What's in a Star Sign?

A friend of mine sent me an article from a horoscope site. This reading is for the month of May. I went to Wiki to learn more about astrology but my head started spinning uncontrollably so I quickly gave up on that idea and went to take a nap.

Fast forward a bit. I'm back.

I'm an Aries so I decided to have a little fun with my reading:

From the site:

Aries
Starting on the first of May, you’ll watch Oprah reruns all day instead of tending to the needs of your newborn child. At the end of the month, your child, having lived off of spider heads and fly brains, will try to strangle you with a rubber band as you watch your favorite talk show. You will live, but this will be the first of 4,100 stranglings your child will attempt. Stay alert.

Um......no. I told Hubby to just shoot me if he comes home from work and I'm watching Oprah. If I'm watching a previously recorded episode on DVR, re-load and shoot me again.

Let's twist that around a bit:

Aries
Starting on the first of May, you’ll watch Oprah reruns your blog, Facebook and Twitter all day instead of tending to the needs of your newborn child hairball-throwing, projectile-puking, sorry-excuse for-a-mammal cat. At the end of the month, your child beast, having lived off of spider heads and fly brains leftover pieces and parts from meals captured by the foxes and other wild animals, will try to strangle you with a rubber band dead possum as you watch your favorite talk show respond to blog comments. You will live, but this will be the first of 4,100 stranglings your child said beast will attempt. Stay alert.

So what does this mean?

I think it means that the cats are plotting their rebellion and it's going to happen in the cat year 4100 and they will begin by bringing headless dead rodents to each human's doorstep.

Stay alert.

The Theft of an Era and Some Eggs

Today, my blog name is Rantings of a Never-to-be-Reformed Evil Easter Egg Thief Geek.

That won't be a permanent change as that name is much too long and on those days when the brain fogs hits (No, it's not EVERY DAY), it will be impossible to manage!

Remember that we have an airstrip as part of our neighborhood. Back in the day before our neighborhood was slapped in the face with a lawsuit, we used to have a big Easter celebration. The Easter Bunny would buzz the neighborhood and drop eggs on an open field. Beforehand, neighbors would put candy in the eggs, tape them very tightly, and put them in a big burlap bag ready for the bombing runs. After the Easter Bunny made several passes and spread eggs almost everywhere except the open field, the Easter Bunny would land and greet pint-size or adult-size kiddos*. Just about anybody and everybody was welcome at this celebration although it was primarily the neighbors and their extended families.

*Note that the bunny wasn't the pilot. Some other sucker had to be blamed for the missed targets.

It was fun. Some of the other pilots would have their planes out and give rides to the pint-size or adult-size kiddos (see the pattern here). It was a great day to be outside and enjoy spring!

So what happened?

I think it's called PROGRESS and the trend that very few people actually take responsibility for their actions and are always looking for someone to blame. And for the lawyers that support them:


Remember this is rant day and thank you Chris Wood for the photo I stole from your recent post.

So back to progress. A large tract of land near the airstrip was sold. A new development moved in just south of our neighborhood. As a gesture of good will, we had a party to introduce them to their new neighbors. We offered plane rides for the kiddies or anyone who wanted one. We had a great time.


ReformingGeek is in the photo and apologizes for her choice of clothing. I'm a geek, remember! Hint: She's not wearing black.

Back to the story. Unfortunately, an unsupervised young child was playing with a golf cart and was injured. You'd think if anything happened, it would involve an airplane but, no, that's not what happened. There were no incidents involving an airplane or any apparatus that you might possibly think could injure a child.

Did I say unsupervised child?

Long story short. The child was not seriously injured. The parents made a very big deal out of it and pursued legal action. Everything has been settled but there are no more parties involving "outsiders".

Neighbors continue to enjoy Easter with their families. Sunday, once the weather cleared, we had planes buzzing around and cars were parked all over the place. It looked like another day in paradise!

Hubby and I kicked back for a relaxing day. We ventured out in the afternoon and as we passed a house down the road, I noticed Easter eggs all over the front yard. The family was in the back. I could not get Hubby to pull over so I could do a quick grab of all those eggs! Heehee. ReformingGeek's evil twin makes an appearance. Can't you just imagine the looks on their faces when it came time to start that Easter egg hunt?

"ReformingGeek stole my eggs. I will cast a spell upon her."

Photo credits: Piper Cub with a ReformingGeek sandwich: Steve Johnson, Unhappy child: istockphoto.com

What? Another one?

So that was that. Another birthday.

Sigh.

The alternative is not so great....

