Last night our baby moved! I did not feel it, but the movement was very visible. When I looked down, I happened to notice that the right side of my stomach clearly protruded, while the left side appeared much flatter. Since I didn't feel it, I am assuming the baby worked hard all day making this big, slow move. Yeah! For the rest of the evening, Bryan and Sean were calling me Shifty.

It's clear that punk music has died years ago. Nothing good has come out for quite sometime. Either that or I am an old lady who won't "get with the times."

When I think of good punk bands, the first that come to mind are Bad Religion and The Ramones and anything that less than 100 people come to see their show. Classics. Underground.

In the early nineties, those of us who liked being considered scary and unapproachable because of what they liked to listen to, were pretty pissed to hear poppy garbage like Green Day and the Offspring climbing the charts. Punk music is underground, it does not climb charts. Tons of cutsey girls who wouldn't know a thing about music started liking "punk." Then late ninties, early 2000, a crappy band called Blink 182 had more crappy little girls bopping around, "oh my god, I love punk." Tons of equally crappy bands came out sounding just like them and having the "skater look." New Found Glory. Sum 41. Bleh.

Those are sporatic things that irk me, let's get to my latest: Avril Lavigne. She constantly talks about what a punk she is, her skateboard, and cute guys. How dare she call her sad, watered down pop crap punk music. Why does everyone agree? She has made it on TRL along with the likes of N*Sync and Christina Aguilera, who are lame pop stars. Avril...call your music pop too cause it is. No true punk artist will hail MTV. Avril is a cheesy little teeny bopper, just like them. and just because your mom takes you shopping in Pacific Sunwear, does not make you cool.

She is a corperately made piece of garbage, processed and squeaky clean. She talks so much about how much she hates Britney Spears. She is far more annoying than her! Britney is a pop star, so she should be on teen girl magazines. Avril, a "punk musician," has graced the covers of YM and Cosmo Girl. Do you think Sid Vicious would have made the cute guy list? Joey Ramone, best dressed? Pennywise, best male band?

Avril is one of the top selling artists right now and keeps saying, "Look at me, I'm a skater." 80's new wave was an embarassment enough to punk. Please stop looking at her, she is far beyond shameful.

Today at IFF, we had our safety fair. We got free stuff like magnets, letter openers, eye tests for glaucoma, massages, stickers, bookmarks, pens, gum, chips, popcorn, stuff to read, and stress balls. Subjects covered were ergonomics, defensive driving, exercise, blood donation, free flu shots, fire safety, healthcare, skin cancer, stress, drug and alcohol abuse, respiratory safety, eye care, and body fat percentage. I now have tons of pamphlets to look through and CPR classes for which I have the option to attend. And lots of advice from the representatives who were so nice to answer my questions. One in particular moved me.

When I saw the fire safety table, I glanced about the information, took several papers, and a sticker. One of my coworkers asked me if I knew the proper placing of the Tot Finder sticker. Since she has children and I don't quite yet, she was correct in assuming I did not know. I thought the window of the child's room was where the sticker was supposed to go, since that is where my parents placed the stickers when my brother and I were little. She said that it goes on the child's bedroom door. The fire safety committee representative agreed. He said that two feet from the bottom of the door is best so that if a firefighter had to crawl through smoke, he or she could see it. In addition, by placing a sticker in a bedroom window, you give information to unsafe strangers that you have a child in the house and they know which room they can get it.

I had no idea. Wow.

Today is my Dad's 62nd (hope I'm not wrong) birthday. By the way he said he is not even close to retiring. For my dad's birthday, we went last night to a mexican restaraunt called Escondidos! and we had a great time. Mom, dad, brother Tom, cousin Melanie, Bryan, and I. The food there was very good. The server was very nice. Everyone was making jokes and telling stories. Good times.

Throughout the dinner conversation, we teased my dad about having the restaraunt servers sing happy birthday. Being the shy, quiet person my dad is, this would definately make him unhappy. He does not like when people are loud or make a fuss over him. We have never been to Escondidos! so we made up stories. When this place sings for your birthday, they bring a mexican hat and sing really loud. And so on and so forth.

