SHUT UPPP

Shut the hell up.

No, really. Dale, Ben, and I went to see "Taken" tonight and I know this only happens because I have one of those "I like to screw with you" relationships with the Universe, but every freaking time I go to the movies I end up sitting next to/in front of/nearby the guy who insists on giving the running commentary on whatever's going on onscreen. I don't understand: just like I don't need your help watching basketball, I don't need your help watching a movie. I've done this before; I've got this. However, this guy seems to think not only his idiot wife needs the in-theater commentary (I'll wait for the DVD, thanks), but the entire theater needs to hear how he's awesome and has this whole thing figured out.

In the first five minutes of sitting by this d-bag, I knew I was in for it. He spent a good couple of minutes passive-aggressively berating the waitress because the bar was out of the two beers he'd ordered, and while the waitress was trying to offer suggestions he wouldn't even let her finish her sentence because he was making fun of her taste in beer. And apparently this was fine with Idiot Wife because she just said there and explained, "He's a beer snob." Uh, excuse me?? How about "Total d-bag with no people skills that shouldn't be allowed to talk in public"? I really hope the Belhaven he ended up settling on was laced with some delicious waitress saliva. I know better than to piss off the people who serve me my food! Anyway.

So the movie starts, and it's pretty exciting. He's making those stupid comments that people who have to say something all the time are known to make but they're small and fleeting so I'm able to let it go. Then at some point a car appears on the screen and suddenly this guy is four years old. He points and emphatically shouts "Audi!" at the screen. Wait, what? Yeah it's an Audi...the story's set in Europe, like every other car in the movie is an Audi. I almost got run over by and Alfa Romeo when I lived in Switzerland and it was awesome until I realized that European cars in Europe are kind of no big deal. Thanks for the update, moron, but from now on unless it's a Slug Bug keep your mouth shut, k? Then at another point the main character finds a dead girl (Don't worry there are a lot of dead people in this movie, I'm not really giving anything away) and it gets all dramatic for a moment, and it's pretty clear she's dead but just in case we weren't sure, there's Moron: "She's dead!" Good to know. The best one, though, came at the end, at a particularly dramatic moment of the movie when one character has the opportunity to shoot another character in the head and all is very tense and quiet. Our old friend Moron then advises the whole theater, "A bullet to the left temporal lobe, that'll almost always kill you." I couldn't help it. Tensest, most interesting moment of the movie or not, I freakin cracked up. Bizarre. And somehow, not that uncommon. Thanks for that, Moron in the movie theater.

But the movie was good and then we got ice cream.

Yeah I'm a GENIUS. You know how I spend all that time whining and bitching about stupid people? It's because sometimes I is one. So this morning I got up, played with the dog, and went to the gym in time for Abel's crazy ass-kicking boot camp class. About halfway through I was dying and when we went to put our hand weights down I sneaked over to my water bottle and took a couple of gulps. MISTAKE!! Apparently when I washed my bottle yesterday I didn't get all the soap out and I'm not kidding, it wasn't just a little soapy it was REALLY freakin soapy! So now I'm doing all this cardio and actively trying not to puke all over the gym. I actually had to leave class and go get some non-poisoned water and sit down for a minute because I thought I might die. It was awesome. Wait, what's the exact opposite of awesome? It was Republican.

Before you read this, I'd like to formally apologize to my mother who is a wonderful parent and an awesome lady and raised me much better than to get in a fight with a total idiot stranger in public. I swear that this almost never happens and I won't do it again. For a while. :o) Ok moving on...

