The Big DumpTruck

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope the Stuffing Fairy gives you the big smackdown this year, you all deserve it, each and every one of you. Yes, even you, lady who was driving 30 in a 40 this morning and causing me irreparable stress damage. Oh, I certainly do think it's great that you didn't have to go to work today! You're so lucky! I know, taking your car for a stroll is a GRAND thing to do at 7:30 in the morning. Don't mind me, I'll just have my front bumper jammed up your tail pipe.

Anyway, my foot fell asleep, and now the rest of me is all jealous. I'm going to go tuck myself in. You stay beautiful, you hear?

Labels: happy, holidays, thanksgiving

I am sad to announce that I will not be able to decorate my house to the level that I would like to this holiday season. I would like to cover the house with so many lights that you can see it from space. Sure, the neighbors might not like it, but really, who can stay angry at twinkly lights? Nobody, that's who!

I don't own enough lights to accomplish my dream, nor do I have the manpower available to me to do it. I guess it will have to wait until after I become rich and famous. And have a lot more energy to do stuff like this.

I also pulled out the two shrubs that I normally put lights on every year. That seemed like a good idea until I realized I can't put lights out on these shrubs any more because they aren't there any more. Huh.

So last year, during the January "everything 75% off" sale at Target I bought a little fiber optic tree. Last week I tracked it down so we could see how tall it was. Not tall enough to use as our only tree, not by a long shot. But of course, now that it's set up, I think I'll leave it, just so I have a little something to make me happy. And here it is:

Labels: happy, holidays, lights, video

Picked up an eco-friendly notebook at Staples the other day because the paper was thin. I'm obsessed with thin paper. I like the way it sounds after you've written on it. [Yes, I'm odd. But you already knew that.] The cool thing about this notebook is that it was made in Egypt from bagasse, which is the fancy name for "paper made from sugar cane". Basically they take the pulp of the cane that is left after the extract the sugar and they make paper out of it.

I love this paper. I sometimes write with a fountain pen and it does NOT feather or bleed through, which is amazing, given how thin the paper is. I want to ONLY buy this kind of paper from now on. My only complaint is that Staples only had two sizes of notebooks available and I was looking for one slightly smaller than 6 x 9.5. But I will suffer because it's great stuff. In the meantime, I'm going to look for alternative sources of bagasse paper. Because it's the little things that make me happy.

Labels: happy, shopping

You know, if they could have just moved the inauguration to yesterday, or MLK day to today, I would have been able to join in the celebration of the transition from President #43 to President #44. However, I have to work, and at work, I had a noon meeting scheduled. I could have blown off that meeting, but I think #44 would not want me to prefer leisure over work (his words).

So back to the grind, jealous of anyone who didn't have a noon meeting. You are all stinky poo-poo heads.

Labels: happy, politics

I'm such a sap. This is the kind of thing that makes my husband laugh at me, which is why I cannot watch Field of Dreams with him any more. It doesn't matter how many times I watch it, I always cry.

This is a link to a video of two guys a the lion they raised from a cub until they released him into the wild. This video is 40 years old, put to a modern soundtrack - you can watch without sound. Very safe for work unless you're the kind of person who cries watching Magic Kingdom commercials when the kids see Mickey for the first time. Ya, that's me too.

Labels: happy, holy_crap, video

The post below with the photo of Kitt? It was reposted today on a website with the best domain name I've seen in months. Maybe even centuries.

Thedailyhasselhoff.com.

If any site on the planet is going to link to me, I want it to be a site dedicated to all things Hasselhoff. (You guys know me - you know there is no sarcasm in that statement.) I just need to figure out how to parlay this into even more fame and fortune.

Oh, and for the record, when we saw the car, and we tried to explain what it was and where it was from, we had to use the Spongebob Squarepants movie as a way of explaining who the "Michael" was that the car was talking about. Junior immediately started talking about Hoff's chest hair. (If you haven't seen the S.S. movie - his talking about Hoff's chest hair is not as disturbing as it would be otherwise.)

Labels: famous, happy, link

Today is a good day. Many good things happened in history on this day. 11 years ago on this day I had dinner in the Houston airport. 14 years ago on this day I visited Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth NH. 15 years ago on this day we started a 10 day vacation at Walt Disney World.

