Category: Daily Life

SueBob has an interesting post up about sexism from a male perspective. So far only one man has commented (hi, Karl!), so because I know I have quite a few male readers, I’d like to encourage you to visit her post and answer her five questions:

1. What do you like about being a man?
2. What don’t you like?
3. How do you feel about being a man in our culture?
4. If you could magically make one thing better for men, what would it be?
5. What would you like women to know about being a man that you think they might be unaware of?

I have today off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so the weekend isn’t really over for me yet. However, I figured I might as well wrap up the part that’s already taken place.

On Saturday night, my husband and I joined my sister and brother-in-law at a Brazilian barbecue restaurant to celebrate my brother-in-law’s birthday. If you’ve never been to a churrascaria, it is a carnivore’s dream. You start by visiting a bar filled with salads, soups and side dishes. It is advisable to eat extremely lightly at that juncture because when you’re finished, the meatfest begins.

You’re given a two-sided token to place beside your plate: the green side means "offer me meat" and the red side means "I need a break." Waiters come around with long swords on which are skewered various roasted meats, and they either pull off individual portions or give you slices from larger cuts. Our restaurant had fifteen different cuts and kinds of meat. I tried numerous cuts of beef, bacon-wrapped chicken, and pork tenderloin. It didn’t take long for me to get full, so I never got to the Brazilian sausage. There were also some standard side dishes on the table. In our case it was fried polenta, garlic mashed potatoes, cheesy biscuits and fried bananas with cinnamon.

Afterward, we went to see "I Am Legend," which was a bit scarier than I expected even though the monsters had physics-defying characteristics that only CGI can provide. I had a couple of movie-related nightmares that night. My brother-in-law said he did, too.

The next morning, I went to my sister’s house to take my niece and nephew to Build-A-Bear Workshop. They’re now one of my primary clients at work, so I wanted to go through the process of making an animal to see firsthand how it went. My niece, who is 7, chose a polar bear so of course my nephew (almost 3) had to have one, too. It was fun to watch them stuff the empty bear shell. I also enjoyed the heart ceremony where the kids make a wish on a satin heart and put it in their bear. As you can imagine,my nephew’s version was a bit abbreviated.

My niece was a Build-A-Bear Workshop veteran, so she helped guide my nephew through the process, although I think she encouraged a little more spending than I originally had in mind. Naturally, the kids wanted clothes for their bears, so my nephew ended up with jeans and a t-shirt for his bear and my niece got a little red skirt and a top with hearts on it for hers. I was glad I’d gotten them clothes because the first thing my sister asked me when I told her they’d gotten the same animal was, "Can you tell them apart?"

Bear condos in hand, we went to the mall’s playground for a while. I sat on a bench with the bears, coats and the kids’ stinky shoes while they ran around. We stopped for a brief lunch in the food court, then went back to the play area until I realized that my nephew was past his naptime. After one stop for pretzels on the way out, I took them home and returned home myself.

I spent the rest of the afternoon running errands with my husband before making tacos for dinner and going to bed right around 10:00 p.m. Ahhh.

Today I need to get the lyrics for the nine songs we have lined up for tomorrow’s band practice. It turns out my computer’s CD drive has pooped out, so I can’t burn the songs to CD and I’ll have to listen to them in iTunes sitting at my desk.

Then I have some work from last week that I didn’t get finished, so I’ll probably work for a few hours. It’s nice and quiet in my home office, so I figure I might as well.

Are you off work today? If so, what do you have planned?

I always thought that one of the positive side-effects of not having kids would be that I’d save money on all of the crazy miscellaneous expenses that kids can incur. Sure, sometimes the cats cost more money than I was expecting, but that’s fairly rare.

Well, it turns out that I’m going to be in for some kid-like expense after all.

My husband went to the dentist earlier this week after complaining for months about a sore tooth. It turns out that his wisdom teeth are growing in and giving him trouble. The dentist is sending him to an oral surgeon to have three of them removed. Have I mentioned that my husband is 50?

It gets better. The dentist thinks my husband would be a good candidate for orthodontia. Once he has the bad wisdom teeth removed, the dentist believes that braces would even out his teeth, and fill in the gap where he once had a molar removed when he was young and poor and couldn’t afford a root canal. He needs either braces or a bridge, and he’s being sent to an orthodontist to see if braces might take care of everything.

All of a sudden, I’m really sorry I didn’t sign up for my company’s flex plan this year.

Obviously, he’s going to go ahead and get the wisdom teeth out either way. I think we may hold off the rest until next year just so I can get a flex plan started first. I don’t know why I’ve always pooh-poohed the idea of saving to cover medical expenses. Heaven knows that between our prescriptions, co-pays, deductibles and chiropractic, we spend a ton out of pocket each year.

On the other hand, I’ve decided that I can finally afford to get Velvet’s teeth cleaned. It turns out that cat expenses really are cheaper than people expenses. And the good news is that no one ever suggests braces for cats.

