James Lind and the HMS Salisbury

Just for fun, I ate my clementine without peeling it. It's sort of smooshed now on my desk.
Since it was juicing all over my hands (and it takes so long to walk upstairs to the sink!) I had to stop the leak. Lo and Behold: orange juice...er...clem juice. Potato, potahto.
I will catalog it under Experimental Food Consumption...For example, if I ever get stranded on a deserted island with no fingers to delicately separate the fruit into sections, that's how I'll survive.
At least I won't die of scurvy. That's a history lesson, beyotch.

biological clock

My mom has this bizarre habit (she has many, but for today I'm only writing about the one).
She cuts pictures of babies out of newspapers and ads and puts them on our refrigerator. She puts strangers' children on our family's bragging space and then, THEN, she names them. She calls them truly bizarre things: "Bubbles," "Puff," and "George Clooney." The best part is that she talks to them.
The fact that it was only recently came to my attention as being strange probably just means that I really am her child just as I suspected. Don't get too close.

Perspective

This is a good bit of advice I overheard today:
"It's not an emergency until someone's head is on fire."

That's My Dad.

On our way to church this morning (what up, Jesus!), my father began his weekly rant. The unwitting subjects of this installment: squirrels.
He believes we have a squirrel infestation. Not in our house, but in the neighborhood. He proposed to tag each of the rodents. "Not to turn the color of their entire tail, but just to spray paint a little color so we can track them." And let's put out cameras. All over the house. And the yard. And I'll quit work so I can stay home during the day. Carly can take the evening shift because she has class; Mom can do early morning and Pops will get the graveyard shift (because the whole thing is his idea). After we get enough footage of the "experiment," I'm thinking we've got another Real World on our hands.

Car Troubles

Yesterday afternoon, three blocks from home, I became a law-breaker. Correction: I got caught breaking the law...allegedly. I say stop, you say rolling stop moving violation. Too bad people were flying past as the 5-0 was writing up my ticket. Where was your backup, Officer Sneakypants!?!!
Crap. Under the counsel of my good friends and fellow perps, I learned that there are many excuses for such behavior. One who has gotten away with 5 moving violations described how she once talked a cop out of the accusation. Their conversation went something like this:
-You didn't stop at that stop sign, Miss.
-Yes, I did.
-Um, no, you didn't.
-I did. And then I pulled up further into the intersection.
-Uh...no [insert Jedi mind trick]...ok. You did stop at the stop sign.

Pity Laugh

This weekend I had the pleasure of meeting my sister's longish-distance Boy-Who-is-a-Friend.
We started off well enough. He paid attention to my father's car show and complimented my mom's salad from a bag. I think he actually said, "wow," which is more than any of us ever has.
If the night had stopped there, he may have had a chance. Alas.
Matt and I took Carly and BWIAF to Figlio, our regular destination for fancy drinks and staying up late. He revealed his age: 18. His penchant for alcohol: that's real nice, in front of her older sister.... But he signed his own marching orders when he told us about shitbagging with his buddies. Apparently, there is a name for the egregious act of putting dog poo in bags and lighting them on fire. Who knew? She and I exchanged a look and I had to bite my lip to keep from asking Matt to remove the kid from the table. The moral to this story: good impressions rarely involve the word "shitbag."

On the piss

Maybe you wondered why I didn't post earlier. I'm not worn out from last night's crazy Céilí or mass consumption of ANYTHING green.
I'm trying to find something from last night to write about.
Matt had camera club and my book club had been put off for another week (assuming all members had better things to do). I recall thinking that I should call some people in case anyone out there was having fun. But I waited too long and phone rings were drowned by bodhráns and tin whistles.
There was a glimmer of hope when we almost went to the liquor store to buy some Guinness. But they were closed. Naturally.
Matt threatened to make me watch Law and Order (hate, hate with daggers), but we settled on the very Irish surfing movie Blue Crush.
Poor showing for me for the first ever St. Patrick's Day without celebration. Shame, shame, know your name.

Now that's some good craic

The wearing of the green.
The drinking of the green.
The eventual puking of the green.
A special toast to St. Patrick and his crazy snake-banishing pagan-converting ways.

Die Schnappi Story

Because I can't keep him to myself any longer...
It's SCHNAPPI! On the left side of the page, you'll notice a little German crocodile. Download his song. I would recommend the .exe file, but what do I know?
If this doesn't make your day better, you are dead to me.

