Although Klein said he was "never a big believer in love at first sight" before, he claimed to be "instantly drawn" to the way Ridenour sat within 10 feet of him and looked in his general direction. A short conversation revealed the two were single, lived in the same town, and had both considered short-term kidnapping schemes in order to avoid spending another Christmas alone.
For her part, Ridenour says it didn't take long to realize Klein was the most caring, funny, and sensitive man who had ever spoken to her for more than 30 minutes without trying to get her to switch long-distance carriers.
"Usually men are turned off by my immediate eagerness to move in together and constant need for assurance that they haven't found someone else, but Paul is just as excited about this relationship as I am," said Ridenour, who canceled her memberships on eHarmony, Match.com, MySpace, and Friendster shortly after meeting Klein. "On our second date, he talked about finding an apartment together. It was so romantic."
I was just watching some video on CNN.com about China's boy surplus. Because of China's "One Child" policy, and thanks to selective gender abortion and infanticide, boys are outnumbering girls in the maternity ward at a rate of 118 to 100 in Beijing, and 130 to 100 elsewhere. They're saying by 2020 there's going to be approximately 30 million more men than women in China.
I'm taking this to mean that the mail order bride business is about to reverse directions. So if you have a daughter under the age of 10, she, too, will probably have the opportunity to be bought and paid for by a rich Chinese man. Oh happy day!
Well the good news is... we have a date for getting our car back.
The bad news is it's February 12th. We're going to be driving this %&*( little Aveo for 2 more weeks. Enterprise loves us, that's almost $1000 in car rental fees. And we love Liberty Mutual for paying up.
But, man... I miss the Accord. I miss doors that don't clank when you close them, gas tanks that hold more than 10 gallons, power locks and windows, and a roof rack.
A fat fighting marijuana that suppressses the appetite? Who knew? "Diet the painless way! Our kit comes with joint, black light, tie dye and an 8 track tape of the Dead! When you sober up, we guarantee that you'll be 10lbs lighter!"
Just 2 weeks until Valentine's Day. Am I going to burn in wifely hell if I admit I've never been a fan of either VD or New Year's? I blame it on the fact that I was single for so long. And let's face it, when you're single and bitter, the last thing you want to see is co-workers getting flowers, people shnorgling at restaurants, or candy. Ok, well maybe chocolate would occasionally soothe the savage beast but...not really. Instead we (a group of friends both male & female) got together for Anti-VD day, which was fun in a bitter kind of way. Dinner! Dancing! Lots and lots of drinking! Ahhhh the good old days. I just don't miss that.
Even after Chris and I "became an item", well I still held/hold a grudge. I'm not precisely captain romance anyway. I was all touched the other day because my husband came home with YakTrax. He got tired of watching me slide around while I attempted to walk the dogs. But we'll make a concession to good St Valentine, and go out for dinner sometime that week. It also has the advantage of not actually having to plan anything. Woohoo!
Holy cats, Americans managed to get 3 silver medals at cyclo-cross worlds. Danny Summerhill (protege of the coaching company Chris works for, JBVCoaching. Shameless plug here... ) took silver in the junior men's world championship. Updated Shameless Plug: Danny gave JV a shout out in an interview with Velonews! Woohoo!
Katie Compton took silver in the elite women's world championships. The DCCoD celebrates tonight as the cyclocrosser they raised from a puppy is on the podium. Jonathan Page took silver in the elite men's world championships.
What was super cool was that all three races went down to the wire, and any one of them had a shot at gold. We had the chance to watch the elite men's on the web, and we were screaming until the last second. I'm sure the neighbors were mightily confused. "The Steelers aren't playing today..." And for those not in the cyclo-cross know, this is equivalent to some team from the UK winning the Super Bowl. I don't know the stats on the other podiums, but JP is the first US man to be on the elite men's podium at the world championship.
So hooray! The rest of the country can celebrate football next week, but a small corner of the geeky cycling world celebrates today.
So I’ve held off writing about the demise of Fatmarc’s blog, simply because I was hoping that he would pull a Garfield Ridge maneuver and say “Kidding! Just Kidding! I’m coming back!”
Alas it’s not looking good.
Which is a damn shame. I’ve sort of found in the last few years that I’m better off NOT reading the blogs of friends I only know peripherally well. There have been a few people whose company I enjoyed in a casual passing way, only to read their blogs and realize they’re a bit…one dimensional. While a blog can’t help but be all about me Me ME!, Marc has a great touch at keeping it from being totally self-absorbed.
