Had a good time in Orange County staying with my now-infamous Aunt Martha last weekend. It’s been quite a while since we did a whole weekend thing… We had some great moments, but something always goes wrong, and it’s inevitably my fault. Of course, this visit was no exception.

For those who have read about the pressure she foists upon me to be Hollywood thin, you may be curious to find out how she responded to my recent weight loss. The answer is: She didn’t notice! I suppose fifteen pounds, amounting to a 12% reduction in my total mass, doesn’t show. Later on she did admit that I looked a little better somehow.

Where she got me real good was during some idle chatter (which with Martha is nearly always about herself) she made the casual assertion that she’s still thinner than I am. Now, as a scientist (shh, let’s pretend) that offended my sense of truth. She’s easily wearing twenty pounds more fat than I am, and I’m not a bitch to notice. It’s a simple fact.

The smart thing would have been to let it slide. And for a while I did so, but the next day during yet another conversation about her, she was lamenting her current state of fitness (or maybe unfitness) and I let out the following remark with a great big welcoming smile: “Aren’t you glad you have a chubby niece to make you feel thinner?”

She popped me for it later, and it would be to her credit if she did so in a way that made some kind of sense. Not the case. Instead, I had the joy of being accused, for the umteenth time, of competing with her… Talk about projection! I had to hold my ground on that one and tell her she’s way off, but as always, her opinion rules… Gotta love family!

12 comments December 5th, 2005

If you don’t know why this is so damn funny, DO NOT feel bad. But for the few of you who do… Laugh it up!

Spent the weekend in the O.C. helping people decorate for the upcoming holiday. Hope you had a great weekend, too!

8 comments December 4th, 2005

Suprised I’ve been blogging this long without telling the story of how I got “Aurora Borealis” as a pen name… Maybe it’s because the tale isn’t that exciting. You should know it had nothing to do with the beautiful atmospheric phenomenon, though I hope to witness it some day.

The first time I used the name Aurora was during my virgin entry into an online role-playing game. I had never played Dungeons & Dragons prior to that, or any of the big geek games, but after a week of empty teleconference chat rooms on the local BBS, I decided to join everyone who had migrated to this game called MajorMUD.

Without so much as a clue, I followed the prompts to choose a race, class, and a name for my character… Elf, Mage, and since I had always been a fan of the Sleeping Beauty story, I named myself after that princess (because I, too, sleep like the dead). Eventually you come up with a last name, and Borealis just worked its way in.

Years later, after having met my husband while playing that silly game, all of my online friends knew me as Aurora. Though that crazy RPG is all but dead and buried at this point, it set me on a course to geekdom, and I’m afraid I’ve never recovered… Thank you, MajorMUD!

17 comments December 2nd, 2005

‘Tis time we get ourselves into the spirit of Christmas. On December first, I can think of no better way to set the wheels of good cheer in motion than with a classic, rip-roaring rant from my favorite angry squirrel, Foamy! Click the picture above to view his Holiday Special.

13 comments December 1st, 2005