Kitchen rehab--part 5

Dancing with the Stars...Love it.

Dancing with the Stars may have a lot of filler junk during the show, but there's something about it—the innocence of TV that reminds me of the Star Search days which I'd watch as a little girl with my grandma. Dancing with the Stars is just pure, fun, guilt-free entertainment! And of course grandma and mom love it too! You could say the same of American Idol, but AI includes some harsh truths--people thinking they rock when they don't--and Simon is just plain mean at times. Entertaining still, these things make AI a guilty-pleasure, unlike Dancing.

I can't help but have a giggle fit every time Emmitt Smith dances with his cute smile and laid back performing. Getting through all of the stupid re-hashing, boring clips, and annoying host that is Samantha Harris, just to see Emmitt dance is totally worth my time. His green dancing shoes last night were hilarious, and I loved his MC Hammer throwback dance. He's going to take it all the way tonight!

Off the subject: Mario Lopez thinks he's the hottest thing ever. I still can't get over his geri curled perm from his Saved by the Bell days nor his hair now—he has to wear a headband during dance practice. Cut that 90s 'do, Mario!

On a completely different note: Kitchen re-hab pics will be posted by next week before Thanksgiving...We've been lazy bloggers.

The Bowed Piano Ensemble

Look at these kids! When I first saw the above pic on the Cincinnati "Classical Music" blog, it reminded me of the game Operation on a much larger scale. But nope, these kids are making music from inside the piano, how genius. I wish we could go see the group perform Thursday night at the CAC, but house duties call. Can't wait to download their tunes!

Foods of Mass Destruction

Donna’s the only one at work who reads this so I can get away with it. Steve, my boss, just came in with his lunch. He’s a late lunch eater and whatever he gets is SO predictable. His high calorie meal will most likely be one of the following 3 things in order of most often consumed: a 3-way from Gold Star, sometimes Skyline; terrible Chinese from the mall food court--I’ve had it, and it’s terrible. I went home early from work once after scarfing it down and then feeling sick; or one of those KFC bowls of chicken, cheese, mashed potatoes and everything else under the sun. Today, he chose his 2nd favorite. The healthiest I've ever seen him eat is a fast food salad. Also, he almost always washes it all down with a huge Coke. Thank God the man works out or else he’d have to fear for his life. What makes this story ironic is that once I was craving a burger and asked Steve where around these parts could I get the tastiest one. He said in all seriousness: “A burger? You know how bad those are for you?!”

1YEAR:1MONTH:10DAYS=1WEDDING

What's it gonna be? Pineapples or a sweet desk?

Last night, Eric and I thought we’d be all sly and cruise around our new neighborhood. We drove by the house, lights were on in the main room with the TV flashing, and it was looking pretty cute in the dark with the dim kitchen light glowing. We thought we had escaped a sighting. Then, we caught the seller posting some signs for a yard sale, the weekend before we move in. Did he catch us or did we catch him?

We’ll never know if he recognized us since it was dark and we were looking the other way. And we don’t know if we caught him in an illegal act since we closed on the home but don’t live there yet. Are they allowed to have a yard sale since technically we’re now paying insurance on the home, and if someone busts their head open while on our property, we’ll be responsible?

Ah, who cares? What we’re really curious about is what they’ll be selling. If Eric and I were audacious enough we’d check it out, but since neither one of us has the guts to actually show up (which would indicate we were in the area and possibly spying on them), we have to wonder: are they going to try and sell that sweet desk, the only piece of furniture we liked in the whole place? Probably not, it’ll most likely be a pineapple bonanza since they may have finally tired of that look and moved on to something a little less theme-like. I can only wonder how many pineapples really graced their walls before they re-painted to sell. We'll just keep speculating, unless I can come up with a good disguise. You think this’ll work?

OCEAN: 1 / JILL:0

OCEAN FUN

EAPinNYC

Swedish meatballs and IKEA are coming to Cincy!!!

Cincinnati Enquirer: “Ikea on the way”

Posting delay

Thanks to our crappy internet connection the past couple of nights, we haven't been able to post anything. I was amped too, looking at all of the pics we have! To be continued......;)

inside our home... well parts

These are pics we took during the home inspection. They sure do like pineapples!

OUR HOME!!!!

We're so excited. We're so excited. :) We're so scaaaared! No, not scaaaared but antsy. We don't get to move in until September.

On the hunt (for a house) and a cross stitch coach

Tonight, Eric and I drove around looking at neighborhoods. We've been looking like it's our job. Hopefully, we'll be packing and getting out of this shack soon enough. We're meeting with the realtor again on Friday and Saturday.

Well, this blog is boring. Donna at work confirmed it. It's boring. Other people take fun pictures of food and such and post these kind of pics all timely. Well truthfully, that just makes me hungry and my stomach growl so I'm not going to do it here. But anyways, that's off the subject.

