Look it's my balcony.

How exciting.



This is a result of a crap day where nothing good happened. So here's some snow on my balcony. I froze my toes taking it so pretend it's "artsy."

It actually did snow snow a little more today but not much and not enough to send people home in droves.

Tomorrow I should have an exciting photo of Dinsdale's as I go to pick up my car (pleaseohpleaseohplease let them get it done tomorrow, I hate being car-less.) Turns out the problem with my car sputtering had something to do with a recall that was out on my car and it won't cost me anything to fix :) That was the one good thing that I found out today.

The aftermath

So I walk out to my car and after managing to back out of my spot a little, this is basically what the wind did overnight:



And my tire's flat.

But at least it started fine and ran fine. I'll get the tire fixed later on.

More Blizzard

Yick.

Blizzard

Now it's snowing. Blowing snow. Freezing snow. The kind of snow that sticks to you, makes your teeth chatter. And there should be about an inch thick layer of ice underneath whatever we end up with because it rained all damn day.



I can't decide if I'm one of those people who gets gooey when it snows. Sure I like the stuff - when I'm tucked up inside with cocoa and a book or movie. But driving in it - being out in it, not so much. Especially driving in it. And shoveling it. And scraping car windows. And spinning off the interstate in it. Or spinning out on Custer just trying to take my kid to school. Scares me.

Anyway, tonight we're getting the first snow of the season.

The things I do.

The lengths I go to make the most mundane seem interesting... *shakes her head*



The looks I got from people coming out of Skags, well... it was embarrassing :)

Bye Sis :(

And the last in the holiday snaps. Kelly and her boyfriend stopped by the paper to say goodbye, and so Kelly could say a quick hello to her old journo teacher who works here.

They're now off to Columbus to have lunch with my cousin who's sending some of his pale ale home with them, and then they fly back to DC tonight.



Kel, the bf is lovely. Come back soon guys.

Update: Happily I am not walking funny today :) I must be bendier than I think I am.

Gobble Gobble

A quick family shot at the end of a very filling Thanksgiving. I missed a shot with everyone who was there, but I'm slow with the cam.

It's been a fun day. So good to see and hang with the sister. And meeting her boyfriend has been great. He got the family seal of approval. We likey him :) Not a bad bowler too.

Me though? I am a bad bowler. I am so bad that I tripped after I let the ball go, lost my footing as I tried to catch myself but because the wood was so slippery I couldn't get any traction. So I did the splits involuntarily and landed in the gutter in the next lane over.

It was really quite an acrobatic fall. But I haven't done the splits, voluntary or otherwise in quite a while so I'm sure I will be walking funny tomorrow.

T-Bone

The kid, the sis and her boyfriend walked into a restaurant. The boyfriend ate too much steak and regretted it for about an hour after we left.

It was most amusing :) Sometimes the effect of a proper side of Nebby beef can be a shock to the system if you're from the weenie town of D.C. :)

Dark times lie ahead...

Goddamn batteries. Or goddamn camera. One or the other, I don't know. Batteries just seem to go into my camera to die. And I'm totally defeating the purpose of this by posting stuff like the pic above but I might invest in some rechargeables this weekend so I can get back on track.

Anyway we went to see Goblet of Fire again. The pic is of the cinema's snack bar where they charge far too much money for a soda. $4.01 for a soda that is the same size as a large soda at Mickey D's that costs $1.50. I thought price gouging was illegal.

I realize that movie theaters make the majority of their dosh from concessions but jaysis - I don't really care if I have to pay 3 times more than it's worth.

Anyway /rant.

It's sort of a tradition for me and the kid to go see the HP flicks a few times in the theater before the long wait for the DVD. We'll probably go one more time next week. It's a great flick. Best of the lot IMO. My friend Mike's much more eloquent about it than I am.

On another note, my sister and her boyfriend arrive in town tomorrow for turkey day. Can't wait to see her and meet him. I'll have pics by then :)

Jury Duty

So le batteries are still dead and I forgot to buy more. Today's pic comes from some county government site. I had to go by the courthouse this afternoon and drop off my papers for jury duty.

I've never been called for jury duty before. I know most people would rather drag themselves across a field of broken glass then go through jury duty but I'm sort of interested in the process. I'm sure I'll find it's a pain the ass and I'll hate it but until then, I'll be hoping I get a good case.

