SHUT UPPP

I'm a decisive person. I can look at most situations, find my favorite exit strategy, and act on it, usually quite quickly. I'm not always right the first time, but I rarely face a decision that is irreversible. This week, however, I was faced with a choice of utmost importance.

I was at my mom and dad's, hanging around with the dogs and waiting for my running buddy to get there, when I decided to cheat a little and have a Diet Coke. Maybe it was the Universe telling me that aspartame is bad and I should have had water instead, but I went to the garage (YEAH my parents have two refrigerators, I'm jealous), got a can out of the 'fridge door, turned to walk inside and dropped the mother effer. Noooo! It bounced around, finally coming to rest cradled against the door to the house, mocking my graceful hands. Ok, fine, I'll just get another - but wait. There was still a Diet Coke box on the shelf but - NO! - EMPTY!! I have the last one, and now it's super shaken up! So what to do: follow what I suspect to be the Universe's advice and leave the soda in the garage in favor of something else, or open it and risk getting sprayed in the face by a sticky carbonated bomb?

Of all the decisions I can make with a cool head - diffusing hostile work situations, improvising with entire classrooms of children, even the few and far between life and death choices I've made in the past - this one seriously had no clear solution. But I wanted the Diet Coke. So F you, carbonation, I'm going in! And sure enough, I wore about as much as I drank. But it was still good.

We've been over the whole "I'm a sucky cook" thing before, so you're probably not surprised to learn that I microwave. Like, a lot. At least two meals a day. To be fair it's not always TV dinners (Hello, Smart Ones quesadillas! Yum!), there are plenty of times when it's yesterday's home-cooked meal (Orrrr last night's takeout leftovers, whatever.) that just needs a quick zap before it's ready to eat. Anyway - I'm familiar with my microwave. Just imagine my surprise when I went to heat up my earlier and - WTF?! - there's a gigantic crack in the plastic, right by the handle. Hoooooly crap, how long has that been there? I'm thinking it's rather new because it's pretty noticeable, but that can't be good, right? And the inside panel (the one with the window) isn't cracked at all, but it still seems totally plausible to me that every time I turn the microwave on crazy scary rays of radiation shoot out of the crack and bounce around my house. To make it even better, it's the kind that is mounted over the stove, so the death rays are on brain-level. Fan-freakin-tastic.

So yeah, not only do I probably glow in the dark and emit small amounts of radiation, Silkwood style (Oh sorry, is that completely wrong to say?), I also get to wander over to the property management office tomorrow and tell them to fix it. Look for the "My Apartment Company Sucks" blog, more than likely coming soon.

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!

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!

Phone: Ring! Ring! Ring!
Griff: (answering the phone) What are you doing?
Me: WEAREGETTINGACARLSJUNIOR!!!!!
Griff: What?
Me: We! Are! Getting! A! Carl's! JUNIOR!!!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Austin area has gotten a little more delicious, and maybe just a wee bit more trashy: We are getting a Carl's Junior. I first discovered Carl's Junior visiting Griff at college in the Great White North (Lubbock) and from that moment on, I knew that no matter what UT had, Tech had Carl's Junior. Texas State wins the "best local food" award though, so neither school should even try. Anyway, every trip I made to Lubbock after that, the six-ish hours spent in the car to get there were all worth it because I knew that the delicious, greasy, star-shaped fast food WIN of Carl's Junior awaited me. Well, until the last trip I made up there when Griff told me that the Lubbock Carl's Junior was no more, which was also when I decided that Lubbock and I were DONE. So anyway, as sketchy as the Oklahoma connection is, I am freakin stoked. I give you:



Carl's Junior, FTW.