The worst food ideas

It has been a very long time since I've had Cheetos so I remedied the problem by buying the knock off brand. It was a bad idea. The top part of the bag was burnt, the middle was delicious and the bottom ones were dripping in oil. Not even joking, I picked one up and oil dropped off the end, super nasty like. I am very unhappy with this latest food disaster. When I buy something I have a reasonable expectation for decency. It doesn't have to be great, but it shouldn't be nasty either.

At least when I am making food if it's bad I have no one to blame but myself. Food manufacturer's have entire departments just for R&D, along with sample testing and lots of other crap.

A couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to see what happened if I cooked an egg inside of a pancake. The idea came from watching my brother eat fried eggs on top of his pancake. I wondered if I could just fry an egg inside instead of using a different skillet. Lazy is my middle name.

The first few times the yoke was not cooked, at all. It wasn't even a little solid. I can happily say that I am sincerely glad it was not me eating them. It took me several tries to get the combination of batter, egg and heat. Once I'd mastered cooking the egg fully without burning the pancake I tried one out for myself. It was pretty good, not all that exciting, but yummy.

On a completely unrelated note, here is a set of graphs that would have made my history teacher cry. Complements of xkcd.

Ninja Turtles

I am molting. And it's not pretty

Baby oil is Nirvana.

The worst thing about sunburns is a few days later when skin starts sloughing off like a reptile replacing their scales. It's ugly. It's uncomfortable. It makes me grumpy. Who wants to run around flaking off little pieces of skin?

Plus trying to put anything on a peeling sunburn can be excruciatingly painful. Enough to make me want to run screaming and bash my head through the wall. Even if that wouldn't make me feel better it might be enough so that I pass out for a few hours. I've been running around with an ice pack practically attached to different parts of my body. The skin right under my collar bones is the worst, I move at all and causes this rippling burning sensation. Super painful. Makes it hard to think about anything else.

Which brings me to my next point. Baby oil is Nirvana. It is the only stuff I've been able to put on that doesn't feel like I am dumping molten lava into an open wound. The stuff is fantastic. The only detriment is that I now smell like a baby. And not in a good way. It's that weird kind of stuffy baby smell. At least I don't smell like a dirty baby, so it could be much worse.

I think that sunburns give me a major case ditsy (okay so it's probably not the sunburn, but I like being able to blame it on something other than myself). This week has been full of "Oh... um. My bad?" I dislike being so oblivious. Every single time I've done something stupid it's been in the kitchen.

Mom was getting ready for a picnic lunch and I decided to help her prep the food. She handed me a bunch of celery, told me to slice it up for the potato salad. I grabbed the huge bunch and chopped the bottom off. My mother flipped, apparently we only needed about three stalks instead of all of them. Well, to redeem my failure I decided to help mom peel the eggs, since she wasn't doing a good job. In high school I'd worked on salad bar prep and I remembered how much easier it is to peel eggs if you roll it across the counter, crushing the entire shell (it's pretty cool, it pops right off). I had forgotten that those eggs had been cooled, not straight out of the pot. It seems that just cooked hard boiled eggs will smoosh, all over the place, if you wake them on the counter. Yeah... I then ended up putting a dirty bowl in the pot of cooked potatoes. It was in the sink and I'd thought it was filled with soaking water, not potatoes. My mother was not happy.

Sadly, that was not the end of my reign of terror.

The next day I was cleaning the kitchen and the sink was not draining. Since the clog was on the disposal side I turned it on to take care of the problem. The sink started shaking and it sounded horrible. I thought it might blow up so I turned it off and left the sink alone. The sink seemed to be doing fine and I forgot all about the weird noises. Suppertime rolled around and I tried to open a jar of pesto and ended up dumping oil all over the counter. All over it. Since I had messed up the counter I opted to clean the kitchen after everyone was done eating. The cleaning went just fine, until I knocked over mom's pill box. It fell on the floor, spilled the contents and broke a piece off (mom duck taped it back on). It was about that time I realized the dishrag was missing. I hadn't seen it all day. Yeah, it was in the garbage disposal.

Unfortunately mom still hasn't banned me from the kitchen.

Pennies and dimes for a kiss

I heard a new song on the radio this weekend, it was repetitively annoying. One of those songs that get stuck in my head and never leave. Seriously, I will think the song is gone and then BAM a few weeks later I am humming. Any of my previous roommates can attest to this, much to their annoyance.

