I'm Alive

...and the world shines for me, today.

(That one's for you, Karla May, and all the other secret - hell, or proud - Xanadu fans out there. You know who you are.)

The stomach flu has apparently subsided for real. That was one bitch of a nasty virus, I'll tell you. Sure, I expect to get something for a day or two every six months or so - I'm kinda prone to getting the gastrointestinal bugs - but I've never had one last for five days before.

I'm with everybody on the weight loss, but it really often doesn't translate for me, because after I get one of these horrible illnesses, my body is so weak and hungry afterwards that I eat everything I can get my effing hands on. I wasn't horrible today, but after making some snow-day promises that a broken Easy-Bake Oven won't keep, I was forced into baking a batch of Snickerdoodles. (This recipe rocks, people, in case YOU TOO are needing to kill some time with your children tomorrow.)

Thanks for the well-wishes, though. I'm mostly back.
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In other news, we are having the
Ice!
Storm!
2007!
Austin news media frenzy!!!

The Man went to work today, and I sent him on a tiny errand to the H.E.B. on his way home. I think it took him over an hour to grab like 10 things. He said it was like people were expecting a hurricane to hit. All the real Quaker Oatmeal? Gone. Along with the bottled water.

Come. On. People. Ice happens. You say, "Hey, there's ice on the road, stay the hell in your homes unless you REALLY really have to get out, and then at least you'll be the only ones on the roads." Pretty much end of story.*

*Actually, I know that it's not the end of the story down here. I don't understand people in Austin having no insulation in their homes, and not having weatherproofed pipes, that sort of thing. There's always some really bad shit that happens to people and houses down here during one of these babies. Plus people try to DRIVE IN IT ALL THE TIME.
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We just finished the minor closet renovations to the old part of the house (the 1949 part; the closets therein suggesting that all post-war housewives in Austin, TX had only three outfits). As OG and YG have seriously reached a crisis stage in terms of pre-going-to-bed fighting, it has become increasingly necessary to give OG her own room, and a slightly upgraded closet was really needed in order to get that done. So, we went from this:
to this:

We didn't add on to them, we just had a guy cut a hole in the wall to install mirrored bypass doors, and then install some Container Store shelving. (And, we did it in the other old bedroom, too.) It probably doesn't look like much, but it adds tons to the flexibility of these bedrooms. They're all new-smelling, too, which makes me feel somehow rich.

OG is thrilled about the room situation, not least because she can now demand imperiously of her younger sister to GET OUT OF HER ROOM RIGHT NOW.
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So, as I'm tributing Karla May tonight, her boy Justin Timberlake was pretty awesome on SNL a couple of weeks ago. In fact, he's been by far the best thing that's been on there all season. Perhaps I need to pay more attention to this young man.

I was desperately trying to post the video for "Dick in a Box" (his song with Andy Samberg) from YouTube, but I just cannot get it to work. I wonder if it's because I changed to the new Blogger. I changed my settings on YouTube to match the new Blogger, but it still didn't work. Does anyone have any knowledge about this?

So, anyway, if you haven't seen it, go to YouTube and search for "Dick in a Box." (And, its unrelated but still really funny YouTube followup, "Box in a Box.")
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Whew. Nice to be horizontal again. (I know, that is what my prom date said, you are so immature.)