Li'l Momma's Rant-O-Rama

i am now officially addicted to Aunt Barbara. if you haven't heard of her, "aunt barbara" is the brainchild of a guy in long island who sells tupperware... he thought it'd be fun to sell it in character to make himself stand out, so he came up with this idea of a 1970s long island housewife (loosely based on his own aunt barbara). s/he has a bunch of videos on YouTube, most selling or at least showing tupperware and the rest highlighting really crappy convenience foods. they're a scream, i can't stop watching them.

here's one:

pumpkin, our little orange kitty that jack adopted 4 or 5 years ago, needs a litter box intervention. she loves to pee -- in the litterbox, around the litterbox, on our rugs. by the front foor, by the back door. on the bed. this has been going on for all of her life... she was raised in a barn (literally) and then became an indoor cat, so she knows how to use the box but also feels that she should have the freedom to go anywhere else she chooses. when jack took her in, it was because the elderly couple who owned her couldn't handle her and her peeing anymore and were thinking of putting her to sleep. and it's awesome that he saved her life, but now the problem is his/ours to handle.

jack has tried everything to manage the problem -- the first vet put her on an anti-anxiety med, which turned her into a zombie... then he kept her in the basement, which stopped the problem for a few weeks until she started choosing favorite "pee places" down there too. i know i've posted before about the giant patchwork quilt of wee-wee pads that the floors in my house have become, we put them down anywhere she likes to pee to at least save some cleanup. we've thrown out 2 pee-soaked area rugs in 5 months. we've bought 7 litterboxes to try to give her more options. but as she chooses more and more spots to go, we're running out of options ourselves.

which means, pumpkin is on her way to an animal behaviorist in a couple of weeks. we've booked a consult with one of the best in our area, so i'm hoping she'll have some more suggestions for us. the appointment is almost 3 hours long, and we have to bring all 4 cats with us (!!!!!!), and it costs a nice chunk of change... but if we can walk away from it with a training plan that works, i swear will go back to that hospital and kiss that vet so hard.

for fun, i started looing at cruises for next year.

i wonder if we could swing a 44-night pacific rim cruise. holy moly.

jack's birthday celebration on saturday was so much fun, almost more fun for me than for him because i got to be all sneaky over the last couple of weeks doing all the planning. silly me forgot to arrange for a cake for the evening, so my saturday morning was spent "running errands" (what i told jack) and frantically e-mailing and texting folks from my iphone to figure out how to get a cake to our final destination that evening. (thanks jeremym!) drove into the city and checked into our hotel for the evening (the hotel palomar -- if you're ever staying in the city, i HIGHLY recommend it, so cool!), and then grabbed a cab to head to dinner.

dinner was, hands down, one of the best meals we've ever had. i took jack to morimoto, named for chef morimoto from "iron chef" fame. the restaurant was gorgeous, lots of white with curved wood accents and glass seating booths that lit up different colors from within. so much fun. and the food... oh my god. we both ordered the omakase, which translates to "in the chef's hands"... 7 small courses of absolute heaven on a plate. the first few courses were raw fish, then we moved on to cooked dishes (including kobe beef and lobster), and then a light dessert. in the middle was a palate-cleansing "spearmint-almond soda" in a liqueur glass for us to sip. the whole meal was like sitting on the judge's panel for an iron chef episode -- we had no idea what was going to come next, and each little dish was completely inventive and beautiful and delicious. the only word i can use to describe the whole experience of dining there is "joyous". we sat there grinning the whole time, marveling over each new dish placed in front of us, sharing our food for each other to taste (he had done the omakase many many years ago, so they brought him different dishes from mine).

after dinner we went to the franklin mortgage and investment company, a cool little speakeasy-type place right near our hotel. jack just thought we were going there for a martini, and almost fell over when we walked in to some of the philly peeps yelling "surprise!". hee. had a nice time hanging with everyone and having a few drinks, and rolled back to the hotel at 1am. jack was completely giddy. (when i tallied up the cost of the weekend later i choked a little bit... i'm sure i'll regret it later when i'm eating ramen for the rest of the month, but it was so awesome to see how happy jack was through all of it. *chuckle*)

unfortunately my night in the hotel was exciting, and not in a good way. i'm not sure if i had a late reaction to something from dinner, or what it was... but i spent the entire night with an agonizing stomachache, and woke up in the morning (after maybe 2 hours of sleep) to discover my tongue was black. WTF. was so tired from being up all night that during mother's day lunch at jack's mom's house, i fell asleep sitting upright in a chair right in the middle of everyone. just a bit embarrassing.

so, that was the weekend. lots going on this week, i hope everyone has an awesome monday!

so, i won't bore you guys with 500 photos and minute-by-minute replays of every single thing we did on the cruise. to be honest, it could really be summed up this way: we ate a lot. we drank a lot. we slept by the pool a lot. but there were some awesome highlights that i want to capture for my own memories, so ( i'll put them behind a cut to save those who hate hearing about other people's vacations. )

by submitting my 5-year-old headshot and thin resume for some extra work on "law and order: SVU" this coming monday. if i get a call, i will die laughing.

speaking of headshots -- i really need a new one. any of my philly peeps know a good headshot photographer in the area who doesn't charge a fortune?

hey peeps! before i forget -- spread the word, we're doing a contest for Tailspin where someone can win a free hoop! we've been getting a lot of requests for custom hoop orders with purple tapes, and i realized that we don't have any purple hoops in our catalog... so we're going to let you guys design it! you (or someone you know) just need to e-mail "info at tailspinhoops dot com" with your design idea, that has to include either purple glitter or purple mirror tape. (you can see the tapes we have on hand here for ideas: http://tailspinhoops.com/tapes.html) we'll pick a winning design at the end of the month, and that person will get a hoop in the size and design of their choice.

okay. now, what else is going on? not much... just attending the meeting, trying to catch up with office stuff (e-mails etc) in between sessions, and hoping desperately that this scratchy throat is not the beginning of a cold or flu. got to see a couple of my chicago (and formerly boston) peeps at dinner last night, which was awesome. and i'm seriously considering doing room service again tonight, because the thought of going out in chicago on st. patrick's day makes me want to cry. (yes, i am the least-irish irish person ever.)

yes, i took photos of the big-pimpin' hotel suite. i'll post them when i get home. :)

last night, michael giacchino won an oscar for writing the score to the movie "up". i think i've posted on here before that michael happens to be the big brother of one of my good friends from college. i met michael a few times when i was in school, and always found him to be super-nice and funny as hell and creative in that way where brilliant stuff just flies out of his mouth and you wish you could sit inside his brain and look around.

anyway. i am beyond happy that he got an oscar, not just because he's uber-talented but also because he's not a typical hollywood douche. and his acceptance speech was so wonderful, please take a sec to click on the link below and play the video. it's one of the best (and shortest) oscar speeches i've heard.

http://soundtrackgeek.com/2010/03/08/surprise-up-by-michael-giacchino-wins-an-oscar/