satisfied by frosting

My boss is the fairy godmother of cupcakes! We were lamenting the noticeable lack of cupcakes in our vicinity earlier today and lo! she just came down with two which we split between four of us, dramatically lowering the guilt factor.

shark week

My friend invited me over for Shark Week's opening night. I've never seen even a small part of Shark Week before so I was very excited. We had many shark-related snacks, including ice cubebs with candy sharks frozen inside, a shark cake and a drink she called "chum". Unfortunately said drink contained clamato juice, which is pretty much guaranteed to make me spew.

In other news, it took me pretty much all of Saturday to recover from Friday night's freakout/planning festivities. You can check out my flickr pages for photographic evidence of both events.

http://flickr.com/photos/inthehoosegow

p.s. did you know there's a brand new blogger blog entitled and with the address of "in the hoosegow"? The nerve!

turmoil

My life, as usual, is like living in the midst of a tornado. Up until today, whenever anyone asked, I'd say "yup, everything's crazy, but work is good." And now, sweet readers, work is about to become very very bad. However, I'm not yet at liberty to discuss the root of this, so I will instead turn to a reminiscence from the past.

One of my co-workers has just returned from her summer as a camp counselor, which reminded me of my one and only camp summer.

During the week-long training, the camp director had us take turns acting out scenarios where we would be presented with a problem and have to act out either the kid or counselor part. The problems were some you might imagine, like the kid is homesick or has thrown up or refuses to change his underwear. Others seemed a bit far fetched, like the one where the kid has been there all summer and never showered or gets her period for the first time or refuses to eat anything but sandwiches. I am here to tell you that each and every one of the scenarios we acted out occurred over the course of the summer.

I was one of those lax counselors, by which I mean that I let my kids get away with a lot because A. I am not a disciplinarian and B. who cares, as long as they're not hurting themselves/each other? This occasionally came back to bite me on my lazy butt. For instance, I made it a habit to buy the kids in my cabin a lot of candy whenever I got to escape to the real world. They'd give me a list and a wad of cash and I'd buy everything I could find. You're imagining wired children bouncing off the walls, I'm sure, but it's amazing how much sugar an 11 year old can consume and still need 10 hours of sleep. What they did do was to sit on my bed eating black jelly beans, which invariably found their way into my sheets. Bleh! There is nothing even close to waking up with black jelly beans stuck to one's nether regions.

giggety

Wednesday night I attended the 3rd H-town film swap. The concept is this: filmmakers submit 5 minutes of film, composers submit 5 minutes of music (or something...), and these are swapped. The filmmakers create a new 5 minutes of film to go with the score they've received and vice versa. The results: variable but windy.

Any of you who attended will recall "C is for Cookie, and Cookie's good for me!" repeated for 5 full minutes, as well as watching a digital timer count down 5 minutes while periodically a man would appear and say "If you think I'm going to take this, you've got another thing (or, occasionally "think") coming." Toward the end, we all broke out in a chorus of "C is for Cookie". Talk about driving someone crazy.

Afterwards I had the strongest margarita I've ever had and enjoyed in my life. No wonder they call it the Cadillac.

i forget

Who knows what I was about to write because my phone rang. Here was the exchange:

"Hi, S. (she always calls me by my first name. Curses!). M. from Dr. P's office."

"Hi, M."

"See you tomorrow?"

"At 4."

That was it. She's a great receptionist and knows when she can speak short-cut-ese.

why waiting is sometimes good

I've been craving french fries for, oh, about a week. Today my boss walked past all of our offices saying "have you had lunch?" until she got to me. Apparently I was the only one who hadn't eaten, so we went to the campus restaurant. I got a sandwich that comes with "potato wedges", which are tastier, more savory versions of french fries.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

summer blues

I know it's only July, but school starts again in mid-August so I feel like summer is almost over. Not the hot, blistery weather, but the days of not having to worry about traffic on the way to school and that feeling of freedom, however false it may be.

lose 20 lbs quik!

Saturday morning was my first group run with my marathon training group. I know that it's currently very hot in much of the country, but H-town is merely in the midst of the normal summer Hot. Still, our Hot means that even at 7am it is 80+ degrees and muggy as heck. After the run (4 miles, not too far but still kicked my butt) I drove to see my goat friends. I have a few nasty bruises from getting into the goat pen with the bucket of treats. I had to wrestle with either Brenda or Tina (probably Brenda, considering how she was using her horns) to get away. The sad thing is that I left my camera at work all weekend so I can't share any pics. It is really sad because the baby goats are so cute and one was nursing from the donkey, Peaches.

sticky

All of my dreams last night involved being around too many people. At one point I was picking out a place to sleep in this house. There were several rooms but all were packed full of beds/couches/cots. Each time I left one room and went back, more of the spaces were claimed.