Last night was trivia - YAY! And a bunch of people who I haven't seen in a while were there, double YAY! Annnnd some jackass decided to start screaming the second Duffy started talking on the mic. Not so much yay. There was a basketball game on that this d-bag wanted to watch and apparently he couldn't figure out what was going on on the screen without the play-by-play so when they turned the sound off for trivia he started screaming like a two-year-old who didn't get his way. No words, nothing specific, just a loud, sustained, Tarzan-like yell. Really, guy? What I don't get, and I never got the answer because he wouldn't actually talk reasonably to anybody, was why he needed the sound on to watch basketball. I mean, you get that if you're actually AT the game there's no commentators or anyone telling you exactly what is going on, right? They invented that job for the old washed up players and coaches who nobody actually in the sport wanted to work with, but d-bags like you still relate to because they've spent their entire careers being not good enough and not liked by their peers, and you both live by the delusion that if the coach/owner/boss would have given you one more chance then you would have been awesome. (With the exception of Lou Holtz, who is extremely awesome but is currently paying his debt to society for coaching the Eevil Notre Dame.) I don't even really know that much about basketball but I am perfectly capable of watching a game with the sound off because...well, there's zero things that I actually need to hear.

So anyway, this d-bag is screaming his head off and at first nobody can tell if he's just drunk or if he's "serious", and somehow we almost ended up (ok when I say "we" I'm really just talking about me and Ben) in a fight! Except I don't really know if it can be considered a fight if the best the other guys can do besides a Tarzan yell is to say "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" repeatedly to the trivia host and to yell "WHATEVER!" and ask if I'm retarded. I mean, I suppose it's a valid question, I was pretty much ready to cut a bitch with a butter knife right there in the middle of the bar. I have been looking for a fight for a while now, apparently. Oh, and did I mention that Fireman's #4 was on special last night and apparently I was reaaalllly thirsty and achieved Pluckers-like levels of drunkenness? Anyway, it was all about to get REALLY awesome and then...yeah, they just kind of left. As the guy's idiot friend left he smiled really big at Ben which Ben quite rightly pointed out he wouldn't have done if there hadn't been a massive oak table between the two of them and the friend commented to Duffy that he has some "real nice" trivia fans, like maybe he'd just achieved the burn of the century.

So that was trivia, or the start of it anyway. GTYO took the damn trophy back which is halfway fine with me because really we didn't want it again and I swear if she takes any of the screws out of the gnome's face I'm gonna paint its face like a pirate. Beeyotch. And we're pretty sure they cheated but they did win best team name for the 2nd time in a row even though their name was pretty lame both weeks. So we're gonna have to have a super strong showing next week because this week was kind of a bummer, what with the screaming Tarzan idiot and GTYO. Apparently I'll be spending the next week brushing up on my grab-bag trivia (so...reading the encyclopedia, I guess?) because that was the only round that we didn't get a near-perfect score in, like always. If anybody wants to throw random trivia facts my way I'm all for it!

Apparently there's something because last weekend I had no fewer than five brides-to-be that stared me straight in the face and refused to believe that we had no open fitting rooms in the store. Yup, we have almost forty rooms, and we've got people in every single one of them trying stuff on. People with appointments or people who waited up to two hours to get into a fitting room, just like you're going to. Here's how a typical encounter with one of these freaks goes.

Mere: Hi, how can we help you today?
Crazy: I need a wedding gown (Insert story here about how she has one that doesn't like or that she has ten favorites that she wants us to pull for her or that she is getting married in three weeks).
Mere: Ok, do you have an appointment today?
Crazy: No, I just want to try on dresses.
Mere: Well unfortunately this is our busiest time of the year so on the weekends all of our fitting rooms are assigned to consultants and right now they are all full with appointments and we're working off of a waiting list. I can put you on the list but you are still looking at at least an hour long wait.
Crazy: I don't need a consultant, I just want to try on dresses.
Mere: Thinking: Are you freaking kidding me, Crazy? I just told you what the deal is: I literally have no fitting rooms for you. They. Are. All. Full.
Mere: Says: I understand but as I was saying, there are no rooms available for you to try the dresses on in.
Crazy: Blinks
Mere: Thinking: You're waiting for me to tell you you're special, aren't you? You want me to say "But for you, I'd be happy to bend all the rules, because you aren't like those other people, you don't have to make an appointment and wait in line!" Guess what bitch, YOU SUCK!
Mere: Says: I'd be more than happy to put you on the waiting list, then you can pull up to three dresses and as soon as we have a room for you we'll page you.
Crazy: Insert passive aggressive (or sometimes just aggressive) comment here.

