Please Don't Ask Me

Hey, Friends.

There is nothing I dread more than someone asking me what I think of the new guy they are dating. Maybe that makes me a terrible person, but it's the truth. Close friends that I've known for years? Go right ahead.  I know you well enough to go there, and I've probably met the guy several times and know him at least a little bit by this point.

If we aren't really that close?  Please don't ask, and my opinion should have zero relevance.

1) Does he make you happy?
2) Does he treat you well?
3) Does he seem like a decent human being?

There you go.  I'm happy that you're happy.  Please leave it at that and let's not delve any deeper.

I found myself in this situation recently, in case you hadn't figured that out by now. It was so uncomfortable!  This wasn't a close friend by any measure, and I had met the guy on accident a couple of times when we happened to be in the same place at the same time.

It was odd to me that she was even asking my opinion.  We don't see each other all that often.  I don't feel like I know her well enough to even gauge if she was asking because she really wanted an outside perspective, or if she was just looking to be told what she wanted to hear.

Thankfully she didn't press the issue, just started gushing about how wonderful he is, all the great things that make him so fantastic.  I'm happy for her.  She went through a really bad end to a 4 year relationship a few months ago.  I'm more than willing to sit and listen to her excitedly talk about him for as long as she wants.

But when she got to the part where they are already planning a vacation together?  I had to ask if that wasn't moving a little fast.  I don't want to rain on her parade by any means, but that seems rushed to me. They have only been seeing each other a couple of months. She, of course, thought otherwise and went on at length to explain why they thought it was a great idea.

I told her to go for it then.  They had obviously put some thought into it and were convinced it was a fabulous idea.  Clearly nothing I said was going to change her mind if she practically bit my head off for daring to ask the question.

She talked about him for a while more before we parted ways.  I told her I was glad she was so happy, and he seemed like a good guy.  He really does from what she said and from the couple of times I met him. I'm happy to see her so happy again. She made it very clear that she thought he was made of all things awesome and that any thought to the contrary was wrong and unwanted.

I hope that the next time I see her they are still together.  I honestly do.  I want to see her continued happiness, and I hope it works out for them.

However, I also won't be surprised if it all falls apart before they ever take that vacation.  I don't know her that well, but even I can tell that he is just screaming "rebound".  He's pretty much the polar opposite of her ex in every way.  The things she listed as these fantastic qualities he possesses right now are the same things I have listened to her bitch and rant about before -- things that annoy her to no end. What do I know?  They say opposites attract.

Back to my point, if I ever had one.

Why do we put our friends in these situations?  I can understand asking a close friend if you really want to hear their opinion, someone who knows you really well and who you know will tell it like it is.  I know how helpful that can be, especially if there is some inner doubt within yourself.  But random acquaintances?  It is so awkward. Say anything less than flattering about the guy and you end up pissing off your friend and/or hurting her feelings.  And there is also the possibility that she is going to repeat that shit if the relationship lasts. At the same time, do you really want to encourage someone in a direction that doesn't seem like it's going to work out?  You don't want her to rush into another heartbreak.  (If he seems like he's abusive all bets are off -- I'm straight up telling you that whether you want to hear it or not.)

Maybe it's just me.  Maybe I suck at this type of thing.  I'm single and probably the last person you should be asking.  I've kissed my fair share of frogs without finding a prince. I excel at attracting the wrong guy.

So please don't ask me.  Spare us both from the awkwardness that I will inevitably bring to that conversation no matter how much I try to avoid it.

It's Been A Long 24 Hours, Kids

Hey there, Friends.

Shortly after posting last about being an idiot and going out to explore in the blizzard, my furnace decided to stop working.  Blizzard raging outside, no heat inside.  Fun times.  It's been a long 24 hours, to put it mildly.

My Mom jinxed it.  I was on the phone with her and she started to say that at least neither of us had lost power or anything.  I tried to stop her.  Literally 15 minutes after I got off the phone with her the pilot went out on my furnace.  I have re-lit the thing successfully many times, but it was not happening yesterday.  I could hear the wind whistling down the chimney, and the flame on the lighter would go out as soon as I stuck it inside.

