Lifted from Cheeky Prof:

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?
Kicked someone off a project team at school.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I can’t remember and…probably.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
None other than the good old USA.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
More patience, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
May 9 (CU had been back from Iraq for a year)…that’s about it. This wasn’t that eventful of a year, fortunately.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting all A’s the first two semesters back in my MBA program.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I’ve been thinking about this one for an hour…and I can’t think of any – probably because I’m not much of a risk-taker, so my chances of failure are usually pretty small.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Bursitis in my hip (fun one, found that out today) and a rather nasty bout of the flu.

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• Don’t take my tech job, but you can have my baby: Giving Birth Becomes the Latest Job Outsourced to India
• Letterman, Leno & Conan – Back on Wednesday
• One man’s trash is literally, another man’s art: Man Keeps Year’s Worth of Garbage In Apartment
• 3 Dogs Inherit $800,000 Estate

Capt. UberHusband and I have a very exciting night ahead of us. First we’re going to go to the gym. After we come back I’m going to tackle level 21 of Diner Dash and then we’re going to get ourselves gussied up and head out to dinner at Roy’s. After that we’re coming back home, cracking open a bottle of champagne and trying to stay awake until midnight.

Our next-door neighbor has invited us over to her place once we get back from dinner…she and one of her couple-friends are ringing in the new year with a dart board, a pool table and alcohol. Sounds interesting, but considering it’s supposed to be about six degrees by the time we get home, the walk over there might be more than I can bear. Tomorrow consists of sitting around, watching TV, and the traditional all-day grazing with Snarkwife’s Holiday Crab Dip. The stuff is awesome. Mama Snark made it when I was growing up, and I am proud to continue with her legacy.

Oh, I am so ready for Blog 365. I already have 360 posts drafted, queued up, and ready to go. Kidding.

Happy New Year to all of you…have fun and stay safe tonight!

2007 DMN Texan of the Year: The Illegal Immigrant

If I move to…let’s say Australia…to work and live but am a US citizen, that doesn’t make me an Aussie.

But…I am happy to report there is, in fact, a little justice in the world.

Hannah Montana essay winner a fake – Yahoo! News

Not so proud to be a citizen of the great state of Texas this morning…this story has been all over the local media outlets, and it now looks like Yahoo! News has picked it up as well.

I love her defense:

“We did the essay and that’s what we did to win,” Priscilla Ceballos, the mother, said in an interview with Dallas TV station KDFW. “We did whatever we could do to win.”

Local news reports expanded on this quote, with Ms. Ceballos adding that no one ever asked her if the story was true. Seriously, that’s what she said.

If I could track down this woman and smack her, I would. Oh, I’d also make sure my husband – WHO ACTUALLY SERVED AS A SOLDIER IN IRAQ – was right there next to me, cheering me on.

Grumble, *&#*$#*$#!, grumble.

Mmm…tasty!

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There’s a scene towards the end of That Thing You Do! when Mr. White is admonishing Jimmy Mattingly’s insistence that he be able to record his songs, rather than continue on the Play-Tone Peoplemover of Fame. It goes something like this:

Jimmy: We do my songs, or we don’t record anything. You got that, White?

Mr. White: Okay, Jimmy. I was looking forward to working with you.

Jimmy: You know, you’re a liar, White. You’re a liar.

Mr. White: And you’re in a tough spot Jimmy, ’cause you didn’t read the Play-Tone contract which you yourself signed. Because, it says you will do what I say. And I say you cover these songs from the Play-Tone catalog. You’ll record “That Thing You Do!” in Spanish.

At the beginning of the holiday season, CU and I were driving around and I heard Elton John come on the radio singing, “Step Into Christmas,” which truly has to be one of the worst holiday songs ever. We talked about how Sir Elton had to have been strapped to a chair and forced to sing the song, or perhaps someone like Mr. White pointed out some sort of obligation which forced him into it.

Either way, “You’ll record ‘That Thing You Do!’ in Spanish” has become our catchphrase anytime we hear of someone doing something which really, you wouldn’t expect them to do unless (a) he or she was forced into it by a manager/agent who’s a stickler for contract details or (b) he or she was so hard up for money and/or publicity that they forced themselves into doing it.

