Smelly

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Frog

For Christmas someone in the better-half’s extended family gave me a plug-in fragrance defuser thing. You know, like one of those Glade things, only this was some other brand that I’ve never heard of and it really doesn’t matter. We use one of those things in the guest bathroom because that’s where the litter box is. I tend to buy the “fresh linen” scent because it is subtle but does the trick of masking cat deposits.

I plugged the gift into an electrical socket and after about five minutes unplugged it and threw it into the kitchen trash can. It was so overwhelmingly cloying that I thought we might both end up with aneurysms. After a little while in the trash can, the better-half swore at the stench and took the bag out to the super can. It sat in the super can for a couple of weeks. This past Saturday we took all the trash and recyclables to the dump. When the better-half put the super can on the truck, we could still smell that plug-in thing–it overpowered a month’s worth of trash. How in the hell did anyone from the manufacturer to the person who gave me the thing think I could possibly use that in my house?

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90 percent of everything is crap

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Frog

In 2004 we bought all new appliances before we moved into this house (Jan ’05). Those appliances were the dishwasher, microwave, stove, refrigerator, washer and dryer.

We have had the following repaired: dishwasher, refrigerator and now the stove. The upper oven’s upper element has welded itself broken. That means no broiling and no toasting until sometime next week. It’s time to get the cheap toaster oven out of the attic.

REALLY!? That’s 1/2 of all the appliances have crapped out in some way in the last nine years. Even though that’s not 90%, the title of this post is the phrase we use around our house and it’s close enough when every repair starts off at $84 just to have the guy show up to tell us something is broken.

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Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Frog

I’m ready to see what 2013 has in store.

I forgot to link to the books I read last year. Telegraph Avenue is still in progress…

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Frustrating Record Keeping

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Frog

The other day my sister brought over a box of old photos that our parents gave her and we scanned the contents of the box. My sister and I (wo)manned one scanner and the better-half and one of our nieces manned the other scanner. The project took a few hours just to get all the photos scanned and my sister helped with guessing dates when there were no dates listed on the photos. I think the record keeping gene must skip a generation. I have it, but my mother did not.

My mother was a total slacker when it came to marking photos. My paternal grandmother was a bit better but today when I got out old yearbooks to attempt to identify school pictures most of the dates my grandmother scribbled on the backs of photos just don’t line up with the yearbooks. How in the heck does that happen?

For instance, here’s a picture of me (in front) and a bunch of kids. We have no idea who any of these kids are. Not one face registered with us and yet they were in our backyard with me:

A note on the back would have been nice. I joked with my sister that the next time I see our mother I’m going to give her a piece of my mind about the lack of notes. Of course that conversation will have to be at a seance or on some sort of astral plane.

At some point when I muster the endurance, I’m going to scan the boxes of photos we have in our guest bedroom closet. It’s a boatload of photos and they are in no logical order. At least I’ll have an easier time with dates, places and people since nearly all of the photos we had printed back in the early years of our relationship were date stamped on the back–thank you photo processing place.

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The Mailbox Bandits

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Frog

Last night we went to our local fire station to hear the apology of the young men who beat the heck out of our mailbox. There were two of them and they are both 18 years old. That’s a pretty important piece of information because what are 18 year olds? They are adults. So, when one of the victims asked the parents of one of the young men if they knew where their ADULT children were at 3am the night of the mailbox smashing extravaganza, I rolled my eyes.

Yes, parents hate on me whenever I point that obvious information to them, but your kids are adults when 18 rolls over on their personal odometers. They may not be grown-ups, but they are adults and the sooner you accept that the better. My former supervisor would always answer me with yes, but they aren’t ready yet. OK, fine. The fact remains they are adults and everyone in the equation needs to take a big whiff of reality. I suppose when the judge is chatting with these adults about the various misdemeanor charges and that one felony charge then reality is going to smell kind o’ rank.

Speaking of rank, the group of people last night nearly went over the edge with the SHAMING (really, they did not target specific people so I don’t care if someone had a cold or cancer or whatever–having property damage sucks no matter what your level of health happens to be). We took a different tactic than punishing them even more (they’ve been reparing or buying new boxes for the last week and have been arrested), we told them we didn’t need to be reimbursed for the mailbox and that we appreciated their apology. I also thanked one of the parents for stepping up and doing the right thing by their neighbors. I wished the young men good luck in front of the judge. I really hope they don’t get shackled with a felony because that will just suck for them for a good long time.

Speaking of neighbors and rank smells…we could tell from one of the cars in the parking lot that the couple who live next door to us was going to be at the meeting. We’ve never met either of them–the lots are large and their house isn’t visible from the road. When he came over to introduce himself as a disabled veteran (no lie), the better-half said yeah, we’re your next-door neighbors. The guy looked us up and down AFTER HE ASKED MY NAME 3 TIMES (I have 5 letters in my name and it isn’t pronounced Mxyzptlk) and then asked us how long we’ve lived here (7 years, almost 8). After we let that hover around for a minute, he started in on some crazy talk about how we put up an Obama sign in 2008 and we must be some kind of odd ducks. Thank goodness the meeting started because he started yammering about Obamacare. We left without saying good bye to him. I tell you we are surrounded by nutjobs.

