Tuesday, November 30, 2010

E-mail of the Week

Entitled "Lost Property"......


"HELLO MS ERICKSON

MY NAME IS LAURIE BARRERA I AM A TRACER FOR AMERICAN AIRLINES AND I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT I HAVE FOUND YOUR BAG WITH DELTA. I HAVE SENT THEM A MESSAGE TO FEDEX YOU YOUR BAG. I JUST FOUND IT TODAY SO IT MAY TAKE THEM A DAY TO GET MY MESSAGE. ONCE I HEAR SOMETHING I WILL LET YOU KNOW WHEN YOU SHOULD BE RECEIVING YOUR BAG. THEY MAY CALL YOU AS WELL. IF YOU NEED TO REACH ME MY NUMBER IS 972-425-6480.

LAURIE BARRERA"



Thank You Laurie Barrera!

Monday, November 15, 2010

9 Days a Week

Last Saturday we went to Sasha'a 2nd birthday party complete with cake, presents, and children-at-heart.   Sasha is the daughter of our good friend's Val and Masha, and because all my baby brothers and nieces and nephews live so far away, I solely rely on Sasha to fulfill my local baby needs.  There was another baby there, but he went to sleep early......party-pooper.





Sunday we took Trevor's New Jersey friend, Mike P.,  to Neverland Ranch.  That's right, Michael Jackson's old stomping grounds. It used to look like this (see below), but they recently took down the wreath and the words and now it's just a plain ol' boring gate.  It was slightly disappointing.  There was a recent debate on whether or not to turn the property into a state park and other rumors claim Paris and Prince (two of Michael's kids) are going to buy the property.  (I get all my facts from Wikipedia)




Monday was the first day that day light savings hit me.  I know they say we get an extra hour of sleep, but it just doesn't feel like I'm getting anything extra besides darkness.  And that makes me tired and lazzzzzy.  And that's pretty much all I could think of on Monday.  I am so tired and I don't feel like doing anything.....



Tuesday I fell on the floor at work.  Terribly embarrassing.  Walking around, minding my own business....  Scurrying around the lab with my arms full of papers, turn the corner and boom I'm on the ground.  Luckily no one really saw it happen but my one co-worker who turned around and asked me what I was doing on the floor.  That caught a few more people's attention who turned around with curious, skeptical glances.  Nothing to see here folks, just a little bit of water, must have slipped.  No worries, I'll just go ahead and wipe it up.  I grab some paper towels and dab at the completely dry floor.  I could have sworn there was water there a second ago...


Wednesday I went to yoga class.  Ahhh yoga class. I LOVE yoga class.
This is not me.  There is no way in hell I can do this pose.   I would love to be able to to, but come on now let's be realistic... But it does, however, look like Santa Barbara


Thursday night was the night before Trevor's big conference and some of his old buddies were in town.  We went out to dinner and then over a friend's house where we sat around a pool table watching an Australian Shepherd try to herd the pool balls.  We also told jokes:
Q: Where did the General put his Armies?
A: In his sleevies!

Friday night was a big night for Trevor's conference.  One of the perks of dating a student is the free appetizers and happy hours whenever the school or department is entertaining prospective students, sponsors, or donors.  Unfortunately this particular conference was not ideal for party-crashers.   So instead I met up with Trevor's colleague's wife and we had beer and pizza and watched college football, just us girls.
ouch


Saturday was the second day of the conference.  That's right I said Saturday.  What blasphemy!  Stealing my weekend Trevor time!  He was gone all day 9-5.  To preoccupy myself I went shopping for 3 hours,  re-arranged all the furniture, re-arranged all the photos hanging on the wall, dusted everything, did 5 loads of laundry, hung out with Butterscrotch, watered the plants, road my bike to the beach, laid on the beach (yes it has been 76 degrees and sunny all week long), read a magazine, road my bike back home, then met up with Trev for dinner and babysat together.  And by together I mean Trevor slept the whole time while I was awake trying to get the baby to go to sleep.   Baby asleep, Trevor awake, parents back home and we watched Legends of the Fall over a bottle of wine....Tears, tears, tears...  Such a good movie!



Sunday....  Oh Sunday, how the dread of Monday ruins you!  Last Sunday I had bought a pair of tweezers to replace my only pair of tweezers that I had so gingerly packed in my luggage that is eternally lost....  I finally began purchasing replacements for the items I had lost.  And I have since lost those new replacement tweezers.  Tonight, after teaching Trev some new yoga breathing techniques I thought a little more about what I was doing the last I had them.. I know I had removed the tweezers from the packaging and then also opened up my new mascara, cover-up and deodarant.  I walked to the bathroom to put my new accessories away and throw out the packaging.  My tweezers weren't where I thought I'd put them and my only guess was that I might have been carrying my tweezers in my "garbage" hand and dumped them with the excess packaging.  Sure enough, after rummaging through the bin I finally find my tweezers in the bathroom garbage can.  Good-bye boy eyebrows!

Today, I also broke out the sewing machine and started "cutting and pasting" some of my old favorite clothes into new dresses....

Dress #1

Dress # 2

Dress # ?....OK, well,  I didn't make this one, but I did wear it while sewing.  The moo-moo is my new favorite wardrobe piece in fact.  Don't knock it till you try it! 
 

