Life, the Universe and Everything
I think I've managed to thank everyone who left birthday comments, PMs, posts, email and e-cards, but if I've missed you, give me the link so I can thank you properly as well. <3
I actually had a pretty good day, although I could have done without the dog waking me up at 6am, after a mere 5.5 hours of sleep, demanding to be let out. And then I couldn't go back to sleep. But aside from that, I got nice presents (including seven paper books, four Kindle books, three of Cassie/Sarah's Bane Chronicles and a generous Amazon gift card. And I'm still only about 1/4 of the way through City of Lost Souls. I think I'm set until Christmas!), enjoyed the movie, had a tasty dinner of grilled salmon salad, and a delicious chocolate and peanut butter sundae courtesy of Cold Stone Creamery (and now I feel like my pants may never button again). And my children didn't behave any worse than usual, which, hey, I'll take it.
Oh, and, lachen, one of the (paper) books I got was Name of the Wind! It was total coincidence, not from my Amazon list, but I'm delighted and looking forward to reading it.
We managed to see Star Trek: Into Darkness - FINALLY - on the very last day before it left the cinema. I know a lot of you were left unsatisfied, but we all (the four of us) enjoyed it just fine. Maybe my expectations were lowered by your grumblings or something, but I thought it was good, even if it wasn't quite as good as the first one. Although, honestly, when we got to the death scene toward the end, all I could think of was Leonard Nimoy replaying his Khan death scene during the recent Spock vs Spock Audi commercial. :P
Now, could they PLEASE go back to filming S3 of Sherlock?
So, after a fairly quiet morning (although I did walk the dogs and made chocolate zucchini bread as a thank-you to my neighbor, who let our dogs out to pee and gave them attention while we were in Philly), the afternoon was full: picked up Two from pottery camp, stopped for a copy of MiniPlu's immunization record for her middle-school registration next week (more in a min), ate lunch in the car on the way to the cinema, saw the movie, drove back across town to MiniPlu's clarinet lesson, went home to change into slightly nicer clothing, went to dinner at a local Italian place, then Cold Stone for dessert. Busy, but nice. Talked to both my parents and to Steve, although it was Scott who left the message on my machine.
I also got a great email from one of my Dutch cousins, who wished me a good birthday and then added that her iPhone's auto-correct didn't like the English word "birthday". "It keeps wanting to change to borsthaar, which means chest hair. Can you imagine singing Happy chesthair to you, happy chesthair to you, happy chesthair dear Debbie, happy chesthair to you." I laughed so hard!
Two had a couple of coughing fits at dinner and while we were eating our ice cream. It makes me nervous when she coughs that hard because she's been known - several times - to cough so hard she barfed. Let me just specify that she was eating Cold Stone's "cotton candy" flavored ice cream, which is Smurf-blue. Sure enough, just as she was finishing her dessert, she coughed up a lung what appeared to be a pint of blue slime. At least it was just the ice cream and not the pizza and salad she'd had for dinner. Actually, it was probably just the phlegm, which happened to be colored blue. But, man, she got it EVERYWHERE. All over the plastic seat she was on, and the table, and her hands, and her (new!) sneakers. Because it was on her seat, she ended up with a blue butt (thank goodness she'd insisted on wearing black trousers to dinner!) and - more hilariously - she had blue come out of her nose, too. I felt bad for our houseguests, who, at least on the outside, didn't flinch, but Will and I were both laughing. I mean, yes, it was gross, but it was also SMURF BLUE, and that just made it hilarious. Especially as Two was clearly 100% fine once it was over. After we'd mopped up with the stack of napkins I stole from a local Asian buffet, I herded Two to the bathroom at Barnes & Noble to hose off her face and hands (and shoe). She was still sneezing blue ten minutes later. :P
Houseguests are leaving tomorrow morning. I should try to get in a run, and desperately need to do some more weeding before the vegetables get completely overrun. Speaking of the garden, the strawberries are pretty much over, but I got over two weeks of berries by the handful - and often the bowlful - and I'm now getting half a dozen blueberries every few days, for the first time. I'm trying to think how to protect the zillions of blackberries that are ripening, so that birds don't snarf them all like they did last year.
Oh! And I went back to TKD for the first time last night! The instructor tried to run us into the ground, and since I lost some stamina (I've spent the past week working on stretches and getting some of my coordination back, but that's not the same as stamina), I was an exhausted ball of sweat by the time class ended, but I did it! There are some limitations, still, but I can genuinely manage most things without trouble, or with minor modifications. Whoo hoo!
