Nibble Dish (ex- OpenSource Food site) is probably my favorite recipe website, even though a lot of the recipes have ingredients I have never heard of.
Today I found that not only are the contributors creative, but they are also extremely sarcastic.

(from handmade_gifts)



The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me.

This offer does have some restrictions so please read:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.
- What I create will be just for YOU & you are allowed to make requests (and I will try to honor them).
- It will be done before 2011.
- It might be cookies, a mix cd, jewelery, a painted card, who knows!
- You'll need to PM me your mailing address if you're one of the first 5.

In return, all you need to do is repost this on your LJ (or on handmade_gifts if you'd like - or even both if you're ambitious!) and offer to make 5 things for 5 other people.</div>

Snow-from-hell weekend in haiku verse:

FRIDAY
3 hour drive home
mom long stuck on the highway
no room at the inn

SATURDAY
22 inches
and climbing. snow still pleasant.
ran out of hot tea.

SUNDAY
drank margaritas
bought mostly ice cream, pop tarts
worried about work

MONDAY
luckily no work
shoveled out snow around car
got car stuck on hill

TUESDAY
called tow truck, waited
called tow truck, waited again
tow truck canceled twice.

I was listening to (a slightly old) episode of All Songs Considered today and they were whining about the shuffle feature and how it breaks up the album. I won't argue, but I hear a lot of people whining about that so I'm fairly hardened to it. Anyway they were complaing that it might cause you to hear songs back to back that should never have been heard in succession (their example was going from Randy Newman's "Political Science" to Minute Men's "Fear is the Life of You") and this, they thought, was really disturbing.

Lately, because of several long car trips, I've been putting things like pieces of stand up acts and David Sedaris stories on my ipod. Since they are considered songs, they get thrown in.
I just had my shuffle give me THIS to THIS to THIS to THIS.


Eesh.

I HAVE GOGOL BORDELLO TICKETS FOR NEW YEARS EVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it's just a matter of time

Not much, besides curry and jars of half-eaten Nutella that I've left there. Luckily those are all awesome things.

( Kingsport/JC in Novemeber (photo journal)...... )

Bibby and I went to the Haunted Trail Walk in Scottsville on Friday, hoping to recapture this experience from 2005.
Since it was Scottsville (a tiny, creepily cheerful block of buldings with the-middle-of-nowhere on both sides) we didn't hold a lot of hope, and spent Friday afternoon imagining that an insane serial killer dressed up as one of the zombies on the trail and began killing people. It didn't help much. The trail was 3 miles outside Scottsville in the woods, and there was a trail that looped around starting and ending at an old graveyard covered half with real graves and half with styrofoam ones. Mostly you walked through the woods in the dark, and people dressed up like zombies would jump out and scream at you. There were a couple mad doctors "eating" people's breains, a girl lying in a bath of intestines, and an outhouse that a zombie with a chainsaw burst out of. He ran toward us with the chainsaw, but I can't hear a chainsaw without breaking into a run, so I didn't see what happened after that. The scariest part was the number of times I nearly grabbed a nearby redneck guy at the sound of zombies screaming. The trail ended with our zombie slayer guide getting taken by zombies.
But the night got gorier.
On the way home we rounded a corner in the woods to find a large siamese cat sitting in the middle of the road. Having handled hundreds of claims where the driver said "Well there was a cat/groundhog/squirrel/dog/deer/moose/elk/horse/cow/chicken/crow in the road and I didn't want to hurt it so I swerved, and that's when I flipped my car" I knew better than the swerve. I tried the veer slightly so as to straddle the cat (and hope it had the sense to duck) but it bolted right as I got to it and I ran right over it. Bibby and I debated about going back, but realized that the nearest vet was 45 minutes away in Charlottesville and we had already seen more intestines than we had wanted to that night. We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that it probably died quickly, and that siamese are a hateful breed.
We were so depressed when we got back to Charlottesville that we went for a hefeweizen at Applebee's. We and a group of guys in their 20s and 30s were the only people at the bar, and they watched had us spend an hour and a half drinking 1 beer they decided to buy us jagerbombs (which I have never had and, God willing, will never have again).
"What should we toast to?" They asked.
"Can we toast to the cat we killed on the way over?" I asked.
Everyone stared at me and after a moment of silence Bibby quickly explained that it was an accident. Everyone drank their drink, but as if they felt that I should pay for my drink in insults, the whole group of them started asking me questions like,
"Were you asleep?"
"Were you aiming for it?"
"Did you go back and try to help it?"
"Did you actually kill it or just maim it?"
Things actually got worse when a girl who had not only been on the trail that night but had actually been in our group AND recognized us even though it had been pitch black out there, came in and knew the group and said "hey I just saw you guys in Scottsville!"
They immediately asked her if she had seen a cat in the road. "Oh yeah," She said, "It was just sitting in the middle of the road. We went around it."
"How did you get around it?" I asked her. "We ran right into it."
"It's called steering." one of the guys said.

