She sold me on that solo. GOD, the pirouettes into a paused attitude.  Hello?! THAT alone should make her the winner. And that PASO.  Katie Swick, THAT is what I’m talking about when I say Paso is my favorite Latin Dance. That was easily the best I’d ever seen.

I think Brandon was great. I think Kayla was great. I think Evan was decent. His dance with Brandon really showed his weakness, I thought. GOD HELP ME IF HE WINS. I’d be ok with anyone else beating Jeanine but not him. She just draws my attention no matter who is on stage with her. She’s got really strong features and just this presence. Plus, I dig her eyebrows. I know, that’s a weird thing to focus on, but they are black and thick and perfect. Just like her hair.

I’m not sure how I feel about them in the Kodak theater. On one hand, I love that the show has gained so much popularity that the finale can be in there but on the other it seemed to be distracting. I didn’t like the red everywhere. I think it took away from the dancers. The think I love so much about the SYTYCD set is that it’s a light silvery gray that lets the dancers and the costumes pop. That kinda got lost there.

But WHATEVS. Jeanine should win. Final. Done. THE END. I have spoken.

In other news, I partied like I was 22 on Saturday and I’m so NOT 22. You can peruse the pics below. It was loads of fun. I’ve been hearing around the office that some people are sad they weren’t invited but I DIDN’T DO THE INVITING, MAN! So Kristy and I will take it upon ourselves to plan a monthly outing with everyone who could ever possibly want to go and get their Karaoke on.

I also wrote a blog for work over social media. Go check it out.

And Mikey’s birthday is this weekend. My family is coming over for dinner Saturday and Sunday we are going to dinner at Josephines. It’s this delicious traditional Italian restaurant, just like in the movies. The name is over the front door in cursive, the table clothes are red and white check and Italian music serenades you as you eat. And omg THE CANOLES. Faboo. We’ll have to get some photos when we are there because they don’t even have a website (the horror!).

Enjoy the pics!

-Ali

Every girl needs one and this is mine.

This is my new comforter set. I had given my bedroom a little facelift about a year ago when Linen N Things went out of business. For less than $100 or so, I bought a duvet, throw pillows, lamp shades and table clothe thingy. Instant makeover. I stayed in the same color family, just updated the look.

However, no one told me what a BITCH duvet covers are. Every day we’d wake up and somehow the comforter inside the damn thing would bunch up on my side and Mike would only have the duvet itself covering him. Then he’d cry because he’s cold and never has enough covers and lord KNOWS I can’t deal with the tears.

So, I’ve been looking for about 6 months for a good deal in the right colors and FINALLY. Found this on sale at JCPenny for like 60% off, plus a coupon and I had a gift card. Happy early-birthday to me!

Ain’t it pretty, y’all? You can’t see all that well, but there is the obvious gold and chocolate but there is some rose and sage, too.  It’s good quality, too, which was one thing I was looking for. Pretty as that duvet was it’s total crap. The last set I had was pretty expensive but it lasted for about 7 years. The comforter was really heavy and I wanted the same thing.  This one isn’t quite as heavy, but it’s close.

So, this is my new happy place. And I need it. I was really looking forward to the holiday weekend. I wanted to do nothing. I was going to work from home for about a half day Friday and not think about it until my 7:30 conference call on Tuesday. Well, that went to shit when an emergency came up. So, I worked until about 10 pm on Friday, tried to finish Saturday but Google maintenance made that impossible. So I finished today.

Lucky for me, 3 of my awesome team members came in to help. Normally, this is something I handle on my own but it was so overwhelming that I would have taken the whole weekend. It still took 4 people working 6 hours straight to get it all finished today. So, I’m very lucky for my work people because otherwise I may have slit my wrists by the end of it.

So tomorrow sleeping in, heading to Sarah’s for a barbecue and enjoying the rest of the weekend.

I did make it out to see Terminator. What a pile of shit. McG had get all “Charlie’s Angel” on it. Since when in a post-apocalyptic war do the chicks have perfect makeup? Bryce Dallas Howard looked like a glowing lady of liesure instead of the wife of the leader of the Resistance fighting for their lives from machines. And just like in Charlie’s Angels, John Connor seemed to have super-powers. I mean, we know super-undercover-detective chicks can’t get all Crouching Tiger in reality. I don’t think any sort of soldier, no matter what, could pull off what John Conner did. Plus there were machines that lived in the water like fish. And a fucked up time-line that made absolutely no sense. And a dumb-ass ending all wrapped up in a pretty bow. Lamer than lame.

