If you haven't checked out The Official White House Photostream on Flickr, you should. It's really cool.

Hey, guess what? Would you believe it's a week to Steve & Loren's wedding and I still haven't decided what shoes I'm wearing? And would you believe that so far I have bought three pairs of shoes? And I'm still not sure if I like any one of them enough? I have photos ( Read more... )

OK, I just went to chicagotribune.com, and this is the main story:

Prom without the price tag

For decades, families have dished out big bucks for intricate hairdos, manicures, tanning, facials, dresses, tuxedos, limo rentals, flowers and photos—all to make prom night magical for their children. Not this year.

Really? Who are these families? I always paid for everything myself and as such did my own hair and nails and I'm 26 and have still never gone tanning or had a facial, and we never rented a limo for prom (but we did once for the trip to Great America the next day, which I thought was a better idea anyway). So it sounds like prom today is a lot like my prom was 9 years ago. Thanks, Trib, for making me feel poor.


OH GOD, now I'm ready the article, and the public high school near me (where my kids would go if I had them) normally has their prom at The Field Museum. As in the huge natural history museum on Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago. And now they are cutting back to a venue near home - I'll shit myself if it ends up being the nicer venue where my [poorer] high school had our senior prom (vs. the crappy place where they had my junior prom). Although when my brother was at our high school 5 years before me, they did prom on a boat off of Navy Pier, so I guess I can't get my panties in a wad about going to a poorer school.

I have been spending way too much time on the internet finding shoes for Steve & Loren's wedding. Here are all the shoes I've found.

Here is my dress:



Loren told us to get yellow or blue shoes. Here are all the shoes I've found that I like:

1 - from oldnavy.com


2 - from ebay


3 - from ebay (I think these might be dark brown heels and not black)


4 - from ebay


5 - from ebay


6 - from 6pm.com



HMMM which ones to buy?? I'm leaning toward the first three, but is it OK to wear dark brown shoes with a black dress?

I was out grocery shopping earlier, and I stopped at Aldi's first. In their freezer section, they had frozen lobsters for sale. They were individually wrapped, and from what I could tell, it was indeed, a whole lobster. The thought of eating an entire lobster weirds me out*, but an entire lobster from Aldi? Just seems wrong. I don't remember what the price was. (* A lobster tail from a reputable restaurant is just fine. A whole lobster looks too much like a giant mutant bug to me.)


Someone in the apartment works nights. Every night, from about 8:30 until 9:00 or so, their alarm goes off. Continuously. Not like very 9 minutes while they snooze, but every second. I can hear it even with the TV on. What I don't understand is why they fail to turn it off EVERY NIGHT. I can understand snoozing for an hour, I've been known to do that, but to just leave your alarm beeping? EVERY NIGHT?? Does it take the person an hour to hear the damn thing?

But, since I figure someone sleeps in the evenings, once I hear the alarm, I know it's OK to practice my flute. Because if that alarm isn't waking them up, my flute sure won't.

I think I'm getting close to running my course with LJ. I was so into it for so long (since October 2000, and really obsessed with it for quite awhile) but for the past year or so, I just haven't been as into LJ, both posting updates and reading updates. I'm much more guarded about what I write about, and I'm just not into the communities, and the f-list other than real-life friends' updates or people I've been following on LJ forever to the point that they almost feel like real-life friends. And my paid account is expiring and I might not even renew it, wowzers.

I think I should probably try to limit my time on social networking sites in general. I need to focus more on my non-internet interests.

But, I think I'll still stay on here since it is the best way to stay up to speed on some of the real-life friends (I'm not much of a phone person).

Ani Difranco is playing in Traverse City, MI in April. TC is where we stayed during our week vacation in MI this past summer - cute cute town in the northwestern lower peninsula on MI. Anyway, I'm sure the venue (the City Opera House) is small and would be freakin sweet for seeing Ani. And tickets are only $32 ... but it is 5 hours away, so I'd have to pay for gas & lodging & meals ....



OK I just checked the web site and the venue is small - the main floor only goes from row A to row Q, 59 seats across and the balcony is row AA to KK. Holy crap. I'm used to seeing Ani in the gigantic Chicago Theater or Auditorium Theater. AHHH.

