ryssee's world

Have a happy new year! Now, go have some fun! :-)

...extremely busy month!

I'm done with my daily posts! :-)

...the rules said 30 posts in 30 days. I missed Nov 1 and Nov 2 and I missed a day in the middle. My penance is to torture you with more inane topics for three more days. So, for the next three days, you will probably see pictures and stuff like that. Just didn't have much to talk about this month I guess. This weekend though, was about what I am thankful for. Here's a Top 5 list. 1) My family, my excellent friends, and my Sweet One. 2) My meowers, who are sweet and fun and give me something to keep alive and happy. 3) My job, with a fun company that is successful, so hopefully I don't have to worry about it. Its youth, passion for the product, and energy helps keep me young too. 4) Getting to travel as much as I did this year. Peru/Ecuador, great times with my friends in Plum Island MA, and London to celebrate 20 years of friendship with one of the special friends in my life. 5) My online presence, which keeps me in touch and in the know with people near and fa

Last night I dreamed that I was walking with one of our sales reps toward a building where we were having a meeting, and a storm was fast approaching. I said, "We better get inside! I'm afraid of lightning!" As we started running, lightning struck the ground three feet away from me, and knocked me on my back. I thought, "Well, that didn't hurt as much as I thought it would!" Then, I woke up. Odd.

We're at my mom's house in the Berkshires for thanksgiving weekend. Had a nice time with the whole family yesterday. Last night Randy and I decided to go to the movies. We went to see Four Christmases, which was funny and cute. My niece C called the house after she arrived home with her sister and mom to report that people were already in line at Best Buy at 9pm last night, waiting for the doorbuster tickets they would be handing out at 3am. Sure enough, we drove by and there were 10 people in line, some with tents. Wow, now I'm a good bargain hunter, but holy moly that is commitment. Did any of YOU actually get any good deals between 4am-7am this morning?

That's it. Now stop reading blogs and go get some turkey and pie.

The cats got an early Christmas present today. Randy got them a self-cleaning litter box. It's gourmet, if anything that has to do with feline elimination can be considered gourmet. It took about 20 minutes to put together. The cats stared at it. Emmie sniffed it. Mimi stood outside of it and stuck one paw inside to determine if it did indeed contain kitty litter. Immediately withdrew the paw and dragged litter outside the box. Some minutes later, it turned on and raked the litter. Both cats watched, bellies close to the ground, fascinated. Neither one has taken the plunge. They are either holding tight, or went upstairs to use the normal litter box up there. We're waiting, but hopeful. Scooping sucks. Gratuitous kitty pictures. Black one is Mimi and stripey one is Emmie. They're the poopers and we're the scoopers.

Can't write much. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is about to come on so I will be very busy in about one minute and 30 seconds. Not much to write about anyway, other than that I am excited to see my family on Thursday. Enter the Vince Guaraldi Linus and Lucy theme , which happens to be my ringtone.

I've gotten a couple messages here and there, and I asked them to write to me more often so I could keep in touch with them. I promised them I would reply to every message they send to me, whether it's on email or in a letter. So, my brother set them up with email accounts. Here's what I got from one of them today. Can you guess how many pets have a lot of teeth you need at lest 8 when I come back from school tomorrow I will check my e mail and respond so you know. I have a question when are you coming on Thursday or Wednesday? I'm going to ask you questions and you are going to answer when I come home from school tomorrow I will check my email so then I can make the mistakes right. When I see you I'm going to give you a big huge kiss then I'm gong to tell you what I told you on the email so then I know if you have learned. I also have a question what dose East Africa live on a day sendme back Love C What have I gotten myself into?? :-) (I l

