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Does anyone know if the microphones from SingStar are compatible with the Karaoke Revolution game? or would we need to get the Karaoke Revolution microphones?
Lanie? Anyone?

My right ear is itching like crazy. Who's talking about me??!!

Or maybe I just need a Q-tip.

More SingStar and RockBand

This is all for Lanie:

You can get Rock Band for 360, I just saw it available on Amazon.
I still got everything for PS2 because I don't want to pay $400 for a PS3, especially considering our last two PS2s were stolen. I had to buy ANOTHER PS2 which was luckily bundled at a great deal with Sing Star. So we have SingStar Pop and the 90s one, but I want the 80s one too. And Rock Band was on sale for $99 for the PS2. So that's why I bought it all now.

The problem with Sing Star is... unlike Guitar Hero where when you play it you sound like the most awesomest Rock Star musician... Sing Star just gives bad singers a microphone. And trust me, I don't believe them for one little second when Sing Star rates me a "Super Star" or "Lead Singer" or whatever. Sing Star is obviously deaf, because I cannot sing.

But Lanie CAN sing. Remember Lanie when you called me and sang Amazing Grace? For everyone else - Lanie sings like an angel. She probably rocks on Sing Star.

And on to my new addiction: Sing Star

With Rock Band in the mail to us right now.

WOOOOO!!!

We saw John Mayer in concert last night, and he was awesome.
:-D

I took Buffy and three of her friends. Just me and four of the most well behaved 16 year old girls. It actually went very well.

We had lawn seats, and arriving an hour before the concert start we ended up in the very back of the amphitheatre where I'm sure planes flying overhead could see John Mayer better than we could. But there were big video screens so we just kicked back on the grass and enjoyed a beautiful summer evening.

Opening was Brett Dennen, a wierd looking guy who sings some fantastic music, kinda like 1980's Paul Simon. Then came Colbe Caillet, who sang well but I thought was boring. I read my book through her part. Then came John Mayer.

I'm not the biggest fan of John Mayer's music. I love him as a person, I think he's hilarious as he messes with the papparazzi and he seems really smart. But after watching him in concert I believe his real heart is much more in jazz, rock and the blues than it is in some of the silly songs on the radio. He said that all he ever wanted was to be a good musician, and not only was he an AWESOME guitar player, I just got the feeling that the radio stuff was not where his heart was.

He earned a million points from me by never once playing "Your Body is a Wonderland".

And he covered "Burning Down the House" as if the song was written for him.

He also has cut off all his curls, sporting something just shy of a buzz cut. But he was still hot.

The girls I took were pretty quiet through the concert, they stood and watched the screens and sometimes they danced, but I had the feeling they were just having fun together, and maybe they were dissapointed they were sitting so far away.

But on the way home, then the emotions came out:
"OMIGOD HE WAS SOOOOOOO CUTE!!!!"
"I wanted to run up on stage and HUG HIM!!!"
"Oh there he is on the radio, omg this song makes me so sad now because he was just on stage singing this!"
"I WANNA GO BACK!!!!"

It made me happy. It was nice to see the four of them had such a great time, and were such good kids too.

Now I have to go buy all his CDs. For... my daughter. Yeah, she wants them.
:-D

So I can't pump my own gas in Oregon AND they have lower speed limits - that's going to be a bummer, heh. Thank goodness for cruise control that allows you to forget how fast you're going (or not going).

And Washington is hands-free cell phone while driving - which is just like it is in California too. I already have my hands-free thingie, but I don't plan on needing it while driving then anway.

Anyone else knows any laws I need to know, please post it here!

Slight revision of trip (driving part)

Okay, now the plan is to leave at 4am and drive through... hopefully getting there around 7pm. It will be a long drive but Spike and I can trade off since it's daytime driving and I think we'll be okay. I may even get one of those traveling DVD players for the car to keep the kids quiet so I can listen to my own music.

Flying was out for the days we are traveling. If we could have changed days we could have gone for $450, but the days we're traveling were $750. Gas should only be $350. So driving it is, this time.

I'm glad someone told me that you're not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon. Who knew such a thing existed?? I can see me calling Scott from an Oregon jail, incarcerated for pumping my own gas, asking him to please come get the kids. I can also hear their father's response to my call: "It's your weekend."

Anyway, 4am - 7pm sounds do-able and we'll get enough sleep to prepare for the next few days.

Algae = Dead

So my brand new little pool started growing a little algae on the bottom of it. The water was crystal clear otherwise, but had a little green grossness on the bottom. So Spike bought a brush and I stuck it into the water... and who knew algae just dissolves into a cloud of green at a touch?

Well, let me tell you that when brushed around, the little bits of green setting quietly on the bottom of the pool suddenly became huge billowing clouds of dark green grossness, completely darkening my pool and turning the entire thing geen. GROSS.

