Randomosity: fainting workers, commas, & Brad Pitt
Sep 26, 2011 Randomosity
Normally I don’t go for do-it-yourself crafty stuff, but these homemade sandwich and snack containers are actually pretty cool.
Turn A Milk Jug Into A Sandwich Box
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Not a week goes by that I don’t order something from Amazon.com (Amazon Prime shipping just makes it too easy). But I don’t like thinking that workers are passing out trying to get my products to me. Shame on Amazon for letting conditions in their shipping centers get so bad!
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So IKEA has launched a new section in their Australian stores called, naturally, Mänland. You can drop your husband off to play video games, watch sports, and eat free hot dogs while you shop. You even get a little buzzer, just like when you drop your child off in their playspace.
My only problem with this? You can only drop them off for 30 minutes. You can’t even get to the section you need in IKEA in 30 minutes. How about two hours?
Ikea Debuts Mänland, a Daycare for Men While Women Shop
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I’ve always hated #FollowFriday on Twitter. For the uninitiated, that’s when people on Twitter recommend other people they think their followers should be following. I think it’s only useful when you recommend one person at a time and give a reason why, but the vast majority of people who participate just tweet out a bunch of names – no context, no reasons. I’ve always thought it was a pretty useless way of recommending someone.
Plus, I suspect a lot of people just do it in a bid to get their own followers – a lot of the time they’re recommending me without even following me themselves!
Now there’s a site that has confirmed what I always suspected: #FollowFriday is useless. According to FollowFriday.com, even though I was recommended by sixteen people this past Friday, I gained zero new followers from it.
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I only tend to complain when people make really egregious grammatical errors, like mixing up you’re and your or their and there. And why is it that half of the people trying to lose weight insist that they want to loose weight?
But I would never call anyone out for misuse of whom, or using their instead of his or her. Sometimes it just sounds pretentious to speak correctly.
I do, however, like to think that I at least know what the rules are, so I was very disappointed to learn that I’m using commas wrong. Often. In fact, I’m probably doing it right now in this sentence. The problem is, I like to write the way I talk. I take lots of pauses so I insert them when I write too. But it’s always good to know the rules before you break them, so you should check out 10 Completely Wrong Ways To Use Commas.
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And last but definitely not least, from my friend @AndrewRossi:
You can find the list here. Bon appetit!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: #FollowFriday, crafts, Shopping
Randomosity: Flying edition
Sep 7, 2011 Randomosity
I just got back from a trip, so I’ve got travel on the brain. Here are some travel-related links I’ve been hoarding.
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Now that my kids are seven and ten, airplane travel is, dare I say, pleasant? I just pack enough snacks and electronics to keep them quiet, and make sure they’re not sitting next to each other, and I can take a nap or get some work done.
But if you’re still in the stage of parenthood where you’re traveling with a baby or toddler, take a look at Sara Keagle’s lists of the top five items to take with you in your carryon for babies and toddlers. She’s a flight attendant and a mom. My favorites on both lists are number five.
Plus, here are some Dos and Don’ts for traveling with kids. I can’t believe parents are so clueless, but on two out of my last three flights, a parent has let a child play a video game or watch a movie without headphones. What the hell?
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What’s that? You’re NOT flying with kids? Then here are some tips for you too.
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This is a great list of common air travel snafus and what to do if they happen. Print it out and carry it with you.
But if you do get stuck at an airport, you can hope it’s one of these ten.
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I’ve been guilty of a few of these. But OMG, some of these are ridiculous!
Thirteen things flight attendants wish you wouldn’t do, plus ten more.
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You might want to skip this one if you get especially scared flying. But I found the list fascinating.
50 Secrets Your Pilot Won’t Tell You
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I’m that annoying person holding up the security screening line because I won’t go through the people screener until my stuff has gone into the X-ray machine. I always do that so that another passenger can’t grab my laptop or wallet before it goes through. But apparently the TSA screeners may be a bigger concern. (Check out the other links at the bottom of that article too.)
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Last, I was quoted in this article about kids flying alone, more than a year before I put my kids on a flight by themselves in Kansas City, and my husband picked them up a few hours later in NYC. And I would totally do it again.
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Happy flying!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Randomosity, What the hell is THAT? edition
Jun 26, 2011 Randomosity
I find the weirdest bugs in our downstairs bathroom. I don’t even want to know what this one is.
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Michelle Obama is my hero. Now I’m just waiting for a few particular Republicans to find a way to criticize the First Lady for being physically fit.
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Fiona performed with her school chorus at the Fort Greene Festival yesterday. They were adorable.
