heh

I can usually tell when something on the ipod came from RTO because it will come up as unknown artist and album... anyhoo, it's currently playing "Billy Joel-We didn't Start the Fir" (sic)

10 shuffle things

just 'cause.

1. Act 1 scene 1 Terzetto: E la fede delle femmmine; Recitativo: Scioccherie di poeti! - Cosi fan tutte

2. The Crystal Ship - The Doors

3. On Your Shore - Enya

4. A Wolrd of Blue - Dwight Yoakam

5. Come voi, leggermi in cor non so - La Fanciulla del West (this seems to be it's favorite opera today, I heard a couple tracks while I was at work)

6. Pirate Radio - Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper

7. Love Hurts - Roy Orbison

8. Abenlied ("Es ist so still geworden")Schumann - Marilyn Horne

9. I Won't Dance - Ella Fitzgerald

10. High School Football Friday Night - Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper (hmmmmm)

devil music

someone posted this at nfcs. consider this your official language warning.

more bird pictures

I don't remember ever posting any of the pictures I took with the camera. so, here they are.

ten miles

on the bike today. in, um, about an hour. yeah, I don't always pedal real hard.

anyhoo, my abdominal muscles are whining today so I guess I did more than I thought yesterday.

watched the Met broadcast of Tristan und Isolde from last week. it was a beating, but I watched the whole thing. okay, singing was great, but it's four hours of not always really tuneful stuff and the story could have been covered in half the time. so lots o' rambling about the sunlight and darkness and dieing. w007!

random Saturday....

felt like a strange day. probably because I worked yesterday and I'm going back to the office Monday. I was telling RTO about how I made a deal with myself that if I made it to the office on time Friday I was going to get a pilates dvd. I made it so I stopped at Walmart on the way home. (also had to get more allergy medication and some random other things, but anyway). I've been meaning to add something different to the fairly regular pedaling I've been doing and I'm feeling extra motivated thanks to Sarahk and Susan doing the Wii fit thing.

Anyhoo, I'd kinda hoped to find the dvd version of the Denise Austin tape I have. (yeah, she's cheesy, I giggle, it works) but as you can see, it's kinda old. so I opted for a 10 minutes solutions thing. I have a couple other of their dvds and it helps because I can tell myself, "I'll just do ten minutes and if I feel like doing more, great! if not, I'm done, no biggie"

so I tried a few of the workouts out this morning/afternoon/whatever and spent most of my time just twitching on the mat attempting some approximation of the moves after the first ten minutes. I burned a few muscles I didn't even know existed.

so then, RTO made some nachos and I was reading the paper and saw that Snuffer's was celebrating their 30th anniversary today and half of all cheese fry sales were going to be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project. RTO hadn't ever been there either, so we went to the one in Rockwall.

stopped at Target on the way home and bought a grill because they were on sale and a couple days ago RTO had said he could use a new one.

and then we watched War Games, which I didn't realize was such a treat for RTO.untill I saw he made a post about it. ;D

a news thing I feel like sharing...

Choctaw Nation receives 2008 Freedom Award

Published:

Friday, June 27, 2008 12:10 PM CDT

The Choctaw Nation will be receiving the 2008 Freedom Award in the category of large employer for its support of those serving in the armed forces.

Tribal officials received word this week from assistant secretary of defense, Rear Admiral Thomas Hall’s office.

Dr. Gorden Sumner Jr., Ph.D., told Choctaw Nation Chief Gregory Pyle that, out of 2,700 nominations, the Choctaw Nation was one of only 15 recipients of the award nationwide.

The Freedom Award will be presented Sept. 18 in Washington D.C. by President George Bush.

RTO was with the 1-180th when they went to Afghanistan. The Choctaw Nation made it possible for them to come home from Fort Polk for a few days before they left for Afghanistan. It was kind of entertaining because RTO called me about the time they reached Dallas, I hopped in the car to meet him in Durant and along the way on 75 I was passed by a couple Choctaw Casino buses (warning, there's an auto-play video at the link). Sure enough, RTO was on one of them.

Anyhoo, read the article to find more about things the Choctaw Nation has done for deployed soldiers.

RTO will hate me...

but I just noticed TCM is having a day o' George Sanders movies July 3.

heh.

you may be on to something there....

(inspired by Sean M. comment, here) kitteh with a bouffant, mebeh.

kitteh klips....

and I thought I took lots of kitty pics... IBKC. I check this site at least once a week, she's a very good photographer and I love the names she comes up with for each batch o' kittens.

and Ferdy's housemate takes care of the printer.

very blurry familiar look

I keep trying to catch her looking at RTO like this. She does it all the time, but she's usually not still for long enough, because it's accompanied by a paw to the arm or just flopping over onto his lap. and if I use the flash, RTO gets all cranky about "being blinded".

preemptive skritching

oh yeah, RTO was out of town when I took these, else I wouldn't be getting this much attention.

Summer!!!

been going to Braums (I would link their site, but it keeps crashing my browser) almost once a week for the last month or so. and a couple weeks ago I was talking to mom about my latest trip and she told me about how the one in Rowlett was kind of squirrelly. She and dad had gone there and they weren't very generous with the ice cream so she took her cone back to the counter and asked for more. It had happened to me too the night we were talking, but I figured it was probably for the best for my girlish figure. ;D Anyhoo, we did not have that problem tonight.


