Wordless Wednesday

I bet you thought I forgot again!

Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, Sanibel Island, Florida

To be honest, since becoming unemployed, I've found it hard to keep track of the days. Wednesdays used to be the start of my work-week... my "Monday." Now, all of the days just kind of run together.

By the way, this is another "recycled" picture. I just haven't seen anything very picture-worthy the last few weeks.

As always, you can visit more Wordless Wednesday participants here.

Wordless Wednesday

Take a look at my first foray into stupid sock creature-making. He isn't nearly as cool as any of John Murphy's originals, but he has a certain je ne sais quoi-- I'm just not sure what it is.

He doesn't have a name yet. Much like I struggled making him (I think it's a him, though s/he doesn't have any discernible secondary sexual characteristics), I'm also struggling at the art of naming him. If you have any suggestions, let me know before I send him out into the cruel world.

I'm giving him to Marisa, who gave me the Stupid Sock Creatures Kit for my birthday. So she's the one to blame when you have nightmares about brown and blue striped, orange-eyed, big-lipped monsters.

So, for the second straight week, my "Wordless" Wednesday entry has actually been pretty wordy. Oh well. For more Wordless Wednesday, check out today's other W.W. participants!

Wordless Wednesday

Forget your holiday poinsettia, your amaryllis, or your Christmas cactus. This is what was blooming in our yard on Christmas day.



The Festivus Bougainvillea is in Bloom.

I'd write more... but I wouldn't want to be late for work on my last day. They might fire me.

Oh... wait...

(A Wordy) Wordless Wednesday

Ok... so my original plan for Wordless Wednesday was to post a series of pictures from the Florida Everblades' annual "Teddy Bear Toss." I had my digital camera at the game and took a ton of pictures as thousands of stuffed animals rained onto the ice after the Blades' first goal on Saturday night.

However, the pictures are still in my camera, and I lack the motivation to transfer, crop, resize and upload them.

Then, I thought, I can just post the pictures of our bougainvillea that's blooming right now. But I took the photos with Cory's camera, and we seem to have lost the USB cable that connects his camera to the computer. Strike two, I guess.

So, instead, you get another "used" picture that's been living on my computer for years. I promise I'll post those other photos soon-- after all, it's not like I'll have much to do with my days once I'm unemployed!

Mackinac Bridge, Mackinaw City, Michigan

Thursday Thirteen

The last few weeks have been pretty rough around the O'Dizzle homestead. I don't really feel like going into detail about it. Let's just say that this Thursday Thirteen is half venting my anger, and half a pep talk to myself.

Thirteen Reasons why losing my job isn't the worst thing in the world:
1) I still make less money than I did as a teacher ten years ago.
2) The construction on Palm Beach Boulevard may never end.
3) I might... someday... get to work "normal" days and hours (working until midnight-- at the earliest-- on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays sucks).
4) I won't have to deal with the Boston Red Sox-- or the (ugh) Boston media-- any more.
5) No more calls on my cell phone waking me up every morning with the "plan for today."
6) Never having to smell a hockey locker room again.
7) Pretty soon, I'll be able to go to the store without makeup (and wearing sweatpants) and nobody will recognize me.
8) Very few of my co-workers talk to me anyway, so I won't really miss most of them.
9) Unless I get a job on a highway road crew, I probably won't have to sweat my ass off out in the sun every day of the spring, summer, and fall (and parts of winter).
10) No more hanging out at high schools. I had a high school kid scream "Whore!" at me last week when I wouldn't put him on TV. Very nice.
11) No more lugging around a 27-pound camera. Or a 15-plus pound tripod. I'll be spending a lot less money on ibuprofen.
12) The pride of cashing a $275.00 unemployment compensation check every week. Because nothing is better for your self-esteem than sucking off of the government's teat.
13) There'll be cake on my last day. Or at least, there'd damn well better be cake. If not, I might just burn the effing building down.

Want to check out other people's (probably much less depressing) Thursday Thirteens? Then visit the T-13 Blogroll!

Wordless Wednesday

Jackson Square, New Orleans, La.

