The gang.

Yesterday, we had a birthday lunch for my father-in-law’s 80th birthday. Kristin came to take photos… YOU try to get nine people (including three kids!) to sit still!

(I just noticed that a couple of the men aren’t even in this one! More later…I am working on a seriously challenging statistical project. Clearly, I am procrastinating….)

Little balls.

Duckpin bowling. Yes, we bowl with little balls. You get three – yup – three tries per turn. Typically, the scores are high. But not last night! We were all pretty darn pitiful. Not all. More about that later. The occasion for the gathering was Zoë’s bat mitzvah. She’s the younger daughter of a great old friend. So while the kids were having a grand old time at the party, the old folks (that would be us) were having a blast, too.

Above – see Howard. With his little ball. (I warned him!) He’s actually a great bowler – on a league and all. He even owns two – really two – bowling shirts. I’m so jealous.
This here is Tom. For those of you who don’t check out his blog, you might want to pop over. He’s a great guy. He also is the famous writer and performer of the Princeton Vocab Minute… I have very famous friends. Tom had a few strikes – mostly after being egged on by Joe K.

Blurry candid shot. I just wanted to include it because I love this bowling alley and I think it’s neat looking with the old overhead score thingie….

Here is the proud father of the bat mitzvah and me. I like this one. (And I rarely like pix of myself!)

This would be Joe K. We (the old gang) know another Joe so this one gets the K. attached. The other one gets his entire last name. So I guess Joe K. wins. I must say he looks a little like a made man in this shot.

Jamie. Looks like she’s keeping some secret, huh? Always great hanging out with her….

Like father, like son.

Another random blurry shot. There’s Mookie. He takes his bowling pretty seriously! I see him only every couple of years, but I saw him last week at the Kenya Connect benefit, too!

The parting shot. My gorgeous rented bowling shoes on the neon carpet. I couldn’t resist.

Truth is, I don’t see any of these people often enough. They (and the ones who didn’t make it on camera) have special places in my heart. Lots of great memories.

My walk down memory lane in the rented shoes is over – thanks for joining me!

Yummy crib.

We had dinner with old friends the other night. At a wonderful restaurant in D.C. — Kinkead’s. I’ve known Pam since high school — we have a lot of history. Here she is with her husband.

Another, more artisitic view of the couple. I kind of like the swirlies. I think this must have been after the martini. Not sure, actually.

He’s looking a little….well? Silly? But look below – this is how we look to them!

Dinner was fantastic. They treated – evidently dinner cost about the same as the proceeds from the baby furniture we’d lent them to use for their little guys…..

But this guy? Py. His name is Py. He was our server. (Why doesn’t anyone say waiter anymore???) And Py is the asshole who served me regular coffee instead of decaf. Can I prove it? No, I can’t. But I slept about ZERO minutes that night. Even with my Rx to help me sleep. Thanks a lot Py. If I had your phone number (or your address), I’d find a way to thank you personally.

Thirteen things in my fridge.

I do have fruit and vegetables and fresh cheese and meats! But this is all about packaged goods!


1) Aloe. Not that we’re expecting a serious sunburn this month, but this is nice to have around.

2) We get our butter delivered from the organic dairy! We also get milk and eggs….

3) This marinated and sliced steak from Trader Joe’s is a big hit around here.

4) White chocolate decorating! Adds pizazz to cookies and cakes. It’s so easy – I love it.

5) The boys drink a lot of these smoothies!

6) For years, I’ve been searching for a salad dressing that like what they serve at Sushi Ichiban in Omaha. This is it!

7) Great tasting grill sauce. Not too sweet, not too spicy. Yum!

8) The new Hellmann’s packaging is terrific!

9) For those dirty martinis. Come on over and try one!

10) These amazing spicy pickles are courtesy of my mother-in-law. We’ve never found them anywhere except in Lancaster County, PA. They are delicious!

11) Snowball anyone? Before it gets too cold out….

12) With 3 boys, I can’t imagine running out of Hershey’s syrup. Good for what ails you.

13) These cute little bagel dogs are great for babysitter nights! The kids love them…

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Hey – I got my groovy banner from Novelist in Training. She rocks!

I love the Internet.

Thanks to Liz, I now can find a happy hour anywhere. At the click of a mouse. Check out Unthirsty.

Now that’s useful.

