feelin' hot hot hot

I love "Jump up and Kiss me" hot sauce so much I would do it.

I nearly forgot

I nearly forgot the most gruesome event of all. As I walk into the office this morning, in the grass is about 4 feet of intestines with a heart or spleen or something at the end. Happy moon-day!

Revived!

For the first time in a few months I feel revived after a weekend. What was different about this one--nothing really. But I feel better, and am anxious to go on vacation. For vacation postings, I've set up another blog so that hopefully I won't get too many random people reading this one. Otherwise I'll have to stifle myself--put up that filter--which I hate doing.

We saw "V for Vendetta" this weekend. Natalie Portman is hot, but she is truly a waif of a woman. In this one scene she was wearing a shirt that was gaping the slightest bit between the buttonholes and I was thinking-that's probably a kid's shirt. I mean, she is robo skinny. But, overall, a good movie. I couldn't figure out the whole time who the voice of the mask was. After Daniel told me (Maxim knowledge) it was so obvious. If you want to know, you can. It doesn't matter to the plot of the movie though.

We got most of our stuff packed, but are realizing we have little room for souvenirs. A re-do will need to commence this evening and Wednesday evening to get rid of more clothes. Right now, it looks like we'll have to do laundry once because we just can't fit enough stuff in our two packs. Tomorrow I hope we'll head down to the Tidal Basin for our annual cherry blossoms visit.

How about George Mason, eh? Not even their coach bet on that one.

My cup o' world is overflowing and clogging up the sewage system.

final itinerary--I think not

After trying for weeks to figure out the best way to get through our destinations of interest (GDOI for Germany, ADOI for Austria, SDOI for Switz to further annoy you and make you say doi like "no doi") for our trip, I think I've finally (mostly) figured it out
Day 1: drive to Wurzburg & Rothenburg ob der Tauer, sleep in Rothenburg (GDOI)
Day 2: Dinkelsbuhl, continue south and stop at Andechs brewery and hang out with monks, drive through Garmisch, sleep in Fussen (GDOI)
Day 3: crazy castle tours, hiking near Neuschwanstein, evening in Munich (GDOI maybe ADOI)
Day 4: Munich, all Munich(GDOI)
Day 5: Salzburg(ADOI)
Day 6: on way to Vienna, stop at Halstatt and towns on Danube River(ADOI)
Day 7: Vienna(ADOI)
Day 8: Vienna, overnight train to Zurich (ADOI)
Day 9: Black Forest region of Germany all day, end in Bern, Switzerland (GDOI and SDOI)
Day 10-13 in no order (well, the days will come in order, but these activities aren't necessarily):
Berner Oberland (Interlaken/Gimmelwald/Murten/Wengen all w/i 30 miles)
Murten/Neuchatel
Lausanne/Montreux
skiing in Zermatt/Matterhorn (SDOIs)
lakes region of the south (since the weather looks fairly crappy, this Mediterranean-like area is looking even more intriguing !)
Day 14: Zurich, Appenzell, St. Gallen (SDOIs)

Hail to the widget!

When we poured both the Guinness Draught and the Murphy's Stout, we heard a little rattle in the can from a contraption that Guinness calls a widget and Murphy's calls "a floating draughtflow system device." Whatever the name, the device consists of a plastic, nitrogen-filled ball with a tiny hole. It's added just before the can is sealed and floats in the beer. It's there because stouts, although less carbonated than most beers, are supposed to have creamier, longer lasting heads--something a good bartender can easily achieve when drawing the beer from a tap. The problem when stout is canned or bottled, however, is that the combination of the carbon dioxide and nitrogen needed to create this "head" and the lower carbonation of the beer results in too little "fizz" to produce and maintain a creamy, foamy head. When a can or bottle containing a widget is opened, the compressed gas in the widget helps the carbon dioxide already dissolved in the beer form additional tiny bubbles, which keep the head stable.

Read it & Lead It

My Honest Tea bottle told me today:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."--Margaret Mead

Read it, & Lead it.

first reservation is made!

Thank God--we have some place to stay the first night of our trip. In fact, so far this is the only place we have reserved to stay. I'm extremely excited to be completely surrounded by toile. It was between this "elegantly" decorated home and another place that looked really boring, so we chose this one. We'll drive from Frankfurt airport through Wurzburg and find our first day's resting place in Rothenburg ob der Tauer. I look forward to the Medieval Crime & Punishment museum!

killer weekend

Nice weather, huh? Too bad next weekend it will be back down to 40. It is March, but I can still hope for spring starting 2 months early.

Laika and I enjoyed a powerhike at the Northwest Branch Trail while Daniel exposed his skillz on the court. It was a super friendly dog trail, so I was able to let Laika off leash and no one seemed to care. There was one angry guy who let his massive golden retrievers jump all over me and all over this group of people. They were ahead of me, and I guess they said something about how he should have his crazy hyper dogs on a leash and all I heard through the silent forest was "Shut the f--up! You know you guys are real a--holes!" A bit much of a retort, but I guess he's just wound a bit tight.

Other than that strange altercation, Laika played in the creek and swam about. Then she stunk, so we bathed her. The end.

