Dec. 31, 2007

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p.s. photos [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 7:21 pm

i was looking up my site again, and there are lots and lots of my photos floating around out there on different websites. there’s a photo i took at the hollywood bowl, there’s one of me at the huntington garden in pasadena, there’s one that kevin took of me in hawaii. lots and lots of photos out there in different places. interesting. but do the people ever bother to read my site, or do they just grab my photos and link them to their own sites?

right now a woman is knocking on a door down the hall saying “open the door kids.”

luckily we won’t be here for most of the evening.

ok again,
gh

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new year’s eve in litchfield, illinois! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 7:17 pm

it doesn’t get better than this. we’re sitting here in the lobby of the holiday inn, about to go have some dinner.

kevin and the band are setting up in the milk barn down near hamel, illinois (i’d never heard of hamel illinois) but they’re having sound issues so it’s hard to say when they’ll be back here at the hotel.

so we’ll go eat without them. but at least we have a plan. and then later, we’ll all go down to the milk barn and listen to the band and eat and drink yet some more.

it’s snowing up in springfield; i saw a picture on tv, and mom got a report from dad.

randy and mom and i swam a little in the pool here, but then a bunch of kids showed up so we left. there seem to be hundreds of kids running around all over the place here. one of them was very excited to find a hotel luggage cart.

like i said, it doesn’t get better than this.

but yet i feel that it might be one of my best new year’s eves. i don’t have to perform tonight, for one thing, so that’s good, no pressure. and i think we’ll have fun. plus i got a nap earlier.

and then, soon, it will be 2008, and eight is my favorite number.

so, good, it’s all good.

happy new year...

grace.




Dec. 30, 2007

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whew... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:14 am

that perfectly sums up the result of yesterday.

i started at 11.

a.m.

by 6:10 we had the stuff packed in the car. thousands of cheese puffs, trays of crostini with two kinds of dips (bruschetta and a delicious olive/artichoke dip), spanikopeta, sausage/cheese/olives on toothpicks, and tortilla rollups filled with roasted red peppers and cream cheese.

it doesn’t seem like much, in print, but it was the quantity of the thing. plus making my french bread into crostini - it took about a minute or a minute and a half to toast one side of the bread in the broiler, which i found out by burning the first tray and part of the second. in the afternoon it was all a flurry of opening the oven door, flipping the bread, burning my fingers and swearing, and on and on like that. at least because it toasted so quickly, it went fairly fast.

i set off the smoke detector maybe three times. i had set a hotpad on fire on friday night, but it only smoked, it didn’t actually burst into flame. that happened saturday afternoon, part of the crostini process.

catering would be a pretty hard way to earn money. lots and lots of work.

i guess if i had more than a couple of days to do it, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

we delivered the food and later i went to the party with amy and jim and randy, and we danced a lot. kevin stayed home because he was tired, and because he can’t dance till his knee is repaired. which it will be, on january 11th, which is coming right up.

the band was called the brat pack, they’re an 80’s cover band, and the music was highly danceable, except randy was annoyed by the people who kept banging into him. but it was fun.

today...not much going on. tomorrow we’re driving down to some farm in illinois where kevin’s band, CROSSROAD FLATTS, will be playing tomorrow night.

an exciting start to the new year.

ok then,
grace.



Dec. 27, 2007

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hmmm... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:22 am

i’m happy to report that this chinese person feels that we have a lovely and sustainable garden. here’s the translated page.

translated page!


Dec. 26, 2007

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ONE VERY ODD THING [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:19 pm

i was looking around at my statistics again and i found a very very odd thing. there’s a line from my website about my garden, with a photo of the garden. it’s on an asian website, and i’m dying to know what the person wrote about my garden, and they have a link to my website and maybe that’s why i’ve had so many new hits. because people somewhere in asia, i have no idea where because i can’t read any of the asian languages, maybe are reading my website.

here is the website. please look at it.

asian website

and if YOU happen to be one of those people in asia who are reading, please e-mail me because i’m sure your english is perfect.

thank you for your consideration,

grace

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there’s always tomorrow... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:11 pm
which will be filled with much activity.

today, though, i’m pretty sure i’m not getting far from the new red leather chair.

i did take mollie for a walk, and she was sufficiently delighted.

ok, like i promised, more photos of our austria bike trip. the last time i wrote, it was about tuesday, september...what? it was the seventh day of our trip, a tuesday. we were sure it was going to rain, but it literally only rained about one drop. we had to ride through a field that day, one that was clearly marked with giant white arrrows that they’d painted right there on the field.

we got to the town of stockerau and were worried that the hotel wasn’t going to be so great, because it had been bought by best western. it’s called the best western drei konigshof, here’s the link if you’re dying to see it. three kings

we biked into stockerau and did only a little bit of trying to figure out where exactly the hotel might be, and we found it without too much tension. and it was a GREAT place. old, well-kept, and they had a giant golden lab that wandered all around the lobby. our room wasn’t quite ready when we got there so we sat in the lobby bar and had a drink.

our room...it was pretty big, and i wish kevin had taken a photo, because the bed looked kind of odd, and then we realized it was a water bed. why a water bed? there was a large display on the nightstand, with lots of water bed brochures so clearly they were advertising the beds. it was one of those very very watery water beds, but nice to sleep in once we stopped rolling all around.

the room also had a little raised portion next to the window along the wall, it was like having a stage in the room. there were steps leading up to the stage. we took a little walk around town (everything was already closed) but it really looked like rain, so we went back to our room and sat on the stage looking out the window. and then the rain came, and it was nice that we were warm and dry.

we had a delicious dinner there in the hotel dining room; when we got there we were the only ones in the room, except the dog wandered in a couple of times which i thought was great but the owners made him leave. they served us wine from the owners' recent wedding, and it was also delicious. i had a big plate of some kind of giant sauteed mushrooms; they were kind of yellow in color and i’ve never seen them before. did i write down the name of them? yes, i’m sure, it’s somewhere...

at breakfast the next morning, there was a little sign on our table with our room number and it said “fam. hughes” and “guten morgen” and we took a picture but it’s very blurry but here it is anyway. i’m sure i kept the sign, but once again, where might it be?



this was the very last day of biking, and it looked like it was a short distance to vienna. so for the only time, we decided to take a detour. 5 km northwest of the town of Korneuburg (korneuburg was 11 km from stockerau, where we started in the morning) was a castle called the Kreuzenstein castle. in our book it said it was destroyed by the Swedish armies, and rebuilt as a typical 15th century castle in 1879, using original parts collected from throughout europe.

i had some guidebook somewhere that said it was like a crazy disney-style castle, not to be missed. so we decided not to miss it, since we’d whizzed past plenty of other “don’t miss” places on our ride.

we rode out of stockerau, and this is the bridge we’d crossed over the day before.



we got to korneuburg with the wind at our backs, and it was a strong wind, but then we had to turn back into the wind to get to the castle. this was ok, if a little chilly. but then we got to the little town where the castle was located, and we could see the castle way...way...way...up.

way up. i rode as hard as i could up the first leg of the climb, but then i couldn’t ride any more.



we weren’t sure if there was an easier way to climb the mountain to the castle, and the bike route signs had disappeared. we did see a really funny sight, though - we passed a row of houses, and a giant dog was lying on the roof of one of them. he just watched us as we rode past. unfortunately kevin didn’t take a photo, but i did videotape it, so someday, maybe in the next five years, when i edit a video of the trip, you can see it. but of course you’ll have forgotten all about it by then.

anyway, up the hill...here’s a glimpse of the top of the castle.



we pushed up, riding and then walking, and then we finally had to just walk up the rest of the way. a large road led up to the castle, but luckily we saw no vehicles. here’s a shot up close.



they were about to start a tour, although there weren’t more than a few cars in the huge parking lot. we figured that since we’d struggle so much to get up there, we should take the tour. there was a guy in a booth at the entrance next to the moat. he took our money and we entered the grounds.



after about six or seven of us were assembled, the guy taking the tickets got out of his booth, entered the grounds, and shut and locked the mammoth gate behind him. hmm.



was it just a one-guy operation, this whole sprawling castle? we didn’t know, because the man spoke no english.

we walked around the inner courtyard and it was really cool...but the man was talking, and no english was being spoken.

but still it was very impressive.







and then he took us inside. we weren’t allowed to take any photos or video, but i can’t recall how we know this since no english was spoken.

first we went into a room with lots of swords and stuff. lots and lots of them. it was interesting, but the guy was relating things and people were laughing a little and interacting and i was feeling very left out. but it was still ok.

and then we went into the kitchen. more old stuff, more talking, no english. lots and lots of talking.

and then we went into another room. and another. and through halls and into other rooms. all very interesting, or at least for the first few minutes in each room, but the explanations and clearly uproarious anecdotes got really really long. and it started to get chilly, since it was a castle.

i started muttering under my breath, and deeply sighing, and wandering around each room as the guy continued to go on and on and on. was it never going to end? maybe not. i started to hate him, and to hate all the other people on the tour, all the german-speaking people who could take part in the lively discussions.

and since we kept going through one hall after another, twisting and turning, it was impossible to figure out how much more torture i’d have to endure.

finally, we reached the last room. it was kind of odd, because even though the rooms were all full of old furniture, there were some strange little touches, like a couple of manequins standing in one room. they were clearly there to show the attire worn back then, but the mannequins looked like they were from the 50’s, and one of them was only wearing a jacket and no pants.

i imagined that this guy owned the castle, but didn’t make enough money doing tours so he couldn’t afford to keep the place up, and he had to start selling stuff off, the like mannequin’s pants.

as we were leaving, one of the other people on the tour asked us (in english) if we’d understood any of the tour. no, we said. that’s too bad, said the girl, he’s the owner’s brother he was telling us all kinds interesting things about the history of the place.

