Insomnimusing: Allons-y!

Thanksgiving was a quieter event than usual this year. My mother hosted it, like she always does, but rather than having all of her sisters and their children this year, she kept it to just "the kids," meaning me and my stepsiblings and our children. I made the turkey, as usual - and as usual, it was a hit. I use Alton Brown's Good Eats Roast Turkey recipe, which is absolutely the best turkey recipe ever. I even passed it along to a friend this year, and hers was a smashing success as well. She thanked me profusely for that. Always happy to help. I also made a cheesecake, which was the only one of six desserts at the dinner that had no leftovers. I think I'll be recruited to make that one again too. I didn't hear anyone even mention any of the other desserts, but everyone was saying, "Wow, the cheesecake is soooo good!" I don't interact much with my stepsiblings. They're not really my kind of people. We had two tables set up for eating, and they

For this Flashback Friday, here's The Cult singing Edie (Ciao Baby)

I spent most of the day as many people did in the country today. I was preparing for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. I procrastinated, as usual, so my preparations included a trip to the grocery store today. I got lucky though. It was crowded, but I was patient. I got a decent parking spot, and I had no wait at all for a cashier, so I was in and out pretty quickly. I came home and made a cheesecake, which cracked, unfortunately. I could conceal it with some cherry topping, but it was requested plain, so the flaw will be obvious. I think it'll pass with the family, though. The cherries and chocolate will be served on the side, and I'll probably have quite a bit left to bring home. It'll taste good, so I'm not complaining. I also have the biggest responsibility of the dinner. I'm making the turkey. I first made the turkey four or five years ago, and it went over so well that I've been asked to do it again every year. I use Alton Brown's Good Eats Roast Turkey re

I'm always looking for a way to save money, so I used the Local Offers Search Engine at Offeretti to find a good deal on services close to my home. Winter's coming, and I need to get my car ready. Right now, that's means I need an oil change, and I'm also going to need new tires. At Offeretti, I found a deal for $10 off an oil change, and I also found a deal to buy three tires and get the fourth one free. And as luck would have it, the same place with the tires has a deal on Offeretti for free starting, charging and battery check, so I can have that done at the same time. It's always a good idea to get that evaluated before the cold Ohio weather sets in. Not bad for a search that took me ten seconds.

I had a meeting to cover tonight. It was about a 45 minute drive to get there, and the meeting lasted about 25 minutes. I love those. On the way there, I had two near-misses with deer on the road. On the way back, I took the normal route instead of the back road, and I'd forgotten that the road was closed at the railroad tracks. So two blocks from my house I had to turn off and make a four-mile detour. When I got home and finished the story, I got a call from Book's dad saying that they'll be going out of town this weekend, so I won't be getting him Saturday. I wonder if I can get rid of the rest of the kids too. Oh well. It doesn't really matter. I've got nothing to do, and no one to do it with anyway.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Popstation . All opinions are 100% mine. I'm a closet X Factor UK and American Idol addict. I don't really sing myself, except in the car and in the shower. But I know and understand the dream of becoming a pop star. The odds are long out in the real world - they're only slightly shorter if you can manage to get through one of those reality shows. But you've got another option. You can make your break for the charts at PopStation , where you can sing for your chance at an album deal. Original Popstation songs are available in the practice rooms for two weeks. You pick what you want and make it your own, then enter the songs into the contest. Real people vote on your songs, and if you're good enough, work your way up to Number 1 on the charts. Every three months, one Number 1 artist will, with a guest, be awarded a three-night trip to New York City to stay at a super-hip hotel and spend two days in a professional r

I went shopping with my mom today. She wanted to find me some new jeans for Christmas, so we went up to Old Navy, which was the source of my favorite jeans ever (jeans that have since disintegrated, so my wardrobe's been missing a "favorite pair of jeans" for a while now). As luck would have it, I picked out two pairs, tried them on, and they were both a perfect fit. How often does that happen? She got me a new pair of pajama pants too. After that, we hit another store and happened to come across a couple of perfect Christmas gifts for my son Pooh. He's extremely hard to buy for, so we weren't about to pass that up. Stop number 3 was a kitchen store, at which I was able to find a replacement for a recently broken kitchen gadget for $5 less than the previous one I'd bought, and it appears to be of higher quality and more durable than the last one as well. In another store, I bought a new webcam, as the one I have for some reason disconnects me from the internet

