• By my birthday (9/21/08), I would like to weigh 165
• By New Year’s (1/1/09), I would like to weigh 150 pounds (my high school and college graduating weight)
• By the time I have to get fitted for the bridesmaid dress for Michelle’s wedding (probably March), I would like to reach my goal of 140 pounds.

Skip the cake
This one’s a trade off. A piece of cake is 12 weight watchers points. A glass of wine is 2. I personally would rather have 6 glasses of wine and one small bite of cake than 1 piece of cake a sip of champagne at the toast.

Dance!
After those glasses of wine, live it up on the dance floor with friends! This is easily “High” level of activity, and you gain back 1 point for every 15 minutes (4-5 songs)!

Wear comfortable shoes
If your shoes are uncomfortable you’re more likely to spend the night sitting at your table than getting up and walking and mingling. Also, uncomfortable shoes make dancing more difficult (see number 2). Etiquette tip: Leave your shoes on as long as you can stand it. If you’re not a bridesmaid and you got to choose your own footwear, I don’t really feel sorry for you - beauty is not always pain!

Eat slowly
It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to register that it’s full. No matter how hungry and excited you are, try to slow down and avoid going back for seconds. It’s an opportunity for some good conversation with other guests who you haven’t seen since the last shindig!

- Ella Fitzgerald, singing Cole Porter

It hit 100 degrees in Dallas today for the 10th straight day.

Knol is made up of “knols” - or pieces of knowledge. Write your own knol and you own it. Other users can request changes, but only the owner can decide what goes live to the world. The idea is that subject matter experts are the ones owning each category, instead of anybody and everybody and nobody on wikipedia. The authors are not anonymous, and many have resume-like bios.

Will it take off? Maybe. Unlike Wikipedia, you can cite the direct author - so maybe it would be a viable “academic source” (read - you could use it in a college research paper). But I think the mass appeal of wikipedia is just that - it’s owned by the masses. Who owns pop culture topics? If I post that Kathy Griffin is still dating Steve Wozniak when CLEARLY the broke up weeks ago, someone will correct me. The great thing about Wikipedia is that what ends up in the article is generally exactly what I want to read about - the trivia, how things are related, the high level most interesting facts about any one topic. A subject matter expert may be too much of an expert to realize what the masses deem important. Also, what if the “owner” of the article becomes complacent and doesn’t keep up with the requests. Wikipedia users have made over 240 million edits in 5 years - that’s approximately 130,000 a day. It’s a lot for a moderator to keep up with.

Sure, I’m skeptical. But I will say this - if anyone can knock Wikipedia off it’s throne, it’s Google.

I’ve never been the maternal type. Children are not particularly interesting to me, and frankly, holding the responsibility of another life in my hands is a frightening concept. I spent the first few nights with her constantly waking up in the middle of the night to make sure she was ok. She doesn’t sleep much at night still - but she’s adjusting.

She loves to explore, talk, play, eat, and be near people. As Jason said, I “picked a winner.”

I still feel a twinge of fear that I’m going to completely screw up and let her down, but things are going very well. I love her companionship and innocent, playful spirit.

For more kitten pictures - check out my facebook album.

Originally uploaded by QCait.

I highly recommend the movie Son of Rambow (trailer).

Funny, fun, heartwarming, and filled with cute Euro-80’s children, the movie is about British child #1 (who is raised in an Amish-like religion) who meets up with trouble-making British child #2, who is an aspiring film maker. British child #1 (who has never watched TV before), sees Rambo at #2’s house and a brilliant idea for a movie is born.
And when you go to the Magnolia, be sure to get the $10 bucket of beer special. Four domestic beers and a bucket of ice to enhance your movie watching experience. If you bat your eyelashes at the bar tender extra cute, you might just get yourself some Shiner (though it’s technically a specialty beer).

An excerpt from today’s post - #99 Grammar:

When asking someone about their biggest annoyances in life, you might expect responses like “hunger,” “being poor,” or “getting shot.” If you ask a white person, the most common response will likely be “people who use ‘their’ when they mean ‘there.’ Maybe comma splices, I’m not sure but it’s definitely one of the two.”

If you wish to gain the respect of a white person, it’s probably a good idea that you find an obscure and debated grammar rule such as the “Oxford Comma” and take a firm stance on what you believe is correct. This is seen as more productive and forward thinking that simply stating your anger at the improper use of “it’s.”

*Maybe I find it so dead on because of the vague subject (inevitably any middle class white person who reads blogs on the internet will find something to relate to), but this is me. To a tee.

So go forth and read daily… you just might read something that lets you have an innocent laugh at your own expense.

Not only do I love following the story of Ken’s 75-game streak on Jeopardy, (I remember it vividly - I watched a downloaded video of his losing game over and over and swore to all my friends he was tired of winning and threw the game)… Not only do I love playing along with the trivia sprinkled in every chapter (I get a measly three or so answers per chapter)… but I love Ken’s genuinely entertaining, intelligent, witty writing style.

As I might have insinuated - this book might not be for everyone. But if you’ve always wondered what it would be like to grace the Jeopardy stage - it’s a must read.

Even if you’re not leaping out of your chair to grab this book - go check out Ken’s blog. His wit doesn’t stop at paper.

NOTE: this is book number 6 of 10 (7 of the ten are the Harry Potter series) that I have resolved to read in 2008. Tracking pretty well, if I do say so myself.

That’s right, we launched the new Nuts About Southwest today!

(If you saw some random posts today - that was QA testing some trackback functionality.)

We’ve also created some screencasts that show off the functionality - so if you want to cheer (or jeer) at my internet broadcast debut - check out this post on the RD2 blog.

Been working a lot lately… including at 11 PM tonight. Big things a’coming… get excited…