Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween!!

Yesterday I took some Halloween tattoos to the kids at daycare and bestowed them upon Cameron (age 4) who I let pick the first one. He got me some diapers and wipes for Nicole on Monday so I rewarded him for being such a good helper. He was thrilled. The giving put him in such a good mood that he decided to give Nicole one of his pumpkins that Farmer Brown brought into pre-school. He even colored on it for her and wrote “Nikki” at the top. As you can see, she likes it!



Nicole isn’t going trick or treating tonight as it’s her parents who’d end up eating whatever she collected. Instead, she and I are going to go and visit/meet our neighbors. I’ve been TERRIBLE about making time to do so because our weekends are so jam packed and lately our weeknights are too. So, we’ll head out tonight when we know people are home to meet and greet.

Happy Halloween!!

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

House Costs

So we’ve started getting some bills for the new house. They’re a bit higher than the old house, but we expected that as we have 3X the room compared to the old place. For perspective though, here are some things we’ve run into in our first month of home ownership:

1) in 7 years in Fairfield Jim and I used a total of 97,000 gallons of water at a cost of $25/month (which included not only water but sewage and trash too). In this house, thanks to the sprinkler system, we used 20,000 gallons in 4 days at a cost of $74. Ouch! Yeah, those puppies got turned down and we’re not disappointed that they’ve been officially shut down for the year

2) Speaking of the sprinkler system, the company who put it in has been paid for ½ the sprinkler cost and that’s it. We’ve called several times to pay them the rest, including the full $1700 for the backyard sod, and they won’t return our calls. We’re not sure why they don’t want the rest of the money owed to them, but when we finally did get a call back it was to do MORE service for us at no cost. Seems strange but we’re not arguing- we’re earning interest on their money in the mean time…

3) Our electric bill was high too – heating and cooling a 3300 sq. ft. house will do that I suppose. Good news here- when we cost compared to the old house’s cost on a monthly basis it was not only proportionate based on the sizes of the two houses, but this house was just a tad less comparatively.

4) We are officially getting mail. People magazine hasn’t missed a week! We do suspect the post office is holding some of our mail downtown though as it’s been lighter than usual as far as quantity.

5) I'm going to pull the trigger on the blinds today - $3300 for the upstairs and part of the downstairs. OUCH. Never had a clue how expensive blinds were.

So far, so good. Now if the old house would just sell and we had some equity to pay off all these people….

Monday, October 29, 2007

Bumbo Seat Recall

Most people with a young kid are familiar with the popular Bumbo seats for babies. Nicole has one, Alex W had one, and they are great tools to help your kid sit up and watch the world.

Anyway, 28 children have been hurt in them recently because of falling out. What’s happening is that the kid’s getting mad, arching his/her back which throws off the balance of the seat and tips it over. What do you expect but the kid gets hurt when they topple… The kicker- parents of the hurt kids are getting mad because when the kid fell it’s not just the 18 inches from head to floor, it’s the kid tipping and falling off a counter or some other raised surface.

Here’s an article snipet regarding the recall Bumbo’s now doing:

The following caution label is attached to the back of the seat:

WARNING — Never use on a raised surface. Never use as a car seat or bath seat. Designed for floor level use only. Never leave your baby unattended as the seat is not designed to be totally restrictive and may not prevent release of your baby in the event of vigorous movement.

….

What you can do:

• Don't let your child sit in the baby seat unattended, and don't use the seat on a table, countertop, chair, or other elevated surface.

• Contact Bumbo if you'd like to receive a new warning label and instructions. The new warning label will say: WARNING — Prevent Falls; Never use on any elevated surface.

How was the initial label not sufficient enough to get the point across and how is the new one any different or better? Geesh!

Weekend of 10/26/07

Jim’s stepfather was released from the hospital on Friday afternoon and I was surprised to come home from work to find not only him and Vickie (Jim’s mom), but Jim’s stepsister Laci and her daughter Nicole too (Bill, Doug’s friend, was supposed to drop them off at our house, not Laci). The only time I’ve ever stayed in the hospital was for my Nicole’s birth, and I actually liked the hospital food. What did Doug want for his first meal post surgery!? SKYLINE CHILI.

