EEEEEEEE!!!!! MORTON!!!!!!

just saw this in the paper.

NCPA / Sumners Distinguished Lecture Series Luncheon with Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke

Fred Barnes & Mort Kondracke

Fred Barnes is co-founder and executive editor of "The Weekly Standard" and Morton Kondracke is the executive editor and columnist for "Roll Call."

WHEN: Wednesday, November 15, 2006, Noon to 1:30 PM
WHERE: Khmer Pavilion, Hilton Anatole Hotel, 2201 Stemmons Frwy, Dallas, TX 75207

The format will be a "point-counter point" discussion between Mr. Barnes and Mr. Kondracke moderated by NCPA Chairman Gov. Pete du Pont. Lunch begins at 12:00 noon and lasts about 30 minutes. Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke's remarks will last until approximately 1:00 PM, followed by a question and answer period when questions will be taken from the audience. The event will conclude at approximately 1:30 PM.

but I work on Wednesdays. : (

which is probably for the best, cause i'd be there giggling like a schoolgirl the whole time. it wouldn't be pretty.

message from carlos 

fess up!

who's sending all the kittehs to my house?

i was out trimming the bushes earlier when the calico showed up. this time he had a collar, yellow with rhinestones. anyhoo, i put the other set of spotlights up finally. went out later to see how they looked (cause it was still too light to see them when i put them out) and there's killah tuxedo rolling around on the front step. i'm tempted to go open the front door just to see if there's another one.

two years o' rambling...

well, at least i'm persistent.

FIU's Friday distraction

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend your cool... and alot of the songs fit with the setting.



Opening Credits: Angel - Sarah McLachlan

Waking Up: Gypsy Heart - Govi

First Day At School: Call me the Breeze - The Mavericks

Falling In Love: She's Leaving Home - The Beatles

Fight Song: Parts Unknown - Big Sandy & his Fly-Rite Boys

Breaking Up: Nugget - Cake

Prom: Georgie and Her Rival - Elvis Costello

Life: Crystal Ship - X-files

Mental Breakdown: I am the Highway - Audioslave

Driving: This Ole House - The Brian Setzer Orchestra

Flashback: It Must be Love - Don Williams

Getting back together: Tijuana Boots - Los Straitjackets

Wedding: The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish - Martin Denny

Birth of Child: Royal Dressing Room Scene - Cinderella (the musical, not the hair band)

Final Battle: Chim Chim Cher-Ee - Mary Poppins

Death Scene: As If we Never Said Goodbye - Sunset Boulevard

Funeral Song: I Read - Passion

End Credits: With a Little Bit of Luck - My Fair Lady


seems it's likin' the musicals tonight.

new trend...

I overheard a guy at the office mention that Trunk-or-Treat was going to conflict with someone's Haloween party. Then today there was an article about it in the paper.

What lurks in that trunk?

Halloween tailgates a safe alternative to trick-or-treating

07:49 AM CDT on Thursday, October 26, 2006

By NANCY CHURNIN / The Dallas Morning News

LOUIS DeLUCA / DMN

Trunk-or-treating always attracts a crowd.

Raeleigh Hall loves to trunk-or-treat.

That's not a typo.

On Halloween, Raeleigh, 9, knows to go from one car trunk to the next, in the parking lot of Cornerstone United Methodist Church in Garland, asking for treats. And she can accumulate quite a stash.

fun roxie pic 

two kitties

I painted this


so way back when.... in August, while i was in florida we went pottery painting one night. I was gonna wait til i got a pic of dad's piece to post mine, but it doesn't look like it's ever going to show up. so, here's the kitty bank i painted. it came out a lot better than i thought it would, one of the fun things about painting these things i guess. the surprise.

Fungus Friday

I put my left foot in there for scale. i wear a six and a half.

just when i think i've seen everything hello kitty

something odd pops up.

fun facts about Oklahoma

Harvey finally got around to it at IMAO.

I voted today!

Yay! I think it will be nothing but music videos for me til Nov. 8th.

anyhoo, I occasionally run across people online that suggest we should elect federal judges. and to that i say, "what are you smoking?" the ballot today was 10 pages. 8 were nothing but judges. yeah, I knew who all of them were, sure. a lot of them were unopposed so I can feel better about them, right? so I guess it's a wonderful idea if there's someone out there you truly hate because fo their incompetance, but that's what impeachment is for. ;p

kutani maneki showed up on Ebay!!!

look familiar?


hmmmmm, I screen capped it since the auction won't be up forever, but it's too tiny to read here. important bits:

