Happy Birthday to You

I'm not a fan of Ms. Biel here, but I'm nothing if not caring. So this is for a certain birthday boy. I hope he appreciates how many pics I had to flip through to find this one. Have gorgeous day.

I don't know who the photographer is, but I found this photo at this fan site.

Luggage

Ugly/cute recycled plastic luggage by Heys.

March!

Well, I'm rather fond of March (also, of the Hebrew calendar months of Adar I and Adar II) because it's my birthday month and Spring is supposedly on the way. I like the word March too. From Mars, the god of war, comes March, a nice succinct stompy kind of word. But it also has a pale yellow quality to it (like jonquils, the birth flower), and a squishy sound at the end (March-shmallow?) and it sounds like "Ma" which is sweet and cozy, and "arch", which can be wry or villainous! And the birthstones, depending which resource you look at, are bloodstone (dark green with red flecks) - which sounds cool and deep and is a kind of chalcedony (<--also one of my fave words), or aquamarine, which is icy and cool and sparkly.

Well, this ode to March is not the reason I logged on today, but what can I do? I love March very March. (Thank you! I'll be here all week!)

Pies - they're just like us!

Via Wendy Brandes Jewelry blog I discovered Cakespy - where they are "seeking sweetness in everyday life".

They put together a very cute pie tabloid - as a way to promote pies in the media battle against perenially popular cupcakes.

I love pie and I love this goofy send-up.

Things I Call My Cat Besides Her Real Name

This is a meme I stole from Marla at Weight and Paint.

Sattie-Pants
Sattie-Pie-Pants
Turnip
Racoon
Bum
Monkey
Punky
OWowOWowowowOW-getoffa-meebrat!
Satoush
Hey!You-can-see-in-the-dark!
Sasa
Shasha
Shasha Bread Company (they make ginger snaps, don't ask)
Cutie-Pie

Names I just thought of but have never really called her:
Tortie-lini
Squeaker
Botox ('cause she has pale eyebrows that make her look perpetually worried)

Her real name is Saturn. Yes, she's a girl. When I adopted her, she was called Franny. I bet you didn't know that.

Wherein Fictionally Tries a Poll

poll by twiigs.com

Carrot Cake Reward (with rum-soaked apricots, hello!)

I worked on my application. Hurrah! (It's an application so I can goes to a school where they teaches people how to makes good writering.)
Now I can look forward to making this amazing-sounding Chocolate Carrot Cake tomorrow or Monday. It is from the Foodland Ontario website, to promote carrot consumption (among other vegetables). 1/16th of this cake will contain 28 grams of fat. I'm okay with that.

*photo of carrosts stolen from Foodland Ontario website (but it's okay, 'cause I bought Canadian carrots today)

PROfessionalCRASTINATION!

I am a good-to-great procrastinator. Oh, why be modest? I excel at it. I am better than you at it.

I even have the Planner (or Non-Planner) for the Creative Procrastinator.

So tonight as I dawdled the last three hours or so, staving off the raging anxiety that is accompanying current project-in-progress, I finally opened up Word and began.

I thought, perhaps I can look to some trusty heros for inspiration. Dolly's just a bit too successful and hard-working to really motivate me at the moment. You can tell she doesn't even know how to procrastinate. But what about Merle?Aw, yeaaah - that's more like it! Truancy, petty crime, serious time, drinking & drugs, 3 broken marriages? Yeah. Still a genius and a living legend? Yeah!

See? All I did was surf the web and eat chocolate ice cream. I could be at the bottom of a bottle of rye right now... out in the park! I'm ahead of the game. I knew it. This writing stuff is easy-peasy.

Phew.

**Merle image "borrowed" from site that has compiled his whole discography. Merle has also recovered from a recent lung tumour removal and is touring again. God Bless!

Advice

Seriously, if you are single and childless, don't go reading mom-blogs just 'cause you can't sleep.

