Problem Solved

I have been struggling recently with a dilemma. Two of my good friends asked me to get ordained so that I could perform their marriage ceremony next year.

Obviously, I was more than thrilled that they asked me, but then I started to get a little anxious. I mean, marrying a couple is a big responsibility. I want to strike just the right tone, something appropriate not only to their level of coolness, but also my respect for them.

Anyway, thanks to my cousin and his beautiful Egyptian-American bride, this problem is solved. I went to his wedding this weekend, and I think the whole ceremony will be a perfect fit for my friends. I’m talking Coptic Christian.

You may not be familiar with this ancient sect of Christianity, which is based in Egypt. Well, let me expound on the virtues of their wedding tradition:

• Sheer Length. What better way to signal the strength of your love than a two-hour ceremony? When we got a copy of the program (more of a missalette), we were surprised to see that it was thirty five (that’s 30 + 5, folks) pages long. However, some parts were in three languages: the original Coptic, a phonetic Coptic version using our Alphabet, and the English translation. So we thought maybe the ceremony would be shorter than it seemed. Boy were we wrong! Most of the ceremony is chanted, so phrases like “Amen” can take upwards of one minute to sing. None of this 43-minute high mass crap. You want to get to that open bar at the reception? You gotta earn it!
• Kickin’ Percussion. As I said, most of the ceremony is sung or chanted. However, there is a cymbal player too, who sometimes chimes in with an exotic 7/8 beat to the prayers. This is totally awesome, and should be incorporated into all Christian ceremonies from here on out.
• Fun Costumes. At various points in the ceremony, the bride and groom don scarlet sashes, white capes, and golden crowns. I was disappointed to see that these were removed when the ceremony was over, though. I hope they got to keep them.
• Huge Cast of Characters. In the Coptic ceremony I went to, there appeared to be approximately four priests, three deacons, six or seven guys whose job it was to sing for the congregation, and sweet old man who showed up halfway through the ceremony and did not appear to have a job, but kind of mingled around on the altar and came down to greet the parents while the ceremony was going on. This enormous number of people brings me to the next benefit:
• Chaos Theory. The ceremony was very chaotic. People were coming and going, moving microphones around, sometimes one or two guys would start singing at the wrong time, almost no one knew when to stand or sit, the couple chatted with each other, the priests chatted with the couple, all while incense was thrown about and the chanting almost never stopped. So you don’t have to worry about maintaining a look of profound interest in what the priest is saying! Nobody’s really paying attention anyway. A very relaxing way to get married.
• Retro Ideals. Although I think everyone has huge respect for the breadth of tradition inherent in this ceremony, some of the ideals were pretty, uh, Flinstonian. However, by the thirtieth time that the priest exhorted the bride to obey her husband, the giggling was pretty audible. I think we both know who’s gonna wear the sash/cape/crown in that family!*
• Lack of Crappy Musicians. Since the whole ceremony is sung, there’s no need to stress about having your second cousin sing the theme from Superman or that song from Titanic!
• Xena Warcry. We were warned that the bride’s family often capped off wedding celebrations with the traditional ululation, which is not easy to perform correctly. It sounds a bit like Xena, only more Middle-eastern. I cannot stress enough how much cooler this is than throwing rice.

Anyway, congrats to my cousin and his new wife. It was an honor to be invited to such an ancient tradition, and aside from the hotel shuttle getting lost on the way to the reception, I had a wonderful time.

And as for my engaged friends, I have already started learning to read Coptic. Unfortunately, as a woman, I cannot perform the ceremony itself, but I did start watching old episodes of Xena. Please get yourself fitted for a cape and a crown and send me the measurements.

*According to the ceremony, both of them.

Now, now, don't be mean.

My boss and I had a meeting last night with a Village committee. On Monday, we got an email reminding us, as well as the rest of the committee, that the meeting would take place, and I quote here directly, “September 12 at 7 PM at the Village Offices. We will meet in the second floor courtroom as usual.”

So, at ten to seven, my boss and I show up. We go into the Village Offices and up to the courtroom via the public entrance, which is unlocked.

