A couple of months ago, I got back in touch with some friends from high school, some of whom I seriously had not talked to in 18 years. Really sad how time gets away from us. But I'm happy to say we've rediscovered our friendships, and one of the fine ladies has proven to have exceptional talent in designing and creating beautiful jewelry using Swarovski crystals and sterling silver. I've bought several pieces from her now and I love them all. Constantly get compliments on them too. She's got a website up now, so check it out. She also does shows around the Chicagoland area and in a few other states as well, her show schedule is on the website.
Here's to you, Mel! Beadazzle Jewelry
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Two Weeks
So, two weeks from today I go in for the first major surgery of my life. Since finding out I need this surgery I haven't been scared nearly as much as pissed off. Granted, when I read about being on a ventilator I got a little oogy-feeling, and yesterday I went to the hospital for a blood test and looked around realizing that this is where I was going to be getting my slice-and-dice. A bit unsettling.
But mostly I'm just pissed off. It's a bad time to leave work, even though at this time I only have scheduled 7 days off of work. Thankfully I can start working at home quite soon, but from what my doctor said and reading other women's accounts on the web, it seems like fatigue is going to be plaguing me for a few weeks if not a couple of months.
I can't do full-on exercise for probably 4-6 weeks, and if you had told me even 3 years ago that I would be pissed off at not being able to work out, I would have spit my triple chocolate cupcakes in your face and laughed my ass off. I feel like I finally got my shit together and started a good and consistent workout regime, and God said "NO! You will have a tumor instead!" *flings down benign tumor in my path for effect* At any rate, all I can do is tell myself that the forced inactivity will make me doubly recommitted when I can be active again.
I know I should be grateful that things aren't worse. I know there are people who would kill to be sniping over relatively unimportant crap like I'm doing. This is just a pretty big gear-stripping for me, when I've been healthy and independent most of my life (my adult life anyway) and now I'll be temporarily incapacitated and will need to accept people's help. It's just a really weird change for me. But I do know it could be worse.
I thought about starting a separate blog to talk about my condition, my surgery, and the post-op experience, if for no other reason than a writer (and by that I only mean someone who likes to write) can get a story out of her own experiences. I still might do it, and maybe it will get some Google hits and help some women out there looking for accounts of what they might have to go through themselves.
But mostly I'm just pissed off. It's a bad time to leave work, even though at this time I only have scheduled 7 days off of work. Thankfully I can start working at home quite soon, but from what my doctor said and reading other women's accounts on the web, it seems like fatigue is going to be plaguing me for a few weeks if not a couple of months.
I can't do full-on exercise for probably 4-6 weeks, and if you had told me even 3 years ago that I would be pissed off at not being able to work out, I would have spit my triple chocolate cupcakes in your face and laughed my ass off. I feel like I finally got my shit together and started a good and consistent workout regime, and God said "NO! You will have a tumor instead!" *flings down benign tumor in my path for effect* At any rate, all I can do is tell myself that the forced inactivity will make me doubly recommitted when I can be active again.
I know I should be grateful that things aren't worse. I know there are people who would kill to be sniping over relatively unimportant crap like I'm doing. This is just a pretty big gear-stripping for me, when I've been healthy and independent most of my life (my adult life anyway) and now I'll be temporarily incapacitated and will need to accept people's help. It's just a really weird change for me. But I do know it could be worse.
I thought about starting a separate blog to talk about my condition, my surgery, and the post-op experience, if for no other reason than a writer (and by that I only mean someone who likes to write) can get a story out of her own experiences. I still might do it, and maybe it will get some Google hits and help some women out there looking for accounts of what they might have to go through themselves.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Scary Black People Made Me Gay
Well, they didn't make ME gay, since I'm straight, have been scared of very few of the black people I've encountered, and even the ones who might have frightened me did so on general weirdness and not anything to do with being black. Also, none of it was enough to get me to switch teams.
But alas, poor Bob Allen is not as strong as me.
In a nutshell:
TITUSVILLE - State Rep. Bob Allen told police he was just playing along when a undercover officer suggested in a public restroom that the legislator give him oral sex and $20 because he was intimidated, according to a taped statement and other documents released Thursday.
This happened because:
"I certainly wasn't there to have sex with anybody and certainly wasn't there to exchange money for it," said Allen, R-Merritt Island, who was arrested on charges of soliciting prostitution.
"This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park," Allen, who is white, told police in a taped statement after his arrest. Allen said he feared he "was about to be a statistic" and would have said anything just to get away.
