Now THIS is what I call sports

The final round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee is this week. You can keep your Laker playoffs, your NFL draft picks and your Dodger bobbleheads. There is no finer sport than the all-American spelling bee (although heavy weight boxing is a close second).

Call me a dork but I've kept a list of some of the most random words that I've heard from past competitions. I often fantasize about using them at a fancy dinner party or even a family event (ideally when I'm upset at my father and then I can trounce him by using a word he can't even repeat). Here are some interesting ones:

Minuend
Chaffinch
Urceolate
Quodlibet

I don't have a competitor whom I root for in particular, but if I see a Latino contender I get excited. Happy that there is diversity in this sport but I'd love it if someone besides an Indian or Asian kid would win.

Does that make me too doctrinaire?

Stop growing baby!

Yesterday was a cause for tears as I bundled up several sets of onesies and bodysuits that Magnus no longer fits. He was standing next to me wearing only a diaper and I can see he is on the cusp of becoming a little boy. The baby flab is gone from his face and his legs are longer and slimmer now. I bit my lip and my eyes welled up with tears. Where the heck has the time gone? I just want to package him in bubblewrap and keep him as my baby forever. (Well, 20 years anyway).

Better get chugging on making another one.

Slightly better than castor oil?

I am taking an inventory of my diet and flaxseed oil has piqued my interest. For some reason, the mere name conjures up images of screaming young children being force-fed castor oil. Clearly I am projecting childhood insecurities on this poor derivative.

Consider the range of ills that flaxseed oil can help: sprains, high blood pressure, bruises, clots, asthma, psoriasis and dandruff.

Some researchers believe flaxseed oil can also help reduce cancer.

Can it help get me pregnant? Now that would be the clincher.

I Love me the Bookstore

I swear, nothing can get me giddy like walking into a bookstore (although a shoe store is a close second). On Sunday we went to Barnes & Noble so I could pick up "The Reader," as threatened in a previous post. I also was curious to see if Magnus would sit still for the children's book hour that they feature. Not so much. That boy loves to run and topple things over.

So of course I couldn't buy just one thing and ended up walking up and down every aisle. I spent the most time in the literature section gazing over all of the titles, analyzing the book covers. It took forever to decide on another novel. Finally, after much agonizing, I selected "Slowness" by Milan Kundera. One, he is one of my favorite writers, and two, I hadn't read any new works by him in at least four years. (Unless he went on hiatus and just stopped writing for a while...). Plus, Kundera is so great about how he structures chapters. They are generally never more than a page long, so you can read ten chapters in five minutes and feel like you have done something with your life.

I noticed a heckuva lot of fat people at the bookstore. Not the "you need to lose 40 pounds" kind of fat, but the kind where they were driving those little motorized carts to get around. For the first time in a long time, I felt skinny. Hmmm. May need to hang out there more.

Billy Bob Thornton: Ne'er Do Gooder

Most people, when they think about Billy Bob Thornton, probably think about how convincing he was in "Sling Blade" or what a creep he was in "Bad Santa." When I think about Billy Bob, I think about all the actors who died after they starred in a movie with him. They include:

John Ritter: Sling Blade, Bad Santa

Heath Ledger: Monster's Ball

Bernie Mac: Bad Santa

Charlton Heston: The Apostle

Billy Bob also kills the ladies, romantically. He is rumored to have dumped one wife for Laura Dern. They became engaged and then he dumped her for Angelia Jolie. He married Angelina Jolie but had sex with a therapist, which ended their marriage.

I am not sure what his next movie is, or who is in it, but the poor actors oughta beware.

You Suck!!!

So it's the Friday before a three-day weekend and the Company has declared that it is business as usual, aka, no leaving early.

Allow me to define: leaving early in our nonprofit parlance would be 3:00. Not noon. Not 12:30. Three o'clock. I'm talking walking out of this building two hours ahead of when we would normally leave.

Many of us work really long hours, sometimes weekends, and we are never allowed to get that time back. Comp time doesn't exist. You will show up and work like a slave and YOU WILL LIKE IT!!

I'm so unnerved. I think I may need to fake an embolism and hobble out of here early.

Like 4:30.

Yeah, I'm Rocking It

I am cranking 80s tunes on my computer and I don't even care that people are walking around covering their ears.