... of old souls, dead books, and tmi?

back in February '06, I read a very interesting book: Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence For Past Lives, by Thomas Shroder, a journalist who shadows/accompanies American psychiatrist Ian Stevenson on his final two field trips to Lebanon and India. "Dr Stevenson has spent more than 30 years studying the cases of some 2000 children who spontaneously remember concrete details about dead strangers whose experiences can be documented."

Yes, I'm talking about reincarnation.

One thing that struck me about his research was, many reincarnees (?) would have some sort of birthmark that corresponded with fatal wounds that helped end their previous life. The new vessel of what had been a gunshot-through-the-heart victim, for example, might have a birthmark right over the heart, or even better, a mark on front and back of the chest for the through-and-through.

... where am I going with this? Well, for one reason or another, one of our recent Netflix rentals was The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a disc containing two 40-ish mins documentaries about this mindblowing document and how it is used/observed in the Himalayas.

I knew in general about Buddhism's frowning upon "attachments", but didn't realise just how far-reaching this mindset is, at least in the Tibetan branch. This book is read for 7x7days immediately after a person's death, to help the consciousness recognise itself and its situation, to help calm and guide it to a better incarnation, and a big part of this guidance is encouraging not just the deceased but also the mourners to let go of their attachments to each other, for these attachments will only make the journey through the death and incarnation "bardot" a lot more difficult.

The little that was quoted / narrated was quite the mind-blower - guess what's going onto my to-read queue?? :) [answer: The Tibetan Book of the Dead! and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife]

... aaaanyways... so where was I? Ah yes, tying together the Old Souls book and the Book of the Dead documentary. One of the two documentaries mentioned briefly a monk who had been shot dead, I think it was during a demonstration? They found his reincarnation, and he had a large bruise that wouldn't go away for a very long time, that supposedly corresponded with the gunshot wound he previous self had suffered. That triggered memories of the Old Souls book from over two years ago :)

And makes me wonder...

... ... does this mean in my prior life I was shot in the butt???

p/s> while randomly Googling for this post, was reminded of this ridiculous edict: "China Bans Reincarnation Without Government Permission" ... heh, some things you *just* can't control, dudes! :)

greeeeeeeeeeeeeen!

yes yes yes I need to tone down the color... but hey! Welcome to the new look of Life After Work! It's been long overdue!!

Nerdy things to share about this round of change:

• I heart ourblogtemplates.com! This is the ONLY blogger template resource I've found that has taken the time to fully define and correlate all the fonts and colors upfront such that they can be tweaked from the Fonts and Colors tab in the Layout panel. As such, I am currently having a GREEN theme, as your bleeding eyes can probably tell, but if/when I want to jazz it up to different tones of blue, brown, whatever, I can do it very easily.


• I really like how the linkbar blends well with the black blogger navbar :) Yes yes I could make it blend with any of the other colored blogger navbars (see previous bullet point) but I'll stay away from unnecessary tweaking right now... but since it's built by a widget, I can't have any humorous hover text, oh well...


• Thanks to advice found here and here, I've managed to have the QuickEdit tool (convenient for me, you won't see it) and e-Mail Link (that envelope&arrow icon - useful to readers, I hope!) reappear. I don't know when/why they disappeared, but I've missed them!


• to my surprise I wasn't on feedburner?!! I suppose it was my other blog/personality that had tried it out. Anyways, so I'm redirecting the blogger default feed to/via feedburner now; hopefully that doesn't negatively impact existing subscribers :D


• Blogger's got some really nifty widgets now, including their version of a blogroll! So I'm gonna be deserting my blogroll from blogroll.com in favor of Blogger's, and will divvy it up into categories, including Face-to-Face, i.e. "Bloggers I've Met"


• have unsuccessfully tried to add a tabbed sidebar - got it mostly there, then started tweaking,,, and it all went kablooey... I'll keep trying... but it's already 2:45 a.m. ... not sure just how much more real progress I'll make right now... UPDATE: found a better/easier version here, done ~3:20am!!

