Pirate Catfish

I got some flack from my family this past week for not already having posted this story, so I guess this is better late than never!

Ben and I spent Memorial Day weekend at the lake with my family. The weather wasn't great the first day we were there but got significantly better the next two days so we ended up having a great time skiing, riding the boat, laying out and swimmng. I'd like to say that we rode the jet skis as well, but our lake neighbor, JackAss*, yelled at me for making a wake. (I had a 2 year old girl on the jet ski with me at the time .... I wasn't driving too fast). Anywho, that is neither here nor there.

ben with ellie (i have no idea why this is underlined)

me, kimmie, and ellie on the new kubota (and no ellie didn't really ride this)

dad driving his boat

mom and kimmie riding big mable!

me skiing ... yaaay! i only learned to ski 5 years ago and have not even attempted in the past 2 years so don't make fun of me for being on 2 skis. i'm too old to learn to slolem now!

Ben and my brother in law, Dave, always like to hang out on the dock and fish while the rest of us swim or lay out or ride the boat or whatever. Saturday afternoon I had a great idea that they should go out and get a bunch of bait because I was going to sit there and and fish with them. I feed the fish around our dock all the time so they're practically pets to me - we always catch and release so I just figured it would be pretty harmless.

I got someone to put a worm on my fishing pole (I really don't like to bait my own ... I'm a priss like that) and dropped it onto the bottom of the lake. Very quickly I got a bite but I just didn't set the hook in time so the fish got away. It didn't take long for me to get another bite and I set the hook this time and wrestled the fish to the surface. Once I got him out, Ben tried to make me take him off but I refused so he came over to help me (reluctantly). Anyway, as it turns out I set the hook too late this time so I hooked the poor fish through his eye!! I felt HORRIBLE. They released him and he swam away but I'm pretty sure he is at the bottom of the lake saying "yaaargh" right now.

I have decided that my fishing career is officially over. I can't be out there turning all the fish I catch into pirates.

* his name is Jack but I've decided that a more fitting name for him is JackAss.

Twittergate

I have a whole post about my weekend at the lake and my pirate catfish, but since I don't have all the pictures from my sister yet, you're going to have to settle for reading my feelings on Ashton Kutcher and his twitter hiatus.

Let me preface this by saying that I have not checked into the facts on any of this at all. Frankly, this isn't really important enough to waste time doing any research and fact-checking especially since any of my sources would be tabloid websites and they really aren't accurate anyway. With that said, I do have opinions on this whole Ashton Kutcher twitter hiatus and I feel like sharing them. Feel free to speak up if you have feelings on the subject and/or legitimate information!

Everyone knows Ashton Kutcher is on Twitter ... he was all proud of himself and made a HUGE deal out of being the first person to reach 1 million followers. I don't really understand Twitter at all, but what I do understand of it is this : if you are on it and have 1,000,000 followers then you are willingly putting information about yourself into cyberspace. Let me take that a step further. If you are a CELEBRITY and you are on Twitter and have 1,000,000 followers then you are basically allowing those million people (or probably more than that now) insight into your daily life. Essentially, they are able to stalk you if they so choose.

Soooooo, with all that said I heard on the radio this morning that Ashton Kutcher is threatning to take a twitter hiatus. (ooooooohhhhh Ashton ..... don't scare us like that!!) Apparently he is upset because there are rumors that the founders of Twitter are in talks to produce something called Twitter TV. I really don't even get it but I think the premise is some sort of competition-show where real people follow celebrities and Twitter about what they see. So I guess Ashton feels like he is being "sold out" by the folks at Twitter because he will end up getting stalked.

Ummm. You are a PUBLIC FIGURE.

WITH A TWITTER ACCOUNT.

WHO BRAGS ABOUT HAVING A MILLION FOLLOWERS.

I think the only person you can blame for selling you out is yourself, Ashton.

Bitch

The title to this post is VERY misleading. I bet you thought you were going to read some juicy gossip or something! But no, no ... sorry to let you down.

I was perusing the wine section of my local grocery store yesterday and stumbled upon this bottle!



Can you believe they actually have a wine called Bitch?!!? I couldn't resist buying it. The grape is a Grenache, which I don't usually buy because I tend to think it is a little too sweet, but the hilarious, PINK label just jumped out at me so I had to get it.

It is a screw-top too!

I made one of Ben's favorite dinners last night, which meant he wanted to open a bottle of wine. I wouldn't even let him consider opening anything but the Bitch! He found it hilarious as well and obliged my request.

