Melyssa-with-a-Y

Our favorite Xmas baby (who hates to make birthday plans) was forced to celebrate last night! The lovely Ms. E. arranged for us all to meet up at the Village Bistro in Arlington. It was a nice small party of 9 - Stick braved the highways and crazy drivers all the way up from Atlanta to be there! She even managed to get Dani a nice gift from KH (with Holly's help). Thanks, Holly. ;) The birthday girl did wear a tiara all night, to make sure she was easily identifiable to the masses. (don't we look cute?) :) Dinner was verrrry yummy (and fast! entrees in under ten minutes!). Most of us vowed to return to the Village Bistro immediately - although I don't know if I'll make it back there before I leave on Monday. Poor Pete was the only guy at the table, but he was ok with it -- until we started talking about our mothers giving birth to us and other 'girly' topics... he was so traumatized by the end that he started re-folding the wrapping paper that Dani was neatly r...

Hannah in her pink boots! (Looks like she's already bow-legged!) Maybe her mom got a better picture of the modeling than I did... and, the magnets I made for Kelly & Micki and my favorite picture of the girl from Xmas Eve:

... but I think Austin is "home" now. Arrived on Saturday night. The whole fam came to pick me up at the airport, and we went to Ted's Montana Grill in Crystal City for dinner. We all had various forms of bison meat -- steak, meat loaf, short ribs, burger -- but nothing so impressive that we have to run right back. It was a little unnerving to sit underneath the wall-mounted giant stuffed buffalo head. (His name was Maximus.) When we got home, we celebrated the last night of Chanuka. I got a penguin to add to my collection (a collection that is growing daily as my mother goes out shopping), a lovely bracelet and three books I wanted (including a knitting book) from my brother. Poor kid had to brave the Crafts section of the bookstore to get the Yarn Harlot book . heh. I also opened my new (RED) iPod (thanks, Andy!) and started loading songs onto it. I loooove it! Xmas eve at Kelly's was tons of fun, as usual. We only had nine people this year, which was a nice,...

You've seen the USB fan , the USB light , the USB coffee warmer ... even the USB lava lamp . Now meet "Rex the Humper." Be sure to watch the video to see just how amorous Rex is. ;)

Sarah Silverman's Give the Jew Girl Toys

Whee! I'm a grammar whiz! Your Language Arts Grade: 98% Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes). Are You Gooder at Grammar? Make a Quiz

I have been trying to ignore stories about last week's Iranian conference on whether the Holocaust actually took place or not. (We all know that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a nutcase.) This article in the LA Times really puts this conference into perspective. According to this emigree from Somalia, it's not that all Muslims deny the Holocaust - they are simply oblivious. They've never been taught about the mass murder of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political dissidents, (or for that matter anyone Hitler didn't like)... or seen pictures of the gas chambers, the cattle cars, the piles of suitcases and shoes and hair. As this writer suggests, they are being fed propaganda, not unlike Josef Goebbels' efforts, telling them that Jews are evil. Yes, there are still people in this great melting-pot of a country who have 'issues' with Jews (and why are there Jews in Hollywood who have forgiven Mel Gibson for his idiotic rant?!?) but for the most part, we're left alon...

I realized today that I have been taking pics but not uploading them, so here's the rundown. It's nothing terribly exciting. Two weeks ago when it was really cold around here, I broke out my new hot cocoa. I bought the "marshmallow lovers" low-fat Swiss Miss. Let me tell you, they aren't kidding when they say marshmallow lovers. Each serving is two packets - one is the hot cocoa powder, and the other is all mini-marshmallows ! I had to take a picture. It was soooooooo yummy. For the past week, my tv has been slowly dying (in fact, as mom reminded me, it was already starting to go south when she was here two months ago!) . I've had that set for ten years - it survived moving from Arlington to Chevy Chase and back to Arlington, and then to Austin. I spent the past week jumping up off the sofa to go whack one side of it or the other to keep the picture going. Finally, last night, I gave up and went to Circuit City. Complicating things, I have a tv unit that has a...