... and finally

• I feel I've been rather stagnant, in terms of my producing blog posts and my discovering new blogs (and therefore, hopefully, having new folk discovering me) ... my other blog personality tried BlogExplosion but found it rather superficial, so I'm in no hurry to repeat that path here. Instead, I'm trying out Entrecard. Its concept is for folk within the network to drop their calling card when visiting each other... of course, every drop/visit gets a credit, and build up credits in order to "advertise" on others' sites. It'll probably be as superficial as BE, but perhaps I'll see some new faces, and get inspired to write more/better!

we're oooollllllddddd!!!

Things we did to mark / things that happened around the time of my birthday:

• Red Lobster on Wednesday for linner
Can never have too many of those free cheesy butter fat-laden biscuits! And the LiiT was actually REALLY well made this time :) Oh, the food itself? Edible :)


• Gave myself multiple papercut-like cuts on THREE fingers, the worst hit being my pointer finger, while cleaning the kitchen sink strainer a tad too enthusiastically :(
  
  
• Rather crappy weather had us going to Grandma Sally's on Friday for brunch
I really like breakfast food :) And Grandma Sally's has a pretty neat "Irish Benedict" on the menu: eggs benedict with corned beef hash. We split that as an "entree" and ordered their banana & pecan baked pancake for dessert. I swear it's not a pancake it's a cake!! We knew we'd take most of it home.... we were right.



• came back, hung around, and "caught" Kosh ordering stuff from the animalrescuesite.com (well, he asked for confirmation - do you really want this Cat Yin Yang pendant... ended up getting that and another bracelet, and some other stuff, thus providing funds for 70 bowls of food for animals living in sanctuaries and shelters!)
  
  
• installed graphics card in 'puter so that it won't crash after too many hours of Sim City. That was an adventure and a half!! But it's all done now... and I immediately set the game options to HIGH for everything - omg the level of detail in the game is awesome - NOW I get to see it!! :p



• the weekend is a blur... Saturday I think we might have worked out, then I probably Simmed while Kosh puttered around (he's supposed to studying for a major exam!!)... Sunday I got off my butt and did some spring cleaning of my own, rediscovering my attempt at putting together a family tree of sorts to keep track of Kosh's family and mine (I only know my most immediate Swiss relatives, and have totally lost track of nephews & nieces being produced by my Malaysian cousins!) I then hunted for, found, downloaded and started using a genealogical program to enter data... next thing we know it's like 3 am ... off the bed!!


MONDAY: - we finally did the touristy thing originally planned for Friday: taking the Hop-on Hop-off bus tour!

• It was the perfect day for such an endeavor; with temperatures in the 70's we weren't baked, and in fact found ourselves a wee bit chilly at times. It drained us more than we realised though - remember we'd only hit the hay at like 3am, we were on the move the whole day 11am - 7pm!
  
• We essentially took the tour bus into town for lunch, and only after did we do the actual tour. Lunch was at Bandera's. Why would we want to go to a place that seems a bit on the exclusive/expensive side, venue of power lunches, etc etc etc? Well, a while ago I had searched the 'net for places to find BBQ beef ribs (only my fave thing ever on Fridays in Urbana!) and this place seemed to have pretty good reviews for its beef ribs and skillet cornbreak, so I wanted to try it out. We shared one order of the ribs and since I couldn't see the skillet thingy we got a side of cornbread and panini. My first impression of the ribs was "omg that's it?? Porgy's has like 4 times the meat at a quarter the cost!!" But it kinda worked out well, because this was we weren't overstuffed at the end of the meal. We even took back one slice each of the cornbread and panini. The coleslaw that came with the ribs was absolutely delish, if a little bit oily - now to figure out what they used...


