Author: Average Jane

Well, the weather held out just fine so that my husband and I could go see Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie at the new Sprint Center. We paid a fortune for a parking spot about two blocks away, even though we could have parked in the garage next to my office building for free. My husband had been fussing about the five-block walk for days and I figured we could park wherever he wanted as long as he was willing to be the one to pay.

The opening act was a band I’d never heard of called In This Moment. I’m not a big metalcore fan, but it was cool to see a heavy band with a female lead singer. Their set was only 20 minutes long, but you could tell that they were overjoyed to be on the tour at all.

Rob Zombie played all of his solo and White Zombie hits with a generous sprinkling of songs and video from his various movies. He’s very fond of cheesy sci-fi and horror films of the ’60s mingled with scenes from stag films of the same era, and the mishmash of images played on video screens all around the stage throughout the performance.

Ozzy also stuck mainly to his hit songs, playing only about three or four songs from the latest album. His interaction with the crowd ping-ponged between, "I can’t fuckin’ hear you!" and "I fuckin’ love you guys!" all evening long. Zakk Wylde is looking more and more like a Viking with every passing year. I think touring bands must spend all their spare time working out these days.

Another thing of interest to me about Ozzy’s band: his keyboard player is Adam Wakeman, son of famed Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman.

The crowd wasn’t exactly boiling over with enthusiasm for any of the bands. I think the Tuesday evening date and the unfamiliar venue may have contributed to that. Plus, the average age of the concert-goers had to have been hovering around 40. Forty-year-olds who have to go to work the next day just don’t rock out like teenagers.

Still, it was fun and we were glad we went. These days, we don’t go to concerts as much as we used to. It’s nice to get out from in front of the TV and see a band live now and then, no matter how good  concert DVDs can be.

The TV weather people in Kansas City are having a sustained freakout about the fact that there’s an ice storm coming through town today.

When I woke up, I thought I might end up working from home, but I decided to go to my morning dentist appointment anyway. Turns out, it’s raining outside.

Yes, there is ice on the trees and I saw a few small branches down. Reportedly there are thousands of people without power in parts of the metropolitan area, but we are not among them. I suppose there may be more branches coming down over time if the rain continues, but so far it seems like everyone’s making a big deal over not much. Thus, I’m headed into the office.

I have concert tickets for tonight and there’s no way I intend to waste them. Even if it means walking blocks in the freezing rain, wearing my heaviest boots and tiptoeing through the ice, I’m determined to be there. I just hope the weather doesn’t have other plans for me.

Our Lucky 13 Anniversary Party was struck with some bad luck: a day of sleeting. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that we have quite a knack for scheduling parties on days when the weather is bad. Or maybe it’s just that we live in the Midwest…

Either way, our expected 20+ guests dwindled to nine when all was said and done. I had bought WAY too much beer, but the wine came out about right, as did most of the appetizers. There’s some baklava left and about half a box of mini cheesecakes, but I don’t think either of those will be a problem at this time of year.

Best of all, my house is darned near spotless. I polished all of the stainless steel appliances in the kitchen including the trash can, and de-grunged the range hood over the stove. I took down all of my faux copper Jell-o molds from the kitchen walls and scrubbed them until they shone. I let the Roomba loose in every room while I snagged cobwebs from the corners, vacuumed dead leaves from around the plants and dusted every nook and cranny.

Before the party started, when the cancellations had already started coming in, we went and bought a 40-pound bag of ice melt and spread it all over the driveway and sidewalk. It was the first time we’d ever bothered to de-ice, but we figured our guests would appreciate the gesture…and appreciate not busting their butts on the ice.

Even though our turnout was less than we’d expected, we still had a lovely time celebrating our anniversary with friends. Now if I can just keep the house this clean until Christmas…

Things I didn’t do:

• Get dressed before 3:30 p.m.
• Go to the post office.
• Drop off my dry cleaning.
• Buy the beer and wine for the party.
• Get the Roomba working.

