Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope that you all have a safe fun night filled with cute kids and *CANDY*!!!!!

Supergirl is dressing as Ariel from The Little Mermaid and Wildman is dressing as a kangaroo. Cutest costume ever. I will post pictures as soon as I can.

Seven Random Facts

I was tagged by Hotfessional for this meme, so I'll give it a go. I'm not sure if I'll tag anyone, maybe I'll decide by the time I finish my seven facts.

The Rules
1. Link to your tagger and post the rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself, some random and some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of post and list their names.
4. Let them know they were tagged by a comment on their blog.

Okay, Seven Random Facts:
1. For my Group Communication class in college, my group made a video spoofing the movie Se7en, with the killer murdering people who broke the seven rules of group communication. We worked on it for about a month and the one guy in the group frickin memorized Se7en so that we could duplicate almost every scene and have nearly the exact same dialog. It turned out great and we got one of the other professors in the department to play the killer. He was stellar. To this day, I can't watch Se7en without thinking of our video.

2. My Five Favorite Films That No One Else Has Even Heard Of:
1. Frailty
2. Salton Sea
3. Man From Elysian Fields
4. Shade
5. Confidence

3. I think garbage cans and garbage bags are inherently dirty and I refuse to touch them. Brand new, I can touch a garbage can, but even brand new garbage bags are gross. I keep my office garbage can under my desk and move it with my feet when the cleaning crew puts it back in the wrong place. Rock takes out all the garbage in our house, but he does tease me about this.

4. I've had seven speeding tickets. Seven. Some things I'm just really hard-headed about.

5. I can spend more money in a bookstore than a clothing store. I can spend more money in a camera store than I make in a month. These are my two biggest weaknesses.

6. Two best books I've read in the last year:
What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman - cannot recommend highly enough.
Anybody Out There by Marian Keyes - I read it through three times before I could put it away.

7. I've kept a list of all the books I've read this year. It's the first time I've ever done that. I'm almost to 50 books. My goal for the year is 75. I think it's funny to have a goal for how many books to read.

Okay, I'm not going to tag anyone because it's Friday and it's time to go home. If you want to do the meme, feel free.

Morning Traffic

This one's for you, Tessie:

Maine
Bumpah Stickah
For the cah

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Part One of - well, let's just not count these, shall we?

Back in high school, I turned 16 before all of my friends because my birthday fell two days after the kindergarten cut-off and I started a year later than everyone else. So I was one of the first to have a car. Unfortunately for me, my parents were of the thrifty sort and my first car was a hand-me-down that both of my parents had driven. Getting a hand-me-down car from my mother wouldn't have been bad, because she's never been hard on cars. My dad, however, is where cars go to die. He drives too fast and neglects basic maintenance. By the time I got this car, it ran and the radio worked. That was all you could say about it. It was also a puke green Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. Stylin'. (You're jealous, aren't you? I knew you were.) When I turned it on, all the warning lights lit the dash up like a Christmas tree. Some of them never went off. So I took to ignoring them. Oh-so-smart. Then one day, my car died on the side of the road. Some nice folks picked me up and gave me a ride home. We had the car towed to our mechanic, who promptly taught me that there is one light that you don't ignore - the oil light. Yep, I ran the car out of oil and blew up the motor. Guess who did not have a car for the last half of her senior year of high school?

Here We Are Folks, The Dream We All Dream Of

And here we are, the glorious 31st anniversary of the date of my birth! I am so like a little kid about birthdays. I *LOVE* my birthday. It is the best day of the year for me. I feel like the whole day just kind of glows. My kids' birthdays are great, don't get me wrong, but my birthday is special. It's all mine, all to myself. And today is going really, really well. It's been a nice calm day at work, busy but not horribly busy. I have three cards from work friends, a cake and was taken out to lunch at one of my very favorite restaurants. One of my closest friends took me out to dinner and dessert last night and I'm going out tonight with my precious family and my dad.

Every year on my birthday, I kind of take stock of my life and see where I am. This year, things are really great. I'm happily married, I now have *two* beautiful children to adore, I still really love my job (most days), I have good friends at work and in my personal life, and now I have a budding professional photography career.

On this, my happiest day of the year, I'd like to share some life theories that I like.

The first is my own. I feel like your late twenties are when you figure out who you are and who you want to be as a person and your early thirties are when you figure out what you want to do. For me, this involved clearing out some really negative people from my life and learning to love and like myself. It involved learning to stand up for myself and not feel guilty for not being able to all things to all people. And my thirties have been about pursuing photography - buying better equipment and learning more about the craft. Getting out and taking more shots. Photographing people I love and trying to craft the best shots I can.

