Apr. 14: Chuckles

My “save this crap to share on blog” folder is overflowing. Here ya go.

 

 

This really, really makes me throw up a little:

 

 

I showed this to Jack and now he won’t stop asking when we’re going to do it to our kitchen.
If we ever make a secret hide-out, it’s gonna be secret from the kids. Why else would we have one???

 

This might be the funniest photo re-creation I’ve seen:

 

Every. Single. Day.

 

 

 

 

 

Just ignore these last ones if you know nothing about Les Mis…

 

Have a good week, friends.

Feb. 27: February summary

It’s been forever since I’ve done a month recap, but the timing seems right.

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

Well, there was Katie’s birthday (recapped here—dinner at Grandpa & Grandma’s, sleepover with friend, manicures and shopping) and Valentine’s Day (recapped here and here—most celebratory thing was B&tB). Our 15th anniversary was last week. Victor took the day off and we had breakfast together at Carver Café—in spite of Twilight, not because of it. We’re going to celebrate bigger than breakfast soon, hopefully getting out of town for a couple nights. To the coast? Seattle? The mountains? We have no idea yet.

Gifts I gave and/or received this month:

For Katie’s birthday, she got shoes and her party.

Vic and the kids gave me flowers for Valentine’s Day.

They don’t really counts as gifts, but we won two of the raffle baskets at our school carnival Saturday night—Oregon Ducks and Dental Care (possibly provided by this dentist, but I’m confirming nothing). Right now there is an awful lot of yell-o and green in our house, but it’s certainly not on our teeth—they’re clean as can be!

And lookie here, I gotta rant for ya:

We heard rumors that some people were suspicious that a PTO board member won a basket. I wasn’t the only PTO winner—Sharon, Wendy, and Adam’s families won baskets too. We planned the drawings carefully to show that PTO had no advantage, so if someone still thought we were cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eaters, they’re just jerks. People also might not have considered that we on the PTO bought hundreds of raffle tickets, so, y’know, odds were in the favor of everyone who did that. Duh.

And then there were people like Dina, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, who tried to convince everyone around her of a vast and devious PTO cover-up. Nice try, Dina! Good thing no one ever listens to you.

Also, Jenn K’s family won the Disneyland passes. I call shenanigans on that one, but only because I’m sooo jealous.

Books I read this month:

The Red Garden, by Alice Hoffman. Out of Oz, by Gregory Maguire. It’s supposedly the final of the Wicked series. I’m halfway through and still waiting for it to get interesting. The other night I bought a new Chris Bohjalian book that I might just dump Out of Oz to start reading.

Movies and TV shows worth mentioning:

No movies, really. I am LOVING Downton Abbey, and watching Season 2 as slowly as I can because I know I’ll go through withdrawals until Season 3 begins later this year. I’m balancing it with silliness like Suburgatory and fun like Smash, along with the other sitcoms I’ve watched for years. Toss in a little Grimm and SVU and I’m good.

New recipes or restaurants I tried:

On Facebook last weekend, I posted a picture of a new potato recipe I was attempting: Hasselback Potatoes (or, as I prefer, Hasselhoff Taters). They were pretty good, but I want to work on variations to make them special-er. But ultimately, they’re potatoes, so how can they be bad?

Special or unusual purchases I made:

It’s not every month I buy 48 whoopee cushions... Yes, stocking the carnival prize room was some very fun shopping for Jen.

This month’s disappointments:

I hate Express Scripts (mail order prescription service) so much I wish I could shoot surly bumblebees ass-first at them through the phone. Besides being complete morons, they have the most archaic system EVER. Dealing with them is so painful EVERY TIME. Effers.

Also disappointing is that we didn’t win that Disneyland basket Saturday night. I curse the kid who drew Jenn K’s family as the winner! (Not really. It was a totally nice kid.)

My accomplishments:

Well, planning our school carnival wasn’t my doing alone, but it feels good that I helped make it happen, and that it’s over and people enjoyed themselves.

