ah yes. the pictures finally found their way off my camera. and since i can’t find my EIN and finish the paperwork that i need to finish today, i’m doing this instead. pretty pictures of the night sky going kaboom. enjoy.

I think it worked out okay for me to go there. I went there twice this week. I tried their website with no luck. I checked the nutritional guides in the store and got nothing more than what each of the boosts provide… so I was afraid of the boosts because they’re all powdery and the chocolatey stuff because I couldn’t remember if I could have whey (I can). Oh, and I was afraid of all the blenders because of the boosts and the whey and the wheatgrass that people add to their smoothies.

The girl on the first day was really nice. I asked if they have a dedicated gluten-free blender, and she said no, and I said ok, thank you and waited for Frank to order. The girl asked why, and I told her, and she tried to convince me that nothing in Jamba Juice was bad for me, and I said that wheatgrass is evil, and she said oh yeah, that makes sense and really did not want to gluten me, especially when I told her what gluten does to me. So she told me that she would give me a fresh blender that had just come out of the dishwasher and would wash it again for me just to be safe.

I loves me a Grape Escape. And I don’t think I got glutened.

Second trip there, I just asked them to double wash me a blender because I have a gluten intolerance and will get very sick if I have a blender previously used by someone who got wheatgrass or a boost in their smoothie, and the second girl was just as nice.

So I was pleased and non-glutened.

Hooray!

Oh! Also very pleased to learn that I picked up wrong info somewhere and can, in fact, have maltodextrin if it’s USA maltodextrin. This was excluding some of my favorite snacks.

Hey, why doesn’t our justice system work that fast?

Saddam went kerplunk today. Good riddance. It’s a good day to buy a book about his defeat in honor of his hanging.

My blogson, MDG, posted about the death of one of the most evil people ever to walk the planet. I agree with MDG… you know, I would love to go shooting to commemorate. Pow pow pow.

Oh, and hooah and ooh-rah and all that to our military again for rooting out that soulless murdering lunatic.

That’s all.

I got the CD for Christmas. I like it very well. If I weren’t being forced to watch Miracle on 34th Street (I’ve avoided it for thirty years, why shouldn’t I be able to avoid it for thirty more? It’s not like there can ever be a Christmas movie as great as It’s a Wonderful Life. Hee.), I would listen to it track by track for you right now and tell you which songs I love and which ones I only like. “Do I Make You Proud” is not on the CD, so there are no songs that I flat out cringe and roll my eyes to hear. ;-)

I’ll tell you the ones I know off the top of my head I like:
Places I’ve Been
Just to Feel That Way
Soul Thing
Wherever I Lay My Hat (though I think I go back and forth between liking it and thinking it’s kinda hokey)
Gonna Move
The Right Place

His mama put him right to work shoveling snow on our first day here. He’s so cute all bundled up!

I love how cold it’s been here. Have I mentioned that?

BTW, my IMAO track suit (in baby blue) arrived today. I love it, it’s so adorable! And it just so happens that I have a little stocking cap that matches the suit exactly. The yellow matches the moon, the blue matches the main parts of the outfit, and the maroon stripe matches the IMAO. I don’t even know why I brought the cap with me to Idaho, because it doesn’t go with any of the clothes I brought. But I brought all three of the caps I own so I could keep my head warm. And there you go. Synergy. Or something.

Oh wait. Here’s a picture of snow. I really liked this one.

i hate writing post titles like that. argh. just haven’t been around the computer that much. things have slowed down a lot, but not so much all the same. you know what i mean?

we’re running out the door to go help Joe Foo’ and Denise go clean their house (they leave for Quantico tomorrow, and the movers took all the stuff today).

had breakfast smoothies with MDG and his lovely wife this morning (this EARLY morning — BAD blogson!!). more on that later.

but right now i want to put on warmer socks. it’s so stinking cold today. about fifty degrees colder than yesterday. I LOVE IT!