Unless they won't use me because I work for the media. Who knows.

Dead Batteries

My batteries for my camera have gone kaput and I can't get new ones until tomorrow. Which is just as well because I didn't do anything at all today apart from watch a few movies (Quills, Donnie Darko, Bend it Like Beckham, and Velvet Goldmine. It's what I do when I'm broke :) and cook another batch of stew.

So the picture I'm posting is a screencap from the Brokeback Mountain trailer. I'm looking forward to this one though I'm fairly certain it won't appear in GI. I found the short story the film is based on and have been reading through it this weekend. It's just gorgeously haunting. I blathered on about it in my other blog so I won't do it here.

Anyway, here 'tis.



I used the shot on Indyknow in the Top 5s article cos I like it. I dunno, I've watched the trailer a million times. I can't explain what it is that grabs me about this movie. It just does.

Growing Fast

I let Shannon drive to Jack's house tonight. She was off to babysit his two little kidlets and I decided to let her get a little more driving practice in. I've been slowly teaching her to drive for a while now beginning with driving in a circuit in the Fonner Park parking lot. Then it was parking practice which she managed very well and only once did she come close to taking out a fence :) Soon Grampa was letting her drive the Cruiser around St. Francis and just last week I let her tackle the mean streets of GI and let her drive all the way home from the Gs.

Then tonight it was dusk driving up to Jack's. As much as I miss my 'little girl,' it's fun watching her grow up as well.

Wow

For the record - I flippin' LOVED Goblet of Fire - and more importantly, so did my daughter. But due to the fact that I forgot to bring my camera with me to get a shot of the long line to get in that I wanted for today's picture, I had to take this wretched pic of my laptop again. Sorry.



But anyway yes, the new Harry Potter in indeed the best of the four so far which is saying something because I love them all. I think the actors have vastly improved. As much as I love the first three films, even I can admit that the actors weren't... quite... ummm.. polished.

But they are now. They had me in tears at the end.

Hello. I'm Johnny Cash.

CanNOT wait to see this movie!



I've been looking forward to this one for months and months. It totally sucks it's opening on Harry Potter weekend but that's ok. Potter Friday, Johnny Saturday :)

I'm le tired

Well, I'm le tired myself, but apparently Spooky the Demented Furball is as well. Currently she is sitting practically on top of my head, perched on the headrest of my chair. She's very sleepy which is why she allowed me to take yet another pic of her.



So yes, it's another photo of my cat. This usually means my day was boring and nothing struck me as blog-worthy. Sorry :)

First snow

Well sort of... It didn't do much here in GI other than spit snow but it was enough to gracefully layer my car with it anyway. But technically, it's the first snow of the season, even if it is a rather wimpy first snow.

You got the Triforce Shard!

After becoming frustrated with Legend of Zelda, Windwaker and the seemingly endless search for 8 shards of the flippin' Triforce, I stopped playing the game - over a year and a half ago.

Just the thought of having to sail in that damn boat looking for 8 needles in the ocean put me off.

But tonight, I felt the need to play again. And it seems the trick to the game, is to take a year and a half-long break :)

GoF Tickets

Wheeee I got my tickets :)



If I could have I'd have gotten the tix for the 3pm show but while I can use my vaca time to take the day off I can't *quite* justify taking the kid out of school just to see a movie. I'm not *that* cool of a mom. So I'm going to spend the day cleaning the place to get ready for company the following week, and as soon as the kid's out of school, we're going to scope out the lines :)

The Forbidden Picture

I took Shannon dress shopping again because I guess the winter dance coming up is a formal. (Thank you Grammy for paying for all of these dresses btw.) So as she was trying on dresses I snapped a pic of her as she came out of the dressing room - and I got in trouble from the little dressing room twit.

She actually came over and said I couldn't take pictures of my daughter because I could be some kind of secret dress spy coming in to steal designs.

Puh-leeeze. If I WAS a secret dress spy I hardly think I'd be in a shop in the mall of a town like Grand Island, Nebraska. Gimme a break!

Anyway I didn't delete the photo so here's the forbidden pic of the day:



And this is the dress we bought as well. And I still couldn't take a photo of it. Silly dressing room twit.

