Stalling Again

An update on the thorn which is still in my thumb: tonight it festered itself out of there, but when I tried to grab it with some tweezers, it burrowed back into the squishy soft bits of my thumb-flesh. This thorn will surely kill me.

In other news, back when I was obsessed with vinegar, my mother sent me The Vinegar Book. It arrived while my Granny was here, and I thought it was all 1970s, only to find out that it was published in 1994. I must have missed the vinegar boat while enjoying my junior year at HHS.

Apparently I was obsessed with the wrong kind of vinegar, after buying 5 gallons of the white stuff. The money vinegar is the apple cider variety according to author Emily Thacker. She basically claims that vinegar can heal everything, including the common cold. Get a load of this:

"To chase away a cold, soak an eight-inch square of brown paper (cut from a paper grocery bag) in apple cider vinegar. When the paper is saturated, sprinkle it with pepper and bind to the chest with cloth strips, pepper side of the paper next to the skin. After 20 minutes, remove the paper and wash the chest, being careful not to become chilled."

Seriously, if my mother had tried to bind a pepper-sprinkled vinegar-soaked grocery bag to me in 1994, I would have called the asylum on her, and possibly also DCFS.

Also olive oil + apple cider vinegar = sunscreen.

I don't know about Emily Thacker. She must have a really good agent. I don't have a cold, so I can't try the paper bag trick for you, and my face is oily enough without slathering E.V.O.O. on it, but I guarantee that I will try something from this book and report back to you before the month of April is out.

Until then, you know where to stock up.

Truancy

So, the last 48 hours have been unbelievably active.

I congratulated myself on all that I accomplished, created a memo in my Sidekick that included 11 new things to accomplish, did something that wasn't even on the list, which I'll tell you about briefly, played Plants vs. Zombies for an hour, then decided to take the rest of the night off.

You will notice that my amazon store, instead of containing 70 books and CDs, has been reduced to just two items.

You will also notice that my wish lists have been updated. I'm a big fan of lists. I like to check things off. In fact, I added cleaning out my amazon store to my list of things to do, just so I could check it off. I'm an INFJ, after all.

My friends, if you do not have wish lists, you should. Unless you are ESTP. Haha.

Good night. Look for an actual TOPIC the next time I post. ;)

See Below for Long Title

I have decided to post to the blog before doing anything else tonight, because there is a lot to cover and not a lot of time to cover it. Allow me to dump out the contents of my scrambled brain here. For absolute proof that my brain is scrambled, consider this:

I am doing laundry while still wearing pants and not pajamas. This is not supposed to happen. Pants are supposed to go into the washer immediately before pouring the detergent into the machine. So, I present to you: Mostly A Random Collection of Images, Multiple Shout-Outs, and the Inevitable Plug for my Cousin's Band.

First, a gift from Jodi's son, seen during their family trip to New York this week for his Spring Break:

If you look closely, you can see the two of them in the reflection. Thank you very much for that! 

Speaking of Spring Break, here's what we missed from the Disaster Preparedness Calendar during mine. The calendar stayed here, and I went traipsing around in my home state. 

For supplies, we needed to get sterile gauze pads and first aid tape. For planning, we were supposed to find a place for our families to shelter-in-place. Teachers are of course familiar with sheltering-in-place because occasionally gunmen run around in our neighborhoods and we have to lock down our students. I've inserted a handy hyperlink for you in case you don't know what to do. 

Next, while making our way to our gate at Midway, Miss Gokey and I ran into this image of McGruff the Crime Dog, whose website has some handy games to play to teach children how to defeat society's trendiest scapegoat, the omnipresent bully. I have made the image extra large so that hopefully you can read it. 

I should add "My iTunes Account is Playing with my Head" as an item in the long title of this post. In the immortal words of Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia, "When life seems like easy street, there is danger at your door." 

Speaking of bands (nice transition, huh?), I have noticed that Shiloh has a habit of playing shows a few days before I arrive into town, and then again a few days after I leave. I am therefore launching a campaign to get them to turn one of the frontmen's songs into a song for the band, so that if I ever see them, he can sing it for me. If you're up for it, please join me in my campaign by sending the title DE NADA to their twitter handle at @shilohchicago. 

With that, I must say that it has been nice procrastinating with you this evening. So, for the piece de resistance, I present to you THE CHAIN. You can't see it, because it's right where it is attached to the wall, but tomorrow's link reads, "Almost There!" Indeed. Returning to the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, "...what I want to know is...where does the time go?" 

LITMB, 

geotrix/jane

Lorem Ipsum

...or whatever that Latin phrase is that means "take up space" or "enter text here" or whatever it means...

That's what I saw today while I had to log onto blogger.com from my parents' computer, since on my laptop at home, my login info is defaulted in and I am automatically signed on. I deprived you of a Thursday post and will deprive you of a photo post today, so I thought I would consolidate, and hey, I might as well yell it one more time, for the last time: SPRING BREEEAAAK! It was awesome. Many thanks to all those who made it possible.

