I Can't Complain

My Little Goblin

So, my fellow blogger and Plurker, Fear and Parenting in Las Vegas (again, not her real name) is running another contest, this one on her personal blog. Having tasted victory once (I won an autographed copy of The Blackberry Diaries!), I've become greedy for more. Besides, the contest is for the best Halloween pictures, and clearly there could be no better Halloween picture than the H-bomb in last year's Halloween costume:

 
Actually, I think his first Halloween costume was even cuter, but the photo is really fuzzy and out of focus:

But damn, he made a cute bumblebee, didn't he?

And just to finish it off, here's his very first Halloween:

It's hard to believe how little he was just three years ago. Now he's a big ol' bossy three year old, full of opinions and independence.  This year he wanted to be a bat, and the absence of a decent commercially-available toddler-size bat costume, I decided to make him one.  So far I've only sacrificed two fingertips and the side of one thumb to the hot glue gods, but hey, there's still three days to go.

Anyway, there you go, Nancy. Thanks for the fun contest!  And happy birthday to you!!

Thursday 13: Thirteen Things I've Learned From Food

Lately for a snack, I've been having these bitty squares of Laughing Cow cheese. I love cheese, and have been known to eat an entire block in one sitting, so I try to eat one of these little suckers instead whenever I have a cheese craving.

Anyway, each tiny square comes wrapped in this little piece of foil with random factoids on the inside. Actually, I've noticed that a lot of individually wrapped food comes with little sayings or facts on the wrappers - I kind of wonder what the point is, since I imagine it would be cheaper to put nothing on the insides of the wrappers.I guess it's marketing, but I gotta say, I'm not likely to pick one product over the other because of all the awesome information or inspirational sayings I'm going to get from the packaging. Interestingly enough, my favorite beer also comes with little sayings under the bottle cap, though they're neither inspirational nor educational. Mostly, they're just a little odd.

So, here are twelve things I've learned from cheese. And one thing I've learned from beer.

1. Vatican employees pay no income tax. This seems perfectly fair to me. I mean, who would they pay it to? The Pope? God?

2. In 1896 tickets from an Olympic competition cost about 16 cents. Incidentally, the 1896 Olympics were the first modern Olympics and were held in Athens, Greece from April 5 to April 16.

3. If the earth could be scaled down, it would be smoother than a billiard ball. I have no idea what that even means, but it sounds good to me.

4. The official bird of New Mexico is the roadrunner. And in case you're interested, the official flower is the Yucca flower. The state animal is the black bear, the state fish is the cutthroat trout and the state insect tarantula hawk wasp. Which sounds simultaneously very cool, and really scary.  The state motto is Crescit Eundo, which means "It grows as it goes."I have no idea what that means, either.

5. Roman statues were created with detachable heads so that one head could be replaced by another. Those crazy Romans... always thinkin'.  If only we could do that with people. 

6. Beer making requires a tenth of the 7 million tons of rice grown in the U.S. each year. I think it's interesting that my cheese has beer facts, but my beer doesn't have any cheese facts. Maybe I should suggest it to them.

7. In 1917 the first Girl Scout cookies were sold for less than 25 cents a box. In 1917, though, 25 cents was the same as approximately $3.50 today. So the price hasn't really increased all that much. The first cookies were baked and sold by a troop in Muskogee, OK in their high school cafeteria.

8. The world's number one food crop is wine grapes. Um, duh.

9. Americans spent more than $110 billion on fast food in 2001. And in 2002, they spent double that on angioplasty, heart transplants and joint replacements. 

10. Every second 3,300 cups of coffee are consumed worldwide. Many of them in my office.

11. 18 doctors in the U.S. share the name Dr. Doctor and one is named Dr. Surgeon. Frankly, I don't think I'd go to a doctor named Dr. Doctor. It shows an appalling lack of creativity. "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" "I dunno... my name is doctor. I guess I'll be that." I'd be way more impressed with a Dr. Nurse or a Dr.Plumber. Or Dr. Middle-level Manager

12. Only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still survives. It's the Great Pyramid at Giza.  Four were destroyed by earthquake, one by fire and one by arson followed by plundering.

And finally, from my beer bottle cap:

13. Time is slow when your [sic] six feet below. Not only is that the most depressing thing I've ever read while drinking a beer, but it's also grammatically incorrect. I guess whoever is in charge of the pithy bottle cap sayings has been sampling the product during work hours.

Plus a Stinky Diapers from yesterday.

Welcome To Our World...

The H-bomb is currently obsessed with the show Word World, on PBS Kids.  Basically, the show's premise is that all of the denizens of Word World, and most of the inanimate objects there, are made of their constituent letters. So, for example, the pig lives in a barn that's formed by the letters B-A-R-N, like so:

 

It's a nice show, actually. Well-made, well-thought out (although I could do without all the jumping on the b-e-d they do), and entertaining. But I have a small issue with it...