Things I did do:

• Watch the Price is Right to see how Drew Carey did as host. So far he seems a bit self-conscious, but I’m sure he’ll be fine once he really gets the hang of it.
• Take a late morning nap on the couch with the kitties.
• Shop for party snacks at Costco. I couldn’t resist the baklava tray!
• Shop for other miscellaneous party and holiday stuff at Target. The Method peppermint/vanilla fragrance sticks I bought are the only Christmas-y thing in my whole house so far.
• Finish the laundry.
• Catch up on the TiVo’s offerings during dinner.
• Play gin rummy, dominos and BINGO with my husband. Best of all, it was his idea!

On balance, I’d say it was a good day. Today I’m making all the dips and salsas for tomorrow’s party, cleaning the house, making runs to the grocery store and the liquor store (stupid Kansas liquor laws), and possibly doing a touch of Christmas decorating, although I may wait until next weekend. Oh, and I’m invited to a blues jam and a holiday party in the early evening, both of which I’d like to attend if I’m finished with everything else by then.

What are your weekend plans?

Okay, not really. I’m actually just using up one of my last vacation days before the end of the year, but it did snow yesterday.

Today I’m planning on running all of the errands necessary for Sunday’s anniversary party. I want to have the food prepared, the beer and wine purchased and chilled, and the house tidied up before I go to bed on Saturday. That way we won’t be running around exhausting ourselves on Sunday before our guests arrive.

As long as I have a free day, I’m also going to drop off dry cleaning, mail a bunch of stuff that’s been sitting on my desk for a week, and take care of anything else I can think of that I’ve been putting off. Ahh, freedom!

Apropos of nothing (except that it’s almost Christmas), I love the title of this post from Rockstar Mommy: My Christmas tree is so emo, it probably cut itself down. Unlike her, I haven’t put up a tree yet. I guess I’d better get on that.

Incidentally, today’s the day I finally decided to do something about my outdated blogroll. I’ve published my Bloglines feed list here and in the sidebar. Sorry if that’s a pain for anyone who used to use the old blogroll to navigate, but the new list is far more comprehensive and accurate.

Have a great weekend!

The people who built and lived in our house before us must have been huge proponents of the natural gas industry. We’ve spent the last twelve years removing all manner of extraneous gas pipes leading to various questionably safe gas appliances. My favorite was the copper(!) tubing that once led to an outdoor barbecue grill, but let’s not forget the copper tubing that ran from our water heater to the fireplace.

Yesterday I finally had a plumber come out to address a gas leak in our basement that we’d been ignoring for years. Heck, it had probably been at least five years since I had the gas company come out and tell me that, yes, I had a gas leak, but it wasn’t bad enough to blow up the house and I should probably hire a plumber and get it taken care of. I’m a little slow sometimes.

The plumber discovered that the leak was from pipes leading to a gas heater in the wall between our kitchen and guest room. When we bought our house, the inspector made a point of telling us that we should never dream of attempting to use the heater. When we had our roof redone earlier this year, we let the construction crew remove the heater’s chimney, and one day I hope to yank the whole thing out and get an extra 6 inches of wall depth back in each room it occupies.

I guess the leak was getting pretty bad because the plumber told us we might see a difference in our gas bill. Yeesh. That never even occurred to me. It’s one thing when a sink is dripping or a toilet is running, but you don’t think about dollar signs flying out the windows when you smell a little gas.

Of course, that led me to a paranoid Google search to see if we’d been poisoning ourselves all this time. The more trustworthy-looking sites seemed to agree that the health hazards are minimal for a minor gas leak, but that there’s evidence that allergies and asthma might be made worse by one. Hmm, maybe my husband isn’t allergic to the cats after all…

So for a mere $200 we now have a basement that doesn’t smell like a faulty gas stove. At this point, the only gas appliances left are the water heater and furnaces. Why couldn’t the previous homeowners have been into solar power?

On an unrelated note, I just came down with my first cold of the season, which has taken the form of a nasty sore throat. I am trying my utmost not to whine about it, and hoping that Zicam and Airborne keep its duration to a bare minimum. I’m not feeling too optimistic about singing at band practice tonight, though. Sigh.

My to-do list this week is a mile long. I keep getting up at the crack of dawn to try to tackle things around the house because I don’t want to give up any precious evening TV time (Tin Man. Are you watching it? I give it the thumbs-up so far.), but I still need more time.

