What I learned today

There is no such thing as a photographic memory.

2 gratuitous plugs

1. I am finally on Myspace. I'm not really sure what to do with it now (probably why I haven't joined until now), but you can add me to your friends if you have it. My user name is aliciamn.

2. If you've got a couple dollars in your pocket...well, first of all, Wyclef Jean would want you to put your hands up...then next, sponsor me in the AIDS walk.

That's hot

Shuttle Fuel Tank to Meet Boosters for NASA's STS-121 Flight

The next shuttle flight is scheduled for early July. I wouldn't plan anything around it, but it's good to know they've got a date in mind.

(Imaginary) New Shoe Thursday

How hot are these Carlos Santana shoes? I will not buy them, though, for multiple reasons:

• My hotel in San Francisco next week is about a block from the biggest and best DSW I've ever seen
• I'll most likely be shopping with Maika on Saturday, and I can't recall many shopping trips the two of us have taken where one or both of us did not make some unneccesary purchase(s)

Therefore, I'm saving my $$ for San Francisco. How frugal of me.

Ooh yay yay yay!!!

Project Runway Season 3 will start this summer - rather than the usual fall start. Word is the contestants will show at September, not February, Fashion Week.

The only problem is that this ruins my prediction that I will hold a Season 3 kickoff party, since my condo will not be finished and my studio isn't exactly party central. Make it a Season 4 kickoff party. My assumption is that Season 4 will run on the same schedule as 1 & 2, with the final 3 (although we really know it's 4) showing at February Fashion Week.

Another thing I love

Googlemaps is positively amazing!! No matter how much I use it, I'm constantly impressed with not only how practical it is if you really want to look up an address, but also how fun it is to take virtual tours of cities using it. I'm currently using it to stalk Roxie's house, where my sister and I will be staying in DC and to take a virtual tour of DC.

How cool is this? And this (close-up on the entrance to the Air & Space Museum)?

As I told coworker Carrie, Googlemaps deserves my firstborn child as far as I'm concerned.

PS - I know the wonders of Googlemaps is not news to my friends, but my mom has just had her mind blown, guaranteed.

Eames

I've always assumed Charles and Ray Eames were two brothers, but I just learned they're actually husband and wife. Did anyone else assume that? Does anyone else care who Charles and Ray Eames are?

Someday I will save up enough pennies to own one of their mid-century modern masterpieces.

Guess what today is

It's Kathy Griffin day!! I'm hella excited for some bitchy gossipy fun tonight.

The Clintons recently unveiled their official portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. When I saw this image, which accompanied the article on Wonkette, my first thought was "what does that have to do with Ted Koppel?"
I must say the likeness is not quite remarkable. Perhaps he liked it because he looks skinny. The Wonkette kids think he looks drunk. I think not so much drunk as like Ted Koppel's twin.

Book corner

I've discovered I don't read nearly as much when I'm not travelling, so I've been a little slow finishing books lately. The only one worth mentioning is Michael Finkel's True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa. It was a super-interesting blend of two very different scandals. Quick synopsis from Amazon:

In True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, disgraced New York Times writer Michael Finkel recounts the story of the murderer who assumed his identity and examines the reasons for his own fall from journalistic grace, in a memoir that is gripping, perceptive, and bizarre. In 2002, Finkel, a rising star at the Times, was fired for fabricating a character in a story about child laborers in Africa. Just as the story of his downfall was about to become public, he learned that a man named Christian Longo, arrested in Mexico for the murder of his wife and three small children in Oregon, had been living under an assumed identity: Michael Finkel of The New York Times.

Abbey Road

For those of you who didn't have your London roommate's aunt's friend (cousin's brother's girlfriend) give you a tour of Abbey Road Studios like Laura, Marc and I were lucky enough to have happen, you can now take a virtual tour of the studio. Sadly, the tour is basically some games and this webcam they've set up at that famous crosswalk. It's more addictive than you might think.