i stomped out. i think at this point i decided i was going to learn a lot of languages so this would never happen to me again.

by this time i was hungry and cold, so we sat at the outdoor cafe outside of the castle and i had a large hot chocolate. the view was spectacular and it was a sunny day and the hot chocolate was good, so my mood improved a lot.

not to mention the fact that we’d get to coast all the way down the hill.



we got back on the trail, and rode onto the island, the donauinsel, leading into vienna. off in the distance we could see the city, and it looked nothing like the old city i’d envisioned.



the island was great because there were no car allowed. every once in a while there was a picnic table, and we started looking for one with a good view so we could stop and have some lunch, but they were all occupied. we finally found one with no view, but we were glad to stop.



at this point we had a bunch of vienna maps, and we figured out how many bridges we needed to pass before crossing the river into vienna. we had the option of leaving our bikes at a hotel near the river, or we could ride all the way to the hotel we were going to stay at. we decided to ride all the way; we’d come this far, we might as well.

we started up one bridge and quickly realized it was the wrong one, no big deal. we continued on and came the the bridge and even though it was a huge bridge going into a huge city, we rode on the level of bridge that was strictly for bikes and pedestrians. not a problem. getting to our hotel probably wouldn’t be bad. we also saw that all the new-looking skyscrapers we’d seen were on the other side of the river, not in vienna.

this is what the river looked like as we got off the bridge.



as we got into the city it was the very beginning of rush hour. we were able to continue riding on the bike path, it was always clearly marked, but the traffic started getting heavy. there weren’t many other bikers on the path, and the ones that were riding were clearly commuters who did the ride all the time. none wore helmets, and all whizzed by us.

on and on we rode, stopping a lot in order to look at the map again to make sure we were going the right way.

finally we got to the huge street that the hotel was on, and the traffic clogged the street. there didn’t seem to be any room to ride on the bike path, so we decided to get off and walk.

we started walking and it was like new york city on a busy afternoon. wall-to-wall people, nobody on bikes, and it was way too crowded to be there.

we saw a break in the traffic and headed back out to the street. a bus followed us, but it didn’t run us over at all.

we continued on and finally came to the side street where we turned into the hotel. it felt like it took us forever to make it there, and it was definitely the most challenging part of the whole ride. we had thought about keeping our bikes to ride when we were in vienna because i’d read that it was a very bike-friendly city, but we were glad to leave our bikes in the hotel parking garage. we emptied out our packs and climbed off the bikes and didn’t look back.

when we’d arrived in vienna at the beginning of the trip to get on a train to start our ride, we’d seen a hotel that said HOTEL MERCURE which was the name of our hotel, and it was right next to a place that said SEX SHOP. so i’d been worried about what our hotel might be like.

it turned out that our hotel was a different hotel mercure, not next to a sex shop at all. it was a nice place, very big, but our room was very small. here’s our view.



we were so happy that we made it alive to the hotel, so tired from our harrowing last bit of riding. we had two days, thursday and friday, to see as much of vienna as we could. i’d been doing too much researching and had a list of about 30 things i wanted to see.

but wednesday night we relaxed.

ok then,

grace.

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HOW MANY FANNY MAY MINT MELTAWAYS CAN ONE PERSON EAT? [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:25 pm

all of them. of course.

ok, i haven’t eaten all of them. yet.

i’ve been surrounded by all these cookies that i made, plus the xmas chocolate candies that i used for decorating the table, and the boxes of chocolates i received from people at work...but then dad gave me a box of fanny may mint meltaways and WHO COULD POSSIBLY RESIST THEM?

at least i passed them around on christmas day and people ate a few.

but today. today i was so filled with good intentions...

here was my plan for the day:

get up. go to the gym and do weights. take the dog for a run. go give blood. clean up the horrible clutter that is everywhere in the house.

here is the reality thus far:

got up. (so at least i accomplished the one thing). ate a couple of mint meltaways as i read the paper. read e-mails. sat around. went shopping for video cards with kevin who got CALL OF DUTY 4 from randy for his computer, the best game EVER, but he tried to install it and needed a new video card. turns out the video cards are something like $200, so maybe he won’t get to play the game after all, plus he can’t return it because it’s been opened. we also bought other stuff like a new floor lamp.

we came home and i started to seriously eat the mint meltaways while attempting to access my webpage account information. they send e-mails to my old e-mail address, and i tried to update it to my new address but i can’t until they change the platform but they haven’t scheduled that yet but they did allow me to schedule it so theoretically it’s going to happen at one a.m. tonight. and then maybe i’ll be able to change my e-mail address but i’m not holding my breath. the whole thing was kind of a nightmare, and all i really wanted to do was look up my statistics to see if anybody is still reading, and so of course you can see why i needed quite a few more mint meltaways to keep up my strength.

finally I DID IT. i can’t even tell you how. i kept randomly typing in any and all passwords i’ve ever had, and poof, there i was at the statistics, which i hadn’t bothered to check in about a year.

