low foot clearance

the name makes me cringe, but i'd eat there all the time if i could.

posted by grace at 5:54 PM on 03/15/08
posted to obsessions

"center stage" was on tv on saturday. oh, how i love that ridiculous movie. and i love susan may pratt, even though she was enough of a bridezilla to kill a guy with peanut butter on csi.

maureen: i am the best goddamn dancer in the american ballet academy. who the hell are you? nobody.

cooper's ballet in the student workshop is just a thing of such farce, i love it. the motorcycle, the simulated sex scene, the tug-o-war, the female empowerment dance set to the music of jamiroquai (i think)... how can you not love it?

paul: what's this?
me: just let me finish their dance.
paul: okay, are they finished?
me: yes.
paul: is the movie finished?
me: no, there's a few more minutes of talking.
paul: fast-forward to the end.

so i did. kids these days, no appreciation for the arts.

posted by grace at 11:51 PM on 02/17/08
posted to obsessions

if cam knows what's good for him, "so... i've been thinking..." should be the scariest words in the english language.

posted by grace at 9:38 AM on 01/19/08
posted to cam | obsessions

have been hunting for a rug for the living room for the past few weeks. finally narrowed it down to a handful of rugs -- and then i finally measured the living room and discovered that i had guesstimated too small a size, and that the increased prices corresponding to the increased size knocked most of my choices out of my budget. well, shit.

so... i'm turning to flor. i've accepted and rejected flor half a dozen times already, but this time sizing isn't a problem, the price is right and we won't have to worry about the additional expense of a rug pad. to seal the deal, i just got an email about their new santa monica showroom, so we can actually go see the stuff in person (playing around with six-inch samples just isn't the same). hope it works out this time.

posted by grace at 9:45 PM on 01/18/08
posted to obsessions | ponce de leon

i am SO excited that dwell studio is doing a line for target. the pictures i've seen of the children's line is TO DIE FOR. i wish the new baby had a nursery to decorate.

posted by grace at 12:18 PM on 01/17/08
posted to obsessions

a few months ago i was pondering what to do for my one pair of reliable pregnancy shoes. i have plenty of shoes (more than i need, certainly), but if this pregnancy was going to be anything like the last, i was going to have to find at least one pair that would fit me through the weight gain and terrible foot/ankle swelling.

last time i lived in a pair of naot shoes (hannover, i think they were called? they were black with red trim), so i thought i'd go naot again. bought a pair of mary janes off zappos, and while they were cute, they didn't quite fit the way i wanted. if i could have found my original shoes on sale somewhere, i would have bought them again, but i wasn't particularly successful in that hunt. (not that i loved them so, but i was feeling a little lazy.) back to the drawing board.

on a set of boards i read, they seem to be constantly extolling the virtues of dansko clogs. i had looked at them before and deemed them a little too... stern. but since my original naots were clog-ish, i figured i'd give them a shot. j.jill had a friends and family sale going on, so i used the discount on a pair of professionals in black oiled leather.

good lord. these shoes were great. i loved them so much, i bought another pair in purple oiled leather. my mom loved them so much, i bought her a pair in black cabrio (she didn't like the oiled finish). we are now dansko fans. what i thought would look clunky and severe makes my foot look positively narrow. what a revelation.

i'm already planning my next purchase...

posted by grace at 12:42 PM on 01/10/08
posted to obsessions

i've been starting to feel rather antsy about the house lately... i suspect it's a mild case of nesting. since i don't have a nursery to decorate this time around and the conversion of paul's big boy room to a big boy/girl room isn't going to happen for a few years, i've turned my focus to other parts of the house. i'm sure i am driving cam crazy.

on sunday i finally covered the glass panels of the entertainment unit. the messiness behind the glass has been bugging me for a long time, but i could never figure out what to use to cover it all up. i've had this image in mind for a long time, but i never could decide on a fabric to use. for some reason, today i decided that dammit, i was going to do something about it. i took some faux woodgrain contact paper (white ash) and cut a piece to fit the glass. much to my utter dismay, the paper didn't unroll very flat. i was about to give up when cam suggested we pull out the glass and put it on the front. luckily, the glass came out really easily, so i covered the two panels with the paper while cam watched football. then he put them back up for me.

it's a little hard to get used to the overall... woodsiness of the entertainment unit, but it looks nice -- and more importantly, it looks neat. i'm pretty happy with the effect, but now the rest of the living room looks unfinished...

posted by grace at 12:14 PM on 01/ 8/08
posted to obsessions | ponce de leon

oh cheap ikea grill pan, how i love you so.

posted by grace at 4:15 PM on 11/29/07
posted to obsessions

this is our current time-waster of choice. god, how i love this comic. cam has suggested that we refer to mr. (ms.?) baby redux as "t-rex."

posted by grace at 5:02 PM on 09/27/07
posted to obsessions

let me just get this off my chest: crowded house fans -- at least in southern california -- are pretty ugly.

posted by grace at 8:05 AM on 08/29/07
posted to obsessions

got a new pair of earrings -- swirly silver hoops from a lovely woman on etsy. they are beautiful, lightweight and discreet. i put them on and forget about them. they don't bother me when i'm on the phone. most importantly, they don't make my ears ache or scab over. (i have ridiculously sensitive ears.) i think they are my new favorite pair.

posted by grace at 10:41 PM on 08/18/07
posted to obsessions

two people close to my heart have been in the news lately. i'm rather shamefaced about how silent i've been. it's not that i haven't been thinking about them -- i just haven't always been thinking about them when i've actually found time to write: neil finn and neil gaiman.

i've heard good things about "stardust," the movie adapted from gaiman's comic/novel. (i admit here and now that i have not read it. fantasy hasn't really been my thing in a long time. i've never even read the hobbit, for chrissakes.) since he was actually involved in the making of this, i may actually see it one day (after i've read it, of course). i'm quite possibly more likely to see/read "stardust" before i ever get to a single harry potter book and/or movie.

