Camp Fire Candy & Girl Scout Cookies

I was a Camp Firl girl, myself, but I have to say that the Girl Scout Cookies are far superior to the candy that we had to peddle to our neighbors.

Many years ago, the GS finally got it right...forget the old way of taking pre-orders for the cookies...just distribute a large amount of cookie boxes to the various troops and have the girls sell them around town. I let the GS set up a table outside my store a couple Sundays ago, and I bought cookies outside a Kroger store Friday night and outside a Blockbuster Saturday night.

I remember getting the shiny Camp Fire Candy order sheet each fall, my head dizzy with dreams of how I'd pay for two full weeks of summer camp by selling some obscene number of boxes. My dreams were short lived, as I was a rather unattractive child, tall for her age, and awkward looking in her cute little uniform, with not much success tapping on the doors of the neighborhood. I think I usually reached about 35-50 boxes of candy sold each year...just enough to get a stuffed animal or pen or some such trinket. I knew it was junk even then.

But still every year, I tried. That's back when it was still safe for a young kid to ride her bike around the neighborhood and knock on strangers' doors. Any sane parent wouldn't think of allowing their kid to do that alone in a big city these days.

So I applaud the GS for trying to raise money with a mighty tasty cookie or two or two billion. My favorites are the caramel ones, the peanut butter patty ones, and the thin mints. I encourage you to pay the exhorbitant $3.50/box if you happen to come across these young ladies peddling their brightly colored boxes some time in the near future. Who the hell knows what the money goes toward; the cookies taste good, and sometimes that's just enough.

Bach Is NOT Pronounced B-A-T-C-H

Are there no music classes at all being taught in schools these days? When I was in elementary school, we had music class and art class on alternating days in 4th and 5th grades, then I was in band from 6th grade all the way through college. Even so, even if a person has never experienced the beauty and excitement that is music class, is it not a fair expectation that they know at least some of the most famous classical music composers in the history of the world? Is it also not fair to expect that they know how to pronounch Bach's name? I'm not talking here about the debate between Bach pronouned as 'bock' versus 'bochh' with the clearing-of-the-throat sound at the end. And in context to what happened the other day, I'm not even talking about the composer Bach. I am talking about an author of personal finance books named David Bach, whose name, believe it or not (gasp!), is pronounced just the same as the composer's. Imagine my dismay and extreme inability to withhold hilarious laughter when, 2 days ago at work, one of my peeps radioed upstairs for another person to pull a copy of "Smart Women Finish Rich" by David Batch. Good golly.

Today the topic was 'Cloning' in my daily reading of The Intellectual Devotional. I almost wish the entries were longer in this book, but I guess the point is to be brief in length and consistent in the reading of them.

I leave for Colorado in a little less than 2 weeks. I'm very much looking forward to it.

I'm tired. That is all.

Wait. My post looks very unbalanced. It looks heavy at the top and light at the bottom. My post does not meet visual presentation expectations. I should do something about that....later.

'For Your Consideration'

Christopher Guest's latest foray into the world of sublime parody left me feeling less than emphatic about recommending 'For Your Consideration', which was released on DVD today.

I felt 'A Mighty Wind' was a step down from 'Best in Show', and this film was a small leap down further.

Certainly, there were laugh-out-loud moments, such as when the character of a studio executive, while trying to convince the writers of a film called 'Home for Purim' to 'tone down the Jewishness' of the picture, proclaimed loudly, "I don't run around telling people I'm a Gentile, look at my foreskin! I don't cram it down peoples' throats!" Equally funny was another character's claim that she enjoyed Latinous food. When questioned if she meant Mexican food, she said, "No, Latin food, for people who speak Latin."