This is why I always make sure to take a shower before a big storm hits.  No, really.  I've been through stretches of four days with no power/heat before.  You don't now how much you miss your hot water and shower until it is unavailable.  Be prepared and start fresh in case the worst should happen.

I started keeping a list of what was going on in the notes on my phone.  I was really bored and getting quite frustrated that I couldn't get the damn furnace to work. I also developed the hobby of bird watching with Jazz-kitty.  No judging -- I find ways to keep myself entertained.

Join me, Friends, as we recall the past 24 hours of fun!

--Pilot out around 2 pm.

--Turn on the faucets to drip cold water so the pipes don't freeze.  Check!

--Try re-lighting the pilot again.  No dice.

--I think I'm going to start baking things now to keep the house warm-ish.  It should totally work.

--Find the electric heater and get that shit plugged in.

--Made a cake.  Currently roasting parsnips...because that's all I have and it should take a while.

-- 5 pm pilot still won't light.  Should maybe just try this once an hour.  Really don't want to blow myself up in the process.

-- Taking lots of pictures of the birds.  Kind of a new hobby that has developed.  I hope you like birds, Friends, because you are about to get to see a shit-ton of pictures.

There are little birds, sometimes blown right out of the Rose of Sharon

At least this one is kind of sheltered between branches

On the ground, under the feeder

In flight

Hanging by my neighbor's garage

Different bird, same windy location

Crows in the tree

This guy was pushy!

Blue Jay, pinned to the neighbor's garage roof by the wind

Bird eating popcorn.  (I know it's popcorn because I threw it out there for them.)

Waiting for the bigger birds to clear out

Crows are here

Feeding frenzy

Crow in the snow.

I told you there were a lot of pictures.

-- 6 pm  Going to light some candles.  I know it won't make much difference in terms of temperature, but it will give the illusion of being cozy.

-- Going to make fish and baked rice pilaf for dinner.  That's a good reason to keep the oven running a little longer.

-- 8:15 pm  Pilot still won't light.  I really hope it is just the wind and it hasn't died completely.  I love you, furnace!  Please, please keep working!

We've spent some quality time together in the last 24 hours

-- I f*%king hate spiders!!!  The cellar is full of them.  Each trip down to the furnace is nightmare-inducing.  

-- Well, at least the cake looks nice.

-- 9:30 pm.  I give.  Wind is still howling outside.  I'm cuddling under a blanket in front of the little electric heater. I'm closing every door in the house that I can to trap the heat in here with me.

-- Midnight.  Going to sleep on the couch in front of the heater.  Doesn't make sense to move it to my bedroom which is cold and start warming it up all over again.

-- Woke up at 2 am.  Jazz-kitty decided it was time to snuggle.

-- Think a plow went by some time around 4 am.  Something shook the house.

-- 6:48 am woken up by a text saying there will be a delayed opening at work.  Didn't get much sleep anyway.  Time to make some coffee.

The house was actually still pretty warm.  Thermostat was reading that it only dropped to 57.  I like to think that my "bake whatever I can" scheme helped.  In your face, naysayers!

And just about 21 hours later...

I have heat!!!!! Let the rejoicing begin!!!!

— Tammy (@tammyshampoo) March 15, 2017

Now to finish up that pesky snow removal.  Thank goodness for my Dad and his snowblower!

 My neighbor, Walt, and I had a discussion about opening a ski resort for the neighborhood wildlife.  Small yards lead to large piles of snow.  They are taller than me!

View from the cellar window during the last trip to visit the furnace in Spider Land

Snow removal in progress

There's my Dad!  And this pile in the front? Comes up to my chest.  I would guess about 4 feet high.  All the snow drifted onto my side of the driveway.

This is the view of my house from the street.