First we have our current digital tragedy: the death of our iBook’s monitor. This means we do not have a laptop available for surfing in the living room, which means we mysteriously aren’t spending much time in the living room anymore.

Then we have last night’s dinner. Yes, you could say I gave up…at least for one day.

I’m saving all my cooking mojo for Friday night, when we’re having some friends over for dinner. The planned menu: green salad with Balsamic vinaigrette, grilled bacon-wrapped filets, roasted new potatoes, Roasted Green Beans with Greek Dressing and mini Costco cheesecakes (which I already have) for dessert.

For you local folks, there’s a KC Blogger Meetup on Thursday, January 17th starting at 5:00 p.m. at Cafe Al Dente at 4th & Delaware in the River Market. It’s another reason I won’t be cooking again until Friday.

The weather has gotten extremely cold again and it makes me want to crawl into bed and stay there for a day or two. The cats wholeheartedly agree with that impulse. Unfortunately, it’s not a practical option.

I worked a long day yesterday, ran by the grocery store and went home to make Pork Tenderloin with Curried Fruit Sauce. It’s one of my favorite dinners, in part because it smells absolutely wonderful while it’s cooking. When my husband’s recording session ended, he came downstairs and said, "That smells like something I might not like."

Dude, that’s grounds for killin’. No jury in the world would convict me.

I sweetly said, "You’ve had this a zillion times and you like it just fine." There may have been a hand gesture involved.

Once he realized what was in the oven, he agreed that it was something he likes. Seriously, if I’m buying the food and cooking it, he’d better eat it, like it and keep his trap shut. For some reason, 15 years of living with me hasn’t taught him that yet.

I’m looking forward to having the leftovers for lunch today. Mmmm.

Changing the subject completely, congratulations to Jeremy and Robin on the birth of their son, Nate. He was due on Friday but decided that he’d prefer to arrive in the middle of the night last night.

Have a lovely Tuesday and don’t work too hard.

TV was pretty much my only entertainment medium over the weekend. From Saturday morning to Sunday evening, I did almost nothing else besides work The Zen Zone’s grand opening and veg on the couch in front of the TV.

The weekend’s tally:

• "The Ghost Whisperer" (Hey, what happened to Ned? Don’t try to tell me that isn’t a new actor. Nobody grows up that fast.)
• "Psych"
• An untold number of "Mythbusters" episodes
• "The DaVinci Code" (So that’s what everybody was so worked up about? How could they even follow the convoluted plot line well enough to get all het up about it?)
• A bunch of episodes of "Clone High" on DVD
• "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (Good so far – but then again I saw the first Terminator movie at the theater, so I’m inclined to like it.)
• "The Family Guy" and "American Dad" (because I was too lazy to turn off the TV)

I almost forgot about our Friday night selection, Bruce Campbell starring in "Alien Apocalypse," an ultra low-budget SciFi Channel movie we received as a Christmas gift. Let me just say that it would make an awesome episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

It was so bad that we had to watch it again with the commentary track. That’s where we learned about the experience of shooting in Bulgaria on a shoestring budget. I liked that the producer came to realize that it was better to work with non-English-speaking actors than English-speaking non-actors. I would have thought that would be obvious, but apparently not.

We have one more cheapo Bruce Campbell movie left for later: "The Man With the Screaming Brain." I almost saw it in a theater when it came out, but ended up just having Bruce Campbell autograph his book, "Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way" instead. My blurry camera-phone photo of that event is here.

So that was my weekend of fair-to-middling entertainment. What did you do?

This is for all my peeps in the Kansas City area. I’ll get back to the rest of you tomorrow.

First of all, some friends of mine have opened a yoga studio for kids and families called The Zen Zone. Their Grand Opening celebration is this Saturday, January 12th from noon to 5:00 p.m. There will be free family yoga mini-classes from 12:00-12:30 and 12:30-1, followed by a winter carnival from 1-5 p.m. with lots of kid-friendly games, contests, prizes, snacks and more.

The studio is at 413 NW Murray Road in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. For more information, you can call 816-554-ZONE (9663). Hope to see you there!

* * * * *

While I’m plugging events, I’d like to invite any of you non-vegetarians to one of mine. I’m a member of Soroptimist International of Kansas City and we’re having our second annual luncheon to benefit SAFEHOME domestic violence shelter on Saturday, February 16th from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Outback Steakhouse, 6870 Johnson Drive in Mission, Kansas.

Tickets are $25, which includes an appetizer, salad, entree and dessert. All food is donated by Outback Steakhouse, so the entire ticket price goes to SAFEHOME. There will also be a silent auction from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

To buy tickets, download an order form here or get them from me at the next KC Blogger Meetup or any Coffee Morning between now and then. I have 100 tickets left as of today and I’m determined to sell out! Help me support a great cause and grab yourself a tasty meal in the process.

In the late fall, it was announced that our company would be providing each employee with a BlackBerry. I must admit, I was hesitant about the whole situation. Did I want to be on call 24/7/365? Was it really even necessary? What would I do with my current cell phone, carry both of them?

