First the movie - Cloverfield (which has been sitting near my TV from Netflix for forever and a day). Actually, not the worst movie I've ever seen (but then again, that's quite a hill to climb). Pretty entertaining, especially if you're doing something else while it's on.

Now, sewing - I finished Tatum's Christmas dress (I know, almost a month in advance - go me!) I tried it on her before I had the finishing touches on it - I finished the trim tonight.

( Cut for pictures of the awesome dress, if I do say so myself )

Hoping to get a lot more done this weekend, too.

I had a nice, relaxing, productive weekend planned.

Then, when I got home, there was a package at the door. From Amazon.

I'd pre-ordered a book, and apparently it's been released. So now the new Jill Kismet book is sitting on my nightstand, taunting me to read it RIGHT NOW.

Except the CDO in me will insist that I finish the book I've been currently poking at, first.

It's sitting there like a big ol' shot of tequila - you KNOW it's a bad idea, and that you'll seriously regret it when all is said and done. But boy do you want to.

It turns out that I have an impressive number of photos of Jer flipping me off (all, or almost all, from the bar build). I have enough of these that I could make a calendar from them - hell, I could make several 18 month calendars, I think. Without repeating a picture.

So, who wants a "Jer is Flipping Me Off ALL YEAR" calendar? I'll find out how much they will be.

Jer is of course getting one for Xmas. But hey, he might want to buy them to give to his co-workers.

Saturday - good lord, what did we do Saturday? Ran some errands, lunch, spent an hour putting together the first part of a Lego kit (details and pic below) then did the transposed Pizza & a Movie night, moved due to karate graduations.

Sunday was cleaning up the back yard - leaves, etc. After lunch we (read I) put together the rest of the Lego kit, the kids and I played, and then I started a dress for Tatum to wear for our family pictures this week and for Xmas (pic coming as soon as I finish it - it's almost done).

Today - grocery shopping, then hope. Kids chilled out while I cleaned the kitchen, then we made cookies. Then I helped the kids play a video game for a while on the Wii. Then some laundry. Now the kids are getting ready for bed, and I'm going to chill, mostly because I'm too tired to clean.

Good think I'm on vacation. I'm exhausted.



( Speed Racer Grand Prix Lego Kit, below the cut )

Both kids graduated belts, big time last night. For Tate it was her first belt graduation. For Aidan he went from the white series to full orange belt last night.



( More pics below the cut )

I believe I've said something about this before, but just in case... a few months ago I was asked to be the Managing Director for the Chicago chapter of Girls in Tech.

We'll be launching the chapter on December 1st, and I would love as many of you that are able to make it to come. The event will be from 6-8:30pm at 200 S. Wacker Drive. The event is open to everyone - in other words, guys, you can show up as well.


In addition to asking folks to be there, I'm also requesting your help - I would really appreciate it if folks would pass this information along to others that might be interested. Here's the Eventbrite page: http://chicagogirlsintech.eventbrite.com/

Thanks!

Oddly Specific

Here's a sample...




(BTW for the geeks - the new site is hosted on Azure)

For those interested, here are my panels on Saturday:

Saturday 12:00 noon-1:00 p.m.

Lilac C: Lady Adventurers
Although the Victorian ideal of women was frail and helpless, some women broke the mold and
went off exploring just like the men. Women like Gertrude Bell, who played a significant
role in the development of the modern Middle East. How did they do it? Join our panelists
and find out.
L. Dombrowski, C. Gerrib, R. Karp, D. Kuczwara

Saturday 2:00-3:00 p.m.

Lilac A: Beyond the Con
Chicago is full of non-con activities: dining, tourism, kids' stuff.&mbsp; Our panelists
tell you their favourites.
D. Kuczwara, B. Miskelley, D. Smith, M. Lyn-Waitsman, L. Zeldes

I was very tired tonight after cleaning the yard with the kids (still some work to do there, but at least a good chunk of it is done) - so I thought I'd find something braindead to watch after the kids went to bed while I finished the laundry. So, when we ran up to get yard waste stickers, I stopped by Redbox and got GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

It was a 117 minutes special effects orgy, with a thin predictable plot.

It was awesome.

Saw this the other day - though that my genealogy geek friends might have an interest in it.

http://port25.technet.com/archive/2008/05/27/featured-project-family-show-on-codeplex.aspx

A description from the project site:

"For a hobby that revolves around dead people, genealogy is remarkably popular: it's the fastest growing scene in North America. And a perfect study for our first Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) reference application.

Our designers employed every trick in the WPF book– styles, resources, templates, data binding, animation, transforms– to present an innovative visualization of the classic family tree, freeing our developers to concentrate on behind-the-scenes features like XPS, Windows Vista "light up", and ClickOnce for WPF."

This is an Open Source project and is covered under the Microsoft Public License.

(For those of you unfamiliar, CodePlex is the Open Source project community from Microsoft, and Port 25 is the Open Source Community site from Microsoft)

Article title claims they are drunk, but all I know is this: if you put daddy_guido, jer_ (hell, throw rbradakis and blur01) and me all into ewok suits - with masks that TOTALLY COVER OUR FACES SO NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW WHO WE ARE - and then put us on live television... well, I'm quite certain we'd do pretty much what these guy do. Test the limits to see how far we can go before they throw us off the show...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/akdobbins/drunk-ewoks-storm-the-today-show

The announcer who mistook Rev Jesse Jackson for Rev Al Sharpton could only be made funnier by... KEYBOARD CAT!

Some of you have heard my tales of woe dealing with the public school system, which I won't repeat here right now. Let's just say that they came from public school being unwilling to believe me about how advanced Aidan was, and being totally unprepared to deal with a kid this smart.

I was just emptying his bag out, and found his reading assessment results. They test in the fall, winter and spring, and for 1st grade the measure is how many words they can correctly read in a minute.

They identify the target as 50% - for the fall, that is 12 words.

75th percentile is 29 words.

90th percentile is 64 words.

Aidan read 85.

I believe my son has made my point to the school for me.

The kids were with me this weekend, so we did as much Halloween as we could. Lombard had a festival downtown for the first time - the Lombard Spooktacular. That gave me the chance to dress the kids up in their costumes and trick or treat with them at the stores, and while both kids got lots of complements on their costumes, we kept getting stopped so people could look at Aidan's (pics below and below the cut). Today was pumpkin painting/carving (kids painted, I carved - those pics below the cut as well)...



( Twas the weekend before, um, Halloween... )

The Princesses get an attitude:

http://jeftoonportfolio.blogspot.com/2009/02/twisted-princess.html

I think this is my favorite:

Submitted with comment (well, other than this)

I'm scheduled to be doing the Weasel Queen performance on Friday night, and in addition to that, according to the General Schedule on the Windycon site, I'm on two panels.

Both of them are at noon on Saturday.

Late last week I completed Mr Darcy, Vampyre, which was book 24 of the 26 I was going to read this year.

My review: Eh. Probably not worth spending your time on. It took itself way more seriously than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and it felt very much like the author (who has written other books extending the stories of Darcy and Elizabeth) really wanted to write another retelling and also wanted to jump on the classic-novel-as-horror-genre-retelling bandwagon. It didn't even have the pathetic tension of a bad romance novel.

...and tortures! Nothing like seeing your baby cuddled up with one of the Old Ones...




http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=322351.msg3718538#msg3718538

Kinda makes me wish I could crochet.