Hey Ya

Check out this acoustic cover of Outkast's Hey Ya. There is something about a guy with a massive moutain-man beard that I find appealing. Maybe it's just a respect for the amount of time it must have taken to grow the thing ... anyway this guy Matt Weedle has an amazing voice - please enjoy.

And just for kicks - here's the original ...

Read more...

Bits & Pieces

I've been uninspired lately with the posting - I apologize. I thought I would throw out a few highlights (or low-lights in some cases) of my last few days. So, in no particular order:

1. My office had a party planned for Monday afternoon this week. Well, to be fair, they called it a "Meeting" but lets be realistic; it was from 12:00 - 4:00, it was being catered, there were games planned and it was AT THE FREAKING PARK, so I'm going with party on this one. For some reason though, the partners decided to take up about 3 hours of our party time talking about the firm's "Core Values" and "Case Goals" and new "Attorneys" and new "Office Locations" and all kinds of other nonsense that did not involve the word "Cake" so I was pissed.

2. Once we finally got to the games it was a hot mess. The highlight of which was "Marshmallow Golf" no surprise, it was one of the favorites. A bunch of lawyers gathered in a park with golf clubs and tees and a crowd of amateurs - they were in Hog Heaven - everyone of them felt like Tiger Woods when they hit the living shit out of those poor marshmallows. The rest of us pretty much just took our turns swinging and missing but we were fine with it. Somehow my friend Will actually won - he credited the fact that he had played mini-golf with his girlfriend the night before. I don't think the partners were too pleased that this was all it took to overcome their endless hours of schmoozing and putting on courses like Pebble Beach for the last 25 years. I say - SUCK IT GENTLEMEN!

3. Highlight of the highlight - when Will stepped up for the game winning drive he yelled "Smores!" Get it? Smores? Like "Fore" but b/c we were hitting marshmallows he said "smores" ... like the campfire treat ... get it ? it rhymes! You might not think its that funny but damn it if he didn't make me pee my pants.

4. After work I had to go pretty much straight over to a funeral service for my friend's 92 year old grandmother. It was the nicest service I've ever been to - not depressing like they usually are. Probably b/c she was 92! She lived a good long life; most people can only hope for that. But I was tired as shit after my "meeting" that day and I couldn't wait to get home and go to bed. Sleep is good.

5. I was so tired this morning that I forgot to bring a lunch to work with me. And I have a 45 minute commute so going home for lunch is not an option. Plus, I carpool with the above mentioned Will, so I wouldn't be able to leave the office and pick something up either. I was stuck with eating a blueberry pop-tart from my bottom desk drawer. But I got lucky! We had a "seminar" today which basically just involved an doctor bringing us free lunch so we would think about sending some of our clients his way for treatment. Score. There were individually bagged lunches each with a sandwich, salad/chips, cookie & soda/water. They were neatly labeled on the outside. I chose a ham sandwich with a caesar salad, water and a cookie. Not bad right?? Wrong. The salad and water were good - but the sandwich was on some ridiculous tree-hugger bread. It wasn't really bread at all it was birdseed with some dough holding it together and giving it a bread-like shape. I picked at it for about 20 minutes - tried to take a few bites and gave up. I figured I would cut my losses and move on to the cookie. How bad can a cookie be? It was oatmeal which I like, it had raisins which I'm ok with, it also had Craisins which I don't like. Again with all the fruits and nuts?!?! Can't I just get a G.D. cookie?? I ate maybe 1/4 of it and gave up. Ugh. I polled the rest of the office and everyone else enjoyed there's - I only found one other loser that was stuck with the bird seed bread, she was equally depressed.

6. To end this post on a happy note: My husband just turned on Food Network and Emeril is making Banana's Foster Bread Pudding! Seriously, how much do you want to taste that?

Read more...

Kelly & Kelly

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

If they are truly in love then I am super happy for them but all I can think of is the logistic hell that they are about to enter. Can you imagine what a pain in the ass it is going to be for banks, utilities, physicians, taxes, cell phones, emails, regular mail ... everything! And if they ever get divorced - God help them!

Read more...

You Suck at Life

Enough Said.

Even worse, these guys are breading a new generation ...

Read more...

How about Peacock?

