Seven years ago when I lived with Lori we had a weekly tradition. It was called Tuesday Boozeday. We would actually go out on a work night, drink beer and watch grown men perform a puppet show. They called it a poopit show because, well, they’re just classy like that.

I no longer have Tuesday Boozeday. I now have Ultimate Puzzle Night Tuesday. I just started it last week. It’s similiar in a lot of ways to Boozeday. Obviously they are both performed on Tuesday nights, they tend to keep you from sleep and there’s a little bit of shame associated with both of them which in turn urges you to lie when someone asks what you did last night.

The puzzle I decided to do is one that mom bought me several years ago as a gift. I found it last summer when I was cleaning out my living room closet. It looked like fun, it was free and it was readily available.

As soon as I started looking at it and opened it up I realized that it was going to be pretty difficult. But I decided to be optimistic, sat down and started sorting through pieces. The puzzle came with a little booklet that was sealed and it said on the outside not to open because inside would tell you how to solve the puzzle. So I set that aside.

I finished the border and was feeling pretty good about myself:

Then I started the hard part of working the middle sections. Not only do you not have a picture of the puzzle on the outside of the box, but every puzzle piece is identical. I’m not kidding:

And to make matters worse it’s all just hedges and shrubbery and flowers and you can’t make heads or tails of the whole thing. But I patiently worked on it every evening until I had it about 1/3 completed. I was pretty happy with myself and decided to take a photo with me holding the frame. I set the timer on the camera and held up my frame and dumped the entire thing onto the floor.

This made me extremely angry and I had to put the puzzle away for a few days. Then I decided to start again, but I found it incredibly difficult and frustrating and decided to open my solution booklet. Inside was a black and white picture that was 1/10th the size of the puzzle. That was the solution. It was like a final screw you from the puzzle.

So I sat there for a little longer, getting more and more angry and not enjoying myself at all, when I finally decided to just quit. I started to take it apart when I realized that EVERY PIECE WAS THE SAME. I could just put any piece where I wanted to and complete the puzzle. So that’s what I did.

You may think that that’s not very rewarding; completing the puzzle incorrectly. And you’d be right. It’s not very rewarding…

But it’s rewarding enough.

Did you ever wonder why on car commercials they show someone sticking their arm out the window and then have a disclaimer that says “never stick your arm out of the car window”?  I know I have.  As long as you are on the open road with no tree branches hanging over I always figured it was fine to stick your arm out the window.  Boy was I wrong.

I was driving home from Brookings on Sunday and it was a warm day.  I had all my windows open and was cruising down 38 probably going about 65.  And I stuck my arm out the window, feeling the warm breeze rushing past.  When suddenly a fly or some other insect slammed into the palm of my hand going 65 miles per hour.  It stung, it shook me up and it left it’s guts all over my hand.  So that’s why you keep your hands in, the windows rolled up and the a/c on. 

I titled this Recipe #1 because I expect that once you try this delicious recipe I will be overwhelmed with requests for new recipes.  Let me just give you a little background on where my thought process lies before I unload this amazing treat upon you.  When we were kids mom had a series of cereals that we always usually had in the house.  At the time I felt deprived as there were no “Fruit Loops” or “Captain Crunch”, but as an adult those same cereals are some on my favorites.  They are as follows:  Raisin Bran, Cornflakes, Cheerios and Puffed Wheat.  They weren’t these name brands, they came in bags and had names like “Happy-o’s” and “Flakes ‘O Corn”, but they were still good.  And once you put them into those nifty plastic cereal containers you couldn’t tell the difference.

We never got Honey Nut Cheerios, but occasionally if mom had some honey in the house, we would take our Happy-O’s and put honey on them and then the milk.  It was a make your own Honey Nut Happy-O’s, I’m not sure how the nut is involved with this one though, but Honey Happy-O’s just sounds retarded.  Well I had some Cheerio’s in the house and last night I suddenly had a craving for some of those Honey Nut Happy-o’s only I didn’t have any honey.  Well everyone knows that Necessity is the Mother of Inventions and Hunger is the Mother of Recipes!  Here it is:

Fill bowl with Cheerios (or equivilant)
Pour generous helping of maple syrup on top
Add Milk and Enjoy.

