Liz From St. Louis

Meet 2009’s toy craze – Zhu Zhu

These little hamsters are cute and rather inexpensive, if you can find one available at MSRP that is. I was unaware of this new toy until last week when the following conversation took place:

Me: So Mom, what do you want for Christmas this year?

Mom: One of those hamsters with the little car it drives around in.

My sister Grace: Yeah, she doesn’t want the habitrail, just the car.

Me: Then where’s it going to live?

Call me aloof but clearly, I thought my Mom meant a real hamster – I had thoughts of her putting a real live hammy in a remote-controlled Barbie car or something. I wouldn’t put her past something like that. My Mom went bonkers over the Geico commercial with the gecko driving the car while tapping his ‘fingers’ on the steering wheel. She also owns a Tickle Me Elmo, was able to procure a Furby, Cabbage Patch Dolls and even coveted Beanie Babies in their perspective hay-days – I give that woman credit for tracking down the hot toy du-jour! So I really wanted to get her a Zhu Zhu for Christmas this year…

Alas, in my shopping excursion on Fallout Saturday (what I like to call the day after Black Friday as the stores look like a bomb dropped – messy and void of the sale items from the day before) there were no Zhu Zhu’s to be found. Looks like Mom will have to settle for a gift that doesn’t include a small animal in a vehicle. Drat.

Thanks to a terrible error code that had been plaguing this blog for months and my fuck-up of mySQL and phpMyAdmin last nite, I had to delete the whole of my blog and start over. I was able to salvage most of my old blog entries and hope to get them back up as soon as possible.

So, let’s just say this is Liz’s blog 2.0
The refresh.

Stay tuned!

Daydreaming at work about my favorite childhood things, I couldn’t help but remember Miss Piggy bubble bath. Along with my Minnie Mouse tights, it was a must have for young Liz, the diva extraordinaire.

I could really go for pink bananas. I still remember that scent as strongly as that of my Tinkerbelle makeup from JC Penney.

Also, can I have this cake please? If it was a pink banana flavored cake it would absolutely kill me. I should try making one, what a fab idea! The 24th birthday cake will be Piggy Pink Banana Bubble Bath cake. You all want to come to my part now, don’t you? Haha.

That was a nice little break, but I’m afraid it’s back to work with me. I’m planning on updating my site and intergrating the blog better with it. Yet, reading Twilight and sleeping copious amounts have taken preference here lately.

I’ve been busy with the internship at AP, which I’m not complaining about. But that’s why it’s been hard for me to keep up with this thing more than weekly.

I will tell you that I’ve been working with Ted who is the art/production assistant. He makes spreadsheets in Excel of things we need (like live photos, posed photos, screenshots of video games, movies, CD art work, DVD box art, and things like that) and then I get to email all of these crazy publicists and get everything. I’ve also been working with Norman the photo editor on putting together a database of all of the photographers and their detailed info. Every Tuesday I get to sit in on the production meeting with everyone from art and everyone from editorial. Needless to say, Tuesdays are my favorite days I really enjoy working with all of these people and seeing just how everything comes together, it’s neat to just do the little things that I do because I know that if I didn’t do them, there’d be nothing but words on the pages! I have gotten to design the subscription cards that are going in issues #219 and #220 and retailer cards for Canadian bookstores.

And the big news is that… I’VE GOT SEVERAL PHOTOS BEING PUBLISHED IN #219! Which is the October issue, hitting stores on Sept. 7th! So you all have to go buy loads of copies

Saturday it rained a lot and we had to take the van to a local car place to get some O2 thing-a-ma-jig fixed. I wasn’t into it but we went to a hot rod show/concert thing in West Salem, OH.

Not even two bands into it, we had to leave to drive to Cleveland Heights to see Big Sandy and His Fly Rite Boys at this really cool venue called the Grog Shop. And I have to tell you, it reminded me of The Galaxy but cooler. It’s in a neat looking building that looks like you’re down in a cave. It was cool tempeture wise and they bathrooms were clean, definately not like the Creepy Crawl

Big Sandy was good but I was overtired and not in a concert mood. Just not my thing, I like loud and fast better. He played a song and asked if anyone was from Missouri, Mom shouted, she was the only one. Well, it turns out Big Sandy was surprised Missouri folk were in Ohio, so he asked why we were there, Mom explained. He thanked us for coming and wished me luck with the internship, in front of all of these people! It was crazy, I felt bad because here he was wishing me luck and I was definately bored and unenthused with the concert. I smiled thankfully and gave the obligitory thumbs up, it was a cool moment. So, then Big Sandy played this “Misery” song which is about being in Missouri. The rest of the nite he smiled over at us, pointed and waved and even raised his glass to us a few times. Mom and Grace had fun.

We didn’t get home till 2am and were exhausted. I slept in late Sunday and then we moved into a bigger hotel room with 2 beds because I had been sleeping on an inflatable mattress on the floor, plus when Cait and Dad come to visit we need more room. So, yesterday we moved and that was tiring. I took a nap and then Grace and I fended off kids and took a soak in the hot tub. Mom finally got some good sleep but Grace and I had a hard time sleeping last nite. We were watching the celebration cakes competition on Food Network, and dammit, we fell asleep before the end. So, if you know who won, tell me!

I’m into my 3rd week at AP and working on helping Mom book the flights for Cait and Dad to come up here and then for all of us to get to NYC. We’re all excited to go!