Project!!

Guess what I'm doing this weekend?!?!  I'll give you a hint:

After almost two years of talking about it, Cody finally agreed to let me paint the wall in the dining room!!  Yay!! 
I would say "we" are going to paint it, but Cody would "rather sit on his ass" (yes, he said that).  Apparently he and his dad think that painting is something you're supposed to pay other people to do.  But I LOVE painting, so I'm super excited.  Plus, after watching 7 college football games today (not kidding- 7), I was ready to jump out of my skin.  I had to do something, so Cody agreed to take me to Lowe's to get the supplies, which he claims is the hardest part of a painting project.  I guess if that's the only part of the project you actually DO, it is the hardest part.  But I can't knock him too much, cause he shelled out the $70 for the supplies.
So anyways, I'm going to spend tomorrow painting the wall.  Here's the before picture. 

Tonight I cleaned the wall, taped everything off, and "sealed the edges".  Since his wall has rounded corners, we wanted the line between rooms to be really neat and straight.  So I taped the lines and then used the same color of paint that's already on the wall to paint along the inside edge of the tape line.  In theory, this will seal off the edge of the tape so that the new color doesn't leak underneath and make the edges uneven.  Big thanks to Uncle Jeff for the tip!  I hope our edges look as nice as his.  More to follow!  Stay tuned!

!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

No shit, this is a bag of cookies I found in the office kitchen this morning:

 

Cookie anyone?

Didn't think so.

Technology 1, Cody and Rae 0

I wanted to share with you all an actual instant message conversation that took place the other day betwixt me and Cody.  I said "betwixt" just now because it's more fun to say than "between".  Plus....well, I'm rad.
I copied this straight from the instant message conversation we had and pasted it here so that you get the full impact of exactly what was said.
Before you begin reading it, though, I must give some important background by defining a few things for you.

"The Kaspersky Anti-Virus Debacle":  Kaspersky is the anti-virus software that was installed on Cody's laptop by Best Buy when he bought it.  It is supposedly guaranteed to launch a face-melting nuclear assault on all the zombie viruses that are attacking your puny weakling laptop.  IF you keep it current.  Cody's Kaspersky expired a month or two ago and he hasn't renewed it.  It bleeps out this horrifying, stroke inducing warning alert every few minutes while you're using the computer and an annoying bubble pops up to remind you that if you don't renew soon, a ninja will stab you to death in your sleep.  According to him, to renew will require everything but a barefoot treacherous climb to the top of Mordor to throw your laptop into the fiery pit.  He very bombastically claims that it will take a whole day of being on the phone and creating accounts and driving to Best Buy and signing a billion dollar agreement in blood.  I tried to tell him that if he'll just take it over to Best Buy and drop it off with the Geek Squad, they'll fix it all up and call him when its ready.  But apparently even with that option, he still needs to take a whole vacation day during the week to do it because it will still take hours and hours and he refuses to waste a whole weekend day when he could be watching football or fishing.  I've been trying to tell him it can't possibly be that big a deal, but we've been going back and forth about it for several weeks now.

"The Great Groupon Debacle":  I recently signed up for Groupon.  If you don't know, Groupon is a website that emails you a daily discount deal from a local store or shop or vendor.  They usually give you such a good deal that you cannot possibly NOT buy the daily Groupon because it's typically like a billion percent discount.  I keep hoping that I'll open my email one morning to find a Groupon for a $5 whole-body plastic surgery deal or free lasik eye surgery with the purchase of a 22 oz mocha.  At any rate, I recently bought 4 fandango movie tickets for $20.  If you've been to Edwards lately, you know that you're not getting out of there for less than the price of your sedan, so this was a good deal and I couldn't NOT buy it (which is exactly what the Groupon wants).  After buying the Groupon, I was given a Groupon redemption code that I then had to take to the  "My Weekly Cinema" website and enter, which in turn would give me the Fandango codes for the tickets, which could be taken to the Fandango site to pick your movie and get the theater code, which I would then enter at the ticket kiosk at the theater.  This could not possibly fail.  I was supremely confident that this hoop jumping was worth it, because I got cheap movie tickets and YOU didn't [neener neener]......It was fool proof.  Plus, I had my old pal iPad on my side and I could do this stuff ANYWHERE!!  I redeemed two of the tickets one evening whilst we ate at TGIFridays so that we could go to the movie right after.  I was smug.  "See?"  I said.  "Technology CAN be your friend."  "Look at ME" I said.  "I just reserved movie tickets while we ate dinner". I was euphoric.

