Arghhh.

Oscar, a friend of my parents, sent me these. It was the mental break I needed. Thought I’d share….

A bicycle can’t stand alone because it is two-tired.

What’s the definition of a will? (It’s a dead giveaway).

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

A backward poet writes inverse.

In democracy it’s your vote that counts; in feudalism, it’s your count that votes.

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

If you don’t pay your exorcist you get repossessed.

With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.

Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I’ll show you A-flat minor.

When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

You feel stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.

Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.

He often broke into song because he couldn’t find the key.

Every calendar’s days are numbered.

A lot of money is tainted. ‘Taint yours and ‘taint mine.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

A plateau is a high form of flattery.

The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

When you’ve seen one shopping center you’ve seen a mall.

Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.

When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she’d dye.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.

Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.

Acupuncture is a jab well done.

Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeet.

Zeros and ones.

Want to see a bunch of elementary school parents shake in their boots? Tell them they’ll be teaching a lesson in binary numbers.

bi·na·ry

Pronunciation: 'bI-n&-rE, -"ner-E

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s): plural -ries

: something made of or based on two things or parts: as a : BINARY STAR b : a binary number system

Most of the parents don’t even remember learning this the first time. Except for the IT folks, and there were a couple of them.

And when the kids asked what the use of knowing this was, my favorite answer (from one of the moms) was “You’ll be able to tell your friend you know the binary system.”

Now how’s that for incentive?

One more photo.

Alright – I’m stalling. I don’t want to be cleaning the storage room. But I am. Well, actually, I’m hiding out at the computer. But for those who have actually seen my family, doesn’t this bear an uncanny resemblance to Davis? (If I ever finish this horrendous job, I’ll post about Thanksgiving!)

Hell’s Edge.

I was clearing out some shelves and found this old picture. The back says “Hell’s Edge 1970″ and from the expressions, I found that believable. But Andrew tells me it’s Hill’s Edge. My side hurts from laughing. Cute kids though. And nice glasses, Andrew.

Thankful.

I am thankful for my family, my friends, my health. And for my work – I love my work. I am thankful for chocolate, poker, my children’s laughter, and for really good wine.

I am not thankful for NJ Turnpike traffic – which we’ll face tomorrow. Or for the honking, rude hordes at the stores and gas stations.

But I am thankful I’ll be spending my Thanksgiving with my parents, my brother and sister and their families and of course with Andrew and the boys. I’ll try to jot down my thoughts (and any particularly funny incidents) over the long weekend to share when I get back!

Wish me luck on the road!

The oyster anniversary.

I mentioned yesterday that we were going to The Oyster Riot in D.C. What I didn’t mention is that it was a belated anniversary celebration and that my parents took our kids overnight for us. We stayed in a lovely boutique hotel, The Madera off DuPont Circle. It was lovely! Though we did wonder why we didn’t get a Sunday Post.

The event last night was loads of fun. We ate, you guessed it, a lot of oysters. A lot. And we drank a lot of wine. Some really, really good wine. Our friends came back to the hotel with us for an anniversary champagne toast and some laughs (including a discussion regarding sex in the champagne room).

As I drifted off to sleep in the luxurious bed, I imagined 10-12 hours of dreamy perfection. But alas, I was awakened at 4:10 a.m. and never really got in the zone again.

Home again, with the boys alseep. It was fun feeling so cosmopolitan last night. But there is no place like home.

Photo from Legal Seafood

Thrifty.

I love shopping in thrift stores. I like vintage. And eclectic. And just plain not wearing what everyone else does. But I like to mix it up.

Today, I went to a thrift shop about 10 minutes from here. I go there all the time, but I’ve never been there on a weekend. (I don’t typically do any errands or shopping on the weekends because I HATE crowds.) But today I did. Mostly because I hadn’t planned ahead and Andrew and I are headed to DC for the Old Ebbitt Grill Oyster Riot and I have nothing to wear.

