soundboard de cheevo

I know I haven't updated in a while so here is a week's recap. I spent my birthday week in low gear starting with a small birthday party on the actual day-o-celebration (March 20) with K's famous chili and a cake and a handful of good friends. The next day I went to Atlanta to see my best friend, Clare. We always make plans for major Atlanta outings, but usually decide in the end that cooking, movie watching, beer drinking and trashy tabloid magazine reading are just as fun without the hellish traffic nightmare that seems to invade every part of the city. It was a nice, quiet birthday week spent with with people and critters I love. I couldn't have asked for more.

If you look closely, you can see the '34' in yellow candles. This cake started out with yellow cake mix and white icing and ended up with a blue layer, a purple layer, and with every single color of icing possible using the Roy G. Biv color wheel. Clare is famous for her technocolor birthday cakes. This is the third one she's made for me. Clare referred to this cake as "the gift that keeps on giving" because what goes in colored with purple and blue also goes out purple and blue -- who knew?

It's hard to be a suburban beagle. She looks sweet here, but minutes later Charlie Brown was caught in my bowl of birthday cake and ice cream. Beagles definitely know the art of the sneak. She is more Snoopy than Charlie Brown in every way.

Eric, Peter and I have a new music project we have started with the working name Days ending in Y. The three of us were in a band called Every Alice on Earth back in the good ole college daze on the early 1990's. We have been practicing most every week since January and it is starting to sound good. When we practice at my place, Andi has to position herself as close to boys as possible (as pictured). She's definitely a lover, not a fighter.

Pets weren't the only critters with claws at my birthday party. Ben, with spitcloth in mouth, was ready to pounce on a very mutually curious Freddie, but never touched any fur. An alternate heading for this photo was "Crouching tiger, lurking baby."

Peter and Eric made bird noises and animal that fascinated Ben, but soon he was on to their trickery.

My small impromptu birthday party included Ben and MC. Ben, now nine months and 23 odd pounds of baby action, was the life of the party. He entertained himself with motor noises he now makes with his mouth, a few stuffed toys and our cats who circle him and stay just out of reach of his grasp. He is close to crawling, but can't get the leg part of the motion coordinated so he just lies on the floor and slowly slithers like a snake (while producing a nonstop fountain of drool). It is a sight to behold.

Baby spit up -- shape of a brontosaurus. K first noticed this prehistoric shape on MC's jeans and decided to document it. The blob to the left is a tree she decided.

I think one of the best aspects of Comedy Central's long--running hit "South Park" is its ability to make fun of anything and anyone and I would put money on the duo of Matt Stone and Trey Parker having the last laugh on their latest stunt. In the spirit of their 'no sacred cows' policy, Stone and Parker have taken aim at the mysterious Hollyweird world of Scientology and specifically at its unofficial spokesman, Tom Cruise . Cruise is so sensitive about the media, or anyone, portraying him besides anything but the raging righteous heterosexual he is that he allegedly threatened to not promote his latest "Mission Impossible" sequel if the latest "South Park" episode featuring his likeness wasn't pulled. Pity the thought of yet another generic Cruise action flick not gettin g its proper hype. The mega entertainment company producing his latest action stud flick also owns Comedy Central. In the true spirit of America, a huge chunk of an in

Peach blossums (top) and Jasmine blossoms (bottom) in my back yard last week. I love Spring.

I remember hearing a report about ten years ago that only 11% of Alabamians have college degrees. It was a shocking statistic at the time and made me realize how I had been surrounded by the vast minority since second grade when my family moved to Auburn. Despite these numbers, the state has excellent four-year colleges including Birmingham-Southern and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), to name just two, that have both been named "Top coll eges" by US News and World Report for many consecutive years. Birmingham-Southern, a private Methodist liberal-arts college, has had an excellent reputation for fine arts programs as well the more conservative fields of business and finance. I don't think its a misnomer to call the school elite. When the church fires started last month, my first thought was that the burning were racially motivated until these arsonists proved they were equal-opportunity criminals. In a way it was a relief that the arsonists were picking chu

My employer, The Birmingham News, ran this article in the Sunday Lifestyle section this past week and it intriqued me. I have never really liked Oprah (with the exception of her performance in "The Color Purple"). She is self-righteous, melodramatic, all-knowing and presumes she rules the roost of American women and media in general. Recently her antics have been turned up a notch by her on-air grilling of shamed author James Frey concerning his book, "A Million Little Pieces." Her soap opera dramatics with the writer had 'ratings boost' tattooed all over them. I don't think its right to publish a work that claims to be autobiographical when its not, but at the same time we are not talking about issues of national security here. James Frey was a addict who hit rock bottom and he exaggerated some of the details of how he got there. Oprah, surely you can relate with dramatics babe. We all know by now that no one gets called on the carpet the way James Frey

I am happy to report that Fab Five Freddie, the feline, is back to obnoxious, bossy, nosey, presumptuous ways after a illness that lasted well over a week. After the kitty catheter came out and he came home, something was off. He was hiding and not eating and both of those behaviors completely contradict the real Fred. He also would not stop throwing up so it was back to vet where they gave him an enema (poor kitter) and he came home with medicine all over his back end that, when he tried to lick off, would make him throw up so we were back to square one so I thought. K and I decided to do something drastic by giving him a bath. Fortunately we had some pet shampoo and while he hated every minute of it, the bath allowed him to turn the corner into recovery. Now its like he was never sick. Today I got a picture of him as he was sunbathing at the back door all laid out like a big sausage. All his old behaviors are welcome signs, because there have been a few times in the past two weeks w

These days it's really hard to feel sorry for Scott Stapp , disgraced former lead singer of Creed, after his latest round of scandalous headlines. I always love when famous people, like politicians and entertainers, blame the media for their misdoings. Yeah Scott, it was the media that made you get arrested for public intoxication on your honeymoon at LAX last month. The same goes for the fight with bar fight with the band 311 last fall. - It doesn't take a nuclear physicist to figure out that if you are famous and act like complete drunken idiot in public, it will be reported. And the hits keep on coming and coming (in all senses of the word). Stapp's dumb ass lost a homemade porn he made with Kid Rock and four strippers and low and behold, it wound up on the internet. Didn't Paris Hilton teach no-talent celebrities anything by her mistake? To make matters worse, one of the strippers is suing Stapp for invastion of privacy and in her suit claims, "For all purpose