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Sunday, December 31, 2006

Behold, the New Camera

As mentioned in my previous post, Jody's birthday present to me was a new digital camera. Our old digital camera is a Canon Powershot A70, which we've had for 3+ years. It's a really good camera and I've never had any trouble with it, unlike the Kodak digi-cam that I use at work. I liked the A70 so much that Ash and my mom both got Canon Powershot A540s for Christmas this year.

One feature I wanted on a new camera was more optical zoom. So I went to Circuit City and Best Buy both yesterday afternoon. I had initially thought I was going to buy an Olympus, but after looking at the Olympus and a Canon, I decided I really liked some of the features the Canon offered. Plus, we've had such good luck with Canon, I hated to change.

So we ended up with the Canon S3 IS. It's a nice camera, operates similar to the other one, but it's got a 12X optical zoom and a 4X digital zoom, creating a total zoom of 48X.

I can't wait to play around with it some today!

The No Good, Very Bad Start To My Birthday

My birthday is today, December 31. Yes, New Year's Eve. And yes, I've heard it all from "Wow, what a good tax break for your parents," to "Boy that must have sucked for your mom to miss out on partying on New Year's Eve."

There's something those of us who have December Holiday birthdays understand it binds us together: We get shafted on our birthdays. I used to think it was just me that felt this way, but it's not.

When we're kids in school, we never get a school birthday party (in all fairness, neither do the kids with summer birthdays, but at least they can have swim parties); we never get swim parties; everyone is always out of town for the holidays, so our parties are generally sparse, unless you want to hold off for a couple of weeks after Christmas. And actually, that still holds true even now because this year, on Thursday, the people at work asked if we could wait and do my birthday next week when more people would be there.

Then there's the people that just lump our birthdays in with Christmas. That happens too. For example, take my dad. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all that he and my stepmom do for us and the fact that he LOVES Jody. J's birthday is in October, two months before Christmas. Last year for his birthday, they got him a Bowflex; this year, they gave him a Glock 9mm. Oh, and for our 6th anniversay, they gave "us" a rifle. Christmas is generally a cash donation with the instructions that it is to be split evenly, not M gets more because it's for her birthday too. Then a week after Christmas is my birthday. The last two years for my birthday, I have received a set of apertif glassses (?!?) and a gift certificate for a massage. I'm just not seeing the equality here. Of course, J says its just because they like him better.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm bitter, but I will say I'm resigned to it, it's what I've come to expect. The whole birthday thing, that is.

So anyway, my friend Samantha came to Abilene yesterday to spend the weekend. I have all sorts of fun stuff planned: first, we'll run by her family's place at Lawn, then we'll go to my dad's and play with the horses for a while, then Samantha wanted to learn to shoot a gun, all followed by a nice dinner cooked by my dad on the grill at their house.

My dad calls first thing yesterday morning and says since it's just going to be me, J, and Samantha coming that we're going to eat with the hunters. For my birthday. Great, I can't wait to go to the hunting camp, where it's cold and spend my birthday dinner with a bunch of strangers. But ok, I'll be a sport.

Samantha arrives, I'm getting the guns and ammo together so she can learn to shoot, and the phone rings. It's my dad. He freaking cancels on us. He cancelled my birthday. And not even for a good reason. I wish he'd just lied and made up a good reason, because now, my feelings are hurt, because while I've accepted and come to expect the inequality that will undoubtedly come in the form of a $50 gift card, the one thing I'd at least had some expectation for (spending time with my dad for my birthday) didn't happen. And he didn't even say I'm sorry about your birthday, or have a good birthday, or anything. Jody was standing there and said something to the affect that I didn't want to eat with the hunters anway and I just burst out on tears. I think I scared him, because he told me to go buy myself a new digital camera for my birthday.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

The Title Is WRONG....

When I go to the beach, I like nothing more than some beachy books...you know, the type: girly, a little silly, nothing more than literary cotton candy. Hey, I use my brain the other 50 weeks a year I have to work...well, actually it's more like the other 48 weeks a year I have to work, but whatever. Some of my fave beach reads in recent years have included

  • the Anita Blake series by Laurel K. Hamilton (pure cheddar)
  • anything by Marian Keyes (she may be Irish, but it translates just fine)
  • the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich (if you haven't read these books go to the bookstore. NOW.)
  • Bergdorg Blondes by Plum Sykes
  • The Starter Wife by Gigi Levanie Grazer
  • Mine are Spectacular, The Botox Diaries, The Men I Didn't Marry (all by Janice Kaplan and Lyn Schnurnberger)

And finally, Star, A Novel by Pam Anderson. I'm not kidding. I thoroughly enjoyed this book while laying on the beach, drinking cervezas, and tanning. No, it was not a deep book, but you shouldn't expect it to be given the list of books I presented above. It was funny, had a decent plot, and entertained you for the short time it took to read it.