So Crazy registers, I put her on my list, and before you know it, she and her massive entourage (which may or may not include small children that are screaming and/or running away) have pulled about five dresses each and they are now trying to sneak into a fitting room. Really, Crazy? Did you not hear me when I told you that all our rooms are assigned to consultants? So the next thing Crazy knows, she's been busted and Brit or Mel or LC or whatever poor consultant whose room she tried to take over is walking her back up to the front, explaining what I just told her and turning her back over to me, where I smile fakely and let her know it will just be another hour or so. Also, I hate you, Crazy.

Oh and of course when she finally gets a consultant with a room the poor consultant has to walk all 30 of her dresses back to the front because she pulled dresses that were 2 sizes too small. Have I told you lately how much I hate brides?

I'm in a fight with a vacuum cleaner. Two, actually. The most horrible part of being mad at a vacuum cleaner is how to describe said POS vacuum cleaner. I tried exclaiming "UGH! This vacuum SUCKS!" But...it doesn't, and that's the problem. But saying that something doesn't suck implies that it's actually good. So WTF? I lose. And now I'm just ranting, and it's just words, because I have no good way of explaining what the hell is up with the vacuum. It sucks because it doesn't suck. Vacuums suck, they SUCK! Also, "sucks" is the only word I can use to describe something I don't like. So don't even ask.

So I was standing in line at Ulta this morning, just trying to buy stupid lip gloss and eyeliner and the inevitable happens: I'm stuck behind a crazy bitch with a coupon. Actually it was an entire coupon magazine like the kind you get in the mail. APPARENTLY, this lady is unable to read, so when the cashier gives her the total, Crazy Bitch tosses down the coupon thingy and says "I want to use this." Ok, no problem, the cashier looks at the coupon and then tells her something about blah blah, certain items are excluded, etc., which I get is frustrating but still, sometimes it's just that way. She even flips the brochure over and shows her where the items are listed that are NOT 20% off. Sure enough, the lady has a big giant Tigi set that she's trying to buy that is not on sale. Instead of taking it like a human being and saying "That sucks, but I understand that it's not your fault," Crazy Bitch flips the f out and gets up in the poor girl's face about it. So the cashier says she'll call a manager, who then comes over and says "Oh, that promotion doesn't even start until Saturday. See here? It says January 24." I scoffed out loud. Like, really really loud, not even caring if the crazy lady buying expensive shampoo and conditioner to go along with her tucked-in tee shirt, tapered ankle-length Mom jeans, and manly hiking shoes heard me. Because she might be nuts but I promise you, I'm crazier. But still nice! Anyway, the adorable mom/daughter team behind me laughed.
Adorable Mom: It never fails, right?
Me: Every single time.
So at this point Crazy B is raging at the manager, and she actually says "EVERY OTHER STORE WILL HONOR THEIR PROMOTIONS EARLY AND I EXPECT YOU TO DO THE SAME!" at which point I burst out laughing because a) That's not true, b) That's not a nice way to ask, and secret option c) I'm looking for a fight. Unfortunately for my fight, instead of turning around and attempting to clock me she throws this pedicure set at the poor cashier and yells at her "I DON'T WANT THIS AT ALL, AND I WANT MY 20% DISCOUNT ON THIS!" holding up the much-needed shampoo set. Freaking FINE! The manager just glares at her, pulls a 20% coupon out of the drawer, scans it and types in whatever manager code she has, and walks away, very noticeably sharing a Look with the cashier. I can't say I would have done anything differently, having been in very similar situations ("Your ad says $350 off every dress in the store!" "Ma'am, that is impossible, that dress is only $299, I'm not going to pay you $51 for shopping with us, am I?") but I enjoyed the fight. So in the end, the awesome cashier finished the transaction, tossed the bag at the Crazy B and just left her with a "Have a nice day." Aww.

