Wooo-oo-ooo-O baaabeeeey please don't wail....

Note to American Idol contestants:

Don't chose songs that have been covered by any character on South Park




When Alexandrea Lushington sang this all I could hear was Butters singing. Okay, okay, she did sound slightly better... but still it wouldn't have been my choice!



Next should be a contestant singing Come Sail Away like Cartman did...

Not already!...

This must be a record for the shortest time to kill a plant. Sunday I planted my grapevine. Last night the temp got down to 31 degrees. What had just days ago been fresh green crisp leaves full of new life, today were a sad wilted testament to the unpredictability of Mother Nature. After the leaves drop off the wood maybe new ones will grow again. I hope!

Another gardening note- fire ants are already showing up in the dirt I mounded for the grapevine. A tip that Hubby's friend gave us a couple years ago that has truly worked to rid the yard of fire ants... MOLASSES GRANULES. You can buy big 50lb bags of it at feed stores, then just run it across the yard in a spreader. It worked miracles for us when we tried it, no more ants. Time to do it again though!

Spousal Art Review...

Hubby said I could post his painting, so here it is:

This was his first painting ever. Okay, I mean besides painting cars and horse trailers. First fine art painting, I should say. He did good with his fabric and the cross, fabric is something people struggle with when learning to paint. I think he did pretty well with the whole thing considering it's something he hadn't tried before. Give most people a paint brush and they aren't going to just whip together a piece of representational art. As our art professor said, a good judge is whether other students would be able to recognize the objects if you took the painting over to the math building. So that was the first step was making recognizable objects. He's on the right track!

Finally, a painting to post...





Here's the first painting we worked on this term, finally finished. Okay not quite, I still have to sign it.

And don't ask me why this ram was apparently at the beach when he died, with a flower stuck in his ear. Too much Beach Blanket Bingo I guess.


Hubby has a painting he's doing too of a different still-life, the first one he's ever made. I'll post it if he wants, but if not then, well, I won't. But I'm not about to ask him as I'm posting this at 1am and should be in bed myself.

Valentine's Day is for winers...

Hubby and I aren't the typical Valentine gift-givers... we're not into jewelry that you have to remortgage the house for, or grocery store bouquets of roses. Nope, we get different types of things, usually leaning towards the interesting.

This year, Hubby got me a grapevine.

Since I'm possibly starting a garden soon, he thought it would be neat to grow grapes. Hey, the more fruit the merrier as far as I'm concerned! I love my fruits. :-)

Plus, he's wanting us to try to make the grapes into wine. Umm, yeah. We'll see how that goes. But it's worth a try, it could be fun.

The first step of course is keeping the vine alive, and actually growing fruit. Considering how the anniversary chrysanthemums fared, wish us luck!

Happy V-Day...

Just in time for Valentine's day... okay actually this is from last year, but just in case some folks haven't seen it:





At least Heart-Kun's marking is clear and defined... unlike all the Virgin Mary images that show up on grilled cheese sandwiches. And, it's a cuter video than the one of the man who found Jesus recently... in a tree slab... as shown here.

How true...

BTW, as far as posting artwork, I know I haven't shown any lately.... I am working on some stuff though. In my Painting II class we didn't even get started on painting our first project for two weeks! So it's been going slowly. It'll be finished soon though, so I'll have something to show. In the meantime I'll just continue my occassional pointless rambling.

Song Crossfire...

The direction this post goes is a bit more racy than normal for me, but I thought it leads to a funny website and am therefore sharing it.

The last several days I've had a song stuck in my head... "Sex and Candy" by Marcy Playground. I heard it on the radio the other night and it's been planted in my subconscious ever since, just as innocently as times when "Copacabana" or "Let It Snow" repeats in my brain like a broken record.

More irritating than having a song stuck in your head, is not knowing all the words to the song!

Hangin' 'round downtown by myself
And I had toomuch caffeine
And I was thinkin''bout myself
And then there she was
.......... hum hum hum hum hum hum..........
Yeah there she was
Like disco lemonade

So I turned to the Internet to find the lyrics. Upon doing so, I came across a website that not only gave me the lyrics, but it also debates the interpretations of the song with some humorous verbal jousting. I had had my own opinion of the meaning of it, but it's not near as fun as what these guys come up with (and no, I'm not sharing what my thoughts were on it!)

Anyway, the webpage is linked here. They also have a bunch of other songs they dissect, so I'll have to go play around on their site for some comic relief.

At least I feel Sex and Candy is a better song than what Hubby often has stuck in his head... the theme song to the sitcom Two And A Half Men:

"Men, men, men, men, MANLY men... woo hoo hoo woo hoo hoo hoo hoo... men, men, men men..."

hahaha

Definitely irritated...

Talk about having a pet peeve! Can you believe someone was irked enough by this to register a URL and post this webpage... http://www.d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com/

Okay, I admit it, even I have to think twice when spelling it.

Mary Mary quite contrary...

I'm thinking about having another garden this year. I had one three years ago, and in spite of my black thumb I grew zucchini the size of baseball bats. That's no exaggeration, they looked like big green clubs. Mighty tasty too. But that first year was an experiment to see what problems I might have. All was going well... until I found out about squash vine borers and European corn borers. It's amazing how they appeared out of nowhere, on land that had never had a garden before. How did they find it? But this year I know what to prepare for, so hopefully I can head them off at the pass.

I'm not sure exactly what I'll plant this year, but I may include: zucchini, tomatoes, black-eyed peas, green peas, green beans, onions, radishes, watermelons, and Big Max pumpkins.

The first time I had a garden I was about 15, and it was by a fluke. We had an acre of land behind our house where we kept our horses, and I often fed the horses watermelon rinds when I was finished with them. Well, one the seeds nestled itself into the pasture manure and next thing I knew there was a watermelon vine growing with a fruit on it. I tried making a makeshift fence around it but once the horses found the vine that was the end of it. They ate the vine and all. But the next year I went all out and sectioned off an area for a full-fledged garden. It did pretty well too.

I grew the Big Max pumpkins for the first time that year just for fun, and one of them grew to be over 100lbs. It was huge! Then for Halloween I set it out on display at the front of our yard. Unfortunately one of the neighborhood teenage guys came and smashed it... my Dad saw them and ran down the street after them, yelling "THAT WAS MY DAUGHTER'S PUMPKIN THAT SHE GREW! GET BACK HERE!!!" That was the only time I ever saw my Dad run, hahaha. But of course they just scattered.

Anyway, let's hope I can fend off attacks from pesky insects and teens this time.

Well praise God...

Hubby finally got a decent job offer! It's back to outside sales again, but instead of just straight commission like typical sales positions it's SALARY, plus commissions, plus expense account for gas etc, plus cellphone expenses..... plus BENEFITS. Health insurance has been a major concern lately, and most companies don't offer benefits to salespeople. And, being in school two days a week didn't help the job search, trying to find a job working around having those days off isn't easy. He wasn't looking to be in sales again, but this was too good to pass up.

BTW the company found him, they are a competitor of a company he worked for a few years ago and found his resume on Monster. Wow... Monster actually provided results for once, rather than just a bunch of scam e-mails.

Anyway, he starts Monday.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!