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She comes out swinging on Boxing Day

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Frog

Christmas Eve is always spent with the better-half’s family. I’ll say this about this year’s gathering: nice, loud and fun. I’ll say this about the food: boring. I was one of the last folks to go through the buffet line and because I was dodging other people in the kitchen, I sat down too quickly. I got back up to grab a roll and realized the gravy was hiding over near the bread which was also way out of the buffet line of sight. I got excited about the gravy because it made me think I’d missed the mashed potatoes and stuffing. I scanned the line again and y’all…they served neither.

My plate this year looked like the red-headed stepchild of Christmas dinner plates. Allow me to describe my plate:
A small scoop of cheesy potatoes (the best dish aside from our ham)
A roll (no butter)
A bit of spinach salad because of the strawberries
A spoonful of green beans that were possibly the most bland thing I’ve put in my mouth all year (seriously, how do you screw that up?)
A spoonful of rice salad that was basically rice and pineapple chunks (WTF?)
A small scoop of spinach and artichoke dip from the appetizer table

I could have had some of our ham but I’d already eaten my weight as we were slicing pieces and the turkey didn’t seem to be worth the trouble. I completely skipped over the mixed vegetable bowl because it looked like someone opened a freezer bag and nuked it to death.

By eating basically nothing for dinner, I was thrilled to hear the gingerbread cake was made with actual shredded ginger and Guinness. Outstanding. I teased the baker that she was going to have to bring it every year because it will become the thing that she must bring no matter what. And, that is fine with me because oh my goodness. Next year, I’ll just skip to a slice of that.

Christmas morning was a totally different story because my sister rocks a breakfast casserole. I know we ate lots of other tasty things, but that breakfast casserole is the stuff of dreams. I stole half of a slice off one of the niece’s plates it was that good.

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Merry Christmas Eve (and happy wishes for tomorrow too)

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Frog

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Stop! Hammytime.

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Frog

Yes, Virginia, there is a Christmas ham.

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It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Vandals (but no Visigoths)

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Frog

Yesterday morning, I noticed something laying in the driveway. I couldn’t tell what it was from the house-it sort of looked like a book. Because it wasn’t blowing around, I waited a little while before going out to investigate. Then I noticed the police car driving slowly into the neighborhood. I didn’t think much about it because they do occasionally patrol our streets. Not often and not since we settled the problem with the jerk running his heavy equipment through our neighborhood to get to his piece of property in another county. Yeah, dude, use your own driveway for that crap. I digress. The cop was in the ‘hood for a reason.

As it turned out the thing in our driveway was the door to our mailbox. Great. The first night after school lets out and redneck boys have nothing better to do than ride around whacking mailboxes. Isn’t that so 1981? Around Thanksgiving the boxes on the other side of the street were hit. Now, it was our turn. Equal opportunity assholes.

I’m not sure how many people got hit, but the next door neighbor’s box was up their driveway and as we were putting in a new mailbox (SIXTY DOLLARS!) a couple pulled up to tell us they’d been hit as well. We joked about electrifying the boxes or in our case encasing solid iron in plastic so when the bat connects with our box someone has to go get a cast…oh, a girl can dream.

I suppose we are lucky. This is the first box we’ve had to replace since moving in seven years ago and ours probably snapped because it was fourteen-year-old plastic, but it’s still a pain and an unexpected expense. The couple who stopped to talk to us said they were just going to bend their box back into shape and repaint it. We all laughed that knowing laugh because I can’t tell you how many times we did that at our other house. Our old box had duct tape on parts of it because there comes a point when you just don’t give a crap anymore.

The better-half and I decided we weren’t doing Christmas gifts for each other this year (we rarely do or we buy something for the house). After we finished installing the mailbox, we agreed this was one of the worst Christmas gifts we’ve ever purchased.

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Back on the healthy train

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Frog

Last Saturday we had some friends over for dinner. The theme was upscale pizza joint. We fried some cheese, made some delicious jalapeno poppers and put together homemade pizza (even the dough was from scratch). And, we drank some fancy cocktails. I had 3 cocktails and they sent me for a loop. Note to self, eat something during the day before you mix up a drink. I had these and we used this IPA. When we went to the wine/beer store, I had to ask for help on selecting a bitter IPA. I’m usually drawn to hoppy beer, but specifically finding a bitter was something that was out of my league. Anyway, I can’t wait to drink the Toxic Sludge by itself.

In preparation for the pizza joint dinner, we practiced our technique at the beginning of the week (testing sauces and toppings and mastering the pizza peel). Our pizza dough recipe produces three pies. For the record, we ate 6 pizzas during the time period of December 10-17. I love pizza, but I’m over it right now. Tonight, we’re back on the healthy train and it will be a vegetable-centric meal.

In a totally different vein, we went to see The Hobbit on Sunday with some friends. All of us enjoyed the movie, but we couldn’t help talking about how there are still two movies to tell the story. I’m sure I’ll read the book again before the next installment. I should time myself and see if it is possible to read the book in less than 9 hours since that’s about how long the movie version will end up.

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