The main characters are a dog, a sheep, a pig, a duck, a bear and a frog. All of them, plus all of the resident insects and all of the secondary characters talk. Except the dog. What's up with that? Some was pitching the idea to PBS and they went... "I like it! Talking animals made of letters! Great idea! Except... that talking dog thing?  Has to go. It's just not believable..." 

The pig bakes, the frog invents things, the sheep solves mysteries and the bear rides a bike. The dog? Mostly just digs in the dirt and makes dog sounds. That said, he is a pretty good speller for a dog, and has an uncanny knack of digging up just the letters they need for any given word. But still, it hardly seems fair that he's the only one who is relegated to non-talking status.  On the other hand, he frequently seems like the smartest one of the group, so I guess that goes to show that talking isn't everything.

Which may be why some people seem smartest before they've said anything...

An Open Letter

To Whomever Was Breathing in My Face Last Night (and you know who you are):

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy that now that the cooler weather is here, you've decided to once again join us for that nightly ritual in which we turn out the light, close our eyes and lay on the bed in approximately the same position for approximately eight hours.We really do miss you when you spend the summer nights hanging out on the back porch watching the bats and owls. But you seem to be missing some of the more crucial points of the ritual; most notably, the part where we lay in the same position for eight hours, give or take. I understand large-ish portions of the bed are taken up by others and I realize that you want to find just the right spot for yourself, so I'm willing to let your wandering around the bed pass mostly unremarked, even though you frequently wander over various soft and ticklish parts of my body.

But let me assure you, I'm still fairly young and in pretty good health. In part because of this whole laying on the bed with my eyes closed in approximately the same position for approximately eight hours every night. The likelihood that I am not just partaking of this nightly ritual but have actually expired is quite small. There's no need to make sure I'm still alive by sticking your nose a half inch from mine, huffing on me until I open my eyes and then meowing directly into my face. Really.  So quit it, would you? Or you're going to find yourself on the wrong side of the door.

Yours truly,

The one who prefers not to open her eyes in the middle of the night and find someone else's peering into hers.

Cupcakes for Lunch

It's a beautiful fall day here in SC (which means it only went up to 78 instead of 90) and a group of my co-workers (and one boyfriend) decided to go out for lunch. And by "decided" I mean, I sent around an email begging people to go out with me and then rearranged their plans for them until they fit with mine. During the resulting email exchange *someone* mentioned the new cupcake bakery that had opened nearby, so we settled on cupcakes for lunch.

Okay, okay, we didn't actually have cupcakes for lunch. We went to some other place and had something else. I'm sure it was perfectly fine. But , really, who even cares when it was followed by CUPCAKES!  And not just any cupcakes... these were lovely, fancy, cupcake-only-bakery cupcakes. *happy sigh*

So, the place is called, aptly enough, simply Cupcake. It's actually something of a chain - there's two locations in the Charleston area, and now we in Columbia have one too.  Ours is located in the Vista, in one of the lovely old brick buildings that were part of the heavy industry that used be in that area.  It's all retail and eating establishments now, but they've kept most of the original feel of the buildings, which I really love.

Anyway, Cupcake is tucked away on one of the side streets in a suitably pink-and-confectionery little shop.

When I whipped out my camera, the employees gave me a kind of a funny look, so one of my co-workers announced that I was taking photos for my blog. Oddly enough, that did not make their looks any less funny. Such is the life of a dedicated blogger. 

Anyway, they offer nine flavors each day, which includes five regulars and four that rotate on a daily and seasonal schedule:

The cupcakes themselves are beautiful and beautifully displayed:

 

I ordered a mocha chip, which is pictured here with my co-worker's black and white:

 

The mocha chip came with a chocolate covered coffee bean on top, which was absolutely the perfect taste complement to the sweet icing. Also sampled were lemon and white chocolate raspberry:

 

We all  returned to work contentedly full of cupcakey-goodness, at least until the sugar high wore off and we all crashed. 

(Mostly) Wordless Wednesday: If You Don't Clean Your Fridge Often Enough

You never know what you might end up finding in there:

Dear John

Today I'd like to address an issue near and dear to my... well, if not my heart then some other, equally vital portion of my anatomy.

It's the john. The can. The potty. The commode, the crapper, the W.C., the loo, the throne, the porcelain bus.  You get the picture, right? In case you don't, I'm talking about this:

What? Your office doesn't have one of those? (Actually, I'm surprised my employer hasn't already thought of this.)

Anyway, let me say first that I have no problem using public restrooms. That said, I HATE having to share a bathroom with my female coworkers.  Somehow peeing next to an anonymous stranger I'm never going to see again seems far less awkward that having to listen to one of my colleagues relieve herself and then have a conversation with her in the breakroom five minutes later.  And I especially hate knowing who had a bad reaction to their lunch at the cheap Mexican place, or who maybe shouldn't have eaten so much of the broccoli part of their beef with broccoli.

