Hair Raising Experiences

For those of you who know me, Legally Blonde is one of my all-time favorite movies. That said, I REALLY needed to get my bangs cut this weekend. I still have yet to find a hairdresser that I like here in Orlando that Chris thinks we can afford (men just don't understand!). Being that he loves me and likes to solve problems, Chris decided to find me a hairdresser himself. Knowing I refused to go to any of the chains advertising $15 haircuts due to past experience and my own beauty principles, he decided to go on referrals. After asking all the ladies at work and gawking at the three-figure numbers they pay for their hair cuts and color (welcome to Orlando!), he went back to the drawing board. Mmmmm, what's a guy to do? Then it hit him, Chris' answer to everything....Craig's List!

Yes, Craig's List. The mother of all online classifieds. I was extremely opposed to the idea. Especially after seeing one which read she could "do ponytails"!?!? But one particular add dropped the right salon name and price so I agreed.

Enter Ruth, my new hair lady. She walks up to me and I swear she was going to do the "Bend and Snap" or show me her "Precious Baby Rufus". She literally looks just like Jennifer Coolidge, but with bigger eyes. Since she had such awesome hair, I decided to stay. Rule of beauty #6- don't ever let anyone do your hair, if they don't have good hair themselves.

So I've been growing my hair out so I could donate it. It's a really fun process, you grow it out to at least a 10" ponytail and then Locks of Love can use it for wigs for cancer patients. Many salons will do major discounts on your hair too. I highly recommend it, it's really fun, especially if your hair grows fast.

To make a long story short (pardon the pun), all the anesthetics and drugs I had been on during my surgery had really done a number on my hair and skin. FYI- it can fry your hair and skin for several months afterwards. So my new friend Legally Blonde Ruth and I are assessing the damage and realize it might just be easier to start from scratch. "Okay," I said, "Let's just chop it off". "Oh no! We don't chop hair! We cut hair.....we chop parsley."

So here is the outcome.............. Sorry it took so long, I actually did this on Saturday but didn't want to post about a haircut without a picture (Shannon!!?!?) and had to wait for Chris.

It's Not Easy Being Green

Cookie Tuesday was moved to Monday this week to accommodate a birthday in the office. The lady loves (by loves I mean has deep obsession with) frogs so I made these courtesy of the M&M's website www.brightideas.com They call them Lily Pond something or others. I can't eat their shortcuts of cake mix and store bought icing, so it was a little more involved than stated, but they were really fun to make and now I finally posted a treat you can make with the kids!

I vant to take your blood

I wanted to thank all the Martino's and Dishman's for the fasting and prayers. I never question the power of the family fast as it has come into play for me once again. I DO NOT have a blood clot! WOO HOO! No sexy compression hose for me. As fun as those were going to be to wear in the Florida humidity...right. I also would've had to take more blood thinners which doesn't sound so bad except for the funny story that happened today: I was filing some papers in my boss's office and we have those heavy-duty filing cabinets made out of 2"plastic. The phone rang so I jumped up to answer it and I scraped my shin on the corner of an open drawer. Normally, it would have just scraped the skin and by morning, not even a mark would be seen. But let's be honest here, this is me we're talking about. Queen of the "owie". Thanks to my Coumadin, I started bleeding. And bleeding. An hour later, still a little oozy (if that's not a word, it should be). My manger saw my leg over an hour later and insisted I file an accident report with the Manager on Duty (MOD). No thanks. "Your in HR now and need to set the example for the other employees." What about my stinking pride!?!? So I went in there and the MOD kept looking at me like, why are we filling these out for you now that you arne't in Entertainment anymore? See, the thing is, I used to fill them out a lot. Let's just say a theater marquee fell on my head in a gust of wind once. But my favorite time was when I hit my head on the puppet stage, knocked myself out, and then came to with a 6' tall rabbit kneeling over me to see if I was okay. At any other place, I would've been hallucinating! And I thought HR would be safer!!

