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OH MY GOSH
remember earlier in the week i wrote that i've been chosen to write for a group blog called dotmoms? well - the editor just wrote me and my essay's been picked up by blogging baby! check it out here. i am SO over the moon right now!
what i did today..
i voted. my gorgeous yellow absentee ballot envelope will soon be winging its way to the board of electors in georgia. very exciting. want to guess who i voted for?
speaking of voting - have you registered? it's not too late you know - and your vote can make a difference, even if it often feels quite the opposite. you can register and even request an absentee ballot from this site. or if you're feeling a little bit rock n' roll you can register with rock the vote. 32 state registrations deadlines are oct 2-8 .. so hurry up and register if you've not done so already!
when i grow up, i wanna be...
hey - i've just started writing for a really great group website called dotmoms. i'll be posting essays there twice a month and i'm in fabulous company. these women can write! i'm thrilled to have made the grade and have my writing accepted. anyway - check it out. did i mention that i'm one of the writers for today? click to read the working mother blues
new items for sale...
have a look at the new tee's i'm doing for toddlers and babies... i'm really proud of them! doodle characters based on your child - you're not likely to find anything like them. if you're interested, they're selling for $15.99 (£8.85) and are turning out cute cute cute! please click here to email me for your custom doodle today! if you'd just like a doodle of your child but not on a tee shirt, they're available as well..
i want to shoot the whole day down..
 
here are two photos of MC taken yesterday. please note her new ug-type boots. it was the first time we'd ever gone into a store and tried something on her that she really loved. the first pair we put on her didn't fit and when i took them off she really lost it. thank goodness they had a pair in the next size up that fit! she wore them out of the store and was running around showing us her 'bootsh.. pink bootsh!' my child is trendier than i am. weird.
the other one is from the morning when every time i tried to take her picture, she'd hold up her pretend camera and take mine in return. was very funny.
other news... last night while i was trying to make my child a delicious, healthy dinner of organic handmade (not by my hands) ravioli with cheese and basil - i managed to dump a pan of boiling water on my hand. so after a call to NHS direct (what a wonderful service that is) and a phone call to our good friends S&D to see if one of them could sit for MC.. we were off to the hospital. first degree burn, pretty painful but no blisters and no tetanus shot required. whew. so many thanks to S&D for being such wonderful friends. and how bad do i feel that it was their anniversary last night as well. man, we owe them big time. thanks guys and best wishes for many happy years to come.
don't call me zaphod
A is sitting here listening to the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy ... and i must not be as nerdy as i thought! because i am just not into it! yay! now the triple sided die of geek culture can just pass me by! i'm cool! i'm cool! not totally nerdy! rock on!
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small
green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.
This is not her story.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
i have a mommy day with mary catherine tomorrow. i'm so looking forward to it.
last night A had a dinner so MC and i were on our own from my office going home. on our drive home through central london i kept looking at all the busy people rushing here and there. i saw some very attractive people, well dressed yuppies on their way to drinks in trendy wine bars. and i found myself giving thought to my life and how it could've been. could i possibly have ever been an attractive yuppy coming from my power job on my way to a chic restaurant for dinner with my smartly dressed casual friends?
would i carry my bally briefcase whilst wrapped in my fabulous 100% cashmere pashmina as i hailed taxis to take me hither and yon?
after my third rendition of 'baa baa black sheep' and second of 'happy birthday' (our new favourite song) i realised that while i look at the people around me, i really wouldn't want to be one of them. i bet most of them will never know the joy of a warm toddler hug or how funny it is to watch in fascination MC's love/hate relationship with her toothbrush. i'd much rather be sharing a slice of peanut butter toast with her in the early evenings than rushing off to power drinks.
it just sorta made me realise that while i'm not what i thought i'd be when i grew up - i am very very happy. that's all i wanted you to know, really.
sorry i've not been posting.. i'm knee deep in servers and the rebuilding of said servers. my geek powers are being stretched to the limit and while it feels good - it's darn stressful.
hackers really piss me off. can i just share that with you? it's not cool to hack machines of random strangers. it's a pain in the bum and mean. the old saying rings true once again .. mean people, do indeed, suck. |_| f|_|(|<|/\/g (4/\/ |<|$$ /\/\y 4$$ - so there.
my parents arrive in just over a week and i can hardly contain my excitement!
calling all americans
please, please, PLEASE do your civic duty and vote. no matter what party or your personal views, votor apathy really (to use today's word) sucks. you can register to vote here. (my postal ballot arrived a few days ago - wanna guess who i'm NOT voting for?)
monday.
we had a great weekend in leeds with A's sister and boyfriend-in-law. very low key - just what we needed. i wish we lived closer, because it's nice to be around family.
nothing much on the horizon for this coming week. mom and dad are here in two weeks and the annual two-months in advance birthday party for MC is the day after they arrive. i hope the good weather lasts as it'll be nice to let them run around in the garden. but if not, we'll all squeeze into casa dunne and hope for the best.
A got his box set of the original three star wars movies today. guess what we'll be doing tonight?
today's reason to get the idiot out..
"Bush is underfunding education. The President cut $200 million from his own No Child Left Behind Act, eliminating crucial educational programs for lower income children and cutting professional training for more than 20,000 teachers. "
i found this site today... the 30 second ads about why we should want bush out of power are really great. i like the winning one, child's pay.
know any girls?
okay - so i'm a total yenta. i'm obsessed with a new project. a project i'm going to call 'let's find my colleague a date'. so - anyone with any nice, decent, charming girlfriends in the london/england area please let me know. he's really nice, dresses well and i think he'd show well. (sounds like i'm auctioning a show horse, huh?)
he's also discovered my website - so i'm sure he'll read this and clock me over the head. but i can't help it. you know me, once i get stuck into a project!
zippidy doo-dah zippedy aye!
ohmygosh.. i totally just booked my own birthday present. I got a decent enough deal and A thought it would be fun. so - we're going to Disneyland Paris for our birthdays! We leave on a saturday and come back the following monday. we're taking a direct eurostar train from waterloo and i so cannot wait.
i think that MC will really enjoy it and as a big time disney geek, i KNOW i'll enjoy it. A will enjoy it too - he's into disney too, since having met me. I mean the man owns his own set of mouse ears. i'm sooo excited!
  
