Everything here is pretty much crap (guess how many places I have active infections!), but I just scored bacon salt in a Woot-Off.

I have an ear infection and am slightly incoherent as a result.

I finished the Ramona embroidery last weekend and photographed it, so please feel free to tell me to stop being a lazy bum and unload the camera/upload to Flickr already.

I survived the four-day weekend with the midget with a little retail distraction. On Monday we walked along the south side of our block to find Crayola triangular capless washable markers at CVS for Austin (caps on markers get in the way when you are two and a half) and popped in Family Dollar to look at random stuff. Found Suave Radiant Brunette shampoo on clearance for $1.60/bottle. Might want to stock up on that.

Trying to get through weeding outgrown clothes before spring cleaning, I am about two-thirds of the way through Laurel's wardrobe. Bought a couple more long-sleeve tees to get her through to spring, but the Middlebury hoodie I bought last fall is nowhere to be found. I asked her if it was under her bed or had been left at school; she giggled and shrugged, "I'm forgetful!". I am not amused.

revme, I have finally finished the Zach'ry section of Cloud Atlas (the least gripping story for me) and am happily back to Sonmi. Cannot wait to get to the conclusion of Louisa Rey's mystery, I had a minor case of the fantods when the first half ended where it did.

I finally wibbled toward not attending Worldcon this year, although the Fluorospherian party was ridiculously tempting. johno, we'll meet at some con in the future.

I will be in Denver on the 23rd to pick up Laurel and return to Dallas. I'm not planning on doing anything wild and crazy while I'm there. I will take more pictures of my niece, because I have been rubbing it in that we share our first three initials and that she is quiet when I hold her. She fusses when my mom holds her. This is a rip in the space irony continuum, although I am unsure of how to repair it.

Laurel is looking forward to starting 3rd grade and seeing the chartreuse LL Bean bookbag I procured in the hunt for a yellow bookbag. Naturally the survival backpacks in last week's haul of using-up-the-FSA spending turned out to be a nice bright yellow, but those are not being turned into bookbags.

I am PMS'ing and thinking too much about hating my birthday. (Not the getting older part, which I rather like, but the actual day.) I'll be back to normal next week.

A few bookmarks for future shopping:
*Cool Songs Collection & Times Table Fun purchased 31 JAN 08, Laurel loves the times table songs
*Volvo things: battery quick disconnect Switch, fuse kit
*CB I Hate Perfume (thanks for the tip, the_mock_turtle)

Over the weekend, I bought a surplice [1] top for Laurel. Blissfully ignorant of current fashion, I noticed Laurel was drawing them on some of her fashion drawings and spotted the top on a sale rack while looking for a cooler-season jacket to bridge the gap between track jacket and winter coat. Cutting off the tag before throwing the purchase in the hamper, I read the tag: "FG LS SURPLUS TOP". I am baffled by how someone could confuse homophones with such wildly different meanings.


1. A surplice bodice has two overlapping pieces at the bustline. Depending on where the overlap is sewn down and the bust of the wearer, the look can range from a modest v-neck to a deep plunge.

Boobie update: Sonogram negated the need for a mammogram; it's just a cyst. Next time I have to have something scanned or imaged, I am totally asking for that place again. I got to lie on a heated exam table (!) and the lights were dimmed so I didn't go blind staring at the ceiling. It was as nice as could be expected for having my boobs pushed around with an ultrasound wand and a weird pad thing that looked like petri dish medium.

I worked at our neighborhood school's book fair for two hours today. I forgot how much I love the smell of bookbinding glue and helping kids earnestly showing me the three dollars they brought find a sale book (most of the books are sold at cover price, but I'm okay paying that since the profits help the school). The volunteer schedule was a little shorthanded tomorrow, so I'll be there 8 AM - 2 PM. Book straightening and student wish list assistance FTW! Even better? Next week is book fair at Laurel's school.

Also: rain? We have enough. Please go rain somewhere that needs it. Thank you. All this cloudiness makes me want to sleep and carry the cat around in a baby sling.

...

Books purchased today at book fair:
- Clementine, Sara Pennypacker - cute chapter book about a free-spirited third grader, first in a series.
- The Dragon of Lonely Island, Rebecca Rupp - picked it up on sale for $2, if you want me to buy you a copy leave it in the comments.
- Tink, North of Never Land, Kiki Thorpe - another Disney Fairies chapter book, Laurel's wild about them and they have glitter on the cover.
- Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium Magical Movie Novel, Suzanne Weyn - I bought this to get the free poster with purchase because Natalie Portman is cute. If Laurel isn't interested I'll sell it on half.com or something.

