Green eggs and ham

Farm fresh eggs. Yum. Nothing like living in the middle of farm country to learn to appreciate diversity. Brown eggs and white eggs are sooooooo "big city". Yep, got to get you some of those "easter egg" chickens to get green eggs. That's a true story.

The Great and Powerful Oz checked out the last tornado watch. Scared the shit out of her, too.
I almost stayed to see how many guys in drag showed up for the free drinks.

I forgot to mention that Tish gave me a Rockin' Girl Blogger Award! Whoooooooo hooooooooo for me! More on this later...

Allergic to fireworks

I found out this week that Pooh King has decided to be afraid of firewords this year. Seriously. I'm relatively sure it was a conscious decision since the dog has never been afraid of fireworks before. I've taken him to parades and fireworks displays (even a U2 concerts... where there were fireworks!) before and never, never has he cowered in fear.

This week is open season as far as Alliance goes. Apparently, for the past few years, they've been banned due to the extreme drought conditions out here. This year there's been enough rain that the town council decided to allow them, and it's been game on ever since. All around town, at any time of day or night, you can hear the crackle and screech of some kid (or adult) trying to blow his own fingers off.

I was out riding the bike the other night with Pooh King running alongside, when the kids gathered in the parking lot of a housing unit started throwing snaps down. In a cruel twist of fate, Pooh King and I were in the immediate vicinity. That dog nearly crawled up my leg trying to get away from the sound. I teetered, bobbed and weaved, and managed not to fall. (No, I did not have on my fuchsia Danskos at the time. Lesson learned.) We made it home despite the dog's panic attack. A few scooby-snacks later, and he was good to go again.

Last night the people in my complex decided to put on their own display of firework mastery. Smartly, they were firing them up from the sand volleyball court. Not so goood? they were aimed pretty much at the roof of my building. (Did I mention we don't have sprinklers?) Needless to say, Pooh King was trying to crawl UNDER me on the couch. After a few minutes, I decided it was best to close the glass and turn on the a/c, lest my dog become permanently shoved up my butt. Really, try explaining that to people.

About 2 minutes later, I look over to see Pooh King watching the fireworks from a window-front seat. It turns out he hates the noise, but loves the colors! Who says dogs are color-blind?

In an effort not to break my limbs, I've made the executive decision to leave the bike on the porch this week. I'm afraid we'll wind up like this, with Pooh King on the bike and me running alongside!

Good luck!

Good luck to The Ancient One, my Grammie, who is having surgery tomorrow to remove part of her thyroid. The initial biopsy was benign, and we're hoping the surgical biopsies will come back clean as well.

Speedy healing, Grammie. I love you!!!

PS... I'm pretty sure you can ask for ice cream all the time for a while!


Update: Gram did great! The doc said it was practically a text-book surgery and things couldn't have gone better. Much to the delight of Ma King, the surgeon looked at her and announced that Gram has the biggest vocal cords he's ever seen. "Well, that won't shock anyone in my family." Gram spent the night with Ma and Pa King and had every intention and desire to go back to her own house today. Good job Gram!

Apple Crisp Girl is a whiner. She complained that I haven't posted yet this week. Wasn't Carhenge and the rest area enough to keep you entertained for a while? I guess not, so here it is... not much funny has happened since Saturday.

I'm playing sand court volleyball on Wednesday nights. I play on a team comprised of the OT from work, her husband, and his tech, who hasn't played since about 6th grade, and me the 5'5" wonder. We're not terrible. In fact, we've won 2 games so far. All the other ones (4 of them) we've won second place... out of two.