I know what you are thinking.  This is the exact type of recipe that would make you think:

And you would be right.  Yummy, yummy disgusting!  Although I must admit that the second bowl did not go down as smooth as the first.

UPDATE:  In response to a question from Katie I have named this recipe “Barf-O’s, with a light maple sauce.”

The way I look at it, there are two types of people – the ones who eat too much and the ones who don’t.  We’re a lot like cars.  Except cars don’t get fat.
 
Consider it:  When you go fill your car with gasoline does it say, “Hey, I know I’m full but could you please put a couple extra cans in the trunk”?  Nope. And just why not?  I mean, basically, cars and people use fuel the same way – the fuel goes in, it’s converted to energy, we move around a little bit and ultimately spew forth toxic waste.  Heck, it’s just chemistry.
 
But suppose cars were more like people.  Running down to the gas station even if their tanks are already topped off.  Sneaking a little Coleman fuel while watching the NASCAR on TV.  Popping a few cans of STP on the weekend.  Would they chunk up?  Would they say things like: “Wow, Impala really let herself go” or “Man, have you seen the size of the fenders on Escort lately?”
 
Oh sure, there would still be the Mercedes who would just have a few sips of bio-diesel then push themselves away from the pump. (I HATE cars like that!)  And the Porsche who could fill up all the bloody time and never seem to get fat (“Geez, that Coupe sucks down fuel like a truck but still has great bumpers!”)
 
Me, I’m like a station wagon or a mini van.  I know that the sports car crowd is not impressed but I can still say, “Holy Cow! Did you see the size of that bus?!!?”

So yesterday I am working at my desk in the office and Cheryl, Lynne and I are all being very quiet, just working away.  I had my headphones in and was working on hard copy research.  I see Yvonne come into our office and don’t think anything of it as we get loads of people coming in and out dropping off things to be scanned.  She walks around behind me and taps my lightly on the shoulder.  Which I find odd because usually people just holler at me.  I take my headphones off and turn around and Yvonne has this worried look on her face.

“Is she alright?” she says, pointing in the direction of Cheryl.

I can’t see Cheryl when I am sitting down as the cubicle wall is too high.  I stand up and see Cheryl slumped over her keyboard like this:

Cheryl has Type II Diabetes and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t really take care of herself.

I say “Cheryl!” and get absolutely no response.  She doesn’t lift her head, doesn’t twitch, nothing.  I say “CHERYL!” much louder and still nothing.  I start coming around the desk hollering to Lynne for help when Cheryl suddenly lifts up her head and starts rubbing her face.  Lynne comments on how red Cheryl’s face is and tells her to stay seated.  Cheryl immediately stands up and says she needs some water.  She comes back in and says she was feeling dizzy and couldn’t hold up her head and she heard me call her name, but just couldn’t move her head.

But here’s the thing.  Her face didn’t look red like she was having some sort of medical problem, it looked red like she was blushing.  And her face didn’t look stressed like she had low-blood sugars, it looked like she had just woken up from a nap.  So I can only conclude that… CHERYL FELL ASLEEP AT HER DESK!

I did learn something about myself though.  I don’t think I would be very good in crisis.  I felt extreme panic.  You always want to be that person who stays calm in the face of a storm, but I no longer think I am.  I’d be that person in the belly of the ship wailing and moaning, “we are all gonna die, we are gonna die!!”

All right, I hope I have built adequate anticipation.  Here it is:

Gosh, aren’t we cute?  Ok, there are several things that I want to point out about this photo.  The first and most glaringly obvious one is that I am, in fact, not Frosta.  Which I found absolutely shocking.  It’s perfectly clear in this photo that I am Queen Angella.

