Weekend update

The weekend was OK. I had a ton to do and just not enough hours. In addition to work, and cleaning, and the usual soccer, I had my second piano lesson. It was great. Apparently I'm too hard on myself and I am doing way better than most adults on their second class. Of course, I have had many years of music experience. But according to the piano teacher, playing the piano is a whole other story. So yay!

I went out to dinner with the family on Sunday for Father's Day. And while I have allegedly done so in the past, this year I really did find the perfect card for my dad. It said: "I know that all these years I was a little difficult, hard-headed at times, and had that know-it-all attitude, but there was a good reason for all that: HEREDITY!" Boy oh boy, that card sure got it all right and dad got a great laugh from it.

My dad and I had always had that special bond, and I think maybe it made my mom just a little jealous. My brother and she were making fun of us while we were waiting to be seated for dinner. Some things just never change! No matter what though, we've always been a happy family, and I really appreciate that. There are also a lot of people around me that don't get along with their parents that they don't even call them, and that just blows my mind, and makes me appreciate mine just a little bit more.

All in all it was a good weekend, but if I had less work to do, it would have been even better.

Another fun-filled busy weekend

My weekend started on Friday. Unlike myself, I decided to go out on Friday night, mainly because a friend is a teacher and they were having a benefit for the school where she teaches at a bar nearby. Don't worry, the kids weren't invited. But now I know how teachers dealt with the craziness of teaching: the got together and got drunk! So, I did too. Sadly, I was drunk and back at home before midnight. That's what happens when you start drinking at 7 pm.

Saturday, I had breakfast/lunch with a friend, then went shopping for a mother's day gift. My mom is SO hard to shop for. She has everything she needs, and she's not the kind of person for whom you can buy useless little cute things. So I ended up buying her some books, because she used to be very well-read, and even now she still reads, but mostly books in Arabic. I thought that she really needs to read some good books in English, so I bought her a couple of books about politics, one of them about Hillary Clinton, and the other about Lenin. Then I picked up a gift card for her.

Well, good thing I did that yesterday, because we ended up celebrating mother's day on Saturday evening. I took my parents to a nice Italian restaurant. They really liked it. Very unusual, because they usually are very picky about the places where they eat.

***HOT REF ALERT! HOT REF ALERT!***

Today, Sunday, I had to play in two soccer games, but ended up playing in three. You see, I played a long soccer game in the morning, about 2 hours. My afternoon game was at 4:30. When we got done, the teams that were playing after us needed more girls to be able to play and not forfeit their game, so I stayed, but I really only stayed because of the cute ref. Oh, I've talked about him previously.

Well, today, me and the cute ref were flirting WAY TOO MUCH. I found out his name is Robert, and when he told me that, I said: "you don't look like a Robert."
He said: "oh yeah, what did you think my name is?"
I couldn't come up with anything and just said: "I don't know, something else."
He said: "well, let me know when you come up with it."
I said: "too late. It would've been better if it just came out, then I would seem witty. Now, it's a lost cause."
In reality, I had a name for him: "A F-ING HOT REF THAT I WANT TO DO RIGHT ON THE SOCCER FIELD." But I didn't know how he would take that!

I guess Robert will do. We laughed together a lot. He laughed at some stupid jokes I made. He said: "it's not fair, you make me laugh, you say really funny witty things."
He said: "I'm a happy person, I like happy people. You seem like a happy person."
He also said: "I really like nice people. You seem pretty nice."

When I was leaving, he said: "see you next week."
I said: "actually see you in two weeks or actually three weeks."
He said: "you won't be here next week? Why not?"

He is really cute. So cute, I just want to lick him. I don't know why. I'm not too crazy about the name Robert. I may have to rename him. I should tell him that next time. Someone help me come up with a good name for him. He has straight dark brown hair, and nice brown eyes, and a beautiful smile. He's fit, about 6' or 6'1". Let that guide you in helping me name him. He's definiltey the cat's meow. MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOW!

Again, ignorance is bliss

As I was filling a glass with ice and cold water from the dridge door this past weekend at a family gathering, a cousin that I happily only see once a year came up to me and offered me her advice:

"You know, if you drink iced water you get fat."
"But I like my water cold."
"It'll make you fat. Just drink warm water to lose weight."
"So when I drink cold water, I gain calories?"
"Yes, that's well-known."
"Water has no calories, hot, lukewarm, or cold."
"Nope, cold water makes you fat."

At this point I decided that the problem with this person is beyond my abilities to fix, so I just nodded and walked away.

Now, maybe there's some sort of a connection between having a good appetite and drink cold water of which I am not aware. But to flatly insist that cold water is fattening is a whole other story.

Another highlight from the family get together is the topic of my church attendance.

