There's Nothing "Soft" About It

Danni's had quite a week in softball. In her game on Tuesday, she was at bat and was hit in the back of her right calf by a pitch. She was rewarded with this lovely-looking bruise. Well, I guess that's one way to get on base!



Then during practice yesterday, they were doing some sort of game/drill, and she and another girl were both diving for a ball. Danni ended up face-down on the ground, and the other girl stepped on the back of Danni's left thigh with her cleat. Yummy, no?



The really great part is that she's also a dancer, and she has tryouts for Modazz coming up this week on Wednesday and Thursday, which is an upper-level dance class at school. The tryouts this week are to get into the class for next year. At least tights can cover up the yucky and hold a bandage in place! Hopefully by Wednesday it won't be hurting her so much.

I don't think "you play like a girl" means the same thing as it used to.

They Went Back Today!

To school, of course! Woohoo! Well, actually Danni and Shannon went back to school today. Kylie actually went back yesterday (different school), but since she only goes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, she was with me today.

We went to the doctor for a well-visit today, because I knew Kylie still needed a couple of shots before kindergarten starts, and I really wanted to get that out of the way. Because really, I don't have enough shit to worry about. I'm not really big on tricking kids or lying to them about whether they're getting shots or not, so when she asked, I told her that I thought she needed one or two. Ok, slight exaggeration, I knew she had to get two, but I told her afterwards we could go see Horton Hears a Who. I'm totally not above bribery. In fact, I heartily endorse it.

Officially, Kylie is 41 3/4" inches tall (as in, 1/4" short of the good rides at pretty much any amusement park), and weighs 32 lbs. Here's the good news: She's on the weight chart! Yes, she's on the very bottom of it, like 2nd percentile, but she's on the freaking chart. Yay. Her eyesight and hearing are great, and developmentally, all is well. Then the two shots. The anticipation is so much worse than the actual thing. When it came to getting stuck, she didn't even cry. She kept telling me when we got back in the car how brave she was. Not that she likes to toot her own horn or anything, but she was totally brave. I got three kisses for saying that on my blog.

Horton Hears a Who was cute, a little slow in parts, but I suppose what you'd expect when you turn a 5 minute book into an 88 minute movie. Everytime the mayor of Whoville spoke though, I kept hearing Michael Scott. Jim Carrey as Horton was slightly better at not using his exact real voice.

Kylie wanted me to take her picture in front of this very large display for a movie coming out this summer called Kung Fu Panda.

Thanks, Dreamworks. Because, you know...this doesn't look like Over The Hedge at all. Have I told you all my theory that almost every recent film by Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks etc, are all the same script, just with different characters and setting? I know the "fish out of water" theme is a common one, but come on. Finding Nemo, Over the Hedge, Cars, Ratatouille... YAWN. Seriously. Although I suppose if the same script regurgitated over and over with different characters in a different setting made me as much money as it makes them...I'd probably do it too.

Have I mentioned how much I truly love Enchanted? I'm so buying it, and very soon. Come to think of it, that's a "fish out of water" movie too. But that's different. Because...because I really liked it. So there.

Gotta put a couple of pictures in here of last Friday, when we went to the pool. Thankfully, it was not windy this time. It was...well, it was hot. I thought the water felt great, but Kylie was still shaking and shivering after a while. See the aforementioned weight of said child. If she had an ounce of body fat on her (and really, she can have a few of mine, I don't mind), she wouldn't always be so cold in the water.

It was so crowded. Madness, I tell you. Sheer craziness. Hi ladies! You're all on my blog in your bathing suits! Hee!

Since the lifeguards are mostly high-school kids, the pool only opens for the two weeks of spring break, and is now closed again and will be closed until school gets out at the end of May. I can't believe it's only 9 weeks away. Danni is almost an upperclassman! And she'll be 16 in two weeks. Help.

