Meep!....Cry of the Rebel

My all time favorite muppet has always been Beaker, the bumbling lab assistant:



I always thought it was because he innocently tried to help and always ended up burning something or breaking somethng by accident...but now I really know why I could relate to Beaker...he is a wild child, a rebel without a cause and when he really wants to let you know who's boss, he cries......."meep"

Uh, excuse me? "meep?"

Yeah, meep. No one seems to know what it means, but the principal of a school in my state has banned kids from using this word. When I saw it on the news, I asked my 12 year old daughter what the word meant, figuring it must stand for something bad...a kind of rebellious code word. Nope. Just meep. You heard me, it has no hidden devil message, doesn't stand for some new drug...just a word apparently chosen by a group of kids to say repeatedly just to disrupt their classes. They planned this "meep" disruption through Facebook and the principal got wind of it and supposedly asked them to curb the meeping. I'm sure this only caused them to want to meep even more - so a letter was sent home to all children in the school advising kids will be suspended for using the word "meep". Is this the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard? I mean punish the kids for disrupting the classes, but to ban a nonsensical word used by a muppet? Are you kidding? If I were in that school I would stage a protest and invite Beaker to give a speech...what's a little suspension, right?

There Is Nothing Wrong With Being Weird...

As a matter of fact, my oldest daughter enjoys when people think she is weird. I don't mean weird in the sense that she uses household objects as clothing or talks to friends only she can "see"...I mean she has a weird sense of humor and I believe it is one of the greatest gifts I have given her. I have come to this conclusion because there is this cartoon that some genius has created on You Tube that I find very funny....it's been out there a while and there are now at least 3 cartoons that I know of. They are called "Charlie The Unicorn"...please, go to YouTube and watch all three. I actually haven't watched the first two in a while, but the third one has this song that is sung under the water and is hysterical...especially the starfish....ok, just click this link or paste into your browser and watch the third "episode":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaCCkfjPm0o
My daughter and I both think this is funny. Very funny.
Now, should you have just watched this and be thinking to yourself that your image of me has come down quite a few notches, well, I make no apologies. I'm weird and I'm OK with that. If you watched this video and you didn't laugh out loud at the starfish...my image of you has come down a few notches. Seriously...Starfish really loves you!

My Mom...The Beer Pong Champion!

I'm going to give you a little background before this one...when I was growing up, it became apparent that my Dad was much more "in the know" about under age drinking than my Mom. This made sense since my Dad had to quit school after one year of high school to go to work and help with the family finances - he grew up quite young. My Mom was on the other end of the spectrum as her Dad owned a gas station and she was raised not to do any un-ladylike things. She told me the worst thing she ever did was squirt her friend at school with a squirt gun, except her friend ducked and instead she squirted a nun in the face...she attended a nice Catholic school. She was a nice Catholic girl. She didn't know about such things as sneaking booze from your parents or drinking games. Her innocence worked to my brother and my advantage when we were younger because my Mom just had no clue what to look for, what things we could be getting into. My Dad knew and for the most part he played it cool as long as no one was getting hurt..."I didn't tell your Mother about the beer in the backseat of your car...just get it out of there"...of course that would never fly in today's world of parents being sued all the time for the poor decisions of their children. My Mom is pretty funny and it doesn't take but a few sips of a pretty mixed drink to get her giggling...her famous story is from years ago when she used to like this drink called a "melon ball"...we were at a wedding and she asked the bartender (completely serious, mind you) "do you have melon balls?"...she ran into the ladies room without her drink she was so embarrassed.

So, this past Wednesday night my parents had our girls over and when I went to pick them up, Bethany and my Mom were playing a game on the Wii. I had to do a double take...it was beer pong! Except without the drinking part...but the characters were scantily clad girls and the location looked like a bar. I said, "Mom, what is this?" Bethany replied, "It's Ping, Mom"...I looked at my Mother and said, "Mom, this is a drinking game. It's beer pong." Of course this was the wrong thing to say because instantly my 12 year old wanted to know how it was a drinking game. I told her I didn't know, they didn't have this game when I was growing up. Which was true, we had anchorman...me and my brother were an excellent team by the way. So they continued playing and my Mom was really good at it. So I'm thinking we need a beer pong table for the holidays...beer pong for the Wii, what will they think of next!