last night we went to the BBC Family Prom in the Park which was 'Disney's Enchanted Evening'... we had an excellent time, although it rained from the minute the concert started until the moment it ended. 45,000 people in Hyde Park, all under umbrellas and bundled up warm. we saw very little but enjoyed it very much. picture above was taken before it started while we were enjoying our picnic of summer food - i wish we'd had heartier fare! the second picture is mc taking a spin around the house in her princess crown. and lastly is the smallest executive! (we had lunch with daddy on our day off on friday)
this is so MC
what a good night.. cheeseburgers snuck into the cinema.. a big bucket o'coke all to myself and a pretty cheesey, yet entertaining tom hanks movie. (obviously, we opted for the terminal) it was okay. there's something about tom hanks that i find attractive, yet i'm not attracted to him. it's like - repulsive attraction. go figure.
this weekend we're going to the BBC family prom in the park. the theme is disney's enchanted evening. sounds very promising and i'm very much looking forward to it. a friend of ours and her tot are coming into town to stay with us this weekend. woohoo - mc's first sleepover!
i'm off this friday for a flex day. so today is technically my thursday. i love four day weeks! mc and i are going to have lunch with daddy and then hopefully we can fill our afternoon with toddler friendly fun and excitement. i'm very much looking forward to having time with her. lately i've really been in the dumps about how little i get to see her. three and a half hours a day isn't enough, really. the perils of being a working mother.
my good friend A and i are going out tonight... just two girls about town. husbands on toddler bedtime duty! woohoohoo! we're going to the movies. either stage beauty or the terminal. any opinions on either?
oh my gosh.
i've found this really really cool application - it will scan all your favo blogs and let you know what's been updated. sorta looks like a messaging program. it's fabulous. check out Jager.
because i'm not always hearts and flowers.. i've started a tiny little corner of the site for rants and raves, not always appropriate and rated G, so to speak. if you'd like to gain access to the inner b*tch sanctum, email me and we'll see. not to be a snob - but some thoughts of mine have to be protected for their own good. considering i'm in the middle of a nasty case of PMT most of my current thoughts need witness protection!
you wouldn't want the situations i'm complaining about to find me and beat me up, would you?
if you are denied access, please don't be offended or assume i'm on a bender about you.. it could just be that we're too close for comfortable access.
i can't help it!
ha - have a look at this. looks like a normal property for sale, eh? check out photo number three!
aw - man.. someone beat me to it! bacon scented candles! make sure you also check out the bacon tee's and car air fresheners! as a side note - ever since our trip up north i can't stop craving bacon! is really weird.
i have six (6) gmail invites if anyone would like one.. gmail is fantastic and i highly recommend it. and i'm tired of seeing 'invite a friend to gmail' at the top of my screen. interested please email edunne(at)gmail(dot)com.
 
thought i'd post more MC pictures to get the weekend started on the right note. i'm not sure of our weekend plans - but they very well may contain an expedition to ikea for a desk. i'm doing so much work at the moment i need room to spread out and work properly. i'd like to tell myself that my new imac needs a place to live - but that would be untrue. however, we do have a 'new to us' imac that needs a desk.
i think i have PMS (PMT if you're in the uk) cos suddenly everything seems grumpy. hopefully a few minutes in MC's company this evening will change that. :)
that flower i told you about yesterday... well it started to bloom around 5pm yesterday. was i watching? uh. no. check out the webcam (quickly because it only blooms for a very short time) click here and get in touch with your inner geek.
if anyone ever invites you to eat a bag of walker's roast beef and yorkshire pudding crisps for breakfast... don't do it. (or make sure to have tums handy as i do not!) interesting taste sensation though!
new heights of nerdom..
so.. a few weeks ago i read a news story about the largest flowering plant, like ever. and it so happens that it's about to bloom. it's called a titan aram or 'the corpse flower' (because it smells like .. erm a corpse (nice) when in bloom). it's located at cambridge university and get this - the flower is like 5 feet high!
so here, my friends, is the link to the webcam they've got on it so we, the interested, can watch it's progress. ahh.. science in action! do you know i actually check on it every few hours just to see what's going on? who's a loser? to be fair, it does grow 10cm per day so it's slightly better than watching paint dry.
nothing much to report.. just getting back into the swing of things from the long holiday weekend. kate left today - so it will be an adjustment getting used to having our house to ourselves again. she's an excellent houseguest and i wish her a safe journey home to the states.
booked our tickets home to atlanta for december. i can not believe how much they cost. oh and did you see apple has redone the iMac? i think it's super swell and i only bring it up because for what i've just shucked out in airfare, i could have a new imac. i hate that airfare is so expensive and it's one of the worst things about living overseas. oh well. at least travelling with mc shouldn't be as traumatic as it has been in the past... hopefully she'll have more of an attention span and we'll get a few minutes break from constant seating bouncing.
anyway - off to finish wednesday.
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