WanderingAmylessly 2.0

I LOVE MY CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not one who often meets famous people. I could count off on one hand the number of well-known, pseudo-important, or even mildly infamous individuals with whom I've come in contact. Actress and weight-loss-product hawker Kirstie Alley frequented the Wichita, Kansas, hair salon where I worked in college (because she grew up in the town -- a little trivia for you). I once interviewed Wally Schirra , one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts and the only person to fly in all of America's first three space programs (when he visited Atchison, Kansas, in 1997 during the celebration of what would've been Amelia Earhart's 100th birthday). I've got a six degrees of Kevin Bacon separation thing going between myself and Dennis Rader, aka BTK the serial killer (friends, relatives, former coworkers, distant acquaintances who all knew him). I scored a smile and autograph from Andy Chapman in sixth grade; the brash British soccer player on Wichita's Major Indoor Socce...

There's a party goin' on right here A celebration to last throughout the years So bring your good times, and your laughter too We gonna celebrate your party with you... I don't want to get ahead of myself. I haven't actually seen it yet. But from what I was told by the guy on the phone I'M GETTING MY CAR BACK TODAY!!!!!!

From the National Weather Service, Quad Cities: A BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM THIS MORNING TO 9 PM CST THIS EVENING. A STRONG ARCTIC COLD FRONT WILL SWEEP THROUGH THE AREA AROUND SUNRISE. VERY STRONG WINDS OF 25 TO 40 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 50 MPH WILL GRADUALLY COMBINE WITH 1 TO 2 INCHES OF NEW SNOW TO CREATE WIDESPREAD BLOWING SNOW. LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS NEAR 3 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE. THIS WILL RESULT IN EXTENDED PERIODS OF WHITE OUT CONDITIONS...ESPECIALLY IN OPEN AND RURAL AREAS. TEMPERATURES WILL RAPIDLY FALL TO BELOW ZERO BY SUNSET AND COMBINED WITH THE STRONG WINDS... DANGEROUS WIND CHILLS OF 10 TO 30 BELOW ZERO ARE EXPECTED. ANYONE STRANDED OUTSIDE WILL BE AT RISK OF THEIR LIFE WITHOUT PROPER PROTECTION.

The sunshine smiled on us today. As did whatever force of nature was responsible for our 55 glorious degrees, the calm winds, and the rapidly disappearing snow. But what oh what did we do to deserve tomorrow's agony?! High of 34 early, dropping like an anvil (onto our heads as though we were Wile E. Coyote himself), gale force winds blowing and drifting whatever snow is expected to dump all over us. Tomorrow night's low? -10 My brain is frostbitten just imagining. So I'm escaping. If only to my virtual portal to tropical island wonderment. You can too. Click here for a directory of popular beachcams from such places (and their forecast high temps for tomorrow) as: St. Croix -- 81 Nassau -- 74 St. Lucia -- 82 Cayman Islands -- 80 Aruba -- 86 (but it'll feel like 92) And take heart. Only about 120 days until Iowa's average high temp reaches 80 degrees. (I hope you live farther south than I do.)

This was our first "baby," Ansel. Tim ran across this photo of him and me when he was sorting through old photo CDs, taken in late '99 or early '00. Makes me smile. And makes me sad. I miss him so much. Edited to note that, no, I do not have a screamin' case of dandruff. We lived in the mountains in Utah; it was snowing.

I thought it was funny when a former co-worker used to sing the little tune when talking about the amorous adventures of a mutual friend. We found it hysterical when Alvin, of Alvin and the Chipmunks, belted it out during Dave's date in the 2007 movie. But there's something very disturbing about hearing the tune escaping from a 4-year-old's mouth over and over and over. Especially when it's MY 4-year-old. The song, you ask? Think '70s disco porno soundtrack. "Bowm-chicka-wah-wah" I'm not sure if this translates to blogpost without some sort of audio/visual example. We'll have to work on taping H doing it (or NOT). Until then, I've included a video clip from youtube. I had no idea this was such a cultural phenomenon...

So there's this nutjob (and truly, I think he's certifiable) holyroller Baptist guy in Kansas who spouts hatred for just about everyone on the planet, who takes it upon himself to recruit a bunch of lemming-like followers to help him spew forth his putred bile. I'm not mentioning him, nor am I mentioning the nasty phrases about whom God hates that his bunch plaster all over their picket signs. I will mention that the rumor is, they're planning to picket at Heath Ledger's funeral, no doubt because (among the numerous projects he worked on) he made one award-winning movie about a beautiful, unconventional love story that broke barriers and touched hearts worldwide. They've decided to use this man's death as a pulpit for their pious, self-righteous, hate-mongering bullshit. How very...Christian...of them. Keep in mind these are the same people who have picketed the funerals of little girls who died in a school bus crash and soldiers killed in Iraq. So to that ...

