Movie Morsels 71: The Woman in Black

Being the crazed Potterphile that I am, I have known a little about this movie for awhile but the second teaser trailer for Daniel Radcliffe's first post-Harry era movie was released yesterday. Yahoo! had a little blurb to go along with the clip but you can read more about it here. I am totally fine buying Dan as a character other than Harry - that's not a problem. Will I buy him as a father young son? Jury's still out on that one.

Grandma's Afghan

Today would have been Grandma Vera's 83rd birthday and I had a cute sort of post planned to mark the day. About a week ago I came across an old card that she'd sent me while I was still in college - she'd sent me $20 along with instructions to "buy [myself] a hamburger" and not to spend it on something school-related. I've always loved that card and so I thought I'd set it aside and post it today to show what a cool grandma she was. Of course, I'm a total loser and can't seem to find where I set it and so can't post it. :o/  I suck. I WILL find the card, rest assured, but until I do, I thought I'd post this instead:

It's a picture of the afghan I received from my aunt Lill for my wedding. According to her, Grandma was going to sell it at the Senior Center but when a woman tried to low-ball her for it, she set it aside with the intention of giving it to me for my wedding. Grandma wasn't around to give it to Robert and me on our wedding day so Auntie Lill did it for her. I was (and am) tickled pink to have such a special gift given to me and since I don't think many of you have seen it, it seemed fitting to share it with you today.

Happy birthday, Grandma! You're missed every day. 

Celebrating her 73rd birthday back in '01.

Rat Spay/Neuter Clinic

Remember the news from November of last year, about a man in southern California who hoarded over 2,000 rats? (He was featured on the season 3 finale of A&E's Hoarders.) And you may recall that the rats were rescued and brought up to be housed at Andy's Pet Shop in San Jose. Well, there are still 300 of those rats available for adoption at Andy's and one of my instructors arranged for some of them to be fixed at Foothill. Ms. Gregory is a major rodent lover and has many connections in the rodent world. So she persuaded a couple of vets to donate their services and North Star Rescue (the guys who were the main force behind the rescue and have a wealth of information about the rats on their site) brought several of the rats to the lab yesterday to be neutered or spayed.

Ms. G asked for student volunteers to help with checking the rats in (which included putting together medical charts, weighing the rats, drawing up and administering premedications), surgical prep (clipping, cleaning, setting up monitoring equipment), assisting during surgery (monitoring heart rate, respiration rate, etc.), and assisting the rats during recovery (keeping them warm, administering pain meds, antibiotics and subcutaneous fluids). It was a rare opportunity to be involved in such an endeavor so I signed up; I wound up working from 9-1:30 yesterday. It was amazing! We were put into pairs and given a rat, which we followed from the start of the process through recovery. I found it all incredibly interesting (and, of course, a bit stressful - I definitely didn't want to make any mistakes!) and made sure to take some pictures. Only two of the following photos are of anything "gross" - I took them during the actual surgery - so you should feel safe while clicking through them. :o) I honestly would consider bringing one home if I didn't already house two gregarious and mental animals already... I know most of you aren't rat people but the rats are super friendly and good with people; if you know anyone who's interested, you should pass the info along and send'em to Andy's to scoop one (or two!) up.




My partner, Manda, named our girl rat "Skunky" because of her unique facial markings. We were the second group to go so we were both very nervous about making a mistake but everything went smoothly (whew!). Skunky is an older female (about 1 1/2 or so) but she was very friendly and frisky - she was hard to anesthetize! I was so glad her surgery went well; she's a sweet girl and had who knows how many litters in that house. I hope she finds a good home to live out the rest of her life. 

Meeting Elliott

Jo and Judy made it up to the Bay Area earlier this week and we were SO happy to see them!!! We hadn't seen them since the wedding so not only had it been a couple of years but, of course, we'd never met Elliott (who is now just over 1 year old). Robert and I were bummed we couldn't make our way to them while we were in southern California so it was very fortuitous that the Yis' vacation plans brought them to our neck of the woods on Tuesday. We always enjoy catching up with Jo and Judy so when they mentioned they're kinda, sorta thinking of maybe moving up here someday, we did our best to pressure them into it. ;o) That would be fantastic!

Elliott was so happy and mellow and friendly - he was awesome! Which just fed riiiiight into Robert's Baby Fever.

Can you SEE the Baby Fever in his face? You can see it from outer space, people.

Can YOU Guess the Chest?

