Examine this

Well, the day has come to announce the announcement that had too many people on Facebook yelling at me to just get on with it already and make the announcement.

I have a new gig.

I am the Denver Highlands Mom Examiner for Examiner.com! Come on over and check out my inside take on this great neighborhood of Denver, just west of downtown. I'll be posting at least 3 - 4 times per week, so get ready for an onslaught of seeing Amos strut our local streets and showing you what's what for parents and kids in north Denver.

Oh yeah, I bought a new camera. It's not here yet. *kicks the dirt*

In case you missed it, I also guest posted over at Sarcastic Mom. Show some love, yo.

How are you doing? You look fabulous in that garment.

Die! Die!

Feeling random, so this is what you get. Sometime soon, I will announce something or another. Keep your britches on until then. Or, keep them off.

• Phil quizzes me most weeks before he heads out to host a Geeks Who Drink quiz at the Irish Hound (read Phil's blog here). My score is sometimes the best, sometimes not. The highest scoring teams receive gift certificates, free beer, or assorted gadgets and odd trinkets. What is my prize? I get to sleep with the quiz master. I doubt the other teams receive orgasms for their efforts. Or, um... Phil?
  

• In keeping with our longstanding tradition of destroying our personal items, Phil managed to throw our camera on the floor. The battery compartment broke. Now, if we want to take pictures, we must hold it shut for our dear lives, breaking off fingers in the process. I actually need the camera now, for reasons I will not tell you yet. I suppose I'm now in the market for a new soul stealer (camera, not husband). You know that American Indians didn't want their pictures taken because they thought it would steal their souls, right? Right. I'm actually glad that the camera is busted. Not only does it steal your soul, but it would take weird blue pictures that were difficult to adjust. Maybe that's the color of souls leaving the nest. So, I need a new device to steal souls in higher mega pixels and with better color adjustment (for maximum stealing, you see).
  

• Amos is in love with the playground. Except, he doesn't know that it's called the playground. Everything is the slide. The slide! The slide! He yells it out as soon as he sees the shiny red, blue and yellow parts of the playground equipment. Ah, but only if it were so innocent. He actually yells out, "Die! Die!" in the most sinister, angelic voice you've ever heard. He runs around the house telling us to die. I am raising Damien, The Omen. I guess it's good for me that we don't live in a two-story house with a balcony. Also, I will not allow Amos to ride a tricycle indoors. EVER. Amos sometimes also seems to speak in tongues. Coincidence? I think not. *wondering if I should shave his head and look for 666*

• Phil and I might have a date soon. A real, actual adult date involving two grownups. This lady right here is in sore need of a night out with a man. At this point, any man will do. I just. NEED. A. DATE. A silly neighbor volunteered to take care of Damien. She has been warned about being told to die.

• Watching too much childrens' television will cause you to go wacky, not unlike the Jack Nicholson character in The Shining. All Dora and Wubbzy makes Sarah a dull girl. All Diego and Wonder Pets makes Sarah want to drop kick the TV and tear the heads off of stuffed monkeys.

• Did I mention that I need a date?

Also, in case you haven't tired of me just yet, head over yonder to that crazy lady Sarcastic Mom. I am the guest blogger on her fence today. Just a sittin' on that ol' fence and sayin' thangs. And chewin' on straw. Chawin' and tawkin'.

How many w's?

I suspect this is what would happen if my grandmother was still alive.

Hey, you. Yeah. YOU.

So, apparently I missed the boat on Delurking Day 2009. This is a day when folks who read a blog are encouraged to stop by and leave a comment. Any comment. Any word choice pattern that involves clacking some keys and moving a mouse.


I apologize for my lack of timeliness. I am surfin' the 'Net today to delurk upon some bloggies that I enjoy. Many of them of are way over there in my favorite blog list on the left. You'd be an improved human being to visit those places.


So, my lovelies, if you happen to read this blog and enjoy the randomness, comedy, tragedy, and tomfoolery that splashes upon your screen, come on a' my house and leave a comment. Delurk. Make it so.





In other news...

I feel like I am a newborn learning about the world. I'm waking up after a long sleep. That whole mess back in '08 (which I like to call Aught Eight like an old rummy, and will sorely miss saying the 'aught' part of Aught Nine once Ten rolls around) left me a puddle of a mess. For those of you wondering, I'm getting back to normal, but some sort of new normal. I think it is a better new normal than the old norm. I think.


Currently, we are watching some bizarre ocean volcano song on "Diego" on Nick Jr. I believe the words were, "You've got to blow! blow! blow! like an ocean volcano! Blow! BLOW! BLOW! BLOW! BLOW!" Now they are yelling, "You gotta squirt! Squirt!"


Perhaps this will be my new mantra for Aught Nine. You gotta squirt. You gotta blow.


I'll leave you with that.

Coffee Dude, part deux

Well, I thought I was being too catty in the last blog, but I seem to have hit a nerve and a chuckle bone with a few of you who are well aware of empty biz-lingo speak. You ams my people.

So, Qwest decided to put off our glorious Internet at home because a third-party verifier made their verifying call to us too late (huh? wuh?). So, we wait until tomorrow for the wireless juices to flow within our abode.

In the meantime, I'm back at the coffee shop with my menfolk. We went to the playground and now Amos is mixing chess pieces with dominos. I'm sure there are old men sitting in Central Park right now who feel the mixed game vibe that Amos is sending through the air, and those men are simultaneously falling over from their concrete chairs and having heart attacks and/or some sort of exuberant spasms.