So Marc, we’ll miss your updates, but at least Chris and I will be lucky enough to stay in touch via email & cross races.
We saw Children of Men on Tuesday (after a super yummy dinner at Thai Me Up.) I somewhat liked it, Chris REALLY liked it. It's an interesting picture - dark, moody, and with some surprising acting performances. Michael Caine was...subtle. Not a word I would normally associate with him. Julianne Moore's character surprised me for reasons I can't explain without making it a spoiler. Clive Owen...well he sorta reminds me of Gabriel Byrne at times. I could have seen either of them playing that role.
It's kind of interesting playing the "did you notice" game with this movie, including "Quietus" the suicide kit that gets advertised in the movie, some background headlines, and things like the whole movie is shot from the viewpoint of Clive Owen's character. It gives the whole thing a tunnel vision type of feel. The other thing we were talking about is that there were a LOT of dogs in the movie. No Rin Tin Tin or Lassie hero types. It's just that everyone had a pet.
My only complaint with the movie was that there were a few references to current events in the movie, which I find distracting. This is a movie supposedly set in the future (20 years in the future, but the future nontheless), I hate being distracted by the references to now. It just felt like a bad product placement to me. But it's definitely worth the watch!
Every time I do anything with an email message, I get this, and have to refresh. It's annoying.
Sorry for the inconvenience. You've stumbled upon a temporary problem we're having with Yahoo! Mail. Usually this problem gets resolved quickly, without you doing a thing. In fact it may be taken care of now.
Try pressing the Reload or Refresh button on your browser, or logging out than back into your Yahoo! account. Hopefully that will take care of things. If that doesn't fix the problem, please be patient while we sort it out and try again shortly. The fact that you're reading this page means we've been automatically notified of the issue, and chances are we're working on it now.
If you think you've been more than patient and tried the tricks above, feel free to contact Customer Care about Error Code 6. Thanks,
The Yahoo! Mail Team
Update: Ferget it. After a few weeks of this, and reporting this to the Yahoo! team with no results, I've given up and switched to Gmail.
After the festivities of last week, we're finally starting to do things that are normal (well for us). Chris and Fred went mountain biking on Sunday, while Ginger continued her weekend of horror. We Drove (!) to the Dog Park(!!) where large dogs with big fangs sniffed her butt (!!!). Then we drove (!) home. We definitely need to work on socialization among other things. But life is good now, she's chomping away on a gum drop that Chris dropped last night. It's taking some work, but with luck and determination, she'll make it through.
I went to work after two days of staying home, first because of insurance related joys and then because of sloppy weather. I could have driven on Friday, but I have to admit to being a bit twitchy. And my boss, who is really great, gave me the head nod to stay home. Have I mentioned he's really great?
And Chris worked on divorce last night. (not that that's normal) Short story - undiluted bleach, bedroom wall, 1 1/2 hours after I went to bed. We evacuated to the guest room. This morning the bedroom still reeked of bleach. I think my only lines of conversation last night were GARRRRR!GGG!HHHH! exclaimed multiple times. If anyone needs me, I'm going to start vacuuming the bedroom at 6AM tomorrow...
Why is it only women who get naked to make a statement?
This one is only for the guys - a PETA naked state of the union. With only a woman of course. Hot naked or semi naked guys? Please, what self-respecting man would do THAT?
(Having said she's naked, do I need to explain that this is NSFW?)
Alasdair nailed it in the comments below. I took Ginger out with me to run errands this morning. She shook the whole time she was in the car, too scared to even accept a treat or any affection. Once she's recovered enough from her surgeries, we're going to need to make a bunch of runs to the park so she can start associating it with good things. That's the theory, anyway. I'm hoping that if Fred's in the car with her, she'll calm a bit too. He's not at all flustered.
I brought home a slew of flicks from the library that I knew Chris wouldn't like. He gets really aggravated because library movies are hit and miss on being scratched. I've been trying to bring the manly movies to the top of the netflix list instead. Anyway, he was zipping through the movies and he said "These are all chick flicks!"
The movies I had? Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants I Remember Mama History Channel: In Search of Witchcraft Battlestar Galactica Season 2.0
The way the week has gone, I'm almost afraid to say this, but....
Ginger is back from the vet and has managed to keep her insides in.
The Insurance company is paying for the rental car, and I now have a means of getting about
Fred has been on two mountain bike rides, without limping
I actually got things done working from home
Here's hoping things continue to move in this direction.
