Things That Make Me Go Hmmmmm

Before you read any further, if you missed Señor Gato Negro's blog takeover, you should go read it now.

Today I'm just throwing out some random things.


Lately I've been feeling a lot like this:

Why is it that during the week time seems to go slowly but then one day you realize it's March 27th and you wonder where the month went?


This week it was time for Yahtzee at my house. My mom had this collection of tiny dishes so Aaron suggested we use them. We had a blast figuring out a menu and (full disclosure) Aaron did a lot of the prep work and all of the clean up and didn't even get to enjoy the food. But look how cute everything looked!

There was a caprese salad, mini meatballs, a coconut cream parfait with a granola base, triple berry Kahlua crisp, and a carmelized onion and blue cheese tart (that picture is pre-baking; those were gone almost as soon as they came out of the oven). I'll share the recipe for that last one soon. It's super delicious.


If you know me well or if you're a long time reader, you know how much I hate stray shopping carts in parking lots. Well, earlier this week I diligently took my cart to the cart corral, which was empty at the time. It was a windy day and as I walked toward my car I heard the cart moving. This thing literally backed up and turned around and rolled toward me. And it happened twice! I think it was possessed.


I'm still a fan of The Voice, but does it drive anyone else crazy that they call the second chance for a rejected contestant the "steal?" Granted, I don't know what else it should be called, especially when trying to be all dramatic, but it's not a steal.

Here's a PSA to any fellow teeth grinders. When your bite splint looks like this...

...it's time for a new one. As my dentist said "at least we know you're using it!"


Have a lovely weekend!

Ramblin' Woman

Commence brain dump.

• I don't think I'm changing the world, but I do enjoy this little corner of mine out there on the world wide web, and I so appreciate when people let me know that they enjoy it, too. Thanks, friends.

• Aaron has had a couple crazy busy work days, including getting his car stuck twice in the snow and helping a coworker get his car un-stuck. Last night I said I'd take care of dinner. The plan was to have pork tinga tacos. Aaron had taken the meat out of the freezer so all I had to do was warm it up and get the toppings and tortillas ready. I decided to do a Mexican rice side dish that we've had many times before, but I didn't check the rice supply in time. I ended up using half basmati and half brown basmati and, yes, I knew that they had two different cooking times but foolishly I thought if I just cooked it longer it would work out. We had to throw out the whole thing. This is why I stay out of the kitchen, people. At least the tacos were edible.

• It's tax time, as I'm sure you know. As a former tax accountant I have a nerdy pet peeve and I know that some of my friends do this but I even heard it on a radio commercial this morning and I may have yelled at the radio. Here it is: if you overpaid your taxes and you get money back it's called a tax refund. A tax return is the actual form you submit to the IRS to determine whether or not you get a refund. Thus ends my PSA of the day.

• Last night was karaoke night. Here's my playlist (minus songs that have been on previous playlists):

• My friend Liz posted this on Facebook today and it struck me. It's not an easy thing to remember but it's certainly true:

People can’t drive you crazy if you don’t give them the keys.

• Tomorrow I'll have a special guest blogger and you won't want to miss it. Hint: she's white and black and very fluffy.

Breaking News

No, I don't actually HAVE breaking news, but this post is about some things that confuse me and it involves "breaking news."

So yesterday I was watching Ellen. In Columbus, it airs at 4:00. The local news on that station comes on at 5:00 and is then on for 90 minutes. Yesterday was also the day that Ohio State formally announced their new president. I say "formally" because of course the news was out the night before so this wasn't a big surprise. And it certainly wasn't the Breaking News that Channel 4 declared it to be. I mean, I get it that this is a big deal for some people, but you couldn't have waited until 5:00?

Of course, the more nationwide "breaking news" bullshit that happened recently was when Andrea Mitchell was forced to interrupt an interview about the NSA to report on Justin Bieber's arraignment. WTF? And just in case for some reason you haven't seen it, here it is:



This got me thinking about a couple other things that I just don't get.

Head-in parking

This isn't the first time I've seen this, so I seriously Googled "head-in parking" to make sure that it meant what I thought it meant. Can anyone explain this to me?

Age ratings on TV

Am I crazy? Don't you read "iffy for 14+" to mean that only people UNDER 14 should watch the show? Obviously that makes no sense, and it makes my brain hurt.


This next picture is the opposite of not making sense. You may have seen this picture on my Instagram, but it bears sharing again. Gwensday was Yahtzee night in the 'hood at Angie's house. Instead of buying ice to cool the beer and white wine, she did this:

Brilliant, don't you think? Finally, something good about winter!

Linking up for Friday Favorites, even though only one of the above items qualifies as a Favorite.

And so it goes...

