misc

durty canadians.

/ emmykay / Leave a comment

Every year Frank and I get tickets from his parents to see a Black Hawks game. Before the game, we go to The Ultimate Buffet. This isn’t your OCB (Old Country Buffet) experience. It is gourmet and delicious – a feast of all of the senses. Yum. We usually graze (meat, cheese, more meat, more cheese) until just before the game. Nothing says tradition like The Ultimate Buffet. After the buffet, the hockey game is really just an opportunity to let the food digest before driving home.

So anyway, on to why the Canadians are on my List. Tonight the Black Hawks played the Edmonton Oilers. As is proper, when it comes time to play the national anthem, we courteous Americans have the guy sing “Oh Canada” first and then our national anthem second. Now, let me tell you, “Oh Canada” is so slow and boring, it may as well be a funeral dirge (Sp?). But we took our hats off and played nice. When they started playing our national anthem, the crowd was very excited. I mean, our anthem is about triumphing after a night of fighting – about seeing our flag waving proudly in the rising sun as the dust settled. Apparently the Canadian team didn’t care much for our rallying, exciting anthem as they started skating around their side of the rink before the song was finished. Who does that??? If we did that, there would have to be a public apology from the Black Hawk’s coach to all of Canada.

The good news is that the Hawks beat the Oilers 4 to 1.

Take that.

Whoa.

/ emmykay / Leave a comment

So it has been over a month since my last post – bad Emily!!

First things first – I hope that everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving. Despite not having an oven, my mother (aka the Miracle Worker) managed to pull off a fantastic feast of traditional Thanksgiving Fare.

My delightful cousin Dave turned 21 with the traditional Martini Party. Good thing that everyone has a few months to let their livers recover before Adam turns 21 in April. As the designated driver, I am responsible not only for getting my parents home, but also helping them remember what they did the night before. And yes, this part was well documented on my cell phone and on Meghan’s camcorder. Hopefully the tape will not be “lost” as it was last time. Uncle Steve cannot seem to locate the tape from Meghan’s 21st. I think that’s awfully convenient since he inadvertantly videotaped an hour of his lap.

Enough of that. Since it is clear that the Christmas season is upon us now (well, since October), Frank and I set up our Christmas tree. We like it – it’s our first Christmas tree and we’ve been married for 3 years now. It’s purty. The month of December is going to be OUT OF CONTROL busy. We have a Christmas party next Friday for work, the Women’s Holiday Brunch at church on Saturday and then visitors on Saturday night. The next weekends after that include a cookie-making party with the H.S. girls, a “Welcome to the World” Celebration for Kristin’s baby boy, Matthew – and – oh yeah – Christmas Eve at our house. YAY!!!

Shout Outs: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO Kate (the 27th), Meghan (22nd), Kelly H-B (11th), and Stacie D (18th). And those were in no particular order.

mellan collie and unending sadness. infinite. whatever.

/ emmykay / Leave a comment

Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth
And our lives are forever changed
We will never be the same
The more you change the less you feel
Believe, believe in me, believe
That life can change, that you’re not stuck in vain
We’re not the same, we’re different tonight
Tonight, so brightTonight
And you know you’re never sure
But your sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light
And the embers never fade in your city by the lake
The place where you were born
Believe, believe in me, believe
In the resolute urgency of now
And if you believe there’s not a chance tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight
We’ll crucify the insincere tonight
We’ll make things right, we’ll feel it all tonight
We’ll find a way to offer up the night tonight
The indescribable moments of your life tonight
The impossible is possible tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight
(The Smashing Pumpkins)

That song reminds me of so many things – I first heard it when I was in junior high school. I wasn’t sure what Billy was singing and I didn’t like the name of the band. When I was little, some fools smashed our pumpkins on Halloween while we were trick or treating at my grandparents’ neighborhood. They smashed our pumpkins’ faces in, except for the littlest pumpkin. Mom scooped up the remains of the pumpkins and built a pumpkin snowman by our front door. Trick-or-treators commented on our interesting snowman pumpkin creation. Their tones were slightly smug – they had put the proverbial blood over the doorpost and the spirit of Halloween Ugliness spared their pumpkins.

I remember a kid in my 8th grade English class wearing a Smashing Pumpkins tee-shirt and I thought, “Does he not know that smashing pumpkins is the cruelest thing you can do to a child?” I think the guy’s name was Jason, but we never spoke. It’s unfortunate that the Smashing Pumpkins came between us.

So all that said, it’s ironic that Frank would be the biggest Smashing Pumpkins fan I know. Fortunately for Frank, I healed from my Halloween wounds of 1992 (though I will always carry with me the saddest image ever of three lopsided pumpkins stacked in front of our door, with one small, grinning gord on top – grinning like it was all he had… and because he saw what happened to his friends). I remember when Frank confessed his adoration for the quirky group – that he was collecting as many bootlegged live songs as he could get his hands on. And then when we started dating, the Smashing Pumpkins resurfaced as a happy band – Zwan. Happiness is not something that Billy Corrigan does well, though we will always have “Honestly” from the days of Zwan. If there is one thing I learned – Smashing Pumpkins best music was born from the first horrifyingly melancholy moment where you realize that the bright orange smeared on the black pavement is, in fact, YOUR PUMPKIN, laid out for all the world to see. And even if your mom scoops the pumpkin up from the pavement, you will always feel violated that someone would think to take your finest moment and hurtle it into the street with a glib, smirking face.

