After having a rough night's sleep last night and having to work until 10:00 tonight, I'm looking forward to an exhausting week being over with. It's hard to believe it's only Wednesday. Josh had an interview yesterday which they chose someone else for. Josh isn't too upset about that one because it wasn't his first choice, but apparently they made it sound like he wasn't chosen because they thought he would bored, so it's probably a good thing. Our fingers are really crossed for his interview today, though. He thinks it went well, better than the interview yesterday, so that's a good sign.

This weekend shouldn't be too busy, although we have a party to go to Saturday night and we will probably go see a movie. I think we'll go see 'Coraline' which looks good. I can't think of what else is playing right now. We are super exicted about 'Watchmen' though and will be taking that day off, well, at least I'll be taking off from my day job. I have to work that night, so we're going to see the first matinee of the day. Other than that, not too much else. We're supposed to get 6 inches of snow tomorrow which seems ridiculous considering what a beautiful day it is today, but it happens. Josh said the squirrels figured out how to get into the other bird feeder. He hasn't been able to get a picture yet, but is going to keep trying. :p It definitely explains why there is so much bird seed on the ground, though. They climb the screen on the window and then jump onto it and hang because they're too big, so it tips and all the seed falls out. Apparently Uzi was going nuts watching this happen and while one squirrel did that, the other was fat and happy sitting in the other feeder. Little stinkers. It's too funny. We're going to have the most obese squirrels on the block. :p

Oooh - and as of a few minutes ago I'm getting a haircut on Friday... with another new person. The other girl I went to a few months ago isn't there anymore. Go figure. I miss Lisa Marie - she was awesome. Maybe I should schedule an appointment with her while we're in Durango in May! I might have the extra money to spend and it would be soooo worth it. I'll think about it. :p

Starvation Heights

My current book of choice is Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen. You can check out the site here: http://www.starvationheights.com/. I'm about half way through and it's proving to be an interesting read. It's astounding really the things people believed in regards to health and some of the ridiculous things that doctors were allowed to get away with until too many people died from these so-called treatments. In this book Linda Burfield Hazzard's treatment is starvation - a "fasting cure" and this story is about two of her more wealthy and well-known patients who were heiresses to a very large fortune, Clare and Dora Williamson - one of which died and the other barely survived. Patients of Hazzard's treatment were kept on diets of a cup or two of tomato broth a day and little else for upwards of 45 days to 100 days until they were literally skin and bones and most could barely walk. This picture is of Dora who was 60 pounds when a family friend finally rescued her from the sanitarium.

Along with starving the patients, they were given daily enemas - sometimes lasting for hours and extremely painful and doing a strange osteopathic massage that involved roughly thumping her fists against patients' heads, stomachs and backs.

Who can say what led people to actually go and submit themselves to this treatment, but once they committed themselves, they were at the hands of Hazzard and her husband. Maybe like the Williamson sisters they were naive and overly trusting and hypocondriacs willing to try anything and believing almost anything - most giving the Hazzard's money and control of their finances - misguided and taken advantage of while delirious with hunger.

Perhaps even more amazing is that after starving at least a dozen people to death with her treatment, Hazzard eventually died herself from starvation from her own cure. She actually believed in her treatment. she even performed autopsies on patients who had died and never put two and two together that their organs were shruken because of the starvation and that they didn't die because the organs were bad, which is what she believed.

Mad Men

*Edit* I am now addicted to this show and love it. :)

So I just started watching 'Mad Men' which airs on AMC (I just started watching the first season from Netflix) and I'm pretty hooked. For those of you not familiar with the show you can learn everything you could ever want to know (and more) on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men.

It takes place in the early 60's in New York at a prestigious advertising agency. This drama seems bent on showing the worst of everyone. So far in three episodes, it seems like no one is happy... most of the married men are having affairs, the wives are gossipy and unhappy in their loveless marriages, women in the office seem to think (and it was probably unfortunately true) that the only way to move ahead is to show off as much flesh as acceptable for the time, flirt with anyone (married men) and basically be easy if it means a promotion or possible marriage so you don't have to work anymore. Most of the characters I want to smack upside the head, so why am I so hooked on this show now!? Maybe it's this sick fascination watching all of this and wondering if that's how it actually was back then... granted, it's a drama and a televsion show, so you aren't getting a broad picture, but it would be nice and refreshing to see one or two characters that don't sleep around, and aren't lemmings, like perhaps one strong female character who realizes how demeaning it is to have men talk to her or about her likes she's a piece of meat and has some self-respect because so far none of them seem to. They're all bent on flirting and being catty and getting free meals out of men (married or not). Also, it would be nice to have a few male characters who don't all behave like horny bastards and treat every woman like they're there for one reason only. I'll watch the rest of the first season and see how it goes. Maybe the sick fascination will wear off the frustration will set in because I'm tired of seeing the worst of people represented.

