A "Reindeering"...

Look what I got from Jade for Christmas!



And well, from her Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Neal too...

I just love it!

What I Really Meant To Say Was... "Merry Christmas!"...

Though in actuality, this picture WAS taken at Thanksgiving...

My "This Year's 10 Most Favorite Things To Be Thankful For" List:

• Passing three of the hardest classes I've ever taken in my life with flying colors.
  
• Remaining gainfully employed in a wonderful company with management that always nurtures my somewhat random abilities and talents.
  
• Getting a new car and some direly needed home repairs done while at the same time snowballing myself almost completely out of debt (for the most part). *thank you Dave Ramsey*...
  
• Discovering a miracle cure for Poison Ivy.
  
• Reconnecting with so many friends from my past. (Technology can be a pain but it can be such a blessing too.)
  
• Not sliding off the road even once.
  
• Being able to see my family TWICE this year and hearing my granddaughter call me by name.
  
• Knowing that Daryn and Jon are now together forever.
  
• Getting over Clay Aiken.
  
• Finally training my kitties to not sleep right on top of my feet when in fact they DO have the whole entire rest of the house.
  
• Netflix

Ok, so I guess that's eleven...

I probably could have gone for twelve...

Merry Christmas to all of the many, many of you who are reading this... and even to those very few of you who aren't... *g*

{{{hugs}}}

This Took More Work Than You Could Probably Imagine...

After 14 weeks of working on this thing (along with around 20 hours per week of additional homework assignments) I somehow managed to finish up my final project for my "Flash" class a week ahead of schedule.

Now, please understand... I GET blogging. I GET MySpace and FaceBook... but this was nothing like trying to figure out any of those. Rather like comparing boiling an egg, toasting a bagel or making jello to creating a Boeuff Bourginione from the recipe of Julia Child...

Ok, so anyway... Please feel free to click on the (very large) thumbnail below.



Tada!

Unfortunately it was deleted from the GRCC hosting site once I graduated. But trust me, it was really cool! *sigh*

GaGa Ooo-La-La...

Shoot I just can't help it. I freakin' love this video!

Earworm to the max!




Should my mother be concerned?

Or my granddaughter for that matter?

As for my kids, I'm sure they're both just rolling their eyes...


Technorati tags:
Lady GaGa, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta , Bad Romance

This Is Me Today...

Don't even ask...

My Sister's A STAR...

I'll never forget how I directed her in her first play! It never got off the ground much... in fact we never even performed it. But we sure had fun rehearsing it for that whole year and a half...

But anyway, this endeavor of her's actually took off! And I'm so proud of her!

She's the gorgeous, sometimes bitchy, blond with the infectious smile... the one who keeps putting her hand over her face and cries alot (I taught her how to do that...) But it's pretty effective, don't you think?




Technorati tags:
Alison Trouse, Stand Strong, The Movie

You've Been Warned...

No, seriously...

Technorati tags:
Adam Lambert, Time For Miracles, 2012, The Movie

I Finally Have To Admit It... Grand Rapids is a Very, Very Cool Place to Live!...

However, when I moved here 20 years ago, it wasn't so much. Downtown was pretty much of a disaster and an absolute ghost town after 6 o'clock on any given evening. And especially on the weekends when you particularly didn't want to travel down there, unless of course you had to take your children to ballet class...

But things have most definitely changed. Over the past few years Grand Rapids has become, really, the most amazing city/town!

Just look what they did on Monroe Avenue last weekend!!!



And seriously, this was only a single entry in the ArtPrize competition taking place in downtown Grand Rapids from September 23rd thru October 10th.

Here's the jist of it...

The Basics
At ArtPrize, any artist—from established to emerging—has the chance to show work. Any visitor can vote. The vote will determine who wins the largest art prize in the world. We also took the unusual step to allow people in the city to open a venue and choose the artists to show in their space. There is not one official curator or jury for the competition.

The number of venues is fluid, so the number of competing artists is fluid. The possibilities are wide open.

We can't predict what will happen, but it should be a lot of fun finding out.

There is artwork all over the city! In every nook and cranny. So exciting! There is even a LochNess Monster sculpture in the Grand River!

Rob Bliss, the artist/creator of the "100,000 Paper Airplanes and Melodies Over Monroe" is a 20 year old, Sophmore music student at Grand Rapids Community College (My School...Yay!) and is currently in the top 25 standings!... amongst (I don't even know how many entries exactly but) literally hundreds I think!

~ He was ridiculed by many beforehand as to the potential litter problem this would cause to the city... so he'd hired a clean-up crew out of his own pocket to clean up the "mess" afterwards. As it turned out they weren't really needed. Pretty much every single person on the street took home at least one of every color as a souvenier....

The voting will continue thru October 1, 2009 when the top ten works with the most votes will be announced and become the only works eligible to win the ArtPrize. Those ten works will continue to receive votes until October 8, when the work with the most votes will be announced and win the $250,000 ArtPrize.

How in the heck did a 20 year old come to coordinate something like this!

The Promo...


The Backer...
Rick Devos Unveils $500,000

Technorati tags:
Art Prize, Grand Rapids, Rob Bliss

I Swear... If It's Not One Thing... it's probably nothing...

Just to keep you all up to date on my latest Poison Ivy debacle...

