Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving! We certainly did, though we had to accomodate Danny's strict dietary guidelines:

Off to Vegas in the morning! Woohoo! I've decided if I win the jackpot I will use the winnings to build Hartman a cathouse made entirely of catnip. Wish me luck!

After a long day of maintaining my politically nuetral work face, I met up with my cousin Alissa in her Marina Del Ray hotel room to celebrate! We concluded the best way to express our elation was to jump up on down on the bed like we did when we were kids! I had a lot of pent up celebrating to do! I can only imagine what the neighbors thought. lol! After we exhausted that outlet, we stayed up and talked for a long time (even though she had to get up at 5am! do'h!). I was cautiously optimistic for an Obama victory, but never imagined it would be such a landslide. Incredible! Indiana! Virginia! PA, OH and FL! As soon as he won OH I knew the game was over. What a fantastic night!

The one dissapointment of the evening was the passing of Prop 8. I am confident this nonsense will be overturned in time.

Gotta get to work now!

My Dad is in town for a visit! We went to the bookstore last night to buy books to take to the beach and read. Guess which book in the $3.99 or less bin we did NOT invest in! hehe

Mom and Dad are famous!! I found them in this old educational film:

Phillip's latest video, hahahaha:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Yay! Cousin Alissa is here! More to come!

Everyday, I go into work, knowing it will bring me a new and exciting (well, most of the time) adventure. I'm so fortunate to have a job in which there is no end to new experiences. Today is a momentus day....

Today.... For the first time in my life....


... I got close enough to a Tiger for it to pee on me.... and... it did.
I have never been pissed on by a gigantic cat before. Like I said, new and exciting adventure everyday!



Maybe tomorrow I will find out what it is like to spit out gasoline and light it (and my hand) on fire....
....nah!

Oh, and by the way:


Even though Hartman is cute and cuddly--- she can be every bit as ferocious as:


Diablo! This is one fiesty cat!

Coldplay's "The Scientist" is one of my favorite songs/music videos:

Yeah, Yeah, I know this is a cop out blog post. I've been busy. :) Today I marched around in dog poop and now I'm off to the gym! I'll blog soon, I swear.

There are a lot of Canton's to go through! Should be a fun ride!

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This N' That:

I Fandangoed some tickets for last nights 10:20p showing of Batman at Universal Studios. That was the earliest showing available that was not sold out! The Dark Knight has received crazy good reviews-- even Best Picture talk on Ebert and Roper-- so we were pretty excited to see it. We thought we should arrive an hour before showtime to get in line for a good seat. Turns out, half the theatre thought they should arrive more than an hour before showtime to get good seats! The line was sooo long! We still managed to get center seats-- just pretty close to the front. It's so much fun seeing a movie like this with die hard fans who cheer throughout the film. So what did I think of Batman?.....

I don't know......

I haven't seen it yet.......

'Huh?' You ask? Let me explain: About 3/4 though the film-- the movie stops-- the lights come on-- and the fire alarm goes off. Keep in mind this is Universal Studios. Massive fire happened here a couple of months ago, remember? With this in mind, all of us in the theatre looked around and sniffed for smoke---- we smelled nothing and demanded the return of Batman! :) After a few minutes, admitting defeat, people started standing up and filing out. A worker came in stopping them telling everybody it was a false alarm. So we waited. And waited. And Booed. And waited. I decided now was a good time to visit the ladies room. When I returned, the lights were on, the movie was playing sans sound. There were shouts of "Rewind it!", "Turn the sound on!" and "Booo!". I believe The Joker had something to do with this!

Soon the sound came on. The movie was far enough ahead that nobody understood what was going on. People started filing out of the theatre in protest. We could hear fan rumblings outside demanding their money back. We had already invested 2 hours in the movie plus the hour in line... so we stayed in the well lit theatre and tried to continue watching Batman. A few minutes later-- the movie shut off again as the fire alarm went off. Now we all filed out of the theatre and was greated by a customer service line of Indy Mac proportions!

We now have 4 free movie tickets and will have to give Batman another try sometime during the week!

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I covered the big 4th of July celebration here on the Lot where our station is located. The lot was packed with people!
I had one very bizarre experience... I was shooting live shots in the middle of the crowd... My equipment was cordoned off by a series of orange cones with yellow tape wrapped around forming what looked like a mini crime scene. I finally had 20 minutes free to sit down by my camera inside my little space and eat a piece of chicken Dave brought me. I sat there with my headphones on listening to the show in case they needed something.... Then it became clear... I had become part of the attraction on the lot. As I took a bite of chicken I looked up and saw a crowd of people watching me. They were pointing. They were taking pictures. It was really weird. And it did not stop. Every last bite of chicken was documented. I'm sure there are pictures somewhere on the internets of me sitting on the ground eating chicken. I now know what it is like to be a zoo animal.
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Hartman has finally taken to the kitty condo I bought (and spent an entire evening putting together) for her! For the first couple of weeks she turned her nose up at it and much enjoyed the box it came in!