That night was CRAZY. Sean and Jessica were scheduled in for a game night at our place Friday night and they brought their kids who go to bed right away upon meeting. When “big” Nicole got home from Wal-Mart with Laci she was all wound up- banging on a toy piano, throwing balls on the hardwood floors, slamming cabinets, you name it. As you can imagine, the noise woke up Em and Ben and put “little” Nicole into a frazzle. I was literally about to lose it when all 4 kids started crying in chain reaction. Jim’s parents felt the same way and went to bed at 9:30.

At the end of the evening it dawned on me that somehow I didn’t re-read the chapters I was to teach on Saturday morning so I was up after the Gardners left, reading about Demand Analysis and Product Development until about 12:45.

Up at 6:30, I got ready, fed Nicole, and bid everyone good-bye as I headed out for class. Things went well there and I came home to Jim putting together our new desk. Finally I spent some actual quality time with Nicole playing with her toys and reading her stories in the afternoon. We were both exhausted from a long week so she took a bath and we both conked out before 9:00.

Sunday we got up, I had brunch with Lori in this ADORABLE coffee house in Hyde Park and then we rushed around to get dressed and ready for the evening. Jim and I attended Geoff’s wedding which was a lot of fun – lots of laughing (an unashamed “geek”, Geoff talked Roswitha into having their first dance be “She Blinded Me With Science” and they cut the cake to “Just Eat It” by Weird Al) and very touching toasts by the parents. Nicole meanwhile attended a Halloween party with my aunt where she took her first hay ride, watch the kids play games, and got oodles of attention from all around including a waiter who held her for a while.

We did miss Greg's visit - he stopped by on his new motorcycle to show it off. He'll have to come again soon!

Vickie and Nicole are getting along better now. For several days there’d be crying as soon as I was out of Nicole’s site and normally she’s not too picky with who has her. I didn’t want it to give Vickie a complex though it apparently was as the comment “she doesn’t like me” came out once or twice when asked how she and her granddaughter were getting along. Anyway, on Sunday I came home to grandma and baby “talking” to each other while rocking in the nursery. Both seemed very enthused with their “aughhhh”-based conversation and I was happy to gain some comfort that they can peacefully co-exist without me checking in every 15 minutes.

Here I am, back at work, yawning. Time to start the madness all over again!

Friday, October 26, 2007

_____ for President!

A fun and informative guide to picking a candidate that thinks like you:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/candidate-match-game.htm

Here're my results:

Guess I'll need to do some research on this fella as I don't know who he is!

Jim matched with someone not in my top three.... guess we won't be talking politics in our house!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

2011 Decisions

Believe it or not, questions as to where we’ll send Nicole for school have already come up and she’s not yet 4 months old. Fortunately for us, because of the location of our new house we have several options: Colerain Elementry, St. John’s (where I went to grade school), St. James, or any other open-enrollment private grade school.


Karen C. reminds me that Summit Country Day is also an option. I suspected the prices were probably more than we wanted to spend on our kid’s education at this level (now if we were talking college that’s a different story; we’d pay for Harvard if she could get in!). Anyway, in case you were considering a Montessori pre-school for your three-year-old, here’s the going rate for a Summit education:

Three-day half-day $5,360
Five-day half-day $8,025
Five-day All-day $11,995
Remember that this is for a school year of just 9 months if you were trying to compute “well, you’d spend $X for 5 day, all-day day care”. Ouch!

Karen did make mention that faculty get a discount off tuition. I wonder if XU would give me a discount on Nicole’s tuition if she went there… I’ll have to check into sending my 3-year old to the University…

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Pictures from the Wedding

Somehow EVERY picture of Lindsay is perfect. Here she is with my niece Ryann in the limo before the wedding.
Mike is VERY into Ultimate Fighting and his Groom's cake reflected it. Note the corner supports- each has the name of a group that will ultimately support them as a couple. We made the cut and intend to live up to the commitment!
Mom's first little boy has officially left the nest. Here's his send-off dance.


