LauraCatoe.com

It is time to retire my black tights, but I just don’t want to. I love these tights. Partly because I can wear them and not bother with shaving (they are completely opaque), but mostly because I have this memory of wearing these tights with a black skirt and red shirt, dancing around my kitchen at 711 on a Friday, waiting on Kris to pick me up for a date. It is a sweet, uncomplicated memory and these tights are a part of it and I love them.

I think it’s amazing that they have lasted five years without a run, even when I have two cats. But their elasticity has not fared so well. When I wear them, I spend all day hiking them back up my legs.

Is there some item of clothing you guys have kept past its shelf life just because you loved it?

No more house hunting. We are staying here until bouncing baby boy is born.

In September, we looked at a house on Haralson. That fell through, and we are glad that we did not buy that house. It would have been a lateral move.

In October, we heard about a house on Turrentine. That fell through, and we are glad that we did not buy that house. It would have been far too much renovating required.

All November, we have been working on getting a fizzbo* on Peachtree. Today, it has fallen through. I think we will eventually be glad that we did not get that house, for some reason that just isn’t apparent yet.

We had agreed on a price, we had a contract that the lady needed to sign before our appointment with Mark Thompson, Finance Wizard at 1:30pm. Shortly after 8am, the lady said she had decided not to sell.

We are sad, because we were looking forward to living there. We are mad because if she wasn’t going to sell, that information would have been helpful 3 weeks ago.

We are glad that we do not have to pack all our belongings, tile another shower or find new tenants for our unit.

Instead of finalizing a new home purchase today, we found ways to focus on making our current living quarters more homey. We went and used our Christmas money from Mama Juanita to buy carpet for our stairs, a project we have been planning to do since we did so at unit 204A. We went to Lowe’s and picked out paint swatches for the baby’s room.

And we went to Hobby Lobby and bought a Christmas tree. My heart may yet grow three sizes this year.

*Ilyce Glink says a For Sale By Owner (FSBO) is known as a “fizzbo” and I find this fun to say.

Today was Thanksgiving lunch in the Gadsden Times newsroom. There was still a half-bag of Idaho potatoes in the Catoe kitchen from Kris making a French Onion potato soup on Monday, but I lack the dedication to get up an hour early in order to mash potatoes for my coworkers. We’re out of that awesome Roasted Potato seasoning, so I turned to my trusty Calling All Cooks cookbook to see what I could do with the potatoes and stuff already in my house.

The answer?

6 medium potatoes
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese (I used the shredded kind)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Chop up your taters, toss ‘em in the oil & spice mixture and bake at 375 for 45 min. I suggest stirring them up half-way through cooking, cause I didn’t and the ones on bottom were really soft while the ones on top still had some crunch. Serves 10-12.

Check out this pic of Angelina Jolie. I swiped it from the Yahoo start page today. Upon seeing the picture, I had the reaction of “well, that’s not the most flattering photo.”

The dark hair and pale lips sort of wash her out and are those laugh lines?

I figure there are two possible explanations:

#1 She is getting older and so there will be increasingly more shots where she doesn’t look 100% sexy.

#2 Whoever put the page together doesn’t like Angelina Jolie and so strove to use a slightly unflattering photo.

I tend to go with the latter option, because I see Ms. Jolie the way Fametracker does:

Angelina Jolie is not sexy, exactly; she’s more like what an alien race might concoct from scratch, based on some half-garbled idea of earthly sexiness. But, being an alien race, and not really understanding the usual limitations of humanity, they go a little overboard: the lips, the curves, the smoldering glance.

Over lunch today, Kris was asking where he could fax something. He wants to cancel a service the Moxie uses and they won’t let you e-mail the request. How antiquated!

Last week, several of the reporters turned in their pagers. I can’t believe they still had pagers.

The only reason Kris and I use our VCR is cause we haven’t ponied up for a DVR yet. But for the ultrasound, if you want the video, you must bring a VHS tape. I’m sure after the ultrasound, the tape goes into old episodes of Veronica Mars.

I took a picture of a kid at the zombie parade with my film camera and afterward, he ran over to see the shot. “Sorry, dude, this one’s old school.”