It was a warm-up for this coming Wednesday June 29th, at 7pm, when they perform at LIU’s Kumble Theater, along with the other students of Fiona’s awesome choral director, Ian Jones (don’t tell him, but every mom has a crush on him; that’s him on the left playing keyboards). If you’re in Brooklyn and want to come see some really enthusiastic and talented students, from pre-K kids all the way up to high school students, tickets are only $5.
Email Ian Jones for more info and to purchase tickets.
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I can now, if I want to (and why wouldn’t I?!?), get my very own dot selfishmom url. Like, my blog could be blog.selfishmom. Of course, the application fee is $185k, which is a slight increase from the $20/year I’m paying now for SelfishMom.com. Still…
Expect a slew of .Coke, .BMW, and .Microsoft urls. And, of course, .Trump. Because he just won’t be able to resist.
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You have almost a year to save up for a trip to Vegas for your guy for Father’s Day, so that he can do this.
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Please note: if you’re planning on scamming passers-by out of cash by telling them that your baby died and you need money for the funeral, try to figure out – and memorize – the salient details first, like the baby’s birthday, and deathday, and the hospital where he died, and his doctor’s name. Slackers.
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Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Randomosity: Don’t pull my finger edition
Jun 25, 2011 Randomosity
So there’s something wrong with my finger. About six weeks ago it developed a big callous-like thing on one side next to the nail. It was fairly painful when touched so after a few days I tried to trim the hard skin off with nail clippers, but under the hard skin was just more hard skin and pain. So I left it alone for a month and it got worse.
Everyone who’s looked at it says it looks like a hangnail gone bad, but there was no hangnail to start with. I went to the doctor a week ago and she didn’t know what to make of it either. She gave me a course of antibiotics and a referral to a dermatologist. The antibiotics are now done and it still hurts – actually I think it’s worse. I can hardly type with that finger and if I accidentally hit it on something it’s scream-worthy. The earliest appointment I could get with the dermatologist is a month away and I’m starting to think that by then they’ll tell me “What took you so long? Now we have to amputate your finger.”
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By tomorrow afternoon Fiona will have a nice little credit on her resume: opening for Mos Def. The school chorus she’s in is singing at the Fort Greene festival.
The funny thing is, the festival’s poster says that there’s a “Suggestive Donation” of $3. So I’m not sure if there should be kids there at all.
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This is all Steven Slater’s fault.
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If you haven’t gotten your free download of “Go the Fuck to Sleep” as read by Samuel L. Jackson, drop everything and do it now.
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If you haven’t seen the video yet of the woman who gets pretty irate on a Metro-North train when an employee asks her to quiet down and stop using profanity, it’s pretty funny in an “Oh My God I’m glad some of the stupid shit I’ve done wasn’t recorded” way. She keeps insisting that she’s very well educated, which just makes her sound dumb. But even funnier is what wasn’t on the video:
According to the person who filmed this, after the altercation the conductor got on the loudspeaker and reminded everyone to speak softly and not use profanity on the train, "especially those people who went to Harvard or Yale or are from Westport."
You can watch the video on Gawker.
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Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Randomosity, horny pilot edition
Jun 22, 2011 Randomosity
So this Southwest pilot accidentally broadcast his conversation about the dearth of sexy stewardesses to the control tower. I thought that kind of thing only happened on sitcoms. From Consumerist.com:
"Eleven f***ing over the top homosexuals f***ing a** f***ing homosexuals and a granny," the pilot complained in a rant that was inadvertently broadcast to air traffic controllers in Houston and others in the area. "Eleven! I mean, think of the odds of that!"
"I thought I was in Chicago, which is party land," he continues. "After that, it was a just a continuous stream of gays and grannies and grandes."
You can hear the (bleeped out) recording here. And listen to his lame attempt at covering it up once he realizes that someone else was listening! Didn’t he learn anything from Anthony Weiner? Oh, wait, it happened a few months ago, when Weiner letting his wiener loose was still secret.
This guy will never be able to walk past a gay bar again without having things thrown at his head, and I’m predicting that the female flight attendants he doesn’t dismiss as “grannies and grandes” won’t want anything to do with him either.
My guess? It wasn’t accidental. I think the co-pilot was sick of having to listen to this douchebag’s rants and broadcast it himself.
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Ever since I saw President Obama kill that fly with cat-like reflexes, I’ve suspected that he had special powers. Turns out he’s The Baby Whisperer.
The very best part about the baby video? The look he gives Michelle! Ouch!
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This is the kind of shit that gives atheists a bad name.
