Die Biebers Die!

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Let's All Go to the Lobby

This is something that I wrote in a forum today, in response to a bunch of "when we were young" stuff.  Someone brought up the "let's all go to the lobby" song we used to see before movies and this was my response.

Oh. Em. Gee.

The lobby song. I swear, my brother and I sang that song everytime we went to the theater. No matter if we were by ourselves or with friends or with parents, we sang it. And not everyone liked it.

Funny story about what huge geeks/nerds we are: Several years ago we drove to Beaumont, TX to watch a midnight showing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They still played that song before movies then. It's going & I'm singing and my brother says "Tracy, hush and listen." Sounded like every damn one of those geek/nerds was singing, too. It was like when you stop singing the National Anthem at large events & just listen to everyone else sing.

I said to my brother, "These are our people."

It was magical.

WIDT - Feb 17

6:30 Yeah, woke up feeling like I hadn't slept at all. Sucks. Stayed up all night playing poker and won nothing. Bah.

Tshirt of the day:

American Idiot!

I love wearing this shirt. The middle schoolers all yell "Green Day!" and look at my like I raided their closet. I was in college when they came out, fetuses! 

Printed out my $20 Groupon to Barnes & Noble so I can go buy a couple of books today: Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot by Wil Wheaton. As you know, I've been reading his blog for a few weeks and really want to read his stuff.

Yeah, that was a complete bust. Barnes & Noble didn't have any of his books in store. I will have to check at the B&N by my house or order them online. Poot. Wanted to get started!

Just checked. Out Of Stock for every B&N in the Houston area. Bah.

WIDT - Feb 16

Tshirt of the day:

Stop Looking At Me Swan!

When I wear this shirt & people who are not well-versed in Billy Madison see it, they assume that it says "Stop Looking At My Swan" and they ask what does "swan" really mean.  Heh.

11:00 Woo Hoo! I get to use our Fog Server today! We used Fog to image our laptops this summer and it was infinitely better than using Symantec Ghost, like we used to. We just use the network boot & spit it out. I am so excited! And typing that also made me sad. Because I am such a nerd/geek/dweeb. Ha.

Not much more at work worth mentioning.

4:45 Ordered pizza before I left work. Yes, laziness set in and we didn't want to cook tonight.

6:00 Home, discovered I made a mistake and ordered one of the pizzas with bacon, not Canadian bacon (ham). Colby liked it but nobody else would touch it.

6:30-ish Played in a $3.00 Homegame tournament on PokerStars in which anyone who outlasted the host (Kevin Mathers) got 1% of his winnings in Friday's $335 LAPC Shootout. Not much but if he at least makes the buy-in money, I get my $3 back.

8:00 Played in the weekly Negreanu open tournament on PokerStars. This time it was $11 buyin. I went out 11th or 12th. Had fun playing but won no money. Probably gained some points towards the leaderboard but that's it.

Then stayed up too late catching up on American Idol. I really need to start being smarter about my hours.

WIDT - Feb 15

Craziness at work lately. That's all I can say.

Picked up Whataburger coffee this morning because the coffee at work sucks. Hit it with some French Vanilla creamer and way too much sugar. Yum. Someone brought Shipley's this morning & because I am spiraling out of control, I ate half of one. I can feel all the sugar in my body right now. #fail

9:40 Just bought 2 Groupons for Vegas. $15 for $30 worth of food and drinks at Margaritaville. Those margaritas kick my ass. Plus, they are like $12 each so I figure, I could get a few while I'm there this summer. We have to go now, right? Like, $30 is such an investment, there's no way I can throw that away!

Tshirt of the day:

Vegas, Baby!

Trying to restore 2 different machines today, one HP PC and one Lenovo laptop. The HP has 2 harddrives that failed at the same time and HP sent me one replacement last week. I had to call & say, "Where's my other HD, dude?" Just received it today so trying to restore it. Laptop was a teacher's that got one of those fake virus spyware programs on it. Yay. I try and try to clean those damned things off but they are difficult. So now I'm just copying the user's files and then I'm going to restore that one to wipe it clean.

12:15 Decided not to eat lunch because I had so much before. Very sugary coffee and half a donut that I did not need! Not the best idea but I didn't bring anything for lunch and I always make bad decisions when I enter Fast Food World looking for something semi-healthy.

12:20 Ha! Got chewed out by a friend on Twitter for not eating lunch. #pwnd

2:00 Found an orange! Thank goodness because I am starving.

Had a conversation via SMS with my bro earlier. He's Mr. Moviebuff so I asked if he had Swingers on DVD. Negative. I expressed my disappointment with his library. And so forth and so on. I'm on such a Vegas kick that I really want to watch Swingers and Ocean's Eleven. He proposed that since we've seen O-11 so many times, maybe we wouldn't be albe to enjoy it since we pretty much say the lines with them. I replied that O-11 has reached Grail status and that we will never NOT enjoy it. I've created a new rating now, Grail Status. Like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We've seen it countless times (including a midnight showing in Beaumont) and will recite many a line while watching it. Which is why no one wants to watch it with us. 

