Another One Bites the Dust...

I am now officially old. Yes, that is correct, I have hit the quarter century mark and joined the old ladies club. The years are starting to roll by at an increasingly faster pace. From this point on I will spend my time knitting, baking bread and spending all my money and time on and with my nieces and nephews. ;-)

One thing I do like about birthdays is that it is a good time to review the past year of my life. (Don't worry, I don't plan on boring anyone by recounting all of the details). It is always fun to give each year of your life a different title, like each year is a chapter. For this year the chapter would be titled something like, "Don't Break a Leg." And yes, I intentionally messed up that saying to reflect my accident prone-ness. The blooper reel for this past year would be full of the many accidents and random catastrophes that I have had.

A Duel of Monstrous Proportions

Remember back in elementary school when you were forced to do science fair projects? Without fail, every year there would be one kid that would do a taste test between Coke and Pepsi. Personally I don't see how that constitutes science, sounds more like personal preference. What is the hypothesis? People say they like something but then can't tell the difference once blindfolded. Wow...that is a groundbreaking experiment right there. Anyway, there were two delivery guys, one from Coke and one from Pepsi, who got into a fight in Pennsylvania. Because they disagreed over which product was better. And yes, this was reported in the news. (No wonder people think Americans are frivilous). http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2007/10/14/miele.coke.vs.pepsi.fistfight.wtae

On a lighter and more tasty note, I went to Santa Barbara this weekend with my Mama for a pre-birthday celebratory lunch and shopping. Here is a picture of me with my lunch. Yes, that is

crab. And I had the little clampy- leg crushing tool thingy and the tiny fork to get the meat out with. It was quite the eventful lunch. So delicious, but incredibly messy. Here is a pic from the restaurant of the pier. It was kind
a gray day. But see the mountains
in the background? With the clouds and such? Well, I had a humanities teacher who said that Asian artwork where the mountains were covered in clouds were always Japanese, and so I call those Japanese mountains.

To sum up this post: Santa Barbara was lovely and the Coke vs. Pepsi feud is really getting ridiculous. Come on people, just let it go already!

Hap hap hap, happy birthday!

Who would have thought that blindfolding a person, spinning them around and giving them a stick could be so entertaining? Well, the obvious answer is the Mexicans! Hooray for the pinata! I did a little research about pinatas, just trying to keep my readers informed, and while there are several theories about the origin of the pinata, it seems like the general consensus is that the pinata started with the Aztecs. They were part of a religious type of ritual, and instead of "papier mache", they used clay pots which would be decorated depending upon the god ad ceremony. Interesting huh? Why this discussion of pinatas you ask? Well, this past Monday was my Dad's birthday- can you believe it, 59!- and we had a pinata (trying to keep him young).

Isn't that amazing? He hit that thing about 4 times and it was dead. No one else got a chance to hit it. Can you say needed release of pent up aggression? Just kidding. But seriously. The next time you have a pinata you might want to have a mini refresher course on pinata etiquette. Even if it is your birthday you shouldn't hog the pinata. (Write that one down in your journal, you wouldn't want to offend anyone by forgetting something that important!)

Well, the rest of the birthday celebration went well. My mom and I had prepared a delicious dinner, some might call it gourmet, I prefer to call it delicious and leave it at that. But if you want to refer to my cooking as superb, decadent, etc. I won't stop you. Anyway, here is another picture, this one of the Parental unit, so precious! And yes, I realize that it looks like my father is about to karate chop my mama, but...actually that is pretty accurate. In our family instead of spanking the birthday-ee we have a birthday tradition that the birthday boy or girl gets to hit the other people. My dad chose a karate chop, which was unexpected but well received. (Ok, if you believed any of that for any length of time then a. you don't know me very well b. you are extremely gullible c. you have issues or d. all of the above).

Anyway, enough rambling about birthdays, pinatas, and hitting things/people. Just please remember the lesson about pinata etiquette because you don't want to be the one person at the party who everyone else mocks for not playing fairly.

Lucky Charms

Texas lost on Saturday, thus losing all hopes of being Champs, curses! I am sure that if I had been able to watch the entire game that they would have won. I have that sort of effect, I am a good luck charm. Yes, some of you may be surprised by that, especially in light of the bad luck that I personally have been having (this year especially), but being a good luck charm does not require a person to have good luck, just to produce it for someone/thing else. And that is something that I can do. I am sure that not everyone believes me, no doubt there are people who think I am loony. But here is some proof:

My Spurs are the NBA Champions, and while some might say it is because of Tim Donaghy's illegal betting, it was lucky that he was refereeing those games wasn't it?
Also, Texas beating USC a few years ago, there were quite a few skeptics out there, and it got a little close, but my Longhorns went on to win it. Vince Young winning the game in the last nineteen seconds was spectacular, and thanks to Pete Carroll for going for it on that fourth and 2, and giving the ball to the Longhorns, boy was that ever lucky! Do you really need more proof? I can keep on going, but I think I've made my point. (What was my point again? Oh yeah). So if I had been watching the game on Saturday, Oklahoma wouldn't be so happy now. Curse those Okies...

For the love of the sport

Looking back on my athletic career, I sometimes wish that I could have done some things differently. You know what I mean, that whole 'if I knew then what I know now' mentality. Nowadays you hear about the parents who get their kids involved in sports at the age of 3. Right now in the park across the street from my house they hold flag football practices for boys who can't be more than 5 or 6 years old, and I have to admit it is pretty cute seeing the little quarterback throw a pass about 3 yards- precious. But here is my contention: at what point does a parent's obsessive drive to have their kid involved in every possible sport and/or activity become unhealthy? Perhaps we should look to a recent story that came out of Beijing. The father of a 10 year old girl tied his daughter's hands and feet together while she swam for three hours in a southern Chinese river. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21126016/?GT1=10450 (Check out the pic). Apparently the girl has a dream to one day swim the English Channel. And she wanted her father to tie her hands and feet. Wow...so if a 10 year old wants to race cars should we let her do that also? How about swimminmg with sharks or sky diving? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't the parents supposed to be watching out for the kids? They are the adults...I don't know, maybe I just expect too much from parents these days. I'm sure that a 10 year old girl came up with the idea of swimming the English Channel all on her own...