Penny: Elle est un peu retardé

What happens when you put a little bit of orange soda in Penny's water dish? She drinks until she throws up. Which brings me to this: It's been a year since we got this little weirdo. Here's a look back at some of her dumbest moments.

• When she came running into the living room with her ball attached to her collar.

• When she tried to act brave around the umbrella, even though it was perfectly obvious that she was scared of it.

• When she loses her mind every time Jon opens up a bottle of near-beer (ew) because she knows what comes once he's finished with it:

• When she got attacked by a lusty chihuahua at the dog park.

• When she fell going down concrete steps and scooted on the ground, on her face, causing injury to her lip. (Sound familiar?)

• When she cried like a maniac at our company picnic every time Jon was out of view. In her defense...she really loves him.

Aw. Ignore her creepy eyes. They don't usually look like that.

Also, it may have been my fault that she drank so much water. I was the one that dribbled the soda in there, and I laughed until I cried because she was drinking so violently. But her water dish is fairly small, so I didn't think she could make herself sick on only that much. I was wrong. She's better now.

A Few Things:

1) We left a pot to soak overnight inside of another pot full of water. In the morning, the pot inside of the other pot was covered in a layer of clear slime (like egg whites), and it had changed color from red to pink. THE PLOT THICKENS: Once the pot was dry, it turned back to its original color. But when it got wet again, it turned pink again. The first person to give a semi-plausible explanation for this phenomenon wins my respect.


2) Jeopardy question:

Jon’s answer: Jesusbird
Actual answer: Cardinal

3) Corinne called me on Saturday to say that she walked into her bedroom to find a mouse all curled up on her pillow, taking a nap. One of her cats pounced on it, once, then lost interest when the mouse ran away. I guess that’s what you get for buying cats that look like this:

4) We went and saw Ghost Town this weekend. It was pretty good – I would recommend it, though it could have done without some parts, and I’m pretty sure there were some inconsistencies in the plot (though I’m not known for being the World’s Best Follower-of-Movies). But it made me laugh out loud a few times, and I’d give it a solid B. There were two F-bombs, for those who care.

5) This is what Jon looked like when we went to see the movie. He's great. I'm obsessed with those pants.

6) Afterwards we went to Banana Republic (the entire store was 30% off!) and got a couple of things. Jon is convinced that Robin from the Real World San Diego was in the store, but I wasn’t so sure. It definitely sounded like her, but she was at least 40 pounds lighter than she is right now on the current Real World/Road Rules Challenge. I would take Jon’s word on this over mine, though, because I’m also not the World’s Best Face Recognizer. I have a real problem with remembering faces. And he didn’t just say that it LOOKED like her, he says he knows that it WAS her.

7) The lady at BR that helped us out was a real piece of work.

Me: Could you check in the back to see if you’ve got this in the next size down? I already looked on the rack and there wasn’t one.
Her: [seven minutes later] There wasn’t another one out on the floor. Would you like me to check in the back?
Me: …….yes please.

After she came back with no luck finding one in the size I wanted, she spent at least three minutes arguing – literally arguing with me - about the fit. “It’s not too big…no, there’s supposed to be lots of ill-fitting, floppy fabric hanging around your hips.” Finally another sales associate intervened and took my side. That’s one thing I’m proud of from my experience of working at Banana. I never blatantly lied and told someone that something looked good when it didn’t. I was working when ponchos tried to make a comeback, and Banana carried a particularly heinous version in their 2004 fall line. Whenever anyone asked my opinion about them, I expressed my severe disgust towards the entire idea. As Best Week Ever once put it, “Ponchos are great if you’re caught in the rain, chasing banditos, or born without arms”.

And 8) When Jon was in the LA airport on his most recent trip, he witnessed the following incident: On his flight into Tucson, the crew was late, and they came hurrying around the corner to board. The pilot’s rolling suitcase accidentally caught the edge of an old woman’s wheelchair, so he stopped and turned to apologize. Her response? “Yeah, I BET you’re sorry”. One of the flight attendants rounded on her, “Excuse me?! Don’t you ever talk to my captain that way”, to which the crotchety old bag replied “Oh, drop dead!” She was promptly wheeled away by security, off to wait for the last flight of the day. (“Wait! What..? Where are you taking me??”) Just another reason why Jon needs to start his own blog. Hilarious.

Lovely

Who’s going to win this cycle of America’s Next Top Model? Will it be…

Thing 1?

Thing 2?

Or Thing 3?

*All photos taken with the trusty Powershot A520 during last night's episode.