so here’s the weird thing - i had been having around 1,100 visits a month, which isn’t a lot, but whatever, it was ok, at least somebody somewhere was reading. but then, in may, it went to about 2,400, then in july, 5,400 and in october, 14,564!!!

what’s going on with that? it’s gone down to about 5 to 7 thousand a month, but that’s a big jump in the number of people reading this. do you think maybe it’s some kind of webhost mixup? every once in a while i get a random e-mail from somebody who was researching something obscure like the words to “arthur and celeste,” one of my favorite songs which i sang on one of my videos, and i have the 45 record of it and listened to it and wrote down the words for the woman and sent it to her and she was very happy about it. i know my mom’s friend wanda reads it, and randy, and gary, and kevin’s mom, and christine, and probably jerri although i haven’t heard from her in a while.

but anyway, in case there really ARE a bunch of people out there, i promise i’ll be better about writing and i’ll even finish putting up the photos from our trip to austria. which i should be better about even if it’s just wanda randy gary nancee and christine reading.

i have to admit it’s pretty nice just sitting around today, although it’s too bad kevin didn’t take the day off.

it’s getting dark and threatening out now, so it’ll probably rain which means i don’t have to go for a walk or a run. i should still go give blood, but does that mean i have to take a shower? it’s not like my BLOOD is dirty, just mostly my hair.

but would they want blood from a woman who looks a little bit like a bag lady?

whew.

ok then,

day after xmas grace.



Dec. 25, 2007

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merry...merr...mer...me...m....... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:24 pm

whew. last night, lots of food. lots of food. a few gifts. this morning, more food. more food. many many many more gifts.

we finally came home and set up our two BEAUTIFUL NEW RED LEATHER CHAIRS that kevin bought me and then we tried to take a nap but i couldn’t sleep even though i’m too tired.

soon we go to amy and jim’s house for yet more food. i can’t imagine eating any of it.

tomorrow i’m going to go give blood. i’m going to ask if i can give a little extra, because i’m sure there is lots of extra blood in my body now. lots.

i gave kevin all of the blue shirts i bought him. they’re not identical at least, but i was looking for a sweater for him and i had trouble finding one i liked but i kept seeing other nice shirts so i kept buying them. a button-down microsuede, dark blue. a dark blue cardigan. a dark blue henley. finally, a blue sweater.

after the few weeks of buying stuf i had it all at home and realized it was ALL BLUE. i could have bought him one item in another color.

but i didn’t.

that’s the way it goes.

i bought him some new ugg slippers but they were the wrong size and also the wrong color and style, so i pretty much struck on all levels. i just spent 45 minutes trying to find the kind he wants. ugg boots are SOLD OUT EVERYWHERE.

except at some place in idaho, called snow river. yeah, snow river!

i got many lovely gifts, but i can’t remember any of them right now except the chairs because i’m sitting in one of them.

maybe i’ll feel more alert tomorrow.

i hope your holiday has been bright.

it would be a good idea to give blood tomorrow, too, if you’re not busy.

you’ll lose one of those holiday pounds. i’m fairly certain i’ve gained about 35 of them in the past 24 hours.

ok then,

christmas grace.



Dec. 23, 2007

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reporting LIVE! from randy’s party.... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:21 pm

i’m sitting in randy’s office now, where the stereo is, and because the speakers are in here, it’s VERY VERY LOUD in this room. i cannot even hear my thoughts at all, so you can imagine how difficult it is to try to type coherently.

the party is going well, but i suddenly got tired of standing up and talking. tired of both things, the standing up, and the talking. perhaps if i was sitting down and talking. or standing and being quiet.

i haven’t gained five more pounds tonight, at least.

maybe only two. or perhaps four.

christine called me today! i was very happy to hear from her, but then horrified to hear her story...on friday night she went to a wedding with her boyfriend tom, somewhere in the mountains over denver, in a snowstorm. on their way home the snow had stopped but they ran into a patch of black ice...and the truck spun out of control...and flipped completely over.

and they weren’t wearing seat belts.

it chills me to think about it.

they were unscathed. a few bruises, some sore muscles, christine’s lips were split. but how was it possible that they weren’t killed, crushed by the truck?

a christmas miracle.

she said that they just sat there after it happened, stunned. she finally called her sister to come pick them up, but then all the paramedics and everybody arrived. they didn’t have to go to the hospital or anything. they spent the night at her sister’s house and now she doesn’t feel like being in a car at all.

i can understand that.

i’m just so happy that the miracle happened.

stuff like this makes you think about things. the importance of things. what matters in life.

ok, my chief desire now is to sleep through the night tonight.

goodnight,

one day till xmas grace.

