronnie forgot what a preschooler is like after drinking Dr. Pepper. She can whiz around the house faster than the Flash.

I saw Clerks II last night. In my opinion, it was probably the funniest Kevin Smith movie yet. I can see why Gene Shalot (or however you spell it) walked out during the donkey scene, but I still thought it was funny as Hell. I was a little grossed out about the conversation over going ass to mouth. Ew. That's just wrong, but a lot of the humor had me busting up in the theater. It was a little overly sentimental in parts, but Jay and Silent Bob managed to inject a little humor into some of those parts.

Well, food is almost done so later!