Woohoo

Unless my eyes deceive me, there is now a Dunn Bros. across from the Monte Carlo. Although I must say when I'm at coffee shops near the Monte...say, just hypothetically, I'm with Kerry Keyes and we're trying to study at Moose & Sadie's coffee shop, I somehow end up drinking Cosmos at the Monte instead of coffee more times than not. Purely a hypothetical situation, of course.

Photo courtesy of Bejota.

Nerd crush

I heart Adam from Mythbusters. For reals.

Hands off, bitches

I saw some nifty clear acrylic chairs at Target last night that I thought would look fantastic on my balcony with the stainless steel table my dad is making me. Right now the chairs are $79.99 each, but I see a clearance price in their future, so don't go snatching these chairs up at regular price and ruin it for me.

In the interest of full disclosure - the chair above isn't the actual Target chair. No pictures of it were available on target.com, but I wanted to give you a picture of what I'm talking about. Hands off!

The challenge escalates

It took me less than 10 minutes of interweb browsing to figure out where that concert was:

Read a review of the concert here.

Laura, I'll be shocked if you can find the ticket stub that quickly in your box/folder full o' London shit.

Challenge

Setup: I yell at Laura a lot for keeping way more shit than she needs to. Me=minimalist; Laura=packrat.

Situation: I can't remember the name of the venue in London where we saw D'Angelo. Laura, the packrat, thinks she has probably kept the ticket.

Challenge: Laura will attempt to find the ticket's she kept for 5+ years and will keep for the rest of her life (so she could remember where we saw D'Angelo and tell her grandchildren what a great rendition of "Shit, Damn, Motherfucker" he sang that night apparently). I will use the resources available to me (only the interweb, since I most likely threw the ticket away that very night) to find the name of the place. If I can't find it, Laura wins and I will concede that there are circumstances when being a packrat serves a purpose.

Laura, do you accept?

I think there's a very small subset of the population that would be interested in Frank Lloyd Wright earrings...and you know I'm one of them.

While I was away....

• My parents still watch Jeopardy every night...only now my mom keeps my dad's score. I put some shame in his game Friday because my mom ruled that if I answered the question before he did, he did not get the points.
• A boy from my high school class works for my dad and they have become total BFF. That's not strange at all.....right.
• Three words: reproduction, reproduction, reproduction. I swear my brother, sister and I were the only people in their 20's at church without a baby on each hip. I am not even exaggerating. I can't call to mind one person there that we went to high school with that was sans offspring. As far as the congregation at St. Peter's is concerned, we are freaks.

Fun for me

...is it sad that this is the appliance in my new kitchen that will probably get the most use?

Happy (belated) Easter

We were having some technical difficulties at the Truhe house yesterday, so Happy Easter a day late.



PS - I will have you all know I made a soy bacon breakfast casserole for Easter brunch yesterday. Pretty damn domestic, huh? Other people even ate it and did not complain. I also broke down and purchased my very own oven mitt this weekend as well.

True adventures of Target and the inordinately high shipping costs

I do not heart Target right now. Has anyone else noticed how ridiculous some of the target.com shipping charges are? A while ago I found an approx. $200 entertainment center I liked, only it cost like $150 to ship it, which completely defeats the purpose of relatively cheap but still cute furniture.
Then, I found these excellent shoes racks for only $12.74 a piece on target.com. What a great deal! I'll take 2. That's still only $25 plus like $5 shipping to organize the mess of shoes on my closet floor. Oh, except they want $15 to ship a couple pieces of wire to me. $15 on a $25 order!! That's absolutely ridiculous, is it not? So although I really want these, I don't think I'm buying them simply on principle. I refuse to believe the actual shipping cost to Target is $15.
If you see something similar anywhere, let me know.

Road Trip

After work today, I'm road trippin' back to SoDak for Easter. My Civic has to leave all its compact car friends in Uptown and go to the land of 4-wheel drive and smoky black exhaust from 25 year-old pickups. The above would not be an uncommon site in good old SoDak (plus it's a fun opportunity to use another Natalie Dee picture).

