Kickin Never Gets You Nowhere, 'Less'n You're a Mule

I found this book called "Western Words" at the Salvation Army. I love it for the following reasons:

1. It was honored for its "typographical excellence". I can only assume this is referring to the "wove antique paper" that does indeed add a certain charm.

2. On the back it has the "For Victory: Buy United States War Bonds" stamp

3. It was owned by someone named J. Ogden Mills. I am 99.9% certain that means that he was related to the famous Mills family (three sons) that originally came to California during the gold rush. One of them was Darius Ogden Mills, at one time the richest man in state and the founder of the Bank of California. His grandson Ogden Livingston Mills held a number of positions in United States public office.

4. J Ogden Mills left something handwritten in the middle of the book. When I researched that a little bit I found out that it is a Sanskrit proverb.

As if all of those things did not make this little dictionary special enough, it is actually filled with awesome cowboy vocabulary that I secretly hope to start incorporating into my daily conversations....For example:

Hammerhead: An unintelligent horse
Gully-Washer: A very hard rain. After such a rain, in cowboy parlance, it was usually "wet 'nough to bog a snipe"
Tonsil Varnish: Slang for whiskey
and my most favorite Airin the Paunch: Vomiting

I was on my hammerhead and all of the sudden we were caught in a gully-washer and to keep warm I hit the tonsil varnish good and heavy and ended up airin' the paunch.

Wrong Number

We recently got a new home phone number. Apparently the woman that had the number just before us had accumulated a great deal of debt and began to be harassed by creditors. So terrible was the annoyance of The Man calling day in and day out that she changed her number and left some sorry sap to pick up the pieces. (Us)

This is sort of like what happened my sophomore year at Chico. Our phone number was in the phone book listed under Chico DMV. Needless to say we got a ton of calls from people desperately trying to make a last minute appointment. We changed our outgoing message to the following and it was hilarious, (on the actual one we used our real first and last names):

Hello. You have reached the Chico Department of Motor Vehicles. Para Espanol, Oprima el Ocho. To leave a message for Nancy Parker press one, to leave a message for Donna Martin press two, to leave a message for Bunny Lebowski press three. To Speak to an operator or to return to the Main Menu press the star key.

At this point the message machine beeps and the Caller, bewildered, presses the star key. On our end we would hear a quick boop. Then a moment of silence. Then the Caller, even more confused holds the star key down. And our speaker would blare a "boooooooop."

When we had friends over at our place we would quiet everyone down at the sound of the phone ringing and the second Boop nearly brought the house down everytime.

Kids can be such punks.

And Now for Something Completely Unexpected...

We watched the tail end of some important hockey game with the San Jose Sharks and the Calgary Flames. The Flames were obviously playing dirty.

Me: Dude, how do you just decide as a team to play dirty?

Jon: I mean, It just gets shitty.

And I just thought that that answer was so precise.

Spring has Sprung

We spent the weekend at Jon's mom's farm in Auburn. Auburn is in the foothills of California in Gold Rush Country.
We made the plan to visit because Pat (Jon's mom) just acquired three pygmy goats that we were desperate to play with. One of her horses had a baby too and it was adorably fuzzy and wobbly. It was sunny with a nice breeze and with all of the babies arriving and the flowers blooming I was forced to recognize that Spring has sprung her lazy ass out of Winter's slumber.































Another fun thing about her house is that Lucy and Zephyr can visit their families too!
















In this photo is Lucy's mom, dad and sister. Lu is the only one smiling in the front (because she is nuts). Zephyr is the good boy in the front right and his mom is in the picture too. It's so cute, it's almost weird?

It's no yolk

When I was eating my salad from the salad bar in the building I work in I noticed that one of the 2 hard boiled eggs I got had two yolks.
Twins! I said
But then one of the ladies I was sitting with said,
"They get a lot of double yolk eggs. It's kind of weird."
"That is weird" I said.

We continued on with our conversations about genetics and earthquakes, work and kidney transplants.

Then I open the other egg and it had TWO FREAKIN YOLKS. Now I'm really freaked. So when I got back to my desk I Googled "egg 2 yolks". Do you know what the odds of an egg having two yolks are? One in a thousand. And 2 is not the maximum, there have been reports of get this...9 YOLKS in one egg.

Some cultures consider this good luck but the Schumanator culture has to beg to differ.