Tonight we played the team led by a fem-mullet. B and L were on her team last year, and they are apparently holding a grudge. I hope the grudge is against the mullet. Anyway, we got spanked tonight, and not in a good way. Up until now, every time we've won second, B says "I don't care, so long as we beat The Hoff Team." That's right, people, The Hoff Team. It just smells bad, doesn't it? And, by the way, B TOTALLY cares every time we win second. It's the team game plan to win first, win second instead, and then have B and Spaz (who, bless his heart, hasn't consistently figured out which way the other side of the court is quite yet) sit and talk about how bad the other team is and how they can't believe we lost. Usually L and I stay out of it, and I just laugh on the inside because I know and can acknowledge that the other team was better than us and we deserved to lose. Before our last game, B said, "I think we're better than the other teams." I just looked at him and said, "I think that 3 of them have proven we're not." Don't get me wrong, I don't want to lose. I really hate to lose, as a matter of fact. But sometimes, you deserve to win second. I just think you actually have to be better than the other team to talk smack about them. If you're the team who won second, and you're sitting there more than 50% of the time talking about how you're better than the team that beat you, you probably shouldn't be doing so much yapping. No, we're not better.

Then I came home to find out that one thing that can make me laugh uncontrollably, even after winning second, is hearing the neighbor-kids doing this:

The boys (5 of them) are riding their bikes around the garage unit, making a big loop. Katie, the 3 year old sister, is on the porch. As the boys cycle around they all yell, in turn, "Hi Katie!" Before Katie can yell "Hi (insert brother's name here)!!" the next brother has yelled "Hi Katie!" So Katie tries to yell "Hi (insert next brother's name here)!!" and can't get it out before the next brother comes around. She got to giggling so hard trying to yell out the boys' names that she couldn't hardly yell at all and was just randomly screaming "Hi! gigglegigglegiggle Hi! gigglegigglegiggle Hi!" This only egged the boys on to ride faster and faster until they were all pedaling their little hearts out laughing and screaming "Hi Katie!" as often as they could.

The result? I got to giggling. The more Katie giggled and squealed, the faster the boys pedaled and screamed, the harder I laughed. I figure I could win second quite frequently if I could come home and laugh like that!

and just one mile from Carhenge...

The great Nebraska rest area. Really, feel free to pull over and put your feet up... or pull your pants down, whichever. Don't you judge us.
The chair has definitely seen better days, but I'm surprised that no one has stolen the toilet. Seriously, after spending some time with Ma and Pa King pricing a new one, I'm surprised this puppy's still there.
Here's my shirt for having the vehicle in the parking lot that was registered at the farthest away place. Some lady from Maine contested my win. Yeah, lady, Fairbanks, Alaska, is further away from Alliance than Bangor, Maine. By 1000 miles.

Now give me my shirt!
Everyone who came got a free "Carhenge" penny. There were lots of shirts and hats for sale as well. Now, what size do you wear?

Happy Birthday Carhenge!!!

If only Carhenge could wear a tiara. I guess the balloons will have to do.
Oh, Jim Reinder, you art philanthropist. Really, you're right up there with the Carnegies.
A new addition to the "car art". I think it might have come out of the "travel of the future" display at Space Mountain.

WTF?!?!?!

Today I went out to the 20th birthday celebration at Carhenge. I was all prepared to post the pictures and tell you how I came to own a t-shirt that says "I got stoned at Carhenge", but now that has to wait because I'm going to bitch for a few minutes first.

After I was out at Carhenge, I decided I'd swing by the Woolrich Outlet store that's here in Alliance. (I know! I can't believe it either.) You never know what you're going to find in an outlet store. I found that I'm fitting into some clothes better, and that one bitchy old lady doesn't like me much.

I found a really, really cute button down shirt to wear at work that could also double for a cute going-out shirt if accessorized appropriately. I was standing in front of the mirror in the store (the mirror being about 3 times as wide as me) holding up the shirt in various colors trying to decide which one was best for me. The following conversation ensues...

Bitchy Old Lady (BOL from now on): I would try this jacket on if the fat girl would quit hogging the mirror.