Met some deadlines at work, blah blah blah…

Facilitated one of our best PTO member meetings yet—we spent $10,000! It was exciting to see how much good our little group can do.

Anything else noteworthy:

Crocuses are blooming! Daffodils and tulips are sprouting! That means spring is on its way! Just ignore that weird ice/snow that was on the ground this morning! It means nothing! Winter, be gone witcha!

That’s all I got.

Feb. 16: IDCEAYWTPFriday, Entertainment Edition

Edited to add 2/16 8:45pm—So, was anyone planning to point out that it is not actually Friday? It feels like Friday to me—the kids are out of school tomorrow and it seems totally believable that I’ve already done five days this week. Gah.

Rather than un-post this, I’m leaving it up because it’ll be Friday in a few hours. That I’m leaving it uncorrected oughta clear up any concerns that I might be a psychotic perfectionist who would lose sleep over a teeny-tiny error like getting the day of the week wrong. I will very likely get up during the night and fix it, though, in which case you won’t even be reading this tomorrow or tonight or ever.

---

Here we go again with I Don’t Care Enough About You to Write in Transitioning Paragraphs Friday, with one small difference: my paragraphs have transitions (kinda). This post actually has a bit of a theme.

• On Valentine’s Day we celebrated as a family by seeing Disney’s Beauty & the Beast, part of the Broadway in Portland series. (Lest you think we are so conscientious to plan our outing to happen specifically on that day, know this: all our season tickets are for Tuesday shows—in other words, there was no planning whatsoever.) Vic and I had seen B&tB twice before and really loved it, but this was Katie and Jack’s first time—unless you count the Clackamas High School performance a few years ago, and I don’t think you should because that sucked bad.
• There were some differences compared to the performances we saw before, and one of them was that they took out the “No Matter What” song, which I love. Belle’s father was a young guy in a bad old guy costume. Cogsworth looked like George Costanza. There were a lot of minor differences like that, and what seemed like a little ad-libbing—I soooo did not approve of the character breaking. It works in some shows, but not this one. Generally, though, we really did enjoy ourselves. The tavern number was as fabulous as always. The transformation was the best one I’d seen. The music of B&tB is so good, and I cried in three different parts, which I almost NEVER do.
• I don’t want to turn into one of those asshole theater critics who has zero right to critique. I mean, I know that high school productions should not be compared to Broadway productions. And the Broadway shows I see are touring productions, which are often scaled down from the original show. I’ve never even been to a Broadway show on Broadway—I’m just being a big fat jerk when I complain that Shrek The Musical was crap.
• But, to be fair, Shrek the Musical was crap.
• Next up: Wicked at the end of March. If they fark with that show, I’ll stand up and scream. I’ll stand up, in my cheap seats, with my purse full of bottled water and snacks for the family, and complain loudly. Don’t test me, touring cast of Wicked. I will do it.
• Sometimes people you know are heroes and sometimes they get to be on TV because they did their job, which is being a hero. I’m an idiot and can’t embed the video, so watch it here, because OMG, you gotta check out the firedude at 1:29—he belongs to my girl Val! I think it’s awesome that he actually got to do something fire-related, since he seems to get called a lot by people who are freaking out over blood on their toothbrush.
• This isn’t quite as exciting as Chris Fukai being the studliest stud this side of Studville, but it’s new music from Train and that’s not bad:

• Here are some hilarious photos you have to see.
• Pinterest silliness:

• My favorite line from Modern Family last night, when they talked about Mitchell’s sister donating eggs for their surrogate mother and he started feeling weird about it:
  Mitchell: “What do I say to the baby? ‘Say hi to your Aunt Mommy.’”
  Cam: “Adorable.”
  Mitchell: “No, NOT adorable. Appalachian.”
• Now I can judge the level of busy-ness of my week by how much I have to watch on Hulu—right now, I’m about three days behind the original air dates of “my” shows. I only caught Modern Family today because I was trying to kill time between two long phone calls. If I suddenly got sick and had to stay in bed all weekend, I think I’d be kinda happy.