April 2007

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Thursday Thirteen

Recently at work, we had a little contest in the newsroom. Everyone wrote down something unusual about themselves-- then we all had to figure out who was who. Out of 25 random facts, I guessed about eight correctly. Better than most-- but I've also worked there longer than most of my department, so I've had a little more time to get to know everyone (or at least observe them).

There were plenty of interesting facts I could have submitted for myself-- but most of them would have been easy guesses for my coworkers. For example, I've touched the Stanley Cup-- but I also did a news story about it.

So, my fact was-- I've had 22 jobs (I think it's actually more than that. As I write this, I just remembered one that I didn't count!)

This week's Thursday Thirteen: The first 13 jobs I ever had.

1) Hotel Maid at the Spartan Motel. Yikes. I think I got paid $30 a day-- though we got to cash in all the deposits on the beer cans left in the rooms, which earned us each about five more bucks on a good day. The Spartan was the "party" motel for all the high school kids. It's also where the carnival folk stayed when they came into town. Oh, and the hotel sponsored a kids' baseball team... "The Quickies."
2) McDonald's. Need I say more? I didn't last very long. By the way, minimum wage was $3.35 an hour.
3) Salad Bar Attendant at the Big Boy. The owner was a total bastard, but the people I worked with were a lot of fun.
4) All-Around everything at Foland's... which was a local chain reminiscent of "Service Merchandise." I worked at this place on and off for five years, until they went bankrupt. And I literally did every single job there at one point or another.
5) Cashier at a little store in the same mall as Folands, called "Kandi's Fashions." I never met "Kandi," mostly because she didn't exist. The owners were foreign, the clothes were ugly and overpriced, and there were never more than one employee in the store... which wasn't a problem since our customers were few and far between. I think I maybe sold $200 worth of merchandise in the summer I worked there.
6) Meijer. I worked the midnight shift in the toy department. You wouldn't believe the number of people who think it's completely appropriate to drag their kid to Meijer at two in the morning. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I worked at Foland's during the day and at Meijer during the midnight shift. I literally remember nothing from that summer.
7) Hudsons, which has since changed names to Marshall-Fields, and then was bought out by Macy's. Really, they're all pretty much the same. Middle-to-upscale department stores. I worked in the jewelry department of the Oakland Mall store. The discount was really good, and I had a lot of cute clothes for the next year or so as a result.
8) File clerk at the Alumni Relations office at Oakland University. It was on-campus employment, so I only did this for a semester, and I only worked 10 hours a week. I remember typing up a lot of labels.
9) Arena Hostess at the Palace of Auburn Hills. This was the first two years that the Palace was open-- and the Pistons won championships both seasons (unfortunately, they won both titles on the road). I saw a lot of awesome concerts those two years.
10) Stringer/Freelance Writer for a little fish-wrapper called "The Weekly Post." I was paid by the column inch. And I still have all of the articles I wrote, which weren't very good.
11) Public Relations Coordinator for a startup video dating service (Which, by the way, had the creative business name of "Video Dating Service.") The guy who owned the place was completely clueless, and I spent the majority of my time proofreading and re-writing his horribly written flyers. I did get to do some radio ads for it. When I went back to school in the fall, I quit the job, and the place was closed by the next summer.
12) Pizza King. What a sh*thole. I made pizzas (because they wouldn't allow women to be delivery drivers) and still have scars up and down my arms from their crappy oven. The owner was a very unhappy man-- he had been Tom Monahan's original partner. One of them went on to be a zillionaire pizza magnate. The other owned a crappy pizza place in Mid-Michgan. Their radio ads had a damn catchy jingle, though. I still remember the phone number because of it.
NOTE: I just found out-- the Pizza King burned down! Long live the Pizza King!
13) Manpower. I applied for a temp job, and I wound up actually working at the Manpower office. It was a blast. There were only three of us that worked there, so we were a pretty tight-knit group.

So, there they are. And here's the funny part-- Those jobs only span a 10-year stretch... and I had several other jobs during that same time... including an internship coaching speech at a rich-kid high school, a very brief stint as a residential maid (I got to clean Jerry Ball's house... which was a little weird.), and my grad-school teaching job.

