Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Fruit and Meat - an abomination



So I have a little rant here, and I wonder if you can guess what it is? Well if you look to the picture on the right here and say to yourself, "My, what a delectable looking pizza" then you really won't appreciate what I'm going to say next. Fruit and meat. Meat and fruit. Sweet and savory. Repeat after me people, they do NOT belong together. I feel almost as strongly about this as I do about the fact that KFC and Taco Bell should not be available in a single restaurant form.

Now normally I save my blog for more amiable musings however the horridness of mixing fresh fruit and cooked meat in the same dish makes me want to gag. Get that pineapple out of my pizza, get those walnuts and strawberries out of my salad, your apples and raisins out of my stuffing, and for gosh sakes get your stinkin mangos out of my salsa! All I can say is WHAT UP PEOPLE? If you are going to go to all the trouble to heat up fruit then it must be paired with sugar and... let's say a crumble crisp topping for starters. Fruit is naturally sweet and therefore predestined to be enjoyed in dessert or treat form. Mixing it with cooked flesh could be considered in bad taste at best or an abomination at worst. Meat on the other hand is savory. An earthy, scrumptious, canine tearing sustenance. It screams for spices, rubs, sauces, and especially gravy. Why go and muck it up with some poor hapless fruit that would be much better served in a cobbler or pie?

If you are one of those people (and you know who you are) who actually enjoy the aforementioned combination and have no compass of what it tastes like to me, I shall give you an example to best describe it's assault on my taste buds. Remember the episode of Friends where Rachel tries to cook a trifle? The pages of the cook book have stuck together and she accidentally makes half trifle, half shepherds pie? I think the exact layers are, lady fingers, peas, strawberry jam, ground beef. When Joey takes a big bite he declares it "TASTES like FEET". Now you know what fruit and meat do to my pallet. Thank you.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

A Golden Boy Comes in Handy




My wedding anniversary is coming up in a few days. It will be seven years. He's the greatest really. Funny, kind, hilarious, eternal optimist, hard worker, the ethics of Gandhi, and the patience of Job. So it's no wonder that he's been given the title of "Golden Boy" by friends and coworkers alike. Things always seem to go his way if you know what I mean. Some have even accused him of living on or under a rainbow. He has a knack for tact and timing. Where I'd jump in and mess things up, he'll wait til just the right time and things will go exactly according to plan (It's almost annoying actually). He's patient too. He's very good at planting seeds in those with authority over him, cultivating them for very long periods of time, and by the time they come to the conclusion he had already engineered out for them they are whole heatedly on board and think it's their idea to boot. Not to mention they feel an teensy bit smarter because of it. It's like "dang that was a splendid idea, so glad I thought of it."

Just this week it was proven again in the form of a free plasma. Heck not only was it free, but they paid him $34 bucks to take it off their hands. How is this possible you ask? Well it's all in the day of the life of a Golden Boy my friend. OK technically it wasn't "free" but pretty close.

We bought a plasma last March (with a 3-year warranty) and last week the analog cable channels and some of the inputs just stopped working. They don't make replacement parts and instead wanted us to bring it in to swap it. Then it turns out they don't carry that particular model anymore (perhaps because it's prone to break in under a year?) so they were going to give us store credit. There was a better brand on sale which we considered upgrading too, but the day he called there were none in stock. He decided to wait (patience again) til Saturday because they told him they might be restocked then. He pops by the store on a whim and someone had returned that same better brand and now it was "open and out of the box" and discounted $300 LESS than ours. So he runs home to rip our broken plasma off the wall and in the 25 minutes it takes to get back to the store they had already sold it. 

Now I'm sure you're like... WAIT a gosh darn minute here. If he's really the "golden boy" like you claim why was it gone when he got there? Well don't worry kids, this of course has a happy ending. Well since our plasma was off the wall and ready for exchange he had to basically exchange it for one in the store. There happened to be another great plasma perfectly new and in the box that would fit us to a "T". Turns out our store credit not only covered the brand new plasma, but the warranty on the plasma was cheaper than our original warranty, so all in all he walked out of the store with a brand new plasma AND $34 bucks in his pocket as they paid HIM the difference. Our new warranty by the way will last til 2011. So we have a year newer TV, an extended warranty, and they PAID us to take it home. Incredible, isn't it? Feel free to shake your head in wonder at the amazing powers of my Golden Boy. I'm just glad he's on my team...

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Bag O' Plagues?!?



So I was wandering through Party City today on a reconnaissance mission to scout out Elmo options for my daughter's upcoming 2nd birthday in May, when I happened across one of the oddest things I've seen in a long time. I literally stopped dead in my tracks... dead being the operative word here. 

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Across the top was a catchy, albeit, disturbing title...

