…but hey, it’s for a good cause!

Anyway, I got this email today:

because I don’t know you, although I wish I could call you Sharra Defender of the Universe, because that just sounds cool.

Hi, Christine. I’m writing to you because you blogged (favorably) about Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (and getting others to clean your walls).

This is not spam! I wanted to let you know that Mr. Clean is sponsoring a charity drive and wondered if you’d like to blog about it. How it works is that for every person that visits this site

http://www.homemadesimple.com/mrclean/eraser/index.shtml

and submits an idea about how they use Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, Mr. Clean will donate $1 to the Hands On Network, a growing charity that helps volunteers keep communities clean. Some of its affiliates are working on Katrina-related projects right now.

http://www.handsonnetwork.org/

Thanks for your time.

Charlie ****

Looks like the deal is legit. I had to rack my brain to figure out what post he was talking about, but I found it in my archives:

Making Cleaning Fun

No clue how he found out my super secret nickname, though!

—————————

Here’s another interesting email I got - funny how search engines help people find exactly what they’re looking for!

I’m an instructor in a school of nursing in Texas. I need a picture of a person with an eye shield (patch) on to illustrate a point in my lecture. I was surfing the net and found your blog picture. May I have permission to use your picture? Your picture will only be used in an educational class for nurses and will not be published.

Wow. I can’t believe that anyone would want to use my post-surgery pirate picture in a presentation. I mean, if I had a straight face or something, I can understand, but I think people will find my ‘ahoy matey’ pretty funny. Or maybe it’s just me.

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Haven’t posted a picture on here in a while, so…

This is a picture of Dr. Doom, me and Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds at the Chicago Comic Convention this past summer. Galactus is this all knowing, all powerful being who goes around the universe looking for worlds to consume to satisfy his hunger.

Sounds pretty intimidating, huh?

Well, intimidating until you see his cute fluffy booties:

Sure, he may eat worlds and destroy civilizations in one bite, but a guy who wear big fuschia booties like that doesn’t scare me!

Tags: Pictures by Yano
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Ahh, seems like stress (work, life, etc) has been affecting my personality as of late. I’ve realized that I’ve been pretty uptight and mean lately.

Dave woke me up from a nap today so I could help him with a presentation (he’s computer illiterate, imagine that!) and I was grumpy the whole time and gave him a hard time about it. It’s really not his fault that he’s not computer savvy, but all I wanted to do was return to my nap.

Luckily, I haven’t had much interaction with people since I’ve been working at home a lot. I’m sure I’d be snappy at the guys at work if I was there, too. Lately I’ve been in work mode all the time.

Oh, if I could only divulge all the juicy gossip and stresses from work - they’d make for wonderful blog fodder. Hmm, maybe I’ll wait a while so if people from work DO stumble onto my little internet world, they won’t know who I’m referring to. Let’s just say I work with some big prima donnas. How I wish I was back in the old days of XSystems - when life was good, we hung out as friends all the time, and I looked forward to going into work everyday. Now, there’s not much left to go to at the office, and it’s almost depressing how empty it is in there. There are only a couple shining stars left in the office for me - stars that will soon leave me by myself.

Hmm. I’ve said too much.

*suspiciously looks around*

Grr….it’s late. Why aren’t I sleepy?

Tags: Daily by Yano
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I was working at home yesterday, typing along, when I realized that I smelled something weird. It wasn’t a strong smell, but it was something unpleasant. It actually made me a bit nauseous. I can’t really describe the smell - it wasn’t like B.O. or something decomposing, but there was just something I didn’t like about it.

Of course, I smelled myself, to make sure it wasn’t me - but hey, I just took a shower, it couldn’t be me! And it wasn’t. Then I smelled my blanket, which I usually have draped around me while I work. Wasn’t the blanket. I got up and sniffed around, maybe it was something burning. Nope.

I gave up, but after a while it started driving me crazy. I only caught whiffs of it once in a while, but it was annoying me.

Then I realized what it was. I touched the top of my nose and smelled my finger. AHA!

After my shower I noticed that I had a zit coming up. I couldn’t find my tube of Clean and Clear Persagel (which is my zit zapper of choice). However, while rummaging in the bathroom I found some Clearasil, that wasn’t mine. Since I was in a jam, I decided to use it and put it on my nose. I didn’t notice then that it had a distinct smell that makes me want to gag.

