Happy Birthday to Me - Not Too Old to be Fab!

Me and my new glasses, photographed by Adam

For once, we celebrated my birthday on time this year (except for this blog post), complete with skiing, a celebration dinner and watching Blue Man Group. If you're in the Boston area, you can get 1/2 price tickets from the awesome ArtsBoston.org.

 Although I was born in the Year of the Horse, I turned 47 this year, and will only reach my "dodecade" or "dozennial" (why isn't there a real word for every 12 years?) at the end of the Chinese calendar year next January. When I first heard it was the Year of the Horse, I was momentarily confused thinking that it couldn't be right since I was turning 47.  This also confused my mom, who sent me a Happy 48th Birthday card.  Oh well, at least I'm still "years" away from the big 5-0.  Did you celebrate Chinese New Year on Bejeweled Blitz? I did!

Every year, I become disheartened by the ridiculous age brackets on surveys.  I'm happy to check off 45-54, but not these recent surveys.  This one was from BlogHer.  46-64?  Just knocking on the door to senior citizenship??  Ouch!

This one was in the VIP membership form for JustFab.com.  46+??  I am lumped with senior citizens!!  Am I too old to be fab? Did you see my new fab glasses??!? Just for that insulting question, I refused to join.  I can buy shoes from any site, thank-you-very-much.

No birthday is complete without cake, real and virtual. On the morning of my birthday, I made some homemade chocolate cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting.

Dova followed suit with a virtual version.

I also received this beautiful purple cake from Doug.  Oops, I ate a piece before photographing the cake!

Dova also followed suit with a virtual purple cake.

Thanks to my family for an awesome birthday!

Happy Hearts Day

I love the shape of a heart. It's totally corny, but seeing hearts always makes me smile.  For Valentine's Day, I collected snapshots of hearts, purposeful and accidental.

First, Dova and I found this yummy looking candy hearts box from Russell Stover.  I just want to take a bite out of it!

From Google Doodle, more candy hearts!  If you click on them, you get little stories produced by This American Life (check out their Valentine's sampler as well).  What a wonderful surprise treat!

From Sudbury Farms, this heart wreath made from recycled newsprint.  Beautiful!

From Bejeweled Blitz, the Heart Stone gem and this all-time high score I got with Dova!  First place this week, baby!

Finally, from My Singing Monsters, my collection of monsters have all been arranged in a heart shape.  For Valentine's Day, the Air Island is already heart-themed!  I was ecstatic to add the Schmoochle to the collection.

All the monsters on the other islands followed suit:

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Clumsy Thumbsy Texting - Fun with Auto Cat Rectal

Autocorrect can be a blessing and a curse.  I actually prefer to use it because instead of meticulously pecking out letters on my phone, I can simply gesture words on the keyboard that are simply close to what I want and Autocorrect intuitively knows what I mean 80% of the time.  Well, maybe 70%.  When I'm out for a walk, it is freeing to "gesture" my thought into words, sometimes without even looking. This is what I typed once on the way to the car.

With the first four letters of "riboght" wrong (<< or bitwise left shift for the coding geeks), Autocorrect magically came up with the correct word "tonight".  Brilliant!

But more often than not, Autocorrect gets it hopelessly and often inappropriately wrong.  Here are some goofs caught in the act (before hitting send!).

No groping the nanny!  I don't even remember what the real word was supposed to be.

Here's one for a fellow sports mom:

No, T&A should never enter into a conversation with another mom.  And to the point that Autocorrect "learns" your common phrases, "groping" and "T&A" have never been used before! Autocorrect definitely has a dirty mind.

The kids and I had a blast watching the Clumsy Thumbsy segment from The Ellen Show on YouTube (all PG-ish). This is what happens when people actually send the wrong Autocorrects.



Many of these can also be found on DamnYouAutocorrect.com (not always so PG-13).  My personal favorite has renamed my beloved Autocorrect to "Auto Cat Rectal" (note in the Ellen version, "rectal" is left off).

And the best collection of this site goes to Top 10 Misunderstanding with Parents.  Completely not PG-13 but oh so funny.  Adam turned off his Autocorrect on his phone so hopefully we won't have any mishaps like those. Then again, I better keep an eye on my own auto cat rectal text gesturing.