Hot enough to fry eggs

Well, almost. It was so hot today that a reporter at the local news radio station tried to cook dinner on his car dashboard - bacon, brocoli, a cheese sandwich, and chocolate chip cookies. Still looks a little underdone to me....

How'd they do this?...

Ok, alot of times the trick is easy to figure out, but I guess there must be some mathematical rule at work here that I don't know about (of course that could include quite a few rules of math given my ancient grades in that area) ... give it a try! http://digicc.com/fido/

Redecorating

Got bored so redecorated my blog. It's cheaper than redecorating my office and I did that a while back anyway (I love IKEA....and it's just down the road...sigh.)

Woot.com contest

Ok, Whitney inspired me, so I decided to give the www.woot.com contest a go. I love playing in paintshop anyway.

March on out and see this!

Cyndy and I took our parents to see "March of the Penguins" today. Great movie! A documentary actually, about the life of Emperor penguins in the antarctic, more specifically the amazing hardships they go through to find a mate and protect their young in incredibly harsh elements. Suffice it to say you wouldn't find me on the film crew! The movie is worth it just for the footage of the stuffed toy looking baby penguins. Cute, cute, cute.

Game

Do you and your family and friends have some strange game you've made up that you play? Cyndy and I have one we play at flea markets and antique stores. It actually has two variations, it's either "Ugly wedding gift", where we each try to find the most perfectly awful, ugly object that we'd like to give as a wedding gift to someone we didn't like, or "Ugly decorator house", where we mentally furnish a house as we walk through the store, with the ugliest, most bizarre stuff we can find. Cyndy wasn't with me this time, but I played anyway. It was all lamps this time. This was the grandprize winner...it's not a good photo because I took it with my cellphone, but it has three ugly lampshades, kind of hung inside each other and each hanging a bit lower as they get smaller, over a base consisting of a swooping ceramic modern sculpture around a crackled "crystal ball". Priceless.

Interesting website

Check out my new favorite website, www.woot.com. They sell one thing a day. It's a different thing each day and it can be anything from a $699 computer to a $1 paper bag of unknown bits and pieces they are cleaning out of their warehouse. When they run out of the day's item they stop selling anything til they put the next day's item on sale at midnight (CST). I haven't bought anything there, yet, but I love it just for how they write the descriptions of themselves and the products. In the FAQ section is says "Q. What are my shipping options? A. Currently, your shipping options are limited. An item can ship if you order it, or not ship if you don’t."...lol.

Favorite book

Was surfing around half.com and was reminded of one of my all time favorite books, The Snowgoose by Paul Gallico (you can get a copy there for 80c....hint, hint). It's short but exquisite like a little gem. Set at the beginning of WWII in the marshes along the coast of England, it's the story of a young local girl, a recluse painter, and a snowgoose blown off-course and into their lives by a storm. No matter how many times I read it I am always moved by it and I love it even though it makes me cry. Of course, Paul Gallico never wrote anything that wasn't a great read. He's up there with Neville Shute and Rumer Godden as one of my favorite authors. Which reminds me, I can't mention Rumer (yes, I've heard that's who Demi Moore named her daughter after, but I don't hold that against her) without urging you to get a copy of China Court. I have to thank my mom for turning me onto that wonderful book. It's a historical romance kind of in the Wuthering Heights-ish style, although maybe just a tad less gothic. Ok, I'll stop now before I can't fight the urge any longer to list all of my favorite other books by these authors!

What are you listening to?

What's in your headphones these days? I've been listening to three cd's alot these days, depending on my mood....

Coldplay's latest, "X&Y", great cd, something very ethereal about it, and I absolutely love the last track.

KT Tunstall's "Eye to the Telescope". Have had this for a few months now and still love it. Part folk, part edgy alt-rock, part whatever she feels like. Currently pretty much unknown Scottish-Chinese singer-songwriter from the UK, she'll be well known soon I'd bet. Love the Black horse and the cherry tree song even though I still have no clue what it means!

The Jive Aces "Dance all Night". Just got this and it's fantastic! More cool party music than big hall swing, has a nice sophisticated edge to it, but is still fun.

Course when all else fails and I'm not in the mood for anything I throw on Andrea Boccelli's sacred arias and really confuse the neighbors, they must think I have multiple personalities....lol.