At this juncture, I’ll point out that there is another entrance near the police department, but we don’t like to go in that way because the door is always locked and we always have to bother the police dispatcher to let us in.

And the waiting begins. Seven, seven-fifteen roll by and still no one has showed up. At seven-thirty, we decide to leave. But just in case, we call one of the committee members to see what’s up.

He says, “Where were you guys? We waited till 25 after!”

My boss, in a remarkable display of restraint, informs him that we are still SITTING OUTSIDE THE COURTROOM. Which, let’s all remember, is the location of the meeting.

It turns out that only three committee members showed up, and they waited for us in the chairman’s office, which, let me remind everyone, is not in, or anywhere near, the courtroom. It is, in fact, behind the police department. Turns out he didn’t have a key to the courtroom, so he decided to hold the meeting in his office.

So, rather than, oh, I don’t know, LEAVE US A FUCKING NOTE, or, say, CALL OUR CELL PHONE, or, here’s an idea, CHECK TO SEE THAT WE ARE NOT WAITING UPSTAIRS, they tell the police dispatcher, who could give a rat’s ass. Oh, and his shift ends at seven anyway, so the point is moot. And, we didn’t even go past the dispatcher because the door is locked, so the point is doubly moot. More like moot squared, actually.

Seriously, it boggles my mind that three grown men could be so thoughtless. I actually cannot wrap my mind around the fact that they just blithely thought we’d figure out the meeting location had changed. Maybe they thought we were telepathic, us big-city design consultants. Christ.

Damn youts!

A ne'er-do-well attempted to burgle my car last night. Of course this happened when My Lord and Protector (Dan) was away. However, the theft was thwarted by our time-tested security system, which includes:

1. Super jumpy/hyper dogs which go nuts at the slightest disturbance, real or imagined
2. A motion-sensitive light installed by the former owner (who was a cop)
3. A thick layer of junk in the car, which effectively masks any objects of value

Of course, now, I'll have to implement an even more stringent security device, namely:

1. Lock the car doors, dumbnuts

I called the cops, who verified that I was, in fact, the victim of attempted petit larceny. They immediately sent over a team of experts to take fingerprints , document the contents of the car, test the sensitivity of the motion detector, and interview all the residents in a two-block radius.

Of course I am kidding! They officer I spoke to, while incredibly nice, said it was only necessary to file a report if it would make me feel better, and that mine was the third recent complaint in the area.

And he told me to start locking my doors. But he did not call me dumbnuts. The dumbnuts was implied.

More weird free food

Some of you may remember, from the Goo-bread incident, that my boss is a kind, generous woman given to foisting weird food products on unsuspecting employees.

She did it again yesterday, out of the blue offering me a fresh Lake Trout that her family caught on Labor Day. (Does this fit the definition of random? I would like to think it does.) Her cousins had caught 24 fish over two days (the legal limit, for any of you game wardens reading), and no one else in the family wanted to bring them home. So she froze some and kept some fresh, figuring what's the point of owning your own company if you can't force your employees to take a fish off your hands?

Anyway, after refusing the goo-bread, I felt I had no choice but to accept a fish. I was a little worried that the fish would be spoiled, since it was caught on Monday morning and I had no idea of how well it had been refrigerated since then.

It turned out to be fine. More than fine, actually. It was a pretty big fish, maybe fourteen inches, and it was just enough for Dan and I together. I cooked it "en papillote", as the foodies say, because I am WAY too lazy to fillet a fish. As you can see, I didn't even bother to take off the fins or the tail.

Well, whatever. It was quite yummy anyway, for a free fish.

Quadruple Ouch

Yesterday I had to meet with a sales rep for a company that primarily sells playground equipment. He rattled off the names of a half dozen local playgrounds where you could see examples of the equipment. I told him that my office manager's kids go to one of the schools he mentioned.

So of course, he asked her about it. It went down like this:

Sales Guy: Hey, Kate says your kids go to Blabitty Bla Elementary! We just redid the playground there last year!

