ColorMePink!

Themes for Gmail! Unfortunately there is a startling lack of pink themes.  I don’t think you still need an invitation for gmail, but if you do and you’d like one, let me know; I’ve got a hundred of them.

Is anyone besides me usingHULU?  This week alone, I’ve watched Nanny and the Professor, The Facts of Life (it’s worth sitting through the bad acting for a young George Clooney), you can search by show name, or episode, they have movie trailers and even full length movies with “limited commercial interruption”.  I haven’t been running around there for very long, but it looks promising and the video quality is definitely better than YouTube.

The highlight was watching my good friend John share a song with Miley Cyrus. Yeah, my house is anticipating this movie… If you’re reading John, great job (and I love you)!

As long as people keep taking photographs, we’ll always have AATIF fodder! Look at these!(Some of them might be considered, um… less than tasteful)

Also, Monty Python has launched their own YouTube Channel.  “Always look on the bright side of life!”

I’m in a mood this year.  I don’t know why, but merely the thought of preparing a holiday meal, or decorating, or putting up the tree makes me break out in hives.  And the thought of gift shopping?  Yeah, I’m not feeling it this year.  It’s not that I’m depressed or anything, cause I’m most definitely not - as a matter of fact, I’m feeling pretty good.  I think I just need a break this year.  You see, no one in my house actually likes turkey.  We love all the sides, and we make a ton of them, but we find the smallest turkey in existence every year and cook that.  We’ve considered just doing a breast, but then we’d have to get the giblets and such from the butcher and we live in Ocala, FL so the butcher is basically the guy at the meat counter at Publix.  So yesterday we had a family meeting and everyone threw out ideas about what their perfect Thanksgiving would look like this year.  When all was said and done, the overwhelming opinion was that we would all prefer seafood.

I called the three restaurants in town that I would consider eating out at on Thanksgiving Day and they’re all closed, so we sat back down at the table and decided on a menu for a Stay at Home, Non-Traditional, Thanksgiving Day Meal.

We’ve decided on:

• small lobster tails, broiled
• shrimp (for everyone but me, I’m allergic), boiled
• crab legs, steamed
• scallops, seared and sauteed

Yum, right?  And easy.  We also thought that this would be great with linguine or fettucine in a garlic cream sauce.  I can’t totally see this, can’t you?  A big, steaming bowl of pasta with all this beautiful seafood and a lovely bottle of wine for the grown ups.  Yeah, I can do this.  I think this is a great decision for us this year.  And the hives are gone.

Oh and I’m looking for new ideas for a special garlic cream sauce, so if you’ve got one, please share it.

I have an 8 month old Irish Wolfhound/Elk Hound Puppy mill rescue.  She is so sweet she’d give you a toothache, but she has a chewing issue. Among her victims are the headset to the XBox 360, my daughter’s slipper, a dry erase marker (I found her before she got to the ink), the plastic feet on the bowflex, treadmill and gazelle (all this equipment, I should be skinny right?  Ok - different issue.)

The other day I went to Petco to find toys for her - we had previously purchased the “indestructible” hard rubber tire which she proceeded to shred into little, tiny pieces all over the living room.  Squeaker toys are out of the question, even with supervision, I think these are too dangerous, especially for her.  I got her some compressed rawhide, which is supposed to last longer and while we were looking, an associate came over and asked if he could help.  I told him the situation and her breed and he laughed.  That’s right, he laughed at my dilemma.  Bastard. He suggested the toys that you put the Peanut Butter, or the dog friendly spray cheese and I told him that there wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d be putting gooey, organic matter into a toy and leaving it on the floor.  Hello?  We live in Florida… Have you seen the bugs? Do you know that canned cheese and peanut butter are going to attract the nastiest, most vile insects on the planet?  Plus… How do I clean these things?  Run them through the dishwasher with the plates that I eat on?  I don’t freaking think so.   Our new friend told us that they make dog treats that you can stick in them as well and that they’re just like dog cookies!  So, we bought the second to the largest Kong toy that they make (It was $20!!) and a box of treats that were $8.  This better be worth it was what I wanted to say to him as they rang up our purchase. (more…)

In the interest of saving money, (we are all looking to save money, right?) there’s Cheapcooking.com - lists of recipes on the cheap for the novice or the more experienced cook.  Cause I know I run out of answers to the question, “What’s for dinner?” all the time!  There’s a whole section for turkey and sides!

