Why I Am

Happy Monday, everyone. This pic was taken yesterday in 100 degree heat, and I am positively melting! It's pretty unusual to have weather like we got on Friday and Saturday, incredibly hot and humid, so most people, including our neighbors with their starter mansions do not have a/c around these parts. That means when it's hot, we just have to suffer. We don't even have an awesome town pool to run to. Well, in truth, there are two pools in town, one waist depth pee enhanced kiddie pool and the other a lap only pool where you could literally get run over if you are not a fast enough swimmer. Hmm, which do I choose?
I guess at this point I ought to have some updates for you...lets see...
Little Rita got braces again.
I am getting a little portly.
School is back and boy am I happy about that.
In less than 4 months, I am going back to India for the 7th time!!
I had so much fun in Las Vegas that I cannot talk about it.
Mr Ratburn likes Seattle now. At last we can talk about moving...
Mr Ratburn spilled beer in my brand new keyboard last night.
The 3 key in my brand new keyboard is jammed and smells like Red Hook.
My neck is killing me again.
DMB slayed the crowd at Outside Lands festival in Golden Gate Park yesterday!
Watched the entire show on the computer, no traffic, and it was free. Besides it was 100 yesterday, no thank you!
Little Rita is one inch taller than me, and she is getting super sassy. OYYY!!!
I do love my new computer, except for the sticky 3.

Have a Lovely Day!

And sometimes in the midst of all my crimes....

Check out this Youtube of DMB w/ John Popper. That man is crazy!
What I really went looking for is this song, Look Around, one of my Blues Traveler favorites. I found this crunchy live version but if you are a Popper fan, tell me you don't get all choked up watching him sing Look Around...then I dare you to stick around for the other 5 minutes of cool stuff. It's ok if you don't wanna, though. You know I put this here for me.

Much Fun Had By All

No, we don't want to talk about it.
: P

Lookout Vegas, Trouble Ahead!

I'm outa here for the week. Wednesday is my sisters 50'th birthday and we will be tearing up the strip!
Then on Friday, Jeanne's oldest son, Garett, will marry his lovely Nicole in Las Vegas and hopefully not by an Elvis preacher! (Oh heck, why not!)
Anyway, you know what they say....

BAYBEEEEE!

Dress Me up In Liverwurst & Camembert Cheese!

Does anybody know which film this is from?

Have a Lovely Day!

Old Tyme Fun

I scanned a few of those photo booth strips I was tellin' you about! The one on bottom right is from last Thursday.

I just gotta find those really old ones...

Have a Lovely Day!

Oh, What a Ratly Feast!

Let's see...I've been at the fair for an hour now and have already eaten a super long corndog :P, and now this gigantic bag o' kettle corn which I watched the guy make right before my eyes! It was so fresh n' hot I was afraid the bag would melt. Do you think there was any kettle corn left for munching when we got home? Of course not!
Now, in all fairness, I escaped from the fair at 3:30 pm while Mr Ratburn went in for the long haul, lasting until 8:30 pm! What a sport. However, once back at the parking lot, I spent 45 minutes without success trying to locate the car. Finally I called Mr Ratburn who came out of the fair and found the car in about 20 seconds. OY!!! Thank you, Mr Ratburn, my hero.

This is a country fair, of course we got baby animals!

Mr Ratburn encourages Little Rita to get out there and bet on the horses! Actually, she just picks the horse, he places the bets.

Hmnn.....I wonder if that kids parents know what he's up to at the fair today? Hee hee!
If you look carefully at my right hand I am holding one of those photo booth strips of which is a family tradition. Why, Mr Ratburn and I have photo booth strips dating back to the mid 80's, long before Little Rita was around. One day I am going to cut a pretty fancy matt and place all those photo strips in order under a frame. Now won't that be cool?

We think this is hilarious because the young men in the seats behind our girls are waving to me for the picture!

I remember when I could do these rides without barfing.