• after the meal, we caught the bus and off we went for the tour. I suppose you'd call us lazy and/or boring tourists: we only got off at two stops - one for free chocolate, and one at the end of the day, which happened to be the free popcorn stop teeheehee! All I wanted was sort of an overview of the city from a tourist's perspective, and that's exactly what I got - mission accomplished! :)


• We left the bus at the theatre district in the heart of the loop, and walked back while munching on popcorn. Reached home around 7pm. I was more tired than I knew - totally failed at doing math and ended up calling my brother to wish him happy birthday thinking it was 11pm his time - - turned out it was like 1 or 2 am so not only was I LATE in calling him, I WOKE HIM UP, he of the 2-month-old baby who probably needs all the sleep he can snatch!! I feel bad about it,,, maybe more certificates will make up for it?? :D :D :D


• I was so tired I passed out for an hour or two on the couch: woke up to Kosh ushering me to bed. That was about 10pm. We were still tossing and turning at 1am. You know how you can be so tired you just can't sleep? Ugh. Ended up back in front of the tv, I think I finally dosed off at 3am, while Kosh took a while longer, finally putting LotR - guaranteed to put anyone to zzzz-land! :D

... so today we woke up totally wasted. I emerged around 10am, Kosh slept till past noon. And for most of the day we've not been very productive. Total zombies, in fact. Yesterday's tour is the most probable culprit. Wow, we must really be getting old, to be so floored by a day of low-key touristy stuff. Imagine being in a foreign country and being a real tourist? We'd need a holiday to recover from such a trip!! We both feel soooo oooolllllddddd....!!

that'll teach the pussy to eat hair...

... the last time we visited the in-laws, among the random conversation topics was how, when very young, Kosh's sister needed a suppository, I forget for what reason, and his dad went on about how it wouldn't stay so the doc told them to "hold her butt cheeks together" for 15 minutes or something, and how he had to do it because my MiL just didn't have the heart to do that to a screaming child.

why, you may ask, do I bring this up?

because I had a similar, rather traumatic experience this weekend, involving a "child" and its butt!

... so once in a while the psycho kitty has trouble getting her poop all the way out, and ends up scooting across the floor, leaving sine waves of poop smears as she struggles to remove the turd by friction.

... so over the weekend Kosh heard her behaving funny as she emerged from the litter box, went to check and then I hear "What are you doing??? What are you doing???? Hey Lynne? She's making sine waves again!!" He the proceeds to lift her up off of the couch where she'd just fled to under his scrutiny. Ummm... now what? Since he was doing the holding, I, fun fun, I had the honor of taking a piece of tissue and pulling the turd out of the cat's butt! ... And oh my, she was SCREAMING at me as I tried to get a hold of the thing, not even pulling yet!! Seemed to take forever but it was probably over in just a minute - slowly pulled the turd out... only to see that it seemed to be attached to her by a long strand of hair. We assume that's the culprit.

I have ONE bit of advice for you, cat: DON'T EAT MY HAIR!!

... of hurty fingers, magic and avatar choices ...

my left pointer finger is sporting at least five papercut-like cuts, due to an incident in the kitchen yesterday afternoon.

... then ushered in my birthday with Magic... NOT really my choice, but I did promise Kosh I'd reward him with a game or two if he got some solid studying done today. Surprise surprise, he actually earned playtime. at a few minutes past midnight. ugh. anyhooo... "played" 2 games using the new Shadowmoor premade decks (Turnaround and something about Entropy) ... and the quotation marks are there because I was manna screwed each time, the first time I had plenty of mountains and not a swamp, so cast a few spells but had nothing to block Kosh's creatures. The second time? 2 swamps. Only. Couldn't cast nothing, so again, nothing to block, so I was dead in record time. This game has always been frustrating to me, I will quickly sink into a grand funk when the deck screws me over, , , and these two games were over in like 5 rounds each time ... [insert expletives here] ... at least it seems Kosh has finally learned this lesson and didn't insist on going for more games to "warm the deck up" :p

Oh, and I further aggravated the cut-up finger shuffling the deck.