Do Britney and I have something in common? She can allegedly sing; I can most definitely not. She has horrible taste in men; I married a devoted sweetie. She goes commando; I remain silent on the subject. But if we're to believe the tabloid psychobabble, the wacky pop princess and I may be sisters in the mental health sense. See, the headlines keep screaming, "Bipolar Brit," and who's to say they're wrong. Even Dr. Phil thinks she needs her head examined, in speedy fashion. Attendees of the annual winter conference of the American Psychoanalytical Association urge the media (through a CNN story) to be responsible and stop speculating about this woman's disturbing behavior. But when you go out in public and flash your bare nether regions for the paparazzi, chomp gum like the hillbilly you are, fail to show up for custody hearings, refuse to give your kids back to their custodial parent (even if it IS K-FED), shave your head, whomp up on someone's car with a...

I'm not going to lie to you. This is typically something I'd poke a ridiculous amount of fun at. Picture it: girl in a skimpy purple getup, twirling her batons, vying for a chance at a crown and that elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist wave. But for the first time, I actually know a Miss America contestant. And she's anything but a ditz. Miss Iowa Diana Reed -- who served as the Hawkeyes' Golden Girl dance twirler during football halftime performances from 2002-2007 -- graduated from the UI Tippie College of Business in 2007 with the highest academic grade-point average in her college's graduating class. Last night, her skills and poise helped her win the preliminary talent show on the first night of competition at the 2008 Miss America contest at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. A new Miss America will be crowned this Saturday night. I remember interviewing Diana for a recruitment brochure during her freshman year. So bubbly, so eager to learn and grow, so pa...

I suppose no news from Hollywood should come as a shock these days. But the headlines this afternoon made me gasp. And then feel very, very sad. So much potential...lost. One story pointed out that two years ago at this time, Heath Ledger was an Oscar nominee. Today he's dead, surrounded by a bunch of pills and innuendo. The 28-year-old left behind a child, an ex, various friends and family, and a legion of fans who mourn not only the loss of a talented person but of a wealth of possibility and promise. It's one of those tragic Hollywood "endings" becoming tired and quite typical. What a shame. There are places we can't return. There are truths we can't deny. These are two sentiments taken from a Brokeback Mountain trailer and a fitting way to say goodbye. Along with a last look at great work...

Maybe one that's just partial to the East Coast. Wow. That game just utterly sucked. Favre's back to his old tricks again...not happy unless he's completing passes to the other team. Tim suggested he kept trying the long passes in desperate hopes of getting a quick TD, so he could go sit his frozen butt on a heated seat on the sideline. Brett might be a reckless passer, but he's no dummy. He's not going to be a Super Bowl participant this time around, either. And he actually might be a dummy. (He was named a lot of other things tonight in the bar and in the car on the way home that I won't repeat here because my Mommy reads my blog.) Well...there's always next year. Who are the Chiefs getting in the draft?

It's 10 below zero. It's supposed to snow later today. But my honey and I are braving the elements. We've hired a babysitter for the evening, and we're going out. Hot date. Drinks. Dinner. Entertainment. Oh geez. Who am I kidding. It's not most women's idea of romantic. We're bellying up to the sports bar with some wings and suds, in front of the big-screen TV to watch the Packers in the NFC Championship. I've always been a reluctant Chiefs fan. They always let me down. They never make it all the way. They have that dumb and not-at-all-politically-correct tomahawk chop thing going on. I'm totally fair weather in Chiefs fandom. My husband, on the other hand, is a lifelong cheesehead. He, literally, has a cheesehead -- one of those yellow foam chunks of dairy product that he plans to take with us to the bar and parade around in public proudly wearing. (I did buy him the cheesehead one year, but you need to go easy on me. I was maneuvering strategically...

When the wind chill dips below negative-20-degrees fahrenheit, you put on an extra sweater and pair of socks, grab the lap throw, cuddle up in front of the telly and snarf comfort food. I've just discovered my new favorite comfort nosh, courtesy of culinary cutiepie Rachael Ray. Because half the world's in the deep-freeze right now, I thought I'd share. One bite and you'll fall in love. And don't expect to stop with one small bowl. (And don't get hung up if you can't find fresh sage or other such ingredients...I got away with using the plain old dried seasonings and they worked fine. Just experiment with the measuring amounts -- and don't over-salt, because the sausages pack quite a sodium punch.) Spicy Sausage, Chicken and Bean Pot Every Day with Rachael Ray September 2007 FOUR SERVINGS (or more) Ingredients 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) 3/4 pound bulk hot Italian sausage 3/4 pound Andouille sausage, cut on an angle into 1-inch lengt...