it's a funny thing to me that comics -- and the san diego con in particular -- have become so trendy. i've only been there maybe 2-3 times; yet in the eyes of some, that makes me oddly interesting. my assistant was mad at me for not going this year. i was all, "um, hate to disappoint you, but i am a suburban mama now -- you're not going to catch me in sd in july with my emily strange t-shirt and my silver ankh." the coverage in the paper, in some of the blogs i read, on entertainment sites... it was just odd.

joel mentioned the con the other day via IM (hope you don't mind that i'm posting this slightly edited version of our somewhat rambling chat!):
joel: I only ask about Comic-Con because it seems like its becoming the "in" place to be, with all of the exclusive information that seems to be coming out of it this year...
joel: there's announcements for fall tv series, announcements for movies, etc
joel: I'm actually waiting for news from Comic Con about one of my favorite TV series
me: eh, when i read about the con in the la times last year, i just sort of sighed and figured it wouldn't be quite the way i remembered it
joel: yeah, things change, but its kinda fun to watch the change knowing that you've been there previously
me: really -- is that something to be proud of? :P
me: when we went, it was diff from when cam went before
joel: proud of? not really, its just more of an observational thing -- being glad that you were there before it became something you don't necessarily like
joel: i'm more of an observer about things I like these days than I have ever been
joel: partially due to getting married, partially due to having kids
joel: so I'm more or less restricted to observing anyways :)
me: har
joel: like when I started watching Japanese animation, it was when people were so desperate to get their hands on it, you got fansubbed 3rd generation VCR tapes
me: i don't know, i feel like we already spend too much time being a little sad about change
joel: now Anime Expo is huge and Borders and B&N stock all the manga titles you could ever ask for.
me: yes -- it's easier to indulge in what were once fairly obscure interests
me: and that sort of diminishes it, in a way
joel: true, but you don't feel at least a little sense of whimsy at having tread a path that is now popular?
me: not like the goal was to be new and different
joel: you were a pathfinder ;)
me: but still
joel: of course not
me: meh
joel: but you did something that now other people think is "cool" :)
me: whimsy? i don't know
me: more like occasionally resentful
joel: please, when the day comes that you do something that one of Paul's friends notes and tells him, "man, your mom is cool" -- it will make your day
me: all of the stuff that is now "cool" -- well, it makes me feel like i was rather faddish

before the movie came out, i read a rather fanboyish article in the la times about gaiman -- i found it by accident; i meant to read a story on the leading man in "stardust," but the gaiman article was right next to it. (never did get to that other article.) when i was logging into myspace (research, i tell you), gaiman was on the front page -- think it linked to a video. it's fabulous that the man is getting more good press and a name in the movie industry if that's what he wants. i'm not sure i ever want to see a "death" movie, but if one comes out we will have to see it because we haven't been doing our share of supporting the comic-book-to-movie movement. never did see "v for vendetta" (i don't like natalie portman, honestly) or "sin city" (never read it), but cam is salivating over the "watchmen" movie (i think he liked "300" -- same director, right?). cam also liked the x-men movies. (for me, i have to ask: keanu as constantine? adding tom sawyer to the league of extraordinary gentlemen? how did "from hell" turn into such a hot mess?)

on now to neil finn.

i have loved this man since i was 12. my kind-hearted cousin overheard my offkey "hey now, hey now" and lent me his copy of crowded house's debut album. off and on, for the last 20 years, i have been listening to all things finn. when plans for a ch reunion show (sort of) surfaced in 1999 for a new zealand 2000 new year's bash, cam and i were so there -- when it fell apart, well, obviously we were disappointed.

it never occurred to me that ch would reunite, especially after paul hester died. i'm happy for neil finn and nick seymour and their new drummer and mark hart (love mark hart), but the new music i've heard... beautiful as it is, it's not ch music. it's neil finn solo artist music. it's complicated stuff. i've never loved neil's work on his own as much as i loved ch, a fact which i hid from cam for a long time, because, you know, i started his own fandom by deciding that we should go to a neil finn show at the wiltern almost ten years ago. paul and i watched the new ch perform during bravo's "live earth" coverage. they played old stuff, predictably. there was a big singalong. paul hummed his own "hey now, hey now" bit for a while. i sighed and tried not to look at the "farewell to the world" poster just a few feet from the tv.

so. cam and i have tickets for a show at the greek later this month. i'm looking forward to seeing them. it'll be fun. it'll be a little melancholy. i'm not sure how much old vs. new they'll play, but i'm sure it'll be a good show. it's just a little hard to reconcile the music i remember with the men they've become. (but this is nothing new for us; cam and i have already had this conversation a few times over the years -- how often does a musician's growth/maturity/evolution actually translate into a continued successful career? (at this point i feel like i ought to be too ashamed to admit that i like new rem better than old rem.)) i hope this works for neil and ch, i really do. i'm not sure that they'll be winning new fans, but the neil fans and old ch fans will carry them through. we're all just aging fanboys and fangirls where they're concerned.

posted by grace at 1:00 AM on 08/12/07
posted to obsessions

saw the new martha stewart collection at macys on friday night. ooooh. even the rooster-shaped cutting board was charming. i am such the fan girl. i loved almost everything.

me: this is the highlight of my day.

in the immortal words of sterling (patrick stewart): martha says that nothing else matters if you can do a nice dried floral arrangement. i worship her.

posted by grace at 10:14 AM on 08/ 4/07
posted to obsessions

i want mario party 8.

posted by grace at 8:40 PM on 05/16/07
posted to obsessions

i recently succumbed to the notion of liking calleigh and delko together. been hanging out at "shipper central" on a csi fansite. damn. those people are fanatical. every possible pairing is explored in detail. supporting quotes are given. lists of episodes with suggestive scenes are collected. scenes are taken out of context to be compiled into dreamy-eyed little videos with music to match. it's insane, but kind of fun.

posted by grace at 12:12 PM on 05/11/07
posted to obsessions | tv

my love for the wii is slightly embarrassing. it causes my son to have nightmares.

paul: [sleeping] turn off the wii.
paul: turn off the wii!
paul: [crying] turn it off!

seriously. i could play warioware for hours. (i do suck, though.)

posted by grace at 9:34 PM on 05/ 2/07
posted to obsessions

god help me, toto's "i'll be over you" is STILL one of the best songs ever.