I won't bother relating the plot of the film, because the plot really doesn't matter. It is the ad lib character interaction that makes or breaks these films, and this was just missing something. It was still a funny film, I'm just disappointed it wasn't more so.
----------------------------------
The entry from the Intellectual Devotional for today was about James Joyce's Ulysses. Maybe someday I'll browbeat myself into attempting to read this work. Or maybe not.
----------------------------------
Sixteen days until I leave for Colorado. I still need to find something nice to wear to the awards banquet. Maybe I'll have time on Thursday to go looking.

No Title

I was working on a performance evaluation for one of my Managers this afternoon when the lights blinked. I went to quickly save the document, but then the power went completely off for a couple of seconds. Drat! I lost a very well-thought out portion of his review. I was able to reconstruct it, but it didn't have the same poetic beauty as the original version.

No tainted peanut butter for me. I only have Jiffy and the Kroger store brand in my cupboard.

I need advice: Dish Network or Direct TV? Definitely not cable.

Has anyone else's energy (electricity) bill gone insanely high in the past couple of months? I'm all about conserving electricity right now. In fact, I need to go turn off some lights in a minute.

I cooked a lovely peppercorn pork loin tonight with wild grain rice and a garden salad. It sure was tasty, and I have plenty of leftovers to take to work with me.

I purchased 'The Secret' and 'The Intellectual Devotional' today. I read today's passage in the latter, and am about 1/3 of the way through the former. I dig both of them. I'm very much getting into universal law of attraction, the power of intention, etc.

Aggravated with Blogger

This is the 3rd time I've tried to get Blogger to work with me.

You get no great posting as a result. Here are only bullet points, which is all I have the patience for right now.

* Kicked out a vagrant from the store on Friday. This is not unusual, but they have been quite vulgar recently. This one called me a cunt, stupid bitch, sow, and tried to spit on me. Nice.

* Beatiful weather today.

* 'The Secret' by Byrne has been the most popular book since Million Little Pieces. If you liked 'What the Bleep Do We Know?' or the idea of the power of intention, or just metaphysical/spiritual stuff in general, you may want to check out this book and/or DVD.

* I'm gearing up for my trip to Colorado. I think I have all the cold weather stuff I need.

* Received my tax return on Friday.

* All my fish are well. Gracie kitty is well.

* Sometimes my staff members tell me way too much personal stuff.

I'm sure I have more, but losing two well-thought out posts in an effort to get the goddam link to work is not worth it.

Free TV for Me

I still don't know how to post links. The only two things I have in my toolbar above are a spellcheck icon and an 'add image' icon.

Anyway...

I found out today that my store won 3rd place in a sales contest involving the Sony Reader. This means that everyone on my staff, plus my boss and my boss' boss each receive a Sony MP3 player. I also get a big arse Sony Bravia flat panel LCD HDTV. Now I MUST get cable or satellite service so that I can join the rest of America in becoming a TV glutton. I am very pleased.

In other news...there was an article in the paper Saturday about the Corteo performance. It mentioned that the injured performer was not seriously injured. Thank goodness. Some of the cast members were in the grocery store across the street during lunchtime today, and I was going to thank them for such a great performance and inquire after their castmate, but I didn't want to hunt them down across the store. Then when I went back to my store, one of my supervisors told me that a cast member had just been in the store. The weather is coldish today, and these folks were wearing black jackets with "Cirque du Soleil" and a large sun embroidered on the backs, which explains how we knew who they were.

I'm still working crazy hours, trying to get this project at work completed. Tomorrow may be the longest day yet. My poor kitty is wailing at me because she misses me.

One last thing. Avoid GE soft white 100 "Energy Saver" lightbulbs. They are the ones shaped like a spiral that are supposed to last for several years, take less energy than a standard 100 watt lightbulb (because they are in fact only 26 watts), and therefore save around $50 per year in energy. These things definitely do NOT illuminate as brightly as a regular 100 watt incandescent bulb. I'd say they perform about 1/2 to 2/3 as well, despite the information on the package that says they'll illuminate the same. They're expensive, too. I've already thrown out that receipt, or I'd take them back.