Bleah.

... and now for something completely different ... which of the following manga avatars do you think is more "me"?

#1:

.. ... .. or #2:

(thanks to RunJenRun for this cool tool!)

why two? well, one I did myself, another with Kosh's input. Not too much difference, but enough that I figured I'd put both up for votage :) Your input please! :)

now I'm off to bed (it's 1:30 am!) ... if the weather holds out tomorrow we are going to do touristy things in the city, seeing as I've not done those things in the 2+ years we've been here, and Kosh actually wants to mark the day for some reason, crazy dude, he must like me or something, teeheheee!

masak-masak

... or "intermission", continued!

I have no idea why I've been documenting my recent kitchen adventures with such enthusiasm... So far there are now 21 pix in the Facebook album I've devoted to this topic ... today yesterday (it *is* 2am!) I was particularly proud of the impromptu lunch which involved juggling three pots/pans on the stove to produce egg noodles alfredo with a side of salmon sauteed with onion & veggies. follow this link for the album, recent photos at the end.

... final installment on the "throwaway" "series" soon!!

intermission

... we take a break from the throwaway series to bring you this picture:



That, dear reader(s), is my first ever Waldorf Salad!

Doubled & subbed/played around a little with this recipe .... not too bad! I'd probably to it over with less salt & pepper, and perhaps sub in craisins and/or vanilla yogurt... we'll see... takes forever to work one's way through a double portion tho, be warned!

... and WHY? you ask, would I bother making this? To help Kosh and I snack on something much healthier than his Hershey Nuggets and my B&J ice cream!! It's working! Now to continue with the evening walks, and trying to hit the gym more than just once a week... :p :p

throwaway - Part 2

Continuing my train of thought on wastefulness... (Part One here)

PART TWO: D.U.S.T.

Yes, you read that right. Dust.

Back when I was young, every Saturday was cleaning day. With a parental unit as taskmaster, we'd use the feather duster to send dust off of the shelves into the air to fall back onto the shelves and perhaps onto the floor, which we then swept with crappy brooms that let as much dust escape as it actually swept, into a pile that was then brushed into the hand-held pan, again liberating clouds of dust back into the air, then dumped into the rubbish bag, again with the dust liberation. Cough cough! The only real way to "tame" it all was by mopping the floors. What a battle, one that was fought and lost every single weekend for *how* many years of my life??

A "cure" to all that - a dustmop! You wield it like a mop, but it's for dust! No more dust flying around! w00t!

I'd owned one for a brief period of time in Malaysia, and found it excellent: the only drawback was that of course you'd need to clean off the mop head every so often by taking off the shaggy cloth and tossing it in the washing machine. My parents inherited it when I moved back in with them, but my parent(s) didn't seem keen on it, so it stayed hidden behind a door for a few years, then disappeared when the moved to their new place. Oh well...

Moving on... Back in 2006, when Kosh and I moved in to an apartment with hardwood floors rather than carpet, whoohooo, time for a dustmop to tackle all them dust bunnies, cat hair, and my own shedding hair!!

Unfortunately I didn't give it enough thought while shopping: swayed by advertising, not wanting to deal with cleaning the mop head like before, but not thinking about the implication of buying two types of DISPOSABLE cloths, I grabbed me a Swiffer Starter Kit and a box each of dry & wet cloths.

Can you imagine my dismay when I realised just how wasteful it actually is?

There's this piece of textured cloth you fix to the flat "mop" and then do your thing, and "... when you're done cleaning, throw the cloth and all that dirt away!" Ummmm after just the one use? No frikkin' way! Seriously! No way would I be party to such wastage!!

So I used same cloth a few times rather than disposing of it after one round of Swiffering the apartment, using the dustbuster to then suck the dust off of the cloth in order to be able to continue using it.

