T. Rex was a Yankees Fan?

At the museum there is an ongoing research project where we ask kids to draw a Tyrannosaurus Rex and then measure the angle of their spine. The background is that in the 1960s paleontologists figured out that T. Rex did not stand up with a straight spine and a dragging tail, but actually stood basically horizontal. And even though this has been a recognized scientific fact for several decades, dinosaur toys, and most other pop culture dino paraphernalia, are still made incorrectly.

This week two particularly funny dinosaur drawings came in (both with incorrect spines, but that's not the funny part). One is rockin' a Yankees cap and various pieces of bling, while the other is part Dalmatian and part reindeer . See for yourself:

Weekend Update

B. and I had such a busy weekend! We left Saturday and drove 4 hrs. to the Crate & Barrel in Philadelphia to register for the wedding. Why would anyone be crazy enough to drive 4 hrs. to register, you ask? Well, we knew we wanted to register at C&B and there are none in Central New York. In addition, B. has a lot of friends down there so it was a nice way to see them as well.

Much to everyone's surprise, our 3 hrs. of wandering around with a scanner firmly attached to B.'s hand actually went quite well. To begin with, we own almost nothing of any worth as it relates to the kitchen other than hand-me-downs and items from the dollar store. And to continue, we love to cook and would actually use all the stuff we're asking for, so that made it even easier. The only difficult part was the flatware. So much of it looks so similar! "Not too modern" and "not too grandma-ish" was about the extent of my criteria, so we worked from there.

"How about this one?"
"No... that spoon is too big, I could eat all of my cereal in one bite"
"How about this one?"
"Nah, the fork is weird. Too pinchy."

Finally we narrowed it down to a few and just randomly picked one (pictured above). I mean really, how do I know what fork I'd like to use in twenty years?! There are bigger things in life to worry about and I just couldn't muster up the energy.

So after our shopping adventure, B. and I headed to his friend's house for a backyard BBQ and an intense Boys vs. Girls game of Taboo. Now, for the record, Feather Nester and I use to kick ass at Taboo so I wasn't intimidated, but it was significantly harder than I remember. Also, something about the game must work better with the female brain because, try as they might, the men just couldn't seem to get a handle on the strategy. Unless, of course, there was any kind of sexual or Simpsons reference that could be made, and then they were golden.

On Sunday we left Philly after a great homemade breakfast made on the All-Clad pans that our friends just received from their wedding registry and drove straight to Jaynes Ave's house. We hadn't seen Jaynes Ave or sweet baby S. in a long time, so it was lovely to hang out even though our feet were dragging from the long weekend. Luckily, this next weekend is a little more low key - cleaning and attending a "doctor and nurse" theme party on Saturday night.

Auntie Em, Auntie Em!

One of the many benefits of living in New England (I consider certain parts of New York to be "New England" even though technically it's not) is that you are basically free from major natural disasters. Sure, I survived a pretty bad ass ice storm in 1997 and had no power or water for a week, but it was still a rarity. And now I live much further south in New York where the chance of an ice storm is even less of a possibility. But not a tornado apparently.

So yesterday we are all sitting in our Dilbert cubicles when the phone intercom goes off: "Hello everyone, this is R., a tornado has been spotted in the area, please seek shelter immediately." Huh?? "Is he serious?" I say to my cubicle-mate. My museum has quite a lot of scientists so I thought maybe this was PhD humor gone awry. Two more minutes pass as we are staring out the windows at the very mildly grey sky. Then the phone intercom goes off again: "By 'seek shelter' I mean that everyone should proceed down to the basement."

So we head to the basement and just sort of stand there with strange looks on our faces. I ask someone for more details and find out that the tornado was spotted about a 1/2 mile from B.'s office. I call him immediately and tell him to go to the basement. Does he actually go to the basement? No. Of course not! Why would an entire building full of engineers do something so sensible when you could just as easily walk outside in the hail storm to take pictures of the sky?

Look at that wall of black clouds!

The clouds when they began to swirl.

Luckily the tornado never completely formed and B. and his employees did eventually smarten up and head to the basement. Good thing too, because I later learned that one of the biggest mistakes people make with tornadoes is thinking that they'll be able to see them coming, when in fact they can just drop out of the sky. Obviously B. and his fellow engineers didn't watch enough Wizard of Oz growing up!

@$!%$#$!

A little musical background for you: I really like music but I've never connected to it in the same way that I connect to visual art. The sight of the Greek Islands or the paintings at the Van Gough Museum in Amsterdam can make my heart stop, but music has usually never reached that level of euphoria for me. Luckily, I've always been surrounded by people who love music and keep me in good listening. Because of this slightly disconnected relationship I had a hysterical experience on the ride home today.