Attempting to be Domestic

Jon’s been in town for over a week so far, hooray! On Saturday we went to a barbeque/potluck that my company put on, which actually ended up being pretty fun. I brought deviled eggs (paprika and all). Look at me go.

They took a lot longer to make than I thought they would. Then, on Sunday I made hot pudding (my mom’s recipe), which was a lot easier to make than I ever dreamed it could be. It turned out EXACTLY how it was supposed to, too. What a surprise; I’m pretty sure that’s never happened to me yet in my short history of baking. Is making pudding even considered baking? Anyway, hot vanilla pudding just isn’t hot vanilla pudding without the sprinkles.




If you give it a couple of swirls, the sprinkles make pretty, colorful designs.



But if you swirl it too much, the pudding just takes on all the colors and turns kind of grey. I don’t have a picture of that, because I was careful not to overmix. I didn’t want to ruin a good thing. Jon might have overmixed his, though.

On Monday night I made a cake from scratch. I used actual cake flour and everything. It turned out okay. Here it is in stages.

Here you can see that I wasn’t successful in dividing the batter equally. One layer is significantly smaller than the other so it got all dark in the oven. That’s the one that kind of stuck to the pan when I tried to extract it. Nothing that a little icing used as glue couldn’t fix.

And here’s the finished product:



Never mind the marks on the wall. And never mind all the frosting splatters and smears on the pan. And never mind that I don’t own a cake plate so I put it on a round baking sheet instead. The important thing is that it TASTED kind of good when we ate it. Not the best cake I’ve ever had…but a success nonetheless.



------------------------------------

In other, non baking related news, some form of insect may or may not have laid eggs in my kneepit. I’d been wearing the same pair of jeans for almost the entire day on Sunday, then at night when I sat down on the floor to play with the dog, something bit me. Does that mean it was crawling around in my jeans ALL DAY?? I never found what it was, but I got a lump behind my knee that really hurt. When I walked on it, it ached. How weird?! Yesterday I noticed that the initial lump had shrunk down a bit, but it had turned bright red.



This picture was taken at work two days after I got bit. Stupid Blogger keeps trying to reorient the image because originally, it looked like it was upside-down. That's because I took it myself by twisting around backwards and angling the camera. Then Blogger puts its stupid oar in and tries to put it the "right" way, and it just confuses everyone even more. Just forget about the camera strap hanging into the shot, and my bare feet. Anyway, I noticed that there’s definitely something black INSIDE of the bite, so I had Jon thoroughly inspect it when I got home from work yesterday, and he said it’s a broken blood vessel.

That’s about all the news. Sorry for the boring post. You were wondering why it’s been so long since I’ve written anything, and now you know.

Another Phoenixy Weekend

Our friends Kellie and Bryan were in Phoenix this weekend, so we drove up to spend a day with them. They came down from Vegas for a Diamondbacks game, but as it turned out Bryan’s favorite college football team (ASU) was playing Kellie’s alma mater (UNLV) the following night, so she surprised him with tickets to that game as well.

We met up with them Saturday around noon and spent most of the day laughing really really hard. We went to the fancy Scottsdale mall for a couple of hours before heading to Bryan’s grandparent’s house before the football game. They were spending that night there and had to pick up the garage door opener since they wouldn’t be back until late. They both went inside and Jon and I waited in the car. After a couple of boring minutes, Jon reached into the pocket on the back of the passenger seat and pulled out…a sex manual. (Me: “WHAT?!”) We were snickering over it when he reached into the seat again and found…ANOTHER sex manual!!! By this point we’re dying laughing, and I’m making plans for us to each be reading one when Bryan and Kellie emerge from the house, but then Jon turns serious and says, “NO. What if Kellie doesn’t know about them??!” So we quickly stashed them away and tried to pretend like we didn’t know anything. When they finally climbed back into the truck, I had to keep turning my face away because I’d start smiling like crazy. After about twenty minutes of small talk, something reminded Kellie that the books were in the backseat because she goes “OH! Why don’t you guys check out the reading material in the seat pocket?” Jon tried to play dumb (“hmmm…let’s see here…”), but I guiltily blurted out “WE ALREADY SAW THEM!!!!” When Jon told them the reason why we ultimately decided not to bring it up, we all laughed until we cried. [Footnote: Apparently someone gave the books to them as gag gifts when they first got married. The reason they were in the truck is because when they were waiting for their house to be built, they moved some of their stuff into a friend’s house for a while. But they didn’t want to take the books there in case someone came across them, so they hid them in the car instead, and they’ve been there ever since.]