Anyway. I kind of like the song, but I love the music video. It is one of the funniest music videos I have ever seen. Ever. With the possible exception being the literal music video from the 80's.

Hmm... so I couldn't find the original version, but this is pretty awesome too. And no, the U.S. version does not work anymore, they lie.

Yes. It's pretty epic isn't it? Hehehe, I about fell over laughing the first few times I watched it.

I wish I had a walk in freezer

To hide all the dead bodies. Of course.

Not really. I want it so the next time I get sunburned I can just crawl into it for a few hours. Or so when I find my own method for cryogenic freezing I will already have an place to stash my body. Not that I particularly want to go into cryo, seems like a waste of time. Knowing my luck I would end up like Mr. Freeze from Batman, never able to leave the cold suit thingy.

This would not look good on me. (photo).

Saturday was my Mommy's birthday (she's real old) and we did a picnic lunch birthday party thing. I totally spaced grabbing sunscreen. So did everyone else in my family, we all got burned a little but I got burned a whole lot. It hurts, it hurts like crazy bad. Getting sunburned seems to short circuit my ability to critically analyze ideas. Not like that particular ability is stable normally (hah, never). Because of that I now have a list of things you should never put on your sunburned skin.

Things that don't work on sunburns:
1.Body scrub
(bad, bad idea. I thought that if I used something that exfoliates skin it would help scrap off the burnt skin and I would get better faster. I have no idea if that actually worked, all I know is that if felt like rubbing my skin with sand paper. Not fun).

2. Vitamin E cream
(It just doesn't do anything, it hurts to rub on and does nothing useful).

3. Pain-a-trate
(It's basically the equivalent of icy/hot, I did not know that when I put it on. I would not have tried to use if if I had known that. I just thought it was a topical cream that numbed the skin, which sounded fabulous).

4. Clothes
(Sunburns make me want to join an indoor nudist colony).

Things that work on sunburns:
1. Aloe
(It's the most wonderful stuff ever. Unless it's straight from the plant, in which case it smells awful).

2. Ice
(I am not sure if this actually helps but it makes me feel better).

Common courtesies

Seriously people, I would love it if when I was being lied to the person would take the time to make sure the story could hold water. Or jello. Hell I would be down if it could hold a freaking brick. I consider it to be a common courtesy to not lie. But if someone is going to than it's a common courtesy to tell an interesting story. If  you're going to lie make it good. Make sure the story makes sense and doesn't contradict something you said yesterday, or this morning, or five minutes ago.

I am not a complete idiot and I get highly offended when someone lies blatantly to my face and then tries to make it sound like I just didn't understand. I understand perfectly and I can guarantee that if someone continually lies to me I am not going to believe a word out of their mouth. Ever. And if you are someone who lies please do not get super offended when no one believes you anymore. Either that or take lying to a professional level.

Here is a list of professions almost required to lie:
1. Politicians
2. Lawyers
3. Hotel concierge
4. Dressing room attendant
5. Actors/Actresses
6. Writers

She loves me a lot

Grade school children and be sweetly naive. I remember doing lots of stupid stuff when I was that age, making dandelion chains, believing boys had cooties and killing daddy long leg spiders (they're super creepy, almost as creepy as the spiders I found in my dorm room two years ago). My friends and I used flowers to determine if our crushes liked us back, I am sure most of you know what I am talking about.

Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!

My older brother was an adorable child, he also had an interesting way of pulling off petals. Instead of doing the normal "she loves me" or "she doesn't love me." He used to pluck the petals and say "she loves me" and then the next petal would be "she loves me a lot." He obviously didn't understand the principle of negative prospects. 

Of course now he has been happily married for ... six years. It might be seven years this summer. Wow, that is a long time. So he had a good reason for believing she loved him a lot.

Museum of childhood horrors

I had a flash back to one of the stupidest things I did as a child. It was not a memory I particularly wanted to think about. I might have been four, maybe five, when I it happened. I pressed my hands into the rough wooden fence and slid my hands about a foot, that was when I pulled my hands away because they hurt.