So of course the first thing you do when you're about to be forcibly engulfed by the Big Gay Black Juggernaut is to go into the nearest public bathroom where you could be cornered more easily. The sheer terror and stress of the situation apparently led to:
In a written statement released Thursday, Titusville Officer Danny Kavanaugh recalled entering the restroom twice and said he was drying his hands in a stall when Allen peered over the stall door.
After peering over the stall a second time, Allen pushed open the door and joined Kavanaugh inside, the officer wrote. Allen muttered " 'hi,' " and then said, " 'this is kind of a public place, isn't it,' " the report said.
The officer said he asked Allen about going somewhere else and that the legislator suggested going "across the bridge, it's quieter over there."
"Well look, man, I'm trying to make some money; you think you can hook me up with 20 bucks?" Kavanaugh asked Allen.
The officer said Allen responded, "Sure, I can do that, but this place is too public."
Then Kavanaugh said he told Allen, "I wanna know what I gotta do for 20 bucks before we leave.' " He said Allen replied: "I don't know what you're into."
According to Kavanaugh's statement, the officer said, "do you want just [oral sex]?" and Allen replied, "I was thinking you would want one."
The officer said he then asked Allen, "but you'll still give me the 20 bucks for that . . . and that the legislator said, "yeah, I wouldn't argue with that."
As Allen turned and motioned for the officer to follow him to his car, Kavanaugh identified himself as a police officer by raising his shirt and exposing his badge.
And my very favorite morsel of the story:
When Allen was being placed in a marked patrol car, he asked whether "it would help" if he was a state legislator, according to a police report. The officer replied, "No."
But the piece de resistance has to be:
Bob Allen has sponsored legislation that toughened penalties for lewd or lascivious conduct.
If Karl Rove could have gone out on this note, that would have been a great juicy helping of awesome but I'll take what I can get.
But alas, poor Bob Allen is not as strong as me.
In a nutshell:
TITUSVILLE - State Rep. Bob Allen told police he was just playing along when a undercover officer suggested in a public restroom that the legislator give him oral sex and $20 because he was intimidated, according to a taped statement and other documents released Thursday.
This happened because:
"I certainly wasn't there to have sex with anybody and certainly wasn't there to exchange money for it," said Allen, R-Merritt Island, who was arrested on charges of soliciting prostitution.
"This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park," Allen, who is white, told police in a taped statement after his arrest. Allen said he feared he "was about to be a statistic" and would have said anything just to get away.
So of course the first thing you do when you're about to be forcibly engulfed by the Big Gay Black Juggernaut is to go into the nearest public bathroom where you could be cornered more easily. The sheer terror and stress of the situation apparently led to:
In a written statement released Thursday, Titusville Officer Danny Kavanaugh recalled entering the restroom twice and said he was drying his hands in a stall when Allen peered over the stall door.
After peering over the stall a second time, Allen pushed open the door and joined Kavanaugh inside, the officer wrote. Allen muttered " 'hi,' " and then said, " 'this is kind of a public place, isn't it,' " the report said.
The officer said he asked Allen about going somewhere else and that the legislator suggested going "across the bridge, it's quieter over there."
"Well look, man, I'm trying to make some money; you think you can hook me up with 20 bucks?" Kavanaugh asked Allen.
The officer said Allen responded, "Sure, I can do that, but this place is too public."
Then Kavanaugh said he told Allen, "I wanna know what I gotta do for 20 bucks before we leave.' " He said Allen replied: "I don't know what you're into."
According to Kavanaugh's statement, the officer said, "do you want just [oral sex]?" and Allen replied, "I was thinking you would want one."
The officer said he then asked Allen, "but you'll still give me the 20 bucks for that . . . and that the legislator said, "yeah, I wouldn't argue with that."
As Allen turned and motioned for the officer to follow him to his car, Kavanaugh identified himself as a police officer by raising his shirt and exposing his badge.
And my very favorite morsel of the story:
When Allen was being placed in a marked patrol car, he asked whether "it would help" if he was a state legislator, according to a police report. The officer replied, "No."
But the piece de resistance has to be:
Bob Allen has sponsored legislation that toughened penalties for lewd or lascivious conduct.
