The great pencil shortage of '08

Monday I was furiously trying to finish up some reports for our board meeting at work when Sybil the intern decided to drop by my office. I've got papers strewn across my desk and I'm punching away at my trusty calculator. So she comes wandering into my office and goes, "Um, Katie, I just wanted to make you aware of something. It appears that there aren't any pencils in this office. I've looked around and there just aren't very many." By this time, I've paused, looked up and I'm trying to comprehend what the heck she's talking about...So I say, "You're looking for a pencil? Did you look in the mail room. There are some in the drawer." To this she replies, "No, no, I have one. I hide it so I can always find it but it appears that there is a shortage of them in this office." I probably stared at her a little too long before I explained that, "You know, we don't really use many pencils around here..." (While inside I continued, "Because we have these big things called COMPUTERS all over this office!") ..."I'm sure I can find you some more in a drawer somewhere." Then she left and I had to sit in disbelief for a few moments. I had no idea there were people still so passionate about using a regular old #2 pencil. I can only stand to use mechanical pencils because they stay sharp continuously. Sybil apparently is still a big fan of the old school pencil. Now I just got to go figure out where she's hiding this one pencil.

Medievaaaaaal Times!

When we were up at Knott's we found the most cheese-tastic thing to do. We have seen pretty much everything up there - the Movieland Wax Museum, Ripley's Believe It or Not, etc. But there was a place we had yet to visit and that was a place called...
(When you say it you have to draw it out like they do...Medievaaaaal Tiiiiimes!) It's a dinner show. I couldn't stop laughing the whole time we were in there. Basically it's this place that looks like a giant castle and all the employees are dressed up like knights, jesters, princesses, wenches, etc. When you go inside they immediately put these crowns on your head which kinda levels the playing field because now you look just as stupid as they do. They whisk you into a room where you take a picture with the KING! (Seriously, I think I had this look on my face the whole night - it was hilarious.) After your picture you get to mill around their gift shop area for a while. You can also look at the butts of the horse they use in the show. (The horse holding cells are glass at the back and so you can see them but basically they ignore all the human looking at them.) While you wait to get into the dining area they make funny announcements and knight people and stuff. Once your allowed into the dinner area they arrange you by the color of your crown. We got to sit in the blue section and we were assigned a knight to cheer for during the show. So they have all the knights running around doing knightly things like jousting and sword fighting and stuff like that. During all this you are served dinner by your serving wench (not my label) and you are not given any utensils so you have to eat with your hands. It was really fun and the crowd gets very into the show. I mean look how much fun we were having! It seems like a really fun place to have a kid's birthday party and unbelievably there were a lot of people there celebrating anniversaries and stuff. I would not advise that though.

Tar Pits

During our weekend away we went and visited the La Brea Tar Pits which are located in the middle of Los Angeles. It's this big park that has this huge lake of tar. There's a cool museum there where you can see fossils from sabertooth cats and mammoths. All these ice age animals got caught in the tar which actually preserved them really well and they are able to find whole skeletons all over the place there. It was a fun place to visit. The only problem is that the place stinks like asphault, I couldn't quite put my finger on why. :) Here's a picture of Sid the Sloth and his friend Dippy.

Fabulous Fords Forever Show

A few weekends ago we got go up to Knott's Berry Farm for the annual Fabulous Fords Forever Show. This is a weekend that Angelo gets to drive his mustang around and I get to relax and read books so it works out for everyone. We got to our hotel late Thursday night but it was nice to just be able to relax the next morning. On Friday we ventured into LA to go visit the La Brea Tar Pits. On Saturday we got together with some of Angelo's "online friends" to go on a mustang cruise. This is the car club that he belongs to online. Now that my parents have a mustang they come up too. This year we had 23 cars on the cruise which was pretty cool. We basically go driving around for a few hours. Here's pictures from our pit stop. From there we drove down to Long Beach and went to dinner. The actual show has hundreds of old ford cars in the Knott's parking lot. During the show you park your car, put your hood up and then everyone wanders around looking at each other's cars. It's kinda funny. We had lots of fun this year and it is such a nice get away weekend.

Happy Birthday Whitney!

