Could today GET any better? You know I never blog from the office but someone just came by my desk to tell me the USPS come out with Muppet stamps two days ago!

There’s little doubt where I’ll be stopping at lunch, and you never know, some of these bad boys might just make their way to Madrid.

Rawk.

Today after work the girls and I are hitting the open road for a weekend at Cumberland Island with Heather Susan behind the wheel of the Griswold family truckster complete with wood paneling. We’ll be staying at the (supposedly haunted) Riverview Inn under our assumed identities to keep the paparazzi at bay.

Among the items in my bag for the road trip I have the following:
- Roaming gnome (can’t have him mad at me again)
- Dry erase marker for writing notes on the car window to other motorists (and socks for erasing)
- iPod with road trip playlist containing truly bad music to be belted out off key
- Lots-o-candy
- Directions (the girls got lost last time they went)
- List of goofy stuff between here and there from Roadside America.com and other fun sites
- THE book
- Marshmallows (you’ll see…)

This also happens to be the weekend of the Rock Shrimp Festival in St. Mary’s, whatever the hell that means. Have I mentioned I love skrimps? No? Imagine that.

The forecast is calling for rain, which dramatically increases the odds of hair brained schemes for entertainment. Please have the name of a bail bond at the ready.

Aside: things said on the phone last night that were not euphemisms: “…but I did touch his dog…” and “hold on, I gotta butter my Eggo first.”

Kissy boo!

For those of you who live outside the great state of Georgia, you should know that our brilliant (ahem, ahem, sorry, had some sarcasm stuck in my throat) Gov. Sonny Perdue called for school to be canceled Monday and Tuesday citing the impending gas shortage. Apparently it’s a great idea to save the government when it comes to buses and the almighty dollar at the gas pump, but screw the moms and dads that now have to either drag their kids to work with them or pay for a sitter…and receive no relief at the pump.

And so the humor begins. The things we have to do to bring levity to the office.

From: Mikey
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 3:39 PM
To: Laura; Hank; Maigh
Cc: Ceshia
Subject: Ceshia – Out of Office

Ceshia had to leave early today and will be out of the office for the rest of the afternoon.

As you know, Governor Purdue’s closure of the schools caught some of us parents off guard. What you may not know is that Ceshia has 3 children of her own. J.J., Thelma and little Michael have been staying in Ceshia’s car for the past 2 days (with the window rolled down a bit, of course!). Naturally, Ceshia wanted to leave a little early today in order to get her car washed.

Once the schools reopen tomorrow, Ceshia will be working regular hours again.

We’re all about the rumors. See the above e-mail and picture Mikey created and put in a frame I donated to the cause next to darling Ceshias keyboard. Note also that Ceshia is about a year out of school at Auburn and has yet to marry and/or procreate.

Kissy boo!

Don’t ask me what time it is, I might tell you how to build a clock.

I’m chatting with Dr. Adam last week while I’m face down on the table making my bi-weekly imprint in the tissue paper on the face stretching device with my teenage complexion that looks like one of those butterfly ink blot things and the conversation turned to cars. Cars turned to ignition issues which turned to engine compression issues which turned to my revealing that once upon a time when I lived in California, I had a Volkswagen bus with compression issues disguised as ignition issues.

This lead to his asking me if I followed the Dead or ever went to a Phish show, which leads us directly here, which feels like nowhere but is actually somewhere and you just need to sit there and read.

Whew.

Picture it: Silicon Valley, 1993. I’m 20 and working for a company called Whole Earth Access doing graphic design and database management (which, given that it was 1993, wasn’t all that complicated). One night I’m there cranking away designing a bridal registry or something and we get a call from the Berkley store asking if we have someone that can deliver some shmancy TV to the Berkley Hills because we have it in stock and they don’t. Kevin (the store manager) answers with “not really, Greg is gone for the day and he’s the one with the truck”. Mumbling.

“Actually, hang on a sec,” he leans out his office door and asks me if I drove or rode my bike in. “I drove. Why?” He finishes the conversation, walks to the fax, grabs something off of it and asks if I have plans for the night. Wondering where this is all going (this is the man who once put me on the phone with Steve Young, laughing because in my North Coast naiveté I didn’t know who he was. What? I knew who Montana was: still King!) I answer “no”.