Kylie decided to get out of the water and start working on her tan. She got this idea from Danni, who was there with us. Thanks Dan! I have a picture of both of them lying out together, but I didn't think D would appreciate a picture of her bikini-clad butt on my blog. I know Ky looks a little bit red there, but I think that was just because it was hot. She had sunscreen on, I promise!

And now let this be,

A lesson for all.

A person's a person,

No matter how small.

-Dr. Seuss

It's Spring. Boo Yay.

I hate spring. Ok, I know I'm weird. But out of all four seasons, it's my least favorite. My ranking of seasons, in terms of favorite-ness:

1) Fall

2) Winter

3) Summer

4) Spring

I love fall because it's a cool light at the end of our heat-blast tunnel. Fall means that eventually, the temperature will be bearable again. It's not bearable yet, but it will be. At some point. I love fall because - FOOTBALL! Leaves, pumpkins, Halloween! And school starts! Well, actually school starts in the summer here, but metaphorically, fall = start of school. And who doesn't love that? I mean, besides the people that actually have to go.

Winter is awesome, because it's COOL. Temperature-wise and Fonz-type coolness-wise also. It means we can actually go outside and do stuff and not swelter and die. We can wear jeans! And shirts with sleeves that extend past your mid upper-arm! To the wrist, even! Occasionally, even a jacket. How awesome is that? Did I mention that we can actually go outside and do stuff? Take kids somewhere besides the pool or the mall? I know that swimming sounds great, theoretically. And it is...for the first three months or so. After that, they're like, "We're going to the pool, AGAIN?" I remember August of 2002, when I was very pregnant with Kylie, who was born on Sept. 3rd. When my then 10 and 7 year old started complaining that they were bored with swimming, I said "I don't care. We are going to the pool, and we are going to spend the day in it every day all day until I deliver this freaking baby. I can't stand being anywhere else." Ok, maybe it wasn't quite that harsh, but you get the point.

You would think that summer would be my least favorite season in a suburb of Phoenix, AZ. But no. Summer is just hot. Once it gets that hot, you just deal with it. You stay inside or in the water. If you must go out, you turn the car on first and let it run for a few minutes, in hopes that the a/c will get going a little and cool the car off enough that the kids won't whine about how stinking hot it is in the car. You start driving, and after about 5 minutes the a/c starts to do its job, the car cools off, and you can remove the oven mitts from your hands. Then you get to your destination, which will be wonderfully air-conditioned and cool inside, and will be somewhere where spending money is required. Of course, there will not be any parking in the shade, so by the time you come out of wherever you are, the inside of your car will be a toasty 180 degrees. Then the a/c will blow hot air for a few minutes until the engine gets all revved up, and there will be more whining, (mostly from me) until the car starts to cool down again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Spring is the worst. Today, the high was about 85. Warm (too warm for my taste), but not unbearable. What spring does is remind you that the unbearable is coming. For this reason, it's my most-hated season. It lets you know that we're about ready to start the months of unrelenting, skin-baking, furnace-blasting heat. I lived in Albuquerque for about 3 months once, and in Denver for about 9 months. I was in both places for the summer. It gets hot during the summer in Alb, sometimes 100. But you know what? It cools off at night. Same with Denver...it sometimes gets into the 90s, and that's hot for there. But again...it cools off at night. I think that's what makes our heat so...ridiculous. In the summer, it will still be 100 degrees at 10pm. Our low might be 90. There's no opening your windows at night to cool the house off. The a/c runs all. the. time. And spring is just here to remind me...nay, to taunt me, that summer is coming. Quickly.

And now that I've told you why I absolutely hate spring...here's a cute little picture of Kylie riding her bike at the park today. Enjoy it now, kid...the heat doth approach. And I swear, if one person says to me, "Oh, but it's a dry heat there!", I'm going to come to your house and shove your head in your oven. Because that's a dry heat too.

