How to make a tomato parfait.
Today at our lovely end of the month meeting maybe half of us paid the required $8 to get food from TGIFriday's for the lunch part of the meeting. The people who looked guilty while scarfing down club sandwiches and sesame chicken bites were quite obvious. There was a lovely veggie tray and when the meeting was over I noticed that no one had partaken of hardly any of the lovely little tomatoes. I love tomatoes and try to eat them whenever I can since Martin doesn't care for whole un-abused maters. This is when I came up with the idea of taking some of the tomatoes to my desk. I grabbed a styrofoam cup and started filling it with baby tomatoes. Then at the very top I drizzled the dip on top. It could have passed for a cherry parfait! I am very happy with my new invention. It probably won't catch on but I was very pleased.

I am wearing blue jeans today. I have not had a pair of jeans that looked decent in over two years. For the past 5 months I have seen everyone at work wear jeans on Fridays. Some of these people have questionable fashion sense on a normal day and I didn't want to be part of that crowd. So I am wearing jeans and feeling that I should be hiking or riding a horse. I never caught on to the whole trend of wearing jeans everywhere and every day. I just don't get it.

We are having guests this weekend. It will be cold and they will probably not like that. Other than shopping or a museum, there aren't a lot of indoor things to do in the Chicago area. Not that there are a lot of indoor things to do anywhere, but with guests sometimes I want to get them out and about. Nothing like freezing temperatures and flurries to get me in the mood for something outdoorsy.

Here are some lovely things to do this weekend in Chicago:

• DVA Gallery is having a sale!
• There is an interesting documentary playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center. It's called "Shakespeare was a Big George Jones Fan" about this famous guy from Memphis called Cowboy Jack Clement. He was big in the music scene i nthe 60's and 70's. It looks like it might be something a little different. Of course, Martin wasn't sure who George Jones is. I was astonished that he didn't know the Possum! But I don't really think that's the point of the documentary.
• The Midwest Home and Design Show This could actually be a fun place to get ideas! And it's not even downtown.

So, I have a nickname and it is Sunshine. This name has a long and wonderful history back from I was bubbly and young. In college I had a friend who would often annouce: "And representing the Sunshine State, it's Amy!" This is because I'm from Florida and I was attending school in Louisiana. I'm sure there were other students from Florida, but I never met them and my friend seemed to get a kick of announcing my entrance into a group this way. So fast forward a few years to grad school. I am dubbed 'Sunshine.' I am not sure if this is a carry-over from the original Sunshine State connotation or a new invention all together based on the fact that my personality is like a big ray of sunshine. (I know a lot of you are probably snickering at this and you can stop right now).
The nickname is used by all of four people that I know of.

On a related note, I went to Birmingham this weekend. Actually most of my time was spent in Tuscaloosa. When I was younger my parents and I would go to Tuscaloosa to spend the day shopping at the mall and then eat at the Picadilly cafeteria. This mall was awesome for two reasons. They had a Gyro place in the food court and they had a Sanrio (Hello Kitty) store. I would save up a month of allowance just to go hog wild in that store. I have no idea if we went to Tuscaloosa 5 times or 20. I just remember that the mall was huge to my small eyes. Wow! Are things always smaller than how you remember them? On a rainy Sunday the mall took us about 35 minutes to explore. This did not include our 1 hour lunch at the Picadilly. I did not get liver & onions, my all time fave, since I didn't see it until after I had ordered the chicken. Oh well.

Driving around Tuscaloosa was a delight as I was with one of the four known people that refer to me as Sunshine. I had delish BBQ in Birmingham with Sweetie as well and got to see the Vulcan up close and personal. While talking pretty much the entire weekend ( I sound like Bea Arthur today)the Mz. and I were discussing other lovely sites to see in Alabama and we began talking about the Ava Maria Grotto in Cullman, AL. Then we started talking about this place. It looks like a beautiful place and so today I looked them up and due to a wonderful teacher my sophomore year in high school I learned about the Order of the Poor Clares and was thrilled to find them in Alabama of all places. These are by far the coolest looking nuns I have ever seen: Check this lovely lady out. It's amazing that I wanted to be a nun when I was little. I think I just liked the idea of having a bunch of girls that all lived with each other. Maybe it was because I never had a sister.

I am happy to announce that I am flying to Birmingham tomorrow. I am then going to be picked up by my loverly gal pal,Mz Librarian. Yep, spur of the moment trip and I chose Alabama. I'm very excited because 1. it has been forever since I've been to Alabama and 2. it has been forever and a day since I've seen the Mz. On another happy note, she has dogs.