We’re throwing a thirteenth anniversary party for ourselves on Sunday. That means we need to clean up pretty much every room in the house between now and then. Some rooms are halfway okay now: the living room, kitchen and bathroom. Others are…not. My office and dressing room and our studio are messy beyond belief. We won’t even talk about the guest room, which needs to be in play so people can use the half bath.

I’ve been halfway through shredding an enormous pile of junk mail for the last two months or so, and the pile just keeps growing. I may have to start compromising and just shred the credit card offers and bills, and let the catalogs go in the trash still labeled.

Yesterday I at least made it to Target and Whole Foods for vital supplies. Well, the idea was to get vital supplies, but I ended up with some extras, like my cool new SIGG bottle. Our house is still mostly devoid of food, but we have enough bread, cereal and milk to get by for now.

I haven’t even started thinking about what I’ll be cooking for the party. In fact, I’ll solicit ideas from you, if you don’t mind. Let me know your favorite party foods, whether it be a recipe or a suggestion for something good at Costco that I may not have ever tried. Thanks, you’re a great help!

I wish I could say that I did something spectacular to my house over the weekend, but I ended up doing lots of hard work elsewhere.

On Saturday, a group of about 15 bloggers got together to do a volunteer shift at Harvesters. We were asked to open donated boxes of toiletries and divide them into larger boxes according to the type of product they were: dental care, skin care, hair care, feminine hygiene or over-the-counter medications. I worked the scales while other people taped boxes, loaded boxes, made labels, put full boxes on pallets, etc. It was three hours of very hard work, followed by a video about the organization and an extensive tour of their huge warehouse.

Afterward, we all went over to Dan’s house for some of his home brewed vanilla porter and a nice dinner of grilled brats and pizza. Thanks for organizing and feeding us, Dan!

Later that evening, my husband and I went to a jam, where I sang a very poor rendition of AC/DC’s "Back in Black." That’ll teach me not to warm up before I go to something like that. In my defense, the monitors were terrible and I couldn’t hear myself, but still…

I got up early on Saturday and dressed in my most paint-covered clothes to help my sister paint at her new yoga studio, which is opening in January. We did second coats throughout the lobby, bathrooms, office and utility closet and still had time to take my niece to see "Enchanted" before dinner.

I didn’t get anything done at my own house other than taking out two weeks’ worth of recycling, but it was still satisfying to be up, moving and working hard. It’s making me think of things I’d like to do at home: paint the half bath, clean up my office, paint the dark paneling in the basement. Perhaps after Christmas…

Look at this – I’ve gotten so conditioned to post daily that here I am posting on a Saturday.

So I’ve taken the plunge and begun my shopping online. As I mentioned before, I got a credit card that lets me generate one-time-use "virtual" numbers for online transactions. It’s an extra step, but well worth the effort to keep from having my data stolen yet again.

Here are the vendors who have received my patronage so far:

• Interwoven Threads – This is a t-shirt company owned by a former co-worker of mine, Andy Woolard. For every shirt sold, a shirt is donated to a homeless-advocacy organization. How cool is that? I really like their designs, too, and I’m looking forward to watching the product line expand.
• Archie McPhee – Who wouldn’t appreciate a company that sells a Crazy Cat Lady action figure?
• Amazon – Of course. I may go back to that well more than once before I’m finished.
• Glarkware – I’m all about the t-shirts this year. And YES, I’m only purchasing gifts. I was tempted to get myself the one that says, "Ask me about my crippling shyness," but it’s in an unfortunate oatmeal color that wouldn’t look good with my skin tone.
• Applescraps – Next week I’m going to be able to get a look at her new product line in person. You can bet I’ll be picking up a few gifts while I’m at it.

I’ve spent the last 18 months or so storing up gift ideas in Kaboodle (along with a bunch of recipes that I really need to try), so I’ll be making my way through those links for more gift ideas.

If you have an Etsy shop, t-shirts, a book, etc. that I should look at from a gifting standpoint, let me know! I’m in the zone and ready to get all of this shopping stuff knocked out quickly.