But since I don't have the option of a private bathroom, and I'm not willing to go that route up there just yet, I'd like to set down some ground rules that I think will help make everyone's communal evacuation experience better:

First, don't take the stall next to someone unless you really have to.  If you walk into a four-stall bathroom and there is one person already in a stall, there is NO REASON for you to take the stall next to them. How about a one-stall buffer rule, okay? I mean really, the more space between you and a coworker's naked butt, the better. Don't you agree?

Also, don't try to hold cross-stall conversations.  I don't know about you, but when I'm in the bathroom, I'm busy with other, fairly important stuff. I don't have any desire to bellow at you over the stall walls about when how to make a motion for summary judgment, or whether your research is going to be done soon. The bathroom is no place for multi-tasking.

Which brings me to my next point: cell phone use in the restroom. Just... don't.  I'm pretty sure the person on the other end doesn't want to hear you peeing, and I really don't want to hear your conversation while I'm trying to pee. Mkay?

And finally, I would just like to go on record as saying that I HATE (and by hate I mean despise with the fiery passion of a thousand suns simultaneously going supernova) self-flushing toilets.  We're all adults here. Surely we can be depended upon to flush the toilet after we use it. And AFTER is the key here. The self-flushing toilets in the restroom here seem to have some difficulty determining when I'm finished with them. It's like peeing into whirlpool; I half expect to be sucked down one of these days. And even when the thing waits until I'm finished with my actual toilet use, it doesn't give me near enough time for the post-use hygiene portion of the program.  I can't be the only one who likes to wipe for more than .2 nanoseconds before tossing the toilet paper in, can I?  I dearly hope not.

So there you go. I was planning on closing this post with a toilet-related pun or two, but I really couldn't think of anything that didn't sound strained (hah, that's kind of one isn't it?!), so everyone should just insert their toilet humor of choice here.

Oh, and somewhat appropos of this topic, there's a Stinky Diapers post from yesterday.

I Prefer To Think of Myself As a Code Buster

Last night Larry and I were watching this Extreme Engineering thing about building the new Oakland Bay Bridge, and how they have to build it all super-strong and fancy to withstand the Next Big Quake, since the current bridge didn't do so great during the Last Big Quake. Anyway, while I was watching, I realized that I'm in entirely the wrong profession. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's not that I have this burning desire to be a welder or work on a bridge construction crew. In fact, that looks like far too much work for my taste. But really, they have WAY better nicknames for their jobs than I do.

Seriously, how cool is it to tell people you're a rod buster or a barge wrangler?  And then there's my personal favorite - pile buck. (Though I originally thought they were saying "pile butt" which is much more fun to say, but not something I'd especially want to be called.) It's way cooler than saying "yeah, I'm a lawyer."  I mean, you tell someone you're a rod buster, and all kinds of interesting conversation opens up. You tell someone you're a lawyer and they either make a rude comment about shysters, tell some lame lawyer joke or ask you for free legal advice "for a friend."  And really, imagine the potential pickup lines that go with being a pile buck. I'm pretty sure no one's ever made any good pickup lines out of "research attorney."

So I've decided. Next time someone asks me what I do, I'm going to tell them I'm a case law buck. Or maybe a stare decisis wrangler. What do you think? Pretty cool, huh?

Wordless Wednesday: Five in the Morning

On the Bright Side, I've Been Told I Have a Hard Head

Saturday afternoon I was helping H-bomb put away his Thomas trains which were strewn all around the living room floor. I reached down to pick up Jack and Edward when suddenly the pointy corner of the arm of our chair leaped six inches to its left and viciously attacked my forehead. At least, that's the story I'm going with, because if that's not how it happened, then somehow I managed to hit my head on the arm of a chair that has been in the exact same place in the living room for at least the past 6 months.

I gave myself a good whack, too. Er, I mean, that evil, hateful chair hit me pretty hard. Larry had to get me an ice pack and some ibuprofen, and I actually felt dizzy and slightly nauseated well into the evening.  H-bomb also assisted with the first aid by offering me a kiss on my boo-boo and Jack the Bulldozer (who, you may recall, I was bending to retrieve in the first place) to play with.

By Sunday morning, I had a nice sized purple egg on my forehead, plus a mark where the chair actually bit me. (I bet you didn't realize they had teeth, did you?).  It doesn't look as bad today, but it still hurts, especially when I bend down, or furrow my brow (which I do quite a lot during my work day).

Anyway, I don't think the pictures really it show it in all its purple and green egg-like magnificence, but here it is. And by the way, it's really hard to take a decent picture of yourself at this angle, so I hope you all appreciate the effort I went to here. I've even highlighted it in a suitably putrid green color to demonstrate the color its currently turning. Y'all can thank me later.