Archive for July, 2007

Last weekend was a weekend of Harry Potter madness. No, we weren’t crazy enough to attend any midnight book release parties. But we did make Saturday a pretty full fledged Harry Potter day. Cathy was in town on her way back up to Kansas, after finishing a successful internship in Houston. I convinced her to stay for a day to enjoy HP with us. We had a tasty lunch at Snuffers, then off to Barnes and Noble to acquire our copy of the 7th and final installment of the HP adventure. There is something very soothing about the smell of brand new printed pages and a hint of coffee/cookies in the background. So, we wandered around the bookstore while waiting for our movie.

Cathy found a really neat book called Flotsam by David Weisner.  Cathy is really in to sea creatures and marine life right now, so she doubly enjoyed the book. While Cathy was letting her imagination wander with the squiddies in Flotsam, I wandered, unbeknownst to me, over to the non-fiction children’s books. I saw a picture book called A Mama for Owen by Marion Dane Bauer and illustrated by John Butler. I immediately smirked at the silly idea that a giant tortoise becomes a hippo’s mother! I was quickly informed by the children’s section Barnes and Noble employee that indeed, Owen was an abandoned hippo that found friendship in a zoo’s giant tortoise. She then stepped through this book with me, explaining the tragic story page by page. Flashbacks of kindergarten story time hit me full force. But for some odd reason, the employee would not let me leave! There was no mention of sales pitches or anything, just wanted me to fully understand the plight of the baby hippo named Owen I suppose. After several “oh that’s so sad!” and “wow, that’s incredible!” phrases were uttered, I managed to extricate myself from the children’s book section and bravely marched myself to the movie theatre in the sudden downpour that seems to occur so frequently in Southlake.

Now, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was not my favorite Harry Potter book. Really, some of it irritated me with all of its teen angst and saving of the house elves. However, I do think it is one of my favorite movies. They still kept it really dark, but managed to keep it from being annoying like the book had made me feel at parts. The casting was absolutely genious. Helena Bonham Carter was perfect to play the evil and twisted Bellatrix Lestrange. I still marvel at Emma Thompson’s ability to make Professor Trelawney so absent minded and crazy, but so gosh darn lovable. The audience giggled through many of her scenes, as intended. Though Evanna Lynch was not exactly how I pictured Loony Luna, but they ended up winning me over in the end. The most brilliant, however, was Imelda Staunton as Professor Umbridge. She was exactly like I thought she would be, down to every last simpering smile and giggle. She was the woman to hate in this book/movie, and she played it tremendously. Also to note, are the Harry Potter kids. They have grown up to a point where there acting is believable and actually quite decent. I do feel sorry for Ron’s actor, Rupert Grint, though, he didn’t seem to have much of a point in this movie, poor fellow. At least he’ll be guaranteed a very well paid job for the next couple of movies, point or no point.

Once the movie was over, Cathy, Andy, and I compared, contrasted, raved, and discussed the movie and the movie goers. It comes without fail that when you go to the theater, no matter how crowded, there will always be a loud obnoxious guy making stupid comments throughout the movie, a weird laugher, a very loud eater, someone who smells funky, and someone to point out the obvious. Part of the movie going experience I suppose. When we got home, there was some puppy playing time, and before I knew it Cathy was cat napping away in the guest room. Andy was working on his computer. What’s a girl to do to entertain herself…but to read her brand new shiny copy of the the last Harry Potter book? Let’s just say I read that book with little attention to much else until I was done, usually how it works (ask Andy). Don’t worry, for those of you who have not had the pleasure of enjoying the finale for yourself, I’m not going to ruin anything. I will say, however, that it’s not my favorite, I kind of expected more, but I still liked its ending because I really can’t imagine any other way it could have ended better. With that said, go read! I need someone to discuss this with!!

Not too often in my life have I looked at a stranger and thought “wow, you’re a truly horrible parent”. Every once in a while, I will be puzzled at a parent’s actions. However, it can usually be attributed to embarrassment, stress, or just lack of grace under fire. However, tonight I saw an astonishingly bad mother that I just had to share my amazement.

Andy and I went to get ice cream at the Cold Stone Creamery tonight (yes mom…ice cream, and to be perfectly clear, I had the fat free ice cream…which was decently tasty). Andy had a free ice cream coupon that Cold Stone sent for his birthday. We got our tasty frozen treats and went outside to sit in the decent night weather. A young mother with her equally young toddler sat at the table next to us…with baby’s father? boyfriend? She was complaining about how the baby wouldn’t eat his dinner. The only thing baby would eat was ice cream. Which, doesn’t that sound bad enough already? As the mother, shouldn’t she just…I don’t know…not feed the child any ice cream? Eventually it will be hungry enough to eat non-ice cream related foods. She then proceeded to call the baby a little fat f@ck, not just once, but over and over. I was appalled. I would never call a grown person such a horrible thing, but a tiny little baby? I’m sorry poor child, where ever you may be. I hope that your life becomes much less screwed up than I think it will be.

So, as my schedule demands, I had the last couple days off since I worked last weekend. Yesterday was spent in Fort Worth, and battling Fort Worth traffic. Usually traffic issues are non-existent, but due to construction my drive was very long and very warm. I met up with Ethan and David for lunch at the Mellow Mushroom. It’s a fantastic pizza place by the TCU campus. They have the best crust I’ve ever had, hands down, and the variety is endless. We settled on sharing a medium Kosmic Karma pizza (spinach, feta, pesto, and tomatoes). It was a nice lunch, and it’s always fun talking to the guys. David had news of my old boss expecting his first baby boy in a few months. Congratulations to them. They are currently taking ideas for names, I personally am voting for Garfunkel.

Since David actually had work to finish in the lab, and couldn’t be convinced otherwise, Ethan and I headed to the Fort Worth Science Museum without him. I’ve heard lots of good things about this museum. Being an aficionado of science museums (we’ve been to Chicago, St. Louis…and more that I can’t think of right now), I’ve always wanted to visit. To top it off, right now they’re holding a Star Wars exhibit that sounded promising. Ethan and I bought our tickets and were soon herded to the group holding area. The museum only lets people in to the exhibit in 15 minute increments, in a small attempt to try and control the hoards of people. As we got closer to the entrance of the exhibit, the numbers of small children, strollers, and mothers/grandmothers on cell phones increased exponentially! I like kids, I really do. But when there are THAT many children around, there’s a lot of screaming, sporadic jumping in front of oncoming traffic (cars or foot), shoving, and just general chaos.

We soon walked into the Star Wars galaxy, marveled at the detailed models of ships, stood next to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker’s costumes, smiled at R2D2, cowered before the surprisingly tall Darth Vador costume, and wondered why the Storm Troopers never smile, even their masks are frowny! (okay, I did the wondering, Ethan just pretended to answer me like I wasn’t crazy). While we’re at it, why do the storm troopers have to wear masks like that? Darth Vador had to because of his crazy infectious face burn thing, but why the storm troopers? I never did understand that.

Back to the museum tour…throughout the exhibit there were really neat hands on activities: build your own maglev train, discover how real life prosthetics are being developed like Luke’s neato fake hand, learn about the art of walking (you have to control a robot to kick a soccer ball smoothly across an exhibit, much more difficult than one would think…though the Japanese really seem to have the whole thing down frighteningly well), build robots to withstand different types of terrain, read about robots which have already been made and being marketed, and all sorts of computer simulations. I would very much have liked to play with these exhibits, but there were so many kids there that most of the stations were past their utmost capacity. I couldn’t even see above/through all those tiny little bodies. Not to mention, I’m sure people frown upon two 24 year olds shoving kids out of the way to play with robots. Though didn’t we pay just as much money to see the exhibit? Sigh…don’t worry, we were perfectly mannered and no small children were harmed because of us.

