Trays Romanteek!

This story and accompanying comments are pretty cool. I even added one!

My Nephew is GORGEOUS

See? The second picture is my favorite so far. :)

A Happy Sight

Unintended Effect

I am an unapologetic carnivore, and I found this game hilarious.

Sorry PETA! No tofurkey for me!

Happy Thanksgiving, Homies!

Lethal Cute!

*snort*

Happy Halloween Homies

Check this out. It's a really good web comic, and a really compelling arc on hell houses. This is why I have so much trouble with faith sometimes, because it makes people act in awful ways to each other.

awesome

In case there was any doubt, I voted for the guy who even listens to little kids like this. Photo op? Maybe, but I've never felt more like a politician might be sincere more.

(Photo respectfully borrowed from here.)

Awwww x1,000

This video is super cute. I'm kind of in love with both of them!

Coming up tomorrow: Gender of niecephew announced!!!! Yes, I'm the only one who really cares, but still. It's my very first niecephew.

Cheers!

Interesting Observation

This was my friend Scott's status message on Facebook this weekend:

"It seems to me Jesus was a community organizer and Pontious Pilate was a governor."

Snerk.

I don't care if you're religious or not, that's funny. Not that Obama is Jesus, by any stretch, but seriously Palin, back off.

Teh Happier!

Sara realized, as I think that I would, that a house without a dog is empty. And so she got a new dog from the Humane Society! Meet Franny:

Franny's a sweet pea who got abandoned in the Humane Society dog run, so she's a bit shy still, but she's a doll. She licked Sara's feet while I met her this morning, and then very gently nommed her big toe. I like to think Buddah brought Sara Franny. Also, please note the slightly flopping ear, which is too cute for words.

Birthday Comparisons

Last year on my birthday I:

• rear-ended someone on my way to work
• had to deal with my parents splitting up
• felt like the day was barely acknowledged and felt kinda bad for myself.

This year for my birthday I:

• Went to Starbucks and had coffee with my bosses who rock, and who gave me fun books, a giant poster to color, and markers to color it with
• had lunch with more coworkers and had Snickers ice cream
• got a dozen loooooong stemmed roses from Jon.

This year has sucked a lot less!

Real blog with opinions and stuff soon!

The most heartfelt thing posted in this blog yet:

Dear Tom Brady:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

Suck it long, and suck it hard. Hubris just made you her bitch.

But 18-1 is still good.

Love,
Angie

Dear Eli,

You are not as awesome as your brother, but congrats anyway, and you're still pretty awesome.

Enjoy the ring!

Love,
Angie

Make a Wish!

Just a quick schill: This local radio station is doing its annual Make-a-Wish Request-a-thon as we speak. As of 9:36 EST, since yesterday morning, they've raised almost $160,000 and granted 27 wishes. I know it's a tight time of year because of Christmas, etc, but if you have an extra couple of bucks, you might consider giving, to either this or your local Make-a-Wish. I do the Wish-Makers club, which is a small, monthly deduction. I don't miss the money that comes out of my bank account, and I really like the organization.

On a more pleasant note

I just got Jon several magnets from Cafe Press that are sure to crack him up. I got him 4. Do I give them to him all at once, or mete them out over time? Hmmmmm.

Surveys aren't cheating, right?

