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April 28, 2008

Improve Your Amazon.com Picks - Wired How-To Wiki

Improve Your Amazon.com Picks - Wired How-To Wiki Quick article on how to improve the items Amazon recommends to you.

Posted by jana at 4:31 PM

April 24, 2008

Contemplating implants

Just got some new black skinny jeans. They look nice and Joey Ramone until you get to the calves. I need some implants. Calf implants. Or what about some strap-on calves?

Posted by jana at 10:52 PM

April 23, 2008

Flock Browser - The Social Web Browser

Flock Browser - The Social Web Browser About six months ago I started using the Flock web browser. Flock has turned me into a microblogging/Twitter addict because it has a pane on the right-side to see the status updates for all of your friends in all of your social networks. Flock also has a "blog this" feature which I am using to create this post. Very nice. I'm giving it my endorsement.

Posted by jana at 1:41 PM

April 22, 2008

Sick Video Tonic

Me: I am thinking a nice vodka drink tonight is just what I need.

Andy: Our house is dry. We could stop by the liquor store.

Me: That's okay. I'll just watch episodes of The Hills on my computer. It will have the same mind-numbing effect.

That's right folks. I started watching this show when I was sick the last few days. After reading the Dooce blog talk about it for the last three seasons I had to check it out. All I could think is "don't these people have hobbies?" That of course didn't stop me from watching 10 episodes in the course of two days.

While Britta was sick she must have logged 8 viewings of the Little Mermaid.

Karsten's sick day video was The Muppet Show Season 1, episode 1 with Don Knotts. We never got to see the other episodes on the disc, but that's okay. Don Knotts still holds up after 30 years.

Anyone else have a sick video tonic?

Posted by jana at 7:27 PM | Comments (3)

April 20, 2008

This post was pre-approved by my husband

This post was inspired by: Robot Jumping Rope

I may be an old married mom but that doesn't mean I don't have any tidbits to share from my past dating life.

Once when a guy came to pick me up for a date the antenna on his car was so large I couldn't go out with him again.

When I didn't want to go out with large antenna guy I just had my brother pretend to be me on the phone. (His voice hadn't changed yet.) Antenna guy finally went away.

I once dated a guy who stole all the pennies from the "take a penny leave a penny" jar. We got busted by the waitress.

I won my college dorm's Dating Game my freshman year. One of the questions was "if you were a pie, what pie would you be?" My answer was, "apple pie, because I'm the American dream." That must have been the vodka talking.

In college I went on a date with someone even though he hit Alex in the eye after a rugby game. Our first three months of dating he only played Vanilla Ice in his car. I dated him for two years.

Two summers ago at the neighborhood pool I ran into the guy who took me on my first car date. I talked to him for 20 minutes and he had no clue who I was. If that is not a sign to retire the bikini, I don't know what is.

I once went on a date with a guy who on the car ride to a state park said, "you know, I could be the green river murderer." Yeah, last date there.

I once dated a guy who drove a yellow volkswagen bug with a rolls royce front. He told me our relationship was like a corn dog and we should try it with the mustard. If we didn't like the mustard we could always go back to just the corn dog. I married him.

Posted by jana at 2:29 PM | Comments (8)

April 17, 2008

Hello, my name is Mom and I think my child is an addict...

...a video game addict. Karsten will wake up early to boot up a computer to fire up video games. The first thing he says when he comes home from school is "can I play on the computer?"

As someone who never got past level 1 on Donkey Kong, I don't get it.

One thing I have learned is to use it to my advantage. Homework not done? Can't play on the computer. See those toys on the floor? Sorry, no computer. I found the best parenting carrot in the world.

We still don't have any video game consoles besides the Leapster (which I can highly recommend BTW). But I think we'll be caving in the next few years... Wii tennis anyone?

Posted by jana at 4:14 PM | Comments (2)

April 16, 2008

Now I can shut up about it

I lost two weeks worth of Project 365 yesterday when my iphoto crashed but deleted most of the photos off the camera but didn't save them to my hard drive first.

What should an American do during these depressed times?

The depression sparked a bout of retail therapy for me and a sense of civic duty.

I did it! I hit "proceed to checkout" and bought my new camera finally. There is money in my bank account. Someone is going to spend it. It might as well be me. I will be helping stimulate the economy too. I can feel good about myself.

Hurray! It should be here in a few days. The bad thing is that now I'll be expected to take decent photos.

Posted by jana at 12:41 PM | Comments (2)

Metal for the masses

A project I designed was recently launched on the Amazon site.

Check out who is winning the Metal for the Masses contest.

Posted by jana at 11:15 AM | Comments (4)

April 15, 2008

Happy birthday mom!

I've been trying to make a set of notecards for my mom using some paintings my great-grandma made when she was a teenager.

