St. Louis Blues

This weekend I had the great pleasure of spending a day in the STL with my bf. After a horribly cloudy and drizzly Friday, Saturday decided to cooperate, and we were able to spend a sunny fall day at the zoo and botanical garden. We then ate a scrumptious Italian dinner and made our way to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert. The anticipated crowd pleaser was also my favorite--Tchaikovsky's fourth symphony. Written at a turbulent time in the composer's life, it is more forceful than one usually associates with Tchaikovsky, almost to the point of violent at times. However, it is not all somber and desolate. The playfully giddy scherzo of the third movement serves as prime example with the strings playing pizzicato the entire movement! Do give it a listen if you are unfamiliar with the work!

Ed and I stayed in a three-star hotel for only $50 (normally $189) due to Priceline. Thank you William Shatner! I drove Eddy back to Columbia in time to enjoy about two hours at home before turning around and driving BACK to STL to meet my brother and his wife for dinner. They were passing through on their way to IL from OK. Silly circumstances and a bit of poor planning on my part resulted in me spending six hours on I-70. It was all worth it though.

The most random tidbit from the day was passing a purple PT Cruiser with BRIGHT yellow hubcaps on the way home from STL and then passing the SAME car on my way back this evening! There is no accounting for poor taste or apparently why I kept running into this horrendous vehicle today!

Blogging from my new 37-inch monitor

Ed has a Netflix account where he can watch movies online. Not content to watch a movie on my normal monitor, he convinced me to bring my 37-inch flatscreen TV upstairs for our cinematographic experience! Now, I bring you this blog post in HUGE HD!

There have been a rash of crazy/interesting experiences at work lately. Not too long ago, a car crash on I-70 resulted in a fire that burned the victim so badly it took days to identify her from dental records. Shortly thereafter, a woman came into my store admittedly with a "grim proposal" to clean her mother's jewelry. She had been involved in a car wreck where there was a fire. I took the charred jewelry and knew that the crusted ash on it most likely was CREMATED GRANDMA! Ugh!

Our store participated in a downtown fashion show at which we gave out coupons in the gift bags every attendee received. This coupon had dollar amounts off of certain price pointed items followed by a version of the store's slogan, "come get your own little blue box!" (Normally, "every woman deserves the little blue box.") I had one lady come in and say "I'm here for my little blue box!" Thinking on my feet I responded "Great! What do you want in it?" "That's funny," she laughed. "No, I'm just here for the free box." Ummmmm, are you serious, I thought. I then had to EXPLAIN to here that it was a coupon to BUY something. She looked at some inexpensive charms ($15-$18), and then told me she needed to wait to buy something until she had a job. Wow...

You never know what you're going to get when you work with the public.

The Nobel Farce Prize

Prestigious past winners of this prize including terrorist Yasser Arafat, foreign policy buffoon Jimmy Carter, and crook Kofi Annan, are now joined by the illustrious Al Gore. Al certainly deserves this prize over the Polish woman nominated, because she merely risked her own life to forge documents and go into concentration camps where she saved some 2500 Jewish children from certain death. Al, on the other hand, made a hyper-exaggerated fear-mongering movie that is not based in reality and now flies around not affecting any change, but TALKING about the Earth warming by .7 degrees in his older model private jet that has one of the WORST fuel efficiencies and carbon outputs of anything in the skies. The high today will reach 66 degrees here, but it SHOULD be only 65.3 degrees. Clearly it is the .7 degrees that is causing sectarian violence in Iraq, Kim Jong Il's nuclear ambition, and the continuance of Israeli-Palistinian conflict. Way to go Al!!

By the way, previous nominees for the Nobel Farce Prize include Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.

The Fall

What a gorgeous autumnal night! So crisp and cool... Die Sterne sind sehr schoen! And I got to see my baby! Definitely my favorite time of year.

October

October has to be one of the greatest months! Pumpkins (and therefore pumpkin pie, cake, pancakes, etc), fall breezes, gearing up for Halloween, and of course, post-season baseball! It's been a wild ride in the NL this year, and my Cubbies took the division. I'm not sure of their chances in the play-offs, but I'm just excited for some extra baseball featuring my favorite team.

Only 30 days to put together the perfect costume! Ed and I have a little tradition of amazing costumes running. See the pics below if you're in need of a reminder: