The "Granny Awards" Mystery

Incident Report
The date: January 27, 2004 ~ 6:15 p.m. ~ A school in Lansing, Ks

The Incident: It was the setting of the annual "Granny Awards" where 3rd and 4th graders flocked in their Gap Kids designer outfits to sit and be entertained by live music and dance performances while awaiting disclosure of awards for "Best Musical Giant" and the like.

All was going according to plan until the Fairy-Godmother screamed. Cinderella's slipper had gone missing and Prince Charming had no shoe with which he could find his bride. It was a case of whodunit. Enter the suspects:

The Suspects
Suspect #1:



Name: Elizabeth ~ Age: 10 ~ Performer at the "Granny Awards"

Bio: The singing starlett herself playing an evil step-sister and whose audience-moving solo can be viewed in part here.

Motive: Noted for her sometimes uncontrolled temper, was seen hours before the performance holding the shoe in question in a threatening manner to Jack, the latter cowering behind his beanstock. Apparently, he had made an unflattering remark about the starlett's height, that she would be difficult to see in the balcony without first standing on a box and thus would never make it in show-business. It's suspected that the Elizabeth may have thrown the shoe at Jack in a rage and lost it down Alice's rabbit hole, where it would be completely unrecoverable.

Suspect #2:



Name: Gabriela ~ Age: 2 ~ Attendee

Bio: Quick-witted sister to the Starlett above and attends each performance.

Motive: Recently rejected for the role of Cinderella due to stage age-minimum requirements, this youth may be jealous of the time each of the performers are able to spend with her older sister and thus be sabotaging Elizabeth's career. Mysteriously, this toddler went missing with her diaper bag in tow backstage before the performance.

Suspect #3:



Name: Josh ~ Age: 22 ~ Attendee

Bio: This journalist for the University Daily Kansan was seen peeling out of the Lansing School parking lot at 5:15 p.m.

Motive: Esteemed writer for the Kansan whose article made the cover last week has since come under fire due to an anonymously released photograph of the journalist holding a cup of questionable contents at a party. It may be possible that this upcoming-talent reporter is attempting to divert public attention from this scandal by "creating" news...

The Show Must Go On




Fortunately, minutes before the performance, the drama instructor donated one of her own shoes for the sake of the awards and was forced to hop between sets backstage. The above picture was taken after the show.

The awards proved a huge success. Elizabeth was viewed by all and earned herself a standing ovation by even those in the balcony, Gabriela spent quality time in Elizabeth's arms after the show and played dress up in the latter's costume at home, and Josh wrote an exciting expose on theft at KU in Thursday's edition of the Kansan.

Not so fortunate for the residents in Kansas, a criminal is still on the streets in your midst as this mystery remains yet unsolved...

-T.

Most Definitely Missing the Summer

My Required-Texts Total Tops 30

It's back to school. That means there's *a lot* less time for web-fiddling . And, our fantastic basketball team got our butts handed to us in Philly yesterday with an embarrassing 83-62 loss and shattering our undefeated record. *ouch* Our loss actually made the cover page on the ESPN website today. wohoo!

To make matters even worse, I still haven't aquired 15 of my books, 14 of which because I couldn't physically carry all of the texts out of the book store (as it was I already had two sacks filled). I am missing 1 additional book because my instructors sent out a mass E-mail today that there is another book he forgot to request out to the bookstores that we have to buy online.

Whine, whine... moan, moan. Hopefully the ranting is out now of my system.

On a good note, Chrystal Kemp and Aquanita Burras are studs and helped our women's team pull down our first conference victory against Mizzou yesterday. What a game to win!

A little lop-sided to the negative today (sorry y'all), I'll close here.

Stay warm. Stay positive. Summer is coming soon, I know it!

Love,
-T.

Biracial

Not white, not exactly...

One of my readers (thanks for visiting, btw) caught me out and about in cyberspace, commented on my "unique features" and questioned my ethnicity. I can understand the confusion about my heritage and don't mind answering questions like these in the least.

I am biracial; my mother is white and father, black. Purportedly, I may be slightly more white given my father's heritage may have included a slave-owner, but I can't be certain.