The football game was a lot of fun, even though our seats were ultra-nosebleed. To beat the traffic, we left partway into the fourth quarter, and apparently that was when the game got really exciting. Oh well. At least we got to see some super awesome marching band formations.

Jon and I went to church with my aunt and uncle on Sunday. One speaker gave a good talk on missionary work and conversions. She was barely a year old, and the youngest of five children, when their next door neighbor began inviting the kids in her family to Primary activities to give the mother a break for the afternoon. Eventually the whole family was converted, and the speaker went on to explain about all the other conversions that happened as a result of that one woman who invited the kids to Primary. All the children were married in the temple and a few had sons that served missions. The woman that was speaking had a son who served in Mexico several years ago, and she told a few conversion stories from his mission. The best one went like this: He and his companion were riding their bikes past a park that was well-known for gang activity. On this particular day, one gang was having a hip-hop dance off. The two missionaries stopped to watch, and after a few minutes the gang leader came over and, in irritation, asked her son if he thought he could dance better than they could. Apparently her kid is a dancer, because he went over, did “eight pirouettes into a split”, then break-danced for a few minutes. So then they all started begging him to dance for them in a battle between them and their rival gang. He told them that he’d have to speak to his mission president, but that if he got the okay, he would be “proud to represent their gang” in the battle, so long as they all turned up the day after for a 30 minute discussion about Christ. Surprisingly, the mission president okayed him to dance, and he won. Sure enough, the entire gang and their families showed up the next day for the discussion, and one of them was eventually baptized.

…And now the reason why I just told that entire story. We got home from church, and my uncle Dave goes “do you remember the talk about the missionary that won the gang dance battle? He ended up being on some little dancing show on TV and he did really well.” In a split second, I remembered that she said her son’s name is…




















...
































BENJI!!!!!! What on earth?!? How random is that?! I mean, I knew he was Mormon, and I probably should have made the connection before then, but still! Crazy! Also, I kind of thought she was exaggerating when she said eight pirouettes, but it turns out she probably wasn’t. I’ve seen him do it, maybe. Clarification – I was never a big Benji fan. Travis was robbed. But it was exciting anyway.

Corinne got stuck in an elevator today. She called me at about 10:00 just to help pass the time while waiting to be rescued. I couldn’t stop laughing, especially when ten minutes after the elevator company was supposed to have arrived, the building superintendent hollered through the closed doors, “ma’am, are you still there??” I like to think that afterward, he mentally beat himself up for asking such a stupid question. Dummy. Anyway, apparently this isn’t the first time Corinne has had issues with this elevator - one time she and Kyle were stuck for almost two hours. And another time she stepped out of the lift only to find that it had stopped a good foot above the floor, and she got whiplash from the unexpected drop. Like walking off a curb without realizing it’s there, except for funnier. Anyway, she eventually made it out of the stuck elevator unscathed, and nothing could have put me in a better mood this morning than being a part of the entire experience.

And that's about it. Kthxbai.

My Thoughtful Husband

Jon’s office building is attached to a big warehouse/machine shop, where they build all the surgical equipment that his company sells. The entire complex is in an undeveloped, desert-y area, and they tend to get lots of bugs and lizards and stuff in the building (earlier this year they found a baby diamondback rattlesnake in the hallway.) Anyway, two days ago Darren in the machine shop started screaming like a little girl when he saw THIS walking across the floor. Jon was kind enough to bring it home so I could see it – I’ve had horrible nightmares the past two nights. Thanks, honey!

Staring at that thing’s face literally makes me ill. I hate it.

Mood Music

This song makes me sad.

	Andrew Bird - Cataracts
	Found at skreemr.com

This song makes me happy.

	I'm From Barcelona - Treehouse
	Found at skreemr.com

Favorite Conversation So Far Today

[Background information: Jon bought a nice belt to wear with his suits a couple of weeks ago, but when he was packing for his current trip to Chicago, from which he will be returning in a couple of hours, he couldn't find it anywhere. The following conversation took place this morning, over the phone.]

Me: I found your belt.
Jon: Where was it?!
Me: On the camp chair, under a suitcase [we have suitcases and duffel bags all over our apartment]
Jon: Oh.
Me: [Trying to fold up the camp chair to put it back in the closet, where it belongs] I can't figure out how...never mind, I got it.
Jon: Figure out what? Oh...you're trying the belt on?
Me: ......NO..!!!!??!?!?? ....I was folding up the camp chair!!!! (?????)