I bought this very large and old maneki neko from the estate of an Asian grandmother here in the Los Angeles area a few years ago. Kutani in the 1950s produced sevral sizes of porcelain maneki nekos that matched this one in general appearance. This one, at 9 inches tall, was the tallest of the size range I have seen. This size is seldom seen on eBay. I would not consider selling him, except for the fact that I managed to buy a matching set of two different sizes (which included a second 9" cat) from a local collector only a year after I bought this one. It seems selfish for me to keep him as an extra without giving you a chance at enjoying him. I hope you will be enchanted by his exceptionally friendly expression as much as I was. He is marked with the Kutani symbol, and the word "handpainted". I suspect the old lady who had owned him bought him from a specialty shop here in the L.A. region. The grandson who sold this to me thought she had gotten him around 1955, which would place him in exactly the same period as the pair of cats I bought from a collector later. The half-size cat from this production line currently goes for $250 and up, when he can be found at all. This larger size (when findable) seems to be in the $650-800 range. To be fair to you, and to give you an opportunity, I am basing my start price solely upon the price I paid a few years ago - and the prices of good maneki neko have been rising ever since. Yes, I will consider placing a Buy-It-Now on this auction, at a higher price. This cat will arrive well-packaged to avoid damage (he is near-mint), and will include a modern small collectable maneki neko trinket which I got from a collector in the greater Tokyo area. Please do see my other listings, as I will be offering a few other special maneki neko cats from my large collection this week.

my kitty is just over 6 inches. sooooo, maybe this person is smoking crack, i don't know, we'll see if it sells. if it does.... I got quite the deal on my kitty. $14.95 plus tax. I was thinking I'd seen similar manekis go for around $50.00 but it had been a while since i watched for any on ebay.

the end is near!!!!

just now.... Carlos...Roxie... nose to nose. no hissing, no chasing after him. wow.

for mom....

New Orleans:

from the musical "Oh, Streetcar!" featuring Chief Wiggum as The Narrator)

Wiggum:
Long before the SuperDome,
Where the Saints of football play,
Lived a city that the damned called home.
Hear their hellish roundelay...

Cast:
New Orleans!
Home of pirates, drunks, and whores!
New Orleans!
Tacky, overpriced, souvenir stores!
If you want to go to hell, you should make that trip,
To the Sodom and Gomorrah on the Mississipp'!

New Orleans!
Stinking, rotten, vomiting, vile!
New Orleans!
Putrid, brackish, maggoty, foul!
New Orleans!
Crummy, lousy, rancid, and rank!

New Orleans

my aunt sent me some coffee....

Highlander Grogg from coffeeam.com . I'd been trying to figure out what it was supposed to taste like. it's kinda sweet. ah:

From the Scottish Highlands...the flavor of Scottish Brandy. Smooth & Delightful!

har har

you're sooooo funny.


be sure to check out the Carnival of Cats at Catcall this week.

not like the real thing

but it would do in a pinch.

if women ruled the world....

some photos.

just saw this at Flying Space Monkey Chronicles

fungus friday


let's just say I have enough photos from the back yard to keep this up for a while.

weirdness of the day....

Anna Russell, Comic Who Made Fun of Richard Wagner, Dies at 94

I bought one of her albums but i never got around to listening to it. One of the tracks came up on the shuffle today. I love the spring.

For the record

Why I'm going to kill RTO

I turned off the alarm clock last night planning to sleep as long as it would take for me to feel really lazy and have a nice "day after show closing I have nothing to do for a while" crash.

The first call came at 9:44 a.m. then 10:39, then 10:48 about ten calls today, three from the same number and they refuse to leave a message. only one of those from the temp agency letting me know they couldn't find my time card and could i please fax it again. the rest were sales calls... i guess, cause less than half of them left messages.

so why do I blame RTO for this? well, for one those that left messages asked for him... and one of them mentioned getting his number from an online inquiry. I know, I know, he means well, trying to lower some of our monthly expenses and he told them to only contact him by email, but he still gave them our ACTUAL PHONE NUMBER!!!! yay! so I didn't get to sleep as late as i wanted and i'm cranky and not getting anything else done today.

catching up....

maneki neko


I got to leave work an hour early last thursday so i hit a couple antique shops in Plano and I found this kitty. I tried to do some research on him but didn't come up with a whole lot. his base looks kind of interesting

base


see? it's like they went, hmmm, let's not leave him open and decided to glue something on there.

mark


here's a close up of the mark. and you can make out where i think he lost his "Made in Japan" sticker. anyhoo, I think it's Kutani, but I wasn't able to find an exact match at two in the morning.

worst.conditioner.evar!

ha, SarahK is always raving about Garnier-fructis. so week before last i had to get some conditioner and Target was out of the Suave Redken defining curls knock-off i'd been using so i picked up Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine Cream Conditioner. I'll just say my hair is neither sleek nor shiny at this point. I'm even going to post a hideous picture of myself now cause it's that entertaining.

please keep in mind that i've worn enough makeup to last for weeks the past few days so i'm going without today and i just generally don't feel well today.

gah!

this is my hair on Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine Cream Conditioner. and me with no make-up and poor lighting. trust me the flash was too much, nobody should have to see that.

stupid, stupid, stupid....

but i loves teh kittehs.

last week the allergist chuckled when i told him my cats don't bother me, but other people's do. and just to prove it last night i petted a strange kitty and today i'm paying for it.

we had a cast party after striking the set last night and the host had said something about locking up his cats and i asked to see them. only one of them came out of hiding, but it was a nice kitty. tiny. well by the time i left my eyes were watering and i couldn't breathe. i tried some useless nose spray and some extra sudafed. oh well, i'd pretty much planned to do nothing today.

