Blinding Us With Science

A recent IM conversation with my husband. We changed our home phone to Voice-Over-IP a while ago and he was looking at our account online. Apparently you can access your voicemail as well as see all incoming and outgoing calls to that number.

DH: hmm who is 918-555-1234
LPF: sounds familiar
DH: they have been calling quite a bit
LPF: doctor maybe?
DH: no don't think so
(at this point I am Googling the number to see who it is)
DH: called as recently as 2:08pm yesterday plus a bunch around 1:42
DH: on june 5th
DH: oh crap
DH: its me
LPF: ah
LPF: I knew it sounded familiar!
DH: :)


Turns out it was his work number. Remember way back before speed dial when you used to actually recognize not only your own phone number, but friends and family too?

Dude Looks Like A Lady

With long, straight, limpish hair and a tendency to abuse the snooze button in the morning, my daily hairstyle for the last several years has consisted of a single ponytail positioned high in the back of my head. This keeps it out of my eyes, and with that much length I can still pull hair in front of my shoulders if I want shaping around my face. But for whatever reason, I made a styling effort the other morning and wore my hair down to work for the first time in several months, possibly years. Certainly the first time at this office. I looked good and I felt girly.

The security guard in our building is required to see our badges every time we walk in, even though he sees me every morning and probably recognizes me by now. Today, of all days, he suffered a slip of the tongue.

"Good Morning sir. I mean ma'am. Good Morning Ma'am."

** facepalm **

Adding insult to injury - I told BizP about Security Guard's slip, and he dang near fell off his chair. I would have smacked him for finding it so funny, but the poor guy already couldn't breathe.


As if this was not bad enough. Later that day I went into the restroom to comb my hair. In front of the mirror, under apparently much BRIGHTER lights than I have at home, I found - 7 long gray hairs. Are you kidding me? Where have those been hiding? And why did they come out to play today of all days?


The one saving grace that day - Princess.

I got in the car after work, and told DigitalA about my day. He, of course, laughed. A good 10 minutes later, after having apparently spent much time investigating and pondering, Princess pipes up from her car seat behind me. "Mommy, your hair isn't gray. It's just tangles."


Awwww ... I love my little girl!

Top 10 Signs Your Blog Is Neglected:

10. You agonize for days to come up with a complete top 10 list, nearly quitting with only 8 items.


9. Your blog password is still l33t-speak for a tv show that went off the air in 2006.


8. One word - Tumbleweeds.


7. All the stories in your "to blog" notebook happened over 9 months ago.


6. Tap tap tap. Is this thing on?


5. Your weekly pageviews drops by more than 100%, driving users from every blog you've ever linked.


4. Your children have aged 4 years since your last "recent pictures" post.


3. Embarrassing stories about you appear in another person's blog more often than your own.


2. You want to track down the owners of the 2 resilient IP addresses that still check your blog everyday so that you can call them up and apologize in person. (L and Em - I'm sorry.)



And the number one sign that your blog is neglected:


1. Your username is LadyPatsFan. ;P




Hopefully this post is a sign of better (or at least more frequent) blogs to come. Stay tuned - same bat channel, some bat time to be determined at a later date.

Oops, I Did It Again

As if I don't have enough on my plate, I have decided to attempt Project 365 this year. I've been doing it since January, and so far, so good.

Project 365 has been around the photography world for several years, but has really taken the scrapping world by storm this year. The object is - take a picture a day for a year. Now, I'm a mom and a scrapper, you'd think I already did that. But believe it or not, there are days when I don't pick up the camera. But most of the time, I've been able to manage a picture a day, and an extra here and there to make up for any "missing" days.

I obviously won't be posting a picture to my blog everyday. I'm just not that organized. But periodically, as I finish them, I'll post my weekly layouts so you can see what types of photos we've been taking. Some photos will represent what we did that day. Some photos will represent something we do or use everyday. And some will just be cute things the kids do. I'm very interested in seeing how this looks when the year is finished.

Here we go!

JANUARY

I've decided to scrap my pictures in weekly layouts, with an additional monthly "cover sheet" so to speak. For January's monthly summary, I used close-ups of just part of the photo - kind of a teaser for what's to come. I used the larger photo blocks to spotlight some of the highlights of the month.

WEEK ONE

I'm following a Sunday to Saturday week, and 2009 started on a Thursday, so there are just 3 pictures for week one. This week's layout is a single pager, and will appear opposite the January summary page if I ever get this project printed or bound.

WEEK TWO

Starting with Week 2, my weekly layouts will be 2 pages. This week was a lot of everyday life shots - Squeegy hiding from the camera or playing with the dogs, an IM conversation between DH and Stringz, Giggles' Girl Scout patches, and Princess being cute.

WEEK THREE

Tuesday's photo is just Stringz standing by my desk, but the journaling is him explaining to me how they extracted the DNA from a strawberry in science lab that day. Giggles had a field trip to the aquarium with her Girl Scout troop, Saturday started Girl Scout Cookie season.

WEEK FOUR

Most of week 4's photos are everyday life - dinner, the fish, the cats - but it ended with my trip back to NH for my dad's 60th birthday. I was only able to back for the day, flying in Friday and home Sunday, but it was SO NICE to see family again. I can't wait until we can bring the kids back east again.

WEEK FIVE

This week we had an ice storm, our first dusting of snow, and Stringz became a teenager.