And just because I plan to use more pomegranates this season, here’s a link on how to easily cut them and a recipe for a Christmas Eve Salad that I might just have to have.

For my friends and family, there’s a great resource for DIY mental health and help!  Of particular interest is the article “In a Novel Theory of Mental Disorders, Parents’ Genes Are in Competition“

It’s a very interesting and useful article that proposes a theory that there is a tug of war between parental genes and that the father’s genes are biased toward an  interest in mechanical things, patterns, and objects, and a reduction of social development skills that can lead to disorders on the autistic spectrum.  While the mother’s genes are more predisposed to sensitivity to moods in themselves and others, which can lead to disorders such as Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder or Depression.

Shit, I’m screwed.

Blocked?  Got nothing?  Need a Prompt?

In Photography, Smashing Magazine’s (Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos

In conclusion, as usual - we’ll end with a great video.  This one was sent to me by my cousin Suzanne, another one with no blog! *gasp*

Women In Film

Remember “Freestyle” music? You know, Alisha’s “All Night Passion“, Sa-Fire’s “Boy I’ve Been Told“, Expose’s “Let Me Be the One“?  Go ahead, click on the links, dance around a little, I’ll wait here.

Ok, now I’ll tell you something else - I still listen to this stuff. I used to have hundreds, no really hundreds, of these songs on vinyl, the 12″ extended remixes and I played them to death.  The music makes me just get up and dance and I’ll tell you something else: the couple of years that this stuff was so popular, all I did was dance.  It was also, surprise surprise, the skinniest time of my life!  But I digress.  I loved this music and I still do.  Unfortunately there was a time when I had to put all of my things in storage and the facility told me that the units were climate controlled, but they lied.  All of those beautiful pieces of vinyl were melted beyond recognition when I hauled them out of storage.  I thought these songs were lost to me forever.

A couple of years ago, this music started to slowly show up on Itunes and I was overjoyed… little by little I started to grow my collection and now I’ve acquired quite a bit of my original collection.  At $.99 a song, it’s really easy to, song by song, grow your music library.  Of course when you look back through your Itunes invoice history and realize that you could have bought a car with all the money you’ve spent, you might get a little sick to your stomach, but that’s another story and shall be told at another time.

Enter the “genius” sidebar in Itunes 8 and now we have issues.  I click on a song and Itunes very conveniently lists all of the other songs by that artist as well as recommendations based on feedback and purchases made by the Itunes community.  Example:  I click on click on “Heartbeat” by Seduction and I get a listing of all the other songs by Seduction that are available for purchase, ooh and look “It takes Two” I forgot about that one.  (There’s an album of their greatest hits for $7.92 - but I’m not interested in the albums because there is always a ballad or two and c’mon - let’s know our limitations, mmmmk? Thanks. )  Under the area of songs from the same artist, is the list that makes it really interesting.  Based on user information they’ve listed recommendations.. ok, there’s “Boy I’ve been Told” (see above), “My Heart Skips a Beat” by the Cover Girls, “Too Turned On” by Alisha, Give Me Tonight by Shannon, “I Wonder if I Take You Home” by my girl Lisa Lisa and wait!  Jomanda?!*  I forgot about her!  I loved her!  I need all of her songs, right now. Click, click, click, click. Add to cart, enter password - and I’m all Jomanda all the time, or “toim” - She must have been from NY too.  So $5.00 later, I have 5 new songs, a renewed interest in this playlist and maybe I’ll even dance around a little and get my cardio on.  I could use it.

And, lest you think I’m only about the dance music, remind me to tell you about the time I had a couple of glasses of wine and restocked my Springsteen library.

*I think I owned every outfit in that video.