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The ever-thoughtful and oh-so-nice Akelamalu from
Everything and Nothing was nice enough to award me with this cool little "splat" award! She gave it to me for being "
basically a fantastic wordsmith", which I think means I write too much! Either way I think it's just the sweetest thing ever from the sweetest lady ever!

Speaking of sweetest things ever, I am hideously behind in mentioning this other award that was given to me a long, long time ago by two of my other favorite bloggers - Jean-Luc himself of
Captain Picard's Journal and Morgen of
It's A Blog Eat Blog World. Thank you ever so much, gentlemen, you both make me smile, too, and I sincerely apologize for the delay in getting this posted!

Amanda has been pestering me to write about the fun she had this past weekend with new friend Cate so on to that next. Being teenage girls they, of course, wanted to have a sleepover so I brought Amanda over to Jason & Amy's later on Saturday evening armed with three types of pizza and all of Amanda's plushie making materials. After pizza consumption and a bit of "
Dodge Ball" on the TV, the girls broke out
Guitar Hero II where Cate has already progressed up to the medium level and will no doubt be playing at hard before too much longer.
After a rousing discussion about politics and the horrors awaiting us in the 2008 Presidential Election of all things (by the by, Jason does one of the best Bill Clinton impressions ever!), I took my leave and came home to an empty house devoid of all children - something that hasn't happened in a very long time. I'd like to say that I treated myself like I was spending a great night at a lovely
Bed & Breakfast but alas, I had to be at work the next morning so it was merely off to bed for me.
Meanwhile, over at Jason & Amy's, the girls went back to playing
Guitar Hero II and overdosing on all things
MCR &
MSI until somewhere around 2:00 in the morning. I'm going to guess that Jason & Amy donned earplugs and retired to their room for the night, which is generally the smart thing to do when teenage girls engage in a sleepover!
One of the other things the girls did was work on a couple of new plushie dolls. Cate is making a new version of the famous
JimJamz (who took to the stage with
Mindless Self Indulgence in Chicago and Colorado) whom she has named
JimZy and who I'm sure is going to be a work of art in felt once he's completed. Amanda, in the meantime, is still working on
Steve, Righ?, the plushie she has had under construction for awhile now. She wasn't sure how she was going to do his orange hair but after looking at a Cabbage Patch doll in Cate's room she hit upon an idea and this is what she's come up with so far:

For now, Steve remains pantless but hopefully Amanda will get motivated enough to get him further clothed soon though it sometimes takes her even longer to do things than it takes me, if that's possible!
The girls apparently had a great time this weekend and Amy has mentioned that they'd like to take Amanda to the
Big E this coming weekend with them. The
Big E is New England's largest fall fair that is held annually in Springfield, Massachusetts and runs for 17 days. I haven't been in years and years myself and though I've been invited to go along I'm weighing my options between a nice quiet day at home or a chance to go eat some of the finest "fair food" around. Mmmm, fried dough and clamcakes ....
That's going to be a hard choice!