Snow fell from the sky, so school is closed (predictions of snow get a 2 hour delay). Back in MY day, we trudged our butts up the drive to wait in the snow for the bus for the 6 hour ride to school. An open-air bus, mind you. Full of chickens and goats. Or maybe that was that trip to Tijuana...I can never keep it straight.
Anyway, this was the view from our porch this morning:
So I trotted the kids out and shot a holiday card. So here you go, HAPPY HOLIDAYS (and by holidays I mean all of them. Take the one you like, Christmas, Chanukkah, Arbor Day, Ramadan, Grandparent's Day, whatever):
And it all quickly devolved into this:
To see the whole photo shoot, which IS fairly amusing, click here.
After dropping the big Squids off at school, we're sitting at a traffic light.
Lily: Wook at dat, mom!
Me(seeing a squirrel on the sidewalk): Yeah, a squirrel.
Lily: Is dat a squirrel or a chinchilla?
Me: That's a squirrel, honey.
Lily, with infinite patience: I not a honey, Mommy. And I'm pwetty sure dat's a chinchilla.
In other news: I just lost a contact lens. It popped off my eye and I went to put it back in. It fell off my finger and onto the DuPont Lenzeater carpet. I spent much time with a flashlight and a magnifying glass (note to Steve: Oh, that carpet has to go. ew.) to no avail. I'm sure the fact that the cat kept sitting her fat ass right in the middle of it all had nothing to do with it. I'm annoyed. I don't want to have to wear glasses to Florida. I halfheartedly go down to see if I have an extra left lens from some previous lens loss...and YES, yes I do! Woo hah! Happiness reigns over chinchillatown.
Okay. Done. Steve came through and remembered where the power drill was and I was able to get on with my shipbuilding. It went much more smoothly before Ben got home, once he saw it, I had to keep shooing him away b/c he was leaping about, trying to fire the plunger from a whiskey bottle. yes, yes he was.
In full sail:
And with the sail up (I made it like a Roman blind). It goes kinda wonky, but hey.
Mr. Squidward keeps a look out:
In my quest to remain in good standing with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I've promised to make Ben's bed into a pirate ship of sorts. I bought a mast today and have come up with ta plan for the sail. But when I went to attach the mast...no power drill/screwdriver. Hmmm. It's not in the bathroom, where I left it. Oh yes, Steve announced--perhaps a bit derisively--that he had put away the drill just last weekend. So I look, but I cannot find. I call him, he tells me that it is "where it lives" on a shelf in the basement. But no. He is stumped. I am stumped. What have we learned? Well, we could reach for that tired old crowd pleaser "No good deed goes unpunished." But me? I prefer, "Don't put things away. If you do, you'll never find them again."
Okay, enough. Here's the damn teapot:
As I said, it's JUST a teapot. When carried as a handbag, it's wicked cool, but there's nothing particularly remarkable about the teapot itself. Really, to see people's faces when you pop off the top and pull out a lipstick. It's priceless. Or, more precisely, about $20 at your local Asian restaurant supply store. Provided you live in the Sunset in San Fransisco.
And while I wasn't really going to put that pic of Ben in the grandparent's calendar, I'm now thinking I need a Calendar of Dorkiness for myself. I'll keep you posted.
So, I'm trying to make a calendar at Shutterfly...which month should I put this one on?
Steve works for a big company. You've heard of them. For the holiday party, the company rents out the new Air and Space Museum, the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center (doesn't that just roll off the tongue?). It's big. Very, very big. How big is it? Well, it's so big that when it sits around Dulles Airport, it sits AROUUUNND Dulles Airport. Actually, it's so big, it not only contains an actual Space Shuttle and an actual Air France Concorde, it contains scads of other planes as well. It's so big that it's virtually impossible to keep warm, even on the government dime, so I got to be smug (for the second year in a row) about wearing a vintage cashmere cardigan instead of a spaghetti strap dress. Here are some shots for scale. No, we don't know any of these people.
That's an actual Concorde. With a DC-8 next to it (which, by the way, is how planes should look. THAT'S an airplane, folks). And lots and lots of room for other stuff becuase this is just one little wing. Hey, the airplane museum has wings!
It was large, I tells ya.