posted by grace at 9:33 PM on 02/16/07
posted to obsessions

my colts superbowl hat arrived. radness. i'm going to wear it to work tomorrow.

posted by grace at 11:27 PM on 02/13/07
posted to obsessions

am ridiculously enamored of a game paul and i discovered on the discovery kids site -- whizzball. it's so addictive. originally paul and i were only into playing it, but we have recently branched out into building puzzles as well. if you happen to solve a puzzle by "paulryo," let me know what you think of it.

at this point i don't even like playing with paul anymore because he likes to use clues (paul: give a clue, let's give a clue) and i don't because it cuts into the final score too much. my current goal is to get my ranking into the three-digit realm. right now we're just under 30,000, which may sound like a lot, but considering that we started in the 200,000+ range, i think i've got a pretty good shot.

posted by grace at 9:20 PM on 02/11/07
posted to obsessions

i hope you have your tivos set today for jack's big music show. today is the groundhog day episode -- and the music video stars steve burns and steven drozd! yay! i watched the video on youtube several times the other day and it is simply adorable.

me: do you know who that is?
paul: no?
me: it's steve from blue's clues!
paul: [watching silently and smiling]
paul: look!
paul: steve from blue's clues is playing with those kids!

posted by grace at 7:11 AM on 02/ 2/07
posted to obsessions

cam told me about this on 12/22. it shames me that news of this magnitude could be lost in the holiday shuffle.

posted by grace at 12:14 PM on 01/ 9/07
posted to obsessions

i hate to admit it, but i'm looking at purses again. very pricey ones. damn me for my expensive taste.

posted by grace at 12:50 PM on 12/27/06
posted to obsessions

a friend told me about pandora last week and i've been obsessing about it ever since. there are some rather annoying limitations to it, but it's still really cool.

posted by grace at 7:07 AM on 12/27/06
posted to obsessions

learned the other day that paul is holding out on me. until last night, he hadn't watched blue's clues with me in ages. i was under the impression that he considered himself too old for it. nope. turns out he watches it with my mom during the day. cruel-hearted child, depriving me of my steve fix.

posted by grace at 1:14 AM on 11/11/06
posted to mr. baby | obsessions

i did it. swoon.

posted by grace at 7:54 PM on 11/ 4/06
posted to obsessions

got an email from the steve burns fan club -- it contained a link to steve's myspace page.

be still my beating heart! new music! YAY!

(am almost tempted to join myspace just so i can try to be added to his friends list.)

in the comments i noticed one about steve's official site being updated, so i went to peek.

oh my god, i don't know if this is just a random sketch or if this is going to be the album cover, but there is a GIANT SQUID on it. a GIANT SQUID, people. (speaking of which, that "caught on camera" documentary is on again tonight.)

oh little balding singing man i love you so.

posted by grace at 7:31 AM on 11/ 2/06
posted to obsessions

i dug up my old gameboy (a yellow pokemon one) because i thought it would amuse paul. turns out it amuses me more. woohoo, i'm a pokemon trainer!

pokemon yellow (all of them, actually, at least blue, silver, gold, et al.) is the most mind-numbingly tedious game ever, but it is relentlessly addictive. painfully addictive. while cam plays sudoku (from brain age) on his ds, i'm fighting zubats and geodudes on my gameboy. my mom tells me that paul is teaching her how to play galaxy II. we're just a cute little game-playing family.

posted by grace at 7:16 AM on 10/31/06
posted to obsessions

been listening to barenaked ladies' new double album. god, i love those canadians.

posted by grace at 1:37 PM on 10/25/06
posted to obsessions

i am consumed by the only-child decision.

we spent a long time talking about how we would only have one child. then, flush with the success of birthing one child, we giddily declared we'd have another. indeed, i told a friend a few months back that i'd be pregnant by the halloween after paul's birthday!

a few weeks back i mentioned how cam and i had tabled the discussion for the start of the next year. as the cousins who gave birth around the same time i did proceed to enlarge their families (in fact, one cousin had a child just a few weeks ago), i find myself feeling torn. i feel pressured, even if no one around me is really saying anything. as my mother announced the pregnancy of a cousin, i said to cam, "i think we're only having one."

in no way do i feel like my life is incomplete. in no way do i feel like i need another child (people tell me i need a girl) to round out my household. do i miss that warm wiggly tiny mass of baby in my arms? sure, but that's no reason to have a child. it's just a reason to get to know people with babies.

paul is such a handful right now. can we handle another child? can we cram another child into our house? are we prepared to either move or do some massive construction?

this past weekend it felt like everywhere we went, pregnant women were bound to be in my way. (of course, we did hit babies 'r' us, so that place is supposed to be swarming with 'em.) it certainly didn't help that i was pms'ing like a fiend -- my moods were swinging wide. i was alternately angry and depressed. these women were clearly TAUNTING my nonchildbearing self, FLAUNTING their earthmother status. then paul hit his prime freakout zone and i was considering running away to be a forever non-pg nun.

methinks she doth protest too much.

over breakfast i told cam that if i could just meet an only child without regrets about being an only child, maybe i'd feel better about the idea of having only one child.

me: i'm an only child and i'm not happy about it.
cam: [condescendingly] your situation is a little different.

i teared up over how regardless of how i got to this point i occasionally felt trapped because i knew that my mother's long-term care was solely my responsibility -- not that this is really a problem, but it would have been wonderful to be able to rely on my brother for assistance. and then i nearly cried about how very sad it was that once she was gone i had no one left to remember our lives together but me.

i'm not saying that i would like another child because i don't want to leave the big old burden of big old us on just paul -- he can put me in a home. what i wouldn't mind for paul is the feeling that there is someone (don't get religious on me) that knows what he knows.

this is terribly cheesy, but i was oddly touched when i read in parade magazine yesterday that seal and heidi klum's son has "dashtu" (tweaked aviation terminology, i guess?) for one of his many names because "as the dash two watches over the main jet, [he] is supposed to watch over his [older] sister." yeah, i'm a sap.

okay, so there are my pros and cons, i suppose. it sounds like perhaps the only thing keeping me from praying to fertility gods might be my own selfishness.

