Blogging from my e-mail

Here H.n.B. I'm not doing this begrudingly. I actually have been wanting to try this since I asked you how to do it months ago and totally ignored the e-mail with the instructions until it mysteriously disappeared on me. Since I'm in my e-mail, I'm copy+pasting something from an e-mail Easel sent me since she's the only one that really does forwards anymore and I seem to enjoy getting the ones like this. So here's the part about November Babies:

NOVEMBER BABY

Trustworthy and loyal. Very passionate and

dangerous. Wild at times. Knows how to have fun.

Sexy and mysterious. Everyone is drawn towards

your inner and outer beauty and independent

personality. Playful, but secretive. Very emotional

and temperamental sometimes. Meets new people

easily and very social in a group. Fearless and

independent. Can hold their own. Stands out in a

crowd. Essentially very smart. Usually, the

greatest men are born in this month. If you ever

begin a relationship with someone from this month,

hold on to them because their one of a kind. repost

in 5 mins & you will excel in a major event coming

up sometime this month.

Mindless TV

I'm forever getting on to Poly about his mindless TV, whether it's Deal or No Deal or Parental Control (but that one's pretty good, I must admit. I'm a sucker for MTV reality). This time, I've found my junk reality TV. It's called Beauty and the Geek. I slightly remember when they first started advertising this show on the WB and thinking it was a bunch of crap. I think most reality shows are a bunch of crap. A few weeks ago, Mehsha was down sick and missed the Sunday meeting. When we came home, she was veging watching Beauty and the Geek. I got sucked in. That quickly. All of five minutes had passed since I walked into the house and I was hooked on the show.

The concept is pretty basic. Eight "beauties" are paired off with eight "geeks" and they are supposed to benefit from the experience. Most of them say they do. I don't know how sincere the first couple that gets eliminated can say that, but I know the last two couples have definitely learned something. Each episode, there are two challenges. One for the guys to learn more about etiquette and dating, girls in general. The girls' challenge is supposed to help them learn more over all. The winner of the girls' challenge protects herself and her partner from the elimination round and the winner of the guys' challenge does the same. Each group gets to pick who they want to go to the elimination round. In the elimination round, the girls are tested on the things that they were supposed to learn and study for their challenge and the guys are tested on things that they did for their challenge. Overall, it sounds fairly boring with me just explaining it, but when you put the ditziest and prettiest girls in with the brainiest and dorkiest guys, it makes for quite the entertaining show. There are tons of funny quirks that accompany a reality TV show, like the fact that after the guys walk out and present themselves to the girls, a girl must pick the guy and then they have to pick a bedroom. The weird thing about the bedrooms is, some of them have two twin beds and some of them have a queen bed. That makes for some interesting points in the show. (Not like that. Shame, shame...) Of course, there's the unavoidable reality show drama, etc. Typically, you have to shoot me in the head, tie me to the chair, and sit me right up at the TV to get me to watch reality shows, but this one is so much fun and I really like to watch it.

At this point, MTV is playing reruns of the show daily. They play two episodes at 5 PM and 6 PM. Now, the CW (UPN and the WB meshed together) is embarking on the third season Wednesday, January 3rd at 8 PM. I've finally found some Wednesday night TV, and it's quite hilarious. Check it out.

The first supper

I'm still quite excited about this, so I'm going to give a quick shout about it on the blog. I cooked dinner for the first time from scratch last night! It's pretty miraculous considering I cooked, it was edible, and it didn't involve rice. I made spinach and ricotta cheese ravioli. It was tasty. I was in EarthFare yesterday and I looked in the frozen foods case and saw ravioli. I asked mom and she said that we could have them for dinner. So I started pulling them all out and looking at the ingredients. Well, everyone of them said "may contain nuts." I can't stand that. So I was bummed for a moment and then mom said that we can make our own and she would teach me. You guys wouldn't believe how easy it is to make pasta from scratch! Though we had a mishap where the egg mixture broke through the flour dam and went all over the counter, we fixed it and I did it by myself. Mom supervised and helped with the filling since there was no recipe for it. It was absolutely cool to cook my own dinner, and it not be beans and rice. It kinda gave me the idea that if I had the resources, I'd like to make my own food completely nut free and like market it places. There are tons of people with peanut and nut allergies and I'm sure they get just as frustrated as I do, and my mom for that matter. She told me I had to start learning how to cook my own stuff or I won't ever get to eat anything but rice when I move out on my own.

I'm no longer opposed to learning how to cook. It's actually fun.

P.S.- I'm babysitting until 11 PM tonight. Just had to share that too.

