of what ties together America's Grandmother, a single pot, and someone with True Grit.

Hello all~!

Boy-howdy, I haven't had a Saturday off in a while, so having this past one off was quite nice.  We were going to try to do something completely different, but it had been so long since we had been to the movies and I have been very good with dieting and so I folded to the buttery goodness of the popcorn...*shakes fist in the air*damn carbs! So we went and saw 'True Grit" which was really good!  I am normally not into that whole cowboy business, and don't even get me started on those nasty creatures they ride, but this movie really focused on the relationships of the characters, and that actor that played the 14 year old girl was amazing!  The movie was funny, and serious when it needed to be, without leaving you with saddle-sores...yeah, I went there.  I would recommend it in a case where it is the guys turn to pick to movie and you aren't in the mood for Denzel Washington, or explosions; this movie will make him feel good about picking it, but not make you want to fake sickness in order to leave the movie early.

I bought a pot at Z Gallerie that I instantly fell in love with~!  I know Mr. Ramsey is shaking his head and looking down at me with his balding head, but listen dude, I have been very good recently!  The pot was only $25 and I think it is going to look great the dining room.  Here are some pictures I know that they are not fab-u, I think there was more than 18% light in the background...

Some of the flowers are attached to the outside of the pot.

Top view.

Close up of the flowers.

As if the day could not get any better, I also got my new calendar for the year...I realize January is almost over, but you cannot rush into picking a calendar rashly.  It also helps to wait bc most calendars are clearanced now~!  See, I made up for it Ramsey, take a hike!!  So I got the Betty White calendar.  I know some of you are a little confused right now, but I have this thing for old ladies...not like that creeper!  I just think little old ladies are cute as heck and Betty is full of spunk!  I have not looked through the pictures yet bc I want to be surprised but the front cover has Betty with shirtless men, and the picture for January has Betty with a boom-box on her shoulder and a thug look.........I bet you have changed your mind about how dumb you think it is now!

Ok my lovelies, it is time for you to go to something constructive now...or you can just sit there and keep doing mindless things on the Internetz, which ever comes first.

Ta-Ta~!

of lizards, books, and burly men.

As usual, I am blogging bc I have received a citation from the blog police *cough* Catherine *cough* ahem. So I guess I will blog about something then.  I have recently added a new member to the 'Casa de Chris' a lovely little fellow named Pursey.  I warn you the pictures you are about to see are not very good and were taken with one hand while I was holding him.

Meet Pursey, why that name you ask?  Well, bc he feels like a nice purse of course!

He is shedding right now, that's why his scales look dull.

Side view.

Action shot.

So, Pursey is a 'true-fire skink' and quite friendly!  He likes long strolls through the bark in his tank and eating crickets.  He is a Sagittarius and prefers to keep his political views to himself. 

I know what some of you are thinking, oh geez, another slimy creature; first it was snakes, then tarantulas, now this.  Listen here hussies, Pursey is not like those other guys.  He is sleek, and handsome.  Once you meet him I think you would like to have a nice cup of coffee with him.  Chris (regular/2/Hommie-G Funkaliez) actually likes him too!  I will be posting better pictures of him once I get my camera back from Chris and maybe I will wait until he is done shedding also.  That way you can see him at his best~!

I spoke of books earlier so I suppose that I should explain that.  I finished a book a couple weeks ago called "The Book of Lost Things" by John Connolly. *Books Website*  I have to say that I really did enjoy this book!  It is set around one of the world wars and the main character is a little boy.  He loves to read and one day gets into an accident and enters into a world where the stories he loves, which are mostly fairy-tales, are real however quite twisted.  For instance, Snow White and the seven dwarfs are in the story, but this time the dwarfs are forced to wait on Snow Whites every request bc she has framed them for trying to kill her.  If anything were to happen to her all of the dwarfs would be put to death.  There are other tales in it as well and some are pretty dark and twisted.  I do not want to give away too much from the book, but I just like how he uses a lot of the stories that we grew up with and makes them funny, or scary.  Often times, I do not like the ending of books, however I found myself happy at the end of this one.  This is the first book that I have read from this author and bc I liked it so much, I got another, "The Unquiet" which is a thriller.  I just thought that I would pass it on in case you are looking for a new book.  It is a little mystical, as are most of the fairy tales that they are based around, but if you like books with a dark and sometimes gritty side then I think you should at least give it a shot.  Another thing that I liked, was that every chapter was titled starting with "of" and then something vague about the chapter, which I have adopted in my blogs of late.  I just thought it was clever how it told you what was coming up, without ruining anything.  I will let you know how the new book goes, I do not read a mile-a-minute like some of you people as I do have to properly segment my time with TV and video games.

