Cruise Tip #1: Bring your own mustaches

Oh yes that's right.  I said mustaches.

You see, the thing about cruises is that there's a lot of time at sea.  And, aside from stuffing your face at the breakfast buffet, the 24-hour grill/pizzeria, the lunch buffet, the dinner seating, and the late-night buffet, the only other thing to do is drink, gamble, lay by the pool, visit the spa, or some combination of any of those. (There's also a fitness center, but who wants to go to THAT on vacation?!)

So our ingenious friends Sleepy E and Mrs. Sleepy (you may remember them from Prank of the Century and Revenge for Prank of the Century) brought some of those stick-on mustaches that make you look like a cheezy version of Groucho Marx.

And we all wore them.

To dinner.

Our dinner seating was right by the entrance to the dining room, so we got much hilarity from people who were waiting in line to be seated.  They would take a look, spot the guys in their fake black mustaches, then do a double take.  It usually took them a third look to realize that the ladies were wearing the mustaches too.

After dinner we wandered down to the casino.  We were already pretty tired of donating our money to the slot machines, so before we called it an early night I happened to see the perfect opportunity for my mustache to have one last hurrah.

Suddenly, we had invented our own game.  We started wandering the cruise ship, hunting out likely candidates for mustache placement.

First we found this pretty lady

And then Mr. Washington

The mustaches were the perfect size for these ladies

The towel animal mustache was inevitable

We started getting creative with the mustaches

Nothing was sacred...

unibrow!

giraffe!

Even the captain got a mustache

The best part?  Standing in line the next day at debarkation, and spotting your mustaches hidden on random objects that you passed.

Worst. Dentist. Appointment. Ever.

I don't really mind going to the dentist. Usually.  Heck, sometimes I even blog about it.

Some people are just lucky and their teeth are naturally awesome.  And some people brush and floss religiously and still have tons of cavities.  I am one of the former.  I have never had a cavity.  In fact, one of my former dentists once told me I had "super teeth" and that I could probably get away with only a dental visit once a year, instead of every 6 months.

If we're being honest, I'm not the best flosser in the world.  I mean, I do floss, just not as often as you're supposed to.  But I brush my teeth, use mouthwash, avoid excessive soda drinking, and all that jazz.  My dentist appointments are usually over in less than 45 minutes.  I'm in, I get a cleaning, a flouride rinse, a final look-see from the dentist, and then they give me my free toothbrush and I'm on my way.

But not this latest dentist visit.  I pretty much left in tears, and not from any sort of dental work that they did.

Appointment #1:

• Arrive at dentist for scheduled appointment.
• Get ushered back to dental room and sit in chair.  
• Get teeth X-rays because they didn't want to request them from my last dentist, even though I had them done less than a year prior.   (I'm told if the insurance doesn't cover it, the dental office will cover the cost, so it's at no cost to me.)
• Teeth photography session.  Literally, the dentist gets out his camera and takes a gazillion digital photographs of my teeth from really close up and at all sorts of angles.  It felt somehow creepy in an indescribable way.
• Teeth inspection.  He pokes and prods my teeth for a bit with some fancy-looking gadgets.

Then that's it.  I'm told that the "consultation" is complete and they are going to look at the pictures and X-rays and evaluate the data they gathered, so they can put together a recommendation for my teeth treatment plan.  They apparently need a lot of time to do this, so I have to schedule a second appointment to come back and find out the "results."

Appointment #2:

• Arrive at dentist for scheduled appointment.  Since they didn't do a normal teeth cleaning at the first appointment, I'm hoping that's going to happen this time.  There's nothing like squeaky-clean teeth after a dentist visit.
• Get ushered back to dental room and sit in a chair.
• Dentist arrives.  He has a packet that includes my treatment plan, some promotional brochures from the pharma company that sells the anti-gingivitis medication he is recommending, and an ominous-looking black binder.
• The dentist hands me the treatment plan.  They did not find any cavities.  However, one of the spaces between my teeth has a deep pocket in the gumline, which he feels cannot be resolved with brushing and flossing alone.  He recommends the medication and a "deep cleaning."  I also have some wear on the outside of one of my teeth from brushing too hard.  This just needs a little patching to protect the enamel.
• Total cost for medication and deep cleaning totals over $5000.  Cost of patching (the only thing I feel that I really do need) is $24.
• Dentist then gets out the ominous binder.  He opens it to reveal close-up photographs of people's teeth in varying stages of tooth rot and gum disease.  He then proceeds to full-on lecture me on the importance of keeping one's teeth healthy, while progressing to photographs that, in the end, must be of people who never brushed their teeth in their whole entire lives.  
• This makes me feel very ashamed, like I somehow am not doing enough for my teeth by regularly brushing and flossing them and, oh, the horror.
• The lecture lasts somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes, until he finally puts away the awful pictures of strange people's teeth.

