Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Turkey foot

I'm in charge of turning the alarm off in the morning. You might be surprised by that if you've seen me sleep. I can sleep anywhere at any time for as long as I'm allowed. I don't understand the concept of waking up feeling refreshed. I wake up feeling like it would be nice to go back to sleep.

But I'm in charge of the alarm. Mainly because I'm the only one who hears it usually. Although G is a relatively light sleeper, he is generally able to selectively tune out the obnoxious noise that signals morning for us.

This morning, the alarm went off a little longer than usual before I managed to turn it off. G woke up, too, and he said, "I thought that was a turkey foot. I was wondering how the client could possibly take my proposal seriously when I can't even turn off the turkey foot alarm clock."

Yes, how indeed?

He partially remembered this when he woke up for real a little while later. I reminded him of the complete revelation, and we laughed. Sleeping can be so funny.

Monday, January 30, 2006

No sale

Our garage sale trip on Saturday did not result in any new stuff for us, regardless of size. We kind of struck out. We passed one sale that appeared to have only kid stuff - lots of brightly colored toys and things. We might have stopped anyway, but there was a very unhappy kid there also, presumably the one getting rid of all his things.

As we approached the sale, there was much screaming - from both the child and the mom. The mom was instructing the kid to "Get inside!" and she knocked his juice out of his hand for some reason. We decided we wouldn't want to buy anything from that sale just because of the bad vibes.

On a happy note, my mom got a new bike. It's a dark blue cruiser. She's in the process of naming it. Any ideas?

Friday, January 27, 2006

Is it bigger than a bike basket?

G and I have been cruisin' all around on our new bikes. We rode to our volleyball game* a couple of days ago, we rode to a neighborhood social at a restaurant last night, and we plan to ride to garage sales in the morning.

The great thing about riding our bikes to garage sales is that we won't be tempted to buy anything big. We can only purchase things that will fit in my bike basket. That's good, because the second half of our house remodeling will include turning our upstairs storage room into a guest room. It's filled with stuff right now, so in order to make it livable, we need to purge. Needless to say, buying lots of new things at garage sales is not helpful for that plan.

Of course, you remember that I bought my bike at a garage sale, so the bike basket rule isn't necessarily binding.

* We play on the county rec league. The season hasn't officially started yet, but we had practice this week. We played all the teams that showed up (4 or 5), and we won all our games. That usually doesn't hold up for the whole season, but we'll take it. We're undefeated in the pre-season!

Thursday, January 26, 2006

The not-so-sweet old lady

Shortly after Christmas I visited Old Navy. Typically, I find either a ton of great things or a pile of things that only look good on the hanger. This visit I ended up with a cute belt that was on sale for less than $2.00. I'd call that a bargain.

Two sweet old ladies were behind me in the checkout line. At least I thought they were sweet. Then I overheard them have the following conversation:
Woman #1 (picking up a foam football): This is really cute.
Woman #2 (in a really sarcastic voice): Oh, it's precious. I wish I had four of them.
Woman #1 (unfazed): I like footballs.
Woman #2: Why?
Woman #1: The kids love them. I bought some for Christmas presents and they had a ball.
So Woman #1 was sweet. The other woman, not so much.

I just realized that I could end up a non-sweet old lady. I always pictured myself as being a cuddly cookie-baking grandma. But what if my current case of sarcasm just builds and builds until it takes over and I can't even be nice to other grandmas?

Won't I be precious? You'll want four of me.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

My schweet new ride

I can't believe I forgot to post yesterday - I have something exciting to blog about. I got a bike!!!

G and I decided to buy bikes for ourselves for Christmas. We were into mountain biking years ago and we each had a nice mountain bike. Then G's got stolen about a year ago and he acquired one from a friend to replace it. But it turns out we're getting old because we no longer want to mountain bike. We want to cruise.

We found suitable beach cruisers and planned to buy them shortly after Christmas (taking advantage of any after-holiday sales, of course).

Saturday afternoon (several weeks ago) - We go to Target to buy our bikes. They have a men's bike and a women's bike. This is the first store we've been to, though, so we want to shop around a little.

Saturday evening - We've decided to buy the Target bikes. Target has a men's bike but not a women's. We decide to wait to buy both together (in hind sight, I'm not sure why). New shipments come in on Tuesday.

Tuesday - The shipment came in. They have several women's bikes, but no men's. However, the bikes aren't assembled until Wednesday. We put our name on one of the women's bikes to reserve it.

Wednesday - The assembler changed his schedule. Now he comes in on Thursdays.

Thursday - All the women's bikes have mysteriously disappeared. Even the one with my name on it! The only cruiser they have back there is a men's, and it's missing its seat. What is going on in the Target stockroom?

G finally found a men's bike at a Target in another city. I was still bikeless, however, and I borrowed a cruiser from a friend to ride when we went camping. We had decided to just keep checking back periodically until a women's bike showed up.

On Saturday morning, we took a walk and ended up on a street with a yard sale. And the yard sale had a bike. G and I took it for a test spin (separately), and we liked it. We asked the woman if she would hold it until we went home and got some money. She said she'd hold it for an hour.

So we walked home, got some cash, and rode G's bike back over to the yard sale. (Yes, we did ride it together - me on the seat and G standing up pedaling. We're entirely too old for this. People probably thought we had stolen the bike and were making a quick getaway.)

The woman had held the bike for me even though two other people had offered to buy it in the interim. One guy even offered $30. We were coming back with $20. But she saved it for me. I figured this was karma, so I've named the bike Karmen. (My old bike's name is Chloe.)

So let me tell you about my new bike . . . It's a Schwinn Breeze from the late 1960's we think. The color is called "campus green," which is very similar to forest green, except smarter. It has the original seat - white and green with a big "S" on it - and the original handlebar grips, which are sparkly green.