Proud to be Canadian

I realized a few weeks ago that whenever people go from light to dark, they go WAY dark. Wouldn't it be kind of unique if someone just went kind of light brown? You really don't see that very often. Someone should totally do it. I will. Okay, I did. I'm hesitant to post the picture of the results, though, because I had lighting issues and the color isn't well represented. But it's the best I could do, and besides, the reason for the picture was two-fold: so you could see the new color, and so you could see the fabulous scar that is the result of my recent fall. Nothing a little Mederma applied three times daily for 6-8 weeks can't fix, I hope.













You can't tell very well because the flash lit up my hair, but the color is kind of a honey brown. It all turned out really well, I think.

On my way home from the salon, I passed a car that had an "Irish Bride"(?) decal in the back window, the license plate said "Cullen", and the plate cover read "Proud to be IRISH". Does this mean that she married an Irish guy (whose first or last name, or both, is Cullen) and that she now considers HERSELF to be Irish?! Because I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way.

Anyway, that's all the news I've got. Have a supergreat weekend.

Ew.

I was standing in line at Walgreens two days ago, waiting to buy two bags of Ricola Honey Lemon Throat Lozenges with Echinacea, when I saw THIS , trying to hang out with the candy in front of the checkout counter:



A lady cut in line in front of me while I snapped this picture with my camera. I have no idea why it came out so small, but let me just make it very clear --- this is a PICKLE in a POUCH. Juice and all. Keep in mind that I'm not anti-pickle, under the proper circumstances, but I seriously almost started gagging when I saw them. All I could think of is those bags that people have to wear after having a colostomy. Sorry. Ew. Even worse, the advertised flavor of the pickle on the right is "zesty garlic". Anyway, I came home and told Jon all about it, and he thought I was crazy, because apparently colostomy pickle pouches have been around FOREVER. He launched into some long disgusting shpeel about how truck drivers love them because apparently you don't have to touch the pickle to eat it, you just squeeze it out the top. Am I the only person that has never seen one of these before?? Am I overreacting??!

What we've been up to

Jon has been home for six whole days, hooray! Here’s a glimpse into what we’ve been doing since I last posted.

1) We went shopping. I got two new pairs of shoes.

I got these ones at Dillards. They were 75% off. Thanks, Labor Day Sales!

Pewmas

2) We went and got massages at a spa. The entire thing was amazing, minus the uncomfortable incident where Edward thought that the edge of my shoulderblade was a giant knot. He worked at it for two minutes until I shifted my body, then he moved on.

On our way back from the spa, the sun was setting to the west and a huge storm was happening in the south. This picture was taken with Jon’s phone. Turns out the camera on his phone takes better pictures than the old Powershot A520.



Since we were driving south when I took this, we ended up running right into that storm. It was literally the hardest I’ve ever seen it rain anywhere in my entire life. So exciting.

3) We rented West Side Story. I’ve been wanting to watch it with Jon for YEARS and I finally forced him to sit through it. Such a good movie…

4) Jon got rid of some old t-shirts. Best day ever! He’s got a closet full of old, holey, stretched out tees that drive me crazy. He finally turned a few into rags last night. Then he took his old Stussy tee, the worst of them all, and cut the sleeves off. He was pretty pleased with himself, marching around the apartment, and when I told him how excited I was that he was finally getting rid of that thing, he said, “I’m not getting rid of it…I just wanted to cut the sleeves off.” Here he is looking particularly white trash. Ew.





5) We ate lots of raspberries. Jon bought a couple of cartons of mutant crack-berries that were huge and delicious. Look at the size of this thing.



6) I randomly developed the awful habit of grinding my teeth in my sleep. I have no idea where it came from – I’m not stressed out or anything. But I have literally woken myself up a few times throughout the past week or so. Annie and I shared a room almost our entire lives growing up, and she’s a severe teeth grinder. She eventually got fitted for a rubber tray thing that she had to wear every single night to protect her teeth, and she’d STILL go at it. Only it would make a loud squeaking noise instead of a grinding noise.

7) Jon made an amazing Crockpot dinner. Beef, sweet potatoes, sweet onions, and carrots, simmered for half the day in a mixture of near-beer, Worcestershire sauce, maple syrup, lime juice, and some other stuff. It was supposably an actual recipe that he found online. AMAZING.

That's the news since I last posted. But something that happened a few weeks ago that I keep forgetting to mention - Severus, the second and final snape, died. Let's have a moment of silence for the dumbest creature alive. He somehow managed to get his head trapped under his fake hollow log. Jon was sad, but I call it survival of the snapes that don't get their heads stuck under their homes. The end.

PS - Sorry for the long gap between my last post and this one.