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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mahi Oasis

The internet has gone on strike at work. Evidently our server crashed yesterday and won't be fixed today. So I'm at the nearby public library. What a useful service.

On my way to work today, I saw a sign outside a restaurant that made me not want to go there at all. I already didn't really want to go there. Since our town is a tourist haven, G and I try to avoid the touristy restaurants (where everything on the menu comes out of the freezer and into the fryer and the meals cost four times as much as they should) in favor of the local places.

This restaurant is one of those touristy places. Actually, I'm assuming it is. We haven't been there. But all signs point to touristy - cutesy name, advertisements for "lunch baskets," shrimp 40 different ways (I bet 30 of them are fried, just served with different sauces).

Their sign this morning: Try our Mahi Oasis

This sounds like a drink to me. A really gross drink. Like that Saturday Night Live skit with Dan Aykroyd advertising the Bass-O-Matic.

I tried to come up with a tasty dish that could be called Mahi Oasis, but I just couldn't. It's always a drink in my head. And I don't think there's any way to make a fish drink sound good.

Home sweet Borders

Last week I was tutoring at Borders again. We were set up at the same table next to the comfy looking couch and chairs area. There was a man sitting in one of the chairs reading a book (I couldn't quite make out what he was reading, unfortunately). No problem there. Until I noticed a split second later that he had taken his shoes off and had his sock feet up on the coffee table.

I certainly have no problem with feet on the coffee table - I'm a big fan of that myself. And I've got no problem with feet in general. But I think if you can't keep your shoes on in the bookstore, it might be time to buy the book and take it home.

I don't want to brag, but . . .

I've been nominated for an MBA and a Ph.D.

That's right. Perhaps you thought these programs involved an application process and required study at an accredited university. That's what I thought, too. According to the two emails I got this morning, though, I guess I just have to accept these degrees. I've been nominated.

One of the emails also mentioned that they have MBA degrees available in my field. Are you sure? I would think that a Masters of Business Administration degree would be mainly in the field of business. I'm not in that field.

But whatever. I won't let it go to my head. I promise to still talk to you even when I have multiple initials after my name.

Who am I?

I am a vegetarian. Or at least I thought I was until a couple of minutes ago. I searched online for the definition of what kind of vegetarian I am (a dairy, egg, seafood, but no meat or poultry eater). Evidently, there is no definition.

In case you're wondering where the "demi", "semi" or "pesco" vegetarian definition is (i.e. someone who doesn't eat "meat", but eats fish) - there's no such thing... - veggie planet

Hmmm. I'm having a bit of an identity crisis here. I've been calling myself a vegetarian for 28 years (i.e. my whole life, but I suppose, technically, I didn't call myself anything for the first year or so), and now I find out I've been lying.

So I checked out the other Google hits, and number four gave me what I was looking for.

Pesco vegetarians eat fish but no other meat. - the site that reinforces my (false?) identity

Yes, thank you. That's what I needed to see.

So anyway, I'm an ovo-lacto-pesco vegetarian in case you were wondering (you are too, Mom and Dad). The point being that my parents and I did not have turkey for Thanksgiving, while G and his parents did. And of course there were leftovers. So G ate many turkey sandwiches in the ensuing days. He probably would have had more, except, as a bad wife, I let us run out of mayonnaise.

A couple of days after Thanksgiving, I stopped by the store to pick up a couple of things, one of which was mayonnaise. I took it home and alerted G to its arrival. Then it disappeared. No one has seen or heard from it since.

Now if it's Miracle Whip you want, we have gallons. Let me tell you the story. Once upon a time (when we were first married five years ago), G let me know in no uncertain terms that he does not like mayonnaise. Only Miracle Whip. Okay, fine, no problem. We still had both condiments in the house, but the mayonnaise was off limits for G. After several years of this, he started complaining that I was putting too much Miracle Whip on his sandwiches. He would sometimes not finish the lunch I sent because it would make him gag. I couldn't seem to put a thin enough layer on the bread. Meanwhile, he always ordered mayo on his subs with no gagging.

So after years of insisting (seriously insisting) that he doesn't like mayonnaise, only Miracle Whip, we stumbled upon the truth - he hates Miracle Whip and likes mayonnaise. What a kook. Of course, the day before we have this revelation, Miracle Whip was two-for-one, so we have a cabinet full of it. And no mayonnaise.

Because we somehow lost it.