And just about noontime today the driveway was cleared and my car was free from its snowy cocoon. If my Dad hadn't come over I would probably still be outside shoveling.

I went to the store like half an hour later.  I just needed to get out of the damn house.  Coffee and cat food...the staples for keeping the peace in my house.

So, the last 24 hours pretty much sucked, Friends.  I try to make make my own fun and just suck it up and deal.  Nothing you can do but try to make the best of it when trapped in a shitty situation.  Let's look at it as a learning experience.  What deep insights can I take away from this mess?

1) I don't like being cold.  I don't mind the cold so much, but extended periods of time being cold is not fun.  I know, I know, "57 is not that cold!"  It really isn't.  But it still sucks.  That is no one's first choice of temperature to live in.

2) At least the furnace wasn't totally dead.  I was really worried and stressing over that.  The poor thing is like 50 years old.

3) Fun fact: I get cranky when I'm cold for extended periods of time and don't get any sleep. Like I was seriously bitchy before I had my coffee this morning.  Sometimes being single and living alone is a blessing in disguise. At least I didn't take it out on anyone but myself.

4) Choosing to stay home is relaxing.  Being trapped in the house is not.  I probably wouldn't have minded so much if I had heat.  As it was, I was so ready to go anywhere by the time I got my car cleaned today.

5) I never realized how popular my yard was with the neighborhood birds.  It's like the coolest hangout on the block!

I'd like to thank my dear brother for not telling me how great the weather is in Florida (he's there for work).  I'm sure the weather in Texas is also delightful if he is back home at this point. 

Did you get to enjoy the blizzard?  I hope things went smoother for you, Friends.  Appreciate your heat and the ability to get in your car and go whenever you wish.  I know I do.

Damn It, Stella!

Hey, Friends.

So....we are currently having a blizzard here.  You might have heard about it.

Being the dumbass idiot fool curious person that I am, I decided to go take a little wander around outside in the blizzard.  I mean, the birds were out in the back yard. How bad could it be?

Pretty damn bad, as it turns out.

The snow was over the top of my boots before I ever made it out of my driveway.  A plow came down my street at some point in the past, as the plow wake comes up past my knees, and I kid of attempted to hurdle over it.

It's also cold -- really, really cold when that wind kicks in.  My phone-hand was bare while I was taking pictures and video, and it was numb by the time I got back inside.

Don't be like me, Friends.  Look at my pictures, watch my video, and experience the storm vicariously through me.  Stay inside where it is nice and warm.

Squirrel made a tunnel through the snow in my yard

The birds have declared my back steps to be their safe space for the storm

Good thing I filled the bird feeder yesterday

That's looking down toward Main Street.  You can barely even see the closest building.

So I made a video of my explorations.  Normally I would have taken more photos, but:

a) it was freaking freezing 

b) the snow was continually getting my phone all wet

c) I thought a video would capture it better

For your viewing enjoyment....

But really, why does it sound so weird and distorted at the end?  

So that's it, Friends.  I'm going to stay inside and drink some coffee.  Maybe I'll make another foray outside again later.  

Right now I have to go prop a chair up against the door of my front porch as the wind keeps blowing it open.  Fun times.

And I think a bird just got blown past my window.  It didn't look so much like it was flying as being tossed through the air.

Cross That One Off

Hey there, Friends.

You know how people talk about their Bucket List -- all the cool things they want to do before they die?  I think most everyone has a lot of the same things on their list:

1) Find true love/soulmate/man of my dreams
2) Travel the World

You get the point.  What about visiting the World's Largest Kaleidoscope?  You know, assuming you knew that it existed and could be visited.  That would totally make your list, right Friends?  It might be way, way, way down the list -- I'm not saying it has to be top 10 or anything.

Well, it does exist and you can go visit it!  Turns out the World's Largest Kaleidoscope is about an hour drive from where I live.  How have I never visited? Such an oversight had to be rectified immediately. I had the day off, the weather was beautiful, and we are about to get pummeled by a blizzard.  Time to squeeze in an adventure before the snowflakes start to fall.

