Monthly Archives: September 2010

I like Michael Strahan and I don’t like flan

Michael Strahan is awesome. He’s cute and funny. I loved watching him play football and I’m so excited he’s joined the Fox NFL Sunday crew so I can still watch him “play”. 😀

The only way that fivesome could be better is to take Curt Menefee out and replace him with me.

But then I don’t know who would keep order.

Flan is just icky. I can’t get past the texture.

Sayonara

So long, farewell
Auf Wiedersehen, adieu
Adieu, adieu
To you and you and foursquare.

I loved it, I did. The badges, the points. Ahhhh.

If you want to know why I removed it, ask me.

All I’ll say here is foursquare stalking.

Sigh.

The BIG “0”

In two weeks it will be my birthday. This is a big birthday. A milestone birthday. An “0” birthday. Yep, it’s a big one and I need to make a big cake.

My problem is this: I am a Libra.

Right. That’s me. Born under the sign of the scales and I can’t make a decision.

Here’s where I need your help. I love to bake and I want to have a fantabulous birthday cake for my Big “0” birthday but I can’t decide.  I’ve narrowed it down to four choices. Please vote and which ever cake receives the most votes I will make myself for my birthday.

BONUS: If you live close to me, you might have to help me eat this cake as it’s possible that David will be out of the country for my birthday. (Yes, again. This will be the 5th year.)

Okay, here we go.

Cake #1 – Irish Cream Cake

This is a yellow cake with butterscotch frosting. The cake itself is flavored with Irish Cream. I adore pecans, which you can see adorn the outside of the finished cake.

Cake #2 – Turtle Cake

Om nom nom. This cake probably really needs no description. Look at the caramel dripping down the top.  I love Turtles – The Candy and a cakelike version of it has got to be good.

Cake #3 – Delta Mocha Chiffon Cake

Chocolate and coffee. Coffee and chocolate. Yum! What a terrific combination and I love them both with all of my heart.

Cake #4 – Nanny’s Famous Coconut Pineapple Cake

Pineapple and coconut tropical creamy goodness. On the upside for those who live close to me, David detests both coconut and pineapple so there would be more of this cake to share. I rarely get to eat coconut but it is MY birthday after all. 🙂

So there you have it. Please help me decide by voting below. I will so appreciate not having to eat four cakes for my birthday!

Wal-Mart Cashiers – The Game

I have a game I play when we shop at Wal-Mart. I wait for the cashier to greet me when I get to the check-out register. If they do, I will say hi and engage in general chit-chat.

If they don’t, I wait and see if we can get through the whole transaction before I hear them say a word. I say nothing.  On most visits, as it was today, the only words we hear are “Your total is $63.24.”

No hello, no thank you, no kiss my foot. Nothing. That’s all.

Play Wal-Mart Cashiers – The Game at your Wal-Mart and let me know how it goes for you. 😉

Oklahoma coolness

TNRAXBEW4FRY
I was driving to Tulsa the other day for a meeting. The radio was on but I was only loosely listening to it while my mind was wandering over my busy schedule. I remember hearing something, and I can’t at this moment even remember what, that was really cool and it was happening in Oklahoma.

I remember thinking, “Wow! I can’t believe I live in Oklahoma” and “Who knew there were going to be such cool things here?”

I was invited to go on (what I call) a field trip to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) on Thursday. It was a staff visit for the AHA staff members and I was happy they included me because I was so excited to go.

I am not scientifically smart. Oh, I think I have a lot of street smarts and I’m definitely not dumb but scientists are another whole realm. I think that if I could have understood math and science, I definitely would have had a career in science.

Ahhh but I digress.

In the entry way, there was a beautiful replica of a cell in the marble.

And several more large “cells” suspended from the ceiling.

They were amazing and looked like art.

First we saw a video presentation about the new facility that they are in the process of building. It will cost $125 million and it will be the most energy efficient building when it’s done.

Here’s what it will look like then.

See the wind turbines at the top? Each turbine is made to look like a DNA helix.  This is how it looks now.

They have a way to go but already you can see how magnificent the building will be when it’s finished.

We then went to visit Dr. Rheal Towner who told us about the MRI research they are doing with extremely powerful MRI devices.

Next was Dr. Dean Dawson who works with chromosomes. He was funny and passionate about his work. He said they use yeast to do a lot of experiments with because, other than the fact that there is no brain, a yeast cell is fairly close to a human cell. He showed us an example of how they forced a yeast chromosome to split the way a chromosome for Downs Syndrome would split. Next, they will attempt to make it do the same thing with mice.