Yeah. I was not the most intelligent child. I remember running home crying. My father plopped me down into a chair and attacked my hands with tweezers and a pocket knife. It took over two hours to get most of the splinters out. Two hours of sitting in a chair while my father dug into my hands with sharp objects. He spent the entire time lecturing me. It went something like this:

Daddy: "What were you thinking?"
Me: "I don't know."
Daddy: "Well, why did you do it?"
Me: "I don't know."
Daddy: "Didn't you realize it would hurt?"
Me: "Yes."
Daddy: "Then why did you do it?"
Me: "I don't know."
Daddy: "Did you want to get hurt?"
Me: "No."
Daddy: "Then why did you do it?"
Me: "I don't know."
Daddy: "Did you think it wouldn't give you splinters?"
Me: "No."
Daddy: "Then why did you do that?"
Me: "I don't know."

Brain damage! (shout out to Bill Cosby. I love him.)

Thinking back on it I am still not sure why I did it. I vaguely remember thinking it wouldn't hurt that badly and that I was tough so it wouldn't matter. Like I said, I was not the most intelligent child. It took me years to be able to walk past a wooden fence without wanting to cry. I still don't like to handle wooden objects, especially wooden cooking spoons (they really freak me out).

Surprise, I am the new cookie monster

Yesterday something incredibly exciting and disappointing happened. I found some Tazo Focus tea, it was hiding in my Celestial Seasonings English Breakfast tea box. Very exciting stuff. I have been craving a cup of Tazo Focus for months. Literally months. Since last November, or maybe October, can't remember. There is not a store in Casper that carries the stuff. The closest store that has it stocked was Fort Collins, Colorado. I am not willing to drive down to Fort Collins for a four dollar box of tea.

Especially not this tea. It's not the best tasting stuff in the world, it is kind of nasty tasting. But like circus peanuts I occasionally get a craving for it. It's made out of yerba matte, black tea, orange essence and coca peel. Yeah, it's odd. The first sip is extremely chocolaty but after that it's pretty good. Packed full of caffeine, there is an insane amount of caffeine in Focus tea. Well, to be honest, there is a lot of caffeine in most black teas.

(photo)

Anyway. I got super excited when I found the tea bags. I immediately went and made myself a cup. It was weird, and not weird how I remembered it. That could have been because I put some milk in it. It might have been fine but the only milk I could find was canned... not the best choice.

It was kind of a let down.

But last night was a ton of fun. My sister took me out for Thankful Thursday at the Beacon, it's a country bar. Thankful Thursday is a weekly event and auction to raise money for various groups. This week was for the Reach 4A Star riding academy, they basically do what my best friend wants to do when she "grows-up" if that ever happens (no she is pretty much already there). The auction is hosted by Radio Rick, a local DJ and radio talk show host. It was a super fun night, I especially like the "bidding" wars. Not that anything got outrageously expensive, but they had a shiny box of Godiva chocolates that could not be sold. Someone ended up buying them and re-donating them, my sister eventually ended up getting them because she wanted the shiny box. It was great.

Death to dishwasher

Our dishwasher died yesterday morning. It was rather tragic, mostly because I do not want to hand wash everyone else's dishes. The handle broke and when mommy attempted to fix it via her normal methods (attacking with a butter knife) it didn't work. Thankfully we have a new handle and everything should go back to normal. At least as normal as it every is.

My life is just sooo exciting. Not.

Working with the public

Apparently the book review idea was a flop, seeing as how I have yet to write one. Or start writing one. My mother has finally set down an ultimatum about me finding a job and it really sucks. I know I need to find a job, but what she wants is just sooo not going to happen. Because there is no way I am giving her the satisfaction of me not having a job by next week. Part of the problem was I had (and this is mostly past tense now) no idea what I wanted to do, in the long run. I couldn't decide between working a crap job and going to grad school for an MFA in creative writing or trying to get a career type job in the communication field.

After four years of studying communication I kind of don't want to work in that area. It's fun, it's kind of fulfilling, but it's also really difficult to find a company whose morals I agree with. And that's something I have never gotten my parents to understand. When working in a public relations job it's not about the products, it's all about the company and it's reputation. If the company doesn't live up to that reputation then I have been selling a lie. I don't like selling lies, I hate feeling like I duped someone. It's unpleasant, unprofessional, and it happens all the time. Most people aren't even aware of the messages they're being fed, of the half truths a company spouts off after a major disaster. I could be a great asset to a PR team, but I don't want to be. I'd like to believe I still have morals.

Not that all companies are evil, most aren't, but people in power have a nasty habit of trying to spin things instead of being honest. The general public is a lot more forgiving of an honest company that apologizes for a mistake than a company that tries to cover one up. And it's almost always up to the crisis PR team to convince the CEO that the best answer is honesty.