Diva Jammers in the paper!

Photo by Marc Campos

Today in the LA Times Image section, the Dolls were featured in an article about roller derby fashion. The author of the article featured the Diva Jammers, which is a group of skaters known for looking fabulous, time out photoshoots and scoring lots of points. My teammate Gori Spelling and myself started the Diva Jammers last year, and with our last pledge drive the group has grown to seven. Who better to feature in the Image section than a bunch of Divas? The article is great and there is also an accompanying photo gallery. The article and the photo of myself and Gori was in today's print paper - I had not picked up a real newspaper in ages but had to go out and get one today!

Thanksgiving Meal. Check

So I did it. About 8 hours of prep on Wednesday, countless recipe look ups, two extra guests (roommate and his girlfriend), a 9 lb turkey, two stuffings and 12 mini pies. Everything was great. Looking forward to taking it up a notch for next year. Got to try to track down Jose Garces and see if he will give me some lessons.

Successful golden brown free-range turkey with hamburger stuffing

12 mini pies in 8 0z canning jars - pumpkin, apple cream and cherry.

Check out recipe

This is the only time of the year that my sibs and I get together. Brothers come in from Dallas and Corpus Christi with their families (minus the nephew who lives in NYC). Occasionally one of my kids joins us, but not this year.

Sibs are all arriving Wednesday evening and we will go to a restaurant for dinner. Then on Thursday, D and I will join the rest of the litter at my sister's house for turkey dinner. I'll be taking 3 pies, dinner rolls, and apple rings. On Friday evening, everyone will come here and we'll have BBQ brisket, slaw, beans and corn bread. Last year we played Wii and had a great time. I got the Wii Resort game for this year. It should be a lot of fun working off all the turkey and BBQ. Everyone leaves Saturday morning.




I'm off all week (Yea!!!) and D only works Mon and Tue this week. Three more weeks of school and I'll be off again for 16 days. (Even better)

Around the country

I am thankful for a job that allows me to take time off, for the internet and blogs which allow me to stay in touch with family, and for a wonderful husband who I love taking road trips with. (Ahhh..)

We head out across the state tomorrow to meet my family in Moab. A little vacation away from our homes where we can just relax and see the sites. (Take a few pictures with some arches before they all fall down!)

Maybe we'll even try to stop at a couple hot springs along the way.

Hope everyone has a great holiday...whatever you may be eating!

Wishing Everyone a Happy Thanksgiving

We will be in sunny


for the holiday. And I'm sure we'll skip the sandwiches and eat a load of these



with our leftover turkey.

I hope everyone has a nice a holiday and relaxing week. I am thankful for such a wonder family- Love you all!

2 day week

So I'm pretty excited for Thanksgiving. Mostly for the two day week but also for taking my first attempt at cooking a whole Thanksgiving meal, turkey and all. It may only be for two other people but you got to learn sometime. Here is a montage of creepy middle-aged men carving turkeys to get you (and me) through the week.

The Urban Outfitter Complex

I never shop at Urban Outfitters. I take that back, I love shopping at Urban Outfitters. It is right across the street from my office so it's a great place to kill 10 minutes on my lunch break. I never buy anything at Urban (except for gifts and sometimes a stupid coffee table book) But over the years I have noticed that most things I impulse buy somewhere else randomly start showing up on UO shelves. Am I a trend setter for this hipster chain? It is headquartered in Philadelphia.

Here's my UO history:

Bought a Holga senior year of college after seeing my photo major friend Mike take some really awesome pictures. At the time they were available only through lomo.com (sold at UO about a year later)
Bought a pair of Timberland Earthwalkers last winter after seeing them in the King of Prussia mall. An impulse buy but a week later my hiking boots crapped out and it snowed. (sold at UO within the month)
I bought these Tretorn boots at a Tretorn store in Georgetown DC (only other one on east coast in NYC). I wasn't crazy about them but they were on after Christmas sale for half off. I still don't like them but that's mainly because they were sold at UO a week later.
I had been waiting a long time for turntables to go USB though I still haven't had the time to start converting any old records. But when USB turntables came out I swapped the old technics (actually my roommate kept it) for a fancy new cheap piece of crap ion. Sold at UO within the month. Not worth it.I saw these cool retro headphones in a musician's catalogue and bought a pair for my studio. Sold at UO a few months later.

After scouring the internet daily for weird little homemade electronic musical instruments I came across this mass producing version of a stylo phone kit. At $15 on thinkgeek.com how could I resist. This and the make your own music box kit I already had started being sold at Urban the next time I went in.

Just a silly photo

Lot's of cool props at the Pig Iron office.

Wedding on/in Long Island

We had a fun time at a wedding on Long Island - Sarah's freshman year roommate. It was a very traditional Italian/Catholic wedding at a big church in Queens - rice on the steps - getting into a retro white Rolls Royce limo (honeymoon the to an island the next day). The reception started at noon (was over at 6:30 which was nice because we got a chance to have a good conversation with the bride and groom). The DJ/percussionist/MC were pretty horrible but the fancy hotel with an indoor swimming pool made up for it.

Babysitting Carl

I'm sooo sad the Phillies lost.

Can I has kong toy?

Sarah and I are dog sitting 8 month old Boston Terrier puppy Carl for about a week. Carl likes eating bottles caps, chicken bones and cigarette butts off the street. He also loves chewing on your hands but other than that he is pretty awesome and pretty sweet. We have already made progress with teaching him to shake hands in just two days. Carl came to us during the Septa strike (Philadelphia's public transportation strike) so we've had to leave him at home in his pen while we go to work (because it's too far for him to walk to Sarah's office.) but his parents are actors and never home so we think we're doing pretty good with him.