Fit that in your pocket

Here she is... the iPad:

Say wha...?
No, this is not a ginormous iPhone, nor is it a ginormous feminine hygiene product, as the name implies. This is Apple's answer to Amazon's Kindle.

And it looks/sounds freaking brilliant. I've already added it to my unattainable birthday wish list.

Price? Starting at $499, but up to $829, depending on level of awesomeness.

But from what I've gathered, it's much more than a wireless reading device. It seems to have all the features of a laptop but without the keyboard. Or rather, with a "touch" keyboard on the actual screen.


Mmmmm. Delicious. Only thing lame about it is the name. Cuz really? "iPad" was the best they could come up with? It's borderline gross. They should have called me!!!! I have better names for it, like the iKindle or the iWantthat.

Haircuts and Extremely Important Question

Here's Homer's "after" pic:



He was busy watching Max and Roovy, which is why he wasn't smiling. He's not mad at me for chewing him out or anything.

I went ahead and cut Cord's hair last night while I was at it. It was super long and feathery. I cut it shorter than he wanted, but his hair grows freakishly fast.

Gus, on the other hand, begged me to leave his hair alone. I agreed on the condition that he not let it hang in his eyes. I hate it when he walks around, gazing through a veil of hair.


Now I have a very important poll question for you, unrelated to my children or anyone I know:

Is it kind of hawt when a good-looking guy gets a black eye? Once it's past the swollen phase, and just bruised?

Like I said, super important question. Think hard. Answer honestly.

Dang

Homer cut his own bangs. Bad idea, right ladies? Neither of us are too
pleased with the results. The pageboy cut is so 1780s.

Viva Las Vegas!

Congrats Erin and Scott! Welcome to the family, Scott! Exclamation
point!

Ignore the giant beers

We went to this Everclear concert in Phoenix over MLKJ weekend, as if it were the 90s or something.



I should probably mention first that we were in Phoenix with Amy & Dwight (plus kids) and Erin & Scott (Scrin, if you will), because we were running the rock-n-roll half marathon. And when I say "we", I am referring only to Tony and Dwight. The rest of us slept in and got to the race just in time to miss Tony crossing the finish line.

Oh dang. I forgot to take a picture of Tony and Dwight after the race. Dang. Maybe Amy has a picture?

After the race, Tony and Dwight went immediately back to the hotel to shower, and the rest of us sat on the grass for an hour or so and watched the Everclear concert, cuz our feet hurt from walking and standing around and stuff.

It was exhausting, dragging those free-spirited kids through that crowd of people. The "spectator" parking garage was super far away so we had to prod and push the kids all the way to the finish line (at least a half mile), and they kept swing from our hands, pulling our arms out of our sockets, and just being generally annoying. Where the H is my metal?

Anyhow, here's the runner's metals:

The square one is from the Phoenix race (clearly) and the round one is from the race Tony ran in December here in Las Vegas (obviously). Tony's halfsie time is always the same (1 hour, 51 minutes, something seconds). That's pretty consistent timing, considering the distance and how many races he's ran. However, for the Phoenix race, his time was 1 hour, 50 minutes, and something seconds. Significant improvement, no?

Whattaya think?

4U2NV

You know those coveted personalized license plates Memzy inherited from her parents because they like her the best out of all their kids? Well, it made me realized that my kids are gonna be fighting like crazy in a couple years over this baby:

That's Tony's personalized license plate from when he was in high school. Yeah, he drove around in public with that attached to his Pontiac Fiero. How he managed to not get his A kicked, I do not know.

In fact, to hear him tell it, he got all kinds of chicks with those plates. Phone numbers n junk on his windshield. Notes like, "Hey there, LDS GUY. I'm LDS GAL... "

Gross, huh?

Thing is, Tony was so adorable, he didn't need any clever gimmicks to get a desperate, nerdy LDS chick's phone numbers. See:


Tony circa LDS GUY^^

Zach Morris's twin, practically!

Anyway, we have two of these priceless license plates to pass down to our boys...



...but we have three future "LDS GUYS".

Talk about potential firestorm. So here's the deal. I figured out a way to keep this fair, as well as add a little incentive for our boys to choose certain career paths. I'm putting this in writing right here on the Internet, which is the same as writing it in outer space since it will never ever disintegrate in a landfill, so I can't take this back:

Whoever becomes a doctor first, gets dad's back license plate.
Whoever finds cure for cancer, gets his front license plate.
And whoever invents the first PRS (personal robot servant) gets my Gremlins lunch box:

...thermos included:

Good luck, boys. May the odds be ever in your favor.

PS. American Idol starts tonight. Eeek.

