snowy strangeness

I grew up on Long Island. We usually got snow during the winter, but it was rare to get more than a few inches at a time. Still, I was somewhat used to it.

Then I went to college in Western New York. Where it was not unusual for a foot of snow to drop in a couple of hours. And I learned how to shovel my car out from two feet of snow.

My husband grew up in Rochester, NY. Where children would stand on snow banks waiting for the bus. Where his mother still lives -- and hires a snowplow driver for the winter to clear her driveway each snowfall.

Yet it wasn't until we came to Maryland that we've noticed this behavior:

Whenever it is snowing, people stick up their wiper blades.

Why? To keep them from freezing to the windshield?

This afternoon, when I took the two-minute walk from my office building to our main office, I noticed that at least 25% of the cars in the parking lot had their wipers up.

Many of them had icicles forming on the wiper blades. That seems far more damaging than wipers freezing to the windshield. Warming up the car for a few minutes, while you scape the windows, would unfreeze them anyway.

I'd worry more that a sharp wind would slam the blades down, cracking the windshield!

who's the genius?

My mother-in-law got us each a page-a-day calendar as a stocking stuffer.

My husband received this:

And for me?

My first thoughts were that these were kind of unusual choices. I kind of like puzzles sometimes, but it's not a hobby or anything beyond the occasional crossword or Sudoku. Mad Libs is just a weird choice for a 34-year-old.

And then we started reading into it.

Does my mother-in-law think I'm smarter than her only child -- giving me the puzzles and him something that doesn't require quite as much thought?

Or does his mother think he might like Mad Libs since he's an editor? And I'm actually an idiot and need these puzzles to make me smarter?

Actually, I'm sure she didn't mean anything by either of these choices. But we sure were amusing ourselves trying to figure out her thought process!

On January 1, I read the first puzzle. A riddle.

A woman watched her husband plunge head first down a deep ravine. She returned home to find him in the kitchen, chopping onions.

How is this possible?

I thought of a few scenarios and then looked at the back. And declared this calendar to be stupid.

The answer?

Her husband was a stuntman and she had been watching him at work.

Well, obviously!

Nothing else has been that dumb, yet. So far they have thrown in a couple word problems, but really seem to favor the trick question.

Yesterday's made me laugh.

To refresh his senses after a wild party, a man goes out for a walk across a wet and windswept moor. There is low cloud cover and not a single star can be seen in the sky. The man is relatively new to the area, and doesn't know the geography of the moor. He has no torch or compass and there is no moonlight to guide his path.
How does he avoid getting lost?

You don't have to be a genius to solve this one.

Anybody that's ever been to a really good party knows the answer!

The man had stayed at the party all night. It was morning and therefore daylight when he decided to go for a walk, hence he would have no problem seeing his way.

Duh.

I'm going to keep playing. I will surely be a genius by the end of 2009!

disturbing finds at rite aid

I was wandering through the seasonal aisles at Rite Aid today, and was confronted with something scary.

Yes, it says she's "Glitzy Girl," but she looks kind of deranged, doesn't she? Creepy.

And just steps away:

The 32-inch Walking Doll. I can't help but insert "Street" in the name.

I had a "Walking Doll" when I was a kid. You held its hand, rocked it back and forth, and it would take small, slow steps as you walked. It was also quite tall, but shaped and dressed like a child. No boobs. No makeup. No nose studs. (OK, the blond girl in the middle is lacking a nose stud. She is also lacking the fishnet stockings worn by the other girls.)

What age child will play with this doll? I was probably five or six when I got mine. On the original version of the photo (I resized it when I uploaded), you can make out the age on the box. Four and up.

It's just wrong.

I'm sure there were others, but I didn't stick around long enough to find more inappropriate / scary toys.

I was too haunted by Glitzy Girl's stare.

delicious road tar

I don't know anything about wine. Some I like, some I don't. I've occasionally been known to drink it from a box and think it was pretty good.

I don't usually like Chardonnay, though maybe I just haven't tried a really good one. Same goes for Merlot, but generally, I'll drink just about anything.

I went to a wine tasting with some friends last weekend at a local shop. I went to a wine festival once, but this was my first time at a tasting. I didn't do any swirling, and I drank my samples.

We picked up a printout explaining the featured wines. The whites started normal enough with comments like "smelling of honey and exotic spices," "dry with a creamy texture," and "wonderful notes of orange rind, lemon blossom and buttery apples."

Then we moved onto the reds. "Beautiful sweet raspberry, wild mountain berry ... " sounds good, until "incense, wood smoke and autumnal vegetation-like characteristics." Yes, all in the same wine! (It was very good, but at $54.99 a bottle, I'll never have that one again!)

Next up, a Syrah that reveals "exceptional fruit as well as notes of road tar, camphor, chocolate, blackberry liqueur and roasted meat." (This one wasn't great, and left an aftertaste.)

Finally, an Australian Shiraz (typically my favorite), is "purple-colored with fragrant aromas of toast, black cherry, scorched earth, pencil lead and blueberry." (I liked this one, too. Still, $39.99 is out of my price range!)

So ... we've got road tar, pencil lead, scorched earth and roasted meat ... are these aromas something people look for in wine?

Fortunately, I couldn't pick out those flavors!

i was going to say something meaningful for my 200th post ...

But ... uh ... I got distracted by something that made me giggle in the Home Depot garden department:

"Contains Liquified Worm Poop"

I know, I know. I've let my inner 10-year-old out again!

But couldn't they have used a different word? I would provide a list of synonyms, but it's bad enough that the search engines are going to pick up "worm poop!"

Obviously, it's sort of fertilizer ... but all I see is a bottle of liquified worm poop! (If you're interested in reading about how good worm poop is for your plants, you can read more about this product!)

Anyway, yeah, this is my 200th post, and I've just set a new low for myself.

And now, the phenomenon that introduced me to blogging in the first place is nearing the start of it's second year. I'm planning a redesign for NaBloPoMo, though if finish early, I'll probably post before November 1. I'm excited about it!

But don't expect any change in format. My potty humor is here to stay!

monkey mayhem

The night of the race, we ate dinner at a Greek restaurant on the boardwalk. We sat on the ocean-facing patio.

Next door was an amusement park that I could see from my seat. I was infatuated by one ride in particular. It had odd spinning monkeys. They were kind of creepy; I couldn't stop staring at them.

Since it was getting dark, I had to return the following day and capture their monkey splendor.

Click on the monkeys if you'd like to see larger versions.

Be afraid, be very afraid!

definitely not the bluebird of happiness

We arrived home today to find a bird standing on the porch. This normally wouldn't be unusual, except that as I approached, he didn't move.

He looked terrified; I figured I must have startled him.

I backed off, and waited a few seconds. I was a bit worried that as I walked past, he might freak out and fly into me!

He continued to stand there, beak open.

I nudged his foot with a stick, hoping to snap him out of it and get him to move along.

Nope, nothing.

I cautiously walked past to the front door, and went inside. He stayed there, still looking catatonic.

Since my digital camera batteries were dead (the camera's kind of broken which caused the drained batteries), I could only get a (crappy) photo with my cell phone camera.

You can't see the look in his eyes ... or that he was standing there with his beak open.

Since I barely have a zoom on that thing, I was also standing no more than two feet from him.

After starting dinner, I peaked outside and there he stood. A few minutes later, same thing.

Eventually, he turned his head and hopped in a circle.

After dinner, he was gone.

Hopefully he went on his way before one of the neighborhood stray cats realized there was a free meal on our porch!