Vogon felt a pull to stop in at Radio Shack today. The pull was being issued by a floor model Roboraptor marked down to $32. (Figures.) We had to buy batteries and download a PDF copy of the manual, but it was pretty funny to make it roar at Bubby. Bubby's reaction: "I'm not messing with that sh*t." Laurel loves it.

We saw Biko again today, but the firbolg turned tail and ran into the shrubbery when she saw us. One of the local cat rescue groups lends out humane traps for a refundable deposit, so we're doing that this weekend.

Saw the doc today for a regular meds checkup (I get a new scrip every 3-4 months) and discussed ( a lump in my breast. It's probably benign. Feel free to skip this part. )

Vogon saw Biko outside in the wee hours of the morning today. He reported that she looks fine, had probably just finished eating from the bowl of dry food I set outside the door, and was on the stairs when he saw her. She ran off when he called her name. Hopefully one of us will catch her in the next few days.

In consumerism news, I went to the SIGG website to buy a replacement mud cap for Laurel's water bottle and bought a new bottle in the next size up while I was at it. With a new bottle top and mud cap, I plan to pass her current bottle on to my nephew. I found a Hello Kitty design available two sizes up from her current bottle, but it was out of stock. So were both of the designs I'd like for myself, but I like SIGG bottles more for their durability than worries that my current Lexan water bottle is leaching chemicals into my water. I'll spring for a SIGG once my Lexan bottle bites it.

( Laurel's current, in-transit and not yet purchased SIGG bottles, 25 kb .jpg )

I've done some back-to-school shopping on eBay. In the past month, I've picked up three Lilly Pulitzer dresses for under $25 each (including a cute circus print one for Laurel) and a Lilly cardigan to supplement my wardrobe staples. Now I'm sitting on an auction closing tomorrow for a CD of mid-century circus photos from a seller I've talked to several times before about my interest in specific circuses' ephemera. If I win, the disc includes several dozen Campa Brothers photos I can add to my family collection. It takes a little of the edge off the loss of Tio Alfonso's circus memorabilia several years ago.

(Tio Alfonso and Tia Bonnie rented a few storage units that went delinquent on payments when their health declined. By the time we heard about the storage situation, the contents had already been sold. In the time since, I've been picking up copies of photos, posters and other ephemera to supplement the notes and tapes I have of relatives talking about the circus.)

MIGRAINE SINCE LAST THURSDAY STOP PLEASE SEND CAFFEINE STOP

That's what I've been thinking all weekend, along with "Laurel, please stop asking me questions like 'Have you ever sucked on cheese?' every five minutes" and "Laurel, please stop antagonizing the cat". School starts next week.

I am officially tired of shopping in brick-and-mortar stores again. We made out well getting Laurel's wardrobe staples at 40-80% off from Kohl's sale racks early on tax-holiday weekend, but we didn't get there until 0930 and the place got steadily more crowded while we shopped. I was surprised we didn't find any children hiding in our not-a-child-seat cart after the swarm of free-range children in the shoe department. I'd normally skip the shoes there, but they were on our way back to the elevator. I found a pair of chocolate brown Mary Jane-style sneakers in Laurel's size that got Vogon's nod on quality and style.

Fry's was positively uncrowded by comparison, although we only went to take a product on the shelf photo of Sam & Max for clearmind. (Hello, Seg!) We picked up some miscellaneous small items there and picked up lunch on the way home.

On Sunday we hit a cluster of big-box office supply stores to pick up a few school supplies that had been specified in colors (so I couldn't pick them out with the majority of the supplies I'd ordered online) and some SD cards. We came home with those plus some miscellaneous office supplies and a 3.2GHz desktop box he spotted on clearance.

Add on a quick grocery trip today where I wasn't on my game and only saved 14% off the bill... and I'm peopled out for a few days. Phew.

I'll be returning to Dallas on Saturday. My frozen toes are glad since the snow line briefly came down to 8000 feet a few nights ago, but I still haven't cracked the stored stuff I meant to get a dent in paring back on during this trip. iconoplast, let me know when you'd like to pick up toddler stuff; I'll call you if I don't hear from you by Tuesday or so.