On Wednesday nights, my boys usually spend the night with the Hub's mom, Nana. This started a long time ago when the hubs and my mom bowled on the same team Wednesday nights. Nana offered to watch 2 of my 3 kids to help us out. This has continued even though they don't bowl anymore. It's helpful but doesn't have to happen. This puts me and the hubs with only our daughter on Wednesday nights. I hardly EVER plan anything, I like having "girl time" with her.

So, I finally decide that my mom and I should have "girl time" this Wednesday and go play Bingo. There's a bingo hall that has daily bingo plus 2 nightly sessions. I told her I thought we should go play the 9pm session after Ally falls asleep. She practically jumped for joy.

Not 10 minutes later, Nana calls to cancel our Wednesday ritual. Seriously? The ONE night I wanna do something? Bah.

7:30-8:00 Kids nightly ritual. Sitting on the floor waiting for Dylan to fall asleep so I decide to play a little pokers. Started off on Ultimate Bet playing $15 satellite into 10K tourney later tonight. Small crowd, only about 16 people paid to get in so there's 2 seats + $15 to the 3rd place person. Early on, I'm dealt QQ in the big blind. Hot damn! Everyone freaking folds. Very next hand, I get KK. I min-raise from small blind. Everyone freaking folds. Seriously? I ended up in 3rd so it was like I lost the $1.50 that UB gets from the tournament so all is good.  I move over to Poker Stars to play Triple Draw 7-2. This game is growing on me. I like it so much better than Razz. Although, I lost half my stack raising the entire way while holding 6-5-4-3-2...no idea that a straight counted against you. Chalk it up to rookie mistake but won't happen again. I didn't win anything playing that tournament but I do like the game.

10:45 Nighty-night too late.

Feb 14 - Catch Up

It's been way too long since the last time I wrote here. Don't even know how long. Well, that's a lie - just scroll down. Duh.

Nothing exciting (big surprise!) + boring weekends (big surprise!) = brain dead me.

Guess I can recap anything that I remember since the last time I wrote & then promise myself that I'll write more frequently. 

1) My boss has been out of town since the middle of last week and it's been slow at work. Weird how when he (the boss) isn't here, things slow down to a crawl but when I (the lowly tech) am not here, things break like crazy. I've been able to repair 2 Macs and start on another PC because I've got no pressing problems. One laptop with a virus but it's scanning so not much work for me right now.

2) Colby got on the team he wanted in his baseball league. This will be his first year of coach pitch, he played t-ball last year. Gotta rein back the hubs or he will burn him out of baseball. The hubs played college ball and is very passionate about teaching the boys. We can tell that Colby really isn't that "into" baseball as much as we are but he does want to play and he really wants to please. If I am not there to stop it, the hubs will practice him every day after school including the days he has real team practice. Colby would rather be playing Wii or DS.

3) Dylan also got on last year's team again and he's still in the t-ball division. I won't have to change my "____'s Mom" shirts for either of them, yay!

4) Ally fell asleep in my lap last night while I was at my mom's house watching American Pickers. She's still so small and I love it but it hurts to think that in a couple of years, that won't happen anymore. She's the last of my kids and there are so many "little kid" things that the boys don't do anymore that I miss. And as she gets older, she stops them too. Then, I will have to wait until they have kids so that my grandkids can do all that stuff to me again. Depressing.

5) Saturday night, I bought skirt steak and chicken for fajitas plus shrimp, bacon, jalapenos and monterrey jack cheese for bacon-wrapped shrimp. I have no idea how these places get those things so wrapped and the bacon crispy. I've tried everything. Grill burns. Broiler did NOT work. So, I cooked them for 10 minutes under broiler then put them in a frying pan to crisp the bacon. They tasted really good but I'd really like to know the secret.

6) Sunday night, we baked chicken strips with sweet corn and mac and cheese. I had promised the kids we would fry up biscuits disguised as donuts but we ran out of time. 

7) I worked out a total of 0 times this weekend, just sat on my lazy ass and watched a marathon of Pawn Stars I had DVRed last week. LOVE that show. Those guys are very amusing. Addicted to that show, along with Storage Wars, American Pickers and Auction Kings.

8) Colby spent the night at a friend's how on Saturday while my parents drove to the home land. My mom went to visit her sisters and my dad when to watch a few basketball games. Of course, their day ended at Coushatta but can you blame them? If I was within an hour of a casino, I'd go too. 