I set off with Google Maps as my trusty copilot.  It's true, Google Maps and I have had some issues in the past, but it was on its best behavior today.  I made it to my destination without any problems.

There it is -- World's Largest Kaleidoscope

I went inside and found the entrance in the Kaleidostore. Since I was the only person there I was going to get a private screening.  I got to choose from 4 different shows that they have.  I went with the newest one, Stardust.  Apparently it was made based loosely on Bill Nye the Science Guy.  Sounds cool to me.

We get to the room, and the guide explains that there are back and neck rests to use.  She said that since it was just me, what I really should do is lay on the floor with my head in the center. That's what she does when she watches it alone.  Your neck doesn't get sore from being at a weird angle, and since the speakers are built into the floor you can feel the music pulsing.

I'm game -- that sounds awesome!

So she shuts me in, the lights turn down, and I get situated on the floor.  I tried to get some video, but it really isn't quite the same as seeing it in person.

Imagine you are staring at this overhead

It was very relaxing, and a little trippy.  If you go and are alone or in a small group you definitely need to lay on the floor to watch.  The bass pumping through the speakers will you give a massage while you watch.  

My advice?

If you go you definitely need to make it a day trip and find some other things to do in the area.  Stay at the spa for the weekend, go hiking, find some things to do in Kingston or Woodstock.  The Kaleidoscope show is only about 5-10 minutes long. It is cool, and I'm glad I went and got to experience it, but the hour drive each way to only do that was kind of bummer.  Poor planning on my part.  Learn from my mistakes!

Still pretty

He Can Blow Up My Phone Any Time

Hey, Friends.

So, remember a post or two back how I suddenly stumbled upon the fact that there are Twitter Analytics?  Yeah.  I'm still kind of amazed that it took me this long to realize it was there.  To be fair, I don't often use Twitter from my laptop.  Plus, it says to "click here to see your top tweets", and my tweets are generally pretty pathetic, so there wasn't a lot of incentive to ever click that thing.

As we've covered many times before, I don't have a lot of followers on any of my social media.  I don't really care, and I've yet to suss out how the hell I ever managed to get the ones that I do have.

Real talk, Friends: Most of the time Twitter is a socially acceptable way of talking to myself. No one is paying the slightest bit of attention to what I post.  I'm just throwing that shit out into the ether. I get so little interaction that I can have notifications turned on.  I'm lucky if I get a couple of "likes" a week.  If I post something I think is highly amusing/entertaining, I admit I will check to see how many "impressions" it got.  Anything more than 20 is amazing to me.  I'm not going to throw hashtags all over it to get more views.  (Unless it is for a blog post.  I will make exceptions for that. This may not seem like much to anyone else, but I actually put a lot of time and work into it, so I would like people to read it.)

Friends, you might be wondering why I was even interested in looking at the Twitter Analytics.  Good question.  I was wondering the same thing myself.  Did I really want to see it all spelled out for me how tiny a speck I am in the Twitterverse?  Yes, I kind of did.  I am a huge nerd.  Give me pretty graphs and numbers and let me ogle them! Dazzle me with your data and let me give myself a headache trying to figure out why some of my nonsense seems to be way more popular than the rest. I'll admit that maybe, just maybe, buried deep down there was the tiniest bit of me that wanted to discover that I was much cooler and more popular than I have given myself credit for being.

In what should be a surprise to no one, my tweet that has gotten the most "impressions" ever is the one I have pinned.  It's been there for over a year, and it's not going to change any time soon.

Too true to change.  I find myself wondering about this more often than I care to admit.

Moving right along, kids.  

The data pictured below is for my Top Tweets in the last  month, but the one at the top of the list? Blows everything else out of the damn water.  Literally the only thing I have ever posted with more "impressions" is that pinned tweet pictured above.  I'm not surprised by the result either, as I'm still getting notifications related to it over a month later.  Let's look at the results, Friends.  