Current Book: Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, by Mara Leveritt. I’ve only read about 30 pages so far, but it’s really good. After reading Helter Skelter (awesome, FYI), I seem to be on a bit of a true crime kick. Mostly I think I’m on more of a non-fiction kick. Like, I want to go to Borders and buy The Year of Living Biblically and the new Postsecret, and the Mother Teresa book.
Current Shame-Inducing Guilty Pleasure: Watching Cheaters on my DVR when I get ready in the morning. That show’s so awful, and so very watchable.
Current Favorite Colors: Hunter green, and the colors of the leaves outside.
Current Fetish: Making out with Jon. His back was really bad last week, and we started kissing and a lightbulb went off in my brain, like “Holy crap! This is really fun, too!” But that’s not really a fetish. Hmm. Voyeurism. (Now I creep you out. Sweet.)
Current Favorite Food: Pepperoni and pineapple pizza. Steak. Mashed potatoes. Chocolate. I’m indecisive.
Current Favorite Drink: Canada Dry Ginger Ale, and hard cider.
Current Link: www.icanhascheezburger.com. I can’t help it, it cracks me up.
Current Favorite Outfit: Eh. Don’t really care. My Old Navy sweaters are really comfy and pretty cute though.
Current Fragrance: Lavender body lotion and “Egyptian Goddess” essential oil.
Current Wish-List: Sacks full of cash, for Jon’s back to get better, and an unlimited expense account at Borders.
Current Favorite Film: Little Miss Sunshine is the first thing that comes to mind, then Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Current Music: “So Small” – Carrie Underwood
Current Anticipation: Seeing Jon tomorrow. This once a week thing is for the birds.
Current Triumph: Getting all of the scholarship letters ready to go this morning.
Current Bane(s) of My Existence: Forgetting to Xerox the damn letters before I stuffed them in their envelopes, which means later I’ll need to rewrite each one for the student files. Dammit.
Current Celebrity Crush: George Clooney, Tori Amos, Angelina Jolie, and Viggo Mortensen.
Current Indulgence: I just had Steak n Shake with my sis and brother-in-law. Mmmm, Frisco.
Current #1 Blessings: Jon, the pets, friends.
Current Mood: Itchy, but in a good mood. (I think a spider attacked my leg in like 9 places last night. Bitch.)
Current Weather: Cool and clear. Love me some autumn.

Consumption

Oh, what the hell is going on worth writing about? Hmm.

• I'm learning to knit! I sort of suck at it, because I drop stitches constantly and I have no idea how to pick them up if they're on the ends of rows or whatever. But still! I sit down at night and watch stuff off the DVR and I feel all Little House on the Prairie, minus the horrible clothes and never-ending life lessons. It's totally gratifying.
• I've been reading Helter Skelter, and am almost done. I like true crime, particularly Bugliosi, and I've found this pretty fascinating. It's kind of incredible to see how powerful someone can be personality-wise that people were willing to lie, steal and kill for him. It boggles my mind, but it's interesting. Plus, I'm totally convinced that I could be brainwashed into a cult pretty easily, which is nerve-wracking. Anyway, it's good stuff.
• Fall premiere time! Hooray! On my roster for new shows: Reaper and Pushing Daisies both look really good, Chuck has potential and... crap, I'm drawing a blank. I watch too much TV.

As odd as it sounds I was pretty in favor of President Ahmedinajad visiting the US, but it sounds like that's gone over for crap, which is terribly disappointing. I don't want to go to war with another country who might blow us completely up! Ack!

...and I've stopped being interesting. Oh well!

Three Awesome Things

I hope to write a real post later, but in the meantime, check this stuff out!

• A Year of Living Biblically: This guy is so cool! He spent a year trying to follow the many very specific rules of the Torah. So very interesting.
• "Check" this "site" out if random punctuation makes you want to "punch" someone. I love nitpicking!
• My friend Chris is blogging now and is totally interesting and fun!

I know I have a limited audience, but it's fun to pretend I don't.

Dirty, Dirty Pleasure

If you're not watching Rock of Love on VH1, do yourself a favor and catch a marathon. It's totally a steaming pile of crap, but it's the most entertaining steaming pile of crap I can think of at the moment. Also, Bret Michaels is somewhat charming in an icky, ridiculous, guy-liner type way. Duly ashamed, but I'm DVRing it anyway.