Office Manager: Oh, the one my kids keep getting hurt on?

Me: Snort.

It gets better. See, our office manager is about the nicest woman you'd ever want to meet, so she didn't say it sarcastically or meanly at all. It just kind of tumbled out of her mouth, and you could tell she instantly felt bad.

So then there was an akward exchange of them talking over each other, her trying to say that she blames the overworked teachers, who can't keep an eye on so many kids at once, while he was saying some parts are meant for older kids and maybe her daughter was too young to play on them, but would really enjoy them when she got older.

The coup de grace? Her kids are the most delicate, injury-prone children on the planet. I'm not the least bit surprised they got hurt on the playground. They get hurt or sick standing perfectly still. Seriously. In the last year, her kids have had:

Head Lice (that was a fun one)
Tonsilitis
Strep throat (about 4 times, no joke)
Anxiety
High blood pressure (at 8 years old! 8!)
Sprained ankle
Several bouts of cold/flu
Stomach virus separate from the flu
Allergies
Sinus infection
Concussion

Of course, the sales guy had no way to know that.

I give up.

So, I decided to buy a pair of Crocs recently. I know they have a reputation for being ugly, but they also have a reputation for being very comfortable.

For some reason, I decided to "be adventurous", and get a pair in light blue. They look like this in the catalog:
















However, on my feet, they look like this:



















Yup.

Why I'm not on MTV

Last night Dan and I discussed what would happen if I were a contestant on Yo Momma.*

Contestant #1: Yo mama's armpits so hairy it looks like she's got Buckwheat in a headlock. Yo mama so fat she got to iron her pants on the driveway. Yo mama so ugly that if ugly were bricks she'd have her own projects.

Me: You know, I never really liked your mom.

Contestant: Yo mama... wait, what?

Me: Yeah, I hate the way she says "Hey Y'all!" all the time. And the onions in her meatloaf are always too raw and crunchy.

Contestant: Um..., see, uh, the thing is...

Me: Oh, and she uses WAY too much Febreze in the house. And it's not even the good kind. It's the crappy kind that smells like apples or something.

*For those of you outside the target demographic for this MTV show (probably all of you) or who have not yet stumbled upon this gleaming monument to popular culture, this is a show hosted by Wilmer Valderrama. I must admit, when he's not dressed as Fez, he's quite a charming and attractive young man. But that's not the point. The point is that contestants trade Yo Mama jokes and the judges decide who is better.

And the punishment is just.

So, every once in a while, I forget to obsessively check Toohpaste for Dinner, Married to the Sea, and Natalie Dee.

Of course, then I get the fun of looking at a whole bunch right in a row. But, still, a punishment from the Gods is in order, so you see this:


which is from Toothpaste for Dinner.

So the punishment for skipping these websites for a few weeks is:

To simultaneously inhale/spew coffee all over yourself at work on a day where you have a big meeting and no time to go home first and you are out of Shout Wipes and have to use a nasty old handi-wipe left over from a barbeque last summer that was at the bottom of your desk drawer and you have a big splotch on your boob* for like an hour and it won't dry right.

*For men, the punishment is to have a big splotch near, but not on, your crotch.

This One's for the Ladies

Okay, so I'm going to discuss a serious, chick-only topic now. Guys, take warning. You may wanna skip this one.

Today, one of my co-workers came in late to the office after leaving a message that she wasn't feeling well this morning. When she got in, one of us (not me) asked if she was feeling okay. So far, so good.

Except then she started loudly talking about her IUD. And how there was some problem with it, which is why she was late. I guess she was at the doctor's office.

Okay, okay, okay. As far as I'm concerned that is a no-no. As a rule, in the workplace, I do not want to hear or talk about any foreign/inorganic objects that come or go from that region of the body. However, I am apparently in the minority on this, because a five-minute conversation ensued between my co-worker and everyone else in the office:

Really? I had the same thing when... well, according to my one friend,... yeah, so the nurse had to yank... and so I told my husband,... and the cramps were... once, in band camp...