I've scheduled this post and I'm assuming I woke up this morning and the world didn't end during the night. Any day that I wake-up is a great day and I get another chance......at being funny of course! If the world ended during the night, none of us would giving a flying flip about this post now would we?


Someone asked me if it was a milestone birthday. I wanted to snarkily respond "Yes. I'm thirty you Doofus" or "so what milestone did you have in mind?" but I took a breath and told him "No milestone. I'm leaning on the back end of the same decade you're in, Buddy!"

I know. That's all I could come up with at the moment.

Some people do not engage brain before mouth.

Another guy in the gym calls me "Old Timer". I'm sure it's because I've been around this gym forever not because I'm old.

Yeah. I'm a little naive sometimes.

He wanted to know my age to determine if he needed to add "Old" to my nickname. I told him that I was still younger than him so to shut the eff up.

Just kidding. I didn't really say it quite that way.

Come closer and I'll tell you how old I am.

Closer.

Just a wee bit closer.

OK.

2F

That's right. Only a geek would report her age in Hexadecimal. My real age is somewhere within this post. Twice.

Mom got me a small cake with balloons on it. She still thinks I'm just a young'n.

My SIL made me some soaps. They are well made so they won't be appearing on Julia D's Homemade Hilarity blog!

Look at those silly kitties plotting the demise of my new soap.
Aren't you convinced that cats are 47 evil?

My friend gave me a candle and shared her lunch with me. YUM! That candle was very tasty!

Hubby got me a cool book. I'm very excited because I just realized that I can still read something that is not on a computer screen!

As for celebrations, I had to work last night so tonight we will do a dinner out with some friends and share a bottle of wine. Sorry guys, no dancing nekid on the table this time (I don't want to break my hip you know) and if you have the pictures from last time, SHAME ON YOU! I paid you off. Now destroy the negatives already!

I also want to thank Tracy at Rambling Thoughts of the Never Ending Mind for giving me an early birthday prezzie last week. She must know how much I like lemons.


Now if I can just get it open and get those lemons out and get some of you started squeezing them, I'll be in good shape to make my next batch of lemon cookies. As for passing it on, if you want it, it's yours. Just send me a sample of what you made with the lemons.


Speaking of lemons, WTF is this?



Is it a tutu that vomited a tutu and then vomited yet another one?

I'll leave you with a little song (just in case you have not figured out the age thing yet):

100 bottles of beer on the wall, 100 bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, 99 bottles of beer on the wall.

99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall.
.......
47 bottles of beer on the wall, 47 bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, 46 bottles of beer on the wall.
.......

Yeah. That's right. I'm going backwards. I'll be 46 next year.

Photo credits: Lemon monstrosity: The fashionpolice.net, Soaps: ReformingGeek

The Oceanic Six Meme

There is some kind of meme going around where you have to list six things about yourself that frankly, nobody gives a rat's ass about (Humor me. It's margarita night and they were really [hiccup] good tonight). Nobody asked me to do this meme but when has that ever stopped me?

I have conveniently renamed this meme to the Oceanic Six meme and will list weird things about myself. For those of you that don't watch Lost, weird things always happen to the six people that "survived the plane crash and were rescued from the Island but are now back on the Island....apparently".

Anyway, so here goes. Things I'm sure you've always wanted to know about me but were smart enough not to ask:

#1. Yes. I'm a cat lover and a sucker for a sweet kitty (So why don't I have one?) I never liked cats as a child. I thought cats growled at you. My BFF at the time had to explain purring.

It was dogs. We had poodles. Hubby tells me poodles aren't really dogs. Poodles and chihuahuas; noisy squirmy rats disguised as dogs. I miss having a mutt. We have no fence and I don't want one in the house and we won't be getting a fence so there will be no mutt. I hate logic sometimes.

Dogs are excited to see you. Cats like you to think they are excited to see you but it's all an act to manipulate you to comply with their commands. If cats can kidnap the HumorBloggers mascot Chester, then we know we can't trust those growling, hair-throwing, hairball-hacking, dirt dropping, curtain-tearing, stinky-turd-dropping, SBD-farting buffoons. WOW! Did that cover it?

So that was #1. Moving on.

#2. I like Peanut Butter and Bananas (but not on a sandwich). They make a mean muffin. It must have been the ghostly visit from Elvis as he was swirling around in Purgatory. My dad also liked Peanut Butter and Bananas. I'm sure he and Elvis are getting along swell in the Great Beyond when he's not haunting my mom's house with additional attempts to stop gap any problem with duct tape and bailing wire.