I Have a Big Fat Crush On Rob Thomas

So, finally the day arrived, and Jen, Danni and I headed out to see Matchbox 20 in concert last night. It friggin' ROCKED! Jen was a bit confused for a while and thought that we were seeing Dave Matthews. lol I know she knew who we were seeing, but she kept saying Dave instead of Rob.

What Jen refers to as a "slight navagational error" on her blog is just really me not knowing where the heck I was going. My name is Shelley, and I'm navigationally challenged. I was born without an internal compass. I need to have a GPS implant, or something. Either that, or I need to remember to print out directions before I go anywhere, because apparently "Get off the I-10 at 83rd Ave and you should be right there" isn't good enough for me. Actually, what happened is I turned left on the first major road after getting off the I-10, and had I gone just a bit further north instead of turning, we would have been right there. Oh well, we were early and we found it eventually. We were even in our seats when the opening act started.

The first opening act was a group of guys called Mute Math. I had never heard of them, but Danni had and she said she liked them. They were ok, but they ended their show by breaking up a lot of stuff on stage and walking all over their drum kit. Seems to me if you're a really popular band that makes a crapload of money, you could afford to destroy your stuff at the end of a show (although I'm not sure why you'd want to), but Mute Math? I wonder if they totally kill off any profit they make doing that. I have a picture of one of the guys standing on top of the bass drum, but it's on my camera at home. I'll have to add that in the morning.

After they were done, Alanis Morrisette came on. She was...Alanis. She's still strange, still a self-described "bitter rocker chick", and still letting us know that it's not fair, to remind you, of the mess you left when you went away. She played for about an hour, I think...and yes, I was surprised that she had that much material. I think I recognized three of the songs, and she did mention that some of the stuff was new.

But, on to the important stuff...Matchbox 20! Thank goodness that Jen's camera was doing a great job, because mine totally was not zooming enough. MB 20 rocked the place for almost two hours, doing a mix of stuff from their new album, their first album, and some stuff in between. Danni was a little bummed that they didn't do the song "Mad Season." I really like that one too. Anyway, it was an awesome show, they have so much energy and you can tell they just put everything they have into it.

This picture makes it look like we had way better seats than we really did. I mean, they were decent seats, but off to the side of the stage. I wish we had been a little closer to the middle. Luckily, Rob looks great from any angle. Jen's camera rocks.

I wish I could remember what song they were singing here, but I can't. I did take some video during the concert with my digital camera. There seems to be no zoom at all while taking a video with this camera, so this video actually makes it appear as though we're farther away from the stage than we really were. I know the band is blurry, but at least they sound good! This is a little excerpt from "Real World."



I just had to steal this pic off of Jen's blog. There was this older, drunk lady behind us. She looked like this:



Haha! I didn't even realize last night that her shirt said "High Maintenance." That's funny. Anyway, at one point during the show, they turned off all the lights and Rob asked the audience to participate by everyone taking out their cell phones, blackberrys, or "otherwise annoying devices", and turn it into something beautiful. When everyone held them up, it did look kind of cool, like thousands of stars shining in the darkness. However this lady behind us was pitching a fit, and bemoaning the "old days" when everyone smoked, and swayed with their lighters. Hey, I remember that too, but not as many people smoke now, and hey...embrace the technology, lady.

She then proceeded to tell us that she had been at a Tom Petty concert, and that Tom himself had threatened to come down off the stage and kick anyone's ass who had a cell phone out. Ok, first of all, I wouldn't have paid money to see Tom Petty. Second, that old, skinny, frail-looking guy is going to kick my ass? Well, bring it on, Tom. Let's see what you've got, old man. Heh.

I know my video up there isn't all that great, so I'm going to close this post with a You Tube video of the actual MB 20 video of one of their new songs, "How Far We've Come". This is the song they opened the show with. I love this song, and I love this band.