We discuss strategy.  I ask, politely, "When are you going to clean my teeth?  Are we going to do that now?"  

He replies, "We only do teeth cleaning on people who have healthy teeth.  Your teeth aren't healthy enough for a regular cleaning." 

(This is the point where I am not sure whether to be shocked into silence or start crying.)

So I say, "Ok, what if I think about the medicine and some of the extra dental work you're recommending, and wait on that, but agree to do the deep cleaning and get the teeth patching.  Can we just do that?"

He says we can but I still have to schedule another appointment.  This appointment is just to review the teeth treatment plan (and, apparently, employ scare tactics to shame me into buying whatever med the pharma company is pushing).  If I want to get any actual dental work done, I need a third appointment.

That's right... a THIRD appointment.  When all I wanted was to go in, get my teeth cleaned, and maybe a 10 minute patch job on the tooth that got brushed too hard.  (Also: does anyone note the irony that he is telling me I have horrible dental hygene at the same time he's telling me I'm brushing my teeth too much?  Which is it?)

I told him I would "think about it" and get back to them on when I wanted to schedule the third appointment.  I then left the dental office, feeling deflated and with no intention of EVER going back.

A few weeks later, the sweet receptionist lady (the only thing this place had to recommend it) called to ask if I'd figured out when I was going to schedule my appointment.

I told her I would have scheduled one if I could've just gotten a teeth cleaning and that little patch job done.

"Well, of course you can honey," she replied, scanning my file.  "We can schedule you for a cleaning and to get that bit of chipped tooth patched too if that's what you'd like."

I said, "I'd like that very much, but the dentist said that wasn't possible, that he didn't want to do a cleaning."

"That's odd," she replied, sounding perplexed.  "I don't know why we couldn't do that.  Let me just check with him and find out what's going on.  I'll give you a call back after I've spoken with him."

She never got back to me.

Prank Of The Century

… because that’s what good friends are for.

We recently had some tenants vacate our rental house in Phoenix. Which is a very special story and deserves a blog post of its own, but what you need to know now is that, amongst the grime and broken furniture and non-functional cars and other trash that they left us, there was one really cool present:

A giant stone tortoise.

As in, this thing weighs like 300 pounds of poured concrete, tortoise.

Well one of our friends, we call him Sleepy E, he secretly liked the tortoise and wanted it for his backyard. So we told him we had already promised it to Frick’s significant other, St. Yvonne.

And then we began secretly plotting how we could give the tortoise to him in the most inconvenient and annoying manner possible....  Because that’s what good friends are for.

Here’s all you need for a good prank:

1. A giant stone tortoise (or turtle, for the non-biologists amongst us)
2. A very tall ladder
3. A pickup truck to transport the very tall ladder
4. An orange bandanna borrowed from Payson’s wife to “flag” the end of the ladder where it sticks out the back of the pickup bed (for safety!)
5. Someone to run the video camera and 5 strong men of questionable intelligence 
6. It also helps if you have a full moon, but that one is optional.

The big unknown that could throw this whole plan in jeopardy was that Sleepy E and his wife have some dogs that like to bark at strange noises. We were very concerned about how we were going to accomplish this prank without alerting the dogs, who would then awaken the household with their barking.  Well, it turns out the neighbors were having a very loud party that night, which easily drowned out the sounds of the prank-in-progress.  Prank completed successfully.

AND NOW I GIVE YOU…..

Giant Stone Tortoise on Rooftop:

P.S. Sleepy and Mrs. Sleepy -- THERE'S A GIANT STONE TORTOISE ON YOUR ROOF.