I'm glad it finally received the Hartman seal of approval. In fact, she's sleeping in it as I write this!

I'm 2 for 2 now. Here's a little video of Hartman enjoying her new Catnip toy! She used to be apathetic to the nip. Welllll, she's Hartman!

Soon, Hartman! Soon!

................................................Uncle John...............................................

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I'm back home in Kansas for my Cousin Sean's wedding! Later today there's a birthday party for Sara's twins. They're 1 already! I'll try to post pictures of the little---well, ok, they are actually GIGANTIC cuties! I swear they are going to be 7 ft tall when they grow up.

Happy Father's Day!!! Let's have dinner at the Cat House! hehe :)
Love you!!

Due to the unrelenting stares of Hartman and Cousin Alissa, I proudly present:

The Griswold Family Vegas Vacation!


Not to worry, this was nothing like the Griswold Family Christmas Cruise! Though there were a couple of close calls... which I will divulge in due time.
As you can see in the photo above, we were living the high roller life! Why?

Mom hit the jackpot on the penny machines! Woooo! Oh... wait a minute... wrong photo...


Ok, here's the right pic! Wooooooohooo! hehehe. Hey, not bad Mom. Not bad at all!

So we hopped in our Limo stocked specifically for me (for those of you who don't know: I'm a total coke addict).

We arrived at our final destination:


The Top of the World Restaurant at the Stratosphere!

The view was awesome. The meal was awesome. My family is awesome. You know what turned out not to be so awesome? Well, for me at least?

The restaurant rotates so everybody eventually gets to see the strip. It goes very slow. It takes more than an hour to do a full rotation. Nobody even feels it.... well.... almost nobody...


This is what it felt like to me! haha. The older I get the more sensitive to motion I become. Dave and I ate at this restaurant years ago for our anniversary and it didn't bother me a bit!

Not to worry, this was no Discovery Christmas Cruise. I just took a couple of five minute breaks away from the rotation and all was well. Phew! Until..... we tried to leave.


You see, the night was still young for us high rollers. We had 6 tickets to see the Blue Man Group after dinner. However, there were only 2 or 3 elevators that seemed to be in use taking people up and down the however-many-stories (like 80 or something) and there were always full when they came to our floor! I eventually asked a worker if they could get us an elevator:

Worker: No...

Me: Well, isn't there a service elevator or something we could please use? We are going to miss our show because we can't leave the restaurant.

Worker: No... sorry....

So, the next elevator that opened, I stuck my foot in the door so it couldn't leave and asked the elevator operator to please help us.

Me: Please, we've been trying to leave for nearly 30 minutes. We're going to miss the Blue Man Group.

Elevator Girl: No, sorry. I don't know.

Me: There has to be someone you can call. Could we take a service elevator?

I apologized to the people on the elevator I was holding up, but hey, we were not going to miss the Blue Man Group over this! The standoff ended peacefully with the Elevator Girl calling an elevator for us.

What greeted us at the base of the Stratosphere was--- a line for a cab! We were going to take the monorail, but we used up all of our time trying to negotiate our way back down to earth. It was 15 minutes till showtime when one of our cabs was available. I handed out the BMG tickets and dispatched Dave, Mom and Dad in the first cab.

Me: Don't wait for us. We'll catch up!

Minutes later, John, Olivia and I hopped in our cab. It was 10 till. How on earth were we going to make it?? I'm sure the cabbie appreciated the clock play by play. "Oh no, 9 minutes! 8! 7! 6! 5!"

When we arrived there was 4 or 5 minutes till showtime! And you know how Vegas is. You arrive at a hotel and you have to walk a mile in it to get to where you need to be.

We flew through the front door. Olivia and I shared a look:

Olivia: I've been training my whole life for this!

The whole world moved in slow motion.

Chariots of Fire began to play.

I think we passed a Cheetah racing through the casino.

We were giddy with laughter, actually, running through the Venetian like crazy people. We caught up and passed by Mom and Dad and Dave.

We arrived safely in our great seats to the Blue Man Group!

The show rocked!! One of the Blue men was stalking John after the show!
Ok. So you know how Hartman was staring at me until I wrote something about the big trip? Well, now she's staring at me telling me I need to pay attention to her... or else. I may write more later. It's up to Hart!

"I'm going to stare at you like this until you blog about your family's trip."

Ok, Ok, Hartman. I will do it tonight.


Hartman, I promise, I will do it tonight!


Ahhh! Stop!

I have to goto work right now. I PROMISE-- TONIGHT!!

Yes, I know, I should be blogging about the awesome Moriconi family adventures. I promise those tales will come very soon! First, I must share this video i found on Youtube. I was laughing so hard I was crying!

