YARRRRRR!

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day! I be fixin to blog about my scurvy week, ye landlubbers, but then I figgerd I'd rather be hoistin the mizzen mast and shiverin me timbers.

to commemorate this fine occasion, here be a song written for a play about Pirates by yours truly and his chief wench! (Yar, I be payin fer that jibe later, i knows it)

Oh, we are the pirates of the Mauve Pearl!
the Mauve Pearl pirates are we!
We love to loot and steal and rob,
cuz that's what good pirates be!

have a grand weekend, ye salty dogs! YARRRRRRR!

Past My Nightmare Quota

The other night I had 2 nightmares where I woke up in a cold sweat and my heart racing. What made them particularly terrible was they were the kind that seem so REAL when you're dreaming them.

In my first nightmare, my boss called me into his office and had a talk with me. It wasn't a bad talk, it was a "getting to know you" talk. We talked about our interests, our families, and found we had a lot in common. Imagine my surprise then when I went back to my desk and it wasn't there. No computer, no picture of me & Tracie, no desk. I asked my coworkers around me what was going on, if it was some kind of joke, but they shrugged and said no, you're fired. I was then escorted out of the building with a box of my belongings, and I remember wandering around North Orem, wondering what I should do, where I should go, and how I was going to tell Tracie I got fired again. I haven't been so relieved to wake up in a long time.

After going back to sleep I was haunted by night terrors again. Quite literally, as it made less sense, and included a horror from most everybody's childhood. I was driving down State Street in Orem being chased by Pennywise the Clown. What made it even more terrifying was all the street lights were out and my headlights didn't work, so I couldn't see anything, but I could hear him chasing me. I haven't dreamed about killer clowns/molesters in years.

Now, the funny thing about the two dreams is that the getting fired dream scared me a lot more than the clown dream. After I woke up from my It dream I actually laughed a little. I guess our dreams can show us what we're really afraid of. Failure, and Tim Curry in clown make-up.

*At least it wasn't Tim Curry dressed as Dr. Frank N. Furter, or Michael Jackson dressed as Michael Jackson.

NaNoWriMo is coming!

It's getting to be that time again! National Novel Writing Month will return this November for it's tenth year, and the second year I'll attempt to write 50,000 words, or 1667 words per day. Last year, all the NaNoWriMo Writers drafted an impressive 1,187,931,929 words, of which 19,245 were mine. This year, I think they're going for 2 billion words, and I'm going for a more reachable 50,000. I am currently thinking what to write my novel about, if I should try to finish my 19,000 word monstrosity, or start something new from scratch. I am not devoid of ideas, I have quite a few I'd like to develop, we'll see what I decide on once November 1 hits the calendar.

In the meantime, I challenge anyone with an idea and a bit of time on your hands (1667 words a day isn't alot) to come along with me and write that novel idea you've had for so long. Registration begins October 1, writing begins November 1, so you still have plenty of time to convince your self to sign up!

Let's get through the crazy month together! Who'll join me?

The Wizard of Apt

brought to you by GaryVarvel.com, courtesy of StumbleUpon.

Chef's Table

This weekend Tyler and Cheryl treated us to dinner at the Chef's Table, for watching over their boys two weeks ago. (Which we loved doing, and will do again, especially if we're paid this way. :)) Those of you unfamiliar with Chef's Table, it's the only 4-Star Restaurant in Utah County, and the best food (besides home cooking) you're likely to find in Utah. If you haven't gone, go. It is completely worth it.

BEST. MEAL. EVER.

When you walk in no less than 3 people with better manners and vocabulary than you treat you like royalty, they lead you to your table and place your napkin on your lap. You're then given a light sorbet to cleanse your palate, it might be viewed as overkill, but the food is so good, you want to taste as much of it as you can.

Tyler and Cheryl were very grateful and ordered 3 appetizers, (Tracie's parents were there as well, as they watched the boys also (and longer than we did)). We had 2 orders of their coconut shrimp, the biggest and meatiest shrimp I've ever eaten, as well as most delicious (and I've eaten a LOT of shrimp.) We also had the crab cakes, and, though I haven't had that many crab cakes to compare it to, I am fairly certain that these were some of the best I would ever have. They were flaky and flavorful, everything there is rich, but never too rich. Just right.

Tracie and I each had a salad, and not just lettuce smothered in cheap ranch. I said 4 star restaurant. The salads came with tomatoes, cucumbers (BIG cucumbers) and were divine in and of themselves. Tracie had the Chicken stuffed with prosciutto (is that how you spell it? proshooto. prashewtoe? Italian bacon that's not smoked.) with Au Gratin potatoes and summer vegetables. She wouldn't let me eat much of it, for obvious reasons, but what I can say is it was like some beautiful symphony of flavor, the chicken was moist, the prosciutto tender, all the flavors came together in a way that was better than the sum of the parts. Mmm mmm good.