My nephew is unbelievably cute and observant, though it's not like we'd expect any less (re observant, not the cuteness) in my family. I wanted to buy him a set of toy tools after I replaced tens of sockets as he systematically removed them from a tool case the other day, but he already has a great toy tool set. Maybe I'll buy him a drum to go with the copy of Go Baby Go! I'm getting him for his upcoming birthday. He loved the track "Ten Little Monkeys" when I played it for him from my laptop. I just like the point about two and a half minutes into the song when the lyrics go "Mama called the doctor and the doctor said / 'What are y'all doing in that bedroom?'".

Laurel has whipped through the math workbooks we bought last week at Beyond the Blackboard and is a few cards from finishing all 40 that come with the junior version of Rush Hour, so it's time to get her the regular game and the expansion decks. I also should order the workbooks recommended by the school district to reinforce what we're already doing to get her squared away to be at the level for the program she'll be in when school starts.

In my typical obliviousness to scheduling flights, my DEN-DFW flight on Saturday will be boarding at the same time the Evergreen Rodeo parade starts. I still have my fingers crossed for my brother's girlfriend to be named rodeo queen; last year she came close, so we hope this year is her year.

On my list of to-do items for this week:
- hitting the farmer's market for a bottle of blackberry balsamic vinegar since I missed it (the vinegar, not the farmer's market) last week,
- staining the ginormous wooden swingset* that will replace the wooden swingset that held court in my parents' backyard through Laurel's early years; it was great for a "free - you haul" find but reached the end of its useful life,
- munging together a short video-collage of photos and video clips from the helicopter discovery flight my brother took last week, complete with obnoxious audio samples and the M*A*S*H theme song, and
- not admitting that after staging a laptop bag intervention with my older sister, she has a new sleek bag that only holds work-related items, my younger sister has her treasured lime green-accented bag back, and I still haven't gotten off my duff to get even a protective sleeve for my laptop. -1 to my geek cred.


* I'm not kidding when I use the modifier "ginormous". This is one of the product photos:
( 64kb.jpg image )

Note to self: Taste Addison had better music on Friday night. I've seen Blues Traveler live twice, so that would have been okay again. When we were there tonight it was The Valentines, followed by Jon Christopher Davis. The former were forgettable, but the dude? Should have already died of mediocrity. We left before the dude from American Idol came on because we'd had enough mediocre noise.

After we bailed from the festival with Laurel wearing a plush monkey hat (will post a photo soon, it's hilarious), a bunch of adorable bows for Laurel from My Little Lady Bug and some neat wooden roses, we hit Uncle Julio's.

Two things about Uncle Julio's:
- It's louder than hell on a Saturday night;
- They still have amazing service when they're down a server and the waitress for our area was covering at least a dozen tables. Props to John the manager for taking our order and making sure we got our check when we were done.

...

I failed to get the Mother's Day cards out on time, but I did locate Laurel's spring school photos to print and include in them so it's not a wash. My immediate gratification Mother's Day gift was a chair massage at Taste Addison; in the next week or so my gift will arrive -- a pair of Teva Pretty Rugged Leather 2 sandals to replace my well-worn 4-year-old pair. (And to appeal to my thrifty side, I had a 20% off coupon from REI.)

A few product plugs before they fall out of my head:

After giving up on my half-hearted search for them, they found me: old-fashioned military-issue-style earplugs. I lost one of my pair several years ago and I've only been able to find the newer triple-flange style since. I look forward to reintroducing them into my rotating selection of earplugs.

Vogon got tired of our Brita filter not doing much for the fact that tap water in the Dallas area tastes like dirt at its best, so he shelled out for a ZeroWater filter. Regardless of what you think of it removing all dissolved solids (mostly stuff you should be getting from a daily multivitamin anyway), it does wonders for the taste at a better price point and convenience than buying reverse-osmosis filtered water. They also have great customer service, quickly replacing a pair of filter cartridges for us when one popped open in shipping and dripped little resin beads on the kitchen floor when we opened the box.

Ziploc Big Bigs have become my secret weapon in organizing art supplies, things for Cub Scout den meetings, and paper products waiting to be shredded.

And I adore everything that comes out of our DeLonghi panini grill, like the delicious Muenster grilled cheese Vogon made me for lunch today.

It hit me today that I am an intellectual snob while I was watching my daughter's classmates talk about the most recent book orders while waiting to be picked up after school.

I'm thrifty and put together an order of 13 books for just under $25: a five-pack of Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, a five-pack of Magic School Bus books from the Scholastic Reader series, and a three-pack of Flat Stanley books.