Yeah, people are weird.

So I was driving home yesterday and I noticed that the Eevil developers are at it again. They've already put a BK within three miles of my house and, while I haven't had BK very often in my life, I happen to think it's absolutely delicious. And also it's probably the worst possible fast food that you can eat. Anyway, right next to this Eevil BK they are building...a Shipley's donuts. With a drive-through. WTF?! I might as well warn y'all now, it's on my way to work, it's on the right side of the road, and it has easy access. I'm officially going to weigh 600 pounds. Except maybe not because my mom saved me after I sent her a whiny text message about how they're doing this to me, I'm gonna eat all the donuts, etc. Here is what my beloved mommy wrote:

SHIPLEY'S donuts are made with toe fungus and taste like cat PUKE! Avoid at all costs!

My mom is hilarious. Thanks for that, Mom! I'll think of that every time I drive by there now. :o) Love you!

Remember when I said that I came back from vacation with a bunch of new reasons to hate people? Here's Mere's Enemy #389234, I-Have-The-Attention-Span-Of-A-3-Year-Old-And-The-Fitness-Level-Of-A-103-Year-Old Lady. She was on our shore excursion in Progreso, which was a trip to the Uxmal Mayan ruin site. I immediately knew we were gonna have issues when the five of us got on the bus and it was full of old people. Thinking to myself "Y'all know this is a long trip right? Like we're gonna be outside and walking for a good four hours? And this is southern Mexico, so it's, like, really hot?" I sat in the back and tried to give the blue hairs the benefit of the doubt. Ok, maybe "blue hairs" is unfair; that term is generally reserved (by my dad) for the early bird crowd at Luby's, but these people were definitely eligible for the senior special at most buffet lines.
Anyway, we arrive at Uxmal and begin our tour with Gabriel, who is living my dream and being a tour guide at an archaeological site in Mexico (definitely on my list of top 5 most awesome jobs ever). He tells us from the beginning that we will have about an hour long guided tour and then at least two hours of free time to explore, ask questions, visit the shops and restaurants outside the park, etc. Ok, sounds good. First stop on the tour: the Magician's Pyramid (awesome!). I'll even illustrate it for you:

Awesome, right? Like, you totally want to know all about this thing, right? Especially if you paid for the tour and then rode a bus for 2 hours to get there? Well apparently some of these people were less interested in the super sweet ancient pyramid and more interested in the iguanas that were climbing on it. I wish I were kidding. It's the Yucatan, there are iguanas literally everywhere, they are ridiculously no big deal, but to these four-year-old old people they were more fascinating than the giant chunk of awesome architecture they were climbing around on. About four times during Gabriel's first five minute talk he was interrupted by people saying "There's an iguana! Do you see the iguana? It's climbing right there! There's another iguana! It's climbing down the steps! Iguana, iguana, iguana!" I hate you so much.
Then I-Have-The-Attention-Span-Of-A-3-Year-Old-And-The-Fitness-Level-Of-A-103-Year-Old Lady wanders off to take a picture of the iguanas. While this guy's still talking! Whatever. Gabriel goes on to talk about some numbered stones visible on the side of the pyramid, how the archaeologists actually had to disassemble part of it last year during a pattern of very heavy rain, etc. so they numbered them so they would know where they go when they had to put them back. Now we're ready to move on to the next place but wait, where's I-Have-The-Attention-Span-Of-A-3-Year-Old-And-The-Fitness-Level-Of-A-103-Year-Old Lady?? Oh here she is, out of breath and drenched and wandering back up to the group, and just as I'm thinking "Damn, I hate that woman!" she goes "Question: What do those numbers on some of the stones mean?" I HATE YOU!
Pretty much my next hour was spent actively hating that woman and one or two others. Every time Gabriel would bring us to something new they would literally flop down on the ground like they'd just sprinted a 5k and then finally at the very last place on the tour I-Have-The-Attention-Span-Of-A-3-Year-Old-And-The-Fitness-Level-Of-A-103-Year-Old Lady finally just wandered away for good, found herself a shady rock, and sat there. That's ri-damn-diculous. I'm pretty sure our tour guide was as disgusted as the five of us were. Uxmal is large but it's nowhere near city-sized, in total we probably walked a half a mile, and it was in the morning so it wasn't even all that hot. Whatever.
Anyway, of course I took a picture of I-Have-The-Attention-Span-Of-A-3-Year-Old-And-The-Fitness-Level-Of-A-103-Year-Old Lady for voodoo doll purposes (not voodoo on her specifically, but on all that she represents). And if it looks like we were planning to drop an anvil on her from this vantage point (we were on top of a pretty huge pyramid)...you're not far from right.

