I'll be back...

I'm still around. Of course I caught the stomach bug making the rounds through the house. Feeling slightly better today, though I think I need to go sleep for another 6 or 7 hours.

Anyway, I'm so far behind on reading/commenting on all your blogs...sorry! On the plus side, I can't wait to have so much to read once I'm feeling better!

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And on the other plus side, you do remember Dollhouse is on tonight, right? Yippee!!!

Who's watching with me?

We interrupt this blog...

...to bring you the GREATEST television news of the year. Do you know what this Friday is? It's the premiere of DOLLHOUSE!

What is Dollhouse, you ask? It's the newest show from Joss Whedon. You know, the genius who brought us Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel, and Firefly, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog.

The show sounds kind of crazy...it's about a group of women who are routinely reprogrammed to fit the needs of whoever hires them. But really, does it sound any stupider than the premise of a teenage girl who fights vampires? Or a vampire with a soul who fights demons? Or a space-western about outlaws with hearts traveling the solar system? Or a wannabe supervillain falling in love? Boy, Joss Whedon shows don't really condense well to a single sentence!

Dollhouse premieres this Friday, February 13 at 9pm on Fox. You all need to watch it. Seriously. You know how approximately half of my readers have borrowed the DVDs of Firefly from me and loved it? Yeah, well you're all still kind of in trouble for not watching it when it was on TV in the first place. Oh sure, I tried to tell you all how great it was, but did anyone listen? Judging from the ratings it got, I believe TK and I were the only people who watched it back when it was on TV!

So for all of you who missed Firefly, here's your shot at redemption. For those of you not familiar with Joss Whedon shows, they sometimes are a bit of a slow starter. Character development plays heavily in the shows, and you can't get that all out of the way in the first 10 minutes. So don't watch a few minutes and shut it off...give it an episode or two before you make your judgment.

Okay, I'm teasing, you don't *have* to watch it. It'll just make you supercool and really, isn't that what we're all aiming for? Then you can come back here and tell me about how you watched it and I'll love you forever!

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Good golly, I'm excited about this show. But if we're being honest, this blog post is spurred by my fear that like Firefly, I'm going to get totally invested and then they'll cancel it after 10 episodes. And six years later, I'll still be mourning the death of the show...

So I'm desperately trying to tell everyone about it, in the hopes it'll get awesome ratings and NOT be canceled immediately as I fear.

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As a followup to my post about Sophie Kinsella, of course the next day I got a call from the library saying my book had arrived. So, I picked it up and returned the one I bought. At least I didn't waste any money on this one! I wouldn't say it was awful, but I'll never reread it. I posted a review here, if anyone is interested.

Help the chef

Some cooking blogs go so far as to, you know, actually offer cooking advice.

And that's why this will never be a cooking blog.

I need help. Help me, please!

I made Thai Pumpkin Soup last night. I followed this recipe, using one roasted acorn squash and one can of pumpkin puree (there were no sugar pumpkins at the store! Heresy!) It was okay. Nothing special. Kind of...one note.

I used a sweet curry because I don't like the spicy ones, and added a bunch of freshly grated ginger, and a hint of freshly grated nutmeg. It helped, but still wasn't awesome. I have a bunch of it I put into the freezer with a note that it needs SOMETHING. I hope you'll tell me what that something is.

Here's the picture of it. It's pretty, right? I garnished with roasted pumpkin seeds. This should have been great. I'm so disappointed it was just okay. Help a sister out, won't ya?



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Last night was some GREAT television. First, let's talk Chuck. Casting Bruce Boxleitner, Captain John Sheridan himself, as Awesome's dad...well, it was AWESOME.

Then, in Heroes (spoiler alert! Stop reading now if you have it DVR'd and haven't seen it yet!)

Okay, you've stopped reading if you don't want to be spoiled, right? Last warning!

Oh my, I love Seth Green. Heroes has some great casting. But on a down note, please, please, please don't tell me my best friend Kristen Bell has been written off. I thought for sure she was going to end up preggies with a lil' baby watchmaker...