We've all heard the media refer to Bennifer -- the doomed pairing of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Or to Scientology sweeties TomKat -- Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Or how about Brangelina -- insanely beautful beings Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Daytime dramas seem to have adopted this name game for each of their most popular couplings. For example, Lumi combines Days of our Lives' supercouple Lucas Roberts and Sami Brady. Nuke refers to As the World Turns' kissyface boys Noah Mayer and Luke Snyder. Even the nighttime sitcom, The Office, spawned a couple couples with smushed-together monikers -- Jam for Jim and Pam, and Dwangela for Dwight and Angela. What I'd really like to know is exactly when this became such an obsession, this morphing two into one, the vowel-and-consonant version of a liplock. In a quest to find out, I discovered the phenomenon has a name and has been occurring at least as far back as Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking-Glass -- mid to late ...

She didn't want to see his scones. But he revealed them to her. Right there in the middle of an Eastern Iowa Starbucks. In an effort to identify the heavyset 40- to 50-ish-year-old, white male who exposed himself to a 17-year-old girl inside the coffee shop on Jan. 8, police have released a still photo from a security camera. Is no place sacred? Minding your own business, reading a good book, looking up to take a sip of your grande non-fat extra hot extra shot cinnamon dolce latte with no whip...to see some fat guy's stir stick staring you in the face? Enough to make me switch to Folgers from my own 10-cup automatic drip Braun.

I just spoke with one of "the 14." I didn't even know what that meant until last night, while I was doing some research online for an interview scheduled for this morning with UI Theatre Department's head of acting, John Cameron. John has written a play titled, "14," about 14 gay students at Brigham Young University in the mid-1970s who were subjected to electroshock treatments -- so called "reparative therapy" experiments -- in an effort to "cure" them of their "homosexual condition." Although BYU's Mormon leaders have denied that this kind of experimentation ever took place, John knows that the barbaric treatment indeed occurred. Because it happened to him. I was actually interviewing him for a completely unrelated feature I'm writing, profiling the UI Theatre's undergrad program, for a national theatre magazine. But I couldn't help asking a few questions about his new play -- which opens Jan. 31 on the UI mai...

I think they should do a poll. A survey. I'm not even sure who "they" are, but I'd just like to know what percentage of time most people's toilet paper spends actually on the little spinny roll fastened to the wall. I'd guess about 97 percent of the time ours sits on the bathroom countertop. Are we too lazy to place it in its correct spot? Do we just not get enough squeezing-the-Charmin time if it's on the dispenser? Or maybe we really enjoy reaching for our toothpaste or our glasses or our hair brush in the morning and accidentally knocking a whole roll of toilet paper into...the toilet. We must love that. Because we've done it at least twice in the last week. The first time, it got fished out of the toilet and plopped into the trash can. The second time, I threw it directly into a plastic bag (along with the one that was still in the trash and had developed a nice blue, fuzzy mold along one edge) and slammed it all in the big garbage. And then I made...

I added a blog site to my favorite links recently, but I hadn't written about it because I was waiting to see whether the blogger would continue to add. He had a shaky track record -- specifically, a Tour de France blog that sorta fizzled after a few posts. But I cut him some slack, since, really, how much can one write about spokes and spandex and doping that hasn't already been written? That and the fact he'd be much more likely to actually go outside and ride his own bike rather than huddle in front of a computer screen and blab about other riders. This new blog is different. It serves as an online gallery to feature his outstanding photography. I'm completely biased, but I'm not the only one to deem his work impressive. During his career, he has won big-time awards (including one where he beat a National Geographic shooter) and been honored by a panel of world-class photographers teaching at a workshop he attended. He has an eye for finding the extraordinary in...

End of January. That's the latest guesstimate for when I might get my car back from the body shop. Want to hear the latest excuse for why it's taking weeks and weeks longer than it was supposed to, to repair $3,200 -- strike that -- $6,500-and-counting in damages from my December run-in with the uninsured Floridian? Some frame-measuring equipment necessary to repair my vehicle just happened to break. They had to order a new one. Meantime, my partial shell of a car sat there motionless on the garage floor with its guts ripped out and its sheet metal exposed. (I know that because I made the mistake of asking to get into it to retrieve something last week and could barely eat for the rest of the day. It was like seeing a loved one's chest split wide for open heart surgery.) This was on top of two previous delays when they "whoa" found a lot more damage than expected. One of those "whoa"s required removal of the motor. All coming back to you now? This latest...