Too wiped to post...

...but had to share these with you.

Last week was BH's 40th b-day. (He share's a b-day with the lovely Ms. Lindsay Franklin, btw.) Anyhoo, his boys came to stay with us this weekend, and they brought gifts. AWESOME gifts. Behold:

A box of gnovelty gnoses.

And, as if the gnoses didn't bring enough joy into our home, this magnet:

These wonderful gifts made me love these two little dudes a wee bit more than I already did.

Tomorrow? Lunchtime blogging!! Stay tuned!!

I have no idea why this link popped up in the "How To of the Day" section of my iGoogle homepage. But trust me: I've got it under control and don't need any help in this area of my life. Thanks anyway, Wikihow.

Sometimes I love where I work.

So y'all know what an utter SLAVE I am to all things cute, yes?

I mean, it could be a kitten, a baby or a miniature ketchup bottle. If it's teeny, and adorable, I grin and melt.

Well, imagine my delight when the team I work on at work announced a "babies nomming on food" photo contest on our website a couple of weeks ago. Holy HELL, people! It has been non-stop baby scoping since then! And today, some of the finalists were posted on a wall here for all of us to vote on. And can I just tell you people how much NON-STOP UNADULTERATED JOY this one young gentleman has brought me?

I give you Baby #3289--let's call him "Lil' Chunk"--enjoying some carrots:

Can you fucking BELIEVE this kid? ZOMG, he's the bomb.

I can't look at him without becoming happier than I was before I opened his photo.

Long live Carrot Boy and his perfectly round head!!

Lunchtime blogging...again.

Seems to be the only time I can find to blog while I actually have the brainpower to manipulate the keyboard is in between bites while dining at my desk.

Another SXSW came and went without me participating at all. I mean, I did attend one itty bitty in-store set (by one of my favorite dudes of all time), but that was pretty much it. And I was even "child free" on Saturday and COULD'VE gone and hit some day parties. But I opted to stay home and work in the yard instead. I am truly astounded by my own lameness. But hey, at least the plants look nice!

The jasmine has been blooming like crazy for a couple of weeks now. It's right outside our bedroom window, so when we sleep with the windows open (which we've been doing), it just smells wonderful.
This is the Carolina Jessamine vine I planted a couple of springs ago. This is the first spring it's really put out blooms.
My sweet husband (who has a WICKED green thumb) stuck some bulbs in the ground this winter, unbeknownst to me. And so now, we have these happy guys popping up all over the place in utterly random locations.

And check out this cute little cedar elm he planted. It'll make a nice shade tree...in about 15 years.

You should probably also check out this nice bus that was parked across the street from my office building for most of last week during the festival.

Their mothers must be so proud.

Also, I TOTALLY forgot to mention the OTHER score we made at the Citywide Garage sale--paint-by-numbers ART!!

These guys go nicely with the other paint-by-numbers horse portrait we already had hanging in the dining room.

This week is going to be pretty eventful. BH is working in Kerrville today and tomorrow, so The Geej and I are flying solo tonight. Then, Wednesday is BH's big FOUR OH! We don't have anything special planned for that night, but I did buy us tickets to go see Neko Case at Stubb's next Tuesday. Also on Wednesday, he's going to College Station to get his boys who are going to be staying with us until Sunday (while their mother goes to help their grandmother move from Colorado to California). Friday, The Geej is going to a photo session as a little model! It's for a marketing campaign that Whole Foods is doing this summer, and it involves popsicles, so it should be entertaining if nothing else. And Saturday? A fairy princess dance party for Margaret's YG. Man! Whatta week!!

Hopefully I can find time to squeeze in a couple of workouts at the gym in the midst of all of this craziness. I'm actually ENJOYING my time at the gym and don't like it when I miss my regular days.

I know there's more I'm forgetting to write about, but my lunch is done and my brain is empty. Hopefully my next post will be less mundane.

For the man who has everything (but taste):

BEHOLD!! Toby Keith's new "TK Steelman" line of menswear.

I believe their slogan is: "When just being an utter meathead douchebag isn't enough, there's TK Steelman."

I have no idea why...

...but this made me gasp with sadness. She was only 5 years older than me. And so very, very talented.

Try a little tomato soup in your gingerbread!