#3. I walked up and down the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 1976! This was before they closed it for repairs and stabilization. I'm glad I had a good sense of balance. Mom stayed down below on a bench thinking I was crazy.


#4. I think I left some brain cells in Florida. The Mission: Space ride at Epcot scared the daylights out of me but not until I tried to leave the ride upright. I slowly walked to the exit holding on to Hubby. I've never felt so weird and disoriented. My head hurt for several hours and I kept thinking I should go lay down. I found out later that it used spinning to create centrifugal force to simulate the G-force effects (at least it did a few years ago when I went on it). Me and spinning are not friends. Six Flags had a ride called the Spindle Top. I couldn't do that one either.

#5. Hubby's Sunday school teacher when he was six turned out to be my uncle. [Insert music from the Twilight zone.]

#6. Hubby and I went to the same college and the years overlapped but we did not meet until a few years later at work.


OK. WAKE UP! It's over. Feel free to do the weird stuff meme. You can even call it the Oceanic Six meme if you want.

Puppy in towel photo: Origin unknown. It was from a well-traveled email.

The Flyin' Yogini and Other Such Nonsense

yogini - female practitioner of yoga

There once was a small yogini called YoginiGeek who attended a workshop to learn more about yoga so she can bring calmness and serenity to Perspective Cat who tends to be somewhat well...er...psycho. At the workshop, YoginiGeek was assigned to a group of larger yoginis to act out a story. This group was tasked with acting drunk and silly (not a stretch for YoginiGeek) to demonstrate what can happen to people when they are not in control.

One of the other yoginis on the team was obviously better at acting drunk and silly than YoginiGeek and was very energetic with her interpretation. The excitement of being "on stage" and being a star may have been too much for YoginiGeek's co-star as she made a large swooping movement with her arm, causing YoginiGeek to break into sudden flight and land on the floor several feet away.

The crowd grew quiet and YoginiGeek was soon surrounded by concerned faces. YoginiGeek starts to laugh uncontrollably. The crowd relaxes. YoginiGeek is on the floor but is breathing and all limbs are intact.

The crowd sighs, yawns in boredom, and awaits the next group's antics.

Now for a little rant:

Don't you just love it when you've taken your car in for service and you get a call the next day urging you to answer "excellent" to the survey that will be given to you later because this is how service advisers are evaluated?

I don't love it.

Earlier this week, "Elle" calls and leaves a message for Hubby asking if the service was "excellent" and to call her back if it wasn't. "Elle" sounds like a pre-teen girl that should probably be chasing the Jonas Brothers.

Being the silly geek I am, I had to tease Hubby about his phone message.

So Hubby, did "Elle" service you OK?

What services did she actually perform?

Why was I not invited?

Wasn't your service advisor a guy? Was his service good? Is he cute?

Give me a break. I run away screaming from surveys. I had enough of that in the corporate world. We would take the survey and then have to form little "teams" to "fix" the problems that came up on the survey. What an EFFING waste of time! And a survey being part of your performance evaluation and being urged to answer "excellent"? Uh, no. Sorry. I don't play that game.

Rant over.

Not quite.

The weather outside is warm. It's spring break around here and everyone who hasn't driven a car all winter is now out driving their car as I'm trying to commute home. On a positive note, at least Real Cat is worn out and ready to sleep when I get home. He's been spending these nice days outside, looking for rodents to torture and hiding from the Zombies.

ReformingGeek thanks Amy Groark from flickr.com Creative Commons for the Cat in Cobra Pose photo.
Licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

Holy Hot Cross Buns Batman!

I went to a new facility yesterday to teach a group fitness class. I encountered Typhoid Terry at the Security Desk. He had a hand-written sign that said he had a bad sore throat and couldn't talk. YIKES! Pass the hand-sanitizer, please.


I also encountered Mooning Moe. Moe was probably just having a normal day in the life of a new facility, tinkering with this or that, showing off his duct tape and bailing wire skills, trying not to blow the place up or electrocute himself, working the Full Monty on his breaks, etc. But this is all I got:


My poor eyes. OUCH!

Actually, that wasn't him. The hot cross buns I saw were much more.....er.....pronounced.

Yes, I said Full Monty back there. I just wanted to see if you were still reading.


Clothing faux pas can be very serious. Just remember how ~awful~ it was for all you guys when Janet Jackson had her little wardrobe malfunction. This guy I was working with at the time came in the next day with a huge smile on his face talking about how offended he was. It was obviously shocking for him and he is probably still suffering from damages. Poor thing.

And finally, what's with you guys with hairy arms that wear tight tank tops to work out in the gym? You remind me of this guy, but gay:


This isn't pool guy material, OK?