My niece Whitney turned 17! Goodness, it seems like only yesterday she was running around dressed as Disney characters. I think she thought she was Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" for almost 10 years. She's so cute! She is now a die hard New England Patriots fan and nearly died when Tom Brady & team lost the Super Bowl this year. She has lots of funny stories about her obsessions with different boys. I think her motto is "a little drama never hurt anyone." Happy Birthday Whit!

Happy Birthday Mom!

My mom's birthday was on the 13th and I never got to post about it so......Happy Birthday Mom! My mom is so wonderful! She is one of the most encouraging people I know. One of the best things I've learned from my mom is you can usually figure anything out if you try hard enough. My mom has also taught me to be easy going and to take things in stride. My mom has a great sense of humor and doesn't really mind that we always make fun of the way she says some things. For instance the word condominium. She can't ever pronounce that word...she says condo-MIM-ium. Why? I don't know. I have sat for long periods of time trying to get her to say it right but it never helps. Those sessions always end with me laughing at her. We love you mom and thanks for all you do for us! You're the best!

Classic

One of my co-workers is in LA today and I had emailed her asking where her written notes were from our last board meeting. I had looked all over her office for the notes but hadn't found them. This is the response I got back from her this afternoon:

"Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 3:20pm
To: Katie Outlaw
Subject: RE: question about minutes

Hi
I think all the notes are in a pile on the floor in the corner at the tall bookcase behind the desk......I hope you can find them"


Oh how I love a good treasure hunt! The crazy thing is that I was able to find what I was looking for in a huge stack of notes sitting right there on the floor. At least she knew where they were. Some filing system we've got here, eh?! We're state of the art I tell you! This is so classic film commission. We know we have stuff and we can even usually find it!

The other highlight of the day was the script a co-worker shared with me for a commercial that featured a ditzy blond hooter girl sitting on a witness stand that included the typo: "...she giggles her boobs." They wanted to shoot this in an actually courtroom! Something told us a judge wasn't going to let that happen so he told them to look for something that could play as a courtroom. Ahh, never a dull moment...you stay classy San Diego.

Deep Thoughts

The other night I had finished off a bottle of cream soda and had an amazingly rip-tastic burp come out! I turned to my husband and said, "You know, that Simpson guy really gets it right when he draws his characters burping - with the lips wiggling and stuff? That's exactly what it feels like!" Angelo just looked at me and winced while he waved his hand in front of his face.

Getting back on the proverbial horse...

I am back in the saddle again. This week marks my sixth week of consistent exercising! Yippee! I didn't really have a choice. I get tension headaches all the time. February was especially bad because I was stressed out all the time. Before February I would get a headache about once a week that would put me out of commission for a night. In February I was getting them every couple days and I was getting dizzy too which was new for me. That scared me so bad that I decided I had to start exercising again. I have made some futile attempt over the last few years to get back into it but my weighty behind allowed me to continue sitting on the couch. One day I went to deliver a report to the County and I was unable to walk up the 4 flights of stairs to get to the office without being totally winded by the time I reached the top. I had to stand there for a minute to catch my breathe before I could go up and talk to the girl at the desk. I was so embarrassed! All I could think was I am in my twenties and I know some old ladies that can walk faster than me. So I have to thank my fear of getting a brain aneurysm and the County Administration Building for getting me active again! So since March 3rd I have worked out with my TV for 4 to 5 days a week. (Most weeks have been for 5 days!) I am really proud of myself and I have only had two headaches in that 6 week period - it's a miracle!

Great moments in presidential speeches?

David Letterman has a great segment on his show called "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" which will unfortunately (or fortunately) be coming to an end in January. YouTube has a great compilation of the bit posted here. Come January it will be a end of an era. I don't know if the U.S. will ever have another president quite like Bushy. I haven't decided who I am voting for in November, as of now we don't even know who will race against McCain but I will say that I was very inspired by Obama's speech on race. I think that what he said was right on point and I have found myself thinking about some of the things he said in his speech weeks after I first heard them. If you haven't seen or read the speech you can see it here. (It's long but worth it.) Whomever wins in November, I hope that they will be able to inspire the American people instead of making them wince every time they stutter while talking about our plans in Iraq.

