You say it's your birthday...

It's my birthday, too, yeah! (No, really. It is.)
This time 30 years ago, I looked like this. Give or take a few hours.

Newsfeed

Newsfeed away!

1. We found Kevin's mom! She was this very nice, very clueless young woman who asked us for dog-owning advice. Thus ensued a very nice, very long sermon from Hot Pants and me on her missteps. For starters, she told us he had run away several times before, "but he always came back." Uh, he's run away before yet you've never gotten him a tag? Um, yeah. He weighs 3 pounds and runs in the street, so chances are pretty good he's going to get squashed by a car. Get him a tag right now! She also told us that she didn't want to get him neutered because she wanted to breed him. I informed her that he would run away a lot less (and hump a lot less) if she would have his boys snipped off. Lastly, she announced she's moving to France in two months and wasn't sure what she needed to do to take him with her. Sigh. Here is where I told her that we would be happy to find a home for him if she couldn't take him. People, people, people. Don't buy a dog unless you're ready for the long list of responsibilities that come with it.

2. How sad was the Michael Jackson memorial yesterday? I was fine and making snarky comments about everything until his daughter, Paris, got up there and started sobbing about how much she loves her Daddy. Holy hell, did I cry! So effing sad.

3. Two friends of mine have started a rather hilarious blog called Matt and Marlene Devour the Culture. Read and love.

And he shall be called Kevin

We found the cutest little long-haired Chihuahua wandering around our street last night, scared to death of the big bad world. He's got a collar but not tag. Way to go, conscientious owners.

He's a sweetie, but he's caused quite the stir in our house, as Oscar The Only Dog Who Ever Existed In the Whole World isn't very happy to learn his name isn't terribly accurate.

We've posted signs around the neighborhood, figuring the little guy couldn't get very far on his four tiny legs. It'll be a week before we start looking for a new home for him, so get in line now.

Meanwhile, I'm calling him Kevin. Behold!

News feed

I've been kind of bitchy latey. First the squirrels, then Boston. I promise to be better about the bitter. For now, here's some what's in the hopper lately:

1. It's been two months since Hot Pants and I started personal training, and we are seeing great results. I've lost 13 pounds and gained muscle and confidence. I'm not sure how much he's lost (though I know it's more than I have ... men are so lucky!), but he looks awesome. I'm hoping I can shed some more of me before the wedding dress arrives and I have the first fitting. I ordered it in late March, so I should be getting the call from the dress shop in the next few weeks telling me it's here! *Does happy dance*


2. "So You Think You Can Dance" is back! The season has been really good so far, and I've actually been disappointed at a few of the dancers who've gone home. I've finally learned to love Sonya and Mia Michaels, both who drove me nuts last year. (Although, now that I've seen her Web site, I might feel differently about Mia...) My favorite dancers are Melissa, the ballerina with a heart of gold, and Evan, the Gene Kelly-esque Broadway dancer.


3. Michael Jackson died. Just in case you were, you know, living under a rock or just stupid.


4. My dad's been scanning and sending me old photos to display during the wedding. Here's some eye candy.

Fuck you, Boston

This is a tale of the worst vacation ever.
We should have seen it coming. After all, we've had horrible weather in every other city we've visited this year, including riding out a tropical depression along the Gulf Coast that flooded the island we were staying on and buried our car in sand and surf. See?

Washington, D.C.? Cold and rainy. Chicago? Rainy and cold. The beach? Flooding, wind, rain, evacuation. You get the picture.

So why would Boston be different? We just had no clue what Beantown had in store for us.
First, our flight was delayed leaving Atlanta, which meant we arrived in Boston at 2 a.m. We had a bike tour scheduled for the next day, but we decided to postpone it because of the nasty weather. We spent the day walking around, avoiding downpours by running into stores. That night, we went to the Braves-Red Sox game at Fenway, where the Bravos absolutely ruled. (Woot!) The rain held off during the game, but this was my view during the game from my "partially obstructed" seat.

The next day dawned gloriously sunny. We nabbed a ridiculously expensive rental car and headed for Plymouth to attend a wedding. We didn't have time to see much of the town before the ceremony, but we did see a rather disappointing rock that played some importance in our country's founding. Big lot of hooey, it is.

The wedding was gorgeous, and we met some really awesome people at the reception while dancing the night away. Plus, they had an ice cream sundae bar. Mmmm!

Back to the tragedy.

We woke up the next morning to biting wind and a nasty misting rain. So much for touring Plymouth. Back in the car to Boston, where the roads are so confusing that it took us an hour to find our hotel right across from Harvard. You've heard of Harvard, right? Google Maps seems to be confused as to where it is. Or, at least, the GPS in our iPhones seemed to be confused about where we were in relationship to Harvard. Arg. More rain, more walking, more wet feet and cold. Cambridge is cool, but I'd rather see it when my extremities are dry.

The next morning was just as disgusting. We decide to take that bike tour anyway, as it was our last day in Boston and we didn't want to eat the tickets. About five minutes into the tour, I fell off the bike, skinning up my hand and knee on Beacon Hill. Awesome.

