googled

you know how google posts fun little pictures and links when there’s a holiday or something going on? like the o’s become hearts at valentines day or whatever. this is my favorite one to date.



i can’t figure it out. a) it’s for “happy holidays” but other than the christmas cannon, i don't remember cannons ever being part of holiday decor. b) why is there a guy launching another guy wrapped in a ribbon? c) when you click on the image, it takes you to links and stuff related to the holiday. this is google’s explanation for this one:

i bet some intern lost his job over this. which is sad because it's the holidays. but it's even sadder for his friend because now the intern has lots of time to celebrate the holidays - which apparently includes shooting said friend out of a cannon. should've kept him onboard, google.

so this is christmas

just a couple random sightings during our christmas trip to albuquerque:

and you thought rudolph was a nice whiff of added christmas commercialism

in front of a family gift shop. i regrettably didn’t go in and ask. i was too scared. not quite sure what they were going for with the quotation marks…

the extent of christmas décor in a public colorado springs restroom. it was scotch taped onto the ceiling

the cookie update

it's a christmas miracle! we did it! our second attempt at sugar cookies actually turned out! except for when meghan accidently put red food coloring in our dough instead of vanilla. eh - adds to the christmas spirit

c is for cooking cruddy cookies

so i consider myself to be a fairly decent cook. stir fry, pesto, spaghettios…i’m a master. but i will openly admit that my skills aren’t as polished when it comes to baking stuff. probably because i never had an easy bake oven. how’s a kid supposed to learn without an easy bake oven?? but i can at least still do the basics – cookies, brownies, playdoh molds…until recently. i’d like to say it has something to do with living with meghan because that’s when the problems started. before i share some examples, let me defend myself – we always (start out with the intention to) follow the directions but we’re busy people and baking takes a long time and plus sometimes we don’t have the right ingredients and the closest store is (approximately 0.2) miles away. to top it all off, we have plenty of perfectly good food already at our house that is going to waste so why wouldn’t we just use that as part of the recipe?

example #1: we’ve been getting super festive…iated(?)…this holiday season so we decided to bake the most wonderful sugar cookies known to man. we made a shopping trip specifically to pick up ingredients and gingerbread-man sprinkles (i know!) and christmasy cookie cutters (i think they’re stockings but they look an awfully lot like squatty crew-cut socks). so what if meghan can’t eat dairy so we have to use cant-believe-its-not-butter from a tub? so what if we don’t have a hand mixer so we blend using a rice spoon? so what if we were mysteriously out of vanilla (i’m talking not a drop in that little thing - and we’ve only used it once! (i think meghan’s been hitting the bottle hard after long days of work)) so we decide to use lime juice in its place? the point is this. none of those should be legitimate reasons for our cookies not to turn out. oh yeah and we also put a lot of extra flour in there because they were super sticky…and then we read the recipe fine print and discovered they’re supposed to sit for an hour to lose their stickiness… oh well. at least we could still decorate them up and nobody would know the difference. so then we followed the frosting recipe perfectly (except for lime juice instead of vanilla) and it was the grossest sugariest thing i’ve ever put in my mouth. meghan even violently kicked the fridge when she tried some, the sweet shot through her so hard. so we did what any logical chef would do. added peanut butter. and meghan somehow made a lovely shade of purple food coloring. wrong holiday sweetie. purple’s for…uh…err…another holiday. but don’t worry, we’re not quitters. we know what went wrong and are determined to justify buying all those cookie decorations! my coworkers agreed to be guinea pigs for this next batch. i made sure they like peanut butter.

example #2: when we were staying with dustin and riley awhile back, we decided to be nice and (not spend a dime of our own by using their ingredients to) bake them cookies. peanut butter cookies. it’s not a recurring theme. we just always have peanut butter. i prefer creamy. dustin and riley apparently prefer crunchy. once again, we followed that recipe exactly. except we couldn’t find brown sugar (who has peanut butter but not brown sugar?) so we used white sugar mixed with syrup instead. at least dustin ate the cookies (that’s not saying much…dustin eats things he finds on the floor). oh yeah and they did have brown sugar. it was hiding right in front of the white sugar. not quite sure why we didn’t check that canister. probably we subconsciously just wanted pancakes instead of cookies. peanut butter pancakes. hmm…that actually sounds kinda good.

example #3: let’s just say that when you write down a recipe using abbreviations, 1 c - b.s. doesn’t necessarily stand for baking soda..