UPDATE: oh! almost forgot to say that there were four concealed carry permits and three out of four people packing heat at breakfast this morning (MDG’s lovely wife — I’m not sure I’m allowed to say her name on the blog — isn’t allowed to carry in the state they were traveling to), and three different calibers. I was carrying my P99 in my purse, Frank had his Kel-Tec P3AT in his pocket, and MDG was carrying a Kimber 1911 in a hip holster.

and to non-musees as well!

Well, I tried to wish y’all a merry Christmas yesterday, but the internet took a Christmas break at the J house.

It was a great day of family, food, and fun here at the J house. Oh yeah. And presents. Got some of those too. I’m playing with my new iPod nano right now and uploading my new CDs and wanted to stop by and say hello.

Hopefully everything will calm down later, and I can tell y’all all about it.

Oh, one fun tidbit. I wrapped up each individual piece of Frank J.’s Dubya-2 in a separate wrapper so that it took forever before he was able to finally put together the whole system and play with his Wii. Hahahahahahaha. I’m so mean. I also tagged each piece of the Dubya-2 “To Frank J. From Frank J.”

Santa was very good to me. Very good. I’m not sure the elves got a break this year.
(more…)

Frank(ie)’s mom made me GF pancakes this morning with the GF flour she bought me yesterday at the hippie co-op (the only place in Boise that has Democrats). She also stocked me up on enough Larabars and Clif Nectarbars (thanks for the heads-up, Ceri) to last me until we leave next weekend and got me some GF bread that looks more interesting than the GF bread I’ve had before. We shall see, I suppose.

I just now learned that there’s a family game that they play based around the Advent calendar (I think that’s a Catholic thing), and I guess if you move the mouse to the new date on the pocket hanging calendar thingy first, you pocket all the money that the mouse is holding on to. Or something like that. Alrighty then.

Frankie and I have some last minute Christmas shopping to do. No Wiis on the shopping list today. A couple of stops. We may go see the Bond movie with the folks later.

And maybe time for bloggage. We finally got the pictures off the digital camera so I have images to show! I figured out that I lost my cord at my dad’s house.

Ta, musees! Love y’all!

Elisabeth Hasselbeck just offhandedly mentioned that one of the chocolates on the set was gluten-free so she could eat it, and my ears perked up, and Rosie said that Elisabeth doesn’t usually eat the food on the show because she has a gluten allergy.

i probably never would have noticed before. i knew i liked her for a reason. well, she’s conservative. but also she’s gluten-free!

the View should have a show about celiac disease. a PSA considering that it’s so prevalent and so underdiagnosed. how ’bout it, ladies?

it arrived via UPS tonight. i didn’t even let him touch it. i had to take it out of all the boxes so i could put it in a backpack, because the Dubya-2 is flying carry-on.

i do not enjoy flying any more. i will not sleep tonight.

btw, if you have emailed me in recent days, i have read your email, and i have likely started a lengthy response and didn’t get to finish the email, had to save it as a draft and will have to finish it sometime when we’re in Boise. so please don’t think i’m ignoring you, i just hate doing short emails when i have so much more to say. you know how wordy i can get. ;-)

especially when there is a pigheaded doctor involved. you know who you are. :D

oh, these things? yummy. gluten-free. the apple pie and lemon bars are great, too, but the cherry pie are the ones i keep thinking about.

i’ve been busy this week, so Frank got himself some easy food for dinner.

and right now he’s making me inhale his chicken pot pie.

file that one under no.

it was just too hard for essay and me to watch.

one of my very favorite pictures.

look how cute we are!

my evil twin has illustrated Frankie’s latest antics. perfectly.

the evil twin also has the perfect take on my questions about how my grandmother died. every time i see it i ROFL. i can’t believe my mind didn’t go there.

*Here’s one for you: I’m never paying this bill. Ever. So you can stop sending it, because it’s just one more thing for me to shred every month, and I have enough things to shred.

*Ok, the last person in your department who put me on hold hung up on me. Are you going to hang up on me? Because that just might make me start having seizures. And I really do have epilepsy [yes, I played the epilepsy card, I was that ticked off], and I tend to have seizures when I get really upset, and I really don’t want to have seizures all day today. I have a big day ahead of me. [A big day of cleaning and shopping and getting ready to go to Idaho.]