Flashback Friday

This is Shannon, age 7, with Kylie when Kylie was only a few days old. This is about as far back as my digital pictures go...before that, they're actual photos. I wanted to find an older picture of Shannon today, because I wanted to remember that sweet 7 year-old. Because right now, that memory is much better than the moody, passive-aggressive, snotty adolescent I've been dealing with today. This picture makes me smile. And cry.

I'm Trying to Convince Myself That Exercise is Fun. It's Not Working.

Wow, I just finished watching Lost, and ... wow. This show is rocking the hell out of this season. I'm so sad that there are only a few new episodes left. And if you don't watch Lost...well, why don't you? My co-worker just rented the first season and is just now starting to watch it from the beginning. I'm so jealous of him that he gets to watch all the episodes in a row, and I'm sitting here begging for the precious 48 minutes they throw me once a week. Holy cow, I love this show.

So, we didn't quite make it to the rec center for the girls' fitness orientation yesterday, but I rescheduled it for today. The reason we didn't go yesterday is that it was supposed to be from 11am to noon, and Danni wanted to go to a movie at 12:30pm with her boyfriend. This was fine, since boyfriend and his family left today for Reno, and are going to be gone for the rest of spring break.

Dear boyfriend's mom,
Dude, I want to go to Reno! What are you going to do with four kids in Reno? Take me instead!

Anyway, the girls went to the rescheduled orientation class for the teens from 9am to 10am this morning. There was a group of 7 kids, 3 boys and 4 girls, between the ages of 13 and 16. They got a tour of the whole place, but it was mainly about teaching them how to use all the fitness machines, weight machines, and free weights safely. Every time I looked over at their group, one of the boys was being used to demonstrate one of the machines, while the girls watched. I thought this was biased at first, but then I realized that none of the girls wanted to demonstrate, not in front of the boys! As you can see, my girls were pretty thrilled during this class:



That's Danni in the red shirt, and Shannon next to her in the blue. In case you're wondering where Kylie is, they also have a child-care place in the rec center! And don't worry, I wasn't embarrassing my kids by hovering and snapping pictures. I was sitting on a rowing machine near them, pretending to text on my phone while I was taking a picture. Actually, all I have right now is my phone camera, because my MySpace, picture-taking daughters seem to have misplaced my awesome, lovely, worth-more-than-their-lives digitial camera. If it doesn't show up soon, someone's head is going to roll.

While they were taking their class, I decided to walk around the indoor track that goes around the upper level and passes by the fitness machines. There's a sign on the wall that tells you that 10 laps = 1 mile. There's also an arrow pointing, telling you "today's direction" on the track. That made me laugh. Maybe every other day they change the direction you walk/run, to mix things up a little? I walked around 10 times, then looked at the time. 9:17am. Dang, what now? Check out the machines, of course.

Speaking of machines...the machines in this place are state-of-the-art awesome. I had to take a picture of the display of the rowing machine I was sitting on:



See, that big 399 is the amount of calories I would burn if I rowed for an hour at the pace I was rowing. As you can see, after 4 minutes and 12 seconds, I had burned a whole 26 calories. Woohoo. What they don't tell you is that you will die of boredom waaaay before you've rowed for an hour. Oh, see those two little boat-looking thingies at the bottom of the display? You can actually have a wireless race against the person (people) next to you. I tried to have a 1000 meter race with Danni. For some reason, I was thinking 1000 meters wasn't very far. Since it was a race, I was going as fast as I could. I gave up after about 300 meters, because I was about to pass out. Not really, but I was pretty winded.

Also, the treadmills, stationary bikes and elliptical machines in this place are awesome. Why? Because they have little TV screens right on them! You can bring your own headphones, and watch/listen to the TV while you work out. They also have an iPod dock on them. Hopefully you can get the idea from this pic:



I know the picture of the screen didn't come out too well, but it's very clear. And notice the channel, Discovery Health? Besides Discovery Health, they have some other cool channels like the History Channel, an entertainment news channel, sports, and several others. This might just get me to stay on a treadmill for more than 10 minutes. Honestly, usually I just want to pull my hair out from boredom after that long, even if there is a TV mounted on the wall. But this, my friends, is way, way cool.