Warrior Dash

So, Chris and I are doing this thing.

It is called the Warrior Dash.

I am woefully out of shape.

That's really all I have to say about that.




(Except that it's a competition, Chris and Payson against myself and Payson's wife.  My only hope is that they are less prepared than us.  Which is a possibility- although I can't discount sheer determination on their part, either.)

Planes, Plumbers, and Automobiles (and a double post day)

I know I've been kind of lackadaisical on the blog thing lately.

It's not that things aren't exciting around these parts.  

I mean, Chris met the governor and we found out why our water bill was so high that the lady at the city public works almost fell out of her chair when she saw it and we hung Christmas lights and shorted out Christmas lights and bathed the dog a lot because for some reason she is smelly(er) than usual.  Also, I bought an outfit to wear to the company Christmas party and the cat peed on the white carpet we just had professionally shampooed after a house party tracked black dirt everywhere and tomorrow the plumber is coming to possibly tear up the foundation of our house to fix the leaky pipe.  Our pool is still mysteriously broken (which is completely unrelated to our water bill) and my tax preparer finally sent the rebuttal to the IRS as to why they should not revoke my first time homebuyer's credit so hopefully sometime before next year's taxes are due I might get last year's refund.  Chris learned a valuable lesson as to why it is important to make sure to screw the oil cap of the airplane on tightly and we got to see the emergency response vehicles at the airport in action and drive back to San Diego while they cleaned the oil off the plane.  And of course the car needs to be serviced and the rent is due.  Oh, but the weather around here has been beautiful.

And with that, I'm going to slack a little more.

I give you... a story about buffalo.  The animal (not the city in New York).

Weirder than leaving my keys in the fridge

I do sometimes make fun of my husband in this blog.  But I try to keep it a little bit balanced, like when I told about how I leave my keys in the fridge.... intentionally.  Since I figure I am a bit overdue for some self-ridicule, I thought to share this story.

The other day, I stopped by the house on my lunch break.  Since I work about 5 minutes from where I live, this is easily accomplished within my allotted lunch break. I made myself a sandwich, then sat down on the couch to enjoy my lunch.  I had my phone nearby so that I could be available for any important work phone calls or emails.  After some time, I had finished my lunch and went to gather up my things and leave.

I couldn't find my phone.

The logical conclusion was that it had fallen between the couch cushions.  I tore the couch apart (twice), searched the entire house, tried retracing my steps - all to no avail.  Since I had no spare phone with which I could call myself, I finally gave up with the thought that I would look for it later that evening when I was off work.

I got off work, and went in to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water.  After I was done drinking, I walked over to the dishwasher to put load the dirty glass.

I opened the dishwasher.  And there was my phone.

Yes, it's true.  In a moment of absentmindedness, apparently, I put my phone away in the dishwasher.  My. phone. was. in. the. dishwasher.

*EDIT*
As I sit here writing this post, my husband is looking over my shoulder.  "What is that you're typing?" he asks.  "All that < ahref > stuff?  What's with all the a's?"

"It's just html code.  For inserting links and stuff."

"Ohhhhh.... YOU'RE A NERD!"

"You take that back!  I was going to write a nice blog post where I didn't make fun of you but now you ruined it!"

"I don't care," he said, "you make fun of me anyway."

"Well," I exclaimed, "it's just basic computer stuff!"

"NERDY NERDY NERDY!" and then, mimicking me in an unflattering manner, "It's just basic html code... It's just basic NERDINESS."

So, just for that, I am going to make fun of him in the very next post.  And that's a promise.

New house, new bills

Chris:  Hey, can I throw this away?

Me:  What is it?

Chris:  The SDG&E bill I just paid online.

Me:  No, give it here please.

Chris:  Why?

Me:  Library card.

Chris looked at me and, with that look on his face that says, I love you honey and you are so adorable but sometimes I think we inhabit a completely different universe, and said aloud, "Heh, you're a nerd."

And if you do not know why I need a copy of a recent bill with my name on it for my first library card in this city, then you are not a nerd and you do not belong in our secret club.

And if you do, well, kudos to you.  As for me, I'm off to read a book...

