Workin' for the weekend.

I'm really, really glad that it's a holiday weekend. I'll let Winnie the Pooh tell you my main plans.

Via.



I love sleeping. B wakes up by 7:30 even on the weekends, just naturally bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. If you let me, I'll sleep past noon. Even after going to bed at 9 p.m. I may have a problem. Still, I can't wait to finally get some decent sleep in.

My other focus for the weekend: lose 5 lbs/learn to love myself. I realize this is a bit ambitious for a weekend, but I might as well start somewhere. I've really been struggling this week between wanting to buckle down on my eating habits and just lose 5-10 pounds so I can be a skinny bitch and just accepting that a healthy body weight for me involves a little pudge in the middle and enjoying a treat without guilt.

I inherently rebel against the idea that I need to be a certain weight to be happy or beautiful. And yet I can't quite seem to convince my sub-conscious to adopt that mindset. Instead, I'll eat something, then berate myself for doing so, even if it was healthy. Then berate myself for berating myself because, hello, you need to eat and there's no shame in feeding oneself, or even in enjoying one's food. This weekend I'm going to try and adopt the following attitude:

Via

In lighter news, I wore these things this week and liked them:

Any advice on how you find balance between being healthy and accepting a body that is amazing, whole, and allows you to do so many things while not looking like some societal ideal would be appreciated!

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Quote of the Day.

Every time you have McDonald's as a kid, it's a victory. Every time you have it as an adult, it's a defeat.
— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) August 22, 2012

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Indigo Blues.

"You need a pocket protector."

"Haha, yeah." *pats pen in shirt pocket*

"No, seriously. You're leaking."

"Oh sh#@t."

Yes folks, Ryan of The Faux Bohemian had put his ink pen tip down into his pocket without the lid, resulting in a large ink blot and an exclamation of "Oh no, my best 3 dollar thrift shore shirt!"

Then, a flurry of activity. E-mails began flying, asking savvy coworkers how to remove the ink. A Tide To-Go pen was produced and hastily applied.

Girl with pen: "I'm sorry if I'm making it worse!"

Ryan: "Worse, how can it get any worse? We're at the threshold of hell!" thus quoting one of the office's favorite movies, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

After rinsing the Tide-ed shirt, the stain was nearly gone!

The downside being that you have to wear a wet shirt. Lesson-the Tide To-Go really works! Even on ink. Way to go Tide people. Way to go.



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Why is it so cold in my office?

It's about 97 degrees outside today.

It's about 47 degrees in my office.

Why would they do this? I've had to begin dressing in several layers. I'm wearing jeans even though I know they will be hot and sticky on my walk back from the train this evening.

We've also had to break out the space heater usually reserved for the dead of winter.

Nothing better than toasty tootsies.

One coworker has moved her entire station MASH unit style to take full advantage of the tiny stream of heat.

"I just want to sit in the heat and eat my sandwich!"

Others are snuggled in their "wubbies" against the cold.

It feels like it should be Christmas or something. All I want to do today is eat and I'm pretty sure it's because my body thinks it's time to bulk up for winter.

However, I would rather be cold than sweltering. You can always put more on, but you can only take so much off.

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Quote of the Day.

Or song of the day, if you will.

I hope I'm this great when I'm a "grannie".



Brought to you by "The Renegade Raging Grannies". Check out their website! They have 425 other songs about politics, human rights issues and more. Plus they have great style.

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Sesquicentennial. Say it three times fast.

Were you aware that it is currently the 150th anniversary of the Civil War? Also known as the sesquicentennial, which I just like to say over and over. Well if you were a history nerd, you would know that. Being the epitome of history nerds, my family and a bunch of my coworkers went down to Manassas, Virginia on Saturday where they were having a big to-do to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Second Battle of Bull Run/Manassas (depending on whether you are a Yankee or Reb, respectively).

Actually, first my parents stopped at the apartment so my mom could meet the kitties and take our family portrait.

Anyway, now on to Manassas.

We checked out the Civil War encampment for a bit. When I was younger, re-enactors creeped me out. Now that I am an historian and understand their impulse to remember, we have come to a truce. I ignore them and they ignore me.