Until we got to Edwards and then....well, BOOM goes the dynamite.  When we got there,  there was no wi-fi to retrieve my confirmation codes and the theater employees couldn't find my purchase in their system because I didn't use the Fandango site, I used the Groupon site.  I went to the arcade to poach their wi-fi, but the iPad had a rare and massive brain fart and wouldn't connect to it.  We ran to the Moxie Java to use theirs, but they needed a guest password and we hadn't bought anything and the wi-fi was for customers only.  Cody kept saying we should just say "screw it" and go buy some tickets, but by this time, I was having a mini-nervous breakdown.  We finally solved the problem using Cody's cell phone internet, which of course was working like gangbusters.  I was just sure that somewhere deep down inside, he was smiling smugly that technology had once again taken a gigantic dump on me.  I was NOT giving him the satisfaction of winning (and by winning, I mean me admitting that technology is a giant fail and him "saving the day" and paying for tickets).  And I was totally demoralized that my Groupon AND my iPad, my precious, had both failed me.  I felt like Satan had unleashed his evil mastiff on me and it was taking a hot steaming leak on my leg.  I was choking back a fury like hell hath no.  I was afraid that any minute, I'd melt into a big pile of anger and tears and disappointment and shame.  And when the problem was solved, I felt totally stupid.  I felt like a four-year old kid who needed a time-out.

Now that you know all that, you can read the conversation below:

Rae says:               

Hey babe!  How's your afternoon going?

Cody says:            

Meh... OK... I've got the afternoon drowsies.  You?

Rae says:               

Me too.....You should go check the latest blog post.  For real.

Cody says:            
OK... I will when I get a few minutes...
[Five minutes elapse]

Your blog was same old, same old, Rae Summers- Genius.

I really liked it!  Great humor!

Rae says:               

If you say so......

Cody says:            

I would comment, but I don't remember how...

I have to sign in or something, right?

Rae says:               

It's not that hard.  You just hit "comment" at the bottom of it.

Cody says:           

Yeah... but then it asks to select "profile"...

Wtf is that?

Rae says:              

Where it says "0 comments" or "1 comment"

You just click there and then use your Google profile to comment 

Cody says:           

Yeah... I don't remember my userid or password...

Rae says:              

I say just forget about it then

Cody says:           

Yeah, it should be easy... I only have 356 different userids and passwords...

I should have written it down...

Rae says:             

Whatevs babe

I say just forget it

I dunno why you don't make all your userids and passwords the same 

so you can remember them.

Cody says:           

I think I figured it out...

and I wrote it down

I added it to my binder of userids and passwords

Rae says:            

Well you didn't need to take a big chunk of time out of your day to comment

but thanks for the comment.

Cody says:         

yeah... that's okay... it only took 20 minutes or so to figure it all out

Rae says:           

[sigh]

Cody says:         

I'm setting tomorrow aside to figure out my kaspersky anti-virus stuff...

may take the day off work

Rae says:           

you should NOT do that and take THURSDAY off instead.  I don't work.

That way, with our powers combined, we can do it in half a day 

and use the other half for fishing.

Cody says:        

I'm only taking the afternoon off for fishing Thursday...

Rae says:           

but didn't you just say you were taking a whole day off for Kaspersky renewal stuff?

You'll take a whole day for that and only half for fishing? 

Cody says:        

actually I might just bring my computer into work tomorrow...

that way I can spend the whole day calling, downloading, etc, etc.

Rae says:          

[sigh]

I like that you're a techno-pessimist, but a real-life optimist.

Cody says:       

yeah... I can't wait for your next Groupon debacle... I'll try not to laugh...

Rae says:          

Eff you

Hide ya kids.......

 Rae!  Cody!  What have you been up to?  

