stuff

I'd love to take credit for both of these fascinating images! Both are courtesy of Raven (!! I finally figured out how to make the link work!). She made me the adorable calendar you see .. it is my desktop.. and Aunt Sissy's & Aunt Jaime's desktop.. and I think both Grandpa John and Grandpa Jamieson too! I'm hoping for one every month.. and also hoping Raven doesn't start to charge a fee.

There was one heck of a fire in downtown Knoxville yesterday. Three (or four?) warehouses burned.. and at least one of them was over 1oo years old. They were all vacant, but gorgeous, buildings. The fire burned for hours. One of those awe-inspiring events.

You know it's never a good sign when you go to pick up your child from school and she's in a different outfit than what she had on in the morning! That happened to us on Tuesday. Little Missy had quite the bathroom event, requiring a change of clothes. AND, even tho she's only been there a month, the outfit(s) I have at school (left there for just such events) are already too small! Her poor little toes were about to bust out of the footies! So I'll be bringing in some new outfits.. probably some that are currently too big! Anyway.. the good news was that after her little 'event' she was in a GREAT mood and slept like a rock! And hey... we didn't have to be the ones to clean her up.. so that's another positive.

Josh has been working feverishly on a pitch this week.. working day and night.. today is the last day before it's due.. poor guy. It will be nice for him to just sit down and relax tonight (after we bathe Eileen and make dinner and clean up the house and make tomorrow's lunches and coffee and bottles...). We have to watch last night's Lost, and there will be a new Office and we still faithfully watch Smallville. And we have three weeks worth of Gilmore Girls. Oh, and CSI will be a new one tonight too! What did we ever do without Tivo?!

Oh.. and we have our first school holiday event next week - Valentine's Day. It's funny.. when we became parents.. we focused on making sure Eileen was well-fed and clean and warm and happy. Things like school parties are not the first thing on one's brain. So early this week when I picked up her daily activity sheet there was an extra page attached. A list of all the babies names and all the teachers names. It was simply titled "Valentine's Day." now what am I supposed to do with that?!? My mind instantly reverts to when I was in 1st or 2nd grade.. trading Snoopy and Cabbage Patch Valentine cards with everyone. And now I am thinking: this is a room of 3-10 month old children.. the older ones crawl and the younger ones sit in the swings.. none of them talk and they most exciting thing they eat are pureed sweet potatoes and bananas. What do they get for Valentine's day?!

Luckily, a girl I work with has her daughter in Eileen's class. Maddie is about 8 mos old. So Jen, being a mother 3 mos longer than me, is a qualified expert! I talked to her to find out protocol. We decided that baking treats for the teachers and the cheapie store-bought cards for the babies is fine. I don't want to be breaking the budget for little people who have no clue what Valentine's Day is.. but I don't want to be that slacker Mom who does nothing! oh the pressure! This is worse than being in middle school!

There ya go.. there's my stream of consciousness blog entry for the day... Happy Almost Friday!

MVP.. I should say so!

He got robbed of the Heisman (ahem, and where is Charles Woodson now?!).

The Gators just kept getting away from him.

He stayed one more year (even tho he got his degree in three) and still wasn't able to get that elusive NCAA title.

Finally, last night, our boy got his due.

He's got a laundry list of records and accomplishments. He's got some pretty funny national ad campaigns. He's actually a decent role model. And now he's got that Super Bowl ring.

I know, if you didn't go to UT during the Peyton Years or haven't lived in this town that bleeds Orange, you probably think it's weird that I am posting an entry about a football player I don't even know! (actually - I did meet him a loong time ago.. I got to interview him when I was an intern and he was in his 3rd season here- but I'm betting he doesn't remember me- ha!)

I think those of us here in Knoxvegas were just as stoked as those in Indianapolis! Even at the gym this morning the little old biddies in the locker room were talking about Peyton.

OK, and now on to the things you REALLY want to talk about:
1) the commercials
2) Katie Couric's hair.

Let's talk about #2 first.
Why on earth was she even there? She's not a sports person. at all. She sat at the desk during pregame with Shannon Sharpe and gang looking ridiculously out of place. Never mind that the story she did was about a player from LAST YEAR'S Super Bowl team (to give credit: it was a heartwarming story about Hines Ward. But he plays for the Steelers. Not the Colts or the Bears). She normally wears her hair in her sleek yet perky bob. Professional enough to be the face of CBS News. Yet last night, someone attempted to make her look like one of the young, hip, sideline women sportscasters with long wavy hair. Key word: long. If you want to wear your hair in chunky waves, it needs some length. Katie's hair just looked like it was sticking out in many directions. Why do I care? Why am I devoting all this time to it? I really have no idea. It has just been bugging me. I wish I could find a picture for you.

OK, back to the commercials.
Was it me, or was an insane amount of time spent on CBS self-promotion?
Full disclosure: I worked a couple of years at CBS Network (yes, the big one in NYC, not an afiliate) in the promotion dept. I know what goes into building promos and promoting the network.
But there were one too many last night. Then again, maybe it was because of the lack of decent paid commercials to put on the air. The Bud Light ones were funny. Gorillas were the best. And the completely random Robert Goullet (sp?) one for Emerald Nuts was pretty funny. That weird weird robot one for Garmin industries was horrid. That music about put me over the edge. And what about that GoDaddy.com nonsense? Oprah & David Letterman were funny. The 'homemade' Doritos one was pretty good. The Chevy campaign was somewhat amusing, but did I want to run out and buy a Chevy? umm. no. now, the Toyota Tundra ads were somewhat fascinating. I have no idea how they did those. I don't want to run out and buy that car either, but still impressive. The Snickers ad? disturbing. Not because of the men sharing the candy bar, but because of the way the first guy ATE the candy bar. Who eats a candy bar like that? gross.

I could go on and on. But I do have things to do.

For those of you checking in on Eileen.. she's just great! She watched part of the game with us last night. She loves football. :) Just like her momma!

Happy Monday.