"I Don't Think They Would Want Kelly In The PTA" (Family Quotes and Weekend Fun)

On Friday night, while some of us chose sleep, others chose to watch a quality movie. Dad gave a riveting review of Dan In Real Life. He reported, "It had a wide variety of comedy in it. You would have to be trippin' to not think it was funny." I requested that he get in a picture with the movie case. He replied, "I don't want to be on your pornographic website, someone might steal my identity."

Apparently, this is what Stacy did quite often during spring break. Kyle remarked on his wide selection of body wash choices as one of the benefits to having several sister in laws. On this particular day, he had tried an energizing bath and body wash. Stacy indicated that the use of the energy body wash and a double shot expresso at the perky bean had only resulted in the above state.



Dad, Kyle, and I played basketball with the Big C. With the nets lowered, against a 17 month old, I am actually a formidable opponent.

We went to Brenda's to give Carter the opportunity to play with his cousins, Lily and Carlee. While there, he was able to see goats and chickens, which he called dogs.

Lily is such a cool girl that she has almost convinced me to retract my vow to punish a girl with the name Laquisha if I were to ever have one.

Bowling Adventure at White Oaks

Saturday evening fun included a trip to White Oaks bowling alley where Kelly, Kyle, and I kicked Matt, Robbie, and Stacy's butts in bowling.

Stacy was the queen of needing a cell phone citation (sadly, I didn't have them with me), talking on the phone while bowling. She somehow managed to get a spare while talking on the phone.

The staff made us quit bowling at 9:30 as they said a huge wave of customers were coming for cosmic bowling. We were told you had to make a reservation for this and no lanes were left open. We stayed and hung out talking until around 10:30. At that time, we were pretty much the only people in the bowling alley. No wave of bowlers had transpired. Upon noting the lack of cars in the parking lot, we are pretty sure we were duped into leaving so that the staff could enjoy their Saturday night.

Stacy's Spring Break Revenge

As I walked into this school Tuesday morning, preparing to sit all day in a small, cold room to experience a grand total of 34 dull pre-referral meetings within a two day span, I received the following text from Stacy:

"At the perky bean getting coffee. On our way 2 shop. We'll prob eat at olive garden. Sorry u have to work. :-) "

I considered this to be fair considering our prior harassment when she had to work and we didn't.

Until she sent me a picture of their stop at Gardner's Candies.

Then, as I was eating my granola bar for my 10 minute lunch break between meetings, I was forwarded a picture of her Olive Garden meal which looked something like this.

Kayla, unknown to me at the time, had made a wise choice. Upon receiving her first text message after a night of work, she threatened Stacy that if more texts were to come, Stacy might never see Sandy again.


Despite the persistance of her torture, my jealousness was assauged as I went to Parkersburg that night to visit with Kelly's family and the Big C. While there, Sam made up a gambling challenge for us all. Each of us drew for two teams left in the NCAA tournament, with the winner receiving a glorious prize discussed but not yet determined. We signed Stacy up for the gambling challenge and let Carter choose two crappers for her...

Easter

Easter provided to be very eventful, beginning with a little doggy following me home from running. Stacy wanted to keep the dog and call it Annie, as she could not call it Sandy. Dad was the Daddy Warbucks of the situation, not wanting Annie at first. Stacy and I sang "I think I'm going to like it here" but I don't think we convinced him.
Two young church goers were jammin' out to Snoop Dogg's Drop It Like It's Hot, being all 2 Fast 2 Furious in the church parking lot. At first, I tried to be clandestine in my efforts to get a photo. Then I just decided to ask. One of the young lads was all about posing with his shades with the hood up. Our conversation was as follows:
Me: "Hey, can I get a picture of you guys. You remind me of The Fast and The Furious."
Boy in photo (pretty incredulous): "The Pontiac????"
Me: "Yeah, Will you pop the hood?"
Boy in photo: "Yeah, sure"... as other boy hides from camera
Boy in photo to friend: "You might as well get in it, she already took a picture"...so much for my clandestine efforts.

Christopher acquiesced to getting his picture taken with us but would not agree to a funny face... Now, if only we could persuade him to visit us in Morgantown to hang out and play Sequence!

Aunt Brenda requested that I utilize my Interpreting Children's Drawings book to analyze Noah's drawing of his dandad. Noah indicated: "That's dandad's eyes, that's his ears, and that's his doodad."
From what I could glean from the book, most of the drawing is age appropriate: "Typically in drawings by preschool children, the head is disproportionately large and dominates the drawing". "Big eyes are commonly seen in drawings by young children." "One does not expect to see arms at age 4. There absence becomes increasingly signficant beyond age 6." Suprisingly, the book didn't have any information that I could find on the doodad.

Who-Cakes: For The Serious Sugar Lover

Jess came to Morgantown to spend some QT with us and fortuitously suggested an IHOP brunch. Stacy held strong to her work ethic, remaining at her school even after receiving numerous texts and calls from Kayla, Jess, and I. As soon as we arrived at IHOP, I spotted posters declaring what I immediately knew I must have: Who-Cakes. These very special pancakes are stacked in all shapes and sizes and are covered with real boysenberry and blueberry glaze, rainbow chocolate chips, and a pink lollipop. They are available only until April 20th to promote Dr. Seuss' “Horton Hears a Who!". They had other Horton-themed menu items, but they were not tried by me. The colorful Who-cakes were excellent, though I pretty much ate most of the glaze and rainbow chocolate chips and not so much of the pancakes. This promoted Jess’ attractive suggestion to buy some icing and warm it in the microwave and eat it with chocolate chips. A family with five children under the age of 8 sat next to us. I tried to make friends with the children and suggested they try the Who-cakes. Not sure how much the parents appreciated the recommendation.

