Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Come See Me For a Good Cause!


Ok, it's that time of year again...Dining Out For Life! Throughout the city and counties of St. Louis, MO, local restaurants will donate a percentage of their earnings to Saint Louis Effort For AIDS (EFA) in honor and support of this celebration on "the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving."

Having worked at EFA for 4 years, this fundraiser is very close to my heart. We couldn’t make supporting the agency any easier…Dine Out, Fight AIDS! I would love it if anyone that reads this and is in the St. Louis area went out and ate somewhere...preferably at one of my restaurants so I can say hello. :) (Q and Liz, I expect you both to travel from Canada and Seattle for the event.)

Please join me as I host Dining Out for Life on Tuesday, November 28th, at:

Wasabi (Lunch – donating 35%)
1228 Washington Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63103
314-421-3500
http://www.saucemagazine.com/wasabi/


SqWires (Dinner – donating 50%!)
1415 South 18th Street
Historic LaFayette Square
St. Louis, MO 63104
314-865-3522
http://www.sqwires.com/

Please call for reservations if you plan on dining at SqWires (if you cannot get it, Soda Fountain Square is across the street...I'll be making appearances there as well http://www.saucemagazine.com/SodaFountainSquare/index.html). All participants dining at sponsored locations will be registered to win a $250 Mastercard gift card.

I hope you can join me at one of these restaurants on Tuesday, November 28th. Other restaurants participating in this event can be found on EFA's webpage: http://www.stlefa.org.

Thank you so much & I look forward to seeing you there!

Monday, November 13, 2006

A Couple Lessons I've Learned Recently

Lesson #1: Four cats are too many! (Side Note: I trapped three more kittens last Friday. I think they were Nova's sisters. They were about the same size and in the same place. I had NO problem dropping their adorable little asses off at the Humane Society).

Lesson #2: I look like a man when I dress like Cleopatra (see Halloween photo). Seriously, I really enjoyed putting this costume together, but I looked like a Donna Summers drag queen...and not a hot one. More like one that's just started performing and hasn't quite perfected their hormones and camera angles.

Lesson #3: I was born to be hit by other vehicles. Last April was my super bad car accident. A week after that, I got rear ended in my rental...and I got hit again last Thursday! And this time by my cryptonite...an old, adorbale, disabled veteran. I was completely helpless...I wanted to pay him off to make him feel better. We exchanged information, he called later to see how I was feeling, and to asure me that he would take complete responsibility...and I suppose I need to go get an estimate on my new car that looks like a junker already (did I mention Best Buy cut into my dash board when they installed a stereo? Yeah, I need an estimate for that too...their insurance is taking care of that).

Lesson #4: At some point, being a vicious, biting-clawing-chasing-crawling under the stove-always pooping-machine trumps cute. Yes, Nova has far more cute moments than annoying ones...but no amount of cute can make up for having your nostril bit in the middle of the night by needle-like kitten teeth. (Cute photo: please ignore my double chin and pay special attention to the adorable kitten poking out of my hoody. The last two photos demonstrate the "beast" at his beastiest. Come on now...tell me that isn't the face of the spawn of satan?).


Wednesday, November 08, 2006

The Litter

Here's Nova with a couple of his bothers/sisters. The white kitten next to him was euthanized because she was "developmentally slow". The black and white one to his left is ADORABLE.

The Momma: This cat is so sweet - and physically very beautiful. She was the best momma ever. She was really tolerant of these little beasts climbing all over her. She nursed them for quite a while. I'm thankful that she took in our little guy.

Now those are some little monsters. Poor momma.

Here's Nova with the three white girls and the black and white boy. The one on the left grew really quickly. L, The Boyfriend and I named her "Crappy Eyes" because she got a really disgusting eye infection. The kitten on the right is the one that was put down. The middle kitten is a dwarf! L was examining her and noticed her legs are abnormally short. Strange. I think she wants to keep it now that she knows it's a genetic freak (so does The Boyfriend...I voted NO to having five cats).

New Picture of NovaHere's our guy. He looks pretty much the same, but he's all about playing - all the time. When he's not playing, he's sleeping on one of our shoulders.

I Get Everything That I Want...

I've been lacking the inspiration to blog lately, and I hate writing just for the sake of updating. But there are so many good things going on in the news that I had to express myself.

Let us get the best news out of the way first...Britney Spears has filed for divorce from Kevin Federline. I realize that I am an intelligent, worldly young lady - but I love a jackass being dumped as much as anyone else. Woohoo! That pre-nup sounds so tight that he should be a hot dog vendor in about 3 months.

And seriously, that's not the most exciting news...but it does get my day off to a splendid start.

Ah, the election. I'm still waiting to see if the Democrats take the Senate, but I'm gleeful that the House is already in the bag. Some additional highlights that make me smile:
  • Claire McCaskill beat Jim Talent for our Senate seat. Jim ran a campaign based on negative stories about McCaskill, while she did not focus on the negative...she kept it about issues (well, except maybe one commercial about his salary and how many times he's voted against raising the minimum wage...but that seems pretty reasonable to me). Her main coup (in my opinion) was Michael J. Fox starring in a commercial for her.
  • Amendment 2: Allow Stem Cell Research: Proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution known as the "Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative" would protect embryonic stem cell research. It would specifically legalize all stem cell research and therapies consistent with federal law. It would ban human cloning. There was a lot of controversy surrounding this because of the whole cloning issue - WHICH IS CLEARLY BANNED IN IT! Anyway, no need to argue my point, it passed. :) I also want to say that The Boyfriend and I put up our first political yard sign (Vote Yes on 2). Our neighbors across the street had a No on 2 sign up and I was nervous because we've just become friendly with them. There didn't seem to be any fallout from it...we all pretended the signs weren't there.
  • Proposition B: Raise Minimum wage: This passed by 76%, and I suspect the remaining 24% were business owners that don't want to pay their employees more.
Ok, I feel content, an election finally went my way. I cried on my way home last year (because I pretty much knew it wouldn't be good), and it's nice to not feel that way this year (The Boyfriend called me after I voted just to make sure).