Flashback Tuesday

While I was trying to type Flashback Tuesday, I accidentally typed Flaskback Tuesday... which is probably a better idea that the former as far as this new job is going. I work probably around 14 hours a day and am so tired when I get home that if I did have a flask at work, it would be well used. Don't get me wrong I LOVE my job, but sometimes it's hard to stay enthusiastic and positive about working such long hours.

Anyway... so this weekend John and I had Sunday brunch at a local place right around the corner from his house called Columbia Cafe. I'm not sure what makes them so proud of their menu that they think that they should charge $8.99 for a chicken salad sandwich (for that record, why do people pay $10 for Fairfield's chicken salad sandwich, when the SHRIMP salad sandwich is only $7.99. These people are robbing us blind!!!!!! And the service is pretty crappy too!!!) Anyway, so John and I ate brunch at Columbia and on our way out we spied this:

View from Left Side:

View From Right Side

I was SO excited! I've never (okay maybe once) seen a scooter/motorcycle with a sidecar. And we get done with our overpriced food and there one is, practically calling us to take a photo of it. So there's your Flashback Tuesday blast from the past. Have a wonderful week!

Target Understands

I don't know how many of you remember me writing THIS POST, but I remember it like it was yesterday, although it was actually over a month ago (June 11th) that I wrote it. Now, I don't know if I ever revealed what my resolution was in regards to this baby shower for a girl that I hadn't seen in 5 years. Well, let me just tell you what a nice person I am.

So, after I get the invitation for said girl and realize that I would be in Seattle during the shower (and jumped for joy), I decided that I should be nice about it and that it was probably the hormones telling her to send me an invite to said shower. So I go to her registry online at this store:

After perusing the registry and picking out a $12 onesie (that's being generous, I thought), adding to cart, refusing gift wrap because it cost extra, and clicking send, I thought, 'Okay Kate, you have finally put this little issue to rest.'

Or so I thought.

Yesterday, yes, I said YESTERDAY (July the 19th), I get an email from Target.com Guest Services telling me that my order was cancelled. They let me know that the onesie's supplier has decided to stop supplying Target. Which is stupid, because that's where everyone registers, or so I thought, but apparently this company has found a better store. So, a month and 8 days after I thought that this issue of the shower is out of the way, I find out that now I really look like a cheapskate because I didn't RSVP or whatever nor, send explanation of why I didn't go (it was all included in the card of the order I was sending). Oh well, I guess.

I told this little story to my friend Kristen and her theory is that Target really knew what the deal was and that they were on my side as far as gift giving goes. They cancelled my order because it was tacky to send me an invite in the first place. It's nice knowing that Target is my alliance and that they decided to backdoor the onesie.

Weekend Forecast

So, I got this new map on my blog that tells me the locale of my readers. I had no idea that the Cob was such a popular place in Hungary, Canada and the UK (although I'm 99% sure that the UK is pin-pointed due to my friends Frances and Baby Money checking in on me). I'm pretty sure that I don't know any Canadians or Hungarians so this is a special shout out to them. In honor of Britney coming to see me in Shreveport this fall, I would like to present to you, one of my favorite Britney videos. She represents Louisiana well.



The events scheduled for this weekend include lounging around doing nothing as well as Game Night on Saturday at the Schillage residence. Dear Sass (whose Birthday Dinner Part Deux was held last night and I was unable to attend due to home plumbing issues), Dobber, Rex and Flavor of the Week, John, myself and the Skills are going to play some games. I'm hoping that Sass, Rex, John and I are on the same team. I am confident that we would be UNSTOPPABLE. (Did you know that the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is made of Titanium? Because I do.)

Also, I am going to prepare a crab dip that I found on Campbell's Recipes or something.com and if it turns out to my liking, I will share the recipe with you. I am a modern day Betty Crocker, I'll tell you. Last night I made THIS and even edited the recipe by adding some black beans. I like to call that 'using my artistic license'. Sunday, John and I are going to look at a house with our realtor friend, Chris David (pronounced Dahveeed). Let's hope that John likes it, because I sure do.