Since that time, Pam has published a sequel to Star, called Star Struck. My dear friend Sara, who also shared in the beachy goodness of the first Pam book while in Cozumel, purchased the sequel for her recent trip to Coz. It just made sense.

I had lunch with Sara and she passed the book on to me. It's short, 190 pages. I fly through it in two nights. And I have to say, that's two nights of my life I'll never get back. It was horrible! As the blog title says THE TITLE IS WRONG. It shouldn't have been Star Struck, it should have been Star something-that-rhymes-with-struck. And I'm not referring to Sucks, but that would work too, because it did. If you don't want to know the plot line, don't read any farther. Basically, the book is about her having sex with Tommy Lee, while killing a few paparazzi along the way. SERIOUSLY. So what I'm saying, is there is not a plot.

Something else I noticed while I was sitting here is the "Praise for Star" included on the book cover and inside back page. The cover says:

"Star is an absolute frolic; clever, consistenly witty, and often downright hilarious." - Anne Rice

Notice it does not say Star Struck. And neither do any of the "Praise" sections. Interesting.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Christmas Day, Football, & Kleenex

No, this post doesn't have anything to do with the Dallas Cowboys....

Me, my mom, and my sister went to see We Are Marshall on Christmas Day. If you want to see Foxy and Matthew look like this


then this is the movie for you...then there's this one part where Matthew looks super hot:


No, in all seriousness, this movie is sad. The subject matter (a small town University's football team and coaching staff are all killed in a fiery plane crash) is sad, and even more tragically, based on true events that occurred in 1970. By the time the movie was over, I had a stomach ache, my mom's throat hurt, and Ashley looked like her dog had died. I have to admit going into the theatre, I knew the premise was sad, but I looking forward to an inspirational film. I didn't find it. I think some people might have, but not me...or my sister...or my mom.
So with all the seriousness aside, I have to say one thing they did succeed in doing is making Matthew look un-hot, which is pretty hard to do, not impossible, as evident in his Dazed and Confused look:

So now I'm going to have to put some good pics of Matthew up:

I guess I was hoping for We Are Marshall to be more like Invincible, which I loved:



It was inspiring, touching, funny...it didn't leave you feeling like someone had hit you in the stomach with a baseball bat. Bad analogy, I know, being as it's a football movie. And it too was set in the 1970's and they managed to make Marky Mark look pretty ok....

And since I went there, we have to post the picture:


Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Colorado or Bust....

So speaking of Jeff, I've decided it's time to go visit him in Colorado. I booked a flight last night departing Abilene on Thursday, January 11 and returning on Tuesday, January 16. I got a pretty good deal, I think. I fly out of Abilene at 6:45 am and arrive at Denver International Airport at 9:15 am. Pretty cool stuff.

So I'll have pretty much all day Thursday there too. Anyway, Jeff lives closest to Golden, which he tells me is about 6,000 ft, while his house is at 9,000 ft. Jeff hurt his back snowboarding, so I'm not sure if he'll be up to skiing when I'm there, but I'm taking my stuff just in case. He also says there's 6 feet of snow on the ground at his house right now. I can't imagine.

I just hope the weather is good for flying in and out...it can snow like crazy the rest of the time!!!! And I'm definitely taking my camera....

Oh, here's a funny picture I found of me and Jeff:


Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Jeff

This is my cousin Jeff:

Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers...he needs it right now.

This Little Piggy Went To Market While the Rest Apparently Went to Shep

Jody is a hunter, I am not. I understand the need for population control and everything, but I DO NOT want to be the one to do it and I don't really want to see it. With that being said, Jody puts game cameras out and the pictures are quite often COOL (a porcupine eating the corn along with deer and racoons. And sometimes they're a little frightening like the following:


Saturday, December 23, 2006

Christmelicious

Have I mentioned that I love You Tube?

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Dance

Alot of people have seen this, but I think it's great!!!


Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Too Funny....

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Merry Christmas

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Well Hello Again....

It's been a while hasn't it? At all phases of my life, there have been games where you have to take care of something...when I was in 4th grade and had the super cool Commodor 64 computer it had a game where there was a little guy in a house and you had to take care of him or he got sick and died. Well, I don't really know if he died, but he'd let you know how badly you disappointed him by tapping on the glass at you. I used to like to make him do that. Sick, no? Then there were the little tami-whaties...again, not so great for me. And then in grad school, I let one of the other GAs talk me into getting a Neopet. Again, you have to log in, buy it food, pet it, etc. or it gets sick and dies. Or something.
Those games, I'm not so good at. This blog is alot like those games.
However, I do enjoy blogging. And I had some laughs reading some of those old posts...purple eye funk, boy those were the days. Anyway, I think I'll give it a try again. Plus I can totally post by email so I look like I'm really working at work when in fact I'll be blogging.
Oh and my renewed interest in blogging can be credited to Courtney...I hope mine is half as entertaining as yours. Plus Diva can't do it anymore, so the torch has been passed...we'll just see how long it takes me to forget to feed it and it gets sick and dies....
 

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