And it actually wasn't that terrible! We referenced the wine-ictionary before drinking and it noted that the grape was grown mainly in France and Spain but this one happened to be Australian. The wine-icitionary also said that it is really more of a wintery wine and should be eaten with rich dishes such as stews. I'm going to have to disagree with that -- it was fairly light and fruity with a hint of spice at the end. (If you are a wine conneseur, you are probably laughing at my tasting notes ... I have zero knowledge!) And for me, this is the perfect summer red wine.

And in other news, I fell asleep before Dancing with the Stars ended but I heard this morning on the radio that Shawn Johnson won!! How adorable is she? I'm so glad she won. Too bad she's too young to celebrate with a glass of bitch :)

Weekend in Pictures

We traveled down to Waycross for Big Steve and Keri's wedding this weekend. It was a great trip and a fantastic wedding. We were able to spend a lot of time with many of our college friends and I think it might be best to recap the weekend in pictures. My words won't do the weekend justice!

Friday night we went to the rehearsal dinner, which was fabulous. After the dinner we went to a local bar to celebrate with the bride and groom. This is the tame part of the evening.

This is Wes, he loves himself. He was so proud to pose for this picture with the mannequin wearing his outfit.

The Girls -- Audra, Becky, Sheri, Ashley, Me (pale as a ghost), and Rebecca

We literally tried about 15 times to get a good picture ... it just wasn't working for us that night!

The boys. I think this is the last tame photo that I have of any of them all weekend!

Before we left for the dinner, one of the locals at our hotel warned us that "the law is real bad in Waycross" so after an hour or so at the bar we figured it might be best to get back to the hotel if we wanted to continue our celebrations!

Becky DOES have clothes on, I swear!

Don't judge me for being so pale! Sheri is ridiculously tan and it makes me look awful

Just what they needed to do - shotgun beers!

No, Ben, you are not a pirate!

.... aaaaannnnd we're in the pool!

It was about 3 am when this pool picture was taken and I decided shortly thereafter that it was probably time I go to bed! So, this is the last photo from my camera for the evening!

The wedding was the next night and here is a little glimpse of how our night went!

Ben and I at the reception

Carrie, Me, Becky, and Erin

Boxer shot - this is somewhat of a wedding tradition for many of Ben's friends

The Longmire family

I'm not sure what they were laughing at ... I must have said something funny!

Ben trying to get rid of his hiccups!

There are several stories from the weekend that I wish I could tell, but frankly most of them aren't PC so I'll have to refrain! That, and also I'm just too lazy to write anything witty today.

Congrats to Big Steve and Keri and thanks for a fun weekend!

Plumbing Emergency ... Solved by Katie

You know how I told you about my trip to the grocery store on Saturday? The one where I saw the spotted dick. Well, the whole reason that I was on the cake aisle was because I needed to buy stuff to make a butterfinger cake for mother's day. So I bought all my ingredients and came home to start baking away. I always just pile up my dirty mixing bowls in the sink as I go and then clean them all up after I'm finished. The sink tends to fill up with water while I'm doing that so I try to make sure that I've got all the utensils out (to make sure they haven't slid down the drain) and run the garbage disposal to drain the water quickly.

Well, I obviously let my knife case slide down the drain without noticing. As soon as I turned it on I heard this terribly loud 'CRUUUNCH' and I sorta freaked out. I looked down the disposal and saw that it was just the case for one of my knives. No biggie ... I just figured I could fish it out really quickly. Now, I know you're not really supposed to do this but I very carefully stuck my hand down there to grab the case out. It wouldn't budge and I wasn't comfortable with having my hand in the garbage disposal for long.

Can you imagine if I died because I got my hand chopped off in a garbage disposal!?! Josh would say that is natural selection for sure. But, I digress. Since I wasn't in the mood to lose any fingers that day, I grabbed a pair of tongs and figured I could get it to budge loose. Nope! I tried and tried for 20 minutes and couldn't get it to move in the slightest. Ben wasn't at home so I decided to call my parents to see if they had any ideas. Mom told me to get the little allen wrench thingy and unlock the disposal and that I should be able to get it out.

Let me tell you, this is not as easy as it sounds. I took everything out from underneath the sink, found the allen wrench key, got my flashlight, and laid down with my head in the cabinet. I worked and worked with that key trying to get it to come loose and couldn't. I was SO FRUSTRATED. I tried calling Ben to tell him he had to come home from the golf course but couldn't get him so I called my parents in a panic again. Dad told me that I probably was just not strong enough to wriggle the thing loose.

Excuse me? Are you questioning my strength? Are you telling me that I can't do something?

Umm, I think so.