Solution-less Puzzle

I have been spending a lot of time lately developing my relationship with Southwest Airlines.  Aside from all the fun and games that comes along with frequent flyer-ship, I've spent enough time reading Spirit magazine to realize that the July issue of the crossword puzzle was missing half of the clues for the "down" column.  This made me reminisce on another solution-less puzzle that I came across during my college days.

I have always been a big fan of Dots candy.  You know, the gumdrops that come in the yellow box.  I don't know if they still do, but they used to come with little mazes and puzzles on the back side of the box.  Well, one day back in 2001, I met a maze that had no solution.

I tried to solve this maze.  I tried.  And tried.  And tried.

Finally, I gave up.  There absolutely was no solution to this maze.  In my despair, I sent a copy of the un-solvable maze along with a letter to the Dots corporation.  (And the address wasn't on the box, either... I went to quite a bit of trouble over the whole thing).

I didn't really expect a response.

Turns out, I got one:




Some poor consumer relations lady actually had to write a letter that said, "we apologize for any undue concern the solution-less puzzle may have called."   Okay, thanks, but I wasn't that concerned!

A delicious, quivering cup of coffee

It's funny, but the busier your life is, the less it seems like you have to write about.  I mean, there were cool job things and stressful job things and moving into a new house and traveling to Vegas and Phoenix and San Diego and Phoenix and San Diego and Vegas and Phoenix and Phoenix and... anyway.  So I am filling the space using a trick that the talented Allie over at Hyperbole and a Half once employed: What does Urban Dictionary think of me?  I'll tell you what...

All right, Urban Dictionary. I'm down with that.  I'm amazing and beautiful and I have a high tolerance for dealing with my husb-- ahem, bullshit.  ALSO, I'm "super sexy cool."  All very true things.

Hmmm.  I studied biology and oceanography in college, and this is new to me.  Of course, I did not attend college in Canada.  And as we always tell my boss (who is Canadian), you never know what those crazy canuks will say.

This one is both TOTALLY AWESOME and TOTALLY CREEPY at the same time.  I mean, I'm not entirely comfortable with my name being used as some sort of slang for something you eat.  There's just a little Jeffery Dahlmer in that.  But the description? quivering! delicious! rare! Where can I get this fabled Italian coffee delicousness?  New Jersey?  Well, bummer.  That's a bit far from the west coast.

So my question is this:  can anyone in New Jersey confirm that there is actually a coffee called a krista?

Tom Cruise found me at work

I was doing internet research at work today and I do, truly, mean work-related research.  Not the kind of "research" that involves looking at funny You-Tube videos or checking out the latest products on Amazon.  

I was searching for photos of hazardous materials containment for mobile refuelers.  The photos came up, and I scrolled through the results...

spill containment... spill containment... spill containment... Tom Cruise...spill containment...

WAIT... what?  Tom Cruise?  It doesn't really matter if you know what "spill containment berms" are, it's still pretty obvious that they are not a famous actor.  No clue why Mr. Cruise came up in my search.  But he did: See the search results

Birds of a feather

This is a picture of our new backyard, taken last weekend.

Choose your favorite caption from the selection below, or create your own and leave it in the comments section:

“OMG, the pigeons are mutating! Look at the size of those things!”

“Thanksgiving’s come early this year… Cletus, get yer shotgun!”






Actually... the birds in question are actually neither pigeons or turkeys -- they are peafowl.



Yes, I meant peafowl:

As you may recall, we recently bought a house. Our new neighbors have about a dozen peacocks/peahens that they let roam around the neighborhood.

Which seemed really cool, at first.

Until we found out they could hop the fence into our backyard. And that they poop. A lot. And that they have very LARGE poops.

Apparently we are going to have to introduce ourselves. As in, “Hi new neighbors. Here are some cookies. By the way, your peacocks are really cool but we have a dog and, well, we can’t be held responsible if your peacocks get in to our yard and our dog attempts to eat them. Also please send someone over to clean up their poo. Thanks. Enjoy the cookies.”

The $500 Chair

A little story of two companies, one chair, and a clerical error…

The company that I work for has a lot of temporary project sites, for which we establish mobile offices. We often furnish our mobile offices with rented furniture.