This weekend also marked a momentous family occasion...my cousin, Maureen, had a baby =)  And thus begins the next generation of Powers, Meyers, Hannigans, Gannons, and so on and so forth!!
Here is Mo circa 1985 (?)




And here is Mo's brand new baby boy, Chris:

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Kevin the Kreeper


My friend, Kevin, pictured above.... looks creepily like the man pictured below (second from the right): 






Pretty creepy, right?

Oh Where, oh where can my little bag be?

Baggage Update:

My baggage was lost somewhere in America last month and has failed to show up anywhere.   I claimed the contents to be around $780 although I am fairly certain that is an underestimate as I keep trying to find things in my closet only later realizing that I had packed them in that damn bag. Although it was for one weekend, I happened to put all my favorite dresses,  every piece of jewelery and hair accessory I own,  my sonicaire toothbrush, all my make-up (which isn't much, but still...),  my favorite flip flops, and hot pink pumps all in that one tragically lost bag. ... damn.....  

This post is a tribute to some of my long lost articles:

My red sequins dress from college roommate Ginger's wedding... (and red feather hair clip)

My fun denim skirt from Sally and white blouse (including pink flower head band)

My 80's black striped and polka dot dress from Susie's deals including neon headband

My Asian dress from Sally

My e-bay project dress and those Teva flip flops

My colorful print dress

My sun dress, pink feather clip. and green headband

One of the dresses Bridget got me for my birthday... it was mine for 1 day

My super soft yellow t-shirt and blue skirt..including white beads

My grey cardigan (birthday present from Nancy) and other floral dress (birthday present from Bridget)  also only owned for 1 day.  Headband and beads were previously mentioned...gone

Black sequins dress and hot pink pumps


Tank top from Ireland

Red marching band cardigan from Ireland
My printed Danish dress from my Danish friend

You've seen this one before but I thought I'd throw in an extra full length action shot

The most tragic of all losses... my beloved leopard print sequins Betsey Johnson dress which I so lovingly splurged on as a birthday present to myself..

If anyone is ever in Alabama, please print out this post and look for my items lat this store:  http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/index.html.   They buy unclaimed luggage and sell it in their shop.  Jerks.  (I would totally go shopping there...)

Who's a Sexy Kite?

Facebook excerpt: 

Jimmy O'Donnell

Facebook Friend # 1:   Didn't you make a big stink about wanting to go as something "pretty" for Halloween?

    • Me:   I'm a sexy kite!


    • Facebook Friend #2:  julie dear, queen of sexy, you wore a duct tape diaper over a pair of sweat pants. . .
       
       
       
       
       
       

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Kite, Camera, Action

 
"For the benefit of Mr. Kite there will be a show tonight on the trampoline...."  I have had that song in my head all week long, preparing for my Halloween costume.  I also quite often mistake the word trampoline with tambourine and even more often combine the two into "trambourine" which is obviously the act of playing the tambourine while jumping on a trampoline. 

Back to Halloween...

This year we headed south to Redondo Beach for a costume party at our good friend Reni's house.  Reni has been a third wheel of ours for close to 4 years now, or maybe I should say I have been a third wheel to Reni and Trevor for close to 4 years now.  That's probably more accurate.  The cast and crew of the show included Reni and girlfriend Liz, a slew of master student alumni's from the Great Class of 08, some highschool and work friends of Liz, and might as well bring the Danish girl down and give her a real taste of tick or treatery, an American Halloween party.

KITE! and Danish friend Saima (aka the rockstar)




KITE!!!!  Where's Ben?

Rainbow Bright flew in from NYC for the party

Hey Popeye, that beer spinach looks delicious but where's Olive Oil?

There she is hanging with Johnny Cash

Doc and Marty McFly came back from the future for the festivities

The Howells were able to make it off Gilligan's Island


Even Flo took time off from the Insurance commercials


Costumes were swapped


kites were photo bombing


And Ben Franklin and Marty McFly made some huge progress towards the optimization of time travel.

Left to Right: Viking, Popeye, Mr. Howell, Doc, Ben Franklin, Johnny Cash, Turtle Guy ?, Sticks...

Right to Left: Carrots, Marty McFly, Olive Oil, Rockstar, KITE, MRs. Howell, Flo the insurance lady, June Carter, Beer Girl


And it wouldn't be an American Halloween party without your standard underwear costumes.  (they weren't with us)

Apparently Conan O'Brien was promoting his new show by asking for people to send in pictures of themselves dressed up with the Conan mask on.... So we did:


Ben's got a little messy...

and a little creepy

Hopefully Liz wins the contest.  The prize is free tickets to the show.  Speaking of contests and prizes and winning, later that night we mozied over to a nearby bar where we walked backwards into a costume contest and proceeded to supermarket-sweep the first, second, and third place couples costumes category and also got the gold in the singles department netting in total a $250 gift certificate to the bar.  Party Time!


This is Kite trying to get Ben Franklin to put his legs up and give the kite a Superman ride....would have been a much better picture than this one which looks like Ben Franklin is trying to give birth...

Doc & Marty...


....and Ben Franklin & his Kite lived happily ever after.


The End...


Happy Halloween!!!