Throwback Friday

Because I missed Thursday. I think Friday should be known as Throw Your Hands In The Air Because It's Friday and maybe Monday should be Throw-up Monday because well, duh, it's Monday and that always makes me want to vomit. Tuesday could be Throw Everything Away and then go get it again because it's only Tuesday and you probably still need it. Wednesday is definitely Throw Could Go Either Way.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to write about. Just goes to show how easy it is to get sidetr...

Oh right, throwback Thursday that I missed. Was going to be all about my Thanksgiving this year - best part, someone serving me food and drink and doing the dishes afterwards. Worst part, gave myself a terrible food baby. Best part, bartender bringing me drinks when I gave him a special wink*. Worst part, realizing that my special wink is not actually sexy. Been using that for years. Best part, Uber taking me to restaurant and bringing me home. Best part for Uber was no one vomiting or peeing in their car. Worst part, I can't be an Uber driver because of my car. Apparently quirky cars are not considered. Best part, having a drinking/eating buddy. Worst part, no one was being responsible. We forgot to designate a responsible person for the night. Best part, stretchy dress. Worst part, didn't help. Best part, gave thanks to Albert for being a great cat. Worst part, he didn't return the sentiment.

*Had to actually explain that it was a special wink because he thought I'd had too many and was having a stroke and cut me off before I'd even had one.

Post Thanksgiving

It's the day after Thanksgiving and I can't write anything because I am too full.

It's Thanksgiving

In case you didn't know. 

I can't write any more because my mouth is full of turkey. And pie. At the same time. It's not polite to write with your mouth full. 

Happy Thanksgiving to those who read my blog*. 

*To those who don't - while I don't want to wish you an unhappy thanksgiving, I will stick with "have yourself an average kind of a day". Maybe next year you'll think twice before not reading. Hmm?

It's The Day Before Thanksgiving

Are you brining your turkey, trying to decide whether to make that weird jello dish (don't), baking all manner of pumpkin things, planning your thanksgiving table decorations or are you at work like me? The end*

*This year I'm going to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner so that someone else can cook for me and serve me. I plan on eating too much pie (as a first course...because I can), drinking too much and behaving badly.

2014 Thanksgiving - Things I Am Thankful For

1. Someone else making Thanksgiving dinner
2. My Math ability
3. Some other things that I can't think of right now but am clearly very thankful for
4. My family. You have to put that one in otherwise you look mean.
5. That I can still fit into my jeans. No, not those ones. The post-Thanksgiving ones.
6. My breasts. They stop people looking at my thighs. What? Just trying a little turkey body part humor...don't make me whip out the wattle waddle.
7. My enormous brain. What? The title is not "Things I am thankful for and humble about."
8. My extreme beauty. Well, I may as well go for gold. Thanksgiving comes but once a year
9. My amazing goodness and kind heart. Ok, fine, That's pushing it.
10. The roof over my head. But not the bloody people that live on my roof. They need to stay very still inside their house and not move. Until I leave.
11. Yoga. And people that teach yoga. And my yoga pants. But mostly my yoga pants. There is a lot of room for error in yoga pants.
12. Not my hair. It's not what I wanted. Where is the long mermaid like locks that I'm owed? More than 30 years of growing it and where is my carefree weekend messy yoga bun? What I have is the size of a walnut shell on the top of my head. Nothing about that says carefree.*
13. Albert. Well, duh.
14. My Mazda - you just hang in there a little bit longer. Hey, how about we get your oil changed next week? Would you like that?
15. Sunshine. While the rest of the country freezes, we don't. Hahahahahaha.

*You have to put something in that you're not thankful for. It's like writing a performance review, you can't just talk about how great you are, you have to add something that you plan on working on. And you can't  call it a weakness or a lack of skills or even more bluntly "something you're a bit shit at". It's an "area of opportunity". I wrote this after I wrote my annual performance review. For which, by the way, I have given myself 14 gold stars, 11 silver ones, 203 brownie points and a big round of applause. There was no mention of the ratings system so I added my own...

