making it up as i go along
Our new bed was delivered Saturday morning. It's bee-yoo-tee-ful! We're so excited to have it. It means that pillows don't fall back between the bed and the wall and our cable hook-up doesn't keep getting pulled out. Plus, it's very pretty. Yet another piece of grown-up furniture … it's getting scary around here. 
We've had a real low-key weekend. We've been watching TV and doing a little shopping and those other things that fill time like reading and cleaning and working out.
I'm one of those freaks who loves rain. I'm not depressed or anything, but I like the sounds that it makes and I like how the world looks when it's raining. So I'm quite happy to wake up and see rain … and that's what has happened today.
Getting lots of work done is a rain bounus. You don't want to go out and it feels pretty darn good to stay in since you can look out at all that pretty rain. I've got my Sex and the City playing in one corner of my screen and Dreamweaver cranked up in the rest of it. May is very patiently sitting by my chair in hopes that I might decide to reach down and pet her or find something for her to eat.
Relaxed. Peaceful. Rain.
Wow. It hasn't been this warm here for months. It's gotta be at least 40 degrees outside. It's not exactly sunny, or pretty (since the snow is all weird icky colors and the grass is saturated with water) but it feels better out there. According to The Weather Channel, it'll be like this for at least the next 10 days. I can definitely live with that.
I cannot believe it's already Thursday. This week has absolutely flown by. I've been quite low on energy. I don't know whether it's cabin fever or that I've been missing my multi-vitamin or something else. Blah
I'm doing my morning ritual of sitting at the computer, web-surfing and waiting for my Special K to digest. I just noticed that Special K has its own website. That, of course, is not a surprise. So I went to pay it a visit, just for kicks.
It's actually pretty stupid. I was quite annoyed to find that one of Kay's (their very skinny mascot) tips was to shop a half off shoe sale. “That'll really burn calories,” she confides. The whole thing is kind of sexist and insulting. I won't be back and personally, I think Kellogs wasted perfectly good money getting that site developed.
It's after 10 and I'm still not quite awake. I worked myself damn hard yesterday and so I had a bit of a lie-in this morning.
Now I'm sitting here, surfin' the net. I've been looking at J Crew's web site. I normally never go there. The clothes do not fit me. But I was looking on Gap and they don't have dresses … just skirts. So I was wanting to look at some dresses. I actually quite like the dresses at J Crew. They've got really nice clean simple lines in good colors. They kind of make me think of Breakfast at Tiffany's or another movie set in that era.
We had a very nice weekend. Matt's lil' sister came to visit and we did all of the interesting things you can do in Madison … mainly went shopping in Chicago and stayed home and watched DVDs.
We made some cookies too … I'll post the recipes for those later. They turned out very well. This is boring. I'm going
I don't go in for politics much. It's all conflicty and confrontational and most of the time very little gets resolved … just posturing and talking. But you can't be totally oblivious of politics right now. It's kind of anywhere.
Anyhow, here's a couple of things to gauge your political stance:
Political Compass measures you right to left and authoritative to libertarian. If you care, I'm like 3 to the right and 3 towards liberatarian (if you're plotting it on a cartesian plain, I'm 3,-3).
President Match rates your matchiness to a particular candidate. It chose GW for me at 100%, which is bollox because I don't agree with him on a LOT of the issues, but I must say that he's probably about as close as I can get to a match on a candidate … but certainly not 100% 
I think British English (proper, not cockney) sounds really nice and I quite dig the accent. But more than the sound and accent, I really like some of the words. A smattering for your consideration:
+ Bodge: to (less than carefully) fix something, as in, “My dad bodged up the toaster with a bit of foil and some gum.
+ Arse: often used instead of butt, but it can also be used like this: “I can't be arsed to get out of my chair and find the remote so I'm watching golf on TV.” Which of course, means that that person can't be bothered. Great phrase.
+ Bollox: This is sort of like a substitute for crap. As in, “That's bollox!” or “He's talking a load of bollox.”
+ Load: a bunch of … whatever
+ Bung: to throw, as in, “Bung me that book, will ya?”
+ Mate: a friend
+ Rate: to fancy (like) someone, as in, “I really rate your cute older brother.”
+ Dodgy: means “sketchy”, as in “I wouldn't walk down that street late at night. It's a bit dodgy.”
+ Fit: good looking, as in, “Brad Pitt is quite fit.”
+ Kip: a nap
+ Porkies: Lies … this is one of the weird Cockney rhyming words. Porkies is actually short for “pork pies” which rhymes with lies. Get it? Me neither. Anyhoo, the Brits have loads of these words. I think it's a rather confusing custom.
+ sack: to fire someone, as in, “I was sacked for making copies of my arse.”
+ snog: to make out
+ spend a penny: to go to the bathroom
+ starkers: to be stark naked
+ ta: thanks!
+ sad: pathetic
+ poof: gay man, as in “Queer-Eye is about five poofs …”
+ jumper: sweater
Here's a nice British-American English dictionary. Funny.
Did you know:
+ Bananas were discovered by Alexander the Great more than 2000 years ago in 327 BC
+ They weren't officially introduced into the US, however, until the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876
+ The average American consumes over 28 pounds of bananas each year
+ The banana plant is actually not a tree … it's the world's largest herb.
+ Bananas are America's #1 fruit.
– From the back of the Strawberry Banana Cheerios Box
I sometimes watch Oprah After the Show since it's on right after Roseanne. I think the most annoying part of the show is all of these women who are so in love with Oprah and their dream is to meet her and they do and they just gush and gush. And I hate to rag on anyone's dream, but that's kind of a crummy one. You didn't DO anything. You flew to Chicago and took a cab to the show and sat in a freakin' seat. Get a life. I would hope you could come up with a better life-long-dream than that.
There are also the annoying guests that want Oprah to do something for them. This one today wanted Oprah to “be her mentor.” Yea right. Someone with a magazine and a daily TV show and a zillion other commitments has time to mentor some random person from her audience. Why don't they edit those annoying people out.
Matt has just informed me that he'll be home late which presents me with a dilemma. What to do for dinner. I don't feel like cooking since it's just for me, but I am hungry (or well I will be) and there's nothing really for a pick-up dinner.
I just got back from lifting weights. I don't usually feel this tired after lifting weights, but I didn't get quite enough sleep last night so I'm guessing that's the problem.
Hmmm… getting hungry. 
It's been a very busy weekend. We've done lots of stuff. We went to Kites on Ice. It was a lot of fun. You go out on the frozen lake (I'd never done that before!) and watch all of these internationally known kiters do their stuff. The kites are massive and some of them can do really cool stuff with their kites. It's fun to see all of the little kids and the various puppies that are there. There was a gorgeous Husky. Matt and I realized too late that we should have brought May. But it was probably for the best. She would have had to walk a lot and she doesn't like that so much these days.
We had a nice V-day dinner too. 
We cooked lobster, which came out very nicely. And we cooked some amaretto tarts that wer excellent.
As part of our V-day festivities, we re-purposed our coffee-table. It got damaged when we moved and it's never been quite right since then. So we took off the top and put the two ends on top of each other to make a very nice bookcase. Then we put up our new coffee table this morning. It looks darn good and we didn't lose any storage space.
We also danced for about an hour today. We're getting way better at it. Now we can do Light Mode stuff without too much trouble. We're still quite white though. 