While we should be working on our backyard this summer, we instead chose to do some painting on the interior. When we moved into this house, about two years ago, the kitchen was covered in blue and pink floral wall paper and the living room had 3 white walls and one that was badly sponge painted with green and what I can only imagine was supposed to be yellow. Needless to say within in a week, thanks to my sister and some friends, we had ripped down the wallpaper and painted over everything! Well, almost everything.; my husband the carpenter insisted that he was going to tile the back splash so we left that unfinished. NOTE TO HUSBAND: TWO YEARS LATER, THERE IS STILL NO TILE IN THE KITCHEN - WHEN DO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT GET AROUND TO THAT? The rest of the kitchen walls we did with "cappuccino foam" which is an obnoxious way of saying - light beige. We carried this neutral into most of the living room but I needed a splash of life somewhere. Purple has been my favorite color since childhood and maybe its just me but I've always dreamed of owning my own place so I could paint the walls any color I wanted. Remember the show Punky Brewster? If you're an 80's girl like me I know the answer to that question. Now do you remember that when she moved in with Henry he let her paint her bedroom and she did it all crazy and rainbow?? How freaking awesome was that? So there was really no option here - my purple fantasy was about to come true. DON'T BE SCARED. I'm not crazy enough to go with Barney purple. It was a very dull color actually. I wish I could remember what it was called ... anyway here are a few pictures of the before.

I hope you're not too distracted by our amazing furniture or the green carpet which was there when we moved in. Focus on the wall color kids. What do you think? Was I totally crazy or is it better than you expected? Either way it's gone now; we covered those two walls on Saturday with my new color de jour. A few months ago when I decided that I wanted to do this and consequenlty started trying to talk my husband into it, he thought I had lost my mind. I then attempted to enlist the support of our friends and family but it backfired and they were basically all on his side. I would describe the color as "peacock" and their eyes would get all scared. I didn't give up that easily and eventually got most of them on my side. (Maybe they were just sick of hearing me talk about it.) But, it's done now - it's actually a bit more green that this picture shows. What do you think? Should I have left it purple -- should I have left the green sponge paint?

Read more...

Reader's Block

Urban Dictionary ,although bloated with nonsense, has some serious gems. I wanted to share with you one that caught my attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reader's Block: "this is when you cannot, for the life of you, pick up a book and read it. Sure, you may be able to read a paragraph or two, or maybe even a page, but you don't retain anything of what you just read or have the attention span and/or will to go on. This is common for those who have ADD, are in possession of garbage literature, or are just so exhausted from having to read so many books during school/college that reading anything else, even for pleasure, has become impossible. To those who love to read, this is worse than heart disease and cancer combined."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Haven't we all been there? Especially in school when you were reading things, whether they be novels or text books, that you really had no interest in. You get through a sentence, a paragraph, a page or even an entire chapter and have no idea what you just read. In my case, it's usually because my mind was wondering on other topics like:

Hmm, what the hell am I going to wear to work tomorrow? I don't have any clean pants but I haven't shaved my legs in like a fortnight so I can't wear a skirt. OK then what's worse...
1) Wearing dirty pants
2) Doing laundry
3) Shaving my legs
Maybe I'll compromise -- just shave up to the knee and wear capris.

Meanwhile my eyes were looking at the words on the page but not taking any of it in. I would go a step further and add an alternate definition to Reader's Block as well. Like when you are an avid reader but just cannot find a good book. I currently have 5 books on my bedside table and I am in the middle of reading each of them. None of them have grabbed my attention enough to commit but I won't give up on them either.

Read more...

Oh Happy Day!

I've been avoiding wearing black pants for the better part of a month now because my black summer work sandals completely fell a part. My husband even tried to super glue them back into shape but that only lasted one day and they were trashed again. It was a sad day when I threw them in the garbage. I went to the mall and tried on every pair of black sandals I could get my hands on but nothing was even wearable. I finally caved and spent an ungodly amount on a pair of Dansko shoes. But it was money well spent! Dansko is a company from Denmark that pride themselves on making shoes that are not only attractive but actually comfortable to wear all day long. Hard to imagine I know, but I swear they really are. If you're on your feet a lot or have trouble finding comfortable shoes I seriously recommend them.