posted by grace at 12:28 PM on 10/16/06
posted to obsessions

finally catching up with the christmas shopping. i feel good about it today.

posted by grace at 4:38 PM on 10/ 9/06
posted to obsessions

paul's favorite giant squid documentary was deleted a few weeks back, so i've been trying to find it again. instead i found "kracken: tentacles of the deep" on sci-fi, which i recorded and i trot out occasionally for paul's amusement. admittedly, it amuses me more.

cam: this movie combines two of your obsessions.
me: [raised eyebrow]
cam: giant squid.
cam: and o'connells.
me: screw you!
cam: [laughing]

posted by grace at 6:56 AM on 10/ 9/06
posted to obsessions

cam: you officially have a stash. the thomas stuff arrived.

what a sweetie. he seems to actually understand my desire for a gift closet. he humors me in my strange purchasing habits, and he has never once pointed out that i don't actually have a place to store these excess gifts.

posted by grace at 7:55 AM on 09/21/06
posted to obsessions

i am letting my long-running subscription to "real simple" lapse. as fond as i am of that magazine, it makes me feel inferior ("martha stewart living" has the same effect, but jesu cristo, it's martha. we are ALL inferior.). flipping through the pages of "real simple," i see stuff about organizing one's home, one's life, one's family, one's work -- and i can't tell if you're supposed to do these all simultanously. i just end up feeling tired after reading that magazine, and those damned things are thick! i'd still be reading the february issue in june.

but just because i'm cutting my subscription doesn't mean that i'll give up on my plans to one day be "THAT organized mom." to that end, i developed a new goal for myself.

me: what is that look?
cam: nothing.
me: oh, like i don't have enough to do?
cam: [smirk]

every sunday, i will take a back issue and select one organizational challenge. if it's a long-term type thing that requires purchases (that won't get here within a week), then i can place whatever orders and then pick something else that will be accomplishable within my one-week timeframe.

i pulled out an issue last night to see what i was getting myself into. it was from 2001 and i swear, it was about a quarter of the size of the current issues. there seemed to be only one applicable article -- about organizing the hallway closet. (other articles included organizing your gym bag (ha! what gym?) and learning life lessons from panda bears (uh-huh, sure).) i took a look at our hallway closet and cringed. perfect. it's a really small spot, there's too much crammed in there, and i've been meaning to get to it for ages. because it didn't really look like a full week's worth of project, i started last night. paul was most amused. i put a scarf on him. "do i look like a woman?" he took the scarf off and put on a fisherman hat. "do i look like a mailman?"

i think this could be fun in ways that no one at home could ever understand.

posted by grace at 12:36 PM on 09/15/06
posted to challenge | obsessions

wish i could buy a nice big angela adams' rug for my living room, but:

1) i can't afford it;
2) even if i could afford it, i'd feel guilty shelling out that much for a rug; and
3) paul would pee on it.

so much for that. i do a lot of shrugging-and-moving-on when it comes to my design desires.

posted by grace at 12:09 PM on 09/14/06
posted to obsessions

i get obsessed really easily. painfully easily. right now i am still obsessing over the way shane west croons, "baby." swoony mcswoon. alas.

that said, i have only written one fan letter-thingy (email) in my life, and that was to heather armstrong. she didn't write back, but i didn't expect her to.

cam tried to sign me up for frenz of the enz, but they took his money and our love and gave him nothing in return. feh on you, peter green.

just joined a steve burns fan club. the steve site i semi-frequent didn't even tell me that the tmbg tribute album came out. feh on them. i need more news. the steve love is all-a-twitter after the blue's clues anniversary documentary. how i love a balding soft man in his middle-30s. if he happened to be an IT guy in a former life, i'd join his harem for sure.

posted by grace at 12:04 PM on 09/ 6/06
posted to obsessions

am fantasizing about the wonders of a gift closet. cam laughs because apparently this is such a mom thing.

posted by grace at 9:39 AM on 09/ 4/06
posted to obsessions

i can't believe i didn't know about the existence of the ten years of blue's clues special. feh on me. what kind of a steve and blue fan am i? the horror. and i never even wrote about the end of the blue's baby brother thing (cam and i deleted that thing asap -- which is a bit of a shame because paul has been asking about it).

anyway, i watched the brief documentary (you can catch it on the nick jr. site) with cam. too cute. the beginnings of the show are really interesting. loved the little segments with steve and donovan. (and steve's secret reason for leaving was very cute.) cam is going to take their beatbox version of the mail song and turn it into a ringtone for my cell. yay! the little scenes over the credits were interesting. jessica alba? bruce willis? robin williams? nick cannon (i think)? looks like they ambushed people at an awards show.

it was kind of weird, though, that they didn't address the end of the show. i mean, it's not like they're making new shows, but considering that they have a constantly renewable audience, it's not like they need to.

posted by grace at 7:09 AM on 09/ 3/06
posted to obsessions

i've been thinking about christmas for the past couple of days. maybe it's because i sent a friend a christmas ornament for her birthday, maybe it's because it's august and in the past i used to try to get my christmas craft (don't ask) in line by august. whatever the reason, it's time to shop.

cam has already beaten me. he bought the first christmas present of the year a few months back. curses!

it's interesting to see how my christmas list grows and grows. it used to be a pretty short one, but then came the baby explosion of the past few years. it's fun to shop for little kids, but it gets kind of stressful trying to coordinate gifts for the three-year-old set, the one-year-olds, the birth-to-6-months group, etc. etc. etc. yesterday i was debating the merits of "girl" gifts over those of "boy" gifts and was it possible to find a truly gender-neutral gift that wouldn't make the parents sneer? i haven't figured out the answer to that one yet.

cam is amused by my desire to start my shopping, but um, excuse me, mr. already-started-down-that-slippery-slope. besides, i'm in charge, more or less, of the list, leaving cam to pretty much buy only for his family and co-workers. so i need to get started or i'll be paying too much in shipping costs later down the line. (you didn't think i'd go to the mall, did you?)

posted by grace at 7:02 AM on 08/17/06
posted to obsessions

i fell in love with a shower curtain today. god help me, i saw it online and i felt tears come to my eyes, it was just THAT BEAUTIFUL.