TK (as the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I try to keep cool so as not to wheel around and break the old biddy in half): Excuse me, are you talking about me? Do you pay rent on this mirror? Do you not realize there are 3 open fitting rooms right there (indicates 3 open fitting rooms immediately next to the BIG mirror)?

BOL rolls her eyes and pinches her face up like she's been sucking on lemons.

TK: Did you just make that face at me?

BOL: No. (still making the face, by the way.)

TK: Then that's an unfortunate joke god played on you, making your face like that.

Then I went back to holding up shirts. I swear, it was all I could do not to tell her that she shouldn't buy the jacket because she was obviously painfully old and probably wouldn't live long enough for the weather to turn cool enough for her to wear it.

But I didn't. 'Cause Jesus hates ugly.

This ends the WTF?!?! moment of the day. Next time you're out in public, think about how you treat other people, okay? Or the next WTF?!?! moment of the day could be about you. And I won't promise to be so nice next time.

tornado watch

These pictures are in proper chronological order. The black, dark, nasty-wind ones? They were first... at 6:00pm. I called Ma and Pa King to tell them I was sucking my thumb in a bathtub.

Seriously. This stuff is frightening.

Holy crapola... those are flying monkeys. One of them can't even look.
Yeah, monkey legs in the air? That's how hard the wind is blowing.
Then, at 8:30pm, this was the sunset.

Thankfully for me, the storm is passing east of us. No tornado warnings. No sirens. Just wind and lighting. Mostly to the east.

Holy shitballs.

**Update: When I called the farm to give them the "all clear" when the storm passed, Pa King answered.

"Hi Poppy, I just wanted to tell you the storm passed so you wouldn't worry."

"I was sound asleep."

"Okay, well, don't worry in your sleep, then."

More hair play

Okay, I promise that this is almost over. Just bear with me while I wow you with my new haircut. This one kind of reminds me of some Greek movie where the heroine has her hair pinned back but somehow maintains the ability to keep long, flowing curls. Very romantical-type stuff people! Maybe I'll join a Renaissance Fair or something.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming!

Happy Daddy's Day

And the happiest of Father's Days to my Poppy.

Seriously.

Thanks for everything, Dad.

The Excellent Adventure of The Great and Powerful Oz

The howling. Oh, the sound of the howling.

I went to Ocean's 13 last night. It was good. My Favorite Asian thought it was a little slow at the beginning (we reviewed it on the phone tonight) but as I'd had 2 beers before I watched it, I didn't notice. Anyway...

I got back from the movie around 10 and stayed up to watch SNL. Okay, so maybe I just stayed up to watch Weekend Update, but since Molly Shannon was hosting, I wanted to watch it all. Of course, I fell asleep during the show and missed Weekend Update altogether, but that's neither here nor there for the purposes of this story. Around 12:15 I woke up on the couch and decided it was time to move it into the bedroom. (Don't forget I'm in the mountain time zone, so everything starts an hour earlier on TV.) The temperature outside had cooled down, so I decided to turn off the a/c (which I now have, thank you very much, Spike) and open the porch door and window to let in some fresh air, and to keep the electric bill down.

Anyway, I fell asleep to my favorite sounds and was awakened a short time later by the sound of an approaching storm (which, ironically, is another of my favorite sounds). Thunder rolling, lightning flashing, impending sense of doom, etc, etc. I jumped out of bed and whipped the porch door shut so the rain wouldn't blow straight in, as it's been known to do. I crawl back into bed and settle down for a long summer's nap.

4am. MMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!

MMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!

MMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!

4am TK flies out of bed. What the hell? Is my cat stuck in a meat grinder? Is someone trying to break in and she threw herself right at his face? Did I shut her in a closet? 4am TK is not a quick thinker... nor is she dressed. So I ran around the apartment all ninja-style trying to find The Great and Powerful Oz while avoiding the partially open blinds lest the Gideons upstairs see me in my birthday suit. (Seriously, those guys come and go at the strangest hours.) Can't find that freakin' cat anywhere, but she's still bellering at me. Finally I go and peek out of the window in my bedroom.