And finally, Mr Ratburn and our pal do a little jig at the fair for us all.
Bless 'em.
Have a Lovely Day!

County Fair Time!

The county fair starts tomorrow and LR is so excited. We are planning to go on Wednesday or Thursday because Mr Ratburn is out of town til then and he wants to go to the horse races. Yep, pretty much your standard country fair with corndogs, cotton candy, a midway, crafts and lots of delicious fair food. I always have to have a corn dog, a vanilla ice cream cone which our local ice cream company passes out free to thousands of fairgoers every year, some kettle corn, and perhaps sneak a bit or two of other peoples snacks as well.
Little Rita loves the rides.
Here is one of our favorite fair goers! We alway sing the Templeton song while on the way to the fair. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have some cool pics to show you by Friday!

Have a Lovely Day!

Thursday Portrait

Pondering the size of Mr Jellys package.

I know I said we were going to San Francisco last Tuesday, but actually we had a change of plans. We decided to head the the Jelly Belly Factory in the East Bay instead. It was a perfect day, weather wise, 82, sunny, breezy, no traffic. No traffic until we got into the factory where we had to wait nearly an hour for the tour. Once our turn, we were given those fun paper hats we are wearing in this picture with Mr Jelly. Or is it Mr. Belly?

Then we were shown the factory where the jelly bellys are made. I don't think I have to tell the three of you what jelly bellys are, do I? Now, Jelly Bellys are more spechul than ordinary jelly beans and their tour proved it. It's official and time to announce it: Little Rita is now taller than Susiestheboss! At 12 years old, who knew....
Here's the Jelly Belly link if you wanna know more important stuff about the beans.
BTW, did you know that Ronald Reagan loved jelly bellys so much that he wrote a fan letter to the company? Whoop dee doo! If you're lucky you caught a glimpse of the semi famed Reagan in Jelly Bellys portrait by Peter Rocha.
Mr Ratburn and LR pretend to own this cool bean car!


How fun to have a wall like that.
In the Jelly Belly gift shoppe, you can buy giant bags of Belly Flops, which are the odd shaped beans that didn't quite make the cut.

They have some pretty delicious looking wallpaper in that factory!
I think we each ate about 100 jelly bellys apiece that day and you know what? We all pretty much have a unanimous favorite.
Licorice!
What's your favorite Jelly Belly flavor?
Have a jelly Thursday.

Such Clever Sunglasses!

Your Sunglasses Say You're an Artist
You are clever, unique, and a total nonconformist.
Your sense of fashion is based on your own personal creativity.

You need to be shaded from the mundane parts of life.
You feel sunniest when you can express yourself freely and without judgment.

Yup!
Nothing to report. New computer is fabulous. Off to San Francisco today to eat fortune cookies and peruse Chinatown. Hope all is well is blogland. I hope to have a little more personal time once school gets going again on August 16th. Until then, you get the sunglass quiz. You know actually, have always loved the Roy Orbison style no nonsense rock shades!

PS Obama wears Mom jeans!

Have a lovely Day!

Upgrading

Woo hoo I got a brand new computer and it's super duper fast! Boy am I stoked about that. We've been needing a new one for years. Of course, what's the first thing I did after getting online and seeing my blog and shop are there? (Like, where were they gonna go anyway, but I had to be sure!) I transfered all my games over and wow are they performing fantastically! (I'm a gamer, yeah I know)

All is well in Susiestheboss land. Just working, entertaining my ony child, and staying cool. Not much news except for this! Have you ever noticed how disgusting an old keyboard gets? I am so happy to get this new one which doesnt have tons of dust and junk in all the cracks. I am just making the rounds of all my sites and stuff, making sure they're all super fast, and yes, they are!

Hurray!

I love my new computer.
I hope you are all having a wonderful summer!

Happy Summer!

