Wednesday, December 10, 2008

adult skate.

I went to adult skate last night, I've been going to this particular skate since last year, but I haven't gone in a reaaallly long time. I try to explain to people what adult skate is like, but I don't think anyone really 'realizes' what adult skate means.

holiday
me at adult skate wearing my holiday sweatshirt my mom made me as a kiddie.

I guess my usual explanation of adult skate is this: Most the people there are over the age of 65, and no one is usually under the age of 50 (besides us). All the people dress up in their 'outfits' The men wear club shirts, or nice 'skating pants' the women wear 'skating outfits.' You know, like the ones they wear in the Olympic ice skating competitions? There are soooo many couples skates, and waltzes that only 1/3 of the people there usually do...There is live organ music, usually all the same songs play for example sweet caroline, build me up buttercup and jeramiah was a bullfrog. Really though, this night can't be explained, you kind of have to just go...plus us 'young people' make the 'adults' really happy. They always tell us to 'come back next week.'


a little glimpse at 'adult skate'

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

no good.

Let me tell you, 27 degrees is much too cold to be riding your bike 5 miles twice a day...I learned this from experience. I mean, wasn't THAT bad, but my bike gloves are much too thin for 27 degrees + wind. I think I may have to make a switch to thicker gloves if I wish to continue riding my bike in the cold. So after not being able to feel my fingers for the last 2 miles of my morning and evening ride yesterday I opted for the train today...not really because of cold, for some reason its 50 degrees today...but its supposed to rain for the next 3 days...I'm kind of disappointed for the rain.

I've been a busy bee lately. My etsy site is empty and I've been knitting a lot..I knit a hat or bandana every evening...I have quite a pile adding up. I finished my living room...I rearranged my furniture and bought a new giant tv. Though after almost 2 weeks without television, its sort of lost its luster to me.

Tonight I'm going rollerskating at 'adult night' adult night is actually 'really old people night' me and a couple of friends go and and skate around with people probably 65+ years old. There is live organ music...its december so I'm going to take a gander and say there will only be christmas music tonight. bummer.

Monday, November 24, 2008

no tv!

Its been a rough month or two. first someone tore out all my plants and threw them all over my car along with some food products, then someone crashed into my car causing over 5k in damage, then i got bit by a dog and had to go to the emergency room and finally my tv died last sunday. I've been without a tv for a week now. it kind of sucks, which i find interesting because I went for 4 years without watching TV pretty much while I was in college. I guess thats what free cable will do to you. But I've been keeping pretty productive. cleaning, rearranging the living room, painting spackling... I ordered a really nice TV at a low price through my work, but its taking some time to get here. I just got a call that it will arrive sometime friday afternoon. I guess it'll be another week until I get to watch TV on a really big screen! not THAT big though. I'm a little excited, isn't that sad?

Saturday, November 22, 2008

its true

I grew up in the midwest. Illinois in fact, some people don't remember that and think i grew up in ohio...but in fact the first 11 years of my life were spent in Glen Carbon, IL. My illinois home was the only home I lived at that wasn't secluded in the woods. We actually lived in a development which was nice. No one in Illinois had pools at all and today I fondly remembered how when I was about 4 or 5 my dad brought home a cattle trough and put it in our driveway for me my sister and brother to 'go swimming' of course at the time I thought this was AMAZING. but now as I think of this memory I realize how ridiculously trashy this must have seemed to our neighbors. and just so you know, yes I have pictures to prove this, and yes my parents still have the cattle trough.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

t-rex head just needs paint.

Monday, October 27, 2008

ween

Hallween has always been my favorite holiday. I think theres only been one year of my life that I didn't dress up in some strange home made costume that either my mom made or I made from scratch. The last 3 years I've attended a ridiculous halloween party in the suburbs where there is a giant bon fire and people dress up in over the top home made costumes. the first year I went my friends all dressed up as ghost busters characters. They even made the car, and someone was a giant marshmallow man. The car was life sized and had working lights on it. Thats pretty ridiculous.

