Friday Night Last Orders At The Pub

Friday we awoke from our steak coma bright and early so we would make it to Magic Mountain when the gates opened. Something you should know about me: I'm not a huge fan of roller coasters. Something you should know about the three other road trippers: they are roller coaster junkies.

this photo makes me clenchy (though I did manage to ride this coaster)

I was determined to keep up with the junkies so I spent pretty much all of Friday in a state of fear/hysteria/shock/exhilaration. Roller coasters are fun, I'll admit it. The Magic Mountain roller coasters? Are over the top.

Example A:
The Goliath. Hits speeds of 85 mph, 255 feet tall, 61-degree drop, zero-gravity floating hills and drops. A twenty-five storey building would fit under the rise of Goliath.

I rode it twice

The park was not busy at all which meant that we didn't wait for long to ride each coaster. All day long, coaster after coaster after coaster. Which resulted in this:

Shortly after this photo was taken, I puked my guts out. Fun times. I then ate a churro and a frozen lemonade and went on more roller coasters (I was trying to keep up with my hardcore roller coaster junkie husband.)

We stayed at the park for ten hours. Ten hours! I was jelly by the end of the night.

When I Call They Better See Me On Your Video Screen

A while back (I want to say last week but that might be inaccurate. I'd look it up but I'm lazy and tired) Ben offered to share his wisdom on any topic with his blog readers. Ben is pretty damn hilarious, so of course I took him up on it.

My question:

I like one of my dogs much more than I like the other dog. Does this make me a bad person? If I ever choose to procreate, should I stick to having one kid to prevent this situation from happening with my hypothetical future children? If I do have more than one child, and I do like one better than the other, is that really so bad? Won't it motivate the other kid to try harder to win my love? Also, should I stop comparing my dogs to kids? When friends and family members tell me boring stories about their boring babies and I come back at them with an awesome story about my hilarious dogs, they give me dirty looks. Who is the asshole in this situation? I'm pretty sure it's them because seriously, who cares if your month old baby is sleeping through the night? My puppy has a mohawk! Fabulous hair trumps sleeping patterns any day, right?

His response:



Hilarious, yes?

Check out Ben's blog later for a list of all of his awesomeness that is floating around today.

Insisting That The World Keep Turning Our Way And Our Way Is On The Road Again

After five amazing days on the road, we stumbled into bed (our own bed! in our own home! with all of our stuff!) at 3am this morning. I was up four short hours later to go to work. Needless to say, my brain is fuzzy. The road trip was amazing, peeps, and I hope to be able to recap just how awesome it was. That recap will not be today. Today I will drink a lot of coffee and dream of my pyjamas. And puppies! We pick the puppies up tonight and I'm more than a little excited. I missed my stinky pups more than I thought I would (while watching the sea lions at Pier 39, I got a little misty-eyed. And tried to convince Shawn that we should bring one home for the pups to cuddle. He vetoed.)

An Old Piece Of Bacon Never Eaten By Elvis

The mornings have been dark lately, making the blinds on our windows unnecessary. Unnecessary, that is, until a random sunny October day filled our bedroom with sunshine at 8am. What does one do when awake at such an early hour on a Sunday? Brunch. Nothing cures a painfully early awakening like all-you-can eat bacon and hot chocolate.

Shawn wanted to ride his bike so I followed in the car and it was ... okay (apart from one road-ragey incident where a massive pick-up truck cut me off and proceeded to tailgate my husband, which made my heart skip a little.)

So here I am, waffling back and forth between hating the idea of Shawn on the motorcycle and being okay with the situation. Yes, watching him ride on the highway with nothing between him and the passing cars but a jacket made my head melt a little. But seeing how happy it made him (his eyes practically fucking twinkled when he took his helmet off) made me feel a bit guilty for wanting him to give it up. I am reserving the right to fret but have decided to make more of an effort to be less shrill about the motorcycle. So much so that I took the bike out for a spin.

What? Don't you ride your motorcycle in a sundress and ballet flats?

Right, so I didn't actually ride the bike; I just sat on it. I'm not sure that I'll ever ride the bike, though I'm not ruling it out. This is progress. Just give me, oh, five years and maybe I'll be ready to put the helmet on.

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Vancouver bloggers: Tomorrow at 8pm, Kristin from better now and Kate from sweetsalty (two ladies who make my stomach churn with their awesomeness) are having a shindig at Steamworks (Gastown location.) I'm going to be there; come say hello and put me out of my socially awkward misery!

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In other bloggy news, Amanda could use some votes to win a kitchen update and Jane has some happy news!

If My Team Loses I'll Be Mean All Night If You Tell Me To Relax We'll Get In A Fight

I promise I will stop bitching about Shawn's motorcycle ... soon. I'm sure we'll find our way to a compromise. For now, though, we're stuck in knowing that our own position is completely valid and reasonable, and knowing that each other's position is just as valid and reasonable, and not knowing where to go from there. Thank you for your comments on yesterday's post; it is helpful for me to hear that people can die from boring, everyday-type activities and not just risky activities. I tend to forget that in all my fretting about reckless drivers.

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Tonight is the Canucks season opener and words cannot express my excitement. I'll be watching the game at the 2 Parrots (which provides a prime hockey-viewing environment.) Puck drops in 6 hours. Gongshow to promptly follow.

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To round out this post of randomness, I want to know what brand / type of mascara you wear. I am in the market for a new supermarket (read: cheap-ish) mascara and am overwhelmed by all the choices. The last one I tried was Covergirl Lash Blast and I found it very clumpy.

Just Beat It Beat It Beat It Beat It No One Wants To Be Defeated - Take 9

Friday Faff: Birthdays and Burgers and Beets Edition

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So, uhh, this is awkward. It turns out that Wolfgang's birthday isn't until next Tuesday. Yet another reason why I should stick to fur-babies.

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Thank you for all your road trip suggestions! I am kind of ridiculously excited to eat at In-n-Out Burger. Shawn and I ate dinner at Fatburger the night we got engaged. We served burgers at our wedding. We are burger people, is what I'm saying. All the other road trip stuff is great too, don't get me wrong, but what I'm really looking forward to is the food. I'm going to shop at Trader Joe's! I'm going to drink lemonade at Sonic!! I am lame, I know.

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So I ate my stupid September beets. Enough people suggested pickled beets that I figured they must be something special. Pickled beets are ... fine. The vinegar taste was quite strong, which masked the taste of the beets nicely. The problem was the cleanliness (and my craziness.) I bought a jar of pickled whole baby beets, which I assumed would be peeled. They were not peeled. I could see beet skin on some of the beets and they all had the top rooty bit attached. It was too much for me to handle so I used a paring knife to peel off the entire outer skin. I ended up with tiny little beet nuggets:


I served the beets on a salad, with a side of barbecued chicken and grilled zucchini. Who's in denial that summer is over? Not I.

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Have a great weekend, peeps!

I Smell Like I Sound I'm Lost And I'm Found And I'm Hungry Like The Wolf

Happy birthday to Wolfgang, my little buddy, my monkey man, the tyrant, the terror, the rebel, the pest from the west, the babe of our family.

It doesn't seem like that long ago that he was a tiny little ball of fluff.

Happy first birthday, dude!

PS: Stop eating your bed or I will turn you into fuzzy slippers. I mean it.