posted by grace at 12:28 PM on 08/16/06
posted to obsessions

last night we watched most of the blue's clues special. it was pretty meh. joe looked pasty and little puffy, but i felt a little bit pleased for him because he was getting to interact with something. sure, these were only puppets, but after all that time alone in front of a blue screen... yeah. so it was nice to see him talking to something.

blue's voice i'm used to (hi, YOU!), but sprinkles? ugh. that was pretty bad. and those spots? i liked him better all white.

maybe we'll finish it tonight. we could have finished it last night, but i was ready to turn it off.

posted by grace at 6:09 PM on 08/ 9/06
posted to obsessions | tv

being the big blue's clues fans that we are, you'd expect that i'd have a long review of the new special "meet blue's baby brother," right?

you'd think.

i actually didn't watch it on sunday. cam reported that paul wouldn't watch it because (1) it was blue's room, and (2) joe had scary hair. i skimmed it last night -- i wanted to watch it, but it was kind of painful because i don't like puppets. (not a muppet show fan. not even a sesame street fan. i watched fraggle rock as a child, but only because i thought the dozers were cute.)

i guess we'll try again tonight.

posted by grace at 7:03 AM on 08/ 8/06
posted to obsessions | tv

there's something very intriguing about solar power. cam and i have been discussing a newfound desire for eco-friendliness. we've never been avid recyclers or anything like that, but we've become rather curious about renewable sources of energy. i guess that means that green-ness just got geeky.

posted by grace at 12:58 AM on 08/ 5/06
posted to cam | obsessions | ponce de leon

i have a new stapler! it's a swingline, but no, it's not red. i may be silly enough to buy my office supplies, but i'm not that much into making an office-space-like mockery of myself.

posted by grace at 12:49 PM on 08/ 1/06
posted to obsessions

yay for lance bass. way to finally come clean.

posted by grace at 12:10 PM on 07/26/06
posted to obsessions

i love to look through catalogs to come up with ideas i can duplicate cheaply in my own home. it's so much fun for me, even though it can get rather stressful because i throw myself into the work.

posted by grace at 12:22 PM on 07/10/06
posted to obsessions

i am completely enamored with the name "myfanwy" for a girl.

posted by grace at 12:39 PM on 06/15/06
posted to obsessions

i am fascinated by documentaries on gender dysphoria. i don't know why. i have never had the desire to be a man.

posted by grace at 12:40 AM on 05/29/06
posted to obsessions

we've been watching the top 100 teen stars countdown on vh1 and i am in heaven. i love teen crap like this and i don't even do so ironically. i am so... stunted and i didn't even know it. can i start calling my son mark-paul? someone needs to smack me and remind me that i'm in my thirties.

posted by grace at 12:34 AM on 04/23/06
posted to obsessions

in may of 2000, my copy of marie claire showed up in our mailbox and changed my life forever.

i exaggerate, but not by much.

the june issue (which i still own -- i kept that and one other; the rest were recycled) had a feature on four women of varying income levels and what they spent on fashion in a year. i was so inspired by this that i kept an excel spreadsheet for a year to chart my fashion and fashion-related purchases -- and was stoked to see that i spent considerably less than someone making roughly the same. mind you, the reason for this was simple. i was harder to fit.

one woman bought a hermes birkin. it was $5K and she had been waitlisted for two years. looking at the picture with older eyes, i think it must have been a 35cm (didn't look big enough to be a 40 cm) black togo with gold hardware. back then i thought it was ridiculous. $5K? 2-year wait? what kind of lunacy is that? and for a frumpy bag, no less. feh! ah, to be 25 again...

over the past few years i've reconsidered my stance on the birkin. now, that stance is I MUST HAVE ONE. it's just so classic. even bought a terrible light blue fake (so as to be ever so clearly fake) just to get more acquainted with the shape. there's an italian site that sells lovely well-made similarly styled bags for a tenth of the price, but i want the real deal. (i did almost buy one, but decided against it because it really did smack of replica. where i live, no one would know the difference, but so what? i would.) had a momentary passion for the jean paul gaultier shoulder birkin, but that faded when i realized just how hard to get that one would be -- plus it was a bit trendier and i couldn't justify that kind of cash for it. last night i was reading about the waiting list and i made a decision that i was going to get myself on that goddamned list for a 35cm black clemence with palladium hardware. if it takes years, fine, because it's going to take me a while to save up enough mad money to buy the damned thing.

i woke up this morning thinking i was crazy and i should never make impetuous, life-changing, expensive decisions while watching zoboomafoo.

last night, though, it wasn't all that surprising that i was thinking about it. on the way home, cam said he couldn't spend any more money until he got reimbursed from insurance. when i said i couldn't, either, he pointed out that he was the one who bought the car (the audi a3, by the way).

"i just bought a $30,000 car. i could have bought three birkins for that price!" he declared.

"then i demand you return the car for a $20,000 one and buy me a birkin," i retorted.

"sorry, sweetie," he said, laughing, "there's no cooling off period."

which then led to an interesting discussion of how new york has a cooling-off period of three days, but you don't take possession of the car until the end of that time. we wondered why pushy new yorkers would need protection from feeling pushed into large purchases until we considered that pushy new york car salesman would be very pushy indeed.

anyway.

i don't know what i'll do, but i'll think of something. wait for serendipity. or the lotto. or for the desire to pass (it might, you never know). i just do know that if i do get one, i'd like the purchase to be made in my 30s or 40s. i don't want to get it when i'm at the age when younger folk look at me the way we now look at little white-haired guys driving sports cars. logic tells me that this is foolish -- jesu cristo, it's hermes, not juicy couture -- but i want to grow old with this bag, not be old when i get it.

posted by grace at 5:09 AM on 02/28/06
posted to obsessions

it's just before 11 pm on a friday night and i'm alone with steve, mr. salt and mrs. pepper. i am actually sitting here watching "blue is frustrated," which is one of the last eps of blue's clues i have left to watch. (i know this because i have a doc on my computer at home i use to keep track of the eps i've seen.) i've been trying to get paul to watch this ep for a few days now, but he is a tiny bit too stubborn to indulge his sick, obsessive mother in this regard. i also need to watch "love day," but i think i'll hold off on that one. i feel sheepish enough watching this one without paul even conscious, but at least steve's in it.

