… is apparently just for me.

elflock
noun A lock of hair tangled as if by elves. Often used in the plural.

From personal experience, I can tell you that this is one of the more horrific things that can happen to one’s hair. Tears will ensue.

As I seem to have spent today dive bombing everyone else’s comment threads and posting non-sequiturs, it seems only fair I allow you to do the same here.

Alien pen pals? Life forms made of sulfur? The true 50th state?

Have at it.

Happy Year of the Ox!

I got nothing.

So that means it’s time for a game of word association. Remember, to get around the spam rules, old word = new word.

snow

Somehow–and although I know how it happened, it still doesn’t make any sense–we ended up watching the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball. (Let’s just say it was Grandmom’s fault and leave it at that.)

I saw quite shocked by the song that was selected for President and Mrs. Obama to dance to: “At Last.” This was the song that Michael and I had our first dance to at our reception.

So what? you say. Lots of people choose, “At Last” as the song for their first dance. True. But how many also choose to have “Simple Gifts” played at the wedding?

“Simple Gifts” was the only song I actually selected to be played at our wedding. (Seriously, I don’t have any idea what else was played–I didn’t care.)

If you aren’t familiar with “Simple Gifts” it’s a Quaker song, and Aaron Copland based “Appalachian Springs” upon the song (and if you’re not familiar with “Appalachian Springs” then you quite obviously are not from West Virginia.)

Thus, I was quite surprised to hear the two most important song from my wedding day played today for the Inauguration.

But for those of you who don’t know the song, or would just like a reminder, here are the lyrics to “Simple Gifts.”

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,

To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

May we all come round right.

Just got back from seeing Ricky Scaggs and Bruce Hornsby.

It was an amazing show and several times I was simply blown away by the music. Very high energy performance, and they were quite obviously having a lot of fun playing it.

They did a version of “That’s Just the Way It Is” that was incredibly good. Well, actually everything they did was incredibly good.

And their backing band was amazing as well, with an excellent banjo player and a simply amazing fiddler, whose fiddle blended perfectly with Bruce Hornsby’s piano.

And to make it better, we inadvertently had perfect seats. We were towards the front and way off to the side, which meant that we had a perfect view of Bruce Hornsby’s hands on the piano keys.

But mostly–holy cow that was just an awesome show!

only hairy
Only hairy what? Tops of feet? Dinosaurs? Worms? I hope it’s not the later, because that would look too much like a centipede, and… EW.

male singer in 2006 2007 2008
Because he was a female singer prior to 2006.

bedroom slippers as fashion fad
Not fad. Error. Grievous error. And the same is true for pajamas.

capries and boots in fashion or not 2008
OK. Who on earth ended up here for fashion advice? No. No. No. A thousand times no. Capris and boots look STUPID. Though perhaps capries are something else entirely. I’m picturing a small sailboat. In which case boots are still right out.

random is not a word
Someone has been lying to you. Random is most definitely a word.

battleturtles
BATTLE TURTLES! REGROUP AND ATTACK!

apple pie comforter
I can sew and I can bake. But I do not think it would be a good idea to combine the two.

For Anne:
(more…)

So there’s been a lot in the news over the past several months about people who are using coupons and “smart shopping” to save money on the grocery bills.

As great as this sounds, I almost always discover what these people are doing is–for me–completely unreasonable.

Why do I say this? Because in every interview these people talk about how they saved $78 by getting twenty packages of toilet paper for $10.

OK. Great that you saved that much money, but where do you store twenty packages of toilet paper and fifty bottles of shampoo and eighty boxes of mac and cheese? And how do you manage to use all that stuff before it goes bad?

Here are the food cabinets in the kitchen. Notice I have those horrible cabinets with wasted space in the corners. (Yes, the cabinets are a mess. Don’t remind me. Grandmom gets the lower shelves, since she can’t reach above them. Makes it hard for me to organize, since I can’t easily reach things on the top shelves.

So no room in here for extra food. Rest of the upstairs? No space. Living room, bedrooms, bath, and one very small closet for both my clothes and Michael’s clothes.

How about the basement then?

That’s even worse.

Here are the storage shelves in the basement. Notice anything? They’re full. And there’s not an inch of space for other shelves. (Rest of the basement is just as bad if not worse.)

So storing extra stuff is not even within the realm of possibility. (I can’t even buy paper towels in bundles larger than two.)

Then there’s the other trick they use, which is finding out what’s on sale and then buying what’s on sale from different stores.

I go to two grocery stores every week. Saturday morning I go to Target and Giant Eagle, and then Sunday to Kroger’s with Grandmom (I don’t like Kroger’s but they have milk from VA in glass returnable bottles.)

You know what? That’s already more time than I like to spend shopping. You want me to add going through the local paper (which I don’t buy because it SUCKS) looking for what’s on sale in every store around town? Are you kidding?

Perhaps if I didn’t work full time that might not sound so horrific, but I’d much rather spend more time at home relaxing, and less time shopping. (Laundry is bad enough.)

Now I’ll admit I could certainly save money by using the coupons they give me at the store when I check out, if it’s for something I’d buy anyway. Except that not only do we not remember to take those coupons back to the store with us, most weeks I don’t remember to make a shopping list before I leave the house.

So is coupon clipping worth it? And if so, how much can one put into it before you’re spending more time shopping than relaxing?

Today my task was to take care of returns and exchanges. I may have mentioned before, I really hate talking on the phone, and I don’t like making returns, so I’d been putting it off. Unfortunately, unless I want to keep the products that either don’t fit or don’t work, I needed to deal with it, since it hardly seemed fair to foist this off on Michael.

He has, after all, dealt several times with Medicare customer support.

First up, Victoria’s Secret, to find out why the bras I ordered, which were the same size as other Victoria’s secret bras I have, were ill-fitting. Despite having to go through IVR, the wait wasn’t too long, and the woman was able place an order for new bras in a larger size for me.

I still don’t understand why racerback bras would fit differently than “regular” full coverage bras. Anyone?

Next, Land’s End. First off, I was shocked when a human being answered the phone. And was immediately able to help me. THANK YOU LAND’S END! I explained me problem–the pocket rivet fell off my new jeans–and she looked in their stock and talked to someone else, and told me that although they didn’t have any replacements in that size, style, and color, the rivets were mostly decorative, so I should be fine, but she put a note in my file that if I called in a couple months because the jeans were failing due to rivet loss, I’d get a full refund.

Awesome!

It’s nice to have unpleasant tasks I was putting off turn out better than expected.

Cold. Rainy.

Consequently: Read. Nap. Pizza planned for dinner. No thrilling post here.

Walter.

Because I am a very small person.

And very easily amused.

I’m Sue Storm! Yay!

Take the test yourself:

(via Jim)

Happy New Year!