This year I've just been so so busy that I had no motivation to even think of what I wanted to be. Last year I was a shark, which was an amazing costume I threw together in a few hours and probably spent 10 dollars making. There was no way in my head I could think of anything to make a better costume than last year, but leave it to me to wait until the last minute and think something ridiculous up. Last night I started working on a t-rex costume. I made the head out of one cardboard box, and a couple brown paper bags so far its taken about 4 hours to make but I'm almost done. I think I'll be able to finish it tonight by adding a little more paper and painting it. then tomorrow I'll start sewing the costume together. Thankfully there is a really really dirt cheap fabric store in philly so I'll probably have a costume for under 10 dollars again this year. I'm so frugal.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

happy birthday to me.

My birthday week started out to my car getting hit while it was parked front of my house. It was 8pm on Monday night, I heard a loud THUMP - which I thought was probably a piece of drywall I had propped up against the wall just falling down, but I went outside to check. there was nothing out there, but my neighbor said he saw a mini van speeding down the street and told me to check my car. So I looked at saw this.


Sigh. I called the police and filed a report, found out its going to cost me a 250 deductible to fix- not too bad.

Last night I went to bed and then heard my roomie knock on my door. She told me that there was a bunch of water in the basement. I guess the pipe fell out of the kitchen drain and all the water was just pouring into the floor. It was 12am and I spent and hour vacuuming up water and moving things around. nothing really got ruined other than some old rugs but I think they can be salvaged. I wasn't going to go to work today because I thought I needed to spend more time drying things, but it wasn't so bad in the basement.

I am going to go home after lunch though because I have to fix the pipe and then I have to take my car in for an estimate at the shop I'm going to in Media. What a birthday!

My newish roommate Frank told me he couldn't believe how calm I was when all these things happened the past two days. He told me he would have been freaking out. I just told him that I was used to things like this happening to me and I 'wasn't really surprised' by them. I also told him that I don't have emotions...but not really, I just am not the type that freaks out over things that happen. I don't really drive my car much so its not going to really really effect me much getting it fixed...and the basement flood didn't really ruin anything and now the floor is really really clean...so...sure its upsetting to have someone hit your car and run...and it sucks to have to spend time cleaning up the basement when you'd rather be sleeping, but worse things have happened and I probably will forget about most of it anyway.


At any rate I did see this clip of small town values to cheer me up.

Friday, September 26, 2008

inkraftwetrust

Palien.

I found out about an hour ago that Sarah Palin is in Philly and she's going to the Irish Pub, which is a really douchey bar down the street from my work. I'm sad to report I went there a couple weeks ago for a going away party for a coworker, had one beer and left.
I find it rather interesting that Palin is HERE because Philly is ridiculously liberal. A bunch of boys I know through a friend I went to college with and who I now work with are going to shout things at her wearing t-shirts they printed themselves. If you'd like to see these gems feel free to look.

I'm sure there will be unlawful arrests of people for yelling lude things at her as usual. Instead of wasting my time on sarah palin, I think I'm just going to go to the Memphis taproom tonight and drink a few beers and watch the debate.

In other news I bought a different sarah palin shirt today because it made me laugh and I have not yet seen anyone wearing it. It came with other free things. yay free.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

a haunting.

Me and my friend Bill used to avidly watch "ghost shows" together while we painted pictures. lately I've been avidly watching a show called A Haunting on the discovery channel. I makes me wonder dumb things occasionally, like maybe if there are so many shows about ghosts that they could possibly be real. I keep these thoughts in the back of my head, though I haven't watched any 'ghost shows' in a couple months.

The other night, say wednesday night I was laying in bed watching six feet under on my computer. I was dozing off and felt a thump in the middle of my bed, about where my knees were. it really freaked me out, especially when I looked over and saw cylar asleep on his bed no where near my bed. I started dozing off again and felt another THUMP. I was secretly very disturbed by this, but tried to ignore it. The third time it happened i decided that it was time for cylar to come up and lay with me in my bed. I eventually fell asleep but kept occasionally feeling my bed move in the middle of the night...cylar still laying there passed out.