This And That And Some Things In Between...

As I said before, we had a lot going on the last few months. At one point, it was just ridiculous how much we were dealing with and our breaking point came when we were waiting outside a courtroom with a few other people and someone came in and said a truck in the parking lot was on fire...we looked at each other as we started hearing sirens...there was a truck parked 2 spaces away from us...we just started laughing...then we started seeing the smoke billowing in front of the windows so Mike ran outside to see if he could move our minivan...too late, they wouldn't even let him get near our car...by the time I ran out to take this picture, the fire department had it all under control so you can just see a little smoke above the cars...and all that was left when we went to our car later on was a pile of rusted rubble where the truck had been...but for a minute there we were like, "seriously? what else could possibly happen to us?"



Once a year my boss puts on this golf extravaganza for vendors and customers. I help to organize part of this event and it makes me crazy for about of month or so, but in return I get to spend a day at the golf course...ok I did get there at 6:30am and I did work via laptop until we had to set up, get everyone (160 or so people) through registration, then set up the prizes and tables, etc....but eventually I was able to sit for a moment and relax....



I know how you all love that I take pictures while I'm driving, so here's one of a nice sunset on my drive home from work one night...I actually took a bunch because I could visually see the sun sinking into the ground (in between making sure I wasn't driving off the road or into any fellow commuters!) and I thought it was cool....it didn't translate well on the camera though, so this is the best one...



While our computer was down we had Mike's semi-annual scans at Dana Faber to make sure everything is still looking good. While we were waiting, I realized how cool that particular area at Dana Faber is. Dana Faber is connected in many ways to the Red Sox by way of charity events, etc. This area at the bottom of the stairs has a whole wall of signed Red Sox baseballs and the walls themself are painted to look like the Green Monster at Fenway Park....if you don't know what "the Green Monster" is...too bad!

Anyway, here is a picture of the wall of baseballs and one of Mike sitting in actual old bleacher seats, getting his yucky drink ready...

More From My Missing Time.....

OK, where was I...oh yes, I lost about 2 months of my time with you due to a computer crash and we were catching up. One of the big events this summer was my 40th birthday. I took no chances with this celebration and had started thinking about it months before. Yes, I would have loved to celebrate Oprah style with a 3 day extravaganza, however in reality a backyard BBQ would have to do. The date I picked revolved around when one of my best friends, who lives in Africa, would be here visiting. Once I picked the date, there is no turning back. Regardless of the weather, that date is yours. My theme was "favorites"...all my favorites, of course. Cheesecake being one of them...although I made a list of 40 of my favorites. Next was music. Throughtout my life music has played such a big role - I can relate almost any event in my life to a song or style of music. I went to a lot of concerts in my day. I spent hours upon hours jotting down specific songs then going through old CD's and other people's CD's, downloading songs, then compiling specific tracks. This was no small task. We have a karaoke machine, but you can use the microphone with it like a speaker. So the idea was, I would play all these CD's I burned throughout the day and would tell little stories to go along with some of the songs. I also had some of my favorite stories from growing up. When the day came, Mike couldn't get the CD's to play...not even kidding....the microphone worked and I remember I kept yelling at him "Fix It!" - the poor guy tried everything and I just kept yelling "fix it!" but we never did get them to play - I was mad, but the wine helped dull the pain. And even though rain was predicted all week, we had none.

Anyway, on my invitations I had requested that everyone bring something that is one of their favorites; a story, a food, a shirt, etc. The picture above is my friend who grew up on my street and she is telling everyone how she always loved these chocolate type pop tarts that my Mom always bought for me and my brother, but her Mom would never buy them...so now that she is a Mom herself, she always has them in the house.

I loved celebrating that I'm 40 with so many friends that mean so much to me. I still haven't grown up yet, so the number 40 doesn't really mean anything to me...at least not yet anyway. I ended the night around 1:30am by going swimming in our pool, then trying to walk off the room spins so I could go to bed without feeling like I was in a tornado...