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HOWL [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:23 am

it’s three a.m. on saturday night. the wind has been howling outside for the past hour and a half. or at least that’s how long i’ve been awake listening to it. it was so loud that i was sure it was going to blow all the siding off the house, as well as major chunks of house itself.

so far everything seems to be intact.

except, oh yeah, i’ve been awake for an hour and a half.

it’s partly due to the dinner we had last night.

we were going to go to kevin’s parents' house in northern illinois on saturday morning to celebrate christmas with his family, including a brother-in-law who i have yet to meet, and spend the night and come back tonight (sunday night). but then kevin started looking at the weather forecast and it sounded unbelievably horrible up there in northern illinois - lots of ice covered with snow plus 40 mph winds and it sounded like once we got up to their house, it wouldn’t be possible to get back.

so instead we stayed home. it was warm here, in the 50’s, and we walked to bed bath n beyond. mollie couldn’t go inside of course which is always a disappointment for her. not going inside places, that is, i don’t mean that she has a special affinity for bed bath n beyond. although i’m sure she’d love it if she was inside.

anyway, a beautiful day.

then, instead of having a very healthy dinner last night at kevin’s familys' house, we went to our friends' house for the most richest meal i’ve had in a very long time.

you know those articles in the paper every day where they warn you that you’re going to gain FIVE POUNDS BETWEEN XMAS AND NEW YEAR’S? well i think i gained them all last night.

jonelle made sauerbraten and homemade noodles, and some creamy delicious mushroom dish involving lots of heavy cream. plus mashed potatoes and delicious gravy and green beans cooked with bacon that was crispy and wonderful.

for dessert, jay brought a homemade apple pie.

five pounds. in one meal.

afterwards we played a game involving words and cards and three of the baskett’s five children, although rarely all three at once because periodically one of them would stomp away, up to their room where they’d been sent because they were yelling a little too much, or they were just mad and had to get away and stomp upstairs and slam the door. it certainly was a lively game, but mostly not because of the game itself.

when that was over, ashton, who is 10 i think, and i played a game in a book. it was full of interesting scenes and we had to find stuff hidden in them. the scenes were composed of all kinds of weird things, and they looked like real photos except they were filled with things like a giant tea bag. let me tell you, the game was hard. we had to move to the floor under a bright light in order to try to find all the stuff on the pages, and we never did find all the stuff.

i’m not going to eat any more food between now and new year’s eve.

randy is having a party tomorrow night. he’s going to have his chocolate fountain (i have to set it up), but i promise i’m not having any of that chocolate. xmas eve we’re having the family over here and i’m not going to eat any of the four million cookies i’ve made. xmas day, brunch at mom and dad’s, dinner at amy and jim’s...

oh, what’s the use. eat eat eat, there’s no way around it. we’re also going to some movies in the next few days, unless of course we’re going to be stranded here at home because of the storm and are forced to eat all the cookies in the freezer.

i’m looking forward to the gifts i’m giving. i’m also looking forward to making amy listen to “i want a hippopotamus for christmas,” so that she can love the song too.

ok then,

almost christmas grace.



Dec. 20, 2007

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uncle [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:48 pm

i’ve reached my saturation point. tonight i was close to tears because i bought this one neat present that comes in a clear plastic case and i took it out of the case and now I CANNOT FIND THE CASE ANYWHERE and i kept looking and looking, around and around the house, and it has clearly vanished. maybe instead of clear, it has suddenly become INVISIBLE. HOW CAN I WRAP THE GIFT IF I CAN’T FIND THE STUPID CLEAR PLASTIC COVER FOR IT???

at this point i realized maybe i need to rest. i clicked on dooce.com, always a good thing to read unless she hasn’t written anything new and that makes me realize what randy means when he chastise me for not writing for a while.

in her entry today she has a link and it’s just called PERHAPS THE BEST WEBPAGE ON THE INTERNET.

and imagine my surprise when i clicked on it and it was THE HIPPOPOTAMUS SONG.

so, once again i implore you, if you haven’t clicked on the link below for I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS, please do so.

heather armstrong, who writes dooce, gets paid ACTUAL CASH MONEY to write her blog. enough money to LIVE ON.

so if you won’t listen to me, LISTEN TO HER.

it’s not too late to be happy and dancing around the room for xmas.

ok then,

FIVE MORE DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS GRACE.

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POWER SHOPPING! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:10 am

i’ve almost reached the point where i CANNOT SHOP ANYMORE.

last night i told randy that i’d be happy to go xmas shopping with him, because i’m just about done with my own shopping, plus i’ve pretty much stopped baking cookies except i did mix up some sugar cookies yesterday and will bake them this evening but then i’m probably really going to be done with them.

anyway, i picked him up at his house because in his job he has to drive around all day to many different little towns some of which i’ve never even heard of here in central illinois, and he wasn’t a very happy camper yesterday because the job is kind of demanding so i thought it would be nice for him to not have to drive.

we started of at best buy, which wasn’t actually very crowded, and we didn’t even have to wait in line at all which i thought was quite amazing. he bought many gifts there and i’m proud to say i bought NOTHING AT ALL, because i keep buying too many things.