A Celebration of Sorts

I like the title of this blog because it reminds me of chapter 1 in J.R.R Tolkien's The Hobbit called An Unexpected Party.


Jon and I went out to a lovely dinner tonight to celebrate the debut of his computer at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas last weekend. The restaurant was called The Carnelian Room and it was on the 52nd floor of the BofA building in downtown San Francisco. It was easy enough to find but we were a bit late, luckily there was parking in the building. It took a moment to get in the garage though because of the security guard that was searching trunks of all cars trying to enter. Jon rolled down his window and the guard said:

"You can park here this evening but in order to do so I need to search your trunk." I spent a hot second dreading it because I knew how ridonkulously messy Jon's car trunk really was and was worried we might be subject to further investigation. So I said:

"What if there's just a ton of tennis stuff back there, is that lawful?"

Security Guard: You don't have any explosives back there do ya?

Me: Not tonight Sir, No.

Security Guard: Ok, Just a quick check then.

(Jon pops the trunk, security guard takes a half a second to check it out and closes it.)

Security Guard: That rifle back theres not loaded, right?

Me: No....Neither one of them are.

Security: (laughing) OK then! you folks have a good night.

At this point I feel obligated to point out that that conversation actually happened.
So that was funny. We had to take the "express elevator" up to the 52nd floor and it went so high so fast that our ears kept popping like we were flying in a plane. The view at the top (what it is most famous for) was totally amazing of both sides of the bay, the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz...Oakland. I read some reviews of the place after I made the reservation and saw that people were really split 50/50 on the actual quality of this restaurant. We had a great experience and a wonderful night eating dinner while the sun set beyond the Golden Gate Bridge.
First I had the scallops and Prawns Salpicon with pickled bell peppers and orange vinaigrette. It was served cold and was WAY yummy. It was my first time having scallops too! Jon got the Crispy Dungeness Roll which was like a combination of a crab cake and an egg roll, it was so utterly delicious I was, dare I say...Jealous?
For our main courses I went wild and ordered the Seared Fennel Seed Ahi Tuna. Seafood is a new thing for me and I am loving it but when the waiter casually said "aaand that will be done rare, I hope that's okay" My heart stopped beating for a few seconds. I really felt like there was no choice but to say, Sure! But you better suggest a good wine too...which he did and I liked the one he chose. My meal was good, tasty, unique and definitely had a lot different flavors to enjoy. Jon had The Steak River Farm Kobe New York Steak. And I quote"
"It was very rare which actually, since I've known you, I have become wary of but actually it was very tender and good and I was glad it was rare."
I had a bite and it was indeed delicious.
For dessert Jon had the Carnelian Room Tarte Tartin which was a sort of apple-y delight. Jon didn't think it was amazing.
I got the fresh fruit, cheese and crackers dessert but by the time it came I could think of nothing but collapsing on my couch.
Some reviews I read claimed that everything from the food to the service at this place fails to meet up to its reputation but I totally disagree.

The only bad review I can give the place was the totally sour parking kiosk guy that refused to give us any information about where the freeway was. But don't worry, we told that guy what's up.

Blahg

So I'm on the phone with my mom and I'm bugging the shit out of her because I'm doing this thing where I am talking to both her and Jon and trying to play operator in the middle. The woman hates it.
We get on the subject of the Bloganator ....

Mom: Boy your blog is just bitter.

Me: What are you talking about, the preschool one?

Mom: Yes just everything, it's bitter.

Me: Well you should have seen the first draft...

Jon: Hey, is she talking about how you make everyone look like an asshole on your blog?

Me: Not in so many words Darling, No.