This past Saturday, it was cool and damp and BH and I had the two younger members of our brood in tow and nothing to do. So we moseyed on down to the monthly Citywide Garage Sale just to see what kind of treasures we could see. BH had been saying he wanted to check it out, and I hadn't been to one since it was house in City Coliseum (RIP). We got there right as it was opening, and started at the back corner and made our way back up to the front. I'm not sure what's stranger: the people who have booths at this thing, or the people who come and scavenge through the goodies. I mean, it was a certified freak show up in there. Very entertaining people watching, eavesdropping, and "merchandising."
Awww...a headless sleeping cowboy toddler. Ain't that cute?

About 2/3 of the way through the booths, we ran across a booth that had old magazines and cookbooks for sale. I'm not sure why, but I always love finding those little pamphlet cookbooks, usually produced as a promo piece for a food or cooking equipment company to showcase their products. Well, I hit the jackpot on Saturday, and I must share.

First off, the buying experience was wonderful. The vendor lady was in her mid-60s, had wildly frizzy "blonde" hair and some of the most effed up teeth I've ever seen. BH called them a "country cemetery." She was sporting a gold sequined fanny pack in which she kept her cash to make change. I picked up these two little books, one cost $2.00 and the other cost $.50. Here's the conversation that ensued with the vendor:

Karla May: I'd like these two please.

Vendor Lady: (distracted/scatterbrained...think Vera from that TV show "Alice") Oh! Yes! Let me see.

(She takes them from me and looks at the prices written in pencil inside the front covers.)

VL: Okay. Two dollars plus fifty cents...that'll be three dollars.

(BH and I exchange WTF?! glances, and he pulls out a $20 bill he'd been wanting to break and hands it to her.)

VL: Let me get your change.

(She goes off to the other end of the booth with the books, puts them in a plastic bag, then rifles through her fanny pack seeming utterly confused. After a couple of minutes, she returns to BH and hands him a wad of bills amounting to $21.)

BH: This is too much. Now I owe YOU some money.

VL: Oh my! I'm not very good at math!!

After all of that, here's what I got:
I've e-mailed the highly talented and funny gal at Cakewrecks offering to mail her the Animal Cut-up Cakes book because, frankly, that shit needs to be shared with the WORLD. So I'm going to keep that under wraps for now. But let's take a peek-a-loo inside the "Cooking with Condensed Soups" book (brought to us by the good folks at Campbell's, natch):

First up, how's about an appetizer (that's utterly UNappetizing)--Eggs a la King:
I'm not sure what "king" these suckers were intended for, but I'll be willing to bet the chef was hastily beheaded after presentation.

Next up, how's about a tasty salad?
There are 9 salad recipes in the "Salads and Salad Dressings" section of this book. SIX of them have "unflavored gelatin" as their primary ingredient.

And now, it's time for the entree--Celery Salmon Loaf:

Mmmm...recTANGular.

With an entree as spectacular as this, you'll want a couple of stellar sides. I think that "Carrots with Celery Cream Sauce" and "Unidentified Brownish Cones of Soup-covered Nastiness" fits the bill nicely:

And finally, you'll want to complete this feast with a truly special dessert:There are 5 desserts in the "Desserts" section of this booklet, and each one of them calls for a can of condensed tomato soup. Ewww.

Some of the recipes deserve recognition just because of their spectacularly disturbing titles:

• Beef Treat in Tomato-rice Ring
• Ham-Asparagus Shortcake
• Baked Chicken Puff
• Liver Creole
• Ring-Around-Rosy Beef
• Rum Tum Ditty
• Fluffy Tomato Rabbit
• Rosy Blanketed Beans (Rosy? Again?)
• Chicken Cornmeal Waffles
• Tomato Soup Cake

So yeah...next time I see a can of "cream of tomato" soup, I'm gonna be thinking, "Cake!" That's like looking at Paris Hilton and thinking "Talented!" IT'S JUST NOT RIGHT!! Damn you, garage sale cookbook. DAMN YOU!!

Lunchblogging.

I COULD be eating my salad outside on this gorgeous spring day, but no dear readers. I owe you a post, and a post ye shall have!

It is St. Patrick's day, and it is Spring Break and SXSW. And what is my Scots-Irish ass doing after work to celebrate? Going to the gym to work out! Whee!! But seriously, there are going to be some insanely good acts in town for South By this year, and I'm going to pretty much miss out on all of it. I was going to try and take Friday afternoon off to hit some of the day parties, but my boss scheduled a meeting from 3 to 4pm. Nice. So, I'll have to settle for trying to hit some Saturday afternoon things that don't mind non-wristband wearing scum like myself. We'll see how that goes...

