My Trip to Japan

I know it’s a long shot, but hey, you can’t win anything you don’t try, right?
Ugh, there goes the negativity again…Starting off this whole blog with “I know it’s a long shot.” My husband always warns me about prefacing things with negativity. Like “I know it’s past the 30 day return policy because it’s been 31 days, but can I please return this?” Yep, that’s me. You’ll probably learn a lot about me in this blog, and I’m ok with that. I’ve got a trip to Japan at stake. So here it goes.

Basically, Japan’s National Tourism Orgainization has proposed an initiative to give away 10,000 flights to Japan to increase tourism since the industry has been hurt by the Tsunami and on-going Nuclear Radiation threat. Of course, this is all pending examination and approval from the government. But, I’m not going to think negative here, remember? They will definitely be giving away trips and I’m going to try to snag four to bring my family.

So, stay tuned!!

Three's Company Moment...

With the Three's Company Marathon on TV over the weekend, I got to thinking about any "Three's Company moments" I've had in my life. You know those times when Jack, Janet or Chrissy would be talking to each other in one room about something completely innocent. Sure enough in the other room someone would be there listening in and totally misconstruing the entire conversation. This was usually their landlord, Mr. Roper or Ralph Furley (oops! too much TV trivia for you?)

Anyway, I remember back when I was in college as a member of a student run club. One of my duties in the club was to edit the Monthly Student Newletter. Sometimes, I would do my homework at the mall just North of the University. My sister worked at the Nordstrom there as the store operator. The operators booth was quiet and had enough room for me to sit and do my class work or newsletter work, while my sister did her operator duties: making announcements, answering and transferring calls.

One day, my sister just got her new portable printer and brought it to work. I wanted to test it out by printing my the newsletter cartoon. I also wanted to resize it down to 25% while printing. We were figuring out all the connections and settings then finally hit PRINT.

As the small image printed out, my sister didn't realize she had the intercom on, and her voice was heard throughout the entire Nordstrom store saying the following, "Is it working? Oh, it's working! It's so teeny-weenie!"

As soon as she said this, she realized her mistake and turned off the intercom. But it was too late. Her phone-board lit up with sales associates calling in to tell her she was on intercom.

I can only imagine what people were thinking she was doing in the operators booth!

The Yule Blog

Ah, what a quiet Christmas Eve it was for us without the kids around. I like to call us "Christmas Orphans", people that don't have any family around to celebrate the holiday. With family in San Francisco and Boston, we can't very well drive to see them. And buying 5 round trip tickets every holiday gets to be too much. So, we sent the kids to my parent's in California this year.

I snuggled on the couch by the Christmas Tree reading Brisingr. Brian grilled us some steaks for dinner and picked out a nice Cabernet for us. While we ate, we signed into Yahoo! Messenger and chatted with Hunter in San Francisco. He turned on his webcam so we could watch and hear everyone open their presents. It was just like being there.

The neighbors brought over a yummy home baked danish last night. So, I'm enjoying that with my coffee this morning. I'll probably do my five mile run in the rain after breakfast.

Tonight, our good friends invited all "Christmas Orphans" over to their house for dessert, drinks and games. Their family is in Michigan. It'll be nice to celebrate and enjoy the company of friends this evening.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Holiday and are able to celebrate and be surrounded by your loved ones this season. With that, I leave you with this gem from the beautiful people of Failblog.org.



In the chorus, he has the voice of an Angel ;o)

Enjoy!

Clean House searches for the Messiest Home

The Style Network's Clean House is looking for the messiest home.

Are you surrounded by stuff? Is the clutter closing in? Send them a photo of your awful abode and it may be chosen to receive a mega-makeover—and you could appear on a special episode of Clean House!

The Clean House team is searching for the messiest home in the country. We're looking for mountains of clothes and piles of junk, oddball collections, outdated or hideous furniture, and tons of plain ol' foolishness.

Think you (or someone you know) fits the bill? Submit a photo of your horrifying house and you could receive a dramatic home makeover and the opportunity to be featured on a special episode of Clean House.