Let's have fun with it. Wild Cherry's Play That Funky Music. :)

This will be my second attempt at a mobile post through my Blackberry (by e-mail). The first one worked, so I'm hoping this one does too. I tried checking Blackberry App World to see if there was a Blogger app available, but that app (BAW) always lags so badly that I got fed up and just restarted my Blackberry. Does anyone know if there is a Blogger app for Blackberry? Anyway, I'm posting this way because my Internet's been down half the night again. It's probably a good thing. I've been spending the past several nights feeding my insomnia by sitting up watching episodes of Ally McBeal online. I'd forgotten how much I liked that show, and since it's been almost ten years since I've seen it, it's like every episode is new. Hell, I'd even forgotten that Billy died - only about the most significant moment in the show's five seasons. I do remember discovering Josh Grobin on the show, and I even remember most of that episode's plot. I have no

I'm starting to feel like I did a year and a half ago. I've been in this melancholy for a while now, but it's beginning to feel like a real depression again. The last time it was triggered by the loss of the man I loved more than any man I ever had before. This time I haven't lost anyone, because I haven't had anyone. But I think I know what it is anyway. I think I've begun to lose hope about the one I thought could be. Sometimes I feel really stupid about it. I think about him all the time. For a while I really believed that something could come of it. I know I have this romanticized notion that you can really overcome anything if you love someone enough. And it didn't seem like that insurmountable of a thing. It's only geography. I'm not saying that we had some kind of great love. I just believed that the potential was there. And that it was worth exploring. If nothing came of it, at least we'd know. It's really not all that difficult to ma

It's a new moon today. It's Monday. I almost missed it, but I couldn't resist it anyway. :)

I was having a dream the other night - I won't get into the details - but as I was waking up a phrase repeated in my head. I thought it sounded like the name of a pretty cool drink. So I got up at 3 a.m., logged onto my computer and looked it up. As far as I could tell, it didn't exist. A concept started developing in my head. What would this drink be? It all came together in my head perfectly. It was a little complicated, but I could work out the details. This is part of my nature. I feel the need to create. It comes out of me in lots of different ways. I used to crochet a lot, because I wanted to make something out of nothing. I found that to be very satisfying, but unfortunately, my joints being what they are, eventually it reached the point that my wrists really couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't crochet more than a few rows before the pain became too much, and I'd find myself either pushing through and causing myself too much pain and then setting it aside fo

Yesterday, I woke up, and the fog was so thick that I couldn't see the trees in my back yard. I don't mind the fog, but the ground was covered with frost. THAT I definitely didn't like. It means it's getting cold. I don't like cold. Unfortunately, I live in Ohio, where cold is inevitable. I got to go on a little vacation to Florida recently, and I saw a friend there who moved from Ohio to Florida about 10 years ago. I must admit, I begin to envy that when the weather turns. Oh who am I kidding? I envy it anyway. The beaches and palm trees. The fact that there's some kind of life there. I could deal with that. I could spend the day funning and sunning, swimming in the surf or just riding along with someone I love on our custom beach cruisers . That sounds like a whole lot more fun than another winter in Ohio, doesn't it?

It's Friday the 13th. Will that mean anything to you? According to the superstitious, Friday the 13th is bad luck. According to cinemaphiles, Friday the 13th is a series of bad movies. The fear of Friday the 13th is called "paraskevidekatriaphobia." The fear of Friday the 13th movies is called "wussiness." Nah, I'm just kidding. The first one actually wasn't too bad for the genre and the period. I suggest if you're a teensy bit freaked out over the day, have fun with it instead! Thumb your nose at it! Throw a theme party! I do things a little more subtly. I just wear a white cable knit sweater and speak in a slightly breathy voice, warning people not to have sex on the beach. (Hey! Serve those as your drinks for that theme party!)

This week for Flashback Friday, I present to you Mr. Mister's Broken Wings.