we then went to petsmart and looked at the poor little kitties and talked about getting one for mom and dad, but maybe they wouldn’t want a surprise kitten for xmas even though i think it’s a great idea. one of the kitties looked just like my cats honey and winnie, with grey stripes. the kitten was sitting in a cage all by itself looking very sweet and forlorn.

of course, it might be a DANGER KILLER KITTY like honey can be when she reverts to her alter ego. but it sure looked cute.

i love going to petsmart because there are always dogs walking around in there, although i’m used to bringing mollie in with me and i felt a little bit bad that she didn’t have the opportunity to sniff all the big bags of dog food and dream about ripping them all open. but we did go running yesterday afternoon and she chased one bunny for quite a while, so at least she had some fun during the day.

after petsmart it all started to be a blur. we went to a couple other places then headed to the mall, which also wasn’t as crowded as i’d have thought it would be. but we didn’t get there till about 8:30, and i think most people had started much earlier and were worn out by then.

we started out at macy’s and randy kept asking me which store we were in, so i was glad i was there with him or he’d have been wandering aimlessly by himself. and then he wanted to know which floor we were on, and at that point i decided maybe he’d lost his mind a little because we hadn’t gone up the escalator, had we? no. first floor.

we didn’t find as much at the mall as he’d hoped, and he was carrying around his overstuffed wallet and clutching a big wad of ads from diferent stores and he kept saying they were coupons and he kept dropping them and i finally said ARE YOU SURE THOSE ARE COUPONS? and he said, no, maybe not, so we stopped to sort them out and left them all at macy’s because none were coupons after all.

and at some point i started to get really hungry because i hadn’t had any dinner, only a couple of xmas cookies, but i didn’t want to stop and get something to eat because we had to KEEP GOING. but at about 10:00 i was both tired and hungry, not a good combination, and we were heading out of macy’s and walked by the kitchen department and stopped to look at christmas platters and china and i was a litle delirious at that point and a saleswoman tried to help us and we asked her los of questions and i think she was probably more than a little annoyed with us, even though she acted very nice.

i bought a big christmas bowl to fill with cookies and randy bought a few things, and that’s all i really bought the whole night which is good because i’ve probably spent way way too much money already.

i have to go get my teeth cleaned now. a pre-christmas teeth cleaning. VERY exciting.

ok then, i hope your day goes well today,

soon to be christmas grace.


Dec. 17, 2007

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I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:37 pm
am i the only person who has never heard this very very funny and cute song? here’s a link to one of the many videos of the song on you tube. i’m glad i don’t watch you tube because i feel that if i did, that’s probably about all i’d do.

YOU MUST CLICK ON THIS LINK!

I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS!

i heard it this morning while doing xmas stuff. CHRISTMAS IS ALMOST HERE.

today i went to lunch with randy who said “so your site is shut down now, huh?” and i just growled at him YES.

because i haven’t even had time to sit down. and it’s ALMOST HERE.

one problem is that i didn’t start shopping early enough. and then i thought i was done, but i wasn’t.

and every time i go to a store i end up buying stuff for myself as well as gifts for others.

plus of course i’m obsessed with BAKING MANY COOKIES. i’ve made nine kinds now, but i want to make four more but i’m GETTING SICK OF MAKING COOKIES.

i need to stir the cookies with my right hand instead of my left because i’ve developed some very major pain in my left hand, which is VERY BAD WHEN GIVING MASSAGES.

but when i try to use my right hand it makes me feel retarded.

i’m VERY VERY EXCITED about a few of the gifts i’m giving.

tonight i dragged out all of the gifts i’m getting kevin and it dawned on me that there is definitely something very odd about the assortment of many things. i can’t tell you what this is now, of course, because i’m sure he’ll be reading this before xmas.

WHICH IS COMING RIGHT UP, BY THE WAY.

this morning i bought some christmas stamps, hopeful that we’ll send out a few cards.

with all my free time.

COMING RIGHT UP.

i shouldn’t even be sitting here now, i should be HARD AT WORK.

yesterday morning i woke up early and started obsessing about everything negative i could think of, which is certainly a healthy way to start your day. i then fell asleep and when i woke up again i had been dreaming about winning a million dollars in the lottery, and what i’d do with the money. i was trying to add it all up in my head - i’d buy crazy big expensive gifts for people, and i woke up as i tried to calculate how much money i could spend.

it was nice to finally wake up thinking about that instead of the usual EVERYTHING IS BAD AND I’D BETTER START WORRYING RIGHT NOW craziness that is stuck in my brain.

i have at least one picture from the nutracker, but they haven’t been downloaded yet and maybe i’ll post them by march.

or maybe april.

WATCH THAT VIDEO, if you haven’t already! i promise it’ll make you laugh.

ok ok ok,

monday night grace

I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS!