So, how many jobs have you had?

Oh! And don't forget-- visit the Thursday Thirteen Blogroll!

Wordless Wednesday

(Ok... so I'm cheating. It's not actually Wednesday. At least, not where I am. I'm post-dating this to make it a Wednesday post. And it's also not "Wordless." I couldn't find a photo I liked, so I'm posting a link to the promo that Cory produced for Wednesday night. So it's a "worded non-wednesday." Whatever.)

Thursday Thirteen

(With just minutes to spare before it isn't Thursday any more!)

The other night, we downloaded "Knocked Up" onto our TiVo-- and had the usual question, "Do we have enough room on our TiVo to record this?"

Our TiVo records LOTS of stuff-- we have 38 "Season Passes" for shows. Many of the passes are for shows that are more Cory's interest than mine ("Mad Men" and "Sunday Morning Shootout," for example). Others are for now-defunct shows that I simply hope might come back sometime as a mid-season replacement ("National Bingo Night?" "Pros versus Joes?" anyone? How about "Treasure Hunters?). But many are shows that I watch religiously.

Thirteen Shows on our my TiVo Season Pass:
1) "24"
2) "My Name is Earl"
3) "The Soup" (and also its mildly retarded VH-1 cousin, "Best Week Ever")
4) "Desperate Housewives"
5) "Last Comic Standing"
6) "Mythbusters"
7) "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"
8) "My Life on the D-List"
9) "Meercat Manor"
10) "Ace of Cakes"
11) "30 Rock"
12) "Burn Notice"
13) An assortment of Adult Swim cartoons-- specifically "Metalocaypse," "Lucy, Daughter of the Devil," and "Venture Brothers."

Oops... my ride is here-- got to go. Later, I'll fill in with links to some of these shows. You really need to check some of them out.

For more Thursday Thirteen, check out the T-13 blogroll.

Wordless Wednesday

Dillingham Street Bridge, Columbus, GA/Phenix City, AL

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Thursday Thirteen

OK, so it's kind of a cop-out, since today was Thanksgiving, but today's Thursday Thirteen is

13 Things I'm thankful for:

1) All of the important people-- parents that love me, a husband that somehow doesn't think I'm a complete bitch, and cat that depends on me.
2) Reasonably good health-- especially considering the fact that I don't exercise much, I don't always eat well, and I don't really have genetics on my side, either.
3) 80s music (especially "new wave" and "hair bands"). I've been in kind of a funk lately, but every time I hear the B-52s or a Def Leppard song, it perks me up!
4) Minor League Hockey. We don't get Versus on the cable system here in the Cape, so my weekly trips to Everblades games give me the fix I need.
5) A car that still runs fairly well considering the fact that I've put about 120,000 miles on it since February of 1996.
6) Other people with a weird sense of humor. Especially ones who are authors (i.e. Christopher Moore, Carl Hiaasen)
7) Cheesecake. Quite possibly the worlds' greatest innovation.
8) Cheap, yet tasty beer. Lately one of my favorites has been Shock Top.
9) Having a fairly fast metabolism. It allows me to enjoy cheesecake and beer.
10) Ben & Jerry's. Though I've been very dissapointed by the lack of B&J's Frozen Yogurt at the store lately.
11) Florida. Sure, it has its faults. It's very flat, I sweat constantly from May to October, and there aren't a lot of trees near us. But the view as I drive over the river on my way to work every day makes it worth it.
12) TiVo. (This was Cory's suggestion. While I love the TiVo, I'm not sure it's quite list-worthy. On the other hand, maybe it is.)
13) Having an education, and a job, and running water, and all of the other things I might not have if I'd been born somewhere else... or in some other time. I couldn't survive a day in Africa. I don't even like camping, for God's sake.

Check out other Thursday Thirteeners on the TT Blogroll.

