Come to Cabaret Night!

I'm spending my week baking all sorts of goodies for Saturday night's first ever show choir Cabaret Night. Ryan is involved of course as a member of Show Choir, and he is also doing a spoken word piece with a violinist. I can't wait, although it's going to be a very busy day. If you are local please come--I've seen some of the silent auction baskets and they are amazing!

Doors and Silent Auction start at 6pm, show at 7pm, tickets are only $5.00 and all proceeds will benefit the Marysville Choral program!

Cheap Trick!

My heart has belonged to Cheap Trick for 30 years and 15+ concerts throughout those years. Only The Beatles (and to be really honest...Donny Osmond) have held my heart for longer. Even though I already own every darned version of Cheap Trick at Budokan ever released I'll be at my local big box mega buy store bright and early on November 11th. Why? To purchase the latest re-re-re-release of Budokan, of course. In a Box Set. With a DVD of the actual concert. In Dolby 5.1 even.

I may blow out DH's surround sound system on November 11th, but oh boy, it WILL be worth it.



To be fair I did wear out my original Budokan, which was on 8-track. Even now I still "hear" the track changover during Big Eyes in my head!

First Acceptance Letter!

My oldest son has officially been accepted to college! Drexel University has not only accepted my baby boy, but admitted him to their Honors College AND awarded him a nice scholarship!

No, he has not actually visited Drexel or even seriously considered them before they waived the application fees (and, I think the essay requirements to apply??) But they do have his major along with a solid co-op program. We'll see what happens next, since we haven't heard a thing yet from the other schools we know he's applying to. For that matter, perhaps this will motivate him to apply for some scholarships and finish any outstanding applications in the next few weeks.

Sniff...I'm such a proud Mommy!

My new favorite e-tailer!

I love candles. Always have, always will, even sold Partylite for a while because I loved their products so much. Now that my stash is shrinking I started looking for a new source to feed my candle love. Thanks to the folks on the Lush forums, I decided to order some candle tarts from Laughing out Loud Candles & Soaps a while back. Pricing, service, and delivery time was excellent and the scents--fantastic! I'm particularly fond of Amish Quilt, Romeo Vanilla, Autumn Wreath and just about anything with a cinnamon scent. Today my house smells like Cinnamon Apple Delight! I haven't tried her bath and body items yet but the wax scents are definitely worth checking out. No, I'm not an employee or silent partner or anything like that, just a pleased customer.

Other than obsessing about candles today, I've been recipe searching on Recipezaar while baking a few goodies and doing laundry. I need to get out of my cooking rut and find some easy, teen-friendly, and leftover/freezer/reheating friendly meal ideas! Any suggestions? Plan to make Sloppy Chicken Enchiladas again from simpledailyrecipes.com for dinner since our local HS football team plays in their 1st playoff game in SEVEN years tonight! Go Monarchs!

Kentucky plays MSU at 2:30 (win and they are bowl eligible, but definitely not bowl guaranteed!) and then CBJ vs. Chicago on TV tonight. Let's see which version of the Jackets show up at Nationwide tonight, I'm hoping it's Thursday night's team but fear it will be Monday's.

I'm back...slowly

The good stuff: Kentucky is 5-3, although only 1-3 in the SEC to date. Yes, UK can still earn a bowl game. Let's see what they do Saturday before contemplating further. Sounds like Randall Cobb earned a start at QB vs. Mississippi State. Works for me--Go Cats!

The who-knows stuff: My Blue Jackets finally put together a hockey game last night, beating Darth Foote and the Avs 4-2. Fourth win in 11 games to date. Could be worse, right?

The reason I haven't posted in weeks? My mom lost her battle with cancer on October 9, 2008 at 11:38pm. Hospice came in less than 30 minutes after I called, but since it was after midnight when they arrived the official date is 10/10/08. Some days are just bad and those are the good ones. The truly bad days are the ones where breathing hurts and going through the motions are futile. DH and I are heading back to Louisville next week to start dealing with the house. I miss her so much, I miss calling after leaving work, I miss telling her about the boys and the dogs, I even miss hearing her grumble. It's strange to be an orphan at my age and I hate everything about it.

Having typed my little rant, I can't say enough positive about Hosparus of Louisville. I wish she would have let me bring them in earlier than the last three weeks, but the assistance and care they gave was phenomenal. These men and women are truly angels on earth, and there are no words for how much I thank and appreciate everything they did for her.

Tuesday

What a day.

• While researching potential environmental education topics for work, I found the Disney Environmentality website. I *LOVE* my job!
• I finally broke down and added the Best of XM to my Sirius subscription, just for the extra sports channels. Even better, channel 208 = NHL Home Ice = included with the internet radio player!
• Was going to cook up pork chops with leftover rice for dinner, but no teriyaki sauce to be found. Grrr, I hate when that happens. Ended up doing a smorgasbord with burgers, pasta, and grilled cheese. Yes, I ate the grilled cheese!
  
• Joined Twittermoms after seeing a plug from a GC/Facebook friend. I haven't explored it that much yet, but hope to find a corner for moms of teenagers.

Lastly, I'm trying to get myself mentally prepared to head to Louisville at a moment's notice. Mom's wonderful hospice nurse is scheduled to see her tomorrow afternoon and she's to call me afterwards. I'm off to pre-pack and take a nice long Lush bath. I should be watching the debate, but tonight, it just doesn't seem to matter.

Hey! I'm a banned book reader!

I was checking out some blog links from my sorority's inCircle site, and one of my sisters blogged about the 2007 banned books list. I've read one (Huckleberry Finn) and have two in the household (good ole Huck and The Golden Compass).

Now, there's a handful of links for various "challenge" lists. I found one of my favorite books ever, A Wrinkle in Time, on the 1991 list. Then, on the 100 Most Frequently Challenged of 1990-2000 we've got just about everything Judy Blume ever wrote, a pile of my required HS reading titles including The Outsiders, Flowers for Algernon, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn; and my beloved A Wrinkle in Time (#22!) Even Howard Stern's Private Parts made the list, and yes, I own that too! I take perverse pleasure in seeing Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men on the list, however if you're going to challenge a Steinbeck book it should be Grapes of Wrath because it was torture via the written word. Okay, so I personally feel reading any Steinbeck book is sick and sadistic torture. Even so, his books still shouldn't be banned.

To further highlight just how ludicrous the book banning types are, Where's Waldo made the above list. Seriously. It was #88. I don't even want to know why someone would challenge Where's Waldo...maybe someone couldn't find Waldo so decided to mount a Ban Waldo campaign? Seriously, it baffles the mind...