Yes, the moms may be witty and smart and hilarious, their children may be adorable and brilliant and well-behaved, but you will allow a tiny worm of fear into your heart and it will crawl into your brain and it will say OMG NEVER EVER HAVE CHILDREN AAAAAAGH!

And really, why put yourself through this if you're already single and childless, hmmm?

I may or may not be speaking from recent experience.


shiver

Leave the Moon Alone

Lunar Property Rights, in a Popular Mechanics article by Glenn Reynolds (the Instapundit), is the kind of topic which leaves me deeply uneasy and anxious.

I want the moon to stay off-limits to human habitation. Am I going to need (to make a gazillion dollars) to buy the whole thing up just to prevent you from living there?

Despite the science fiction I've read, I don't really want to live on the moon. Not with the rest of humanity there too. (I'd make an exception for you, of course.)

Ok, I confess, it's not that I don't want to live there - it's that I don't want to spoil the view from here!

Chocolate, not Politics

My cousin went to Israel recently and returned with some Elite chocolate-covered biscuits and some Mekupelet chocolate bars for me. Hurray for cousins!

Anyhow, I was particularly cheered by the Mekupelet chocolate bars. (Mekupelet means "folded" in Hebrew.) I hadn't had them for years (even though you can buy mini-versions here) and I wondered how they would stand up to their ubiquitous twin, the Cadbury flake. I naively thought they were the same bar, just licensed by Cadbury or something. Anyhow, I am not the only one to ponder such things, because blogger Marcos Kirsch has an entire play-by-play adjudicated comparison.

It is hilarious (especially if you are familiar with both bars):

A small crumble bounced into my eye causing temporary discomfort. I bet you’ve never had chocolate in your eye and I don’t care if the Cadbury marketing drones spin this crumbliness as a good thing. It’s a freaking hazard.

בתיאבון (Bon appetit)!


I can't believe I didn't have a "chocolate" tag already!

Childhood Fears

When we moved to Canada, I was in short order introduced to many new and strange and often wonderful things that I had not had as a pre-schooler in Israel. While I never felt that I lacked anything as a child, there were things my friends had that differed from what I had at home. New to me were the Easy-Bake Oven, boxes overflowing with Barbie clothes, an entire shelf of only Dr. Seuss books with matching book-ends, and lastly, the item that will continue to haunt me in my declining years, a Mini Pops record.

For those of you blissfully unaware of the words "Mini Pop" till now, Zoe Hart, a former Mini-Popper herself, explains the Mini Pops.

I don't know if we had the actual show here in Canada, but I do remember terrifying commercials for the records. A childhood friend had one of these records and I remember my discomfort listening to songs like this mutilated Abba Medley. Supe-per-Troop-pe-per. I think that's the exact record my friend had too. I wonder if that records explains my deep loathing for medleys.

Medleys are like Jell-O salads, aren't they? A bunch of things that are decent on their own, but really awful when forced together (i.e. lime jello, berries, cream, marshmallows).

Anyhow, if you hate child pageants, lipstick on underage girls, and songs by Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mini Pops will give you nightmares too. (That's why I thought the whole VF-Miley Cyrus brouhaha was so ridic; she'd been wearing heels and lipstick for way too long already and no one got all righteous about that.)

And if you think I'm employing hyperbole for dramatic effect, you obviously haven't checked the links yet. I really did have nightmares: a blonde 8-year-old Mini Popper threatened to "get me" if I spoke to her boyfriend. I was afraid. You'd have been too.

Ah, the eighties. Good times!

Heart and Club, Light and Sugar

"The moth flies at night in June and July and is attracted to light and sugar."

Subtitute my name for "moth". That could be my company - Industrial Light and Sugar.

The above is a random wiki find. I was searching "quinoa" which turned out to be a type of "goosefoot" which is eaten by the larvae of certain "lepidoptera".

Random + Nerdy = Joy!

This picture, below, is not the Heart and Club Moth, but it makes for a cooler picture! Good thing I don't publish the news. Learn more, if you're so inclined, at "Your guide to the moths of Great Britain and Ireland".