This *should* be me:

Ever have one of those days? 

Fink, hittin’ the ground runnin’…

1. Woke up this morning with a terrible cold. I felt it coming on all day yesterday, but tried to ignore it. It will not be ignored.
2. In anticipation of feeling like garbage this morning, I took *one* NyQuil pill (half the regular dosage) at bedtime last night. Overslept by two hours – feel like garbage.
3. I needed to bake and choreograph today. Neither is looking too good right now.

However…

1. I got to see the Js this weekend.
2. ”         ”       ”   Mavis this weekend.
3. Our DVD player died, and at 9:30 last night, we found a new one that does more neat stuff than the one we had (built-in WiFi, cool interface, more options), for not much more than we paid for the previous Blu-Ray player. Score.

Weekend = success. Now there’s that icky week coming up. Hork. Bring on the Super Bowl — my last excuse for not doing anything tonight.

All is well. I am running late. Nothing new under the sun. Happy Finkday. Bring on the grandsons, the sunny weather (and almost 50 degrees!), choreography, score cuts, calling guitar players and photographing sweet treats at Kay’s house.

And it’s payday too, thank the gods. I’m all set! Hope you have some fun plans for the weekend.

1. I am being refined by fire. It’s good for me. By “refined by fire,” I mean watching my character (and that of a colleague) be assassinated in an open forum. And by “it’s good for me,” I mean I did not respond to it.  Those who know me best know that it is not at all like me to take that kind of treatment silently. Win.
2. There are those who think I have never suffered rejection or disappointment, so I couldn’t possibly identify with what they are going through. Oh my, the stories I could tell…
3. People who have never spoken more than a few words to me in my life appear to have intimate knowledge of why I make certain decisions. If they were actually correct in their assumptions, it would be beyond cool, ja? It’d be like, I dunno, magic.
4. It is always easier to assume than to ask. Maybe it’s because we are afraid we won’t like what we hear. (I’ve been guilty of this, too.)
5. This will all pass, and the sun will come up, and things will again be good. I have 35 years of experience with this stuff telling me that’s the case.
6. I hate auditions.

What I really want is for someone to get up and make the coffee. Nah, nevermind — I’ll do it. Happy Thursday! I can smell the end of the week…

Rousseau, at his relaxed happiest at 6:30 this morning…

Snowbathing

I made him come in before I had a bigger mess to clean up

You know, as much as I complain about the weather (and lack of weather on school days when I’d rather stay home in my jammies), winter is very pretty here. Peaceful and quiet.

Until, of course, you get in your car.

Happy Saturnday, fiends — hi ho, hi ho…

1. It’s Finkday. And there was much rejoicing.
2. I’m spending part of the day at beautiful Terra Community College, in a planning session for the proposed Jazz and American Music Festival. Fun.
3. It’s 6:25 a.m., and I don’t have to get ready to leave yet.
4. Basically, it’s a 3-day weekend. Score!

Anyway, part of the conversation included appliances, and how much they’ve changed. Mave told of a fridge she’d seen on TV with an embedded or mounted iPad on the front panel, which could display all of one’s recipes with one touch. Then, last night, I got to thinking about retro design as well. Remember the appliances of old, when your parents and grandparents called a fridge an “ice box?” And what about the ubiquitous mustard yellow and avocado colors of the early 70s? You can hardly find those shades available anymore (probably with good reason).

I found some awesome print ads for appliances at Found in Mom’s Basement. So glad that someone saved these gems:

From the year I was born

Awesome colors from 1966

From 1957 -- I'm sure they wanted the reader to pronounce it "cook" and not *kook*. :-)

Gotta get back into the writing habit. I think that’s what’s wrong with me. Lately, I’ve been off my pins. And while I’ve really enjoyed getting The Comfort Foodie up and running, and have lots of fun plans, it’s taken more of my brain resources than I thought it would.

So it’s back to thinking, researching, and firing the neurons. It’s part of my morning coffee, and I hope it’s still part of yours sometimes, wherever you are.

While I don’t have time to review it, I’ll tell you that we watched Moneyball the other night. Very good. A solid four-cheeser biopic, even if you don’t enjoy baseball or care a whit about the Oakland Athletics. Brad Pitt: one fine actor.

And now I must fly. The Slip ‘n Slide (aka My Driveway) awaits.

Happy Finkday!!

Look for more random neuron firings next week!

If you can complete that lyric (and I know some of you can without any help), you will have guessed the theme of today’s post.

Yes, fiends, I am taking just a brief hiatus from RtB, while I design the main scheme for The Comfort Foodie, my new food blog adventure. Why do I need yet another project, you ask? Well because, as many of you know, I plan to retire in eight years, and I am going to need at least a dozen other income streams — however meager — to supplement my pension. There is some money to be made in food blogging, so I am going to take the next two-three years to see if I might have what it takes. Only one way to find out, right? And even if it doesn’t make the grade financially, I hope I will have something resembling a family food history that I can pass on to my children and daughters-in-law, if they want it. If not, no worries; it will have still been fun to put together.

So please don’t abandon me totally. Have a look at the archives (I do every once in awhile, just for a head shake — I have said some mighty silly things over the last soon-to-be four years), or post here and give me suggestions on how you think I should go about being the next Bakerella. (Nope, I’m not linking to her; she’s now the competition.)

Are we having a great week so far? A-OK over here in Freezingland. See you on down the road…much love.