I had cappucino chunky chocolate (frozen yogurt, I think) and RTO had Peanut Butter Pretzel. My fave is probably the chocolate with malted milk ball bits in it, but they don't scoop it, it only comes in containers and I really don't need that in the house very often.

catching up on Streetcar

last couple days at work....

Stell, it's Gonna Be All Right
Take a look at Yourself


and tonight - What's all this for?

what day is it?

fun things going on at work so I'm working an extra day for a couple weeks. worked yesterday, so of course today I kept thinking, "I can rest tomor... oh. aw nuts." Thankfully, if all goes according to plan, I'll never have to send an expense report nastygram ever again, because the new system will take care of it. yay!

Father's Day? what?

kinda slipped my mind..... yeah, that's it..... (I sent something, but, um, don't know if it made it in time. no really)

anyhoo, Cute Overload had a bunch of cats in ties for the occasion.

since it's that time of year....

couple of posts/discussions...

Soldiergrrrrl asks, "Flip-Flops at the office?"

and Kris had a post about open toed shoe etiquette last week. (scary pictures)

I don't take very good care of my feets (or much else, really) so I don't usually wear sandals to work. but the rest of the time during the summer it's flip-flops. I don't understand the pedicure thing, haven't ever had one, but hated the manicure I had for my wedding, so, meh, there's other things I'd rather spend money on. still, I find it interesting how trends have changed and remember fightin' with mom over it. ;D

good times... good times...

hittin' the books...

here, I help you!

yeah, okay, my Italian isn't so great.

yours isn't either. maybe it's time for a break?

huh...

was reading in the paper today about the resurgence of vinyl records for music and they mentioned that Amazon has a category/page set up for it. yep.

(the top seller is currently is Madonna's Hard Candy)

tonight's Streetcar

Hello Stanley. Do you mind?

order is restored....

had gone a couple days without a Streetcar excerpt. Now the ipod is playing Don't you Love these rainy afternoons? I need to break down and watch this turkey at some point, I guess.

while I'm rambling about opera stuff, I watched this production of Abduction from the Seraglio and wouldn't recommend it. The camera work was really distracting, sometimes just showing people's hands and waists and/or crotches. and usually I expect to see the person that's singing, not close-ups of other people not singing or waiting for their entrance back stage. but maybe they figured that was better than what the singers were doing, which didn't always make sense to me. Blonde in particular was hard to watch, she had so much extraneous, clumsy movement. (Like taking her shoes off and rolling around on the ground. for why?) and yet, I sat through the whole thing. oh well.

more musical posting....

How many other states did Rodgers and Hammerstein write songs for? (just kidding)



I watched the 1945 version of State Fair tonight. I'd never heard this song before. the little feature on the DVD is quite entertaining too. all kinds of fun facts from people from the R&H society(? might be library, I can't remember now) and some people involved in making a stage adaptation for it in 1996. I didn't know it originated as a movie. anyhoo, some fun music and pretty fluffy story. nobody died.

oh hai!

I don't usually expect to turn around while I'm sitting on the couch and be face to face with a cat that isn't sitting on the couch.


RTO left this cooler behind the couch and it was maggie's favorite place to sit. the goof.

No Streetcar yet....

but the ipod just started playing Channel Z. *sigh* I suppose it's payback for making it play the Berlioz Requiem today. RAWK! it's on youtube..... here's the Dies irae (stick around for the Tuba Mirum, though really you don't get the full effect unless you're in the chorus and everything is so loud the floor is shaking and you can't hear yourself screaming. heh) but I played the thing because I had the Lacrymosa stuck in my head while I was filing. who the heck knows why?

Easter lilly

oh yeah...

so last week the therapist loaned me The Introvert Advantage to read and it's been interesting so far. filled with little bits that make me go, "OMG, that's so me". So far the author explaining how she thinks introverts are pretty much "wired" differently than extroverts. ie. their brain chemistry is a bit different, relying on different neurotransmitters and areas of the brain to process stimuli.

so Kris had a post tonight about loving American cheese. and I commented that I did that too, ages ago. which tied back to this bit I'd read just this afternoon:

Human memory is complex and uses many different areas of the brain. The brain stores memories in numerous locations and creates links between them called associations. Often we introverts think nothing relevant is in our head because we haven't triggered the association to our long-term memory. Here's the neat thing - most pieces of information in long-term memory were stored with several handles or keys (associations) for unlocking them. If we find just one key, we can retrieve the whole memory.

So let's say you like to paint or fish or walk around a park with flowers in bloom, but that information is locked in long-term memory. You have some free time, but you can't remember what you like to do. This may sound nuts to an extrovert, but it is a common problem of introverts. Remember, it takes only one key like a thought, emotion, or sensory association to open the whole memory.

I notice I do this a lot with crafts. (oh yeah, I have a drawing table or the closet full o' yarn and string and cloth) strange, but true.

Breaking!!!

Maggie ate the season's first lizard tonight.



I had to help at one point, because he was under the rug. I was just going to leave it up to them, but then I had to walk down that hall and didn't really like the idea of possibly squishing it. yum.

Tonight's Streetcar track...

Blanche!