Video: $28.3 million for a chair? Video

I happen to like it.  Not sure why The Today Show hosts  find it so unappealing, but I’d take it.   Maybe not for $28.3 million, but I do like it.

Today is my best friend’s birthday.

Misty and I have been friends for ten years, and our friendship began when she realized I was the inside source for free concert tickets. One Ozzfest together and that was it. We knew we could be friends for a lifetime.

We have a shared sense of humor. The kind where we are on the floor in tears from laughing so hard, and the kind that leaves others rolling their eyes, completely puzzled, when asked to share what the laughter was about.

Before kids, we spent every day at work together and a couple of nights a week drinking together, either at pool league or some show at the amphitheater. After kids, we spent our time finding activities to keep the kids busy and us sane. And now that the kids are older, we are able to once again cultivate our shared love for alcohol, dive bars and Golden Tee.

Thankfully you love the sun as much as I do, and are willing to spend every day possible at the pool or beach…no matter how rough we feel on a Saturday morning. I can always count on you dragging your ass to the water.

You put up with my strong opinions and sarcasm, and thankfully you are smart enough to get me. Really get me. I don’t befriend just anyone and am very picky in determining who I consider friend worthy. You are at the top of my list.

You are the friend that some people can only dream of finding. While laughter is the initial attraction in enjoying or appreciating a person, it is the qualities you possess that make a friendship enduring.  You have the world’s biggest heart. You have a love for family and friends that is as big as the world.  You are true to yourself and those who  love you.  You are always there.  I can rely on you for anything, at anytime, and anyplace. Not only do I love you, but my three kids and my husband all love and consider you family. We would be lost without you in our lives. Honestly.

Love you, Misty. Have a very happy birthday, and the best year you can have. You deserve it.

(Be ready tonight. Adam has an agenda, and it’s to carry you out of the bar. And you know how he is when he’s determined.)

Now go say Happy Birthday to her!

Ethan is a pretty good kid in school.  He tries really hard not to talk out of turn or during insturction time.  It’s important to him that he not get a “mark” during the school day.  Some days on our way home from school I’ll ask him if he got marked, and I usually get a  no.  Yesterday I asked, and this was the conversation:

Me:  Di d you get marked today?

Ethan:  Yes, but it wasn’t my fault. 

Me:  Really?  How’s that?

Ethan:  Well, Landon yelled out “Stop” for no reason, and Mrs. Rosemond gave me a mark.

Me:  So you didn’t say anything or do anything for this?  Did Landon get marked since he was the one who yelled?

Ethan:  No, he didn’t.  I don’t know why she marked me.  I didn’t do anything.

Me:  Are you sure?  I can’t imagine she’d just mark you for no reason.

Ethan:  Me either.  I was just being my usual happy self.

By usual happy self, I’m guessing he was talking up a storm since that’s the thing that makes him happiest.

He was considered a “sports legend” in our area, but I knew him as the guy who always greeted me with a hug, always bought me a drink and always shared a slow dance with me.

Today I…

made and ate the best quesadilla.

bought Ethan two new fish for his aquarium.

got a phone call telling me that someone I very much admired passed away.

got a flat tire, called Adam to come home and change it, thought it needed a plug, but ended up with a new $200 tire. Blech!

watched Fashion Police for the second time.

made Adam pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner.

shivered whenever I walked outside.

thought about sitting by the pool.

considered a new color scheme for my downstairs.

wished for warm weather.

said “I love you” more than a few times.

realized how lucky I am.

Every so often I hear about a movie months before its release date and from that point on anxiously await its arrival. This time it is Taking Woodstock.

“Taking Woodstock” is based on the autobiography Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life by Eliot Tiber and Tom Monte. The film, based upon the book of the same name, follows the true life story of Elliot Tiber, (Demetri Martin), an aspiring Greenwich Village interior designer whose parents owned a small motel in Upstate New York and at the time held the only musical festival permit in the entire town of Bethel, New York. Tiber offered both the motel and the permit to the Woodstock Festival’s organizers.

The film also focuses on Tiber’s life as a closeted gay man hiding his sexual orientation from his family, and his self-discovery following the Stonewall Riots.

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when gays and lesbians fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted homosexuals, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.

Not only does the story interest me, but it’s got a phenomenal cast:

Demetri Martin (he’s got a new show on Comedy Central) as Elliot Tiber, who volunteered his family’s motel to be the home base for Woodstock concert organizers which would take place on a nearby farm
Imelda Staunton as Tiber’s mother
Henry Goodman as Tiber’s father
Liev Schreiber as a transvestite named Vilma
Jonathan Groff as Woodstock organizer Michael Lang
Emile Hirsch as a recently returned Vietnam vet
Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan as a hippie couple attending the concert
Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a closeted married man having an affair with Tiber
Eugene Levy as Max Yasgur, who owns the nearby farm
Mamie Gummer as Lang’s assistant
Dan Fogler as a local theater troupe head
Kevin Chamberlin as a local banker foreclosing on Elliot’s family’s motel
Damian Kulash as a long-haired folk singer
Tim LeHockey as Johnny Bandana

Now all I have to do is wait for August 14.

I have been watching all things Academy Award since E! started their countdown show at 2:00 this afternoon.  I love watching the red carpet and refuse to stop and blog during the actual awards, so this is it for tonight.

Good luck to all the great actors and actresses who recieved nominations, and to any others who were nominated in some capacity for the films they were involved in.