Actually, I don't understand their impulse to re-enact. You know why? Because living in the past actually sucked. It was dirty and there was no electricity, indoor plumbing, or internet. So while I love to study it, I am quite happy here in the second millennium with my cable and air conditioning.

But I digress. It unfortunately began to rain. Being hearty types, we took the shuttle (read: wagon) to Liberia House Plantation, a local historic home that had been used as a headquarters by both the Confederates and the Union during the First and Second battles, respectively. It is known as "the death house" because when the Confederates fled the first battle, they left four dead bodies in the house. Lovely.



These are my people. Also note my fashionable blue plastic poncho from Niagara Falls.



Liberia House

Unfortunately, once we got inside the house it began to pour. As in driving rain. Also unfortunately there wasn't much to see in the house, so it wasn't somewhere you wanted to be stuck. We hung out on the portico and watched the re-enactors be miserable and wet.

Rain, rain, go away.

Once it became clear that the rain wasn't going to stop any time soon, the people running the event decided, thankfully, to bring vans to shuttle us back to our cars instead of making us ride back in the tractor wagon, exposed to the elements. They moved us back into the house, where we encountered an historically inaccurate Abraham Lincoln:

Also creepy. To quote the woman to his left "Don't touch me, Fake Lincoln!"

I say historically inaccurate because at this time, theoretically 1862 according to the people manning the house, Lincoln didn't have the famous beard. Nor would he have worn gray pants with a black coat. I'm just saying. 

Of course, by the time they got all of us shuttled back, the rain was stopping. So my parents and I went back out to the actual battlefield, where we took a bit of a hike and then went to Don Pablo's for dinner, where I ate fried ice cream and didn't feel one bit bad about it. So there.

 

Check out what a bunch of other bloggers did this weekend at the link-up these lovely ladies hold!

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It's Friday, I'm...poking around the museum.

Actually, I did this yesterday, but it's close enough.

One of the joys of a museum employee is when you get a few minutes to randomly open drawers in storage and see what cool things you find. After a combined 10 hours of training in a classroom over the past two days, our little group figured we deserved to go see some cool stuff.

We headed to the Music, Sports and Entertainment division, which includes, among lots of other things:

Lance Armstrong's bike (how timely).

Indiana Jones' jacket and whip.

"We named the dog Indiana."

 Me, a coworker, and Indiana Jones' hat.

"Sallah, I said no camels, that's five camels, can't you count?"

 Me, a coworker, and the Sesame Street sign.

Oscar the Grouch (his trash can is stored separately).

A blurry me rifling through the late Phyllis Diller's famous joke files (I'm in the "sex" section, because that's how mature I am).

The typewriter from "Murder, She Wrote".

One of Mr. Rodger's sweaters.

And Sonja Henie's figure skates (look her up).

There's also a lot of other sports stuff that I didn't recognize because I'm not a sports person, but I'm sure it's still cool. And yes, I'm aware that I work at just about the coolest place ever.

Happy weekend!



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B's First Quarter of a Century.

Tuesday was B's 25th birthday!

He got presents and I semi-decorated the apartment.

This is how health conscious he is: I offered to bring home cupcakes from Crumbs for his birthday treat. His reply? I think I'd rather have frozen yogurt. We ended up going to Chili's for dinner, home of the molten lava Oreo cake, and he still said "I'll be ok with just frozen yogurt." I'll tell you something, if it's my day of the year to eat cake, I'm going to eat cake, damnit.

But not B. He contentedly enjoyed some froyo.

While the kittens looked on dubiously.

And then fell asleep while still trying to hold their heads up.

I hope you enjoyed your birthday, love!



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On balls.

You know the kind I'm talking about.

Via.

When we took our kittens to the vet on Saturday, we were under the assumption that between them they possessed two, both of them on Truman. The vet massaged his man area and went "one...two, great" and then she picked up Tesla and went "one...well don't worry buddy, the other one will come."

I had presumed, from the context, that the vet was talking about kitty testicles, but when she said she felt one on Tesla, I was confused, since everyone had thought Tesla was a girl, and we had been treating her as such for three weeks. So I said "one what?" and she replied "testicles. He's a boy. They're both boys."

Oops.

So hopefully I haven't screwed up my cat's psyche by treating him as if he subscribes to a gender not matched with his sex-although how can you really tell a cat's gender? Do animals have mismatched genders and sexes like humans sometimes do? I think that's too heavy a question for this early in the morning.