Last week I went and did phase 2 of the redhead-returning-to-blonde thing at the salon. So after another 3 hours and a couple of hundred bucks, voila!

It was weird looking at myself in the mirror as a blonde for the first time in seven (yes, seven!) years. I was looking at the "old" Karla May, but the Karla May that was looking back at me was a lot older, and "fuller-figured" than the last time she was blonde. Oh well...the old, I can't help. The figure, I'm working on.

The facelift at Mi Casa continues. Now that the bathroom is pretty much done, we've moved on to other rooms in the house. First, we replaced the HORRIBLE 1980s-era fluorescent light box in the kitchen with this swanky little number from IKEA. No really, go check it out. I'll wait.

Not bad, eh? GOD, it makes SUCH a difference. I can't even describe it. And since I failed to take before and after photos, I have no pictures to do the describing for me.

Next up, transforming the guest room into a room for the boys to enjoy when they come to visit. Right now it's, well, it's a guest room, and so they feel like guests when they're here. So we're going to re-paint, get some new furniture, and try to make it more boy-friendly. BH is in charge of this endeavor because, you know, he's a dude.

I've got more to write, but I've got to get ready for a meeting. (Such are the limitations of the lunchtime blogging session.) So, I'll leave you with some photos I took when we visited the state capital weekend-before-last:

Looking up in the dome from the rotunda. I wonder how many tourists have taken this exact same photo.

My GIRL Ann!! What a lovely portrait, no? Too bad it has to hang right next to George W.'s.

And the building itself. It really is quite lovely, isn't it?

I have no idea what the hell is going on here.

I just know that I like it.

Sometimes it's so easy to love Austin.

Take last Thursday for instance. It was a gorgeous day. Very spring-y. Had a decent day at work, and as I was leaving, I was sitting in traffic, waiting for my turn to go left on to southbound Lamar at Sixth. While waiting at the redlight, here came a group of unicyclists--3 dudes and a chick. Their unicycles were really tall, and they were all wearing helmets. They were just hauling ass down the sidewalk during rush hour like it was the most normal thing in the world. As I sat there with my sunroof open, enjoying the breeze and grinning at the unicyclists, I thought to myself, "Well they're really doing their part to keep Austin weird, God bless 'em." Well, no sooner had that thought entered my mind when I saw what was coming up the sidewalk behind them: an oiled up, manscaped dude on a bike wearing nothing but a tiny red g-string. And when I say tiny, I really, really mean it. Unlike the unicyclists, this guy didn't make the light, so had to stop and wait until he got the green light to cross. During his brief respite--when I'm sure every eye in every car stopped at the intersection was drawn to him like a freakin' trainwreck--he decided to, um, adjust himself. Rather vigorously. It was a sight to behold, people.

After the freakshow at the intersection, I went and got The Geej, and we headed a little party the parents one of her classmates were hosting. The occasion? It was First Thursday, and one of The Geej's teachers was singing with his band. The party was held two blocks from the site of the gig (the parking lot of Jo's and the San Jose), and the hosts had pizza and tacos for eats, and beverages for the kids...and the grown ups. At gig time, we all walked down together, and the kiddos all wore their "laminates"--faux backstage passes that their teacher had made for all of them. It was SO much fun. The weather was perfection, the kiddos were all rocking out, and the teacher--Mr. Gabe--did a great job. Check it:



Did you ever have teachers this cool? I sure as hell didn't.

It's still not 100% done...

...but I can't wait to show photos any longer because it already looks SO much freakin' better.

Okay: The Great Master Bathroom Facelift of 2009

Before:

When I moved in, I replaced the carpet (eww...carpet in a bathroom) with the tile you see here. And I also replaced the sink fixtures, and BH installed one of those cool curved-outward shower curtains.

But please look at that big ol' 80s wall-sized mirror (taped up here and ready for us to smash before removal. THAT was fun!).

And the lovely peanut butter smeary looking faux finish paint.

Not horrible, but definitely not very cool looking either.


But behold how it looks now:
Unfortunately, this photo doesn't really show the true colors of the walls, which are cream and a chalkboard slate-y blueish green.
Nice, huh?