My friend S. from work offered to make me a CD of workout music so that I could be one step closer to joining the gym. As I left work to go pick up B. I excitedly tossed my new CD into the car player and started listening. So I'm listening and bopping along... Pink...good! Justin... good! A little old school Britney...good! Then I come across a song I don't recognize right away, but eventually it sounds familiar. It's some Snoop song that I've only heard sporadically on the radio. And therein lies the rub.

Radio hip hop and real hip hop... not even remotely the same thing. And I thought I had a good understanding of this, I really did. But apparently I should have given more weight to the degree of dirty that the "D. O. Double G" is able to achieve. After all, this is the same man who showed up to the MTV Movie Awards a few years ago with two women on leashes. Leashes!

So anyway, I'm listening to the song and all of the sudden... "Wait... What?!?? You want to do WHAT... to my WHAT!!!!!?" Eyes wide, mouth agape, staring at the CD player! "My WHAT is hanging WHERE!!??" SNOOP!!!!

I know, I'm sure you're hysterically laughing right now! Go ahead, I don't blame you. As soon as I could get my mouth to close, I started laughing quite hard as well. Silly little white girl driving her silver Altima, you're even more clueless about music than you ever knew!

Wedding Wednesday

A brief mid-week update for you... B. and I are deep into wedding plans, specifically engagement party plans and starting our registry since everyone is already asking about it. Who registers for their wedding 14 days after they get engaged?! This is what happens when you wait so long to get married, everyone else gets as anxious to start the process as you do! So this weekend we are headed to Philadelphia for the day to dive head first into Crate & Barrel - woo hoo!

On a related note, can I just say that thank god I spent the last year researching wedding stuff. If you've done it, you know how much information is out there and I'm sure it's incredibly overwhelming if you're trying to learn it all and plan a wedding at the same time. Fortunately I learned it all first (at a relaxed pace) and then got engaged. Because of this, I'm glad to report that we have a very happy and stress-free househould. It's really nice to just enjoy this time in our lives because we've both given up a lot to get here. Cheers to happy households and cheers to the rest of the work week!

Movie Night

Last night a momentous thing happened. And if you know me at all you'll realize that this truly is a big deal, despite how unremarkable it will sound to the lay person. I started watching a movie at 9:15pm and I stayed AWAKE for the entire thing! This is coming from the girl who fell asleep in the movie theater during Independence Day, one of the most action packed movies of the last decade.

The local art museum was presenting the 80s camp classic Flash Gordon on the side of the building. So we went to Wegmans and loaded up on goodies, grabbed the bottle of wine that B.'s parents gave us for our engagement and headed over. It was definitely extremely campy and therefore funny, but it ran about 40 minutes too long. Next showing is Raiders of the Lost Ark in August, so we'll definitely be back for that.

Thank You!!

New bonus to being engaged - people buy you stuff and do incredibly sweet things for you! I'm such an independent loner at heart that I'm always so shocked and so appreciative when other people go out of their way for me. It's truly surprising and touching. Here are some of the most recent examples.


This is the beautiful sign that my incredibly sweet future sister-in-law made for us. Not only is it great to welcome you home from work, it will definitely be used at future wedding events (engagement party, etc.). Thank you Meggy!! :)

This is my very first in-the-mail engagement present! Our family gave us some lovely and thoughtful gifts last weekend, but this was my first experience of coming home to a present. And can I just say that if you are able to finagle some way to come home to presents at night, you should definitely do it because it's great! Look at how beautifully it's wrapped!! I am such a sucker for gorgeous wrappings and papers. For me, it's as exciting as the present, and my Southern Belle Ouiser did not disappoint. Once I took the picture for posterity, I decided that it was OK to actually unwrap it...

Ta-Daaaa! A beautiful photo album and a super cute card to boot! Thank you Ouiser!!

Obligatory Ring Shots

Here ya go girls! I took the first two pictures in the house, so the diamonds are not very sparkly, but you'll have to trust me that in normal light I could illuminate a room!! It's the first thing everyone has commented on. That, and how impressed they are that B. picked out the ring himself. I would write more but I'm also building our wedding website which is extremely time consuming, but will be well worth it in the end.

Non Wedding-Related Update:One of the onions died. Now the guest list for our exclusive salsa party that we had planned for the end of the year just got a lot more selective.

The "F" Word

As in "fiancée..." because I AM one now! Yes, it finally happened and I'm way too tired from traveling and phone calls to write a more adequate post. Suffice it to say, it was lovely and truly surprising. He proposed on the dock out at my family's camp on Lake Champlain and it was especially wonderful since my best friend, feathernester, was in town to celebrate her pregnancy with her parents. (My apologies for high jacking your barbeque :) )

For right now, there are more people to call, another nap to take, and maybe some websites to browse. Stay tuned...

