Corks for Conservation...Oh, how I missed thee

Yesterday was the annual Corks for Conservation fundraiser at Binder Park Zoo.

I was really happy I was able to go this year. The Ogre was going to go with me. But, alas, the great maker in the sky called upon him to serve drinks at the Grange June Chicken BBQ. Who is he to say no to community service?  Also, if I say it's the great maker in the sky demanding he is to serve drinks, I'm thinking he may actually be answering to Bacchus.  The Grange is an agricultural based Fraternal Order, after all.

But I most certainly know I was answering the call of Bacchus!  HEUS WINE FEST!  Rather I mean, Hi, Corks for Conservation!  Nice to see you again. I too am doing my community service!  That means supporting a local fundraising event, not picking up trash along the side of the road.

 Oh, wait, I've done that too. Note that the road was adopted, and I wasn't part of a court ordered community service project.

This year, I was lucky enough to go with Christine B.  Our kids go to school together, we've seen each other around, but we had never actually hung out.  Which is a shame, because we were up to no good in the same manner.

 

Can I playz wit Liquid Nitrogen too?

Ladies were photographed so you could tell how high up cat was

It was cool because she didn't mind when I completely lost my mind with excitement over seeing the Snow Leopard, up close, and on top of what looked like a telephone pole.

Look! Kitty!!

She actually encouraged it. "It's cool Holly, dork out! I'm not embarrassed!"

I also got the insider scoop on some Vicksburg.  It was mostly that I am missing out on reasonably priced, delicious food by not going to The Village Hideaway.

I wanted to argue. "But it's the hideaway, and everyone will see I'm hiding away in there. Plus, the big beer sign out front. Wait, I'm at wine fest, I asked the Ogre out for the first time at Bud's Bar. I brew my own beer."


The jig is up Bishop. Your hobbies are hooch related.

So I embraced my hooch hobbies and shared with Christine the beauty and the wonder of the Mega-Bev.  "No, really, you have to go.  It's like, a kid in a candy store awe inspiring! Or, an adult in a giant liquour store awe inspiring. But really, they have everything."


Oh, what wineries did we enjoy?  I personally really enjoyed Lawton Ridge Winery in Kalamazoo.  Their wine was the first we tasted of the evening.  The people were super friendly, very fun to talk to and the wine, well, it was delicious!  I highly enjoyed the AZO White .  I was also a bit smitten with the fact that they named the wine after our airport code. I am a sucker for clever.

Black Star Farms were there too.  I want to go to there.  The Ogre and I brought infant Harry to Traverse City and we toured the facilities.  We loved the wine! We loved the B & B!  We promised ourselves we'd go back...we had more kids. It's been 13 years. But we still love them. 

Spotted Dog Winery  Cute name, cute labels, fun names.  The people at their booth were really stand offish and not especially friendly.  I really didn't want to support them by getting a pour from them.  But Christine and I were curious about their Coco Noir wine.  Here's the description:
Coco Noir
A smooth red wine blended with a mouth filling flavor of dark chocolate.
Be sure to take in the aroma before sipping!

We got a sample.  I was being all pissy. Right before we tasted it I said "it's going to be all nasty and vinegary and just, just spotted dog poo!"

It was in fact delicious. It was smooth. It was a deep, full bodied red. Then, to finish, the coco flavor. It was amazing.  I took back my pissy comment and said "Ok, they do deserve to be like that, this stuff is awesome." Or something to that effect.

Also, I was introduced to a friend of Christine's.  She is totally ready to deliver pregnant, and she said The Zombie Prom Date Knitters could totally deliver her baby!!!

Not a look of ZPDK inspired fear, JOY, pure JOY

So thank you Christine for a great night out. I look forward to hanging out more, and going to the Hideaway for lunch sometime soon.

*Blast from the past blog link...check out Mother's Day 2008. Camping and Beer...with Kids!

Fire it up

I once had the opportunity to rent what was basically a shed, with a burn barrel for a fire place and no electricity.  Wait, the electricity situation was what brought me to thinking about this fine rental in the first place.  I lied, it did have electricity.  One hour a day, the landlords would fire up the generator, and BEHOLD! Electricity!  One hour a day.  The sad part was, the rent was too high.  I couldn't afford to live in a shed.

I currently have everything, and it's all awesome, and sometimes I feel guilty about it.  So, I try to give back. Just, in general. Which leads me back to the electricity thing.  I have a lap top that, until recently, worked.  Now it works, but only about 7 minutes a day.  I think back to the shed I couldn't afford to rent, with it's one hour of electricity a day, and laugh. 

Eric asks me why I don't want a new computer. I tell him I don't need a new one. This one builds character.

It's always snot, or poo

I never blog.  But I really need to. I have so much to share, it's like exploding out of me.  Much like the poo that has been exploding out of the dog.

Yeah. My puppy.  MY puppy. He was at the vet's kennel while we went to Florida to see Pk, for Spring Break.  This was the first time he'd been boarded.  Sweet side effect of kenneling Franklin...3 days of Post Kennel Stress Syndrome!  Really. If I'd have known, that poop on the walls from a 91 pound dog was an option, I may have just stayed home.

Don't get me wrong. Vacation, was totally awesome.  Like extremely sweet, rad, and totally BARF FREE!  Yeah. That was the actual goal of the vacation. I mean to be awesome, yes, but we had actually set the bar pretty low and were just hoping that no one would barf.