As you may have heard (because I haven't shut up about it) I recently cruised with four of the most awesome people in my life. You may have also heard that large quantities of alcohol were steadily consumed, some by dubious means, by all of us. One of our prouder moments, I have to say, was the effective use of unregulated free alcoholic beverages at the Captain's Cocktail Party. Those things are amazing; you wander in dressed all nice, find a comfy seat, and suddenly dozens of waiters with trays full of drinks and appetizers are swarming the place, randomly handing them to whomever asks for one. Because we've decided we're special, we attended both of the parties (the one for the early dinner seating and the one for our later dinner seating) because there's no sign that says you can't. Now, before you get all up in arms and start screaming at me about how it's people like us who ruin it for the rest of you, taking advantage of freebies and driving up costs for everyone, examine this nugget of truth: You're just mad that you didn't think of it first.

Anyway - this is a story about me screaming at a four year old, not about differing levels of awesome. So I arrived fashionably late to the first of the Captain's parties and I strolled in (BTW: I totally got shamelessly hit on in full view of my husband and my friends while walking to meet them at their table. Score!) and had to play catch up with everybody at the table. Those waiters sure are on top of things at all times because before I knew it I had a glass of wine and at least three whiskey sours sitting in front of me and they just kept coming. Service = good! After they dismissed everyone to dinner (early dinner) we went and wandered around, then showed up again about an hour later for round two. Once again the cocktails kept magically appearing and when you're sitting still it's really hard to judge exactly how strong those drinks are. Yep, whiskey, I blame YOU.

After the appetizers have been served and the "You Know Who You Are" crowd has had just enough alcohol, people tend to magically get up onstage and dance. White people dancing = usually entertaining. This is when it happened. This was a moment that I am not exactly proud of, and I claim no responsibility what so ever because it's clearly the alcohol's fault. But I admit it, I was blinded by...some feeling I'm sure, and it actually happened. I yelled "homewrecker" at a four-year-old.

It all started when the OWPs were dancing, all cute and bouncy and liquored up and then these two little girls from Mexico, probably 3 and 5, got up onstage. Adorable! Katie and Mark (who don't fit in the OWP category, but were definitely liquored up) danced with them for a little bit and it was the cutest thing, and then an even cuter thing happened: a little boy walked over and started dancing with the oldest girl. Immediately, everybody in the auditorium started cheering and clapping because that's just freaking precious. Of course, some people can't stand to see other people happy. From across the stage came pageant girl. Now, I don't know for sure that she does pageants, I'm just saying with the big blonde bouncy curls, the heinous poufy tulle monstrosity she was dressed up in, and the number of people from "rural America" on the boat, it's a safe bet. So right, girl dressed up as a fairy princess cupcake runs over and gets all up in my girl's Kool-Aid, trying to dance with Adorable Boy! WTF?! Nooooo, beeyotch, he's already with somebody! At least wait for the end of the song, jeez. Luckily, Adorable Boy is also Stand By Your Lady Boy so he's having none of it and just keeps dancing with the cute little girl that he was with in the first place. Fairy Cupcake turns and runs back to her stage mom (who is standing right by the stage so you know she's a stage mom), who is waving like mad at her daughter to get back over there and dance with that boy. I'm not kidding! She's actively rearing a future homewrecker so that her daughter will be the cutest one on the ship! Apparently I harbor some very deep unresolved feelings of wrath toward the That Girls of the world who think because they're adorable they have the right to cut in wherever they see something they like, or I had a high school flashback, or I just saw it as a metaphor for a lot of what goes on in the world, but it pissed me right off. And also I have a VERY strong distaste for stage moms, but that's not new.