So, I’m off to my sanctuary. I’m gonna (try) to sleep like a baby.

-Ali

Fail.

So, Neal’s all “We can take the bus!”. Hi. I’m from Kingwood. We don’t have buses there unless you ride one of them fancy commuter ones or a school bus. I have never in the 23 years I’ve lived in Houston ridden the bus.  So, Neal figures out the schedule and whatnot and off we go.

We wait. It was late. We start questioning ourselves. “Are we at the right stop? Should we go to one down the street? Are big losers?” Finally it came. And you know what? Not bad. Air conditioned. Took us almost right to the restaurant. We didn’t die.

We celebrated with fried pickles.

Biggest drawback? Waiting in the heat. Other than that, I’d do it again.  I feel like such an urbanite! Even in a car-riddled city like Houston.

Other things:

Dancing with the Stars: I was totally sad to see Lil’ Kim go. She wanted to win so bad. And she came off so sweet! So not the ghetto, pastie-wearing ex-con I imagined! I think Ty Murry is adorable, but homey can’t dance. Come on, y’all.

Idol: WTF Paula? I equate that crazy shit with Brit-Brit’s VMA drug-haze performance from a couple of years ago. I LOVED PAULA back in the day. She had serious moves. I still think that quadruple switch-foot pirouette she did in the Cold Hearted video was one of the greatest dance moves, ever.  See?

Her performance was so SAD! She had no precision, no pop. It was like she was sleep-walking through that. Sleep walking while lip-syncing.

And Gwen Stefani? I LOVE HER. Why did she do that? She’s grown-ass woman with two kids, y’all.  It just looked like she was trying to re-live 1996. 13 years, man. That’s a whole sassy-mouthed teenager. You just can’t pull off “I’m Just A Girl” with a ridiculous faux-punk look at 39 with 2 kids and a designer clothing line complete with signature fragrance.

As for the actual contestants, I’m glad Gokey stayed even though he butchered both songs. I wish it would have been Chris going home, though. I liked Allison.

Also, I promised an Easter blog but it’s been so long I just can’t commit an entire one for it. So, we played games. We drank. We ate crawfish and alligator. MIKE ate alligator and didn’t hate it. (Crawfish is next!!! I will make him a Cajun before it’s over. Much to his chagrin.) The kids got tons of Easter goodies and went on an Easter egg hunt (in plain sight).

Here’s a few pics. Click for the full size! (Mike was the photographer so he’s not in any. Sadface.)

Also, I set up a Tumblr account if any of you darling readers have one, please add me: http://diva-ali.tumblr.com/

For those who don’t know what that is, lemme explain. It’s sort of in-between Twitter and a blog. You get a feed like Twitter and you have followers but you can post as much as you want in a post along with pics and videos- but only one per post. You don’t have comments or anything, though. You can have a small answer box, but it only has like 140 characters. You can “heart” each post if you like it and it’s called notes. And really that’s it. It’s just another time-suck and way to whore myself.  I like it so far.

Alright, I’m out. I promise to blog more. PROMISE.

Hugs,
-Ali

This is an infomercial. Someone took all the good parts and chopped it down to a little over 5 minutes of fantabulousness. It has it all! Door breaking down! Hollerin’! Neat-o food appliances! Hip terminology like “jibba jabba”! And some BLING!

But most of all, it has THE man.

Yes, I’m talking about that hip cat from Rocky 3 and the A Team: The Great Mr. T.

I present to you, Flavorwave:

Also, Mike was in Seattle last night for business. Today at the airport he saw this:

In case you can’t make it out, this bitch and her man both have a perfectly ironed crease in their pants. AND she’s wearing stirups. STIRUPS.  I wore those in high school and even then it was pushing the fashion limits for 1992. I just want to know what goes through people’s heads when they get dressed in the morning. And those fuckers where flying to Houston. Y’all know they live in Cleveland or Willis or some shit. They’s goin’ to the big city so they had to put on their good clothes.

Man, I’m such a bitch.

Sunday night Me, Mike and Kristen are going to see Chris Cornell at Warehouse Live. That’s a very intimate venue. I think capacity is like 1500. Y’all jealous? You should be. I get to go re-live high school and college when he kicks it old-school Soundgarden style.  If he pulls out some Temple of the Dog (even without Eddie OMG Vedder) I might have to pee a little.

But I’ll tell y’all one thing. I won’t be wearing no fuckin’ stirups. That’s for DAMN sure.

Since my Buffy marathon, I’ve had a hankerin’ for some good old grungy 90′s alternative rock so I wiped my iPod and filled it the sounds of Nirvana, Candlebox, Counting Crows, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Foo Fighters, Stone Temple Pilots,  Sarah McLachlin and Goo Goo Dolls.  Seriously, the best era of music in my book.

Diggin’ out the docs and flannels…
-Ali

OH PS! Mikey got to ride first class the other day. He was all sorts of pumped. Check out his blog. Y’all should be reading it regularly anyway, bitches.

OMG WTF with that big. blue. WANG?!?!?

Wha? Did you think I’d post it? NO. I just wanted to give y’all an idea. IT’S NOT THAT KINDA BLOG, PEOPLE. Just lots of cursing.

So, OBVIOUSLY, I saw The Watchmen this weekend. And I’ll admit, I called it the Big Blue Wang movie all weekend. But I don’t think I was fully prepared for The Wang.

3 hours of giant nekkid blue man and his colossal Wang. Plus some half nekkid dominatrix-hooker looking “superhero” chicks. Who is gonna believe that in the 40′s some chicks were running around in bustiers, fishnets, and thigh-high-platform stilettos? Tits and ass hanging out ALL OVER the damn place. For real? Even if it were acceptable, how the hell would anyone be able to fight in that get up?

And then they go and modernize her for 1984. Silk Spectre II, the original’s daughter, with some extra ho added in for good measure.

And on top of the costuming on the chicks, there are some wicked sex scenes. Was it truly necessary to get an extreme closeup of Night Owl banging Silk Spectre inside of Archie (the flying blimp thing they got around in)? EW. You could practically see his little hairs. That’s gross, y’all. Gross. I nearly barfed my Goobers.

It was total soft-core porn aimed at greasing up the geeky comic book fanboys. I’m not just talking about the film, either. It was accurate to the original graphic novel. It just cheapened everything about how cool the story is.The  plot was intriguing. I actually really liked the story- but all that ridiculous, over-the-top gratuitousness kills it. The fight scenes were sub par- I saw better shit on Buffy and Angel.

It was pretty.The cinematography was great- especially in the 1940′s era scenes. The glowey blue dude was neat-o when he wasn’t waving The Wang in my face. It was a lot to cram into one film and if you didn’t know the story prior to, you will probably have a hard time following it.

Also, we had some fucking fanboy goons behind us. Like OLD fanboy goons. Easily in their 50′s. They were loud with these super dumb  laughs. All through the movie they chuckling like everything was some super awesome nod to the book they masturbated to in their 20′s. It was all I could do to not get straight ghetto on them. SO annoying and much creepier than the Batgirl incident at The Dark Knight. I love comic book movies, but fuck. They sure bring out the wackjobs. Literally.

And now, the Daily Show summons me. Hello, Jon Stewart. I wanna be your bff so bad.

-LMAO
Ali

PS- MONICA. Hey, girl! I blogged for you! FOR YOU… *victory stance*

Not a fucking thing. I am happier than a pig in shit about that.

I feel like we’ve been going non stop since October. Mike’s parents were here, Dianne was here (amazing that my liver survived that) then Christmas and we celebrated 4 times, spent a week in Jersey, came back for New Years then had Madeline’s first birthday.

Oh, and at work, we re-launched our website. Check it out. Plus I trained on an new system for trafficking ads.

So, my plan for this weekend? Mike and I are going on a date Friday night. We are going to check out a new place called Little Bigs. They serve gourmet sliders and wine. HOLLER. AND we can enjoy the pretty weather and the views on a lovely patio.

The rest of the weekend I plan on sleeping in, enjoying my coffee, ordering take out and wearing pajamas. I might venture out to the grocery store but that is still up for debate. I’m also going to have a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon. It’s been years since I’ve seen them and my friend Kristy was so gracious as to let me borrow her dvds. I’m so ready for some ass-kicking vampire staking.