Sledding!

We finally went sledding down the hill in the backyard, so here are the pics from our silly antics. :p

Lego

Okay, as I mentioned before, I received some Legos for Christmas from Josh and while I haven't built anything too amazing yet, I did find this website for Nathan Sawaya who does amazing things with Lego bricks. Check it out - it's amazing!!

http://brickartist.com/

Igor

Okay, you simply must watch Igor! This is surprisingly bouncing up to one of my new favorite animated films. The touches of dark humor accompanied with a fantastic soundtrack (which unfortunately can't be purchased - just the intrumental songs) had me laughing and thoroughly enjoying myself.

The cars won't start, can you guess why?

Eye Contact by Cammie McGovern

This month's book is about a young autistic boy who witnesses the murder of a fellow classmate. It took a while for the book to really draw me in and then even when it did, it felt like it was hard to feel close to any of the characters. I didn't feel like I had been given enough to really know any of them. The author seemed intent on keeping you guessing and scratching your head, which is great - in moderation. I think I've read maybe a handful of books with autistic characters, though, so it was interesting, especially when I found out the author has a son who is autistic, so she's writing from actual experience when it comes to that aspect of the novel. I really didn't feel emotionally attached to the book, though (I tend to really get into books when I read them). It wasn't particularly thrilling, and while parts of it were definitely mysterious, the writing often felt scattered.

So after reading that I moved on to "Dewey" which I read in two days and laughed and cried and if you're a cat lover than you have to read it!

How can you not love that face?! He truly sounded like a very special cat.

Happy Holidays!

Talk about an exhausting couple of days. I'm officially wiped out. We spent Christmas Eve with Josh's dad and that part of the family. It was a south of the border theme with some non-traditional fare and present opening (of course). All in all, a very nice evening. Christmas morning Josh and I got up and did our stockings and gave the kitties their presents and opened presents from my family - and then I made gingerbread pancakes with lemon sauce. We had a few hours to relax before it was time for Josh's mom and that side of the family to arrive - 15 people in total and when you have that many people you can pretty much bet on a little chaos in a house of that size. Still, we managed to fit everyone in the basement in front of the fire to open presents. We took about 168 photos over two days, so I'm obviously not going to post them all, but here is a link to a seperate site... mostly family opening gifts. I have to work on Sunday evening, but I do believe Josh and I are going to watch some of our new movies tonight and tomorrow and just crash on the beanbag chair in front of another fire. I also plan on playing with my new toys - Josh gave me legos! A huge box of them! Yay! So, while I do that Josh will probably play some Fable II (my gift) and we're going to check out Mario Galaxy for the Wii (from my mom). I also have a new 500GB harddrive to fill! :)

Here's the link: http://madamesecretary.googlepages.com/christmas2008

The company Christmas party was on Saturday night so we dressed up, which was fun and a rarity. :p The party was at a local golf club and overall it was very nice, the food wasn't bad, the dessert was super yummy! The company really put a lot of money into it actually... free bar and everything, plus gift cards ($100!) and fleece logo jackets for everyone - guests included. We decided it was time to leave as soon as the DJ played the Chicken Dance, which had been preceded by an interesting selection of songs, most of which was pre-90s.

Now... as for the gingerbread castle... it turns out it was a tad bit too ambitious for a first time experiment when you are pressed for time. Things started going wrong when it became apparent that the little hand mixer was not going to cut it. I have now decided to save for a nice big cuisinart that will mix anything. Try mixing 9 cups of flour and molasses and etc. and you'll know what I mean. To make matters worse it turns out my large cookie sheet (which fits in most regular ovens) does not fit in our 70's Brady Bunch style oven. After two hours in the kitchen and one disaster after another I managed to bake the dragon and the knight and the lady, but then called it quits. We have yet to decorate them, but I think a bit more planning next time would be better and a much smaller project to start out with.