The happy family!

My Name is Karen

... and I am addicted to Candy Corn.

and Sarah W just continues to add fuel to the fire. The 24oz bag she gave me yesterday is nearly half gone. Woman- I want my waistline back and you're not helping!!!!!!!!!!!!

Monday, October 22, 2007

Surgery Update

Doug is out of surgery and everything went well – no complications! He’ll be unconscious for several more hours and will be in the ICU for 3 days. Vickie is coming home with me today to spend the night and will go back to the hospital ??? - they won't let her spend the night in the ICU so we'll be doing some shuttling... Hooray for the road to recovery!

Weekend of 10-19-07

Our weekends are jam-packed anymore and it’s downright exhausting. Thank you again for all your thoughts, prayers, and generous offers to help with Doug. Jim’s mom spent Thursday and Friday with us to have the opportunity to sleep in a real bed instead of a hospital room. While we were at work she spent hours helping us with the house – breaking down boxes, loading bookshelves in the office, vacuuming every crack of hardwood for drywall dust in the downstairs. Whew!

Though we would have liked to have spent more time with her, this weekend was also full of wedding excitement for my brother and his fiancé Lindsay whom most of you know. Friday was the rehearsal dinner which went without a hitch. Dinner was at the White House Inn where my father gave an exceptional (though Jim said it was too long) toast to the couple and their family. The meal was great, but the dessert was a highlight- baked Alaska that they had flaming to the ceiling at several points that eventually set off the fire alarms!!

Saturday was an EARLY day after so much excitement the night before. I was up and at ‘em at 6:30am as it was my first full day of teaching. Things went fine there- about 20 min shorter than I had planned- but that worked out well as I skipped out for lunch and to get my hair done for the wedding. Three words: Midwest Wedding Hair. I need say no more about how I looked or how it was fixed.

The wedding itself was really nice. Nicole was being cared for by my aunt and she got a little fussy before falling asleep so I saw them travel to the children’s room twice. Lindsay looked beautiful and Mike was as he always is, laid back. I have pictures that I’ll post tonight. I did take what I consider a kind of big deal because it was at my brother’s wedding- I didn’t receive communion. I’d taken the bread before at Catholic events but I'm to the point that I don’t want to be hypocritical- critical of the church and then accept its greatest sacrament. Anyway, yes, it was a bit surreal to look at the couple saying their vows and realize that your little brother is all grown up. I think I’ll lose it when Greg gets married.

The reception was full-out rockin’. Mike and Linds had about 275 people in attendance including a large smattering of their friends. Greg gave one of the best best-man speeches I've ever heard and though he said he was nervous, it didn't show at all. They did all the traditional dances with the bridal party and parents, and had a special family dance with Ryann too. The beer and wine flowed, there was dancing on the tables, they turned on the lights to end the party and about 50 people lingered on for another 40 minutes! Perhaps the most creative element of the reception was the groom’s cake- more on that when the picture goes up!

I spent a lot of the reception toting Nicole around to see people. I wanted to make sure that folks who had sent her a gift got to hold her. While this was the “right” thing to do it meant that I only danced to a few songs; conversely I did get to talk to a lot of people by spending my time this way. She was exceptionally well-behaved but stayed up until about 11:30 before she hit the sack. Jim was very concerned about the volume of the DJ and her developing ears. While noise is part of the package with a reception, I had a new appreciation for really how loud it was. We attempted to keep her outside or away from the action towards the end of the night.

Our whole family slept in on Sunday as we were WORN OUT. The day was spent cleaning the new house and plotting how we’ll ever get to the old house to tidy up. We capped the night off with a 4/4 bowling record (Special Props to Dave P for his 699 series! 1 pin away from a pin!).

