Amber & Hello, 2011

I look forward to your arrival, new year, and I embrace you with this motto.


Upward.

I also offer you this rhyming resolution.

From the roots upward
My spirits to leaven
In two thousand and eleven.

And I sing you this theme song.  (Or, really, I sing along with Joe Pug.)



I look forward to your arrival.  Whenever you want to get here, I will be ready.  And so will my first chakra.

Amber & Noah

This photo cannot convey the very wet Armageddon happening outside my window. I might hide under my desk. (Jimmy says I have been hanging out with Pickles too much.)

Amber & My New Nemesis

Illness, I have had it with you.  Although some people have suggested I try not to have new nemeses this year, I am making an exception.  First, you continually pick on some of my dear friends.  Then, you gave me an ailment that no one had ever heard of with the world's silliest name ever.  Then, while I was recuperating from that, you made me get crawly head sensation from nerve problems related to my jaw disorder that persist even after the miracle of the jaw adjustment.

Then, today, you chose the most baby and vulnerable of all targets: Pickles.

Giving my poor pink-nosed, curly little guy another UTI?  I mean, come on.  Although we managed to get to and from the vet without getting clawed or having accidental carrier poops, this is just not fair.  Pickles is already the nervous nelliest of all the cats.  In fact, stress from recent thunder storms and fire crackers (it is still Independence Day in my neighborhood) and contagious me stress (see above referenced other illness infractions) could be the very reason the boy is sickie.

Illness, be warned.  I will not abide.

Your days are numbered.  I am Attacking.  Starting now.

Amber & 3:07 am

It's 3:07 am.

Do you know where your insomnia is?

Amber & The Great Fork Massacre of 2010

On my way to the office this morning, I passed the tragic site of The Great Fork Massacre. Lo!

On the corner of Madison and 29th Street, there were, for no reason I can offer, thousands of shredded and mutilated little plastic fork corpses.

I tried Googling ("weird forks in street madison ave new york," "broken forks road madison ave new york") but came up with no explanation for this senseless waste of fork lives.

Our thoughts go with you, brave little plastic fork soldiers, slain in battle, I can only imagine, with a giant  order of To Go Lo Mein.  Our brave heroes!  Remember our fallen fork brethren.

Amber & Trend Spotting

Incredibly Popular Diana was gifted this hat by one of her students at the end of her school year.

I love Diana's hat so much: it's purple, a top hat, and really small.  It's like a whole outfit for your head.  Little did I know Diana was on the cutting edge of a whole trend in novelty mini-hats.  Of the examples of this trend I have discovered, this one is my favorite.

It's so nautical--even more than a sailor hat, and who would have thought that was possible?  Greatest Hat Ever.  Although this one is also rather fab.

Look how happy Diana's mini-hat makes her!

It makes me just as happy, and I'm not even wearing it.

Amber & Mind Blow

Get ready....

I love cats.

And, if that didn't blow your mind...  Pickles is curly and afraid of the camera flash.

Amber & Really, Technology?

So, some of you will remember the first time I used my oven and CRD and I nearly died from laughter when we learned that, in addition to beeping super super loudly, my smoke detector said in a incredibly calm woman's voice,  "Fire.  Fire.  Carbon Monoxide."  And, if the laughter didn't kill us, the panic of trying to stop the beeping (did I mention it was super loud?) might have.  The event gave me great concern both about what was burning off inside my oven to cause that smoke and about the extra stress of the beeping--while I was trying to gather all four cats into carriers--in case of a real fire fire.  (Carbon monoxide.)

Well, guess what I just learned, at 5:00 am on a Sunday morning, happens when the smoke detector's battery gets low?

"Beep.  Beep.  Low battery."


I'll let you puzzle out how I managed to a) get the damn thing of the ceiling (I have really high ceilings, being on the top floor), and b) figure out where the battery was.  And if that's too easy, you can puzzle out how I disconnected it since it was wired directly into the electrical system. That's right, the battery is only it's backup source of power.

This seems like a really bad over-use of technology.  Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

Amber & Short Term Memory, Long Term Dread

Q: Mr. Owl, how many days does it take for a cat to forget a very bad thing that happened to him?

A: Let's find out. One...

Two...

Three...

Exactly 754 days.  This can not be a good thing.  But, golly that surgery was great for him and healed super well.

Amber & You Are What You Eat

RIP, SpaghettiOs Man.

If it wasn't for you, Candice and I might not have survived to adulthood. Or, maybe the will to not starve would have been strong enough, and we would have found something better to eat anyway and been healthier adults?

Amber & Sealizer

Remember the Squirrelizer?  (And my much cheaper version?)

Well, marine mammals make memes, too.

Hee hee.  I love a happy sea lion.

P.S. Nick found this on Reddit while he was "working."  It's the number one thing over there right now.

Amber & Missing

This guy has crazy curly whiskers.  La Perm.