Don't get too impressed.  A lot of that is other people being cool and it accidentally rubbing off on me.

I can totally explain how this happened....for the most part. We'll go in reverse order, shall we?  Save the best for last.

3)  People love their damn Rice Krispie Treats.  I made them out of Fruity Pebbles and posted a picture.  I honestly have no idea why that got so much attention.

2) I went to a concert and posted a picture.  It was the first night of Panic! At The Disco's Death of a Bachelor Tour.  I attribute this to them being cool and having a lot of fans.  

1) Oh, there's a back story for this one.  Pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and get ready for story time.

It was a normal day.  I was at work, feeling a little under the weather and hoping I wasn't getting whatever stomach bug had been making the rounds.  I was convinced that I could just power through to the end of the work day....until it became very clear that I was not okay and needed to go home. Like immediately. I didn't want to further contaminate my coworkers.

I made it home, changed into my pajamas, and snuggled up under a blanket on the couch.  If I was going to feel like death warmed over then I was going to do it at home and make my misery as comfortable as possible. I turned on the television for some company and discovered that The Hangover was coming on soon. I don't know what it says about me, but that is one of the movies that I just have to watch any time it is on -- doesn't matter if I just stumble across it part way through.

I decided to try and distract myself from feeling like shit by checking Twitter before the movie started.  I'm scrolling through the posts, and I see that Logan Henderson had posted something.  So I replied with the tweet above, not thinking much of it because it's true.  I fucking love that song and listen to it all of the time.

Watch the video.  Trust me, it's good.

And then I snuggled back into my little blanket burrito and proceeded to fall asleep before the movie even started.

I woke up, looked at the time on my cable box, and freaked the hell out for a hot second.  7:15?  In the morning or at night?  Holy shit, was I already supposed to be up and getting ready for work?  How the hell long was I asleep?!

I grabbed my phone so I could see what day it was -- sad, I know.  I was all discombobulated and had no clue.  Still February 6th, meaning it's evening.  Thank you, iPhone! I flopped back onto the couch and let the relief wash over me.  

I just laid there for a while until I determined that I actually did feel a little better after my accidental 4 hour nap.  And that's when I noticed that my phone kept buzzing. In my moment of nap-induced panic I hadn't bothered to look at anything beyond checking the lock screen for the date and time.

What the fuck happened while I was sleeping?  Twitter notifications are blowing up.

Friends, when you have as small a number of followers as I do, I have notifications turned on for everything. As previously mentioned, I'm not the greatest with social media. I have somehow managed to also set myself up to get text messages from Twitter about said notifications.  My phone was literally just vibrating next to me on the couch, and had apparently been doing so for a while.

My first thoughts were not of the good variety. I'm used to talking to myself on Twitter, so it didn't even cross my mind that I had posted a reply right before I passed out. My train of thought immediately jumped to:

1) Something bad has happened: natural disaster, we declared war on someone/something, etc.

2) My account has been hacked.  Nothing I have ever posted has gotten this kind of a response.

3) Did I sleep-tweet?  Is that even a thing?  What kind of ridiculous thing have I done that I don't remember doing?

It was with more than a little trepidation that I unlocked the phone and opened Twitter.  

I looked at my page, half expecting to see it had been taken over by a porn-bot or the like.  Nope, looks normal.  It would appear that I didn't sleep-tweet anything either, which is a relief.  Oh hey, 5 people liked my reply I posted earlier.  That's nice.  And checking the home screen doesn't make it appear that any catastrophic, world-ending event has happened.  Guess I'm going to have to look at the notifications.

And...now we have our answer.  

He replied.  While I was busy sleeping on my couch, Logan replied. That explains it all. I was getting all of these notifications because I was "mentioned" in his reply that a shit-ton of people were "liking" and re-tweeting. It had nothing to do with me -- I was accidentally popular by association.  Some of his coolness had rubbed off on me.

That is the long-ass story of my Top Tweet.  Like ever.  A month later and I'm still getting notifications about this, almost every day.