Some atheists in Brooklyn have a problem with part of a street being renamed “Seven in Heaven Way.” Apparently these seven firefighters, who all died on September 11th 2001, have long been known in their community as “Seven in Heaven” and that’s how their families want them remembered. But a group called American Atheists claim that honoring the men in this way “uses the tragedy of 911 to legitimize Christianity by asserting that Heaven is a real place, and that all these heroes are actually there.” They claim it’s illegal and unconstitutional.
These fanatics seem to be looking at the first amendment the same way gun nuts look at the second. They need to shut the hell up and let the families honor those brave men in peace.
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And last, Jason Valdez, a gang member with a long record, took a hostage during a 16-hour standoff with police, during which time he updated his facebook status six times and added twelve new friends. He even posted a picture of himself with the hostage.
He shot himself when police stormed his motel room and he’s in critical condition. If he pulls through I’m looking forward to his updates from prison. I hope he keeps us updated about all of his new “friends.”
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Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Randomosity, garlic breath style
Mar 23, 2011 Randomosity
I’m writing this with possibly the worst garlic breath I’ve had in a while, but it was totally worth it. I got a very nice shout-out on a post about a Hidden Valley Ranch event my friend Nicole and I both attended a little while back, and included in her post was a simple and fantastic-looking recipe for Ranched-Up Hummus Dip (and check out the picture of Fiona up on the counter with Hidden Valley Ranch celebrity spokesmom Angie Harmon!). Since I had all of the ingredients I made some, and since I love garlic I doubled it to two cloves. And wowee was that a lot of garlic in one little recipe. Next time I’m going to use one clove like the recipe said!
And I will definitely make this recipe again. It took literally five minutes start to finish. I could whip this up for a surprise guest, put out some pita bread, and look really impressive. I only had a few spoonsful because I had just eaten some more of the delicious Cauliflower-Potato Mash I made yesterday – that one is going into my permanent rotation of recipes. The rest of the dip will be eaten throughout the afternoon with pita wedges, baby carrots, grape tomatoes, and blanched green beans, followed by half a bottle of mouthwash before tonight’s PTA meeting.
It felt like a “grazing day” when I woke up so it was pure serendipity that I came across this recipe today!
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I’ve had this video open in a tab on my computer for weeks, just because every few days or so when I need a laugh I watch it again. I’m not sure what my fascination is. I guess because Darth Vader doing anything other than being menacing is automatically funny (search “Darth Vader funny videos” sometime), and Can’t Touch This was just awesome. Put them together? Comedy gold.
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I have no idea if this story is real and the video authentic. If it is, it’s just delicious: guy steals laptop and takes it home, records himself dancing, and laptop owner is able to access the files remotely. He posts dancing video on YouTube, causing thief to beg him to take the video down.
And if it isn’t real, well then, it was a genius attempt at a viral video and still very funny. Thanks very much to my friend (and fellow Blogging Angel) Rebecca for tweeting the link!
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I love pretty much everything Aaron Traister writes in Redbook. This collection of the 18 most annoying male habits, explained may actually be a public service though, heading off a couple of fights between me and my husband. And it’s hilarious.
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I wrote a post last week about my daughter’s fatalistic attitude towards her future in light of the recent earthquake/tsunami tragedy in Japan. A commenter very helpfully put this link in the comments about how to talk to children after a tragedy, and I’m finding it really useful and realistic. So thanks very much to Tracy for the link!
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I gave some laptop buying advice to my friend Nikki a while back and she found it useful enough to turn it into a post! Hopefully you’ll find it useful too.
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Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 14 (Hidden Valley Ranch). Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and Momtourage, and podcasts with The Blogging Angels.
Tags: Angie Harmon, funny videos, Hidden Valley Ranch, Recipes
Randomosity – crazy Christmas Week edition
Dec 21, 2010 Randomosity
Hear Me Warble
Every year @Neilochka collects up songs and pictures from his readers and posts them in one big “blogger concert.” Isn’t that genius? This year I submitted at the last minute (come to think of it, I think I submitted at the last minute last year too…I sense a pattern) so I’m way down near the bottom. If you can stand listening all the way through, I eventually sing four part harmony with myself. Five minutes to find a free SSAA version of Silent Night online, fifteen minutes to learn the four parts, and almost ninety minutes to learn how to use my new Sony ACID Music Studio 8 sound editing program in order to record all the tracks and publish them together. 
Facebook Fails In Real Time
I’ve found a new site to waste time and avoid work on: Reasons to Hate. Which honestly is a terrible title, and the site’s design is weird, but the concept is pure genius. You can search for what people are saying very publicly on Facebook.
Some of the most entertaining searches?