Survivor: San Francisco

This is Fort Funston, it used to be a military base but now it is a dog beach wonderland. It is no more than a five minute drive from my house and a perfect place for the dogs to go NUTS. I took them here today because it was so nice and sunny and warm out that I just couldn't justify staying inside.
There are 4 legs of the trail that I take them on. From the car to the ocean is the first leg. Lucy notices nothing but the frisbee, "Lu, slow down, you need to conserve your energy" I said, but she totally didn't listen. Zephyr (the best dog ever) meanwhile trots along keeping up at his own pace, enjoying the day as I had intended him to. There is water halfway through the first leg of the walk but the Z man never drinks it. Lucy does and we move on. Now it was so hot that by the time we got within sight of the ocean she runs straight for it, swimming in the tide pools and of course drinking TONS OF SALT WATER. In the middle of the second leg she gradually loses interest in the frisbee and her eyes start to look a little bloodshot.
LEG 3 The shit started to go down. Suddenly the dunes no longer looked like they once did. What was once a steep slow hill up in deep sand was now ten times harder and off the trail. I felt like we were stuck in the Sahara with the ever-changing dunes. Whenever I stopped (to avoid puking) Lucy immediately laid down, I gave her a ton of water from the bottle that I packed. Whenever there was shade she immediately laid down. I started feeling, once again, like a bad parent who had misjudged her poor child's capabilities.
SO THERE WE WERE near death, talking about what we should have made of ourselves, telling each other that we could make it, we would make it. I'm telling you it got sketchy. We finished leg 3 of the trip but we might never speak of it again.
At the beginning of the 4th leg the dogs found some good shade and Lucy all of the sudden had the worst ocean water diarrhea in front of all the other parents. I took them over to the shaded area I had been trying to get to and let them rest for awhile.
We headed home and she was her usual annoying self in the car, so I figured she couldn't be feeling too bad. When we pulled into our parking spot at home I was thinking about our adventure and about how they would be good and tired for at least two days and as I rolled up the window I hear a YELP and there is my darling puppy with her floppy black ear stuck in the top of the rolled up window.

See What I Deal With?

This video was shot today as I walked in the back door of my house but my dogs are exceptionally consistent and it could have been shot on any afternoon within the last two years. I just keep waiting for the day that I open the door and rather than having two Australian Shepherds pour out instead they say "Hey, she's home, come on in, lets chill on the couch. Wouldn't it be nice to do absolutely nothing right now?"
But as it stands, this is what meets me everyday after work:





** Notice I said "wait!" without results.

The Truman Show

Every now and then something will come around in my life that I become temporarily obsessed with. Whether it is a song I put on repeat, a store I love to shop in, or a meal that I love to eat, I will partake in this "something" until I utterly wear it out. In some circles this is called Addictive Behavior. Occasionally a store or restaurant owner will catch on to the sudden spike in sales and they will actually raise the price of the item. Supply in demand, Yeah, but I'm just one person.
Take for example Banana Island. A restaurant that offers specialty dishes from Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. They have two things that I would inject into my veins if I could: Roti Canai and Satay Chicken. I started phoning in orders SO often that the manager of the restaurant started saying in the most amazing accent "oh, I kno yuuuu".
Now. Prices have gone up like $3.00 total for my whole combination in the past month, fine (I'm made of money) but they give half the Roti that they used to and they have changed to some smaller, less appealing chicken. How can I be sure? Well, time was I couldn't finish the whole meal. Couldn't even consider it. Now:
It doesn't even stand a chance.

Anyways, this just really chaps my ass....Discuss amongst yourselves...

PART III: The Most Shit Talkinist PreSchool Ever

The following entry is the final episode in a miniseries of III entitled "A Series of Unfortunate Employments" wherein the author (myself) will discuss her three previous places of employment and how and why each one was so woefully unbearable.


Montessori Preschool* (Two years of raising your kid)
1. I don't care who you or your husband are, the moment you drop your kid off at this school THEY ARE SHIT TALKING YOU. About Everything: How you forgot your kid's jacket, how you don't spend enough time with your kid, how your kid is a total asshole (because you are one too), that you look like you're getting "pregnant" when they know full well you are not, that you are flirting with the dads, that you smuggle food out of school functions, that you are "not doing your child any favors" by dressing that way, that when your child goes to kindergarten you and he/she will have a serious and rude awakening

2. Woman that owned and ran school was ancient and because the children in our class were scared of her yet totally enamored with dinosaurs, the teacher that I taught with nicknamed her Montesaurus. Now that is funny.

3. Hideous and angry woman with attitude up the ass named KIM** thinks she's better than you but in fact could never master preschool herself (perhaps the reason for her anger/resentment in the preschool environment).

4. We were not allowed to give the children black paint or markers for art projects. They also had to leave their trench coats, black lace up boots and KISS make-up at home because with kids these days....you just never know.

*Not the school's real name
**Definitely her real name. Total bitch.

PART II The Tackiest Boss Ever

The following entry is Part II in a miniseries of III entitled "A Series of Unfortunate Employments" wherein the author (myself) will discuss her three previous places of employment and how and why each one was so woefully unbearable.