So yeah, pretty much I felt protective of the happy little scene going on between the first two kids and didn't want Stage Mom and Fairy Cupcake to win, so I yelled "HOMEWRECKER!" at them. We were in the back of the auditorium and the room was pretty loud and there was a band playing and all that, but still. Did I yell "Homewrecker" at a four-year-old? Damn right I did.

I don't know exactly what happened, either I asked for too much time off (totally a possibility) or they didn't have hours for me this week so they held off scheduling me until Saturday, but I ended up with a glorious two weeks off instead of just one for vacation. Before you get happy for me, let me remind you: I do not get paid vacation. I have this job that is honestly worse than most. I've had some horrible ones in my day (spent a summer in high school working at the local Putt-Putt, mind you!) and I've been in the workforce since I was fourteen so saying that I, at 25, have a freaking terrible job, that's something. Plus I've tried to quit this job like four times now. I actually succeeded once, for about three months, until a manager called me and asked me to come back. Turns out I'm really good at this job. But I hate it and it's toxic and soul-crushing.

Uh, anyway. I've had this week off since we've been back from vacation and at some point I clicked on the Craigslist classifieds, just to see what's there. Turns out the answer is a lot of stuff! And while I'm not the most qualified, I know I'd be awesome at a lot of these jobs! Administrative assistant? I rock at typing and answering phones! Preschool teacher? Those are the only kids I don't hate! (Ok, that's not entirely true for a lot of reasons but let's don't get in to detail here!) I've been waiting to go into this career that will save the world but in reality all I really want to do is answer phones. Is that so bad? Am I rejecting feminism and all that so many have stood for if I say that I just want to be a stay-at-home mom and maybe make a few extra bucks for my family if I can? Are those lowly aspirations? Is that why I've resisted and fought tooth-and-claw to not finish my degree? Self examination is not always comfortable.

I know that D and I don't have kids right now, so the stay-at-home mom thing is out, but I do know that eventually that is what I want. At least until our kids are in school. Why build a career that I'm eventually going to leave anyway? And why does that career have to be in environmental management, or teaching, or social work? Why can't I just happily answer phones for eight hours a day and be happy? Oooh or if the stars aligned just right, writing? Ugh. At this point, I know that anything would be better than the job I have right now. Even my friends hate my job. I get no respect (Hey Rodney Dangerfield!) from my superiors, most of my customers, or half of my coworkers, and while I enjoy the job some of the time, most of the time it's exhausting. Wow this blog SUCKS. I'm so depressed right now, I'm going to go drink a Dr. Pepper. Anyway - what to do? I guess step one: open resume, click "send".

Oh PS I hope everybody caught the new ep of The Office. It was awesome. I don't want to spoil it for anybody but Andy + Prius + Dwight = LOL'd 'til I almost fell off the couch.

My stove is possessed!! Apparently some invisible gremlin has decided to screw with me and it's interfering with my eating habits so I'm not too thrilled. This morning I decided that I was going to have an egg for breakfast (that's right, one egg, what up?) so I turned on the stove and wandered around the kitchen while I let the oil and pan heat up. At this point let me just say that while I've had electric stoves everywhere I've lived for the past six years I grew up with gas stoves and I still suck at using the electric ones. I hate them. Anyway - I went to check the oil and it wasn't hot, which was weird because I could smell that the stove was on (Reason #234 why I hate electric stoves.) and then I noticed that the BACK burner was glowing orange. Crap, really? Ok, so I turned on the wrong burner, whatever. I moved the pan to the back burner, no big deal, cracked the egg and continued to wander around the kitchen and suddenly the egg is, like, turning black and there's smoke coming off the pan. WTF?! So I pick up the pan and the burner underneath has gone from "Sidewalk on a Summer Day" to "Solar Flare" glowing bright red. Seriously, stove?