When I saw the 'Guess the Chest!' game on EW.com this afternoon I thought "Hot dog! I'll nail it!" Because I assumed it would mostly feature chests that are currently showing (or were at least shown somewhat recently). That was an incorrect assumption and it did affect my score; apparently, I just don't recognize a lot of "classic" hairy chests. Still, I got a very respectable score (if there is such a thing for such a game) - I got 14 right, which, according to EW.com, means "you've got a thing for hairy chests, don't you? But then, you already knew that." I really don't, EW, I really don't. I just devote a lot of brain space to completely useless information!

Some of them I knew right away, some of them were educated guesses and some were known just by process of elimination (a lot of the answer choices are recurring). You have to keep score yourself but if you need to kill a few minutes, give it a whirl.

The Oatmeal: A Picker-Upper

I had a bit of a rough go of things this morning so my friend Amy directed me toward this new The Oatmeal comic to cheer me up. It worked.

(The last frame is my absolute favorite!)

The Cracker Jack historical prizes were found via this website, and the current prize photo via this blog.
Also, A big thanks to Sabriya Stukes for suggesting I do a comic about the shit-tastic quality of current Cracker Jack toys.

And, in searching through old Oatmeal items, I came across this gem, which rings so true to me now as a cat owner:

That last bit is too true. I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I said I could count the number of times I've slept through the night since we brought Linguini home on one hand. It's ridiculous.

Disneyland!

Robert and I weren't planning on doing anything for our anniversary this year but at the last minute Robert decided that just wasn't going to cut it so he planned a quick trip down to Disneyland. Yay! We hadn't been to the Happiest Place on Earth since our Christmas trip with the Blackards back in '09 and a quick getaway was just what we needed. (Robert especially - he'd been working crazy hours for several weeks.)

We stopped in Westwood on the way down to grab some dinner at Jerry's (though Robert didn't get any pickles this time) and take a quick spin around UCLA. For some reason there were still lots of kids on campus and they looked young. Very, very young.  Robert and I felt very, very old. :o(  Even older when we realized we started college 13 years ago. Meeeeeeeeeeeeeew. We marveled over the new construction on campus and remembered how much fun we had there before time forced us to hop back in the car and finish the trip to Buena Park.

Robert purchased our tickets online but he wasn't about to take a chance and have the park close like it did the last time we visited so we made sure we got there bright and early. Which actually worked out really well because I didn't have to worry about Robert's head exploding... or so I thought. The man is the most competitive tram-rider EVER! It's ridiculous. But he mellowed out once we got our physical tickets and walked into the park and we had a fantastic time. There were some definite hiccups - it was hotter than Satan's balls, there were 400 million people, the Matterhorn was completely out of commission both days and both Space Mountain and Indiana Jones were down periodically throughout the entire trip - but because we were there for two days, we had the freedom to wait in line and get to everything. (We got a chance to see the fireworks, the parade and Fantasmic, which neither of us had seen before. It was great!) Without a doubt the line for Star Tours was the worst but we did wind up snagging a FastPass and riding it at the end of the first day. Of course, for those of us with motion sickness it wasn't the wisest decision to ride it and it was actually quite serendipitous that it was the final ride of the day. But! We had a wonderful time and I'm so very glad we made the decision to take a few days to get away from home. :o)

Breakfast at the Carnation Cafe on Main Street.

My delicious Mickey Head waffle.

Robert haaad to have his corn dog, of course. Not that I blame him - I had my cocoa and pretzel, too!

He was very, very...

very excited. :o)

See the 'Happy Anniversary' pin? We wore those the second day. Super cute but I had no idea every park employee had to wish us a happy anniversary upon seeing it. I was proud of me, though - I still wore it the entire day.

Happy Birthday, Ma!

The Girls' Summer Visit

The girls spent their summer break with Joseph and since he now lives in the area, we are able to see the girls while they're here. This summer, the girls spent each Friday with my mom so I headed over to Casa de Kimball to help out and get in some quality visiting time. And quality visiting we did. :o)

I tried to snap a candid shot of the girls between photos but accidentally got a photo of Grandma's behind instead. (Whoops!) The girls thought that was hilaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarious and giggled up a storm. I just loved their faces; the smiles in the last shot are PERFECT.

I Am Harry Potter

Okay, okay, okay I know I said the Harry Potter posts would cease once the movie came out but my friend Kris sent this to me so it's totally not my fault!!! And I love it too much not to post it. You're welcome. 

And this one is just another set of mini-interviews with some of the cast. I can't help myself! It's a sickness, really.