One thing I love about Flickr is the photo stats. I love seeing how many people view my photos, and how they find them (esp what keywords lead them to my photo, based on tags, titles, etc, through a Flickr search or Google or Yahoo search). This is also a good way to find out if my photos are displayed on any other web pages (not that I mind). Unless someone saves the photo and displays it. Then I have no way of knowing. I wonder if Flickr will tell if my photos are downloaded.

ANYWAY, the point of this post. Since uploading this photo 24 hours ago, it has had 181 views! The next most views out of the 50+ photos I uploaded yesterday - the next most was 23 views on one picture! And they don't count my views.



When I checked the stats, many of the views were after searching for something related to "tights" (either just "tights" or "purple tights" or "new years eve tights" or my favorite "tights -gay -tranny -tv -tgirl -transvestite -sl -secondlife")

So I searched "tights" on Flickr and some interesting stuff came up. Granted, it's the internet and weird stuff comes up for pretty much anything. But I wasn't expected so many pictures of guys in tights, especially shots of guys just from the waist down. There was one user in particular that had A LOT of photos of him in tights from the waist down ......

what's the deal with twitter? I don't get it.

:(

I am sad

Cubs wave bye to Wood

By Paul Sullivan

The Kerry Wood era in Chicago began with a bang and ended with a thud.

On a cloudy November afternoon in Chicago, the Cubs quietly cut ties with their free-agent closer, who tied a major-league record with 20 strikeouts in his fifth big league start in 1998.

After acquiring a potential closer in Florida's Kevin Gregg on Thursday morning, Hendry announced the Cubs would not try to re-sign Wood, who will be able to accept free-agent offers from other clubs on Friday.


http://blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports_hardball/2008/11/cubs-wave-bye-t.html

Hi LJ friends--

This Sunday I'm walking in the American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. The money raised will support the American Cancer Society's lifesaving research, prevention, early detection, and support programs for thousands of patients and their families.

If you'd like to make a donation on my behalf, you can do so online: http://main.acsevents.org/goto/mwolff.

THANKS!

Because this totally excites me:



13 million-digit prime number discovered

Mathematicians at UCLA have discovered a 13 million-digit prime number, a long-sought milestone that makes them eligible for a $100,000 prize.

The group found the 46th known Mersenne prime last month on a network of 75 computers running Windows XP. The number was verified by a different computer system running a different algorithm.

"We're delighted," said UCLA's Edson Smith, the leader of the effort. "Now we're looking for the next one, despite the odds."

It's the eighth Mersenne prime discovered at UCLA.

Primes are numbers like three, seven and 11 that are divisible by only two whole positive numbers: themselves and one.

Mersenne primes -- named for their discoverer, 17th-century French mathematician Marin Mersenne -- are expressed as 2P-1, or two to the power of "P" minus one. P is itself a prime number. For the new prime, P is 43,112,609.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/27/prime.number.ap/index.html

I'm doing the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk on October 19. You should support me (unless you're a fan of breast cancer or something).

http://main.acsevents.org/goto/mwolff

Rob lost his phone today. Not just lost as in misplaced. He was leaving work to go get lunch, and I guess when he was getting in his car, he started to feel nauseous, so he put his phone on the roof of the car, puked a bit, and then got in his car and drove off. You can guess what happened to the phone. He looked around the parking lot and the roads he drove on, but no phone. So off to the Verizon store we went after work. We're on a family plan, so instead of getting free phones every two years, we only get an upgrade at the 2-year contact price every two years. Well, he doesn't get his upgrade until August 30. But I knew that my upgrade had rolled around, so I was nice enough to give him my upgrade eligibility, and wait until August 30 for my upgrade. Which is fine with me, I like my current phone (Razr) and I'm still debating if I want to upgrade to a regular cell phone, or a Blackberry or PDA (meaning I would get reimbursed $70/month through my company if I had my own smartphone, instead of paying $8/pay period to use their Blackberry, since I occasionally travel and what not and they want me to have email access but "due to IRS regulations" have to charge me $8/pay period to do so. Even though I only use it to check work email and appointments.)