Other than that, we just spent time with the Gs, and I got my hair chopped. Now there's some spaghetti cooking I must attend to.

Veteran's Day

One of these flags belongs to my beloved grandfather, James. A. Gleason. He served as Gunners Mate First Class aboard the USS Daly during WWII and he served again during the Korean War.

Love you Grampa, and thank you.

Know Your Mike

And again it was a slow day for Melia. The highlight of the day was probably when I suggested we make a new banner for a section on IndyKnow for Mike's weekly column, and instead of the regular IndyKnow head, we use Mike's head instead :) Mike will kill me but ah well, it's worth it :) Here's the head we went with:



And as an added bonus, here's how the banner turned out:

KFC's driving me mad

You can't really tell what the KFC sign says in this photo but I didn't feel like driving around the block :) The sign is irritating me for some inexplicable reason. It's been the same message for over a year now. It says something like 'We do bbq right, 2 bts' or something, I can't remember (you'd think I'd remember since I'm irritated they don't bother to change the message.)

Sometimes when I go to lunch I don't feel like going home so I'll pick up something and drive to the park near the office to munch. The sign is right in my line of sight so I glance at it whenever I go there and after a while I started to check to see if they changed it. Soon it began to really bug me. It's like it's the KFC that gave up and can't be arsed to change it. The joint is tucked away, apart from the other fast food places down the road. It's out of the way basically. It never looks busy either.

Anyway it just seemed weird to me that a place of business wouldn't change their big sign out front for over a year.

Amazing how the odd little things like that get stuck in our minds eh?

It's not a butt!

I like to hone my mad doodle skillz while I'm sitting in meetings. Oh I'm listening to every word mind you, but I just can't seem to keep my hands still when there's a pen and paper handy.

Anyway today's doodles were from the 10am news budget meeting. Now, I never know what I'm going to doodle. The art of doodling is such that the end product is usually a complete mystery until you stop doodling or decide one particular doodle is done.

Years ago I used to be a telemarketer and sold accidental death insurance over the phone. I usually win the "worst job ever" category with that one. Anyway between calls you get bored, you doodle. I'm no artist by any means so my little bits of ink splotches are rudimentary at best.

Today however something I doodled that to me looked like a chick wearing bikini bottoms. Upside down and to the dude across the table apparently it's a butt, which he loudly asked at the end of the meeting, "Is that a Butt???"

I must have blushed ten shades of red because I was then subjected to all kinds of ribbing from the journos in the room.

And I will never doodle anything but squiggles from now on.

And no, it's not a butt.


(I had to blur out the meeting notes page because I don't want to get in trouble for posting internal work stuff.)

Busy Day

Working on my To Do list for the day. I managed to get through most of it. I actually felt at the end of the day like I had accomplished something. Was nice.
Otherwise, it was a typical day.

Hand: Tastes like chicken!

That's my hand she's gnawing on by the way.

Mmm Mmm Good

It was a slow Saturday. Shannon was off at a friend's and so I cooked us up a batch of my famous beef stew. Knew she'd be starving when she got home and it's a bit chilly today so I figured it would be perfect. Also baked a fresh loaf of bread which I split in two to use as bread bowls.

It was very yum. I know it doesn't look like it in the pic, but trust me it tastes better than it looks :) It's hard to make stew look pretty :)



Not a great pic for today, but it's really all I did. Hallmark's showing Thorn Birds all day so between that and slowly beginning to pack, I didn't do anything exciting. As usual :)

Anyway, now we've got stew for days. I'm sure we'll be sick of it soon.

Last one I promise

It's done! Yeah, the tiles don't match but frankly I don't give a toss. I can take showers again! And I don't have to get the nasty glass shower doors back. I prefer curtains. Ohhh the bliss of a long hot shower with the hard pressured water beating against my skin. It's heaven.

Classic

My baby's first orchestra concert in high school :)

I lead an exciting life

This was the highlight of my day.



Well, actually the fun thing I did today was edit IndyKnow's first podcast. I had a lot of fun doing that, but I've done enough photos of my laptop (for now :D)

Yeah baby!

Yes I know if I was a true nerd, I would have the wide screen version. Well *phhbt*. I have a shit 19" TV and widescreen just annoys the hell out of me on it. If I had a spiffy plasma though... hehehe :) Someday, when I've won the lottery.