I met Howard at The Griffin Tavern in London in 1988. I was employed there for the summer, and he wandered in and ordered a Jameson's. I served it and with my newfound imitation-British attitude declared, "You must be from the States!" Which, of course, he was. From California. Turns out he was there for a SF 49ers/Miami Dolphins exhibition game. "Sir, excuse me, but you're bleeding on the bar." He'd cut himself shaving. He managed to meet Dan Marino and the rest of the Dolphins, as well as the cheerleaders, in a pub in Kensington called the Rose and Crown or something like that. Despite my imitation-British attitude, he asked if I'd like to go to the game with him at Wembley (the old Wembley, not the remodel). He was cool to talk to so I said yes. It was a lot of fun. It's been 20 years and 4 months since then. He'd been out to visit me in Amherst (when he bought a charcoal grill so we could grill outside), and Albany and Boston, I

Jeepers it was cold today. 28 degrees F. Yikes. I spent most of the afternoon changing the closet over from fall to winter. Trying to gain control over the mess in the Princess Room and actually get the summer clothes and slim clothes into the basement this year. Also managed to do a load of laundry. Went to Target, spent $80 and didn't get anything fun. After I put away 18 rolls of paper towels, 12 Charmin Mega-rolls of TP, 3 different cleaners, two big boxes of cat litter and litter box filters (changed the litter boxes too), I felt like all I did was lose $80. Tonight we went to a really nice dinner at a restaurant called Casablanca in Harvard Square. I think we were the only natural-born US citizens in the place. Very Euro. Great food though. Randy had duck and I had Arctic Char. Yum. After that we went to see the new James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace. Cool. Also got free passes to another movie because the sound kept going out. Came home and got a sweet email

OK I know I've done a bit of London blogging lately, but here's another one anyway. We just came off a great summer Olympics in China, where the athletes were great, records were broken, and we got to experience the last warm fuzzy thing we got to see-feel-view before the markets collapsed and the economy went south and the US election happened, etc., etc. Now, we look to the next summer Olympics in 2012. London won the bid in 2005, ( the very next day, they went through the horrific 7/7 terrorists bombings on the subway and bus that killed over 50 people-let's not forget about those people, and it was one of the worst days I had, worrying about one of my best friends.) Moving on, they had to come up with plans for the games, not to mention a really cool logo to splash all over anything that's possible to sell before, during and after the games. Enter the worst logo for any product, service, or event I've ever seen. What was going through their minds, to select th

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Landing in Arequipa, Peru, in April. Click here to see who else is wordless today.

I missed a post yesterday! Darn it, I was doing so well! Oh well, because I started Nablopomo a couple days late I have to pay penance by posting a couple extra days in December anyway. What's an extra day on top of that? It will be 30 posts in 31 days instead! I was at our sales meeting all day yesterday - so great - all our shoes and apparel look awesome for Fall 2009. Yes, fall 2009! Hard to believe all the footwear and apparel manufacturers have already decided what we're going to be offered in stores to put on our bodies a full year from now. After the meeting, we did a "Dine-Around." We were broken up into smaller groups of 8 people each and assigned a restaurant. Ours was Bouchee on Newbury Street, around the corner from the hotel in Boston's Back Bay. Cool tres Francais ambiance, nice wines, so-so food, but great company. Transitioning from Fall 09 to Fall 08 now...a couple years ago, I signed up for emails from Julie Foley, who's a local sty

Randy's got a friend in Seattle who thought we'd like the band Spearhead . A couple summers ago, he sent us their "Yell Fire" CD. One listen and we were hooked. They've got a kind of reggae/world music kind of sound, great hooks, and simple lyrics where you can shout along by the end of the song even if you've never heard it before in your life. Yesterday morning, Randy was checking around for things to do and saw that they're currently on tour in New England. So, he got some tix and last night we got to see them in concert at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence. Awesome show, great tunes, really cool place to see them. It's a rock club in an old building right downtown, with a couple of bars and a huge open floor in front of the stage, but they have a balcony with seats too, so you can have an awesome view and a nice cushy seat. Not like we sat, the music kept us movin' and groovin' most of the night! Before the show we went to di

One of my new favorite blogs, thanks to my recent trip to London, is Going Underground . The blog's owner, Annie Mole, posts about traveling on London's enormous transport system, and all the crazy things you see in transit. She puts a humorous twist on something that usually just makes people miserable. A pretty funny topic to post on every day, but her blog is an award-winner, so stop by and check it out sometime. After our recent election, she posted about a couple things she stumbled across. I can't direct-link to the post unfortunately, but here are the pics. At Holland Park station. These signs usually have service information written on them. ( The photo was attributed to Andrew Grill , who posts about mobile marketing if you're interested.) The Metro is a free daily newspaper given out at the tube and train stations. We're not the only ones watching this election closely!