Y’all didn’t know I loved Buffy? Pfft. I do. And Angel. And Roswell. And Smallville. See? There is some shit you people don’t know!

Also, do you y’all remember Laura Winslow? You know, the daughter from Family Matters? Hated Steve Urkle and dated Stefan Irkel?

Homechick is filling in for my bff Niecy Nash on Clean House. She looks good and she’s sassy.

But she ain’t my girl Niecy.

And now, to end this blog with some faboo cute. I mean, tell me this isn’t the cutest 1 year old princess you’ve ever seen in your entire life?

Counting the minutes to Friday night…

-Ali

Edit:

OMG what the fuck is wrong with me? I almost forgot! We have a new president and I’m doing the snoopy dance in celebration. I thought his speech was incredible (which didn’t shock me) and I just can’t wait to see how he changes the country. Fingers crossed!

Also, one of my favorite blogs – The Houstonist- posted some information about inauguration celebrations around town. They love to use people’s flickr photos to enhance their posts and this time they used one of Mikes! It was part of his collection of Obama murals around town. Check it here.

He’s so talented, y’all. It’s ridiculous. The stuff he made for Madeline’s party was so awesome.

My man rules.

Ok, I’m really going to bed now.

No, really.

I’M GOING.

G’night.

It’s his new bestest friend.

We hit the Astros game last night with some of my work people and Mike decided to make a couple of little videos. Now, we had met at my house for some tasty beverages prior to the game. I don’t think you could tell, though. We acted like proper ladies and gentleman the entire time.

Ghetto Supa-stah. Or Ghetto Supa-Dork. Same same.

I also wrote a new blog (the first time in a while, actually) for work.

Kumbaya, bitches. Let’s all sing-a-long!

It’s 12:34 AM. I’ve been here since a little after 8. AM. He was here earlier than me.

People have been asking about my where-a-bouts. I’ve pretty much fallen off the internet. Aside from an occassional tweet or post on some of the boards I’m on, I’ve been completely ignoring my internet life. Sort of. I mean, I work in the internet biz so it’s not like I’m ever unplugged. I’ve just not been socializin’ too much. And y’all know that ain’t like me.

What have I been doing, you ask?

Rebranding our company, launching a new line of business along with three websites and a brand spankin’ new shopping cart. That’s what.  Not by myself, of course. I can’t code shit. I feel like I’ve done some act of God when I add a link to a graphic in an html email.

But, my team has pulled out all the stops over the last couple of months and been working our asses off. There were lots and lots of late nights and ordered in food and coolers of beer in my cube and fuckin’ EH I think I’ve gained 20 lbs. Maybe 30. Not even shitting you. All I’ve been doing is working, eating and drinking.

But it’s pretty much done. We are on our last leg of the launch. All code is live and we are tweaking now. By we, I mean they while I sit here and write this and listen in on this conference call. I’m waiting for the all clear so I can send out emails. And I’m here for moral support.

Go to our site and tell me what you think. If you look hard enough, you might find pics of my fat ass. And all video work you’ll find is courtesy of my very own Mikey-poo. Who stayed up and tested links for us tonight and made a shit-ton of graphics and took pics and did all sorts of stuff to help us out.

I have managed to squeeze in some fun, too. I had a birthday. Mike was voted the Biggest Yankees Fan from The Buzz and got tickets to all three games. I got drunk with my co-workers a few times. I shopped online till I dropped for my Cabo trip. (2 weeks! OMG.) We snuck a quick trip to Jersey. We saw the awesome Houston 4th of July firework display in our back yard. And I played with my cuter than cute chunky-monkey niece.

So, that’s been what’s up. We have an awesome launch party scheduled for Friday (planned by moi!) and hopefully I’ll have some great pics from it. We are talking private room, open bar, food and Rock Band on the big screen. Ho-lla.

-Delirious from lack of sleep.
Ali

Anyway.

We did that, somewhat organized the office, worked our asses off and barely slept.

Oh. And I went to Ali-Mecca and saw Sex and the City.

Kristen came over and we met Sarah and some of her friends at the movies which was total drama. Like, people everywhere and we were in a traffic jam going to the theater. I even got to verbally cut a bitch who tried to cut in front of me. As if. She didn’t know I was going to Mecca and I had to lay the law. I rolled the window down, asked her if she had a problem then proceeded to tell her that there was a long line behind me and so tough.

