“They float, they all float”

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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Confirming my fear of clowns

It’s Halloween tomorrow and, as in every year past, I have a growing anxiety this time of year that I’ll be seeing an abundance of clowns roaming the streets of this Halloween-crazed city. This is a big reason why I don’t plan on going very far from home tomorrow.

And while I joke a lot about my fear of clowns and, sure, I’ll admit that some of it is put on, I got confirmation the other night that I am still very much afraid of clowns.

Note: I can barely even look at this picture it terrifies me so much. From perhaps the scariest scene in all of film.

Anyway – and seriously I can’t look at that picture – I had a dream nightmare the other night that tells me a) still afraid of clowns and b) I may need to stop reading Stephen King for a little bit.  I was lost in the woods (hello The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon) and it was pretty hilly where I was. There was a river running beside where I was walking and, for some reason, I knew that the only way I could get back to civilization was to go into the river. I either had to cross it or swim down it, I can’t remember.

As I’m standing on the bank of the river trying to decide what to do, I start hearing a voice and it’s coming from underneath the water. I’m paraphrasing cause I don’t remember it exactly but it said something like “You know you have to come in here.” I started arguing with the voice, saying that I could jump across or just find my own way. “No you can’t, you have to come in. And you know what’s in here.” Without any other choice, I went into the water. As soon as I did, a clown, most resembling It from the Stephen King story, grabbed my leg, pulled me under the water and I woke up.

That was one of the most horrifying dreams I’ve had all year and I’ve been on edge ever since. Damn murderous clowns.

 

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I Am The Very Picture of a Perfect Pumpkin Pirate-Ship

Guess who won the 3rd annual office pumpkin carving contest yesterday!!!!

Okay, so I don’t have a good picture of it yet – or a picture that doesn’t make me look like 300 pounds – but if you guessed my group’s AMAZING Pumpkin Pirate-Ship based on the show The Pirates of Penzance, you would be…

CORRECT!

Yes, we won the local contest yesterday with our pumpkin turned pirate ship. It’s hard to see there but we had canons out the sides and a gourd screwed to the front as the lady of the ship and even tiny pirates on the deck (which I built). The flags were carved of the same pumpkin as the ship and suspended by bamboo sticks and all of this happened in exactly one hour. To accompany our ship, we had Dark N’ Stormy drinks (rum and ginger beer) and my successfully made pumpkin scones.

As you can see, we had stiff competition this year. My former teammates in accounting did Mary Poppins and turned the pumpkin into Mary’s umbrella. Two teams did Dreamgirls and of course the adorable The Lion King pumpkin with our Sponsorship Director’s newborn as baby Simba.

What got us the win was our presentation which I will try humbly to say was all me. For those of you familiar with The Pirates of Penzance, you’ll remember the most famous song from the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta is “I am the very model of a modern Major General.” Well, I took that song and countless work hours and changed the words – as most of you know I enjoy doing – to fit our pumpkin. The result was “I am the very picture of a perfect pumpkin Pirate-Ship.” I wrote out the entire song, being careful to use the same rhythms as the original. What I hadn’t been counting on was my team making me read the song out loud along to an instrumental version of the song to everyone in our office! If you don’t know, that song goes wicked fast and I didn’t practice it hardly at all! But I did it and people loved it and it got us the win.

I’ll post more pictures of our pirate ship when I get them from my team. It’s really incredible. By winning the local office contest, we get a free lunch anywhere in the city. The national competition will be decided by Monday. If we win that, we get a vacation day!

Fingers crossed!

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“I’m where I want to be and who I want to be and doing what I always said I would”

Really quick thoughts, I literally only have a few seconds:

• As can be observed by my subject line, I’m still wickedly obsessed with Chess In Concert. I just got the DVD – thank you free B&N gift card! – and have watched a bit. LOVE IT!
• I hate the red line. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! Got stuck this morning on a disabled train outside Porter Square. Combing the time sitting on the train and standing on the platform, I was there for about an hour. Took me 2.5 hours to get to work this morning. Bah! It was scary too cause the train I was on had to be pushed into the station by another train. Thank God it wasn’t too crowded on that train cause I was already feeling claustrophobic. 5 trains went by at Porter before I could get on. Bad morning.
• Pumpkin contest is tomorrow meaning all of my spare time is being taken up by it. Lots still to do. Unfortunately I’m also incredibly busy at work as is the rest of my team.  How we’ll pull this off tomorrow I’m very anxious to see. I’ll do a bigger, in detail post about it tomorrow.
• Watched all of The Big Bang Theory Season One over the weekend and started Season Two last night. Forgive for saying it but at the moment I’m enjoying it much more than How I Met Your Mother. I’m so fickle. Expect a much larger post about this hilarious show in the coming days.
• Was sick early in the week, felt better last night and only okay today. Don’t have time to dwell on it. I have one more sick day for the rest of the year. That will be interesting as I always get sick this time of year and everyone at the office is already sick.
• Still don’t have my glasses. Called them today – two weeks after ordering them! – and they said they should be in in the next couple of days. Yeah right. I ended up taping my busted glasses so at least I can see but I look even geekier than before.
• I have no idea what is going on in the world. I’ve been so focused on being sick, getting my work done and working on this pumpkin that I’m not sure I even remember what day it is. In times like these, I remind myself that over the summer I was bored to tears and would’ve killed for this much to do.

