Huh, that didn't hurt

I've been tagged. Or memed. Or magged? Or whatever you call it, by Isolated Existence, who apparently finds me interesting enough to want to know 7 more useless enthralling facts about me. The deal is, you share the seven nuggets of info, you tag seven other bloggers, the love continues.

So in case you were wondering:

1. I am deliberately obtuse when it comes to politics, current events, sports, etc. Pretty much anything anyone else considers "news". I would rather save my emotional energy for other things.

2. I've seen The Blues Brothers approximately 1282 times.

3. I'm supposed to be cleaning my house and baking a cake for my son's first birthday party right now, but I'm not. I'm blogging.

4. When I was 10, my family moved to New Zealand for three years. If you want to mess your children up, culturally speaking, do THAT.

5. I'm an atheist, my mother is an atheist, my grandparents were atheists and my great grandfather was an atheist as well. That's a whole lotta non-godliness.

6. I have a mole on my hip that is supposed to be removed, but I decided it had been in my life too long so I didn't go to the appointment. Well, that and I'm slightly terrified of people cutting bits of my skin off. Only slightly.

7. I can grow pretty much anything, except, apparently, corn.

Now I want to know random facts about these people:

1. April over at April's Little Family
2. Kelly at Per Se
3. Mary Anne at The Stiletto Mom (who's probably already gotten it, like 24 times, and this'll be spam for her. Also, she's on a beach somewhere drinking a lot and may use that as an excuse not to pay attention)

Meh....that's all I'm going to tag. The eighth fact on that list, which would be of NO surprise to ANYBODY, is that I'm friggin' lazy.

No more Mr. Nice Guy

Last night I went to see Alice Cooper in concert (don't make me post my high school grad pic again to explain why). I was hoping to have some really awesome story to tell you, like we got to hang backstage with Alice, or we got some cool swag, or I made out with the really hawt guitar player uh, never mind....sorry, honey! Anyway the reason I had such high hopes is that my friend J, which is who I went with, is such a diehard Alice fan that he managed to get an actual phone interview with him for the weekly show he does on the community radio station. I naturally assumed that after their conversation we would all go for coffee or something.

But, sadly, what I have instead is a compiled list of things that made me realize that I'm...well, OLD.

1. I didn't wear the makeup, but I did wear earplugs.

2. I spent a lot of time being inordinately annoyed by the couple in front of us and their constant PDAs. I mean, I get it, you love each other, smoochies, whatever. I don't need to see you grabbing each other's ass THAT many times, and the guy had his arm slung so tightly around the girls neck that it appeared he had her in a headlock. For the entire opening act. All I could think of was the poor girls massage therapy bills.

3. I was stone cold sober, and I was pretty disappointed that they weren't selling coffee. Because I was sleepy. At a rock concert.

4. It wasn't just me, because the entire audience sat stock-still through the opening band (Econoline Crush, who are pretty great and definitely party music). Okay, it was a seated-auditorium type venue, and this town is traditionally pretty stuffy laid-back as far as audience participation, but sea cucumbers would have displayed more enthusiasm.

5. I kind of worried that the stage show was too gory and/or derogatory to women, because J brought his 9-year-old daughter. I'm pretty sure that when I saw Alice in concert 3 years ago, there were no such concerns.

6. Half of the row in front of us left before the encore. That would be the third row, where the alleged 'fans' sit. Getting out of the parking lot quickly is apparently more important.

Anyway we had fun (including the 9-year-old) and Alice rocked (I mean, that guy's SIXTY, speaking of old). It even garnered high praise from J's daughter: "Yeah, I guess it was better than Hillary Duff".

Nobody tell Alice she said that.

A little background

There are four of us that survived highschool with our friendships intact. The Four Amigos, the Four Horsewomen of the Wine-Induced Apocalypse (Haha, okay, I just made that up now, because I'm an idiot. We've never called ourselves that. But if we did, my highschool grad picture makes it pretty obvious who would be Death). (So many thanks to my friend J for digging that up and posting it on Facebook, where 30-somethings go to compare themselves to people they went to high school with, and subsequently feel inadequate).

Anyway, if you read my other blog at all you've probably already met Force of Nature. She's the kind of person you always want on your side...because you wouldn't want to go up against her. She's a masterminding, event planning, steamrolling mama bear of three. And she's totally in your corner.

The only one of us to escape this little patch of dirt and head for the coast is Politika. I'm calling her that because to me, wishy-washy non-partisan that I am, it seems like everything with her is political. Not in a bad way. Just in a very informed, articulate, exacting, opinionated way. When FoN and Politika get together, you can dry your hair off the whirlwind they create.

The fourth member of our quartet I was going to call Limp Noodle. Conversations with her are often a variation on the, "What do you want to do?" "I dunno, what do YOU want to do?" theme. But I've recently come to realize that she makes things happen just as deliberately as FoN, just without broadcasting. What she IS is an incurable romantic; she's in love with the idea of being in love. Everybody has a friend like her, who is sometimes exasperating because every relationship she is in is The! One!, but who restores your faith at the same time. So she's Valentina, and she's this weeks superhero.

Monday's Muse and Slackfest

Sometimes an artists inspiration is in the tools. This week my Monday Muse is the Bamboo Fun tablet I just bought. So. Cool.

Except it's also the reason my weekly superheroine is going to be a little late. Once you get going with the Bamboo, it's a whole lot faster to digitally ink & colour than with a mouse, but there's a bit of a learning curve. Hopefully she'll show her sassy self later on today.

Catching Up

Since the government only "pays" me for the first year of being a mom, starting next week I have to go back to work. Which is fine, y'know, we're pretty lucky getting a year up here to be stay-at-home moms in our igloos. I'm just not confident I can function as an individual again, and I'll miss my little sidekick.

I'm only going to be in the office part-time, so Da Boss is hooking me up with a laptop so that I can do some work from home. Which is pretty sweet, because when I first started working there (like, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth...velociraptors, even) Da Boss was of the "why would I spend money on NEW equipment when this works fine?" mentality. So he offered it up and my first thought was, "That will be awesome for blogging".

And my second thought was, "I wonder if the video card can handle Warhammer?".

I take my job very seriously, I can assure you.