Wordless Wednesday

Providence Canyon State Park, Lumpkin, GA

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Thursday Thirteen

Since Cory and I bought the condo last year, we're now only about a mile from the public library, so I've been going there a lot lately. That's what made me think of this week's T.T. Topic:

My 13 Favorite books as a kid/teenageer (in no particular order):

1. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. As Charlotte herself expressed, that is "Some Pig."
2. The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden. The illustrations were done by Garth Williams, who also did the illustrations for Charlotte's Web.
3. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I probably read this dozens of times, and much like Charlotte' Web, I remember seeing an animated version of it at school at some point.
4. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. Sugh a great book, though I read it a little too young. It made me terrified of my menstrual cycle years before I even needed to think about it. And terrified of belts, too.
5. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. I don't remember much about it, only that it made me cry. And speaking of crying....
6. The Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. I bawled like a baby. I know they made a movie out of this a few year ago, but I never saw it. Which leads us to another book that's "now a major motion picture:"
7. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I saw a high school production of the play when I was little, and I read the book shortly afterwards. I really, really wanted to see the movie, but somehow Cory went to see it and I didn't. Totally not fair.
8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I had trouble getting through all of the "Lord of the Rings" Trilogy, but I loved The Hobbit. I remember seeing an animated Hobbit movie at some point. I don't think it was very good.
9. The Pigman by Paul Zindel. I really liked all of Zindel's books. He wrote about most of the same topics that Judy Blume wrote about, but his characters weren't as sugary-sweet.
10. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Who didn't love Ponyboy? I loved this book before the movie came out-- then I saw the movie and became mildly obsessed with C. Thomas Howell, who played Ponyboy in the movie.
11. The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger. I could relate to Marcy. She was smart but thought she was stupid, and she wore glasses and had a low self-esteem. I still have a copy of it.
12. I Was a 98-Pound Duckling by Jean Van Leeuwen. I still have a copy of this one, too. I must have read it 50 times. The main character was tall, skinny and awkward. And she still managed to find a boy who kind of liked her. You've got to love that.
13. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I spent one summer reading all of Adams' books while lying in the backyard. At the end of the summer, I emerged physically tan and a little mentally warped. Don't forget your towel.

So, which books did you read as a kid?

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Wordless Wednesday

Michelangelo, Telfair Museum, Savannah, Georgia

Snap Attack

One of my coworkers has a digital picture frame at her desk with photos of her kids-- when she got it (last year for Christmas, I think), it was quite the novelty around the newsroom. We all oohed and ahhed for a while, mostly because that type of stuff is totally outside of our pay grade.

Every time I see it, it makes me think about how much digital cameras have completely changed our world. Ok... that sounded a little silly, I know. It's not like digital cameras have brought about world peace or anything.

But think about it... just about everyone has a cameraphone now. Remember when we were kids, and you weren't allowed to bring cameras into a concert? Imagine trying to police that rule now! You'd have to confiscate nearly every cell phone in the crowd!

And what about Drivers' Licenses? Remember when you had to wait 4-6 weeks to get your new license in the mail, only to discover that your eyes were closed? Or that there was a shadow across your face that made you look like you had a moustache? Now you can see that horrific picture in just minutes!

Cory and I have two digital cameras (aside from the ones on our phones). Mine is larger and takes better pictures, but I'm always afraid to take it anywhere. I don't want to bring it to an amusement park, for example, because it's a little too big and too nice.

Cory's camera came free when we signed our mortgage. It's much smaller (I can carry it in my purse, so I can take pictures any time I want), but the pictures it takes aren't as nice. And somehow we lost the software and the USB cable to connect it to our computer, so any time I want to remove pictures from it, I have to go to the store and use their photo computer, which is kind of a pain in the butt.

What I like most about our digital cameras is what some people like least about them-- you don't have any pictures. I'm okay with that. I have shoeboxes full of photos from film, and I rarely look at them. But if I have a digital picture I like, I can email it to my friends. Or I can make a print of it. Or, I can make it part of the new "Wordless Wednesday" here on the blog. Did you catch last week's picture of the Tiger and his meat kebab? I'd never been that close to a tiger before-- it was pretty cool!

I'm going to try to post more pictures on "Wordless Wednesdays"-- so I can show off a few more photos. I haven't figured out if I want to do some kind of theme yet-- we'll see. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Thursday Thirteen

Today's Thursday Thirteen:

Thirteen Albums I Own (and when I say "Album," I mean "Album." as in a 12" round vinyl disk with a hole in it.)