Fink out (for a bit)

I’ve said in years past — most recently, last year – that I’m not too good at keeping “resolutions,” so I rarely make any. Actually, I did set one specific goal last year: to be kinder to myself. In many ways, I achieved it; others, not. Well I’ve had a long time to think about it (365 days, to be exact), and I have decided to mete out some detailed plans for 2012. I’m fixin’ to free the lock on the Year of the Fink.

Yes, fiends, 2012 is going to be about me. But no worries; it’s really about how I’m going to relate to the world around me, and that includes everyone and everything else in my life. I’ve already started the work to become physically healthier, which directly affects the interaction with my two grandsons and other family, and that is ongoing. (Don’t want to say too much more about it, because like a fool, I still believe in jinxing things.) Rather, these promises to myself are designed to improve my mind, daily attitude, constitution, general outlook on life and my relationships, to wit:

I Resolve To…

• assert myself more, both in deed and word. (I know — my students would say, “MORE? What the…?” HA)
• be available to my family more.
• improve or abandon unhealthy relationships.
• be OK with people not knowing the whole story. I don’t know why, but this has always been a huge deal to me. I care too much about what others think, especially when they form opinions about me based on one-sided information, or even out-and-out lies. Truth is, people are going to say and think what they’re going to say and think, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so I will sweep them away.
• save more money for retirement.
• go home when it’s time to go home. The work piling up can wait.
• be more honest with friends and family about my inner feelings.
• walk the dog more often. (Actually, I need to teach him how to do THIS.)
• forgive more, and ask for forgiveness more.
• Let. It. Go. It’ll never be perfect, so stop agonizing over it.

But for the moment, it’s all fun and games. The Js arrive at 10 a.m. to spend the day until 5:00, at which time we will lateral them to their other grandparents for more fun, and the Thriller and I will go out for dinner. Tomorrow, we get away for the last bit of the holiday. (A huge thank you to Kay and Bob for taking Rousseau while we escape!) Then comes the Push to Memorial Day, aka Grease and the spring concert season. Even that won’t faze me, though. Nothing is going to steal my joy this year. But again, more on that tomorrow.

So, it’s my wedding anniversary today. How about that? A loud huzzah and big hugs to the Thriller for surviving another year of my insanity (although with his classes and internship, he’s had plenty of his own). Anyway, yay for us. Let’s commence to celebratin’.

Be safe this night, fiends.

The Fink’s handsome baby boy is 28 today. How the minutes do fly. What were you doing 28 years ago?

It’s been quite a fun ride with my two sons over the years. And specifically about the birthday boy, I remember:

• getting food poisoning when I was three months along, and worrying that I’d poisoned him, too (all was well, thankfully)
• various trips to the emergency room for stitches in his head — the crazy things those two did…
• his interest in the guitar at a young age

It amazes me at how fast life passes by, and how we need to hold on tight and get all the joy we can from it. At least that’s my plan. Savvy? With me? Hm?

So happity birthday, Lars, my precious boy. The fun is just beginning.

MamaFink out.

Well now, it’s 4:16 a.m. and I’ve already been up for two hours. I’m dreaming of being upstairs in my comfy bed, under the electric blanket, dreaming. Why is it that the brain holds so much sway over what the body does? Ah, the spirit is willing, but, yeah. And funny how this only happens when I have to be somewhere in four hours. On the days I have no commitments, I sleep just fine. Rat Fink, Rat Fink…

So of course, I pad down the stairs, start the coffee, and read the news. But first, a commercial:

Deal Chicken. Go there and put in your own city. I just liked the name at first (I saw it while reading a St. Cloud, MN newspaper article), but after clicking over, it appears that one can score a deal or two. I might have to go back there and snoop around.

I think the only thing worse than knowing I did not win the lottery would be knowing I did win it, but was unable to find the ticket. Actually, that would be much, much worse. Bash-your-head-on-the-desk worse. Or worse yet, not knowing that I had the winning ticket…now that would bite.

Cyberbaiting. Cripes, this is all I need.

Maybe, but I’d have to make you suffer for it. “Honey, I know you wanted that Alaskan cruise for Christmas, but, I’m going to give you this instead.”  Yep. That’ll work,  sure as a Browns victory this Sunday.

This can be called payback — reaping what you sow — bad juju — for giving new customers great deals on the Droid Razr, but gouging current, loyal, on-time paying customers who want to upgrade early. Feh. A hex upon your household.

Mmmm, meat - out of a machine, even. Could this foreshadow the return of the awesomely classic automat?

And now that it’s exactly 5:16 a.m., it’s time to get going. Stuff to do at the school house this morning. It’s going to be a thumbs-up weekend, however. Bring it. Happy Thurnsday!

Anyway. Am I mental for the following?

Life would be grand if…

1. I never again saw a toilet in a Facebook profile photo. If you have teenagers on your friend list, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
2. I never again saw a Facebook status post that contained only song lyrics (with no artist credit, of course).
3. there was a Facebook script that auto-detected photos containing the duck-face-and-peace-sign pose, causing the perpetrators’ profiles to be instantly deleted and their IPs permanently banned. Along with the profiles of their progeny.
4. Oreos were thermogenic.
5. there was a cure for osteoarthritis.
6. I could just have *one* more week of Christmas break. (I know, stop whining.)
7. it would snow bigtime just once soon, so the Thriller could use the shiny new snowblower he got for Christmas. I’ve never known him to actually wish for a snowstorm until now.

What do you wish for today? I know my list was a skosh tetchy, but sometimes it just helps to blab it all out there, you know? Let fly with your snark. I’m yer huckleberry.