Yep, that’s it. I’ve run out of time. I’m not even going to spell check this. 🙂

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And that led to…

If you read my last post, you’ll remember that I said I had spent much of the weekend watching The Big Bang Theory and that made me want to watch Roseanne for obvious reasons. All I can say is thank God for YouTube! I’ve now watched a bunch of David/Darlene clips from the end of the series that I had never seen before since I stopped watching when the show got, well, unwatchable. Totally was crying at the baby stuff and the wedding stuff.

See, this is what happens when I have a weekend to myself. I just geek out.

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Grrrr

I have spent all day working on this pumpkin for our carving contest on Thursday! First it was trying to make pumpkin scones – I think I got it – and then it was trying to build this damn platform for the damn pirate pumpkin ship. Have you ever tried to build a ship platform with a box cutter and a couple hundred popsicle sticks?

Really? No one has done that? I’m all astonishment.

My fingers hurt, my head hurts, my broken glasses are almost literally taped to my head and I’ve lost my office pool for football yet again.

7:13 on a Sunday. Time for bed? If I look at one more popsicle stick I’m going to scream.

On a high note, while working on said pumpkin pirate platform from Hell, I did a marathon of The Big Bang Theory Season One. I laughed till it hurt. Such a funny show. Makes me want to watch Johnny Galecki on Roseanne as David. He was always my favorite on that show.

Oh, that and the Pats are now 5-2 going into the bye. YAY!

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Scones, scones and more scones

ETA: To those of you are also my friends on Facebook, please do not mention any of this on there as there are coworkers on Facebook that should not be learning that I’m trying to make pumpkin scones. Thanks! 🙂

Some of you know that my mother could be world famous for her baking, especially when it comes to her scones. Do not ask me for the recipe, it’s a family secret.

Well, this week is my company’s annual pumpkin carving contest. As a bribe to our judge, we decided I should bake these scones. I’ve said many times that while mine are good, I cannot make them like my mom does. No one can. And I even have the recipe. I stumped her on this one though because I need to make pumpkin scones which she has never done. We brainstormed over it last weekend to no result.

I got online and it turns out there are tons of pumpkin scone recipes out there. But here’s the kicker: not one of them is even remotely close to my mom’s recipe. The ingredients and directions are completely different. For example, every single one I read (and I read 20) called for eggs. My mom’s recipe does not include eggs – that’s as much as I will tell. I had no idea my mom’s recipe was so unique. Not being a particular fan of scones, I’ve not had the chance to compare  my mom’s to any other scone. I know she gets requests constantly for the recipe. She’s even had people tell her to sell them.

Side note: if you’d like to try these scones firsthand, stay at my mother’s B&B in Provincetown, MA. It’s called The Bayberry Accomodations, the rates are very reasonable – especially now in the offseason, and it’s ideally located just off Commercial Street.

Side note 2: If you do go to P-Town, also go to my mom and Ruth’s store called Impulse. It’s the one with all of the telescopes but it has a lot more than that. If you are lucky, you might even see a certain two Bernese Mountain Dog sleeping in the back.

Anyway, since I couldn’t find a recipe that resembled my mother’s and that would add pumpkin into it, I had to try and wing it which is what I’ve been doing this lovely Sunday morning. The first batch just came out. Tastes okay but I can barely taste the pumpkin. It’s more of an aftertaste of pumpkin. So I’ll keep trying.

I shouldn’t be so arrogant in thinking that I can adapt my mom’s recipe when I can’t even make the original the way she does. But if I do manage to get this right, some of you might have to be taste testers for me. 🙂

I’ll keep you posted…

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“I’m not trying to make this sound gay” – THE OFFICE and 30 ROCK Recaps

Spoiler Warning: If you didn’t watch The Office and 30 Rock last night, you shouldn’t read this.

The Office

• Loved it! Huge improvement over last week’s episode.
  
• “I’m sensual” – Hell yeah you are.
  
• The info thing on my cable said that Dwight offers Jim a peace-offering. Knew that was too good to be true. The duck mallard thing was great.
  
• Ryan wins douchebag of the year…with a hat. He’s so much fun to watch.
  
• Yes, it’s creepy that Michael is dating Pam’s mom and that he calls her his “lover” – a term I’ve always thought was weird. But his speech defending his reasons in the conference room got to me as much as it got to Phyllis.
  
• Karen was right. Pam is kind of a bitch. Not even kind of in this one. I really did feel though that we were supposed to think that of her. Sure, I felt sympathy for her but she was overreacting big time. It’s fun to see this side of Pam. I like to see all of the characters display their bad sides. Besides, she’s pregnant.
  
• Jim is already whipped. And he’s about as supportive as a sponge. I loved that he just stood there as Michael and Pam screamed at each other. Also loved the quick backtrack he did with Pam about her overreacting at the end.
  