Along with Tae Kwon Do, Ethan is taking a cooking class one afternoon a week. It’s been really good for him because he’s been testing his palette with lots of new recipes. This is especially amazing for me because he’s an incredibly picky eater. I think I’ll start letting him cook more at home now that I realize how much fun cooking is for him, and how much more adventurous it has helped him to become.

Ethan is taking a martial arts enrichment class every Thursday afternoon for the next few weeks, and a cooking class each Friday.  The enrichment classes are school sponsored and are put on by the school PTA.  I volunteered to assist in the Tae Kwon Do class.  They needed someone there to help out with the dismissing the kids, walking them to the water fountain and other various bullshit. 

The martial arts program is put on by a local Tae Kwon Do school, and of course, Master Lee is the instructor.  Will someone please tell me why the instructor at every fucking Tae Kwon Do school is called Master Lee?  Seriously, I don’t care what part of the country you’re from, if you walk into a Tae Kwon Do studio, the guy says “Hello, I am Master Lee.”  What the fuck?  But the fact that Master Lee is there isn’t the bad part of the this gig, it’s that the PTA president’s douchebag of a husband is there to help out.  Why is he helping out?  Because they have two kids, one in first grade and one in second grade, who are three times a week students of Master Lee.  So, of course this makes Douche an expert based on absorbtion of watching his kids.  I first realized that Douche was a Douche during the Christmas Dinner with Santa back in December.  How you ask?  Well, because he had no problem yelling at his stepdaughter in front of me and Misty when we were purchasing holiday items from her at the school store.  Needless and unnecessary yelling.  He was just being an uptight cocksucker if you want my honest opinion. I truly think Mr. Whitebread Douche is a little racist and resents the fact that his wife had a biracial child with another man before he met her.  I truly believe this because at everyevent this ”tucked in Polo shirt with a belt, khaki pants, top sider wearing” whiter than white family pushes this girl to the back of the group.  I’ve seen it, and I honestly believe it’s the case.  I also believe that this guy was such a douche that his wife was probably the first piece of trim he ever hopped on. 

So, the story goes that I spend and hour and fifteen minutes watching this guy pretend to perform martial arts maneuvers, all the time saying “Yes Sir, Master Lee” and making horrid grunting noises.  Of course, now I know what he sounds like when he spills the juice into his wife.  I seriously want to vomit when I’m in there.  Not only does he physically disgust me, but he also says things really annoying things that make me want to choke him.  I have a difficult time keeping my feelings off my face.  I hope I can survive the next few weeks.

This guy along with another episode yesterday, make me question what the hell was I thinking when I agreed to help out.   Most of the kids in this class are really sweet and good listeners, but there’s this one kid who is one of those always in your face kind of kids.   Touching, grabbing, talking right IN  your ear.   Basically,   he’s annoying and he’s a brat.   And it’s not just during the Tae Kwon Do, it’s during classroom time.   He’s been in Ethan’s class since Kindergarten, so I know him.   He just hasn’t matured an ounce since he was five years old.  He is eight now.   He is also the son of our wonderful room mother.  I’m not sure I’ve mentioned before what a mental giant she is, but as the co-room mother, I know firsthand.  I also think she volunteered to be lead room mother to help ease the burden on the teacher of having her kid in the class, particularly since she can never make it to any of the events.   Yesterday he was a complete annoyance, just all over touching other kids and not listening.   I must have moved him six times in 30 minutes.   Near the end of the class I see his mouth completely on another boy’s ear and yelling.   I’m getting ready to move him again, and I notice the boy tell him something. Most likely “don’t yell in my ear” and then he turns his back on Alex.   My guess is he just wants to get away, but before I go over there I look and see Alex chomp down into the back of this kid’s shoulder.   I mean chomp.   I hear the kid yell and see him rubbing his shoulder.   I run over and confront Alex who just clams up.   Of course I explain to him that I will be telling his mother since biting is TOTALLY unacceptable for an 8 year old.   TOTALLY!   I also do dismissal, and check IDs as parents pick up kids.   Alex’s father picked him up, and I’ve never met him.   I explain to the father that Alex bit another child, and the father asks “did you bite someone?”   Alex responds with a “he was annoying me for no reason at all.”   And the dumbass father (no surprise room mother and this guy are married) says to his son, “what are you supposed to do when someone is bothering you?   You’re supposed to go tell the teacher.”   At this point, I just looked at the father and rolled my eyes.   Not once did he ask me to explain what was going on.   Classic example of “it’s not my kid’s fault.”   I wanted to scream.   If it were up to me, Alex   would not return to TKD.   These classes are a bonus and if you can’t behave, then you don’t come.   Anyway, I was soooooo annoyed by it all.   Ethan has told me time and time again that Alex gets in trouble almost daily for touching, hitting, and yelling at the other kids. It’s just not fair to the kids who are behaving and controlling themselves.   And these are second graders!   Biting, especially, should never take place between 7 and 8 year olds.

Needless to say, Tae Kwon Do totally annoyed me yesterday.  Why didn’t they ask me to help out in the cooking class for gosh sakes?

This morning I took out a pack of chicken breast to defrost, then made the mistake of calling Adam and asking him what he wanted for dinner. His answer? Chicken Parmesan. This would have been all well and good on a normal day, but Ethan had martial arts class after school today, then we stopped by the pet store to get a couple of new fish, and by the time dinner came out of the over it was almomst 7:00. I personally like to have dinner cooked and everything cleaned up by 6:00. One good thing came out of it though, we definitely have leftovers for tomorrow night.