ARRGH! ENOUGH!

Now, I realize that my little company is only 20% male. And the male contingent (okay, the one guy) was absent from the office. But really, folks, is that any reason to prattle on about your hoo-ha? NO! Good God, NO!

Maybe it's just me. Maybe for me the gene that allows women to talk about this stuff at work was replaced by the gene that allows me to kick ass at Mortal Kombat. (Well, I kick ass at least until my thumb starts to hurt. Usually about 10-15 rounds of best-of-three. Oh, and I'm a shitty winner, too. Just ask Dan.)

Alls I know is, it was all I could do to not cover my ears with my hands and sing la-la-la.

So, please, ladies of the world, keep the hoo-ha talk to happy hour at Chi-Chi's, and not at the office. The more dudely among us thank you.

More Adventures in Homeownership

So, if you have been following the saga of our adventures with renovating the house, you will know that this is the point in the dramatic arc where Our Hero is Struck Down by his O'erweening Hubris.

Yes, we redid the backyard. Yes, we successfully got rid of practically all of the ugly wallpaper. But then... then we overstepped our bounds.

It all started when Dan got the clever idea of turning our back room into a laundry/utility area. For most of the past year, this room has done nothing but provide a home for an increasingly smelly old futon. It is where the dogs stay when we are at work. So making it into a laundry room would not only give it a useful purpose, but would also allow guests to use the downstairs bathroom without looking at the contents of our dryer.

We started scheming. Handy friends came over and assured us that extending the utilities would be a snap. Dan pulled up a corner of the ratty carpet and discovered hardwood underneath. We figured out the best way to arrange the utilities for the washer and dryer, and maybe even put in a utility sink to boot.

Then, like Icarus, we flew too high. One day we decided to just Go Ahead and Do It, and we took everything out of the room.

With baited breath, we pulled up the carpet. Also with held breath, because it was stinky.

And then we discovered that the previous owners had neglected to put down a carpet pad underneath the carpet. Also, they decided to GLUE THE CARPET DIRECTLY TO THE HARDWOOD. Oh yes, there was flooring adhesive spread over every inch of the floor, except the little bit that Dan happened to pull up previously.

Holy shit. Can you even believe it? We never thought the wood would be in pristine condition, but we figured we be able to paint it, at least.

Nope. It's hopeless. We can't sand it down, because it will melt. (see, melt? Icarus? Get it? Get i- Okay, whatever.) We can't scrape it off because it will take thirty thousand man hours.

Also, my Dad pointed out that extending the utilities will probably require a plumber, not just an electrician, because of reasons too boring to list.

This would be the part in the home-improvement reality show where the color on the screen would slowly fade to black and white, and there would be a shot of me looking at the room and shaking my head in slow motion, perhaps accompanied by floating translucent dollar bills, and a Law-and-Order style "gung gung", because we do not have the means, time, or desire to do all of this right now. Unless money starts raining from the heavens like the feathers from Icarus's -- okay, okay, even I have lost patience with the mythology thing. I'll stop now.

The good news is, unlike a home-improvement reality show, we can wait to do the room over when we feel like it. Which also means that we can put a little more thought into the room than our normal "whatever happens to be on sale at Lowe's" method.

Also, since the room is completely empty, it is fun to whistle in there.

Wha'happened?

I know. A long time between blogs. Too long. Not-even-bothering-to-check-if-there’s- something-new long. I know.

So what has been up? Lots! Mostly work.

Did you know that I have a job? It’s true! Yesterday I spent 14 hours working at that job. The day before? Also 14 hours. But what about Monday? Oh, only about 13 hours. And what about the “weekend”? 5 hours on Sunday and 6 hours on Saturday. A real break. Very refreshing. Today, maybe I have only 10 hours before I can go home. But at least I get a nice fat overtime paycheck, right?

HA!