We still have to get some new accessories and decor, put some wood trim up where the ceiling/walls meet, and BH is going to build some much-needed drawers in the space where an unused make-up stool is now parked (that big empty space beneath the counter in the next-to-last photo above). And then, when all of THAT is said and done, we'll need to repaint all the white cabinets and trim.

But seriously, doesn't this look better...even without a bidet?

Best comment spam EVER!

I got this in my comment in-box last night:

"The ultimate bathroom retreat is not complete without a bidet or better yet.......a portable bathroom bidet sprayer. The hand sprayer gives you superior control and water volume and if the bathroom was not designed to allow for a bidet it offers the convenience of installation on the existing toilet AND you don't have to get up and move every time! You will pay for it many times over in toilet paper savings. Available at http://www.bathroomsprayers.com"

Wow. Toilet paper savings!!

****************UPDATE************************

After I published this post, I'll be damned if "David" didn't send me ANOTHER bidet-related comment.

"It gets better (like a fine wine): Save Trees? Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time! Get serious and add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. I think Dr. Oz on Oprah said it best: "if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn't wipe it off with paper, would you? You'd wash it off” Available at www.bathroomsprayers.com with these you won't even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! Don’t worry, you can still leave some out for guests and can even make it the soft stuff without felling guilty. It's cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You'll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. And after using one of these you won't know how you lasted all those years with wadded up handfuls of toilet paper. As for water use a drought is always a concern and must be dealt with prudently but please remember that in the big picture the industrial water users always far exceed the water use of household users and in the case of toilet paper manufacture it is huge. The pollution and significant power use from that manufacturing process also contributes to global warming so switching to a hand bidet sprayer and lowering your toilet paper use is very green in multiple ways."

So "David," if you're reading this, I appreciate your persistence and your product, but you can quit sending your comments because I'm not buying the hand bidet sprayer at this time. Around MY house, we prefer to just let stuff dry up and flake off naturally. (I keed! I keed!) But really, enough with the comments. Capeesh?

Not ONLY is April 15th "Tax Day"...

It's also the premiere of this trainwreck:

And suddenly, it was March.

I'm not sure how it happened, but we're now in month three of this year. We celebrated the new month by heading to the Zilker Kite Festival with The Geej and BH's youngest, F. We'd had such a good time when we went this year, but for some reason this year, the whole event was kind of blah. Maybe it was our timing (we got there pretty early in the day) or maybe it was the HORRIBLE music they felt compelled to BLARE over horrible speakers so that everyone in a 5 mile radius could hear it. I'm not sure... We tried and tried, but were unable to get our bumble bee kite airborne, despite a healthy wind. Luckily there were several bouncy houses to keep The Geej entertained. After it was all said and done, we went and drowned our sorrows in big ol' greasy plates of Tex-Mex, and that seemed to make everything better.

Later on in the evening, Doug decided to sit on his sister while she was sleeping.

I love how he's all, "What?!" in this photo.

Did I tell y'all that I joined a gym? I know, right? I'm like the most NON gym person you'll ever meet, but a) they were having a special offer for people at my work where they would waive the $150 joining fee and b) the damn gym is literally across the street from my office, so it's not like I could make up too many excuses not to go there, and c) I'm a tub of goo with high blood pressure who needs to get off my arse and do something active a few times a week. So far, I've been going on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons pretty consistently. I'm also trying to fit in one work out each weekend as well. Right now, I'm mainly doing cardio with a wee bit of free weights. After I do this for a couple of months, I'll be ready to move on to some real strength training. I was worried about how I was going to be able to pay for this each month, but then I sat down and did the math and reallized that if I brought my lunch to work at least twice a week, I could offset the cost of monthly dues. Plus save some calories as an added benefit. I'm not ever going to be a supermodel, but I'm hoping this gym membership--and the actual outlay of cash each month--will inspire me to increase my overal physical health. Because, you know, I'm FORTY FREAKIN' YEARS OLD!!

One more thing: The great Master Bathroom Facelift Project 2009 is almost complete. I just need to get some new bathroom accessories, and BH has a couple of man things (i.e., things that require tools) that remain to be done, and I'll post some pictures. I'm VERY happy with how it has turned out. I'll be curious to see what you out there in the Interwebs think...

Not much else to report here from ye olde Pine Curtain. Thankfully, things are actually kind of calm right now. But March is going to be a busy month, so check back often!