way behind

A little illness, a bunch of work, some house guests, and other miscellaneous chores, and you'd think I was too busy to write in my blog. My prerogative, I guess.

It's raining. Again. And windy. Again. Payback for a significant decrease in snowfall this winter?

tonight's excuse

It wasn't the sleeping cat anchoring me to the couch... it was me, sound asleep moments after Ted went to bed, and unmovable until just recently. Geesh.

trapped

My cat wouldn't let me get off of the couch tonight. I was stuck; held hostage by ten pounds of blue tortoiseshell fluff. Anchored firmly between my feet, she curled into an adorable -- yet immovable -- ball. I was her captive. Not much accomplished, other than watching "Dreamgirls" and communing with my kitty.

happiness is...

Four schmumfy kitties all sleeping within arm's reach. Three on desktop afghans, one on an afghan-topped hammock below. Truly, I am blessed.

Of course, actually getting a photograph of all four of them together proves too challenging for me. Maybe some day.

Art by Ann Mroczenski

shocked

I don't see a lot of television commercials, thanks to TiVo. But I was home sick today and sleeping/draining on the couch all day long, when I came across this commercial. I've watched it 4-5 times now, and I laugh as hard every single time.



Now to bed to rid myself of the rest of this bug.

boo hoo

Ever have that feeling when you're sick when you just want to cry? Not for pain or discomfort. Not for frustration. Not because it'll help clear out the phlegm. Just to cry, for the sake of crying. I'm there. I've only been sick since Thursday night. It's not as bad as it was last time. But here I am -- just wanting to cry. Doesn't help that my right eye has been tearing for the last couple hours. I thought I'd paid my illness dues this year. Blah.

bed

Because I'm sick again, dammit. And we have guests in town -- staying in our guest room. And I have already used all of my sick time at work this year, so I'd better recover from this by the end of the day Sunday. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

erin go huh?

One might assume that, with a name like Kelly, I would be partying it up today. Well, I wore green to work. A short-sleeve, 5-button henley under a long-sleeve crew-neck sweater, and a purple skirt with small flowers and leaves to complement the top half of the ensemble. I helped my department write a limerick for the contest (we didn't win). I had Irish Stew for lunch. I missed my Dad (he often called himself The World's Largest Leprechaun). No beer, green or otherwise. No bacchanalia. No kooky hat. Guess I'm just no fun.

Some Irish wisdom from a friend:

May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you wherever you go.

Some old Irish wisdom I heard years ago (source unknown):

May you be in Heaven half an hour
Before the devil knows you're dead.

hakuna matata

My friends, Rina and Alia, took me to see "The Lion King" tonight at the Boston Opera House. It was a birthday gift. What a wonderful show. Beautiful costumes. Amazing puppetry. Great music, of course. A stunning venue. And the chance to spend an enjoyable evening with two lovely friends.

dear alex lambert

Dear Alex,

You are young. And yes, your lack of on-stage experience highlighted your nervousness while performing on TV for millions and millions of people. For the inexplicable and often illogical voting audience, that shaky inexperience did not endear you.

Pity. Because you have a unique and wonderful voice, and a talent that is undeniable even under the burden of stage fright. Please don't allow last week's vote to alter your musical career path. We need musicians like you. If you don't come back to AI next year, then please keep pursuing the path through other means. I look forward to someday having in my music library the musical stylings of Alex Lambert.

Sincerely,
Kelly

P.S. Your talent is spot-on, but that hairstyle must go. Either grow it all long or cut it all off. The half-and-half baby mullet ain't workin'. :-)

cheating

I admit it. There are a couple entries in the 2010 sanguinary blue that were not written on the day they were posted. I've 'fessed up. What's my punishment? Shall I write a phrase repeatedly on the blackboard?

I will not cheat on my blog again.

I will not cheat on my blog again.

I will not cheat on my blog again.

I will not cheat on my blog again.

I will not cheat on my blog again.

Yah, right.

mr. cuervo is mean

Well, in his defense, it wasn't actually Jose. And it wasn't single-handed. You see, I had a slumber party with my long-time friend, Rina, last night. Her husband was at a conference and her daughter was at her own slumber party, and Rina invited me over for dinner, margaritas, and Wii. Ted would be in bed before 8:00pm anyway, and with my plans in place, even he went out for early drinks with a friend before hitting the hay.

I re-discovered a couple of things in the process. [1] The reason I don't eat nachos any more (more than a few corn chips wreak havoc on my digestive system). [2] Rina makes crazily strong margaritas. The kind that make me breathe fire after each sip. [3] The combination of the above two items nearly incite me to a life-long diet of oatmeal and prune juice.