*Why, yes, I would like to be connected to your Slam Center… No, I will not call them. I am not making another call. I have already called you people twice today, because you hung up on me once, and I’m not doing it again… Yes, it would be fine, they can call me… What time? Between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., since that’s the only time I can ever get ahold of you people.

*I would like you to know that I already called here about ten minutes ago and was already transferred and spoke to two different people and was put on hold twice. While I was on hold the second time, after having explained twice that I am not paying AT&T any money ever, I was hung up on. So you are receiving me as an angry customer, and it is not your fault, but I just want you to know that I am very angry, because I do not appreciate being hung up on, and I will try to not take that out on you, but you’ve got me now, and I am very angry.

Rarr. I don’t speak so gooda English when I’m Chomps-like angry. Maybe I am the Rumsfeld Strangler.

It’s all about the amount of paper that goes in my shred bin. I know I’m never ever paying AT&T a dime. I know this. But I have a room full of paper to shred, and I get a stack a day in my mailbox that goes straight to the shred bin. There is only so much paper one girl can bear to shred. One day I’m going to snap, and I’m going to shred it and mail the little paper shreds back to them in their little return window envelope. They will never get their $16.68.

They make me want to shout ugly things.

I went outlet shopping Friday. I bought Christmas presents for Frank (yes, even still) and my stepmo’. And I bought a crystal bell ornament at Mikasa for Frank to give to me for Christmas (I needed it, and it was only seven bucks, and I don’t have friends to shop with during the day who can go back and tell Frank, “Sarah wants this, and you should buy it for her.” So I brought that home and showed it to Frank and said, “You bought me this, and you’re going to wrap it for me and put it under the tree for Christmas.”

And oh no! There was a Factory Brand Shoes outlet. Y’all, I’m so desperate for my feet to not hurt (and I’ll wear the shugly Crocs that they make for colder weather if I need to), so I even went… to the Easy Spirit store. Yes, I had even tried the Easy Spirit store first. And even their shoes didn’t work for me. See, I need wide shoes. I need wide shoes, because I have horrible pain on the sides of both of my big toes, on the insides of my feet. So I must have ample room around my toes, or I suffer greatly. And as you probably know, wide = ugly in shoe land. Anyway, the Easy Spirit ugly wide shoes, surprisingly, did not have enough cushion for my heels, which also give me problems.

But then I came upon the FBS store, and I found the running shoes. I’ve had a lot more energy in the couple of weeks since I gave up gluten, and I assume that my energy will only continue to improve. Aaaaand… maybe I can start jogging again in slow increments. In Florida’s exciting flatlands, won’t that be fun? Anyway, I never liked running anyway; I just liked the way I felt afterwards, and the music part of running. But now that I haven’t been able to do it, I want to do it. I stopped in 2003 when I got shin splints. Probably calcium deficiencies due to celiac disease (my non-medical opinion).

Back to the running shoes. In 2003 when essay and I took this runners’ training course, I went to a runners’ shoe store and they videotaped me running and told me I shouldn’t wear Nikes anymore, that I needed to wear Sauconys. Well, I got the shin splints not too long after that, and I’ve had my Sauconys for three years, and my Sauconys have hiked the Grand Canyon (I’ve hiked the Canyon in three different pairs of shoes, I think), gone golfing, etc. They’re done.

So of course, at FBS, the first shoes I saw were these adorable little pink and brown New Balance numbers. I wanted them. They felt horrible. I was sad. :-( The second thing I did was go straight for the Nikes. Oh, and I’m so glad I did. I found two pairs, actually, that felt great on my feet. One wide pair was pretty enough, but in blue shades, and eh, I burned out on wearing blue-accented running shoes years ago, and I’m ready for a switch; and these were mostly navy - ech. But at least they weren’t ecru, right? And then there was a lovely purple-shadesy pair that felt like I was walking on air. Nike Air. I really wanted to get those, but it was the display shoe, and alas, it had no partner anywhere in the store. But I think it worked out well, because the blue-shadesy shoes have these little mesh pockets around the outsides of my big toes, so it’s really stretchy around there every time my feet move in them. The shoes feel like foot-gloves, really.