I wish I was a little bit taller

When I opened an "NCAA pools" email, I honestly expected a story about Olympic-sized swimming facilities.
Since I no longer live with avid watchers and players, I forget the important things like
1. lingo ("I kicked the bunny to Kim"),
2. what it's like to watch sports with people who care, and
3. how we fit an entire DIII team in our living room to watch games during this bizarre festival of high socks and pasty white skin. You could say I had forgotten about joining in the Madness of March.
I have attended only one basketball game this year; made it just in time for the last 7 minutes (I had Gilmore Girls to watch, people). I recalled
1. how my intestines twisted each game I went to in support of my college roommates (GO BLAZERS),
2. how the last 5 minutes lasted an eternity, and
3. how surprisingly small people will throw themselves in front of (wo)men the size of Mack trucks. ON PURPOSE.
Raise your glass to the men and women of the bball-a-thon. May your shorts be long and your fouls be intentional.

Shaking fists at the sky...Bonnie Raitt revisited.

Noooooo...! James Taylor live cannot be scratched!* I just had a flashback.
Years ago I neglected the charming songstress' (Bonnie Raitt, not James Taylor) album Nick of Time and got wrongfully blamed for scratching it (which I certainly don't recall having done). That was back in the day when my little sister used to beat me and because of my generally pacifist leanings, I refused to fight back.
That was before we invented a little game we called "Whip-ya." It was pretty complex: we chased each other around the house waving bandanas and shouting, WHIP-YA! WHIP-YA! (No, I am not kidding.)

*Author's note: it was just a real funky beat he was laying down for "Steamroller."

Now, a tribute to the Don:

I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse...
Read this blog or die.

Ok, that's a little more violent than I generally like to get. How about this:

Read this blog or your horse's head will get photo-shopped into your bed by my extremely capable gentleman friend. AKA, the family muscle. I like to call him Luka.

I'm officially in classic movie appreciation love with The Godfather. Last night was my first viewing EVER. I know, I know. But now I will be a devotee until I get nightmares. Then I'm out.

I want to adopt Marlon Brando (rest his soul) and his stuffed cheeks into my family. Not that I don't love my real godfather (big ups to Uncle Jim) but he can't do an Italian accent.

Tony "Freakin'!" Fly

During a conversation with Lorinda last night, we discussed a phenomenon I like to call Radio-Station Additivity Disease. It is a matter not to be taken lightly. I am ashamed at how callously we laughed at this serious disorder.
Evidence suggests that R-SAD evolves out of an obsessive need to append. Please be aware of symptoms which include, but are not limited to, sing song verse of
station name: "KOOL 108!"

location: "Twin Ciiiiiitieeeeeeees!"

what: "Cool '60s and '70s!"
number of upcoming songs: "8 in a row!"
when: "Starts now!"
You may report instances of R-SAD to the Board of International R-SAD Affairs in Brussels, Belgium at www.BoardofInternationalR-SADAffairs.gov

Recently Sought:

I just Googled "git yer hair did."

I'll take a wind room at the Ramadan, please

Perhaps it was the 90 minute drive with an incomprehensible Irishman. (An auspicious beginning, no doubt.) Or maybe it was eating my entire dinner (including salad and desert) in under 5 minutes.
Possibly, it was due to the well crafted, impecably timed production of The Foreigner. Or the remarkable ability of Sarah and Mary to create hilarity from the painfully mundane.
Maybe it was Norovirus.

But I think I laughed harder last night than I have in a while.

Brand names

All cymbals when played solo and in syncopation sound like the AMC movie theater pre-show cartoon where the popcorn and the Pepsi hold hands.
And now I want enough Junior Mints to give myself a tummy ache.

Another bout of important knowledge to follow

Apparently beer worsens a stuffy nose. You can imagine my surprise. And perhaps you can also imagine then, how positively necessary it was to wear a Breathe Right* strip at Friday's on Monday night.

My dear friend Cristen monogrammed it for me (to be safe; those things are always walking out of purses and into the hands of the young).
And I swear to you that as soon as I put it on, my nose literally expanded. My nostrils could have held Sharpies. Not that I tried. I'm just saying.

*Everything trademarked will be italicized until I discover how to do the small TM. It could be a while.