Cracklin' good times

There's nothing quite as invigorating and exciting as the beginning of fall...and the beginning of football season in Ann Arbor. The students are back, there's energy crackling in the air, the leaves are changing, and the maize and blue are flying everywhere.

The first game of the season was against University of Utah, and friends and family traveled in from far and wide. Well, mostly from Utah...and DC. The Hales came to town, Steve and Debbie Atwood joined the party and as a last minute surprise our own Travis and Garrett miraculously arrived on our doorstep.



Michigan lost, yes, but the good times were rolling with the family in full-effect (minus Ryan and Amy -sniff) and lots of friends. It was just like the good old days--family game night...let's do it.

(New pics from the weekend can be found on silent spinsters.)

Props-Time

Time to give props to the people who helped me make over Spinster Stories to the miraculous piece of art you see before you.

Carly Farnsworth of Playful Pickles Designs http://playfulpicklesdesigns.blogspot.com/
did a fantastic job of making my idea into a reality. Check out some of her other cool designs on the above link.

AND

Meredith Oldham the fabulous photographer who took my picture, and made me look respectable despite my best efforts to the contrary. You can see some of her beautiful photos at: http://www.merephoto.com/.

I love my new look-- thanks ladies!

It's not rude to be nude

I had a trip for work that took me to Seattle. I went with Elizabeth. She reminds me a lot of mom. Great organizer, very detailed - not so good with things that don't make it on to a list. Here are a couple I would suggest go on the to-do list. Don't lose your keys. Don't lose your blackberry. Don't take pictures of "lusty ladies" in the middle of a busy street. Ok, that last one is partially my fault.

After lunch in Seattle and a bit of walking around town, Elizabeth suddenly realized that she had lost the keys to our car. I won't bore you with ALL the conversations and challenges that happened as we tried to solve this seemingly simple problem, but I will say that we couldn't get a tow truck to fit in the garage, we couldn't get a locksmith to make us a key, and we did talk to customer service no fewer than 10 times as we spent about 4 hours in the rain trying to solve this problem. We finally did get a locksmith to open the car so we could get our luggage, and then we took a taxi to our hotel. Well two. The first one we got in we were forced to exit.

There were exciting moments, and a twist of bitter irony. After hours of searching, as we were finally on our way to the hotel (in our second taxi) Elizabeth heard a message Elizabeth from the art museum that they found her keys. They were closed by then.

And it is kind of amusing that Elizabeth lost her keys while doing something very important. She was in front of the art museum taking a picture (in the middle of a busy street) of a sign across the street titled, "Lusty Ladies - It's not rude to be nude!" I beg to differ. In some cases, it is definitely rude to be nude. Like at the dinner table.

I think the trip ended appropriately with Elizabeth and I racing to the airport to catch our flights...with not a minute to spare. As a parting gift Elizabeth left her blackberry on the back seat.

The Ultimate STANK-onia.

Well, Stankonia went out with a bang. I made arrangements to have my brother come take a photo of the team (and Barbara), Kristin did her hair real purty, and wore her best knee socks and we got ready to keep that 2 game win streak going....only to show up and be the only people on the field. Eventually two more team members showed up, but well, it's kind of hard to play softball with 4 people.

Loss by forfeit. Final game. What a way to go down.

New Hobby, and Pictures too

I've decided to stop bombarding people on this blog who could care less about seeing random pictures of my family and friends. As you can see by the new link on the left side, I've started a new blog--Silent Spinster Stories. Something I'm sure a few of you on here wish I would be more often. Silent, that is.

Bottom line, I got a new camera and I'm a bit snap happy. I plan to learn how to use it well and call myself a photographer instead of a hack. If you'd like to see how I'm coming along you can take a look-see.

This weekend my victims were the Ellis family. I posted a few of my favs. http://silentspinsterstories.blogspot.com/

Other than that...no breaking news.

Well, except this: Desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm not talking about being a spinster, I'm talking about the lack of blog material I have available for my blog here in Michigan. I have signed up for Match.com (pause for reader gasp) and I plan to use it regularly to fill up the pages of this blog.

There is no way that I will actually find a match on match.com, so please understand...I'm doing this for you. I think you can be assured it will provide us both hours of entertainment.

Here's a preview of what it has to hold for you. An excerpt from an email I got yesterday: "I may not be a supermodel, but I'm a super guy who really likes super models." I cannot attach a picture for you, but to create a mental image - 48, glasses, 5'8", 250lbs, bald. Let the games begin.

Breaking News

Miraculously Stankonia registered it's first two (and probably only) wins of the season on Friday.

It is clear that we owe a large portion of our win to our #1 fan Barbara (the heckler) who helped to inflame and get in the heads of the other team every time they were at bat and lowered her heckling of us to a mere 50% of the game.

It must also be noted that I only pulled a few muscles in my legs this week, instead of every muscle and suffered no sliding injuries.

It's amazing how fun it can be to actually win a game. I had forgotten. Go Stankonia!

Love at Work

Who's to say that there should only be love at home? After all, our own Bob Quinn shared his thoughts on romance in the office on the legendary Phil Donahue show. Apparently it's quite a trend.

Yesterday, Colby (pictured in blue) was telling me about a picture that he said was taken by someone in the office as a joke and then posted (to his surprise) in our company newsletter. Apparently this distressed him and he emailed me the evidence:



After he shared the picture with me, I responded, "I think Micah looks a little too happy, and you look sorta...in love."

I thought that would be the end of it, but was surprised moments later to find what was the funniest email response to cross inter-office mail in a long time.