Double take

The place I work has about 100 employees. Its relatively small size coupled with its location in the middle of nowhere lead to an environment where everyone knows everyone else. It's very nice.

There is a guy who started here a few months ago. I don't work with him, but we have had many conversations since he arrived. Both he and his fiance (who works here also) are very nice.

Every time he sees me, he does a double take and then gives me a warm greeting. It makes me feel so special. For example, if I'm walking down the hall behind him and he briefly turns his head to see who it is, when he sees it's me, he turns again and says hi. Or if he's working in a common area and I walk in, he might look up to see who entered. He invariably looks back down at his work and then quickly looks back up with a "how are you."

So either he avoids talking to some people, he thinks I'm extra nice, or he does this to everyone. I don't know. I'm going to go with the extra nice theory.

The closet klepto

I judged another science fair on Wednesday. (Un?)Fortunately, these were done by high school honors students, so they were higher quality than the previous fairs I judged. They still left much to be desired.

One of the biggest problems with the projects was lack of originality. It seemed like half of the projects in my category (Chemistry) tested which laundry detergent works best. You would think that at least this is useful because you can learn which products to use, but each project tests the same detergents, and each one gets different results. So either Tide is the best detergent, or Tide is less effective than cold water. Take your pick.

The other half of the projects tested which hand soap works best. The methods for testing this usually involved putting vegetable oil in water, adding soap, and shaking them up to see what happens. One of these projects seemed to be more advanced. The student asked which antibacterial soap works best. Then she tested it by putting motor oil in water, adding soap, and counting the resulting drops of oil. I appreciate the use of a different type of oil, but this has nothing to do with bacteria. As G's dad will tell you, nothing can grow in oil. It's antibacterial itself.

The highlight of the science fair was the man I was paired with for judging. He was in charge of holding the score cards on a clipboard and writing down our notes. Every time we would leave a project, he would pick up the student's log book and/or report, stack it neatly with the clipboard, and move on to the next project. The first time he did this, I thought he might have a good reason, and having just met him, I didn't want to point out his mistake. But then he just kept doing it. He would realize he had picked up something that wasn't his a couple of projects down the line and he would look at the folder like he had no idea how he had gotten it. I would dutifully take it back to it's proper project. Then when we moved on to the next project, he would take that projects stuff. He did this over and over - at least five or six times. At one point he referred to himself as a closet klepto. That didn't stop him, though.

I wonder what it's like to work with him. I'd imagine you'd have to keep your desk completely clean or nail everything down. Otherwise, he'd be liable to walk off with something everytime he walked by.

By the way, none of the detergent or soap projects won.

Black out

Our bathroom is nearing completion, but G and I are still showering in the cottage. It's not really that inconvenient - it's kind of like being at camp or something where you have to go to the bathhouse. It's a nice shower, too - plenty of hot water (unless G takes an extra-long one right before me), good water pressure, and a window in the bathroom to let in natural light.

This morning there was a problem. As soon as I plugged in my hairdryer, the lights started flickering. They went off and on and off and on and off and on and then just off. My first thought was that I had caused this with my hair dryer. The outlet was one of the safety ones that has test and reset buttons. I pushed them repeatedly in various combinations, but still nothing.

So I took my hair dryer back to the big house to finish getting ready there. Surprise - no power there either. I was pretty sure I couldn't have caused both the cottage and the big house's electricity to fail, so I began to suspect that something bigger was happening.

I finished getting ready in the semi-darkness and dried my hair the best I could with a towel (not a pretty sight for my curly locks). This wouldn't have been a big deal at all except that I was heading to judge a high school science fair this morning, and I didn't want to look like a ragamuffin.

I drove through the neighborhood looking for lights, but I didn't see any. There was a fire truck parked at the end of the next street and I almost asked them if they knew why our power was out. Then I noticed the bright orange cones surrounding the dangling power line.

So it wasn't me, then.

Maybe I already told you about this . . .

but if I didn't, then you'll be glad I blogged about it.

Some friends invited us over for dinner a couple of weeks ago. They were serving a dish similar to fish tacos (which G and I are fans of). The dish had a really snazzy name, but I can't recall what it was right now - Fiesta Salmon or Mexicana Salmon. Ooh I remember - Salmon Mexicali! This inspired me to try to name all dishes something exciting. I think it might make everything taste better.

I consider myself a good guest. I always ask to see if there's anything I can bring. If they say no, I try not to bring anything (this goes against the grain, but I try). On this occassion, our friends said we could bring something if we wanted to. In our current state of home improvement, I barely have time to grocery shop and make decent meals (spaghetti) for G and I. I'm generally not up to making things good enough for other people to eat.