"Geez, I haven't seen you at church in a long time. How long has it been?"
"Easter..."
"That's not too bad!"
"... of 2004!"
"Shame on you! Why don't you go to church?"
"Scheduling conflicts."
"With what?"
"Soccer."
"Seriously?"
"Yes. The minute I start losing as much calories sitting in a church as I do on the soccer field, I'll come to Church instead of going to soccer."
"You're hopeless!"
"I think that conclusion was arrived at a looooong time ago."

These people really need to give up! REALLY!

Solving a mathematical problem

For the past few years I have been getting sick at what I thought were randomly spaced out times of the year. In a way, that's true, because Easter is not on a set date, and it moves around somewhere between February and April. Finally, it dawned on me, I always get sick after holidays. What the hell?

Sure enough, right now I am dealing with an annoying headache that is usually associated with symptons of the flu. How the hell could this have happened? We can add that to many other times when I had the flu for a couple of weeks following Easter, Christmas, or a Fourth of July family picnic. And of course, my favorite is the time when I got the stomach flu after Christmas in 2002, and I was puking my guts out non-stop for 3 days. I even threw up when I had nothing in my stomach, which I believe is called dry heaving. Well, you can imagine the beautiful noises that accompanied that. At the time, I had just returned from college after finishing grad school and was living with my parents still. My mom treated me like I was dying. She didn't realize that the stomach flu was not a deadly disease. She now remembers that time and says how horrible I looked, sitting on the couch, not being able to lift my head, and resembling a chewed up rag more than anything else.

Point of the story is, I examined the patterns and finally figured out that it is the children that do all this to me. The problem is that kids are constantly carrying many viruses, and sometimes they don't show the symptoms, so when you see them at family gatherings, and hold them around, hugging them and kissing them and taking pictures with them, while they get snotty and spitty, you are really just giving the viruses a chance to exchange a little host for a big host with an immune system ready to fall apart at an instant's notice. Those evil little kids, they fool you with the cuteness and then BAM they take you down when you least expect it! Thanks little P and little S, I don't know how much candy I can put in your hands next time I see you just to show my appreciation for whichever of you gave me the nice virus that is chewing up my head right now!

Things for which to be thankful

Every year for Thanksgiving we have family over our house and do the whole stuffing our faces thing. It's always fun. I help my parents run around and get everything together before people get over, and we always end up with food that could feed an army. But hey, I'm not going to complain. I always took a lot of leftovers with me back to college and now back to my place. I love leftovers. I'm all about leftovers. But after that whole "I can't believe I ate that much" feeling subsides, I always think about how in the rush of things I forgot to think about all the things for which I'm thankful. I always promise to take a moment the following year and be thankful to get that fulfilling feeling of joy and maybe eat less. That's a huge maybe.

But here are a few other things I'm thankful for:

1) Post-it notes - I can't live without them, they're on my mirror, all around my computer and all over my desks at home and work - they complete me

2) The weather channel - it's amazing, they tell you what the weather is going to be like and you can get ready accordingly, they're mostly off, but eh, it's cool - Local on the 8s

3) Direct deposit - imagine how much time you save when you don't have to go and deposit your check in the bank, and it's cool when you check your account and there's that much more in it - yes, I'm easily amused

4) Twist-it eye liner - forget those eyeliner sharpeners, they never work that well anyway, the eyeliner loses sharpness after one use, and the soft black center gets stuck on the blade of the sharpener - twist it and go on

5) Gift registries - long are gone the days of filling your house with other people's taste, and seriously, I don't like thinking about what to get people, so everyone should do it, except that one chick for whose bridal shower registered for underwear, jeans, and lipstick (I'm not joking!)

6) The snooze button - if you know me, you know I am a snoozer, I once snoozed for three hours, I'm addicted - the snooze button also completes me!

7) Twinkies - they're the ultimate American snack, they define us, and they last forever, you can leave then on the shelf for ages, and still be able to eat them, they will survive a nuclear holocaust - mmmm, artificial spongy god-knows what's in them suppository-shaped "pastry"

8) Cheesy 80s movies - seriously, they're the ultimate girls get togethers entertainments, and I don't know about you, but most of my friends remember when those movies came out, and when you watch them you have hours and hours of amusement - not a dull moment wit 80s movies, back in the 80s, now, or when we're in our 80s

9) Jack Daniels - all those times I had to go to football games and it was really cold and no coat or sweatshirt could keep me warm, Jack did, and even when I put it in my half bottle of diet coke and snuck it into Wrigley then chugged it when my friends convinced me that the security people were going to take it from me if I didn't finish it before the 4th inning, it made me happy, REALLY HAPPY - Jack also completes me...

10) Blogs - if it weren't for blogs, what would I do with all the extra time I saved because of direct deposit - thank you blogs!