Google-Google-Google

Chlorinated the FUCK out of the pool last night, there was no way anything was going to survive the chemicals I poured in there.

This morning... no more green! Just some milky clouds which I hear are the DEAD algae. Which, when you know what it is, is still GROSS (dead algae???) but at least looks better. Bought some water clarifier at the store today and it's slowly becomeing beautiful again.

Death to all algae. That's MY pool, no algae allowed!!!!!

So I've been stressing a little about this long trip, not the trip part but the 15 hours driving part, and how we were going to work this out without either arriving in Seattle at midnight or me driving all through the night and falling asleep at the wheel at 10am. Or being cranky and irritated for the rest of the trip.

So now the plan is to leave on the Saturday around 6pm, arrive in Medford, Oregon or thereabouts around midnight, stay in some cheap dirty motel, and then back on the road around 7 or 8am. We would then arrive in Seattle around late afternoon.

We'll probably do the same on the way home, leaving in the afternoon, staying in a cheap motel on the way home, and then arriving back home the next afternoon. This extends the driving part of the trip and the being away from home part, but will greatly lower the stress level and the likelihood of me plowing into a tree.

Spike has offered to help drive, and I'll let him, but he doesn't understand how tiring long trips can be so I'd never be able to sleep with him at the wheel. But we'll see how it goes.

It almost made the $900 train trip seem worth it, but it's still a few hundred dollars cheaper to drive. We'll work it out. We'll need a vacation to get over our vacation but I'll have 2-1/2 days of rest before it's back to work.

The main reason I'm worried is my mistrust of Mapquest's time estimating. I drove to Medford long ago with a boyfriend and his brother (rotten boyfriend, but his brother was driving up to surprise his 9 year old boy on his birthday, and it was one of the most touching things I've ever seen) but anyway it took us 12 hours just to get to Medford. This included enough rest stops that I thought I was driving with two 4-year olds instead of 2 grown men, but I just don't want to end up driving 24 hours straight. So a motel stay is what it's going to be.

See?

Thank you thank you for all your travel suggestions! Keep them coming!

Annie, I was thinking about you earlier. I have a friend in San Diego who I ALWAYS miss seeing when I go there, and I assume that you aren't near Seattle or you would have said something, right? Because that would be tragic if you were right down the street from us and we didn't know.

Also, yeah, Mapquest actually said 13hours 40 minutes. So add in the gas stops and food stops and it should take a good 15 hours. I was thinking about leaving at 4-5am, but now I'm thinking maybe leave around 11pm the night before... maybe napping all day Saturday, then taking one nap break on the way there. We'd get there in the afternoon, the kids could explore while I slept at the hotel. And then we'd be ready for dinner. We have nothing lined up until around 10am the next day when I booked a duck tour. Later in the week I got some concert tickets for the kids on a Tuesday night at an all ages venue, El Corazon. They'll get to go see Matt Pryor (of The Get Up Kids and The New Amsterdams) and Chris Conley (of Saves The Day). I don't know who those people are but their MySpace music sounded nice and Buffy has heard of them. So that will get them out of my hair while Mommy gets some sleep on Tuesday, heh. And I booked the tasting tour at Pike Place Market. Other than that, we'll be staying at 5th and Blanchard and should be within walking distance of anything we want to do.

Keep up the suggestions!

So we just decided on our vacation: Seattle

Why? Because we've never been and it will add another state to the list of places we've been. Actually two states, cuz we'll pass through Oregon. Plus... birthplace of Starbucks.

We're going to drive up, stay for three full days, and drive back. It's a 13 hour drive, around 845 miles, but the gas is actually cheaper than plane or train (Scott and I are seriously considering a train trip next year).

On our expected itinerary:
Pikes Place Market and food tour (plus Starbucks)
Woodland Zoo (with flesh eating piranhas!)
Hiram M. Chittenden Locks
Fremont
and of course the Space Needle

I found an inexpensive hotel a couple blocks from Pikes Place. I believe it includes free breakfast.

We'll be leaving in a couple weeks. Be back in time for school to start and I won't even miss a session with my personal trainer.

For a simple, non-exciting vacation, we're all three pretty excited.
:-D

Drumroll please....

And the grade is in:

"A"

That class was a nightmare, and that A was well earned, let me tell you. English Grammar can kiss my arse now.

The waiting game

I finished Summer School a week and a half ago but my grade still isn't posted. I know it's most likely an A, could be an A-, but the deal is that I need it posted before I can finish my Masters Application. So POST THE GRADE ALREADY.

Stress.

Awesome, just fantastic.
And Heath... I love you so much. Why oh why...

I'm about to lay down some serious cussing and swearing about my bathroom toilet. But I'm going to try not to.