It's 10:45 and I'm eating a dinner of sunflower seeds and Welch's grape soda. What does that say about me?

Free TV for Me

I still don't know how to post links. The only two things I have in my toolbar above are a spellcheck icon and an 'add image' icon.

Anyway...

I found out today that my store won 3rd place in a sales contest involving the Sony Reader. This means that everyone on my staff, plus my boss and my boss' boss each receive a Sony MP3 player. I also get a big arse Sony Bravia flat panel LCD HDTV. Now I MUST get cable or satellite service so that I can join the rest of America in becoming a TV glutton. I am very pleased.

In other news...there was an article in the paper Saturday about the Corteo performance. It mentioned that the injured performer was not seriously injured. Thank goodness. Some of the cast members were in the grocery store across the street during lunchtime today, and I was going to thank them for such a great performance and inquire after their castmate, but I didn't want to hunt them down across the store. Then when I went back to my store, one of my supervisors told me that a cast member had just been in the store. The weather is coldish today, and these folks were wearing black jackets with "Cirque du Soleil" and a large sun embroidered on the backs, which explains how we knew who they were.

I'm still working crazy hours, trying to get this project at work completed. Tomorrow may be the longest day yet. My poor kitty is wailing at me because she misses me.

One last thing. Avoid GE soft white 100 "Energy Saver" lightbulbs. They are the ones shaped like a spiral that are supposed to last for several years, take less energy than a standard 100 watt lightbulb (because they are in fact only 26 watts), and therefore save around $50 per year in energy. These things definitely do NOT illuminate as brightly as a regular 100 watt incandescent bulb. I'd say they perform about 1/2 to 2/3 as well, despite the information on the package that says they'll illuminate the same. They're expensive, too. I've already thrown out that receipt, or I'd take them back.

It's 10:45 and I'm eating a dinner of sunflower seeds and Welch's grape soda. What does that say about me?

Corteo

I am winding down from a very long day. Actually, I'm not winding down. I'm still very much wired. I was finally able to get to sleep about 2:30am last night. I woke up at 7am, worked from 8-6, ate dinner with my friends, then drove us to the site at Fair Park where Corteo was being performed. After the show, I came back to my store and worked until midnight. I'm still very untired...perhaps because of that vanilla breve I had at 11.

Corteo was magnificent, as expected. It is not my favorite Cirque show, but it was extremely well executed...until a performer seriously injured himself in the finale.

In the finale there were 6 men's gymnastic-type high bars set up on stage, four of them creating a square, and one each on either side. The men were gymnasticizing all over the place, and then one guy had a solo. He did the usual maneuvers you'd see on tv, but when he was doing his dismount, he did a double back flip and caught the front part of his legs above the ankles and below the mid-shin on the bars, then smacked to the mat. He didn't move, and a few of his fellow performers rushed to his aid. One of the performers made a big "X" sign with his arms a couple of times, and various members of the stage crew rushed on stage. The audience was deathly silent; only the noise of the heating system could be heard. A person brought out a backboard, and the guy still wasn't moving. An announcement was made that one of the performers had been injured, and the performance was stopped momentarily, as though we couldn't see that for ourselves. One of the crew members talked to a couple of performers nearest the wings, and then those performers started a 'telephone chain', communicating some sort of information to the other 30-odd people on stage. It took less than a minute for them to do this.

After the injured guy was strapped into the backboard and taken off stage, we all applauded for him, just like you do when a person gets injured at a sporting event, and then the music started up again. The cast stood near the edges of the stage, and they proceeded to take their bows, signifying the end of the performance. We all gave a standing ovation, because they really needed that support right then.

As I was leaving, my friends and other people around me were saying things like 'I hope he's ok'. He was so obviously NOT ok. I'm sure it hurt like hell to crash his shins against that bar, then drop 10 feet to the ground and land on his face.

As we were heading out to my car, the ambulance was trying to get to the tents. I wish the guy a speedy and full recovery.

