List 4: wildlife, Corpse Flower Mania, rum, Kokomo, Kim Jong Il

Good week. Nothing horribly exciting, but just generally good. Hope yours was too! Enjoy the list, and feel free to comment if you have anything to say.

top 20

1. the wildlife in my backyard–skunks, possums, squirrels, kittens…we’ve got it all, and you can see a sample in this video
2. Corpse Flower Mania in Houston
3. Booking a cruise to celebrate our 10th anniversary–we depart from Galveston October 31!
4. my sister Kellie, who ambitiously made a volcano cake for her son’s fifth birthday
5. The Plants vs. Zombies app
6. threatening storms that break up quickly
7. Salt (the movie with Angelina Jolie that we saw on Friday night)
8. salt (the seasoning that I put on everything)
9. the smell of fresh ginger
10. the clever producers who pick the NPR bumper songs–after a story on digging up corpses they played the theme from HBO’s Six Feet Under
11. since we’re talking about NPR, the talk show Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, Story Corps, and the late, great Daniel Shorr, who passed away on Friday at age 93
12. rum
13. PhotoShop. That program is a amazing.
14. lightning
15. more than 1700 people signing up to be fans of La Porte By the Bay on Facebook
16. catching up with old friends
17. Rachel Maddow
18. Voice Control on the iPhone. I discovered it by accident, and it is amazing.
19. The San Jacinto Monument in La Porte–it commemorates a battle we actually won, but everyone seems completely obsessed with the Alamo instead. Baffling.
20. Coke floats

bottom 10

1. That Kokomo song by the Beach Boys. It gets stuck in my head for days. Here’s the Muppets version for your own agony:
2. noxious weeds
3. the desire for gaining fulfillment with a PhD vs. the actual fulfillment of sitting on my couch watching television every night
4. accounting
5. my Blackjack HD app that keeps crashing just as I’m about to bet
6. breaking a nail–it’s really annoying
7. crazy North Korean dictators
8. people who are cruel to animals
9. My hair. It never does what I want it to do.
10. getting a dental appointment–SEPTEMBER is the earliest I can get in

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List 3: Buble again, Jaxon, Dyson, Cruel Shoes, Stifling heat

Ok, first of all I want to apologize for the fonts from last week. I told you this was a new blog, and I’m trying different things out. Eventually I’ll get it right, and hopefully you’ll keep reading until then. Second, sorry for Michael Buble at the top of the top 20 again. The concert was awesome and I just can’t let it go. But next week I promise to leave him off the list so we can give someone else a chance. Finally, Happy Birthday Jaxon! I can’t believe my oldest nephew is already five! Time goes way too fast. Because your mother is my sister I know she’ll understand why I had to put you second on the list.

This was a great week–I was busy, busy busy at work and it ended with that fantastic concert. The weekend has been blissfully uneventful, and Jamey and I made the BEST homemade pizza we’ve ever eaten. Ridiculous deliciousness. I hope your week was equally wonderful, and I wish you a great week ahead.

Cheers!

top 20

1. Michael Buble in concert. Easily one of the best concerts I’ve seen, and not (just) because he’s so cute. He really is an amazing performer who absolutely loves what he does for a living and appreciates the audiences that allow him to do it. Jamey is really a fantastic husband for taking me to the concert un-bidden, and enjoying it with me.
2. My nephew Jaxon, who turns FIVE this weekend. He’s given a lot of joy to a lot of people, but most of of all to his parents.
3. homemade pizza
4. James Dyson, the guy who makes those amazing vacuum cleaners and now these fabulous air multipliers
5. Gulf oil spill contained–let’s hope it lasts
6. Scottish accents
7. Scott Simon
8. The iPad. I seriously cause I riot whenever I take it to a meeting because everyone wants to play with it.
9. the new Jaguar XK
10. The band Naturally 7. They opened for Buble and they were AWESOME.
11. the Hurricane HD app
12. having lunch with the South Side Ladies (thank you, Gwen and Karen and Centerpoint Energy)
13. planning a cruise
14. solar power
15. Jessica Howard dresses
16. Shark Week on Discovery (it doesn’t start until August 1, but I adore the advertisements)
17. HMNS’s promotion of Corpse Flower Lois. Between the web cam, the Twitter Feed, and the interaction with TUT’s Little Shop of Horrors it’s been a lesson in marketing brilliance.
18. the fact that possums eat snakes
19. my Kitchen Aid Mixer
20. My sister Jackie, who decided that we should make a red mojito and name it “The Mosquito.” She should have been a bar tender.