With that, I am instituting…

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Cookie and Daisy got a box of Kung Fu Fido doggie fortune cookies from CU’s sister this Christmas and – no joke – the things look exactly like fortune cookies. I wondered if they tasted any better than the cookie tripe we generally get from our local Chinese restaurant, but when I saw the “made with real chicken liver!” sticker on the box, I took a pass on the taste test.

Regardless, the dogs loved them – and the cookies actually come with real fortunes. They’re really quite insightful:

• “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the tax code and any word other than “sit”.
• Confucius say, dog house-broken? Hire carpenter.

The best part? Think about it…someone actually has to sit at a desk and come up with these fortunes. How do I score that gig?

Christmas at casa de snark was wonderful, as usual. Although…I have to say, it doesn’t really matter if your home has one, two, or twenty people in it on Christmas day…it’s a tiring experience. Seriously – you’re going from the moment you wake up and by the time you get to the day after Christmas you vow that you will do things differently the next year. But really, you never do.

So now that we have that holiday under our belts, our sights are turned to New Year’s Eve. Ah…New Year’s Eve…the holiday full of interesting memories. I have loads. One particularly poignant one from 1995 (6?) involves a party with some friends, and ends with a now decade-long violent aversion to tequila. Another involves me going into the back alley behind the house and letting loose on one of our neighbors and his demon spawn child, because they had the balls to shoot off fireworks toward our backyard. This was annoying not only because we had a burn ban at the time, but because I was desperately trying to just sleep through freaking midnight when CU was in Iraq. I have another one from high school…I had a party…with confetti I created out of paper and a hole punch. I think I spent about six hours vacuuming it up the next day. Good times.

New Year’s Eves have become a little more subdued around here in recent years. Now it generally consists of dinner out and then a bottle of champagne back at home at midnight, but we’ve been invited to a party next door by the Non-Husband-Stealing Neighbor. We’ll take advantage of that after dinner…should be fun, and will give us a great opportunity to regift a few things. Oh, I’m sorry…did I say that out loud?

And of course, with the new year comes the inevitable questions about what your new year’s resolutions are. Are you one of those folks who sets lofty goals like, “I will lose fifteen pounds by January 15″ or do you set more reasonable goals like, “I’ll try to floss the day I go to the dentist?” Do you just pooh-pooh the whole concept, believing that resolutions are lame because no one ever meets any of them?

Or…do you decide to go all wickedly insane and vow to blog every day in 2008?

…and all through the house, all the creatures were stirring…especially my spouse. Heh.

Most of us have at least a few good Christmas memories, right? You know, the ones that you still remember 20, 30, 40 years later?

• When I was a little girl…2nd grade? Maybe it was 4th…not sure. Anyway, both of my parents were sick – really sick. That year they did get up with me at the crack of dawn long enough to open presents, then it was back to bed. Best Christmas ever…why, you ask? Because I had Spaghettios for Christmas dinner. I rocked.
• One Christmas when we lived in Wisconsin (I was somewhere between 3 & 6), I looked out our back sliding glass door on Christmas morning and saw reindeer tracks leading away from the door! Cool! Santa really did come to the house…or did he? Turns out he didn’t…but the end of a broom handle did.
• My first Christmas in my very own apartment – sans roommate. 1996. That was such a great year. I had this dinky little 4′ tree and a brand-new poodle puppy. Awww.
• Believe it or not, the year CU was in Iraq. I woke up Christmas morning, and he and I opened presents together courtesy of Yahoo Messenger and my webcam. I would have rather had him here, but that was the next best thing. The other thing I remember vividly – how I managed to get all of his Christmas presents arranged in one flat-rate Priority Mail box – it was like a wrapped game of Jenga.

I’d love to hear some of your favorite memories…or better yet, share them in your own blogs and get all of us in the Christmas spirit!

And…speaking of Christmas spirit…we figured out who sent us the cake. It was CU’s uncle. Mystery solved.

And…speaking of food…we are anxiously awaiting the Ninth Annual Christmas Eve Dinner Snarktacular this evening at The Melting Pot. Nothing says Christmas like stabbing little pieces of meat and cooking them yourself.

Merry Christmas…hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

CU and I received a fantastic cake last week – from Cakes by Jane – but we don’t know who sent it. I thought maybe our friends Jana and Vali sent it, but an email from Jana today confirmed they did not, in fact send us a cake. On the upside, we should be getting something from Wine.com soon!