Anyway, I did get to check out the new LG Dare, which is similar to the iPhone. It was pretty nifty. The LG Voyager also looks fancy. I was confused as to why all these non-PDA phones had qwerty keyboards, I assumed they all had email capabilities, when really they just have web browsers, and it seems the qwerty keyboard is for "dumb ass kids like [friend's name] who send 50 text messages an hour." (My words in the car to Rob.) But then why would I need one of those phones if I wouldn't be getting it to replace the Blackberry? (I don't think my company would reimburse me for a cell phone that just had web and not data capabilities.) I guess I would be as bad as the kids.


* The subject lines refers to the fact that I have been in Rob's situation before - when I dropped my cell phone in the toilet three years ago, and had to get a new one.

This may be a long shot (my next stop to ask in a Mac LJ community) but has anyone here tried to edit a website through the web-based editor on GoDaddy.com using a Mac computer? I'm taking over editing the website for a local dance studio, and they have everything set up on GoDaddy. Eventually I would like to completely redesign the site, which I should be able to do and upload through Dreamweaver, but for right now, I just want to make some edits (change font color, delete outdated stuff) to what is already out there. Unfortunately, the web-based editor isn't showing up too well on my computer, and I don't know if it's because I'm using a Mac (it seems like it's made to work on a Windows or Linux operating system).

Help? I can figure out how to edit the hard code, but it would be so much easier if I could use a WYSIWYG editor on GoDaddy.

so some super fun storms cut through the south suburbs today. luckily I was south of it all in kankakee, but it sounds like a tornado possibly touched down within a mile of my parents house and caused some damage, luckily my parents and their house were safe.

unfortunately, the expressway I took home was shut down due to an overturned semi and possibly damaged powerlines, so what normally would have been a 45 minute drive home took a little over 2 hours. yay. but, I'll take a little traffic annoyance over the roof of my building getting blown off.

and they say we could repeat all this weather again tomorrow! yay!

 

Monday is the Gossip Girl season finale (WHY am I getting sucked into that show?)

Mad Men needs to come back soon otherwise ... I may have to get a hobby other than wasting time on the interwebs.

Last night, Rob and I decided to go out to dinner to this relatively new Kabob restaurant that opened in the town north of us. We had been there before, maybe a month or so ago, and it was absolutely delicious. It's also one of few restaurant selections that is not a chain and not super expensive.

Unfortunately, when we get there, the doors are locked. Disappointment sets in. There is a new (chain) on the other side of the parking lot, so we decided to check it out (it's also relatively new). We find out the wait is 45 minutes, so we left.

This is what I hate so much about the suburbs. There are a million chain restaurants, and they ALWAYS have long waits on weekend nights. There are a few local restaurants that in my opinion are way better than the chains, they just don't have that name recognition and maybe are a little rough around the edges, and very few of them ever have waits. But usually they are tucked into strip malls. Most of the chains are new construction. I just don't get suburbanites. Why do they wait almost an hour for a table at a chain restaurant? When there are plenty of perfectly good non-chain restaurants to choose from?

We ended up getting sushi (no wait for the sushi bar). And I found out instead of seaweed I could get a soybean wrap in it's place. Yay! I was starting to not like seaweed, and thus either not like sushi, or tear open my rolls to remove the seaweed, which just felt wrong.


I'm still really sad about that Kabob place. They had the most delicious hummus ever.

is it just me, or do I look like my mom in this pic?



also, for those of you that bake, and have made pecan pies, why is it that every time I've attempted to make a pecan pie, it always ended up kind of soupy? do I need to cook at a higher temp? for longer? let it cool longer? am I using the wrong recipes (I know one of my attempts was a Martha Stewart recipe)? help me, LJ. it's my mom's favorite pie, so I always attempt it on Mother's Day.

I asked my Dad to scan my mom's banana bread recipe and email it to me, as we have a lot of very ripe bananas and I don't want to throw them out.

Notice the date written on this ... I find it amusing that my mom was 7 months pregnant with me the first time she made this ... and said it was delicious  :)


(feel free to use this recipe ... my mom's made it a million times and it's delicious).


PS I made regular bread for the first time last night. I used the dough hook on our kitchen aid. learn all about my adventures (ha) on my other blog.