11-29-2011

Now that Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday are all officially over (well not exactly totally over), I'm now prepared to begin to think about Christmas. Or in my job's case, whichever seasonal holiday you choose to observe. Speaking of my job, we have a Christmas (used to be a tree) ladder that everyone can decorate with office-made ornaments. I made Post-It-Note-bread-people that are wearing finger tip hats that I cut off my hobo gloves. Needless to say, I'm already pretty excited about Christmas.

11-28-2011

Oh, Cyber Monday. I know I made fun of your relative, Black Friday, but what you've done to my bank account today was cruel and entirely uncalled for.

11-27-2011

Nicole and I have a policy of spontaneously awarding ourselves "prizes." Generally these are for minor accomplishments such as running 600 miles, or in this case buying a miniature, porcelain, teddy bear tea set to assuage for a really really bad sinus headache. Additionally, we're crazy cat people, and just so happen to have things like giant catnip filled tea bags laying around the house. It doesn't take a fortune teller to predict what happens next. Yeah, we're having a high tea party on an antique silver dish with our cats. That's real milk in the creamer because Mushroom takes her tea with milk. Not because she's British though, but because she's a cat. A cat that drinks tea. However, since catnip is pretty much crack for cats, Mushroom may have drank a little too much tea and ended up trashing the party then passing out. I belive that that's the definition of a successful cat party.

P.s. I'm fully aware what this post says about both my relative level of sanity and social life. I still like it and I don't care. I do what I wanna.

11-26-2011

The number of nice days left in the year for hiking in the woods are probably very limited. Pretty soon this cave and these bees will be covered in snow.

11-25-2011

I hope everyone had a good time standing in line for hours in overcrowded stores to buy a stack of VHS tapes and DVD's for 10% off. I was out burning up turkey and pie calories in the woods stomping in the glorious mud, climbing hills, and chasing Great Blue Herons for 11.2 miles this morning. Enjoy watching that Brüno DVD you got for 99¢. I'm sure it will be worth it.

11-24-2011

Thanksgiving is by far one of my favorite holidays. It celebrates eating, and if you've ever read my blog before, you know that eating is pretty much a religious activity for me. Quickly becoming another religious activity to me is running, so in addition to celebrating copious gluttony, we signed up for a Turkey Trot race in the morning. Since this was going to be a relaxed "fun run," I had grand aspirations of running with my little point-and-shoot camera to document the whole race. I started out well with a shot of the pre-race ritual of Nicole eating a bagel (maybe the ritualistic eating is why I like running so much). I even got a shot of the ritualistic, pre-race trip to the Porta-Potty. Now understand, I'm a bit of a germaphobe and have a paralyzing fear of public restrooms. Especially Porta-Pottys. Like night terror, screaming in my sleep level horrified. So before races, it's pretty much like a game show to get there early and pick the right door that no one has been to before me. Finding the closed down lid (pictured above) and still wrapped up roll of paper is pretty much like winning the all expense paid trip to Tahiti for me. Aaannnddd this is where my documentation of the race comes to a close. Right before we lined up, I decided that running with even a small, little camera would be no fun at all, so I stashed it in the car. Sorry, I really did want to get pictures of people huffing and puffing so they could eat at much turkey as they want. Maybe next year...but probably not.

In a move towards full disclosure, even the above photo is fake. That's not really the end of the race, and Nicole didn't really beat her dad. Her dad still has a bit of speed on her. Nicole's parents are cool. If you don't believe me, here's a picture of me doing festive holiday shots with my mother-in-law.

You can pretty much (rightly) assume that there was truckloads of food and that I ate it all, but I was too busy eating to take pictures. I did however take this picture because I'm still obsessed with the electric turkey saw power tool. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

11-23-2011

It's the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm fully prepared to out-gluttony this wee spider in terms of relative body mass to consumption ratio.

11-22-2011

Look! Do I win a prize or anything? I hope I win something good...like maybe a new car.

11-21-2011

These are egg rolls that my grandmother made. We keep a stockpile of them in the freezer for special occasions and when we want to be fat. Tonight is not a special occasion.

11-20-2011

Don't let this really hip drummer fool you. We're at the Beachland to see my favorite bluegrass band. For real bluegrass with lots of cowboy hat wearing and yes, I have a favorite bluegrass band. This isn't my favorite bluegrass band. They're the opening act but they were still very good, and even sang songs about bears.

When I saw Trampled by Turtles last year (11-6-10), I was a lot closer to the stage and got better pictures. This time I was shooting though heads, so I didn't take as many shots. I really like seeing live music though and I always wonder why I don't do it that often anymore.

11-19-2011

Look, Nicole is wearing crazy shoes again, and this time she's carrying a ladder. What could she be up to? Whatever it is, it apparently involves this very suspicious caulk gun and putty knife. Actually, she's not doing anything at all, because I won't let her do sketchy things like climbing on the roof since she's know to be "whoopsie" prone. Instead, I climbed my own clumsy self up on our sketchy roof to pretend that I'm a good and responsible homeowner. If you've ever read this blog before, you know that this is not true. Regardless, I could no longer put it off, and set on an expedition to find why water has been leaking though our walls and into our basement. This crack looks like a viable culprit. I did this which probably would have fixed it, but since I was already up here and had a full tube of nasty smelling sealant stuff, I did this to make sure I won't have to go back up here for another hundred years. Hopefully it works.

I wasn't sure if it was in bad taste to post about this on here, and it kind of creeps me out, but I think it's really crazy so I'm doing it anyway. Today while we were out doing stuff, we saw all sorts of police lights and people searching in the woods by a broken highway barrier. As always, I was curious to know what was going on, and always have my camera with me, so I took some pictures. The weird thing was when we got home, we googled to see what happened and if everyone was ok (so far they are), and came across this picture on a news site. If you look closely at the last two pictures, the guy in the yellow jacket is leaning into the car in both shots, and I'm pretty sure that little blue guy and I were taking pictures of each other. Creepy.

11-18-2011

Tell me I won't leave the house in a wool duffle coat, reflective running tights and Vans slip-ons to drop my broken car off at its sleepover. I'll make you a liar.

11-17-2011

Peep kicks.

11-16-2011

So back when I was in college, one of my friends started seeing a girl that liked to go to bars with her dad. In order to see said girl, my friend would have to meet up wherever said dad chose to be that night. No big deal. But wait, said girl's father happened to be gay and logically enjoyed going to gay bars. Gay bars with male exotic dancers performing on stage. This frightened my friend. As such, I was enlisted to come as "backup." I'm not really sure what exactly being "backup" entailed, but whatever, it was something to do that night right?

In any case, the reason that I'm telling this seemingly random story is because since my time in college, said gay bar has turned into a divey punk rock bar, and my friend's band was in town to perform on the same stage that I had previously watched a dude wiggle around in a thong on.

This band had a kick drum graphic that was pertinent to Nicole's interests. My friend's band was selling real records.