I found a fabulous top. But I also found poverty and desperation. I admit I was shocked by the huge crowd of fellow shoppers — most of whom were clearly shopping thrift out of need and not out of style. I felt conspicuously un-needy. And really guilty. Was I taking away from these people by shopping in this shop?

I always thought that a charity thrift shop served many purposes. 1) to create meaningful work for some that are difficult to employ 2) to raise money for charity from the purchases and 3) to provide a place for low income people to shop. But today, all I could see was people who needed affordable clothing and here I was, buying it up.

On the other hand, I didn’t see many people looking for funky tops to wear with brown low-slung jeans. So it’s not like I was actually racing for the good stuff against people with no other choices. But to tell you the truth, I felt I should have been at Nordstrom.

I do have a sweet outfit for tonight. But it’s a little bittersweet.

If you gave a kid a camera….

he would want to take some pictures.

We bought a decent digital camera recently. The boys have expressed an interest in using it. Back in the day, we all thought about the cost of wasted film. What waste is there now? Nothing to speak of, so why not? As long as they keep the strap around their necks so they don’t drop the camera.

I uploaded the photos the other day from their first day of camera freedom. Here you see a few prime examples of the creativity…..

Max was inspired to enter a contest with this one…. The theme is “I wonder why?” and he wonders why people destroy property. Deep, man. His photo is called Blaze Graffiti.

And Reed entered a photo, too. He wonders why bullies bully and his photo is called The Bully who Despised Duke. Note the shirt. I never asked Andrew how he felt about this.

But the point is, if there is a point, that given the right tools and no parameters (except don’t break the camera), kids create. Some grown ups forget how. But it sure looks fun.

Works cooperatively with others.

My father taught me that outcome matters most. Why you did something might be interesting to know. But what you did was key. I hope I’ve found a balance to this theory and that I do make choices for reasons that are important to me. But, still, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. (And I’ve always wanted to say that.)

Case in point. Report cards. As you can see from the lovely report card here, this particular student received all A’s and 1′s for effort. Nice outcome. However, see the right hand column. (if you click on the image, it gets bigger!) This same student did not score the highest grades for “working cooperatively with others” or “taking appropriate risks” or “responding appropriately to directions” or being persistent, accurate or legible. Am I the only one who wonders how this kid got all A’s?

Now, let’s think about performance reviews. How are we evaluating others and how are we being evaluated? By our outcomes? By our ability to work cooperatively with others? By our leadership skills? By our risk taking and persistent qualities? I believe that in the workplace, all these things matter. We need to work together to accomplish goals. But we also need to be rebels in our thinking – pushing aside the “old” way to consider new directions. And if we are hard to work with or people just plain don’t like us, but we’re incredibly effective, is that good enough? Or is peace and happiness more important. Does discord feed creativity or kill it?

Well, I don’t know. Do you?

I want tunes.

Today, we went to Borders. I had birthday gifts to get for some of the kids’ friends and some holiday gifts for my own guys. And I had a great coupon. Reed wanted music.

Reed’s taste in music is eclectic. But his favorite is hip-hop. There are very few appropriate CDs available for 8-year-olds, as you can imagine. He has some Will Smith and the Shark Tales CD. I even, not at my best moment, bought some Black Eyed Peas. From that, he learned some new vocabulary words. We asked the girl working there if she had any suggestions. It didn’t have to be hip-hop. Could be rock. Any suggestions? She had none. (Though when I picked up Nirvana, she shook her head NO.)

But they had the coolest thing. You can take any CD, scan it and put on headphones. You can hear the CD. Really, almost everything they had in stock worked. It was amazing. Reed told me he wanted a song from Aly & AJ, but not the rest. He’d like a song from Little Bow Wow (if I heard it and approved).

So we decided to go home. Listen to a bunch of songs on itunes, buy the ones we like, and make our own CD. He’s excited about the project and I’m glad I’ll be able to cherry pick an assortment that he wants and that won’t make me cringe.

Lots of people shop online and do their actual buying in stores. This is just the opposite, I suppose. I’m not much of an offline shopper, I admit, but I think Borders is doing something right.