I Should've Stayed in Bed.....ALL WEEK

So this week started out pretty ho-hum. Nothing out of the ordinary until Wednesday. Wednesday was a gloriously humid and warm day. One of those days that when Fall comes, I cling to like a child to his mother. Wednesday brought out a pair of sandals I haven't worn in a couple years. I love these sandals and I figured I'd honor them by wearing them one last time before its too cold (in my opinion).

How did those sandals honor my Wednesday in return?? The outside part of the right one ripped off the sole mid morning. NICE huh?? My co-worker had shoe goo from a previous shoe fiasco she had so she offered me that. Only to find out that it was dry. So I tried to hunt down crazy glue with no luck. So I spent the rest of the morning walking around with a 1/2 on shoe.


I went to Payless at lunch in hopes of finding a cheap pair of something that was "allowed" by our dress code to get me through the rest of the day. Nuthin'. Of course, that trip to Payless was rewarded with what?? The outside of my LEFT shoe breaking exactly the same way as my right. Both were held on ONLY by the thread trim going around the outside of the shoes.

NICE.


I spent the rest of the day walking around at work like I was a child wearing my mother's high heels.

When Anthony got home, he laughed at the situation and asked to see the sandals. I slipped them back on only to realize the INSIDE (insole) of the RIGHT one broke too.

REALLY?

It was hilarious. And this was only Wednesday.

Thursday brought a post-work trip to the Carp Pond to meet up with Anthony and his friend while they fished. I've been there a million times with and without Anthony. Its a nice little park setting, with a pond and a bench. As they were wrapping up, I was texting his friend's wife and somehow I FELL in a ditch. FELL. Twisted my ankle. Phone went flying. Paper I had in my hand scattered. Arms, legs, feet - all went separate ways. And my ego was bruised as bad as my ankle. There was no need to get medical help (though it does hurt a little now) so I went home....

This morning I got in my car to the most HORRENDOUS smell....and it wasn't me!! I thought maybe I'd left part of yesterday's lunch in the car, but then I remembered I went out to lunch with Anthony. I thought that an animal had climbed into my car to die, but I realized all the windows and the sunroof were closed. Hmmm.... A quick check into the trunk of my truck revealed the culprit.

TWO LARGE PACKS OF ROTTING ORGANIC CHICKEN FROM THE SUPERMARKET ON WEDNESDAY THAT WE FORGOT TO BRING INSIDE.

REALLY?? I MEAN REALLY????

That went in the trash right away. But I was left driving to work with my windows completely open and the sunroof open in an attempt to air it out. I got to work w/ my hair looking like a birds nest from the wind.

FABULOUS.

At least its Friday. Of course, tomorrow we're going to an open house that is touting a "dutch basement". No one I know - including my father the architect - ever heard of a dutch basement. With my luck, its realtor speak for "quicksand in the foundation" and I'll go down there and be sucked into oblivion!

Bleh

House hunting is not so much fun my friend. Not so much.

What are the chances, Tony?

I'm not normally one to get all star struck when a celebrity walks by (not that it happens often). Nor am I one to go on those tours of where places filmed (I hear there IS a Sex and the City tour though....hmmmm).

Last night, we went to a wake in Bloomfield, NJ. After, we were told there's a good ice cream place a couple blocks away, so we headed over, parked and walked in. "To where?" you ask? Holsteins. Now, most people might not know about Holsteins in Bloomfield, NJ. However, Soprano fans know it as the restaurant where Tony and his family ate for the last scene in the last episode of the series.

The place is a pretty unassuming place, however, when you walk in, you can definitely recognize it if you've seen the show.

We sat down and after a couple minutes, Anthony's dad pointed out where we were sitting.


Out of all the tables (all 10?) we could've sat at, we happened to end up there. Pretty cool. Anthony's butt was in Carmela's seat. Anthony's sister was in Tony's spot and I was in their son's spot. Pretty cool.


Anyway, we all got ice cream, had a good time, and no one blacked out for 18 seconds like at the end of the episode. Pretty good if you ask me! :)

5 Years Already?

Today is my Luna's 5th birthday!! I can't believe we've been together almost 5 years (this October) and what a big girl she's gotten to be!! Things definitely have changed and I hope she has a wonderful year - and many more to come!