All of my siblings are half-siblings on my mother's side and have no black heritage in their lineage. So, my niece Elizabeth for example, pictured in the "Elizabeth" post is completely white, although she's half-German, so maybe she's "mixed" as well, depending on where each individual draws ethnic lines. ;)

It should be noted as well that I additionally color and straighten my hair just to keep y'all on your toes. To see a picture of me somewhat more natural, click here.

In closing, I feel I'm in good company. Such celebrities as Halle Berry and Eagle Eye Cherry are mixed this way as well.

Thanks for reading!
-T.

Countdown to Mid.Night

Thia vs. mark

The reason I'm so anxious in this pic is because I am trying to take Mark down at midnight. He's accepted a challenge of sorts and I can't think of a single thing I've beat him in yet (the stubborn jerk). This one, I can't lose.

I want to apologize to those of you who read my blog regularly... this post is sort of personal...

So, I have a challenge For mark... and just to be nice, I've posted a nice pic that's a dead give-away of the object in question somewhere on my website. My midnight, Mark, you're gonna have to supply me an answer. But you're gonna have to look very closely and pay attention to my clues to find the link to it. Thia Michelle wants you to find the htm-page devoted just to you and your futile mission... get out the magnifying glass and look behind the laughter. Hmmmm, this is a toughie.

I know that link is somewhere... where did I put it? oh yeah... it's there.

You've still got one hour and 45 mins. Go, Mark, Go!

Later,
-T.

Welcome Thia's Digital Playpen

My homepage is up!... Again
Well... Technically I have had a homepage for almost a year that I was too embarrassed to show anyone. Now, it's a whopping single page with no links and a paragraph of content. Woohoo! But, my skeleton is out there and i will be loading it with useful info over the next few days.

Just wanted to let you guys know that you can *visit me* officially. I had a lot of fun with CSS and GIMP (an open-sourced Photoshop-like program) building it. And yes... that's my neck featured on the page so I'm not snagging anyone else's copyrighted stuff ;). Let me know what you think!

Browsers, blah blah
Oh and to give you the heads up... If you're running Internet Explorer of *any* version, my site won't render properly because Bill Gates is an evil man who is too busy making money to worry about making a quality browser.

OK, so the man isn't satan, but you should run out and install Mozilla Firefox right away. It's free, small, aesthetically *very* pleasing and the tabbed browsing is very addicting. If you already have firefox, you're a genius and beautiful and need no help from me. If you're not, run to it... don't think. Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Jeremy
Also, Jeremy has updated his site with all kinds of useful information about computer-related problems. He has a very nice *and* functional site and was very sweet giving me comments to help me make my homepage more aesthetically pleasing. You can visit him here. Very nice, baby :).

Goodnight!
Everyone stay warm because the weather here sucks still thanks to Mark.

-T.

The Curse of Mark

Blame Mark for All the Ice:

Oh sure, he looks like a nice enough guy, but when Mark came up from Florida, one of the loaded pieces of doodoo he told my mother was that in her words :"he was going to bring up the Florida warm weather, so watch out when he gets back on the plane to go home!"

Sure enough, it was in the 60s here for his five-day stay... a record-breaking winter. Day two without him and this is the cover story for our city paper.

You Guys Rock!

I've gotten several IM's from you guys and even a voice-mail or two about my photo galleries, since I decided not to make the galleries post-able (is that a word?) for commenting, that is probably the only way anyone figured they could let me know.

I just wanted to say *thanks* for checking them out and feel free to comment here on the main blog about them as an additional option.

After posting another small gallery, I am reminded at how seriously time-consuming it is the way I do it, so let me know if anyone can think of a way to make my life easier.

Love You Guys!

Stay safe if you're out on the roads today. See ya later on at the game :)

-T.

Usher in the New Year with Photo Galleries

Happy New Year Everybody!
It's about 5 in the morning, so I hope this all makes sense...

I just wanted to wish everyone Happy New Year and let ya'll know that I've posted a couple of photo galleries with pictures of you guys from Jordan's New Year's party and the Geogia Tech game so far in my sidebar. It took a loooooooooong time to manage all of it, so I'm not sure how many more of these I will post if I ever do again. But here they are and it has to be said that my friends sure are beautiful people. :)

(No! There are no thumbs... Nobody better ask me for any thumbs, grrr. But feel free to download at your leisure/surf.)

*Sniff, sniff* We miss you already, Mark. Make sure you keep in touch with us hicks still stuck out here in Kansas!

Alright, goodnite.

Love you guys!
-T.