The second theory is from Molly. It is the two-thirds theory and I think it's brilliant.
"1) The two-thirds theory. Meaning, you have a professional life, a social life and a romantic life. As long as two of the three were good, you could be happy. If you slipped to just one, it was time to get your shit together. If you got all three, then heck, you Won. But two-thirds was nothing to complain about."

Best wishes to you all. I hope you all have all three thirds at the happiest level possible.

Hypothetical Question

Is there any point in giving someone a birthday card if the only nice thing that you can think of to say that doesn't make you gag is "Happy Birthday"? Because nothing else is true. Usually I would write something like "It's great to work with you!" or "You're such a fun person!"
or some such complimentary phrase. But what if you really dislike the person? What if this person recently stabbed you in the back in a completely egregious manner? Is it worth the gesture? Is the small political goodwill that it might engender worth your last card that actually says "Happy Birthday"?


Disclaimer: This post has nothing whatsoever to do with my working life. Which I strive to never mention here at all. In fact, I am not employed at all. Yeah, yeah, that's it, not employed at all.

The Double Bind

Just finished a great book - The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian. The main story concerns a girl who was attacked when she was in college and, after graduation, has taken a position working with an organization that helps homeless people find homes. One of the men who had been assisted by the organization passes away and leaves a box full of photographs and negatives. The girl becomes obsessed with printing the negatives that hadn't been printed and in finding out who the formerly homeless man had been. Many of the photographs are of famous people, indicating that the man had been a somewhat famous photographer at one point.

Interestingly, the book is loosely based on a real person. There was a homeless man in Vermont (I think) who passed away and left a box of photos containing photos of famous people. The photos used in the book are real and they're very good. And you can definitely recognize some of the famous people, even if you're young like me and don't really recognize people like Eartha Kitt and Flip Wilson right off the bat (or a very young Dick Van Dyke).

And it features one of my absolute favorite literary conventions, the unreliable narrator.

October

It's finally October. October is, by far, my very favorite month of the year. The fall weather here in North Carolina is perfect. Crisp, cool mornings, warm afternoons and long evenings made for sitting on the porch talking. And the fall colors in the woods and trees along the road are just gorgeous. Of course it doesn't hurt that my birthday is in October! (The 18th, but I'll accept presents all month long!) And Halloween, my favorite holiday. Which is even more fun with children to dress up. Supergirl loves to dress up and go over to her grandparents' house and give out candy to other children. We've taken her trick-or-treating, but she really prefers to stay in one place and see all the other kids. I can't wait to see what she wants to dress as this year. And I have to find an adorable baby costume for Wildman. Preferably involving ears. Swistle has gotten me hooked on ear clothing for babies. Way too cute.

October is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Hotfessional has an awesome contest running here. Go visit her and try to win some cute pink prizes.

Why Don't You Go Ahead and Come In On Sunday, Too

The following is an email sent to a co-worker of mine from one of her friends. I have personally met the girl who wrote the email and I assure you that this is a true story that happened yesterday morning.


Good Morning friends!
I just wanted to tell you all about my lovely Monday morning. I have a weekly call on Monday mornings with our entire sales region (4 states: account teams, managers, and operational director... probably 50 people). I skipped out today because I have a lot to catch up on from being out on Thursday afternoon and Friday. I missed the best call -- probably the best call in the HISTORY of conference calls....

So we are starting to use video cameras at our desk for video conferencing, and when we are on team calls, we are supposed to be using them. The settings on the video are supposed to make it so that people only see you when you are talking. This guy was working from home today, and didn't have his video camera settings correctly working. While the call was going on, the camera was being shot on him. He was NAKED at home. So, everyone in the office is snickering because he obviously doesn't know that his camera is on. It gets worse... He stands up and is jacking off in front of the ENTIRE team, and doesn't know that his camera is on. The operational director who is leading the meeting (his boss's boss) calls his boss and makes her call him and tell him to turn off his camera. So, yes, ladies. We allllll got a peep show this morning, and a good example of a career ending move.

Thank you and have a great day.

Confession

I have a hard time not favoring one of my children over the other one.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I have a favorite, but I have one difficult child and one easy child. One child with whom everything's a fight, every opportunity is taken for back-talk or pushing limits or testing authority. One child who is happy and content 99% of every day. Maybe a little clingy sometimes and fussy when sleepy, and definitely mischievous and into everything, but basically, a truly relaxed, happy child. One child whom I love, but some days have a hard time liking. One child whom I feel I can't get enough of and could not possibly love or like any more. One child who feels like a constant trial, who seems to know my weaknesses and the behaviors that will piss me off the worst. One child who feels like a constant delight and just seems to brighten every day.

So tell me your stories, readers, if you had brothers or sisters. Did your parents have a favorite? How could you tell? How did that make you feel? If you were the favorite, did you use it to your advantage or did you help out your siblings?