If you're brave enough, tell me about your favorite clothing faux pas.

In other boring news: I now have 3 different security badges in my purse. Yes, they are all mine. Or maybe I should say that they have my picture on them.

Let me rephrase that. They have some god-awful image that resembles me when I feel as bad as the guy in the first photo. My passport photo is better.

Did you see Lost last night? Sawyer cleans-up good!



ReformingGeek again thanks istockphoto for the photos.

Tagged and Stranded, but Loved

Kirsten over at Soccer Mom Files stranded me on an island and gave me the following sob story involving a retarded genie.

“Your ship has sunk. You have, of course, been stranded on a deserted island. You have salvaged a copy of the King James Version of the Bible and a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare. Nothing else."

Oh no. I'm stuck on a deserted island with no Sawyer and no Kiefer. Maybe I should be glad it's not the island from Lost with a life of its own and a creepy ability to move from place to place hindering any rescue attempts. Also, its inhabitants can't ever leave because they are in some sort of twisted, unnatural relationship with this possessed island.

In a sweet, soothing, mellifluous voice, ReformingGeek starts to sing "Welcome to the Hotel California..."

“The very next day you find one of those Arabian Lamps in the sand. Of course, you rub it and, of course, a rather grumpy Genie appears." “‘Let’s get this straight - there is a recession going on. There are restrictions on the three wishes now. I don’t do water or air transport now so no boats, planes or magic carpets. As for electronics, forget it. There isn’t the infrastructure on this island. I can let you have one book and I mean one VOLUME, one essential item and one luxury item. Now hurry up and make your choices, I have to get to those three thousand other islands you are going nominate.’”

So what's with this primping, beefed-up genie and his love for the sun?

Nice flip-flops, though.

Anyhowser, back to the 3 wishes. I guess beggars can't be choosers:

A book? ONE book?

Hum......lucky me. I think I'm going to have to go with the Book of Charms. Duh. Then I can whisk away any demons and other such evil spirits that try to take over me or my island. Hubby said it might help if I'm a witch. Does it count that I've been called one?

Or was that the other "itch" word?



An essential item?

Another genie, of course. There had better be a genie in this here lamp or else the blue guy gets it!

A Luxury item.

Ahhhhhh. A massage.


Nighty-night.

I thought about asking for an eyelash curler but with the humidity, the taming of the wild eyelashes would only last a few seconds, so forget it.

In other news, that sweet cutie-pie Diet-Dr-Pepper-addict Quirky dropped me this "Friends" award that is making me think of cardio exercise and leftover Valentine's Day candy. I'm not sure why. Here is what I was supposed to do with it:

Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who can choose eight more and include this text into the body of their award.

It's time to spread the love, folks. I picked a few of you suckers loyal readers based on absolutely no criteria because, afterall, you are all wonderful. Enjoy "free love" and/or get yourself stranded on the island without Sawyer or Kate (for you guys):

Elizabeth at Elizabeth and her Invisible Chinese Baby
Marvel at The Daily Egg
Bee at Bee's Musings

Have fun!

ReformingGeek thanks Disney for not taking legal action against me for using the photo of the blue guy. I'd also like to thank Amazon.com for kindly allowing me to show a photo of one of its book offerings. Brain fog prevents me from remembering where the heck the lamp photo came from. Finally, I actually have the right to use the massage photo!

Fridge Frenzy

I opened the spare fridge in the garage and realized that it's no longer a spare fridge. It's a beer cooler. Hubby has decided that he is now a beer snob. You be the judge. Notice there are a couple of bottles of wine and some leftovers but other than that, I feel like a true Texan with all this beer.


But wait. It's not Miller, Bud, or Coor's so maybe not so Texan afterall.

But wait. There's some Shiner Black Lager. We're good.

You're probably wondering when the party will be and when you will receive your invitation.

That may happen at some point as Hubby has one of the milestone birthdays this year. It's such a big milestone that when I made custom calendars for family members this Christmas I made this day a holiday just in case anyone gets distracted with life and forgets his birthday.

Hint: The milestone birthday has a zero in it.

Ok. Ok. It also has a '5' in it.


Let me know if you see some beer you like. I'll make sure to have it on hand for the party. For those of you that don't imbibe, no problem. I've got plenty of Diet Dr Pepper!

Also, I've noticed some craziness with some of the neighbor's kids lately. I put a security camera in the garage and caught one of the little turds in the act. I hid the beer but I think they found it anyway.



Does anyone think this guy looks like Da Old Man?