Can't wait til April

So I've been planning on this since I had my phone for a year on July 4th (yeah, national holiday. We thought it would be a good day to renew our service). Shortly after I got my phone, maybe six months, I was steeped in txting. It's probably a hobby of mine by now. Definetly a habit if not a hobby. I would say habit because it costs me money- a lot of money usually, but it's too much fun to quit. When I started I knew that I would need something with more of a key board than just my 12 button number pad. So I started looking at the different multimedia phones with the full or extended key pad. Well, I'm all for cute, and none of the ones Cingular had were cute enough for me. Blackberry. Cute (and yummy) name. Not to cute phone. A few weeks ago, I stopped in the Cingular store to just look and see if they were cuter in person or something wasn't on the web. There's no getting me to leave Cingular. We've been with them since "Bellsouth Wireless." Whatever the motivation, I wanted to look and see about new phones. I'm slightly lost and the guy behind the counter can see that but he was really nice to me and asked me what I was looking for. I explained that I was looking to get a new phone (duh. Why else would I be standing in front of a display of phones?). I gave him some details of what I wanted, and that my biggest requirement was that it have a key pad with all the letters on it and I didn't have to press multiple times to get the letter I wanted. He showed me the few that they had and I said I wasn't too keen on Blackberry because they just weren't quite me. ( I didn't tell the clerk they weren't cute enough. I wanted him to take me a little more seriously than that.) He then tried to win me over to the Blackberry side. I am easily swayed. He showed me his and was bragging about sending paragraph long txts. I said I did than anyway, it just took so long. He knew what I was talking about. He let me test his out and try some different features. It was so WAY cooler than my little flip piece of junk that has begun to look like a piece of junk. Although the Blackberry was very alluring, I told him it just didn't seem to be what I was looking for. He must have been able to tell that I was looking for one cuter and told me that Blackberry was coming out with a new phone. The Blackberry Pearl. He showed me that website on the Internet (on his phone) and I was quite taken. This phone is so for me. It doesn't have seprate keys for each of the letters of the alphabet, but it meets every other criteria so the fact that some letters share keys doesn't matter to me. Its smaller than the other Blackberry products and that's a big thing for me. I didn't want something so bulky, even though I carry around bags big enough to put a file cabinet in. Plus, it would be perfect since I don't have Internet at my house, I can use it on the phone with a usage plan. It's just exactally what I want. It's just going to take some saving on my end, but I'll be there by April.

It's it loverly?

Out of his element

Well, I'm doing the whole blog at the library thing right now. Can't seem to get in touch with mom for some reason, so stopping here didn't seem like a big deal, though I'm starved and mentally exhausted from going on Eliza Jones' studies with her this afternoon.

Severly disappointed I'm missing Easel's first recital in a very long time tonight. Severly. It's all around free and any concert she's ever done has always sounded wonderful. Totally severly disappointed.

Now for a quickish blog:
Today we worked some territory in Athens, since that's where we meet on Wednesdays. Once again, Andy and I were put together. It's been some time since we were put together two days in a row, so it doesn't bug me that much, but it's either making Deborah Clasky mad as heck or it just tickles her because she always brings it up. Anyway, he has territory in the elite part of town. It's the equivalent of Buckhead to Atlanta. So we're back there working and we go to this one house. It was a fairly nice old lady, but she didn't want us to come back- ever, so we told her we'd make a note of it. Turns out, it's already on the back of the card. Andy had already made a mental note of it, he told me as we walked away from the house, and that he had forgotten in the whole 60 seconds it took him to get up to the door. Bless his heart. So for the next few doors we talked about ailments and he's so an old man when it comes to aches and pains. It cracks me up since lately, I've had the immune system of a horse. (Watch me get pneumonia this winter...) Well, we round the corner and the prez of the homeowners association asks us to leave and says that they consider the work of the lord to be soliciting as well. We finished that street and moved on to one further back on a boundary. Again, someone mentioned that we were considered soliciting in their neighborhood, (which you can't really call it a neighborhood. They just put a sign out front and want to keep us out but it's still all city owned back in there.) So then a cop comes down the street and asks us if we were soliciting anything and that he had gotten a few calls. Andy very diplomatically says that we aren't selling anything and we aren't asking for money, just sharing a scripture. The cop says fine and goes along. He really didn't care anyway. We finish up the street and leave, just to keep the peace for those old windbags back there. Andy who was head of the group despite having two elders with us, decides it's time for a break. We're awfully close to just about everything back in that area, so he suggests Race Trac. Dimwitt excitedly asks if we can break at Earth Fare. Andy looks a little worried, but we give him directions and we all get out for a snack. Everyone else is inside, and Andy and I are walking in and he stops me and says, "You gotta help me. I didn't want to tell Dimwitt, but I've never been here." FINALLY! MY ELEMENT! We're in downtown Athens at the health food store, where we shop weekly. It's like being in some parts of Atlanta and if I close my eyes I can imagine I'm in Five Points or the Virginia Highlands and I'm not so homesick anymore. So like a little puppy dog, I take him around the store and show him where the drinks are and snacky type stuff and tell him that I'll be at the coffee counter getting a latte. He wanders around for a while and calls me on my cell saying he's kinda lost. So I go get him and he pays while I finish waiting on my drink. When I'm done, I find Dimwitt has walked out the door and so I follow to see Andy in the van. I asked him how his experince was. His exact words were, "I felt like Joe Dirt when he messed something up and all he could say was 'I'm new here! I'm new here! I don't know what to do!" We busted up laughing and I told him that now he knows what I felt like in Race Trac. It was quite funny, but I guess you had to be there.