Yay! My cousin Kim comes to my rescue today! She, as a busy mom, dedicated employee, and aspiring first-time triathlete , is also having trouble with themes this month. She came across a meme from one of her bloggie friends, and since it's a meme, it's not theft if I use it, Chris ! Here are all of my secret names. The codes to get them can be found below. Enjoy and feel free to play along on your own blog. 1. ROCK STAR NAME: JJ Scion 2. GANGSTA NAME: Chocolate Saucony 3. NATIVE AMERICAN NAME: Red Cat 4. SUPERHERO NAME: Blue Newcastle 5. NASCAR NAME: Sigurd Ray 6. STRIPPER NAME: CK One Milky Way (Imagine the outfit. Jeepers.) 7. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: oh no, I don't remember who that was! 8. SPY NAME: Summer Geranium 9. CARTOON NAME: Banana Boyshorts 10. HIPPIE NAME: Oatmeal Ceiba If you want to play, here's how: 1. first pet, current car 2. fave ice cream flavor, favorite type of shoe 3. favorite color, favorite animal 4. 2nd favorite color, favorite drink 5. the

...I'm stuck in the middle of a month of blog-posting without a lot to write about. Hm, our sales meeting is next week. Fun, but nothing great to write about. I guess the only entertaining thing about that, is that all the guys start talking about what they're gonna wear, because no one can fit in the size medium lifestyle apparel samples. It's funny to hear a bunch of 50-something guys talking about clothes. The economy appears to be pretty much flushable, but the entire world is writing about that. I did manage to find a pair of nice jeans at 30% off, and they're a brand that never goes on sale. Got 'em because I am exploding out of the identical pair in my normal size. I blame that on 7 weeks of kitchen-remodel take-out, not my complete lack of physical endeavor. My beau is at the Patriots/Jets game with his company tonight. Well, THAT'S kinda funny, 'cause he's a Dolphins fan, and everyone else he went with is pulling for the Jets. How come w

My boss took us to the Celtics game tonight. Great game, very exciting from the 2nd quarter on. Within one or two points at the end of each quarter from the 2nd on. Wow the way the crowd exploded when they won...pretty wild! From Boston.com: Celtics rally, send Hawks to first loss of season By JIMMY GOLEN, AP Sports Writer BOSTON (AP) Paul Pierce hit a fallaway jumper with 0.5 seconds left, scoring 34 points in all on Wednesday night as the Boston Celtics overcame a 16-point, second-quarter deficit to beat Atlanta 103-102 and send the Hawks to their first loss of the season.

How lucky am I, that I got to go to both the Equator and the Prime Meridian in the same year? At the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England, in October At the Equator (GPS location) outside of Quito, Ecuador in April, on my 40th birthday Randy at the Equator Monument - only 300 yards or so off the mark, and a much nicer, older monument

Housekeepers! Yes, we have house cleaners come to the house every two weeks. Let me just say that for me it's money well spent. OK, we don't have kids, but we both work full time and we're kinda sloppy. It's a pretty inexpensive service, especially for the area, and I'm not about to do a deep cleaning on an over 100-year-old nine-room house all the time. I could barely keep my three room apartment clean when I had it! Today, the housekeepers came for the first time in 8 weeks, primarily to clean up the mess left by the contractors. We've done a bunch ourselves, but it's so nice to have it deep cleaned-even the wires to the electronics are clean. It's so nice! They moved all the furniture in the living room. So, while we're waiting for the guys to finish up all the little leftover projects, we're going to sit on our nice clean couch, in our nice clean house, and decide if we want to keep it this way.