Of course, the effectiveness of the cloth plummets after one use... so once it gets real bad, I turn the cloth over and use the other side! Not as effective as a pristine cloth, but still provides a relatively decent performance.

As a result, a box of 16 dry cloths has lasted us two years, and it's still not finished! How's that for being frugal? :) It helps that Kosh and I are, ummm, not *slobs* per se, but we're certainly not hung up about needing the place spick and span and dust-free at all times :)

On a less positive note, we had also bought a 12-count box of WET cloths for the same Swiffer mop, so that we could, you know, actually MOP the floors: now that was an utter waste! The cloth seems to run out of moisture after only a small surface area gets "mopped" ... I'm tempted to see if I can "reactivate" it by spraying water on the target floor, but I don't care enough to try; instead I just make sure I limit the wet mopping to smaller areas (just bathroom, or just kitchen, or just entryway, etc etc).

We ended up having to buy an actual mop (easy-squeeze sponge type) so that the entire apartment could get a proper moppage without going through like three of those swiffer wet cloths. So much for a 2-in-1 product!

.. .. now the question becomes: once the wet and dry cloths run out ... am I going to replace them? If nothing else, I would get another round of the dry ones, certainly not the wet ones. And if I decide to forgo the Swiffer entirely, umm, we'd have that thing sitting in a corner gathering dust on its own. Sigh. So, might as well use it, right?

... ... if I could go back to that fateful day when Kosh and I were doing our new household shopping, I'm wondering what I would decide, knowing what I know now... perhaps I would have voted to just make do with the crummy vacuum cleaner instead of a dustmop/broom to deal with the dust? (ugh noise! ugh emptying the dust bag/container!). Because the bottom line for me no brooms - i know all too well how they don't work!!

One positive thing out of the debacle? We're sticking to using Pledge (or equivalent) and a small dustcloth which we throw in with the laundry, to take dust off of stuff, rather than falling for the Swiffer Duster product!

We take the small victories where we can... :D

... the REAL reason for this series on wastage coming up next ... stay tuned!

throwaway - Part 1

Being half Swiss and having been exposed since very young to the frugalism that defines most of Europe (that, amusingly, here in the U.S. seems to be the stereotype for Jews!), wastefulness does grate on me.

Here in the U.S., I feel it even more keenly than elsewhere.

I understand that in many cases, what I see as wastefulness is "just" the consequence of advancement of society. Or aversion to risk (self-preservation?). Lots of other reasons.

But, most probably, it's ultimately driven by the bottom line.

Part One: FOOD

... definitely for this example, anyway!

It came as a shock to me back in the mid-90's when a friend of mine, working at the university residence hall cafeteria, shared that there was always A LOT of food left over - unserved! I'm not talking what was out at the buffet line! - and that all this food got thrown away after every meal.

Why?

Because even though the food could go to good use at any homeless shelter, the liability in case someone got sick off of the food was just way too high, so into the rubbish bins went all that food. What a waste!

Yes, I understand the risk aversion, especially in such a society where everyone sues everyone else at the drop of a hat it seems, but still... what a crying waste, eh?


... it got me wondering, back in Malaysia, how things would be in a similar situation: firstly, I wonder if the law explicitly addresses "expiration of food", or liability of "food donors" ... then again, even if such laws exist, we all know how well (more important) existing laws are upheld / implemented, riiiiight?

... I don't know about local school / university cafeterias, but isn't it whispered that many places just "recycle" their curries and other food? That's how they consistently have great flavours, right?? Ugh :p

... ... aaanyways, I digress ... this was supposed to be an intro to some recent incidents of wastefulness I've observed / taken part in ... but it's taking too long so I'm breaking it into three instead... stay tuned ... next topic is DUST followed by DVDs.

sweaty smiley

... "fresh" from a 30min stint on the elliptical ...


sweaty smiley!! [kinda ... maybe a sweaty sneer?]