posted by grace at 10:51 PM on 02/24/06
posted to obsessions | stuff

my mother called me at work on friday.

her: ... and they left cam a letter.
me: cam just got a letter!
her: [laughter]
me: [laughter]
me: ah... i need sleep.

posted by grace at 4:22 PM on 02/18/06
posted to obsessions

i read that lv is phasing out the gold hardware in favor of silver on all of the epi leather bags. i know this is disappointing news to some, but me? woohoo!

posted by grace at 10:33 PM on 02/16/06
posted to obsessions

this evening i added myself to the waitlist for a gerard darel bag at a local boutique...

posted by grace at 9:35 PM on 02/16/06
posted to obsessions

i am feeling beyond sheepish. i need help. i need an intervention. i've already told cam he needs to take my credit cards away from me (but that wouldn't really help because i've memorized my main credit card number)... there was a final winter clearance at the eileen fisher site, and i spent over $250 because the prices were ridiculously low (like $19 for something normally $60+). i bought just about one of everything they had available in my size. there were even a few things i coveted but didn't buy because they sold out (and stolen from my cart!) while i was hemming and hawing over the total.

oh well, i work hard, why shouldn't i buy things for myself?

posted by grace at 12:46 PM on 02/15/06
posted to obsessions

i got my speedy 25 last night. cam is far too kind to me. i didn't think we'd go out yesterday because it was getting late and i was still unwashed, but he insisted we go to south coast plaza (after calling both south coast plaza and the beverly center lv boutiques to see if they carried the speedy 25 in black epi leather).

so i showered and off we went. the lv boutique was crowded, but cam went right up to the counter and asked for the speedy 25 and 30 in monogram canvas and the speedy 25 in black epi. of course, they had sold out of the black, so cam asked to see the orange so that we could at least see an epi speedy. it was cute, but it was hard for me to get past the orange. the speedy 30 was too big for me. cam was right. then i asked for the jasmin in black. (cam was all, "what the hell is that?") the sales associate smiled. "that is a nice bag," she said approvingly.

she brought it over and i fell in love. so pretty! it had gold hardware, so we asked them to check for silver. "maybe they'll make this easy on me and only have it in gold," i said to cam. calls and whispers ensued. end result was that they only had silver in the blue, i think. even though i kind of knew this would be the case, i was still disappointed. it was so gorgeous and cam liked it, too. we deemed it almost the perfect black bag.

i ended up buying the monogram speedy 25 and i think i might be spoiled for life. the shopping experience wasn't all that great -- so crowded, lots and lots of asian women (that was actually just an observation -- i don't have anything against asian women) -- but the presentation was so charming. my purse was practically gift-wrapped. is there any store at a lower price point that packs up their products so nicely?

carrying the lv shopping bag seemed to make me part of an exclusive club. even with my hair a mess, my clothes so underwhelming (old jeans, gapkids velcro sneakers with paint on them, katamari t-shirt and black hooded sweatshirt), child on my hip, women still scoped me out, eyeing the bag with curiosity and open jealousy. it was hilarious, and yes, it was part of the whole shallow pleasurable experience. i'm not above a little consumer oneupmanship. not at all.

in other purse news: i am completely, utterly cured of the lust for the celine clandestine and the boogie bag. they didn't have a clandestine in the store (well, at least as far as we went inside), but they did have a few iterations of the boogie. adorable, but for over a grand i expect my purses to have feet. not to mention the chilly reception we got from the staff... we started to walk towards the store and the salesguy up front whipped out his cell phone or something and proceeded to poke at it the whole time we were in there. the saleswomen futher inside didn't even look up. believe it or not, guys, i can afford this, and if you'd rather my money went to lv, well, so be it.

posted by grace at 12:50 PM on 02/13/06
posted to obsessions

watched the video for steve burns' version of "dead" for the they might be giants tribute album. (cam, bless his nonjealous heart, made a bunch of screencaps for me because i couldn't watch the video at work.) very cute. he looks good bald and clean-shaven. of course, i loved the dorky glasses on him because i wear very similar ones... swoony swoon mcswoon. what a sick person i am.

posted by grace at 12:01 PM on 02/13/06
posted to obsessions

if i bought every single handbag i've thought about longingly in the past few days, i would be at least $20K in debt.

posted by grace at 12:43 PM on 02/ 8/06
posted to obsessions

paul and i have been watching "blue's big musical movie." he seems to like it. "movie. movie. blue."

i understand that the whole watching experience of blue's clues is really based on you interacting with blue and the gang. the characters on the screen are familiarly close. but... there's a scene in the beginning of the movie that cracks me up because one could perhaps (perhaps!) envision straddling steve, he's that close. "oh, it's you," he says sleepily, sitting up in bed in his cute little striped pajamas. of course it's me. it better be. i'm the jealous type.

slays me every time. who is this movie for, anyway?

posted by grace at 8:37 PM on 01/23/06
posted to obsessions

i have decided that i am ALL ABOUT the 5-door car. i just love chunky little 4-door hatchbacks. cam is not thrilled by this.

posted by grace at 9:51 PM on 01/22/06
posted to obsessions

last night i settled on the couch with paul to watch our nightly dose of blue's clues. even though he had expressed a preference for a particular episode (paul: play. store. play. store.), i decided we'd watch "magenta gets glasses" because i had not yet seen it. at least i didn't think i had seen it.

once we started watching, i was positive i had not seen it before. there was a girl in it, a real human being, and she was magenta's owner. her name was miranda and she bugged the crap out of me. sure, she was pretty and i liked the way she dressed, but she made too many faces. and worst of all, steve acted rather lovesick around her. i was irritated.

cam was amused. "she makes as many faces as steve," he pointed out. "it's just that she's not steve." grrr. "she's not used to acting in front of the blue screen, and steve isn't used to acting with people."

um, cam, you can leave at any time, you know.

posted by grace at 4:21 PM on 01/19/06
posted to obsessions

as much as i love him, i can admit when he is acting like a spoiled brat.