Shannon was next to me on a treadmill, jogging...at about 5mph. She wasn't even breathing hard. She was like, "I could do this all day!" Shut up kid, before I push your scrawny little butt down and you fly off that treadmill backwards. Now that would be funny. The only way we could get her to leave was to promise her that we could go back tomorrow. In fact, we even reserved a racquetball court from 9-10 tomorrow morning. They've never really played before, so I think the three of us are going to have a little game of cutthroat. Ha. I'm going to kick ass. Oh, who am I kidding? They're softball players...they'll be whacking that little ball all over the place. It'll be fun though.

I finished off my late morning/early afternoon taking Kylie on a little trip over to Jen's house. I was going to try and install Photoshop on her external hard drive, but it wasn't working so well. (Sorry Jen! I tried, really!) Kylie had a lot of fun over there though, because Grace has some cool stuff! A playhouse in the backyard, and a trampoline!



Grace's 13 year-old brother Chris can do some pretty awesome stuff on the trampoline. Like a forward flip with a full twist. I wish I had taken a video of that, because I was amazed. Then we had to leave, because I had to come to work. Bleh. There will be none of this working stuff tomorrow though...yay for my two days off! I love Friday and Saturday. The pool is open from noon to 5pm tomorrow, so hopefully we'll make it down there. Oh yeah...80 degrees tomorrow, but a high of 58 and rain by Sunday. And then back to 80 by mid-week next week. That's some crazy weather right there. I'll be enjoying every single minute of Sunday.

Spring Break! (On a Budget)

Spring Break. Don't those words just conjure up fond memories of Mexico, all-night drinking binges, orgies, and copius amounts of illegal substances? No? Ok, maybe that's just me.

Actually, what it conjures up for me now is the fact that for the next two weeks, I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn (6:45am) and take people to school. Some of you might not think this is all that early, but when you don't get home from work until 11:30pm and to sleep until about an hour after that...trust me, it's early. But for the next two weeks, I can actually sleep in a little bit! My body, however, didn't get the memo. My eyes popped open at about 6:35am this morning, and informed me that I had had my 6 hours of sleep, and I was done.

I tried to argue. My brain told my body,

"Don't you get it? We don't have to be up this early! We can sleep a little more! Don't you realize that we go through life perpetually tired? We can catch up, just a little bit, these next two weeks."

My body said, "Forget it, you're awake." My body sucks.

In case any of you are sitting there thinking, "A two-week spring break?" Yes, our school district is on what they call a modified year-round schedule. We have a two-week break after each quarter, and then 8 weeks for summer. So we get two-week breaks in October, December and March. Summer break starts at the end of May, and school starts again at the end of July.

Anyway.

So the challenge becomes, what do I do with these kids for two weeks, without breaking the bank, which doesn't have much in it to break in the first place?

Yesterday, we went to the new recreation center that our city just opened. It's HUGE. It has a fitness center with all the weight machines, treadmills and a walking/running track, a kids' play area, teen lounge (not open yet), classrooms, gymnasium, ceramics studio, dance studio, and some other things I'm sure I'm forgetting about. They're going to charge $60 a month for a family pass, which I will probably pay for June and July, the two months the kids are out of school. In the summer here, our activities have to be either indoors or in the water, so I think this would totally be worth it.

For now though, since the center just opened, we can go there fee-free until April 20th, which is the actual "grand opening." Which seems a little dumb, since it's already open. But hey, it's free and we'll take advantage. The girls and I went there on Monday and tried to sign in at the front desk. After asking the ages of the two older girls, the lady informed us that they couldn't use the fitness center until they took the "Fitness Orientation" class, which was required for ages 13-17. They both rolled their eyes, which I kind of understood, but I guess you gotta follow the rules. The first class that fit into our schedule was Wednesday from 11am to noon, so that's what we'll be doing tomorrow.