In addition to airplanes, the joint was full of food. Many, many buffet lines. Standard American fare (including a mashed potato bar, which I thought was the cutest thing), Indian food, Chinese food (which was to be loaded into little take out containers), all the sushi you can eat (which, it turns out, is rather a lot)...given the ethnic mix of the attendees, I think everyone was happy. Oh, and dessert. Lots of yummy dessert. They had the now-required-by-federal-entertainment-law chocolate fountains, in dark, milk, white, and caramel. Folks were a leeetle too impressed, given that you can buy them at Toys R Us. And dude? There was white chocolate cheesecake. Who cares about crappy ass melted "chocolate"? Open bar, need I say more? The joy of wasting other people's money is that you can say "whiskey sour, please" have a few sips, ditch it, and move on to another drink. Given the amount of food in my gullet, I could have cleared the bar and not gotten tipsy. Oh, and glowing ice cubes. People loooved those. They kinda creeped me out. "Gin and Tonic, hold the uranium, please."
Did I mention that there's a Space Shuttle in there? I don't know which one. One of the ones that didn't kill anybody, I suppose. Steve does like to rant about it, dear thing. We ran into one of his friends from work and Steve started to launch into one of his "space-based money waster" rants--a good natured one, though, because it's the holidays--and his friend kind of rolled his eyes like an indulgent teenage son and said, "Is this a Thing, like you and the UN?" Yes. yes it is. But humor him or I'll kick your ass. The cool thing is that he could snack on desserts while shooting baleful glances at it:
Here's the shot from the entry to the Hall of Failed Experiments
See the dude on his cell phone? There was a lot of that. They're like little navigation devices--"Meet U at the Concorde!" Things are cool.
Speaking of cool things--Jet Pack!
Why weren't we pouring money into THAT technology, huh? I could get the kids to school in a trice if we had jet packs.
We didn't stay very long, since we had to spring the kids from our very kind neighbors who were staying up past their bedtimes to entertain my spawn. We essentially hit the ground eating, grazing our way around the hall. Me, I'm a dessert gal, and I only regret that the richness of mousses and cheesecakes keeps me from eating as much as I want to. Steve, on the other hand, was made very happy by the sushi, which came out on little baggage carousels. It was kind of a funny scene, each conveyor belt surrounded by hawk-eyed sushi-lovers, letting the daikon and cucumber go by, waiting for that unagi or yummy yummy octopus. Heeerrree it comes....YOINK! Get yer tafetta ass outta my way, that's MY TUNA!
I wish I'd gotten a picture of the woman who had apparently been sentenced, by a rather cruel judge, to be the center of a table on wheels. She was in the middle of a round table w/a hole in the center. Picture those crocheted toilet paper cozies with the doll in the center. But in satin. Her dress cascaded over so that the food was arranged on her dress and she could walk around offering treats. And making it really hard for me not to walk up and say, "Uh, excuse me, but there's a bit of food on your dress."
In addition to food, there is much people watching. I've come up with a few fashion rules that need to be stated, apparently.
1. White women look stupid in saris. Yes, saris are beautiful, I wish Icould wear them, too. But you look like you're dressing up for a grade school Pageant of the World.
2. If you wear a white blouse and black skirt or pants, you will look like The Help and people will hand you their empty plates. It is your own fault.
3. Men: you have it easy. Just wear a damn suit. And yet, you insist on screwing it up by wearing Warner Brothers ties. You think it makes you look fun loving. You think it says, "I'm wearing a tie, sure, but I'm not The Man." It makes you look like Weird Al Yankovic. Just buy a grown-up tie. You are 40 years old and, therefore, a grown up.
Me? I was a fashion plate, in my matte jersey skirt and vintage cashmere cardigan I got at a thrift shop in Las Vegas. My children have somehow made my dress shoes disappear, so I wore my slinky red boots. And I carried a teapot as a handbag. yes, I did. It was cool, so shut up. This is my one dress up event a year, now that everyone I know is married. I go buy makeup beforehand and then try valiantly to apply it so that I don't look like I got into my mom's stash. I've promised my imaginary friends shots of me trying a "smokey eye". Luckily I watch America's Next Top Model, so I know how to pose. Here we have relaxed face, eyes empty; 3/4 face, and Fierce!
I couldn't get the eye quite right. Then, halfway down our street, I realized I never put on mascara. At all. I suck at being a girl sometimes.
Anyway, in addition to all of this, there were IMAX movies, rides in those simulator thingies, a comedy club, a dance club, several bands (including a Beatles cover band of 30something guys in wigs. Watching them rock out to Green Day as the other band finished its set was cracking me up), and some guy relentlessly drumming. It was...something. Not your standard office party.
