Monday, June 30, 2008

29x365: #11 ashleigh

i am honored to be a part of your upcoming wedding, and i wish that i wasn’t always studying for this damn test so we could hang out again!


29x365: #10 jamie m.

if i hadn’t met you, i don’t think i would have made it through law school. i just wish we were still as close as we were back then.


Friday, June 27, 2008

things you can do to put off studying for the bar

1. search frantically for four cds you have been missing for approximately 2 years, even though you do have them downloaded to your itunes.


2. search frantically for those dumbbells you know you have but haven't been able to find since your renter moved in and you had to take them out of the guest room dresser. a year ago.

3. blow up core ball, because at least you can find that.

4. yell at dogs and cat for trying to play with core ball.

5. donate television, entertainment center and cucumber water to local charity yard sale.

6. think about how much you really need to rectify the situation that is your hellhole of a home office.

7. listen to hour-long dooce interview.

8. look up tori & dean's b&b in fallbrook, california to see if it still exists even though they're not running it.

9. google iphone cases that do not block proximity sensor so husband will stop freaking out about not being able to hang up the phone.

10. spend 15 minutes trying to remember all the ways you have procrastinated so you can publish that list to your blog.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

champagne thursday: toast #10

currently super excited about something that someone in my small town is doing to try to increase the liveliness of this place. i don't feel i'm at liberty to say what it is, but all shall be known by october, and i am thrilled.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

things i love wednesday: the inimitable george carlin

sad week, but this video helps:

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

swimmin' pools, movie stars

the husband had only been gone a couple of hours before i pulled out the beverly hillbillies kiddie pool for the dogs. he's not a huge fan of the mess it usually creates, but when he's gone, the kids get spoiled. and i'm glad i set it up because teagan, who has never liked the water, has been having a blast with it.

Monday, June 23, 2008

the much anticipated GIANT TV

bask in the glory that is horatio in HD. and the husband isn't even back in town to enjoy the maiden voyage...p.s., see that sad little silver box in the bottom left corner? that's our old 26" tv. isn't he cute? oh, and the cardboard on the wall is marking the new tv's place in our home. it is not art, i promise.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

nostalgic deja vu

so, husband is out of town for a funeral (sad), and a dog i love found a family and left the shelter where i volunteer, and i'm feeling kind of sentimental...again. also, my friend my high school was super stoked to see this particular photo when i was trying to fill her in on the last decade of my life, so here goes:
for serious, isn't she just a little cotton puff with a hot pink collar? p.s., that was a cat collar because she was too small for every dog collar in the store. she outgrew it in a few weeks, but damn did that make me swoon. 

that sheep was her first and most favorite toy. she carried it around like a baby and never, ever wanted to harm it, even though she soon started ripping other toys to shreds. maybe six months later, she apparently popped a crazy pill and finally gutted her most beloved sheep as well, and we later went through approximately 8,942 of the damn things at $4 a pop. i still have several of them in our own personal soft toy infirmary. my thimble-less thumbs likely will dictate that they remain there for perpetuity.

also, she did not ever want to leave her crate when we first taught her how to stay in it overnight. we'd get up in the morning, open it up and call her out, and she would look at us like there was a flaming moat of lava surrounding the crate and she could not possibly traverse that kind of fiery boundary. now she laughs at the puppies when we make them stay in the crates when we leave the house. while she stretches out on the tempurpedic. life is good in aikoville.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

champagne thursday: toast #9

today i am ever so grateful for an old friend from high school coming into town unexpectedly and getting me out of the house for a bit. new concept. haven't seen this girl in 11 years. that is sad. and scary. also, love vegas hotels for under $40. ridiculous.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

things i love wednesday: handmade house numbers

when we had our house painted, we trashed our old boring house numbers and tried to find cool new ones. we bought some tile ones with a frame from home depot, but they didn't fit into each other. somehow i was actually able to talk the husband into allowing me to custom order from a woman named ann allen. she sells her awesome handmade stuff under the name flying woman design on etsy. and we love her because she made these just for us:helpful hint: it is way easier to tell friends, pizza guys and delivery folk where you live if you have numbers on your house. just something i've learned.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

cadence gets her revenge

just in case you were worried that bronson actually did eat his kitten, here you can see that this teeny little spitfire really can hold her own:
p.s., seriously with the ears? face...melting...cuteness.

Monday, June 16, 2008

sometimes he just likes to freak people out

again, i swear to you that bronson would never eat his kitten. i promise. but the other day, cadence curled up with him on the couch and then started batting at his muzzle with her tiny paws. and then he did this, which we're going to call laughing:

29x365: #9 michael

when you were younger, you stole money. you've graduated to stealing the spirit and optimism of those around you. i hope you're happy with the life you have created.


29x365: #8 david

if it weren't for you, i might have listened to crappy pop radio rather than enjoying pink floyd in 4th grade, frank zappa in 8th and on from there.


Friday, June 13, 2008

i might have to move to japan

i just happened upon this article, and now i have to figure out how to pack up the dogs and cat and ship everybody over to japan to live out our days in a land completely devoid of the types of people i regularly see at wal-mart.

if you don't want to check out the article, basically what it says is japan has made it illegal to own a waistline that is over a specified number of inches - one limit for men and one for women (and the women's number is higher! equals we win!). even as i sit here expanding due to lack of exercise and an increase in bar exam failure-induced alcohol consumption, this whole idea makes me just giddy. the japanese are a beautiful people. case in point, this quote from someone really important:

“I don’t think the campaign will have any positive effect. Now if you did this in the United States, there would be benefits, since there are many Americans who weigh more than 100 kilograms,” or about 220 pounds, Mr. Ogushi said. “But the Japanese are so slender that they can’t afford to lose weight.”