Now to talk to you about today's book review: How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack.
I gave this book to my dad as a gift for some holiday a year or so ago. It is hilarious because it contends that the yard gnomes of the world are planning an uprising to kill their owners (and all humans, actually) and take over the world.

Although silly, the book does offer practical advice like, "keep a manicured lawn." Yep yep.

I will now summarize chapter 7 for you as part of my thesis that the authors of this book wrote it to prepare people for the apocalypse, people who would never buy a book labeled, "Prepare for the Apocalypse."

Chapter 7 is "Ten Tips That Could Save Your Life" and discusses the importance of PRACTICING exiting a first-story window, memorizing room layouts so you can find your way around when the gnomes cut your power (less important, in my opinion, in the days of cell phones), and keeping a weapon in every room. Chapter 9 is "Your Arsenal." Weapons include yarn tools (shovels, rakes, pitchforks), hockey sticks, baseball bats, furniture, garden hose, pepper spray, sledgehammer, firearms, land mines, "your body," and using gnomes to attack other gnomes. So, keeping a weapon in every room is easy when the term "weapon" is used loosely.

Again, practice makes perfect, and the book recommends practicing getting out of bed in attack mode. Keep floors and counters clutter-free (see how this book would be good for your favorite teen or messy roommate?), being prepared with a bicycle in case your car gets disabled, and...not yelling.

So, that's that. A less-than-one-page manual for surviving disasters in the category labeled "other."

And now, without further ado, Happy Easter. Onward to Memorial Day.

Spring Break Snow Day

I'm officially done (after this) hollering SPRING BREEEAAAK!!! because it is half over.

Originally, this was to be a short product-review post discussing the virtues of the Toro Power Shovel. Ace, who shoveled after what was at first the Most Disappointing Snowstorm Ever but soon shaped up to the tune of eight and half inches of snow, not bad, not bad.

Ace's evaluation is that the power shovel is no good. Of course, it is the less-expensive alternative to the traditional snowblower. It looked pretty cool to me, but I wasn't the one shoveling. Most online reviews are pretty good. 

And that was supposed to be the post, until I met, a day late and a dollar short, Plants vs. Zombies.  

That was how I spent my snow day. 

I still have never played Oregon Trail. At least not that I remember. 

I'll give you a couple of screen shots, and then you can click the link and thank me later. 

With Breathless Anticipation...

...I count the hours until Spring Break: 18!

But, in the meantime, I have two things to share with you:

1)

2) Good luck getting into the rent check! I suffer from a hereditary condition called "hoarding." This means that you are probably used to receiving packages that seem like they are filled with my trash. However, I prefer to think of the packages as being filled with recycled goods. They often come in recycled containers, as well: envelopes or boxes that someone else sent to me first. It may very well in fact be that you will receive one of my recycled goods...as your birthday gift. Please do not be offended, and know that each item is special and sentimental to me. Usually, it is a souvenir of some place I've enjoyed, and I want to share it with you, or it is an artifact from a special time in my life, whether you were a part of that time or not. 

If perchance you have no idea what I'm talking about and would like to receive some of my recycled goods in the mail, send me a facebook message with your mailing address, and let's get the ball rolling. 

Patience is a virtue, though, and the ball isn't going to roll until after SPRING BREEEEAAAAK!!!!!

When You Not Only Forgot But Also Temporarily Misplaced the Thing You Need

I was texting back and forth with a friend of mine today, and the poor thing has a phone that uses T9 (don't mock her - I also will probably have one of these sooner than later), so she said to me, "Fannit! You are supposed to always be prepared!" 

Fannit, indeed. No giant knitting needles when I needed them. 

A short post this evening. Just enough to tell you that when you go to a very easily accessible national park (not like Canyonlands or Escalante, maybe in another lifetime), one where there are a lot of other people who are able to access the park just as easily as you:

- DON'T FORGET YOUR HEADLAMP!

- DO remember your marshmallows. 

- DO remember your firestarters and pie irons

- DO NOT be a jerkface and tell an old man who asks you to turn down your music that he, "should be in a rest home."

The parks are for all to enjoy. 

Which brings me to tonight's product review, of the long-ago-purchased Black Bean Chili Pie. 

First of all, I forgot my headlamp, so step two was I spilled half the spice packet. 

It cooked like a charm because I followed the directions. 

It was spicy enough to kill something that might logically be killed by spices. It was...too spicy. 

Conclusion: For the foreseeable future I'll stick with the time-honored (because we invented it back in 2010) pie-iron-pierogi. 

The good news: the fact that the chili pie was soooo spicy gave me a grand excuse to eat LOTS of marshmallows. 

The remainder of my week will be spent preparing for SPRING BREEEAAAK!!!!, so I'll have no new adventure to report on Thursday, only more useless blathering for you to look forward to.