I got those. Yay! I have new shoes! They’re navy-laden, but I’ll survive.

Then there was a Bass Shoes Outlet. Uh-oh. And they were having a sale. :-O I needed new boots. Got two pairs, same style, black and tan. Oh, and I had my Bass Bucks cards with me, which were discontinued a year ago, but they could still give me a dollar off for every stamp, up to twenty-five stamps. I had thirty-three, so, my two pairs of boots were about fifty bucks.

Now I have happy feet, and I don’t come with an annoying global warming message, nor do I lie and say that the United Nations isn’t useless!

Yeehaw!

give a Garmin so they’ll stop with the stupid singing commercial. they’re ruining Carol of the Bells for me.

OR DIE HARD!!!

OH

YEAH

BABY!!!

Yippee Ki Yay, Mr. Friendly*.

*The first time I ever saw Die Hard 2: Die Harder, I saw it on regular TV, and it was dubbed, and there was some weird voice that I’m pretty sure wasn’t Bruce Willis, and when he said the famous line that I hate, the dubbed line was “Yippee Ki Yay, Mr. Friendly.” So I’ve always said it that way and giggled with glee every time.

A couple of weeks ago, I was so pleased to find sea salt in a shaker can at Publix. Morton Sea Salt - fine ground. I never thought to check to see that my salt was gluten-free. Ech. This celiac thing definitely comes with a learning curve. Morton’s website has a handy-dandy FAQ answer. “Which Morton salts are gluten-free?” And my sea salt is not on the list.

So there you go. Apparently it’s in the anti-caking agent called Yellow Prussiate of Soda.

Expletive deleted, y’all, I have to be looking in food coloring and anti-caking agents.

But at least I know how I’ve been getting glutened.

UPDATE: YPOS has no gluten. Sorry for the misinfo. It still makes me sick, and I avoid it.

holy toenail polish, what did i eat?

i’ve checked the forums and company websites, and everything questionable that i used for cooking last night was supposed to be gluten-free. La Choy Lite Soy Sauce i used for my pork roast (oh my goodness that was a good pork roast), Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce (i prefer French’s but they were out at the store) for the cabbage (that was excellent as well — just cabbage, butter, salt, pepper, worcestershire, fried on the stove top).

but jumping hornytoads, i have a migraine today. i wonder if i can’t tolerate soy either? well that would suck. my arm muscles and my feet hurt today too. the arms are kind of burning on the inside — i don’t know how to describe it. it’s like i can feel the fibers burning?

anyway. i’m off to the post office. shipping a lot of books today.

you know who i really enjoy? Bebo Norman. i have this CD, and it’s such a warm, calming CD. makes me feel like i’m sipping a cup of hot cocoa.

Frank just went and guaranteed that no matter what I get him for Christmas, he won’t even notice.

He bought himself a Dubya-2 bundle. Eleven freakin’ days before Christmas. Never mind that every time I walk into a store that could possibly carry a Wii, I check for them so I can get him one for Christmas. And I’m always looking online. And he told me not to bother looking anymore. And he told me it’s best to wait until after Christmas.

And women are the mixed signals sex. Yuh-huh.

All along he’s been saying not to buy a bundle because you get stuck with games you don’t want. So I didn’t get him a bundle. And so off he went and bought a bundle.

Anyway, I guess there’s no point in me getting him a 7200rpm hard drive for his laptop (he hates his laptop, because it’s so super-slow, and I wanted to make it run super-fast for him), because he won’t notice it. He’ll be playing with his Wii. That was to be my thoughtful gift (the hard drive, because we were going to wait until after Christmas for the Dubya-2). He won’t care. He’ll be too busy throwing that stupid Wiimote at the TV. UPDATE: Ummm… If I’d known that $600 was in the budget, I would have bought him a whole new laptop instead of just the hard drive, but I thought, “No, I can’t buy him a whole laptop. But I can buy him a hard drive.”

