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So there we were, stuck at home with Raine nursing the return of a persistent cough and groggy from her cough medication, and Skye hit by a sudden bout of food poisoning shortly after breakfast. Not sure what caused it – we all ate the same thing but none of us were struck down.

Oh no, not another boring weekend! Know that the mall is our second home on weekends. Take that away from us and we become grouchy and edgy, swinging from the ceiling fan and chewing on our toenails. Or better, watching Lady Gaga videos for entertainment !

My teens have long sensed that Lady Gaga isn’t someone I necessarily approve of. So it was something of a shock, to both me and them, that a boring Saturday night found me sitting there with my poker face on, watching the Gaga wreathing and writhing ever so unabashedly on the Today Show !

Sure, she’s bold and talented, I grant her that, and possibly even vaguely entertaining to a shopaholic family with no place to go on a weekend. Still I’d rather she had a little more fabric on her where it matters! I mean, my teens are watching, know what I mean?! Gah!

Steev’s been keeping us up late on a movie marathon. So far, we’ve watched “The Losers” again for the second time. Love it especially the part where Jensen sings Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing“, it’s hilarious. We’re suckers for geeks who can hack into someone’s computer and suck out a bank’s asset based lending data in a second, that’s what!!

“The Proposal” starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds was something I’d been wanting to watch for a long time. Well, we finally got around to it. Love romantic comedies and this one was great. It kept us rolling on the floor laughing from start to finish.

We also watched “When in Rome” starring Josh Duhamel and Kristen Bell which was another barrel of laughs when she, a workaholic city girl too busy for love, goes to Rome and gets caught up in a whirlwind of unlikely suitors.

Being that we’re suckers for free movies, what do you think we did when tickets to Iron Man 2 came floating our way?

Okay, so this time Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr) has more than a few problems to contend with. First off, Ivan Vanko (played by Mickey Rourke who looks nothing like himself in his younger days), who is avenging the death of his father who supposedly collaborated with Stark Industries in the early days, has created a miniature version of the arc reactor and is now ready to whip the metallic paint off Iron Man.

Then Tony Stark discovers that his own arc reactor is failing and slowly poisoning him in the process. Unable to find a fix, he fears his days are numbered and hands over Stark Industries to Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow).

Okay, I’m going to stop here. It gets a lot more complicated, of course, but I’m not going to spoil the fun for you if you haven’t watched it yet. Suffice to say that I would walk 500 miles to be 5 foot 9 and 500 more to be that willowy in a pencil-slim skirt . Gwyneth Paltrow is gorgeous. She really is.

Oh, by the way, I love how Tony Stark waves his hands about to reorganize his floating icons while minions like us are still using the mouse to click here and there. But what I don’t get is the idea of Iron Man showing his face to all and sundry, and partying in his metal suit. Aren’t superheros supposed to keep their identities secret or did they change the rules when I wasn’t looking?

BTW, have you watched Iron Man 2 yet? What do you think of it?

- there’s no other way to describe this weekend. I chauffeured Steev to a business event in town. Whatever possesses companies to organize events on a Friday afternoon at the busiest mall in the city is beyond me. It took me 1.5 hours of circling the basement like a vulture to find a parking spot!! Can’t think of a more productive way to spend my Friday .

Somehow lunch at 4pm was kind of a weird concept. We were hoping there’d at least be a teeny-weeny tea break so we could grab some cookies but no such luck! Steev quietly sneaked out and bought us an apple tart each to tie us over.

Saturday was groceries, bookstore, dinner and a movie. We had one free ticket for the five of us and everything was so last minute, we were still trying to decide which movie while standing in the ticketing line . So glad we finally decided on “The Losers” which we thoroughly enjoyed laughing and gripping our seats from start to finish.

Today’s lunch was entirely forgettable. I don’t even want to talk about it. Dinner at a al fresco food court in 97 degrees wasn’t exactly my idea of a fun way to end the weekend but at least it saved me from having to open my kitchen.