*The other Katie came up with the title for this post.

Books

I'm reading like mad lately. Too much, actually, and it's making my life all off-balance. I stayed up until 3am last night, finishing a really good book (that I'm not going to tell you about just yet), and then I laid in bed for another hour or so, thinking about it. I had to get up at 7am, so I had no business staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning, but I just had to find out if Miss Two Slice Hilly 'as gonna git what 'as coming to her, and if Skeeter 'as gonna marry Mister Stuart, and if Minny 'as gonna leave that no good husband a hers.

I love books that make me act all reckless and irresponsible, but I hate the consequences that go along with of that behavior. This time: I slept through my alarm in the morning, which was embarrassing, as I was supposed to sub-teach Gus's primary class. I jumped out a bed, threw on a skirt, and made it there 10 minutes late, by myself. Then I felt all down in the dumps about myself. Why'd I stay up so late? I could have finished the book after church today. But when I was reading last night, I just knew if I put that book down I would toss and turn all night, and probably have one of those dreams where I'm looking for a toilet the whole time cuz I gotta pee so bad but can't seem to get any relief no matter how many times I go.

One of these days I'm gonna wet the bed, and there'll be nothing I can do to stop it. Except maybe finish whatever book I'm reading before I fall asleep.

Anyway, American Idol starts this week, so thankfully I'll get some TV time in and balance out my life a little. Kids are good. Alive and well, if you were wondering.

PS. The potato book we're reading this month on SRBC is top notch. It's a good month to join us if you were thinking about it.

Face-lift

^^to be read in a sing-song voice.

So, you know that one Smart Remarks Book Club Blog that looks like a homeless person designed it? Well, the other day Landee suggested I redo the header. Like, take a new picture of that shelf in my office, but this time dust it off first, and remove the highlighters and wrappers and other debris, and then arrange all of the book club books we've read so far on the shelf.
^^whole paragraph to be sung. (tune of your choice)

I was on board right away, because it's an adorable idea, only problem, I was missing 9 out of 17 (yes, can you believe 17 books already!!!) of our books, due to my rich-person Kindle, which allows me to download digi-books instantly at the touch of a wand. Plus my neighbor had two of them. So, Landee goes, no prob, I'll take a pic of whatever books I have and you can photoshop them in.
^^sing all that too.

Sounds simple, eh? Maybe. But we practically spent an entire day coordinating photo shoots, discussing shadows and real light verses flash, and matching angles, and emailing pics back and forth, etc. Yeah, we took the whole thing vry srs.
^^sing it.

So, here we go from totally geek...

(old header, ya know)


To totally chic...

Like you fell into a rabbit hole and came out in heaven, eh?

Lots of those books weren't even on the shelf when I took the pic. Magical, ain't it? I can only take credit for arranging the pic, photo shopping in some of the books, adding a few shadows, adding those whimsical waves, and building the entire shelf (plus wainscoting) with my own two hands. Landee added more books and then actually made it look good. It was practically ugly when I email it to her. It had this weird vomit-like hue due to my lighting issues. She fixed the color, added some doilies of some sort, and picked the most perfect fonts (she's a master with fonts).

Only problem is, we're missing one of our books.<--singsong it. Neither of us had a hard copy. See if you can discover which one is missing. Winner gets everybody's favorite prize-->bragging rights.

Anyway, go see how fancy the SRBC blog looks now. We painted the walls in there too. I had hoped it would dry a shade lighter, but what are ya gonna do?

10

It's 10. Happy New Year!

This video is in the wrong decade. It's not old enough to be retro, just awkwardly outdated.

We had a great Christmas this year. Loved spending Christmas with my SIL, and we had a fun Christmas eve--Tony had his sister, and I had mine (Erin), and we had an awesome battle-of-the-siblings trivia game. I only took one lame picture (stuck someone in that video montage) and no group picture.

Anyway, I never got around to blogging this past week, and it all feels like old news now, so I'm just gonna leave it at that. As you can see, I got the three books I'd asked for for Christmas. So I started flipping through them a little, only intending to reminisce a little, and I ended up reading all three books over the weekend. I love them. If you haven't read them yet, I highly recommend you do. By Megan Whelan Turner. The first book might take a while to get into, but if you stick with it, the reward will be all the sweeter.

Speaking of sweet rewards, I finally met mi Internete' amigo, Flem. This is months and months (perhaps years?) in the making. Here's a badly angled picture as proof:

She is way cool, a virtual fountain of riveting-type information and conversation. Her Steve is super nice, and her kids are freakishly cute and funny. I highly recommend you become her Internet amigo (if she isn't already) and fandango a visit with her.