I worked and worked for another 10 minutes or so. FINALLY it came loose!

Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aren't yall proud?

Sorry! I Can't Resist

I was strolling down the cake mixes aisle at my local grocery store today and found this.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!! What in the world is this?

I did a double take when I spotted it, stopped, stared at it for a minute and walked on down the aisle. Then when I thought nobody was paying attention, I turned around and went back to take a picture.

Am I the only person who finds this hilarious? I know I have an immature sense of humor, but how can you not find this funny?

Anyone happen to know what spotted dick is?

UPDATE: I just went into wikipedia to look up the definition. This is what it said:

Spotted dick is a steamed suet pudding containing dried fruit (usually currants), commonly served with either custard or butter and brown sugar. Spotted refers to the dried fruit (which resemble spots) and Dick may be a contraction/corruption of the word pudding (from the last syllable) or possibly a corruption of the word dough.[1] Another explanation offered for the latter half of the name is that it comes from the German word for "thick," in reference to the thickened suet mixture. There are many nicknames for a Spotted Dick including "Spotted Richard", "Dick in a box", "Dotted Lloyd", "Mixey Dick", "Dick with a dot" and "Dickie Burton" as well as many others. It is a cultural part of English Cuisine.

Awesome. I think next time I have friends over, I will serve them some dick in a box.

Just Stuff

So, I guess I've been pretty quiet on the blog front this week. I just realized that I hadn't updated since Tuesday! Mainly this was due to a lack of internet service at home, but that has also been restored. Also, there have been several things that I've wanted to write about but decided it best not to for one reason or another. Nothing particularly good or bad ... just everyday life things! That is the problem with a non-anonymous blog, I guess.

Soooooo ... I guess I'll talk about something that I do feel comfortable blogging about. Mother's Day is coming up and I still have NO IDEA what to do for my mom. Of course she says "oh just pull weeds in my flower beds for an hour ... that is what I would really like". Riiiiiiiggggghhhht, Mom ... like I'm not going to get you a gift for MDay! (I'll still pull some weeds when I'm out there, Mom) Anyway, she isn't hard to shop for at all but at the same time its hard to find something really special and not cheesy. You can post comments w/ any ideas you may have for her. (Although she does read this blog, so I'm sorry if it ruins any surprises, Mom!)

Another thing that is a safe topic is Ben. I like to pick at him sometimes on this blog, I know. It is very well documented. However, I'd like to take a few minutes to BRAG on him for a change! We both have a tendency to leave things just laying around in the house. You know ... shoes, purses, empty glasses, etc. Not trash or junk or anything its just that neither of us are really good about putting things away right after we're done using them. We've decided that we need to make a contientious effort to keep our house tidy and he is doing SO WELL! Every day when I come home from work, the bed is made up (decorative pillows and all), there are no shoes laying around, no hats, or coats out of place and he's even keeping his bathroom counter cleared off! It seems so silly, but really coming home to a tidy house has made a huge difference in my mood! (Yaaaaay, Brian!)

Did anyone see The Office last night? Cafe Disco. AWE. SOME! It was honestly one of the funnier episodes I've seen in a while. I really wish I could learn to dance like Andy. Is he not the best charachter right now?

Okay. Enough randomness. I'll holler back over the weekend or early next week!

Habits

I'm in a very pissy mood today so just bear with me. One of the reasons for my bad mood is that my internet is not working. I HATE YOU O2 SECURE WIRELESS. Seriously, I do.

So anyway I am blogging from my phone now. I'm sure this post will be full of spelling and grammar errors and I'll be lucky if this makes any sense. Don't be rough.

So most everyone here knows that I work for my father in a family business. We go to lunch each day with my cousin and uncle. Sometimes my grandfather will join us if he is around. Anyway, our office is in an area with very few restaurants which means we have a rotation of about 5 different places: Panera, Guthrie's, a BBQ place, a local sandwich shop, and ... ummm..... uh... Well, I guess our rotation only consists of 4 places. That really isn't the point anyway. The point is that we go to the same places each week and we're always together so the people who work at these different resturants pretty much know us and what we tend to order.

For instance, when we all walked into Guthrie's today the ladies who worked there were laughing. Once I told them I wanted a grilled chicken pita, they looked at each other and laughed some more. So, obviously I'm pretty predictable. I go to the same places each week and order the same thing every time. So my question to you is this: is it odd that I go to the same places each week and eat the same things week in, week out? Or is this normal?

I know this post sucks/makes very little sense. Just deal with it. You can blame my interweb provider. (O2 Secure wireless ... they suck).