redhotmomma’s blog

You know how the saying goes...once a cheater always a cheater. Well, in this case it's me who's the cheater. Technically, I am just going back to my first love.

Myspace that is. I haven't checked into Vox accept to read posts by my most excellent friend KymPossible and add comments on her kids. I've been blogging on Myspace again...I feel so dirty. Maybe the grown up side of me needs to dump my MySpace account and spend more time on my relationship with Vox. Although...according to a recent poll MySpace is for old people,  anyone who doesn't want to be associated with moms over 35 are leaving MySpace for Facebook.  Sigh....I'm torn between two loves.

Went out for my birthday this weekend. Met up with my friend Ronnie (seriously smart IBM type) and a couple of her friends from HS. It's weird that even though we are all in our 30's we seem to revert to HS-like behavior. Drank way too many margaritas at Momma Margies off the 10 in SA. Had to. Everyone kept shoving them in my face all night. :)

I recommend the strawberry margaritas. They're made with really sweet frozen strawberries and top-shelf Tequila, and on manager's special night they are only $2.99. (we completely forgot about the 3 drink maximum, and so did the manager.) The food was tolerable. Typical fast food mexican, but hey, when you're drinking good margaritas at an excellent price, who cares what the food tastes like?

The night was a little surreal as the group mostly talked about HS antics, and "who's doing what these days," and managed not to make me feel completely geriatric. (they are all turning or just turned 30).

All of these people were in marching band, and someone actually said during the course of the conversation, "what did people in HS who weren't in band do?" I found this profoundly funny when Ronnie turned and said, "what did you do, Lori?" (perhaps being in the marching band at Mt View HS didn't qualify as being in the Marshall HS band elite....who knows.

It kind of made me wonder about the people I graduated with...Would we get lost in yester-year if we got together and drank cheap margaritas? Would we be talking smack about people who weren't in V.U (only KP and Steve will get that reference) And what has become of us all? This particular group consisted of an E.R. Doctor, two IBM programmers, a semi-pro boxer/musician/something else, and school teacher. Not a slacker in the bunch. Maybe there is something to be said for the Marshall HS marching band after all.

Good times.

Tell us about a time when you were brave. 
Submitted by Hops.

Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.  - Omar Bradley

Back when IT and Accounting were barely merging houses I had to get up in front of 100 of our biggest clients and pitch a new web based accounting system. I had to convince them that the services we were offering were secure and totally 24/7 with zero down time. I had been on a stage before, even taught small groups of clients about technology offerings, but I had never been on this scale before. My boss thought it would be funny to ask me if I were nervous just before I went on. I had my back turned to him and answered very nervously, "yes, but I'll just picture them all in their underwear." Then I turned around to find him standing right next to one of our clients. Yeah, that made me feel a lot better! **dripping with sarcasm.**

The client sat right in front as if to mock my embarrassment. UGH! I got through the presentation, fielded a slew of hard nosed questions and then quietly went back stage to have a heart attack. 

Who is the very first friend you ever had?  Are you still in touch?

My very, very, very first friend was Jennifer. She and I went to the same day care in our neighborhood. We literally have known each other since we were babies. Although we were split up in Kinder...mom wanted me to go to the afternoon session and her mom sent her to the morning session, we were still troublemakers 'round the burbs.

When I started first grade, I was all excited to be in the same class as Jen, but once again my parents thought I should go to private school. When that school was closed, I got to spend one glorious semester enrolled in the same class as Jen. (that was short lived once they found out I had GT skills.) Then I was sent off to a magnet school downtown. *sigh*

Jen and I were both tearing it up in the neighborhood, playing on our bikes and swimming at the local pool until I moved up north to go to Jr. High. (guess mom had had enough of public schools in South East Tucson.)

I lost touch with Jen until High School where we tried our best to keep in touch, but it proved futile with our proximity to each other. That made me very sad. The last I had heard she had moved to Tennessee, so when I found Classmates.com and reunion.com on the Net, I decided to research Jen and find out what had happened to her. After a few years of exhausted efforts, I found her and we correspond every now and again. It feels like old times, only without the bikes and sunburns.

My good friend Ronnie coined the phrase "boob salad." Imagine if you will a nice, normal suburban mom of two (who also happens to be a top notch mainframe programmer and killer TNT runner/mentor) on an excursion to the Bay Area where she meets up with an old college buddy. The college buddy who in the film industry. Thus, the dinner party or after-party (whatever) that they end up at is saturated with starlet, couch hopping types with enhanced mammary regions...(bought and paid for by other entertainment types). Anyway, she is telling the story of how she felt a little awkward with all that saline and silicone thrust in her face and said, "I felt like I had ordered a boob salad for dinner."

