What is he gonna do? Bite your ankle?

Oh my GOD. The SHAME!

This is the new mascot for my college.




I just. God. I knew prairie dogs would be bad, but...

From the press release, it's "a design that demonstrates just the right mix of ferocity and humor — something our coaches, student athletes, campus and entire Santa Fe community will be able to get behind."

Excuse me while I go mourn the conversion of my funky little school into a "big" university wannabe.

New Office!

view from my desk2.JPG
Originally uploaded by LacyLu42

We moved into our new office today! I SIT BY THE WINDOWS! Check out some more photos at my flickr page!

fandom has gone all explody

For those of you not plugged into Harry Potter fandom intravenously, J.K. Rowling says Dumbledore is gay.

I don't make the news, people. I just report it.

Vail Photos!

Lacy and Brandon by the river
Originally uploaded by LacyLu42.

Photos from our recent trip to Vail can be seen here. Enjoy!

also!

Just to brag a little, I went to yoga last night and left Brandon a cryptic post-it note on the fridge which read, "Gone to yoga. Back at 7. Start dinner please!"

We had talked that morning about the fact that we'd gotten the ground beef out of the freezer to thaw. We planned to use half of it for burgers, half for stuffed peppers. I thought for sure he'd go the burger route.

He didn't. He dug through three cookbooks (only going for the Joy of Cooking last?) to find a recipe and made those stuffed peppers from scratch!

He complained they were a little bland. I said they just needed a touch of salt to be brilliant.

it's a good thing

A few good things from the desk of me:

• Wegottaeat.com – Since the dawn of the personal computer (or thereabouts), I have been searching for a recipe organization program I could love. I have tried several, loved none. My biggest pet peeve? The TIME it takes to enter each recipe, and the fact that most programs make you enter quantities in decimals rather than standard fractions (ie: 0.66 cups instead of 2/3 cups). I save recipes from all over the place, frequently found on the web, and the last thing I want to do is re-type everything when I feel like a simple cut and paste ought to suffice. Enter We Gotta Eat recipe manager. The smart cookies developing this site (still in beta) realize that a lot of times you just want to copy and paste, and have made it easy for you to do so. Also, it looks like it's got a social function, whereby if your friends are also members, you can share recipes. Cool.
  
  (I'm already drooling over Cookbook, one of three winners of the "My Dream App" competition, but until it is released, wegottaeat.com has my vote.)
  
  
• Epicurious has a redesigned website that kicks booty, while we're on the subject of recipes.
  
  
• Gaim.com – The community portion of this site has tons of great articles about living well, living whole, living green.
  
  
• Just found out that this lunchbag is on sale at reusablebags.com — I'm totally buying two right now!
  
  
• Bought one of these Chico Bags at Vitamin Cottage a couple of months ago, and I cannot TELL you how handy it is. I keep it in my purse at all times and use it whenever I'm buying just a few things that don't REALLY need a plastic bag. The best part is that It is really easy to stuff back into its carrying pocket — a must for collapsible bags like this.

fooffera

I think I'm finally coming out of my wedding hangover. It went well, Emily was amazingly beautiful, as always, and I found out that not only is Matt a fine dancer, he's a heckuva singer as well. ;)

If you haven't already seen them, there are a few, mostly blurry, pictures on my fickr page.

Tonight, the hubby and I are going to see "The Little Mermaid" at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. I'm kind of interested, because apparently, based on how this six-week run goes, the show could change dramatically between its run here and its opening on Broadway in December. I'll have to let you guys know what I think. Actually, I'm angling to write a sort of pre-review of it for the winter NYC guide book here at work. We'll see if that pans out.

~*~

Last Friday, I went to my first ever baseball game. Truth be told? It was kind of boring. But as my friend Jeff put it, you don't go to a baseball game for the baseball. We were actually there to support my coworker, Mikey, who won an American Idol-style contest to get to sing the national anthem, and she ROCKED. You can download a recording here if you'd like to listen. Unfortunately, the Cubs beat the Rockies rather soundly, but we had great seats, decent stadium food, and lots of fun with drunken coworkers. Good times.