Doug’s triple-bypass surgery is this morning, going on as of 3 minutes ago. Please keep him in mind and heart. The new plan is that perhaps they will go to Vickie’s sister Connie’s up in Van Wert as they know more people there in that town and would have access to a car. More on that when details are shored up.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Doug Update

Thanks for all the well-wishes and help offers with Doug. We went to see him yesterday and he was definitely pretty weak. Lots of wires going in and he's tethered to a few machines that limit him from going outside and smoking (making him "grumpy" according to Jim's mom though none of us care and think it's for the best that he can't puff!).

Jim's mom came home with us last night and, sweetheart that she is, asked what she can do around the house while we're at work. She actually seemed eager to sweep out the cracks in the hardwood with the shopvac (a fine layer of drywall dust resides in them now that is driving Jim crazy).

The firm plan, baring any unusual complications from the surgery (which stroke is apparently the largest and most realistic one), is to move them into our old house. We have a fridge that we moved to the new house that we'll simply send back and we'll buy our new bedroom furniture in short order so they can sleep in our current queen-sized bed. My uncle said he has a couch and a larger TV that we can borrow too. Grandma has some dishes and pots of mine from college we'll transfer; and since we left the appliances and the kitchen table I think they should be pretty set.

Martha's comment about fate had me feeling better on a lot of fronts - better that the house isn't sold and is available for their use, better that where they will stay is convenient (walking distance) to a Walgreens in case they need milk or a prescription, better that both they and us can have some "normal" transition into living in the same city.

It'll be nice that Nicole will get to see her other grandparents more than twice in three months!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Doug

As many of you know, Jim’s parents (mom and stepdad) drive a semi truck for a living. In a stoke of amazing convenience they were actually in Florence, KY on Tuesday morning when Doug was stuck by a heart attack. He has had 2 stints already put in as well as an angioplasty done. They determined yesterday that he’ll need triple bypass surgery on either Monday or Tuesday. Normally they’re in Arizona or California or someplace far when this happens, so being just 40 minutes down 75 is a fluke of good luck.

Anyway, we’ll be headed down there today to pick up Vickie and have her spend the night. Timing could get goofy with Mike’s wedding this weekend (means our schedule is 3X as busy as normal) and shuttling her to KY and back. We’ll work it out though.

This might put them here in Cincinnati as much as 5 months post surgery while he recovers. We’re already planning how to work this out – potentially moving them into our old house so they can settle in and have their own space. More news to follow as we know it.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Shots from Picture Day

She's ready for her close-up!

This is the family picture we settled on. Wish Nic would have given us just one smiling shot to choose from... We adjusted the framing so that it's vertical.


My favorite one of her! Look at those cute toes! This is also the dress she'll be wearing to Mike and Linds's wedding this weekend.



Monday, October 15, 2007

Weekend of 10/12/07

Friday: The "old" house needs a lot of work. There are dust outlines where the furniture was and still some random stuff on the closet and pictures on the walls. After work we headed over there so Jim could do some exterior work and Nicole and I went shopping for curtains, etc. Come 10:00 the baby was tired and neither Jim nor I felt like we accomplished anything significant.

Saturday: Family picture day! Nicole has taken dirty diapers to a new extreme. Practically EVERY one is a blow-out and Sunday was literally THE WORST it’s ever been. Kid had to get dumped in the tub and the PJ’s she was wearing might not make it to circulation again… All these little delays put us further and further behind until finally we were rushing out the door, make-up not quite perfect and baby not dressed.

We got the shots done at Portrait Innovations and ended up spending about $70 on 2 poses of Nic (her 3 month shots) and 1 pose of our family. Nicole was not amused by all the antics of the photographers, despite their patient and constant efforts, and we only got a few smiling shots out of her. This did help in narrowing down the picture selection but means our family picture has a little girl with a neutral look on her face. Ah well.

We went back to the old house after an IHOP brunch and cleaned. We have 2 rooms in showable quality now but the exterior still needs work and there are 3 other rooms that need some work. We’d be more panicked about this if people were actually walking through our house but that’s unfortunately not the reality.