Have a good weekend!

Jan. 30: “Smash” = smash

Whenever I watch TV shows at nbc.com, I see a little ad for Smash in the corner. Last week I finally clicked the link and OMG! I think I have now found my new favorite show. The full-length premiere episode is online now, even though it won’t air on the network until February 6.

This article describes the show quite well; it basically follows the creation of a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe. Smash has a great cast, as well as a superb behind-the-scenes team (including Marc Shaiman, who wrote the songs for Hairspray the Musical and the must-see Funny or Die video, Prop 8 – The Musical). Here’s what I love after watching the first episode:

• Debra Messing—I forgot how much I enjoy her.
• Megan Hilty—she played Galinda/Glinda in the Wicked tour that came through Portland a while back, and was fantastic. I think her Smash character, Ivy, is going to be kinda evil. I already love her.
• Jack Davenport—he played Norrington in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He looks so different in Smash, but that voice is very recognizable. I keep waiting for him to mutter something diabolical about Jack Sparrow.
• Anjelica Huston—I don’t have any special fondness for her, but she’s a great actress and seems perfect for her role as a producer.
• Will Chase—he played Roger in Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway so I love him.
• The original songs! The performances! The characters! And did I mention the original songs?

Watch Smash here and don’t be surprised if it makes you finally comprehend just how very much Glee sucks.

Jan. 1: Bald guys and big books

We here at the House of Manullang are a wee bit obsessed with Les Misérables lately. We got the 25th anniversary concert DVD for Christmas and have watched it at least once every day since. Watched it, like, AS A FAMILY, like, all four of us sit down for a sing-a-long. It’s weird and funny and way awesome that we have been doing this. You’re invited to join us anytime.

If you’ve seen Bridesmaids, you remember Annie’s roommate, right?

In real life this guy is Matt Lucas, and he’s in the Les Miz 25th anniversary concert, nearly unrecognizable as “Master of the House” Thénardier:

The character is, to put it gently, a giant arsehole, and Matt Lucas is soooo good in the part. Here’s a trailer with short interviews in preparation of the 25th anniversary concert; my favorite part is when he begs to play the part of Cosette (2:58).

Whether you like musicals (normal people) or not (Dina), take 51 seconds to watch this clip:

This here’s funny stuff.

Thinking my (our) interest in the musical version of Les Misérables might inspire us to read the classic novel, I ordered a copy from Amazon last week. Yeah, it’s a free download for Kindle, but that’s the abridged version; I wanted the real thing, the unabridged, every-word-Hugo-meant, all-in-one-volume version. I opened the box to see this:

Yay, books! I love books! I was eager to start reading right away, and—I’ll be honest—I kinda did a “neener neener, I get to read it fiiiiirst!” dance for Vic and the kids. I lifted the book out of the box and was surprised at how heavy it was. Then I grabbed a measuring tape, because, um, oh-em-gee, peeps:

It’s a mass market paperback, and even with all the publishing tricks they used to fit as much text on each page as they could, there are still just under eleventy threeve million** pages between its cover. I’ve held Bibles that weigh less than this thing.

Maybe that abridged version isn’t so bad after all.

Please don’t ask how much I’ve read yet. I’m still adjusting to how much art fits on the spine of this book.

(**possibly an estimate)

Sep. 4: Yay! Grrrrrr! Yay! Grrrrrr!

Last week was completely, totally, 100 percent chaotic. I’m not even going to try to share all that’s been going on, but I will say that it pretty much begins and ends with PTO. You’re shocked, I know. This is a crazy time of year for PTO—school starts on Tuesday and there is SO much to get ready—and while I have the most amazing team to work with, my brain just won’t shut off. Argh.