First of all we've been making fun of Antoine Dodson all weekend.  In case you don't know about him, here is a link to the story (YES, a real ACTUAL news story. Repeat-  this is not a joke):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzNhaLUT520
Then came the re-mix:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrWu13Uh2Yw&feature=related
Cody and I have been laughing about it for months.  Then, last week, he emailed me this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2uJyCPCy5w
Which gave us a third wind.  We've been laughing about it all weekend.  Thanks for taking that little journey with me.  I trust you've all become dumber along the way.

What else?  WELL.......

In addition to that,  we tailgated Saturday.  Broncos win again.  Kellen Moore threw for 507 yards and three touchdowns.  We also went ahead and rolled up a school-record 737 total yards and a 42-7 victory, thank you very much.  Go Broncos!  And what do we get for it? 

I don't know about you, but I'm ok with TCU going to a major bowl game instead of us.  I'd much rather play the California Bay Area Polytechnic School at the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese bowl on Christmas eve. 
Once again, I brought the camera to the tailgate party, but I did NOT take any pictures of tailgating because everyone who was there knows what it looked like and if you weren't there, well I guess that's what you get for not coming.  If you had, you'd know what it looked like and you wouldn't need pictures.

Sunday was my dad's 53rd    14th    43rd birthday. Happy birthday, Dad!  We went and saw the new Will Ferrell  movie "Megamind" to celebrate.  Such a funny movie!  Go see it!  No, I mean now.  Go see it now.  Just stop doing what you're doing.  If you're working, go and tell your boss you're sick and go to it.   It will be way better than whatever it is you're doing.  If you don't go see it, you are so dumb.  You are really dumb.  For real.

The time change yesterday totally threw us for a loop.  Anyone else feel totally out of whack?  It felt like bedtime for about five hours last night.  At what felt like 8pm, we looked at the clock and it was 4:45.  At what felt like 11pm, we looked at the clock and it was 7:15.  At that point, we surrendered ourselves to our pajama pants.  At what felt like midnight, but was actually 9pm, we decided to cure our boredom with mindless eating.   I gave up and went to sleep on the couch at what felt like 2am, but was actually only 10:30.  On the plus side, getting out of bed this morning wasn't quite as hard.  And I didn't really mind yesterday seeming endless because I always get terrible Sunday blues. It allowed me to labor under the delusion that the weekend was much longer than it actually was.  Hooray!!

We've allowed ourselves to become followers of a new show on AMC- "The Walking Dead".  We're two shows in and pretty well hooked.   If you decide to check it out, keep something in mind:
It is VERY gory.  And by VERY gory, I mean VERY VERY gory.  And by VERY VERY gory, I mean VERY awesome.  It's also definitely not for the kiddies.  So if you're going to watch it, you better hide ya kids, hide ya wife.......
I am not normally a fan of "following" shows or series because then you're stuck watching every week and waiting to find out what happens.  But I would follow a lot more shows if they had zombies in them.  Like, if "Dancing with the Stars" had zombies, I'd probably watch that too. 

That's it for today.  Thanks for tuning in.  For "Party of Two", I'm Rae Summers.  You stay classy, everybody.

Happy Halloween!!!

My FAVORITE time of year!  Halloween crept up on us this year.  I think it's because our seasons have been so out-of-whack.  It didn't feel like summer until about August 31.  Then was warm and beautiful until about the second week of October and when some a-hole pulled a switch and BAM, it was cold and fall-ish.  All of a sudden.  One day it was 70 and the next it was 40. I barely got the decorations up in time.  I thought I'd do a post about our Halloween adventures and post all of our fun pictures. 

Well, first off, I'm pretty sure Cody's house is haunted.  It's very creaky.  Not creepy, creaky.  Actually, given the astronomical number of horror movies I've been watching, it's been creepy lately too.  Only I swear (despite what Cody says) that sometimes the upstairs floor creaks when no one is upstairs.  And now I have proof.  We took a picture of Trooper the other night and caught a ghost in the background.  See?  Irrefutable proof of paranormal activity in Cody's house!!