And in completely different thoughts... I heard someone today use the word "commonize". Look, if there's already an existing word, MUST we make up words? I believe what this person meant was "Standardize". But they'll probably use "commonize" going forward (aka in the future...another pet peeve of mine).
So tonight Fred was being a little cranky with Ginger as she was being a bit of a spaz. He gave her a few high pitched "BACK OFF BITCH" barks and grabbed her nose a few times. Standard old man-puppy interactions around here. A few minutes later I looked up and she was running around really strangely. At first I thought it was because Fred was being mean to her and she was being a goofball. Then I took her out, and that wasn't it. So I told Chris "Check her stitches". As he started to roll her to the side, I realized that parts of her that were supposed to be inside, weren't. So it was off to our vet, who thankfully is open until 8PM. Basically he couldn't do a quick fix, so she's going to go under anesthetic and he's going to fix her up tonight. Poor little girl. Fortunately they gave her something that made her really stoned. As Chris said, when they took us back to see her, the only thing missing was a Girls Gone Wild flashing.
So here's our poor little baby with a dopey smile on her face and an Edwardian collar... Oh, yeah, and big brownie points to our vet, first of all for really being genuinely upset about the stitches, but more importantly, because he revealed that he's a Johnny Cash fan. He's working until 11PM tonight and will be back at 7AM, and was looking forward to turning on the JC music after they closed to clients at 8PM.
I'm working from home today while we try to iron out all of the car joys. But in addition, we just picked Ginger up from the vet for her spaying. Poor little girl. She's curled up at my feet, occasionally issue a soft groan as she tries to curl herself into a little ball. It's almost funny to hear, because other than barking, Fred is not very vocal. But she's obviously in some pain, and I feel sorry for her. Every once in a while she looks at me as if to say "make it stop!" Of course, I can't. When she first came in, Fred kept sniffing at her. You could see him thinking "What the hell happened to you?"
Odds of her getting in a car again? Slim. Odds of her going up the steps to the vet again? Even slimmer than that.
So the last week or two I've been thinking "Wow, life has been rather dull, of late. I need something to blog about."
Well....
Tonight we were driving past a busy parking lot. The first car pulled out of the lot rather close to us, but still cleared the (no stoplight, no stop sign from our direction) intersection. The second car pulled directly into us. Chris had tried to swerve, but the guy didn't even slow down. He hit the passenger's side front quarter panel and pushed our car across the street and over the curb. At which point we barely stopped when we realized that smoke or steam or something was pouring out from under the hood. So we bailed out, snagged the dogs, and staggered down the sidwalk. We took a couple of shaky breaths and realized it wasn't smoke. Phew! Some really nice ladies let us put Fred & Ginger in their car while we sorted things out with the police and the other driver. A friend came and picked us up, as the car had to be towed.
So damage to the car...my guess is $5K. We'll see. Damage to his car - probably totalled. There was transmission fluid and oil in the street from his car, the entire front was smashed in, and it's a 6 year old car. More happily, no serious damage to people (although our @&$#*% air bags did not go off.) We do have bruises and some sore muscles. Damage to dogs: Ginger was already nervous in cars. And tomorrow she's going to get in a car and get taken to the vet for spaying. Odds of her ever calming down in the car: Slim to none. And Slim done left town. But neither dog appears to be hurt.
Looks like we're going to have a lovely new paint job on the front of the Honda. And a bunch of new components. Sweet. Sort of. It could have been much worse, we're not sure how we lucked out enough to not have hit or been hit by an on-coming car. But no more longing for excitement for me. This sucks.Our Baby, worse for wear
As Jane Galt of Asymmetrical Information says about this article, Oh My God, I'm a Liberal. (I trend conservative with a few blips into liberal in specific areas.) Some of the "findings":
• Liberals are messier than conservatives. Their rooms have more clutter, more color. Conservatives’ rooms are better organized, more brightly lit, and more conventional. Liberals have more books and their books are on a greater variety of topics. (I think anyone whose been inside our house can say that we are for sure liberals. If we get any more liberal you won't be able to get from the back door to the front) • Compared to liberals, conservatives are less tolerant of ambiguity, a trait researchers say is exemplified when George Bush says things like, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think," and "I'm the decider." (eh, 50-50 on this one. If I'm on vacation, I'm perfectly dandy with ambiguity. If I have to get things done, I want to get facts, make a decision, move on.) • Conservatives have a greater fear of death. (Can't even touch this one, I don't know how I compare to anyone else) • Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature. (cough, cough BULLSHIT. I'm a travel fiend, for one. And pretty much a "liberal" on the rest as well, although I don't know how to prove that without getting tedious.) • Conservatives are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, rule-following, duty, and orderliness. (eh, 50-50 here. See neatness/orderliness above, but I do have a strong sense of duty & rule following) • Conservatives are more likely to have been insecure as kids, whereas liberals are more likely to have been confident as kids. (I'll give them this one. I grew into confidence after being the quietest kid in my grade school class.)