I got the original Broadway cast soundtracks for Les Miz and and Mamma Mia yesterday. Having new music is such a lovely thing. I look forward to having time to sit down with the lyrics so the stories of both shows make more sense—though I suspect Mamma Mia is as stupid as it seems.

Jack got the teacher I was hoping he’d get, and one of his best buds is also in his class. BUT I’m actually kinda mad at Jack right now, so I don’t really care whether or not he’s happy. Seriously, you know how sometimes your kid can act like a complete fartknocker, like you even consider driving him out to the country and leaving him in a beet farm somewhere? That’s Jack the past few days. Vic and I are ready to kick him out of the house, which we didn’t expect to want to do for another six years or so.

I’ll be honest; I’m glad the kids are going back to school and won’t be around home, whining whining whining. Where are my clean clothes? I’m bored! When will you feed me? Geez. It’s EVERY DAY with that stuff. Good riddance, whiners! (Seriously, I’m tha-rilled that they’re growing up as quickly as they are—most the time, anyway.)

The pup will not stop barking at anyone who dares to walk past our house. He’s making me crazy. It’ll be all quiet in the house and suddenly he sees something outside and goes NUTS at the window. It makes me pee a little. OK, not really. But it’s scary.

The PTO has already received several donations in response to the solicitations we sent out last week. It always surprises me when people are so eager to sponsor our efforts!

I read a local headline the other day that said someone threw a bunch of kittens out of a minivan on a busy road. Can you believe that? It makes me want to throw that person out of a minivan on a busy road. People are jerks.

We went up to Mt. St. Helens today. The last thing I should be doing right now is taking off for a non-school thing, but really, it’s exactly what I needed. Tuesday morning, when I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I’ll be glad I had a little break. The weather was perfect today—clear and sunny, even hot at times—and the views were amazing. Want proof? Here’s a pic I took from Johnston Ridge Observatory:

The viewpoint is 5½ miles north of the crater. We never see the big hole from Portland—in fact, from Portland, St. Helens looks a bit flatter but otherwise the same as she did pre-1980. It’s really fascinating to be right there. We stopped at two other visitor centers on our way back to I-5. It was a perfect day to be up in the mountains. It was a perfect day to be with family. It was a perfect day.

Bring it on, Tuesday! I am soooo gonna kick your ass.

Aug. 28: Weekend wrap-up

The weekend is over. Vic goes back to work tomorrow, which bums me out almost as much as it does him—I do enjoy having him around during the day, and not just because he mopped in front of my friends last week. We’ve had a busy few days, but I shall try to catch up with the goings-on at the House of Manullang.