ding ding dong ding

300 tubas. what better way to bring in christmas? i was impressed with how silently they played silent night. they probably only had 5 tubas playing silent night and all the other ones were just pretending. joke’s on us. thanks for risking your ears and windows, denver, by letting 300 tubas congregate in a confined area to play us christmas carols. it just wouldn’t have been the same if it was oboes.

to top it all off, mr zachman was a guest conductor! mr zachman was our music teacher in junior high. he was cross-eyed. i have nothing against cross-eyeds, but it does make it rather hard to follow instructions when your conductor points at you with his baton but looks right at your neighbor. also, he was huge on lecturing on how to take good care of your instrument – keeping it clean and tightening the screws when needed and such. that’s why it was funny when he got really upset in class one time and threw his clarinet against the wall. shattered to pieces. way to take care of your instrument mr. zachman. oh…you weren’t talking to me?

white elephant how to

(me coveting, riley presenting and jack just being hot)

i’m pretty impartial when it comes to actually wanting a white elephant gift, but when it’s a jack skellington gift, there’s not a lot i wouldn’t do to get that guy. let me back up and give credit where credit’s due… riley – you rock! not many people can perfectly capture jack-ee-poo’s charming skeleton grin and dreamy curious eyes using mostly toilet paper tubes…talk about another notch on the “dustin definitely married up” chart. now here’s the good part about white elephant gifts. if you’re smart and determined enough, you can totally work the system. i won’t lie, you will probably have to make a few sacrifices and a few tears might be shed, but if you’re fighting for jack skellington, the end definitely justifies the means. here’s a quick how-to:

1. hone in on the gift you want (i know this seems like a common-sense step, but in this day and age, i don’t want to leave it out and then get sued because someone didn’t do this step since it wasn’t spelled out and then the results were off.)

2. form an alliance with another participating white-elephanter (keep in mind that both of you probably won’t benefit so find somebody who loves you enough (or is drunk enough) that he/she doesn’t mind giving up the chance at a good (is there such a thing? (yes…it’s called a toilet paper jack skellington)) gift. plus, you have to accept the fact that what goes around comes around and at a future white elephant exchange, you have to be willing to be the sucker for somebody else.)

3. pray your guts out that one of you gets the gift on its final exchange. (an alternative to this step is to form an alliance with someone really tough and bully-like. then you can just gang up on the person who got the gift you want at the end of the game. joke’s on them (note: if you’re really tough and bully-like and plan to take this approach, you can skip step 2.))

in this particular case, my mom ended up with jack skellington and i ended up with a food scale, which was apparently a pretty hot ticket item back when people still cooked with black and white food. what a great woman to agree to switch with me so i could longingly look into jack’s eyes while she weighs her carrots.

but like i said, you have to be willing to be on the brunt side sometimes. at my company christmas party, my coworker tom was dying to get this antler rack that my other coworker amy brought. my number was one of the last so i vowed to get that thing for him. i did. and in return, i got this rockin’ gift.

discovered uses thus far include giving “the rock” to my nephew, holding a drink/flowers/crumpled up paper because who would want to just hold those in your bare hands, acting like you became the hulk (or had a deadly tar-growth) on one limb of your body, and of course, a winter glove. the funniest part about tom getting the rack was that amy brought it to get rid of it and never have to look at it again and tom’s bringing it into the office to display at his desk…he sits right next to amy…i feel partially responsible but not that bad because who can even feel bad after getting an oversized fist?

christmas rocks!

so if you’ve never taken the opportunity (or even worse – you’ve never even thought about taking the opportunity…shame on you) to see the transiberian orchestra in all their concert glory, you haven’t truly experienced all that christmas music has to offer. also, it’s a great blast to the 80’s, and who doesn’t want that to be part of their holiday festivities?? i’m having a hard time limiting my highlights of the show. let’s just say there were lots of lasers and fire and strobe lights and probably about a thousand band members and a narrator telling a really cheesy christmas story. and a couple of singers with good gravely voices. and everyone had really long hair. and the girls all had blue eyeshadow like barbie and the rockers. and there were a handful of guitar duels and a piano duel and those triangle shaped guitars. and it started snowing inside the pepsi center.

i’m serious – it had every ingredient necessary to make a perfect flashback rock concert. it was awesome. plus, all their music is so fun – what better way to get in the christmas spirit than with a jam session of oh come all ye faithful? i think the absolute highlight for us was the main violinist, anna phoebe, though. she was incredible. she had this custom made bright pink electric violin that she would just wail on – she must have gone through at least a dozen bows. aside from that, i’ve never seen someone with so much energy. 3 hours of running back and forth, doing backbends, running up into the crowd…wow…i’m in love.