So at this point I decided I'd made breakfast for the dog (You're welcome, Rygel!) and I would just have tea so I set the teapot on the other back burner (not the possessed one) and wandered off again. Ok, fine, when I say I "wandered off" I really mean I was sneaking chocolate chips. Anyway, five minutes later I check it and...nothing's happening. Boo! So I turn up the heat. Still nothing. I hate my stove. So I move the teapot, turn on the front burner, and stand there. I hear the water start to boil so I get out a mug and a teabag and wait. A second later, nothing. WHAT THE HELL!? I'm tired of playing Whack-A-Mole with my stove, trying to throw a teapot on whatever burner decides to heat up, so I turn on the possessed burner. Sure enough, in about three minutes I have tea. After one wasted egg, a blackened stainless steel pan, a stove that thinks it's playing Whack-A-Mole, and thirty minutes, I have tea. Tastes like victory.

Right so on the first day of the cruise it was ffffreezing cold. Luckily, I had remembered to bring my super cheap mittens from home! Katie forgot hers but no worries, I got two pair for 40 cents last week (yeah I'm still not over that - it's so awesome!). So I let Katie borrow a pair of mine and I put on the other pair and...yeah, at some point one of the ones she was borrowing totally jumped overboard. I don't even know what happened, just all of a sudden she says "I think I lost your mitten!" and makes a Michael Jackson comment. We never found it on the deck and nobody ever turned it in to the purser's desk. Why would anybody want one black mitten?! Unless you're planning to commit a crime and need to not leave fingerprints, but even then a mitten isn't going to do you much good, you need gloves! I know because I kind of tried to show Ben how you could still pull a trigger with a mitten on but it turns out you can't and you'll look stupid, wearing one black mitten putting on a puppet show. Also, apparently in Lithuania they don't have mittens. Good to remember, what with me being 1/4 Lithuanian and all. Katie had to describe in detail to the little Lithuanian woman at the info desk that she was missing a mitten ("It's like a glove, but with all the fingers stuck together? It kind of looks like Michigan.") and had they seen it. Turns out, they had not.

I've decided that the mitten probably chose to become debris on a Texas beach somewhere, casting itself overboard, possibly angry that it was sold for only ten cents at Target. Whatever, mitten, screw you too.

I'm not the only cooking idiot out there! While trying to find a recipe to satisfy my sweet tooth (I always have dumb food cravings when I'm sick), I was browsing my beloved allrecipes.com when I read a review of some red velvet cupcakes posted by someone who is even more of a culinary joker than I! And I quote: "Just a tip: I don't think it will work for anything other than red. I tried to make them blue, substituting blue food coloring for the red. The batter turned green as soon as I added the cocoa."

So, what is that then? Finished Product Knowledge Fail or Creative Recipe Manipulation Fail? Either way I kind of love it. Also who wants to eat blue cupcakes? Anyway, thanks, food fail guy!

Dear Life,

Please ban the following things from my presence until further notice:

- My fickle internet connection
- People under the age of 20 and over the age of 60*
- Sentences that begin with the word "Question"
- People who use sentences that begin with the word "Question"
- Scales (bathroom and fish)
- Mystery illnesses
- Stuff that's dumb and doesn't make any sense
- Commercials for gyms that remind me that I haven't worked out in weeks
- Dog toys full of fluffy stuff
- Family Guy
- My upstairs neighbor and her pet elephant/camel/giant horse

This list is not all-inclusive and is subject to change at any time without notice.

K Thx,
Mere

* Exceptions apply.