Two little fleas meet up to vacation in Florida every year. One year, one of the fleas shows up and he's cold and shivering and miserable. The other flea asks him, "Why are you so cold?" The first flea says, "Man, my trip was awful! I hopped a ride in Jersey, and I've spent the last eighteen hours zipping down the highway in the moustache of some dude on a Harley!" The second flea says, "That's no way to travel! What you do is you go to the airport bar, have a couple of drinks, find yourself some sexy stewardess, crawl up her leg into her panties and nestle yourself down nice and cozy. Trust me, man. That's the way to go!" So the next year the two fleas meet up again, and the one flea is again cold and shivering and miserable. The second flea says, "Why are you cold again? Didn't you take my advice?" The first flea says, "Yeah, I did just what you said. I went to the bar. I had a couple of drinks. I found myself a sexy st

I got all settled in to work today (or yesterday, I guess, seeing as it's after midnight now), and then it turned out that I didn't have anything on my schedule. Yes, I finally forced myself into motivation to work, and there's nothing for me to do. I've got three stories to do tomorrow though. I wonder if I'll be remotely motivated then. Probably not. I need a real job again. This whole freelancing thing feels so pointless and dead-end. I've been looking, but it is frightening how little is available. And of course, there's nothing in my field at all - at least not anywhere near me. I hate not having any options. I can't go anywhere else right now, because I'm bound by a custody arrangement for my son. That locks me in for the next five years. Not that I could afford to move anywhere anyway. There's quite a cost involved in that. I wish I weren't doing all of this alone.

Isn't it fun? Flashback Friday this week is Stacey Q's Two of Hearts!

The girls didn't have school today, so, naturally, they woke up very early and very loudly, ensuring that I would not be able to sleep in this morning. At least it gave Gin the opportunity to do the chores she avoided last night, because she had plans today to go to a friend's house to spend the night. She left at noon, and Munch and I were left with an afternoon to ourselves. We spent it watching "Chicken Little" then we went out for sushi for dinner. She was in heaven, of course. :) After that I dropped her off to her dad, and I came home to find that Pooh was actually home. Well, he got the sushi leftovers. He did save me a little though. He's a good boy. The rest of my evening is watching a movie and reading a book. It's a quiet one.

Abbott Medical Optics Inc. (AMO) is sponsoring an iLASIK Video Contest inviting entrants to make a video showing how better vision can make or has made their lives better. Users can submit a video in one of three categories: "My contacts are getting in the way of my good time"; "My favorite sport or activity would be so much cooler with better vision"; or "You should see life after the iLASIK procedure." Once you submit a video, get your friends to vote on it by posting a link on your blog, Facebook page, Twitter - or any way you can think of to promote it. The grand prize winner gets $5,000, so if you haven't had iLASIK, your prize money will get it for you, or if you have, you can use that money to do all the things that are so much better now that you've got great vision! Three first prize winners will be awarded an HDTV package valued at $2,500 (one per video category). Three second prize winners will receive the Flip UltraHD camcorder (one pe

Like a fool, I agreed to help out with the election coverage in the office tonight. It was probably a good thing, too, because I got out of there at midnight, which was half an hour past the copy deadline, and we still didn't have all of the stories in from the people writing them. Hey, I got my three stories done, so I really don't care about the rest. I wasn't responsible for them, and I came through on my end - again, for a newspaper that won't hire me full time (because the company won't authorize any new hires). It's hard not to take a "so what?" attitude with them after a while. I did get to hear a little fun news while I was there. It seems that the fellow who replaced me at my old job will be leaving there soon. I expected he would, but the really sweet part is that he is moving on to something waaaay better (like five times the salary), which is just a sweet little thumb of the nose to the DICK publisher of the paper. I so don't miss it at

Since Halloween, I've been overindulging in the abundant candy in the house. When I went grocery shopping today, Halloween candy was half price. So, guess what? I bought more. I don't think I've ever had this much candy in the house. It could be dangerous. I've been a little depressed lately, and now I've got a massive supply of chocolate on hand. Oh well, I suppose I lost so much weight that I've got a little room to spare - particularly in all of my jeans. Of course, I've still got the upcoming overindulgence in meat and cheese nibbles for the rest of this month and most of next, along with some fruitcake coming soon as well. Maybe I should watch myself.... but then again, why? Who else is looking anyway? Other high points of the day include my son Book breaking his glasses, me getting a hard rap on the elbow that five hours later still has me wincing whenever I bend it, and getting caught up in a caravan for an opposing school returning home from some spo