"I think I am most disturbed by the fact that you would be surprised that Micah could be so happy with my love."

Touche.

A picture is worth a lot of words

I had to post a few more pictures of the kids that I took this weekend.

This one because it so perfectly captures Max's relationship with Aviva. Spraying her with water (see evil glint in eye) while pretending it's not happening, and Aviva still just adoring him and accepting the abuse.



And these three tell a sweet little story:

First, Max's jealousy that Keely got to put on makeup.



Next, Max finally getting control of the vanity and the makeup.



Last, Keely embracing Max Factor's love of face paint and his personal life choices.

Spin-ster Apparel

Several months ago, Elizabeth, Benita, Gina and I were talking about how Spin-ster Stories should seize the marketing goldmine it is sitting on, and start selling stuff online for spinsters.

Benita (I think) came up with the clever idea of selling t-shirts with different kinds of spinster labels so you could buy the one that best fit your personality. Shy Spinster, Sassy Spinster, Sultry Spinster, or for women like Benita who happen to be inconveniently married, Wanna-be Spinster or Spinster at Heart. You get the idea.

I wasn't sure these would really be the hot sellers we were imagining, but for Gina and Elizabeth's birthdays, I created a shirt for each of them. Elizabeth finally sent me some pictures of her in the shirt which you can see above. You can also see how when she is wearing it, she looks so hot that it virtually ensures she will not remain a spinster for long if she wears it in public.

Once she provides her success story and it's link to this shirt, I will start to sell them on here with no doubt that they will go like hotcakes.

Paris for Prez

As I was driving to work this morning I heard a talk show chatting about a new ad that was created on funnyordie.com. It stars Paris Hilton (uh-huh) and is a reaction to McCain and his stupid comment about her being "Barrack Obama's kind of celebrity" AFTER her father contributed much $$ to McCain's campaign. Talk about estupido.

Anywho, Paris does a great job, and frankly, I'm bought in to her energy plan. At this point if she's in the race, she has a strong shot at my vote. Check her out:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/64ad536a6d

P.S.
I just found the ad McCain made that set her off. Apparently he doesn't outright SAY Obama is like Paris, he just shows her and Britney and says he's the biggest celebrity in the world and implying what that means. If you're interested:

I got yer drama

Tonight we were watching So you think you can Dance?...well of course we were, pretty much goes unsaid. Abram even had to leave work early because in his words, "I would have liked to work 2 or 3 hours more to finish up, but the final of SYTYCD was on."

Point is, I always thought this show was exciting and dramatic, but it wasn't until they were showing the intro to the Russian number with Twitch and Joshua that I got a glimpse of how truly emotionally gripping it is.

Kat was talking about how hardcore this number was that the two guys were going to perform next and how taxing, and then the camera cut to Joshua. He said, "This is so hard I broke my shoe" and as he said that he showed us the torn sole of the shoe and right as he pulled it open Kristin gave a loud "GASP" as if she had just seen the most stunning and shocking thing of her life.

I looked at her, she looked at me, and I said, "Pretty dramatic huh?" And then we both burst in to laughter.

High drama folks. You just never know what twists this show's plot will take.

Ellis Pictures

I took some photos of Kristin and her kids today and I think some of them turned out kind of cute, so I'm sharing. Largely for gramps and grams in Australia.

Plain English

Today I opened my email and in it, I saw this subject which had come from one of my list serves: "Italian look for job."

I don't know why, well I sort of do, but it really cracked me up.

I read it to Abram and Kristin who giggled as well and then Abram, whose mind obviously runs in a different direction than mine said, "It would have been more effective if he wrote..." and here I thought Abram might say, Italian man is looking for a job, or some other grammatically correct phrase, but instead he finished with, "Hot Italian look for job."

Truth has been spoken.

War...what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing.
It is the devil's own game. Enough said.

Well one more thing should be said--mom was right. We shouldn't be allowed to play it on Sundays. Or maybe we just shouldn't be allowed to play any games with dice. Too much risk of injury...in this family.

Another week, another beating

Stankonia: Part II. Softball is clearly going to be the end of me. I will say that although we did lose both games in our double header this week, at least there was one point in game two that we took the lead. And we had multiple runners on base in both games. These are both MAJOR achievements.

While I would like to just sit back and enjoy these major milestones, unfortunately I can't move. I got assigned the role of pitcher for some reason and while I can't say if the position is correlated to all the injuries, I know that some of them are definitely connected. I:

1. Got hit in the shin with a ball the catcher (Kristin) threw back to me.
2. Got hit in the knee by a ball someone at third threw back at me in the dirt. I have the softball stitching marks in my knee to prove it.
3. Pulled my groin muscle (I think?)
4. Pulled all my butt, thigh and hip muscles -whatever you call them.
5. Slid in to second and cut up my left calf and my upper left thigh/ buttocks.

I know Travis got great enjoyment out of the fact that I couldn't walk after hiking Y mountain. If he saw me know he would never have to find another reason to laugh for the rest of his life. I can't walk. I can't even sleep, because every movement wakes me up in pain. I am completely and utterly broken, and I have no idea why, but I am forced to admit it may have something to do with my age. No matter how well I wear it. And the fact that a 20 year old kid at the game tried to ask me out three times to the new Batman movie (much to Kristin's enjoyment as she watched me squirm) should prove that. Thank you Oil of Olay. And thank you little-boy child for making a woman who could have given birth to you feel OK even as she lay immobilized by her aching, elderly bones.