Things That Happen When Kate-Naps Are Interrupted

Lately I have had NO energy. Seriously, none. This may stem back to Friday (unexpected day off when Nancy and I went to meet a friend for a margarita at 430PM at the Oyster Bar and didn't return home until 3AM.

All in one night I managed to run into a girl I taught at Disciple Now 3 years ago, a guy that I had a cyber screaming match with 4 years ago, and a girl that I roomed with in France 5 years ago. Not to mention, I had greasy hair, was wearing a tshirt and had no makeup on. AND it was 102 degrees outside so I was all sweaty and shiny. Ugh. Somehow we managed to go from Oyster Bar to Fat Boys to Fat Cats to El Dorado (where I ran into Losing Anna and the entire city of Shreveport) to Fatty Arbuckles to Stray Cat to home. By the way, there are way too many Cats and Fats in this town. Yeah, so it was an intense pub crawl.)

Anyway, I've been sleeping a lot lately. Like I was saying, it may stem back to bad decisions, or possibly a thyroid issue. I'm still paying off a dermatology visit so I have to pay that off before I have other things checked out (paying for my own insurance is costly). So, Sunday night I went to bed at 7 and last night I decided upon a Kate-Nap around 6. People kept texting me, so I ended up having a break from sleeping at 930ish where I got up and went downstairs to watch The Bachelorette (Jillian is a moron) and Chelsea.

I was all nestled on the couch when around midnight my doorbell rang. I froze and my heart started pounding very intensely. Seriously, there was no way in hell that I was going to answer that doorbell. I thought, if this was someone that I know, they would have sent me a text or called to tell me they are coming over. So it was most likely a child pranking me, or a rapist/murderer. (John warns me to never answer the door, even during the daytime. Goes along with the whole don't talk to strangers deal.)

So what do I do? I mute the TV, slide off the couch and army crawl to the bathroom where I hoped to go unnoticed. I stayed there until I decided that it was safe to come out, turn off the TV and lamp (very slowly and quietly) and tip-toe upstairs back to bed under the covers. I texted John and he was all like "Don't answer the door. If it happens again, I'll send a car out (which really made me giggle on the inside. FYI his father is retired Shreveport Police.)" So, I laid there until I fell asleep again.

Well, this morning, I woke up and tip-toed downstairs (I guess in case the doorbell-ringer was still there waiting on me) and made my coffee and got ready to go to work. I opened the front door slowly and peek outside. Nothing on stoop. No extinguished flaming bag of crap, no DVD (someone left one once), and no dead people or blood. So I glance over at my car and there is this on my windshield:

I was thinking "What the crap?!? I never get this stuff. Someone scared the hell out of me last night to leave a rose on my windshield? Was it John? A secret admirer (I have many)?" So I texted John and asked him if he happened to leave anything on my car and he said 'Maybe'.

OK. Mystery solved. Whew! Moral of the story is that I decided that I should toughen up slightly and that John is a sneaky (and sweet) guy.

Childhood Reflections

Look how pretty these leaves are!

Now, imagine about a thousand of them, dead and buried in between thousands of these:

So, when my brother and I were children, my parents decided it would be a good idea to get a 'rock garden.' Why? I have NO earthly idea. My brother and I protested because we didn't understand their reasoning behind this rock garden, and honestly, flowers are prettier than rocks, but whatever. So, off they went making their beloved garden. I'm pretty sure Jeff and I stayed inside and watched either Old Yeller or Miracle on 34th Street (since these were the only two movies we owned that weren't cartoons), while they planted. Finally it was finished and it looked something like this (except remove cacti and insert gigantic oak trees. Also it was about 10 times this size):

Neat, I thought. A garden, minus flowers. Whatever. Whatever is right! It turns out that my parents secretly had devised a plan for when Jeff and I were to be punished. We would be banished to the 100 degree+ heat whenever we had done something wrong and we were to pick the leaves out of the rock garden. Just thinking back upon this, I wince. I remember wishing so many times to trade lives with Peaches the rat terrier because she didn't have to pick the leaves out of the rock garden. It was absolute torture. There were THOUSANDS of them, literally thousands!