Martin, back from his four day extravaganza in Vegas is going to go to Denver for a day and then hopefully remembers to pick up the hold I have at the library on Sunday. He asked for a good book to read. I gave him The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, from which he demured. So I have given him my over 10 year old copy of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. I have read this book three times. It is one of the few books that I have ever read more than once. The others that I can remember are Love in the Time of Cholera and Pride & Prejudice (of course). I have read Anne of Green Gables about ten times, but that's in a category all by itself. So, he scoffed at the Donna Tartt book. Probably because it didn't have :
*aliens
*spaceships
*alternate historical happenings
*zombies
The Secret History does have:
*murder
*Greek language scholars
*incest
*suicide
*snow
Lately Martin has had a thing for zombies. He has also not seen Shaun of the Dead.

What am I reading? Since I put all of this emphasis in being a walking book suggestor for my husband I must be reading something quite grand. I'm reading The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai by John Tayman. So far it is absorbing and fascinating. I try to sneak little bits of it in all through the day. It's better than crack. Or so I can imagine.

Like anybody had to really wonder:

You Are Very Worldly

You're an international jet setter - or pretty darn close. And while you may feel like you have many more places to visit... Most people live their whole lives without seeing what you've seen. In fact, you're probably going to be traveling again soon. So Bon Voyage!

How Worldly Are You?

I once saw a drunk man punch a police horse.

So it snowed last night and I had a dream that I was in some wacky Hong Kong/Target land. There were swimming pools and a large bookstore attached and you could just wander in and out of all these places in a swimsuit and towel. I was with two friends from college, fraternal twins actually, and we were hitching rides on these crazy vehicles that would take us up the mountains on Hong Kong Island. It was like a regualr car but had these seats that could attach to the outside of the vehicle so that more people could ride. I miss these two girl friends that I was once so close to. That wasn't part of the dream, though I think that might have been part of the meaning.
As with snow, it is much colder outside today than usual. The pond outside my office window that I speak of so frequently is frozen. This morning two swans were slipping on the ice and have since disappeared to other environs. Now there is a coyote slipping on the ice and sniffing everything. Isn't it funny that coyote is said "Kie-o-tee" but not speeled like that. It might be more exotic if we said it the way it's spelled. I hope the coyote doesn't make a meal out of the swans.
I had a great plan to go see a movie this weekend. I did not. I want to see "the Painted Veil" with Edward Norton and the lovely Naomi Watts. It is only playing three places in the entire Chicago area. Darn it! My aunt apparently also wants to see it but thought it took place in Africa not in China. They don't look similar to me. On an African note, I am thrilled that Forest Whitaker won a Golden Globe for his role as my favorite psychotic dictator last night.

I am currently on day three of a 10 day working marathon. Since unnamed co-workers scheduled classes on Monday and technically now it's a holiday at our university, I am stuck teaching said classes. What a pisser.

I always swore that I didn't like Jimmy Buffett's newer songs. Anything say, after 1982 was verboten in my book. Well, I gave in and bought his newest CD. It's pretty good but I've decided that I cannot listen to his music without feeling pangs of a sort of homesickness.

On an interesting note, my boss took our department of three people to lunch on Wednesday. This marks the first time that I've eaten lunch with some from work in over two months. That's just sad, I know.

While searching for odd words that our students use in our chat service (today's word: mawah) I came across this gem at Urban dictionary:

celebutard A famous stupid person. Typically refers to the current crop of vapid celebrities.
As in:
Celebutard Paris Hilton got the name of her own videogame wrong.

Which brings me to the question of the Ages... Why is she famous in the first place????

So, taking a cue from my buddy at Repressed Librarian , here is my life, rated. Does anyone want to be my friend? I thought that having loving and dependable parents would have given me higher marks for family and friends. But being an only child probably puts me the in sad category to most people who have sibs. Stupid sibling-blessed people. Apparently my love category was obnoxiously high. I apologize for nothing!!!

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	8.2
Mind:	8.1
Body:	8
Spirit:	8.4
Friends/Family:	4.3
Love:	9.1
Finance:	9.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

So I have to work on MLK day. On a happier note we might be going back to Israel in February. The interesting part is that my loverly sis-in-law and baby Abby and sis-in-law's hubby will be there also. It could be fun or a total nightmare. Will keep you posted. I want to go here, most of all:

This is at a park called Nesher Park near Haifa in the northern part of Israel. I had seen this gorgeous Israel tourism add on youtube of all places and they highlighted this hanging bridge. I thought it looked lovely. Take a look at the advertisement here and you'll understand why I love this place.