I left there on Monday to a chorus of,

"Omg, that's so dumb! Do they think we don't know how to walk/run around a track? I can't believe that's so stupid!"

On one hand, I totally agree with them, but I'm sure it's because of liability, insurance, blah blah. The nice part is that after they take the orientation, they can use the fitness center on their own, without me there. Took them out for a fast food lunch instead, (because that's totally better than exercising, right?) then went home so I could get ready for work.

Today, Danielle had a softball game in Northern Nogales Tuscum Tucson, (Sorry Kirsten...I can't help it) so she was going to be gone all day. After dropping her off at school at about 10:30am for a team lunch before they got on the bus, Kylie and I headed out to...Bass Pro Shop. Field trip! Jen and her kids (three of the four, anyway) and Kirsten and her kids (all 5 of them!) had invited us to join them at Bass Pro Shop. I have to admit, at first I thought this was a little silly. We're going to a fishing store? But then Jen said they had these big aquariums with big fish, and Kylie likes that sort of thing, and it's FREE, so I said what the heck?

Did I call this place a "fishing store?" Oh my, how wrong I was. I had never been there before, but what I thought was some little fishing store was actually a ginormous Hunting/Fishing Lollapalooza Extravaganza. I mean, this place is its own self-contained mall. The Mall For Men. Hunting and Fishing Men.

Being a city girl and never really into hunting or fishing, this place was a totally new experience for me. Not only did Kylie like the fish, but the coolest part for her, I think, were all the previously live animals that were now dead...and stuffed. They were everywhere! Everything from ducks to prairie dogs, elks to mountain lions and bears. They were ex-animals! They had ceased being! Hee. They were very real-looking, probably because they were, you know, real. Just not breathing. I was trying to get Kylie to touch one of the bears and feel the fur, but she wasn't having any of that. She was fine with touching a wolf, a coyote, a skunk and an elk, however.

I took some pictures, of course.

I wrote some stuff on this picture, pointing out different things. I just realized that the writing is too small to read. I think if you click on the picture, you can see it bigger.

Really, you could live in this place. There's even a restaurant.

Here are Kylie and Gabe trying out one of the two-man tents. Luckily, they're a little too young to know what those things are really good for.

No hunting extravapalooza would be complete without an arcade game where you can pay quarters to shoot things with rifles. This is awesome entertainment for 5 year-olds. Hee. We didn't even give them any quarters, and they still had fun.

Ok, really, we weren't at the zoo. That's an ex, um...moose? Actually, I have no idea what that is, but it sure looks real, doesn't it? Jen pointed out to me that this is actually a female cow elk. Thanks Jen...because I definitely would not have known that. :)

And here I thought there wouldn't be anything in this vast empire of a store that I would ever want to buy. However, I was sold when Jen pointed out this party-sized margarita machine to me. If you can see Kylie's little arms over there on the left side, you can get an appreciation for how big this thing is. I forgot to look at the price, but really, I don't care. I want it. You can all chip in. My birthday is in May.

So, tomorrow we will go back to the rec center. Not sure what we're doing on Thursday. Friday, we're thinking of going swimming. That's right, swimming. During this spring break, they open up one of the bigger public pools in the city, one with a couple of waterslides and kids play area. They even heat the water, because really, even though it's supposed to be in the low 80s the next couple of days, the water is still really cold. It is! We are not wimps just because we need our swimming water heated to 87 degrees. We're just used to that because the sun heats our swimming pools to 90 degrees in the summer all by itself. Thankfully, by Sunday we're supposed to have a little cold front move through, and our high will be back down to 69 degrees, or what I refer to as "acceptable." I got into the elevator at work today, and some random old dude getting out said,

"Isn't it a beautiful day outside?"

Being the friendly, optimist that I am, I replied,

"It's hot."