Heh. I look like I have disproportionately wide shoulders vs waist. Or maybe it's just that most of my fat is situated at the FRONT/ belly? :p

... mashed potato pizza, or how I can now create a new blogroll ...

For the longest time I've wanted to have a separate blogroll for "people I know / have met" but also for the longest time all I'd have on that list were fewer than 5 people, most of them being my schoolmates whom I've known since, well, school, who got bit by the blogging bug within the past 2 years or so.

But last night, that all changed.

I attended Davecago!

... and I managed to get Kosh to come along too!

The plan was to get there at 5pm, but we ran a little late, and were of course subject to the vagaries of the public transport system, arriving right at 5:30pm instead, and everyone was already there (well, one latecomer after us, but still)..

... now, I tend to exhibit the social properties of wallpaper than that of a butterfly, so arriving next-to-last made the meeting-new-people aspect of the gathering a bit daunting, especially since everyone else seemed to know each other. Thankfully in total we were about 14, so while daunting, it certainly wasn't overwhelming! :)

A few came up and greeted us immediately - Gary and RW, if I remember correctly - that was nice :) And of course Dave, who equipped us with our tags, and a deck of cards each; we also got to choose flair (see Office Space if you don't know what this is) for the lanyards, cool! (I was very amused, Kosh chose meditative dave, while I chose try evil, LoL!).

You can see them here, taking their place among the other "hanging stuff" - in case you were wondering, that thing that looks like a leather stomach is a boda bladder thingy, a souvenir from the AXSigma Barndance of '94. I have a similar (less dusty) one somewhere in my boxes in Malaysia.

... looking for the tangent, and sliding back down, back to the topic ... where were we? Ah yes, meeting people: I immediately recognised Kevin, and made it a point to greet him, and so got to meet his wife, but our circles didn't overlap much after that. Of the others present, there were one or two who seemed slightly familiar, but they most probably were channeling people I know rather than me actually recognising them, because, well, as far as I know I haven't blogrolled too many Chicago bloggers. One totally stole all our hearts, tho, as Radioactive Girl doled out bags of some radioactively delicious brownies to everyone present, yummy yum yum!

Who else was there? Jen, Mocha Momma, Leah, Mrs RW, Robin, and professional lurker Suzanne. (will be adding to / making a new blogroll... soon ... after the template revamp!!)

We started at Piece Pizza, where one of their toppings offered is actually mashed potatoes. On pizza. And believe it or not, it was actually quite good ("so says the carb fiend," chortles Kosh). The white pizza was like liquid garlic, mmMMmmmMMmmmm! After a short stop at the ice cream place across the street, we were led to Violethour: and being led certainly was required - in the spirit (haha) of the Prohibition era, its entrance is just a nondescript door in what looks like a boarded-up place; upon entering, there are these heavy velvet drapes and dim lighting, all pointing towards a pricey and pretentious establishment - wasn't too far off the mark - well at least we know it's there and we can say we've been there :) After that, we established ourselves at Salud and proceeded to down a few before Kosh and I excused ourselves - it was only 10pm but it felt really late - then again, with the outing starting at 5-ish, that was about 5 hours of socialising, no wonder we were tired!!

I'll post or point you to other bloggers' write-ups of the night. We brought a camera but the battery died after two pix, LoL, hence the attempt to include related-yet-not-of-the-event-itself images :) Like this one: me once we got back.


Keen eyes will notice I've got Davewear on :) And that I'm still clinging valiantly to shreds of anonymity by not posting full frontals / immediately recognisable pix of me. *grin!*

Blogger write-ups (will update until about a week from now):

• Mashed Potato Pizza, Velvet Drapes & Absinthe, Plus A Professional Lurker Revealed (RW) (you can see me in one corner of a pic)


• Nerdurday... or How I spent my Saturday (Leah)


• Bullet Sunday 93, Live from Chicago (Dave)


• Bloggers, Beers, Brownies (Mocha Momma)


• Bogging Down (Robin) (just a little blurb at the end)


• Radioactive Brownies (or something) (Radioactive Girl aka Tori)


• R.I.F. (Jen)


• Get Down Tonight ... (Kevin)


• Piece Pizza & Davecago3 & The Velvet Hour (Gary)

time for change!

testing out a new look!! (original here).

whaddaya think?