Cleaning House

Quick Note-
I just sat down on the bed to talk to Chris. He has been gone a lot this summer and I have gotten used to my own little life style. As you can imagine, living with smelly and stinky boys in hotel rooms, so has he. So, Chris is sitting here working on the laptop and I plopped down on the bed when my knee hits something hard. As I rub the quickly forming bruise, I feel around for the culprit and find...a spoon! Eying Chris with "The Look" he realizes this is an unacceptable home for the utensil.
"What's this doing here?" I ask in a flat tone.
Chris responds with, "I wanted to spoon with you?"

Deya's of Our Lives Soundtrack

No, it is not currently being sold in stores nor does it hold any tracks from High School Musical 2 (darn it!). But I have had a few questions about the girl that sings the background music to my blog. I changed the song a few days ago, but it's still the same artist. Her name is Colbie Caillat and she writes and performs all her own music! Finally something to replace that uber talented Britney...wait, what am I saying!?!?! Yes, the girl actually is talented and no unfortunately her record label isn't paying me to plug her album. :( But Chris and I love it, you can get it on iTunes or check it out on her website, which I hyperlinked it to above (which means, Mom, that you click on it and it will take you there so I don't have to send it to you later..love you!) and she's on tour right now with the Goo Goo Dolls (who knew they were still around?!). Enjoy!

Close Encounters of the Celebrity Kind

Hello friends. It is not only my pleasure but I (Chris Graham) have been told (by Deya) it is mandatory that I write this blog for your entertainment purposes. And seeing as how much I enjoy eating and the occasional cuddle, I find myself typing this entry. It should be said that all the events in this episode are based on true events in as far as I can remember them.

Very rarely does a day go by slowly working in live television. There is always a deadline to be met and the clock very quickly becomes an enemy. I have had the great fortune to meet some incredible people in my thus far short career. From the simple, to the super famous, they all have something to say and it’s my job to make sure they say it in as short a time as possible.

Last night proved to stand out among far too many of the rest.

A couple weeks ago while I was on the road at a tournament I got a phone call from the executive producer of the Golf Channel’s Original Programming department if I could be the Stage Director for the live finale show of Fore Inventor’s Only. It’s basically a reality/game show where the winning invention stands to make a lot of money.

“Chris, it’s Jay, can you do me a huge favor??”
“Depends, what can I do you for?”
“We decided to add a live studio audience so I need someone to run the floor and I heard you have done it before.”
“Well I am supposed to work on Golf Central that night.”
“I’ll take care of it.”

At this point I knew he was going to have to throw some authority around to find someone to cover me on Golf Central so without delay, I agreed.

Last night I showed up and was looking forward to the task ahead for several reasons, but the main one being it was going to be a great opportunity to do something out of the ordinary. Plus I was going to hang out with George Lopez all day because they got him to co-host the show.

So, I arrive at the studio and we had to run thru a rehearsal at 2:30pm, with just the contestants, then the audience was brought in 7:30pm so we could pre-tape the first 2 segments of the show and then we were live at 10pm for the final 4 segments.

As I walk onto the set to make sure all the inventions are in the right place I hear the very recognizable voice of George Lopez entering the studio behind me. Now fortunately I have met enough famous people that very rarely do I get star struck. So I did not have to deal with being a bumbling idiot or anything. I mean really, he puts his pants on one leg at time right? Except….. his pants cost a lot more than mine…… and once his pants are on he makes about 4316% more than me per hour.

So, after our rehearsal it was time for our crew and contestant dinner. There was a special VIP catered section in the part of the building where the ‘Suits’ have their offices. Then there was another catered section, for the rest of us.

I apparently made an impression with George during our rehearsal because he invited me to come with them for the VIP dinner. Which was a lot of fun. George told me a lot of really funny jokes that I can certainly not repeat in this forum but trust me they were funny. But I would say the most impressive aspect of George’s comedy is how amazingly quick witted he is. For example once we actually started to tape the show we got thru the entire 1^st segment and we went way longer than we were supposed to so we had to redo it. So I walked up on stage to tell George and Rich (the other co-host) that we were going to retape it and George looks at me and says,

“I just burned a lot of good material. If I use the same jokes they aren’t going to laugh as hard.”

In a flash of immense wisdom I proceed to shrug my shoulders. George then proceeds to come up with all new material for the retape on the spot. I was incredibly impressed.