posted by grace at 9:20 AM on 01/17/06
posted to obsessions

paul: jump. jump. jump.
my mom: are you a frog?
paul: jump. jump.
mm: are you a frog?
paul. no.
mm: well, then what are you?
paul: man.
mm: a man! i didn't know you were already a man!
paul: real man.

posted by grace at 8:43 PM on 01/15/06
posted to obsessions

after the auto show (paul: auto. show.), we stopped by the target on sepulveda right off the 110. much to our surprise, they had the parents magazine mypod in stock! it was called "my mp3." (not sure when the name change took place.) we listened to it all the way home.

jump, jump, jump
everybody jump
we play football in the playground
you play seesaw in the playground
we have fun and joy
everybody jump

posted by grace at 3:48 PM on 01/14/06
posted to obsessions

last night we went straight after work to the la convention center (it is down the street from my office, after all) for the auto show. (cam was working from home as is usually the case on fridays, so he packed up our son and off they went to pick me up.)

i was kind of meh about the whole thing. cam really, really, really wanted to see the bugatti, which he did (from several different angles). in the concourse hall, where all the primopricey cars live, the exhibits were slightly different from in the other halls. these cars you couldn't touch, sit in or even breathe on. the bugatti was fenced off in this sort of tank-like black thing. men with accents were ogling that car, imploring their friends to take pictures of them at just the right angle as to appear that the bugatti was mere inches from them instead of several feet away. cam also wanted to see the lotus, and was sure to tell paul that he was expected to purchase one for his old man when he could afford it.

like i said, i was kind of meh -- until i saw my dear, dear honda fit. i had totally forgotten about it. what a cutie that car is. sure, it's underpowered, but it's only $13k. i sat in the driver seat and was content.

overheard: it's like a matrix, but conventional.

bite me, i say.

paul had fun, driving various cars and attempting to flee from our overprotective hands. i'm not sure what he liked best (well, aside from the fact that he kept saying "jeep. jeep!"), but i must point out that he did take his own turn sitting behind the wheel of the fit.

posted by grace at 2:53 PM on 01/14/06
posted to obsessions

we may not have found the mypod at target last night, but i will persevere and visit every goddamned target in the south bay if i have to just to track down that foolish thing. (i should have bought it the first day i saw paul transfixed by it.)

if i don't even try, i'll never bring closure to this situation. i would be forever doomed to wander the earth knowing only the first line to that stupid "jump, jump, jump, everybody jump" song. if i at least make the effort, then maybe the parents magazine gods will take pity on me and get that damn song out of my head.

posted by grace at 12:53 PM on 01/13/06
posted to mr. baby | obsessions

am currently crushing very hard on amy butler's nappy bag. i love love love it, even though i suspect that it's far too big for my short and scrunchy little self...

posted by grace at 3:43 PM on 12/23/05
posted to obsessions

my properly-sized steve shirt arrived today. i look silly wearing it, but i'm still so very pleased.

thanks, cam!

posted by grace at 6:35 PM on 12/21/05
posted to cam | obsessions

spent a few minutes looking at old tv guide covers (the tv guide site has an online gallery of covers going back to the 50s. it's cool. check it out.) after imdb revealed to me that steve had been on a cover. i was sad to see it was kind of a creepy picture. oh well.

since i was already there, i thought i'd look at a few others -- namely ones featuring peyton manning. there have been three. i own the peyton/eli one, but i had never seen the other two. in one of them, he was actually -- dare i say it? -- kind of hot. note that there are many things one can say about peyton, and hot is so not one of them. i say this out of love, mind you.

posted by grace at 12:35 PM on 12/21/05
posted to obsessions

just peeked at a blog of a filipino girl who just declared her love for steve burns five days ago. yay! and she's even listening to "songs for dustmites." if i wasn't so antisocial, i might even write to her.

for christmas, cam bought me a green-striped shirt like steve's. what a guy. (he bought a blue joe shirt for paul.) fortunately, he couldn't resist giving it to me yesterday when the package arrived -- and i say fortunately because the store sent the wrong size. it would have been crushing to unwrap it and see that instead of mens small*, it was a kids small! cam called them and they'll be sending out a new shirt asap. poor cam is disappointed, but it's no big deal. it's good that we caught the error in time. we should have the replacement on thursday.

*surprised? what, were you expecting "fangirly" or "obsessive mom" to be a size?

posted by grace at 12:32 PM on 12/20/05
posted to obsessions

in an episode of blue's clues, we learned how blue came to live with steve, et al. it was disconcerting, to say the least. bothersome, even. i have these questions:

1) where are steve and joe's parents?

2) where did joe go? if he was in the house as a baby, when did he leave?

3) how can mr. salt and mrs. pepper be so [occasionally] dippy if they have been able to successfully raise two humans and assorted, um, household objects from birth or near-birth?

4) how old is blue? she has been a puppy for at least 20 years.

i know i've been thinking about this too much, but i think if you watched several years' worth of eps in a matter of months you'd feel the same.

posted by grace at 12:49 PM on 12/19/05
posted to obsessions | tv

it completely slays me each and every time steve and joe on blue's clues wear something different from their normal outfits. (for instance, steve's striped t-shirt and shorts in "blue's backyard ballgame bonanza" are just too cute. i nearly kept that episode just for those shorts.) and i totally love how, according to the holiday episodes we watched this weekend, apparently nothing says generic winter holiday like rollneck sweaters.

happy holidays, everyone!

posted by grace at 12:29 PM on 12/19/05
posted to obsessions

oh colts, how could you let this happen?

posted by grace at 1:24 PM on 12/18/05
posted to obsessions

at smart & final on tuesday night, i gasped with joy when i saw a three-pack of liquid barkeeper's friend. the feeling must have been mutual because it practically leaped into my cart.

i love that stuff.

posted by grace at 6:59 AM on 12/ 9/05
posted to obsessions

* sometimes i wish the colts would lose because then it wouldn't seem so... uh, i don't know, trendy to like them. i hate to seem like a bandwagoneer.

* if colts score, it's because they have a good offense. if their opponent scores, it's not because the opponent has a good offense, it's because the colts' defense isn't playing so well. why is this?

