Yesterday I was on my way to pick up my boyfriend from the airport when I ran into some traffic. I was on the feeder road inching along, but I noticed that the traffic on the freeway wasn’t moving at all. I turned on the radio to hear the report, and this is what it said:
“All lanes are blocked for cleanup on I-10 east at Wirt road. There has been a spilled load of animal parts.”
What a lovely image.
Well, this list was actually quite hard to come up with. I like to think it’s because I am a very positive and optimistic person. I was trying to limit the amount of foods that I include here (seeing as how I’m the world’s pickiest eater), but then I just gave in. So let’s go ahead and get all the food products out of the way, shall we?
1) Milk – skim milk in cereal is acceptable, but that’s it. I once tried cereal with water, because I thought it would be great if I could eliminate milk from my diet entirely. But it was disgusting, so the skim milk remains. But I keep a close eye on that expiration date.
2) Peanut butter and peanuts
3) Seafood – I WILL gag. Maybe even vomit.
4) Vegetables – with a very few exceptions.
5) Tea
6) Chicken on the bone
7) Wine – I have sincerely tried to like it. I doubt I ever will.
8 ) Whipped cream
9) White chocolate
10) Cheesecake
OK, I’m limiting myself to ten food products. So! On we go with the rest!
11) Asymmetry
12) Baths – you are sitting in your own filth. That’s all I have to say.
13) Having my car towed
14) Change
15) Roaches
16) Sunburns
17) Moving
18) Chevy Impalas
19) Reckless and/or extremely fast drivers – when I encounter one on the road for some reason all the rage within me bubbles up to the surface.
20) Smoking – it is the leading preventable cause of death. And I am not very good at being around smoke.
21) Snow – good for skiing, and that’s about it.
22) Beeping noises – which I hear ALL DAY LONG at work
23) MySpace
24) Northern accents
25) Yard art – unfortunately my parents are becoming connoisseurs of it. Hi Mom and Dad!
26) Carbonated or flavored water
27) Automatic paper towel dispensers
28) The 800m run – I ran this race in junior high and I was good at it but I despised it. Someone told me once that the three hardest races are the 800m, the 300m (or 400m) hurdles, and the mile. I ran all three of those. In high school we were required to be timed on the 800m for soccer tryouts, and I seriously began getting nervous about it months before.
29) Crowded buses and trains
30) Mullets
31) Clutter
32) Spit/Saliva/Mucus
33) When I can hear people chewing their gum, even if they’re not smacking
34) Migraines
35) The number 9
36) Victoria’s Secret
37) So-called “modern” dance, art, and music
38) Oklahoma – I apologize to you Oklahomans; it is not my intention to offend you. I admit my main experience of Oklahoma comes from driving through it from Texas to Kansas, and the couple of times that I visited Oklahoma City and some random small towns. So maybe there are some better parts of Oklahoma out there, I just don’t know about them right now. And I will say that I like Oklahoma people a lot.
39) Cleaning the bathtub
40) Ties worn by women
41) The far left
42) The far right
43) Politics in general, to be honest. I really try to be more informed and interested. It’s just very hard for me.
44) This mole on my back that I’m worried will one day turn cancerous.
45) Gambling – especially poker; excluding Bingo, which I love.
46) Those big blow-up Christmas decorations which seem to be an epidemic in recent years
47) Waking up to an alarm
48) Really low speed limits
49) The giant crack in my windshield
50) Loud engines
> I just signed up for a Flickr account, so if you have an account as well, add me as a contact!
>I really appreciate Chick-fil-a’s fruit cups because they don’t have any melon in them. I dislike melon. I also think putting melon in a fruit cup or fruit salad is a cop out for restaurants because it takes up so much room.
>I was driving yesterday and I saw this sign outside of a church: “CH–CH. What’s missing? UR.” I’m all for a clever sign, but I don’t know how I feel about this one.
>The best news I’ve heard in a long time? “We don’t really do care plans in this class.” I love psychiatric nursing already!
>I finally watched the Gilmore Girls series finale yesterday. I was already completely broken up over the penultimate episode, so it’s going to take me awhile to recover from the whole ordeal. I think maybe I need to wallow a little bit. Ice cream and Gilmore Girls on DVD should do the trick!
Happy Tuesday. :)
Yesterday, for the second year, my roommate Carmen participated in the World Championship Pun Competition in Austin, TX. There were two events. The first was called “Punniest of Show” in which the contestants (32 in all) performed a 90-120 second monologue and were rated on a scale of 1-10 by four judges for a maximum of 40 points. I am proud to say that with a score of 39, I now live under the same roof as the second-place winner!
Here’s a clip of her presentation:
You can read the entire transcript here.