Thursday, June 12, 2008

champagne thursday: toast #8

super congrats to lynne spears, aka yet another celebrity child leech of a mother, whose book is no longer in limbo. honestly, i don't know what i would have done had this book been scrapped completely. i might not have learned how to raise a manic depressive redneck or a pregnant teenager.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

things i love wednesday: housekeepers

i don't really feel like i need to explain much beyond this post's title. helpful hint: if you have four dogs, a kitten, an ailing ferret, a caveman husband, few hours outside of work and a penchant for drinking in your spare time, get a freaking housekeeper. it is the most beautiful thing in the world. i can walk through my house in bare feet and not look like i have furry toes afterward. it is lovely.

Monday, June 9, 2008

update

his hours of research finally paid off, and in just a few short days, we will be the proud owners of far too much technology for one living room wall. damn thing better last too, because i don't think my marriage can weather another excruciating study of the benefits of 120 hertz squeezed into 52 inches of liquid crystal display anytime soon.


p.s. um, best buy? bite me. amazon is way better than you could ever hope to be, so don't even worry about refusing to sell us your products.

nostalgia

after drinking far too many bottles glasses of wine last night, all i was looking forward to was coming home at noon and curling up in bed with the dogs studying for the bar exam. unfortunately, today is the day that i was smart enough to schedule not only a house cleaning courtesy of someone other than me, but also a paint touch-up on the exterior of our house. which equals 8000 people too many in and around the house for the dogs to maintain normal sanity levels. which equals why i am currently in bed behind my closed bedroom door to keep the dogs from tripping the housekeeper. and to keep malichai from eating her vacuum. oh yes, he tried. after whining more than a 6-year-old leaving disney world.

days like these make me nostalgic for the all-too-short time when malichai was so tiny, his legs didn't even work properly. which was when we took this picture:which was really just a bad reenactment of this picture:which makes me miss having puppies...but not enough to get another one. because five dogs would be crazy.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

divorce imminent

husband came home from office at about 3 pm. it is now 10 pm. that means i have witnessed seven hours of him researching home theater equipment. putting things IN amazon cart...taking things OUT of amazon cart.


may have to shoot self.

i'm just sayin'.

Friday, June 6, 2008

mixed bag

today, i was finally certified to once again sit for the bar exam. this made me happy. and then depressed. and then a little anxious, but in a good way. and then quite anxious, and in a bad way.


have i mentioned that this is my least favorite thing to do in the world?

side note: it does make me rather gleeful to know that i have been certified to sit. let me say that again: certified. to sit. think on that for a bit.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

champagne thursday: toast #7

a couple of weeks ago, i read a post by dooce about the furminator. apparently, the husband and i had seen this thing at petco before, but we thought there was no way it would work quite like the advertising said it would. all i have to say is i'm totally going to believe all marketing campaigns for all products from here on out. this is the most amazing product i've ever used, and i'm not even kidding. it removed a mound of fur from teagan, and we have never been able to brush anything out of her. ridiculous.

observe the teagan pile (just look at how embarrassed she is to have me for a mother):
bronson is decidedly more excited about his recent hair loss:aiko is downright thrilled to be a bit lighter, especially since we just learned she's gained 10 lbs since she was last weighed:and malichai thinks we're all a bunch of silly bastards:

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

things i love wednesday: degrading document titles

i may have mentioned in passing that i failed the effing bar exam for the 4th time recently. to rub a little salt in my freshly reopened wound, i got an email telling me that i had also failed to properly fill out the form to apply to take the damn thing again, and a new copy of the document was attached as follows:

does anybody else think i should get one free "kick-em-in-the-teeth" card for this??

come on-a my house, my house

yesterday, a rather prominent person in our little town dropped by to invite me to a party. this would be fine except for the fact that i live with four rabid maniacs lovely dogs who like to terrorize greet everyone within a 50-yard radius of our house. the way it works is, someone comes to the door and unwittingly rings the doorbell. dogs have minor heart attacks trying to figure out who it is that has just come to see them and only them, and can you even believe that somebody came to see us? this is the best thing that's ever happened to us! let's see who it is! then i throw three of them out the back door, but i neglect to lock that door. i answer the front door with aiko reenacting a scene from cujo beside me, and i try to have a pleasant conversation with the nice lady that has hand delivered an invitation to a party. then, three dogs come busting through the back door, because did i mention that malichai knows how to open that door if it is unlocked? oh yes, he does. so three crazy little giant furbots burst through the front door, jump at the 4-foot-tall woman and run into the street, all the while giving said woman approximately 15 seconds to watch her life flash in front of her.


and the dogs wonder why we don't have people over more often.

this incident did have the positive effect of reminding me that i had this lovely new masthead all designed and ready to upload weeks ago, that i had been dying to put it up and couldn't wait for june, and that it is now june 4, and just where have i been for four days??

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

reason #67 we crate the kitten while we're gone

bronson loves this damn cat. LOVES. HER. but here, it looks like he thinks she might just make a good snack.

Monday, June 2, 2008

headline would read: vicious pit bull attacks poor, innocent kitten!!

we never tire (read: always tire) of repeatedly explaining to people that no, pit bulls are not inherently horrible creatures - some people have chosen to make them that way. helpful hint: if you want a poodle to be an attack dog, you can raise it to be an attack dog. if you want a pit bull to be a loving little lick-monster, well, get a pit bull puppy, because that is what they are naturally.

however, i realize that if this photo is ever picked up by fox news, it will be accompanied by a headline that predicts the kitten's imminent mauling:
p.s., this photo was taken last thursday, and the kitten is still alive - wonder of wonders!!