I just don't have the bloggin' bug in me lately, but I do have the crafty bug: www.subversivecrossstitch.com. The beginning of last week, nobody at work could teach me how to get started on my very first subversive creation which I gave to Jason and Michelle as a housewarming gift this weekend. It's the "WTF?" pattern (tame enough for my 2-yr-old niece Kyra) which of course, I never thought of photographing once it was done. (sorry no fun photos on this blog; just plain old text)

Never having attempted counted cross stitch before (maybe blindly as a kid), I needed help getting started and called JoAnn Fabrics and Michaels. Did they have anyone to help? Nope, just young folk trying to make a dime, nary a crafty bone exists in those places anymore. Soooo, with the help of Google and after typing in cross stitch Cincinnati, I found two stores: One More Stitch and Wizard Weavers. Which one do you think sounds most logical to call first? Hmmm, well that store just doesn't do counted cross stitch and wouldn't be able to help me. But Wizard Weavers, heck yeah, the lady was so cool on the phone and then, in person. Her name's Rosalia (sp?) and boy, I was timid to show this lady in stuffy Hyde Park my pattern and my Subversive Cross Stitch book. But Friday I headed on over, and the first page she flipped to was Homo Sweet Homo, and I about lost it. She sure did take it well, never flinching and thumbing through it like nothing, dryly quoting the phrases.

"'Rat Bas----,'" Rosalia said slowly and funny as ever. "'Whatever.' That's perfect for my granddaughter--she says that one all the time. 'Life Sucks, Then You Die.' Well, that's the truth," she said.

Rosalia was cracking me up!

After I got the hang of it, we sat and stitched, listening to Chopin. She was working on some dorky needlepoint with Santa and a reindeer and claimed it was for a great-grandmother's grandkid. Rosalia told me she's done one every year for this lady and says they're boring as heck, especially since the lady always likes patterns with animals.

So we started chatting and Rosalia tells me she's from Jersey. (explains the accent and the unflinching attitude) Then, some old ladies came through the door, so I casually flipped over my pattern to the blank side--only on the T and the F with my stitching, they'd have no idea what was about to come. While they were oohing and aahing over baby shoe patterns and knitted doll dresses, one of them approached me.

"What are you working on?" she asked, emphasizing "you" as if I was a professional stitching up something fah-bu-lousssssss.

"Oh nothing, it's just an inside joke," I said, showing her the pattern.

"What does that mean?" she asked with a polite, innocent schoolgirl giggle.

"Oh, you don't wanna know. It's just silly." I smiled and giggled too. (hehe hoohoo) She smiled again and then walked off. Shwoo. The coast was clear.

I'm sleepier now and ready for bed. WTF?

Bachelorette party debauchery

Soooo, there's no pics from Eric's Expo yet because I'm not a self-professed picture taker. His mom did just fine with that! Now I need to bum some pics off of her, if she'll be so kind....hehe. Thanks for taking all those pics for us mom! :)

In the meantime, here are some bachelorette party pics from Christine's cam--I still haven't gotten my Amish camera pics developed, but I think Christine did a fine job. Besides hitting the town for the night, Jules' surprise weekend at O.U. consisted of a scavenger hunt, which although my team didn't win (Becky, Christine, Lyndsey, me), I'd have to say we had more excitement. We came in contact with a very drunk soul in the middle of our sunny afternoon hunt--no, drunks weren't on our list to find. Anyways, we found him curled up on a brick paved walkway in the middle of campus. After some nudging and talking to, he was able to get back on his feet again, and we pray he made it home safely.
Lyndsey asked him, "Where were you? B-dubs?" (he had B-dubs matches next to his hand which also barely held crumpled up bills and his cell phone) His answer? "I'm getting my masters." Wow. That was the running joke of the night at the bars. Let's go to B-dubs and get our masters!
Highlights of the weekend: blue sky, nice cabin in the woods, Christine's cooking (unbeatable chicken salad-her own recipe), watching Julie open presents, bar-hopping--finally finding one that would accomodate Natalie (she forgot her id; we all felt so young again!), watching the college kids party it up, meeting Julie's friends, Natalie and Lyndsey; sis-in-law to be Melissa and sis-in-law Cindy; and catching up with Christine and Becky!!

Tech Expo 2006

The Tech Expo's coming fast. The pressure's on since Eric's winning poster design was found out at work. Now the higher ups have knowledge of when and where and that Eric's involved. A little over one more week left, and the fam's coming to view his 10 by 10 ft massive undertaking. (the size of his space to show off his building design) Is that an exaggeration? Eric does tend to super size things in his mind. Sounds cool though doesn't it? For more on the Expo click here: http://www.uc.edu/cas/expo/

Chloe's slow death, by french fries.

For a brief period of time Chloe lived with Eric and Brett; Eric had graciously taken her in since my dad's allergies got the best of him. Going through Eric's old pictures I came across these. Now I was guilty of giving Chloe people food from time to time, but whole french fries? She was also tormented with cheese stuck to the fridge at dangerous heights for an aging cat. And what would she do? Jump til she grabbed that cheese.

Don't be throwin' bills at me!

I (Jill) was in this pictured traffic, 30 mins. late to work this morning. I didn't actually make the pic since I can't find my big red Lumina, but I did get to see the crime scene which included a van with a bullet hole in the driver's side window. Rapper T.I. performed at Bogart's in Cincy last night and made some homies really mad. It's not too hard to make homies mad. Just throw some dolla' bills into a packed sea of homies and expect to get shot on a major highway, no less. One guy in T.I.'s posse didn't make it, maybe he was the bill throwin' fool. I pity the fool. Check out www.Cincinnati.com for the rest.