She got a new scratching post this morning - and already loves using it!! Tonight she'll get treats and lots of love too!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUNA!! Mommy loves you!!

REALY? Slow news day I guess!

I'm actually embarrassed to post this..... How, with all that's going on in the world, is THIS news???

Wild Turkey Terrorizes NJ Neighborhood

GO MONKEYS!

I know I've been MIA for a while....but well, life's busy! :) Not too busy to eat bananas though! And to save you a little time eating them, here's a tip from MONKEYS!



Who says we can't learn a thing or two from the wild animal kingdom??

Talk about ew!

For all 2 of the readers out there who actually take time to visit me here, my apologies that I've been MIA lately... I've been busy. The sun was in my eyes. We ran out of milk. Wait....um...?

Seriously though, my time has been consumed with work and searching for a house. After how many years together, Anthony and I finally decided its time to buy a house. So here we are, in the midst of house hunting. We know what we want, and we figured that there are those things that are a MUST (like a quiet street) and those things that we want but can live without (like a huge master suite). We thought our demands were pretty easy.... I mean, we want a place we can fix up ourselves (within reason) so how hard could that be to find??

OYE.

After searching for only a couple months and seeing only a few houses so far, we're coming to the realization that maybe we demand a lot. We've only seen a few houses so far because most of the others (and there are A LOT) we've scoped out and found they were on busy streets, falling apart from the outside, or should be sold with a gun or other home-security system included. We had one close call on a house that just went on the market this week but decided it wasn't for us....we just didn't SEE ourselves in it.

We finally went to see a house yesterday that we've wanted to check out for a while. It was sunny and bright from the outside. Quiet street, nice craftsman style house, decent yard (yeah we'd LIKE bigger but the garage that was skewed about 10˚ off plumb would definitely be knocked down). We thought this one would be a shoe-in.

O-M-G

We walked in and I should've known to run when I smelled the stale pee smell from the front door. Now, these people had no cat/dog, so YOU tell me who that stale pee smell was from!

The house was falling apart. How can a house that looks so nice from the OUTSIDE be so bad inside?? Now, we're not just talking dirty and messy (both of which it was). We're talking all tours should come with has-mat suits. NAS-TY! OMG it was bad. Seriously the place had to be GUTTED in order to be livable. It says something when the musty old basement smells better than the main living space. And lets not talk about the condition of the bathroom. I still feel itchy from being in the house. I showered when I got home..

So the house hunt continues. We're going to an open house today. If this one doesn't leave me skeeved, I'll consider it a one-up from yesterday's disaster.

Wish us luck! :)

Faith

When good people do things like this to help our fellow furry creatures, it gives me faith in mankind...

Give A Squirrel A Helping Hand @ Yahoo! Video

Best news yet!!!

From the US Humane Society:

Victory For Seals! The European Union Bans the Trade in Seal Products

"This is the beginning of the end for the Canadian seal slaughter. The EU was a primary market for Canadian seal products, and the Canadian government estimates the loss of the EU market will cost Canada’s sealing industry $6.6 million (CAD) annually. Given that the landed value of the Canadian seal hunt last year was less than $7 million, the implications are enormous.

With this ban, the EU joins the United States (which outlawed seal products in 1972) and Mexico and Croatia, which ended the trade in 2006. Soon there will be nowhere left to trade the products of cruel commercial seal slaughters, and seals will be worth more alive than dead.

Seals' lives have already been saved. Just the promise of an EU ban was enough to drive this year's price for seal fur down to $15 (CAD) per skin—a decline of 86 percent since 2006. As a result, many sealers stayed home. Out of Canada’s quota of 338,200 seals, fewer than 60,000 have been killed to date. By the regulated closing date of the seal hunt—May 15—it is likely more than a quarter of a million baby seals will have been spared a horrible fate."

WOO HOO!!! Maybe there IS hope yet!!!

Well, here's a new one for us!

Issued by The National Weather Service
New York City, NY
10:39 am EDT, Tue., Apr. 28, 2009

... RED FLAG WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 2 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 8 PM EDT THIS EVENING...

The National Weather Service in Upton has issued a red flag warning... Which is in effect from 2 pm this afternoon to 8 pm edt this evening.

Winds gusting to 25 mph... Temperatures approaching 90 degrees and relative humidity readings of 25 percent will combine to provide the ingredients for the rapid spread of bush fires... If one were to occur.