So, yesterday when we went over to John's parents house for Father's day, I noticed that there was an unfinished fenced area around the side of their new house. I asked John, "What's going on over there?" He replied "Oh, Dad wants to build a rock garden." I instantly was teleported back to the age of 7 when I would get bloody and chapped fingers digging out those leaves. Poor Mackenzie and Jon-Thomas (John's 4 and 3 year old sister and brother.) They have no idea about their father's maniacal plan of what is in store for them in the upcoming years.

Weekend Recap

My weekend consisted of very little. Saturday afternoon, I fell asleep watching my favorite movie in the world (Amelie), while John cleaned the house.

Saturday evening, I attended a birthday extravaganza for this fellow:

Happy 28th Birthday Joey! It was a great gathering with great people. Sunday, was a lazy Sunday. And by lazy, I mean there was a Mr. Gatti's buffet involved. In the parking lot I spied this:

I'm pretty sure that the owners were asleep inside. Or at Mr. Gatti's. On the back of their travel trailer was this. Rand McNally would be proud:

I thought it was a little peculiar that they managed to completely bypass Utah... Anyway, the rest of Sunday consisted of me doing a few craft projects (painting a mirror and an accent table) and then I Kate-napped it until this morning. 13 hours of sleep to cap off a weekend. There's nothing like it.

Things That I Should Probably Just Go Ahead and Get Over

An open letter to the driver of this Ford Mustang:

Who the heck do you think you are? You park in the community parking garage as if you drive a Benz. You have invested in your MUSTANG an paint job that consists of a maroon color crossed with black crossed with splatter paint. This is a crime against not only, your precious Mustang, but my eyes! You then force the rest of the workers in our building to park like so:

I don't know if you realize this, but your MUSTANG is over ten years old. That body style stopped being produced in 1997, therefore your MUSTANG COUPE 2Door, even in excellent condition, cannot be worth more than a $1,600 trade in value (according to Kelly Blue Book). So, seriously, you aren't fooling the rest of us. Park in ONE parking place and stop being a douchebag.

Sincerely,

Kate Warren and Gladpys the Sister Civic

PS. I know you are from Keithville.

Room for Improvement

I occasionally have those mornings where I wake up late and don't have the energy or time to wash, dry, straighten this mane of hair on my head without being late for work. Actually, usually I have plenty of time but I'm just too lazy to do it. It takes me FOREVER to dry my hair and I get so overheated due to hair dryer that I've gotten to the point of just drying it halfway and saying "Screw You" to the rest of it. On top of the heat-issue, my hair has gotten to a length where it isn't easy to lean my head over the bathtub and wash it effectively anymore. (For the record, I take baths at night and don't wash my hair at the same time because if I sleep on it after washing it, it gets all lumpy and wavy and not right. Just letting yall know that I bathe every day.) Enter Psssssst (pronounced like it's spelled):

Side story: Once upon a time, my good friend Melissa and I took a trip to Drug Emporium in search of Psssssst, because that is where Barber Sass informed me that it can be purchased inexpensively. We walk in D.E. and peruse the never ending shampoo aisles. There are seriously like 3 shampoo aisles, which is a little ridiculous, but it's good to know that they have such a nice selection. Anyway, so I look and look and look and I can't find the Psssssst ANYWHERE. Great. So Melissa and I go to the cashier area and ask for assistance. We tell the girl what we're looking for and she points us to condoms. No! We tell her. Psssssst isn't a type of contraceptive, it is spray shampoo. Finally we find it with no help from her. We laughed for a long time about that story at the time... Ah memories.