I don’t guess I’ll send back the stuff I’ve already ordered, but I guess I can stop shopping for him now, because he’s not even going to care. He’s just ruined Christmas by making sure that I can’t get him something he’ll care about more than what he’s already in love with: his stupid Dubya-2.

By the way, he told me yesterday that they are supposed to have Dubya-2s in stores this Sunday, and I was even planning to talk him into camping out at Best Buy to see if we could get one that I could get him one for Christmas.

Instead he paid twice the price for the Dumb-ya-2 in a bundle with some games he didn’t even want. Sure he got Zelda, but he also had to take Madden Football (won’t play it) and probably some dumb game where you drive your own rubber ducky through the water to the other side of a canal and see who gets there fastest while collecting dead frogs along the way for bonus points.

I said, “Well you at least better have gotten an extra Wiimote and nunchuck thingy in your bundle.”

Nope. He fell for the scam that you’re only supposed to fall for if you’re the rich parent of a spoiled child, and it’s Christmas Eve and all the Elmos are gone.

There is one story in the news that I want to talk about sooo much, but my take on it involves people who I know read my blog from time to time, so I really feel like I should send in a tip to the FBI about the story before I comment publicly on the events. Or maybe I should just leave it alone. I wish I could verify one thing about one person before I even called anyone or commented on the news at all.

Ok, so that’s what’s going through my mind, and it’s been on my mind for a couple of weeks, and it is very troubling. I’m sorry I can’t share, but I want y’all to know that there is news out there that really troubles me, because I wonder if I can help, and no, I don’t think I’m being paranoid, because it doesn’t involve me directly.

Another story in the news. Y’all know those missing hikers? The two on the left that they keep showing on Fox News look soooo familiar to me. Like I really know them. Why do I know these guys? Are they actors? Bloggers? Did I meet them in the Grand Canyon on one of my hikes? I hope they are ok and make it out alive. The picture on the far right? I can’t even make a face out in that picture. Anyway, I pray for them.

or
Things that make your ears bleed

Have I ever mentioned that I hate FPL? Just in case there is still a person remaining out there who doesn’t know this little tidbit about me, I will tell you one of the many reasons why.

Wait a minute. Perhaps hate is too strong a word. Pity is good sometimes. I mean, it’s a little pathetic that they cannot manage to reset our meter each month without cutting the power, so I almost feel sorry for them. Except that they don’t so much as give me a warning phone call to say, “Excuse me, ma’am. If you have anything important that relies on electricity, such as an internet-based business or a computer or maybe a washing machine, I’d like to let you know that it will be turning off at approximately 11:47 a.m. Yes, ma’am, it’s better for us if your Tivo cuts off right in the middle of a show so that you miss that three minutes that it takes the Tivo to reboot and get its bearings again.”

See, if they would call to warn me, I could at least go unplug my cranky printer, which just does not like getting cut off at the power source. Every few months when Blinky does their thing, something goes haywire with the printer, and the stupid thing won’t fire back up. Oh, it will come back on and act like it’s talking to the computer. You plug it into the computer, you unplug it, it makes the requisite, “I miss you! Oh good, you came back!” noise. The printer checks the cartridges and scrolls back and forth to pretend that everything is cool. But it won’t print the test pages, it won’t print its own self-test. It just refuses to print anymore. And I have to re-teach it how to print the awesome photos that it prints.

And I always forget how it is I get it to start working again.

So I have a bunch of books that came from the printer today. And I would love to mail them to anxious buyers tomorrow. But now I have a wonky ticked off printer that doesn’t want to play the game tonight, so I can’t print the postage, I can’t print off the emails that tell Frank what the people want in their personalizations (not that he listens — he takes what they say “under advisement,” really, and then tries to add his own thing so that they’re getting their money’s worth, but I’m like, “hey! they paid you to write what they said to write!” but he doesn’t get that logic. he’s a “writer.”).