In any case, at least Tesla is a unisex name. Sorry for the mix-up buddy. You're a very handsome boy.



Truman, boy kitten.



Tesla. Also a boy kitten.





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Quote of the Day

 

The female body also has ways of shutting down your whole election @reptoddakin. #legitimaterape
— Angie McAllister (@AngieMacMcA) August 19, 2012

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Peaches and Ice Cream Deliciousness.

Turns out that one of the upsides of the massive drought the country has faced this summer is that our peaches are sweeter. Counter-intuitively, the less water they get, the juicier they are when they ripen. And what is better than a ripe, juicy peach on a perfect summer afternoon? 

This, my friends. This:

I'm jealous of my past self in this picture for being about to enjoy this ice cream.

Homemade vanilla ice cream topped with sweetened peaches.  I only get it once a year, at the flea market held annually by the church I grew up in, which happens to be an adorable country church notable for its red roof.

The flea market is the only fundraiser the church does during the year, with the exception of passing the plate on Sundays, and it is quite a big to-do. Almost a hundred vendors pack into the little church lot, and there's pit beef, hot dogs and of course, the ice cream and peaches that people stop in for specially, even if they have no interest in the market itself. Since I was little, it's been my job to ladle the peaches onto the ice cream that my mother had dipped.

My grandmother enjoying her ice cream.

And my dad doing the same.

This year, I still served up peaches, but next to me was my brother, making good use of the muscle he's put on since he's grown up. I got to hang out with my parents, my grandparents, great aunt and uncle, cousins, second cousins, etc. (it's a little country church and we're all related, ok? I'm ok with it), spend the day outside on the very first day that the humidity broke, and stuff myself with ice cream. So you know, it was a pretty awesome Saturday.

My great-aunt and myself.

My mama directing traffic. Excitedly.

Family friends hamming it up.

We also took the kittens to their first vet appointment. We got some news there which I will be posting about tomorrow.

 Linking up! Check out the other blogs at the link and make some new friends. Welcome anyone from the link-up!

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It's Friday...I'm watching the Muppets on YouTube.

As I have nothing of note going on today, please enjoy this gag reel the folks at Disney put together to welcome the Muppets to WDW-via MuppetVision 3D-in 1990.

Side note-I can't believe how much TV technology has improved in only 22 years. This video looks so, well, old. Which makes me feel old. Yikes.

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It was Julia Child's 100th birthday yesterday.

And while I'm not sure I understand the idea of throwing a "surprise party" for a deceased person (sorry Julia) as the museum did yesterday, I did appreciate the cake they had.



See that cake? The sheet part was about the size of four normal sheet cakes together. Then there was this whole wedding cake thing in the center. The woman cutting the cake is Julia Child's niece, who happens to have an awesome, literary-sounding name: Philadelphia Cousins. She wrote a touching blog about her memories of her aunt and her famous kitchen here. 

I took a piece of cake adorned with a white rose, because as you may or may not know I have a love affair with cake and icing in particular. Thus, the rose provided the maximum amount of icing per slice of cake. Philadelphia exclaimed, "Oh good, you took a rose! Do you know how much butter is in this cake?"

Now, I already feel bad about how much I love cake. I know it's bad for me, and since I'm continually trying to lose about 5-10 lbs. I shouldn't be eating it. So did I want to know how much butter was in the cake? Absolutely not. Let me eat my cake blissfully unaware of what I am doing to myself, please.

So I replied, "Do I want to know?" and she said "25 pounds". Twenty-five pounds. Of butter. Now, I don't know how many pieces of cake they were able to cut, so I don't know what the ratio of butter per slice was, but I do know it was more than I should've eaten in a day. However, that cake was damn good.

As you can see above, we are all enjoying it very much. So screw the butter. The other great thing about this "surprise party" was that they let us all out on the rooftop deck of the museum to eat it. Even though the day was a bit gray, the view is always fantastic.

The Capitol way in the back there.

 

Washington Monument.

 

National Mall and Dept. of Agriculture.



National Mall and Smithsonian Castle.



Now if I can only eat healthy today and get to the gym tonight so I don't feel so guilty about that cake...

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