Some Important Points For A Friday

1. Just to be clear, I only have one foot in the Crazy Camp. The other one is firmly planted in Cat Lady land, so I think we can all agree, I'm cool. Perfectly normal female.
2. A comment was recently made to me that I have all kinds of walls up when it comes to flirting/engaging with me and that my sarcastic, sardonic, ironic sense of humor was yet another wall. So, I decide to bring the Berlin Wall down a little bit. For the second time in history. Of course as soon as I did that, I realized it was a mistake. I need one of those bank teller walls that comes hurtling down (or up - depending on your bank model) when you press the panic button at the first sign of a transgression. If you're lucky, his fingers might get caught and mangled a little bit...it's a hard lesson but one they will only make once.
3. Thanksgiving is not next week.  I think someone moved it when I wasn't looking.  I feel let down.  Also, my turkey purchase is a little premature.  Back in the freezer you go.  Neville
4. I just read a statistic that says that 70% of porn traffic occurs during business hours.  Which leads me to wonder are these people watching in their office or in a pod/cube environment?  Which then leads me to wonder if the porn watching is then causing any reactions...you know what I mean...and how is that manifesting itself?  At this point, I think we're all hoping the porn watchers have an office and let's not even contemplate the lunch room.    Who out there is feeling a need to watch porn at work -  is it that work is not stimulating enough?  Wait, that sounds wrong.  To be clear, I don't mean that your job should "stimulate" you, I just mean keep you distracted from thinking about all the porn you are apparently missing out on.  Unless of course your job is in porn, in which case, go for gold.  Do the porn watchers not have computers at home so they have to do it while at work on the Company laptop?  Did they just need a timeout?  Some stress relief?  Because I find that going and getting a coffee or leaving for the day works wonders. I still have so many questions about this.  Does anyone want to fund me to do a full research project?  I think we all know how good I am at charting and documenting results.

Obsession - Letting Out The Crazy

Let me tell you a little story about the inner workings of a female friend of mine and see if it strikes a chord with any of you*.  

Here's what happened to her recently. You know when you meet someone when you're away for a weekend, you have a great night, you leave it with "let's stay in touch", exchange numbers and become friends on Facebook? She had one of those evenings. Luckily, she wasn't sure that they were a very good match - although it's possible that one evening wasn't enough to determine that but she much prefers to make snap judgements. Obviously much safer and given proximity to one another, very sensible on her part. So, it's good that she didn't get all obsessed over someone that she's sure is a terrible fit for her and doesn't even live where she does. She kept it down to a couple of casual texts, the occasional Facebook comment and then left it at that. 

And then she got irritated that he wasn't being as responsive as she was (and that they hadn't made Thanksgiving plans - yes, this is a normal train of thought). So instead of letting it go, she caved and sent a casual Sunday night text "Hey - how was your weekend?" 

A mere hour and 41 minutes later (she wasn't counting, just happened to notice the time), she received the following response "Call me in one hour." Call me in one hour? What does that mean? Are they spies? Did he forget to add "Let it ring once then hang up and dial back again immediately." Or does it just mean that he would like to chat in an hour when he is free? No, that can't be it. Far too simple. Anyway on the off chance that he did mean that, she did what every normal woman would do - she set the egg timer for one hour. 

A few minutes past the appointed hour (it doesn't do to be too precise), she sent a text to see if he was still awake (a courtesy since they were different time zones). An hour later, it was safe to say, he was not. Luckily she only stayed up for another hour wondering what that meant. So what is the lesson in this for her?  Just leave it alone?  Find a replacement? Learn macrame? Make alternative Thanksgiving plans? Yes.

*Not you men people

Happy Thanksgiving

I wanted to write a post but then this happened.

I can't be expected to type with my thumb practically ripped off.

Happy Turkey Day. Ow.

Happy Thanksgiving...To Me

Thanksgiving Thoughts and Reflections:

1. The year I hosted Thanksgiving and made poached fish for dinner - I now see the error of my ways and am very sorry
2. The year I volunteered. I showed up with my two massive containers of mac n' cheese and full of virtuous, righteous do-gooding. After I dropped my food off in the kitchen to be added to plates and packaged up as a dinner for one, ready to be distributed around the city, I got in line to be assigned my volunteer duties. Two hours later - still in line, still volunteering but effectively only volunteering to stand in a line. Effectively not very effective. Finally, I get called to a car with 3 others, we load up with the plated food and are told to drive to where we think there are homeless people looking for a Thanksgiving meal. Being new to LA, I suggested a spot in Portland. I was ignored* So the ringleader and driver headed for her favorite homeless spot. Apparently they went home. Not a single person in sight. At which point we resorted to Google and headed for Skid Row in Downtown LA. Finally getting into the swing of things, we hand out meals with only 2 thrown at us by someone who wasn't very hungry. Empty of all our plates we head back to base camp with just a couple of things. Two homeless puppies and their homeless fleas and some mashed potato in one of the girls hair. Not mine though so don't worry.
3. The year I slept through Thanksgiving - was about to write a description of what happened and realized this happened. I slept through Thanksgiving.
4. How to make a scaled down Thanksgiving dinner for one. Dennys.
5. The year I ran the Turkey Trot - this is a hellish idea that has to be done early on Thanksgiving morning so that you can justify eating your face off later. The Portland Turkey Trot ends up at the Zoo and you run the last part through it, with Lions and Tigers jogging along beside you in their cages. The turkey's don't run with you in their cages. Because they are dead. And about to be eaten. So it's a very mistakenly named fun run. (A) the turkey's are not trotting and (B) therefore not having fun. They are just dead.
6. The food that shouldn't be eaten on Thanksgiving - Canned anything. Tofurky**
7. The football games I didn't watch on Thanksgiving. All of them. Ever.
8. Giving thanks - let's celebrate the harvest. Which occurred several months earlier as we are now in the middle of winter. Fail.
9. In response to a query: No, I will not be going home to New Zealand for Thanksgiving.
10. Apparently every year the president issues a proclamation, to"pardon" a turkey, which spares the bird's life and ensures that it will spend the duration of its life roaming freely on farmland. The rest of us massage our birds with butter and then eat them***. 
11. The year I named my turkey - Neville. Actually this happens every year now. Taking suggestions for next year as this year I will be roasting Gustav's left leg.
12. If I have a whole pumpkin pie, how many slices will you get? None. My pie.
13. Thanksgiving advice - don't cook fried turkey in the nude.
14. Things I am thankful for:

• Gustav 

 

Rose are Red, Violets are blue, Thanksgiving poems are very difficult and I haven't quite mastered it yet.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

*Which I don't think was really in the Thanksgiving spirit.
**Despite the previous comment in where it appears I am on the side of the turkey, I will still eat their dead bodies rather than have turkey formed out of tofu. My only exception to this rule is turkey formed out of cake.
***However, the pardoned birds don't have a very good track record and it seems they now use an alternate.  In 2010, Obama pardoned Apple, and alternate bird Cider. Both had died of natural causes by Thanksgiving. In 2012, Obama pardoned a 45-pound turkey named Liberty and an alternate bird named Peace. Peace survived until shortly before Thanksgiving 2012, when he was euthanized.  There is no record of why Peace had to be euthanized.  Which I find very suspicious and suspect that the Secret Service were involved.  If you are reading this, Secret Service people, I'll have you know that you will never find me as I am a master of disguise and do all kinds of clever computer stuff that I can't quite remember right now to put you off the trail.  Also I am Australian.

An Open Invitation To My House For Thanksgiving/Rugby

Dear all of my friends*,

As most of you don't know, NZ is playing Ireland on November 25th which is close enough to Thanksgiving for me to combine the two. Since it's being played in Dublin, it's probably at some horrific hour but there's that whole time difference thing which is like long division and who can understand that? I asked for them to play around 9amish but it seems I no longer have the power to (a) convince New Zealand to play at a time more convenient to me or (b) reverse the world's time zones. I'm like Harry Potter but without magic. Or a wand. Or an owl. Or a broomstick**. Or an invisible cloak. Actually, it turns out, I'm not like him at all. That was a poor example.
Normally, I would have come up with some fancy invite but I forgot that I'm not a graphic designer. So I got out my stick and dirt. Drew a cool invite with my stick in the dirt but I can't figure out how to get it on my computer. If you want to come over, can you come look at my dirt invite? I'm going to need you to RSVP in the dirt.

I will make a full Thanksgiving dinner, provide you with beer and wine and sophisticated party snacks. I will also be making and decorating little rugby ball cookies. But if you show up and there aren't any cookies, just know that in my head they were delicious.

This is what I want them to look like.

If I'm lucky, they'll look like this

So, I think that went well,

You might want to bring a cushion or a chair as I have a three seater couch. If only 2 people show up, we will be fine. A little awkward perhaps, sitting side by side, staring straight ahead. Also, don't touch my stuff.

Hope to see you***,

K

*Hi Mum.
**Actually I have a broomstick but when I command it to fly, it just falls limply to the ground. So we just sweep instead.
***Not true. Also I have changed my mind about doing this.

A Handful Of the Conversations I Regularly Have...

This is probably going to offend some people. And by people I mean Americans. Which means my readership may drop back down to 3. So, I'm going to need the New Zealander's to step it up a bit until I can get the Americans back. What do you say we all pick on the Aussies tomorrow?

Stupid person: Are you from Australia?
Me: No, New Zealand
Stupid Person: Yeah, I thought I recognized the accent
Me: Probably right after I told you

Different stupid person: Where are you from?
Me: New Zealand
Still stupid person but still different one: Oh cool, that’s next to Sweden, right?
Me: No, that’s Norway.

Blind drunk stupid person: Have you seen a hobbit?
Me: Yes.

Stupid Person: Do you eat turkey for Thanksgiving in New Zealand or something else?
Me: The Mayflower didn't make it to us, so...

Stupid Person: Are you going home to New Zealand for the weekend?
Me: Yes. I have a time travel portal
Stupid Person: Really?
Me: No.

Stupid Person: Has anyone ever said "throw another shrimp on the barbie" to you?
Me: No - that's so original. Did you think of that by yourself? 

Culturally Unaware person: Why do New Zealander's call themselves a fruit?
Me: The nickname comes from a bird called the Kiwi
Culturally Unaware person: Have you eaten a Kiwi
Me: Yes, it was roasting next to the shrimp on the barbie
Culturally Unaware person: Does it taste like chicken?