Precautionary/preparedness actions...

Residents are urged to keep vehicles out of grassy areas and to ensure proper disposal of any smoking materials. In only takes a carelessly disposed cigarette to ignite a wild fire and with the dry and windy weather conditions... A small fire could spread rapidly.

A red flag warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now... Or will shortly. A combination of strong winds... Low relative humidity... And warm temperatures will create rapid fire growth potential.

More Information

... GUSTY WINDS AND DRY CONDITIONS THIS AFTERNOON...

.A STRONG SOUTHWESTERLY FLOW OF VERY WARM AND RELATIVELY DRY AIR WILL RESULT IN CONDITIONS FAVORABLE FOR THE SPREAD OF WILD FIRES.

Forget about recycling on Earth Day

With Earth Day approaching (its tomorrow), I'm posting an article I just read - which you can also view at Care2.com here....just a little something to think about!

This Earth Day, April 22, millions of people will take steps to save the planet. But while many people have embraced actions like recycling, taking short showers, and using cloth bags and energy-efficient light bulbs, relatively few have gone vegan. If you do just one thing to save the planet this Earth Day, please switch to a vegetarian diet.

Turning cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys into "beef," "pork," and "poultry" is no simple matter. As E/The Environmental Magazine points out, "just about every aspect of meat production—from grazing-related loss of cropland, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle, to pollution from 'factory farms'—is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences."

Consider this:

• Farmed animals generate more greenhouse gasses than SUVs, tractor trailers, trains, and jumbo jets put together. According to U.N. scientists, the livestock sector is one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide and the single largest source of both methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Nitrous oxide is about 300 times more potent as a global warming gas than carbon dioxide. The meat, egg, and dairy industries account for a staggering 65 percent of worldwide nitrous oxide emissions.

• Nearly half of the water used in the U.S. is squandered on animal agriculture. More than 4,000 gallons of water per day are required to produce a meat-based diet; only 300 gallons of water a day are needed to produce a totally vegetarian diet.

• The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that factory farms pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. A Scripps Howard synopsis of a Senate Agricultural Committee report on farm pollution issued this warning about animal waste: "[I]t's untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and diseased. … It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and making people sick. … Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated. … Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick."

• It takes 3 1/4 acres of land to produce food for a meat-eater, compared to only 1/6 of an acre of land to produce food for a vegan. A new study, produced jointly by environmental groups and the soy industry, showed that cattle ranchers are largely responsible for the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. The U.N.'s report Livestock's Long Shadow says that the "[e]xpansion of livestock production is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America, where the greatest amount of deforestation is occurring—70 percent of previous forested land in the Amazon is occupied by pastures, and feedcrops cover a large part of the remainder."

If you're not willing to go vegetarian, at least consider eating less meat. Once you see how easy it is, you'll realize that it's just as easy to go vegetarian. While it won't fix all the problems in the world, a collective move toward veganism will reduce disease risks, drastically lessen animal suffering, and substantially "green" the planet. For tips on making the transition to a vegetarian diet, see www.GoVeg.com. Have a happy, meat-free Earth Day, everyone!

WOW!

WOW! Well, here's proof that you can NEVER judge a book by its cover...to set it up, here's the article written on YAHOO....

"American Idol" isn't the only launching pad for aspiring singers. Across the pond, "Britain's Got Talent" scored a huge boost in the Buzz after an unassuming contestant gave an amazing performance.

Susan Boyle (remember that name) became a Web phenomenon after singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables. The performance brought the audience to its feet and left the judges (including Simon Cowell) either speechless or in tears.

Before going on stage, Ms. Boyle admitted some self-deprecating facts about herself (she's never been kissed and lives alone with her cat, Pebbles). For those reasons and more, audiences were expecting the female William Hung. They were wrong.

Lookups on the sudden star posted huge gains. A no-name just the other day, Ms. Boyle quickly surged into our top 5,000 overall searches. Blogs and gossip rags went wild. The Mirror jumped on the story, reporting that while Ms. Boyle thought she "looked like a garage" on TV, she received a standing ovation when she showed up at her local church.

Other sources write that as a child, Ms. Boyle was the target of bullies because of a disability. But, with her newfound fame, she is getting the last laugh. In fact, she's already meeting with officials from Mr. Cowell's Sony BMG label. This may have been the first you've heard of her, but it certainly won't be the last. You can watch her performance below...