I elected to have the Bacon Wrapped Beef Tenderloin with Sauce Madeira. I have congratulated myself ever since. Actually, I stopped reading after "Bacon" and just ordered that. I expected to get little medallions of flavor wrapped in bacon, but I got quite a large filet draped in bacon. It was superb. I ordered it medium, which some family members may criticize me for, but that's how I like it, and it was pink and red and oh so tender, right now I am salivating so much thinking about it that Pavlov has called me several times for some kind of study he's doing. My largest and only regret is that it was so good I ate it all up and couldn't have it again the next day. (Something Tracie shrewdly did with her Chicken).

Now, dessert. Tracie had a Chocolate Napoleon, which I am convinced she's going to leave me for once she gets a second. To me, it looked like a slice of a multi-layered German Chocolate cake. To Tracie, it looked like the new love of her life. I had the Chocolate Rasperry Cake, with a large layer of rich mousse. The dessert tasted like the inside of a humongous dark chocolate raspberry truffle. But better. It was so exquisite I think it may have ruined other desserts for me. I'll have to eat more (and soon) to make sure.

If that wasn't the best meal ever, dessert cemented it. But besides the excellent food, I'd also like to make special mention of going to eat with Tracie's parents and older brother and his wife. We really enjoyed going out with them, and it was wonderful to go to such a nice setting and be treated as "adults" among the "adults." Not that they treat us like kids, but from someone who's spent more time at the "kids table" it was nice to be at the Chef's table as an ''adult." Everyone should do it at least once.

The only real question now is when will we go back.

Lazy Blogger's Post Generator

We all need one, we've all read them (hopefully not from me) I hope you like this "Lazy Blogger's Post Generator" I found while stumbling.

Crikey! I just noticed I have not updated this since Paris Hilton was in jail... You would not believe how hard it is being waited on hand and foot and generally lounging around. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!

I am lost in a sea of pseudo-olde-english with setting fire to people wearing Crocs, selling my soul to Google, just generally being a delightful mistress to various lawyers I met recently, my day is a magical flight from the first cockadoodledoo from the rooster to midnight. I am convinced that I absolutely deserve this after all my hard work. But who cares.

I solemnly swear that when the weather turns bad, I will blog more often. You have my word! This is for my ever faithful, devoted public.

Pink and Palin

I've wanted to blog lately, but I don't have much to say. But, as I have said in the past, I say now: never stopped me before. I suppose I could rant a bit on things that have been bugging me lately.

Who the heck decided that "pink" is the generic "girl" color? And "who" decided to put "words" into "quotation marks" when they're "angry?"
Seriously tho, is this a new development, the designation that pink is inherently feminine, some marketing genius/nutcase in the 1920's going "Nobody's buying our pink baby clothing, see? We gotta do something about it, see? I've got it, see? We tell all the girl babies to wear pink, see? Girls look freakin adorable in pink. See?" Or was it an ancient technique, practiced by cavemen before fire or Geico Commercials, would dress their babies in pink or blue to deferentiate them, rather than pull down their tiger-skin diaper and risk becoming baby boy squirtgun target practice. "Throg! Little Boogoo got me again! There must be easier way to check which one boy and which one girl!" "Me know! Put boy in blue and girl in pink!" "Where we find blue and pink? We not even develop dyes yet!"

We may never know the answer. I'd care even more if I thought I looked good in pink, but as some of you may be unfortunate enough to know, I don't. And what is with the social ostracism accompanying men wearing pink? We don't think a woman is a lesbian or even a little butch if she puts on blue. But put pink on a man, and everyone around him suddenly becomes homophobic, or thinks they're in a bad 80's movie. (And I know what you're thinking, so stop it. There were TOO some good 80's movies.)

Matt Damon doesn't "like" Sarah Palin. Ok. Thanks for that, Matt. Maybe she was involved with Treadstone, and he just wants to protect us. Shouldn't he be working on his second Oscar-winning script with Ben Affleck? Or practicing his fight scenes while filmed by an epileptic camera man for Bourne 4, the Bourne Ennui? Sigh. Yeah, I'm Jason Bourne. Yeah, I can kill people, that doesn't mean I want to. Yeah, we're the government, we're corrupt and we want to kill you cuz you don't want to kill people for us, yet you'll kill all the people we throw at you. If they were smart, they'd hire the targets they want assassinated at Bourne, that'd take care of em in no time!
Seriously, I love those movies.

What else I like is Governor Sarah Palin!I don't know what ANY of her issues are, but I like her solely because she's a woman, and if I didn't like her, I'd be a sexist bigot. So, what I'm really trying to say is I'm for the Obama/Palin ticket, because that way I'm neither racist nor sexist, even though the only part of Obama I don't like is his white half. Seriously, America, how childish are we that if we criticize Palin we're sexist, we criticize Obama we're racist, we criticize McCain, we're anti-septegenarian, and if we criticize Bush, well, we're loyal Americans. That only leaves me free to criticize Biden, and for all I know, he could be great! But let's grow up a little and stop the attacks, let the opponents criticize without mud-slinging. The first party to STOP ATTACKING their opponent will be the one that my vote goes to.

And there's a new post for ya. ;)