This past month, we closed up one of our mobile offices, and called the furniture rental company to come pick up their desks and chairs.  Well, when they came to pick up the rented chairs, they had a surprise in store: an extra chair.  A few days later my boss received the following message:

"During our scheduled pickup, we retreived 5 chairs from your location.  Since our records had only indicated that your company was renting 4 chairs, we have submitted the following invoice for the rental fees for the 5th chair, dating back to the start of the rental contract...."

The rental fee, back-dated two years, came out to slightly more than $500.  Now, let's just take a moment to reflect on this:

a) we weren't actively trying to cheat the system.  It's a big enough company we honestly didn't realize they should have been billing us for 5 chairs.

b) had we not done the right thing by returning the chair and, instead, just kept it -- not only would they not have been able to try and bill us for the rental but they would have been out a chair, too.

c) we rented a lot of stuff.  In the grand scheme of things, they shouldn't jeopardize their business reputation and the loss of a client over one chair.

d) that chair is not worth anywhere near $500.  At this point we've more than bought the darn thing.  Twice.

With these things in mind, my boss responded in kind:

"Although we regret that a clerical error on your part has resulted in the loss of rental income for this one chair, we feel that the good faith effort of returning your chair should suffice as payment in full."

There was a bit of haggling back and forth after this.  They countered and said, "How about half the cost of the back rental fees?" To which we responded, "No thanks.  You can still have your chair back though."  This went on for a few emails and phone calls until finally, they said, "Okay, when can we pick up the chair?"

At this point, you would think that's the end of the story.  Oh, no, it couldn't be that simple.  Because as it turns out, when the rental company came to pick up the extra chair (which we have now dubbed, "the five-hundred dollar chair") they couldn't find it.  We had set it aside so it wouldn't be mixed in with the regular office furniture, and when a different moving company came to pick up our mobile office they took everything - including the five-hundred dollar chair which had been carefully positioned inside that office.

After many phone calls and much disbelief on the part of the mobile office movers ("We always make sure the offices are empty before we move them") we managed to retreive the chair.  Only now we have to figure out how to deliver it to the rental company, becuase they won't come out again to pick it up.  (Of course, they won't just let us keep it, either).  So it sits in our main office, hanging out with a sign on it that essentially reads, "DO NOT SIT on the $500 chair."

Say What?!

Every so often, I overhear people say things that are unintentionally funny. Here's a collection of great quotes from the last few months:

“Aren’t they looking for you at the school?”
-A customer, speaking to her young-looking waiter at the Olive Garden

“You need to get rid of that Twilight Princess, yo. You’re playing ‘T’ for ‘Teen’ man.”
-Relationship advice from one guy to another at the Home Depot

“I wanted to get off on the right foot… I just had to decide which foot!”
-A new acquaintance, on what type of first impression he wanted to make at a party

"You can open up that can of worms and you can’t put it back in the box.”
-On why it wouldn’t be a good idea to broach a certain topic, from a co-worker who obviously isn’t too familiar with his parables

“I consider myself a fairly smart people...”
-One of my friends, who shall remain nameless because I want us to stay friends

“I don’t want my company to send me to Canada, because they shouldn’t need me to travel overseas.”
-Another one of my friends. Also nameless

“The moon is closer than Florida because you can see the moon, and you can’t see Florida.”
-Yes, someone actually said this. And no, it was not one of my friends (which is a good thing because that kind of stupidity on a regular basis would make my brain hurt).

“This thing changes like my underwear!”
-One of my bosses, frustrated by the pace and timing of a project.


(As a side note, I should mention that my friends really are smart people. Even smart people say dumb things sometimes.)

Is That a Rooster, or...?

Los Angeles is suffering from a crisis. No, it’s not state’s largest fire since 1897, with a smoke cloud seen all the way from Vegas to Denver (seriously). It’s not the post-Michael-Jackson music industry, the increasing prevalence of gang activity, or the dead bodies and trash floating out in to the Pacific Ocean from the Los Angeles River. Nor is it the fact that taxpayers received IOU’s, the animal shelters are overcrowded, and Renee Zellweger was in a car crash. (read: minor fender bender with no injuries. Renee spotted for the first time since accident! The headlines screamed the next day, like it was a surprise she managed to drag herself out of bed after that “harrowing” experience.)