The story is now legendary in our little circle of girlfriends both in person and online. So now we have started a club of sorts calling ourselves the Boob Salad Girls. We have even posed for pictures as such, proclaiming our salad-ness to the camera operator. Anytime we go out to dance, drink or be socially unacceptable, and are feeling particularly naughty, we will undoubtedly adorn the uniform of all Boob Salad Girls nationwide...low-cut or otherwise revealing baby-doll type shirts. (well, not ALL of us)

Our theme song: yes we have one...Boob Salad...Yummy Yummy. (If you are in any way familiar with the Wiggles, you'll find this especially funny.)

But what to do next? I am starting a t-shirt site (Thanks to Kympossible for the idea) and posting t-shirts for sale adorning funny sayings and graphics by Redhotmomma. Look for the link to the site very soon!

Would you go on vacation by yourself, and if so where would you go?
Submitted by Sean & Stefan.

Man, that's a good one! I'm an outdoor person. I love to hike, climb, swim, surf, whatever. But those are not exactly the best things to do solo given the number of personal dangers one might encounter. (remember the story of the guy who had to cut his own arm off in the mountains of Utah?) I suppose if the conditions were right I would want to be dropped off on a tropical Island (with provisions of course) For a period of one week. That way if I got into trouble I would simply be dehydrated and or a little hungry. But not so much that I looked like Tom Hanks in Castaway.

On the positive...I could lay around under palm trees admiring the sea...eating papaya and fresh caught fish. Surf and swim in the cool blue waters and explore the nearby jungles. And NOT have access to tv, cell phones, kids screaming (I currently have more than I need) and no one and I mean no one interrupting the peaceful tranquility of solitude. ahhhhh. I'm there already....

What are five things that most people don't know about you? 
Submitted by mika.

Although I think this was in an earlier post (thanks Kympossible) I will indulge the Voxiverse:

1) I hate clutter. Can't stand it. Makes me crazy.
2) Not a big fan of chocolate or shopping. Is that grounds for having my Fem Card taken away?
3) I am addicted to blogging and reading blogs. There is no 12 step program for that, is there?
4) I can sing in the shower and in the car, but it takes a lot of liquid libation to get me to sing on a stage...weird since I spent a good part of my youth on stage.
5) I would be perfectly happy living on a ranch in the middle of Montana (if only I had high speed Internet) ;)

There. That's five

Books:  Show us the longest book you've ever read.  (All the way through.)

History of Beauty

What movie cliché would you most like to live out in real life? 
Submitted by Wes.  

I'm still looking for my Jake Ryan...*sigh*, but I would love to take on the roll of a Bond Girl, help foil an evil mastermind plot then get shot up into space with an agent of Her Majesties finest. YUM.

I saw two incredible movies this Sunday. I took a whole day to watch two movies, but it was worth it. The first movie was Miss Potter. A very well done tale of Beatrix Potter (famed for the Peter Rabbit series of children's books.) It was inspiring and also sad as you realize that through pain and isolation some of life's most amazing artistic talents are discovered. Renee Zellweger plays the part of Beatrix Potter and Ewan McGregor (the guy from Moulan Rouge and of course Star Wars) plays the lead love interest, so it has tremendous "box office" pull, but without the obvious sex and scandal nod that most big productions have.  Still, a very sweet love story and an insight into one of my favorite authors.

The second movie was called Mistress of Spices. A pseudo Bollywood Indi-film that had me gripped from the very beginning. It was a mystical love story of an Indian woman who has second sight abilities and uses spices to heal and help tell the future of all her customers. She has three rules that keep her from experiencing life the way normal folk do. She can never use her abilities to help herself, she can never touch another person's skin and she can never leave her spice shop. Until one day Dillon McDermott shows up at her front door and, well let's just say the red chilli's are not as hot as their attraction to each other. The film does go a little awry when they introduce the fact that (Doug Dillon McDermott) is part Native American. It was almost as if to say their attraction to each other was more justifiable because he was not your typical white guy from San Francisco. *sigh* He was all too adorable in the film. You must rent it on a rainy Sunday afternoon. (I should give a nod to the Mistress herself, Aishwarya Rai)  What an amazingly beautiful woman! Anyway, don't go into the movie with high expectations of beautiful scenery and alot of interesting dialougue. The most sensual thing in the whole movie (the leading actress of course) and the spices themselves. But in all, a wonderful tale of assimilation of culture.