No good reason

I finally watched The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and as predicted by both Netflix and Julie, I really liked it. I especially enjoyed Marvin, the robot with Alan Rickman's voice, as I love all things Alan Rickman. From Colonel Brandon to Professor Snape and all the gay hairdressers, whatever he was in Dogma, and adulterous bosses in between, I heart him. So anyway, simply to amuse myself - Marvin and Alan Rickman. Whatever, I do what I want.

Astronaut pimp

Boss Julie gave me a signed version of the picture of Robert Crippen above since she didn't want it anymore (her loss).

Mr. Bob has a pretty impressive bio, including piloting the first space shuttle flight, but what's even more impressive is his chest hair - check out the close up. It's one of the last thing I'd expect to see sticking out the top of a spacesuit. Just goes to show you how badass astronauts used to be - you know he wore a gold chain undid more buttons than necessary on his shirts, not to mention drinking his share of liquor while he was at it. In short, Robert Crippen:Astronauts::Ron Burgundy:Anchormen...at least in my mind.

Sad in the City - Update

The Go Fug Yourself girls got their hands on the same picture of John Corbett that I blogged about a couple of days ago, and needless to say, they had a field day with this one.

Sex in the Fugly

Happy Birthday to Cheeta (aka My Brush With Fame)

Today is Cheeta the monkey's 74th birthday. Cheeta starred in the old Tarzan movies and like many other geriatric movie stars, he now lives in Palm Springs.

Here's where I come in: I've actually met Cheeta since he lives very near my uncle and my dad insists on driving past Cheeta's house and stopping in to say hello whenever possible. This article is a little misleading, however, as the primate sanctuary Creative Habitats and Enrichment for Endangered and Threatened Apes referenced in this article is actually the garage of a Palm Springs rambler that Cheeta lives in with multiple other monkeys.

Realization

I've realized that I do know a Natalie Dee in my own life, and her name is Beth Ironside. For example:

Top 5 hungover/lazy Saturday movies

In no particular order (note I must actually own the DVD for the movie to be included here, so the field was pretty small to start with):

• So I Married an Axe Murderer
• Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• Clueless
• Home Alone

Happy Saturday

So I don't have boombox pants, but I do have a boombox purse. True story. It doesn't actually play music, though, so I must keep my iPod. Plus, I heart my iPod.

Project Runway update - Project Metrodome

Yes, I know the show is over, but that doesn't mean I've stopped obsessing about it. Blogging Project Runway is still going strong and today they featured an article about the Minnesota Vikings. As I've said before, I could give a rat's ass about the Vikings, except when they ask Kara Janx for her ideas on the Vikings' new uniforms:

The colors are so fantastic, so I really wanted to highlight them. I wanted
to make them more like little warriors going to war, who can tear the other team
apart. More like rrrrrrrrrrr. I'm not the biggest football person in the world.
I wanted to add horns, but I didn't because it probably wouldn't be allowed."
Kara Janx, a contestant on Bravo's "Project Runway"

New (imaginary) best friend

Not that it takes much, but Natalie Dee's drawings make me giggle to myself - they're nerdy, don't make sense, and contain well-placed cuss words. What could be better? For that she is added to the list of people I don't know that I really want to be friends with like Michael Ian Brown and Sarah Vowell.

Sad in the City

Aidan, what happened?

and the winning colors are....

If you hate them, don't tell me 'cause it's too late to change.

Main living area: Gray Screen
Bathroom: Meditative
Bedroom: Blonde

Hopefully these will fill my wishes of being neutral, but not khaki/boring.

Dead fishie (aka I work with assholes, part 3)

This is what I found on my desk Tuesday morning, after Blinkie Skoog was discovered dead there on Monday.
If you can't read the paper, it says "Police - Do Not Cross" ....and the scene wouldn't be complete without a White-Out chalk line of a dead betta fish. Nice.