Note: Cute graphic from Unthirsty’s site…

Halloween on Acid

(a special guest blog by Megan)

As you can see by the photo above, there’s a little bit of Halloween spirit going on in my neighborhood. When we moved in over a year ago we were delighted to see how everyone got so excited for Halloween – a holiday that gets almost as much attention as Christmas around here. People put up all sorts of fun decorations and on Halloween itself, folks have lights and sounds, even smoke surrounding their spooky doors. It’s really a very fun, very safe atmosphere. Everyone stands outside and watches the parade of trick-or-treaters. And this year my little girl will be one of them and I can’t wait.

But now these people have moved in. The crazy lawn decorating people who are obsessed with Mickey Mouse. And get this, they are RENTERS! They don’t even own their place. But I digress… The minute they moved in they just plunked a bunch of stuff down in their front yard including a fake Mickey Mouse topiary and called it landscaping.

I’m from New Jersey (easy now…) and so I’m used to lawns full of life-size Nativity scenes at Christmas and more light-up Santa’s than you can count. We even had one family put up a giant banner that offered holiday greetings from their family. I guess what I’m saying is, been there, seen that. But what you see above is on a whole other level. Although I’m not quite sure what that level is.

So, now instead of tastefully done Halloween decorations, we have to endure the giant inflatable Mickey as Dracula which on a dreary day like today is looking very care worn and leaning to one side. Are we to commend these people for having Halloween spirit and a sense of fun? Should we knock on their door and say, “Well done!” Or should we deflate Mickey the Vampire in the middle of the night with a wooden stake through his heart?

If anyone has a wooden stake, please let me know. In the meantime, Happy Halloween!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then what?

Ever want to just get away from it all?

I got an email from a friend who said:

“windy..icky..rainy day here. I have to go off island to send a letter overnight. [insert personal business here - the reason the letter needs to go & be sure to imagine some very harsh curse words here too] I am so sick of all of this.

I want to run away and live on an island. Whoops. I’m already on an island. Yikes. Love, me”

So where do you run to if you already live on a beautiful island?

A nice view.

I was asked by Cyrus, my personal trainer, to meet with a young woman who worked at the gym. Seems she just graduated from business school and Cyrus told her that I was the person to talk to about how to create her future. Flattering, yes. Hyperbole, yes. But what could I do? So I got her email address on my way out the door and set up a meeting at a local coffee shop, Mad City Coffee.

Having the schedule and workload that I do, I had to cancel our meeting (with 48 hours notice) and reschedule for the following week. Deadlines. You know how it is.

So the day came and here I was dreading it. I was wasting an hour and a half of my life on a total stranger and not only would I never get it back, I would get nothing out of it.

Curse you, Cyrus.

I got to Mad City right on time. On the way, I daydreamed that she’d be late and I’d be aggrevated. But she was there sipping her coffee. Waiting for me.

I got a nice cup of mocha and sat down. Deep breath.

She told me she had great news. A job she’d applied for last week was offered to her. She had accepted. She’ll be a product manager at one of the ecommerce sites for AOL. Good work if you can get it. And great for her resume, too.

My first thought was, great, I’ll take my coffee to go. Nice to meet you. Gotta run. But she had a question.

Cyrus has told me about your work and your life. It sounds amazing. To what do you attribute your considerable success and independence?

What does one say to that?

I had to stay and drink the coffee evidently. Don’t you think? So I started telling her about my business philosophy. About how managing people doesn’t mean being a tyrant. I told her about how I keep in touch with everyone I’ve ever had good business or personal experiences with and how knowing those people and what they are doing over time has been very helpful. Not to mention interesting and fun.

We talked about work ethic. About doing what is expected and more. We talked about not asking for more from a company until you’ve proven that you are worthy. We talked a long time. She’s a bright and interesting young woman and I know she’ll go far.

Particularly since she sent me a note after our time together telling me that I was one of the people that she’d like to keep knowing.

I think she got it.

Tough crowd.

We took our friends to Trapeze for dinner. It was very nice and leisurely.

After dinner, we decided to go see the new houses in Maple Lawn because 1) Alan is a developer and he was interested and 2) we wanted to see Kristin’s dirt.
These adorable teen boys were hanging around and skateboarding – and they let me take their photos. I was going to tell them I knew their mothers as I got into Alan’s fancy car and left, but I didn’t. They did seem a little skiddish. Well, that is until I told them I was just going to post the pix on my blog.

Whew. No worries.

Little people.

A friend of ours came into town to visit us for dinner last night and to spend the night. He brought the woman he’s been seeing for some time whom we’d never met.

When I answered the door, she smiled broadly. I thought she was just so happy to meet me.

As it turns out, our friend told her that Andrew and I were little people. She’d been preparing not to stare for days!