Here is this year's pumpkin.   I admit it isn't up to my usual standards, but I was drinking beer and watching football and talking to Jacquelyn while I was carving.  It reminds me a little of Jack Skellington, which I did NOT do on purpose.  We also baked the pumpkin seeds.  SO good!  Cody didn't do one at all because everyone knows that men can only do one thing at a time and when football is on that's the one thing. Once during a game, I told Cody that was pregnant with Mick Jagger's mutant pterodactyl crack baby and he didn't answer until commercial, at which time he just said "Ok, wait, what now?"

Anyways, I really went yard on our costumes this year.  I had so much fun with it!  Cody wanted to be the A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. 4000 from South Park. I wanted to be Leela from Futurama.  I spent about two weeks working on the costumes because I guess I'm just hard-core like that.  Also, I'm butt-tons of awesome.  I cut out tons of pieces of foil and little construction paper squares and pairs of tights and used about 50 sticks of hot glue.  The A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. was pretty user friendly too.  The head attached to the body with stick-on velcro so that it could be removed for easy beer drinking.

After some preliminary tests, the user requested that I modify the design by adding a hole in the mouth-area to accommodate a bendy straw so he can drink beer without taking the head off at all.  Also, I told him it was okay to drink a lot of alcohol because robots need alcohol to fuel their cells.  He just sort of looked at me funny and then I realized that those are Futurama robot rules, not South Park robot rules and A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. is not a real robot like Bender anyways.  He's a stupid fat kid in a robot costume.  Duh, Rae.  Get it straight.


 Saturday night, we went out to Old Chicago.  Almost everyone who was supposed to come actually bailed.  They probably got attacked by robot unicorns or captured by Jigsaw or came down with raging cases of lame-itis or something, so we totally understood.  It's really too bad they were unavoidably detained because we had an absolute freaking blast without them.  You should have seen Cody walking around in that stupid robot outfit.  Me and Kenna almost peed.  Cody didn't think that anyone would "get" his costume.  I said that was nonsense.  And then I explained that TV has been a cornerstone of life since the early 1300s and that now, millions of years after the invention of the first television set,  people can still really connect with TV shows like South Park because we're all very stupid.  Also, I explained, even if no one gets it, he's still a grown man in a cardboard robot suit and that's just fucking funny no matter how you slice it.   He was wrong.  Everyone got it.  He was the hit of the night.  He couldn't have been a bigger hit unless he was handing out free sacks of crack.  My costume was great, too, BTW.  Except people kept asking me where Fry was.  Next year, I need a Fry. 

I made my eye out of bubble goggles covered with white nylons. Are you impressed?  Well you should be.  Do you know how tricky that was?  I should sell that thing on Etsy for like a thousand dollars.  I think my favorite part, though, was the boots.  I bought black rubber boots from the WalMart and spray painted them.  They were actually the most comfortable pair of shoes I've ever had on and I want to wear them all day, every day,  forever.  Trust me, you do NOT want a roundhouse kick to the face while I am wearing those bad boys.

I very nearly had a costume crisis.  I ran out of purple spray because I only bought one can.  Cody sensed a meltdown.  He began to frantically think up places we might procure some more Jerome Russell Panther Purple spray.  One flying trip to Walgreens and three cans of spray later, I had very purple hair.  And I was high as a kite.  I trailed a purple haze of chemical stink all night long.  The real  problem, though, was when I tried to get the purple OUT.  For one thing, the spray is not just color, but also actual hair spray, so my whole head was stiff.  The hair tie was glued in place and had to be cut out with scissors.  It did finally wash out, but the chemical smell stuck for at least a week. 

On Sunday, we got dressed up again and went out to visit some family.  We met my dad at Sockeye for a beer.  At the end of the evening, we decided to go to the Tavern for sushi.  And let me tell you, those Tavern people acted like it wasn't Halloween at all.  Not a single costume in the joint.  Not even a decoration.  What a bunch of stiffs!  The looks I was getting, you'd have thought I had one eye.
Anyways, here are a few more pictures.  I hope you all had as fun a Halloween as I did.  Now all we have to look forward to are Thanksgiving and Christmas.  [sigh].........