My Boss: Where people just beg to get fired by posting about what complete idiots their bosses are, how much they’re going to screw around while their boss is out of the office, or even how they’re secretly in love with their boss. Umm, not so secret any more, genius.
My Divorce: Nothing celebrates the end of a formerly loving union like ragging on your new ex – often by name – on Facebook. Classy. Even classier? Bragging about who you’re sleeping with now that your divorce is final.
New Number: This might be the most entertaining search of all. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at how many people have posted their new phone number on Facebook. And I’m definitely NOT suggesting that you text these people asking them if they know what a privacy setting is.
He Doesn’t Get It…Thank Goodness
Jake told me this joke the other day: “Yo’ momma’s like a hardware store, five cents a screw.” He then laughed uproariously with his explosive laugh, and looked at me to see if I found it as funny as he did.
I looked at him and said “Jake, do you even understand that joke?”
He said “Yeah, you give her five cents, she screws up.” OK.
Documents That Matter
My buddy over at Microsoft Office 2010, @Farkonia, sent this to me. And maybe I’m just a big old geek, but it made me laugh out loud.
Changes
I just changed my picture on both twitter and facebook, from this one:
to this one:
I had to show of the hair, which I did myself.
When I see my tweets go by now I don’t notice that they’re mine – I’d had the same picture since I started on twitter in 2008!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1 (Microsoft Office 2010). Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and Momtourage, and podcasts with The Blogging Angels.
Tags: Microsoft Office 2010, Reasons to Hate Facebook, Yo Momma jokes
Randomosity – Halloween, Cows, Kinect, & Disney!
Nov 9, 2010 Randomosity
Halloween
Halloween in our neighborhood is HUGE. Every candy stop is super crowded…
Bands play…
Scary movie scenes are recreated in open garages…
People go all out with decorations…
And it gets so crowded that the police shut down a couple of streets, including the one where these crazy people put on a huge production every half hour:
This year the kids wanted to go super-simple with their costumes, which made things very easy on me. In fact, even though I bought fangs and fake blood for my little vampiress, she refused to wear them. It was all about the cape. And after hunting down rubber neck bolts, latex, latex remover, a black wig, and green, white and black make-up, Frankenstein’s Monster decided that he just wanted a mask, and after tearing my hair out at three different stores one suddenly materialized, discarded at the register. Truly a Halloween miracle.
By the way, “Tricky Dick” did not go trick-or-treating, The Ass did. But he threw that on so that he could be in the picture. :-)
Dairy Farming
Last week I spent a couple of days in California with some fantastic people from the California Milk Advisory Board. We toured a couple of dairy farms and ate more cheese in 48 hours than in the past few months combined. I even got to do some impromptu milking!
Many thanks to my fellow Blogging Angel Heidi for the pic!
Kinect
The new Microsoft Kinect is finally here! My family has been testing one out for about ten days now, and it is…magic. It hooks up to an XBox, and there are no controllers. You simply move, and it captures your moves with great accuracy. So far I’ve tried the Sports games (beach volleyball is awesome!), Your Shape (the Gym Games are so much fun you forget you’re exercising), and Dance Central (I can’t play that one until everyone goes to bed – I suck so bad, but it’s so much fun!). I think this is going to be THE hottest item for Christmas. Get one early so that you’re not racing around on December 24th trying to get the last one.
Speaking of Kinect…
When the Wii came out, it was big news that a lot of TVs were getting broken by Wii controllers flying out of players’ hands. With no controllers, I didn’t think it was possible to wreck a TV with the Kinect. And yet someone has. Making it even funnier is who it is: a writer for Consumerist!
Times Square Disney Store
This afternoon the kids and I went on a tour of the brand new, two-story Disney Store in Times Square, and it was quite impressive! No matter which Disney princess your little one is into, there’s a section for her. And Jake couldn’t stay away from the Cars and Marvel areas. All three of us spent quite a bit of time in the Toy Story aisles. :-)
We followed the tour with a big blogger dinner down the street at Carmine’s, and then the kids rolled my cheese-stick-and-pasta filled body down the subway steps. It was a fantastic night.
Garfunkel and Oates
I came across these pee-in-your-pants funny singers a couple weeks ago and keep going back to their site to watch their videos (apparently I’m the last one to discover them, based on their YouTube views). My two favorites? Pregnant Women are Smug, and Why isn’t there more Fucking on this Island? Do not play these at work or near your kids. Even if the language isn’t an issue, the hysterical laughter might be.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, Momtourage, and podcasts with The Blogging Angels.
Tags: California Milk Advisory Board, Cheese, cows, Disney Store, Garfunkel and Oates, Halloween, Kinect, Microsoft, Times Square
