Snow? Big surprise.... & 12 on 12 (v4) December

I've been traveling and playing catch up with work blogging has been hard as my creative juices are tired and don't want to play. Playing catch up with work so let me play catch up with you folks:

If you live in the Midwest or love watching The Weather Channel, you know what came for a visit yesterday. This was what met me on my commute home.

I know it doesn't seem much, and in the end it wasn't that deep, but the worst of it hit just as rush hour started so you know that immediately translates into Clusterf**k and a long ass commute home. At least it wasn't an ice storm with up to an inch of ice... wait, that's this coming Friday.

One post I wanted to do over the weekend was to bring back the 12 on 12 project that I haven't done since... jeez, August! So here's December's edition! (pardon this version... it's actually 10 on 12) I was in Seattle on site at a conference:

This hotel was VERY wired for technology. The TV and phone system were all Internet based. This morning for some reason the TV came on by itself before my alarm went off. It was playing good jazzy world music, but it was on a channel that played the music and had a slide show of dog pics.

I step out of my room and there's a Wall Street Journal at my neighbors door. Waking up to see my homestate's governor on the front page of the WSJ usually can't be a good thing

My registration desk at my conference. AKA My little corner of the world to sit and wait for something to go wrong.

After the attendees have had breakfast and are in session, I head out for my own caffeine supply. I'm not a coffee drinker so a Diet Pepsi does me well. Too bad the hotel is a Coke property so I have to head down to the drug store to get my fix.

Coming back to the hotel. Notice that heck of an incline??

Me blogging at the desk. In conference world if you're bored on site, that means the conference is going well.

I am also re-reading a great book. Sarum by Edward Rutherford takes the history of England from the ice age until WWII and weaves fictitious characters to help tell the tell. (kind of like Titanic... there wasn't really a Jack and Rose, but the ship was there and it did sink) He's written several books like this that are great reads.

OH boy... the hotel certainly knew who was coming to their hotel. This afternoon's snack break had cookies and cupcakes. Two words... RED VELVET! It was pretty good! It wasn't like the ones my faux-wife made me for my birthday, but it was a nice effort.

After the conference was over I went out to look around. There's a Seneca Street! (Seneca is the town in South Carolina that I grew up in.... GO BOBCATS!)

Seattle's great market with a little bit of everything!

Cuz I love me some dogs!!!

Thanks to BearPupUK for the fun survey!

I never cared much for Sean Penn....

When I was in high school and Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out, it was the good ole boy laugh movie. All the ass hats that I disliked in high school loved this movie so I naturally disliked it. I wasn't a burn out in high school so didn't relate.

Then he hooked up with Madonna and became the bad boy of paparazzi throw downs. No one likes a star that's too uppity for their own good.

Then came Shanghai Surprise... were we surprised? no, not so much.

And while he did an OK job in that movie where his daughter is killed and his childhood friends are either accused of the murder or investigating it, he was still not on my list of actors that I liked.

Until now....
I won't go on and on with a litany of what he did in the movie, but I'll sum it up with one of the best compliments I can give an actor; he made me forget that he was Sean Penn. He WAS Harvey Milk. Obviously I never knew Harvey Milk, but I've read about him, I know his story, I saw the documentary on Harvey Milk and heard his voice on a recording he made when he felt his life was ultimately in danger. If you don't know the story of Harvey Milk or even if you do, go see this movie.

So often the term "Oscar worthy" is tossed around too easily as a marketing tool. While I would love to see Sean win an award for his portrayal, the cynical side of me feels the subject matter will be a barrier. If it makes a difference to Sean, he's won an award with me. He took me into Harvey Milk's life in a very believable way and he's also on my "Like" list now. (which, let's face it, EVERY Hollywood actor is dying to be on!)

I'm remiss... so let me catch up....

I've been prepping for a conference and now am on site so I've been out of communication since the Palin-of-Nine blog below.

I'm in Seattle, a town I love and haven't had the chance to come to in about 4 years. I'd forgotten about one aspect.... the hills...
I'm standing on 1st Avenue looking up at the tallest building you see in the distance and that's where I have to climb to for the Kinko's. It's too early in the morning for me to mountain climb!

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy walking and hiking, but Chicago doesn't have hills. I walk everywhere in Chicago, but that's because there are no hills! I'd adapt if I lived in Seattle, and I could easily live in Seattle, but we'd have to do something about these hills.

It did dawn on me that ll the times I'd been to Seattle before with conferences, I was on 6th Avenue which seems to be the top of the hill. Obviously I didn't realize that I'd found the only upscale boutique hotel at the bottom of the hill. Also, leave it to me to find the only upscale boutique hotel in Seattle that's next door to a sex toy shop. I peeked through the windows (from outside....) and it looks like a nice sex toy shop as sex toy shops go I would guess, having NEVER been in one myself. ahem....

But Seattle is a great town and and it's obviously Christmas season here too. The hotel I'm in is decorated very nicely and has fake bubble type snow (something you have to see yourself) at the entrance. I flew out here on Saturday morning as it was snowing in Chicago. I was up so early that by the time I arrived in Seattle I was so exhausted, all I wanted to do was sleep. When we arrived at my hotel I looked out the window and said "Dammit.. it's snowing here too!" too sleepy and slow to realize that at 48 degrees, it would be hard to be snowing where I was. And, the snow was bubbly. Things are different on the west coast, but not that different.

In the spirit of the holidays, I'll leave you with a cute survey that I found over on Stephen "Wicked Hater" Rader's Blog.

You Are Prancer

You are the perfect reindeer, with perfect hooves and perfect flying form. Why You're Naughty: Because you're Santa's pet, and you won't let anyone show you up. Why You're Nice: You have the softest fur and the sweetest carrot breath.

Which of Santa's Reindeer Are You?

A'ight Palin... you brought this on yourself!

The election is over (thank God)

We haven't seen hide nor hair of Palin except her pardoning one turkey while 12 others had their heads butchered off in camera range.

But I just ran across something at Deep South Mark's page that I had to say is the most offensive Palin connection to date.

Someone was connecting this year's elections to the Star Trek universe and came up with this....

How completely mean and unfair to Seven of Nine and the Borg civilization! I'm sure Jeri Ryan is crying in the corner at this comparison!

Even when Seven of Nine was a Borg, she was never as heartless and uncaring for other beings as Palin continues to be. Besides, even on their worst day no Borg could contemplate being as stupid as Palin.

OK, Rant over.... Come on Jeri, we'll get some ice cream and go assimilate some rednecks.

For that not-so-fresh feeling...

This ad was over at More Cool Pictures in a series of old ad sheets. What were they thinking???


Lysol.... LYSOL! That stuff burns my nose when I spray it in the bathroom. I can't imagine what it would feel like being poured on your hoochie.

Time flies when you're... asleep!

I really didn't think I would be so completely unplugged from everything last week while I was on vacation, but I was! I saw friends, went out to dinner a couple of times, watched a number of movies on TV and, of course, slept. I did a few things around the house, but that was only because my back was getting sore from laying around so much! Sometimes you just have to have a period of lazy slothfulness to make you appreciate the activities of regular life.

I did think I'd blog here or there while I was out, but seems I didn't make it into the blogosphere at all since my last post was a week ago. That means I have a lot of reading to catch up on with my fave blogs! I missed this past week's TMI Tuesday, but I would like to answer it later this week because the questions seemed fun. But can't now.. have to continue catching up on emails from while I was out. I've been at it for 2 hours now and I'm still on last Monday....