Here we are, the last day of 2013. I'm really not one to get all retrospective, and actually this post may end up being a lot of rambling randomness. For me personally, 2013 was a pretty good year, and I'll take it because the previous three years saw some major shit go down. But 2013 did suck for a lot of people close to me, so I'm hopeful for 2014. Of course, life isn't puppies and rainbows, and bad things happen to good people and on and on. But for anyone reading this, I wish nothing but the best for you in the new year!

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A couple weeks ago I did a post about some of my favorite things in 2013. While I'm sure I left out a lot, there were two things I wanted to be sure to mention. One of the best books I read was The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. If you somehow haven't read this book, I highly recommend it. And late in the year I became obsessed with this song:

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Last weekend we had Christmas part 2 with my family. We went to Erie, PA to my brother's house. We decided it was Opposite Day because I got this:

It's a tagine, for cooking Moroccan food, and I've wanted to try it, but as we all know I'm not the cook in our house. Luckily I received a cookbook as well. I'll let you know how it goes. We had a great time hanging out with my mom, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephews (and their dog Munch), and I even have a family picture to share!

photo by Jackie

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I dropped the ball on sending Christmas cards, even though I've had them since Halloween. Some of you still may get one in the mail, but if not, here's our holiday greeting.

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Have a safe and enjoyable New Year's Eve, however you celebrate. Oh, and here's a little pet peeve of mine: it drives me nuts to see advertisements for parties that read "New Year's Eve 2014." NO, that will be 365 days from now. Anyway, we'll be getting together with neighbors and staying in the 'hood. 

Gwen Coco's List of No-Nos - Holiday Edition

It's now less than two weeks until Christmas. Eep. I've done a lot of online shopping, but truthfully I enjoy going out and shopping in "real life," especially when I can do it in the middle of the day on a Gwensday. Yesterday I ventured out and while I had a good experience, I did come up with some new pet peeves (you can also read Part One and Volume Two). And so, I present:

When parking, if you stalk me for my parking spot and I can clearly see other available spaces, I WILL take my sweet time leaving. I might even just put my shopping bags in the car and go back to the mall.

The 12 days of Christmas really refer to the 12 days after Christmas, not the days before Christmas. I get that it's a good ploy for retailers to use the days leading up to Christmas for sales and such, but it's not right. However, there's a fun little ditty popular with high school choirs (mine did it, which tells you how old it is) which twists around the song. It starts "the first day after Christmas, my true love and I had a fight / and so I chopped the pear tree down and burned it just for spite."

Dear nieces and nephews, if I don't get a list from you, you're getting clothes. Sorry 'bout your luck.

While I love listening to the local radio station 103.5, which plays 70s, 80s and 90s, when the temperature outside is this:

it's just cruel and unusual punishment to play this:

And just for fun, not a pet peeve but I thought this was fantastic:

Happy Friday Eve!

Gwen Coco's List of No-Nos, Volume 2

Back in the infancy of this blog, I wrote a post about some pet peeves. Most of you may have missed it; you can read it here. Well, there's always room for more irritants, hence "Volume 2."

If you're wondering about the title of the post, my lovely friend Marla started calling me Gwen Coco a while back, and in fact she came up with the post title (sorry Marla, no royalties).

(From Mean Girls, if you didn't know.)

A reminder of the disclaimer that I won't hate you if you do one of these. And please forgive me for using the gif above, because honestly another of my pet peeves is overuse of gifs. They kinda make me queasy. So let's get that off the screen, shall we?


















Ah, that's better. Please don't do the following:

 Give your child a name that you don’t intend to use

I talked about this in my brother's birthday post, because my own parents were guilty of it. I just don't get it. Trust me, as your kid goes through school, he or she will constantly have to say "I know the roster says my name is X but I go by Z." Just stop. Sorry, Mom.



Eat at a chain restaurant on vacation

I beg of you, just say no. Find out where the locals go, and hopefully the locals don't say Buffalo Wild Wings. The only exception is if it's a regional chain that you don't have back home.

Leave crumbs in the butter/cream cheese/peanut butter…

This seriously grosses me out. Just wipe off the knife on your toast or bagel, NOT in the remaining condiment. And how about not putting so much on your knife in the first place if you're not going to use it.



Beep at the car in front of you the moment the light turns green

OK, this is probably particularly annoying to Aaron and me because of where we live. I took this yesterday from our screened porch.

As you can see, we're quite close to a somewhat busy intersection. You wouldn't believe the number of car horns we hear. Chill out, people!



Attention Target shoppers... 

See this?

Do you see how there's a place to throw away the wipe after using it? Then why the hell do I have to get a cart like this?

Never mind that I don't understand the need for cart wipes in the first place. If you're that germaphobic, you probably have your own wipes with you. (If you read the first pet peeve post, you'll see that shopping carts show up there, too. If you didn't read it, go ahead and do that now.)

I'm sure Volume 3 will appear someday. What are some of your annoyances?