If Karl Rove could have gone out on this note, that would have been a great juicy helping of awesome but I'll take what I can get.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Further Observed
In the news: Karl Rove is quitting. What bullshit. If anyone shouldn't get to leave their job on their own terms, it's this scum-sucking, eerily-uniformly-flesh-toned, dirty-rat-bastard cyborg. At the very least I wanted a Mark Foley-esque exit for Rove if not a full-on "Money's on the dresser, Chocolate" moment.
Again in the yarn store: 100% bamboo yarn, which is actually more slippery than Michael Jackson in the hands of prosecution. Really curious to see how it is to work with. The yarn, not Michael Jackson or his prosecutors.
Tables turned: My best friend has decreed that I can no longer tell her what TV shows to watch after losing IQ points to The Two Coreys. She acknowledged that this was my revenge for her recommending Not Another Teen Movie, over which I nearly sued her ass for mental anguish, emotional distress, the 2 hrs of my life I can never get back, and the $3.95 rental fee.
Again in the yarn store: 100% bamboo yarn, which is actually more slippery than Michael Jackson in the hands of prosecution. Really curious to see how it is to work with. The yarn, not Michael Jackson or his prosecutors.
Tables turned: My best friend has decreed that I can no longer tell her what TV shows to watch after losing IQ points to The Two Coreys. She acknowledged that this was my revenge for her recommending Not Another Teen Movie, over which I nearly sued her ass for mental anguish, emotional distress, the 2 hrs of my life I can never get back, and the $3.95 rental fee.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Observed
Today in the Borders cafe: a very white man in a Green Bay Packers cap, reading Uncle Tom's Cabin with all the diligent concentration of a man defusing a bomb. Seriously, the book was 3 inches away from his nose.
On reality tv: I don't remember the channel or the name of the show, but apparently it's Wife Swap with hair stylists. The show caught my eye because the guide info said one of the people was in Gurnee which is very close to me, so I decided to see where they were filming. Apparently this salon requires Bible study during the workday for their employees? Whatever bakes their Eucharist bread I suppose, but I think I'll stick with my trusty stylist for the foreseeable future.
In my knitting group: A woman who can knit lightning-fast without even looking at her needles. I seriously envy her.
In my new favorite yarn store: a 50/50 blend yarn of soy (that's right, soy) silk and wool for 50% off. It feels really nice and has beautiful purples/blues/greens/tans running through it. It's from South West Trading Company and they have quite a few alternative fiber and alternative fiber blends including bamboo, milk protein, and hemp in addition to the soy silk.
On reality tv: I don't remember the channel or the name of the show, but apparently it's Wife Swap with hair stylists. The show caught my eye because the guide info said one of the people was in Gurnee which is very close to me, so I decided to see where they were filming. Apparently this salon requires Bible study during the workday for their employees? Whatever bakes their Eucharist bread I suppose, but I think I'll stick with my trusty stylist for the foreseeable future.
In my knitting group: A woman who can knit lightning-fast without even looking at her needles. I seriously envy her.
In my new favorite yarn store: a 50/50 blend yarn of soy (that's right, soy) silk and wool for 50% off. It feels really nice and has beautiful purples/blues/greens/tans running through it. It's from South West Trading Company and they have quite a few alternative fiber and alternative fiber blends including bamboo, milk protein, and hemp in addition to the soy silk.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Very Odds and Ends
The Bourne Ultimatum. It was ok. Good action, plus Matt Damon is so tasty and delicious I might not have to eat for weeks after a Bourne marathon. However, I have only read half of The Bourne Identity and I'm fairly sure there was reasoning behind Damon's character agreeing to become Jason Bourne, and the movie didn't touch on it at all, which kind of left the impression that he was just a pointless, thoughtless mook who agreed to become this killing machine.
Clowns are still fuckers. I was flipping channels the other day, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was on, which is the third film installment in the franchise that made J.K. Rowling richer than the Queen and Davy Crockett combined. In the scene I was watching, the students confront a shape-shifter that takes on the shape of whatever your deepest fear is. The trick to defeating this thing is to think of how to make the fearsome look ridiculous, and then cast the proper spell. So this one girl steps up to the plate, and the boggart (shape-shifter) turns into a mummy or something. She casts her spell and the damn thing turns into a SEVEN-FOOT CLOWN. HELLO??!?!??!?!?! That's a bazillion times worse than a well-preserved corpse in need of new gauze. WTF???
In other clowns-are-fuckers news, I also saw the Krusty the Clown Burger King commercial that shows both Krusty and an animated version of that unbelievably creepy Burger King character. I couldn't decide which was worse.
