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Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Sense of humor

As you might imagine, having a sense of humor is a requirement in my house and, if I do say so myself, both my kids have a great sense of humor. When Claire and I met up with Amy on the way to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving, Amy started telling Claire that she had seen the movie "Elf" last night with her boyfriend Joey and that she thought Claire would like it.

Well, Claire had seen Elf the weekend before while at the house of her boyfriend, Joshua Miller. I had so much fun listening to my 19 year old and 7 year old daughters laugh like crazy and talk about their favorite parts of the movie. I told Amy that the conversation was either a validation of Claire's advanced sense of humor or an indictment of Amy's juvenile sense of humor. Either way, it was so fun to hear them laugh like crazy together about the same movie that each one had seen with their boyfriend.

Monday, November 22, 2004


UF-FSU scoreboard showing half-ass QB Wyatt Sexton at the UF-South Carolina game last week wearing a Florida sweatshirt. Again, more Gator envy by the Noles. They did show the pic on ESPN but someone photoshopped it onto the scoreboard.

Sunday, November 21, 2004


They never get over that rejection letter from UF!!

Down with the evil Nole

WOOOOOHOOOOOO--Gators finally beat the evil Nole in Tallahassee. True Freshman Brandon Siler was a STUD at middle linebacker playing for Crowder. Ciatrick Fason, who attended the same high school I did, carried the offense in the fourth quarter. So great to win there on the night they rename the stadium to Bobby Bowden Field. That's going to be a good trivia question in a few years.

The game was sweet retribution for the Noles sorry behavior after the game last year when they attempted to deface our field--

Click here to see the fight from last year and the bogus calls that cost the Gators the game.

To all FSU fans, regardless of the outcome of ANY football game, you will always be Florida's Second-rate University.

What do Florida and FSU grads have in common? They were both admitted to FSU, or, to use its correct name, half-ass U!

And now, I will go watch the replay of the game so I can observe the play without the nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach and trying to stifle the curse words that want to fly out of my mouth. I haven't had the pre-game nervous feeling like I had last night in a long time. I swear my heart was going to beat out of my chest as the Noles completed their last drive. As I phoned my old college roommate after each score, she asked when I would believe that the Gators would win it and I said, "Not until the clock reads 0:00. You know that I've had my hopes crushed too many times before."

Gatorzone game story








Saturday, November 20, 2004

Good quotes by Robert Frost

"The best way out is always through."

"You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence."

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

The Triumphant Return of the Double Helix

The inaugural reunion of the Double Helix of Fear and Retribution (aka Karen, Kat and David) was the usual phenomenal occassion when we three get together. 45-minutes into the 10 hours together and our cheeks hurt from laughing. The best lines were...
"He sends me his regards? He'd send his regards to anything with a hatchet wound!"
"Are you sure you've never directed porn?"
"If they can hear you, they can shoot you."
"With skinny girls, that's nothing but bones banging against you."
"Sorry, I was looking at some big tatas. Can you heave for me?"
And the refrain as we looked at the 165 pictures that we took was...
"Damn, we're good looking. I would so do us!"

As we got into David's car early in the evening to go to the show at The Garage, the song that came on his CD player was "Ants Marching" by Dave Matthews Band. We sang with greater than usual gusto. So fitting that we had spent the afternoon on a pub crawl while all our OD co-workers were muddling through the layoffs and reorg...

He wakes up in the morning
Does his teeth bite to
eat and he's rolling
Never changes a thing
The week ends the week begins
She thinks, we look at each other
Wondering what the other is thinking
But we never say a thing
These crimes between us grow deeper
.....
Take these chances
Place them in a box until a quieter time
Lights down, you up and die
....

Driving in on this highway
All these cars and upon the sidewalk
People in every direction
No words exchanged
No time to exchange
And all the little ants are marching
Red and black antennas waving
They all do it the same
They all do it
the same way


"Ants Marching" lyrics


Kat and Karen



Surprising David--aka blackmail picture #1


Annual reunion photo


Thursday, November 11, 2004

Layoffs a comin'

Well, it was confirmed in the newspaper today that layoffs are coming to Office Depot, my employer. Layoff story Rumor has it that 600 people will be let go tomorrow. We'll see.

Funny thing happened today during our division staff meeting. The VP usually takes questions at the end and she was joking today about not taking questions because of the layoff rumors/article. As the last director got up to give his report I said, "Make sure you leave time for questions." She said, "No, Jeff, I want you to go slow and long." Everyone cracked up. It was a funny moment in the middle of the layoff crap.