bottom 10

1. the price of vanity (cruel, cruel 4″ heels)
2. biting my tongue
3. my stomach’s reaction to onions
4. rude people
5. walking barefoot on my dirty kitchen floor
6. credit card debt
7. willful ignorance
8. the Yahoo search engine commercial with the Lionel Ritchie soundtrack
9. doing the dishes (why can’t they just do themselves?)
10. stifling heat

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List 2: Michael Buble, Spy Swaps, All American Rejects, the actual eclipse

This was such a nice week! We had a ball at Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge on Monday (see the video in the bottom 10 for the one bad part of it), enjoyed dinner and a movie on Thursday, and went to see the Astros play last night, then came home and had some nice refreshing mojitos. The gulf oil spill continues, as do mosquitoes, mornings, and ridiculous download speeds. I have tons to look forward to this week. At the top of my list (every list) is the upcoming concert by Michael Buble–can’t wait to give you the highlights next week!

Until then, enjoy this week’s list!

top 20

1. the fact that I have tickets to this Friday’s Michael Buble concert
2. Jamey, for buying said tickets for my birthday (a) three months before my birthday and (b) two months before I knew they were on sale
3. fireworks
4. National Geographic’s Photo of the Day
5. The song “Gives You Hell” by the All American Rejects. It’s remarkably satisfying.
6. chicken tacos
7. dinner and a movie with Jamey last Friday
8. the nail polish color “Dusk Over Cairo” (both the name and the actual color)
9. spy swapping
10. Google Earth
11. rainy mornings
12. new shoes
13. Mark Ruffalo
14. friendly alligators at the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge (which will not be friendly much more if the idiots in the bottom 10 keep in up…)
15. watching live Major League Baseball on a Saturday night (Astros 4, Cardinals 1)
16. the Wave
17. Joel Stein’s Time Magazine column this week–hilarious
18. mint + lime + rum
19. the cat hair repellant properties of leather couches
20. watching the solar eclipse online (the actual eclipse, not the movie)

bottom 10

1. oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill hitting Texas beaches (I’m afraid the Spill will make the bottom 10 in one form or another for a while). You can still help clean up the mess here, here, and here.
2. the guy in this video who clearly has a death wish (this was during an otherwise beautiful visit to Brazoria last week)
3. mosquitoes
4. an empty calendar
5. Comcast download speeds
6. going to work in the morning while Jamey has Fridays off in the summer
7. Mornings in general. Except for the beautiful sunrise part, which I usually sleep through.
8. traffic
9. long concession lines for substandard food
10. missing the Ford Reunion in Utah next weekend even though it’s because I’m going to see Michael Buble (see Top 20 #1)

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List 1: USA, Dvorak, iPhone, Gulf Spill, Conspiracy Theorists

NOTE: This is my first post to this blog, and it may be a while before  I completely know what I’m doing with it. So please be patient as I figure it out, and enjoy this week’s top 20/bottom 1o.

Cheers!

top 20

1. The good old US of A. I love it that I live in a country where both I and the person in front of my on the freeway with the “I Heart My Guns” window sticker can live in relative peace and harmony.
2. Listening to Dvorak under the moonlight at the Miller Outdoor Theater with Jamey last weekend
3. The new iPhone. I realize this is trite, trendy and predictable but it can’t be helped. It’s pretty awesome.
4. Dawn liquid detergent. It does wonders for oil-soaked ducks and pelicans.
5. Elizabeth Peters’ Vicki Bliss series. I only have two books left and I’ll be so bummed when it’s over.
6. Finally figuring how to get rid of those damn j’s in Outlook, thanks to this post that Chris Pirillo (@ChrisPirillo) tweeted last week
7. The Discovery Channel (the world IS just awesome!)
8. Sleeping in. Or just sleeping, for that matter. I’m a bit of an insomniac.
9. Hot green chile enchiladas and cold margaritas
10. Bank of America–I just switched to them
11. This blog by a Cisco Intern claiming to be The Most Interesting Intern in the World (thank you, @matthewworkman, for posting it on Twitter)
12. Our beta fish, Rupert
13. The pharmacy at Target. They rock.
14. The App Store on the iPhone and iPad. I shop there for hours.
15. Our new couch.
16. Kicking our Parks & Recreation Director’s ass in Scrabble at last week’s City Council meeting
17. Alec G. Dryer, the CEO at the Houston Port Authority. He spoke at the BAHEP membership meeting last week and he was great.
18. Baby kittens
19. Twilight kayaking on Armand Bayou
20. Words with Friends

bottom 10

1. The gulf oil spill–you can help clean up the mess here, here,  here or here.
2. Working on the Fourth of July
3. Passing the buck
4. Conspiracy theories
5. Failed baking experiments
6. The fact that the weekends fly by so much more quickly than weekdays
7. Summer re-runs
8. Summer hair frizz
9. Being clumsy
10. Wells Fargo–their fees were too steep for me

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