Credits: All the January pages were created with the Giggle kit by Digitreats.
The templates are:
January: January Template by Digitreats
Week 1: Project 365 Template 01 by MOriginals
Week 2: Project 365 Template 01 by Digitreats
Week 3: Project 365 Template 03 by MOriginals
Week 4: Project 365 Template 01 by Brenda Smith
Week 5: Project 365 Template 02 by Just 2 More Things

You Must Remember This

Mnemonics. Little tricks and rhymes to help you remember things. We all use them.

Some mnemonics are pretty universal, and most people have at least heard of them. "Thirty days hath September..." for the days of the months, "ROY G. BIV" for the colors of the rainbow. Leap years are evenly divisible by 4 but not 400.

Sometimes our references come from Pop Culture. Children's programs like Sesame Street have long used music to teach numbers and letters. Thanks to Schoolhouse Rock, there are thousands of thirty-somethings who can tell you about the Louisiana Purchase or sing the Preamble to the Constitution. I've heard songs that list all the 50 states in alphabetical order, the Presidents of the The United States in order, or all the Kings and Queens of England.

Some are more personal, something a teacher or a parent taught you that's a little different than how other people remember it. I can still hear my 10th grade french teacher whenever I spell professor - "It only takes one F to fail you." I've heard other variations, but in our house the planets were aligned in the order of "Mary's Violet Eyes Make Johnny Stay Up Nights Period."

And then, there are the inadvertent mnemonics. The family stories that you think of whenever a topic comes up that helps you remember a certain fact. Maybe you got only one question wrong on a test, and you always remember what cost you that perfect score. Maybe the correct answer was said or written in such a way that it became instantly memorable.

One summer holiday, we were sitting around the pool at my uncle's house, and the adults were playing Trivial Pursuit. (Quick, which decade was this?) My dad and his brothers and sisters liked to play in teams, and bounce answers off each other before giving the official answers. This also allowed the teams to ebb and flow as people arrived or departed, without disrupting the game. A precocious kid, I preferred to hang out with the adults, so I was the official card reader for both sides. (Oh, and by the way Regis? I came up with "Is that your final answer?" WAY before you did. You can make my royalty checks payable to LadyPatsFan...) The following question came up for my dad's team:

Who was the second person to walk on the moon?

Discussion ensued. "Well, of course, Neil Armstrong was the first." "Yes. And that was Apollo 11." "Did Apollo 12 touch down on the moon, or just orbit?" "I know Apollo 13 was supposed to and didn't make it, but was 12 scheduled to land?" "Who was in line for the Apollo 12 mission?" "Okay, now who would have been commander?" "Would the Commander have stepped out or stayed behind?"

I don't remember all the names and dates and assorted trivia that was tossed around during the discussion, but I remember it taking several minutes. And I don't remember the name of the astronaut that my Dad finally named as the second man to walk on the moon. But I will never, ever, forget the correct answer to this US History question.

me - "The correct answer is .... Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin"

.... long pause while everyone stared open mouthed at me ....

Dad - "Of course!" V8 head slap. "The guy behind Armstrong on the ladder!!!"

Ready To Run

There was an armed bank robbery in our city recently. Living in a major metropolitan area for the last 8 years, this is probably not an unusual situation. This particular robbery happened 1 1/2 blocks south of my office at right about lunch hour. Given that the "perp" fled north after the robbery, this put him at my intersection about 5-ish minutes after I walked through on my way to the library.

Did I see anything? No.

Did I hear anything? No.

Did I know anything about it? Not until I got back to the office and read about it on the local newspaper website.

So why am I so concerned? Why has reading about a robbery so close to me, at a time when I was out walking by, made me so nervous? Was it because I found out about it so soon after the non-encounter? Was it seeing the security camera picture of the really creepy looking disguise he wore? Or is it from growing up in CowPoke NH, and not yet being fully "city-fied"?

Whatever the reason, I'm thinking it will be safer to walk with OoRah or BizP in the future.

Wait a minute, you say. OoRah I understand, him being an ex-Marine and still large and intimidating. But doesn't BizP weigh something like 50 pounds soaking wet if he carries a 20 pound barbell? He doesn't exactly exude intimidation.

True. But like the hunter said while lacing up his tennies - "Dude, I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you."

I Sense A Disturbance In The Force

Last weekend I flew home to NH for 2 days to surprise my Dear Old Dad on his 60th birthday. We didn't tell him he was having a party. We didn't even tell him that he was coming over to little sister's house for dinner Saturday Afternoon until Friday, so he wouldn't stew over it and start figuring things out. We thought we were doing really well at keeping the secret. Until Saturday morning.

DOD looks at my step-mom, NR, that morning and out of the blue says "You know, the only surprise the girls could pull off would be if LPF was there." NR managed to answer to the effect that none of us could have afforded that, how would I get away, blah blah blah. Outwardly calm, inside she's screaming "YOU TWIT! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU FIGURED IT OUT!!" Hoping she diffused the situation, we continued with our plans.

Big Sis drove them over to the house, and when they arrived I handed my camera off to my cousin and hid around the corner where DOD couldn't see me. He comes in the house, and as he enters the living room he sees all the family gathered around. Then I came around the corner. His response? An emphatic "I KNEW IT!"



How did he know? He says he "just had a feeling."