Dec. 10, 2007

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SEVERE ICE WARNING! DON’T LEAVE THE HOUSE, WHATEVER YOU DO!!! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:19 pm

this has been the warning ever since last thursday. tonight randy says that on the news they declared that there will be a HALF INCH OF ICE by tomorrow morning and it will be VERY VERY BAD out there.

right now it’s 34 degrees and seems to be getting warmer and i feel that if it precipitates, it’s going to be rain, not ice.

these DIRE ICE STORM WARNINGS are like all the years and years and years of tornado warnings. until, of course, one touched down a few blocks away.

but we’ve had ice storms, had at least one last year, but like i said, i really don’t think it’s going to happen. but it’s making all things weather-related VERY VERY DRAMATIC around here.

my biggest drama is that there is now an xmas tree lying on the floor here in my living room.

today kevin and i went out to buy a tree. at menard’s last year we found a great one for about $12.00.

today, though, they had only a couple of pitiful frozen trees. we tried County Market - they had big frozen trees for about 70 bucks. most places seemed to be out of trees altogether. that’s because people have been putting them up since before thanksgiving, i guess.

tonight randy and i went to frosty’s, a place that’s set up every year next to ace hardware. randy told the guy he wanted a frasier fir, and the guy did have a few left, but they weren’t anything like the huge and glorious ones he’s had in years past. but it’s a perfectly nice tree.

i told the guy i wanted something cheap and not too small. he pointed one out - 25 bucks, he said. but it was much much too short. no, i said. he pointed out another one. nope. and then he pointed at one that was pretty tall and really nicely shaped and that’s what is now lying here in my living room.

i was going to wait till kevin got home to bring it inside, but then i decided i could probably do it myself. i dragged it in and set it in the stand and was very pleased with how nice it is. but i couldn’t get the trunk all the way into the stand, which made the stand fall over. i called randy and he said i needed to saw some of the bottom brances off.

i couldn’t find a saw in the garage, but i did find an axe. people use axes to cut trees, right?

it didn’t work, not at all.

so i’ll leave the tree trimming to kevin.

meanwhile, i’ve gotten all the ornaments out of their boxes and so they’re lying all over a couch and things are a little unkempt around here.

i think i’m about done with xmas festivities for one day. i’ll just sit and wait for the ice to hit.

ok then,

monday grace.



Dec. 08, 2007

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ice ice ice... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:56 pm

on thursday at 4:00 p.m., i left work and there were two giant trucks in the gas station parking lot, both loaded to the top with mounds of salt, both with lights on and MOTORS RUNNING. they were READY FOR THE SNOW.

it didn’t start until six, and i keep wondering if they sat there for two whole hours, just waiting, and what, exactly, they might have done in all that time.

i had to go to “nutcracker” rehearsal on thursday night at six. roads were ok. but going back home at about eight, things were VERY VERY BAD. i don’t like driving in inclement weather anyway, and in the dark i hate it even more. i decided not to get on the highway, and instead took a back road that was DARK AND TREACHEROUS AND I COULDN’T EVEN SEE THE ROAD.

but i made it home alive, and at about 10 p.m. i noticed that a neighbor was shoveling his driveway and thought that that looked like a very good idea, so i found the shovel and started in. it was actually nice out there in the dark and cold, because the snow made everything so bright. honey the kitty was having a grand time running all around, but she mostly didn’t stray outside of the shoveled areas. sometimes she charged into the snow, though, and she was highly entertaining.

it was great exercise and there wasn’t much snow, only a couple of inches, and it was pretty easy to do and it made me feel productive. kevin had a very VERY VERY bad day at work, and i wanted him to come home to a CLEAN DRIVEWAY. because what’s better than a clean driveway?

today, though...ICE. well, this afternoon it was mostly rain but now we have an ICE STORM WARNING DON’T GO OUTSIDE TONIGHT UNLESS YOU’RE COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR MIND PEOPLE ARE SKIDDING AND GETTING INTO ACIDENTS LIKE CRAZY.

unless, of course, you have to be in the nutcracker, and in that case you’d better head out pretty soon.

right now there’s no freezing rain but all the snow is now covered with a shiny layer of ice and i’m very very glad i’m not going to be the one doing the driving.

when we get out of the performance it should be quite the skating rink.

randy was YELLING at me this afternoon because i haven’t written in such a long time, but i’ve been very very busy doing TOP SECRET XMAS THINGS. randy is also in the nutcracker and we had our pictures taken together on the stage this afternoon and he thinks it would be great if i’d post the photos but i feel that i’ll probably look like absolutely huge and enormous because my dress is a gigantic tent-like affair with a hat that gives me a headache because it’s too tight.

oh, and i recall, months and months ago, that i mentioned that i might not get the photos of austria up till xmas and now it’s ALMOST XMAS!

so here are a few more photos, and maybe i’ll get doen by xmas.

we left Krems on a cold grey morning and krems is kind of a big place and we weren’t on the bicycle path when we left but we were sure we’d find the river but we didn’t. we had quite a few discussions about the directions and finally we saw a man and asked him if he knew where the path was and he spoke no english at all and we couldn’t understand his german but i thought it would be a good idea to go in the direction that he pointed.

kevin didn’t think so. we were trying to get to the other side of the river, because it was supposed to be more scenic.

so we stayed on the north side of the river and it wasn’t so scenic and it looked like rain. and there was lots of mud that had been scooped off the road. here’s a photo that kevin took while pedaling. yes, he’s very good at multitasking.



and he took this picture of me by holding the camera above his head facing backwards.



so it wasn’t scenic and kind of cold and we had heard that there was a good chance of rain and suddenly we came across all these detours. we had to drive on a gravel path, or maybe a gravel road, next to a train track and not only was it cold and not scenic but also seemed a little dangerous.

up ahead was a field and kevin said “we’re going to have to ride across the field.”

i, naturally, assumed he was kidding.