“Good, we’re going for a ride.”

The next thing I know the backseats are out of the VW and there’s a big ol’ TV strapped in for safety. The phone rings again and there’s been a change of plans, instead of heading for the Berkley Hills, we’re now headed for the Oakland Coliseum. Huh? “Oh, I didn’t tell you? The TV is a birthday present for Jerry Garcia.”

Have I mentioned I love crowds? How I love smoking pot? How I love crowds of people smoking pot? Really? Probably because I don’t.

Fine.

Kevin and I load ourselves into my ride, along with a guy from the store named Steve who goes by “Fish”. It was before that, there’s no relationship. Let’s move on.

So we get to the coliseum, I’m directed by a gruff and burly security guy to drive into the building, which actually means below the building which actually means backstage. No shit, you can do that.

We unload the electronic monstrosity and are promptly given backstage passes, tickets to the show, and pointed towards the buffet. I’ll pass, thanks.

Kevin and Steve are way too into the adventure and the scantily clad chickie with the hula hoop by the Mongolian Beef, so I hang tough. Eventually they grow weary of the backstage thing and we find our seats through the smoke filled stadium. I was fascinated and distracted because it was a Chinese New Year show and they had one of those giant dragon heads with the cape attached doing laps around the audience. Consequently this is also the only reason I remember what year it was, because I’m not a linear thinker. It was the year of the rooster, and I was born in the year of the rat. Thinking about this occupied me an estimated ten additional minutes.

Some time after arriving and shortly after boring myself completely of people and dragon watching, Carlos Santana made a surprise appearance. I watched Fish and Kevin as their faces lit up and tried to find new ways to be amused. What I’d guess were two very looooong songs later I got fidgety and irritable. It had been a few hours since we arrived and was past my bedtime – I’ve always loved sleep, don’t question it. The boys are ready enough so we roll backstage one last time for them to geek it up and find our way back to where I’d parked.

As we’re pulling out from under the coliseum the boys are going on and on about how they’ll never forget the experience, and I’m contemplating jabbing a spork into my eye. We’re escaping before the masses but some a-hole wanders in front of the bus and it’s non-too-trustworthy brakes which I manage to jam in time to stop short of pancaking the pedestrian. Yeah. Carlos Santana.

And that, my darlings, is (most of) the story of Maigh, the Grateful Dead, Carlos Santana and the magic bus.

Good morning, pun’kin heads!

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s going to be nearly impossible for me to do any justice to having seen Phantom of the Opera last night. I realize that for most of you this does not inspire envy, so I’ll keep it short…ish.

It’s an event I’ve been looking forward to for months, the final showing at The Fox in Atlanta and although the performance had shaky start with some painful over-acting, The Phantom hit it hard at all the right spots during the second half. The words and the lines that usually inspire me to crank up the soundtrack were just as raw and pure as I wanted and needed them to be. I closed my eyes, grinned like an idiot in the darkness, tried not to sing along and reveled as the goose bumps worked their way up my body. So there. FO.

If anything, you should be achingly jealous of my “Bonzo”. Yeah c’mon. We closed Murphy’s down with a natural but unintentionally long dinner following the show and since I had a healthy salmon steak, the Bonzo kind of balances it out…right? Nod and smile, Chachi.

Wondering what else I did this weekend? A LOT! Football, hockey and even a little hippie love. Lookie here and here.

I’ll go ahead and tell you that there was no exercise (which means no walking, running or getting on a bike and/or sporting a flat out in the middle of nowhere) or seeing any exotic marvels of engineering. Just some good, clean, down home, southern style, free wheelin’ fun.

Kissy boo!

Our catchy team name for trivia last week at The Vortex didn’t get us third place, that honor was completely attributable to not writing down one of the answers Shelby gave on a Lord of the Rings question. My bad. He took the pencil away from me after that.

The best part of the night might have been the fine print on the gift certificate we were awarded.

I dragged a friend of mine to see March of the Penguins Thursday night and on Sunday night he’ll be one of my three “dates” to Phantom. When we sat down in the theatre he finally asked me what the movie was about. “It’s a love story”, I told him. He shut his eyes for a long moment, cocked his head to the side, gave me a cold stare and said “if I’m not still hetero on Monday I’m going to kick your ass.”

Awesome.