I sure do. Time travel is a possibility folks. Don't you watch Lost?

Yeah. I know it looks different than my fridge but work with me here. ;-)

ReformingGeek's fridge photo was not taken by a really good photographer. Do with it what you want. No rights reserved. The other fridge photo was borrowed from a recent email and has probably been all over the world by now.

Hump Day Howdy!

Sometimes life around the ReformingGeek household just isn't all that exciting. I know you're surprised and think I spend my days shopping for shoes, hunting wild animals, playing nosey neighbor and/or supervising trash receptacles, but some days I think my dharma is cat slave. Seriously, open door, close door, repeat. I guess I should bloom where I'm planted because my next life might be as a house cat (more likely a cockroach).

I know I spend a lot of time blogging and sometimes I know I'm still asleep reading blogs because I find that I've made a silly comment or commented on the wrong post. Oops..... I can always use the brain fog excuse or maybe I need the 12-step program.

So today I find myself creating a short post. Ha! I know you don't believe it.

No really. Here goes.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who never really lets you talk?

I met a friend for lunch recently and this is about how it went. I used to work with this friend and she's always been this way and I do like her but when I start thinking about how things usually go when we meet up, I laugh at myself.

RG (me, of course)
FTF (Fast-Talking-Friend)

RG: Hey, how are you?
FTF: I'm good. Remember my brother. Well he married so-and-so and last week they..........blah blah yada yada....What's up with you?
RG: Well, I'm....
FTF: And remember uncle Bob? He crashed his motorcycle..blah blah yada yada....So are you working now?
RG: I'm still teaching at ......
FTF: Oh yeah. My daughter and her friend are planning this trip....blah blah yada yada.....
RG: Sounds nice so how's......
FTF: Did I tell you so-and-so left the company? Yeah, she........blah blah yada yada......So you really don't make much money teaching, do you?
RG: Um.....
FTF: Anyway, so my other daughter.......

For an hour.

We part company. I think I got screwed and I'm wanting to snarkily shout out "Was it good for you?!?!"

Fortunately, I have other friends and they are not like that!

In other news, I actually had a GREAT experience talking to a customer service representative. This person was efficient, SPOKE ENGLISH (not Engrish), and took care of my request in record time. GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY, THERE IS A GOD!

Coming up in February, I am scheduled to work a temporary part-time job to supplement that obviously inadequate income my friend described. More on that later.

Finally, to fully honor hump day, I leave you with a humpback whale showing off up in Alaska next to our cruise ship. *These photos were taken in September 2007 on one of last Inside Passage cruises of the season. If you want to see the whale in all it's glory, click on the photo and page down.





Happy Hump Day! How about a vote for the whale antics over at humor-blogs. Click here to vote and thanks!

*Photos property of ReformingGeek. Please do not use without permission.

And your point?

I was reading a discussion earlier about whether or not your humor is affected by your mood. In my case, I would have to say absolutely and totally! I tend to get real sarcastic when I'm feeling a bit witchy (note choice of words reflecting the season). I checked my mood thermometer this morning and this is what it showed me:

Maybe it's because I was planning to run 13+ miles today. Or maybe it's because my Mom called. Mothers have this magical spell that just by tone of voice, a look, osmosis, or body language invokes the guilt gene in their daughters.

I had a friend tell me that when she turned 40 she stopped caring what anyone thought about her or her opinions! I was impressed. At that time, 40 was still a little ways off and after our conversation, I was innocently looking forward to this kind of freedom. Now that I've been there and done that and it's been awhile, I'm finding that she was just so very, very wrong. Damn!

For those of you not yet 40, please do not worry. It's easy and it's a blast. I was working in an office at the time and there were about 6 of us turning 40 within a 6-9 month period. The cube decorations and gags moved from one cube to the next. It was hilarious. I remember that someone disabled my phone, hid my mouse ball (just to be clear it's the computer mouse) and my cube was full of black balloons, black crepe paper, and confetti. The gag gifts I remember were a magnifying glass and a grim reaper Halloween decoration. Sounds lame, but it was fun. There was probably more but I've got CRS (Can't Remember Sh*t) so this will have to do.

Writing this post, practicing deep breathing, and having finished the 13+ miles upright and with all limbs intact has given me the therapy I need. From this day forward, sensitivity be damned. No more guilt. Please just kiss my a**.

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I'm tickled pink that you stopped by and actually made it to the end of this post. My mood will get an ever bigger boost with a smiley. Also, I post @3 times a week. Get the latest by subscribing or become a follower and view the latest post on your dashboard (Blogger).

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