meghan and i also learned some things about each other we hadn’t realized before during this concert. another christmas miracle. we both have the exact same pitched “wooo!!” like after a song is over and you’re resisting the urge to throw the beast, so you scream “whoo!!” instead? yeah – identical. and we’d start and stop at the exact same time too. it would’ve been funny to put some poor unassuming person in between us – surround-sound whoo-ing!

reasons why i love my great grandma tick tock

grandma tick tock (officially mcclintock, but meghan couldn’t pronounce that when she was younger…and tick tock just fits) is 90 years old. she still works part time, dresses up for halloween (one year, she dressed up as cleopatra and she loved her costume so much she wore it everywhere for weeks before halloween. my aunt had to take the costume away because people kept getting surprise visits from an 80-something year old cleopatra wanting to borrow a stick of butter or whatever.) she’s never missed sending a birthday card and she makes us watergate cookies every year for christmas. i’m not really sure why she calls them that, but i’m pretty sure they’re made out of pistachio pudding. oh and she’s obsessed with dr. phil.

recently grandma’s health started failing, so she decided to pretty much rip up her will and to instead foot the bill for her entire family to go on a disney cruise with her to celebrate her life. how amazing is that? so we spent a week in the carribean with 52 of our relatives – from uncles and aunts to great and second (maybe even third??) cousins. the cruise itself was a blast (i’ll get to that in a second), but the thing that stuck with all of us the most was the realization that we belong to such an amazing legacy. there were people there that i haven’t seen in years, but that didn’t matter. we were all the same family and everyone was treated as such. in the spirit of grandma, who insists on talking to everyone she passes (the entire cruise staff knew her and even other families wanted pictures taken with grandma tick tock), we opened our arms and our hearts to get to know each other and to get to know grandma even better. by the end of the week, kids in the fifth generation were crying because they had to say goodbye to people in the third generation. second cousins hated to leave great uncles. what a great connection. i belong to such a cool legacy. thanks grandma tick tock for helping us all realize what’s really important in life!! and thanks for making me realize that i’m going to have to start saving for my wedding – i always wanted a small one, but now there’s no way i wouldn’t invite all 52 of those people!! love you grams!!

and now…

reasons why the disney cruise rocks

1. because you get to dress up like pirates

2. because you could get proposed to by a member of the cruise staff

3. because your waiter constantly plays practical jokes on you during your formal dinner

4. because where else do they light the christmas tree using pixie dust?

5. because they sell artificial hairpieces with little mickeys in them

6. two words – jack sparrow

7. one word – tarzan (no pic sadly. his abs broke the camera)

8. because all these people are there!

mmm pizza

in case you were wondering and are ever in the area, the world’s best new york-style pizza lives in my (soon to be former) apartment complex. it’s magical. and the best part is, they speak spanish…er…maybe not…




p.s. i need to learn why sometimes my phone takes black and white pictures. not that taking a picture of a takeout menu in black and white isn't artistic...

okay fine i give up

i think i owe a lot of people this post. and i think it’s really overdue. a handful of people “tagged” me with this little quiz meaning i have to fill it out or else a disaster beyond my imagination will occur. so better late than never, right? eh..

jobs i've held...
1. i used to babysit. like the babysitters club. only without the club part. and then one of the boys i was watching one time fell and hurt his arm. i told him to tough it up and sent him to bed with ice on it…his mom called the next day to let me know he actually broke it and thanks for being responsible about taking care of her son

2. i got hired to work at burger king one time when i was 14. only after i accepted the job did the manager who hired me realize i was only 14 (he was really smart) and apparently burger king has some really hazardous stuff going on that i was forbidden to touch per child labor laws. i could only work the cash register. couldn’t even wipe down a table. this never made sense to me – a) money is dirty and b) what if there was a hold up? i’d be the first to go. i think i worked there for one day

3. meghan and i ran a southwestern jewelry kiosk at costco one time. we weren’t supposed to work together, but we always stayed for each other’s shifts because then you could tag team – one of you mans the store while the other one makes a free-samples run. one of our customers licked every single ring we had. yes…licked

movies i can watch over and over...
1. if only the “never-ending story” really was never ending. then i could probably watch that without getting too bored

2. meghan and i watched the “santa clause 2” probably 40 times in a row one night. well not the whole thing, but just a couple scenes because the little girl was such a bad actress. the more we watched it, the better we both felt about our chances to be successful in hollywood

my guilty pleasures...
1. gray’s anatomy

2. cheese. any and all cheese

3. popping zits (ewww why’d i say that??)

