Thinking I'm Wonder Woman

My family staged a small pintervention for me last week. It seems as though they like to eat dinner every night and wear clean clothes to school or work and somehow pinterest interferes with this practice. They patiently explained how my perusal of nifty stuff on pinterest was robbing me of quality time with them. Quality time meaning good food and clean clothing, of course.

It was a rough start, but I made the effort. Hardly any pinning was done. My time was limited to about an hour every day. I was doing so well. I was doing so well. Then I received an email from the good folks at pinterest.com alerting me to some boards I might enjoy.

Enjoy them I did! Look what I pinned today:

That's right. It's a Wonder Woman themed Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Two things about this mixer speak to me.

One: I already have a plain white Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I love her. With almost un-holy like feeling I love this mixer. I use her several times a week and most of the time, she has stuff in her big silver bowl to mix, whip, or knead. The other times, well, I just like to watch the attachments spin around.

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Five Minutes Of Peace

Christmas is over for this year. I wasn't going to post anything about the actual holiday because ours (like I'm sure everyone's) was very fun and very busy. It was the busy-ness of the season that caused me to really appreciate this photograph that I snapped:

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The Difference Between My Husband and Myself: Christmas Edition

I was … ahem … not peeking, but rearranging … presents under the tree yesterday when I noticed a strange Christmas phenomenon.

In our house, my husband is the gift wrapper. I am not. I do not have the skills, patience, or wherewithal to successfully wrap more than one gift per month. On the other hand, my husband is an engineer and he lives for precision type projects. It oozes into almost everything he does.

Like wrapping Christmas gifts.

Just look. You can totally tell that my husband wrapped this gift:

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I Think My Husband Broke Up With Siri

It finally happened. After weeks of watching their love affair progress, my husband and his iPhone personal assistant, Siri, have called it quits.

I never saw it coming.

I know, I know. We all thought it was a love for the ages. We thought it was going to last forever, baby. Just like a chick flick starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

Siri + My Husband = TLF.

What could possibly have broken up this uber couple? Siri turned on my husband, that's what. She treated him like she's been treating me all these months. Which is to say not very nice.

Just look at these text messages sent from my husband (on the left, using Siri and her voice recognition superpowers) to me (on the right using regular people powers) on Tuesday evening:

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A Very Special Christmas Edition of My Nerdiness

There are just a handful of days left before Christmas. I'm not saying that to freak you out, I'm merely thinking out loud (as I so often do on this blog). I need to make sure that I'm on track for Christmas 2011 and to do that, I must break out my most favorite guilty pleasure Christmas song: George Michael's 'Last Christmas'. Mmm … get the fondue pot because that song is chock full of cheesy 80s goodness.

Oh, and I need to crack open my Christmas spreadsheet and make sure I've accounted for all my purchases.

Christmas spreadsheet? Yep. A Christmas spreadsheet. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a nerd. A big, organized, on budget, on time holiday nerd. With a small dash of geek thrown in, you know, for fun.

As both an avid participant in Black Thursday/Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and an anal retentive, compulsively organized gal, I feel the need to keep my shopping lists, purchases, and budget neatly arranged and at my fingertips. Enter Excel, my most favorite of all the Office applications.

Seriously. I have a favorite. And it's Excel.

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I Need a Pintervention

My intense love for pinterest.com grows with each passing moment. Oh pinterest - how I love you so! My adoration for you has completely eclipsed everything else in my world. Seriously. I hardly even watch 'Real Housewives' anymore.

To be fair, I haven't just been looking at all the cool and amazing stuff on pinterest. I've been making several projects.

Behold. My Santa hat brownies:

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Nothing Wakes Up The Nutcracker Like A Little Wild Turkey

My New Year's Resolution this year was to become a more culturally diverse person. So far, I've been to an art museum, attended a concert, and visited a sculpture garden. 2011 is winding down and I thought that my cultural opportunities were pretty much done for this year.

Enter The Nutcracker. I've never been to the ballet and I've never seen The Nutcracker … well, I've seen Barbie in The Nutcracker (her first movie), but that doesn't really count. Last night I had the opportunity to see the New York City Ballet dance The Nutcracker. And it was amazing.

Through the magic of a live feed, I was able to sit in my local movie theater, munch on popcorn, and watch the dancers on stage (almost eight hundred miles away) in New York City's Lincoln Center.

Logistically, I didn't think I'd be able to see this show. Lots of activities make up our Tuesday nights, so trying to add in one more thing while juggling the rest was challenging. I thought I had the logistics all figured out until I realized that there was no time for my husband and I to eat dinner before the start of the show.

Me: Well, I think I've figured everything out. Except for a few minutes for us to eat dinner.
Husband: No problem, we can just grab McDonald's on the way and eat it in the car.
Me: … you do see the irony in that statement, right? Eating McDonald's in the car while on the way to see the ballet … clash of cultures, my friend. Worlds are colliding.

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The LSD Sweater

Initials are very popular and have been for a few years. Now that I'm thinking about it, they were even popular when I was a kid. I remember when I was about thirteen (my most physically attractive stage … not) monogrammed sweaters were all kinds of popular. All the cool kids had one.

The sweaters themselves were pretty plain, most of them being simply a solid color. But the monogram itself could be anything from plain to just darn swanky. It was all in the font of the letters.

Having cool initials helped make your sweater extra fab. My initials at the time, JJW, weren't exactly blah nor were they very exciting. My sister had more exciting initials, LAW, because they spelled a word. I would have loved for my initials to spell a word. Unless that word was ASS, like a boy in my school (true story).