In other random news, I just saw the preview for the new Star Trek movie. Despite my full-fledged geek status, I'm just not a big Trekkie and have been ignoring this. And will continue to do so, except that did you see Zachary Quinto (Sylar) was cast as Spock? That cracked me up, since on Heroes his incredibly huge eyebrows do half the acting, and now he's cast as Spock, another famous eyebrow-actor. Funny, or maybe it's just me...

Why I love Sesame Street, Part 2

You may recall a few weeks back I posted about the Goo Goo Dolls on Sesame Street. I love them! Anyway, I meant to immediately follow it up with this second post, but I got distracted. So here's my second reason why I love Sesame Street.



I love the puppet they have singing Kate from the B-52's part. And I love when Michael Stipe says "we can be...HAPPY" with that crazy gleam in his eye.

It's genius.

Enjoy :)

People really are reading!

I've had an odd experience the past few days. I went to the Mother of Twins sale this weekend, and then another Mother of Twins event last night. And a number of people came up and said they read my blog. Or made comments about things I've written about. It was weird. I look at my stats, and know I have far more readers than commentors. But for some reason, I always imagine all the non-commentors as strangers, not as people I know and see on a semi-regular basis. It was kind of neat, and exciting to see some actual proof (besides the rather impersonal sitemeter stats) that others are reading besides my regular (and totally awesome!) commentors.

So hi all you lurkers...strangers and non-strangers alike. Leave a comment if you'd like...I love to get comments! Or don't. But if I know you but don't know you're reading, don't be surprised if I tell you a story I've already recounted on my blog!

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Catching you up on past "stories": The Mother of Twins sale was fun, although I didn't sell quite as much as I expected. And the money I did earn won't make it into our trip fund, since as discussed last time, our TV broke. Money...it goes out a whole lot easier than it comes in, doesn't it? Anyway, to catch you up on that story, we did get a new TV on Sunday. It's very nice, and I did get to watch Heroes last night when I got home from my meeting, so I'm happy. It was a great episode, by the by. Unfortunately, we had an old-style entertainment center, with a square opening for a television. We would have had to get a very small LCD TV to fit in the slot. So we decided to go with a bigger TV. Which means we now need a new entertainment center. Well, for right now the TV is sitting on an old coffee table, which is going to have to be good enough for a while.

If it's not one thing, it's another, right? And our "another thing" is that our stove broke. Well, only one of the four burners, but I do really like to cook so having only three burners is an annoyance as I often need to have all four going at once. Well, on the plus side, I do hate our stove, but once again, this is going to have to wait a bit before it gets fixed or replaced. I'll have to plan carefully for now to only have three-burner meals!

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Replies to comments on Sale Time!:

LauraC: Ah, not to read! That is a cruel and unusual punishment! And that book blog sounds really interesting :)

Jongirl: Thanks, momma :)

Goddess in Progress: Yay, it was fun to see you at the sale. Total chaos...fun, right??

Jacki: You should try to see if your local Mother of Twins club has a sale. The prices are generally much better than a consignment store, and far better selection as well. At least at our sale! You don't have to have twins to shop the sale.

Jaime: Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your SITS day!

Mary Ellen: Can't you write into to your message board ahead of time to see if anyone is selling? I mean, someone must have monkey costumes!

Melodie: Thank you!

Replies to comments on Aaaahhhhh! Broken TV!:

Goddess in Progress: That is a terrible time for a TV to break. Thanks for the BJs tip!

Three Under Two: I did think of you and your TV turn off week. Ack! I unwillingly participated! It wasn't that bad to go a few days without the TV, but I do really like Heroes :)

Gio: We survived, with sanity mainly intact. Mostly because there's no good TV on the weekends anyway ;)

Nancy: Okay, now you made us research a Costco membership. Which I couldn't talk TK into. I was so hoping for another warehouse club membership as I've heard Costco is better than BJs. Ah well...

Ronnica: Yes, I'm glad we're not sports fans of the loss of the TV would have hit harder! I did some extra reading this weekend and have to get my first book review up over on your site!