HP Manic

Work is totally kicking my ass right now, so please forgive the lack of posting. It's not even that I don't have anything good to talk about right now! So first things first, the latest movie review

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
I have to tell you, I was not super-excited about this movie until I saw it. I hadn't watched any of the trailers, and though Goblet of Fire was good, it wasn't that good. Frankly, Michael Gambon seriously turns me off as Dumbledore. I've had the debate several times where people say that if he'd tried to play it as Richard Harris did, he'd get accused of aping Richard Harris. Well, I get that, I guess, but the thing is, Richard Harris was the absolute physical manifestation of what my mind sees Dumbledore as. In the two movies he is in, he shouts exactly one time, when the cave troll is let into Hogwarts, and that's to get the students to be calm and quiet. Other than that, his voice constantly sounds like he's having a conversation with one person, even if he is speaking in front of everyone in the Great Hall. Harris's eyes sparkled in the exact way I've imagined Dumbledore's, and the quieter moments he had with Harry really gave off that sweet, grandfatherly vibe that I think is key to the character. Albus Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard in the world, but he's also remarkably gentle, and has shown compassion to everyone, including Tom Riddle. Gambon is just so abrupt and harsh in comparison. In the Great Hall in Prisoner of Azkaban, his establishing scene at the opening banquet immediately turned me off. He sounded like was shouting immediately, and that's just not in character from the books. Yes, they're separate entities, but the character is who he is. My other big nits to pick is his absurd little wink near the end of PoA when he's telling Harry and Hermione to use the time-turner. It's so skeazy and not in character. It didn't come off right at all to me. And the last thing I'll bitch about was the Champion selecting scene in GoF. The way he shouted Harry's name, then ran up and grabbed him? No. Sorry, wrong number, not Dumbledore. So anyway, mostly because of that and the complete wussification of Ron Weasley, I wasn't the biggest fan of the last two movies.

Pleasant surprise, though, this was actually one of the best yet! So much stuff ended up working. Imelda Staunton could not have been a more perfect cast for Dolores Umbridge, nor could Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood. They were both fabulous editions to the cast. Also, it was good to actually get to spend some time with the character of Sirius Black, since he really didn't have much at all to do in GoF. I think Gary Oldman really got it right with the warmth and penned up energy Sirius has in the book. It was really nice to get to see that character fleshed out in movie form. Rupert Grint, Dan Radcliffe, and Emma Watson were all really good as well. Ron was less of a wimp! Huzzah! Their interactions were really solid and probably the best I've seen them yet.

Some of the special effects were stunners, too. Sirius speaking from the fire place was SO much better than it was in GoF. If you recall, GoF has his face basically animated in the coal bed of the fire. OoTP has his head as a form in the flames, which is so much closer to what I saw in my head, and much more satisfying. Tonks's transformations were great fun, but she was barely in the movie, which is a bit of a bummer. The Veil also looked awesome. It was a little more ethereal than I think I had pictured it, but it really worked, I was quite impressed. The thestrals didn't really fit my mind's eye picture. They looked more like dinosaurs to me. But they still worked, overall, and the scene with Harry and Luna was a nice one. The Wizard Duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort looked a bit too much like a light saber fight for me at first, but it moved away from that, which was good.

The best part to me was the training scenes for the DA. Those completely embodied to me what the book showed. Harry is a really good, really warm teacher, and the class is excited and eager to learn. The only omission I really missed was Harry seeing Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom at St. Mungo's. Seeing Mrs. L give the gum wrapper to Neville and to see Neville's reaction really changed that character for me. I actually really started to care for and about him as a main character at that point. The movie handled it fairly well, but I did miss the scene a lot.

Anyway, that's my two cents on that. The book comes out Saturday! And I have to go to a concert Saturday night! D'oh! Oh well. I'm sure I'll have more to say on that subject soon.

Dramatic Look

I don't know why this is the funniest thing on the internet ever, but it kind of is. I had to post it in case you haven't seen it yet.

Actually, I ammend that: Will Ferrell's "The Landlord" is the funniest thing on the internet ever, but this is really, really close.