At the end of dinner, my dad insisted that it was not his birthday and everyone else said otherwise. The waiter told my dad not to worry. Two minutes later, we heard loud noises like cowbells and my father's face went pale. The waiter came by and the hostess put a gigantic sombrero on my dad's head, gave him ice cream with a candle and the horror stricken look on his face was immortalized when the lady took a polaroid! He looked like he wanted them to go away RIGHT NOW.

I think we all witnessed the most embarassing moment of my dad's life last night. And I could not get my hands on that picture to post on our site.

This morning I found myself in daze thinking about one of my favorite holiday traditions. Although it is about two months away, I always get excited around this time of year. Every year my Dad's family has this weekend-before-Thanksgiving celebration.

My father's is one of eleven children who have families of their own with children who have families of their own. So you could just imagine how large of a family it is. Everyone wants to have holidays with their family, but it is sometimes not possible, aside from the fact that there are so many of us. The idea that we should all spend at least Thanksgiving together is our tradition. So, the week before Thanksgiving, everyone gathers at my cousin Judy's house and we have our aunts, uncles, cousins, brother and sisters party. Therefore when the actual holiday comes, we have our own separate family get togethers. And no complaints of holiday traffic for the most of us who have to travel a distance. This is such a cool party that everyone who normally does not attend other family functions makes an effort not to miss it and some people even fly in to be there.

It is one of my favorite days because it's probably the only time I see some of my favorite people and the food is fabulous. What a wonderful time we have greeting, "I haven't seen you in so long. So happy you are here." It's wonderful when I get to use my great skill once a year of speaking elementary Spanish to my aunties and they are so excited when I get a little more understanding.

As I mentioned earlier, the food is fabulous. Everyone makes a dish to share. Food is our big thing. Who made what and how good it looks. I am amazed how many cool things there are to eat, how many different ways people make Spanish rices, all the unique things people come up with that I have never tried before. Everyone fights over the empanadas, which are the greatest food ever. I think its cool the way everyone knows that there are certain things that are standard every year where you can say, "Can't wait to have Aunt Cloty's rice," and there are people you know always make something really good and very unique from last year, "I wonder what Celia is making this year." Bryan went for the first time last year and he was impressed and he had such a good time.

It's our day to get back in touch with where we left off last time, hear stories about people and laugh, "Hey Christine, did you know that you dad did ...." And then, "See you next time."

I love this holiday (pre Thanksgiving) equal to Halloween. Can't wait for this year's holiday.

Last night, Bryan and I decided to stay home and do absolutely nothing for the first time in a long while. We never watch any of our movie channels, we just pay for them. Flipping throught the channels, believe it or not, the most interesting thing was what seemed to be this sad excuse for a vampire movie. Then we saw credits and thought that we should watch this cause it just started.

Starring Snoop Dogg and Pam Grier...."Bones." Bryan and I thought that this would probably be a really dumb movie and we should watch it to see exactly how dumb it would be.

It was a very uninteresting movie (btw not a vampire movie) about a silly looking "gangster" from the seventies who was betrayed and killed. He was ressurected unbeknownst to the entrepreneurial dj team decides to buy Bones' old house and make it a dance club. Everybody on the street warns them about the house blah blah blah some guy gets killed blah blah blah... Every ten minutes there was some lame special effects for Snoop Vision and the some further lame flashbacks that clue you in on the background of Snoop's death. Why, why do there have to be so many flashbacks??!! Bones then seeks revenge on those who betrayed and killed him. Oh, okay.

I personally find Snoop Dogg to be a ridiculous and silly character rather than the smooth, cool gangsta that he is desperate to portray. Everyone's acting was sinful, even Pam Grier which is pretty surprising. Even more surprising, A movie made especially for Snoop about a gangster had only five scenes which mentions drugs. 'Sup Snoop Dogg? There were tons of stereotypes clearly shown through every character. We won't discuss that.

Anyway, we did watch the movie. On a Saturday. Pretty funny.