CafeChatNoir

Child’s Play is at it again!

Over 45 participating hospitals around the world this year.  330K donated already this season, they’re shooting for 750K by Christmas.   There’s probably a children’s hospital near you that’s participating.

I’ve come to the realization that the weekends that the Redskins have won any games have been the weekends where I have not seen a single minute of said games. For the rest of the season, it seems that it would be best that I not even take the time to pop over and check the score, much less actually watch a game.

Fortunately, this trend has not crossed over to hockey, as I have actually seen the Capitals win a couple times this season. (Even before they replaced the coach.)

I am afraid this trend is affecting the teams of my friends. I went up to watch the end of Philly/New England game this evening, fully expecting that the Eagles would be in the process of being slaughtered only to discover that they actually showed up to play, and I was quite stoked because it really looked like they would win. Many of my friends at the pub are Eagles fans, and I was heartbroken for them when the Eagles couldn’t quite pull it out. But they played one hell of a game – not too bad to only miss by 3 points when you go in with a 30 point spread.

In completely unrelated news, it’s not often that people genuinely surprise me in a positive way and it’s happened twice in the past week. It’s nice to have your faith in people restored every now and again. (For the most part, I can maintain my faith in humanity, it’s faith in people that gets a little shaky at times.)

Yes, you read that right – because today, Moxley is certainly not MY dog. Little bugger has been driving me up the wall today.

I just now got him to come inside after being out for about six and a half hours. (Today’s high: 46 degrees.) Today’s trick was to come to the door, sit and look pathetic and then when I would go to let him in – RUN AWAY!!!!!!! WOOHOO!! Let me just tell you, that gets old after a bit.

In the morning he gets biscuits after he goes out. Since he didn’t want to come in, I just set the biscuits on the floor inside so he could get them when he finally came in. Well, the cat comes downstairs and is sitting too close to said biscuits – so, what does the little dingbat do? Barks at the cat – through the back door – but won’t come in because said cat is blocking his path. The cat that is about 10 pounds to his 30. Of course, the cat sees no need to move since the dog isn’t actually coming inside, and the dog won’t come inside because the cat won’t move.

I know the cat enjoyed that little episode.

The dog is already asking to go out again.

Little bro liked the turkey and had no arguments when I informed him that the leftovers were allllllllllllll his.

Other than the rolls being a touch *too* golden brown, everything was good.

Target, who normally doesn’t pay a bit of attention to any kind of human food, was rather perplexed. I lost count of how many times he walked into the kitchen, head high smelling the turkey, and then ate his food and looked at me as if to say, “Why doesn’t this taste like the rest of the kitchen smells??” At one point I had to put the roasting pan on “his” counter for a moment, and it’s a good thing it was only a moment, cause he was ready to take a header right into it. So, he got a tiny bit of turkey with his dinner and was a VERY happy cat.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Group W bench.

At the rate things are going, we’ll be eating around midnight, but we’ve never been big on hard and fast schedules around here.

As usual, the pub was packed last night – everyone comes into town and after about 3 hours realizes they’ve already had too much family time and then it’s time to escape for beer and sports.

Enjoy the day.

I just saw an advert for Kohl’s after Thanksgiving sale. Though I still do not want to hear a damn thing about Christmas until after Thursday, I can’t fault the stores for advertising the sales, as they have this little thing they like to do called staying in business.

What killed me is this – they’re opening at FOUR IN THE MORNING. I just can’t even fathom being up and at a store that early in the morning for anything or anyone. I’m fairly certain I don’t like anyone that much in the first place.

I realize that there are people that DO go out to these sales at the crack of dawn – what I can’t quite fathom is who and why. What gift or recipient is SO critical that you would get out and torture yourself that way? You’ve just survived a major family holiday and now you want to go deal with insane crowds and risk an elbow in the eye because some store only has 5 of this season’s hottest toy actually in stock?

For full disclosure, my brother & I usually venture out on Black Friday. Wander around, check out the Santa Claus to see if he’s decent and get a late lunch. It’s more a spectator event for us, never before noon, and I’m fairly certain I don’t remember a single time we’ve actually bought anything that day.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. – Plato

Honestly, I think more people forget this than remember it.

I have been having all sorts of off the wall dreams of late. Usually I can’t really remember much about them except that I wake up very confused and trying to make sense of something I can barely remember. Today’s stuck for whatever reason.

It kind of revolved around a party I am supposed to go to this evening – I was with all the same people I saw last night (who will also be there this evening) and there was all sorts of scurrying about in the morning to get ready for the party (which is actually at someone else’s house) but then I had to go to work. At work, I was begging management for some technical manuals for my team that they really needed to get their jobs done. I was fed some BS story about it being copyright infringement if they gave them out, so I said I’d just take it further up the chain to management. Another manager said it cost too much, I said that I’d pay out of pocket, but they said I couldn’t do that either. Then I found out the higest manager would be at the party – so I said I’d just corner him there and get my technical manuals.

Then I woke up. I can only assume my subconscious feels that the party will be weird and drama laden. I figured if that’s the case, I might as well contribute to it and managed to snag a slot at the hair salon for a long overdue haircut. That alone should confuse the hell out of most of my friends around here. The stylist was rather disappointed when all I wanted was a boring straight cut with no frills. But, he did it exactly the way I wanted and I walked out of there being one big bucket of awesome.

When you have this kind of fabulousness going on, the only thing you can do is top it off with Starbucks.

We shall see how the party goes and if anyone randomly offers me technical manuals.

Normally I don’t pay much attention to Britney Spears train wreck of a life, but someone pointed out this article, and well, I just don’t know how she is surviving.

…when court papers recently revealed that the pop tart doesn’t save or invest any of her roughly $737,000 monthly income, financial and entertainment insiders weren’t surprised. …

Given that it’s Britney, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised either. It’s not the income number that is mind boggling – she had a good career there for a while, and probably gets residuals every time pictures of her running over people’s feet hit the internet.

But seriously, how on earth do you manage to spend 737K in a MONTH?? Granted, every picture shows her at Starbucks, which ain’t cheap, but I just don’t think it’s possible to have that many lattes in a month.

Britney, honey – give me 737K for a month and I’ll show you how to live on just half of it. And you’ll still be able to go to Starbucks, I promise.

Food & Friends is working with Bread & Chocolate to bring Thanksgiving Pies to their clients.

You can order pies for yourself, or for Food & Friends, or both.  I beleive there is only a day or two left to get orders in, so if you’re interested, best get over there soon.

Food & Friends is one of my favorite local charities – basically it’s Meals on Wheels for homebound folks with illnesses such as AIDS and cancer.