I also dreamed that I was making dinner for my friends at the lake but they didn't tell me that they had really already made it and were just pushing everything I had made off to the side.

I got to work today, having waded through the soupy air, to find a box of chocolates and a card that says "Ranger WOW!"*, which makes all of the stupid dreams and yucky weather tolerable.

*It's an inside joke which would be hard to explain but suffice it to say that we put "WOW!" after things we like.

fotos

I just chose a flickr alias that matches this blog, so you can remember it. My usual moniker, waspwoman, was already taken. Can you believe it? Anyhoo, I just got a new dig camera so you can check here periodically for updates:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/inthehoosegow/

Yes, I know, the only recent photos are of my cat. Deal with it!

recovering

My regular schedule is all kaflooey because of the Immersion program that finished up yesterday. Now I have to wrangle myself back onto my schedule because the following things are pressing:

1. Cleaning my house. I have been ignoring the cat-hair dust rhinos, but they're starting to form herds.

2. Mowing the front lawn. See many previous posts about my yard.

3. Grocery store. I will soon be out of coffee and shampoo, two things I don't care to be without. Also, my razor is so dull I am more scraping than shaving off my body hair, which is slightly unpleasant.

4. Running. I signed up for marathon training this year because I like to run with a group, I like someone else to make my running schedule for me, and my pants do not fit.

grass

My lovely neighbor mowed the strip of grass between our driveways AND edged it. That propelled me into "edging" the rest of the lawn. In my world, that means I go around the driveway and sidewalk yanking out all of the grass growing inwards, rather than using a proper tool. It's a hot and sweaty job, even at 7am. I'd meant to do a bit of weeding and also clean up inside the house, but I ran out of steam way before that.

madness

We are having a big training thingy here this weekend (really, Friday through Wednesday) and while I am not participating I have a large number of responsibilities. Yay, I love responsibilities! A few are even fun, like taking a group to lunch and to the Menil, but most are worky, like making sure the caterers brought what we wanted, setting up kettles for hot water and re-setting the rooms. I am mostly looking forward to seeing some old friends and meeting new folks too.

Meanwhile, I had a big summer camp group come in this morning. I had planned some fun things and they seemed to be involved. One boy was very concerned that he have time to find information about his dog. One of the other boys was hitting on his counselor. This is why I love this age group--they are an inquisitive mass of hormonal madness.

Finally, I am trying not be a big baby about my personal life, which kinda sucks at the moment. Happily, we're having ice cream in a few hours.

hey hey i'm a monkey

Check out my friend's teaser reel on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoQUTNLhNBY

You can see me in a blue cowgirl outfit and also at the very end in a lab coat. As my sis reported, the sound quality is messed up. And yet, that doesn't stop me from saying: I'm famous!

Hahahahaha.

what was i thinking?

I verbed so many things today. The day began with laundry and lawn mowing, followed by a quick shower and a sprint to the dentist. Back at home I did more laundry, ate, etc. (which translates into Read My Book and Watched Regis). Work began with a desk shift, then two meetings and catching up on my to-do list and rss feeds. It will end with another desk shift. Circle of life and all that.

happy smile

I had a very fun weekend in Austin, party because I stayed at a famous old hotel. It was also mass fun because of all of the events I attended, people I met and food & drinks I ingested. Cantaloupe agua fresca, need I say more?

Luckily we hooked up with one of Austin's premier social butterflies, which meant that our calendar was full to bursting each evening.

Oh yeah, I also attended a li-berry conference while I was there, which was productive and interesting. I'm definitely looking forward to next year!

getting older

One of the weirdest things about aging is the change in perception of time. Children experience every second. An hour lasts forever, especially if they are expected to sit still. Summer vacation stretched on for miles (I have an odd habit of imagining the year as a big circle...) and Christmas Eve night passed about as quickly as a turtle with gum stuck to its feet.

These days, the years seem to speed past. Just the other day I was squeezing into my bridesmaid's dress for my sister's wedding, but now my oldest nephew is 5 1/2 and starting school in the fall.

I can't wait until I'm really old and I go to put down a glass only to realize the table has turned to dust.

4th

While standing around in the drizzle watching the fireworks, we kept overhearing some guys (who sounded a bit drunk) shouting out things like "Freedom! (swear word)" "America! (swear word)". We got in the act by shouting out "No taxation without representation", countered by drunken boys or perhaps others standing near us shouting "we're not going to drink that tea!", countered by us with "England, boo!" etc. Then we tried to recite the preamble to the Constitution but couldn't get past the first bit. We are sorry Americans.

lake-y goodness

Top 5 reasons I love going to my friends' lake house:
1. There's a lake and I get to go swimming, sometimes naked!

2. No schedule whatsoever. I spent most of Sunday asleep on the dock.

3. Communal cooking & cleaning up. Many hands make light work.

4. Rum punch.

5. Doggies. We had up to 6 dogs to play with at once.