Twitter Analytics can be fun, right Friends?  Okay, I'm really struggling with a way to bring this all back on point after that.  In reality I can't see why I would ever need to look at these things again.  I'm not going to be promoting a tweet.  I'm not hell-bent on getting an insane number of followers.  I don't run a business or need to gauge my audience. Maybe out of morbid curiosity and/or sheer boredom at some point.  I'm still going to feel like I'm talking to myself most of the time.

But on the off-chance that Logan has nothing better to do with his life and actually stumbles across this and takes the time to read my ramblings....

Hi there, Logan.

Thanks for the reply.  I probably should have said so at the time, but it was beyond me at the moment. And thanks for making me momentarily cool by association. For the record, I'm totally okay with you replying to anything your little heart desires and causing chaos on my phone.  Any time.  Hell, if you wanted to do an experiment and follow me, we could see if my phone completely blows up and dies. Just throwing that out there....you know, in the name of science and research.  I'm due for a new phone in a couple months anyway.

xoxo,

Me

Long and Weird

Hey, Friends.

Have you ever had a week that wasn't necessarily bad, but it just seemed super long because it was filled with weird and ridiculous things?  I know that sounds odd and a little vague.  I'll try to explain as best I can.

It all started on Monday.  I thought it was just a fluke -- one weird conversation that I was dragged into as a very confused participant.  In retrospect, I maybe should have taken it as a sign of how the entire week was going to play out.

I was at work, minding my own business and trying to get things accomplished, and this guy I've never seen before comes over to me and decides to start a conversation.  He opened by asking me if I have, "ever contemplated what life is like for the noble coconut?"  He was serious about it, too.

What?  I'm going to go with no. Is he really talking about a freaking coconut here, or is this some kind of code that I don't recognize?

So I told him that I hadn't really given any thought to coconuts.  I didn't know where he was going with this, and I saw no point pretending like I had given time to contemplating the life of a coconut. 

That was mistake, Friends.  I'm not sure there was actually a good answer to that question though, as I'm pretty sure he was going to have his say on the topic no matter what answer he got.  I got a whole lecture about how I was part of the problem.  Oh yeah. 

Did I ever eat coconut?  Yeah.  It's delicious.

Did I ever drink coconut water, or cook with coconut milk?  Yes to both.

That's why I was deemed part of "the problem", Friends.  Don't feel left out -- I'm sure he would consider you part of "the problem" as well. He went off about people only appreciating the parts of the coconut that they could eat or drink.  No one cared about using the entire coconut.  Why wasn't anything being done to make productive use of the hard outer shell?  The coconut should be just as respected as any other living thing, and "all of its resources should be used."

I might have made it worse when I mentioned that people did use the shells for things.  I have a little monkey statue made from pieces of coconut shells. Apparently he did not consider "tacky tourist crap" to be something of value.  The shells were solid, hard material that should be used to create things for the greater good.  He didn't seem to have any specifics on how that should happen or what those things should be, but was emphatic that it should be happening and the world was, "overlooking a wonderful resource."

That was Monday morning, Friends.  

There was a whole shit-storm of the weird and ridiculous happening that I can't talk about.  We're only going to touch upon the surface stuff here, kids.  I'm going to give you the most amusing parts of the week.

By the time Thursday rolled around, I figured everyone could use a little treat.  

Made Rice Krispie Treats using Fruity Pebbles. Not sure if it will taste like anything but pure sugar, but they look cool. pic.twitter.com/ujHXh5UB6r

— Tammy (@tammyshampoo) March 2, 2017

**A bit of a digression for a moment...
I rarely use Twitter from my laptop unless I need to post something here.  I can't even imagine trying to type this all on my phone or Kindle Fire.  I need a full keyboard and many tabs. To that end (and because I kind of suck at social media in general), I've only just now discovered the link to the Twitter Analytics on my profile page.  I don't ever see that on my phone.  There could be a whole post about this discovery in the near future.  But to get somewhat back on point, that tweet has apparently gotten more views than almost anything else I have ever posted.  Who the hell knew that Fruity Pebble Treats would be that damn popular?**

Where were we?  Thursday, right.