• I thought the Erin thing with putting out the candy was really funny for some strange reason.
  
• All of these comments have been the same. Yeah, I pretty much thought the episode was very funny. 🙂

30 Rock

• I love Will Arnett. I miss Will Arnett. He needs to be a permanent member of the show. While I enjoy the show without him, the Arnett factor sky-rockets my pleasure watching 30 Rock. He and Baldwin have the best chemistry on the show. Plus, Will Arnett’s looking pretty good these days.
• I laughed so very, very hard at the “Thriller”/too soon joke. Loved it because it was a) not entirely appropriate timing as Liz was not actually making a Michael Jackson joke at all and b) the quick but stern way Tracy said it without looking up from his magazine. I don’t know, it just struck me as really funny. “Too soon” jokes always do.
• Thought the episode was, like The Office, very funny and enjoyable to watch. For me, this show is made up of the little, odd things that are so funny that the actual stories become secondary. Liz finding an unopened bill in the trash is a good example. I remember that better than I remember what Liz was doing in the episode. But that’s probably just me.
• Tracy is growing on me, Jenna is not.
• Turning the microwave into the car was a riot.

I had all these other things to say about these two and of course I now forget them all. Some quality TV going on right now.

SIDE NOTE: PROJECT RUNWAY – wow, very surprised (and kinda sad) that that person got kicked off. Thought it should have been the other one. That outfit was hideous.

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“I don’t have the words to say, they’re overdue.”

Thoughts:

• Haven’t been posting a lot, I know. I’ve been in better places mentally but every time I go to put those nasty thoughts on here I stop myself by saying no one wants to read that crap. You know, it’s all the usual stuff: spending too much, eating too much, exercising too little, not staying on top of things. Anyway, here’s some other, more superficial thoughts to take my mind off:
• I am racing against the clock to rewrite the words to “I am the very model of a modern Major-General” for our pumpkin contest which is one week from today. Too bad I finally got busy at work so now I have no time to work on it.
• Still don’t have my new glasses which means today is day 4 of the great Can I See Anything? contest – and I’m losing. Every day it’s getting worse. I might have to call For Eyes today and ask if the new ones have come in cause I don’t think I can last the weekend without them, not to mention I’m supposed to be driving tomorrow night.
• New band obsession! I have no idea if this band is cool or popular, poppy or hard core. All I know is that from the two songs I’ve heard, I want to go buy their album (if they even have one). You guys ever hear of Muse? I’ll admit that I found them off of the Twilight soundtrack with their song “Supermassive Black Hole” which I’m addicted to. And now I’ve absolutely fallen in love with the song “I Belong To You.” I might have to check more out, maybe on youtube before buying. ETA: Apparently they have 5 albums and I’ve been living under a rock.
• I don’t know how it happened but my two favorite TV times of the week are Mondays at 9:30 for The Big Bang Theory and Wednesdays at 9 for Glee. I don’t get more enjoyment out of any other shows on TV as much as these two. And how awesome was Glee last night? OMG! Stupid baseball on FOX means we don’t get new Glee until November and I’ll be counting down the days.
• Stupid FOX. It was announced that Dollhouse is being pulled from the air during November which means the network is not airing the show during fall sweeps. What does that mean? Goodbye Dollhouse. If you’re keeping a show, you don’t pull it for sweeps. IMO, this second season has not lived up to the potential thus far. It rewound instead moving forward which is surprising for a show that got a last-second second chance. Ante not upped.
• HIMYM – didn’t care much for this latest episode. I enjoyed the Marshall and Ted stuff but I wasn’t into the Barney/Robin story. Is anyone else kinda not digging the Barney/Robin relationship as much as they thought they would? That first episode was so promising and now it’s kind of boring. Might need to move things along there.
• One month from now I’ll be in Virginia. Two months from now I’ll be getting ready to go to San Diego. Time, where are you going?

That’s all I got. Happy Thursday!

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“Oh, what a beautiful morning!”

How am I feeling this morning?

I think that picture sums it up pretty good. Even though the Titans played like absolute crap, it was still a big boost to the morale of Patriots fans to win yesterday 59 to NOTHING! There is no better team in the snow and weather than the Patriots and no better quarterback than Tom Brady.

It was reminiscent of the 2007 rout of the Washington Redskins – in which Belichick was accused of running up the score to 52-7 – and then last year’s complete decimation of the Super Bowl bound Arizona Cardinals in a 40 to 7 something game in which the Pats were accused of running up the score.And now, at 8:15, I’m already hearing whining about Belichick running it up.

Here’s my take on this. You cannot be accused of running up the score if the opposing team is not playing. The Titans gave up in the first quarter. It’s a game, the goal is to score points. If the other team can’t keep up, you don’t stop playing the game. Give me a break.

But whatever. I’m learning that to be a Patriots fan, you have to develop a thick skin and a deaf ear to what non-New Englanders are saying about Belichick and the team. It’s still a great, great feeling (not to mention the Jets losing 3 in a row!).

London next baby!

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