We had fun. Don't get me wrong. And playing 1981-style Galaga while slightly buzzed is far more exciting than it should be. We chatted lots and just hung out. It was great. But next time, I'm in charge of the food. And corn chips and tequila will not be included.

so long, jonathan garvey

When Ted and I first started talking online -- before the introduction of pictures or even a written description of physical appearance -- he asked me what kind of man I was attracted to. That's a tough question because I've found a variety of men attractive to some degree. But the truth is, I do have a "type." To demonstrate this type to him, I named three.

* Grizzly Adams

* John Goodman

* Merlin Olsen

OK, so Grizzly was a character. I wasn't sure if Ted would know the name Dan Haggerty. John Goodman was current at the time because "Roseanne" was still on the air, plus he was making movies regularly. Merlin? Ted wondered had he found a football fan in me? Um, no. That would be "Little House on the Prairie" talking. Oh, they didn't come any sweeter, nicer, and handsomer than Jonathan Garvey. And from everything I've read, the same was true of the man playing the part.

R.I.P. Mr. Olsen.

huzzah, kate harding

There are so many links I could add here for Ms. Harding. Tonight, it's all about this one. (Oops. Somehow, two got in there.)


Photo by Becky Hill.

tchaikovsky would be proud

This is my little friend, Alia. For Christmas*, we gave her a kit of unadorned wooden nutcrackers along with a paint set. Without any direction, and with amazing determination and drive, she had completed them all in less than two days. Zoom in on this picture. They have handlebar mustaches. It's all very cool.

* We celebrated Christmas with Alia's family weekend before last. Three previous attempts had to be rescheduled for various reasons. If you're wondering, yes, it's fun to have Christmas in almost-March.

wagon

I've fallen off the blog wagon. Missed a day, with no power outage for an excuse. Pathetic entry today, with no excuse of any sort. When will I really get into the daily blogging groove? Bets on the date?

Here's a funny.

and the winner is...

Not me. Because, of all the movies nominated for anything tonight, I've only seen three. "Up," "Star Trek," and "Sherlock Holmes." Time to break down and get a Netflix subscription?

yes, again

sorry

Can't do it today.

you're only a day away

For only the second time since starting my current job 18 months ago, production will commence for a new customer. Tomorrow, my company will be making 10,000 jars of premium goodness for a different company to sell under its own name. That is my job. I sell my company's goods and manufacturing capabilities so that other companies can have delicious specialty foods with their own brand on them. It's called "private label."

I've been working madly for 18 months to build the business. In that time, I've only signed on two new customers. And, as of last week, my largest existing customer officially discontinued the last of the items we were making for them.

There are a lot of other projects that are in the hopper now, getting hotter by the day. I just need one big customer to approve one item, and it will make a huge difference. Of course, what I really want is for all of the customers in the hopper, big and small, to give the go-ahead, so that I can inundate my poor R&D, production, and distribution teams with too much to do. Let's make 'em all sweat!

time to purge

There are 11,311 messages in my personal email box. Oh don't worry. Only 4,749 are unread. Hey, don't I get credit for at least opening 6,562 of them? Among the unopened are daily headlines from the New York Times, real estate listings, Sirius satellite radio program updates, LinkedIn connection updates, and messages I send to myself from work (recipes, reminders, topics to blog about, links to articles, etc.).

This is in contrast to my work email box, which ebbs and flows depending on a variety of factors, but rarely gets above 100 and rarely holds anything that hasn't been read within hours of arrival. The box was getting a bit big (75), but today, I managed to chip it down to 16 messages (and all of them read). It was not easy. The reason the messages were there was because something needed to be done with them.

Oftentimes, that something is a series of things (make a call, update a task, create an appointment, build a spreadsheet, create a file, you get the idea). Sometimes, it takes an hour to put away a single email.

Obviously, I don't make such time for my personal email. Probably twice a year, I plumb the depths and do some serious deleting. Time to do that again. If only I had time.

olympics

Though I didn't watch much of the Olympics (I think my total time watching opening and closing ceremonies is greater than the time spent watching actual competition), I miss the cool sport-specific logo that graced Google every day. And I admit to feeling slight regret when people talk about certain events or athletes that I didn't see at all. Interestingly, I still find my spirit buoyed by the mere existence of The Games -- even if I didn't see much of them.

remember

This is really interesting.



And it makes me think of my mother and my father for very different reasons.