By the way, I'm not including Soundtracks or Greatest Hits collections. As Bruce McCullough once said on Kids in the Hall, "Greatest Hits are for housewives and little girls!"

1. Olivia Newton-John's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. Don't mock. I didn't say "Thirteen albums I'm proud to own. did I?"
2. Friend Or Foe (Adam Ant) My friend Anne and I sent a really bizarre fan letter to Adam Ant once. I'm surprised he didn't hire police protection and get restraining orders against both of us. I also have the album "Strip," which was by far his worst album.
3. Living in Oz (Rick Springfield) Hello? Dr. Noah Drake? Need I say more?
4. Pyromania (Def Leppard) I also have "On Through the Night," "High and Dry" and "Hysteria" on vinyl.
5. Forever (Bittersweet Alley) Probably the second-most popular 1980s Detroit rock band, behind The Romantics. The lead singer ended up marrying the older sister of a girl I went to high school with. I also have their second album, "Some Like it Hot."
6. Pictures for Pleasure (Charlie Sexton). Charlie Sexton was a teen guitar prodigy. And he was cute. Enough said.
7. Rebel Yell (Billy Idol) As we all know by now, I was obsessed with Billy Idol. I also had his self-titled debut album, along with "Whiplash Smile" (which sucked) and the EP "Don't Stop," which I bought on a school field trip. Oh, and I have two albums from his first band, Generation X.
8. Slippery When Wet (Bon Jovi) After all these years, Jon Bon Jovi is still cute-- and still putting out hit albums. Who would have guessed that of all the hair-bands I liked in the 80s, they'd be the one to survive?
9. License To Ill (The Beastie Boys) My friend Kristi won us concert tickets to see the Beastie Boys in downtown Detroit when I was a senior in high school. I bought a T-shirt, unaware that on the back it said "Get off My Dick."
10. Slide it In (Whitesnake). With Tawny Kitaen on the cover, of course.
11. Out of the Cellar (Ratt) Actually, now that I think of it, Tawny Kitaen is on the cover of that one, too. And just think, years later, she was married to a major league baseball player who she beat up-- and dated Jerry Seinfeld, too. Girl gets around.
12. Days of Innocence (Moving Pictures). The ultimate one-hit-wonder, at least as far as their US albums go. They had exactly one hit song, "What about me?" Last year, a guy at the karaoke bar sang it-- and I had to talk to him about it. Turns out he was Australian.
13. Seven and the Ragged Tiger (Duran Duran). I never really liked this album that much, Their earlier stuff was much better.

Feel free to discuss my awesome taste in music. You know you want to.
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Wordless Wednesday

So the whole point of "Wordless Wednesday" is that it's supposed to be "wordless." Oh well. Since this is the first one, I'll give you a little explanation. You may be surprised to know that I took this photo at the zoo. Yes, we were pretty close. About 10 feet away. And yes, that is a meat-kebab that the tiger is eating. Cool, huh?

Ok. From now on, Wordless Wednesday posts will be wordless. But we'll cheat a little. If you want information on the photo, you can hover over it with your mouse. There'll be some text explaining the picture in the information box which appears.

More Wordless Wednesday here.

Thursday Thirteen

Once upon a time... the Sportslady participated in something called the "Friday Five." But the website went defunct, and Fridays are a pretty busy day for me, so I dropped it.

This week: My first foray into the "Thursday Thirteen." Knowing me, this won't last long, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

Thirteen things I have been for Halloween:

1. A Leopard. Or maybe it was a cheetah. I was only about six, so it's hard to say. The costume was adorable, though.
2. A gypsy.
3. A fairy. I wore my white ballet outfit and my mom made me some sweet wings and some kind of a halo/hair wreath thing.
4. A conehead. I said a lot of stuff like, "Mips! Mips!" and "We come from France.... Yes... France." I was only in fourth grade, so nobody but the bus driver got it.
5. Some sort of a punk David Bowie type thing.
6. A rockette. My dad had a sweet tuxedo jacket with tails. The rest was pretty easy.
7. A witch. The first costume I sewed myself. I made of a green lacy dress to go with a black wig... But everyone thought I was supposed to be Cher. That would come in handy later.