That evening Jim and I headed out to Mike and Lindsay’s respective bachelor and bachelorette parties. Both of us had a good time, Jim copped out around 9 I hung in there until quarter till 1. Both Nicole and Ryann got to hang out with Grandma.

Cute story: at the bachelorette party Karrie was holding Nicole and I had Ryann. Ryann and Nic kept looking at each other so we put them close together. Ryann reached out and hugged Nicole several times and “kissed” her (she had a pacifier in at the time). ADORABLE. Later that night Nicole was not all about sleeping on the floor with her cousin and was crying to be held. Ryann army crawled over to her concerned and held her hand to try to calm her down. Mom said it was really sweet.

Sunday: We got up early, I taught at XU, Jim played racquetball with his boss and then promptly got the bug Lisa, Kendall and I all had last week. Timing was inconvenient as his cousins came into town to spend the night with us. Between Nicole's being wide awake and eager to be entertained and him praying to the porcelain goddess all night and needing various things I didn’t get to have a lot of quality time with the cousins either. I'm exhausted this morning.

And I get to get up at 5 tomorrow to go to Akron for business meetings all day. Hoor-ay. :P

Thursday, October 11, 2007

3 Months Old!

Nicole is 3 months old today! I weighed her this morning and she’s almost 15lbs which means she's gaining about 2 pounds per month. She laughed for the first time on Tuesday night – she’d giggled before but this was her first full-out laugh. See the video below!


She remains to be a really good baby- she loves getting baths, being cuddled, sleeping in bed with her mom and dad (bad bad habit that we’re ending this week hopefully now that her nursery is getting set up), and is starting to reach for interesting objects (ie her Molly doll), especially ones that make sounds. When she gets “talking” she is a chatterbox! She still loathes being on her stomach but has learned to turn on her side which is how she perfers to sleep as well. In the last week she's gone down for naps on her own which is fantastic! Now if she'd only drop that 4:00am feeding...

Sometimes it’s still surreal that we have a baby. Especially with moving it’s been very busy and taking time out to enjoy the moments is something I have to pay attention to accomplish. She’s changed so much in 13 weeks- I attached some side-by-side comparison pictures for reference. The one on the left was taken 7-16-07 when she was 5 days old. The one on the right was from last Wednesday, October 3.


My Kid and Me

2 days ago Nicole was clearly very happy being with Andrea, one of her babysitters. She was all smiley, cooing and giggling at her. Even as I was changing her, Nicole would turn away from me to “talk” with Andrea. When I packed her up and put her in her car seat to go home she let me know how unhappy she was to leave.

While this is great- I want her to feel happy and safe with her day care- no mother wants their kid to prefer the babysitter to them. My head danced with how I can spend more time with her, beyond weekends, evenings, and the thrice weekly lunches I visit her over. I made several off-handed comments to Jim, waiting for him to reassure me that I was still Nicky’s favorite and blah blah blah, but he didn’t pick up on cues of needing encouragement.

Well, as if Nicole did pick up on my need, she has spent the last day enthralled with me. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but she is very happy with me at the moment. On several occasions I’ll notice she’s stopped nursing and when I look down to see why it’s because she’s beaming up at me. I sit her on my lap and talk to her and she squeals with delight. I stopped to see her at lunch this afternoon and she woke up with a smile when she saw me first thing. LOVE IT!

Maybe I am still her favorite. : )

Beep! Beep!

A compliment is a compliment and all given to me are appreciated. There is one group of people whose compliments have, over the years, taken higher precedence- truck drivers.

Ever since I was in high school I’ve always been very grateful when a truck driver honked at me, even better if I see them waving when I glance up in my rearview mirror. If I get more than one honk in a day or back-to-back honks from truck drivers driving near each other I actually take note of what I'm wearing or if the seatbelt is positioned in a “flattering” way to attract the attention; not that I change it if it is because by then my head's held a little higher and the sun’s a little sunnier.