I work the late shift on Thursdays.  When I got to work I found out that the phones and computers had been down for part of the morning, but it was all rectified by the time I arrived.  Worked well for me, and clearly everyone was going to need the Fruity Pebble Treats even more than I had thought.

Later that afternoon, the police show up with lights a-blazing on their cars.  They are looking for a white male who "may or may not have any clothes on."  They got a call from the school down the street and thought he may have headed to the library. They checked the library and the used book store in the back of the building.  No naked man found.

We were all more than a little amused about the situation.  Did the police really think that we wouldn't have noticed, or called them, if there was a naked dude just wandering around in the library?

I actually made notes about the things that I said.  The staff was amused, but all of the patrons present had to ask what was going on and we had to explain.

"Nah.  I'm pretty sure we would have heard about it by now if the naked man had wandered in to join the knitting group."

"Because if you're naked and running from the cops, the library is totally the place to go!  You'll blend right in."

(Real talk -- it happens more often than you would think.  Let me Google that for you.)

"I made Fruity Pebble treats.  Eat one of those and you'll be wired for hours.  You won't miss any of the fun."

"I bet it was a senior prank.  Probably changed in the men's room long before the cops ever got here."

"No, we don't generally get a lot of naked people in the library."

Taking it down a few notches in excitement, you know what else is always amusing?  The titles on some of the romance novels.  Take a look if you have never paid any attention to them.  I had commented to a former coworker once about some of the character names being a little crazy, and she actually had an explanation for that.  She is a published author, reviewed a lot of things, proofread manuscripts,so she would be in a position to know.  She said a lot of the character names get changed because the authors will get feedback from the editors that they need to make the characters "fiery", or to "spice it up" a little bit.  She said that is when you end up with main characters named things like Cayenne -- clearly that author had hit the breaking point with the need to make things "spicier".  The titles themselves are just silly sometimes, and full of contradictions. I swear I once saw one called "The Playboy King's Mistress Bride".  What the hell does that even mean?

I don't remember the exact title of the book we discovered this week, but it had to be something pretty interesting to catch everyone's attention.  I wish I could remember what it was, but I know it led to me saying:

Because when I think I need someone to depend on, my first thought is always, "Damn it, where can I find a bull rider?"

Friends -- there are even better discoveries on Amazon.  I kid you not.  A couple years back I was trying to find a book on there for a kid that had something to do with a T-Rex when I made an amusing/disturbing discovery of the WTF variety. This obviously was not the book he was looking for, but it isn't something that you will forget seeing.  Like....ever.  I had no idea that such a thing even existed.  Click here if you want to know, but don't blame me when you can't forget about it.

Which brings us to yesterday when it was finally, blessedly, Friday.  I got out of work and had some things to do, errands to run.  I just wanted to get home and relax.  Couldn't just be easy though.

A new Popeyes opened very near my house, and that thing has screwed up traffic on a regular basis since day one.  Essentially, I really can't use one end of my street from lunch time on.  I kind of spaced on that fact when trying to get home last night and spent some quality time stuck in traffic caused by the drive-thru line that had backed up out into the street.

I'm listening to the radio, cursing my own stupidity for trying to get home that way, when there's a guy knocking on my window.  He keeps knocking until I crack the window enough to ask what he wants.  "You going to Popeyes?  I need some biscuits."  I tell him I'm not going there, just stuck in traffic.  I fully expected he was next going to ask for money, but he didn't.  He just wandered on to the next car and knocked on their window.

Fucking Popeyes is fast becoming the bane of my existence.

So that was my week, Friends.  It was full of weird and ridiculous things. I'm not saying that it is necessarily bad, as it was pretty amusing at times.  I just wish it had spread itself out a little more....like over a few weeks rather than crammed all into the same one.