I agree with Tyler Cowen, these folks tried to paint with too broad of strokes. My personal, unscientific experience is that most of my friends all want the same things, we just have different ideas as to how they are achieved. We all want (at some level) security, food & shelter, fulfillment, and happiness for all. How we think those are achieved, varies, and that tends to indicate whether you're conservative or liberal. I personally think any "science" to explain this is b.s.
I am apparently addicted to dopers. Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, but the precursor to them all... Mark McGwire. I LOVE Mark McGwire, and I think he's taking a beating for everything that is/was wrong in baseball. In 1998 I remember staying home to watch those last few games on TV in which he was swinging for that homerun record. And yes, I choked up when he did it in front of my hometown crowd, and they cheered for minutes. I remember being touched when he hugged the Maris family, and being impressed well before that when he started the foundation for abused kids. He's always struck me as a big bashful farm boy, and I have a soft spot in my heart (and probably my head) for him.
One of my favorite sports writers is Bernie Miklasz, and he has a great column in the StL Post-Dispatch today that sums up my feelings on the whole Mark McGwire "thing". Nice to know that there are coherent people in the world who can channel my feelings.
I actually think most of my readers aren't from this area, but from this is from the "Best Friends" group (Thanks, Laura!). You can't print the flyer, but it's worth getting the picture out:
Dear Best Friends Member,
We were contacted about a lost dog in the Richmond, Ohio area. Maggie, a 30# red Aussie/Lab mix, traveled with her family from Pennsylvania to Richmond, Ohio for the holidays, but unfortunately, she slipped out the door while at a relative's house in Richmond. Maggie was lost on Route 43 near the Jefferson Lake State Park on December 24th.
Please help us reunite Maggie with her family by sharing the attached flyer with anyone who may be able to assist. If you can print and post the flyer in your area and/or places of business, Maggie’s family would be most appreciative. If you have seen Maggie or have any questions, please contact Stephanie at: 717-419-7864 or skantz@cysd.k12.pa.us .
Thank you for being a member of Best Friends and for any help you are able to offer.
When the Dems said they were going to pass through all of this legislation in 100 hours, I thought "Wow, somebody is really on the ball. It's catchy and newsworthy and fast paced." But then you start looking at the details. 100 hours didn't start RIGHT away, they had to have a few days first. And then it's not 100 continuous hours, but 100 hours of 8 hour work days (no weekends! no overtime!), which is like 2 - 3 weeks. So this sexy, fast idea just became...blah. They took a James Bond kind of idea and turned it into an actuary. Boooooring. Call me when someone starts a fist fight on the floor of the house. My MTV mind can't be bothered to hang in there and pay attention for 3 weeks, especially when I have no input or impact on what's going on.
I glanced over at Ginger last night and saw that she was sleeping with her head on Chris's chrome bag. Apparently she was a messenger in a former life, because from day one, she loved to sleep on that thing. And now....well on day one she weighed 22lbs. As of weigh in on this last Friday, she weighed 44. She's doubled her size, and Chris is going to need a bigger bag to keep her happy.
This weekend I was the epitome of laziness, much to the disgust of the dogs. Fred and Ginger spent several hours perfecting their pouts, and sleeping in bed.
It did include a trip to the spa, which is always sort of amusing to me. Let me start with, I love to go to the spa. Love it. I could be a kept woman. But it's also not my people. Me: Tomboy, hair askew, no makeup. Other women: Perfect nails, perfect makeup, perfect hair.
One cool thing was that the woman who did my pedicure was married to a guy who had been stationed at Chanute AFB in Rantoul IL the year before my Mom & Dad were. Rantoul was where my brother was born. So it was kind of cool to chat about that, and to hear her talk about what a remote, middle-of-nowhere place it was. (It's since been closed).
But to show you how much the whole spa thing doesn't fit my life, when I stepped in the door of the house after my pedicure (and walking home in paper thongs - try THAT on for size!), the dogs immediately went into the traditional "Dear Lord, you're home! I thought you were never coming back!" greeting...and stepped on my wet toenail. And thus my lovely feet became unlovely again before I even made it in the door.