Melodie: Yes, I did get a number of comments from my boys. They are very glad to have a new TV to watch Backyardigans on.

ntsc: Thank you for the link to the directions to make local hot dogs. Unfortunately, my source for local meat had a fire at their store so I'm not sure where to get local meat anymore (anyone have a source they want to share? I have to attend some of those Verrill Farm fundraisers as I loved their store and would travel a ridiculous distance to go there, probably defeating the purpose of eating local but oh well...). Good golly, I'm going to have to join a meat CSA, aren't I? Anyway, thank you for visiting, and for the helpful link!

Aaaahhhh! Broken TV!!!!

Oh my. Our television is broken. We only have one TV. I love TV. What am I ever going to do??? Wah!

I can't even play my wii! Oh me oh my!

Stupid technology, making me all reliant on you for my happiness. Well, it could be worse. It could be my computer. Of course, unlike TVs, we do have a few extra computers sitting around. You know, in case we had to supply computers for a small company. One of the perks (oddities?) of being married to a computer guy.

So how long do you think we'll last before we buy a new TV? I mean, Heroes and Terminator are both on Monday. So we don't have long...

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Shouldn't be playing around online as I still have much to do for the sale and have to leave in just a few short hours. So I'll reply to comments on my next post! Hope you're all doing well, and have working televisions...

Okay, who's watching Heroes??

Wow, how awesome was that last night? Although please tell me that other people were vaguely confused. I have faith in the writers, though, that it will eventually make sense. Probably after it comes out on DVD and I get to watch it two or three more times!

Anyway, I'm not going to do Heroes recaps, but I just had to give a brief WOW. And comment for a moment about how much I love whoever casts the show. I mean, really. They have the greatest cast. Who did they add this week? Francis Capra! I was totally in love with Francis Capra as Weevil in Veronica Mars (please, oh please, tell me there are other Veronica Mars fans here. I'll think you're the super coolest!)

And who else did they add to the cast of Heroes? Bruce Boxleitner! Yes, we're talking about John Sheridan, from one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever, Babylon 5. I mean, just yesterday my post title was a quote from Babylon 5 (yes, I regularly sprinkle my entries with random sci-fi references I highly doubt anyone would notice. I'm a total geek.) How awesome is the casting for Heroes?

Okay, Heroes love fest officially over. For now.

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Replies to comments on And So It Begins....:

Gio, LauraC, Nancy, KCRSummertime, Jules, and Melodie, thank you for giving me some guidance on the "when to send to school" issue. Hopefully they'll be well enough to go tomorrow, especially since I have a dentist appointment scheduled while they're in school!

Nancy: That's interesting that you found the first episode of Firefly slow. It actually wasn't shown by Fox until they canceled the series, so TK and I didn't see that episode until after we'd seen most of the rest of the series. Of course we were interested in the characters and backstory by then! Glad you stuck through it!

Ronnica: Thanks! I'll email you!

Arrr!

Ahoy, mateys! We be talkin' like pirates today. Now who'll be joinin' me, ye scurvy dogs? Arrr! (Yes, today is Talk Like A Pirate Day, for those land lubbers out there).



My boys love this episode of the Backyardigans and are always telling the that a pirate says "arrr". They also like to ask, "What do you do with a scurvy pirate?". The answer: make them walk the plank!

Love that logo

I'm actively involved in the local Mother of Twins club. I have a great time with it...in fact, I'm on the board. I even have a shirt with our logo on it. That's pretty cool, isn't it?

It gets better. Our logo is hilarious. I don't know who chose this logo. It's supposed to be a mom with a baby on each side, and it's kind of heart shaped. I get it...mom, twins, love. Nice.

Yeah, well, what does this logo look like to you?




I was wearing my shirt the other day at the grocery store, and the fish counter guy stopped me by yelling out, "That's awesome...is your shirt flipping me off?" No, it isn't. Do I make things any better, though? Of course not. I answer, "No, it's supposed to be a mom with twins. But I think it looks a lot like a pe,n^is." (Sorry for the crazy punctuation, once again attempting to avoid any pervert traffic). Then I put my hand over my mouth, shocked by what came out. I swear, I think I have a short-circuit some where between my brain and my mouth.

So what do you think our logo looks like? And how much would you like to meet the women who chose this logo? I have to applaud their ability to choose a logo that simultaneously appears to be a mom with twins, a middle finger, and a phallic symbol. That's pretty impressive.