Or not.

As luck would have it, Coffee Dude is here again. Phil says the guy has been here since this morning. Perhaps Qwest has besmirched his good name as well. I suspect, however, that Sweetie has kicked him to the curb for wearing all brown from head to foot.

Yes. All brown. The same shade of dark, coffee house brown. If I wasn't able to observe the tail of his shirt, I'd swear that he's wearing a one-piece jumpsuit.

I'm going to guess that outfits like that combined with paradigm shifts, confluences, leveraging, and innovation are the reason that his venture capitalist buddy didn't want to bite the bagel.

So, here's why I appreciate Phil. I just observed his work e-mails, and someone he communicates with uses phrases such as major release, regression tests, public query, and release notes. See, that could potentially be really annoying coming out of someone's mouth (especially Coffee Dude), but Phil doesn't use these words (well, "major release" may have been uttered in our bedroom - hachachacha!). And for that, I love this man.

You know, Coffee Dude is bringing out my inner cattiness, and for that I should probably thank him. I look forward to coming here tomorrow to see what shade of puke he is donning. Will I perchance get to listen to another of his brilliant speeches?

I'll leave you with this. This morning, when Phil told me on the phone, "The guy you wrote about is here again, about three tables away," I asked him, "Um. You better hope he didn't hear you." "Um. I hope not."

So, then I spent the morning wondering what the chain of events would be if Coffee Dude HAD heard him. Would there be a confrontation? Would Phil try to calm Coffee Dude by saying, "Naw, man, she said some great stuff about you."? Would Coffee Dude demand to see this writing and then Phil would be forced to say, "Well, at least she edited out the parts where she called you a douchebag."? And would Coffee Dude then try to have fisticuffs with Phil, perhaps box him about the ears? How long would it take before I would hear of these grand tales of mayhem in the coffee house?!

As you can imagine, I was anxiously loading up the stroller as I pondered this, hoping that I would catch man-on-man, coffee-flinging barbarism over my blog.

Sadly, there was none. Maybe tomorrow.

Observations upon a coffee house outing

While waiting for our new Internet connection to be established at home, Phil and I have ventured to the coffee house for free 'net and not so free coffee. Phil is showing Amos around the place and letting people gawk at him. Meanwhile, this is what I'm hearing from the guy next to me on the phone...



"Yeah. He's just not on board. He's a sinking ship."

"Well, I'm down the wire here. My game is off. His method isn't entering our agenda."

"By some miracle, he'll come back and get into the circle. I'm not banking on it."

"We need the capital and the commerce. He just doesn't want to put his name on it."

"Lots of discussions today, but he's just not gelling."

"Okay, Al. Enjoy your tennis game."




UGH. How many more mixed metaphors and crappy biz-lingo jargons can this guy throw in? I am having convulsions just trying not to scream over his conversation. If only he had thrown in words like "paradigm shift" or "team effort" or perhaps "planogram." I suspect he's listened to way too many motivational speeches from Tony Robbins. Come into the circle and embrace the team. Hug it out.

I ran a business, and I didn't talk like this guy. I'm not sure how that would have improved things for me if I had entered the paradigm shift or the quantum leap. I used my big girl voice, but I didn't try to master some other biz-speak in order to impress folks. Then again, I was in the natural products arena that is full of laid back hippies and yoga enthusiasts.

I still have no idea what he does, but I think it's best that I not. I do know that he shakes the heck out of the community table we are sharing, and that's really annoying.


I guess I'm a little cranky at the coffee house. Heh. I'm not one to talk, I guess. I'm the lady with the giant stroller in the coffee shop, possibly annoying others with my large contraption.

Phil says folks just complimented Amos on his haircut. Thank you, coffee patrons.


-----

Update: He's one the phone with "Sweetie" now. His voice is totally different. He's down and out. He's under the weather without a paddle. He is stretched to the outer limits and other mixed metaphors.

Ouch.

He just said, "Are we having dinner as a family?"

It was so sad the way he said it. Okay, Coffee Dude. You've made me sad for you. Go home to Sweetie and have a gin and tonic. Maybe tomorrow you can put a plug in that sinking ship.

Onnellista uutta vuotta

That's Happy New Year in Finnish. That concludes today's language lesson. Well, for you, at least.

For Amos, however, language has suddenly exploded in new and exciting ways. The lil' mimic picks up new words every day, ranging from two (dew), three (dee!), shoe (dew... yes, it's the same as 'two'), to cheese (deezsh!). Thanks to "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!", Amos goes around the house saying "Wow wow!" and raising his eyebrows up and down when he sees something exciting.

Okay, the eyebrow thing is something we taught him, but you must give him credit for combining the two skills.

It melts my cold, dark heart.

The lil' noodle understands WAY more than that. He meows when there is any mention of a feline. He knows what a xylophone is and where to obtain one. He climbs the stairs on the playground and goes down the slide all by himself. He can find your nose and your belly. He is quite fond of showing you his own abdomen, so much so that I think we'll have a public streaker on our hands one of these days.

Apparently, while I wasn't looking, my boy grew up into a bonafide toddler. Eighteen months is a mighty fine age.

So, here's to a new year without any catastrophes, yet filled with wow wow!

*raises eyebrows up and down*