Also!  I was at the gym today, and saw a commercial on one of the TV's for the new Spartacus series~!!~!!  It stars soon and is a prequel to the first season.  If you were here you would have to cover your ears bc I am squealing like a little girl ;)

Snow at The Chris'

Its'a be snowin out der momma!  We got a couple of inches last night and it is still going coming down.  We are supposed to get another couple of inches before the end of the day and then maybe some more tomorrow!  Of course, I was up around 7 and so I had to go out and take some pictures~! 

 

I guess I am going to wait until noon to head to the gym, Chris said the local roads are a little rough still.  I need to catch up on some of my TV shows anyhow ;)

of Tron and being katzenjammered...

Over the weekend Chris and I made our weekend voyage to the movie theater, something that we have not done in quite some time, to catch a movie.  We saw Tron and I was a little skeptical at first because a lot of people were saying that it was not that great and that the only good parts were the special effects and such.  I have to say though, I thought it was really good!  The effects were really amazing, of course, but the story wasn't bad either.  13 was in it from House, and I think she played her role perfectly.  I like her, it is sad that she left House, but it seems her movie career may be on the rise bc she is in another movie that is coming out...Cowboys and Aliens.....yeah, you read that right...it looks good/interesting actually.  I digress, Tron made me want to visit the land inside my computer and ride motorcycles made of light...or carry my whole life in data plugged into my back...hmm, maybe not.  Seriously though, all their info right there for people to snatch, you would think that with all of their advances and flying ships and what not that they could condense those disks down to a thumb drive you could put in your pocket.  I guess I am being too efficient, just call me seven-of-nine.

The music from the movie was great also, I think I may have to go to iTunes and  see about downloading it.  Yes, I am one of those people that gets soundtracks from movies.  If you turn your nose up at such an act, poo on you!  Some of my favorite songs come from soundtracks, a lot of them are classical in nature, the ones form Tron were very digital and I think would make great workout mix.  I totally need to update my iPod, I have had the same techno mix on there for a couple months now and you can only listen to certain songs so many times before they are not motivating anymore. 

I have a widget on my phone that displays the word of the day from dictionary.com and today's is katzenjammer which means the discomfort and illness experienced as the aftereffects of excessive drinking;hangover.  How come we don't use this word more?!  I love it way better than saying you have a hangover~! 

Dude, I am so katzenjammered right now... 

I think I may get drunk tonight, just so I can use that phrase tomorrow!!!

Ok, well I think I am done rambling for now.  I am going to start my random picture at the bottom of a blog again, I have been very negligent in my duties of late. 

Ta-Ta dearies~! ;D

I submit myself for punishment...

So, I know that it has been like forever since I have blogged, but come on now, Christmas was here! I am prepared for my beating now……is this a family blog? I think it best to skip that thought for now.  Anyhow, it has been super crazy at work recently, I dare anyone to work retail at Christmas time and see how you lose all of your sanity.  Between morons angry because we did not have the right color toy for their dog, and the company itself imposing all these restrictions while setting bogus sales quotas at the same time limiting payroll, and, and, and...let’s just say I'm done. 

Ho, Ho, Ho, finally time to head to TN for Christmas at the Mitchells!  I will warn you that this Christmas tale is unlike most you may hear; fore our story includes mounds of tortilla chips, containment breaches, and Collin Farrell in the movie Twilight.  Christmas day was awesome; this was the first time in my entire life that I had snow ON Christmas day!  When I was younger, we were in Florida where you are lucky to get down to the 60’s during the day on Christmas.  It was sooo beautiful!!

 

It was big fun at casa de Mitchell, with Zach opening some presents first and having a grand ‘ol time doing so!  We all followed suite and soon the room was a blur of wrapping paper, ribbons, and pure excitement!  We had to go in shifts, between Zach getting totally overwhelmed to us snacking and such, it was truly a marathon.  We were mostly done when we sat down to eat our delicious feed, turkey with all the trimmings!  After the meal we all felt like Jabba the hut so we all adopted our spots on the sofas and tried to relax. 

