Mickey's PhilharMagic

I have a confession for you...I don't think anything will ever be as great as the Disney movies of my childhood. These include The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. I loved these movies hardcore. Then came Pocahontas and let's just leave it at that.

A few years back they opened Mickey's PhilHarmagic and it's the best of all of my favorite Disney movies. And, 3D is involved. As we all know, when something is in 3D, it's better. This is why the movie theatres can charge me twice as much to see a movie in 3D.

So, back to the ride. You go into a theatre, get your seat and put on your 3D glasses. It's one of the better 3D shows I've ever seen and it's so gosh darn cute. The premise is that Donald has stolen Mickey's sorcerer hat and now things have gone amok. Donald is taken on a trip to all of these different worlds and there is singing and dancing and craziness. The best part is when he visits Ariel in her little treasure trove and she shows him all of her jewels (minds out of the gutter please, I'm talking about real gemstones). She sort of throws them out into the crowd and because you've got your 3D glasses on, you've got rubies and emeralds and sapphires and even DIAMONDS floating around your head. It's the stuff dreams are made of.

This little movie adventure is 50 times of cuteness. Kids will love it, teens will love it, parents will love it, grandpas will love it. Even dogs would love it, but dogs aren't allowed in the parks! 5/5 stars!

Let's Waste Some Time

Sometimes, I enjoy wasting a little time. There is nothing better for sucking a day away than the internets. Here are some of my very favorites places to lose myself...

• sweethomestyle.tumblr.com - nothing is better than looking at beautiful homes and feeling badly about your own home
• thisiswhyyou'refat.com - looking at this gives me a stomachache, but in a good way
• failbook.com or failblog.org - you have no idea how badly I want a facebook friend to post something dumb so that I can submit it
• marthastewart.com - its no secret that I love Martha and this website helps me nurture that love
• passiveaggressivenotes.com - I wish I had the balls to write these notes because if I had the balls, I would have written a lot of these.
• theknot.com - I like looking up people I knew way back when and hoping they have some obnoxious story about how they met that I can laugh and laugh at.

In addition to this, there are several blogs that I follow and make snarky and sarcastic comments about. I won't post them here because I believe it's bad blog karma. Plus, I don't want them to close on me. About a year ago, I found this fantastically sad and desperate little blog. Immediately after discovering it, I wrote a snarky comment in my blog about one of her blog articles. Shortly thereafter she stopped posting on her blog and then she shut it down entirely. SHE TOOK THE ENTIRE BLOG OFFLINE! I couldn't even read the back articles that I had grown to love so much. They were awesome. One was all about how her boyfriend wouldn't propose to her and how terrible it made her feel and that her boyfriend was all "maybe if you'd stop obsessing about the wedding, I'd feel more comfortable marrying you." Ouch. Now it's gone. My point is that I won't make public which blogs I ridicule, but I will tell you privately. Email me bitches.

To Do or To Be A Lazy Bum

I have internal strife. First of all...where did December go? I feel like this month just started and now it's close to ending. Second...December, what is wrong with you? Did I give you too much attitude last year? Because this year you have crapped on pretty much all of my plans. You've ruined weekends and fun dinners and I am not happy about it.

Now, onto my strife. I think I am very lazy. I don't mean to be lazy, but some days lately, I have felt like a big fat lazy bum. I could blame the weather, but I don't think it's that. Mostly it's that I have a lot of projects that I want to get done. The projects meld with all of the everyday tasks that I need to get done (much to my dismay, toilets don't clean themselves) and all of a sudden I have a to-do list that is as long as I am tall (keep the jokes to yourselves) and I don't know wear to start, so instead of acting, I sleep. Hey, making to-dos is hard work.

In all seriousness, this month has been busy at home, busy at work and it's left me tired. Not exhausted, but tired enough. So, this is my life strife...I'm never getting things done because my to-do list keeps regenerating itself. When there's no end in sight, I tend to isolate and hibernate. And right now, I've been napping on the couch every night at around 8:30. Then I wake up in the morning and feel extraordinarily lazy.

I need a jump start!

We Should Be Professionals

Last weekend, my mom and I were hard at work baking away. This is the fruit of our labor. We made chocolate mint cookies, peanut butter cup cookies, frosted sugar cookies and ginersnaps.

The peanut butter cups are a favorite of mine. I've had about two dozen since Saturday.

After years of trying to perfectly frost sugar cookies, I've decided to spare myself a lot of time and stress (and also so that my mother doesn't have to hear my sailor mouth) and just do a zigzag pattern all over the cookies.

Tanenbaum

This is my red, green and white tree. All of the ornaments are in those colors and there's an inadvertent candy theme as well. For some reason this tree doesn't photograph that well. I think it's that the multi-colored lights aren't as bright.