THE PATH DETOURED ACROSS THE FIELD.

here is the path, clearly marked with white paint.



here’s me, figuring that there was no alternative and we’d better hurry before the rain started.

the field wasn’t as bad as riding on the gravel, in my opinion.



at the end of the path was...a bar. yes, a bar at the end of the field. maybe the guy also sold sandwiches. we might have stopped but RAIN WAS IMMINENT.



the funniest thing about riding on the path through the field was how well-marked it was, with the white arrows continuing across the whole field. so you didn’t get lost and start randomly riding the wrong way in the field.

we stopped at the little town of Tullen, the “garden city.” we didn’t know it was the garden city when we were there, but we did admire the many pretty flowers. it looked like a nice little town, and we sat on a bench eating our lunch after putting on our rain gear. i wasn’t looking forward to riding in the rain, but we could see it coming down in the distance, and it seemed inevitable.



we hurried out of town as the drops started to fall. worse yet, we thought that we were almost to our night’s destination, Stockerau, by the time we got to Tulln, but then we realized that we still had another hour and a half, at least.

but then...the rain was never more than a few drops. whew.

it was a pretty ride on the south bank, and we made it to the bridge again to get to stockerau. here’s a shot of birds on the bridge.



now we had to get to the town, and it looked like we’d be on a road. but the road had absolutely no traffic on it, and soon we were directed to a path through some woods. here’s one more shot taken from the bike.



this was probably the best path into a town we had on the trip. after our nice ride through the woods, we arrived in stockerau and still the rain hadn’t come.

but now i have to go out in the FREEZING RAIN and we probably should have left 15 minutes ago.

ok then,

chilly grace.


Dec. 03, 2007

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e,r. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:15 pm

it was the call you never want to get. after seeing the bee movie on friday night, we came home and this was the message on my phone (which i’d left at home, which i never do) “hi, grace, this is mom. we’re at the emergency room, because we think dad had a heart attack.”

i can’t express the fear and panic that gripped my heart. i called mom at the hospital (they were amazingly fast at tracking them down); she said they weren’t sure what it was but they were keeping him overnight. i called amy and randy (we’d all been at the bee movie together) and kevin and i raced out the door to the hospital.

dad seemed fine. he was hooked up to those things they hook you up to in the emergency room, and he didn’t look his usual natty self because he was wearing a hospital gown, but he really didn’t look bad. i guess at this point somebody must have told us that it wasn’t a heart attack, but they were keeping him there for the night and he’d have to have a stress test in the morning.

he’d had chest pain at about nine o'clock friday night, with pain shooting up into his jaw. so it sounded like a heart attack.

it certainly was hard to sleep friday night.

saturday morning, an ice storm was predicted, and we left for the hospital a little before eight. when we got there we couldn’t find dad - they said he’d be on the fifth floor but he wasnt' there; they said he was still in the ER. we went back to the er and he wasn’t there, either, and at one point somebody told us that he’d be gone for two hours getting his stress test. what were they going to do, have him run a marathon?

eventually he came back to his ER room (it didn’t take two hours) and we then waited for the results. and waited. dad continued to say that he felt fine, except he was tired because he didn’t sleep well because they seemed to be doing major construction nearby all through the night.

meanwhile, they closed down I-55 south of springfield because of the icy conditions and because there had been so many accidents. soon the ER was bustling with all kinds of people, many of them screaming out in the hallway. there weren’t enough rooms for the multitudes of wounded that had come in.

we waited. and waited. an hour...and then a nurse finally appeared and said they were probably going to have to admit him because he didn’t last very long on the stress test. she said she’d be back once the ER doctor had gotten ahold of dad’s regular doctor.

things were really tense then. we discussed the fact that his bad showing on the stress test could have been because he has asthma.

we waited and waited some more, and speculated...and then, finally, the nurse again appeared. dad could go home! his doctor confirmed the stuff about the asthma.

but nobody explained why dad had the chest pains.

we all went to mom and dad’s house and had pizza for lunch.

dad is supposed to make an appointment with his doctor this week, which i assume he’ll do.

it seems that things are ok. but something like this really smacks you across the face.

it’s a good idea to tell people you love that you love them. they probably already know it, but it’s a good idea to say it out loud.

the rest of the weekend was much less turbulent.

i have to make xmas cookies now.

ok then,

monday grace.

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