Click here for their submission form.

Block Party

A representative from CBS came to our neighborhood on Friday last week to meet with some of the Grayhawk homeowners that might be interested in participating in a new reality series they are currently calling "Block Party". She was presenting to a packed house held in the small Grayhawk Community Office. It was standing room only.

Here's basically what they're looking for:



This audition is not exclusive to our neighborhood, so if you and 7 of your neighbors want to do this feel free to send in an audition tape. The sooner the better! The tape should be about 9 minutes long, 1 minute to introduce your neighborhood and 1 minute for each of the 8 households. Introduce yourself and have each member of the family introduce themselves, so they can see and hear even the kids. They want a little background of what you do and or how you would describe your family. They're looking for varied backgrounds...a psychologist, a zoo keeper, a cocktail waitress. Is your family like the Osmonds? or the Osbournes?

They are planning to film for 3 weeks in the summer and all 8 families will need to take time off of work, so they're offering each family a $5,000 stipend if they're chosen.

They didn't mention what the competitions would entail, but CBS is also home of the Amazing Race and Survivor, so you can kinda get a good idea of the extent of challenges you could face. Food Challenge, Bungee jumping, etc. Prizes would also be offered for each challenge, too. Maybe a remodel of a room in the house, or a car, or landscaping -- you get the idea.

My friend has the perfect neighborhood to apply to this. They have block parties all the time and would have no problem finding 8 households close together. The main issue is they're worried what it would do to the relationships with their neighbors. I mean, who wants to know what the neighbors really feel about you? After the cameras are all gone, you've still got to live with these people. So, I'm not sure if they'll be applying.

It'd be great to have it somewhere within Grayhawk, though. It'd be nice to showcase the neighborhood to a national audience. Even though Scottsdale gets such a bad rap!

Extreme Disappointment

I'm home sick today. I only dragged myself off of the couch because the phone rang. I heard BT leave a message saying he was stopping by Extreme Pita for lunch and he wanted to see if I needed anything. What a sweetie.

I remember when I first moved here, I saw the small Extreme Pita store in the 101/Scottsdale Mall. But the font confused me from the parking lot. To me, from several yards away it looked "Extreme Pho". The 'i' and 't' blended in to make an 'H' and the 'a' looked like an 'O'.



See the picture above? If you look at it from far away, squint and kinda tilt your head, doesn't it look like Extreme Pho? I'm not saying I drive with my head tilted and squinting, only sometimes...

I thought "Wow! How very multicultural of Scottsdale to have a little noodle house in the mall. Imagine my extreme disappointment when subsequent visits to the mall revealed that it was a Pita place instead. All I know, with the aches and pains I've been having all day, I would kill for a good Chicken Pho!!!!

And for those of you who don't know what pho even is (pronounced F-uh), you are missing out on some good ol' Vietnamese noodle soup in all it's yummy heartwarming, soul cleansing goodness. The soup comes with different garnishes that you can add as you see fit like, onions, cilantro, thai basil, bean sprouts, lemon or lime wedges. You can also throw some hoisin sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce or Thai hot sauce, Sriracha. I usually order mine with chicken and throw in the sprouts, cilantro, a couple squeezes of lime and some Sriracha. Yep, I feel my sinuses opening up already.

Oh well, time to finish my pita and get back to the cozy spot on the couch. Feel free to comment if you know any good Pho places near Scottsdale!

Reality Invasion

I just got an email from our Community Association that CBS is looking at our neighborhood for a new reality competition series. How exciting!

They didn't give us much information except that "The network is looking for spirited and entertaining families that live in the same neighborhood to participate in a competition for substantial cash and prizes. Network representatives have specifically selected Grayhawk as their first choice in Arizona because they believe the community is perfectly fit to this series."

The community has invited families of the neighborhood to an informational video conference with the casting producers in LA on Friday.

I better make sure that my daughter takes some video footage of Dad and I during our Mad Mud Run this Saturday for the casting tapes.