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Replies to comments on Book Group, as described by B-Man to TK:

FitMePink, I'm certainly making an exception to my lack of pink love for your blog. And I wish I'd seen your call for recipes sooner...I had too much to do to get any together. Plus, I "ruin" most of my healthy food with vast quantities of cheese and bacon ;)

Mommaof4Wifetor, Thanks! Our book group actually met at a friend's house, and I can hardly believe it, but she didn't pull out any trains for us to play with.

Gio, Book group was a riot, although we were even less focused than normal (I don't think that book really lended itself to discussions, though). I had a piece of pie for breakfast. What, I figure it has to be better than a donut!

Replies to comments on My DVR:

Gio, I can hardly wait until the next SYTYCD season!

Laura, it was incredibly easy to miss Firefly unless you were a wicked big Joss Whedon fan. Fox showed it on Friday nights at 9pm. Sometimes. Sometimes not. And they didn't show the first episode. And they canceled it in a heartbeat. *Everyone* missed it. Except my husband (a sci-fi lovin' engineer) and I (a plain ol' sci-fi lovin' geek). We stayed home every Friday night while it was on, and that was back in the pre-kids days when staying home Friday night meant something. I'm a little jealous that you get to experience Firefly for the first time. It's really wonderful, one of the best shows ever. And then you get to watch Serenity (probably my favorite movie). Yes, I'm definitely jealous. Push it up to the top of your queue, and enjoy!

Nancy, oh, you have to watch Firefly! It's so good. I'll lend it to you if you'd like. And glad I got your kids hooked on Wonder Pets ;)

Angie, whew, so glad to hear I'm not the only One Tree Hill watcher! Love your site...what a good idea!

My DVR, plus cooking for the cure

We'll start with the light stuff: I guess it's all the rage to blog about our DVR schedules. I saw it first on Laura's blog, though she admits to seeing it other places, so who knows who I'm originally copying :)

Well, here it is:

Mondays: This is my big night. In fact, I've had to eliminate two shows from my lineup (Gossip Girls and How I Met Your Mother) due to the fact that my DVR can only tape two shows at a time. It takes TK and I all week to watch out Monday shows!
8:00 Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (I'm really loving this show! I started watching it because it stars the girl who played River in Firefly)
8:00 Chuck (I enjoy this as well. I started watching this since it stars the guy who played Jayne in Firefly. Yes, I loved that show!)
9:00 Heroes (Love, love, love it! Season One was a lot better than Season Two, but I felt like they really had to hurry along their story due to the writers' strike last year. So I have high hopes for Season Three!)
9:00 One Tree Hill (Yes, I'm embarrassed).

Tuesdays:
8:00 House (TK and I don't watch this religiously, but let them build up on our DVR. Sometimes we watch 'em, sometimes we delete them if we're getting close to our DVR limit).
9:00 Fringe (We watched the premiere and thought it was okay. I'm not sure if we'll keep watching, though).
And Tuesday question: where is Reaper? It was on the CW last fall, and was renewed for a second season, but isn't in the lineup yet. Weird.

Wednesdays:
8:00 Pushing Daisies (This is an odd and wonderful show!)

Thursdays:
9:00 Supernatural (Surprisingly scary sometimes. The first episode still stands as one of the scariest things I've seen on network TV.)

Fridays:
They're not on now, but we watch Monk and Psych. They had their last "summer" show this past week, and won't be back until January.

And that's it! The show I'm most looking forward to this season is Dollhouse, which is scheduled as a midseason replacement so it won't be on until January. So it's not on my DVR yet, but it deserves a shout-out from me anyway since I'm counting the days!

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Now for the fun-serious stuff: KitchenAid has a line of "cook for the cure" items. For every item purchased, KitchenAid donates a certain amount to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation. That's awesome. Only problem is, it's all PINK. I know, how stupid that this would bother me, but I *hate* pink. And it would clash something awful with my muted fall colored kitchen (all oranges, yellows, greens and golden browns). And I *hate* pink. Did I mention that already? But finally they have an awesome new product. It's a platter called "Pass the Plate".