tv shows i enjoy...
1. gray’s anatomy. even though my med student friend told me it wasn’t that believable. we’re not friends anymore

2. anything on vh1. i just saw this show called “the shot” that’s about aspiring fashion photographers. it involved taking pictures of huge tarantulas. now that’s entertainment

places i have been on vacation...
1. one time i visited maine, which i always wanted to do ever since i did a school report on it. i chose maine because i knew nobody else would. i don’t remember anything about my report except that the cover had sailboats on it. thank goodness for clipart. i was told maine was a lot like seattle, which is mostly true except for the part about falling down those dumb rainy hills everyday on my way to work in seattle

2. every other cliché (and even non-cliché) city (butte/butt montana) you can think to vacation. well not really, but i don’t feel like listing anymore places

3. i don’t visit places so much as i do pick up and move to places…i need to work on that. i hear vacationing is nice

favorite foods...
1. cheeeeese!

2. pickles

3. marshmallows only my stomach never agrees with that one

4. sometimes i think the kraft mac and cheese commercials make me fake crave the stuff. i never like it when i eat it though. but a+ for good advertising

awards i have won
1. i think i won a drawing contest in kindergarten. i think it was a picture of a slide. i might need to confirm that with my mom

2. i seem to have a lot of medals from various flute competitions, but i couldn’t tell you what they are. maybe some dancing ones too

3. meghan would probably give me a “best sister” award if she ever thought of it (ahem)

4. i won a radio contest once but it wasn’t really an award and it was because of a story that wasn’t really true so maybe i shouldn’t be proud of that

5. sadly i’ve never won an employee of the month award. nor have i ever worked for a company that has employees of the month. i should probably consider that in my next job move

secretly, i wish i could....
1. be a professional dancer

2. own a coffee shop

3. tell the time just by looking at a glass of water

a random thing about me...
i get the song “bicycle” by queen stuck in my head a bizarre number of times in any given week. odd since i don’t even own a bicycle

i won’t tag anyone on this because i don’t wish pending destruction on anybody. i’m just that nice

the art of hair

when it comes to vanity, the one thing i’m not ashamed to spend money on is my hair. my hair and i have a very amiable relationship – it does what i want it to do in return for me promising not to a) fry it or b) shave it off. so far so good (only, the 80s don’t count because i was too young to be held accountable for any and all perms my hair went through (thanks mom)). oh and maybe this fried my hair a little bit


but it was fun and fruit-stripey and probably not the most conservative thing i could have done while working at an all-about-image law firm. but that’s okay because i never wore nylons either like i was supposed to. or maybe that makes it not so okay…either way, the point is – i can sort of empathize with your recent anxiety, nat nat. only your freakout is more legit because i was in dc and you work in provo…

so one of the first things on my to-do lists when i move to a new place is to find a worthwhile hairdresser (i have a pretty extensive list of good salons across the u.s. if anyone’s looking). i found (and heart) michael at flirt salon right away. he’s so great because a) he’ll spend 3+ hours on my hair to make it look just right (most people quit after 2…i have a lot of hair). b) he has a tattoo of a homestar-runner lookalike star on the inside of his arm – it’s just something to look at when you’re getting your hair cut for 3 hours. c) in his spare time, he runs a real estate business and is always trying to sell me a house. d) i just found out he races and shows horses. so that’s a funny combination. i wanted to ask him if he uses foils to dye his horses’ hair too and i wanted to suggest that they should go blond, but then i thought they probably look okay with their natural color.

meghan is not so lucky at finding good stylists. i told her about michael right away, but she didn’t listen and went to some lady that made her look like a member of the cast for hairspray. finally, she just went to michael and was very pleased. except that she asked for bangs and got fringe. here’s the difference – bangs are short and go straight down. fringe is longer - more like a layer and kind-of swoops to the side (picture my hand motions). here’s her hair


i went a few days after her and asked for fringe. he gave me bangs. here’s my hair. what do you think? pretend like i don’t look neked. i’m not. but do i look like a 12 year old? it’s grown on me and as you can see, i try to make it look like fringe, but sometimes i’m envious of meghan’s fringe. only in my head though. i think it becomes one of the seven sins if i say it outloud. wait…i just did…crap

i was going to photoshop meghan’s fringe on my hair and my bangs on hers, but it turns out that looks really scary, so i’ll just let you use your imagination. we don’t do enough of that these days.