Did I mention I was driving Kristen’s car? She expected it to get keyed.

Loved the movie. I reviewed it on The Spout. Check it out. Feel free to jump in the conversation.

We had a great time. I cried, I laughed, I cheered… it was fantastic. We went to House of Pies and had pie afterwards. (What the fuck else are you supposed to eat at House of Pies?) Kristen slept over. We girled Mike out and watched Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

Did I mention that we didn’t have cable, internet or phone all weekend? Why, you ask? Because the awesome AT&T dude who came to hook up my neighbor’s internet he thought the way to make it work would be to cut the wires to our house and strip out the box. Yes, the AT&T guy. Yes, we have service with AT&T. Fucked up much? Wait until I get a hold of customer service. I smell a free month! Also, his service still doesn’t work.

We woke up this morning, waited around for AT&T and FINALLY it was all turned back on around noon or so. Which fucked me up cuz I had a work emergency on Saturday just before the movie and had to go in to the office to take care of it because I had no god damn internet. Kristen got to see the office, though.

So after all that, we went to Momma’s Cafe and had fried pickles, Migas and cinnamon coffee. Then Kristen and I got a mani/pedi and picked up Marble Slab for us and Mikey. We had a great time. It’s so rare that Kristen and I get that much time together but I love it when we do.

So, I had a stressful but great weekend. Hopefully the work stuff that has us all stressed will be rectified soon. I’ll probably disappear again for a bit after this posting.

Well. Until my birthday. You know how much I love to celebrate me.

9 days and counting-
Ali

Last weekend was the first time we had some down time. We hung some more stuff in our house, slept in a bit and went to a concert in the park that Mike blogged about. It was fantastic and a nice way to ease back into the crazy of the coming weeks.

Us being cute at the park:

Work is nuts. Everyone is stressed about a big project we have. We are all having to buckle down and get it down because our deadline is creeping up fast. By the time I get home I’m just exhausted and want to veg in front of the tv with food that takes no time to make. I don’t want to think, I don’t want to talk to anyone… I just want to be.

I bought freakin’ Yoga Booty Ballet to try to get rid of some of this booty, but I have no desire to do it. I’m gonna try to rectify that this week.

My brother was home this weekend, so Friday night we had dinner at my mom’s house with my brothers fiance, her mom and her nieces. It was delish, but the drive home was hell because of a wreck.

Saturday we got up early to cheer on The Planet in Houston Dragon Boat Races. I’m not sure how we did overall because I had to leave early, but I know that The Planet Underdogs (Non-management team) beat The Planet Big Dogs (Management Team). There was a lot of pride at stake, but the Underdogs prevailed which may or may not effect our reviews next week. I did see via Kristy’s tweet that we won the Spirit award which didn’t surprise me because we are awesome. We had a lot of people show up to support us!

I would have loved to stay out there all day, but I had tons to do. We needed to get some stuff for a shoot Mike’s doing Monday at The Planet. We stood in line to get passports and photos for our trip to Cabo. I got my hair cut (always muy importante).

Then, that night, we experianced what we’ve been waiting for since we saw some bootleg trailer from a comi-con what seams light years ago. We saw Iron Man. AND IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME! I’m so excited for Robert Downey Jr. I’ve been a fan for so long. It was great to see him look amazing and really pull of an exciting and amazing larger than life movie. And Jon Favreau? I would have never known he could pull off something like this- not because he’s not talented, but there are those who can make really great movies and there are those who can make killer awesome action movies. It’s rare that you find both. He’s a long way from Gutter, that’s for damn sure. I wanna see it again, but there are so many more movies to see, I just don’t know that I’ll have the time.

Also, in the lobby, I met someone. I had to whip some ass and show him who’s boss, though.

After the movie, we did some midnight grocery shopping and Sunday we cooked and my whole family came over for dinner. It was so nice to have everyone over- we didn’t get to do it all that much in out other place because it just wasn’t big enough. But now we have plenty of room so hopefully we’ll be doing it a lot more.

So, I’m pooped. I’ve got a week of work crazy, Amy is here and we are trying to squeeze in some time together and next weekend we are off to Louisiana. Fingers crossed that I make it through everything without passing out at some point.

-Fixin’ ta sleep like baby.
Ali