Rock Chalk, Jayhawk

This is a photo from KU Sports of Mario Chalmers flyin' high over NC.

I'm so excited for tonight I'm gonna puke. I know, I need to calm down...but why? And for the record, yes, I'll be wearing the same clothes I wore on Saturday. No worries, Lone Reader -- I washed them! Oh no! Did I wash out the luck? Nah...just the salsa and lime juice.

GO JAYHAWKS!!

Did you hear screaming last night at about 10:05? You did? Was it high pitched girly screaming? Oh...that was me. My sister and I were doing the Tipper/Hillary dance, hugging and screaming and dancing at the same time. And the dude in the pic? My brother in San Antonio. Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, KU!

Octodog!

It's what's for dinner.

Wait a minute...I think 'Octodog' is trademarked. Oh yeah, this company makes the 'Frankfurter Converter'. (for the record: yes, we ate them and no, I don't need a tool to cut the end of a hot dog into 8 pieces.) Which is more frightening...the thought of eating an Octodog or the fact that someone sells a tool to make them?

It's Rat Day

Yes, today is the sixth annual World Rat Day. How will you celebrate? Watch Ratatouille? Scamper gleefully? Be willfully destructive and chew through the back door of a restaurant? So many choices...

Nah, I've never owned a rat. The tails kinda freak me out. My family has had a number of pets, though. Let's see: a parrot, a cat, about 10 dogs (never more than two at a time), an owl, a ferret, hermit crabs, a turtle and many fish. The owl was found by my dad when he was in the woods. It was a baby and its mother had been killed by hunters. The baby owl imprinted to him, and we ended up raising him. We named him 'Hootie' but there were no blowfish.

I have some amazing pictures of my brother and me sitting on our swingset with a great horned owl resting on the top bar. We gradually got Hootie acclimated to hunting (don't ask) and he flew off into the sky at sunset one night. He came back about three minutes later, being chased by a throng of crows. It took about another month before he silently glided away in the clear Oklahoma night.

He'd never wear a mortarboard, give a hoot or eat a Tootsie Pop. I loved him anyway. And Hootie would've LOVED Rat Day. (again, don't ask)

Happy Friday, gorgeous! Enjoy your freedom and don't let the crows get you down!

Happy Birthday!

Today is the birthday of one of my very best friends. To mark this momentous occasion, a few random thoughts:

1) When R. visited me in the days pre-kids we took a tour at the now-defunct brewery on West 7th. Contrary to what you may have heard (or personally witnessed) I'm not much of a beer drinker. I guess I was that day. We stayed for the tasting afterwards. We stayed until the shiftworkers came in and had a tasting. We stayed until they said to us, "Really...you should go." Then we staggered down the street to Cossetta's and I burned my tongue on some delicious pizza pie.

2) Once when we were crazy young teens, we were riding with her dad on the highway back from Kansas City. R. started singing a solo and I giggled. The car immediately swerved over to the shoulder, and her Army dad barked out, "Are you making fun of my little girl's singing?!" I was scared that he'd make me get out of the car and do push-ups on I-35. No such of a thing -- I just apologized and we left it at that.

R. is one of the rare people who has been a through-line in my life. We saw each other through gay boyfriends, parental divorces, painful break ups and bad haircuts. We also danced like you wouldn't believe to 'Xanadu' and the music from 'Hair', sang along with '1776' and wore trash bags to a bar. Despite her love of a) sci-fi, b) Air Supply and c) air guitar, I adore her. Happy birthday, Honey! May the year ahead be sweetness and light.

Don't Get Fooled Again

I have no April Fool’s post. I’m not one for practical jokes…maybe because my early life was so filled with uncertainty and crazy that I didn’t really get most pranks. (You’ve got to have a base of normal to play against…) Anyway, I was talking on the phone last night and recalled this TRUE STORY:

As I’ve mentioned before, my family moved a lot. No, we weren’t on the lam or a military family…my parents were misguided East Coast intellectuals who thought they could live off the land and be pioneers. Plus my dad’s first offer to teach was in Oklahoma. We lived there for four years and in that time I went to three different schools in three different towns. I spent two years going to a reservation school, where my parents thought it would be good for us to live like homesteaders on the edge of a reservation. My brother and I got beaten up every day for two years, with breaks (of course) for summer. It was really, really hard. When I saw Sherman Alexie speak late last year, he said, “The rule on the reservation is you never hit a girl…unless she makes you mad.” After to listening to him for a few short hours, my entire stint on the rez was re-framed and I saw that it wasn’t about me or my brother being singled out, it was a culture of desperation and violence that we stumbled into. Okay, it was also a little about us being the white kids, too.

Anyway, I was profoundly gullible as a kid. Just way too trusting. (Am I still? I dunno. You tell me.) Two points of evidence to support this claim:

1. Everyday at the reservation school we ate the same lunch: an orange-colored cheese stick, black-eyed peas, white rice with a spoonful of white sugar on top and some kind of canned fruit. Every day. And every day, the same girl in my class would pick up my cheese stick and say, “Guess where it’s gonna break and you can have mine AND yours. If I guess, though, I get to eat both.” Then I’d guess, and what d’ya know? Every day I got it wrong. She must’ve really been hungry or really loved government cheese.

2. At the school after the rez school, they had a campaign to “Send A Mouse to College.” It had a poster with a super cute little mouse wearing a mortarboard. We saved change to bring to school to…....wait for it…....buy lab rats for the American Cancer Society. “Send a Mouse to College” sounds so much better than “Give a Mouse a Metastasized Tumor and a Smoker’s Hack.” Anyway, I was pretty young (7? 8?) and I actually thought mice would go to college. I’m not sure what I thought they’d do there…maybe run mazes and eat orange-colored cheese sticks? When my dad told me what the money was really going to be used for, I was really upset. I cried, “Are you kidding me? They don’t even get the hats?!”

Here’s hoping that this April Fools’ Day no one takes your cheese and you get to wear your super cool hat. In the words of our exalted leader, “Fool me once, shame on …fool me twi…fool fool…uhh..don’t get fooled again.”

Bacon-y bacon w/ bacon

No, this isn't an April Fools' post. Lucky's Pub in Houston offers up their Bacon Wrapped Bacon appetizer. Italian pancetta is wrapped in Canadian bacon which is then wrapped in American hickory smoked bacon and served with a maple butter sauce. It's a veritable UN of nitrates, with a coronary on the side. (via Bacon Unwrapped and Neurotic Fishbowl)