On the upside, its the first annual reunion of the destranding of the Double Helix of Fear and Retribution (ie skare moving away). That means I'll be pub crawling through Atlantic Ave. with two of my best buddies while the blood-letting occurs. Here we are at the original destranding of the Helix last year.

As we said last time they were cutting staff at Office Depot when we left for lunch while everyone else sat at their desks worried about their jobs, "They can't fire us if they can't find us!!"




Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Great Quote

Great quote from Bartleby.com today (a site I highly recommend)--
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."


Check it out here

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Things that make me chuckle

Claire, Al and I went to see "The Incredibles" a movie about a family of super heroes. I told Al that if I were going to be a superhero, I'd like to be Elastigirl, the mom's character. He said, "Sweetie, you ARE Elastigirl."

I looked her up on The Incredibles web site. It said that she is 5'8", 125 lbs, her primary special power is flexibility and her secondary special power is agility. Wow, I guess I am Elastigirl. (DB said it should be "Sarcastigirl"--good one!)





My fortune at dinner said, "You deserve to have a good time after a hard day's work." And I have a lot of hard days at work. Guess me, skare and DB will be cashing in on that one during our pub crawl this Friday evening. Starting at the one and only The Blue Anchor.

Maybe we'll get to see the ghost, Bertha. To quote Lee, the owner, during his interview on the Travel Channel special about Haunted Places, "It was the most frightening experience of my life. I had to sit down and have a brandy." As opposed to standing and drinking red wine as he does most afternoons.


Another good quote was from the cartoon Jimmy Neutron. Jimmy brought Thomas Edison into the future. Edison's expression of surprise was, "Well, knock 10 points off my IQ and call me Tesla!"

Random Name and Title Generator

I found another fun way to waste time on the internet--Click here for a random name generator

My title is--
Lesser Countess Junior Grade of The Left Side of Beer For Breakfast, Sister Kat R. Stuhr

Post a comment if you get a good one.

Friday, November 05, 2004

What a great kid

Poor Amy is stressed out because she's going to get two Bs her first term at college and only start off with a 3.3 average, even though she's taking a Biology class that is not recommended for first year students and is a weed-out class, Chemistry, Pre-Calculus (another weed out class) and Comparative Politics. That girl has some high standards.

She's called me twice in the last two weeks just to tell me about something funny that she heard. That just makes my day. Once was something funny her Biology teacher said about fermentation. He said he has a friend who won't drink wine because he does not want to drink the byproduct of microbes that die in their own excrement. Not sounding too yummy now. The other thing she called to tell me about was a funny sketch on the Daily Show after the election about the f-ed up exit polling. Bee, one of the Daily Show correspondents, goes around asking people all sorts of random questions. One of the best is when she encounters a lady coming out of a salon and she asks her what she had done in there. The woman replied that she had a haircut and Bee points to the woman's head and asks, "Does the carpet (wink, wink) match the drapes?"

Go here-- The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and click on the "Exit Polls" link. Its way funny.

Its nice to be friends with your kid if you can do it while still being a parent.

"Check me out. No, seriously, check me out."

Those famous words from Strongbad have taken on new meaning lately. I've gotten used to being visually raped by the guys. Even the last few years where it seems to have moved into a new level--different generations, races, nationalities, hemispheres, etc all doing the obvious "check me out." But, for God's sake, I draw the line at chicks doing it. Today, the fat, female (not even cute, not that it would make a difference) security guard did it twice in the span of 5 minutes. I thought I was being paranoid so I asked DB and he confirmed it. And, if anyone can spot someone checking out a chick, its the master of that skill, DB.

As I related the story to skare, we commented on the number of times people have thought we were lesb****. OK, so we like to dress casually, don't accessorize a lot and aren't big into the lots of makeup thing. I think that when she's in south Beach next week I'm going to go down and meet her for brunch. We can work the lesb*** angle and probably get better service at the restaurant. I'll bring Claire and we can play "Claire has two mommies".

Hear Strongbad utter those famous words here. Be sure to listen to the end--
Homestarrunner Intro .

Edited the post to add the *** because I found that someone had found the blog by searcing on that term. I've got no problem with it, but don't want my blog to be misrepresented among the search engines.


Thursday, November 04, 2004

Teachable Moments

They say that effective parenting comes down to teachable moments--identifying moments when your child is asking to learn something and making the time to teach them.