The idea is that you buy a platter ($25, $5 of which is donated), register it on their site, then cook or bake something for family or a friend. Give them the food on the platter. Then they do the same thing, cooking or baking and passing along the plate to someone else. And it just keeps going, spreading food and love!

The plates just went on sale today, and when I headed over to their site at noon, they were already backordered. But I ordered one anyway, and I'm looking forward to getting it and cooking (probably baking :) for someone. Now I'll just have to decide who. Since this does have a bit of a "chain letter" component in that the person I give it to is supposed to pass it along to someone else, I have to make sure it's someone who wants to do it, not someone I'm bothering with it.

If you'd like to buy a plate of your own, head over to cookforthecure.com.

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Comment replies:

Giovanna, Nancy, and Tracy: Thanks for the potty advice. It ended up that B-man kind of freaked out and demanded pullups today so he didn't pee on the floor at school. We let him wear them, but I took him to the preschool bathroom before class started. He did fine, and had a dry pullup at the end of school. We'll see how Wednesday goes!

Just Say Julie and Keeper of the Skies Wife: Thank you for stopping by! I hope you'll be back! I'm so enjoying my SITS week :)

I wish my life was as good as an ABBA song

A girlfriend invited me last night to go see Mamma Mia. So we headed out, on a Tuesday night, to see a 7:30 show. It was sold out! What's up with that? Quickly, we got into our cars and drove to another nearby theater to see the 8:00 show. Whew, there were tickets left. But there were also THREE bus loads of teenage Italian tourists. That's pretty weird, isn't it?

I thought I was being so wild, going to see a movie on a weeknight. I guess people do it all the time. Who knew?

I enjoyed the movie, although it made me wish I was watching three other things:

Pride and Prejudice, the BBC version, of course. It is a truth universally acknowledged that all women of a certain age (um, my age) are in need of Colin Firth*. He was very good and very funny in Mamma Mia.

Muriel's Wedding: I'm sorry, but this movie still holds the title for "best movie to use ABBA for the soundtrack". Mamma Mia came close, but couldn't quite dislodge it.

Veronica Mars, the first season, of course. I believe Amanda Seyfried will always be Veronica's dead best friend, Lilly, to me, no matter how great she is in other things. And she was pretty good in Mamma Mia. But again, it was no Veronica Mars.

So all in all, a very fun night. And now I have a lot of DVDs to pull out and watch!

Random unrelated thought: I got some awesome purple beans at the farmers' market the other day. They look like green beans, they taste like green beans, but they're purple! The boys were pretty excited about them, and both took a bite of the raw bean as we were getting it ready to cook.

So I steamed them, took off the cover, and GASP! They were GREEN! I mean, it's kind of neat that the beans turn from purple to green, but I'm pretty sure my boys thought I just switched out the fun purple beans with regular green beans so they wanted nothing to do with them.

Don't you think the purple beans should come with a warning: "These beans turn green when cooked."

But anyone with older kids and a glass topped pot might want to plan a "watch the purple beans turn green" experiment that if you're lucky, will end with all the beans being eaten!

*Did I go a bit too far in mixing my Jane Austen references? I hope not! I also am being too lazy to pull out my copy of Emma, so I hope I came reasonably close to "quoting" it.

My first Meme

Well, here goes. I've been tagged by Goddess in Progress and Mommy Esq, and it's all fun, so I'm game.

Four Jobs I've Had:

• Carny. Okay, fine, it was a real amusement park, and I was a games' barker
  
• Accountant for a dotcom, during the dotcom bubble and bust
• Playground supervisor. Don't they need supervising?
• Resident Advisor in the evil center of the Universe

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over:

• Dirty Dancing
• Heathers
• Stardust
• Happy Gilmore

Four Places I Have Lived:

• My parent's house
• My dorm room(s)
• My apartment(s)
• My house

Four TV Shows I Like:

• Firefly (and a shout-out to Buffy and Angel, too. I love Joss Whedon)
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
• Veronica Mars
• Heroes
• (Are you proud I've left So You Think You Can Dance off my top four?)