* peyton appears to be the dorkiest football player ever and that is why i love him. those commercials! gah!

posted by grace at 6:42 AM on 11/22/05
posted to obsessions

the other night i dreamt i met steve burns. no idea where, but there were comfy chairs all over the place like a vegas hotel lobby.

we chatted for a while, sitting in those comfy chairs. he said that it was still funny to him how so many moms were just a little in love with him.

"more than just a little," i said, getting out of my comfy chair. and then i kissed him!

what a funny dream.

posted by grace at 7:02 AM on 11/15/05
posted to obsessions

none of this george eads and jerry o'connell (congrats to him and rebecca romijn, by the way) nonsense -- it's time for this completely nonwhite girl to admit to some crushes on men of color. (and the colors would be brown and yellow, i guess.) aamer haleem and archie kao are entirely too cute.

posted by grace at 8:25 PM on 11/10/05
posted to obsessions

yay! this article makes me happy. yay for small cars (and my beloved fit)!

posted by grace at 10:51 AM on 11/ 9/05
posted to obsessions

steve (love!) burns' "troposphere" definitely goes on my best songs ever list. swoon!

posted by grace at 7:01 AM on 10/14/05
posted to obsessions

i haven't revisited the world o' slash in a long, long time, but man, i used to totally live there. not at the point where i wrote it, i just read it... with glee. far too much glee. (i don't have to define "slash," do i?)

i think what happened is just that i turned way too mom on myself too quickly. it was the same with tv. after paul was born, i couldn't really watch anything violent. i still can't watch boxing or any crime shows involving crimes against children or pregnant women.

anyhow, i used to love this site, but i never really read anything on it other than the celebrity fanfic. i have a love-hate relationship with fanfic. i even wrote one years ago that i posted to a smallville forum (it was about poor neglected pete). i love a well-written and inventive one, but so much of them are just such trash. they have to be at least somewhat realistic, and i think that's the problem. too many stories i've read seem to involve the writer far too much -- either directly as a character (witness the hijinks of buffy and pals in my english class!) or indirectly by infusing characters with the writer's own traits (i am rory, can't you see?).

the realism issue is more easily sidestepped when the fanfic involves musicians or actors -- real people. when you write about tv or movie characters, they aren't so much of a blank slate. they have a direction, a way of speaking, a backstory. when a writer makes a character do something out of character, it just causes a big disconnect. a huge freaking wtf? moment. when you're writing about real people, you may have a notion of their histories and how they come across in interviews and whatnot, but you're basically on your own to imagine a private life. who is going to contradict you? "oh my god, justin timberlake would never, ever say that." um.

i also visited a few other sites that i can't seem to locate anymore: one specifically for boyband slash (loved me some joey/chris) and another one for smallville (clark/lex and lana/chloe). a few years back i discovered csi slash and realized that grissom/nicky slash was totally squee!-worthy. the other day i learned of the existence of ncis slash (duh -- just never occurred to me) and i do so look forward to the notion of some gibbs/dinozzo.

i've read an opinion somewhere that slash just ruins the fun of hoyay. the spark is there on tv, we see it, then we go and write about it and then the sassy secret sexiness of it is just gone. i don't think i believe that. i think it adds an interesting dimension to the tv-viewing experience. i read somewhere else that slash just isn't good slash if it isn't naughty. this i agree with. i don't need full-out oiled and sweaty sex scenes, at that point it's more porn with familiar people in the lead roles -- but there needs to be something giddy-making and fun about it all -- like, "oh dear god, it's about time these two hooked up! yes, in that way!"

there aren't any immediate plans to dive back into slash. when could i? when i'm at work? riiight. when paul goes to sleep? i guess, only if cam is watching lost or battlestar galactica or numb3rs. and only if there is wine available.

hurray for naughty reading fun!

posted by grace at 10:43 PM on 09/30/05
posted to obsessions

as fond as i am of the backstreet boys, i'm not entirely sure what to think of their latest video. it's hilarious, but it's so ugly. it's good they are moving on, yes, but i miss the pretty. the wind machines, the rain machines (hoses?), the angsty poses, the tortured artist expressions set to easy-listening pop...

posted by grace at 12:42 PM on 09/29/05
posted to obsessions

peyton, you know i love you, but please... don't talk-sing.

posted by grace at 7:27 AM on 09/27/05
posted to obsessions

i'm a big fat liar because i am going to talk about joe (and steve (love!) because a day isn't a day until i say something about him).

i found the joe episode we watched this morning to be really, really distracting because his hair kept changing. i'm not accusing the good people behind the show of recycling footage with joe the way they did with steve*, but it was pretty obvious that some of the scenes were strung together. in some parts he has the hair he usually has, in other he's practically mullet-y. not a good look for him. sadly enough, the more i watch the more distracted i get by hair and makeup incontinuity and it's messing a bit with my enjoyment of the stories.

one of the steve eps was really good and really cute. the other one was close to the end of steve's time on the show, and well, it shows. still love him though. have i mentioned lately that his cd is amazing?

on one of the tv sites i frequent, i noticed that donovan patton is credited with being "joe burns." this just cracks me up.

i watched the clip of steve on "yes, dear." hilarious. got it from here. "so do you want to make out?" how many moms have had this exact dream? surreal.

i clearly watch this show entirely too much.

*watch several of the early steve eps in a row. watch steve's hair before he sings the main blue's clues song, during and afterwards. there are definite breaks between those three points (they kept this structure with joe, by the way) -- first steve sings either by himself or crouching next to side table. then he sings the song right in front of the thinking chair. right after he sings the word "anything," he dives out of view and blue jumps up to fill the screen. then steve pops back up with jazz hands and sings "that we want to do." the part in the middle is reused several times. i'm sure most moms already know this, but i just wanted to write about it because it will consume me alive until i write it down. looking at later episodes, i see that the this particular sequence often looks a little different from the rest of the show -- i don't necessarily think at this point that it's because of recycling but rather that it was shot at a different time from the rest of the surrounding scenes. i am so overthinking this.

posted by grace at 11:23 AM on 09/24/05
posted to obsessions

if a certain person turned out to be gay, i would love him more.