We’ve gone through our list of the Usual Gift Suspects and have come up completely empty. Hopefully we can figure out who sent it, because I don’t want the giver thinking I’m a totally inconsiderate buffoon for not promptly thanking him or her.

Ah…now it looks more like Christmas around here. Nothing like a fresh theme to take us into the last week before Christmas, right?

On that note…and on the heels of my post about things which make it seem like the holidays, I wanted to toss out a few toys from my youth which made my heart go all aflutter:

• Lite-Brite
• Fashion Plates
• Legos
• Barbie and all of her related paraphernalia

One of my favorite Christmas gifts ever was a fantastic Barbie townhouse. Got it one of the Christmases we lived in Wisconsin…so I was little. It was three stories (about as tall as me, at the time) and had an elevator I could operate myself! With a piece of string! The inflatable furniture I got to go along with it was…quite trendy at the time? The only thing that place was missing was a macrame plant hanger, and maybe a fondue set.

The one thing I always wanted – but never got – was an Easy Bake Oven. I don’t know what it was about those things, but the thought of cooking by light bulb always sounded so fun. Sure, I could bake a cake in a real oven…but where’s the joy in that? I was never big into the whole Cabbage Patch doll thing…and of course, games for my Atari 2600 were always appreciated – like Pitfall. Oh, that Pitfall Harry – what a man.

What about you?

It’s Reveal Your Blog Crush Day…and I’ll admit, I just found out about it five minutes ago.

Having said that…my blog crush is…wait for it…wait for it…

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Dear Santa,

Thank you for delivering a few items yesterday for Capt. UberHusband to wrap today and put under the tree. Things were looking mighty one-sided under there for a bit, and I didn’t want to have to call Dr. Phil to remind CU that some women need to see presents under the tree for more than a week before Christmas.

By the by…Cookie has asked for a kitten for Christmas. I’m not sure where she’s going with that idea, but I think you should probably skip the kitten and get her a new bed.

While I’ve got you here, I’m making my grocery list and wanted to check on your wine and cheese preferences in lieu of cookies and milk this year. Would you rather go traditional with a nice cab, or live it up a bit with a zesty sangiovese? I assume you’re bringing your designated sleigh driver (I won’t tell anyone, don’t worry – your secret is safe with me)?

Let me know…see you in ten days!

Snarkwife

Mmm…tasty!

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Here’s the latest on which shows are finito and which still have a little life left.

Enough is enough, people. Let’s get our respective houses in order and put an end to the strike. I can’t bear four nights a week of American Idol and I sure as Hell am not going to be able to sustain myself on repeats of Law & Order: Fill In The Blank on USA.

The one show that has really given me that pit-feeling in my stomach though, is Lost. I’m beginning to think CU and I would have had a better shot at seeing those last eight episodes when we were actually in Hawaii three months ago.

I’ve been pondering the idea of bringing back beloved shows from yesteryear to try to squeeze a little more ad revenue out of them. With a serious lack of “family-friendly” television on the air now, what about repeats of Eight is Enough or my current fave, The Waltons? Think Tim Daly is the hottest thing on Private Practice? You should have seen him as a crack commuter airline pilot on Wings! And, I don’t know about you – but I think the world could use a Doogie Howser, M.D. revival.

Or…pick up HBO and Showtime and gorge yourself on Big Love, Entourage, Californication, and Weeds repeats.

Oh – for the record, I don’t watch Big Brother. Someone always tells me that’s “coming back” and truthfully, I don’t get the appeal. It’s sort of like The Real World, except the participants are grown adults who can’t use the ignorance of youth as an excuse for their behavior. But then again, I watch Bridezillas…so I suppose I shouldn’t be casting such big stones.

I was reading Women’s Health at the gym a couple of days ago (no, really) and a few of the magazine’s writers were asked what their favorite things were about the holiday season. I thought, “That would make a cool blog post.”

