I've added "word verification" to the comment area to block spammers. My apologies.
For Shame!!!
I know!! I KNOW!!! But it's been a REALLY busy week!! Wait!! I have pictures!!The cat in the new toilet. Always one for the scrapbook.
Do I post too many pictures of the little man? Am I becoming a "cat lady"? Egads.
Next...
The chandelier I just ordered...and I'm not typically a sparkly, dainty kinda person...but I just love this.
Construction, of course. Oh c'mon, you KNEW it was coming! There's more done then what is depicted in this picture. Painting this weekend!
And HOCKEY!!! This was a few weeks ago. The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Flyers!! Yes, I'm a LEAFS fan. I even wore my jersey. When they Flyers aren't playing the Leafs, I root, root, root for the home team.
Not all of this stuff happened this week but it was recent. And while I am too tired to think of many words, I did my best with pictures.
Hey Ant!
I was in the lobby of my office building this afternoon and saw the biggest ant I've EVER seen...it must have been over half an inch long. I can't even imagine what it's eaten to get that big...the rest of the colony? How old must this ant be? It was like an old man ant. That's all I can figure.I happened to have my Treo with me at the time and on the way back across the lobby I wanted to find a way to inconspicuously take a picture. Wouldn't you know it, my phone rang. Damnation! So I missed the picture. As I was speaking on the phone, I crossed the lobby and had to be at least 10 feet away....and could still watch this ant milling about in front of the elevators!! The last I saw, he'd managed to actually get into the elevator. Which then went to the top floor. Maybe he had some paperwork to finish before leaving for the weekend. 
Have you ever wondered what the ants think of Adam Ant? Is he their God? Or do they mock him because he'll never truly be one of them?
Gutted and Studded
So it begins…the REAL renovation. This is not the little dabbling of paint and window blinds…this involves sledgehammers, crowbars and dumpsters. Witness what was the family room during the clean out phase. Bear in mind, this was never really a real room. It had a LOT of crap in it. CDs from floor to ceiling; DVDs, VHS tapes and PS2 games crowding the closet; Einstein’s fun-time tower and my lonely little desk in its temporary spot. It is currently in its second temporary spot, soon to be moved to its third. I think it’s getting a complex. So this was pretty much a junk room.
I missed getting pictures after the demolition….just plumb forgot!...but it was fun. To be honest, it looked a little creepy. They had used this glue to affix the paneling to the walls and it was this deep red color. Once demo was done, the room looked like a medieval torture chamber. You can see it in the picture below.
A few of us started tearing things down on Friday night, around 7. By 11pm the paneling, ceiling tiles, carpet and plaster ceiling itself were gone!! It was quite a scene. The powder room got the axe the next morning.
The contractor started this morning around 7am. I like this guy…he’s very knowledgeable and genuinely seems eager to do a great job. So now I have studs on the walls and recessed lighting in the ceiling. My cable finally comes through the wall instead of the damned heating duct. Tomorrow is dry walling and the big event of replacing the bay window with French doors to the patio. I think the plumber might be coming to take the toilet and sink out of the powder room. I’m seriously jazzed about this new room.
Tomorrow I get to pick out toilets, a sink and tile. Then I get to go back Thursday and pick out the cabinets that will make up the bar. It’s pretty bad when the people at Home Depot start to recognize you.
Okay, I promise to stop talking about the house.
Look at this….could there be a more peaceful way to spend the day? 
Now I have a question. I’m watching television the other night and the commercial for Gillette Fusion razor came on. Have you seen this? It’s like a commercial for a sci-fi movie. The blue, cool, Freon-filled tube merges with the red, hot, lava-filled (I guess) tube and they create…..THE FUSION RAZOR!!!!! 16 blades working together to give you the closest shave you’ll ever get by actually stripping the skin right from your body. Change the way you shave forever! You can go without shaving until your epidermal structure grows back.
The web site is just as bad. IT’S A RAZOR FOR GOD’S SAKE! Exactly how technologically advanced can it get? Sharp blades. A handle. A cool little strip that dispenses aloe or lotion or butterscotch pudding….I guess it depends on the brand.
Okay, let’s review. I’ve covered local news (my house), world peace (refer to the picture of Eistein) and Health & Science. Oh!! L. Rod Cruise and his little mail order bride had their perfect baby girl and named her Suri, which is Hebrew for princess. So that covers entertainment....sort of....let's face it, we're talking about Cruise and Holmes...not exactly the Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward of our time.
Give ME 20 minutes and I’ll give you a bunch of babble.
Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself....
...and now, we don't even have to fear that. One of my very favorite magazines is “The Week”. I am not a fan of watching the local news because it just makes me sad and angry. With “The Week”, I can get all my news from around the world, albeit sometimes belated, in one sitting. It’s also perfect for my ever declining attention span. One of my favorite sections in “The Week” is Health and Science. It just fascinates me to no end.