Now - at 42 - if only I didn't still have problem skin like a teenager, and more scraggly gray hair than I want to see in the mirror. :P
I actually had a pretty good day, although I could have done without the dog waking me up at 6am, after a mere 5.5 hours of sleep, demanding to be let out. And then I couldn't go back to sleep. But aside from that, I got nice presents (including seven paper books, four Kindle books, three of Cassie/Sarah's Bane Chronicles and a generous Amazon gift card. And I'm still only about 1/4 of the way through City of Lost Souls. I think I'm set until Christmas!), enjoyed the movie, had a tasty dinner of grilled salmon salad, and a delicious chocolate and peanut butter sundae courtesy of Cold Stone Creamery (and now I feel like my pants may never button again). And my children didn't behave any worse than usual, which, hey, I'll take it.
Oh, and, lachen, one of the (paper) books I got was Name of the Wind! It was total coincidence, not from my Amazon list, but I'm delighted and looking forward to reading it.
We managed to see Star Trek: Into Darkness - FINALLY - on the very last day before it left the cinema. I know a lot of you were left unsatisfied, but we all (the four of us) enjoyed it just fine. Maybe my expectations were lowered by your grumblings or something, but I thought it was good, even if it wasn't quite as good as the first one. Although, honestly, when we got to the death scene toward the end, all I could think of was Leonard Nimoy replaying his Khan death scene during the recent Spock vs Spock Audi commercial. :P
Now, could they PLEASE go back to filming S3 of Sherlock?
So, after a fairly quiet morning (although I did walk the dogs and made chocolate zucchini bread as a thank-you to my neighbor, who let our dogs out to pee and gave them attention while we were in Philly), the afternoon was full: picked up Two from pottery camp, stopped for a copy of MiniPlu's immunization record for her middle-school registration next week (more in a min), ate lunch in the car on the way to the cinema, saw the movie, drove back across town to MiniPlu's clarinet lesson, went home to change into slightly nicer clothing, went to dinner at a local Italian place, then Cold Stone for dessert. Busy, but nice. Talked to both my parents and to Steve, although it was Scott who left the message on my machine.
I also got a great email from one of my Dutch cousins, who wished me a good birthday and then added that her iPhone's auto-correct didn't like the English word "birthday". "It keeps wanting to change to borsthaar, which means chest hair. Can you imagine singing Happy chesthair to you, happy chesthair to you, happy chesthair dear Debbie, happy chesthair to you." I laughed so hard!
Two had a couple of coughing fits at dinner and while we were eating our ice cream. It makes me nervous when she coughs that hard because she's been known - several times - to cough so hard she barfed. Let me just specify that she was eating Cold Stone's "cotton candy" flavored ice cream, which is Smurf-blue. Sure enough, just as she was finishing her dessert, she coughed up a lung what appeared to be a pint of blue slime. At least it was just the ice cream and not the pizza and salad she'd had for dinner. Actually, it was probably just the phlegm, which happened to be colored blue. But, man, she got it EVERYWHERE. All over the plastic seat she was on, and the table, and her hands, and her (new!) sneakers. Because it was on her seat, she ended up with a blue butt (thank goodness she'd insisted on wearing black trousers to dinner!) and - more hilariously - she had blue come out of her nose, too. I felt bad for our houseguests, who, at least on the outside, didn't flinch, but Will and I were both laughing. I mean, yes, it was gross, but it was also SMURF BLUE, and that just made it hilarious. Especially as Two was clearly 100% fine once it was over. After we'd mopped up with the stack of napkins I stole from a local Asian buffet, I herded Two to the bathroom at Barnes & Noble to hose off her face and hands (and shoe). She was still sneezing blue ten minutes later. :P
Houseguests are leaving tomorrow morning. I should try to get in a run, and desperately need to do some more weeding before the vegetables get completely overrun. Speaking of the garden, the strawberries are pretty much over, but I got over two weeks of berries by the handful - and often the bowlful - and I'm now getting half a dozen blueberries every few days, for the first time. I'm trying to think how to protect the zillions of blackberries that are ripening, so that birds don't snarf them all like they did last year.
Oh! And I went back to TKD for the first time last night! The instructor tried to run us into the ground, and since I lost some stamina (I've spent the past week working on stretches and getting some of my coordination back, but that's not the same as stamina), I was an exhausted ball of sweat by the time class ended, but I did it! There are some limitations, still, but I can genuinely manage most things without trouble, or with minor modifications. Whoo hoo!
Now - at 42 - if only I didn't still have problem skin like a teenager, and more scraggly gray hair than I want to see in the mirror. :P