This is Mike's blue ball themed tree.

A dog in a Santa hat. Notice the treat in the upper right corner. This is the key to getting the dog to post in the hat.

MN, I Give You An F

An F for effing ridiculous. And St. Paul gets a quadruple F with a side of total douchebaggery. This weekend we had a blizzard. It was a real doozy. It ended on Saturday around 8:00 p.m. One would think that the roads would be somewhat okay on Monday morning for work. Right?

BIG WRONG. Minnesota has failed us (or maybe it's just St. Paul has failed me). I have about a 10 minute drive to work. Unfortunately for me, most of that drive is through downtown St. Paul one way or another. This morning I was totally bamboozled.

Getting into downtown was a long adventure. The roads weren't fully plowed. No salt or sand had been put down and there was glare ice in many places. The snow mounds were so high you couldn't see around them. Many sidewalks weren't plowed causing people to be walking in traffic. You couldn't see any lane markers and in some cases you couldn't see road signs. All of this added to the fact that downtown St. Paul traffic is already crippled by light rail construction and you had an awful morning commute.

I understand that there was a blizzard and it's difficult to plow and move snow around. But, we live in Minnesota. Blizzards happen. Shouldn't the city and state have some kind of contingency plan to get the streets plowed so they are safe to drive?

Random Acts of Douchebaggery

I will first make a plea to you all, my internet friends. Many people tell me that RAD is their favorite part of the blog and they wish that I would post more frequent RAD's. I would love to do this. However, while I often encounter people doing dumb things, I can't always get a picture. And RAD's posted to my blog require a picture. Anyhow, I often save up RAD's so I can surely post one a month. My request is this: if you peeps see a RAD and can get a visual, send it to me! I will post it. This can truly become bigger than the asexual revolution.

Now onto a RAD that I have been saving for awhile.

I was on my fabulous vacation this summer in our nation's great capital enjoying the sights of the Jefferson Memorial when I saw this atrocity. A grown ass woman laying on a bench inside the memorial with her and her children's stanky feet just lounging all over the walls of a historic monument.

Oh no, don't get up. By all means, relax, take your shoes off and put your feet up. Put them up on the walls of history. Don't be shy. And please invite your children to do the same. Perhaps when you are done, you can show them how to take a crap in the bushes at Arlington Cemetery.

I also like how they are facing the wall, as if they walked all that way to the memorial to not look at the statute. Douches...all of them.

The Help

I will be straight with you. I was not super excited to read this book. It's another one of those far too hyped up books where everyone and their brother loves it. Which tends to mean that I will hate it. Plus, look at that cover..........How boring does that cover make the book look?

But I was looking for something that I could really get into and this fell into my lap. Folks, I was hooked. The author tells the story through three different viewpoints and it always breaks off from one viewpoint just when you want it to continue the most. I think this is the author's cheap trick. And it totally works.

The plot is this, we are living in the deep south when people still had maids and were horribly racist. One rich white girl wants to write a book about the maids' experiences. But, this would be taboo and would get everyone involved in a whole lotta trouble. So, she does it in secret. When the book comes out, the people of the town know the secret, but do they really want to admit that they treat their staff this way?

It's one big moral dilemma after another. It's pretty good and a very quick read.

4/5 or 8/10 stars.

A New Month Is Upon Us

December is basically my favorite month. But, also sort of my least favorite because of how quickly it all flies by. I am one of those people who love Christmas. And in December you get to celebrate the season for an entire month. It's awesome. Here are all of the things I look forward to this month:

• Christmas lights. Love them. I would go out driving every night if it was possible. It's not, but I still go out at least once a week.
• Christmas trees. There's nothing quite like decorating a tree. I like to pull out each ornament and remember where I got it. My mom still has ornaments that I made when I was 4 or 5. Every ornament that I put on the tree has a memory for me and I love a good trip down memory lane.
• Christmas music. I'm not as into it as a lot of people I know (Anne, I'm talking about you), but I still like it a whole lot. Pandora's Swingin' Christmas station was on all day at work and I know I'll go home tonight humming O Holy Night.
• Christmas cards. I'm very old fashioned this way. Really I love receiving mail, and sending out Christmas cards ensures that you will get some in return.
• Christmas movies. My biggest complaint is that the networks put them on too soon. I saw the other night that The Grinch was on. Can't they show that a bit closer to Christmas. I think they do it so that people will buy the movies. Consumerism.
• Christmas baking. This year I'm looking forward to another successful cookie baking day with my mother. The two of us make hundreds of cookies together. Then we eat them with little to no help from family and friends. We're gluttons.

But like all things that are meticulously planned out, they go by way too fast and leave the planners with a certain amount of the blues. That's one thing I don't like about Christmas.

Happy December everyone!