I got my BlackBerry a week before the start of our holiday break. Once I went through the training session, I pretty much just carried it around for use as a clock for the first several days. I read e-mails on it, but didn’t necessarily respond until I got back to my desk. I made one phone call just to see how it worked.

All that changed as soon as I went out of town on business. It was a single-day trip: fly out in the morning, meet in the afternoon, and fly back in the early evening. I hate traveling with a laptop, so I flew light with just the BlackBerry in my purse and a zippered folder full of paperwork.

It was kind of a last-minute trip, so I had some work projects to handle while I was traveling. As I sat in the airport in the morning, I found myself responding to some e-mails, typing with one thumb. That was pretty convenient.

After we landed, I checked my e-mail again and had my first BlackBerry-related accident: smacking the side of my head against the cab door as I got in. There was blood. Important lesson learned right away.

Once the meeting was over, I sat in the lobby and wrote some copy (in a notebook with a pen) and then typed it into the BlackBerry to e-mail it to a project manager. By then I was typing with two thumbs and getting really speedy about it. In less than a day, I’d turned into That Guy…the annoying BlackBerry user who gets so absorbed by an electronic device that the rest of the world fades away.

Fortunately, the addiction didn’t get its hooks into me completely. I don’t jump to check it every time the light flashes to tell me I have an e-mail. I certainly don’t pick it up in meetings and start tap, tap, tapping away. I think I am going to let my old cell phone go pretty soon, but only because it’s stupid to carry two mobile phones in my small purse.

It is kind of fun to have a piece of sleek, new technology to play with. Do you know of any cool BlackBerry functions that a novice user wouldn’t have figured out yet? If so, please share!

Next week, my after-work schedule goes back to its usual crazed level. This week, however, it’s been wide open. It’s been really nice to be able to come home and relax every night.

My husband and I have both been so busy that we have seen very few movies in the past year. Thus, we’ve been hitting Blockbuster each night to start catching up.

I make no claims regarding good taste when it comes to movies. This becomes obvious when I tell you that Wednesday night’s selection was "Rush Hour 3." I’ll admit it, we lean toward stupid comedies and brainless action, with the occasional animated movie thrown in for maximum immaturity. Yes, there are some slightly less cheesy movies on my "to see" list ("Stardust," for example), but I can wait for the sake of compromise.

So anyway, last night’s movie was "Superbad," which I thought was pretty funny. Tonight we’re going with "Live Free or Die Hard," for which I have high hopes.

One thing we’ve noticed on our trips to Blockbuster: they don’t seem to have very many customers these days. Maybe it’s just because we keep going on weekdays, but I kind of doubt it. I think Netflix and redbox are moving in for the kill.

I tried Netflix when it first launched and stopped using them after they claimed I hadn’t returned a DVD that I most definitely had. They "took my word for it," but it left a bad taste for me and I didn’t feel comfortable with their system after that. I’m sure things have changed considerably since then, though, and I’ve been feeling twinges of jealousy when people talk about their Netflix queues.

redbox sounds even more appealing except for the whole "having to go into a McDonald’s" part. I like the idea of only paying $1.00 to rent a movie, particularly since Blockbuster is still $4.50. I’ve had friends swear by it, so I may need to give it a try.

It’s going to take a lot more movie rentals for us to catch up on the past year’s worth of stuff we missed, including "The Simpsons Movie," "Shrek III, "Transformers," "Meet the Robinsons," and "Shoot ‘Em Up." Can you recommend anything else in our preferred genres that’s worth checking out?

Saturday evening update: We’ve now seen "Live Free or Die Hard" (awesome) and "Shrek III" (eh.). On tap for tomorrow, because I’m the one who went to the video store, "Stardust." After it goes back, the redbox experiment begins.

Over the holiday break, something broke: my bedside air purifier. Now, I couldn’t care less about the cleanliness of the air, I just turned the fan up to "High" and used it as white noise to cover my husband’s snoring so I could sleep.

It was old. I’d had it since the early ’90s and had treated it very poorly. It hadn’t had a filter in it for years, and I seldom bothered to clean out all the lint and dust it collected. Not surprisingly, the motor finally went bad after 13+ years of daily use. Really, I’m impressed that it lasted that long.

I threw it away and started looking around for white noise alternatives. My husband’s alarm clock seemed like a good bet. It came complete with a selection of nature sounds, including a waterfall that sounded a lot like static. For several days, I cranked up the waterfall while I slept, but the sound was harsh and it didn’t really cover the snoring. I spent the last four or five mornings of my holiday sleeping on the living room couch until dawn.

Last night, I finally admitted to myself that I needed another solution. A trip to Target yielded a $24.99 air purifier model that seemed worth a try. It promised that it was "whisper quiet" at any speed, but I suspected that its high speed would be just loud enough to do the trick.

Okay, so it was a little quieter than I was used to. However, add a touch of "waterfall" along with the fan and voila! – a sleep so good that I actually overslept a bit.

I love it when things work out.