Beautiful is about 55 degrees, windy and cloudy. Fat chance we'll see that again before December. Now 'tis the end of Comfort, and the beginning of Summer. Booooooooooooo!!

Fun Movie Meme

Edited again, March 16th: In case anyone cares (ha), #3 is from Bull Durham. Crash says it to Nuke when they first meet. #5 is from St. Elmo's Fire. Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) says it to Leslie (Ally Sheedy).

Couple of hints for the last two: #3 is from a very popular sports movie, and for #5, think 80s and the Brat Pack.

Edited to Add: Ok, if anyone knows any of the others, feel free to guess. I know Fannie said she knew #4, and I have no doubt that she does!

No tagging involved, I promise!

I saw this on Fannie Mae's blog, and it looked like fun. I even guessed one of her's correctly! Plus, I have an hour and a half left to kill before I can leave work, and this seems like as good a way as any to spend it.

Ok, the rules:

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. No Googling or IMDB-ing. That's cheating, and that's no fun!
6. One guess per person on the first go-round, please. Give everyone a chance!

Here are the quotes:

1) "These guys ever smile?"
"They're Russians...they get shot if they smile."
Jen got this one too...it's from Miracle, the movie about the 1980 Olympic hockey team.

2) "That's what all these cripples down at the VA talk about: Jesus this and Jesus that. They even had a priest come and talk to me. He said God is listening and if I found Jesus, I'd get to walk beside him in the kingdom of Heaven. Did you hear what I said? WALK beside him in the kingdom of Heaven! Well kiss my crippled ass. God is listening? What a crock of shit." My friend Lish knew that this quote is from Lieutenant Dan in the movie "Forrest Gump." Wtg Lish!

3) "Yeah? From what I hear, you couldn't hit water if you fell out of a fucking boat."

4) "Every night it's the fucking chicken! Holy God Almighty! Is it possible just once we could get something to eat for dinner around here that's not the goddamned fucking chicken?" Ok, second go-round, Fannie Mae, Lish and Jen all knew this was from "Little Miss Sunshine." If you haven't seen this, you really should. HILARIOUS!

5) " I enjoy being afraid of Russia. It's a harmless fear, but it makes America feel better, Russia gets an inflated sense of national worth from our paranoia. How's that?"

6) "Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you're not good at them." Naturally, Hubby the golfer knew this quote was from the movie "Tin Cup."

7) "Where's that money, you silly stupid old fool? Where's that money? Do you realize what this means? It means bankruptcy and scandal and prison. That's what it means. One of us is going to jail - well, it's not gonna be me." Yay, my friend Kirsten knew this was from "It's a Wonderful Life."

8) "Had my dream again where I'm making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I'd nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me a 5.6. Must the dismount." Yay, we have our first correct guess! Fannie Mae knew this quote was from "When Harry Met Sally."

9)"We will be perfect in every aspect of the game. You drop a pass, you run a mile. You miss a blocking assignment, you run a mile. You fumble the football, and I will break my foot off in your John Brown hind parts and then you will run a mile. Perfection. Let's go to work." Jen got this one...it's from "Remember The Titans."

10) "I believe in a long prolonged derangement of the senses to attain the unknown... Although I live in the subconscious, our pale reason hides the infinite from us." Hubby also knew this one...it's a quote from Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison in "The Doors", one of our favorite movies.

Bloggy Funk

I have no idea what's wrong with me lately, but I can't think of anything funny or hell, even mildly interesting to write about. So for now, we'll just go with the Pinewood Derby winners holding their cars and trophies. Not very exciting, but at least they're cute! (Sometimes)

Kylie took second place in the speed category for the 3-7 year-olds. In case you're wondering, her shirt says "Patience Tester." I thought it was apropos.

Shannon took first place in the speed category for the Leaders in Training. Um...yay? I mean...yay! Great job cutting out and putting together those cars, Grandad kids! Well, at least the kids did the painting and decorating.