Our final visit was to Dr. Charles Esmon.

Dr. Esmon is the one person we met who has actually benefitted from funds raised by the American Heart Association. His story of coming up with Protein C to save people with extreme poisoning of the blood was mind bogglingly cool. He also told us that without fundraising organizations like the AHA, much of this research could not be done.

I am really so happy that I was asked to go along on this visit. While a good portion of what they told us probably sailed right over my head, it was clear that these intelligent and dedicated scientists are changing the world as we know it.

And guess what? They are right here in Oklahoma. How cool. 🙂

TNRAXBEW4FRY

Paperdolls

My Mom was a very creative person. When we were small, she made us groceries out of plaster of paris so we could play store. The produce looked SO real we wanted to eat it.

I’ll never forget my 6th birthday that had a Mary Poppins theme. She created Mary Poppins out of a hanger, sewed her outfit, including her carpet bag and this graced the center of my party table. We played the usual party games but I remember the prizes going along with the theme. I remember very specifically a yellow pin that looked like a parasol.  How I wanted to win those prizes!

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, Mom joined Weight Watchers. This was way back in the dark ages and, once her weight was lost, she became a lecturer for them.  She would draw her own posters every week to illustrate the point of her lecture and I think this was the first time I realized that Mom could really draw.

She drew a self portrait in the 80’s that my brother and sister and I saw here and there. We all agreed we needed to throw that away when we came across it while packing up her apartment last November.  She looked angry in the self portrait and I don’t think any of us wanted to remember Mom like that.

Mom was fun and she was unique. We always knew when she was angry though because her left eyebrow would raise, seemingly on its own.

I brought quite a few boxes of mom’s stuff home with me after we went through her storage units in May. I haven’t really had time to do much with them but I keep being surprised by the things I find when I take some time to look.

I was speaking with someone this a.m. who suggested I read The Traveler’s Gift. I told her that I have this book, it was in Mom’s things, and I pulled the book out of the box it was in while I was talking to her.

I just opened up the book and look what I found?

A little hand drawn, cut out, lady with a dog. I know Mom drew this. It’s like she’s still making me paper dolls. 🙂

Littering by any other name…

My friend J and I have been walking pretty regularly for almost three years now. (Wow! Has it been that long?) Our normal path takes us south down Keeler Avenue, east on 18th Street, then north on Johnstone Ave until we get back to her house on 12th street.

We call ourselves The Old Bat Patrol. Along the way, we pick up garbage. We even have garbage sticks and t-shirts.

It’s pretty amazing to both of us just how much garbage accumulates along this path when we are pretty diligent in picking it up four days a week. The main things we pick up are pop cups, beer cans, cigarette packages and The Hometown Shopper. Lots and lots of copies of The Home Town Shopper.

The Home Town Shopper is a Bartlesville Examiner Enterprise production. It’s tossed in the yards of every house on our walking path on either Tuesday or Wednesday, I can’t be sure. We even get a copy on the lawn of The Big House, which is currently (and noticeably) unoccupied. I pick them up when I mow the grass.

We don’t have a subscription to the Examiner Enterprise but are still the recipient of this paper that goes straight from my lawn into my garbage can. I unrolled the one above so I could take a photo to add to this blog.

Dear Examiner- Enterprise,

No one is reading The Home Town Shopper which you so generously toss on our lawns each week.

They run over them with their lawnmowers.

Leaving little schnibbles for us to try and pick up.

They just leave them lay, until they are yellow and so many in number that J and I pick them up and throw them away for you.

Sometimes, they land in the street (or are put there!).

When they look like this

we can’t pick them up anymore. They’ve become one with the asphalt.

We love walking, including picking up the garbage. It’s good exercise and it makes us feel like we are doing something possitive for our neighborhood.

I do, however, feel sorry for the advertisers in the Examiner-Enterprise who believe that there are people actually seeing their advertisements in The Home Town Shopper. It’s clear that no one is reading these papers.

It might be time for the Examiner-Enterprise to get into the 21st century and find some better way to help their advertisers get their word out. Hey, twitter is free! 🙂

Cardboard obsession

It has come to my attention, that I may be obsessed with cardboard. That fact hit me last night as we were opening the new Mr. Coffee maker that we had to buy when I took the old coffee carafe out of the dishwasher and it was broken.