Susan Boyle Sings on Britain's Got Talent 2009 Episode 1 @ Yahoo! Video

Interesting.....

Here's yet another posting on why we should be compassionate to animals.... There are studies showing now that YES, crabs and other crustaceans (including lobsters, etc) DO feel pain and can possibly process it like humans do!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090327/sc_livescience/boilingmadcrabsfeelpain

Is anyone out there?

Really? More Snow? REALLY?

Ok, its March 1st, so WHY am I sitting here looking at a snowfall forecast map for tonight into tomorrow??  And WHY does it say we're going to get a solid 6-12" of snow over the next 24 hours?

WHY?

Honestly, the 50˚+ weather we got last week must've been a sick joke!!  Seriously, I'm about to throw myself in front of traffic if we get anymore cold weather.  Its March already people!!  How about some spring-like weather??  Anyone??

Seriously, why does this map even exist this late in the season??

I think its cruel and unusual.  Ok, maybe not unusual, but still cruel!!  I seriously want to break out my sandals already and put my coats into storage for the summer!! 

I guess I'll be breaking out my snow boots tomorrow instead!!  Blah!

Well, its been a while and I've been MIA. To be honest, not much has been going on. I've spent the past month or two moving and unpacking and digging through boxes. Its really quite incredible how much stuff one person can collect over time. And its equally impressive how much one person doesn't need a lot of stuff when they're happy.

I guess our collective national consumerism could be an indication of how unhappy our society is.

Anyway, I've been digging and unpacking and settling in to my new home life. Luna is settling in quite nicely and is s-l-o-w-l-y getting accustomed to her new brothers. They still hiss at each other from time to time, but now Luna and Cliff have taken to chasing each other down the long hallway that stretches between the living room and our bedroom. Its nice to see her playing with other cats - even if it is just for a few minutes until she remembers she doesn't like them. And the hissing starts again.

Baby steps I guess.

Anyway, for once I really have no complaints. Life is good. I'm happy. WE'RE happy. And the cats? Well, they're getting there!!

So, I guess all I can say is that I hope Spring gets here fast, because this cold is getting old!

Who'd have thunk it?

I think I've hit a whole new level of domestication....I am SO excited over our new vacuum cleaner!

We've needed a new vacuum for a while. The old one was older than dirt. It was held together with duct tape and even though it was an upright, it didn't always stay upright (which was a treat when it tipped over on you)!! I even noticed that it wasn't sucking up the big stuff anymore (like shreddings from the cat scratching posts).

So after many weeks of looking and hemming and hawing and not wanting to spend the money on a new one, we finally gave in and got one of the dual cyclone bagless uprights with a HEPA filter that is washable (no extra trash and no replacing it!).

I can only describe it one way....AMAZING!!


The living room was vacuumed with the old one yesterday morning so there wasn't stuff all over. When we got home, we put the new one together and tried it. Just from the "clean" oriental rug we have, we filled the container. TWICE. It was disgusting how much dirt and cat hair came out of the carpet! At first we thought maybe it was carpet fibers and that the rotating blades had chopped up the rug to make so much debris, but nope. Cat hair and dirt!! Its amazing how much was in what we thought was CLEAN!!

We proceeded to vacuum every rug/carpet in the apartment. And I can't tell you how skeeved I was at what I thought was clean but really wasn't! In fact, our bedroom rug had what I thought were dark stains on it - but after it was vacuumed you couldn't see them anymore! It was just DIRT that hadn't come up!

EEEEEW!!

I'm not sure if its that our new toy is just that great or if our old one was just that bad. Chances are its a little of both. But still, its amazing how CLEAN home is now!!

Kinda makes me want to run home and vacuum some more!!

(Who'd have ever thought that sentence would've come out of me!!)

Ode to Clementines

Lately I can't eat enough clementines... Those wonderful little round orbs come packaged in a cute little crate and I end up eating 4 or 5 in a matter of minutes - sometimes I don't even remember eating that many!!

SO....to that end, I would like to express my love of these little sweet wonders as I pop yet another into my mouth....

Ode to Clementines

Oh my darlin'
Oh my darlin'
Oh my darlin' clementines

You're so yummy
In my tummy
Oh my darlin' clementines!!

FIN