I got back up, hopped on my bike and continue with the 10-mile tour (after some first aid). Ouchy ouch ouch. By the end of the ride, we were cold and very, very wet. My hand, wrist and knee ached. We walked around the North End neighborhood for a while and grabbed some tasty pasta for lunch, where Hot Pants promptly dumped a full glass of Diet Coke all over himself.

Determined to make the best of it, we headed back out into the rain to see about the Institute of Contemporary Art's Shepard Fairey exhibit. I noticed my ankle and foot starting to hurt, but I chalked it up to my hugging the sidewalk earlier. After a mile and a half trudging through the rain, we discovered the ICA was closed. It's Monday. Fuck.

We grabbed a cab and headed for Cheers, where I gleefully bought a pair of dry socks to relieve my feet of their misery. At this point, I was kind of limping from the ankle pain. The more I walked, the worse it got and before long, I could barely walk. Fuck.

Finally, we decided to just head for the airport, where was now hopping on my one good foot and cussing under my breath. We checked to see what gate we were leaving from, only to discover that our flight was delayed for FOUR HOURS. This was where I announced really loudly that I hate Boston. No longer able to walk at all, I sent HP off to find a wheelchair. Turns out you can get checked in and through airport security really quickly if one person in your party is in a wheelchair. That's great, unless you're at Logan airport, where the AirTran terminal has absolutely nothing but a small newsstand and you're stuck there for, I don't know, FOUR HOURS.

I had to elevate my ankle, so I ended up lying on the floor with my foot up in the chair, showing the entire world my Cheers socks. We finally arrived home at midnight, never more glad to see our cat-hair infested home. I'm sure Boston is great, but I'm not really interested in going back any time soon.

Peachy Keen

I live in the Peach State, even though Georgia actually is third in the nation for peach production, behind California and South Carolina. Whatever. We're the ones with peaches on our license plates. Imagine how excited I was when I moved in with Hot Pants and discovered the very lovely tree in our front yard was, in fact, a peach tree! I had visions of making homemade peach pie and canning peaches for the winter and doing all sorts of homespun peach things with the peaches because they are peachy.

Fast forward a few months to when the tree started to actually produce peaches. Did you know peach trees produce too many peaches, so you have to constantly thin your crop or you'll end up with tiny, nubby peaches instead of gorgeous juicy ones like you see at the grocery store? Yeah, um, it's really fun spending time each afternoon picking tiny little peach buds off a tree in your front yard. Woot.

We did the best we could, but by the middle of the summer, the tree's branches were sagging under the weight of its fruit. Add in a two-year-old drought, and what you have on your hands is a bunch of broken branches. Not just one or two branches, but, like, entire hunks of the tree just ripped right off. The tree just gave the hell up. And the peaches looked like sad little golf balls.

That's when we decided to trot off across the country on a nine-day vacation, leaving our miserable little peach tree to fend for itself. About three days in, we got a call from our next-door neighbor, Julie. A lady and her five children had pulled up in front of the house and started loading trash bags full of our peaches. Despite threats from Julie that the police would be involved if they didn't leave, the woman continued harvesting our fruit. I was livid. If that woman had come by when we were home, knocked on the door and asked for some peaches, I would have gladly given her as many as she could carry. It's a terrible economy, and folks have got to help each other out. But to just take them? That's bullshit. Sure enough, when we got home, what few peaches were left were rotten.

This year comes along, and the drought is over and the tree looks healthy and I'm all "We're gonna have peaches!" I carefully thinned our crop, thinking of all the wonderful things I could make with the fruit. Long about mid-May, we noticed gnawed on little ball-like things all over our back deck. Yep. Squirrels. Motherfuckers ate every last one of our peaches and left the evidence on the back deck, just in case we didn't feel the sting of the theft enough. There is not a single goddamn peach on that tree and the season isn't even half over! Fucking rodents.

So far, it's:

Thieves and rodents - 2

CB - 0

Clean cut vs. Guyliner

There was a moment during last night's "American Idol" finale where Adam Lambert appeared in the gayest outfit I've ever seen on that show. He had on stacked gold boots, tight black leather from head to toe and some kind of sparkly, wire wing-like raised shoulder guard things. Hot Pants burst into hysterical laughter.



"I hope he wins, because that means American would have voted for THAT!" he said between shrieks.

As it turns out, American didn't vote for that. Or, at least, enough of American didn't, despite Lambert's lovefest with the judges throughout the season. America vote for Mr. White Bread. Shock!

Truth be told, I like Kris Allen. He was a big ol' snoozefest at the beginning, but he really showed his stuff as the season wore on. His rendition of "Ain't No Sunshine" was AWESOME. I loved his Kanye West cover. I thought his Michael Jackson cover was decent. For the first time in a while, I agree with America on this one. I didn't like David Cook. I hate Taylor Hicks. Jordin Sparks is boring. Carrie Underwood is not my style. Kelly Clarkson? Nope. But there's a tiny chance I might actually buy a Kris Allen album, provided he doesn't do a whole record of Kara DioGuardi songs.