However, on a monogrammed sweater your initials aren't in order, so my LAW sister (on a sweater) became LWA, with the W in the middle with a bigger and slightly fancier than the L and the A.

*side note: Sadly, ASS boy would have still been ASS on a sweater.

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And Now … Something From the Home Decor Section of Goodwill

It happened again this week. I had some time to kill in town and I was by a Goodwill. And a Target. My bank account prefers I kill time at Goodwill, where I'm more likely to whip out my phone and snap a few photos of the odd stuff for sale than I am likely to whip out my wallet and buy something. If I kill time at Target, I find at least fifty dollars worth of treasures that I did not know I needed until I spied them on the shelf. 

It's a total mind game. And I am just not equipped to win it.

I found this broken scale at Goodwill.

How do I know it's broken? I stood on it to weigh myself. There is no way on this Earth that I weigh that much. So what if I eat butter at every meal? That factoid is completely irrelevant to this conversation. The scale went immediately back on the shelf where I'm sure it sat in shame for giving me an incorrect weight.

Aside from the obviously broken scale, my trip to Goodwill was looking unfruitful in the humorous donations department.

Until I saw this in the Home Decor aisle:

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Thankful For And Freaking Out About Butter

During the month of November, several of my Facebook friends posted one thing they were thankful for as their status everyday. This led me to thinking about what I'm thankful for, but I didn't want to post it daily on Facebook.

I thought about writing several blog posts listing the things in my life that I am thankful for having. But I nixed that idea because I never know where to draw the line between heartfelt sentiment and schmaltz. Also, by the time I decided to do a daily blog post, November had come and gone. And most of my 'thankfuls' are obvious anyway: family, friends, and butter.

Butter?

Yeah. Butter.

Okay. Maybe butter isn't an obvious choice, but I'm very thankful for butter and I have a little bit every day. I probably have more than a little bit every day. I have butter at nearly every meal.

I can't help it. It's delicious.

Once I realized that I eat butter at every meal, I kinda freaked out. You're shocked that I freaked out about something, aren't you? Yeah. It's pretty shocking news.

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Why, Pinterest, Why? Why You No Like Me?

Have you all heard of the website pinterest? Yes, you probably have because you all are way cooler than me. I came late the the pinterest party. Obviously.

For those of you who live under a rock bigger than the one I reside under, let me school you on the wonderfulness that is pinterest.com. Simply put, it's heaven in a website.

You can find things that you like on the web and 'pin' them to a virtual bulletin board on pinterest.com. And you can have more than one bulletin board. Oh hons. This. Is. Thrilling! Virtual bulletin boards - oh my! I can quit copying and pasting pictures of all the quirky little weird stuff that I find online and absolutely love to iPhoto and instead, pin it to a virtual bulletin board.

The catch is that you have to ask pinterest to be invited to join their website. Inviting myself anywhere flies in the face of the manners my mother tried so hard to instill in me. But, pinterest is wonderfully amazing and awesome, so good manners are flying out the window. Sorry, Mom.

I asked to be invited to the pinterest party.

Last Tuesday.

Seven days ago. I asked. To join pinterest.

And I've not heard back from them.

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My Thoughts on The Jerk

I'm in some kind of weird movie watching zone. It could be because I'm a total suck up and I want to finish my movie list earlier than my December 2012 deadline. I'm a classic overachiever. Or it (more likely) could be because it has been cold and rainy at my house the last few weeks and cold weather doesn't inspire me to do much other than grab a blanket, a snack, and a seat on the couch.

For my viewing pleasure, The Jerk with Steve Martin.

Honestly I've never seen The Jerk, but I felt that I had seen it because I've heard the jokes for years.

Example 1: My husband used to grab the new phone book upon it's delivery and immediately look himself up. This earned him the nickname 'Navin' from a few of our friends. Now I know why.

Example 2: One of these same friends, Caucasian McWhiteboy, would always respond 'I was born a poor black child …' when asked to tell a little something about himself. Now I know why.

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2011 Christmas Parade

I love a parade. It's true. Especially my local Christmas parade. You may remember last year's parade in which a guy dressed as a pint o' Guinness fell off a float and rolled into the cameraman for the local news.

Good times.

This year marked a change in the local Christmas parade. The safety of the parade marchers was put above everything else, meaning the pint o' Guinness wasn't on the float rocking out to the live band. Instead, he was firmly tethered to the bed of the pick up truck by a thick strap. It was safer, but it severely limited his killer dances moves to the Cheese Weasels' live music.

Gotta be honest with you. Safer = less fun for me.

In what I'm taking to be a sure sign that the economy is improving, the candy thrown out to spectators this year was top notch. We're talking full sized candy canes, gum and Tootsie Rolls. Tootsie Rolls are my favorite. Sure they look like little turds, but mmm mmm. They are deelish.

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Good Thing I'm a Cheap Date (Or KFC: Home of the $600 Buffet)

I am, admittedly, a cheap date. A little carryout pizza, a one dollar movie rental, bottle of wine with a screw on cap, and I'm set. My tastes run more funky and cheap than elegant and expensive. It's okay. I'm fine with it. I've embraced this quality about myself.

One place that I never thought would be too expensive for me to dine is my local Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Specifically the Monday night buffet.

Good thing we aren't big fans of KFC. I could never afford to take the whole family there. Pin It Now!