But there's been some puking going on.

And my printer isn't liking card stock.

But I digress.

Happy birthday to my mom! Not a day goes by that I'm not thankful to have her near us and such a big part of our lives. She's been bailing us out a lot lately so I'm going to try to make this birthday a good one for her.

Posted by jana at 3:43 PM

April 14, 2008

Britta on the mend

Britta ate a quarter of a grilled cheese sandwich, a few bites of bread with butter and a bit of jello today. The good news is that small amount of food washed down with watered down Gatorade is STAYING down.

The sick Britta was so darn precious. After yesterday's second puke she said, "oh dear!" and after another puke in which I was holding the bowl she whispered "I love you mommy." I really babied her when she was sick and I think she appreciated it. Today we had a Cinderella movie watching marathon. She knew when all the sad parts were coming and would hand me a teddy bear so I could cuddle with it.

I'm sure tomorrow our lives will return to the fast track. I may just miss my sick Britta time.

-----
Oh, and I forgot to mention that her last puke was at midnight last night.

Posted by jana at 9:09 PM

April 13, 2008

Metrics for today

Pukes by Britta: 5
Loads of laundry: 3
Little Mermaid viewings: 3
Naps: 1/4 (interrupted by profuse vomiting)

My house stinks and orange puke may have stained the rug.

We'll see what this evening brings.

----
9pm update

1 more major puke but this time into a puke bucket. Yay. Britta fell asleep on me while I read a book. In a sad way it was a rather nice way to spend a few hours. When she woke up I was there to hold the bucket.

2 more loads of laundry since it was discovered Karsten peed his bed last night too.

Let's hope we've seen all the puke we're going to see for this day. Wondering how tomorrow will pan out.

Posted by jana at 3:26 PM | Comments (3)

April 12, 2008

Kleitsch consumer confidence is building

I hate gambling. If I never stepped in a casino again I wouldn't care.

Then what is up with this scenario?

Andy: "I really need to hire some people. FAST. I don't know when the angel round will close or how much money I'll take though."

Me: "We could probably use our tax refund and move some money around to guarantee a salary for 1 person for 3 months."

How did that come out of my mouth?

The stakes are getting even higher and I'm talking about doubling down.

Posted by jana at 10:25 PM

April 7, 2008

Wooo! Spring Break!

The rock star and the cat (aka the kids) are in bed.

My sniveling sniffle is almost gone.

Taxes are in the mail.

5lb block of cheese fills the fridge.

Bread is baking in the oven.

Load of whites in the washing machine.

Dishwasher loaded.

Bills are paid.

I need to party.

Who wants to go to IKEA with the kids and me tomorrow? Daddy needs a new conference table to make some deals.

Seriously, comment, call or email me if you want to join my IKEA party.

Posted by jana at 8:35 PM

April 6, 2008

Dreaming

The report from Vegas is that the "mobile conference room" was a success.

I hate to jinx it before any contracts are even signed, but I will say that Andy subscribed to the yacht magazine, Power Cruising. I'm still dreaming about the taqueria and a nice camera. Even if my dreams are on the smaller scale, it feels good to be dreaming again. If I haven't mentioned it before (ha ha) self-funding a start up has been painful.

I also think most people think we're crazy for putting ourselves through this when Andy could be working for a company that would pay him for such work. Or maybe I'm just the one who thinks we're crazy.

Posted by jana at 9:51 PM

April 2, 2008

Mom Declares Victory

My son ate a spinach calzone tonight. With real spinach. Lots of green spinach.

I declare major mom victory.

How did this all go down (literally)? First of all, I must admit this was an accident on my part. I had made calzones a few weeks ago and then froze them. I didn't think to label the "green and red" (red bell peppers too!) ones from the plain white and brown (cheese and sausage) ones unfortunately. Last night I defrosted them and tonight I popped them in the oven. When I cut into them I realized The Big Mistake.

I scanned the cupboards for a disguise. No jars of marinara sauce could be located. I ran downstairs. Nada, but I did have quite a few cans of tomato paste. Perfect.

I covered the chopped up calzones with warm tomato paste. Britta, the Good Eater said, "ick!" Karsten shoveled the bites in one after another.

Now here's where the full disclosure comes in. He was playing his new Leapster as he/I shoveled the food in. The calzone was 3/4 the way digested before he noticed all the green stuff and then started gagging and spitting it back up.

I will not let the Leapster situation dim my victory. I feel this victory as sneaky as it was can still be counted in full. This is my ray of hope that he will move beyond bread and cheese in various forms for his diet some day.

Tomorrow Andy comes home from Vegas and I'm sure we'll be back to the "no Leapster at dinner" policy and back to careful scrutiny of all potential green food items.

Posted by jana at 8:52 PM | Comments (1)