it's still rock and roll to me

yes, it's been 11 days and counting for me... i guess we have all learned something about me. i play a lot of cards and not so much blogging in these snowy days in fargo, north dakota. apologies for the lack of posts, i have a TON half-written and will probably begin back-dating posts in the next few days, so keep checking back for updates on what i was doing - ha!

until then, enjoy my weekly post of kitchen katastrophe. version: mulled wine and puppy chow. mmmmmmm.... delish! i also have about 5 kit kat posts in the wings, so be sure to check out mad tasty AT LEAST every week.

enjoy and a bientot!

first dude around the house

first dude hangs out with the the snow babies' trees and presents at christmastime

how tall are you? (poll archive)

how tall are you? extremely stubborn and suspicious	1 (12%)
rather inclined to giggle and doesn't put things away	1 (12%)
practically perfect in ever way	3 (37%)
other (comment)	3 (37%)

Votes so far: 8
Poll closed

wonder boy

friday fun time. enjoy my brother's video from high school (about 10 years ago). my bro is the one in the sombrero.

dreamsicle

a dear friend of mine from high school, we'll call him kane, was one of the first people to ever get a gmail account a few years ago when google first launched their email service. i think it was in 2004. at the time, people could only get an account through someone inviting them - i think kane knew someone or someone who knew someone who worked at google. in any case, he got me an account. when another friend of mine, kevin, heard about this, he was incredibly jealous - he wanted an account right away. at the time, i only had a few "invites" (versus the hundred now). i sent one to kevin and he sent all of his friends this exciting email about how he got in to gmail before most of them.

anyway, i don't think any of us at the time would be worried or even think about the impact of having a gmail account would have on us. and, in my opinion, i think we still have no idea what will come. there was an article on a blog i read about the scariness of it all and you can read it here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/16/google-book-searchs.html

for example, this morning, i awoke from a bizarre dream. i instantly went to my computer to look for my friend, rich, who was in my dream. he wasn't online so i sent him the shortest email
subject: "where are you?"
email: "i just woke up and you were in my dream."

the next second, upon returning to my inbox, i noticed this advertisement at the top:

Your Dream Is No Accident - www.Life-Answers.com - See why your dreams are really you

this is kind of freaky, folks. granted, this is not new and if you noticed, google has been doing this forEVER. i was just reminded of it by this article and thought you all should be, too.

in other news, happiness for today: spent the day xmas shopping with my mom. it was good. we got a lot done AND i bought six sweaters for $109. thats CRAZY. at least i'll be warm in this cold winter. oh, and on that end - i still refuse to admit that it's too cold here. we went shopping and i had a short sleeved shirt on with a long-sleeved sweater, hat, scarf and gloves and it was a bit drafty. i probably wouldn't stand outside in that for a long time, but it's not TOO cold. i have to wear a sweater because my jacket is packed somewhere downstairs and i dont want to look for it. we'll see how long that lasts....

practically perfect in every way

there is this thing on the internet called "the happiness project." i'm sure if you googled it, you could find lots of info about it. from what i understand - the gist of it is for people to actually try to improve their lives by doing things that make them happy. like, crossing items off your list doesn't actually make you happy. or maybe you pretend to like something (like watching the news), but it doesn't really make you HAPPY. so, after reading about this, i decided to try and do at least one thing a day that makes me HAPPY. today i did two things i genuinely like - watching movies and playing cards.

this evening my parents and i sat down to cozily watch tv (still below zero out there) and what was on? not much, but i found mary poppins starting right when i turned it to the channel. my father had never seen it (??!! how is this possible??) so we watched. it was fun to see a movie i haven't seen in probably 20 years. i remembered almost all of the songs - just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down - chim chimeny chim chimeny chim chim cho roo - superkalifragalisticexpedaliocious - etc. and then i beat my mom a few times in cards.



on a sad note, i discovered that first dude is missing. he is not to be found anywhere. i wanted to take a picture of him with all the snow, but i have no idea where he is. any thoughts? ideas where he could be?

but more importantly, what makes you TRULY happy?

break me off a piece of that kit kat bar

it's monday, so you know what that means! kitchen katastrophe! actually, today is my first post in a while because i was traveling - i admit it! i was bad. but from now on, be sure to check out my piece on monday's over at mad tasty.

mmmmmm...

today's recipe: never-fail-fudge!

please comment and enjoy.

a beautiful day in the neighborhood

i didn't leave the house today thanks to "the worst storm in years." the 10 o'clock news is on right now and the main story is today's blizzard - which is still going on (blizzard warning for all of eastern nodak). there is a no travel advisory for all of north dakota. they are saying that people who * must * venture out should cover ALL exposed skin - the temperature right now is negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-23 celsius) but with wind chill it is -38 F (-39 C) - and at this temp, skin can freeze in a matter of minutes. while the snow is dwindling down now (we've gotten a foot of snow in less than 24 hours), the wind is high. since the snow hasn't had time to pack down (partially also because there is no moisture in the air), it is blowing around fiercely.
today has been rather slow. actually, i can't remember most of it. that's what happens when you * can't * go outside. we made fudge, which was good. and i played rummi against my mom. my parents watched football while i napped and then i talked to my friend jen who is home in the states for a few weeks. other than that: uneventful.