Today Randy used the rug doctor machine on the sofa and chair - took out a lot of kitty cat fur and they look and smell great! I took care of the deck today, cleaning up the planters, closing down the grill, putting away the chairs. Threw out my back lifting a bag of dirt, hit my head in the cellar, and got sprayed full-on in the face when the hose attachment decided to reject the on/off switch thing. Yesterday's choppings remain where I left them. Work for another day.

Warning: This will not go down in blogger history as one of the most exciting posts ever published. Today Randy rented a carpet cleaner from Rug Doctor and cleaned all the carpets in the house - wow, they look unbelievable - and I chopped, chopped, chopped the hydrangea bushes, some tree limbs, and all the plants in the garden, before attacking the bamboo forest we have growing for 35 feet along the north side of the house. What I couldn't believe is that today's what? November 8th, and I worked outside all day until it got dark wearing a tee-shirt and jeans! Probably about 64-65 degrees. Wow. Still gotta clean up the deck - look at the state of it! This was our summer slice of heaven, but now it's just a gigantic mess, thanks to the construction in the kitchen and the death of 80% of my plants. The hydrangeas are dead center in this photo. They were so big this year we could hardly get into the garden. Now, they're a bunch of big sticks growing out of the ground.

I love the City Slicker Cafe. I just had yummy meatloaf with rice pilaf and spinach. Randy just had steak tips with the pilaf and a salad. Delivered to our door. Hot. This place rocks. My belly is full. I am so happy it's Friday that I just can't stand it. Happy weekend!

A post a day in November...perfect time to get caught up on my pics! As you may or may not know, I went to London in early October to visit my friend Dave. We've been friends for over 20 years now, ever since I met him in the pub I worked at as a sophomore in college. We went out the night before these shots were taken, and were really hung over, but because it was such a gorgeous day, my last day there...and because I had to bring back pictures of a Flat Stanley paper doll my niece had sent me, who really hadn't been photographed in anyplace famous yet, we dragged out butts out of the house and hit the train in the middle of the afternoon and made the trip into town. We hit Pizza Hut outside Charing Cross station, scarfed down a gigantic pizza with gigantic diet cokes (and honestly, we had the nicest waitress in London there, a rarity-we tipped well in the city that never tips!) and hit the pavement. Here's Dave, catching up on some sleep on the train. On the Strand, wi

Wow, what a night last night. I had to stay up and watch it all. The best part, aside from the Obama victory, was watching the crowds in Grant Park and Times Square and the other places they showed on tv, filled with happy excited people. I heard that in Boston, people were jumping into the long reflecting pool/fountain thing outside the Christian Science church. It was so great to witness an election where people ran out into the streets and celebrated with joy afterwards. The neighbors down the street put out red, white, and blue balloons. What a fantastic, amazing, inclusive, historic moment. So, today, I am very tired, and very happy. Instead of writing anything else about our president-elect, and how much better I feel about our country's future and position in world politics, here's a photo montage that put a big smile on my face last night. My mom put together a photoshow of my beautiful nieces. Enjoy! :-) PS- The Onion's website is definitely worth a vis

Oh crap, it's NABLOPOMO time again, a post a day in November. I forgot it was November so I missed the first two days, but I'm going to try to post every day for the rest of the month. Bizarre call in the wee hours here in Somerville this morning. I like our reverse-911 and reverse 311 service; it's very cool, but this freaked me out a little, when I listened to the message this morning after I got up and voted, completely uncaffeinated, I might add. So, the phone rang while I was having sweet dreams. I got up and saw that the caller id was reading "city" so I ignored the call and went to bed. I thought, "Why are they gonna tell me about Somerville Ave construction in the middle of the night?!" Because that's the only reason they call. Except for one time to warn me about an assault near my neighborhood where they hadn't caught the guy yet. Anyway, I read the caller ID and went back to bed. Here's part of the article: Connect CTY Sys

OK get out there and vote! Even if you write in Minnie Mouse! At least check out this funny video (with a special guest appearance at the end.) Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!