Working out the knots

I went to get my massage today. I've been looking forward to getting one for weeks. My old masseuse, Lara (great, another La(u)ra to keep track of in my life), left for Oregon with her vegan boyfriend a few months ago. So I had to find a new person to poke and prod on my back. This new massage lady was Toya (as in Latoya, I assume, or as in "my parents gave me a freakishly weird name"). At least I don't know any other Toyas. Toya was very nice, all 98 pounds of her, but a bit too chatty for me. There is a fine line between being social with your client and telling your entire life story. In under an hour I learned that she left her ex-husband in New York, has two kids, a fiance, a new bed from her fiance for Christmas, has a Type A blood type (which apparently means she has thick blood), only eats red meat during her period, and gets constipated when she's pregnant. A good number of those gems of information were things she could have saved for our second appointment or really kept to herself indefinitely.

But my back does feel a bit better. I just miss Lara. Lara was very mellow and didn't use strange smelly things. Why did you forsake me, Lara, and make me have to search for a new massage lady?

My massage wasn't all I was hoping it would be today, but it did give me an hour to lie still and just chill. I need more of those hours.

I will soon be referring to loos and lorries.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, I told LauraSiobhan that I wanted a kettle like hers for Christmas. I wanted it to be non-whistling and attractive enough I could leave it on the counter all the time. She accepted this mission with great enthusiasm and on Christmas day I opened this wonder of a kitchen tool.

I must confess to you all, Internet, that one of the main reasons I love this kettle, other than the fact that the Puddin' is no longer using our under-sized Paul Revere kettle on the stove that would throw boiling water all over EVERYTHING, is that it makes me feel very British. Rich has been known to proclaim that he feels "like a cuppa" and after I look at him and blink exactly twice in blank-faced "I don't even know who you are anymore" wonder, I agree that tea sounds great.

We use this fancy little kettle for oatmeal, green tea, hot chocolate, Lady Grey tea, vegetarian cup-a-soups, and occasionally some herbal echinacea tea. It's just like we're in London, except our quaint little kitchen is huge in comparison and our clothes washer is far far away in a laundry room. Oh, and there's none of that creepy sausage in our fridge.

Cheerio, y'all!

WoW Battlegrounds Monitor

So since Rich won't tell the world about his clever idea (but has told a few people in person with much embarrassment), I'm forced to broadcast it for him. The Puddin' has been playing a fair amount of WoW and now that his main character is at level 60, he's been playing a lot of Battlegrounds. But there has been a bit of consternation when he queues up to play and 45 minutes later finds out that he missed his turn because he wasn't in the room when the distinctive Battlegrounds sound went off and alerted him it was time to get in the game.

We went through several weeks of him walking back into the computer room every 2 minutes, but that got old really fast. (To let you in on a secret, the Puddin' can be a bit compulsive at times.) So he came up with a brilliant idea.

A trip to Wal-Mart and $20 later, we now have our very own Battlegrounds Monitor, courtesy of Safety 1st. Rich bought a very cheap baby monitor and hooked the transmitting box up in front of the speaker. He then can clip the receiver onto his belt and wander around the house doing laundry or talking to me or playing X-Box in the living room (talk about multi-tasking) and never miss out on another opportunity to kick some Horde ass. It works great!

So if you are a frustrated WoW player or a frustrated partner of a WoW player who can't leave the computer because there's only 15 minutes left in the queue, get thee to a baby department STAT! We're considering painting some in Warcraft themes and market them to ThinkGeek or the like.

P.S. The icon came from my trip to the dentist. The full image is here. I love my cameras.