See how great a day this is?

Oh the Disney thing? It was our honeymoon.

*smooches* to Mister Dump for 15 great (and interesting) years! (And they said I'd kill you in your sleep it wouldn't last!! Ha! See how little they knew?)

Labels: happy, holidays

Yesterday was Mother's Day here in the United States. (Hey, I have at least one international reader that will admit to it, so let me just pretend I'm I web sensation the world over, would you?) I got my mother's day present earlier (some high quality headphones for my iPod to do a better job of blocking out stray conversations at work) and certainly wasn't expecting anything on Sunday.

But Junior wrote me a poem (I will share it tomorrow, because I don't remember it verbatim and I want to make sure I don't miss a thing) and gave me a little pot with seeds planted in it. I believe the flowers will be marigolds, but he was calling it something else, so we'll see.

We packed up and headed out to Newport to meet up with my brother-in-law and his wife who were up here taking their belated honeymoon. And my new sister-in-law presented me with my "other" Mothers Day Present: salt. I got salt for mother's day! I'll bet nobody else out there can say that!!! I got salt hand-carried all the way from Houston! And I'm beside myself thrilled!

You see, we eat at Bertucci's a lot, and they have Cefalu Sea Salt grinders on the table, and I love this salt more than many many things in my life. Every time we go there (a couple of times a month) I threaten to steal the salt off the table, because we have never been able to find it for sale anywhere. Apparently, Mr. Dump wrote down the name and phone number of the import company and did a ton of footwork to try to track it down. The company would only sell it by the case but apparently there's a liquor store chain in Houston that carries it, and he somehow convinced my SIL to wait in line for 40 minutes (!) to buy me 5 shakers of Cefalu salt (she also bought one for herself). And they gave it to me yesterday and I was bouncing with happiness! No longer do I need to fight the urge to steal!

This is darned tasty salt. It's hard to explain how salt can taste good, but it just tastes, well, salty. It's 100x better than anything you pour out of a round box into a shaker, and you grind it yourself with the built in grinder-top. The bottle says it's imported from Sicily, 100% natural, made only by the Sea and the Sun. Maybe it's the sun that makes it extra good. I recommend that you all go to Bertucci's and try some.

So yes, I got salt for mother's day. And I couldn't be happier.

Labels: food, gifts, happy, holidays

It's my official 2nd day of being an Utter Wonder Hall of Famer. Things are still going exceedingly well in the Hall of Famer department. I had no idea what it was like to be a Hall of Famer, I mean, it's like all of a sudden my life was converted to HD when it used to be just normal regular TV. You don't really know what you're missing until you get that HD TV, and then you scorn the people who are still living with the technology of the 60s and 70s.

That's what it's like being me.

I highly recommend you all become Hall of Famers so that we can start getting together on the 2nd Wednesday of the month for a luncheon. (That's a good word, isn't it? Luncheon. Not just a sandwich and a drink, it's a luncheon, because special people don't just eat lunch. They attend luncheons.

One of you will have to be the guest speaker, though, because I'm going to be busy trying to eat my lunch. Luncheon. Sorry, still not used to all this.

Labels: famous, food, happy, nothingness

The look on Pap's face mirrors how I feel right about now. And I want to point out that I did take a picture of him standing there in a jock strap but Mr. Dump posted the picture he took on his iPhone over on Red Sox Soul because he got to the computer first and I didn't want you to think I was copying him.

Labels: happy, Red_Sox

You can have my 100 Calorie Lorna Doone shortbread cookie crisps when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.

What you have here are animal crackers for grownups, people. Do you hear me? 100 calorie packs of sweet, buttery goodness.

Go. You can thank me later.

Labels: food, happy

I'm sitting out on my deck, drinking a Coffee Coolatta, and I can't think of a better way to spend the afternoon. Well, okay, I can think of a couple of better ways, but those cost money and involve being inside a mall. The breeze is what is making this a great afternoon to sit out on the deck. I highly recommend you run out and get the things mentioned in the subject of this post, and then you can write to me to tell me how great it is at your house!

Unless you live in the southern hemisphere, in which case I'm really sorry, I don't mean to make you feel bad.

Labels: happy, laptop, summer, weather, wireless