I think it's waaaay too blue... but I can probably tweak that... ... ... once I figure out how to play with the header to make it like the one currently in use here, with the 15+ headers randomly shown for each page load - not ready to part with that :)

And while you're there, answer the poll too, k?

Cheers, and have a auspicious 8/8/08!! :)

walkability

... so Kosh and I have been trying to be good about increasing the level of our physical activity.

Among other things, we've been walking around the neighbourhood a lot, either in the evenings for a post-dinner walk (anywhere between 10 - 40 mins, depending on our route), or sometime during the day for errands, or for "earning" breakfast :)

Dropping by Elisette's today, found some support for our efforts: "my" neighbourhood has a Walk Score rating of 85. Explore this site, it's got lots of interesting stuff about this whole concept of *gasp!* walking!! I've gotta say, I really do like this little neck o' the woods where we live - lots of things nearby, and an "el" station also nearby for trips I need to make elsewhere.

Here's the "reward" from one of our "breakfast walks":

Venue: Hashbrown's @ S Halsted & W Maxwell

Their specialty is hashbrowns made from sweet potatoes: them yams are not so much hashed as vermicellied, then sauteed; it's a side that accompanies almost every dish. My verdict? "Meh." You've got to try that at least once, but me, not a fan. Too sweet :p

So this most recent visit, Kosh and I both opted to pay the extra (not stated on the menu!! FAIL!) to sub in some of their other hash options.


(above) Kosh had the Killer Hashbrowns (idaho potatoes, cheddar cheese , onions & sour cream topped with crushed corn flakes baked 'til bubbly)

(below) I had the Combo Hashbrowns (idaho & sweet potatoes sauteed with sliced garlic and topped with Romano cheese)



You may note I didn't bother including the egg aspect of the meal: they paled in comparison to the hash, LMAO!

What you see are probably half the amount of hash that arrived - had to make it a point to snap pix before we snarfed it all down our gullets :) :)

[in the end we were good, we still took back some of each of our hash and omelet, made for a good breakfast the following day)

So, in case you hadn't figured why I'm writing about this: both hashes were incredibly yummy. The killer was essentially a potatoes au gratin, while the combo diluted the sweetness of the sweet taters PLUS it had garlic yummy yum yum!!

I certainly know what to *sub* next time I go there, LoL!

another movie meme!!

... my most recent movie (quote) meme was in March; y'all identified all except one: the one that stumped my readers? The Rocky Horror Picture Show! :) Tsk tsk tsk! :) I suppose if I'd used the "shiver in anticip...pation" line it would have been easier to identify?? Anyways, as threatened earlier (although the fulfillment of said threat is much later than anticip...pated), here's another entry in the meme category:

The source is again Karl (*waves!*).

...

So Entertainment Weekly came up with a list of the top 100 movies of the last 25 years.

I've changed the "rules" a bit: I’ve bolded the movies that I’ve watched, and put asterisks** next to the ones that I've watched multiple times (catching bits and pieces on tv doesn't count!). Also, I’ve listed the movies I DIDN’T like in red and those I didn't/couldn't finish watching in italics (these would probably have earned a "red" if I'd watched it all, LoL!). Finally, I've greenified those that are on my Netflix (200+ title) queue, even if they've been there for almost 2 years LMAO!!.

Feel free to adopt & adapt this yourself!