Bellisima* (A wholesale jewelry/scarves company. Total employees after I left: one)
1. The owner was an extremely annoying Jewish New Yorker transplant to San Francisco and when she would ask me for THE SCISSORS she would say "heyand mee tha SIZZA". As though she was the one person in the world that had thought that one through.

2. She appeared to be one of those people whose lips were always a little too wet.

3. She was cheap as hell and did terrible business from the addition to the top floor of her house. The room was so small at times I had to duck to go from one side of the room to the next.

4. She apparently had a method of applying make-up that involved a paint ball gun and some distance.

*While I ended up LOATHING this woman, I don't think it would be fair to her to use her real business name....but this one is pretty close :)

PART I The Trashiest Pizza Joint Ever (Chico, Sweet Chico)

The following entry is Part I in a miniseries of III entitled "A Series of Unfortunate Employments" wherein the author (myself) will discuss her three previous places of employment and how and why each one was so woefully unbearable.

Rico's Pizza: ( "Rico" was a Pakistani man named Navid (Nah-Veed))
1. Once there were ants on the buffet table and rather than handle the problem through the appropriate pest control avenues he said "Hey, girl whose name I never learned, just stand here and keep wiping." Yes it was gross and it was one of the many times I rubbed management the wrong way with my non-compliance.

2. How about a pizza metaphor? The kind of people that attend an all you can eat pizza buffet are the discarded crust of society. And they swim laps in vats of ranch.

3. We made these god awful MASSIVE gimmicky pizzas that just begged for large parties of cheap people that would invariably order 6 million pitchers of:

4. Coors Light which for some reason always poured foamier than Cujo salivating before dinner. The rocket scientists in the pizza lab could never figure out why...

Do it Himself

One of the particularly fabulous things about Jon is that he is super handy. He has made several things that are key components to our little townhouse.
Like this mirror for example. I love this mirror that he made for my birthday last year. This photo is from the holidays and I loved the beaded garland and glass icicles so much that I waited until February to take them down.

Musically Inclined

Ever since I was little I have been known to burst into song. I truly cannot help myself.

I have vivid memories of singing so loudly in the shower that my brother, bless his heart, would bang on the door and say "STOP IT THE NEIGHBOR'S ARE COMPLAINING!"
I'm older now and realize it was just because he was jealous that I was blessed with the musical gene but at the time I thought that maybe the neighbors could hear me. Was that such a bad thing? If you're asking was I embarrassed the answer is unequivocally, no. If anything I felt like 'Good - they should hear this'.

I'm 24 now and frankly this habit doesn't carry with it the charm that it once did. I have in fact been told that I can't sing. And one of those people was a stranger and she goes "Nah uh- homegirl cannot sing~ It's all good girl I can't sing neither!" and honestly I was really surprised. Depressed. Confused?
Another person was Jon. When I told him that if I had only started earlier I would be famous by now he says "No Dude. Sorry man you like get it, I mean you understand music and stuff but, you just can't really sing."
Knife me in the heart. It's over between us.

So there you have it. I'll never be a rock star (stop begging), I'll never have a Grammy (unless I can steal one) and you won't have my single on repeat in your car....althouuuhgh...Jon and I do have the capacity to make a cd...should you be interested.

Mr. Fancy Pants.

Jon is on the phone so much that I have had to start a blog so that I have someone to talk to. His phone rings once every 20 minutes. In the meantime, he is on the phone. But you know what? FAR BE IT FOR ME TO STAND IN THE WAY OF PROGRESS. This video is of Jon and I using the multi-touch screen computer that he built and is revolutionizing the world with. Not yet....but someday soon. I know what you're thinking and the answer is yes. He is better than your boyfriend.

On the Origins of Victory

When Jon and I are having an amazingly good tennis rally:

He serves it at 300 mph directly at my head.

Somehow I manage to get the ball over the net by shielding myself with my racket.

He lobs it back over, as though to say: Oh sorry I thought you could handle that.

I smack the shit out of the ball because fuck you.

He hits it really hard and way in the other corner, thinking he's sweet.

I hit it back better. faster.

He runs towards the net just after he hits a miraculous spin making me sprint forward

I win the battle of wits by hitting it over his shoulder in the back corner.

I yell "YOU SHALL NOT PASSSSSS!" a la Gandolf and hold my racket triumphantly over my head.

He says "Ok, I'm going to really start hitting it now"