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.