PJ Day

I so look forward to conference weekends! Twice a year we get to watch church on TV! It's awesome. Sometimes I think Sundays are my busiest days of the week. It was so nice not to have to worry about anything church related this weekend. Last night as Angelo and I were falling asleep I said, "You know what? I never changed my cloths today!!!" Angelo said, "You're wearing the same thing you woke up in?" I said, "Yep, I didn't shower or anything, isn't that awesome??? I haven't been able to do that in a while and I wasn't even sick!" Angelo just laughed and me.

New (to us) car

We were able to get Angelo a more masculine car (although I don't know how masculine this picture is?) It's a '05 Toyota Tacoma. They are suppose to last forever. He likes it so much I haven't been able to drive it yet and we've had it for 2 weeks.

Happy belated birthday to Seth & Luke!

In all my non-blogging I missed wishing the babies a happy birthday! They aren't babies anymore since they turned five! We hope they had a happy birthday. This is a really funny video featuring Seth and Luke as leprechauns. Don't make the leprechauns mad! They are so funny!

Bee Careful!

Another funny thing that happened to Angelo this last month was he ate a bee! What?! How does one eat a bee? Only Angelo could figure that one out. One Saturday we were eating lunch on our back patio. I had noticed a bee flying around because it made me get up out of my seat. If the bee wants my seat he can have it! I starting playing with our cats and when I went back to the table Angelo had spit out a bunch of chewed up pizza onto his plate complaining that that bite hadn't tasted good. A few minutes later he said his throat hurt. We went inside and over the next 5 hours he continued to complain that he hurt. He swished some salt water around in his mouth which made him feel a little better. Later that night he kept talking about his throat. I asked if it was like he got bit or something and the light bulb finally turned on. I said, "That bee! I bet you ate that bee!" So we went to the kitchen and found the plate with the chewed up pizza on it. He dug around a bit in it and, low and behold! - we found the butt of a bee. The bee had unsuspectingly landed on Angelo's pizza and Angelo had chomped the thing in half but the sucker stung him before he was finally done in! We took a picture of the disgusting chewed up bee but I can't bring myself to post it. During our discovery I almost ralphed so I don't want to subject anyone else to it. After figuring out what had happened we went to the bathroom to check out his mouth. I looked in there and towards the back of his mouth, sure enough, there was a little stinger still embedded in his cheek. I pulled it out with some tweezers. It was really weird. How lucky he is that he isn't allergic to bees.

Bye Irma

Have I become a manic blogger or what? The end of March was eventful but not so eventful that I should have stopped blogging. I don't know what happen. Angelo had a lot of weird stuff happen to him which was sort of amusing (now that we're over it.) First he chipped his back molar and had to go to the dentist to get it filed down. Once he was done at the dentist he went to start his car but it just made a horrible noise and then it caught fire. Not in the billowing flames sort of way, just some black smoke coming through the vents. Our little Irma had finally kicked the bucket. She had held on for a long time though. (We called our silver Taurus that because 1) the license plate number had "RMA" as part of it and 2) the car also looked like a grandma's car.) So I had to go pick him up and we called a tow truck. The tow truck driver drug Irma onto the back of his flat bed and kinda laughed because he said he picks up a lot of Taurus'. The good thing was that our insurance covered the tow. So I left Angelo to ride home with the tow truck driver and went off to work. When I came home I found that they had deposited Irma on our side of the street but she was facing the wrong way and was more than 18 inches from the curb. I noticed this only because a meter maid was kind enough to point this out to us with a friendly yellow ticket afixed to Irma's windshield. Lovely. $47. I guess this sort of balanced out with not having to pay for the tow. Does insurance cover stupid tow truck drivers too? I guess not. This was on a Tuesday night and Angelo and I both had busy night's with our mutual groups. (Have I told you Angelo is our new Young Men's President? Well he is. It makes coordination meetings a lot easier.) So we couldn't deal with our "backwards too far away from the curb" car until about 9:30 at night. Irma's engine would not turn over so Angelo and I were reduced to pushing the car around our street in a 20 point turn to get it facing the right way and close enough to the curb. It kinda looked like a circus routine. You know where the clowns try to maneuver a car around and wave their arms around a lot? Whenever a car would come down the street we would pause and act like we were normal. It was pretty funny now that I think back on it. Irma was donated to Father Joe's on Friday. Bye Irma!