I suppose I woke up around 4 or 5 that night and had to go to the bathroom so I opened my bedroom door and out runs the cat I'm fostering. I later found that she ripped open my box spring and burrowed inside...I really don't like cats, at all.

Friday, September 12, 2008

bathroom smathroom.

I finally painted my bathroom the other night. I somehow arrived at this color.
b-room

rainy rain.

Its a dreary day in Philadelphia today. Its not very bright in my cubical, which is surrounded by windows. Unfortunately its also supposed to rain tomorrow which is going to stink! My friends Abby and Mike are getting married outside in the PA suburbs, I guess thats what you get when you have a wedding during the highest point of hurricane season. We were supposed to camp out in the yard tomorrow night too, but if its storming I think that I'll just go home to go to sleep.

Nothing much new or exciting. Last night I helped my friend Bill do some gardening at a rich couples house. I mowed the lawn with a push mower, and cleaned up the flower beds a bit. I think they own 3 houses all together, and this one is really nice. Its a carriage house of a giant mansion - which are now two separate properties. The house is in Mount Airy which is a really ritzy area 20 minutes outside Center City. I would totally live there someday, it sort of reminds me of where my parents used to live in New Jersey.

After this I returned home and took Cylar for a walk, we found out that the park I take him to was closed up. It wasn't really a park though, just a huge fenced in area that has a hole in the fence. I'll probably just start taking him somewhere else that has an open area now and toss the ball. He'll never run off if there is a ball or frizbee involved.

now for your viewing pleasure...

Thursday, September 11, 2008

I was awoken the other night around 3am to the sound of my dog Cylar vomiting all over my bedroom floor. Luckily I have hardwood floors, but nonetheless its not very fun to be woken up to vomit all over the floor and trying to avoid stepping in it when you walk in the dark to your lightswitch. Sadly this is a somewhat common occurrence but I got up and cleaned it up. I went downstairs to throw away everything and heard a little scurrying in the kitchen, of course it was a mouse. Luckily I have a foster cat, so I found her and threw her on the kitchen counter and moved the canister the mouse was hiding behind. She caught it for me, what a nice foster cat.
I returned to bed around 4 after all this excitement and was about to go to sleep when Cylar started to throw up again. It was an interesting night to say the least.

I actually finished painting my bathroom yesterday, a puke green color I'd say. And I even had time to witness the horror of Andrew Bird's song being featured in a new Marriott commercial. The more disturbing fact was that I was listening to his music while I painted the bathroom and saw it on TV after words.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

food for thought.

I made my derby pie yesterday, its delish. I shared it with some friends who had no idea what I was talking about when I told them I was making a derby pie. They decided that they really liked it too.

now some real food for thought.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

bathroom bathroom bathrooms

I get so overwhelmed with my house sometimes. I bought it in June of 2007, and following in my parents footsteps I looked for the 'best deal,' and when I say 'best deal' that really means a cheap almost falling apart fixer uper.

Now I'm not sure if my house was really the 'best deal' because its just been sooo much work. Practically everything has had to be replaced or gutted or covered up. Every floor in the house has had to be redone minus the living room which has sweet parquet floors but unfortunately they have to be refinished at some point.

At any rate it doesn't ever feel like I'm making any progress or have any clue what I'm doing. I have so many projects going on at once and never seem to finish anything (again following in my dad's footsteps). I find myself most weekends just sitting around staring at things having no clue what I should so I usually just end up cleaning something instead of actually completing any home improvement. But I am glad to report that today I actually did some work on my house.

In a couple weeks my parents are coming over and we're going to install a new half bath on my first floor. I know that for a fact I will now be the only person on my block with 2 bathrooms which makes me excited. Today I decided that since the bathroom is being installed over the parquet floors that I was going to remover that section of floor. There is a mahogany strip that goes around the border of the room and I want to take it out and reinstall it around the border of the new bathroom so it looks like it was always there.