Back from vacation! Already I kind of miss it and want to get back on the boat. Well, partly because I miss it and partly because apparently my body thinks I'm somewhere on the high seas - seriously, I can still feel the boat rock. BUT we had a great time and of course, I came back fully armed with tons of stories and reasons to hate people. Like you had any doubt! Give me a couple of days and I'm sure they'll be up here.

So yeah, per the agreement I made with the dog before we left, I did not jump off the boat but that doesn't mean I didn't contemplate tossing a few other people over the side, and the boat was full of some super classy OU fans who looked awesomely dejected in their Sooners shirts after their boys lost the championship game. I LOL'd as I passed a bunch of them playing roulette in the casino after the game, just tossing all their chips on red and watching the dealer stock up on whatever they were throwing out there. Because we all know: Why doesn't Texas float off into the Gulf of Mexico? Because Oklahoma sucks.

The only sad thing about leaving the country for a week is leaving our little pug Rygel at home. For those of you who don't know, we've had Ryg for over a year now and he's pretty much our baby. He's going to be in great hands, one of D's coworkers agreed to watch him while we're gone and she's really great and loves dogs and all that so I'm not worried or anything, I'm just sad that I won't have him for almost a week! Sad face. But this means that not only do Dale and I have to pack for ourselves, we also have to pack for our little guy!

Umm...this is embarrassing. I have gathered up all of his toys to find some that he can take with him and...yeah, pretty much everything is at least partially destroyed. In the bag to go to the pug-sitters with him is Woolly Bully, this toy that used to have a red face with floppy ears, and when you drop it on the floor it shakes and rolls and sings that "Woolly Bully" song. Unfortunately, our little guy has skinned it, so now it's just an egg made out of plastic with a bunch of holes in it that shakes and rolls and sings that "Woolly Bully" song. And there's a stuffed purple platypus that we got him the day he came to live with us (back when he weighed 4 pounds!) but he's ripped all the stuffing out of it. It is now known as his "flat-ypus" instead. Pretty much every toy he's ever had except for his squeaky barbell has been torn to shreds by Rygel, Lord Destructo, King of Killing Toys. And also shoes. Usually only my high heels.

NOM!

Here he is, hard at work on Little Bear (which we still have, although he's been completely de-fluffed) on the day we got him

Yeah it's still green but...now it's all colorful and stuff. I figured I got new clothes for Christmas so the Awesome Blog should too!

In other news the Cruise Countdown is whittling away and I'm pretty much bouncing off the walls at this point. I can't wait to get outta here and be not at work, not in school, and not available by cell for five days. Ooh and Mexico! And "Western Caribbean" which we all know really means "Gulf of Mexico" but apparently that doesn't sell as many cruises. I finally have a dress and the bottom half of a swimsuit and might go in search of a top tomorrow but there's a topless sundeck on the boat so if worse comes to worse then...you know...meh.

FORTY CENTS (that's after tax!) for two pairs of mittens (that's two pairs together, not per pair) and THREE DOLLARS AND TWENTY FIVE CENTS (also after tax) for a bikini bottom. The first deal was found at Target and the second at PacSun. Stuff THAT in your pipe and smoke it! Holla.

In case you don't remember my previous post about my culinary prowess, my history with food preparation is...bruised. When I unwrapped a very surprise and very much appreciated ice cream maker (AWESOME!) on Christmas morning, though, I decided that "cooking" ice cream isn't the same as cooking regular food. Just because I'm a lousy cook doesn't mean I will definitely suck at making ice cream right? Hmm...well, jury's still out on that one. I made chocolate chip peppermint ice cream yesterday and it was...kind of awesome, actually. It took WAY longer than expected but I think I've got my first trial-and-error list of dos and don'ts. Exciting! So thanks, Amy, for an awesome Christmas present and on a maybe-related note, I now have a bunch of lovely ice cream in my freezer, if anybody wants to come over and help eat it. :-)

Oh, P.S. Happy New Year. Cruise countdown: 4.5 days (counting today and the .5 part of Monday when we won't be on the cruise yet). FTW!