So I guess what I’m saying is that Zwan didn’t have a chance because what can you sing about after you kill children’s dreams? And I guess I am also saying that the least that Billy Corrigan could do is give Frank and I one decent, relatively chipper song to hang onto as “our song.”

But it won’t bring back the pumpkins of 1992.

And that, Mr. Corrigan, is the infinite sadness of which you speak.

So I just have to tell you…

/ emmykay / 1 Comment

I thought I did a decent job of painting my toe nails this morning. I put a base coat, then a coat of paint, a second coat of paint and a top coat on them. All in like 5 minutes. I figured that the 15 minutes i needed to blow dry my hair and put my make up on would allow my toes proper drying time before I put them in socks and put those socked feeties in shoes. Sadly, I just switched to my work shoes and my toes are all smudged. Ugh. Oh well, worse things in life than smudged toenails.

Scary Storms!

I stayed with Frank last night up north and we were totally nailed by the storms. We were in the cottage without air conditioning when at 2 am, I thought, “Geesh, the air conditioner is loud” and then I remembered that we didn’t have one! Over 50 MPH winds were whipping around our small cottage that sits between two lakes (which means we don’t have anything to slow down the wind). Rain was pouring down in sheets so thick, I could barely see our cars parked 20 feet from the front of the house. I thought that we were certainly going to have a tornado, but fortunately the storm died down in less than 20 minutes & we went back to bed.

This morning the sunrise was goregous on the back lake, but it revealed all the mangled trees, park benches, etc, from the night before. A neighbor’s park bench was blown onto the road, a large tree fell on another neighbor’s porch. We thought Frank’s parents’ house, which is just up the road, had been spared, but later we found out that one of Sandy’s (my mother-in-law) willows had fallen on the 2nd pontoon boat (which was out of the water, on blocks at the time) and completely destroyed it. Fortunately only 2/3 of the willow fell. The part that the hamock is tied to is still standing. The other fortunate (sort of) thing is that over the winter, someone had stolen the motor off of both pontoon boats. Frank’s parents own one and then the kids (Kath, Dave, Karen, Frank and I) have the other one (I think that’s how it’s broken out, anyway). Frank’s parents’ replaced their motor, but didn’t put a new motor on the 2nd pontoon, which is good because it would have been too bad if we put a motor on the 2nd boat.

So that’s that. I am sure that Dr. K (Father-in-law) is quite busy cleaning up today and helping out the neighbors. Some of the neighbors had branches fall on power lines, etc. It really hasnt’ been a stellar summer weather-wise, so I guess it’s only appropriate that we go out with a bang 🙂

Other Stuff

I am going to take next Thurs and Fri off to finalize apartment details and job stuff–hopefully Frank and I will be moving in mid-September. Gotta find a job, though… Such exciting times!!! 🙂

The Sacred Train Rule…

/ emmykay / Leave a comment

Has once again been broken. There are five rules of riding the train:

1) Do not speak loudly (or at all) before 8am.

2) Take any cell phone conversations to the vestibule.

3) Do your best to avoid hitting other passengers in the head with your bag as you walk down the aisle

4) Do not speak loudly about personal problems because then I will want to ask you about them if they are particularly juicy, but I can’t because I’m not really supposed to “hear” what you are saying

5) Do not speak loudly (or at all) before 8am.

Rules #1 and #5 are particularly important and have been mentioned several times in previous blogs. I don’t understand why people have such a hard time with this rule.

This morning, there was a gaggle of teachers taking the train in from DeKalb. Now, I have to say that I’m not sure that they were really teachers per se. They were definitely student teachers, which explains the stories they were telling. One of their friend’s mothers went over to his apartment and cleaned it for 9 hours one day. First of all, what 20-something has their mom over to clean their apartment? And secondly, what MOM DOES THAT?!?! If your kid is a pig, but out of your house, I say, not your problem. Also, these girls were talking about how they like to go drinking at several bars and people they knew. What was particularly upsetting about this was that 1) they prevented me from getting a very important extra hour of sleep that I crave every morning and 2) the stories they were telling were so blah that it wasn’t worth staying awake for. But their voices were so high pitched and whiney, I couldn’t fall asleep. UGH!

So, enough of that. I’m done. Really.

Gotta finish work…

Time Traveler's Wife / This Weekend

/ emmykay / Leave a comment

Time Traveler’s Wife

This weekend I read Time Traveler’s Wife in less than 24 hours. I couldn’t put the book down! I highly recommend it. As a matter of fact, if you wish to borrow it, let me know–I can hook you up!

This Weekend

Frank and I had an absolutely lovely weekend together. We went up to the lake on Friday and saw Shrek 2 on Saturday. Sunday we went back up to the lake for Frank’s and Dave’s (brother in law) birthdays. Monday, I hung out with Tammy and Kate, then saw Raising Helen with my friend Erin. Frank and I grilled out Monday night. Ahhh… Bliss.

🙂

A New Look

/ emmykay / 1 Comment

For a new season! As the weather gets (mostly) warmer, I thought I would try a greener blogger.

And Jamie–I did check that box–let’s see if it works!!