8. Little Red Riding hood. It was pretty cute, actually. The next year, I altered it so my friend Casey could wear it.
9. University of Michigan cheerleader.
10. Barbie, complete with hot pink pumps and disproportionately large breasts. I went to a fraternity party and one of the guys asked me if I was a dude. Very depressing.
11. A Pirate. Because of the fact that I rarely throw things away, I had a sweet puffy shirt and thigh-high boots. It also explains the hot-pink pumps from the year before.
12. Another Witch. This time, I looked a little more Goth... and I added a pointy hat to the outfit.
13. Cher. For real, this time. And I won $100. Not too shabby.


Last night, I was a pirate again. No prize money this year, though. I'll try to post a picture in the next day or so.

If you're interested in hearing what other "Thursday Thirteen"ers have to say today, check out their Blogroll.

All About Me

The lovely Holly forwarded this meme to me over the weekend... and since I seem to have run out of reasons to blog regularly, this will have to do.

Four jobs I have had in my life
(I've worked for 17 different employers... and held many positions at each of them... so I'll try to condense)
1. Television Journalist- for three different stations in Missouri, Georgia, and Florida
2. Communication Instructor- at CMU, Truman, and MACC
3. Retail Whipping-girl at a variety of food service, clothing, and general merchandise stores.
4. "Arena Hostess" (which is a glorified way of saying "Usher") at the Palace of Auburn Hills

Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. Babe
2. Silence of the Lambs
3. The Blues Brothers
4. Young Frankenstein

Four places I have lived:
1. North Grafton, MA
2. Mt. Pleasant, MI
3. Ottumwa, IA
4. Columbus, GA

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Lost
2. 24
3. The Soup
4. Pros versus Joes (though it may very well be the worst show on television)

Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Las Vegas
2. Orlando
3. Cape Cod
4. Cedar Point... many, many, many times.

Four websites I visit daily[almost]:
1. FARK.com
2. ESPN.com
3. EBay.com
4. coryodonnell.blogspot.com (in hopes that if I didn't post anything, maybe he did)

Four of my favorite foods:
1. The Fajita Quesidilla (#80) on the menu at El Vaquero in Columbus, GA
2. Prime Rib (I can feel my arteries hardening, just thinking about it!)
3. Lobster (with artery-clogging drawn butter, of course)
4. Pineapple with Hot Fudge

Four places I would rather be right now: (and as I wrote this, I was at work... so keep that in mind)
1. At home, In bed, watching something that we TiVo'ed.
2. Las Vegas
3. Hanging with friends... except theyre scattered all across the country!
4. Sea World

So now it's your turn. I expect full cooperation.

Monday Madness

Oddly enough, this week's Monday Madness is all about moving. Interesting, huh?

1. When is the last time you moved? Three years ago, Cory and I spent his birthday moving into our current townhouse. It was just an across-town move.
2. How many times in your life have you moved? We moved at least a couple times when I was too little to remember. When I was three, we moved to Michigan, and when I was in Junior High School, we moved across town. I moved to Mt. Pleasant, Michigan for graduate school, and moved once in my two years there. After that, I moved to Kirksville, lived in three different places, moved to Ottumwa for three months, then moved back to Kirksville. I moved to Columbus four years ago, and moved once since coming here. And in two weeks, I'll be doing it again. So, that's at least fourteen times, right?
3. In your opinion, what is the worst thing about moving? I'd like to say that it's leaving my close friends... but to be perfectly honest, the worst part is that sinking you get when you realize that you have way too much stuff, and that you've severely underestimated the amount of time, effort and money that it's going to cost.
4. What is the most exciting thing about moving? When it's over.
5. If you've lived in the same place all your life, do you plan to move in the future? This question certainly doesn't apply to me.
6. Do you WANT to move somewhere else; if so, where? To be honest, I don't know where I want to live when I "grow up." I guess I'll just find out when I get there.

I expect participation this time, people!