I stick to a basic book order buying plan of a mix of "one-sitting reads", chapter books, and something popular that she can relate with her classmates about reading. I know that sounds a bit doofey for me, but I think that  having some of her reading be titles or series popular with her classmates helps her socialization skills. The school librarian is great at keeping me up-to-date on what's popular (because libraries : me :: crackhouse : junkies) and I let Laurel pick out whatever she wants when we go book shopping as a family, so I think my book order buying plan works well for us.

Back to the story, a classmate of Laurel's came over to show us what he got and tell Laurel what he got was better. (This isn't a character judgment, it's just what he does.) For nearly twice the cost of what we spent, he got just two items: a My Pod Storybook & Personal Music Player (part of the Reader's Digest "book and player" format, it's a ROM player) and a large-format picture book that came with 3-D glasses.

I think this explains why I never see any books when I've visited their home.

After that, I thought "I bet that explains why their fifth grader displays reading skills at a second grade level." I know there's more involved that I don't know about, but it makes me sad that they have a huge big-screen TV as the primary piece of furniture in their living/diving area and no books in sight other than the mom's textbooks and a few religious titles. What's there for the the kids to read? (I'm not suggesting that the Bible's not good, just that it's scant variety for recreational reading.)

Despite our originally booked flights being canceled both ways due to weather at their respective destinations, we had a vacation. I've got a bunch of photos and a travelogue post coming, but I want to reassure all of you that I'm alive even though I haven't posted lately.

And now, how we rang in the New Year:

It seems my unspoken New Year's resolution has been to try new things that push my social comfort level, so Vogon took me to the Galleria on New Year's Eve to find a dress for our tradition of ringing in the new year dressed to the nines. The whole experience of shopping in a high-end department store was pretty surreal; I felt quite out of place poking around in my casual dress.

With his encouragement and much giggling on my part at the construction details on some of the dresses we looked at (I know I'm not into modern couture, but wow), we left Nordstrom's with a black sheath that I dug on first sight and a red ruched jersey dress with a deeper v-neckline than I'd pick on my own. I am quite amused that I own more dresses than jeans now.

After the mall, we hit Target for a girls' dress for Laurel and shoes to go with our dresses (black slippers with a beading detail for her, a pair of simple slides for me), then on to New Year's Eve dinner at The Blue Fish, where we thankfully weren't the only family with children in tow. Laurel has been demanding miso ever since, so it's time to either make or pick up a block of plain tofu for that. (:

I got distracted by the Law & Order marathon waiting for midnight and wound up watching a few episodes after Laurel went back to bed after the toast, so we all slept in on New Year's Day and had takeout Chinese for a late lunch/early dinner.

Now I'm getting back into the swing of housework with the return to regular FlyLady zones and getting this month's PTA newsletter ready to go to print. Wish me luck, or at least a respite from Laurel recapping cartoon scenes from memory for me every few minutes. (:

If I felt any urge to buy Himself a holiday gift, Amazon.com just recommended the following to me:

Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America

Thank you, Amazon, for making me laugh so hard I snorted my drink.

Bonus hilarity: at the time it made the recommendation, I had just purchased the Sausage Stuffer Kit attachment for the KitchenAid stand mixer.

Laurel's teacher's birthday is next week, so I asked her earlier this week if she had a favorite kind of cookie or muffin I could make for the class that day. After thinking about it, she told me she'd really like chocolate chip muffins if I could make them. (I haven't met a cake I couldn't make, but she knows Vogon and I as the volunteers that make cheesecake sliced, dressed and plated for PTA potluck teacher luncheons.)

Picking up baking supplies today, I found the little pouches of Betty Crocker muffin mixes have Box Tops for Education on them -- a 10c value on every one of those 76c packets.

I think I've just found my best bet for laying in a good stock of BT4E labels since they're the only clip-and-save program our school participates in. w00t.

I think I need a craft intervention. My sister just called...

Sister: What color parachute cord did you want?
Me: It doesn't matter.
Sister: Well, it's black and 8 cents a foot. How much do you want or should I get a whole spool?
Me: How much is a spool?
Sister: 1200 feet.
Me: *boggles*
Sister: It won't take up that much room. So what do you do with it, anyway?
Me: I make stuff with it. It's like gimp [boondoggle, plastic lacing, other term of regional preference] for grown-ups.
Sister: Oh. Well, you'll have to show me when you visit.


Here's an excellent example of neat things made with 500 cord, or why I am so glad the Boy Scouts taught me more than just the basic eight knots: http://stormdrane.blogspot.com/