Still two more things to blog about, but I guess those will have to wait.

All we could think of was...

Well, I have a few things to cover before I get to that.

I swore that I would never cook dinner for Contessa's dad, who shall now be Mountain Man- at least until I can think of something better, but microwaving some mac-n-cheese and steaming some veggies and picking up a rotisserie chicken isn't dinner. And even if you want to call it cooking dinner, I'm doing it for Contessa. Since her father has started seriously seeing a sister, she and I have really bonded. I got back from Atlanta and didn't get to pick her up until 4:30 from Deborah Clasky's house. Deborah babysits on Thursdays and was happy to pick her up for me and I was very grateful, since I was having a good time spending the rest of last month's pay check with peeps from Baltimore at the AmericasMart. When I picked her up, of course I walked right in and scared the beejesus out of Andy and she ran and jumped into my arms. Three months ago, that would have never happened. She and I are pretty good friends now, and I am so happy for that.

Oh a big "what up home fries" from the Mehsha corner. She misses you all in our dwindling blog land and if she had access to a compy, she would be blogging. There's plenty for her to say. And so much that I want to blog about, but just don't have the access to. Definetly like the new phone that I want to get and the mindless TV that I have finally indulged in and totally love. It's depressing, but so lets get one thing I wanted to blog about out of the way:
This Thanksgiving weekend, we drove to see my Grandmama T. She had her gallbladder taken out two weeks ago and we went to visit her and help her out. She went out for the first time today to go to the chiropractor. She feels great. It was an emergency surgery because she developed pancreatitis and that's pretty serious. People die from that. So we went to help her out this weekend and it was an OK trip. I knew it wasn't going to be a top ten, if anything a bottom ten trip. (I did find a spiffy brown corduroy blazer on sale that's perfect and there was no tax in SC. Don't know about here...) Overall, the best part about the trip was the ride we take now going and coming. We take I-20 to Columbia and then 521 I think is the number, but we do some bypassing now and go thru cities like Manning and Andrews that we didn't go by before. Manning is a cute city. We haven't stopped there yet, but it doesn't look as podunk as some of the other cities we drive thru (i.e.- Rembert and Salters). On the other side of Manning, there is this farm with goats. As we were going thru there on Thursday, there was this brown blob running across the road. It looked almost big enough to be a small horse, but we knew it wasn't. Man was it running fast. We got closer to see it was a fairly large goat and watched it hop the fence. Then there was a white and brown splotched one that hopped over after it that was even bigger. The brown one ran into the little shack there and all of the other goats (about 15) were just staring at the only brown one that had just run across four lanes of "traffic" and a wide median. Those of us in the car (mom, Mehsha, and me) were just dumb-founded at this event. All we could decide was that they were bored since nothing was open and it was Thanksgiving. The other splotched goats dared the smaller brown one to run across the road to the field across the street and eat some grass and then run back. The other goat that had hopped the fence but was still on the right side of the road was over the fence so that he could see and time the brown one because he had to do all of this in 30 seconds or less. That was the most logical explanation. When we came back through on Sunday, they were all laying down asleep, obviously still exhausted from the dare on Thursday.

Goats are not very cute farm animals and I couldn't ever move to South Carolina.

I miss this thing

I could literally write a novel now. Right now. All here. I feel indebted to my blog and the fact that it's been horribly neglected lately for my pen and paper ( which somehow always seems to win over keyboard and fingers). I've been saving this link up for quite a while and I'm just hoping that H'n'B hasn't posted it before, but I'm sure most of you all ready know these because you're cool like that.:
http://www.neatorama.com/2006/07/24/the-25-most-important-questions-in-the-history-of-the-universe/
Have fun. This one is good too.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/
There's too much going on right now to try and tell y'all about it.