DIsregard Previous Blog Posting

Now, either you will have already scrolled down to read said previous blog, thereby disregarding my instruction, or you have followed instruction and be reading this and only this. Either way, I take pity on you, O Child of the Blog World.

My internal clock is off tonight. I should be in bed asleep right now, but I'm just not quite ready. Today was my day off, but I went in at 7am this morning after leaving at midnight last night. I had called in a team of people to work on a project that is due next Friday. We're now about 25% complete; it's a big project, though not a difficult one.

I haven't been getting much sleep in the past week or so, and I was gravely tired when I came home about noonish, so I took a nap...a long one. After 5 hours of sleeping, I got up, fed the fishies and the kitty, and played the ridiculous game I wrote about below. And of course, now I'm not tired enough to get some sleep.

I do have a fun day planned tomorrow, however. Oh, and before I forget, my orange vest arrived from Land's End today. I had it shipped to work, since I'm never home. It's quite cute, and when I fall down the mountain and over a cliff while skiing in Colorado next month, they'll be able to find me in my new garments. But really, we all know the real reason I bought the stuff is because it matches my beautiful vehicle.

On to tomorrow...after a glorious day at work I will be going to see Cirque du Soleil's Corteo at Fair Park. I believe this is the 4th, maybe the 5th, Cirque show that I will have seen. All hail the procurer of free tickets who then gives them to me! I'm going with several work colleagues, and it is opening night, so it will hopefully be a vibrant performance.

Schell, I thought of you on Tuesday. Wentworth Miller was in my store again. I immediately thought of you and your family because of what you posted in your blog about watching his show together. I was going to say something to him, to pass along how much you enjoy the show, but really, how would it have sounded coming out of my mouth? Probably something like this:

"So, hi there. You shop in my store practically every week. You usually buy magazines with your picture on the cover...not that there's anything wrong with that. I need to tell you that this baseball hat you're wearing today is far more flattering than your sea foam green fishing hat that you usually wear; because let's face it, no one should be wearing a sea foam green hat of any kind. Oh, and I never watch your show because I don't have tv. I mean, I have a tv. I have two TVs, I just don't have 'tv'. I know that's confusing. You see, I have televisions, I just don't have cable, and broadcast reception around here is inadequte which makes no sense but is true. So, I watch everything on DVD, which is really not cost-effective, because at the end of the year it would be much less expensive to simply get satellite or cable or both rather than spend what I do on DVDs. But that's not what I wanted to tell you..."

Well, you can see where that is going.

I'm trying to ration my Dublin Dr. Pepper, but it is just so dang tasty that it's difficult to do so. I should have purchased 2 or 3 cases when I was down there.

I can't remember if I've mentioned before that my nephew is playing chess. He seems to be really enjoying it. It's apparently pretty common now that elementary school kids play chess in after school activities and such. He sometimes plays with a 2nd grader in 'after care' at school as well as challenging his Dad and his Kuppaw (grandpa/my dad) on Sundays. I'm sure the 2nd grader wins most of the games, but it's good for Nephew to learn that he can't win all the time.

I found out on Wednesday that I'll be a trainer again this year. The conference is in April this year, so it should be springtime in Michigan by then...much better than than the bald brown winters of past conferences.

I'm still not sleepy, but I think I should try to get some sleep before going to work.

Billionaire at Fish Tycoon

Because of Emma's blog post (to which I posted a comment, but now it's not there!), I decided to revisit a game I played briefly this spring called Fish Tycoon. You can find the web version at Yahoo games.

If you read some of the short reviews, there are many people who say the game is too slow and you can't make any money, and there are many people who say they have infinite money and have bred all the magical fish.