The second event was a tournament in which two punsters went head-to-head. They would receive a topic and go back and forth punning off that topic with only 5 seconds to come up with one. If they took longer than 5 seconds they were out. No word could be punned off of twice, and if they reused a word they got a strike against them and they were out on the third strike.
Carmen faced last year’s second-place winner in the first round. The topic was “Dancing.” A few excerpts:
“My paper isn’t good I got a B, but can I plié?”
“At the big dance your senior year of high school you have to have the right drink. You need promenade.”
In the second round her topic was “The American Presidency.” This one lasted 17 minutes!
“I’ll have to put a Nixon that one.”
“I was editing my web page and I wanted to make sure everything was easily accessible, so I put a Lincoln everything.”
“Have you ever found one of those pits? They come impeaches.”
Moving onto the third round, the topic was “Mystery and Crime Fiction.” More snippets of punny goodness:
“For Halloween I dyed my hair and put it up in a ponytail with a red herring.”
“There was a costume that was used in the play, but I don’t know who donned it.”
Finally, she moved onto the final round, facing off against last year’s first and third-place winners. The category was “Fictional Creatures”:
“I gave her some money because I ogre.”
“If you’re hurting, I don’t care. Bear it.”
“I’m so mad, I’m going to lop off your head! Psych! Lops aren’t very nice.”
Last year’s champion got out on strikes, and Carmen took it to the other guy. But it was soon obvious that he knew many more creatures than she did, as he revealed himself to be a Dungeons & Dragons fan, whereas Carmen is NOT into fantasy or any similar genre. So after a long and hard battle, she conceded and again took second!
Congratulations Carmen!
Her fans:
For your reading pleasure, here is a list of 50 things that I like. This list is completely random and by no means exhaustive. Let me know which of these things you like or dislike!
1) Mary Kay Satin Lips – this stuff is so good they sent it to the soldiers in the gulf war. I think I am addicted to it.
2) The number 3 – just ask my soccer teams. They all know which jersey NOT to take.
3) Automatic sliding doors
4) Bike lanes
5) Mounds candy bars – Mmmmm. Dark chocolate + coconut=the perfect combination.
6) Chicken fried rice – I could eat it every day, probably. Until I had a heart attack.
7) The Pill – caveat: not for its birth control effects. (Edit: this is very outdated.)
8 ) Fat animals, especially when they are also furry
9) Pedicures – or almost any service you can get done at a spa. What can I say, I like being pampered.
10) Cruise control
11) Babies
12) Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue perfume – and the fact that my brother recommended it to me and my boyfriend bought it for me. (Edit: that boyfriend is now my husband!)
13) Yoga
14) Pandora.com – a great free internet radio.
15) The semi-colon
16) Caribbean Way smoothies from Smoothie King
17) My Franklin Covey day planner – I am obsessive about this thing and have no idea what I would do without it. (Edit: I now use the planner on my iPhone. It was a sad day when I switched, but I have to keep up with the times, man.)
18) Dogs – especially Molly, Eddie, Sydney, Teak, Riley, Susie and Kenzie. There are too many dogs in my life, I couldn’t narrow it down! (Edit: We’ve said goodbye to Molly, Susie, and Kenzie and hello to Cleo, Bentley, and Niko!)
19) Hot Pockets – ham and cheese are the best.
20) NPR
21) Songs that tell a story – Ex: “The Lighthouse’s Tale” by Nickel Creek
22) The Winged Victory of Samothrace sculpture in the Louvre
23) Foaming hand soap
24) Toyota Priuses
25) Gmail – as far as I can tell, everyone should use it. My favorite thing about it is that you can keep your inbox clean while still saving as many messages as you like with the “Archive” feature.
26) Tulips
27) Fortune cookies
28) Bingo – but only in the bingo hall with the serious players.
29) The smell of air conditioner in the car
30) Maps
31) The dead man’s float
32) Penguins – especially fat ones (see #8)
33) Macs
34) Reading on the bus
35) My eyebrows
36) Dark chocolate
37) Sneezing
38) Crossword puzzles
39) Gel pens
40) Tragic characters – Ex: Achilles in the movie Troy; Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities; Sirius Black in Harry Potter
41) Singing in my car
42) Fabric Band-aids
43) Traveling to visit historical places
44) Dr. Mario – only the best video game ever invented. EVER.
45) Real Simple magazine
46) Lucida Sans font
47) Blue Bell dutch chocolate ice cream with Hershey’s chocolate syrup
48) Bananas – the perfect fruit: they curve toward your mouth, they are yellow which is enticing, they are color coded (green too early; brown too late), they are easy to peel, and they taste so good!
49) Going to the bathroom – ahh, such a simple pleasure.
50) My wash cloth, which I dedicated an entire blog entry to at one point.