For Christmas, my friend Angie gave me Season 1 of Grey's Anataomy. Which I greeted internally with a ...okkkkkkkk. I don't watch much broadcast tv, so while I've heard of the show, I really didn't care much one way or the other.
I hereby retract my apathy. I'm on episode 4, and so far it's really, really good. I'm impressed.
My husband can attest that I have abominable taste in music. That extends to my loving corny musicals. (Do I get brownie points for hating "South Pacific"?) And this one has a special place in my heart. My birthday is July 4, and in my mid teens we developed a tradition of going downtown to watch fireworks, then coming back and watching the late, late showing of the movie version of the musical 1776 on TV. A few days ago I felt a yen (out of season) to watch the old movie again. And ya know what? I still love it. One of my favorite lines comes from John Adams as he storms into congress early in the movie:
I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress!
Another great line (just because of our weekly road trips in the fall) from Adams:
At a stage in life when other men prosper, I'm reduced to living in Philadelphia
A few years ago I got to Independence Hall in Philly, and it made me laugh to realize that they must have actually filmed the movie on sight. Anyway, I'm off to scare the dogs by singing along again.
It's kind of amazing how little things can totally change your
perception of a room. We pretty much live in a style best described as "Frat House". But thanks to the sparking switch on my old floor lamp, it was time to suck it up and buy some new lighting. The DVDs and CDs in our house have lived in a pile in a corner of the room. And the Home Decorator's Outlet had these two items on super duper discount. They arrived yesterday, and it's amazing what a difference that has made in our room. It's kind of exciting, I feel so....grown up. Just 15 years after everyone else my age feels grown up.
Have I mentioned I loooove working from home? I have? Only a million or so times? Too bad. I loooove working from home. Way more relaxed, and usually if I pick the right days, way more productive than being in the office.
Crappy, rainy day today, but still freakishly warm. We're having the kind of winter that I associate with Houston. I have mixed feelings about it. I don't want to rush into winter, it's not really my time of year. But it feels strange to be in January with 55 deg temps at 9AM. Oh well, I'm enjoying this freakish weather.
My friend Susan is volunteering for Elderhomes in Richmond, so I figured I'd give it a shout out. I love that they use "Let's Work Together"as the song for their video instead of some schmaltz-fest music.
Oh, and if you're just doing random internet searches, scope out www.goodsearch.com . They give like a penny for every search done using their site to a charity. If you specify one, it's an easy way to give to charity without actually having to have the moolah yourself. It's probably not as hard-core as google, but for a general search, who cares?
And since hubby is putting food on the table at JBVCoaching these days, I want to give them a shout-out. C'mon people, Fred & Ginger prefer a very expensive brand of dog food.
It's been an odd week here at work, for a variety of reasons. The way our work holiday schedule fell this year, it only took 2 days of vacation to get 10 days off. As a result...everyone took 2 days of vacation. And we came back tired, grogged out from eating poorly (but oh how yummy!), hung over, sick, and facing a new world order. I've still got the same cold as two weeks ago and I feel like mentally I'm wading through mud. But when I look around, I see my co-workers are in the same boat
Which is all a really long excuse for the old blogger lament "Sorry about the lack of postings!"
The little dog has graduated to big girl status. Instead of confining her to a crate (which she's just about too big for), she's graduated to being kept in the dining room during the day. This is only possible because at 6 months old, she's almost as house-trained as Fred was at a year old. She's a pistol. Yesterday she managed to get past our rube-goldberg door blockage to the kitchen, and shredded a newspaper and a map. You just know that this was the coolest day she ever had. "A whole newspaper! Mom gets mad when I shred a Kleenex!" It's going to be a lot longer before she gets run of the house though, precisely because I would hate to see what happens to the couch.
Anyway, the beginning of the year lameness will end! It will! Just...maybe not today.
It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm…of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.
-H.L. Mencken
By Ken Levine One of the writers from the TV series M*A*S*H writes about Hollywood, showbiz, etc
Class Factotum She's Baaaacccckkkkk. And as funny as ever!
Cobb I'm fascinated on this man's ponderings on being American. And being black. And being an African-American.
Confessions of a Pioneer Woman She makes me laugh. Any woman who has named her own disease - Low Blood Sugar Cranky Butt Disorder - is ok by me.
Cute Overload OK! I admit it, I love a website which uses terms like "prosh" and "paws-up-itude". I'm pretty sure I will have my engineering degree taken away now.
Fatmarc Mountain Bike, Cyclo-cross...is there anything this man doesn't do?