Don't worry.  Pickles is not missing he's right here next to me, trying to lay on the keyboard.  But what happened to his kitty eyebrows on the right side of his face?  (Stage left, for us.)

See?  The left side has those crazy white frizzy, twisted whiskers.  But the right side is bare.

Did Pickles fly too close to the sun, counter-clockwise?  Or did he snuggle up next to the radiator a little too close?

Only Pickles knows.  I wonder if this means he'll be walking in circles until they grow back.

Amber & More Famous Celebrities

This is Ginger and me doing our impression of Michael Richards squished up against me on the uptown C train after work. He got off at 81st Street. At that point, a man on the train said, to no one in particular, "Kramer.". And we all felt acknowledged. I also felt stupid for having thought a C on the express track would go express.

Amber & Bizarre Analogies

Also, I am famous today.

(Paragraph six)

I am impressed he even knows that there is such a thing and that Mother Goose has one.

Amber & Brotherly Love

On this historic day, November 14, 2009, Pickles extended a rear paw of brotherly love, and Woody accepted.

Or, at least, he didn't hiss and move away.

Amber & You Don't See That Often

This grainy image is of a priest eating BBQ with a non-clerical friend.  Well, there you go.

Spotted at Bone Lick Park.  The country meatloaf was particularly yummy, by the way.  And the mint julep was pretty boozy.  Boozy enough for me to take this photo in the restaurant of my fellow patron, only to discover that my work phone has a flash.  Again: well, there you go.

Amber & Eyeballed

Imagine my surprise when I was watching Gossip Girl and Kim Gordon arrived to marry the mom and dad on the show! (I don't imagine you're surprised I watched GG-- I've been sick long enough to watch everything on the Internet, including the entire The IT Crowd series on Netflix Watch Instantly--more on that later.)  I remember there being some back-story about how the dad was a rock star and the mom was a groupie, but I was still shocked to see them put their money where their mouths were in the form of appearance fees for Mrs. Rock-N-Roll Family herself.  Back in the day, we used to see them packing up the Volvo wagon for the weekend, just like regular parents, only with skinnier jeans.

I was not surprised when the full band appeared to play the reception, after all they have that album from this past June and I bet a tour to go with it.

But I WAS surprised when Mark Ibold turned out to be the bassist in the band.  When did that happen?

You may remember I have a special long-term relationship with Mr. Eyeballed.  We used to live in the same neighborhood, and I would see him around all the time.  Once, I even helped him figure out how to use the peanut butter making machine at Commodities.  And then he used to tend bar all the time at Great Jones when James and I would have brumch there.

How we've fallen out of touch for me not to even know he had joined Sonic Youth!

Amber & Breaking News

I am taking a moment out from my anti-antibiotic biological reactions to bring you this hot news item. Although I don't really care so much about all the controversy at that award show, it did lead me to do some research and discover this great song by Beyoncé called "If You Like My Hand Then You Should Have Put A Ring On It."

Now, I know. I know. You got the criticism; I am aware of it. But those are some awesome dance moves and that is one physically fit lady. And she has a robotic hand thing!
I totally want one of those. Heck, I already wear leotards all the time to amortize the cost of the dance equipment I bought for that tap class in Wisconsin and because I like to pretend I am Ruby Keeler while making Excel workbooks.

After I saw the video and compared favorite dance moves with CRD, he pointed out THAT was what that whole SNL skit with Paul Rudd, Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg and that chubby guy in leotards was all about. Who knew?

And then Nick was all, "Did you know it's an hommage to that Bob Fosse choreographed Gwen Verdon dance number called 'Mexican Breakfast?'" Apparently, really recently (2007) someone dubbed a contemporary song over the original score and dance fun ensued. Here is the current song with those original dance moves.



Remember folks: you learned all about it here on Amber & first.

Amber & The More the Spookier

Bat Dots!I have to say they are pretty darn tasty, although a sweet orange flavor isn't very scary. (I'm not sure what a scary flavor would be... and please don't bring up those gross flavors of Harry Potter jelly beans.) And see how the little Bat Dot Guy has a blood orange slice for a mouth so it is fruit juice, not blood, dripping on the box?

They do look kind of scary, though.
Kind of like, well, bat droppings.

Amber & Seasonal Spooky Delights

Kevin's love of, and lack of self control pertaining to, Dots is one of his Distinguishing Characteristic Properties. He has eaten them for longer than I have known him, and often remarks on the freshness or the particular gumminess of each batch. He is a Dot connoisseur.

Yesterday, he partook of a new seasonal offering, the Ghost Dot, which you can read about in greater detail here.Essentially, it's a spooky green dot in some mysterious unnamed flavor. (Although the web buzz seems to be that maybe each one is a different flavor.)


For the forthcoming holiday season, Dots also come in blood orange Bat Dots and Candy Corn Dots. I can't wait for Kevin to try them all. I think he liked the Ghost Dots on account of how he ate the whole box.