Here goes:

1. Pulp Fiction (1994) **
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03)
3. Titanic (1997)
4. Blue Velvet (1986)
5. Toy Story (1995)
6. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
9. Die Hard (1988)
10. Moulin Rouge (2001)
11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
12. The Matrix (1999) **
13. GoodFellas (1990)
14. Crumb (1995)
15. Edward Scissorhands (1990) **
16. Boogie Nights (1997)
17. Jerry Maguire (1996)
18. Do the Right Thing (1989)
19. Casino Royale (2006)
20. The Lion King (1994)
21. Schindler’s List (1993)
22. Rushmore (1998)
23. Memento (2001)
24. A Room With a View (1986)
25. Shrek (2001) **
26. Hoop Dreams (1994)
27. Aliens (1986)
28. Wings of Desire (1988)
29. The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
30. When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
31. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
32. Fight Club (1999) **
33. The Breakfast Club (1985)
34. Fargo (1996)
35. The Incredibles (2004) **
36. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
37. Pretty Woman (1990) **
38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
39. The Sixth Sense (1999) **
40. Speed (1994)
41. Dazed and Confused (1993)
42. Clueless (1995)
43. Gladiator (2000)
44. The Player (1992)
45. Rain Man (1988)
46. Children of Men (2006)
47. Men in Black (1997) **
48. Scarface (1983)
49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
50. The Piano (1993)
51. There Will Be Blood (2007)
52. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988) **
53. The Truman Show (1998) **
54. Fatal Attraction (1987)
55. Risky Business (1983)
56. The Lives of Others (2006)
57. There’s Something About Mary (1998)
58. Ghostbusters (1984)
59. L.A. Confidential (1997)
60. Scream (1996)
61. Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
62. sex, lies and videotape (1989)
63. Big (1988)
64. No Country For Old Men (2007)
65. Dirty Dancing (1987)
66. Natural Born Killers (1994)
67. Donnie Brasco (1997)
68. Witness (1985)
69. All About My Mother (1999)
70. Broadcast News (1987)
71. Unforgiven (1992)
72. Thelma & Louise (1991)
73. Office Space (1999) **
74. Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
75. Out of Africa (1985)
76. The Departed (2006)
77. Sid and Nancy (1986)
78. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) **
79. Waiting for Guffman (1996)
80. Michael Clayton (2007)
81. Moonstruck (1987)
82. Lost in Translation (2003)
83. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)
84. Sideways (2004)
85. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)
86. Y Tu Mamá También (2002)
87. Swingers (1996)
88. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) ***********
89. Breaking the Waves (1996)
90. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
91. Back to the Future (1985) **
92. Menace II Society (1993)
93. Ed Wood (1994)
94. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
95. In the Mood for Love (2001)
96. Far From Heaven (2002)
97. Glory (1989)
98. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
99. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
100. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999) **

... and there you have it ... any reactions? I know, I know, 100 is a LONG list,,, I had considered just doing to top 50, but then we'd have lost South Park, LoL!

i.o.u.

So recently I became an aunt.

The thing is, Kosh and I are not sure what sort of gift would be useful let alone practical, since the baby's main digs will be in Switzerland, but momma and baby are temporarily in Malaysia for the duration of her pantang... I'm always the practical sort, don't put it past me to give a gift of diapers,,, but unless I tell my own mother to buy that and give on our behalf,,, ehh... not the same...

So, Kosh and I came up with this solution:



Sorry for the crappy pic - Kosh & I were trying out our camera for the first time!

We essentially sent them I.O.U.s - redeemable for "a baby gift, a night of babysitting, or other items or services [terms & conditions apply]"

I had fun with the fine print ;) do you see it wrapped all along the side of each "voucher"?

Fine Print #1:
No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. One transaction per certificate. Originals only; no photocopies honored. Wow you read this!

Fine Print #2:
Terms and Conditions: Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. One certificate per transaction. Not transferable. Congratulations, your glasses are the right strength. Always read the fine print.


ah, sometimes I really amuse myself :)