In the end, it was a great show, the audience was full of energy and while my favorite did not win the show, I was happy with the outcome.

And George invited me to go golfing with him the next time he was in Orlando. It didn’t take me long to agree.

Cookie Tuesday

I started a tradition about a year ago called Cookie Tuesday. Every Tuesday I bring in a batch of cookies, brownies, cupcakes, or some kind of sweet concoction I have come up with to work. I'm a baking addict with all my pink Kitchen Aid accessories if you didn't know. I have to admit the last few months I slacked off, but for the most part I have been very regular about it. Anyway, I made the most a-mazing cupcakes for a Labor Day party and for Cookie Tuesday and had to share! They are of course from the queen herself, Martha, and she calls them Hi-Hat Cupcakes. Anyway, that links to the recipe, my only tip would be to make sure you scrape the bowl of the icing while you boil it. This is not a good recipe to make with kids as it's pretty time-consuming and involved, but boy were the results amazing!!!!

RDD

A few weekends ago, Jillian and I took Rachel to her first Disney trip ever! Since her initials are RDD and we kept calling it Rachel's Disney Day, the term ADD means nothing to me now. I don't care if people tell me you have to go to Disney with a child. You haven't seen anything until you've seen a twenty-seven year-old get ready to meet Mickey Mouse for the first time. So, sorry the pics are kinda lame and slightly under/over exposed, but I didn't really know how to use her camera (I was the official photographer, but that apparently wasn't the best idea). But she's from Dallas and she gets major points for owning a pink camera.






And yes, she wore the tiara almost the entire day. Beth Ann, I dedicate the hand-painted 5-foot tall pink flamingo to you. Rachel's a Dallas girl and didn't understand you don't wear make-up to the parks, so that's why she looks so amazing compared to myself, although Jillian still manages to look pretty good, so I'm just gonna leave the subject alone here. But we park-hopped, something I'm not sure I was up for yet, but I did anyway (sorry Mom!!!). We opened up with Animal Kingdom, did Magic Kingdom in the middle of the day (I skipped some of this to go pick up Cally from the groomer- see Emily, I am a good mom!), and then came back for dinner and fireworks at Epcot. Whew!! We were tired!

Don't You Know Who I Am?

To get in the spirit of our celebrity sighting, I wanted to share a story that happened pre-blogging in our Provo days. We are pretty big Costco fans and for those of you who aren't big wholesale shoppers, you can't enter the store without showing your membership card. With that said, here is our fun anecdote for the day:

Chris and I were not members of the fabulous chain that is Costco yet and were accompanying Mom and Dad on a shopping excursion, mostly to lunch on the free samples. Chris realized he left his phone in the car and ran to the parking lot. After he left, it dawned on my mother that he would not be able to get back in the store as he didn't have his own membership card. So we are standing next to a pallet of Campbell Soup while I scarf down the latest flavor out of a paper shot glass and Mom is wringing her hands, trying to stand on her toes to see the entrance to the store and hopefully Chris. We are of course nowhere near the entrance and her intimidating 5'3" frame can't see over the racks of fake Sherpa coats anyway. Dad has wandered off towards the latest Dan Brown novel at this point and I have spotted another sample an aisle down. Mom is nervous that I am not more concerned with my husband being stranded in the parking lot of Costco than tasting the microwavable turkey burger. Excuse me for being a starving student. And I know my husband is clever, I just didn't realize quite how clever.

Mom finally convinces me to call Chris, and I tell him Mom will meet him at the front (I don't want to miss the first batch of frozen burritos do I?) at the entrance. He says not to worry, he can see me now. Up he walks with quite the story:

Chris walks importantly through the store entrance, ignoring the employee in the red vest.
Employee: "Sir, I need to see your membership card."
Chris: Annoyed, "Are you kidding?"
E: "......No, sir."
C: Arrogantly, "Don't you know who I am?"
E: "Um, ....no?"
C: More patiently now, "You must be new."
E: "Well, ....yeah, ....I've been here about two weeks."
C: Explanatory, "Well, .....I'm Chris Graham"
E: "Oh....... I'm really sorry Mr. Graham......Go right ahead." Ushering him into the store with no further questions.