There sits Oz, on top of someone's SUV, staring straight at my bedroom window and yelling at the top of her lungs.

W.T.F.?!?!?! 4am TK is trying to figure out how the hell the cat got outside. Is there a hole in the wall? Did someone try to break in and she really did throw herself right at his face, only to be carried outside as he tried to get away? Again, 4am TK is not such a quick thinker. So I throw my robe on, run down the hall, down the stairs, and outside to rescue my dumpster cat. She yells at me about 3 more times before running out from under the SUV to be taken back inside. As I walk up the stairs I ask her how she got outside.

"You shithead. You didn't pull the screen door shut when you opened the glass door, so I went outside to look around. Then you shut the freakin' door. I jumped onto the downstairs neighbor's air conditioner, then down to the ground. Then I hunted around for a while. Checked out the dumpster action, etc, etc. But I couldn't get back up to the porch, not that it would have mattered, since you shut the freakin' door and all, so I crawled up onto the highest thing I could find and screamed at you until you woke up to come rescue me."

4am TK is stunned that The Great and Powerful Oz can talk... and that she called me a shithead.

She slept on my head for a few hours, then taught me a valuable, valuable lesson...

If you try to clean up cat puke while the cat is still puking, she will just go puke somewhere else.

Good thing I already have a spot cleaner.

Dear Pooh King, I am sorry I'm so lazy. Thanks for being the Neighborhood Watch. I heart you. The Two-Legger.

And now, here are some better pictures of the hair. At 3:15 I decided it was time to quit doing laundry (mostly because it was done) and take a shower. I'm going to dinner and a movie with G. Ocean's 13, here I come.

What you've been waiting for!

Funny conversation:

TK: See? You're feeling better! And you said physical therapy was stupid. Harumph!!
Kid: Physical therapy is stupid... it just works.

You gotta love an 11 year old.

Now, back to hair day. Sam was definitely worth waiting for. She spent a lot of time discussing the state of my hair and what I wanted to do with it, which I definitely appreciated. I came out of it with buttery-blonde summer locks, and the ability to continue my rockstar look. Now, the picture below isn't the best one I've ever taken, but you have to understand that I'm not really a morning person, and this was taken at 7:30am (and before I had on my lipgloss). If you met me at 8am on a workday you wouldn't believe that. However, I have to get up at 5:45 to be at full speed by 8. I wake up slow, people... S.L.O.W.

Hair day was good. Very good. Who'd have thought Alliance, NE, would pull through? It was odd being at the salon at 10am, but hey, it's 5:00 somewhere, right? Just kidding. I had to go back to work afterward so there was no glass of wine. Boooooooooooooo. Everyone knows hair day involves wine... or margaritas... or both. Don't you judge me.

I'll have pictures of my hair tomorrow. Let's just say I'm back to being very, very blonde. But for today, here's the Great and Powerful Oz checking out the new pet bed... she refuses to call it a dog bed. Just sayin'.

snort, giggle, snort-snort

Here is your single's love horoscope for Wednesday, June 13:


You've got a unique style, made even more so by the stars now -- work it! Don't hide your weird side or dampen that sense of humor -- if they get it, they'll get you, and if they don't, well, that's sorta sad.


That freakin' cracks me up!

Oz-fest... and a little Pooh, too.

The Great and Powerful Oz has been cracking me up lately. She's taken to sleeping cocoon-style in anything she can get into. She still sleeps in the closet occassionally, but she has really taken to even smaller spaces.

Oz-in-a-sack... It's kind of like figuring out what you do with a Jamaican in a box.

The ambient temperature in my apartment was about 85 degrees, and Oz decides to become a cat-in-a-blanket. She stayed in there for about 3 hours.