come fly the friendly sky

this is why i love southwest airlines. because you get to choose who you sit by. other airlines are such a crapshoot because sure you might have the best seat in the house…er…plane, but then the man resembling and smelling like a moldy raisin ends up having the second best seat on the plane, which happens to be right next to you. not with southwest though. and i’ve decided that it isn’t worth trying to get the coveted “a” section tickets because you run the same risk. no no – you want to be the last person on the plane because then you get the huge benefit of choosing who you sit next to. for example, how could i not sit next to this guy on my flight to utah?

even if the entire plane was empty and i could sit anywhere i still would have sat next to him. now, given the quality of my camera phone (p.s. i’ve gotten better at remembering to turn my phone to silent before taking pictures), the original picture just doesn’t do it justice. so i made a recreation of what he actually and really looked like.

barney purple

i can’t believe i asked him if he was from utah. right as the words were leaving my mouth i wanted to pull them back in. of course you’re not from utah. we said it in unison – him outloud and me in my head: “you’re (i’m) from boulder.” i love it. the sad part was that he only talked to me a couple times during the flight – in between eating his organic whatever and talking to his wife, who just looked out the window and laughed at who knows what the entire trip. he talked about how he can’t figure out the concept of sudoku and how he loves gambling at wendover and i overhead him tell his wife she needs to make him a new hat because the one he was wearing was starting to fade. fabulous

this is halloween

so in case you were wondering what a young single woman with no kids and no desire to dress up like a chesty bunny wearing stilettos does for halloween, here’s your answer:

the third annual spooky wooky yorkie halloween party. denver loves hosting things for dogs. especially when it entails dressing them up. one might think this means denver hates dogs because how cruel to make them dress up like fairies (we really did have two “fairies” at the party), and that’s probably true. but come on – it’s so funny. only maybe the boy dog dressed up like britney spears was a little much.

in our intense efforts to participate in only the highest-class activities (also known as – “will this make a good story?”) meghan and i just had to go to this refined little event. i got milo a pirates of the carribean costume with a really cool little hat (complete with jack sparrow dreads and beads pertruding from its rim). only milo refused the wear the hat. come on man – i spent good money (not really) for that hat! so, he looked a little less pirate and more peasant or homeless person in raggy..rags…and he’s a total scruftster right now, so hair all over the place and disheveled. plus i don’t really know what happened to him – he’s only supposed to be 6 pounds, but he’s a little mutant pushing the 10 pound mark. which sounds small, until he’s in a room full of 3-4 pound dogs. wait – not just in the room with them, but actually and literally running them all over like some sort of godzilla. my dog’s the one running frantically across the screen.

he did this the entire time we were there. got in dog’s faces, jumped on them, pulled at ears and tails, ran in circles like a madman while all the other puppies pleasantly drank their tea with their pinkies raised. i love my dog.

for the inseparable friends

how happy that someone finally created a girls bathroom where not even walls exist to stifle any gossip between friends. but how sad when two girlfriends skip in to pee together and one can’t sit because there’s masking tape on the seat.. plus she has no toilet paper

first snow!!

after being away from good ol’ mountain winters for the past few years, i’ve been a little hesitant to face the snow again. and then the snow decided to face me. we had our first snowfall yesterday – at least 3 feet probably. blizzard conditions. couldn’t leave the house. this is all a lie. we seriously did get about 6 inches though – not too shabby for a pre-halloween storm.

and even though i survived my first true snow in a few years (dc and seattle snow doesn’t count), hats off to milo who not only experienced his first snow ever, but decided he loves playing in it (to the regret of his owner). it was deep enough (or maybe he’s just small enough), he’d step and his entire body would sink. it looked like a little toupee resting on the snow. then he’d fly out in one foul leap and sink in an inch further. he’s like a little kid – 3am rolls around and he’s waking me up with a “i really want to go play in the snow right now” lick. so, in honor of his first snow, i got him some snow gear. it was only appropriate. he thinks he’s all that in his little suit. he works it with the lady dogs

Punkin Chunkin

apparently there’s a shortage of pumpkins this year for halloween. maybe i’m talking out of line, but i feel like i heard that somewhere – probably from a reliable source, but who knows. anyway the point is, i love pumpkins. pumpkin smoothies, pumpkin ravioli, pumpkin whatever-else-you-make-from-pumpkins. except for jack-o-lanterns kind of scare me. they didn’t used to until i got a little tiny pumpkin last year with full intention to make the cutest jack-o-lantern known to man. so of course it had big doe eyes and a little smiley smirk and maybe some little elfish ears because i heard those were cute. it was the freakiest thing ever. looked like an anime teletubby – not pleasant. and then it looked really scary once it started getting wrinkly. i couldn’t even throw it away because i was too afraid to get too close to it. it was for sure some sort of evil spirit vessel.