• PTO is going and going and going… it’s taking way too much of my time right now, and you’re lucky I don’t blather on and on about it like I want to. Sunshine and I are getting things ready for the new school year—which starts Sep. 6—and at least for now, have stayed as sane as we were going in. We shall see what this next week brings.
• Today we saw another one of our Broadway in Portland shows: Mamma Mia. I’ve gone back and forth on my opinion of it all afternoon, and I’ve finally decided that it’s mostly stupid, but there’s good music and generally it’s big, silly fun. Kinda like Grease. I was surprised at the acting, which I thought was quite bad—like, high school theater-caliber—and WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH KELLER AUDITORIUM’S TERRIBLE SOUND AT SOME SHOWS??? Sorry, I yelled a little there because OMG IT DRIVES ME CRAZY.
• P.S. I hated Mamma Mia, the movie. Hated it. I’m not sure why, since I liked most of the cast and there’s that ABBA music that’s fun, but I couldn’t even stand to watch it until the end. Ugh.
• P.S. part deux: I think my mom just disowned me for that last statement.
• P.S. numero three-o: On a related topic, I do not like Glee. I should like Glee. I should LOVE Glee. I’ve watched five episodes and think it’s one of the worst things on TV. What’s wrong with me? As much as I love musicals and all, shouldn’t Glee be one of my favorite shows? It is not.
• I read a book this weekend called The Penny Pinchers Club, and like the musical we saw today, it was all fluff and kind of a waste of time. Okay, it was mostly a clever little story, but when the main character was encouraged to Dumpster-dive to save money, I lost interest FAST. There were other tips on pinching pennies that made me laugh: using the empty bags from cereal boxes, because FREE WAX PAPER! (Who spends too much money on wax paper? I go through a roll of wax paper every few years, MAYBE. Is there something wrong with me? I don’t care; I’m not saving empty cereal bags.) 
• Tomorrow night a bunch of gals are coming over to make pencil cakes for the classrooms for the first day of school. What’s a pencil cake, you ask? You totally asked that. I know you did. Here’s the basic idea, which we have used as our starting point. Our finished cakes will be approximately one vajillion times better though.
• My mom didn’t have her surgery on Friday. It’s been postponed and the surgeon is all “meh” about it, which in a weird way makes us all feel good that they’re so NOT worried about doing the surgery immediately.
• Vic and I went to Cannon Beach on Thursday and we ran into the delightful Fukai family there. How lucky were we? We had dinner together and then went our merry ways, so our visit was short but fun and reminded us that we’ve hardly seen the Fukais all summer and that sucks. Catching up away from home was the best part of the day because the weather was rotten on the beach—I mean, it’s still the beach, and it’s still being away from home without kids, and it’s still beautiful scenery, and it’s still a day off work… we just really coulda done without the wind.
• I have a bunch of Pinterest finds to share but I’m too lazy to go get them. Maybe next time.

No more words.

Aug. 8: Linky goodness

This post is not so much “stuff Jen says,” but “stuff on which Jen thinks you should click.”

My niece created this site: I Live Here: PDX. It makes me wish I lived in the city because then she would profile me but-cept then the site would shut down of boredom and that would make her sad. Anyway, if you live in Portland, Erin is looking for you. Contact her through the I Live Here: PDX Facebook page. You’ll be faaaaamooooous!

This tutorial for making a super-cute T-shirt shrug has been all over Pinterest lately. People have posted pictures of their completed shrugs below the tutorial, which is kinda fun to see.

We saw our first Broadway in Portland show of the (our) season, Les Miz, yesterday. The kids and I did a lot of reading up beforehand so we’d know the characters and basic plot, and I think that helped, because it was frequently hard to hear the lyrics (stoopid Keller Auditorium). The show was so much better than I expected it to be. Even Jack didn’t totally hate it. He and I found this LEGO Les Miz video yesterday—it’s got terrible sound editing, but the LEGO part is good.

Here’s some help treating your laundry. Sherrice and I discovered the wonders of Dawn liquid years ago, but a lot of these other suggestions are new to me. And while you’re in list mode, here’s one for the types of glue that can/should be used for different materials.

If you like cucumbers, you’ll love this salad.

Ever picture The Office with a Dallas-like intro? Me neither, but there ya go. Here it is in a classic sitcom style—isn’t it weird to watch The Office with a laugh track? Here’s my favorite: The Office in Japan.

The new IKEA catalog came out last week! Mine is already marked up and dog-eared. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, here’s where you can request one.

Have a super-duper fantastic week, y’all.

Jul. 27: Whine, whine, whine

Alright. I have some stuff I need to get off my chest.