This is her favorite way to view the birds that sit on the porch and taunt her. She chatters to let them know that if they don't watch it I'll throw her right at their beaks.

And alas, Pooh King's new bed. It's his royal throne. Remember, the fat boy is weighing in around 85 pounds these days. Oh-boy's got PLENTY of room to stretch out on his news couch-bed. He was seriously excited about showing it to his Woobie (the toy).

As soon as Pooh got off of the bed, Oz decided she needed to sleep under it. Figures.

Oh, and did I mention that Thursday is FINALLY hair day? Thank god, because I need some serious de-rooting1!!

Scenes from the local area...

The guy who owns this place desperately wants it to be a Boy Scout camp. Hmmmmm...
If you look closely, there's a double rainbow (the lighter one is to the left hand side). A patient in Alaska told me that in the case of a double rainbow, the colors in the outer rainbow are reversed. She was right.

This is what it looks like about 2.5 hours after the tornado watch expires. I was still watching for flying monkeys.

Scenes from the Ft. Collins trip

I think I'll pass on the tuna.

A very cool mosaic.

This is G. She's tiny. She fits in the little kid car. And she has to wear kid's shoes.

Conversation

Bossman had to drive to a town 20 miles away to see patients at a nursing home yesterday during the nastiest part of the tornado watch. As he's driving in, we get this call at the clinic...

(ring, ring)
E: Hello?

Bossman: The weather is awful! Tell Tiffany the Tornado Queen that she can drive to Hemingford the next time we're under a tornado watch!

*everyone laughs*

This morning:

TK: Bossman, if you think I will get in my car and drive during a tornado watch, warning, whatever, you clearly don't care if I work here anymore. 'Cause in case you don't understand what I'm saying, I would quit before I would get in the car.

Bossman: Oh, come on, it's not THAT bad.

TK: Horse-shit Bossman. There's nothing between Alliance and Hemingford. Sure, they say you should get in a ditch. But really, a tornado can throw around train cars. Like I have a chance in hell of making it out of a ditch. It's one of those things they tell you can do just to make you feel better just before you get sucked up in a twister with some cows and die. No thanks.

Bossman walks away laughing. E says, "You have a twin, right? Because you keep saying you're going to leave, but we want you to stay. If you're leaving, you have to leave your twin."

Today was nasty, cold, rainy and windy (with gusts up to 50 mph) but no tornado watches or warnings. Stay tuned for pictures of flying monkeys...

Severe Weather

I learned a few things today...

1. I don't always immediately remember the difference between a tornado watch and a warning. I think a warning should mean "be careful, there could be a tornado" and a watch should be "Holy shit! Watch out for the tornado!" In fact, the opposite is true.


2. In the event of a tornado watch, all of the blinds in the hospital have to be pulled closed. (I'm not sure why, since they're not going to slow down a tornado.)


3. I get a little claustraphobic when I'm worrying about seeing approaching tornadoes and all the blinds are shut.


4. When you work in an area where they're doing cardiac rehab, you should not peek out of the blinds during a tornado watch and yell "Oh my god!!!" when you see very dark clouds moving quickly, no matter how ominous and scary it looks.


5. Even if you immediately yell "It's not a twister! I'm just scared!" you will get yelled at for sending some old lady into sinus tachycardia. And for saying "holy shitballs, Batman".


6. For some unknown reason, I can remember what sinus tachycardia is easier than I can remember the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning. *shakes her head in disbelief*

What a good dog!!!

*Cost of Pooh King as a puppy- $0. (Thanks Ma and Pa King)

*Cost of Pooh King's vet visits- Maybe $2000 over 10 years... not bad, really.

*Cost of Pooh King's food for 10 years- Oh sweet hey-zeus! I don't think you can calculate it.

*Cost of carpet spot cleaner after the Peanut Butter Scooby Snack incident- $40 or so.

*Cost of said Peanut Butter Scooby Snacks- $4.95

*Value of the number of times Pooh King has woken me up in time to get ready for work because I forgot to turn my alarm on? Priceless!!!