So what I’m saying is that I’m freaking tired. Here are the highlights since my last post, as near as I can reckon through the blinding fatigue:

• We got a new car. An ’03 Corolla. Very exciting. Last night I fell asleep in it at the Price Chopper parking lot. It is nice.
• Congratulations are in order for Marty Cohen, I believe. Now the only question is whether to address her as “Dr. Cohen” or “Marty Cohen Comma PhD”. Yay!
• Dan is getting older this week. Woo Dan! In honor of his becoming a man, we are going to NYC to see a Yankees game and visit BadPie and her guy there, what’s-his-face. Dan has never been to the ol’ big apple. He partially blames this on being from Buffalo, when in fact his sister, who is also from Buffalo and I believe still resides there, pops down to New York like ninety times a year. It is truly a paradox.
• It is track season here in Saratoga Springs. For those of you not familiar with this, it is kind of like a plague of locusts, only instead of insects the town is overrun with Very Rich People for six weeks. Yesterday Dan saw a Lamborghini Diablo. Parked. On the Street. Parked on the street! That is so wrong. Also, the prices at all restaurants go up like 25%. But it is fun to go to the track, because they let poor people in, too, and you can sit at a picnic table with a cooler and make $2 bets on Papa’s Delicate Condition and If Mandy Patinkin Were a Horse. Or pretend that you are in a movie about horses, because every movie about horses from the last twenty years was shot there.

Anyway, there’s the highlights. Tonight I am going to watch Project Runway, which hopefully I recorded. And then sleep sleep sleep. Tomorrow, I swear, I’m only putting in eight hours. Screw the Man! Eight hours I say!

Nothin' better than an incurable laughing fit at your desk.

Seth Stevenson is my new hero.

Frankendog

We recently decided to give Roger, our golden retreiver/collie mix, a summer haircut.

Now, before all the dognazis jump on my case about how fur is nature's airconditioner and other wackadoo bullshit you saw on web, this was on the recommendation of our vet. He tends to get little rashes during the summer, partially because the excessive fur holds moisture close to his skin.

So Dan and little bro John took him for a cut. The groomer said he would give the dog a "lab clip".

Um, except he left his tail long, and clipped a little too close to the body for my taste. I can't find the digital camera, so here's a photoshop approximation of how he looks now:

His undercoat is pretty white, so the difference between his head and his body is startling.

I know, I couldn't stop laughing at him either. It's kind of pathetic really.

Well, at least his rashes cleared right up. And he smells better. What can I say.

Yay!

This is it folks! Crooked Spoke Press is up and running!

For those of you who don’t know, Dan and I embarked on a hare-brained scheme about a year ago. We decided to create a small business to make money “on the side”, as you 20th-century Americans put it.

After much talking, and a little more talking, we decided that it would be fun to get an antique printing press and make cards and invitations. I would do the graphic designing part, and Dan would do the customer service and computer parts. We would both run the press, of course, at least until Dan almost loses a finger. Then I would run it.

Why a printing press? Well, when we were getting married, I totally was obsessed with the look and feel of letterpress invitations. I would swoon over the Martha Stewart Catalogs, with their beautiful handmade, old-fashioned invitations, the letters biting into the thick paper – I’m getting carried away here.

Anyway, we couldn’t afford them, because they were a JILLION dollars. Seriously, like $2.50 to $6 PER invitation, not counting response cards, etc. That’s CRAZY, folks. The paper costs like 50 cents, tops. With the response cards, it added up to like ten dollars a person for the cheapest invitations. I briefly thought about getting a tiny press and doing them myself, but I snapped out of it.

So, we bought cheap regular invitations and they were great. But the fever of getting to play with bits of paper and ink stayed with me. Dan was not so crazy about the paper aspect, but was obviously interested in the gazillion percent markup. And, it was something we could do together, so it would be either “Tons O’ Fun”, or “The Road to Bickerville”. We are banking on the former.

So, we bought a printing press. Soon we will be selling greeting cards online and at craft shows. The picture above is the very first thing we have printed that looks any good. Yes, it was made with hand-set type, by yours truly. (Bernhard Heavy Gothic 24 pt. font, to be exact)

But wait, you say. You bought a printing press? Where the hell did you get a printing press?