David was helping me to get the new coffee maker out of it’s packaging. If you’ve ever done that before, you know that with the styrofoam, etc. it’s kind of a two person job. Especially if you don’t want to break the new carafe.

As I was unwrapping the machine, I was handing the packaging pieces to David. After I thought it was all unwrapped, he said, “Aren’t you going to take that cardboard off?” pointing to the burner. Lo and behold, there was the most beautifully round piece of cardboard I have ever seen!

He tried to take it away from me to put it with the rest of the discarded packaging and I snatched it back from him. “No! I want to keep that.”

I stood there admiring my beautiful cardboard circle. Honestly, I have no use for it but I do love it.

This morning, I looked across the room and saw this:

What is that? Boxes. More cardboard. I just can’t bring myself to throw them away. I might “need” them.

I also have quite a collection of these:

These come to  me when my pageant contestants send their headshots.

I suppose I should really just throw all of these cardboard fancies away but it makes me feel kind of good when I can recycle one of the boxes or the one time I actually used one of the flat cardboard pieces to protect a mailing.

You’ve seen, I’m green, I’m the Cardboard Queen. 🙂

The geek in me

I’ve written before about the fabulous info we learn at the Bartlesville Marketing and Communications Association meetings and I have another story for you today.

Last Thursday’s meeting was about the impact of QR codes on your business. QR code? What in the heck is that? The pageant isn’t like a normal business so I was convinced I would learn nothing of any use to me. I didn’t really even want to go to the meeting, I was that sure it wouldn’t be worth it. But I decided that had to go to the meeting because I am the secretary of the association and I didn’t really have a good excuse not to go.

I am not a secretary kind of gal. I take horrible notes. I get too caught up in what’s going on, or too distracted by other things if I’m bored.  Attention span of a gnat. But being the BMCA secretary is awesome because I get to live tweet the event. That keeps me interested, focused and occupied. 🙂

Once Scott got started, I was enthralled. How had I never heard of a QR code before? They are big in Japan and you can find them on buildings and billboards and CDs. They are everywhere.

What is it? It’s a code, kind of like a UPC code, that when scanned, will take you directly to a website, dial a phone number or send a text. How cool is that?!

I felt a little Veruca Salt-ish. “I want it and I want it NOW!”

I couldn’t wait for the meeting to be over so I could get to work on my first QR code. This thing that I thought would have no use in my business, I suddenly knew had endless possibilities.

Here’s my new non-pageant business card. The QR code in the lower right corner, when scanned, takes you directly to the Rott-I-Tude facebook page. Awesome!

Expect to start seeing these in my life. I will for sure be putting one in the pageant program book and am thinking of putting one this year’s t-shirt for the contestants. And now, you will know what it is when you see it!

Scott referred to me as a social media queen but, honestly, I think I’m just a geek. 🙂

Click the link here to see David Austin’s interview with Scott Townsend about QR codes.

In a foxhole

Today is my aunt Bonnie’s 75th birthday! Bonnie is my mom’s older sister. There were just the two of them and Bonnie was a big part of our lives growing up because she and Mom were close and we usually lived pretty close to them.

She is the polar opposite of my mom. Mom was always a dreamer, a little flighty – kinda like me. Bonnie represents a calm steadiness to me. When I was in bootcamp, our drill instructor asked us if we had to be in a foxhole with any woman who would we choose? I chose Bonnie.

Which bothered my mom. But I knew that if I were in a foxhole with my mom we’d probably end up getting our heads blown off and my best chances lay with her sister.

When I was young, Bonnie was a teacher. When I was in 5th grade, my regular teacher had to have surgery and Bonnie was put into our room as a long term substitute. One of my other uncles and aunt lived in Hawaii at the time and we happened to be studying Hawaii in school. When she called me out with this fact in front of my classmates, painfully shy little me wanted to just crawl under the table and die. I cried. I think that’s the only bad memory I have of Bonnie. 🙂

Last October, when I went out to be with Mom, I feel like I bonded even further with Bonnie. During the whole of Mom’s illness, death and aftermath, Bonnie did the heavy lifting. Oh we moved the furniture, but she handled the housing, insurance, funeral, etc. The heavy stuff. The hard stuff. She was there when I called, when I needed a shoulder.

I want to take today to tell you just how special Bonnie is to me and how blessed my sisters, brother and I are to have her in our lives.

I love you, Bonnie. May your day be as special as you!