It’s either figure out my wonky printer or sit Frank down with books in front of a computer screen and email to sign the books in the morning. He’s cranky in the mornings, so I’d rather stay in bed and just leave him a note with detailed instructions and emails printed out all nice and neat. ;-)

I guess next I’ll download and reinstall Wonky’s drivers.

Bad Blinky. If I recall correctly, Texas electric companies could reset meters without turning off the power and flipping my breakers.

what rock Rosie O’Donnell’s been living under that she’s never heard of Homedics brand stuff before? for two days she’s been going on about the name of the products. they’ve only been around for about twenty years, Rosie.

maybe you are richer than Barbara.

So I was talking to my mom and told her that I told my sister she has to take her health very seriously, especially anything that could remotely relate to cancer, “because you do have a grandmother who died of lung cancer, Sizzle.”

“And which grandmother would that be?” asked my mother.
“Um… your mom? Mammy? She died of lung cancer.”
“Nnn… No, I’m not sure she did.”
“She didn’t? All these years, I thought that’s how she died. Twenty-seven years, I’ve been telling doctors that’s how she died. How did she die, then?”
“You know, I’m not really sure. My doctor asked me the same thing yesterday, and I couldn’t tell him, either. I think it was something to do with her liver.”
“Well, that would be good information to tell my doctors. They would take me more seriously about Lupus. Was she a big drinker?”
“No, not at all. She did eat a lot of bacon, though.” LOL. “That’s what I like to tell my doctors.”
And then I brought up a certain other person in the family history that we should maybe worry about and asked if that person died of lung cancer, because I thought that was the case, but hey, I’d also always thought my grandmother had died of cancer.
Bikermommy said, “I’m not really sure about that one, either, but she drank and smoked all the time. She’s another one who died really fast.”
“Did Mammy die fast?” At this point, I was still baffled by the fact that I don’t know how my grandmother died.
“Yeah, from diagnosis until the time she died was about three weeks.”
“Well, was she sick for a while before she got diagnosed, though?” I asked.
My mom said, “No, not really. She did have a little heart trouble, though. Just some palpitations.”
I said, “Oh, like [another person in our family]. But the doctors are so much better today and have much better equipment.”
“Much better.”
“Ok, so you never wanted to know how she died? You didn’t think that was important? Like for your medical history or anything like that?”
“I guess I just… no, not really. I never really asked. I always thought it was her liver. I should probably find that out.”
“Yes, ok. So you let me know when you find out.”

??? It’s so weird. I don’t even know how my grandmother died. I wonder if it’s true that she died when I was three.

In case the monkeys who run ABC want my opinion, the current Carly is the best Carly ever.

The snarkage is coming…

they just had a Fox News Alert that consumer spending is up 1% in December.

and see, before i heard the big chime, i hadn’t noticed the channel was on, because i’ve been sitting here reading my new Celiac book ever since Frank left for work, and it’s just background noise.

thanks for the update, Obvious Man! and thanks for reminding me to change the channel, guys!

If your neurologist ever tells you he’s sending you for “nerve conduction studies and muscle stimulation testing,” what he really means is he’s sending you for needle torture and electrocution.

But at least I got to meet Dr. Wonderful’s wife. I gushed about Dr. Wonderful for a while. I might have overwhelmed her just a little. And then she apologized. “It’s my first time to meet you, and I’m going to torture you with needles. I’m so sorry.” She was adorable.

The electrocution actually hurt more than the stabbing with needles. Make that, “I’m going to stab you with this needle. Ok, 1, 2, 3. Now that I have stabbed you with the needle, flex your muscle while the needle is in your muscle and nerve. No. You’re doing it wrong. Do it better. Give me your best effort. Ok, now I’m going to push against you, and you resist me. Ok, now flex your muscle that the needle is in. Ok, now relax.”

Sure thing. But what really hurt was when the guy (not Dr. Wonderfullette) electrocuted behind my knees. Because they have to use a higher voltage to stimulate the nerves between your knees and your feet, and that does not tickle.