you know what i wanted to do with that thing? this

punkin chunkin is a sport (did you know “sport” is the word used for a hamster that is genetically different from the rest of all hamsters? makes the phrase your dad used to say to you – “hey there sport!” a little less endearing doesn’t it?) where all the world’s geeks (nobody else is smart enough – no offense) create pumpkin launchers. there are apparently a few cities that have nationally known punkin chunkin contests. other cities (aurora colorado) are in training (and free!!) i initially thought there were probably rules and limitations in how you could create these things, but after we saw one of the pumpkins get launched riding a rocket, now i’m not so sure. i also initially thought these pumpkin launchers would be pretty makeshift – lobbing the poor defenseless pumpkins up about 25 or 23 feet and then dropping down no more than a few footsteps away from where they started. um…one of these launchers sent a pumpkin 1,400 – yes 1,400 feet!! they could probably start a company – their clients would be people like me with demon pumpkins. their slogan can be something like “launching your demon pumpkins 1,400 ft so you don’t have to be haunted by their anime eyes.” something like that. i’m still working on wording a little bit.

my dog can beat up your dog

won't you be my neighbor?

mr rogers said it best when he asked us all to be his neighbor. but, how naïve of us to agree to that before really researching rogers to make sure he would have been a pleasant neighbor. in fact, the more i think about it, the more i can’t picture him delivering brownies to the houses on his street. and i bet he gets really upset when the little neighborhood posse tries to t-p his trees. and does he have plastic flamingos or one of those hedgehog shoe wipes on his front porch?

we had these neighbors growing up – the gerks. we fondly nicknamed them the jerks (and sometimes i called them the geeks, but it wasn’t until i was older and more word-savvy that i realized that nickname wasn’t really applicable. that’s why nobody laughed when i announced it way back when) they hated us. truly. we never ever saw them – i don’t think they ever left their house. until we accidently threw a ball in their yard and tried tiptoeing to get it. then ms. gerk (ps, they looked like the neighbors (the bigheads) on rockos modern life) would come out in her bathrobe and curlers and start screaming at us “what d’ya think you’re doin’? this ain’t no football field!” and we’d run off screaming, without our ball, and then tell ghost stories about it later that night. i think they took our balls to give to their dog, stinky (that maybe wasn’t his real name). stinky was a huge dalmatian chained to a kennel in the backyard. like his owners, he never left. neither did his poop. thus the name. the times when we threw balls into their backyard was the worst. we had a special spot, perfectly out of view of any of their windows, to climb over the fence. it was far enough away from stinky so he wouldn’t eat us. it was living proof of evolution. you had to be quick and sly – if you got caught, you were a goner. only the strong survived.

the point of the walk down memory lane is this – thanks to modern technology (and people with insane amounts of time on their hands), we can now be warned of neighbors like the gerks (and probably mr rogers) before even moving to an area. check this out. you can post comments like “this neighbor sucks” about people – giving as much info as you want (name, address, shoe size) to warn people who might be moving into an area. this could save children’s lives. i don’t know how many kids we lost to stinky. it might also be a funny joke to post something about your friends just to let them know you’re thinking about them.

cruel and unusual punishment

here’s why this store hasn’t thought this through enough:

1) i hope the store intends on giving these gifts to the kiddies after their parents retrieve them. what if the employees get too excited to enforce their policy that they give the kid a shot of caffeine right away and then the parents never come back. joke’s on them. this is totally realistic, too. if i accidently left my kid at this store, i would for sure not go back to get him. i don’t need any more puppies – it’s just not worth it.

2) what kid wouldn’t want to run away if there was a promise of a free puppy attached?

3) what kid would actually drink espresso. gross…they’d end up giving it to the puppy and wouldn’t that be fun

p.s. isn’t that a nice full-body shot reflection? so artistic

il n’y a pas le feu

i’m really just writing this post as an excuse to use my favorite french phrase.


so as it turns out, i could have died the other day. this is my office building



and this is my floor

on the plus side of being the top floor, the 360-view of outside and sunshine(!) are unbeatable. the only thing that would make it better would be if it was one of those spinny restaurants that moves around in circles as you eat. we do have free pretzels and granola bars at my office though, so i guess that’s kind-of the same.