I'll die when he dies!

Quick update

Okay, okay, I know you were expecting pictures. G and I went back to the bar on Saturday, but there wasn't nearly the spectacular collection of characters as showed on Friday. Apparently there was a wedding reception for another local band member and all the "roadies" had been invited. Bye girls-working-the-pole. Bye Injun Joe. I miss you already. I promise, if I go back on a Friday night, I'll bring the camera.

I spent almost the entire day on Saturday and Sunday trying to avoid walking. On Tuesday, being the freak of nature I am, I managed to hurt myself on the StairMaster. No, I didn't fall off. Apparently I was stepping differently with my right leg than my left leg and hurt the muscle that bends the ankle up. Seriously. By Tuesday night, every step hurt. By Friday, I couldn't walk without wanting to amputate my own leg. Every time I swing my leg forward and especially when my heel hits the ground, I feel like someone's jamming an ice pick up along my shin bone. I spent 5 days getting worse instead of better. (Now, aren't you impressed that I made it to the bar?!?!) At least today I only wanted to cut my leg off about 50% of the time.

Aye carumba!

I finally ventured out into the Alliance "nightlife". Be afraid, people, be very afraid. In an attempt to bring sexy back to western Nebraska, I figured I'd go hear some live music.

The place? The Gathering Spot, which of course, everyone calls "The G-Spot".

The band? "Ignore the Girl". Now, the lead singer of the band is the sister-in-law of the speech therapist I work with, G. That means we were the cool kids the band came to hang out with during their breaks. The lead singer is in her early 40's and has bleached blond hair with neon pink edges. Tres chic. But the band was okay, overall, and she can really wail on some of those songs, so a good time was had by all.

Of course, there were some outstandingly fantastic mullets in attendance. The wildly drunk Native American guy we very politically incorrectly referred to as "Injun Joe". He was too drunk to walk anymore (tipped over a table just walking in) and kept begging people to get him beer from the bar. Now, one of my firm rules of drinking is that when you can't walk to the bar anymore it's time for you to quit, so I politely declined to get Injun Joe another "mug of cheap beer." My defiance led to me hearing this... "GIRL! GIRL! YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL! GET ME A MUG OF CHEAP BEER AND I'LL BUY A BEER FOR YOU! GIRL! GIRL! PLEASE! PLEASE!" for about 80% of the night. Now, other people don't have the same drinking rules as I do, so Injun Joe was never out of a mug for long. If the person left his/her drink at the table while getting a mug of cheap beer, they returned to find their glass much lighter, as Joe apparently couldn't wait long to refresh his palette.

Moving on to other fine sightings...

There was the obligatory dirty dancing couple. Seriously, it was like watching porn. Somewhere a pole was missing its stripper. She intermittently dry-humped her boyfriend and another pole-less stripper, much to Injun Joe's delight. I was nearly blinded more than once when she felt the need to bend over with her ass up against someone and her shirt raised up to expose, well, use your imagination... and it wasn't pretty.

At the bar there were two women dressed exactly alike except one in red and one in blue. They instantly became Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Tweedle Dee got lucky and was dancing with a guy who I can only describe as having no moves. Okay, he did have one move. He put his arms out to the side and moved them in a motion that resembled turning the world's biggest steering wheel back and forth. Tweedle Dee liked it.

I forayed into the bathroom to find a very drunk woman talking to herself while on the toilet about how awful all the town people were.

The first week I got here I started exercising after work. There's a program at our clinic that allows the community to access the gym during certain hours, and I have taken full advantage of it. The attendant, Will, is 20 and born and raised in Alliance. Before we'd gotten to know each other much, he gave me this sage dating advice...

"Be careful if you're going to date around here. This place is swimming with STD's."

I bet the G-Spot is STD central! I'm going back tonight and taking my camera!