Melyssa-with-a-Y

Yesterday, while I was getting ready for my supper club (making whole wheat pizza dough, and then rolling it out and decorating it with homemade pesto, mozzarella and sundried tomatoes, and another one with crushed tomatoes and artichoke hearts and more mozz... ) I was listening to the middle rounds of the National Spelling Bee on ESPN. It was sort of funny to see how ESPN made it more "exciting" ... they even did short interviews with the kids and their parents. It was cute. Starting with Round 4 (semifinals), they had to spell words like skeuomorph, hircocervus, echinocystis, and omphaloskepsis. Yikes! These are mostly 12 and 13 year old kids! I was amazed. I thought I was a good speller - I won the spelling bee in my elementary school in 5th grade and made it to regionals... where I was tripped up by the word "platelet" (I hadn't had biology yet, I didn't know that it didn't have the "-ette" on the end! oh well..) So yesterday, I tried

eeeexcellent.

and it's empty! where is everybody?

oy vey. This has been some day. I think I spent more time in my car than I did at the office. Or anywhere, except maybe the doctor's office. I started the day at the medical building for my annual physical, and to get a referral so I can get my knee checked out. He thinks I have patella-femoral syndrome , which is exactly what Bryan had when he grew too fast and had no cartilage in his knees. I can live with that -- I'd rather have to do PT than have any kind of surgery, but we'll see what the ortho says. I was all ready to head back to work after 45 mins in the docs office, but no! That would be too easy. I had to go to the lab first. EKG, blood test, and a tetanus shot for good measure. (ow. did I mention that they had to stick me twice to take my blood, because he screwed up the first time? ugh.) An hour later, I was finally on my way. I made a beeline for Starbucks first, since I had been fasting since midnight, and had only slept for about 5 hrs. And "beeline&

Having a whole bunch of movie channels (and a DVR) is great, though sometimes it keeps me from watching my Netflix movies for months at a time. I can watch some of my favorite movies whenever they're on, over and over again, and quote most (if not all) of the lines. The list is long: Star Wars/Empire/Jedi, Princess Bride, Pretty Woman, Hunt for Red October, French Kiss, Footloose, Crimson Tide, Bridget Jones, Unforgiven... occassionally Dani and I try to build a complete list, but we can never think of all of them. I think it's a comfort thing. I know I can do just about anything around the house - work, laundry, build bookcases, hang pictures, knit, and even nap - and know exactly what's going on in the movie. It's actually harder for me to do these things when I'm watching a new episode of something, like Countdown on MSNBC, or CSI, because I want to concentrate on what's being said. But these movies are my comfort food. Speaking of which, tonight, Fie

This afternoon, Rebeka and I went to a baby shower for our friends Juan and Letty . Letty has another six weeks to go, but she looks like she's about to pop! It was a nice, small shower, with couples and kids. Of course, I was happy to go to the shower, and I made the world's quickest duckie - started last night at 9:30am, finished in the car on the way to the party! But the biggest draw for me was that it was being hosted by one of my favorite bloggers, Stephanie Klein (and her husband Phil). I've been reading Stephanie's blog for at least a couple of years, since she published her first book, Straight Up and Dirty , moved to Austin (shortly before I did, I think), had her twins in December '06... It was great to actually meet her! The "beans" are a little over 2 now and talking. They're SO cute. And Phil is just the nicest guy in the world. Our illustrious hosts made finger sandwiches, complete with the crusts cut off -- cucumber, salmon, egg sal