on the down side, you’re always the last to know when the building’s on fire. we were all diligently (lie) working when one of our consultants runs over and announces “um…there are like 100 people on the grass outside...looks like they’re evacuating the building.” i was careful not to use any exclamation points to describe her announcement because there was no exclamation involved. this might be a good time to say that i work for a really laid-back company.

so, after we all got done with what we were working on, picked up all of our personal items and finally started smelling smoke, we decided to join our building-buddies in the grass (after meandering down the 12 flights of stairs). there was lots of smoke. and this is what came to our rescue.

there were probably about 32 fire trucks, a couple of ambulances, a few dozen police cars and even one of those cool unmarked vans you see on csi. it was like a little party – only i was sad everyone forgot the marshmallows (i guess i never knew that word was spelled with an “a” as in mallow. i always pictured an “e” because marshmellows mellow me out. what is a mallow anyway? (it’s a plant…i just looked it up)).

so, tons of flashing lights and smoke and a surprising amount of unalarmed onlookers. i guess everyone was secretly hoping the building would burn down because, hey, day off! i wanted to let my loved ones know that i was a goner so this is the string of texts i sent meghan. i had to keep sending her stuff because she kept not responding (she claims her phone was dead) (i don’t believe her)):

1. maybe my office is on fire
2. that’s it for me!
3. i’m a goner!
4. tell milo i love him very much
5. goodbye cruel world!
6. woman! do you not care that your only sister is dying in a fire here?

i have such a caring family. don’t worry though. i was just trying to scare her. i wasn’t really dying. just sitting on the grass watching the firefighters spray water all over the place. as it turns out, our official office dumpster was on fire..not the actual building. i’m not really sure that it’s our official dumpster, but i assume it is because clearly someone wanted to burn it down and that only happens with official stuff. also, how else would you explain the csi van?

let me out!

how sad is this?



talk about a commitment-a-phobe's worst nightmare..

the real reason i moved back to colorado

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The South
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What'>http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have">What American accent do you have? Quiz'>http://www.gotoquiz.com/">Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

what not to do at a concert

every summer isn’t complete without a good ol’ down and dirty, sit-in-the-scolding-sun-for-hours-with-some-of-the-best-people-watching-on-the-planet, rock concert. our concert of choosing (thanks to meghan winning free tickets for…well, we don’t really know why…) was the big gig. of course i was excited for this because i thought it would be some sort of pink floyd “great gig in the sky” tribute or something. i was mostly wrong except i’m pretty sure the words “pink” and “floyd” (okay, maybe not floyd) were used at one point or another during the show.

it was a 6+ hour long concert with about a dozen bands playing. i was shocked when i heard there were different groups – i thought it was the same band changing clothes and occasionally number of members during breaks. that’s how unique each band was. yay pop culture. *disclaimer: blue october has a very unique sound.* *disclaimer on my disclaimer: i have to say that so meghan doesn’t beat me up.* *disclaimer on my disclaimer on my disclaimer: she could*

now, if you’ve never been to one of these types of concerts, let me set the stage (har har) for you. imagine a huge community picnic (with more drugs). you pretty much have to come at 2pm to get a good spot on the giant lawn. it’s really ironic because at 2pm on a steamy august saturday, the “best seats in the house” are actually shoved back in the corners of the field…aka the only places dotted by shade. you can’t fall into this trap though, because these “best seats of the house” will be the absolute worst seats of the house once the sun sets and 8 billion more people come. so, even though your doctor might disagree, sitting in the spot most prone to give you heat stroke is the option for you.

the concert was fun. me, meghan and kyle swayed with the music (or because of heat stroke…i’m not really sure). more and more people piled onto the lawn, meaning by the end of the night, we were in very close proximity to the girl who mooned us, the belly dancer, any number of illegal substances and to the innocent foot that i violated.

in my defense, when there’s not enough room to even spread your personal bubble to 2 inches, you can’t be held responsible for your actions…kyle was sitting on one side of me and i had my arm around the back of him – you know, not wrapped around him or anything, just resting on the ground behind him.

i started playing with his hand a little flirtily (real word?) (p.s. it’s not...but flintily is) when it all of a sudden occurred to me “hmm…that’s kind-of an odd position for his hand to be in…” my stomach sank a little bit because i pretty much knew what was going on before i even turned around to confirm it. i turned around to see my hand, groping the barefoot attached to the lady sitting directly behind kyle. i thought her foot was kyle’s hand…my bad…

so what’s more disturbing – the fact that i was groping a strange lady’s foot or the fact that the lady behind me was letting me grope her foot without saying anything. was she getting some sort of satisfaction out of it? sick. i’m going with that’s the worst part. but maybe she was just embarrassed because what do you say to some stranger who’s fondling your foot?