Instead, we finished up our Star Wars fun (which strangely enough, the end was routed directly through the Star Wars gift shop. Where one could buy anything from mouse pads to Halloween costumes for your dog) and began looking for the rest of the science museum. We found our way into a room which seemed to be all wrong. There was a mammoth skull at the front, two dinosaurs fighting in the middle, an antique dentist chair on the right, taxodermied Texas creatures in the back, and Aztec statues on the left. Turns out, the science museum is going through a major overhaul and has closed down most of its exhibits. We enjoyed all that was there, but left feeling a tad gypped. That’s when…we remembered our science museum sticker passes included entrance to the Cowgirl Museum of Fort Worth!!

Now, I’ve been there before a couple years ago with Andy and Scott. Let’s just say the most memorable part of the museum was getting to sit in the free kiddie corner coloring with crayons. Either way, we still had to give it a shot. Thankfully, the main room had some of the science museum spill over (with a lot less kids). It was a room of optical illusions, which means Ethan and I ran around with eyes covered, squinting, ducking, walking from side to side a lot. It was fun. We then headed upstairs to the actual cowgirl section. There were a lot of tours going on, which meant mocking was kept at a minimum. That’s when we came across a very short replica of a horse, perhaps a pony? It was just…there, with no purpose that I could ascertain. Perhaps it was there to help kids understand how to…get on a pony, so it had to be short? Either way…I got a great photo of Ethan on the tiny short horse. Picture will be posted after this is written. Andy just figured out how to e-mail photos from one’s phone to flickr and have it load on one’s blog. The rest of my “weekend” has been spent running errands, doing laundry, playing with Jabberwocky, and catching up on sleep. Hope everyone else’s weeks have been going well!

Okay, I know it’s a little delayed. (10 days delayed in fact) But here is my Andy-Eric-Jordan’s 25th birthday bash blog. Friday night, Andy’s actual birthday, was spent with the neighbors grilling and having a tremendous time. After dark, however, the mosquitoes really started coming at us. Even with application of clean feel OFF insect repellent, those little blood suckers kept attacking. I’m not sure if that says something about the bug spray, or the fact that the mosquitoes were very hungry that night. By the time we surrendered, I had welts all over my legs. However, the itching couldn’t keep me from the massive amounts of laundry that had to be done before guests arrived. Cathy and Jordan were arriving from Houston that night. While Jordan was staying with Eric, Cathy was staying with us and probably had no desire to sleep on a puppy fur infested office couch. So, Andy and I vacuumed, cleaned, laundered, and dusted till Cathy made her entrance.

I had big plans of getting up early on Saturday to get ready for guests. Sadly, my sleepy head had different plans. Kat and Josh arrived from Austin around 10 in the morning. I got up at….9:55. The boys left to go play paintball at Xdrenaline Zone in North Richland Hills, not too far from our house. I have been paintball-ing previously, and have received all the welts that I could possibly desire. This time around, I wasn’t really in the mood to have lots of people shoot small paint pellets at me while I try to hide behind a bush. Instead, Kat and I made a shopping trip to the neighborhood Sephora. (Cathy wanted to sleep in) I love Sephora. What a pretty shiny place full of happy sparkly make-up just waiting to be tried on and taken home. I won’t scare you on how much stuff we bought, but isn’t it really more important that we were both very happy with our purchases?

We woke Cathy up for some tasty lunch at Beef O’ Brady’s. Which I drove past the other day and discovered they have changed their name to Dublin Square. After lunch, the very sweaty boys returned home in much need of water and showers. The rest of the afternoon was spent preparing food and decorating for the party. We put up banners, lights, balloons, picked up the cakes, set up tables, filled coolers, arranged food platters, and anything else necessary for a party to go smoothly.