THE BAG OF PLAGUES. I gasps audibly and looked around to see if anyone had seen it too. I approached with great caution, head cocked to one side, perplexed look on my face. HUH? I looked around with great concern. What section was I in, anyway?? Turns out I was in a small (but interesting) Jewish section for the upcoming passover. Intrigued... I pressed on. What could be more fun than a bag o' plagues? Inside the bag was a treasure trove of wonders I had yet to behold. A sack of suffering if you will... a... oh heck, just check out this picture just so you know I couldn't even begin to make something like this up:
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Ok, so let's peek inside and see what you get. Well it's all 10 Biblical plagues (or representations of them in fun learning toy form) that God and Moses rained down on those naughty Egyptians for not letting the Israelite people go. I remember the story well from Sunday school. Each plague got worse and worse until finally the stubborn pharaoh let everyone get out of Dodge. So here's a complete list of what you'll get for your money:



Blood: Fake blood
Frogs: Plastic frogs
Lice: Small black bug
Wild Beasts: Animal finger puppets
Cattle Plague: Cow mask
Boils: Sticky hands with boils
Hail: Plastic ice cube
Locust: Large green locust
Darkness: Sunglasses
Death of the Firstborn: 9-pc. puzzle


My personal favorites? The sticky hands with white boils (cause, you know you want your kids playing with boils), the vial of "blood" (love the disclaimer cause real blood might be straw that crosses this camel into "creepy" land), and of course the giant scary louse. The sunglasses (for the darkness plague) add a nice touch and can be used later for "Risky Business" floor slides and Secret Service make-believe games.

I was so enamored with this little bag of God's wrath that I HAD to share it with my zany friends, so I clicked a quick cell pic of the bag with matching title and sent it off with the caption.. What the?!? A few moments pass and I get an overwhelming response. Where ARE you?? Another wrote, "that's hilarious, but where the hell are you?" I replied... I'm at the passover section of Party City... talk about a fun theme party, my friend. It's not a party til someone cracks open the bag of plagues. Let the death and mayhem begin.

But before you guffaw yourself silly, BEWARE! This is serious Jewish business here. One google of the Bag of Plagues will call up hundreds of sites offering passover "fun" and educational tools that help little kids learn about their faith. Like the passover bag of frogs seen here:

http://www.milechai.com/p/passover-educational-toys.html


I'd like to state for the record here that I'm not at all dissing the Jewish faith. I was just surprised to find such a wonderful little abstract item tucked between the Mardi Gras and St. Patrick's Day party supplies. The more I think about it the more I want to go back and get myself a bag O' plagues. Hey I think the Jews are on to something. Heck more power to them. Especially this time for thinking outside the pox.

When Gallbladders attack...


So up until now, me and most of my internal organs have been getting along splendidly. It's probably the same for you. Heck, if they are working just fine, no one really probably gives them a second thought. Well, a few weeks back, my gallbladder got peeved and decided to give me the what for. This might be on the most part a tiny, understated, rather forgotten organ but when it gets pissed off all hell can break loose. What IS a gallbladder you ask? Well it's this little sac that sits under the liver and stores extra bile for a time when the liver needs a little extra help on digesting big meals. If you are so inclined there's a retired general surgeon that explains it perfectly here:
So my attack started as an aching pain in the center of my back which increased in pressure then shot through like a samurai sword to the front of my chest under my sternum bone. From there it got progressively worse and more intense. I felt like my heart was going to explode. I can't even describe the pain really, although most people say it's worse than childbirth. Well I've had three babies and they ain't kidding. That's practically an understatement actually. I literally thought I was going to die. We eventually called 911 (a first time for everything) and I was brought to the ER.

Long story short, I had stones and I had to have it removed. Where did these stones come from, you ask? I guess most people have them. Most of the time they hang out in your innards uneventfully. Sometimes eating a high fat or greasy diet can cause them to crystallize, OR, and this one is ironic, weight loss and a low fat diet can also cause gall stones. It's like, damned if you do... damned if you don't. I just lost 45 pounds this year, while pregnant mind you, and in a slow and healthy way to boot. Then I had baby #3 seven weeks ago. Well turns out having three babies in short succession doesn't help either. Our good buddy "estrogen" (the bitty) likes to contribute to making the stones get harder faster. This is the kind of stuff other people don't tell you and you only find out after you have kids. So this prize combination of winning factors caused my gallbladder to revolt and try and kill me (Well at least it FELT like it was trying to kill me. He really gave it the college try, although I'm still alive and kicking).

So besides my c-section scars I am now sporting a sexy four-hole addition to my mid section. Sometimes I'm afraid to drink water for fear I'll start leaking like a sieve. Luckily they are pretty small and should heal up nicely. Matter of fact medical science is a stinking miracle! Here it's been a week since they removed an ENTIRE organ from my body and I'm pretty much ok. Walking around (with some pain mind you) but not too much worse for wear. It's amazing if you think about it. So that's it for now, but try and be nice to your innards... just in case.
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