na na na na na na, you say it's your birthday

i turned 28 on the 13th and john turned 48 on the 10th and his wife has a birthday tomorrow and then there's wayne, and keith, and dave, and marc, and mike, and italian stallion, and brock, etc... there are so many birthdays this time of year that i was forced to host a small, impromptu dinner party in our honor. you'll find some pictures below from the night where i served braised lamb in my fancy new dining room on my fancy new dishes, glass and flatware. i know you'll find this hard to believe, but we drank much wine, martinis with vodka, beer, green beans, and all sorts of other liquids involving blue curacao at said party. here is the evening in pictures in order of progression from start to finish.

first we listened to some choice music:















next, the boys got undressed:















that's when i found my guests to be far more interesting:















i'm pretty sure this is where we started to lose control:















and this is when drew and i ended up wearing john's shirt:
















it's best not to ask questions.

here's a random shot of my ugly niece who was not at the party. man she's ugly:















happy birthday 2005, novemberites. hope to see ya next year.

i love you man

he was tied with my mother for my most favorite person in life. he was tall, intelligent, stylish, dashing, dry-witted, and loved his poodle and his red, red wine. he was a lot like cary grant except bald. my mother is a lot like her father except for the tallness and the baldness and maybe swap out dashing with diabolical. otherwise, exact replicas. he was the core of the family and a lot of screws started to fall out after his death. my aunt v got a divorce and then lost complete control of her 2 kids. my other aunt, s, moved to california, got a divorce, then got remarried and didn't tell anyone. family xmas, easter, birthdays, and cook-outs headed south. as they say, he probably did much rolling in his grave. i have really good memories of him in the summer. he loved taking my sister and i to local fairs and winning goldfish for us. he would ride his motobecane over on sunny days and then we would get our bikes out and ride back home with him to have ice-cream with my grandmother (since they only lived a few streets over). if my dad was tackling a project in the yard, he would ride over, sip iced-tea, and keep my dad company until it got dark. his corvette collection was the best. there were 4; one sold to aunt s, one sold to some greasy looking guy, and the other 2 - totally stolen from the garage on 2 separate occasions. he was pretty pissed about that. so was i. my favorite memory was when he would pick me up from half-day kindergarten in the gun-metal grey one and head straight to mcdonald's for happy meals. he would get one too so that there would be extra toys for us hanging around at his house.

i miss him. i was 3 days from turning 9 when he died on his birthday, november 10th. i didn't get enough time with him, but i don't have any regrets. he lived close and always wanted to see us. he was a wonderful man and i'm glad i got to have him in my life.

i'm not here to preserve anyone's feelings

the mood caught me. you're in for a treat. things i hate.

• the 2 words 'pet' and 'peeve' used together
• when i get mascara or pen on my hand
• personalized license plates
• aimless busy-bodies at work, who by the way, do have agendas
• having a boss
• zealots, religious or otherwise. if you're psycho about 1 particular thing, i hate you
• wolf spiders. i hate that they make me have to kill them. i do
• red roses
• all the little mindless lemming families in my neighborhood
• anything too sweet, like cake and pop
• christmas and everything it stands for/encompasses
• porders (this is vague danni-code which you may never figure out)
• people who pretend to be whatever the current company includes (a vegetarian perhaps)
• champagne
• sausage
• raisins
• the people whose attention span cuts out after 4 seconds. listen to me dammit. i'm only speaking to you because you need to know what i'm telling you. morons.
• german opera. it's just so all-around ugly.
• couples who think you're less of a person without a boyfriend
• U2, elvis costello, and the talking heads
• kiss-asses and yes men. thanx for ruining my life.
• how our society has spiraled into a nose dive of laziness and complacency, never to regain control
• when people lick the foil lid of a yogurt. you knew this was coming

corporately, we believe in orgasms

reese cups are so delicious that they completely and totally incapacitate me. i can do nothing while we're in conference together. nothing. i just hung up on some guy because of this. my apologies, jim.

if you were here, i could deceive you

i decided to have my house face west so that i could really see the moon from my back windows. guess what also happened this fall...mars is in the eastern sky. a little bonus for me. i'm sitting in the middle of my great room floor in the dark (since my one chair has been moved in great anticipation of the sofa that's arriving in 10 hours) looking up at the stars and it's pretty neat. this house makes me happy most of the time - when it's not making me feel hopelessly imprisoned at work. i'm calm and extremely uneasy all at the same time. the only other things i might need at this particular moment would be max and john mayer or jack johnson with an acoustic guitar. i wish you could see this but a plain old digital pic doesn't do it justice. isn't that just your luck.

i want candy

so my halloween was nice. friday night was the usual party at sarah's old house where i dressed as master hor. i've never seen some people that drunk before (and i've seen A LOT of drunk before). it's good that the little ones didn't make it out for that one this year. definitely some x-ratings on that one. call me later and we'll discuss. last night i had sarah, diane, and sharda in my driveway drinking beer. the guy next door was giving warm cider & bourbon to everyone so we got to hang with the 'bors too, which was nice. and sarah, diane, and i all kinda want to make out with mike who's 50 and very intriguing... i digress. ok, so we were giving the early birds one piece of candy (like 1 kit kat or 1 take five). then we began to notice that some kids were actually avoiding my beautiful well-lit abode and deliberately choosing to walk through the mud by the dark house across the way and we then also realized that the 84,000 kids that we had originally planned for, were in fact not coming. we had to "quickly" switch gears and give the later kids in the second hour giant sweeping handfuls. also, i would like to know why those bitches across the street with all the fall decorations had their effing lights off. that's bs. the lady directly across the street from ms. october 31st cannot be halloween scrooge. how can me of all people possibly live across the street from halloween scrooge. @&!. long-haired, 5yr-old shaggy kid was adorable. he was sitting in a wagon being pulled around by his mom (or dad. i can't remember) and he could barely come up for air to say thanks because his mouth was so full of candy. very effing cute. i want one like that. now. coincidentally, i carved a pumpkin in under 7 minutes while i was waiting for diane and sarah to show up. i'm fantastic. the decorations will stay up for a little longer and then i'll close the books on halloween 2005. it was a good one. i'll miss ya old pal.