Another movie

Saw another good movie on dvd this weekend, although a world apart from the Judi Dentch one, literally...lol. Finally saw "Bride and Prejudice", the bollywood take off on Jane Austen. It's great... kind of corny lines, improbably situations, and some wooden acting here and there... but it's just so cheerful and colorful that its endearing. And probably the only movie where you'll see an musical number including mariachi singers, a gospel choir and baywatch lifeguards all mixed together on the beach...lol.

New hobby

Thought I'd post a few pics of my new hobby. I tend to lose interests in crafts once I figure out how to do them, so no telling how long this will last...lol. Cyndy, and our friend, Linda, are also playing around with this stuff, so we'll probably get a table at a local craft fair to see if we can sell some. I've sold about $70 worth to friends who saw stuff they liked, but I hate selling to friends because I'd rather just give it to them, but can't afford to...lol. I like the wire wrapping the best, I think that's the most fun. I have more pics at this album .

Ladies in Lavender

Saw a wonderful movie last night. It's only showing around here for a few more days and in just one theater and I almost didn't notice it. Washington is horrible for foreign and arthouse films. You'd think they would be easy to find in such a world capitol but most of the theaters that show stuff like that have shut down over the last few years, they just want to show the big hollywood blockbusters. Anyway...... saw "Ladies in Lavender" starring Judith Dench and Maggie Smith. And the male lead was the young actor from another favorite of mine, "Goodbye Lenin". This is a great film, a little bit sad and wistful, a little bit funny, and shot in drop dead gorgeous countryside in Cornwall. It's the story of two older sisters living on the coast who find a young foreign musician washed up on the beach one morning. The actress who plays their housekeeper almost steals the show, it's worth it almost just to watch her scenes. Any of you reading this locally, it's showing at the theater in old town Greenbelt thru Thursday.

Teapot Purse

Ok, on someone else's blog I mentioned my teapot purse the other day and someone wanted to see it, so here it is in all it's glory (the black/white fuzzy thing to the left is my cat Grover who insisted on helping with the photo shoot).

The clasp is the "tag" from an imaginary teabag and there is a mirror and the lid is a changepurse, there is also a little mirror on the underside of the lid. They had it in brighter colors like red and green and orange, but I decided tan was more subtle and versatile, or at least as subtle as a teapot purse can be...lol. I got it at Bluewater Mall just outside London, the biggest shopping mall in Europe, at one of my favorite shops, Octopus. Don't ask me why it's named that, but it carries all sorts of offbeat colorful stuff. Most of my friends are horrified by this purse and cringe when I use it in public..lol...but that just makes me use it even more.

Laundry origami

I don't know why I'm posting this since I've already shown it to EVERYBODY, but in case I missed you, this is so cool, I wonder what she does with her jeans...
http://www.chicagoist.com/archives/2004/11/17/japanese_t-shirt_magic.php

Go to this site and then click on the wording that is underlined that says, "this rockin' laundry folding method," and watch how easy it is to fold a t-shirt. I tried it and it REALLY works!!

Cough..cough..sneeze...

Lot of cobwebs around here! Guess this poor old blog is evidence of my often too short attention span...lol. But will try to do better! If you want to see how a blog should be done, check out my good friend (and fantastic author!), www.matthewpaulturner.com and his blog.

Finally saw "War of the Worlds" yesterday and seeing it the day after the horrible attacks in London put a different spin on it, at least to me. It was a good reminder that nothing Mr. Spielberg and his pals can whip up will stand up against the real thing. True horror in all it's unique, breathtaking and banal examples will trump multi-million dollar special effects each time. The only parts of the movie that really shook me were "people moments" between Tom's character and his kids, scenes that would have been at home in any genre of film....western, horror, adventure, etc., the sci-fi stuff was secondary.

And speaking of Tom Cruise, how scary is it that he is beginning to look more normal on-screen than off!?

One last random thought on the London events..... how weird and telling of our era is it that a good friend just outside of London didn't hear about the bombings until I called to check on him? He'd been outside all day painting and hadn't been near any newscasts. On 9/11 he'd heard about it before I did. Kind of amazing that our world has grown so small in some ways that news from down the street can be learned from people a continent away as easily as from the nextdoor neighbor.