Popped rib...it's a thing

A couple of years ago, I popped a rib. I know, you're like "whateves, popped a rib? What does that even mean?"  In my case, it means I stood on top of a washing machine, and forcefully removed a rug. When the rug came free of the washer, there was a loud "POP."  Yeah, that was a rib in my chest popping loose of it's normal spot on the sternum.  Ouch!

That 3rd one down. Yep, on the left.

I'd like to point out that said rug was not put into said washer by me.  I did choose to defeat the stuck rug of my own free will.

Soon after that, I fell off the porch, gave myself whiplash and ended up in physical therapy.  I didn't really notice the pain in the chest, due to the pain in the neck. Also, no one beats me. I really do all of my own stunts, and damn, yo, not well.

Recently, I started having chest pain.  I was all "Ogre, I'm having a heart attack just like Rosie!" He asked how long I had been experiencing chest pain.  "Ever since I started exercising. Wait, maybe after I fell down over the dog gate. Either way, it's been like a month. I think it's a really slow heart attack."

He said I should stop doing my own stunts. Or grow longer legs, not fall over the dog gate, and it was my rib again.

NOOOOOOO! Not the rib!  It couldn't be that again.  That's all healed and awesome!

So, after 2 months, I went to see my Doctor.  How embarrassing is it to admit to popping a rib while pulling a rug out of a washer? Not nearly as embarrassing as the rest of my medical record.  The verdict this time...irritated joint between the rib and sternum and a torn pec!

What the hell does a person do for that?  Do you get narcotics?  NOOOOOO!  As AtYourBecandCall would say "You get RICE!"

Rest
Ice
Compression
Elevation

There are a few issues with the compression, and elevation since, it's my chest and all.  But, I should be better in about 8 weeks. I'm sort of hoping for another dance induced whiplash incident to take my mind off my chest pain. (You should really check out that last link.  It's a post about dancing, Led Zeppelin, and cash money.)

Winter Activities

I've been doing some new things lately.  No, really totally normal things.  Like flossing my teeth, drinking water, and the even, exercising!  Sorry, even normal things aren't safe from being blogged about.

The flossing is fine.  Just time consuming.  You know, it's really cutting into my staying in bed and not flossing my teeth time.

As for the exercising, I'm trying to run.  As we all know, rule #1. cardio.  I've tried and it never seems to stick.  It's possible I was doing it wrong.

So instead of being part of a running group, I'm trying the Couch 2 5k app.  Which is cool.  I put in my headphones, run when I'm told to, walk when I'm told to and listen to my own sweet playlists.  So far, I've only had one problem with this.  I have to work on not yelling "THAT'S RIGHT, BITCHES!" when I've completed my work out.  I really think the lady on the treadmill next to me would appreciate that.

I've also gone skiing lately.  Sure, I've participated in skjoring before, but never actual skiing.  So, being 38 and totally out of shape, I decided to chaperone Pig 2's 5th grade ski trip. Here I learned that skiing is pretty fun, not falling is the best, and it sucks to be in the learn to ski class with 10 year olds.
I've also learned that it's poor form to dominate the bunny hills and then yell "Take that, BOOGER EATERS!"

I hope your 2013 is going just as smashingly as mine! At the rate I'm going, I'm bound to break something, or get arrested for swearing in front of minors.
 

Eh, seems normal

Last night I had the chance to meet up with my lovely ZPDK friends. We talked, we laughed. Some of us dragged a garbage bag full of sheep fluff into the store. Others dragged the sheep fluff out of the store.

I began working on a new project.

It's made with scraps. Scraps so hideous that it makes me wonder why I ended up with such ugly yarn.

It's turning out so hideous that a lady stood behind me, speechless, as I began to add another row of orange to the sparkly, fluffy purple fury I already had going. She walked away, stunned.

As we were saying our goodbyes, Bec said "Drive like an asshole!" Of course I promptly did.

After our fun, I went out to my car. As I was driving I thought, "gee, this is a really dark parking lot." Turning onto M66 I wonder if my contacts were what was making everything so dark. Which,if that is the case, wow, inconvenient.

Turns out, both headlights were out. I didn't freak out, I wasn't sad. I drove like an asshole. Brights on the whole way home. I even pulled over at one point to make sure the tail lights were still operational. I may have been an asshole, but I didn't want to get rear ended.

Now I'm at the Ford dealership. I can see the Ford dealership from my house. When they set their garbage dumpster, well, it made us nervous. So, I'm sitting here waiting for my car. Which of course means I have to use the bathroom.

Imagine my surprise when I spotted the arsenic sign. Actually, I dried my hands, took the photo and said "Sweet! I don't have to worry about being poisoned by arsenic! I bet I've built up quite a tolerance . I should totally go play the lottery!"

The thing I'm worried about is how long this light bulb change is taking. The amount of time it's taking is making me think it is actually a much more pricey electrical problem. Plus, this is cutting into fitbit steps.

Twitter, we had a good run

I'm back at blogger smack talking twitter for iPhone. I mean really, I can't crap on iPhone, apple will hunt me down and kill me. As for twitter, those dirty 140 character upstarts, I can totally call them out.

I'm just going to have to learn to save up my mean for one coherent rant each day. I can do it. I have the focus.

I wanted to tweet how I walked into a random pit bull flash mob at petco. It was crazy. You know with the dogs and the owners all in one place. Somehow that doesn't need more than 140 characters.

Curse you twitter and apple for your poor mixing. I only want 140 characters. I'm weak, and sort of distracted by shiny things and squirrels.