Naive Gardening

A little update on my recent adventures with gardening...

Today's conversation with a co-worker:
Me - So in addition to the herbs and tomato plants we put in, we also had 2 onions, a shallot, and a chive. But here's my question... if the onions and shallots are all growing under the soil, how do I know when to pull them up?
Him - Just pull them up at the very end of the season
Me - Really? Just wait til the end of the season and I'll have a bunch of onions and shallots?
Him - Well how many onions did you plant?
Me - Two. Why?
Him - Well then you're going to have two onions at the end of the summer.
Me - WHAT?! TWO onions?? TWO onions??
Him - Yeah. They're not like potatoes. One bulb...one onion

So there you have it. All of that tending and special care for two onions. I plan to take my two onions, three tomatos and some of the chives and hold a very exclusive salsa party at the end of the summer. After all, someone other than me and B. should be allowed to relish in the months of work that will go into raising that onion.

Blog P.S.
Me - Honey, come read my latest post.
B. - .....(reading)....
B. - WHAT?!! We're only gonna get two onions?! Are you serious?
Me - Yeah! Tell me about it!

Fill 'er Up!

A little gas humor to brighten your week. Think Hybrid!!

Impromptu Gardening

So yesterday B. and I decided that we were gardeners. I realize that the picture is woefully unimpressive, but you just have to bare with me. About a month ago my mom and I were the recipients of several potted herbs from a Wine & Herb Tour that we did. Ever since, the little herbs and tomato plants have been struggling along in the little plastic containers that they came in. Feeling as though we had reached the breaking point on the sad little containers, we decided that we really had to replant them. Enter Trip #1 to Lowes. No big deal, we thought. Pots...soil...done.

Well, upon replanting the herbs I had an epiphany that I really had no idea what the hell I was doing. I have no gardening experience and neither does B. It occurred to me to actually read the little tags that came with the plants. The little tags informed me that tomato plants need to be planted at least 2 feet apart. Huh... Interesting. Enter Trip #2 to Lowes. We figured that if we were going to plant tomatoes, we may as well go for broke and create a little garden area next to the house where only stones and weeds used to live. So 6 hours, 2 trips to Lowes, 4 bags of dirt, 1 bag of mulch, and 20 pavers later, we have the world's most unimpressive garden, created at a house we don't even own. It's OK though, we got to feel domestic and maybe something will live long enough to put into a meal next month. I'll keep ya posted.

Gardening afterthought - Our little adventure was the most physical activity I've had in nine months (AKA: since I quit waitressing and started nursing my back injury), so today my back muscles and my leg muscles are quite sore!

The most popular kids on the block!

Yes, that's right, it was a big weekend. Not only did B. and I go out on a Friday night (huge!), but we also took a day trip yesterday. We basically haven't done either activity more than once in the last year, so both in one weekend is a pretty big deal for a couple as lame as we've turned into. And I'd love to tell you that it's b/c we're too busy raising fantastic children that will be the leaders of tomorrow, or b/c we've started these really amazing entrepreneurial enterprises that are devouring our time, or b/c we just have so many friends that we don't have time for day trips... but none of those things are true. Really we just get extraordinarily tired from our work weeks and talk each other into staying home. Yeah... that's it. That's the only explanation I can give you.

Friday night was the Ithaca Festival as well as our friend, Jaynes Ave.'s, 30th birthday, so we made our way through the crowds, ate festival food, bought a few crafts, and then drank until the bars closed. It was an unusual night in that the only groups of friends we have (my work friends, B.'s work friends, our Jaynes Ave. friends, and some musician friends) were all out and all at the same bar. So rather than the more expected scene of 4 people sitting in a corner booth drinking and griping about work, we got to mingle! Like popular people! It was GREAT!

Then Saturday we woke up and drove to Canandaigua, NY on Canandaigua Lake, a neighboring Finger Lake. We went to Bristol Harbour Resort and toured the facilities as a possible wedding spot for the future. It was gorgeous! Just as great as the website pictures would lead you to believe. It sits on a hilltop above the lake and has gorgeous views, an Adirondack theme, and is attached to a Robert Trent Jones golf course (for those of you who don't golf, that's a big deal in the golf world). All in all, a very nice weekend. Now it's back to mundane weekend activities such as cleaning out the car and separating all of the recyclables. I've put a little something below to bring some comic relief to your Sunday...

Funny of the Day:

B. - "... blah, blah, blah about last night's Yankee's game... blah, blah about the guy who got hurt. As it turns out, he has a concussion and he pulled his cervix!"
S. - "Uh... guys don't have a cervix. And I don't think you could 'pull your cervix' anyway."
B. - "Huh... Well... it was something like that."

Story update: The Yankee had a cervical sprain in his neck, also known as whiplash injury.