The game is quite simple, and I find it amusing in a strange sort of way. You have two fish tanks; one is 'tank one' and one is the 'sell tank'. You start off with some fish eggs and growth hormone and $300 in an account to buy supplies from the fish store. Over time, the fish grow, and when they are 20 days old, you can drag them into a box on the screen, check their family tree, and set a sale price for them. By cross-breeding them, you can create exotic fish and hopefully/eventually find the 7 magic fish.

If you have a couple hours to spare, it's a fun thing to try. Here are some helpful hints:

-Find a method of keeping track of your hybrids (this is not easy because there are at least 26 base fish; that's a log of cross breeding!)
-Fish will sell in the store for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I started out selling them at $1,000 each
-With a couple thousand dollars you can buy all the decorations that are available on the web version. This wil draw bigger crowds to the fish store
-The bigger crowds will then pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the fish, so money no longer is an issue
-You can use the growth hormones to speed up the pregnancy and of course the growth process of the fish
-With 26 minimum base fish, finding the 7 magic fish may be easier achieved by random pairings than by systematic trial and error
-Not all options are available on the web game, so it is greatly limited...still, it's free entertainment

Yes, Emma, They're Orange

My hat, scarf, and shoes are orange. The vest didn't come in orange, so I got black. I am placing an order tonight, though, for another vest (this one will be regular ol' goose down) which IS orange. I'm such a freak. I used to hate the color orange; now I think it is vibrant, vital, and vivid.

Verbie, what brand of water filter do you have on your fish tank? The one on my 29-gallon tank at home is having some problems, and I want to replace it. It came with the set-up kit, so I think it is PetSmart's brand called Top Fin.

I did my taxes yesterday. I had saved all my receipts for 2006, but even when I added up the sales tax on all 600+ transactions, including my car and computer, it still didn't add up to more than the personal exemption/deduction/whatever, so I saved all the receipts for nothing. I did verify, however, that all my money goes to about 5 or 6 main places. Lucky them. I wonder if that is the case with everyone?

iTunes still hasn't gotten a quality copy of SG-1 season 10 or Atlantis season 3, so I cannot download them. I am most peeved regarding this.

I love spring rolls...tasty. Oh, and Welch's grape soda...mmm.

Gracie kitty was thundering around last night as I was trying to get to sleep. She runs through the vertical blinds in the living room, tears around to the other side of the apartment, runs back, jumps into the tub, and mreows. Silly kitty.

I think that's all I have...nothing very exciting today.

Colorado

I have a meeting in Denver in mid-March. A few of my friends and I are going up early, staying in Estes Park for a few nights, and having a mini-break holiday (as Bridget Jones would say). I'm very excited, as I've never gone snow skiing before. And since I've never gone skiing before, and Texas never gets that much snow, I found myself in need of some cold weather clothes. Awwww, too bad, I know.

So, I ordered the cutest hat and scarf and snow shoes from Land's End. Guess what color they are? I also ordered some long underwear bottoms and sock liners, cold weather water-resistant gloves and a vest that is supposed to keep me warm in 20 degree weather. The vest fits snugly, but I figure once I layer some clothing underneath, it'll be too tight, so I'm going to return that one and get the next size up.

I know a couple of people who might visit this blog live in Colorado. What activities do you recommend that are near/around Estes Park?
______________________________

I sold back the DVDs last week and bought Stargate Seasons 2-5. I got a decent amount for each box set I sold back, and I have tons more to sell back.

Tonight I purchased the new Norah Jones CD. I'll listen to it tomorrow on the drive to my parents' house. I'm sure I'll enjoy it greatly.
______________________________

Fiscal 2006 ended tonight. I'm looking forward to a great year in 2007.
______________________________

My nephew's Kindergarten teacher passed away a few weeks ago. The headmaster at his school called the parents of all the kids in his class (I think he may only have 12-15 kids in his class). At least one parent came to the school to be with their child when the headmaster told the kids. My nephew enjoyed his teacher very much. My sister says my nephew is taking the death pretty well, but when someone is late or doesn't show up at a particular time, he thinks that person is dead.
______________________________