I’m going out today and buying me some new Persagel. I should never have strayed from it in the first place!

Mystery solved!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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You know what? I just found out that we have the ESPN News channel. I don’t think Dave knows because the channel is hidden all the way at #402. We rarely go above 200 when channel surfing.

Let’s keep it between us, ok?

If he ever finds out about this, it’s over.

I’ll never watch TV again!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Not too much time today to post…thought I’d take a couple minutes to teach you something I thought was cool. I loved cultural anthropology in college, and I always learned interesting things.

In our society, we’ve got basically 9 main colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black and gray. Of course, you’ve got the hundreds of different shades of those colors that have their own names, too, like lime, burgundy, navy, cyan, gold, etc.

What’s the least number of colors names that a society has had? Two - light and dark. Of course, there’s different shades of gray between that spectrum, but cultures that have names for colors usually start off with two - one for light, and one for dark. For societies that have three colors, the next color to get a name is red. After red, then comes blueish-green (the Chinese see blue and green as shades of the same base color).

Interesting?

Maybe not, but I had nothing else to say today.
p.s. Of course, I may be remembering this all wrong, so I apologize if I’m just speaking out of my ass.

Tags: Quickies by Yano
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Why five?

Because that’s the number of interceptions that Chicago Bears’ rookie quarterback Kyle Orton gave up yesterday.

*sigh*

After the high of last week’s win over the Lion’s, we came to reality yesterday, realizing that yes, Kyle is a rookie and he’ll make his mistakes. It’s how he handles those mistakes that will determine how the rest of the season will go.

To tell the truth, he did ok. There were a couple times that he was rattled, but not as many as you’d think. He didn’t panic, he wasn’t afraid to pass even after giving up those interceptions (though we were afraid of him passing!) and he kept his head on - no pouting, no shouting, no breakdown. He also used Thomas Jones effectively - he rushed for more than 100 yards. Also, it’s not like Kyle sucks as a quarterback - Cincinatti has an awesome defense. Last week, Minnesota Vikings QB Daunte Culpepper threw a career high five interceptions to the Bengals as well - he’s been playing for more than 5 years.

Luckily, our defense kicks ass. We lost 24-7 yesterday, but if the Bengals had really used those interceptions to their advantage, we’d have lost by much more than that. Our defense really stopped them from progressing any further and scoring. Sure, they were a bit tired in the 3rd quarter, but still, they did an awesome job of stopping the Bengal offense.

So, we lost a game yesterday. It could have gone better, but we didn’t give up. We’ve got 2 weeks to mull over it, since next week we have a bye (we’re not playing).

Am I the only one the misses our field goal kicker Paul Edinger? This new guy Doug Brien is 1 for 4 this season. That’s not good!

Man, I love football season!

Tags: Daily by Yano
5 Comments »

Dear God,

You know, I know that most of the time when people talk to you, they’re asking for something. I’m sure you remember, but I did so a couple years ago, every day, but you didn’t make it happen, and my mother died. Those things happen, I know, and the more religious say it’s because you needed her with you, or it was a test of my faith, yadda yadda. You remember that time, don’t you? The time I was really angry at you and thought that you were really unfair?

I admit, I don’t really ask you for anything as much anymore. I still believe in you, I still know you’re around, and really, I can’t give you too much grief because my mom’s with you right now and I know you’re taking good care of you - since she hasn’t come back to tell me otherwise.

Anyway, the reason I’m bugging you right now is just to say thank you. I know people say it a lot, like “Thank God!”, but I don’t know how many people actually tell it straight to you, or thank you enough.

It’s been obvious that I’ve been having a hard time lately, especially at work, but to tell the truth, there are some challenges that I couldn’t have overcome without some sort of divine intervention. Sure, a lot of it came at the last minute so there was a lot of panicking that happened, but in the end, I made it through. I could say that I did it with my own power, but I’d like to think I had a little bit of help.

So thanks. Thanks for helping me out in the last couple months, preventing me from losing my mind where many other people would have broken down and given up. Thanks for giving me the strength to hang in there and persevere.

You rock, dude.

One of your many loving minions,
Christine

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Yesterday I headed out to Naperville to see one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, do a reading and sign copies of his latest book “Anansi Boys”. He was the guest of this small book store and the reading was at a local college. I got there on time, but the place was already packed when I came in.