This morning, as I was getting ready for work, I was singing The Cure song "Just Like Heaven" and Claire said, "What are you singing, 'Show me, show me, show me'?" I replied, "Yes, its one of my favorite songs by a GREAT band called The Cure."

So, I capitalized on the teachable moment, we went to the computer and I put the song on. We danced around and sang. Not sure how appropriate the lyrics are for a 7-year-old but at least there's no bad words and she's not going to get the references anyway.

"Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick
The one that makes me scream she said
The one that makes me laugh she said
And threw her arms around my neck
Show me how you do it
And I promise you I promise that
I’ll run away with you
I’ll run away with you"

*And to my NSWStateofMind friend, my deepest apologies for showing you those lyrics and adding to your torment. Naaah, not really, you deserve your torment. ;)


Election Results

Just today at lunch, I was telling DB that I'd like to see a map with election results down to the county level. All the maps show states in red for Bush and blue for Kerry but they don't graphically display just how close the election was. So, I found this...

Click here for election results map

Blue means 100% Democrat, purple is 50/50 and red is 100% Republican. There is a lot of purple.


Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Thank God its almost over...

The presidential election it is. Let's hope its finalized this week and not dragged out through the courts. This line from the Indigo Girls keeps going through my head, "While the politicians shadowbox the power ring, in an endless split decision never solve anything."

Here's a good perspective on the election from the UK--The Daily Telegraph--It's not just the economy stupid

Monday, November 01, 2004

I'm the Gator Jinx

My apologies to the entire Gator nation for my role in our loss to Georgia this weekend. My self-imposed exile from the game that I invoked in 1984 apparently extends to the entire stadium grounds, not just inside the stadium. As I said before, the Gators went 1-7 before my exile and have gone 14-4 since then. Obviously, the recent success against Georgia is due primarily, if not entirely, to my self-imposed exile (OK, so Spurrier may have had something to do with it but Zook went 2-0 against them before this year.)

I went to the stadium this year to tailgate with some friends. I had MANY people who know about my exile ask me, with a hint of panic in their voice, "But you're not going INTO the game, are you?!?". I said, "No, just hanging around to tailgate and watch the game at Richie's RV." I stayed on the stadium grounds until halftime. When I left, the Gators were down 21-7. We watched the rest of the game at Matt's house and they rallied back to a 24-21 deficit in the beginning of the 4th quarter before losing 31-24. I guess I stayed at the stadium too long for the Gators to overcome my bad karma.

But, I'd do it again because it was a blast. It was like old times hanging out with Deb (Wench!!) and Matt. I got Deb to come with us despite the fact that she's been battling a severe cold for two weeks, works as a teacher of autistic 4-6 year olds so she's got a physically, emotionally and mentally challenging job, and she wanted to use the weekend to rest up. And I didn't even have to pull out the old college taunt of "Oh, Bluto, I have a little cold and can't go party with my best buds." Richie's RV was a blast, the lobster, steak and Voodoo punch were worth the 10 hours in the car. And the GSMB get together at Smitty's RV was fun, too. I climbed to the top of Smitty's RV to get an aerial photo of part of RV city. That was fun.

The photos tell the story....
Kat's Trip to the World's Largest Cocktail Party

As we were going to the stadium, we crossed the St. John's river on the water taxi that was filled with fans from both schools. I had an interesting conversation with my daughter who is a freshman at the University of Florida--
Me-- "Amy, did you know that the St. John's River flows north."
Amy-- "No, mom, I didn't know that."
Me--"Its the only river in the northern hemisphere that does that."
Amy--"Oh really, mom, that's interesting."
Me--"Do you know why the St. John's River flows north?"
Amy--"No, mom, why?
Me, with an increased volume--"Because Georgia SUCKS."

As the Georgia fans around me gave me dirty looks, my college roommate Deb, who used to console me through my tears when we lost the game every year while we were in school said, "Kat, please try to not get us beaten up before we even get to the stadium."

Before the game outside the stadium, as we walked between the various parties we were going to, my 7-year-old daughter, Claire, asked me when we could start yelling at some Georgia fans. I said, "Now's as good a time as any" so she kept chanting "1 in 13, 1 in 13" (their record against us over the last 14 years), as we walked around the grounds. Its important to start them young with the family traditions.

So, the old Gator rallying cry of "Wait 'till Next Year" has been changed to "Wait 'till Next Coach!"




GOOOOOOOOOOO Gators!!