In other happy work news, I got a fabulous surprise in my in-box today. Part of my job as a legal case manager for personal injury claims, is to collect medical records from all of my clients' treating physicians; this is an incredibly time consuming and thankless task. It normally requires months of letter writing and phone calls not to mention a sickening amount of money. Can you believe doctors actually charge us $30 just so we can get a copy of their bill - that's just shameful. Last week I called a chiropractor's office to follow-up on a request I sent a few weeks ago. The guy who answered the phone didn't know what I was talking about but said he would pass my request on to the "girl" that handles it. The next morning I had a voicemail from the doctor himself - asking me to call him on his cell phone and let him know exactly what I needed. Sweet. So I did - only got his voicemail though. Today I had a big stack of records with the itemized bill attached! Woohoo :) There was also a small white enveloped clipped to the front with my name on it. I had no clue what this could be - when I opened it up it was better than Christmas morning; he sent me a gift card for Godiva chocolate! What?? I wish this guy treated all my clients!
I considered calling him on his celly to thank him for the gift but then I thought that might be kind of weird. It made me feel like we were dating or something. Not that I would mind. I could use a nice sugar-daddy and I suppose a doctor that doles out Godiva would be good enough to fit that bill. (I'm easy people) I'm now considering putting-out on the first date. Wonder what my husband would think ...

Read more...

Smurfs Movie?

Yes it's true - I just read that Columbia Pictures and Sony are getting ready to make a Smurfs movie. I guess it was inevitable; its becoming a common thing to take children's television shows from the 80's and turn them into movies (Transformers anyone?) Some of these turn out pretty good but others, like G.I. Joe, are destined for the discount DVD bin.

I have to say that I am seriously looking forward to Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are. I'm not sure it's going to be 'kid friendly' but being as how I don't have kids ... I don't really care, adult friendly works for me. I'm so glad they went with live-action on this one and the puppets from Jim Henson Creature Shop are going to be amazing.

Another one I'm looking forward to is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. The original Disney version was my absolute favorite movie as a kid. I've seen every subsequent version that I've been able to get my hands on (and there are MANY). I even own "The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll" as well as "Lewis Carroll, Photographer" (a fabulous gift from my sister!); both of which I recommend to any Alice fans. "Still She Haunts Me" is another great book about the relationship between Charles Dodgson and the real life Alice; its a bit disturbing but definitely intriguing. But back to the movie - I'm a little nervous about Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter only because his Willy Wonka was so horrific, but I have faith that they will pull it off in the end.

So which television shows or books from your childhood would you like to see remade into big screen movies and who would you cast or have direct?

Read more...

Top 10

Andrea over at Not Rocket Science has bestowed upon The Bee a Blog Award.
Thanks Andrea!

I'm supposed to write 10 things about me that my readers may not know. Since I'm pretty sure that its mostly just my mom that reads the blog this is gonna be tough. I think I'll modify the theme a bit and offer up 10 of my Guilty Pleasures which will mostly include trash TV shows that I can't get away from. Let's take this alphabetically shall we?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1) America's Next Top Model - for some reason I cannot tear myself away from this crap. I think it's basically Ms. Jay that keeps me tuning in. How can you not love him? (or her or whatever)

2) American Idol - Yes I know people love to hate this show and I know that although it may not be "rigged" exactly there is definitely producer pushes for specific contestant and even Simon admitted this season that they don't put the best singers through to the finals. I guess I'm a sucker. side note: Alexis Grace was robbed.

3) Anime - NERD ALERT !!!

4) Big Brother - the new season is starting this month and I can't wait! Unlike some other reality shows this one actually takes some intelligence to win. I know people are cringing as they read that but I swear it's true. Luck will only take you so far on this one. Someone back me up on this.

5) Blackbelt TV - This is a recent addition to my cable line-up and I've fallen in love. My husband is really the one that turned me onto kung-fu movies so I have to give him all the credit. Nothing would make him happier than to die and be reincarnated as Jackie Chan (specifically "Drunken Master" Jackie Chan.)

6) Fox Reality Channel - Have you noticed a pattern here?

7) G4TV - It was shows like Ninja Warrior and Unbeatable Banzuke and their incredible popularity (however underground it may have been) that lead to the less than stellar copycat shows on ABC: Wipeout and I Survived a Japanese Game Show. Don't get me wrong, I'll watch both of these shows if I catch them on, (in fact I'm quite a fan of the I Survived... which even has the same host as Bonzuke) but they are nothing compared to the originals.

8) Jon & Kate Plus 8 - I know there has been an awful lot of hoopla surrounding this family recently but I was a fan way before the "separation heard round the world." I've been less interested lately; I watched for the kids not for the parents. How can you deny a face like that? side note: I harbor a secret desire to have Asian children. They're just so damn cute!

9) Kid Nation - I tuned in to this one out of pure curiosity and quickly got hooked. I'm not expecting a new season anytime soon. Too bad though - these kids were pure gold; Jared was born to be a star.

10) Obsessed - Not sure if this one is really a "guilty pleasure" something about it being on A&E makes me think its high class. Then again, Gene Simmons: Family Jewels is on the same channel so there goes that theory.

Read more...