Rant Over

You're Not Reading This

ivesone.blogpsot.com

So what year, when, are we all going to give up fireworks? Yeah, yeah, I hear ya, "but they're so pretty!" I hate em. They are expensive, they are loud, they pollute the air. I find it ridiculous that people will mass in thousands, wait for hours for 10 minutes of pyrotechnical display, but still I managed to get dragged along by non-enlightened family members. (Ok, by LR, who wanted to run around with her pals, sans parents, all night on the football field.) In our town, because of traffic considerations, we stink up the county one night early by having our display on the 3rd.
We had a pretty full moon on the 4th as well. LR and I drove to a really high spot in the hills and found our place to watch the fireworks display from afar because there was no way I was driving 15 miles one way to pay $5. a head, and wedge myself into the local fairgrounds to see these 10 minutes of light.

So we watched most of it, the puffs of quarter sized light on the horizon from two larger towns east of us. Whatevah! Look at the sky, 20 miles of grey thick smoke floated over the plains. Disgusting. Then traffic jams that rival Los Angeles just to get home from that event. Figure it takes about 7-8 hours to prepare for 10 minutes of fireworks display, once you include planning, packing, driving, walking, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, then 10 minutes, then about an hour or more to get out of the fairgrounds parking lots, then get home.

This is just two towns. Think about the entire country spewing all that smoke for one night a year. No wait! Think about the entire country NOT spewing all that smoke for one night a year. Now that's what I'm talking about.

ivesone.blogspot.com

Now this is California, where we care about our air, supposedly. If we really did, fireworks would become illegal forever.
Now what could we use to replace fireworks while still keeping with 4th of July picnics, comeraderie and etc? I suggest shooting wieners from air guns at each other at 10 paces. Hot dogs are disgusting anyway. Or how about just hanging out with everyone that you love, having the bbq, the sack races, the watermelon eating contests and what have you. Then when it becomes dark, just play charades or something.
I just don't like fireworks, except for maybe these really cool graffiti art paintings of fireworks by Ivesone, a street artist from Amsterdam. Please go check out his blog which is full of his bright and imaginative art.

Have a lovely day!

Happy Fourth O' July

Couldnt find a super good sounding version of this song. But I love John Doe and X, and well, here ya go. You're not really reading this anyway. That's the cool thing about having a blog that noone reads. You can type whatever you want like, Tony has smelly feet, and noone would see it. Or you could say bad things about Gman, like, contrary to what you may have heard, he makes terrible BBQ! You could even talk about what Lime was really doing when she smashed her van...

You're not reading this anyway, so it doesnt matter.

Have a nice day! Don't go gettin' all burnt now!

Goodnight, Moon.

Goodnight, Farrah.


Goodnight, Michael.


Goodnight, Ed.

Happy Father's Day

It's his fault, he wrote it. Happy Father's Day!

~

Daddys Girl

by Mark Leslie
She has her Daddy’s eyes

In a jar up in her room

It took a while to dig them up

Because she’d used a spoon

She has her Daddy’s hair
And with it his whole scalp

She hacked it off with a dull steak knife

But knew a sharper one might help
She has the rest of her Daddy’s parts
Stored in an air-tight drum
She fancies herself a Daddy’s girl
But she looks more like her Mum.

Summer Fun With Mr Sean

Summer vacation is in full swing so that means it's time for Mr Ratburn the teacher to run off into the wilderness with lots of beer in hand. He does a lot of this running off stuff with our great pal Mr Sean. Here is Mr Ratburn in Mendocino.

The alien has landed.
The Alien.

Strange elixirs were consumed.

In The Genie Bottle


Mr Ratburn gets tribal.

Hope you are all well, I havent anything to report. It's summer, I have LOTS of business which is fabulous. I have my ticket to India for December 26th, and my traveling companion which I am completely excited about.
Mostly I am just sewing a lot. Nothing exciting. But as you have seen, Mr Ratburn is having a ball! LOL
I hope you are all having a fabulous summer.

Susie

Thursday Portrait

Actual unretouched photo of me up really really high.

Have A Lovely Day!

Thursday Portrait

Goofin' Around

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Have A Great Weekend!

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