Since it was just me, I was able to grab a seat near the front. I had never seen Gaiman before in person, nor heard his voice. I knew he was English, but he had relocated to Minnesota to be near his wife’s family. His accent is awesome, sounding a bit like Alan Rickman’s (Professor Snape). He was so comfortable on stage, talking about how his book came about (it’s the sequel to his best seller “American Gods”), making the audience laugh with his clever jokes and immediately creating an air of familiarity between him and everyone else in the room.

He then read a chapter from “Anansi Boys”, and I sat there, content as a little girl. The whole audience was under a spell, their eyes steadily watching him, laughing at the funny parts, giggling as he changed his voice to match the different characters. It came to mind that I hadn’t been read to in a very long time, probably since 2nd grade. It’s a really cheesey word to use, but it was delightful. I was sad that it was over when he finished the chapter.

I love doing the readings. The readings are the fun bits… The readings are probably the things that actually keep me going on these. If I couldn’t do the readings, I wouldn’t do the tours. I get to stand up there and read to a bunch of adults who in many cases nobody’s read to in years, since they were about five. They just squat on the floor. That’s enormously enjoyable.

- from an Onion interview on NeilGaiman.com

Afterwards, he did a little Q & A session. Some key things:

- There’s no plans right now for a Sandman movie
- “Death in Me” (I thinkt that’s what it was called), the movie featuring Sandman’s little sister Death, is being shopped around
- Neil co-wrote “Beowolf”, which is coming out in a couple years featuring the voices of Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie and Crispin Glover as Grendel.
- Neil has several sequels in mind - for “Neverwhere”, “Stardust”, and a set of short stories related to “American Gods”

Once the reading and questions were done, he went upstairs to do a signing. There were easily 800 people there, but luckily they had given out numbers to people to keep order during the signing. We got to stay in the auditorium and hang out and just waited for our group of numbers to be called. I got to read the book, well, about 221 pages, before my number was called - 2 hours after the reading ended.

But it was awesome to finally meet Gaiman. I seem to have a big problem when meeting celebrities - because I was utterly dumbfounded when I was actually face to face with Gaiman. Luckily, my name was already on a post-it on the book (to make it easier for him to spell names). I finally snapped out of it and meekly said, “I’m loving the book so far!” He said something to me, and it didn’t register, so I said “Huh?” (real classy, Christine) “How far along in the book are you?”

“Oh! I’m at page 221.”

“Wow, you’re a fast reader. Well, I guess you’ve been waiting two hours so you’ve had time to read. Thank you so much for waiting, and for coming to see me!”

“Yeah! Thanks!” …and I walked away.

Real smooth, Christine.

Smooth.

Tags: Uncategorized by Yano
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Back to answering questions from readers, because I really have nothing to say today. I’ll answer the question that I know has been keeping my readers up at night, something that I’m sure all of you are DYING to know my opinion on…

“What about Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston? ” - submitted by Bronx

You know, I believe I’m the minority here, but I think that Brad and Angelina are a good couple. Sure, Brad and Jen were great, but if you look back at interviews that Brad had when he was still married to Jen he seemed wary that the married life would last. That should have been a red flag right there!

She should have known that Brad doing a movie with Angie was trouble. If Dave was going to spend more than a week with Angelina Jolie, even if it was sorting through garbage dumps for recyclable materials, I *KNOW* something will happen. Hell, I’d have an affair with her, too! She’s hot!

Outside of the hotness factor and the fact that they could possibly be the most stunning couple alive, you have to admit that they have a lot in common outside of the looks. Brad has always been a philanthropist, and Angelina had been a Goodwill ambassador for the United Nations since 2001. Brad comes from a big family, Angelina wants a big family. Rumor had it that Jen didn’t want to have kids.

I think Brad and Angie will get married, but they’ll get divorced soon after. Unless their personailities are so strong that it actually keeps them together - their wildness could balance each other out.

I feel bad for Jen, she loses a lot in this one, but hopefully she can find someone who is more commited to her and the institution of marriage. She’s got a lot of friends, and a lot of support, but I doubt she’ll ever take Brad back if he came back.

There. Now you know.

You can go on living your life again without wondering.

Tags: Daily by Yano
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