I can’t express my gratitude enough toward Cathy and Kat for the tremendous amount of help they provided. While we were at the Albertson’s waiting for the nice but very young guy to fill up our balloons, he was really very slow, I looked through some thank you cards. I found one who’s entire “clever” gist (and I say “clever” in a sarcastic manner) was to fill the front with nonsensical phrases, one of which was “pony weasel”. The inside then said “because I couldn’t find the words to thank you enough”. I found this really quite obnoxious and shared the displeasing card with the other gals. We unanimously agreed that the term “pony weasel” should really become the next catch phrase, hence the title of this post. I’m doing my best to further this new term for thank you.

People started showing up at the house around 5:30. I think we had a total of 17 people, 2 kids, and one puppy. I was really quite astonished that we had almost enough seating for everyone that came! We served Andy’s outrageously delicious burgers, Cathy’s well mixed (not vomit looking) corn casserole, Kat’s tangy lemon pasta, baked mashed potatoes, fresh summer strawberries, mango (which is very difficult to cut in to a good serving size), grilled corn, chips of all varieties, and drinks galore. There was a lot of mingling, laughing, chatting, a little girl chasing Jabber around the house yelling “DO! DO!”, and playing of Guitar Hero. Sean very kindly brought his guitar and thus the battling began.

We all had some very tasty ice cream cakes from Marble Slab Creamery (Oreo and Double Dark Chocolate), a birthday song was sung very reluctantly and in various keys and speeds, presents were discreetly exchanged, and the evening wrapped up much too soon. The next morning, Kat, Josh, Cathy, Andy, and I went to Southlake Town Square for some brunch at the Cheesecake Factory. We all decided that very though tasty, the food portions were far too large and really quite wasteful. Who really needs a stack of french toast as large as one’s head? After the shock of sudden thunderstorm (surprise surprise), Kat and Josh braved the weather to head back to Austin.

Cathy, Jordan, Andy and I went to the theatre to watch Ratatouille. What a great movie! I will never stop marveling at how Pixar can come up with such cute and amusing movies. It’s fabulous and I highly recommend it. After the movie, Cathy and Jordan also headed out to return to Houston. Thus, Andy’s big birthday has come to a close. I feel it was a splendid success and plenty of people came to show their admiration for such a great fellow. Pictures have been posted in my gallery, so feel free to take a look! I apologize again for the sporadic posting, but my wacky work schedule attributes to most of the irregular blogs. More posting tomorrow, I promise. ^-^

Today is Andy’s birthday, his 25th in fact (if you couldn’t tell from the title). It occurred to me that we have a bunch of major birthdays in our teen years. Thirteen means you’ve finally become a teenager, much to the chagrin of your parents. Sweet sixteen…I was never really sure what that stood for, but it was important and I fought tooth and nail for a big sixteenth birthday party. Eighteen stands for finally getting to vote, serve the country, and buy smokes. When you’ve reached 20, you finally escape the angst-filled years of being a hormone raging teenager. College starts, and soon you’re turning 21, yay for alcohol!

From there on out, major birthdays become further apart. I mean, who’s ever heard of friends flying across the country for one’s very important 37th birthday? Birthdays are really only celebrated in 5 year increments from now on. This was really quite depressing, birthdays should be celebrated with friends and family, with as much vigor and celebratory spirit as one can muster! With that in mind, I decided to make this birthday for Andy a truly enormous and momentous occasion. After all, the next big birthday is the life changing 30.

So on my day off (today), I’ve been running all over town gathering supplies, food, and cleaning our house like mad. Jabberwocky thinks I’ve gone crazy, and has settled on the office couch to supervise my hard work. I surprised Andy at his office today with a small cake for him and his co-workers. I took a chance on a cute little local bakery (Busy B’s Bakery in Southlake), but in the end…it was too much frosting for my taste. Nice red velvet cake though, and even nicer chinese family that owns the bakery. I wasn’t aware that asian people liked sweets or cakes, but I stand corrected. With that said, I’m off to run a few more errands. I’ll be sure to post pictures and more stories as the weekend progresses. Make sure you’re a good friend and send your birthday wishes to Andy!!!