If You....

Hate cancer and love Sheldon...

ETA: I didn't realize this wouldn't fit in the space on my blog. But if you mouse over the video and click on the name of the video in the upper left corner it will take you to the youtube page.

Wasted Talent

It seems like every time I come back here I talk about why I haven't been here. This can't possibly be interesting to anybody, so I won't go into it now. But it does relate a little to what I'm thinking about today.

Last night my family and I watched A Bronx Tale, a fantastic story of a kid growing up in a 1960's Bronx neighborhood, caught in the middle of the classic good vs. evil struggle: His father is a decent, hardworking man who refuses to be corrupted. His mentor is the local mobster (I'm way too suburban white-bread boring to know the proper terminology for his position despite having watched all six seasons of The Sopranos.) The story is mostly true, based on the childhood of actor/author Chazz Palminteri.

The movie is certainly a classic, and I highly recommend it, but this is not a movie review. It's about hearing something in the movie that hit me, all epiphany-like.

A few different times the father tells the main character, "The saddest thing in life is wasted talent." This morning I printed those words and taped them to the wall over my desk. I put my writing under the category of a talent. I mean, I'm not a fantastic writer who will write the greatest novel ever to be seen, I will probably never see anything of mine featured anywhere that actually pays for that type of thing. Just because mine is not the best talent of all those who have it still makes it a talent, doesn't it? Or maybe if I'm not going to be the next Hemingway I should just not bother. From what I understand, there have been writers who are considered untalented who have made millions. If I enjoy writing things that are virtually unreadable I should still write them, I suppose. Besides, how will I get any better when all I do is think about how this, that or the other thing would make a good blog entry.

Look at me talking myself into writing. From what I understand the great writers can't not write. I can't not not write. But, continuing on the theme from the "wasted talent" line, I am sad a lot of the time. Maybe the sad thing in my life is the talent I'm letting go to waste. Perhaps I haven't realized that the sad will go away when I write. Maybe that's the connection I always thought was lacking.

Despite my realization that living a life philosophy based on a line from a movie is inherently sad in and of itself, I'm gonna give it a whack. Couldn't be any worse than Scientology.

My Sushi

...is very pretty tonight. Just wanted to share.

A New Era Dawns...

A lot has happened for me over the last few months. A lot will hopefully be happening over the next few. And if you're reading this, I'll be sharing it with you from wherever I go! That's all I can say for now... Meanwhile, please enjoy this picture of my cat playing in our hamster aquarium. Yeah, I know...

My Lost Party - Let Me Show You It

As soon as the date was announced for the premiere episode for Lost Season 5 I began planning my Lost Party. My original plan was to have people over for the actual airing, but my wise friend Gerry suggested we should watch that in our own homes, undistracted and uninterrupted. Then we could get together to rewatch it after having time to stew on all the theories that arose. It was a great idea! The conversation, debates and laughs were in abundance and we all had a great time. What follows are pictures of what I did. Any of these pictures can be enlarged if you click on it, if you'd like to see more detail.

The Party Decorations:

Of course, the obligatory palm trees...

But this one has a little Hurley hanging out underneath, as drawn by my 5 yr old son.

I put a generic tropical themed tablecloth on the table and thought it would be cute to add a little extra Lost touch...

...that led to an idea to add Lost quotes all over the plain white area in the middle of the tablecloth. I wish I had thought of this earlier; then it would have been completely filled. More on the jars you see there in the food section.

The Party Food:

This is the sign I made to hang over the "Hurley Buffet." The drawing of Hurley in the van was drawn by James Boudreaux II and I found it at his site, The Lost Boys Project, where he has lots of great comics based on the Lost characters.

Hurley's Island Buffet:
"Where if you eat more comfort food,
You won't go around shooting people!"

Here's a closer look at the jars from earlier. For some unknown reason I did not get a shot of the jar of Dharma Ranch Dip and the veggie platter. Rest assured, it looked awesome.

The table had two platters on it. The top has mangoes and papayas, for obvious reasons and the bottom has pepperoni and cheese in homage to Cheech's sandwich in "The Lie". Too bad my budget didn't allow for caviar or we so would have had those sandwiches, even if I had to guilt my guests into trying a bite.

Tower of Goodies!

What's on it?

Ho-Ho's (watch out for dead rock stars!), Dharmalars,
Chocolate Cream Cookies

Next to the Tower of Goodies was a crock pot full of Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack Breaded Baked Chicken Wings with homemade blue cheese dressing. They were awesome, dude.

The Frozen Donkey Wheel:

A lime margarita-style blender drink. The lime is cut to look like it has spokes coming out of it. And it was all kinds of yummy. Notice the Connect 4 pieces surrounding the drink. Somehow I also forgot to get a picture of the game as well.

Party Favors:

I made Dharma Fish Biscuits... really just sugar cookies with cookie icing.