I think it’s because they see hundreds of women a day and yet they acknowledge me specifically. I'm choosing to ignore the fact that they could be honking at 18 other women and 3 guys a day… And, no, I don’t think I'm being honked at because I'm a bad driver. It’s not that hard to stay in my lane on the highway.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, when I got my first honk post-kid I beamed the rest of the day. I took it as the official sign that I had gotten my pre-baby figure back. A couple days ago I actually got honked at with Nicole in the back seat which I thought was a huge compliment – I am a mom and still cute!- something I don’t normally associate together.

I wonder if my father-in-law (a semi-truck driver) used to honk at pretty girls. His personality is such that I bet he did. He's the type that would tell a truck stop waitress that she "sure looks pretty today" and he'd say it just like that and be completely sincere. Now that Jim's mom rides with him I think it's safe to assume he's quit honking if he did before- she can be the jealous type and would probably reach over and pop him if he beeped at another woman.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Weekend of 10/5/07

I'm tired. It’s been a long weekend.

Friday: I took the day off work to finish painting Nicole’s nursery, which I was successful at. It’s a more melon-colored version of mint green. I also stopped into work with her to show her off- everyone fawned all over her which made me smile.

The house had a showing at noon and the feedback was that ours was the favorite of the day… but they have to sell their house in Chicago before they can move to Cincinnati. Boooo!

When I got home that evening we had more to pack and get ready. It was kind of sad but with all the partial moving we somehow sent all of Nicole’s diapers to the new house forcing us to go to Meijer and buy another pack. This of course made my dinner cook longer than necessary and resulted in an uneventful and bland last dinner at Kay Drive. :(

Saturday
: The movers came at 10:30am and we had 95% of all our stuff packed and ready upon their arrival. Nicole was very good – she sat on my lap and watched three guys work very hard and very fast at loading all of our stuff. Hiring movers was the way to go- they were so much more efficient than we would have been and to not have to do any of the work made the process almost unstressful.

What did take some emotional toll was when Nicole’s projectile vomiting started. Lisa and Kendall helped tremendously with getting her cleaned up, changed, and ready to go while we directed movers and worked on lunch. Unfortunately the vomiting didn’t end at the first bout, it continued through her next meal, forcing Kendall to make a Pedialite/thermometer run for us to Meijer. Poor kid slept most of the day but did give Lisa and I some scares with how lethargic she became and the multiple rounds of her eyes rolling back into her head. Dr. K prevailed though and her last puke was at 11:00pm.

Lisa gave me a new sense of awareness that I wasn’t fully aware of until after the conversation. After Nicole’s big 9:00 puke that required a change of clothes for both her (her fourth that day) and me, I stripped her down for a bath. Lisa asked me if it bothered me that I was covered in vomit. I never realized it but the mom thing has set in- I literally didn’t give my own clothes a second thought, they were a simple casualty of “war” and easily laundered. AUGH. I’M A MOM! AUGH!

Sunday: There are boxes EVERYWHERE in our house. We didn’t get much done on Sunday before it was time to go bowling. We won 4/4 games but that only bumped us to 8th place out of 16. It’s still early in the season though.

Monday: Whatever Nicole had on Saturday came out in me on Monday morning, forcing me to stay home from work. It’s been a LONG time since I threw up (perhaps those wild night’s revenge with Joe and Rick??) and I wouldn’t mind if it’s a long time until I do again. Not pleasant. Just as frustrating was how achy I was. Here I am, surrounded by boxes and things to do and way too ill to move and accomplish anything. At one point I stared at the ceiling for 27 minutes without moving. I did perk up a bit around 3:00 when I opened all of Nic's clothes boxes to sort them and put them away. She owns A LOT of clothes. I did take up the opportunity Nicole presented to go to sleep for the night at 8pm. Ahhhhh, sleep!

While I tended to Nicole, poor Jim put up the fan in the morning room as he was eager to finally check something, anything, off his to-do list. Unfortunately we were missing a piece and he has to call the manufacturer so even that didn’t get accomplished. Hopefully he can change out our front door handle tonight and feel a little better that things are getting done.