the rest of the concert was good. kyle even let me hold his hand again after i washed all the random foot germs off.

misread street signs

apparently colorado's a little behind on its political correctness

but it at least pretends like its handicap accessible..

p.s. this sign is right next to a spiral staircase

llamas llamas everywhere

i can't say i'm particularly fond of llamas, but that's probably widely disputed based on:

1. i recommend emperors new groove to everyone (shameless promotion - you should see it)

2. this is one of my favorite things on the internet

3. my llama shirt

4. my recent journey to the burro days in fairplay colorado

here's the funny thing about the burro festival. there are camels...there are llamas (more to follow)...but from what i saw, there aren't any burros actually in attendence. (this is a lie. i think we just missed the actual burro day)

here's the other funn(ier) thing about the burrow festival. the festival kicks off with a 3 mile run/walk. sounds sane enough right? right. the trick is this - you have to race with a llama. like this:

(p.s. i had no idea that guy was wearing a byu shirt before i took that picture...)

you and your llama speed through main street, dodging all obstacles in your way. then it's off to the fields where you tread through streams, over rivers and through the woods. oh and, these llamas are hardcore - they train for a whole year! the 2008 llamas are already starting their boot camp. of course, they are still llamas and llamas are apparently stubborn. this is no task for sisies. even some boston marathoners probably couldn't do this race. we unfortunately couldn't do it because by the time we got there, they were out of llamas. so sad

how brilliant is this? uh doi - very brilliant! i'm not really sure where the money goes or what organization puts this on, but i assume it has to do with the national association of llamas or something equally llama-minded.

the happiest place on auraria parkway

in the name of crossing-things-off-the-summer-to-do-list, we (kyle, kyle o, meghan and i) went to elitches last weekend. in traditional nathaniel style, i've decided to rate the highlights of the day to help you and your friends plan out your most successful elitches amusement.

the mind eraser - b+

definitely a good coaster to start on to make sure your accompanying friends can hold their lunch. you have to wait the extra 2.5 hours to sit in the front though to get the whole effect. I'm pretty sure the other seats don't jerk your head back and forth like a pinball on the headrest (thus the literal name)

the boomerang - a-

a personal favorite. once again, a literal name (elitches is clever like that) - this coaster combines the forward acceleration of a car on a track with the backward umpf of a car going backward on a track. my favorite part of this ride was when they closed it down temporarily for "minor technical problems" while we were in line - those tricks really get people pumped for the rides. nobody wants to ride a safe roller coaster.

shipwreck falls - b-

this is our version of splash mountain, minus any singing robots and about 30 feet of drop. i would rank this one higher if the water that splashed all over us wasn't a lovely shade of asparagus green. also, this ride is not nearly as fun as standing on

the bridge at the bottom of shipwreck falls - a

anytime you can't even see blurry images of anything because the wall of water coming toward you is so thick, that's a good thing.

the seadragon - a-

the only appropriate way to go on this ride is to put half your group on one side and the other half on the opposite side. and then you have screaming contests. lucky for us, the entire ship agreed to participate. it was a lovely chorus and for the record (pay attention meghan), my side won

insanely huge blue snow cones - a++

except for the $280 pricetag

white water rapids - c+

this one looked really fun when it was 98 degrees, but then when it was hands-down the longest line we waited in and only about 32 degrees and raining by the time we got into our raft, it wasn't as fun. we pretty much all huddled in the middle trying to avoid even the smallest drop of dumb asparagus water. i think my favorite parts about this ride were the two random girls in our raft - one took her shoes off because she just barely drew checkerboards on them and didn't want it to wash off. the second because she just barely drew eyebrows on herself and didn't want them to wash off. she kept asking us "are my eyebrows gone?"

so because we waited in line so long to sit with miss no-eyebrows, by the time we got off it was lightning...ing and they closed the rides. we were bummed because we didn't even ride the grand daddy of rides. but a close second included going to

qdoba for dinner - a

best burrito place around in my humble (and true) opinion

after we were stuffed of burrito we found out that all the rides were open again, so we drove back to elitches and headed straight to

the flying coaster - a+

this used to be called the superman i think but then six flags sold elitches and everything went generic. so sad. what a crappy name. anyway, didn't change the quality of the ride. this thing was awesome! you climb up this little ladder into a pod and then it rotates you onto your stomach and you go through a coaster superman...i mean flying coaster...style. crazy feeling!

and finally...

merry-go-round

this one is too scary to talk about