When I finished doing this small feat, which took me about 4 hours I decided to finally finish spackling my upstairs bathroom. Though its been done for 7 months, I've never finished the walls of the bathroom. I think its high time so by tomorrow when everything is dry its going to get a coat of primer. Now my Dad won't be able to scold me the next time they come over like he always does.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

sheeshus.

They opened a new gym in the comcast center this week. It opened on Tuesday the 2nd. I didn't go on Tuesday because I had plans - which fell through - after work. So instead I ended up going today, I almost didn't though because there was supposed to be a soccer game.

Every week a bunch of people that I don't really know play soccer...its never serious they're called 'shitty soccer' on the yahoo group they made and most the time only 6 people show up.

At any rate, there was supposed to be a soccer game, but it fell through so I went to try out the new gym. I lifted weights for about a hour, which was scary because the worst noises I have ever heard were coming out of my knees. I've had my knees both operated on several times so they're not the nicest working knees. I figure if I start lifting weights and building up the muscles in them that I can prevent future troubles...but also I really like to lift weights...I was on the weight team in high school (though no one ever believes this when I tell them). After an hour of weigh lifting I used this elliptical stair climbing machine for 15 minutes. I was pretty tired after that, and shaky but I had to ride my bike home 5 miles still. That was pretty rough riding a bike with jello arms.

Before I left I received a message that soccer was actually going to happen, so I got home at 6:30 ate a bagel and then rode my bike 2 miles to the soccer field. I played soccer for about an hour and left. I stopped by a friends house to say hi on my way home and she gave me a little slice of pecan pie that she made. It was good, but not as good as my moms pecan pie.

Pecan Pie made me think of derby pie and how i wanted to make it so here I sit looking for a recipe. They're pretty hard to find since its a trade marked name...but I've found a couple that could be promising. Maybe I'll have time to run by trader joes tomorrow and pick up some walnuts and try this sucker out. Maybe my brother in law knows a better recipe? He is from Kentucky.

Monday, August 25, 2008

I painted this awhile ago, but I never posted it because I've been so busy with fostering dogs. I've had 3 dogs in my house at various times over the past month and a half. 3 dogs is way too many and I don't think i ever want that many again. Having two seems like no work at all now that the 3rd one (I was dog sitting a former foster dog)is gone. Anyway. This is a bubble blowing rocket I own. I guess I'm painting things I own, on trashy wood I pulled out of my house. Hopefully I'll have some time soon to make some new paintings...
rocket

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Plain Jane.

I sold one of my (many) bikes this week for $150. It was the second one I ever painted, it was my favorite but it was time to sell it since I never rode it EVER. I think I spent 30 dollars fixing it up, and it was free. Not a bad profit.
for sale

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

I am so sick of dogs...yeah its true. Maybe I'm just sick of Doodle who I'm dog sitting for the week....he's crazy and has really bad manners that I broke of him when I fostered him but since he was adopted he's back and even worse than ever! I'm not really sure if its worth 25 dollars a day to watch him, but oh well he's here to stay. And Alvin my other foster is driving me crazy too. I think I need a break from all these animals...so happy that doodle is going home to his family on saturday...only 2 more days!

In other lame news, I've been cleaning my house with vinegar water instead of household cleaners in a feeble attempt to save money. I've had lots of complaints about the smell from the other residents in my house so I mixed in a little tea tree oil which does the trick, and a little goes a lonnnng way.
its been awhile, but in my defense I haven't made any artwork in a long long time. I blame it on my house that I bought a year ago which is still a large work in progress. At any rate I have painted some new paintings. I chicken and 3 marbles. I painted them all in one day and my friend Bill ended up buying my chicken painting. He bought me dinner, and I gave him the painting.

They're painted on old wood from my house, they're not very big either. Its a problem I have, not painting anything very large.