Sweet pathetic reality TV and the validation of self. So this weekend I also discovered a horrific trainwreck of epic proportion - The Two Coreys. Who are the Two Coreys? Corey Haim and Corey Feldman of course, who rose to meteoric (a really sluggish, cold meteor) fame in the 80's thanks to the film The Lost Boys.
Both Coreys are about 35 now. Feldman is gainfully employed and married with a nice house and a cute dog. Haim is unemployed and appears to have stopped maturing mentally just around the original premiere of The Lost Boys, 20 years ago. He is basically a hot steaming mess. Haim moves in with Feldman and his wife and the Madcap High Jinks Train leaves the depot.
I told John about this show and we both agreed that we would have expected Feldman to turn out the worse of the Two Coreys. I am wondering if this is because Feldman was the less conventionally attractive Corey back in the day, i.e. people tend to associate good looks with good fortune. To both our credits though, Feldman did have that weird Michael Jackson wannabe phase to live down as well. In any case, we both turned out to be wrong and Haim is the pungent mess that we would have been more inclined to expect of Feldman.
It all adds up to a jaw-dropping, fetal-position-inducing spectacle that is only honed to a razor edge by the addition of Feldman's wife, she of the suspiciously buoyant breasts and tears flowing in support of PETA. It's horrific. It's awkward. And I fully admit that it makes me a lesser person when I admit that this trainwreck makes me feel better about myself. Sometimes you gotta do what you can to cope.
Clowns are still fuckers. I was flipping channels the other day, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was on, which is the third film installment in the franchise that made J.K. Rowling richer than the Queen and Davy Crockett combined. In the scene I was watching, the students confront a shape-shifter that takes on the shape of whatever your deepest fear is. The trick to defeating this thing is to think of how to make the fearsome look ridiculous, and then cast the proper spell. So this one girl steps up to the plate, and the boggart (shape-shifter) turns into a mummy or something. She casts her spell and the damn thing turns into a SEVEN-FOOT CLOWN. HELLO??!?!??!?!?! That's a bazillion times worse than a well-preserved corpse in need of new gauze. WTF???
In other clowns-are-fuckers news, I also saw the Krusty the Clown Burger King commercial that shows both Krusty and an animated version of that unbelievably creepy Burger King character. I couldn't decide which was worse.
Sweet pathetic reality TV and the validation of self. So this weekend I also discovered a horrific trainwreck of epic proportion - The Two Coreys. Who are the Two Coreys? Corey Haim and Corey Feldman of course, who rose to meteoric (a really sluggish, cold meteor) fame in the 80's thanks to the film The Lost Boys.
Both Coreys are about 35 now. Feldman is gainfully employed and married with a nice house and a cute dog. Haim is unemployed and appears to have stopped maturing mentally just around the original premiere of The Lost Boys, 20 years ago. He is basically a hot steaming mess. Haim moves in with Feldman and his wife and the Madcap High Jinks Train leaves the depot.
I told John about this show and we both agreed that we would have expected Feldman to turn out the worse of the Two Coreys. I am wondering if this is because Feldman was the less conventionally attractive Corey back in the day, i.e. people tend to associate good looks with good fortune. To both our credits though, Feldman did have that weird Michael Jackson wannabe phase to live down as well. In any case, we both turned out to be wrong and Haim is the pungent mess that we would have been more inclined to expect of Feldman.
It all adds up to a jaw-dropping, fetal-position-inducing spectacle that is only honed to a razor edge by the addition of Feldman's wife, she of the suspiciously buoyant breasts and tears flowing in support of PETA. It's horrific. It's awkward. And I fully admit that it makes me a lesser person when I admit that this trainwreck makes me feel better about myself. Sometimes you gotta do what you can to cope.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Hi, My Name is Donna, and I'm a Book Whore (all together - "Hi, Donna")
I've been a book whore since I was a little kid. I am the only child of Korean immigrants and thankfully we weren't poor, so they could afford to indulge me in the area of their choice. My parents were no different from the stereotypical Asian parents in that they wanted me to succeed academically (especially since it was clear from an early age that I had the motor skills of a tranquilized elephant) so that area was always books. I could ask for any book I wanted and my parents would buy it for me, which, combined with their lack of knowledge of American popular fiction, led to my trying to read Stephen King's Carrie in fifth grade and being so scared I had to throw the book away.
