New Year's Eve and it's hard to believe
another zodiac has gone around.

While you drank yourself high on hoping
and watched the ceiling spin from the ground.

Counting down from ten it's time
to make your annual prayer.

Secret santa in the sky
when will I get my share?

Then you tell yourself
what you want to hear.

Cause you have to believe.

This will be my year.

This will be my year...Semisonic


Go Ahead Punk: E-Mail Little Squaw @ squawpunch@hotmail.com

AIM: gimletgurl7 (Remember when she used to be here?)

Saturday, February 14, 2004

Happy almost the end of Valentines Day.

I won't go on an anti-Valentines Day rant because being married to a man who buys me flowers even when I say, "You don't need to buy me flowers." Well such a point is moot and and smacks of insincerity. But it's not. I think that if you need one day and one day that's dicated to you by Hallmark, but if you need one day of the year to pour out all your emotions and make some grand gesture just to illustrate to someone how much you care about them, well...your glass is certainly half empty.

Anyway, I am spoiled and I did get those flowers that I requested not to receive.

We didn't want to do something romantic or psuedo romantic for the day so instead we opted for fun and very much what we would have done almost eight years ago when we were first dating.

Which prompted the question, "How far into your relationship do your activities cease to be 'dates'?"

We both agreed once you decide that you are "together" or "going out." A date implies to us that you are leaving yourself open to other options.

Now we just do fun things together. So we decided to go to the Liberty State Science Center for the day...on the way there we got that ever familiar view of the Statue of Liberty from behind. Given current circumstances it seemed ever more poignant. We've all been seeing those AMEX sponsored commercials asking for money to re-open the statue and we couldn't figure out how she could have fallen into such disrepare based on the fact she's only been closed for a few years. How dare they try to milk us of more money? The truth lies in the fact that they probably feel the need to heavily increase security. Gilly made the good point that the government is going to do everything possible to prevent something from happening to her even if that means never allowing anyone to climb those freakin' impossibly narrow, winding steel stairs again. I'm happy to say that me, claustrophobic, afraid of heights me, well I've climbed them twice. To be honest I actually ran up the second time. I guess that I had to redeem myself for all the sweating and quaking in fear that I did the first time.

But anyway...we're passing behind her and I said to Gilly, "Who could ever move their children away from this?" Meaning, why would you ever want to remove your family from such a world of opportunity?

Gill pointed out that a lot of people couldn't affort to leave in this area and that a lot of people who do have never been to the top of the Statue of Liberty. It's all about perspective I guess.

Liberty State Science Center...refreshingly large and uncrowded, home of the largest IMAX Dome Theater in the world. We went to see a dolphin movie. We had forgotten we'd been to the IMAX Dome at the Ben Franklin Institute but that on was much smaller. We got prime middle of the theater seats and to be honest the angle made me a bit nauseous. Now the film was amazing and they way that they shoot it they send you right to the edge of you getting sick and then they stop. I would have liked to go over the brink (not literally sick but mentally stimulated sick)...if that makes sense. HOWEVER, this movie really bummed me out. It was just like "Benji Come Home" again. I mean, I know the trick...the reason they can get the funding to make such a movie (andto get Sting to do the music) is to make it socially conscious. However, I was really bummed out when they showed the footage of the dolphins dying in the tuna nets and talked about them getting hit by boats. It made me very, very, very sad.

I really hope that Douglas Adams got to see an IMAX movie before he died. I think he would have loved this one.

Amazingly enough all the children in the museum were rather well behaved. Gilly was disappointed by his instructor during the "Polymer" show and I was happy to seen them crush a golfball as part of the presentation.

I think some of the most fun we had was going to the gift shop and why you ask? Well we walk in and knowing that I had no excuse to buy anything (plus we were going to Ikea on the way home and I'd rather spend there)...but there was a whole massive rack of monkeys! Not alive of course but the kind that hang via velcro holding their hands and feet together? And we LOVE LOVE LOVE monkeys...but most importantly the first thing I said was, "There's VIDAL BABOON!" Not really but the approximation which was featured on Chris Collingswood's microphone on the Fountains of Wayne tour this past summer. Alas I came home without a monkey...other than the one I married and Edgar and Freddie and the one on the mantel piece...and my "How funky is your monkey" socks which I was wearing yesterday, but no new fuzzy velcro monkeys...PLUS I was denied the opportunity to purchase an AirZooka!

"The AirZooka is a fun gun that shoots a harmless ball of air up to 40 feet. The AirZooka operates simply by pulling back and releasing a built-in plastic air launcher. Best of all, the AirZooka uses no batteries, so you'll never run out of ammo. Imagine blasting the hair or ruffling the shirt of someone up to 40 feet away."

The "laser show" we went to was disappointing, it was kind of like watching a bad screensaver in 3D, plus it hurt our eyes and it lasted like 15 minutes.

Ikea, overly stimulating but I held my own...I am very, very, very happy that we don't need to buy furniture there. I am happier that I can just buy accessories. Which in this case involved several brightly colored plastic gadget thingings, an ice crusher called a "Groggy" and a couple of massive faux beveled frameless mirrors.

PLUS Gilly didn't want to kill me during the process. Not once. At this point in my life the Ikea, modern Euro look doesn't even work in our house as we're more traditional French Country Martha Stewartish...and loving every minute of it.

Such and exciting day could end only with what? My husband buying me a new battery for my laptop (as a V-Day gift) and two massive boxes of my favorite chocolate covered toasted coconut clusters and of course, a dancing monkey at the dinner which we ate at...

I kid you not they had a toy monkey (much like the monkey of the velcro hands) which hung above the counter and when something passed in front of it, it would crunch up its long skinny legs as if it was dancing.

PERFECTION!
posted by JustKeepMum on 11:59 PM