It’s not often that I will watch a commercial eight times in a row, but this one is worth it. You may have already seen it, but if not – watch this.
Archives for January 2011
Found.
Lloyd and I spent Sunday afternoon and part of the evening re-arranging his classroom. Well, he did most of it and I was his Girl Friday – totin’ and haulin’ when necessary.
Many things were donated items that had to be weeded through, trash needed to be trashed, and some tables and desks were going to switch places. We bought Pepsi to provide strength!
I moved some desks around (the ones I’m standing on for the picture) and when they were away from the wall I saw something spooky.
Ladies and gentlmen, I would like to offer my first installment of a series I like to call: Is It A Dead Spider?
Is it?
What did you guess?
If you guessed “Not a spider, but a rolled-up twist tie”, then you win!
You’ll be able to continue playing this game in subsequent posts. It’s important to remember the spider bit for the next part of this long – and yet kind of pointless – story.
Lloyd was up on a ladder with his head in the ceiling so he could run some cable across the room. He called to me, “Hey, come up here. I want you to see something.”
“Is it a dead spider?” I asked.
He assured me that it wasn’t. I climbed the ladder and he said, “Look on top of the server.” I did and saw:
Lauren: It’s the frog that Beth gave you.
Lloyd: Not that. Look closer.
Lauren: (looking with trepidation) There is a spider up here, isn’t there?
Lloyd: No. Oh, maybe you’re not high enough. Go up a step.
I did and saw:
Hey! It’s Lloyd’s pocketknife that he lost months ago! It’s the CyberLloyd 2000, as we like to call it – with all kinds of tools on it for fixing computers. He was missing it for weeks and we finally just ordered a new one. Now he has two, isn’t that sweet?
And wasn’t this a long, drawn-out way to tell you, ‘Lloyd found his pocketknife on top of the server’?
Let the CoolPix begin!
Thank you, Beth. I’m hiding behind your asking about the camera because I’m worried I’ll be stoned to death for talking about this so much.
You might remember that in October I was thinking about buying the Nikon CoolPix L110 based on the sole reason that I could remember it’s name? Well, that never changed. I would visit the cameras at the big box stores and hold them all, but the Nikon seemed to be the nicest one. The man at Best Buy said that the cameras on either side of it were better, but in my head I told him, “You don’t know.”
Lloyd and I never buy each other presents for actual Christmas. We have a policy that a holiday can be honored up to a month before or after, and we usually choose after. Well, last week we bought the camera. (He also got a present this week, but that’s another post.)
I like it. It’s still a point-and-shoot camera but it’s hefty – like a pretend SLR. It has a BIG lens, a lens cap, and feels more like a big-girl camera. The plan (based on my camera-dropping record) is to never take it out of the house, but in case I do, I made a camera case for it. I had browsed online for one, but I really wanted something that would fit in my messenger bag with my laptop, and this fit the bill. Here’s the photo essay:
1) makeup bag from Target ($5.99) and a thick piece of craft foam ($1.69)
2. Measure the depth of the lower portion and use an old magazine from Lloyd’s school library to make a straight line. (That magazine part isn’t strictly necessary. You could use a box.)
3) Cut a strip, then cut another. Trim them so they will fit around the inside. Keep trimming – you’ll get there soon enough. Be upset that you can’t make them not look like an eyeball.
4. This’ll fix it. A little tape would be even better.
5. Done! Make Lloyd come over and look at it several times. Ignore his sighs.
It holds the camera, the strap and some extra batteries. If I needed to take the cable along, that would fit, too.
The camera itself has some fun features, like automatically taking a picture when someone smiles. (That’s when it’s in ‘happy face’ mode.) It’s very fun, but won’t recognize Lloyd’s smile due to his cold, dead heart moustache.
Pizza Cutter Madness
Lloyd has a lot of pizza cutters. He feels that one who loves pizza as passionately as he does should have a good selection. We have seven, but I can only find six. (The basic one with a wooden handle has gone AWOL.)
Once, long ago, I thought I might make a display board for his collection like Martha Stewart did with her rolling pin collection, but then the television was on so I watched some.
Since then, I’m on the ‘enough is enough’ wagon and have made it plain that I think one pizza cutter is sufficient for any household, so let’s not bring any more into the building. The wrapped one is the last one he snuck in. It was a freebie from the State Fair a couple of years ago.
So if you started reading this post and thought, “Hey, maybe I should get Lloyd a pizza cutter for his collection!” May I say, Please don’t. Help me stop the madness. The insane, pizza-dividing madness.
By the way, we are usually strict ‘divide-into-eight-equal-slices’ people, but one evening Lloyd let out a war cry and divided the pizza up into about twenty random wedges that were all different. It was exceedingly fun to eat.
Wonderful, wonderful Saturday
I am a big believer that whenever the opportunity to stay in pajamas all day presents itself – take it. It’s like pretending that you’re sick and “resting” all day. Lloyd and I did that today, and it was wonderful. Jammies, computer games, movies and napping. Ahhhhh.
I did manage to do one thing, though – my mom’s new year’s resolution: throw out old spices. So, you can cross that one off, Mom.
I have a divider thing in a drawer and then half of one cupboard shelf filled with spices, which is very funny since I know zip about spices. (Except that I don’t like tarragon and Lloyd doesn’t like rosemary.) When I cook I just shake Simon and Garfunkel titles into the food and hope for the best.
I sorted them out, tossed the empties and ‘clumped-into-a-spicy-brick’ ones, cleaned the spilled spices and seeds out of the divider, then put it all back.
Lloyd did a little work, too. He swept and mopped the floor while singing a song about “I’m-a sweeping the flo-or…” to the tune of La Bamba, but he has threatened to sue me if I show you the video recording.
Art Shot Saturday
I have a new camera, but I’m refraining from talking about it since I think I’ve camera saga-ed everyone to death. Instead, I think I’ll put up my messing-around photos on Saturdays since I’m usually too wiped on Friday nights to come up with anything good.
I was actually hoping to have some real photos, but I’ve just got the one. (I’m learning how to mess with the focus.)
This next one was going to be a fun experiment, but Lloyd got up and left before I could figure it out. I’ll just post it fuzzy.
That’s all. Maybe I’ll have more next week. Happy Saturday.