Tales of telekinetic horror aside, I have always loved having books. In the bookstore, I'll dig through the stacks of books to get at the copy two or three layers back which I assure myself that fewer people have touched and whose cover is usually in better condition than the topmost, heavily molested copy. New books give me a mild contact high, but I have old much-loved books that have been re-read again and again. I am just plain easy when it comes to books.
I go through phases of being good and steering clear of bookstores and Amazon.com. Usually books are cheaper at Amazon so I'll just order what I need from there. However, I love being in a bookstore so much that I'll sometimes give in and buy from there, especially when they tempt me with the occasional 3-for-2 sale.
I justified today's Borders excursion with the fact that I'm facing abdominal surgery next month with a 4-6 week recovery period, so I'ma get me some books. (Meanwhile I had to beat the crap out of the Voice of Reason within that reminded me that I have a pile of unread books still waiting for me.)
Laura was kind enough to lend me these two (oops, three!):
Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
The Stupidest Angel, A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror
Lakota Woman
And at Borders I picked up these at the 3-for-2 sale:
Reading Lolita in Tehran
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Saturday
I went looking for cillic's recommendations but didn't find most of them. I did already have A History of God in my unread books pile so hopefully that will get read soon. I also want to finish Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, which I'm about halfway through.
And I'm looking forward to these when they come out in paperback:
It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Tales of telekinetic horror aside, I have always loved having books. In the bookstore, I'll dig through the stacks of books to get at the copy two or three layers back which I assure myself that fewer people have touched and whose cover is usually in better condition than the topmost, heavily molested copy. New books give me a mild contact high, but I have old much-loved books that have been re-read again and again. I am just plain easy when it comes to books.
I go through phases of being good and steering clear of bookstores and Amazon.com. Usually books are cheaper at Amazon so I'll just order what I need from there. However, I love being in a bookstore so much that I'll sometimes give in and buy from there, especially when they tempt me with the occasional 3-for-2 sale.
I justified today's Borders excursion with the fact that I'm facing abdominal surgery next month with a 4-6 week recovery period, so I'ma get me some books. (Meanwhile I had to beat the crap out of the Voice of Reason within that reminded me that I have a pile of unread books still waiting for me.)
Laura was kind enough to lend me these two (oops, three!):
Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
The Stupidest Angel, A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror
Lakota Woman
And at Borders I picked up these at the 3-for-2 sale:
Reading Lolita in Tehran
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Saturday
I went looking for cillic's recommendations but didn't find most of them. I did already have A History of God in my unread books pile so hopefully that will get read soon. I also want to finish Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, which I'm about halfway through.
And I'm looking forward to these when they come out in paperback:
It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Running Out of Tacky
So Laura and I were talking today, and I invited them up to my neck of the woods and noted that I could give them directions that would take them past the local Tacky Spectacle, the Onan Pyramid House. Now I am quite sure I showed this phenomenon to Laura when she visited a couple years ago, but I can hardly blame her for blocking it out. It is a spectacle both dazzling and underwhelmingly peculiar to behold.
It is, for lack of a better term, an "Egyptian compound" complete with pyramid, 50-foot Tut statue, hieroglyphics on the walls surrounding the compound, and if my memory doesn't completely fail me, a metal palm tree. All planted smack-dab in the midst of the lush cornfields of Gurnee, IL. Basically, it is what would happen if Britney Spears and the Luxor had a baby. Do you ever worry about the day when the universe could run out of Tacky? No, I don't either, but I have never had to worry about that possibility, seeing as how I've known about the Onan Pyramid House for years.
Move over, Liberace, (credit to Laura) because Tacky's got a brand new (or, decades-old) bag.
It is, for lack of a better term, an "Egyptian compound" complete with pyramid, 50-foot Tut statue, hieroglyphics on the walls surrounding the compound, and if my memory doesn't completely fail me, a metal palm tree. All planted smack-dab in the midst of the lush cornfields of Gurnee, IL. Basically, it is what would happen if Britney Spears and the Luxor had a baby. Do you ever worry about the day when the universe could run out of Tacky? No, I don't either, but I have never had to worry about that possibility, seeing as how I've known about the Onan Pyramid House for years.
Move over, Liberace, (credit to Laura) because Tacky's got a brand new (or, decades-old) bag.
Book Recommendations, Please!
So I am scheduled for surgery after Labor Day (not RIGHT after Labor Day, I trust my doc but still a bit wary of the post-holiday blues) and I will need books to read while I recuperate. Please post your recommendations in the comments!
Thanks!
D
Thanks!
D
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