So, like I was saying before, Psssssst can be a real lifesaver when you are too lazy to wash your hair. You simply point and shoot where your hair looks greasy (i.e. territory where an egg could be fried), and it sprays white talc or something that I'm sure is really harmful to the environment as well as yourself and off you go with perfect 'clean' hair. Barber Sass also told me that Ken Paves uses Psssssst on Jessica Simpson's hair (which I'm sure is true since it is rumored that she is an unbathing, disgusting person. I know this because she craps in her wardrobe from film sets... another story, another day.) instead of washing it. Barber Sass' mother D.D. also told me that Psssssst, as she pronounced P.S.S.S.S.S.S.T., was a hot commodity in the 70's, back when people flat ironed their hair with actual irons.

I am not upset at all about not being born in that decade if you were wondering. So, I used Psssssst a few times. It just doesn't work right for me. I find that unless you have dirty to light blond colored hair, it leaves gray/white streaks where there should be beautiful strawberry locks. So, instead of looking clean, I just look old. I think that I should write the headquarters of Psssssst and tell them that they could better their product if it came in different shades. White could be for blonds, brown for red/brunettes, and black for black-headed people. I should be a marketing strategist.

Things That Happened That Shouldn't Have

Well tennis was an adventure, that's for sure. We went to retrieve our rackets, only to find out that, of course, they weren't where John said they were. So what did we do? Made a trip to Wal-Mart of course. JUST where I want to go at 7PM on a weekday. Surprisingly it wasn't slammed so I picked out my Maria Sharapova racket and went on my merry way.

(On a more interesting and exciting note, between the journey for rackets and the purchasing of rackets, I got a call that one of my best friends in the whole wide world got engaged!!! Congrats Laura!!!!! And Happy Birthday tomorrow.)

We get to the courts and do our stretching and prepare to battle. John:

A closeup for the ladies (he's super excited because he got a brand new Roger Federer racket):

So we got to it. We hit it back and forth to each other to warm up. I practiced my Anna Kournikova backhand, was running back and forth, fetching the balls, trying not to die, etc. All in all we 'played' for about 15 minutes before I couldn't take it anymore. My knee started hurting and here I am now:

Great. My knee is swollen and I probably burned 50 calories. Also, don't judge me. Yes, I AM that white. And my camera flash is powerful.

Things That Will Most Likely Never Happen

Yesterday I decided to take a walk around the Cob. I haven't done this activity in years, I kid you not. I figured that it may be a good idea to become more active before I develop more artery placque or premature diabetes. So off I went. I was walking along at a brisk pace, hoping to not come across anyone I know (or don't know for that matter) and I stumbled across some tennis courts. Who knew?!? It's nice to know what my Homeowner Dues go toward other than the maintenance of my 2' x 4' lawn.

This takes me back to a few weeks ago where John and I decided that every Tuesday and Thursday we are going to play tennis together (not that we even know how) in order to hopefully, become more attractive people. (Keep in mind that this conversation was over two weeks ago.) Ok so the first set of Tuesday/Thursdays it rained. The second set of Tuesday/Thursdays I napped one of the days and we went to eat with my parents the other day. Okay... so we are on week #3 of procrastination and I'm hoping that we can actually play. Or just hit the ball back and forth to each other. I don't plan on this being too exhausting or actually happening, for that matter.

Word of the Day

A co-worker and I were conversing just the other day and she dropped the word 'lackadaisical' in a sentence. I thought to self: 'Wow!!! That is a word that I would love to put in my vocabulary.' So, I've been thinking and thinking of how I would casually throw it into a conversation...

Lackadaisical:

–adjective
1.
without interest, vigor, or determination; listless; lethargic: a lackadaisical attempt.
2.
lazy; indolent: a lackadaisical fellow.

(On a side note, when Googling the definition of lackadaisical, this photo was the first image result. I think I'd like to meet her...)

Ok. Here goes. "I have a lackadaisical attitude towards sports and children." I also don't give a crap about cats (sorry Blue), the color yellow, or Coldplay. (Interesting that all of those things start with the letter 'C'. This is something I should look in to.)