So, here’s my list:

• Christmas episodes of TV shows (think Roseanne, Little House on the Prairie, The O.C.)
• New wrapping paper
• Chocolate peppermintinis
• News reports about those weirdos who run up $1,000 electric bills with their outdoor light displays
• Going out shopping with CU, then pointing at things and saying, “THAT would make a good Christmas present. No wait, come back here – LOOK – that would make a good Christmas present. Did you hear me?“
• Looking at all the ornaments CU and I have acquired over the years
• Bitching about that horrible song, “Christmas Shoes”
• Opening *one* present on Christmas eve
• Christmas Eve dinner at The Melting Pot
• Watching Cookie and Daisy go all wiggy trying to get chewbones out of their stockings

What about you?

So – as soon as I turn in my team’s simulation write-up in half an hour (there’s a fun story behind that, too), I am officially done with the Fall semester and my Operations Management grade is out of my hands.

I took my final a little while ago and started sweating bullets when about halfway through the exam, I started hitting questions from a chapter which wasn’t in our syllabus. Chapter 14. We covered every chapter in the book but that one. I remember specifically mentioning to CU a couple of days ago that I thought it strange we skipped it but hey, that’s what the professor scheduled.

Needless to say, I panicked…because that’s what I do when I find myself woefully unprepared for something. I was having a tough enough time with the exam (BTW – people who think open book/open notes exams are easy are also on crack) – the last thing I needed was to have to learn about ERP and MRP on the fly.

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Finishing up my class…simulation write-up…final exam…

Back tomorrow…hopefully. Send oogly googly thoughts my way – the midterm was tough and I need to do well on the final to nail an A.

Mmm…tasty!

Appetizer
What was the last game you purchased?

Oh geez…I think it was the Millenium edition of Monopoly…back in 1999. Obviously, we’re not big game people.

Soup
Name something in which you don’t believe.

I don’t believe in the idea that people are always rewarded for hard work and innovative thoughts – sometimes, those things wind up being bigger liabilities than assets.

Salad
If you could choose a celebrity to be your boss, who would you pick?

Tom Hanks. I hear he’s fabulous to work for – tough, but he knows his business.

Main Course
What was a lesson you had to learn the hard way?

You can’t make people love you if they don’t – no matter how hard you try.

Dessert
Describe your idea of the perfect relaxation room.

This place…the open window on the other side faced the ocean, and the afternoon sun streams in and warms the room. Add some soothing “spa” music and a little aromatherapy…utter perfection.

The Twelve Days of Fafa
(sung to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”)

On the first day of Christmas, my Fafa gave to me…
a Fafa head, her name is Britney.

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But, we appreciate the shout-out, Amazon.com!

This is the seventh Christmas season for CU and I in our house (okay, technically it’s only CU’s sixth) and we have never done the holiday lights thing.

When we drive around in the evenings, we see so many truly horrific light displays that we always said we’d never do lights unless we could do them right.

This year though, we’re surrounded by lights. Our neighbors on both sides have them up…our neighbor across the street has them up, and the folks in the house kitty corner from us – well, they don’t really have lights up, they just have those awful red and green outdoor flood lights – but we can’t be the only ones not in the holiday spirit, you know?

Feeling rather Grinchy while surrounded by all of this festive spirit, we decided this would be the year we would do lights. We’re so glad we did. Ours is the best house on the block. Neener neener. I didn’t think we were terribly competitive, but I guess we are.

Heh. Just wait until we put up the new fence next month.

Someone asked me how the Billy Joel concert was…you remember, the one I was so excited about because I got tickets for my birthday? Well, we didn’t go. The asshat CU bought the tickets from on eBay never sent them. Nice. Didn’t respond to emails, phone calls…nothing. The guy had a 100% positive feedback rating but in recent weeks, we’ve discovered we’re not the only ones who were duped. Now the transaction is in the hands of the PayPal claims department. What a pain in the ass. But, the Dallas Morning News said it was a great concert.

• $1 iPhones – Enough said.
• Manolo Blahniks…for your man – Ooooooh…guess what Capt. UberHusband is getting this year!!
• Rick Springfield’s new Christmas CD – “You know I wish that I had Santa’s girl.” Okay, I’ll quit.
• The Christmas drinking glove – Friends don’t let friends drink cold.
• A flight on JetBlue – Because it’s an amazing airline which, I might add, doesn’t fly out of Dallas. Figures.
• The no-hands auto can opener – Although, I’m not quite sure why you’d be opening cans in your car.