Well, I finally procured the services of Poison Ivy Control of Michigan after several landscaping companies told me they wouldn't even touch the stuff.

So the 'guy' (who shall remain nameless) stepped out of his black, Ford 150 or something like that, yesterday afternoon looking absolutely drop dead gorgeous in his thigh high rubber boots. And then I remembered that he really WAS probably half my age. I tend to forget about those kinds of things sometimes...

Anyway... on our walk back to my woods I extraopolated over my sad tale of poisonous woe and he seemed so very symphathetic. However once we got out there it didn't take more than a second for him to say "This isn't ivy." (He called it "ivy"... how cute! Like it was a completely non-threatening thing to him.) But I absolutely love honesty, if you know what I mean.

The only saving grace for me, after having him travel half way across the state ON A SUNDAY no less (and one that helped me to feel much less like an idiot) was the fact that he DID actually find quite a lot of it crawling on the floor of my woods along with a big ole mother vine... (and I use that term in a purely horticultural sense) growing up a tree in the far back in my woods that would have surely dropped a ton more babies onto the floor of my woods this fall. So he took care of what was there with his humongous canister (which I'm sure is still 3/4 full) and he'll return in 2 weeks to completely yank it all out.

He also confirmed that the thing I pulled out of my flowerbeds (with my bare hands) a couple weeks ago was indeed... "ivy" which he then shot dead. Bang! So thankfully, somehow in the end I was saved from being TOO totally embarrassed about my complete ignorance.

And then he left me a card with his cellphone number, along with the word "Anytime..." Now I'm more than certain all that meant was that THAT was the best number to reach him at... anytime... but still. lol

Meanwhile... I'm now wondering how to apologize to this very innocent plant for all but annihilating it last weekend!



*sigh*

IN MEMORY...


Shoot! I sure do hope it grows back...

These Things Are Just Weird...

I mean what would someone have to be guilty of in a past life in order to be given an assignment such as this in this one?



Uck... that thing was just huge!

And whaddya think that little pincher thing on it's back end is for anyway? Seriously!... now that's.just.scary.

But still, I just love this time of year and all it's many wonders...

My Continuing Woes of Yardhood...

I swear that I seriously never meant for the premise of my blog to focus on the neverending battles of yard ownership. It's just sort of happened that way.

See, the weather has just been so incredible lately and I've thusly felt motivated to get out there and clean a few things up. Namely my flower beds, which seem to year after year sprout up some other odd new something or other. This year it's been these long leafy vines...

So yesterday, beautiful as it, was I got out there bright and early, did a few push ups to limber up my arms and then started wrapping these buggers around my wrists so I could yank 'em up with everything I had. And trust me, it took about everything I had!

Anyway... the flower beds look great now!

But there's more...

This morning I woke up (after dreaming all night that my kitties had been scratching the dickens out of my arms)... and lo and behold? Well, I'll spare you the grisly details...

I really don't know exactly what power it was that manifested itself in giving me such hindsighted intuition, but I was suddenly prompted to Google Poison Ivy.

And there it was in black and white... whaddyaknow... a crucial nursery rhyme I never learned!

If There's Three... Let It Be...

So I took a walk out to my property line where my yard meets the woods, just due to the fact that I was yet again being hindsightedly intuitive... and well just shoot!



Because this was for all intents and purposes is and has always been the only navigatable entrance way into my woods, which for 15 Falls and Summers has been my saving grace as the final resting place for all my exorbitant amounts of yard waste.



And I can see now that this is basically the horticultural landscape of my entire woods... (now that I'm educated.) And to think that all this time I've been appreciating it as just lovely green foilage...

So I am in a bit of an overwhelming state of shock and disbelief right now... remembering all those gazillions of times I've treked through this patch wearing nothing but shorts!... and most recently only Crocs! (or well, you know what I mean...)

They say that some people can be immune to this stuff for years and years and then suddenly have a reaction to it. And once it affects you, you only become more and more sensitive.

Tonight I scrubbed down the lawn mower handle before mowing my lawn, after washing every imaginable thing in my house. My hands and arms have been scrubbed to the point of obliteration. The final task on my list is to douse down this keyboard with extremely hot and soapy water just as soon as I'm done here.

**Note to self: At least use the weedwacker in the flower beds next time!!!

But still, what's a yard-ho like me suppose to do now?

This just majorly sucks.

UPDATE:
But this just in!!! Oh my gosh! I gotta buy stock in this stuff! It really, really works!!!


Technorati tags:
Poison Ivy, Zanfel

Back To My Roots...

Seemed like a good place to start...

So, anyway... it's like every weekend I just stare at them and scream "I'm just not at all in the mood!!!"

Because you see, I have these "things" growing in my lawn. And I've tried every which way and a half to get rid of them, but these are some really heftily burrowed buggers. And not even TruGreen could help!



So I finally "Googled" them. Yes, Google is my friend. And it seems that they are Wild Violets. So how do I get rid of them? I asked 'Ask Google' timidly. And lo and behold I received an answer!...just like that!

And the answer WAS.. of all things,... "Well, You don't! Just try to enjoy the pretty purply flowers they bring each Spring. And also... they are edible and provide for a really lovely garnish."

Um OK....except not.

Anyway, I just spent a really long weekend in my yard...



So much for a bright and lucrative future in hand modeling.


Technorati tags:
Wild Violets