Now this is very strange to me because when Christy and I would play She-Ra I would always be Frosta and Christy would be She-Ra.  The only explanation I can give with this is I think I wanted more tinfoil.  Frosta doesn’t even have wrist guards and she wears a cape.

So I was probably thinking in my 5 year old brain, that if I was Queen Angella I would get giant tinfoil wings.  Which I did.  Plus I got those super cool wrist guards.

The second thing I would like to point out is how unfortunate a season Fall 1986 was for my personal style.  The previous summer I had decided to cut my own bangs and you can see from this photo that it didn’t really work out.  Interesting side-note about this is that after I had mutilated my hair I thought I could play it off and no one would notice.  I hid the hair I had cut off inside our plastic Castle Greyskull.

That looks different for some reason.  Probably just seemed a lot cooler when I was 5.  Now it just looks silly.

The most important thing I want to point out (and any true-blue Williams kid can appreciate this) is the complete set of Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedias lined up on the shelf behind us, glistening in the flash bulb of mom’s Kodak Instamatic camera.

Lastly, I would like to give a shout out to my 2 IT guys for all their hard work.  Mark for scanning that photo in and cropping it for me and Ben for updating the banner for our site.  This project is truly a team effort and I know I don’t say this enough but I wouldn’t be able to do it without you. 

For some reason I thought this post would be a lot more interesting.  Well what do you expect?  It’s 6:20 in the morning.

X-files Theme Song

That’s right folks!  The new X-Files movie is coming out this month.  Is everyone excited?  No?  Maybe this will help:

Now are you excited?  I know I am!  Mulder and Scully are back!  M+S 4EVER  That’s all I got.

test

To start off I would like to say I’ve put off the She-Ra Halloween photo for a later date to build anticipation.  And by “build anticipation” I mean I haven’t scanned the photo yet.  Soon, my friends, very soon.  Now for the real reason we are gathered here today.  To talk about my Super Nintendo.

Isn’t she beautiful?  Aren’t you the most jealous person ever!!  Oh sure you can play Mario games on you PSP or Wii or Gamebox, but can you transport yourself back to spring break ’88 everytime to slide the button into the on position and before the tv even warms up you hear the theme music, you grab your #1 controller in your sweaty hands and look up to see this:

Oh yeah!  Life is good!  You are 8 years old again and your loving brother and sister are playing Mario World and you are watching them.  They keep trying to get you to play, but you know you aren’t very good at it, in fact, you’re terrible, so you decline.  After some prodding you finally take over the controller.  You start the level in good shape.  You have Yoshi, you have a feather and a back-up mushroom at the top of your screen.  You have 30 extra lives.  What could go wrong?  Apparently everything and in less than 5 minutes your siblings are breathing down your neck saying things like “you’re doing it all wrong, don’t do that, what’s wrong with you?”  You’re trying to focus on the game, but you just can’t seem to get it to do what you want it to do.  Suddenly you break out in a cold sweat, your thumbs are killing you and the flying turtles just keep coming.  You know what Ben and Christy are thinking.  They are both thinking it so loudly they are practically screaming at you.  “Geez, I wish she’d hurry up and die so I can play already!”

Good times, good times.

Suddenly you realize that it’s 10:30 at night, you haven’t showered, haven’t made your lunch, your thumb is killing you, you have to get up in 5 hours for work and you still haven’t beaten the haunted castle level and if you don’t it won’t save the last two levels and you’ll have to do it all over again tomorrow.

Oh Mario!  You fat little man!  Why can’t you jump right?

My lead at work gave me a Super Nintendo and a bunch of games her kids bought her like 15 years ago.  It looks like it’s never been used and works great.  You don’t even have to blow on the carts!!  So if you want to come over and play with me sometime, THAT’S JUST TOO BAD!  BECAUSE IT’S MY GAME, MINE!!  AND I’M NOT SHARING.

Since my sister is taking for ever to get the photo up here is a teaser trailer:

And Frosta is pretty cool too: