lazy blogger

I have little about which to digress.

Here's a blog I've been enjoying lately though:

Indexed

christmas pictorial

Christmas went very well, peaceful, thank goodness.

Here's what Santa left under the tree.

super cool racetrack



American Girl, Kit Kittredge

A microscope and marbles for E (no pictures, oddly) so here's one of her reading Dragonology with Uncle Mike. The whole series of books (Egyptology, Wizardology, and Fairyopolis) is awesome, interactive, and beautiful...but I digress.

Another memorable moment was when my brother Bobby opened his gift from Mike, Laura, and I. His favorite childhood toy was "Biff the Talking Bear" who long, long ago lost his ability to speak in a terrible accident. He still has the original, but Mike found a talking, albeit shirtless, Biff on EBay, and we chipped in. Bobby loved being able to hear all his phrases like "My name's Biff, and I'm all bear" and "Want to fight? No? That's good." He was really happy with it. Here are Mike, his favorite vintage sock monkey, Cheetah, Bobby, and (naked) Biff II.


Well, blogger is being difficult with the picture uploading, so the pictorial portion of the post ends here.

Other highlights:

Brother Tom won the Most Unusual gift contest with an ornament depicting Santa and a reindeer stuck inside a sardine can.

E got to have "5 Golden Rings" in the 12 Days of Christmas song.

and

Laura got K one step closer to rock stardom with an awesome acoustic guitar and Emma one step closer to mad scientist status with a kit to grow carnivorous plants.

the arrow...it's following me

I linked to this site from the Presurfer the other day and was stunned by how unobservant I am regarding logos. This is especially the case for Amazon.com (I'm on that site all of the time and never noticed the arrow went from "a to z" or that it was a smile). I also never noticed that there is an arrow between the E and the x on the Fed Ex logo. Yesterday going to work, I saw no less than five Fed Ex truck and I couldn't stop looking at the arrow. Then when I was leaving work, what pulls in and blocks me from leaving? The arrow!

probably more fun than reading my ramble...

My friends at Jellyvision are "Bringing back Jack" in the form of a daily Dis or Dat question that I have embedded here on the sidebar thanks to the magic of the interweb. Scroll down a bit...there you go! So now, when I don't post for a week, my throng of readers can at least amuse themselves here.

Enjoy!

george washington and the gingerbread house

Warning:
Shameless Mommy Bragging...Bloggagging?

Tuesday night, E had her final park district acting class, and all of the families were invited to see the "performance." Now, I knew she had a flair for the dramatic and since piano does not come easy for her, I wanted to sign her up for a class that would be an easy, fun creative outlet for her. She had always come home from the class happy, and I occasionally ran lines with her for a skit she was assigned (She played Lucy from the Peanuts gang opposite her friend M who played Linus). She seemed to do fine, she always has great inflection when she reads, and I figured she'd do okay and it would be cute.

Wow though, the teacher had them do all these fun improv type exercises where they had to walk around the room in "their own little world" until she gave them a suggestion and then they had to act it out. They had this huge array of costumes and props and were given the freedom to just be creative and put themselves out there. E was just so in her element, so at ease, so comfortable with herself, she was like...shining.

The skits went well, but my favorite part was another improv thing they did. E was asked to be the "storyteller" and sit in a chair. The rest of the kids were told to put on any costume they felt like. Then the teacher asked the audience to shout out a noun, a verb, and another noun. The response was "George Washington" "Eats" and "A house" It was E's job to tell a story while the other kids acted it out that somehow told the story of GW eating a house.

I thought to myself, "Oh no, how's she going to pull this off?" Well, here's how:

She scanned the other kids, one of whom was wearing a rat nose (he also had a hook for a hand, but that's besides the point) and she got this confident smile on her face.

She proceeded to tell the story of how a family was gathered for Christmas. They were decorating the tree and making a gingerbread house. (So all the kids start pantomiming that) I'm like....oooooohkeeeey where is she going with this?...The poor kid.

Suddenly, she says, their pet hamster, who was named after their favorite president, George Washington, jumped up onto the table while they were distracted by the tree and proceeded to eat the gingerbread house. So that's the story of how George Washington ate a house.

The audience was so impressed, none more so than myself, that she pulled that off in such a funny clever way. I was so proud of her. Mostly, I am so happy that she found something that she really has a knack for and likes to do.

I keep going back to how the teacher told them to be in "their own little worlds." And at first that made me laugh because I am constantly telling E to, "get OUT of her own little world" and...insert any of the following phrases : get dressed, put on your back pack, finish your homework, concentrate, find your shoes, flush the toilet...you name it. Then it made me sad because she's such a creative, albeit spacy, little girl and I'm such a nag so much of the time. I'm very glad she's had the opportunity for someone to tell her, "Go ...BE in your own little world" and give her freedom to use her creativity.

Needless to say, I signed her up for the same teacher's all improv class in January.

things i did this week...

that I don't do on a typical week.
(This list is in no particular order)

Convinced my two-year-old that the mall Santa wasn't creepy so we could get a picture

Assisted in the messy construction of 14 bagel/peanutbutter/birdseed ornaments

Walked with 14 little girls in tundra like temps to hang said bagels on a tree

Exhaustive research on the development of preschoolers

Watched ten thirty-minute educational films

Bought a black velvety holiday dress

Edited something called a fabric lab

Baked 42 chocolate chip cookies

Stepped on this dog

i swear i've written this before...

We saw De Javu over the weekend. It thought it was very well done, although it caused my brain to become very spinny. It kept me thinking the whole time. Denzel Washington is one of those actors who just commands the screen. Val Kilmer gained a lot of weight, it was a little distracting- he just looked so different. Every time I think of something to type about the film, it's kind of a spoiler so I'll stop there.

We saw De Javu over the weekend. It thought it was very well done, although it caused my brain to become very spinny. It kept me thinking the whole time. Denzel Washington is one of those actors who just commands the screen. Val Kilmer gained a lot of weight, it was a little distracting- he just looked so different. Every time I think of something to type about the film, it's kind of a spoiler so I'll stop there.

happy blogiversary to me

A year ago today, I began digressing.

Here's my first post.

ominous encounter

making movies, seeing movies

Tuesday was my first day on a film set ("Budgeting Basics"---look for it to blow away Casino Royale at the box office). It was so cool, and I'm learning so much. I ran lines with actors, coached the voice-overs, made decisions about wardrobe, settings, and if the students look really hard they can see me as an extra in a coffee shop scene. And I only clumsily tripped over a chord and spilled the director's Coke once...not bad for me. In short, I helped make a movie, and it was freakin' cool.

I've seen quite a few movies recently...so we're going with the Haiku Review!!!(click on the titles for more indepth and less syllabically constricted information on the films)

Casino Royale

Daniel Craig is hot
charismatic and bad-ass
Best Bond film I've seen


Stranger Than Fiction

determinism?
or is it all just free will?
skillfully acted


Borat

sophomoric but fun
people caught being themselves
ignorance exposed