Stories coming soon!

Ok, so there is this game on Facebook called 'Superheros'. You attack other players to try and steal their powers and gain experience to become the ultimate Superhero.

I was attacked by my friend, Curt, today with the power of ice. He was 'throwing icecyles' at me. He messaged me:

"Quite frankly, if I can throw ice cubes from Florida to California then I really am a Superhero!"

Now click here to see what happened today, MAY 22nd, in LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA!

It appears Curt should get fitted for his cape and green tights!

Yes, I admit. American Idol is my guilty pleasure. Considering they received nearly 100 million votes for the finale, chances are it's your guilty pleasure too (so stop with the finger pointing and laughing!) For the first time since I started watching the show in season 4-- there was a contestant who I really wanted to see win! He had me at 'Hello'. (couldn't resist). I wasn't supporting him just because he's from Kansas City (my neck of the woods)... Or because he looks strangely like my brother, John:

Well, okay, My friend Mark is here right now and he says he doesn't see it... But I think he's just bitter because I beat him at Wii.... Nevertheless, when Idol started out my parents and I would say "hey, John did pretty good on Idol last night.".

As the season went on, I no longer thought of him just as the dude from KC who looks like my little bro. This guy ROCKS! I admit... I even voted. Ok, now you can point and laugh.

After watching the entire season, rooting on David Cook-- the moment I've been waiting had arrived. The entire season culminated to this one exciting moment! Here it is! Me watching as they announce the winner:

Yup. That's what happened! That's how my investment of every Tuesday and Wednesday night of the year paid off! lol!
I had to goto the internets to see who won. And, *spoiler alert* Congratulations David Cook! woohoo!!

Happy Mother's Day! I love you!!!!!!


Here's proof of my Mommy's awesomeness! hehe :)

HARTMAN HAS LOST HER LITTLE MIND. MUST WATCH VIDEO!


Hartman is obsessed with bar soap. Yes, bar soap. She prefers oil of olay. We close the shower door and she screams at us to open it. Oh, Hartman...

Yesterday, I went goat hearding. Now I can mark that one off the list! Next up-- the Moon! ;P

Bartleby and Rhodey +

The Family +

Chipotle Burritos +

American Idol =

TUESDAY NIGHT!

I love our Tuesday night ritual! I know, I know, "you had me at 'Bartleby and Rhodey' " :)

As if the kittens and burritos weren't exciting enough-- there is actually a contestant on this year's American Idol who I would buy an album from! A solo album he produced independently pre-idol leaked to the internet. I listened to it and it rocked! So everybody do me a favor and dial in a vote or two for our Kansas City native, David Cook tonight. He's the real thing:

Happy 11th Birthmonth,Hartman! Yes, it's time for the month long Hartman celebration! :)

Hartman has a very specific routine in the morning. Believe me, you don't want to mess around with her routine. Sleeping in is met with 'Meow!' 'Meow!' followed by the licking of the face and ultimately the tunneling under of the blankets and biting of the calves. It's best to just get up and give her fresh food, water and treats. Then raise the blinds to the bedroom window so she can watch birds and squirrels while making bizzarre chattering noises. It must be done. It must be in that order-- or suffer the consequences!

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Here's some video of my neices kittens, Rhodey (orange) and Bartleby (not orange):

TODAY...


I DROVE A FIRETRUCK AND....



ATE ROCKY ROAD ICE CREAM AND...

I GOT PAID TO DO IT....
LIFE IS GOOD!

Ode to Pallucca's:


Ah, Pallucca's. The little grocery store where tiny angela used to buy Cokes and Baseball cards, read the comic books (without ever buying one.. sorry bout that Palluccas), and made the biggest decisions of her life: do I get a cherry ring pop, a pack of Candy Ciggarettes, or some Big League Chew? Can't forget those delicious Wax Bottles full of syrupy goodness!

Not to mention Pallucca's is the giver of fresh, hot, Frontenac bread!
Why do I mention this tonight? Dave and I were driving along, talking about how we have to get up before the crack of dawn tomorrow (yuck) when suddenly a tear appeared in the space time continuum-- a certain song came on the radio and *woosh!*:


It's 1980 and I'm eyeing the ginormous shelves of candy! Yes, Funky Town by Lipps Inc has managed to forever hardwire itself in my brain to Pallucca's Grocery Store. In the early 80s, Pallucca's must have played Funky Town over their speaker system a million times... and tiny angela LOVED it!
Everytime I hear the song (which isn't often. In fact, I hadn't heard it in years) I am instantly 6 and buying Wax Lips. It's a treat. :)

I know, I know, so much to blog about and I end up blogging about tootsie rolls and blow pops. I'll try to catch up soon.

By the way, I sure wish the memo about pop rocks and coke had made it's way to to tiny angela back in the day. hehe