NYC Day 2 and 3 Just The Highlights

Thursday was the best basketball viewing day with a close game against UCONN. However, it remained relatively uneventful otherwise.


On Friday, we walked through Central Park, where we posed for pictures at both the entrance to Central Park and the Tavern on the Green inside Central Park. We also saw Strawberry Fields. We sat while our friends had tea on the eighth floor of Saks Fifth Avenue. This description is given of Saks: With their dozen or so American flags flying outside, this department store offers quite a treasure of fashion for men and women at a SOMEWHAT HIGHER price because of all the great names within. From Calvin Klein to Ralph Lauren, cosmetics to accessories, items for travel or the home, and from shoes to fragrances, you'll find almost all that you'll need at this well known store. Note the somewhat higher description. I found a pair of shoes for 1400 dollars in the store, to me constituting a tad more than somewhat higher price.

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The game against Georgetown was a low point of the trip. To assuage the agony of defeat, some new friends took me out for an interesting night culminating in lots of karaoke. We were able to see a spectacular view of the city from the top of one of their office buildings. We ended the night (or morning) with two karaoke establishments, one of which had continuous Gwen Stefani and Brittney Spears videos playing as you sang. The other place was a smaller establishment and here the videos featured sailboats with seagulls flying above. We finally arrived back at the hotel at 6 in the morning. It was thought by some that we were attacked by a gang. Thankfully, this was not the case. Sadly, no pictures of this event were taken with my camera. It is hoped that one will become available at a later date.

NYC Day/Part 1 Just The Highlights

After a three am departure from Morgantown, we arrived in New York and easily procured our tickets for the upcoming game. We pre-gamed at Café 31 where I ate a lucky grilled cheese. We arrived at Madison Square Garden for the first game and spotted our team watching the game. I was able to get Ted to sign the sign I had made to cheer for him and get a picture with him. This resulted in the highlight of the trip being achieved on the first day. Ted then proceeded to rack up some playing time during the Mountaineer victory over Providence and make a total of one foul shot.

Ted signed my sign for me.
He won't stop texting me now...


A.P. Moran was a friend of my boss' husband. He provided some guy advice to counteract that which I usually get. My favorite quote: "Men are like buses. One comes by every 20 minutes. Just make sure you get on the right one." He had tons of crazy Moranisms such as these.

In Case I Missed My Intern

I had always wanted to take a picture of the intern while he was working with us. However, even I did not know how to come up with any reasonable angle for proposing a photo opportunity to him. Two months after his early departure, I came into work and low and behold on my desk I found this picture, blown up, with some of his favorite quotes to me: "Lori, come here, score my tests, make me some copies, can you email me a copy of your reports?" NYC will have to be really fabulous to top this as it truly made my week.

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Take the Intern Behavior Appropriateness Quiz

1. On your first day of work, you are dying for a cigarette. You should
a) ask your supervisor to stop you off at the nearest convenient store then ask if it is ok to smoke in her car
b) hold off until you are shown your new assignments and have time to slip away unobtrusively
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2. You want to leave early on Friday to see your girlfriend. Your working hours are until 4. You are in a meeting with your supervisor and it is 2. You should
a) fidget more than a child with ADHD and peace out as soon as the meeting is over without even going over the procedures from the meeting, then tell your supervisor not to tell her supervisor you left early
b) wait calmly until your supervisor finishes recapping the meeting and says you can go
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3. You have 2 cases per month when you should have 10. You should
a) ask your supervisor to score all your checklists, look up your background information for you, hand in a report with copious errors, and a file in complete disarray, then ask for a recommendation.
b) Do your own work and shock the socks off of everyone

Training Via My Boss: How To Pick Up A Guy

My evaluations from my boss tend to be glowing, with the exception of one area: my abilty to pick up men. My boss is continuously trying to remediate my weakness in this area through training sessions any time the opportunity arises. She has been known to come into the student section at basketball games to encourage guys to talk to me, find guys sitting next to her at games and call me over for fradulent reasons, and pick up guys after events such as American Idol concerts. All this is usually done with a major lack of discretion for quality.

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In the office, chatting before the Pitt game, I underestimated her ability to go to far when I mentioned that my friends and I were planning to go to Keglers after the game. As we were joyously celebrating our victory, who should bust up in Keglers but my boss and our secretary. Our secretary, at least, kept her focus on someone who was with us. My boss, however, spotted a random guy across the room, called him over and invited him to join us. We learned all about our new friend, who as it turned out had a girlfriend, but was a great sport in meeting new people. This was actually a more positive alternative to the other guy she had spotted, a very intoxicated older gentleman who looked a slight bit like Coach Huggins and was delusionally proclaiming to the entire place that he was Huggins. After this event, anxiety has reached a new level for me as I prepare for the upcoming trip to New York with these people.