• I’m sick of Pandora sometimes. I don’t think it’s very good at knowing what kinds of songs I like, even though I tell it all the time. On my Broadway musicals channel, it plays an awful lot of Maroon 5. That’s wrong.
• Four times this week I have wondered if our house was on fire because my neighbors have fires going in their fire pits. I love the fire pit things, and we’ve talked about getting one for ourselves, but smelling fire scares me for a second every time. I mean, I live in a neighborhood where you don’t expect to smell fire. Well, *I* don’t expect it. I guess I should learn to. It would lower my blood pressure.
• That reminds me, I don’t think it’s very nice to grill meat outside and not invite me over.
• We went to a wrap-up meeting for Relay for Life tonight. A bunch of teams were all HRMPH, YOU HOE-DOWNS DIDN’T REALLY WIN BECAUSE TONY RAISED MOST OF YOUR MONEY. But then they also suggested that they would get Tony to join their teams next year and they would win and when they said that I flipped them all off. OK, not really. But I wanted to. I kinda did it in my head, if you must know. I’m only kinda joking about that part.
• Our Relay event chairs are stepping down and they’re needing lots of new people to take on committee positions. Victor pinched me whenever I started to look like I was going to raise my hand. As much as I would love to be on the committee, I’m tied to PTO for the next two years and I know I shouldn’t take on anything else. Still, when they said that one web guy was leaving… I was tempted. I was.
• Have I mentioned that I hate cancer? I hate it especially a lot today.
• Popcorn, however, I like.
• If you ask me what I’ve been doing for the past two days, I’ll make something up that sounds more exciting than “researching PTO bylaws.” This is not one of the funner things I’ve ever done. This long-ass sentence is exactly the reason why:

The PTO shall purchase and maintain Directors’ & Officers’ Liability Insurance (D&O) on behalf of an individual against liability asserted against or incurred by the individual who is or was a director, officer, employee, or agent of the PTO, or who, while a director, officer, employee, or agent of the PTO, is or was serving at the request of the PTO as a director, officer, partner, trustee, employee, or agent of another foreign or domestic business or nonprofit corporation, partnership, joint venture, trust, employee benefit plan, or other enterprise; however, the PTO may not purchase or maintain such insurance to indemnify any director, officer, or agent of the PTO in connection with any proceeding charging improper personal benefit to the director, officer, or agent in which the director, officer, or agent was adjudged liable on the basis that personal benefit was improperly received by the director, officer, or agent.

• (I think I get lost somewhere around the first occurrence of “asserted.” Possibly “PTO.”)
• In the next couple months, the four of us will be seeing three big-deal Broadway in Portland musicals: Les Misérables, Mamma Mia, and Shrek. Betchoo wish you were Jack, huh? That would work out well, because he sure doesn’t wish he was him. I swear to Buddha, my boy will learn to love musicals if it kills me.
• I know I’m supposed to be thankful to have hair again, but my hair is being kind of an asshole lately.
• Laundry takes forever and seems quite pointless. Being able to see the floor of my closet is totally overrated.
• I still haven’t gone on vacation.
• It’s been weeks since I’ve seen some of my friends in the neighborhood. Stupid summer.
• Alex F’n reminded me of this blog post today. It’s from last summer and I’m hideous. (That’s not what he reminded me, it’s what I was reminded of when I looked at that post. Yuck.)
• Speaking of posts from last summer, here’s a way-weird one about my eye. Don’t worry; it’s not gross like this one.
• If you clicked on the gross thing, I’m laughing at you right now.
• I went an entire post with only a slight complaint about Victor. Where’s my Awesome Wife award?

Done whining. Your turn.

Mar. 19: Broadway in Portland 2011-12

We didn’t renew our Broadway in Portland subscription for the 2010-11 season because we weren’t impressed with the lineup. Yesterday we got the announcement about next year’s shows, and are DEFINITELY going to subscribe again!

• Les Miserables (extra)
• Mamma Mia (extra)
• Shrek the Musical
• Blue Man Group—I hate this kind of thing, but I’m sure some poor sap will snag our tickets
• West Side Story—I’ve never seen the stage musical or the movie—can’t wait!
• Disney’s Beauty & the Beast—we’ve seen this twice before, and are thrilled to see it again!
• Wicked (extra)—I’ve seen Wicked four times and will see it at least once during its Portland tour stop
• Million Dollar Quartet
• Jersey Boys

Shrek is in September, and from then on, it’s Date Night for Vic & Jen every couple months. Yay for us. We likey the Date Night.