Stay tuned for the next installment to find out!

Six-month Anniversary Fake Interview!

Fake Interviewer: So, this will be month #6 for Monkey Eats a Taco. How does that feel?

Kate: Good, my arm felt good, it felt good. I just did what I could for the team. I’d have been just as happy if it had been someone else doing it. It just felt good to get out and do something positive for the team. I just do the best I can with what God gave me, you know?

FI: At the beginning, you said you hoped this blog would help people discover “…what an amazing, hilarious, insightful genius [you are]” Has that happened?

K: Oh… ha… yes, well, the thing about that is…. no.

FI: I told you so.

K: Oh shut up.

FI: Any goals for the future?

K: Yes, absolutely. I’m definitely going to try to use more British slang and idiomatic phrases.

FI: Please give us an example.

K: Er… Crikey! That’ll be a larf! Bob’s your uncle!

FI: That’s pretty pathetic, you know.

K: Well, give it time.

FI: Okay, last question. Can you tell us about a mildly wacky and/or “random” occurrence that happens to you often, and should be a metaphor for your life, but strangely has no deeper meaning at all?

K: Sure, I’d love to. On my way to work, I frequently have to stop my car to let horses and jockeys cross the street.

FI: Thanks, and I’ll see you in another six months.

K: That’d be lovely.

The Preemie Twins are dead! Long Live the Preemie Twins!

When we moved into our house, every room except the upstairs bathroom was decorated with different, ugly wallpaper. That’s 11, count them, ELEVEN kinds of ugly wallpaper.

So we have slowly been chipping away (in some cases, literally) at the wallpaper. First was the kitchen and living room, then our bedroom and the upstairs hallway, and the dining room and entry/foyer over the winter.

This weekend, I’m pleased to say, we got rid of another significant ugly wall-treatment holdover from the previous owners: the Preemie Twins Room.

This was the bedroom of, you guessed it, the twin sons of the previous owners. Apparently, judging by the way the previous owner said “preemie twins” roughly 15,278 times during the closing, these twins were born prematurely. So the room was decorated as a boy’s nursery. It was white on top, ugly blue on bottom*, with a teddy bear border and those godawful vinyl wallpaper stickers of moons and bears in pajamas and shit. Makes sense, right?

It would, except when they moved out of the house, the “Preemie Twins” were THREE YEARS OLD. No longer preemie! Not by any standard!**

Obviously, the first thing I did when we moved in was to rip down the stickers and the border. The border, of course being a cheap-ass piece of crap, left a brown paper backing. But at least the bears were gone.

We lived with the border backing for about two months, before I finally decided it was time to paint. Guess what? I couldn’t get the whole backing off, thanks to the care the previous owners took in NOT properly preparing the wall for wallpaper. So instead of a plain brown strip going around the room, there was an area six inches wide, just at eye level, where it appeared that some one sneezed. Over and over.

Since this is the spare bedroom, and we have not had any overnight guests, we just kind of closed the door and tried not to go in this room over the winter.

But, since we have some guests coming soon, and since I couldn’t stand it any longer, this weekend I painted the room a soothing pale green color, in wonderful matte paint.

Ah. No more preemie twins. Let me tell you, it feels pretty good.

* In high gloss paint, mind you. HIGH GLOSS.
** As an aside, the previous owners apparently also at one time stored a diaper pail in the room, probably behind the door, because the very first thing my dog Roger did on entering the room was to try to pee on the door. He did not do this anywhere else in the house, and generally speaking, he only does that when he smells, you know, wee-wee. I guess he could still smell the preemie twins’ diapers even after three years, which is the GROSSEST THING EVER. Luckily, I caught him in time and avoided a wee-wee incident. And then I steam cleaned the room like five times. And wiped down the walls and door with Lysol. And then performed a Native American purification rite. Because you never know.

I also have a +5 Bag of Holding.

More nerdily exciting news!

Like many geeks, I was puzzled that Chris Eccleston, the ninth Doctor Who, only stuck around for one season. That’s a pretty short run.