The (swearing) toilet has been (cussing) leaking all over my (swearing) bathroom and destroying my (swearing) bathroom floor but I have to go to Aptos this weekend, and when I finally found where the (cussing) leak was coming from [the hose] I shut off the (swearing) water to it at 1am but this morning the (cussing) tank is back FULL OF (SWEARING) WATER again so later this morning [AFTER my workout] I yanked and wrenched on the (swearing) valve again until it shut off but then when Spike tried to get the (cussing) hose off water started STREAMING out of the (swearing) (cussing) valve flooding my bathroom AGAIN, (SWEARING) AGAIN, so we both (SWEARING) yanked on the (SWEARING) valve some more while it was plugged with a (cussing) towel until finally, (SWEARING) FINALLY it appears the water is shut off.

(Oh, and Murphy? I didn't shed one tear while doing it. AND I held in the swear words. Aren't ya proud?)

But now we can't unscrew the top of the hose from the tank. But I don't even care at this point, the (swearing) water is shut off and the toilet can (swearing) sit there for the weekend until I get back. I've learned way more than I ever wanted to about toilets by googling "How to shut off water to toilet" "How to replace toilet supply hose" "How to remove toilet hose" "How to shut off main water valve" etc etc. Did you know there are even videos on the internet showing you how to turn the valve off?

So next weekend I'm sure I'll be googling "How to replace a bathroom floor" "How to tear out water damage" and "How to lay linoleum".

Fun Fun Fun.

More PMS from Pischina

Pischina watching a Mia Michaels routine hours before her period should start:

"Aww, the dancers are angels. That's so sweet.. wait, the angels are sad! Why are they sad? I don't want to see... *sniff* sad angels... what happened? What made the angels so.. *sniff* sad?? WHY ARE THERE SAD DANCING ANGELS ON MY TV SCREEN???? BAWWWWWLLLLL!!!!!!!"

Personal Training at the YMCA

I had my first full personal training session at the YMCA today. I signed up in June but after a comedy of errors and three trainers-who-could-not-train-in-the-morning later I finally was assigned an older gentleman, nice, but didn't seem too tough. We had a consultation last week and I wasn't happy to be spending so much money on something I didn't think was going to help me much, but he did show me a couple new things I thought would do me some good. And there didn't seem anyone else who could work with me on the hours I was available, so I was resigned to whatever they could give me.

But today was official training day, and he was awesome. He worked me hard, not so hard that I thought I was going to die, but I was definitely walking that line. I have a feeling I'm going to be a little bit sore tomorrow < end under-estimation >.

I'm loving it.

Ya know your period is about to start when you get all emotional over the girl who wins the Shear Genius episode and then outright cry over every single So You Think You Can Dance routine.

Is anyone else watching Big Brother this season? I hope you are, because it is really good. They've made some changes and hopefully they keep panning out.

The cast this season is pretty great. Not everyone is really likeable, but the house isn't full of sluts, whores and morons. They seem to be, for the most part, educated, intelligent and interesting people. I couldn't live locked up in a house with them, but I couldn't name 12 people who I would want to be locked up with.

At any rate, as a viewer I find most of them to be really interesting, even the ones I don't like a whole lot.

Plus, the honey/feather competition? GENIUS. Best competition on Reality TV EVER except for when Survivor first started having competitors beat the crap out of each other. I couldn't stop laughing last night as they slogged their way through the honey, all covered with feathers. It was a combination of "I wish I could do that" and "I don't EVER want to do that!"

And lastly, the Big Brother After Dark on Showtime is already GREAT. Well, the clapping game last night was dumb, but when they started doing the spinning/ball game I was laughing out loud again and (almost) wanted to move into the house with them. Later in the evening I just had it on in the background as I played Sims2 and suddenly I heard all this screeching on screen, I turned around and April and Keesha were having a HUGE fight, the likes of which you don't usually see until much later in the season (Evil Dick/Jenn, James/Sheila). I could not believe what I was seeing, April brandishing a pool cue at Keesha who spent the rest of the night screaming "Fucking Barbie Bitch" (heeeeee). And also... Jerry is quite a creepy dude, and Michelle needn't encourage him with her baby talk. Baby talk from grown women is also a big creepy factor, but especially when directed at a creepy old man who likes to touch and kiss young women way too much.

Okay, that's my comments on Big Brother. There have only been two episodes on television, so there's still time for a quality nosedive, but I'm enjoying it so far and especially the After Dark Showtime episodes. I hope some of you are watching it too!

That was the most lame-brained speach I've ever heard President Bush give. Unbelievable.
How do reporters keep straight faces?

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Out of Sims 2 rehab
John Mayer Concert
More things to keep in mind...
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