This week, there was an article about a simple hormone treatment that can cure severe phobias. According to the article, a surge of the hormone cortisol dulls mental functioning and memory retrieval, making it easier for phobic people to cope with their fears. Since most people avoid the object or situation that terrifies them, when they are suddenly exposed to it, they have a panic attack before any cortisol can be released. Through several sessions of treatment with test subjects, their phobias decreased considerably…by the final round, the subjects didn’t even need the pill to face their fears. Admittedly, more clinical testing is needed.
What I keep wondering, however, is to what degree this pill could work. If you think about it from an extremist standpoint, which I am apt to do with ideas like this, this might not be such a good thing. Fear can be good and it’s normal. Granted, they are talking about phobias, which is not the same as “fight or flight” thinking, but how will they control the difference? I WANT to be afraid of jumping off a building. And I WANT to be afraid of a gun being pointed at me. These are not situations I am faced with every day, so how would the pill know to separate that from my phobia of, for instance, being trapped? I think irrational fears and phobias are okay.
If there is a drug that (again, we are in ExtremeLand) can make me feel safe and secure when, say, taken in increased doses, how will I know the difference between feeling safe and feeling appropriately afraid? Can it somehow affect the fight or flight instincts that we all have….aren’t they all, somehow, tied to chemicals and hormones in the body? It’s a little creepy. Don’t get me wrong, I can see the positive affects of this…for the people with debilitating fears such as leaving the house…or walking….or people (which is not that irrational when you think about some of the people out there). I can see how this could change someone’s life in a million good ways. But will it also get to a point where it can affect a person’s life in as many bad ways? Is this a social drug of the future? One which teenagers will buy and take to see how far they can push themselves in the face of fear?
The other article that caught my eye was about Red Bull cocktails…or any energy drink cocktail. Apparently, the problem with these drinks is that it makes the person drinking it think they are not impaired at all. When given to some young, healthy volunteers, it was found that the people who consumed the Red Bull cocktail were just as impaired as their friends who drank alcohol alone. The difference? The people who drank the Red Bull cocktails thought they were just fine. Being a huge fan of Jaeger Bombs, I’m now a little scared to drink them, since I’ve always felt perfectly fine afterwards.
Well, nothing a dose of cortisol won’t cure. A round of Jaeger Bombs on the house, with a cortisol chaser!
Braves Schmaves
Son.
Of.
A.
Bitch.
Baseball season has begun. I personally have nothing against baseball, baseball season, baseball players or baseball fans. I was quite the fan myself as a kid. Yeah, I had a baseball card collection, too! I met Brooks Robinson at the Shop 'n Save in Parkville, MD....and he signed my shirt. In my twenties, I saw the last game the Orioles ever played at Memorial Stadium and probably shed a tear or two in the name of my youth and nostalgia.
So what is my issue (this time) you may ask?
I RELY on TBS for my sitcom fix in the evenings. Once 8pm hits and the WB and Fox go to regular programming, I often flip to TBS for my goods, my rush, my stuff, my trip. The remote is the artillery I use for my bang and channel 20 is my candyman. (Yeah, I totally had to find all those word online.)
Now that baseball season has begun, TBS shows the damn Braves games. Ted Turner is a big cheese head. Look at this picture.
Cheesy.So just because he owns TBS AND the Braves, he gets to air whatever he wants. I guess if I want to watch what I want to watch, I'll have to buy a television station....and you would think the ransom I pay to Comcast each month would have accomplished that by now. The only thing I could find in place of good sitcoms was Roseanne on Nick at Nite. I really can't deal with her all evening. Listening to her screech feels like someone pushing a thumb tack into my forehead over and over again. I only have to make it until 10:30....then I can go back to the WB for my nightly line up. Atlanta Braves in place of sitcoms...that's NOT funny.
"A greasy shade and a curtain drawn..."
It was another weekend of working on the house and softball. And a great party downtown on Saturday night! I now have brand new, white, wooden blinds on almost every window. So pretty! I know this isn’t that exciting but you have to understand that for the past 15 months, the only thing covering my kitchen window was a poorly shaped piece of canvas tarp that I put up when I moved in. Don’t ask me why – because I don’t know – but I’ve never liked dealing with window treatments. The blinds were not that bad – save for the poorly written instructions and teeniest freaking diagram I’ve ever seen. Awful! I hope the people writing these instructions aren’t the same ones writing the instructions for, say, portable defibrillators (I know there is a real name for those…AED or something like that….I didn’t feel like looking it up). 
But, behold!! The beautiful new blinds on my front door.(As a matter of fact, that IS my Christmas wreath because I really DO believe every day should be like Christmas.)Now, I KNOW what you’re thinking….”Freaking hell, are we gonna have to hear about every damn little thing she does to her house?”
And the answer, of course, is….yes, most likely.
It’s nice to see some things finally coming together….even if it does kill me or put me in the hospital. If that’s the case, I’ll have a lovely home in which to convalesce. When I’m feeling up to it on warm days, I’ll be able to slowly stroll around the yard and look at all the beautiful landscaping work that’s been going on all week.
In the spirit of anonymity, the following is for a...my name is allison. She'll know what it means.cindy@cherryindigo.com
:)