Couldn't agree more

I'm glad to hear I am not the only person that was a bit confused by the AirTrain from JFK. Coworker Carrie and I were hella confused by the process, despite being reasonably intelligent and well-travelled. We did get it right on the first try, but it was not an exceptionally smooth process. Well, apparently even Erik Torkells, the editor of Budget Travel, was confused by the process. That's right...it tripped up the editor of a travel magazine. Makes me feel much better.

From Gridskipper: Erik Torkells vs. the AirTrain

Whoa whoa whoa

When did Kenneth Cole decide to double, perhaps even triple, the price of his handbags?

And, my God, what is this monstrosity? What sort of chunky, cheap-looking hell are you trying to put me through, Ken? They look like frickin' Skechers.

It's like I hardly know you anymore.

Fineline = Rocked

By Mr. Bob Schneider on Saturday night. As a bonus, they made a recording of the show and yours truly will be the proud owner of a copy for the low, low price of $15. God bless disposable income.

Correction: God bless discretionary income. I apparently have had disposable and discretionary mixed up in my head.

Discretionary Income - The amount of an individual's income available for spending after the essentials (such as food, clothing, and shelter) have been taken care of.

Disposable Income - The amount of income left to an individual after taxes have been paid, available for spending and saving.

R.I.P. Blinkie

I'm not a murderer

The death of Blinkie Skoog (coworker Carrie's betta fish) has been ruled a suicide. Here's a run down of the events following the discovery of Blinky's body on my desk this morning.

The tragedy is first reported by my boss Julie:
To: Internal Audit Dept.
From: Boss Julie
Carrie left Truhe in charge of her fish while she's on Spring Break. They put it on Truhe's desk so she wouldn't forget to feed it........ Truhe came in this morning and the fish is lying dried up and dead next the fish bowl. The silly thing JUMPED OUT of the bowl!!! This is why Truhe should never have children........

The death is investigated:
To: Internal Audit Dept.
From: Manager Scott
Taken from the recently released police report...

"Based on the evidence noted at the crime scene, the fish appeared to have leapt out of the fish bowl in an attempt to reach the ocean. Once the fish realized he was out of the water, with no hopes of jumping back in, he flailed about, slamming his head into the desk of Ms. Alicia Truhe until he was rendered unconscious. Further analysis was conducted by forensic pathologist, Mr. Yang Lee, The blood splattering left on the desk of Ms. Truhe was consistent with that of a traumatized, yet hopelessly desperate fish. The said fish was confirmed dead at 2:29am on Sunday, April 2, 2006.

Blinkie Remembered:
To: Internal Audit Dept.
From: Coworker LouAnn

Blinkie Skoog, 2, of Edina Minnesota
passed away Sunday, April 2nd, at 2:29 a.m.
Blinkie died of self inflicted head trauma.

Blinkie is survived by Carrie Skoog, owner.

The funeral will be held Wednesday,
April 5 at First United Internal Audit
Church in Hopkins (The Tav) at 12:00 p.m.

Project Runway shakeup

The news that Tommy Hilfiger would be taking over for Heidi Klum...and that Tim Gunn may be out as well was genuinely upsetting to me.

Good thing it's an April Fool's Day joke.

No joke, I was worried. I'm a loser.

Jeopary update

Abby, Aviry and I all agree the contestant quiz was mighty hard. I think I got a good chunk of the questions right, but I don't think you'll be seeing me on Jeopardy anytime soon. My dad, the only one of us who could properly represent on Jeopardy couldn't take the quiz because he and my mom couldn't figure out how to temporarily allow pop-ups on their computer. (Insert obvious joke here.)

Where do I get my own?

Legos + Beatles = awesome

I'm so tempted to email these people and tell them they should really keep this rug - it really ties the room together.

From Craigslist: Oriental-style rug (or Big Lebowski-style rug, if you prefer)