Where's the dog food?

last weekend's visitor


usually when i get home Roxie is anxious to come inside. she waits at the backdoor. So i was a little worried when i got home last Saturday night, opened the back door and no puppy runs in the house. turns out she was stalking something.

i just like this one 

in case you're curious about the previous picture....

and i figured i'd eat up some space with text before posting more pictures.....

Carlos likes to hop up on the kitchen table and yell at me sometimes. when i'm in the kitchen. anyhoo, it's a good chance to catch a goofy picture of him, so I just start clicking away. there's lots more where that one came from.

yeah, tell me about it. 

a fun accident story....

for lola. ;D

allergist antics....

yeah, so i had an appointment yesterday, i'd been dreading it, but it actually went smoothly. figured he would probably give me a hard time about not having the ct scan done but he didn't even ask me about it. the nurse did, I told her i gave up after calling once a week for a month and them never having my paperwork. she said they got confirmation. yeah, okay, well nobody called me to set up an appointment like they said they would. oh well.

but the fun bit was when for some reason it came up that RTO is in afghanistan. the dr. then told me he'd been talking to Sam Johnson the day before about the Reps. recent trip to Iraq. dr. also said he'd been planning a hunting trip to Quetta, Pakistan for last December (don't ask me what's good hunting there) but decided to cancel it. I told him that was probably a good idea particularly with some of the news i'd heard lately about the pakistan/afghanistan border area.
(then this was posted at Fourth Rail). anyhoo, nothing too deep, I suppose it's easy to get distracted while your looking in someone's nose.

speaking of ads....

usually i would probably post this at Signaleer, but i wouldn't want to get him in trouble. ;D (Major John said something about agreeing not to show the "branding video" til they officially launch the campaign) but some other soldier*cough*grrrl*cough posted a youtube link. it choked me up. go watch it! wait even better.... embed!

just saw an ad

Homegoods opening in Irving and Highland Village, so i'm somewhat safe. visited one while i was in Florida. fun, fun.

you know what cooler weather means?

slugs!

I just let Roxie outside and she stomped on one. she doesn't understand why i wouldn't immediately let her back inside. um, yeah, you're not coming back in till i'm sufficiently convinced you won't get slime on the carpet. sorry puppy, that's just the way i am. eat your food before the possum gets it.

why are you not petting me? 

the last hoorah

more roses


the rose bush started blooming again a couple weeks ago. i'll have to trim it back this year, it's getting out of control.

honk shoo 

that's not sitting!!!!

um, yeah.


i'm a bad mom. i try to get Roxie to sit when i let her in and this is usually the result. sitting before i'll open the door, we've got down. it's after we're inside and we want to run laps through the house that's the problem.

mom said there weren't enough pictures of Roxie.

roxie!


i think i took about thirty picture before i realized there was cat snot or something on the lens, hence the haziness.

things to do backstage when you're dead.... bored.

latest doily


it's all kinds of wonky. I'm just glad I could get it to lie flat.

security system ads

these are crackin' me up. you know, the ones where the lady is home alone and some random guy decides to kick the door in. Does that really happen that often? so far, all our alarm has done is let the neighborhood know when my brother in law is here to feed the animals when we're out of town.

I think i'm in love

yeah, so I finally unpacked this turkey last night. wasn't feeling sleepy round about 3 a.m. and thought, "I'll watch the dvd that came with the food processor! that should make me sleepy." WRONG!!!! I can't believe what this thing can do. I'd never seen the slicing blade in action. after skimming the manual, I think I can run some cheese through it. definitely can shred some cheese, among other things.

so, yes, I made some hummus. OMG!!!! it was sooooo easy and it came out fluffy, and i got the flavor just right. I'm so inspired to try other things now.

I could easily get into trouble....

last time I visited their site they did not offer shopping. I think there's also one opening at Firewheel before too long.

cause cats love dressing up.....

found this while perusing the free knitting patterns: Cat Muumuu

I don't think my cats are big enough to require one yet.

whine, whine, whine....

so opening night I noticed a few of the adults backstage were receiving decorated little brown paper bags (a bottle of Manischewitz) from one of the board members. At first I thought it was just the tech people (director, costumer, etc.) but then some of the cast got them too. but not me..... I jokingly said to one of my cast-mates, "what am I? chopped liver?" so, after the show was over the guy comes up to me and says, "Look what I got you!" it was funny because he made a point of showing me where my name had been hastily scribbled on the bag in pen, unlike the nice sharpie art on the others. anyhoo, I said I figured I should be flattered they probably didn't think I was old enough to consume alchohol. ;D