No, no, the crisis is: Roosters. More specifically, multiple roosters.

Apparently, having more than one rooster is a threat to public safety. Not to mention all that annoying crowing at the early dawn hours!

Okay, I see two main flaws in this logic.

1) If it’s early enough, and I’m sleeping, a dozen roosters are not going to wake me up. Unless you live in a tent, or your neighbor has some sort of rooster factory, are you really going to “wake up” because of the roosters? Heck, I lived in a 38-foot trailer and our neighbors had roosters, turkeys, horses, dogs and a DONKEY and it did not wake me up in the morning.

And, 2) If the noises from two roosters are going to wake you up, then probably one rooster will do the trick as well.

Of course, as with anything in L.A. movie stars (the rooster kind) are exempt. So don't worry, everyone, there will be a Charlotte's Web: the Sequel.

The main criticism of this new law is, of course, enforcement. But apparently the empty echoing of the city’s coffers is a big incentive, and the city has been traipsing the town citing people for zoning laws that they haven’t enforced, like ever, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine they will fine you until the cows come home (or the roosters leave).

Here’s the take home: in L.A., you need a permit for everything. If you do not have a permit, assume you need one and, at some point some city inspector will come by and you will be fined.

(Sidebar: Per Title 10, Chapter 28, Section 60 of the City Code, you do NOT need a permit or license for having a pet Marmoset monkey. Also, Squirrels. Just FYI. You know, in case you were thinking about getting a pet monkey.)

The History of NASCAR

During a recent car trip from Phoenix to L.A., I drove while Chris took a nap in the passenger seat. Since I was in command of the vehicle, this meant I had control of the iPod. I could force Chris to listen to NPR and various other "nerdy" podcasts while he was, essentially, trapped in our moving vehicle. I think this is partly why he fell asleep, because it was either slip into unconsciousness or jump out of the car a la 007 only to land in the middle of the desert next those signs that read, “State Prison. Do Not Pick Up Hitchikers.”

After I was tired of NPR, the next academic podcast that I forced my husband to listen to was “How Stuff Works,” from the “Stuff You Should Know” franchise. He had slept through most of NPR but he was staring to wake up at this point.

Today’s Stuff: How Moonshine Works (Click here for the full article by Ed Grabianowski)

It’s a fascinating enough enterprise, but one portion of the podcast really caught my attention.

Basically, it said that Bootleggers – the folks who smuggle(d) moonshine – became very mechanically adept in order to make their cars fast enough to outrun the police. This ability “created a culture of car lovers in the southern United States that eventually grew into the popular NASCAR racing series”.

I looked over at my husband. He was staring off into space, awake but drowsy enough that he apparently missed the significance of what we had just heard.

The hosts of the podcast continued: “In fact, the winner of the first ever NASCAR race had used the same car to make a bootleg run just a week earlier.”

And there you have it: INDISPUTABLE PROOF that NASCAR was founded by hillbillies and rednecks who love their booze.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just sayin’.

The usual yard sale stuff

Backhoe... $5900
Water Tank... $3900
Big Cooler... $3900

Everything you need for your very own in-ground cold-water redneck pool?

Priceless.

Thugs 0, Marching band 2

This is awesome. A 17-year-old girl made the local paper for defending herself against two would-be muggers.

The article states that the teenager was walking to school when – suddenly – she was grabbed from behind by two men who demanded her money. (Now, why they thought a high school girl in a middle-class neighborhood would walk around with a bunch of cash is beyond me.)

So this girl, ever the quick thinker, hit the first guy with a quick strike to the nose, and kicked the second guy in the crotch. Oh, and did I mention she was in the marching band? Yes, she then proceeded to beat them with her baton until they backed off. She ran away and escaped her assailants unharmed. The thugs, however, were not so lucky as one had a severe nosebleed and the other… well… you can guess how he felt.

The police put out an APB for the thugs. The description concluded with, “one of them is probably holding his nose and the other one is limping after being kicked in the groin area.”

The story's headline read, "Thugs 0, Marching band 2."