Yesterday my manager saw the Jump to Conclusions board on my wall and asked what it was. When I told her it was from Office Space, she said "Oh yes- I watched that in business class!" She then went on to tell me that, as part of one of her final exams, the class had had to watch Office Space all the way through and then, using quotes and examples from the movie, illustrate different types of business theory.
ack! ack! Who would do such a thing??

I went to see Harry Potter with Andrew and Bryan today and Bryan said when one of his friend first read this paticular Harry Potter book (the day after it had been released) he wrote the major spoiler at the end of the book on the hood of his car and drove around town. In addition to the random vandalism he received to the car from people who had not finished the book, he apparently returned to his car at one point in the day to find a dent on his fender in the shape of a broomstick.

I just got a bill for a loan I have through King College.

2 PROBLEMS:


1. They now have a website where I can pay online. NOW. After they have been losing the checks I've been mailing them for the past 5 AND A HALF YEARS.

2. My remaining loan balance is $38.19. My minimum payment due is $60

Thanks King. It's been real.

Kara, her daughter, and Z all came this weekend to hang out, go to Montpelier Wine Festival and do whatever Z did at the library for 10 hours.

At the wine festival we mostly tried the bizzare wines: Hot (HOT HOT) Pepper wine, Blueberry Muffin, Chilli Cheese "Dawg" (lick the cheese whiz the winery reps spray on your hand, take a sip of chilli dog wine, lick the cheese again) and Pomgranate from Peaks of Otter, Chocolate wine from Cooper Vineyards and wine from Stone Mountain that no one could remember the name of, but which everyone referred to as the "Pizza wine".

Like most neighborhoods in Charlottesville, my neighborhood is 30% redneck whackjobs, 30% rich white jerks, 30% rich white uva students (the latter not being followed with the term"jerk" to avoid repitition) and 10% whatever Andrew and I are.
This might cause a little tension, but tell me why, since I have move in here less than a year ago, we have had:

-our next door neighbors firing shotguns at our house in the middle of the day
-a police bust in the cul-de-sac by our house of who knows what or whom
-a complete shut down of our road due to 3 police cars, an ambulance, a fire truck and 2 police vans and a complete search of a house across the street

and now, for the last few days, a man that parks his mini van across our driveway BLOCKING IT and selling shoes out of his trunk.
Keith went down to him tonight and said "hey, do you mind not blocking my girlfriend's driveway? her housemates are coming home soon".
The man apparently felt that it was rude of us to ask him not to block our driveway and said something like "hey man- chillax! I'll leave in a little while after this guy finds the right pair of loafers."

My neighbors did come home, and said they will be calling the police the next time he comes over (which will be tomorrow, from the look of it). Which is awesome b/c the police are
A. jerks themselves
B. won't do anything but make the shoe guy mad
C. a pissed off shoe guy will then come back and join our next door neighbors in shooting up our house.

At least we aren't as trashy as Richmond (yet).

"Regardless of the extent of the loss, the adjuster must be able to articulate where the fire originated (known as the origin) and what caused the fire (known as the cause)."

are you freaking kidding me?

Travel writing story# 3 - Ireland, you piece of crap

( Póg Mo Thóin )

My small group leaders from church are supposed to be out of town this week, and just sent this email with instructions for all:

CL and I are going to head out of town to see her brother and family. Buckners, would you be up for hosting?  Dawn would you be up for leading the Romans discussion and being the time keeper?  Shirley, would you please lead prayer for one another?  Madeleine, would you bring some cool shoes?

sweet.

Travel writing story #2 - 500 word advertisement for Roatan Island...

( Roatan )

My trainer and I got a call today in the medical unit from a man who said his wife had strained her back and was going to the choir-practor for treatment.
Then we asked him about the passenger in his wife's car and he said
"yeah, that's George." My trainer asked him if George was a relative.
"Hold on." the guy said "Honey! What relation is George to me?"
He came back and said "He's m'nephew."
After a few minutes George, being injured, came up in the conversation again and my trainer tried to verify George's address. Finding it the same as the insured's she asked
him if George was a household resident. The man paused for a minute, then said,
"Yeah...he's engaged...to my...daughter."
My trainer, having not had a very interesting day, asked to speak with the wife, since she technically was the injured party, and verified George's status again.
"Yeah, he's my nephew." The man's wife said, "but he's not engaged to my daughter. They just have some kids together."
Unfortunately for George, he was also there and, being injured too, we asked to speak with him. My trainer couldn't resist verifying the status once more.
"We're married." George told us of he and the daughter. "But I'm trying to go to Georgia and get a job with a carwash."

travel writing Story #1 - Horseback riding with Charlie Izquierdo



( Diez )

Studying insurance is in many ways similar to smashing your face in with a large brick. For instance, my textbook spent the better part of a page describing to me what fire is. Not only that, I had to define "Fire" and answer
a few review questions about it, presumably to make sure I fully understand the concept. And look! Now I need to describe the difference between "Hostile fire" and "Friendly fire". I may need to cheat on the end of the chapter test. Right after I slit my own throat.