Throbbing headaches and near migraines aside, I love hyperactive weekends like these. So did we have a good weekend? Raine says yes. Skye gives me the thumbs up. Especially the impromptu movie. We should do impulsive stuff like this more often, my girls say and I’m guessing it just might have something to do with a certain geek .

I honestly had no idea this could be so addictive. When my two girls were little, sand art was one of their favorite things to do. I would help them peel off the stenciled parts bit by bit and watch them happily scoop colored sand on each part to create these cute picture cards.

Recently we were at a family day event. We got there too early. I had three teens with me and a full hour to kill. Steev was busy playing cameraman so I wasn’t too worried about him. I was more concerned that the girls and I were just going to wilt away . Seeing as how it’s near impossible for any teenager (or their mom!) to survive for more than a few minutes without the internet or their MP player, I realized we had to do something. Fast!

Thankfully we spied a sand art booth nearby with a handful of little kids milling around. But that landscape was about to change! Three utterly shameless grownies would soon be dancing around those colored sand pots, with kiddies half their size, making cards for themselves!

Sand art is really fun. I felt like a kid again and couldn’t resist making, not one, but two of these cards. Can you guess which ones?

Like I said in an earlier post, it looks like I’m spending more time reading celebrity news which, to be quite honest, I’ve hardly ever had time for! I normally rely on my kids to drop me juicy tidbits about who’s dating who and who’s got the better guy or beach bod or whatever.

Till now, I’ve been living off the summaries, the briefs, the abridged versions. Now finally I have a bit of free time from my gym workouts and I’m spending it reading celebrity gossip ? Much as I hate to admit it, I’m finding it all very interesting and I just can’t wait to go online for my daily dose of who’s ditching who, what’s happening behind the scenes at Dancing with The Stars and American Idol…

… and just laughing my head off at the stuff famous people do. I guess maybe that’s what happens when you have too much time and money on your hands. You either go shopping or you just kinda go looking for trouble. Or maybe trouble comes looking for you. Either way!

As I read this stuff, I’m wondering, is it just me or is there a slew of talentless people sprouting up claiming their bit of the action? I was watching, somewhat with disdain, the interview of a much sought-after on-screen couple who have neither fangs nor looks nor talent. Then there’s a kid with bad hair who’s trying to sing. Let’s face it, if you need the help of electronic synthesizers, you basically can’t sing.

Okay, that’s just my two cents culled from my latest pastime which will come gracefully to an end once the renovation work on my gym is completed and I go back to working out in earnest. Meantime, back to catching up with the latest celeb buzz !

As you know, my days are long and hectic. Come night time, I’m sometimes just too tired to do any real work on my computer and end up surfing around for entertainment instead, and I found this funny vacation rental commercial.

Well, with a name like Unitard, how can this guy not be funny as he goes around saving families from getting into bad vacation rental deals that ruins the entire holiday for the whole family?

Why, he says, when they can go over to Vacation Rental.org and pick out the best vacation lodging ever. Go watch the video at http://www.vacationrental.org/info/blogs/funny-vacation-rental-commercial—unitard.html. Enjoy!

I can’t believe I wasted spent my entire morning watching an interview with some Korean actor. The only reason I was watching it was because I was on the treadmill in the gym doing my cardio, aka captive audience!

Admittedly I’m a banana (yellow on the outside, white on the inside). When I was growing up, I lived with my British-educated aunt who banned us kids from watching Asian movies. See one and you’ve seen them all, the story lines are all the same so I never developed an interest in them.

This wasn’t a movie though, it was an interview on CNN. Anyhow what could I do, I was chained to the treadmill! I have no idea who this Korean dude is except that thankfully he speaks somewhat intelligible English and I could actually catch bits of the interview through the crunching of treadmills being worked to death.

But what caught my attention was the way the Aussie interviewer was looking at him. There were moments when I thought she must surely be falling in love with this guy the way she was looking at him . It was like watching a love story unfold within an interview. How quaint!

She’s gorgeous, by the way, but I’m not so sure about him . She was gazing intently at him with her very pretty smile while he was looking everywhere else but at her. Gosh, some guys are just so blind! And that, was my Monday morning entertainment!