~*~

I'm reading the most awesome book called "Eat, Pray, Love," and it's beautiful and may be changing my life. It's made me want to take up yoga again and maybe learn to meditate, and I've found an ashram south of Boulder that sounds perfect for both. Of course, what REALLY sounds perfect is a week-long yoga retreat up in the mountains, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Maybe for Christmas...

~*~

On the subject of vacations, however, the husband and I have booked three nights in Vail for our anniversary/Labor Day weekend. I'm v. excited. Apparently, it is also the Vail Jazz Festival and Gourmet Festival weekend, which sounds delightful. They're doing a sale thing for the end of the summer, so we got a pretty swank hotel room for $81.50 per night — because Vail is at 8,150 feet above sea level.

Deathly Hallows Review

I was going to cross-post my entire Deathly Hallows" review here, but in honor of those who haven't read it yet, I will instead post a link to the review on my livejournal.

SPOILERS! Do not click this link until you have finished the book. Then, please feel free to click and read and tell me what you think.

harry potter party in boulder!

Photos from the Boulder Books Harry Potter party on Friday night!



Brandon tries on some eyewear at Boulder's version of Honeydukes, Powell's Candy Store


Owls! In the bookstore! In the ballroom! That wee one on the left looked so much like Pigwidgeon to me! And he was blind which is why he's part of the rescue.


Mayhem outside on the Pearl Street Mall. (If you look closely, you can see a very punk rock Tonks standing up taller than most of the crowd near the left edge of the main bookstore window.)

We made a list of all the characters we spotted and BOY were there a lot! Some of the best? There was a teenage couple dressed as Hermione and Harry that were SO good it was scary. We kept getting creeped out every time they walked by. Then there was a dad who was a pretty good family. There was another family — three of the kids had red wigs and were Fred, George, and Ron (with scabbers on his shoulder), there was an ickle wee Draco, a wee little Harry, and then mom was dressed like Tonks, with pink hair and dad? Dad had a wolf puppet on his head. We about died. It was awesome.

There was also someone dressed as the Knight Bus, a Howler, and three brooms (they were wearing grass skirts with broom handles sticking out the backs of their shirts, and nametags that said things like "Cleansweep" and "Nimbus"). There was also a troupe of death eaters complete with metalic masks like in the films, and a little Peeves dressed all in white, with a white face, and a brightly colored bow tie. There was also a Marietta with SNEAK in dots all across her face.

We also invented a game we called, "Not a Costume." You see, Boulder is a pretty unusual place to begin with, so there were some people who may or may not have been dressed up particularly for the party. The lady wearing a wreath of dried flowers and carrying a tambourine? NOT A COSTUME. The bloke in the stocking cap and silk waistcoat smoking an ENORMOUS pipe? NOT A COSTUME.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun. The bookstore was divided into "Houses." You picked up a Marauder's map from Platform 9 3/4 outside the store, then you had to go through each house and get your map stamped. Then you come back out and got to graduate with your Hippogriffs. :D It was fun, and I'm glad we went.

"Words? Words? Words."

I'm really worried that Harry Potter is going to end up like Hamlet. I mean, he's avenging his dead father, sort of in love with the girl next door, but unable to be with her, and more than a little mad. So, I have this bad feeling it's just going to end in a bloodbath. Cos in Hamlet? EVERYONE dies. Literally. Everyone. Horatio is the only one left, so it'll be, like, Neville kissing Harry on his now-scarless forehead and saying, "Goodnight sweet prince. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest," and curtain.

And I will be very peeved. And depressed for months, no doubt.

Note to self: buy kleenex before the weekend.

P.S. If JKR deals with Hermione and Ron with a line saying, "Granger and Weasley are dead," she will be hearing from me.