One other positive thing happened last night – our neighbor up the street, Shirley, stopped by with flowers and a welcome note. I was only mildly embarrassed that our house was a disaster zone (she knows what it’s like as she moved in just 2 weeks ago too) and I was in my “sick clothes”. It was sweet of her to come though and I'm glad Jim got to meet her. I hope her and her husband Rob can be our new friends! We need someone to fill in for the Sacks who are leaving us for Arizona!

Now that we've officially been in for 2 days here are the "WTF" things about the house:
1) we get no mail. I didn't even know the post office was allowed to deny service but apparently they've said they wont' deliver until 1/2 the subdivision is complete. If they mean the whole thing of 88 houses that could mean we don't get mail for years. Larry down the street apparently "knows someone inside" at the post office and is working on it for us.

2) we don't have a linen closet or drawers in the bathroom. How is this even possible!? Working on a place to put our towels and my make-up now....

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Hats

When I was a junior in high school Sue and I became infatuated with hats. I think it’s because people didn’t really wear them and so to do so was to stand out a bit from the crowd. We even rigged the Secret Santa exchange amongst our friends so we could buy each other a hat. NOTE: I never once saw her wear hers…. Maybe I have bad taste?

When I was in college I bought a black dress hat to go with my pea coat. My boyfriend at the time, Kenny, loved me in the hat and always complimented me on how nice I looked when I wore it, which of course prompted me to wear it more often.

Now the only hats I wear are knit or fleece ski cap type in the winter because Cincinnati can get frickin’ cold with the wind chill. I still think you have to be pretty cool and confident to pull off a hat like the chick in the picture above. Further, I don’t have the right kind of hair cut to look good in a hat like that so I'm hesitant to buy one even though I like the style.

The first person who comes to mind who could/should wear a hat is Rachel, but I suspect if she did it wouldn’t be as trendy as the one I posted. Someone good with photoshop should play around with different styles for her.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Going National

Since my freshman year of college I’ve read a column, “Ruminations”, by Aaron Karo which I think many of my readers are familiar with. If not, hit up http://www.aaronkaro.com/. Anyway, in ’08 he’s launching a public rumination forum for guest writers. I figure I do this anyway via this blog, so, being totally egotistical, I suspect others might be interested in reading what I have to say. Hell, I conned someone from Austria to read regularly! ; )

To apply to be a writer I have to send in 3 writing samples of topics I’ve ruminated about. SO, is there anything that comes to mind that I’ve written about in the last nearly 2 years that you found funny or thought-provoking?

If YOU are interested in applying, check out the following site for more info: http://www.aaronkaro.com/ruminations.htm

Monday, October 01, 2007

Ink

I have been fascinated by tattoos for years. Shows like “Miami Ink” could play for 3 hours a day and you’d find me sitting there watching it for the full 3 hours if I had the time. Because I don’t have any myself (there’s nothing that I find important enough in my life that I need it permanently marked on my body) I am constantly interested in what and why others get inked.

Some other thoughts:

  • Sarah and Viki went to Texas for a convention and got tattoos together while they were there. I SO wish I could have been there to watch the process and get their first-hand reactions at the time. This is why I'm so glad Viki let me tag along when she got her nose pierced
  • Sarah F tried to get me to threatened to “force” to get a tattoo once as a punishment for dating a certain guy I was interested in. Didn’t work.
  • I’ve had a long-standing idea for a book (my idea for my first self-made million!) called “The Meaning Behind the Mark” – the idea was to travel around and interview sports stars about their tattoos and why they got them. The great part of this idea is the multiple editions of the book I could produce – one for baseball, one for basketball, etc. It’d be the perfect coffee table book for every sports lover!
  • Before my little brother got his cross put on his chest, he consulted me on the design – I was so touched that he thought enough of my opinion to ask!

This morning CNN had a little picture version online of real people’s meaning behind their marks – to see them: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/27/tattoos.irpt/index.html.