$581 less money, but so much more rich

Hit up the crazy HTO sale this morning. Good thing no one was angry at me for getting to work at noon.

We anxiously waited in line outside as I set up my strategy. Tents first, clothes second, shoes optional. The optional was thrown out the door.

Daniel and I are the proud owners of a new tent, 2 new sleeping bags, a shirt for Daniel, an Alchemy Mountain Hardware jacket for me, and a token travel mug.

Savings of $455.67. Loss--4 hours of my time.

Brokeback Sheba

"What are you, the queen of Sheba?"
Although I haven't used the term recently, I certainly have said it in the past many times. But who the hell is the queen of Sheba? After a short bit of digging this morning, I found that the saying may relate to Makeda (the Queen of Sheba) and her visits with Solomon. She was probably from either Yemen or Ethiopia, and traveled 1400 miles to visit Solomon and test his knowledge and wits. She exposed him to countless mind games and tests in order to better her own knowledge and seek his teachings. She was extremely knowledge-hungry. These stories come mostly from the Bible, by the way.

So is it possible that when we say "What are you, the queen of Sheba" that we are inferring that the person is behaving as though they are smarter, swifter, etc?

Big Mac Index

The 10 most expensive cities in the world, says EIU, are (from the top down) Oslo, Tokyo, Reykjavik, Osaka, Paris, Copenhagen, London, Zurich, Geneva, and Helsinki. The press report didn't list any others, nor did it show the least expensive cities—to get at those numbers, you have to pay thousands of dollars to subscribe to EIU's cost-comparison service.
However, there's another available index—for countries, not cities—that does show low-cost areas. Oddly enough, it's based on a very simple premise: the local price for a Big Mac. Don't sneer: Some very learned economists believe that the price of a Big Mac, converted to U.S. dollars, is a reasonably good approximation of how far your dollars will go for other local expenses.
The latest "Big Mac Index," also from the Economist, shows Switzerland at the top, with a Big Mac price of $4.93, compared with $3.15 in the U.S. Other high-cost countries are Denmark and Sweden—findings that are roughly comparable to the EIU's city rankings.
At the other end of the scale, the cheapest Big Macs reported in the index are mostly in Asia—China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines—along with some relatively underdeveloped countries including Argentina, Russia, Egypt, and much of Eastern Europe.

Schaefer you old bag

You're not done with the media just yet, partner. Check out the alert I just got in my Business Journals daily update. Dear, dear Libby.

First Baby Shower

So this weekend I attended my first baby shower, which is a big step for me. It's stepping into a whole world that is unknown--burping cloths, teething rings, onesies... Basically, it's a world that is scary and dark. :)

But, Jenna did look very beautiful and pregnant-like. These are the hats that I basically spent all last week and the weekend making. I was sweating bullets trying to get them done. The white one has hearts on it. I really need to get started on making baby sweaters. Perhaps I could make money off my hobbies :)

This is a picture of the outrageously nice cake that her family-friend made. Jenna's family friends encompass nearly every arts, crafts and design businesses that exist in this world, except perhaps for Peruvian weaving. Maybe one of them tried it while on drugs in college, but I don't know. All in all, it was a nice day for Jenna.

I hate highlighters

Why why why must it always smear when I highlight something written in pen. I nearly dread reaching for the yellow highlighter. There's no doubt in my mind, even though I've carefully blown on the pen writing for at least 5 seconds, and was careful not to spiddle at all, that my highlighting motion will end in smeared crappy looking smearness.

grrrr.

Breakdown

So the Oscars last night were pretty good. Interesting at least. Stewart craps me up. I enjoyed his low blows at Russell Crowe and the glamorization of Hollywood. Seriously, they are damn lucky that Clooney won first, because his speech kept people watching for at least another hour. I've always had mixed feelings about the Sexiest Man Alive 1997, but he was quite eloquent and spoke from the heart. I was impressed.

I was not impressed with old ass Lauren Bacall however. I hope the teleprompter was broken and that's why she struggled so hardcore through her lines. Total botch by the Oscar committee for not checking that she could read prior to the show.

And, seriously, Crash winning for Best Picture? Lame. I do not concur.

More tomorrow on my first baby shower (as an attendee only :)

Scary

Sorry to be a downer, but definitely respect every day of your life as much as you can. You never know when you'll be driving along and a whole truckload of wood will drop on you and kill you.

This needs to stop happening right at my beltway exit. Last time it was the logs that fell off the truck.

Kids, I don't know what's wrong with these kids today!

So my hubby and I visited the children's section of Borders this weekend (Sunday afternoon) to purchase a book for a friend's baby shower. That experience definitely set us back another 5 for having kids. We were practically running out of the store. Daniel got all bitter and scowly. I got tense and confrontational. It was ugly.

They were sprawled out all over the place, with sticky fingers that pick up books from one place and either put them back in another place or just on the floor. There was an annoying British woman reading a tongue-twister of a book to her 3-ish year old (I don't know-he could've been 6 but frankly I don't know this stuff) and the kid could've cared less but she just kept reading in her annoying accent. He'd ask a question or make a comment and she'd just pummel right over him. "Mummy's busy reading".

Running around, lots of noise, utter chaos......ahhhh! I'm working on finding a calm place.