Four Favorite Foods:

• Pizza (Mushroom and Onion)
• Chocolate (no nuts)
• Tom Yum Talley (this awesome seafood coconut spicy soup at our favorite Thai Restaurant)
• Ice Cream (Coffee/Chocolate combo)

Four Places I Would Rather Be:

• In bed (where I'm going soon)
• At a Ani DiFranco concert
• Hiking to a waterfall
• Picking strawberries

Four People I'm Tagging:

• Mary Ellen
• Lit and Laundry
• Two Moms and A Baby
• Plus anyone who happens to be writing a super-secret blog, or just happens to be interested in meme-ing.

Have fun!

The ants come marching one by one

N-man found an ant in our kitchen today. As I went to go get it, N-man told me, "that's my pet, mommy."

Well, please tell your pet he's not allowed in our kitchen, and to please not bring any of his friends.

Random unrelated thought: B-man, after reading a few books and seeing it a few times on TV, has decided that Max and Ruby is his favorite TV show. My issue: it's the most gender stereotyped show in recorded history. I mean, short of a caveman grunting "me make fire, you cook dinner", I'm not sure how much worse it could be. Ruby plays with dolls, Max with robots. Ruby makes raspberry fluff cake, Max makes mud pie.

But I don't know what I'm worrying about. Both boys want to be Ruby. So I guess it's good I'm providing them with a female role model?? Just kidding. I'm cutting them off of this one as there's pretty much zero redeeming value or entertainment.

Bonus related thought: I went to a banquet last night for the twin club, and I got dressed up. In a skirt and everything. N-man saw me and said, "what's that" and pointed to my necklace. I told him it was a necklace. His response: "That's kind of cute." [pause] "Can I have it?"

Then B-man told me I looked like Ruby (or Woo-bee, as he says it). I believe he meant it as high praise. Or at least that's what I'm choosing to believe.

More bonus unrelated stuff: I'm reading Zodiac by Neal Stephenson and really loving it. It's an eco-thriller, written quite some time ago (the late 80's) and set in Boston. I have a love/hate relationship with Neal Stephenson. Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books ever, but Quicksilver bored me out of my mind and took me three tries to slog my way through (I'm glad I persevered, though, as I really enjoyed the second book in the series). Anyway, I'm always a bit hesitant to give him a go. But I found this at a used book store a while ago and picked it up, and just ran across it again on my shelf when I was in a sci-fi kind of mood, so there you go. It's enjoyable and a page turner and just what I was looking for.

Final unrelated crap: I was just going to post a line or two before going to bed, so I'd have some time to read Zodiac. But somehow my mind kept going in different directions. So enjoy this most random of entries!

Yes, really. Just one TV.

Our cable company is switching to all digital programming shortly, and they've been inundating us with letters announcing the upcoming change. The problem is if you have an older television, you need to have a cable box attached to it or it will no longer work. Okay, no problem. Our TV is old, but we have a cable box so I keep throwing away the letters.

So, today I get a call from the cable company saying they haven't heard from us about the upcoming change and they wanted to make sure we understood that older televisions without a cable box will no longer work.

Her: How many televisions do you have in your house?

Me: One.

Her: Just one?

Me: Yes.

Her: Because you only have one cable box. Any televisions that aren't hooked up to a cable box won't work after the conversion.

Me: I understand. We just have one TV.

Her: Okay (with a tone of "are you nuts" in her voice). Well, you'll be fine for the conversion then.

Me: Thanks.

Is it so weird to only have one television? What would we do with more televisions? I guess we're lucky that for the most part, TK and I watch the same stuff. Fine, I can't handle all the Stargates and he can't stand One Tree Hill, but we just stick those on the DVR and watch when the other is doing something else. But generally, we have the same taste. He says something like, "did you hear there's a new show coming on about a guy who gets a computer downloaded into his head that stars the guy who played Jayne in Firefly?" and I say "Wow, that sounds awesome". Or I say, "Oh my gosh, there's a Terminator show on TV that stars the girl who played River on Firefly!" and he says, "When's it on?"

Yes, we pretty much revolve our television watching around actors who appeared on Firefly. Or other Joss Whedon shows. What can I say? We're both total geeks. And I guess that's why we only need one television.

So how many TVs do you have? Please tell me, is it really that odd to just have one television?