The next day was equally entertaining, Mom II, Chris, and I stopped at T J Max on the way to the Mitchell Mansion to scavenge their after Christmas sales.  A few treasures were acquired, but nothing of real note.  We spent most of the day recovering from the onslaught of the day prior, most of us reading, or playing with Zach.  We play in the snow for a bit, it really was cold out so we had to limit our exposure, as Zach kept breaching containment with his gloves falling off.  Speaking of gloves, I let Catherine use mine because her hands were getting cold and while tending to the kid got some Z-snot on my gloves…ah, the gift I always wanted. 

 

This picture is soo adorable~!

 

We ate, again, we were always eating, I think we all thought we had tapeworms and we wanted them to be happy on Christmas too so we were constantly stuffing something down our gullets.  Side note, homemade eggnog, freaking confusing.  I think at one point we had the whole counter full of different containers of whipping cream, egg whites, yokes, we were heating some of it up, whipping stuff, blending things, utter chaos.  All I have to say about it though, is it was sooooo worth it absolutely delicious~!

Mom II suggested that we go to the local Spanish restaurant and get a carry out order for chips and salsa.  She said, make sure you get the big bag; we were to get a couple of orders for various people as we all wanted some for the road.  We get to the place and Chris does the talking, Lindsey and I lay low. 

Chris: Can we get 6 big orders of chips and salsa please?

Spanish guy:  (crazy eyed) 6 BIG BAGS?

Chris: Yeah, the big ones.

Spanish guy: (still crazy eyed) ok.

A few minutes later three guys come out with a freaking wheel-barrel’s worth of chips and salsa.  There was obviously a communication snafoo somewhere…oh well, CHIPS FOR EVERYONE!  Can I just say the look of everyone’s face when we walked in with shopping bags of tortillas chips was priceless.  We still have 3 gallon sized bags of chips left at our house!

These are just the ones we took with us!

As the evening was drawing to a close Catherine and Lindsey said they wanted to play the new board game Lindsey got from Santa, Twilight the trivia game.  Well, me being such an expert in Twilight I played too!  Let me tell you, it was awesome, not only did I need hints on almost every one of my questions; I also added a character to the movie that wasn’t even anywhere close to right.  The question was something along the lines of “which character was next to (insert some old vampire guys name that was apparently important) in the painting on the wall.”  Well my hint was that the name started with a “C” and I should be able to get it…yeah, right.  I rack my brain, trying to think, and suddenly it hits me…Collin Farrell!!  Needless to say, I did not receive a scene card for that question.  I honestly had a blast playing the game though, the girls were taking it very seriously and toward the end it was pretty much neck and neck (my neck was frolicking in a field somewhere with hot wolf guy!) however Catherine pulled out an impressive win and the rest is history.

See, I told you Collin Farrell was the right answer!!!!!

~Represent~

The days went by all too quickly and before we knew it, we were saying goodbye and hitting the snowy trail.  The ride back was treacherous, and very slippery when we were crossing the mountains but we make it home ok and all is right….or so we thought.

When we come into the house Scooter is so excited to see us, as usual.  My friend Jamie “was” watching him while we were gone, but something was not quite right.  We walked into the living room and there are a number of poo spots and Scooter does not do this.  I am angry and of course I start thinking, we have an alarm system, so why not call and get the log of arms and disarms.  We get the log and to our surprise we see:

12/24/2010

7:45am – System Armed (this is when I left for work, Jamie understood that she was to check on him that evening)

Nothing the rest of the day.

Nothing Christmas day.

And then nothing until 6:40pm on Sunday the 26^th when she is there for 15 minutes and then leaves.

Then

Nothing until we get home Monday at 6pm.

I can’t even begin to put into words how angry I was, Scooter is like my child and to have him starving for two days while being in pain with not wanting to go to the bathroom in the house is something I never thought a good friend would do.  Chris talked me out of calling and cursing her out, and so I wrote a long detailed email to her asking her why she did such a thing.  I still have yet to receive a response from her.  As far as I am concerned, there is no excuse for that.  How someone can willingly neglect an animal and then lie to me saying she has been there is horrible.  I will update if I ever do get a response back from her.  I am not holding my breath.

Geez, what a downer that part of the happy Christmas tale was.  Overall, I had such a good time; the Marlatt/Mitchell/Vaughn-Dowdal/Bishop Christmas was one for the record books!  I feel as though I have gained at least 5 pounds of fat, but the memories and love I gained far outweighs that.  Thanks everyone for such a great time!

These next two pictures will show that Zach is ready for life, all you need is Star Wars and Starbucks...that's how I role, it will work for him too ;D

Father and son watching Star Wars together, all is right in the world!

Awesome.