9) Haven't played poker since last Wednesday night. Thought about Ultimate Bet and how I used to have an account there. Tried to login and I don't have access to the email I used to use. Worked with Customer Service and they were able to reset my email and reset my password. I logged on to find close to $20 still in my account! Woo Hoo!

10) How could I forget!! Crap, one of the reasons I haven't been writing is because I've been too busy reading. Decided to jump on Wil Wheaton's bandwagon about 10 years too late so I thought I'd start reading his journal/blog. I went to wwdn in exile and saw that it started in 2005. Okay, I can do that. During that first post, he talked about wwdn and how they had to move. So I go to wwdn and see that it started in 2001! Holy crap! But I really wanted to read from the beginning so I could get on board teh Geek Train that's sweeping the nation (yeah, I stole that from him). So, that's what I've been doing with my free time, readying his journal. I'm up to sometime in 2004 right now and it feels like I'll never finish! I have added many books to my Amazon Wish List though, including his, so at least I'll get some MORE reading material. Really regret not being into all this when it happened, we are very close in age & seem to be interested in a lot of the same things, in the same time period. Would have been cool to be a part of all that when it was getting started. Oh well, it's never too late to attempt to be cool, so I'm trying!

Guess I'll add to this as the day goes and my memory is restored.

Not much happened at home, except my laziness continued. Read some more wwdn while Ally fell asleep & then went downstairs to watch a couple of Pawn Stars I had recorded. Got to be about 11:30. Could have used that time to work out but I didn't so I suck.

More suckage tomorrow!

WIDT - Feb 8

Weighed this morning & I've put back half of the weight I dropped last week. Thanks, Not Snow Day Weekend!!

Eating watermelon for lunch. Love salted watermelon. Turns out, I did not salt my watermelon, I sugared it. Very disappointing.

Feb 8 - Catch up

Man, that Snow Day that was actually just a Cold Day completely threw me off, blog-wise, exercise-wise, eating-wise, blah.

We left early last Thursday because of the threat of snow and icy rain. Well, only got a little bit of icy rain that night, no snow. We were all very disappointed, especially my kids. I had to tell them all day Friday that there was no snow coming.

Staying cooped up in the house for 3 days was trying. The hubs had to work Friday and OT on Saturday, so it was just me & the kiddos. They hung out at my mom's house a little bit each day so I could get out to the grocery store but mostly, it was insane running around the house, fighting, playing video games, making messes, typical ages 7-2 year old junk. And I wanted to pull my hair out.

It was way too cold to run on the treadmill so I didn't. I had no healthy foods at home so I ate badly. I can't remember much of what we did, really.

Saturday, I actually bundled up and ran on the treadmill. Ran 2 miles in about 20 minutes. It was so cold in the garage & our heater was cranking inside. Felt like I was going to vomit when I was finished.

Shawn and I hit the Outback Saturday night. It was super crowded so we sat at the bar. My steak was yummy and the broccoli was yummy-er. LOVE their broccoli. Don't try to tell me how many calories are in it, I can taste it.

For a Super Bowl party on Sunday, I made these awesome brownie-peanut butter bites from Bakerella.

Yes, they were awesome

I also made a pizza bread rollup thing that I make for every party we ever have. Our friend Danny has a Super Bowl party nearly every year and he always requests it. Basically, it's a dough filled with cheese, seasonings, garlic and pepperoni (no sauce), rolled up, baked and cut into strips. Not sure why it's such big hit but Danny isn't the only one who requests it so...

Super Bowl was okay. I really only watch for the commercials, as I didn't have a favorite team this year. My dad has always been a Steelers fan so I was kindof rooting for them but didn't do it with gusto.

Twitter was fun during the Super Bowl. I could see many people that I follow shared my like or dislike for many of the commercials and the musical "entertainment".

Also over the weekend, I successfully parlayed a $27 tournament ticket into a $82 tournament ticket on Poker Stars. I'd like to get at least one more step up and then wait for some WSOP satellites to pop up so I can qualify to go. If I get an entry to ANY of the tournaments, we have to go! Right?

I'm writing this on Tuesday and I can't remember anything remotely interesting that happened yesterday. Blah.

WIDT - Feb 3

6:30 Super tired this morning, did not want to move. 5 hours is not enough sleep. Downed a 5 hour energy and had a big cup of coffee. It's working for now. Wonder where I'll be when I hit that wall?

10:13 Not getting much work done at all, waiting for 1) school to close early or 2) snow to fall. I work a good 40 minutes away from my house and my kid's schools so if it's gonna come down, I need to get out of here before that happens.

It's freaking freezing in my office. It's like I'm sitting outside. Still have my coat, scarf and gloves on and I'm still cold. Ridonkulous.

I've modified my .99 cotton gloves for use with trackpads and iPhones. Resourceful.

The tips of those glove fingers have been repurposed as hats for Yoda and my IT dude. Yes, I have silly things on my desk.