I'm so excited about my new bike! It's a lot of fun to ride around. In fact, you might even say it's Schweet.


Friday, January 20, 2006

The dominant otter

When G and I were camping recently, we went for a bike ride around the edge of a large lake. We started out on a definite trail, but that wasn't nearly adventurous for us, so we struck out on a less-traveled dirt road. Evidently that's where they put the good stuff because we saw a couple of otters.

G was in the lead, and I heard him say something about a bird in the water. Then he muttered something about maybe an otter. I immediately turned back since otters are some of my favorite animals. G was skeptical that there would be anything to look at, but he reluctantly circled back as well.

When he made it back to me and the otters (there were two, and they had caught a big fish), I was speaking to them. They were making a sound that's hard to describe. It was similar to the sound a horse makes (not a whinny, but the sound you can make by blowing air out of your mouth while letting your lips flap together. You know that noise?) with a high pitched whistle in there, too.

So the otters would make the sound, and then I would imitate it. I really felt like we were speaking because they were looking at me and everything. I was communing (and communicating) with nature.

When G arrived, he made the noise at the otters, too. And the otters swam away with their big fish. We decided G was too good at the noise and had scared them off because he was dominant. My husband, the dominant otter.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

The starer

G and I went camping recently. Not backwoods roughing it camping. More like being on vacation except instead of sleeping in a hotel, we slept in a tent. There was a bathhouse just a stone's throw from our campsite with hot showers and everything.

One morning, I was in the bathhouse doing my after-shower primping. I have a really cool ditty bag for all my toiletries, and a woman asked me about it - Where did I get it? (It was a gift, but it comes from L.L. Bean.) Do I like it? (Yes, very much so.) Should I get one? (Yes, you definitely should.)

After this discussion, I began drying my hair. I was looking in the mirror, but I could see the woman out of the corner of my eye. She was staring at me. Not doing anything, just staring at me. This went on for an uncomfortable period of time - she staring, me pretending not to notice. It was weird.

Then she spit into the sink, and I realized she had been using mouthwash. That's why it looked like she wasn't doing anything except staring. My peripheral vision didn't pick up on her subtle swishing. I forgave her the staring at that point. Her mind was obviously on her mouthwash, not me.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Here's to you, D

This comment was posted several weeks ago:
I am a little hurt in the way of feelings. I was informed of this site within the first week of operation and I have yet to read any post about me. There could be one on here but I did not read every blog, as I am not a strong reader. Please figure out who I am and give me a sign, so my life can continue.

You might think I would have a hard time figuring out who this anonymous person is, but you forgot how smart I am. It was the "not a strong reader" that did it. I spoke to this person shortly after I started my blog (and I was pretty excited about it), and he basically told me he wasn't really into it because the entries looked a little long and he's "not a strong reader." I guess he's been working on the reading, though, because it sounds like he's read some of it.

I aim to please, so here's a very short story about D . . .
On Christmas 2004, D happened to be visiting his family only a few hours from where G and I were celebrating with our family. Since we don't get to see each other that often, we decided to drive toward each other and meet in the middle somewhere.

As you may know, the selection of restaurants on the interstate that happen to be open on Christmas is not large. So we met at Hooters. This is even sillier if you know me - a vegetarian feminist at a restaurant known for chicken wings and, well, hooters.

Good times.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Is anyone still visiting?

G and I celebrated Christmas with his family last week (hence the continuing lack of posts). We had a very nice time. The weather was really beautiful, and it was great to spend time with everyone.

Our niece and nephew (M and D) were great fun this weekend as always.
Here's a quick funny story to kick start my blog for the new year. . .

D was in the kiddie pool making big full-body splashes when some other kids joined him. D is a very friendly kid, so he was more than happy to play with the pool toys that they brought. One of the dads blew up a beach ball and threw it in the pool. D saw it first, so he started playing with it. The kid it belonged to turned around and said to D, "I have one just like that."

What a coincidence.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Christmas treasure

Guess what I did on Christmas? No, actually, I didn't go to Home Depot, but good guess. In addition to spending quality time with family, opening presents, and eating way too much, I went geocaching for the first time! Not what you were expecting, huh?

"What is geocaching?" you may be asking yourself. Well, people create caches and post their locations on the web. Then others can find the caches by using a handheld GPS. Treasure hunting with a reliable map!

The Christmas geocaching episode was spurred by my cousins from the panhandle who are just getting hooked on the sport. To be perfectly honest, we had a little trouble finding it. That doesn't seem so bad until I tell you that this cache was rated 0.5 on a difficulty scale of 1 - 5, 5 being the hardest. I think our difficulties arose from the fact that we just didn't trust the GPS.

In addition to coordinates, the website gives you a description of the location. So we were second-guessing the GPS in favor of the description. In hind sight, that doesn't make much sense since none of us were familiar with the area.

It was all worth it, though, when we found the cache. I didn't think I would be so excited, but it was really thrilling to find this secret treasure box hidden in a public place. So many people walk right past it without even knowing it's there. It's like being in a secret society.

The cache we found was an ammo box. It had a logbook and various treasures in it. We signed the logbook, took a treasure, and left a treasure. That's how it works. You can take something out of the cache as long as you leave something in exchange. There were magnets, matchbox cars, some seashells, a couple of golf balls, and some various small toys. We took a sea bean because they are supposed to be good luck, and we left a small mouse toy that belonged to my aunt and uncle's cats.

I checked out the website today, and there are thousands of geocaches in our area. Amazing! I think we'll have to start finding them. It's always fun to pretend you're a pirate.

Arrrrrh.