After I wrote "DHARMA" on them and put them in bags they looked like this. I also gave lil' Dharma polar bears. How cute are they?

I had a lot of fun doing this and hope to do it again after the season finale. Off to find a recipe idea for a Flaming Frogurt...

Merry Christmas to all fans of Lost!

I'm dreaming of a Lost Christmas
Just like the ones with Ethan Rom
Where the treeline rustles,
and Sawyer hustles
To shoot bears and boars and Tom.

I'm dreaming of a Lost Christmas
With every Other that you fight
May your bears and bunnies be white
And may all your Dharma Beers be light

I’m dreaming of a Lost Christmas
With marbles colored black and white
Where the tree frog’s singing
And ears are ringing
From when the hatch blew up that night.

I'm dreaming of a Lost Christmas
With every number that is cursed.
May McCutcheon’s knock down your thirst,
And may all your bad luck be reversed.

Cayley Practices Her Photoshop/Photo Uploading Abilities

I think I must have scurvy.

First, I was on a quest for lemon juice.

Then, I started adding this to my water.

Then I had an overwhelming craving for Limeade and sent my husband to store for a couple cans of it.

And now this is my favorite beer. It is apparently "inspired by a Mexican recipe with lime and salt." All I know is that it's limey, and not in the derogatory name for an Englishman way. Me likey limey lately.

As a postscript, if you think lime flavored beer is gross, then I can't imaging what you will think of me when I tell you I have found something else I want to try while I was searching for the Miller Chill photo:

I believe I have mentioned before that I like, nay, love Clamato so you know I just have to try this. Mostly just to tell the story of the historic day I was brave enough to conquer the odd concoction that struck fear into the hearts of all around me. And, of course, to see what it tastes like.

Update Update

I have been so bad about posting that I have actually not even looked at this site due to the shame I feel in neglecting it. The past two weeks have been a blur of school preparedness. Add to that back pain that has made anything other than breathing and eating completely unappealing and you have, well, this: The lonely un-updated blog of yours truly.

I have been writing today, and you will shortly see a blog posting I wrote for a new website about the Fox show Fringe. The site looks great and I encourage all you fans of the show to stop in and check it out. If you are a fan of Sci-Fi in general, why not visit their sister site, Quantym?

Then, I will be updating The Daily Crutch, news on my boy's first week of school and other things that I am watching and hearing about.

A few more quick updates: I found lemon juice at Walmart the other day, and I saw it again at my supermarket today. Unfortunately I hear from Wisconsin that a friend of mine can't find any at her markets, so maybe we're just stealing it from the midwest. And going back to one of my earliests posts, I finally got around to listening to the Dork Forest podcast (I know, I'm slow. Did you not know I'm a dork myself? It explains a lot.) Anyway, I found it hard to listen to at first because the podcasters produce it by calling into a service and that "over-the-phone" sounding voice is a little distracting at first, but the show was funny enough that I really enjoyed the program and can't wait to download another one.

Here's How Much Of A Dork I Am

I posted a comment today on Jorge Garcia's blog. I'm practically beaming about it. I wanted to tell all my friends about it, as if I had had just had lunch with him instead of putting one of scores of posts by fans about a quick thought he put on his blog. But that's not the geeky part. I actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about what I was going to say, as if he would read the comment, think to himself, "hey, she seems like a cool chick, I should see if she has a blog." And then he goes to it, posts something to me and the next thing I know he and his girlfriend are joining me and my husband for yard sale-ing and sushi. Which is ridiculous. My husband doesn't even like sushi. It's just one more example that proves I need to stay away from celebrities. I can't handle it. The time I met "Weird Al" Yankovic I was a mess. We had gone to his show in a small venue near here and there we ran into a comedian friend, who, it turned out was friends with Weird Al's bass player, Stephen Jay. He got us backstage and said we could meet Al. That eventually became something like two hours later, because Al kept inviting in people waiting for autographs. That man does not like to disappoint his fans. Anyway, what we thought was going to be "hanging out with Al" turned out to be "when the line starts to taper off you can get in it after that bunch of ten year olds and get his autograph." When we got up there, Paul was cool and calm, shook his hand, told him how much he enjoyed his work and thanked him for the autograph. My few moments with him were like a blur. I think I tried to launch into a stammering story of how we had sung "Amish Paradise" at a karaoke bar a few weeks earlier then decided that was a stupid story so I tried to change gears in the middle of it and it came out something like, "Uh, Hi, Al, um, Weird Al, we love, I mean I love your songs, we did the Amish... thing, um, I love you, I mean your work and uh, thanks. For the autograph I mean. And the music. And um, also, uh, the music too. Thanks." I'll say it right here: "Weird Al" Yankovic has some serious patience. He just smiled at me with great understanding, and no sign of irritation, as I backed out of the room, tripping over ten year olds.

Someday I'll tell the stories of when I spent the day with A. Whitney Brown and spoke on the phone with Tucker Carlson.