the news has compared today's blizzard to those blizzards of the winter of 1996-97. i remember this winter clearly. in jan '97, my appendix ruptured. a story for another time, but i can recall this easily because we could not actually get to the hospital (which is only 5 blocks away) because we were snowed in - even though we live in the middle of the city. i think we had nearly 10 snow days (where we couldn't go to school) that winter - usually 2 was a lot. the storms were so bad, we had so much snow that when the snow started to melt, the land and rivers couldn't handle the water and thus was the famous flood of '97. it really is famous, there are even wikipedia articles about it.

what i remember most about the flood was that we would go to school in early april of that year and everyone was divided into groups. i think i was in the blue group. at the beginning of the day, during morning announcements, they would say "blue group will be leaving at 9. red group will be leaving at 1. etc." then when our time came, we would board a bus to head to a warehouse full of sand. we then made sandbags until everyone stopped dreaming of vacations on sandy beaches. there were these machines in which sand would enter from the top. at the bottom, we would put a sack and fill it with sand about 3/4 of the way full. then we would close the bags and load them on to trucks which would take them to the river (which is 4 blocks from my house - opposite direction from the hospital) to build dikes. at night, my parents would wake up at 1 and 2 in the morning to go monitor the dikes. they would walk back and forth all night to make sure there were no leaks - the water on the other side was higher than many of the houses the dikes were built to protect.

at the time, i don't think i really realized what was going on - how a community could come together to help each other. i didn't realize how special that was; how quickly our city mobilized. i definitely did not realize how much our hard work affected the city. fargo was saved, but on the night of prom that year, we got word that our friend's in nearby grand forks (70 miles north of fargo) were all evacuated. their dikes weren't high enough to stop the water and the whole city was flooded. on the news, you couldn't even see the tops of 2 and 3 story houses. my friend's homes were gone - no more pictures, clothes, memories. some of my friend's went to live with relatives in fargo or minneapolis. they didn't finish school that year.

it was a very memorable time in my life - a time i didn't fully appreciate until much more recently. for now, though, no flood. my bedroom windows have 3 inches of snow inside them. and yet, i have yet to complain that it's "too cold" outside. i love the cold. ahhh. thus is the life of a north dakotan.

let's get lost

just got back from cvs. i was really excited to go because i had a 25% off coupon - off of EVERYTHING. that's really awesome. but anyway, something weird happened. i was walking down the feminine hygiene and oral hygiene aisle - tampons and pads on the left and toothpaste on my right. i'm looking at the wonderful pink and pale blue products on the left and there is a cvs man looking at the toothpaste on the right. maybe he was taking inventory? making sure the toothbrushes didn't up and walk away? i'm not really sure, i didn't really pay attention. all of a sudden, he says, "can i help you find anything?" i look around. there was no one else to be seen. "umm, no, thanks. i think i've found everything i need." i was not embarrassed - why should i be? every girl needs to get feminine hygene products. i figured i must've just missed him looking at me before he went back to his work. so i'm standing there comparing and i hear, "and how is your day going today?" i turn around. staring at his back, i respond, "great, how is yours?" "i'm doing well, thank you," he responds still not looking at me. "it's getting pretty cold out there, isn't it?" now i'm kind of standing with my hand on my hip and my head tilted, "yeah, it's gonna be cold." still not looking at me, "that's what they say." then he promptly marches off. i stood there a little stupefied. i'm not sure if he was embarrassed or just busy or what. it was the most bizarre conversation EVER.

everybody hurts

i can't think of anything i hate more than dry skin. maybe bent papers. but dry skin really really sucks. and fargo in the winter is DRY DRY DRY DRY DRY. after you take a shower and dry off, you can hear your skin crackling. you have to be ready to lube up right away. if i wash my hands at all during the day, instant lotion. i keep lotion in my handbag, on my desk at work. at any of my past apartments, i have hidden lotion all over the house - in the bookshelf, next to the kitchen and bathroom sink, behind the tv, on the desk, on my night stand, etc. but now that i am not really in my own home, i don't really have that luxury. i could leave lotion all over the place, but i've learned my lesson.

last winter, when i was home for christmas, i was free with my lotion bottles - i would carry them around wherever i went. if i was going to put on socks downstairs (my bedroom is upstairs), i would bring my lotion down and put it on before putting socks on. i even told my mom how my nightly ritual is to put lotion on my feet and arms and if my feet are dry, i can't sleep at night. one night at like 4am, i bumped into my mom in the hallway. we were both going to use the bathroom. i had been up for HOURS because i couldn't find my lotion and was dry as... well, something really dry. around 1am, i had gotten up and gone downstairs to look for my lotion. couldn't find it. so when i met my mom in the hallway and she said, "what's wrong with you?" i could only growl. i was so upset. i went to my room and quietly slammed my door.

the next morning, i got up after my parents (because i couldn't sleep all night) and went into their room. what do i find on my mom's nightstand? THREE BOTTLES of lotion. i told her what i found and she said, "is that why you were in such a bad mood last night?" i could hardly explain how important lotion is to me. so now, my mom doesn't take my lotion on random walks around with her and i do not let the lotion leave my room. i have two bottles, just in case, and i keep one bottle in the basement (where my parents send me to watch tv when they want the main one, and where they rarely venture). i should buy stock in aveeno during the winter - i'm pretty sure i alone keep the company afloat.

so what's the point of all this? apparently we are going to be in the midst of a major storm on sunday - 8 to 12 inches of snow. my main goal for tomorrow is to go to cvs and buy lotion, lotion, lotion so i can hole up and be a hibernating bear on sunday. what are your plans for the weekend?