Today is the big day! We move into our new offices in the new building! I escape cubicle-land (aka "the Library") and enter a real office, with windows and -- most importantly -- a door! Unfortunately, it's also working-in-limbo day, because I can't go work in my cubicle (they're moving the cube furniture to the new building) and I can't go work in my new office, because they don't want us to get in the way of the movers bringing our stuff in. *sigh* So here I sit in Starbuck's, getting amped up on the strong smell of coffee, trying to get some work done, and drowning out the constant Xmas music with my Launchcast. (And trying to figure out what to get for everybody for Xmas/Chanuka. Any requests? suggestions?)

I wish I were kidding with this. "Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products." --Jim Rutz, a columnist writing in the far-right WorldNetDaily that soy is a “devil food” that has caused a rise in homosexuality. Seriously. http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327

Welcome to the Holiday edition of "Getting to know your friends" - courtesy of Phyl-Phyl 1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Both. It all depends on the gift. I looove wrapping gifts. 2. Real tree or artificial? None. Menorah, check. Chanuka lights, check. Tree? Not so much. 3. When do you put up the tree? see #2. Menorah comes out the day before Chanuka, and gets put away after the eighth night... after I've cleaned all the melted wax off the base. 4. When do you take the tree down? again, see #2. 5. Do you like eggnog? Lactose intolerance really curbs my eggnog intake. However, I would love to get a sip of Dani's famous version someday. I'll just pop a dozen lactaid pills first! I'm still on the hunt for the recipe my mom used to have for eggnog cookies. they were awesome. 6. Favorite gift received [as a child]? There are two things that I absolutely love that my parents got me - first, a script from the West Wing, signed by Dule Hill, Allison Janney, ...

Spent the weekend in Kansas/Missouri. (Kansas City, MO is the closest airport to Overland Park, KS, so that's where I went.) My friend Stuart "officially" married his wife Jenny. Yes, you read that correctly. These two eloped almost three years ago, before he was to be stationed in [a Middle-Eastern country] for two years, and she was going along on the trip. So now that they're back, this weekend they had a church wedding and a big party. I admit, was a little (ok, alot) apprehensive about going to another wedding by myself, but in no time, I was "adopted" by Stuart's high school friends, Anthony and Tamara, and Tam's husband Eric. Turns out these were the "cool" kids - the ones that were always causing trouble, the ones that everyone stared at for laughing too loudly. I fit right in! We were so clearly the "fun" table at both the rehearsal dinner and the reception that people moved to hang out with us -- or moved to get away ...

I don't normally just post links to other blogs, but this one is disturbing, and a little bit funny. (Sort of like that diet coke ad .) The Priest-of-the-Month calendar, from Rome: http://athomerome.blogspot.com/2006/12/priest-of-month.html As Andrew Sullivan put it, "How Gay is the Vatican?"

The USC Trojans, after effectively squashing the Fighting Irish like bugs, felt good. No, they felt Grrreat! They were going to the BCS national championship to prove their mettle against Ohio State -- in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year at SC -- *if* they could win the last game of the season against crosstown rivals UCLA. Piece of cake! That turned out to be a big IF. We're perfectly content to play in the Rose Bowl, mind you. But the boys I saw on the field at the Coliseum last weekend were not the same boys that came out to play this weekend. UCLA is not that good. The Bruins were 6-5, fourth in the PAC-10. They just out-played us, plain and simple . It sucked. And somebody, please put Brent Musberger out of his misery. I know it wouldn't have felt as bad if we had been winning, but his commentary was really horrific. Maybe he was just being snotty because USC sent a nasty letter to the network after Musberger revealed Booty's hand signals on national televi...

Bryan, Marc and Carla went to the Magritte exhibit at LACMA on Sunday. (I'll bet my plane was probably somewhere over New Mexico before the boys even woke up...) I was very jealous. I am particularly fond of Magritte's Son of Man and the other bowler-hat images. But of course the most famous one is "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." -- a painting of a pipe with the caption, "This is not a pipe." I received this photo by email (and sent to my cellphone) on Sunday. The caption was "Ceci n'est pas une Fratkin." :) Son of Man is part of my favorite scene in The Thomas Crown Affair (the new version) -- Pierce Brosnan and his lackeys scatter around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, all wearing black coats and bowler hats and carrying briefcases full of pictures of the man in the bowler hat. It drives the cops crazy. Marc also found (after Bryan mentioned) a picture of the Son of Man etched into the top of a Mac Powerbook, with the Apple...