So I looked it up on the internets. When I found out why he’s no longer on the show, my head exploded into a thousand tiny bits.


Chris Eccleston stopped being Doctor Who so that he could take the lead in a remake of The Prisoner.
He is going to be Number 6.


Wow. Let me repeat: Wowwee wow wow wow.

For a level 17 geek such as myself, this is very, very exciting. Even if the remake is going to be more like the show 24 than the old show (I guess that means no man-eating weather balloons or penny-farthing bikes).

And for all of you who’ve read this and have no idea what I’m talking about, congratulations! You’re not a geek! You probably also went on a date before you were a freshman in college! Good for You! Now, please move. You and your normal social life are blocking the TV.

Footnote: I can feel that some of you are questioning… Kate, did you… did you photoshop the Village symbol on to the Tardis? Just for this post?

Yes. Yes I did.

Dear God!

Yesterday, when I got into work, my boss very excitedly told a co-worker and I that she brought something in for us – Friendship Bread. I thought, “Oh. Bread. Okay.”

But instead of handing us each a piece of a baked product, she gave us each a large, Ziploc bag, which was about one-third full of a creamy goo.*

Mine was dripping slightly.

She started excitedly giving us instructions about how you couldn’t put it in the fridge, and how we need to squeeze it once a day for eight days before we could bake it, and all I could think was “I’m holding a dripping bag of goo.”

She even had a photocopied handout with the instructions on it.

I don’t know about you, but in goo-related situations, my brain tends to shut down and go into panic mode. So instead of doing the polite thing (taking the bag home and throwing it away) all I could think about was having an un-refrigerated mass of yeast sitting on my desk all day.

No thanks.

So I did my best to fight the revulsion in my throat and gave the bag back to her, with some lame excuse about not baking in the summer.

She actually did have some of the finished product to share. It was a quick bread, which tasted like zucchini bread. Frankly, that’s not much of a payoff for fondling a warm goo-bag for a week. Why not just bake zucchini bread? What could possibly make someone try to foist this crap off on unsuspecting co-workers?

I feel kind of bad that I panicked and used bad manners, but what could I do? I think even Miss Manners has an exception for goo-related etiquette.


*For those of you with a strong stomach, the color and texture was like runny pus. See? See? You’d panic too!

At the barbeque, at the barbeque, at my house

This weekend we hosted a barbeque for a few friends to inaugurate our new and improved backyard. It was fun. We felt like real, live, grown-ups. Here are some highlights of the evening:

• I went inside for two seconds, and the sausages on the grill lit on fire in less than a minute. Well, that’s one way to get them to brown quickly. Luckily, I had poached them prior to putting them on the grill, so no one got trichinosis. I’m pleased to report that, despite the blaze, there were only four sausage casualties.
• Maddy got very excited at seeing so many people, which she indicated by sitting in the middle of everyone and barking once every nine seconds, until someone pet her.
• Roger also got very excited, which he indicated by peeing more and looking longingly at the food everyone was balancing on their laps.
• The Hezel-McCormick orzo salad was a big hit.
• I had a rousing game of “What celebrity does my friend Konrad look like?” with Konrad’s most excellent wife Nikki and Dan’s friend Leigh. It was a tie between a younger, Australian version of Val Kilmer, and an older, Australian version of Prince William.
• Bocce was played.

All in all, a great evening. Although any event that involves a cooler full of beer, Cornell chicken, and homemade sangria is bound to be a success in my book.

The Crystal Calls

Holy crap. Holy crap.

I just found out that they’re making a sequel to the Dark Crystal.

Holy crap.

If you’re as much of a geek as me*, then you are probably just as excited. At this point, I am in such shock that such a thing could happen that my brain has not fully processed the information.

Obviously, this is one of my all-time favorite movies. I saw it in the theater and I still remember getting vertigo at that first shot of Aughra’s observatory.

Anyway, now I have about a year and a half to hope that they don’t mess the sequel up. Cross your fingers for me.

*I’m just being polite here. It is not possible for you to be as much of a geek as me.