One Up, R2, Yoda, Oscar, Dwight

Mr. IT

Can you tell I don't want to be here today? I have done NOTHING productive. Ack.

WIDT - Feb 2

Ugh. After staying up too late to play poker and getting knocked out on the bubble, I'm in NO mood for crap today. It's freezing. Seriously.

I live in Texas! We don't like this!

8:10 Things are looking up though, because I weighed myself today and I am down 7 pounds from last Monday. Yay me! Didn't bring anything for lunch today. It's so freaking cold, not sure if I'll want to even get outside for food. Guess we'll see later!

11:00 Breakfast for lunch. Went to the Egg & I in Meyerland. Bacon and cheese omelete. Was just okay. Not much flavor except for the bacon. Hazelnut coffee = no thanks.

2:40 Had to go across campus again for something that was unplugged. Seriously. How hard is it to scan your environment before you call me? It's too cold. Wah.

Been trying to get this IBM working wirelessly on Jolicloud all freaking day. Jolicloud is Linux based so it's been difficult figuring out how to install a driver in that platform. I don't work with Linux and while the terminal commands have been fun, they are getting me nowhere. Going to install on a different computer to see if maybe that card is bad.

The boys are staying with my mother in law tonight so it's just me, the hubs and Ally. She loves Ramen noodles so I made her some for dinner. We watched American Idol. Meh.

8:00 Playing in Daniel Negreanu's $11 Open tourney on Poker Stars again. I placed last week so I figured I'd try again. Sitting next to Ally in her bed while she tries to sleep. Trying to pat her and play poker. I'm nothing, if not a multitasker.

8:55 On break. Think I've been dealt Queen-Deuce off about 10 times. Woo. According to my stats, I've seen 40% of the flops on my table. Too many?

12:33 (next day) Just finished 4th...$197.20. If I could have just lasted one more, but I guess I can't be greedy. Freaking exhausted now. Feel better that I stayed up this late & actually got paid. Yay me!

WIDT - Feb 1

Wow, cold today. They are predicting possible snow on Thursday and Friday. Gotta get to the store today to get my kids some real gloves and better jackets. We live in Houston. All they have are hoodies!

Could not go to sleep last night. Guess those 2 cups of coffee were really not good.

8:20 Downstairs at work only to find weak-ass coffee. HATE. Now I'm drinking hot water, flavored with sugar and cream. This is why it's not effective to just use the free coffee at work. If it tastes like shit, who cares if it was free??

10:10 Found Firmware Password Utility when booting to Mac OS X DVD but still not working for me.

10:30 Out to find the kids some warm things. Target = nada. JC Penney's = nada. Thankfully, Academy saved the day. Yay. Bought some beef jerky & I feel like I'm going to pull my teeth out with this. Tastes good but damn, gonna get a charlie horse in my jaw. Texted my brother that and he replied with "That's what she said." Bastard.

12:30 Ate some watermelon. Nothing better in the world than salted watermelon. mmmm

1:15 Finally had to call Apple. Not going to solve my firmware password problem but now I can't even get the iMac to read a disc so they are replacing the optical drive.

1:22 Hungry!

3:18 Just got back from traveling across campus for a "problem". Here is my rant. First of all, we have a ticketing system. You need help? Fill out a tech support ticket, the entire staff is alerted, you get a number, you are in the queue, we help you. But this person is just too special for all that mumbo jumbo, they just email one tech person. Projector cable in Room blah dee blah is not working. Okay...follow up email asks, Is it a problem with the laptop connection or the wall connection? Reply is laptop connection. I go across campus to see what the problem is. Person who sent email is sitting there, I ask, so what's the problem? Oh, it's not me, it's the other teacher that teaches in here. (Um, you are the one who sent the email!) Well, do you have any problems with the projector? Nope. Okay, shoot me now. YOU sent an email complaining about a problem that YOU don't even have. Broken = YOU. /rant

Really want to go to the Houston City Hall Farmer's Market tomorrow. But it will be too cold and it will take more than my allotted lunch hour to enjoy. Boo

4:11 Just ate 4 Milk Duds. Some caramel still stuck in my teeth. Ready to go home!

Wow, again. Very cold. Turkey tacos for dinner.

6:30 Decided to play $11 Omaha H/L on Full Tilt while kiddos watch a movie. Built a fire in fireplace. Toasty.

7:00 And decided to play for a Step ticket on Poker Stars. Did I already have one? Yes. Should I have looked before I registered? Yes. Bah.

Now I have a Step 1 ticket and a Step 2 ticket.

10:15 Out on the freaking bubble. DAMMIT! I hate playing for hours and getting nothing out of it. So angry with myself for the way I started playing with about 25 left. Too conservative or too loose, changed hand to hand. I've got to get better at the end-game of tournaments.