Borrowing Soapbox Topics

While reading some other blogs, I came across not one, but two topics that I feel like I need to share.

The first one is from Erin at She's a Big Star. Erin was one of the co-hosts of last Friday's blog linkup about football. The gist of it is that after Friday's post, someone contacted her about blogging about DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket. Sounds pretty cool, right? Erin thought so, too, except that the man's email specifically said that he wanted her to write about why men need Sunday Ticket. When she explained that she'd love to do the post but she's a woman, as are the vast majority of her readers, the guy replied that instead, they'd like her to blog about "How to Keep Your Home Safe as a Single Woman." So today Erin wrote an open letter in response to this person, and it's fabulous. You can read it here.

Amen, sister

Next we have my real-life friend Steph at Life According to Steph, who posted today about oversharing on Facebook. I couldn't agree more, and I can't really say it much better, so I urge you to read her post. (You can find it here.) Steph and I are very similar in that we'll tell it like it is, but we're not going to post things that we know will hurt a friend's feelings or divulge something that's been entrusted to us. At least, not intentionally.

I've talked about my infertility, insecurity and bad habits. I'm honest here and on Facebook, but that doesn't mean I tell you everything. Facebook posts that expose skeletons in another's closet or seek attention without really saying what's going on (otherwise known as "vaguebooking") are unnecessary and immature. But let me be clear, if you choose to post such things, I will get my free entertainment out of it.

Sad but true

Ranting on Gwensday

Day 22's prompt is Rant about something. Get up on your soapbox and tell us how you really feel.

I've been pondering this one. I have plenty of pet peeves, lots of things that annoy me, and I've been on my soapbox about serious issues as well. But I don't feel like being super serious today so before I start the rant, I have a confession:

I am a grammar snob.

I'm not saying that every sentence I write is perfect and I know typos happen (even to me), but it amazes me how little is thought of spelling and grammar. It's one thing to make errors on your personal blog or a silly Facebook post, but when I read published articles with misspelled words or poor grammar I want to scream. And don't get me started on menus at restaurants (I recently saw a menu for a supposed Italian restaurant that misspelled "prosciutto" and "scallopini.") Really?

Today's rant specifically targets e-cards. I love a good e-card. I saved this one recently:

However, I clearly can't share it because the period is outside the quotation marks. I can live with the partial sentence "You in?" but that damn punctuation will drive me nuts.


This is how I often feel:

My absolute favorites though, are the e-cards that rant about poor grammar but are also guilty of it. Observe:

There are at least three things wrong with that card. Please, just put on the dunce cap yourself. Thanks.

And now you can look back through my post and find any mistakes I've made. ;)

Really?

Recently my mom commented on my use of the word "really" and how it can mean so many different things depending on my tone. Mostly I use it with sarcasm. Today I'm writing about pet peeves, or things that make me go "hmmmmm," or things that make me say "really?"

Disclaimer: it's entirely possible that you commit one or more of the following, and that's OK; I don't hate you. Similarly, I recognize that there are things that I do that many people probably find completely annoying. For example, overuse of the word "dude," as in "Dude, really?" Also, it drives Aaron completely nuts that I put my dirty socks in the laundry inside out. Ponder that for a moment and it may lead you to another thing that pisses you off about me in that I have a husband who does laundry. But I digress...

Right Turn on Red Etiquette (or lack thereof)

Dear driver behind me at the red light, do not honk your horn at me to turn on red. You do not see what I see, and you honking your horn makes me more likely to just wait until the light turns green.

Dear driver on cross street, if I have a green light and I'm stopped in the middle of the intersection, it is NOT so you can turn right on red and bog up the intersection even more.

Dear downtown driver, if you are going to turn right on red, make damn sure that no one is coming. This is especially true if you intend to turn right on red and then immediately move three lanes over to the left.

And while you're at it, pay attention to these signs!

Shopping Carts Strewn All Over Parking Lots

This is mind-boggling to me. If I am capable of taking a shopping cart to my car, I'm certainly capable of getting said cart back to a cart corral. And while there may be a FEW exceptions to this rule, there are not enough exceptions to justify the number of carts I see throughout the Target or Kroger lots.

A Certain Insurance Company's Radio Commercial

...in which a woman's voice identifies herself as a single mom, "so I have to watch every penny." Then we hear Patrick Dempsey's voice saying, "we all do." Really, Mr. Star of Stage and Screen? When's the last time you had to watch every penny?

Yes, McDreamy, I know that's you and I'm not buying it for a second!

Chatter

Anyone who's ever been in a choir rehearsal or a presentation with me knows this well. Yes, I'm the one constantly shushing. It's simple, really. If someone else has the floor, shut up. It's incredibly rude to both the speaker and to the others in the group who just might be trying to listen.

Stay tuned,

The Gila