So G and I decided to stop and buy some chips and dip on the way over. We did so, spending more than a couple minutes on the chip aisle. We aren't big chip eaters, so this aisle is a bit foreign. We just wanted regular potato chips, but G thought all the bags were too big ($4.00 for a bag of chips?). We finally found what we needed and moved on.

As I was exiting the chip aisle, a separate display caught my eye. It contained Cheetos, but the bag had the word "natural" on it. Is this not an oxymoron? And who are they marketing to? I'm not sure the health food crowd is going to embrace a Cheetos product, and I'm not sure any self-respecting Cheeto-eater is going to choose a bag with "natural" written in big letters.

We happened to enjoy some Cheetos (not natural) this weekend with our niece and nephew (their choice of chip). I had forgotten how good they are. I don't want to like them, but I really do. Maybe that's the market - adults who forgot how good Cheetos are but feel guilty about eating them now. Hmmm . . . maybe they're onto something.

The family

G's brother drove nine hours to come visit us this weekend. That's nice all by itself, but he brought our niece (7 years old) and nephew (4 years old) down with him, too. What a great bonus!

G took his bro fishing - both fresh and saltwater - and I got to hang out with the kids. We had a lot of fun. We made Christmas ornaments (or "ordaments," as the nephew says), played on our local playground, had dinner with G's parents, watched a couple of movies, and played pick up sticks (this is an actual game, not just picking up sticks from the yard).

Our nephew is a very easy going kid - very agreeable and happy most of the time (all of the time this weekend). He is also very much into trucks and tractors and anything with a motor, I think. Any truck that has tires bigger than normal is a "monster truck," and an extra large tractor is a "monster tractor." Luckily, there were two tractors in the construction site across from our house on Saturday. He almost couldn't contain himself long enough to get his shoes on. He kept saying, "Aunt ______, hurry up. Hurry up." We sat on the sidewalk and watched them for quite a while.

Our niece is a super fun kid, too. Of course, she's at the age now when she knows everything. On our way to dinner with G's parents, we could see the moon. I told her that phase of the moon could be called a crescent because of the shape of it. She disagreed because she hadn't learned that in science class. I reasserted my statement. She said quietly, "That's fine, but it's false." I added an additional fact or two to strengthen my position, but I don't know if she bought it.

Later in the drive she asked if I knew the word "SunCom." I told her I didn't, and she told me it comes on TV where they live. I told her I hadn't seen it on our TV, so she kindly explained. "It's truth in wireless." (I checked it out, and that is their slogan. It sounds very heady, but it turns out that just means they include taxes and fees in their rate quotes instead of adding them on later.)

We had a great time this weekend, and we can't wait to see everyone again for Christmas in January!

Bengay and Old Spice

There are many quirky little things G and I do in the interest of saving money or "beating the system," as we like to call it. One of these things is that instead of renting movies from the store, we "rent" them from our local library for free. (We often end up paying a dollar or two for them since the late fee is a dollar a day, but it's still cheaper than Blockbuster.) As a result, we rarely see movies while they would be considered "new releases." We're okay with that.

We recently watched the movie Something's Gotta Give, with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. It was relatively entertaining, but it reminded me how very repulsive Jack Nicholson is. Particularly as a love interest. Every time I look at him, I think of the Joker. This might be appropriate, since Nicholson played that character in Batman, but it's not a pretty picture.

When he does this:



I see this:



Not pretty, huh?

I won't ruin the movie for you if you haven't seen it, but I find it very unbelievable that dozens of attractive women half his age would go out with this guy. You've got to be kidding me. I was flabbergasted at the ending of the movie. No way.

As G said, you could smell the old man scent through the TV screen.

One really nice thing about the movie was Diane Keaton's character's house. It was in the Hamptons (I always thought this was a mountain range, but it turns out it's a beach area on Long Island) and absolutely beautiful. It was decorated in muted shades of white, cream, and khaki, and it looked so homey and inviting. G and I both commented on liking the color scheme and mused about how we could incorporate that into our house renovations.

After thinking about it more, I'm not sure that color scheme's going to work out for us. Neutral tones can make a nice house with nice stuff look understated and chic (particularly with the backdrop of sand dunes and sunrises through the windows), but they can also make a more average house look like a rental.

We've done "rental." We're ready for some color.