Amy’s Gripping Commentary

Wristies!

I get quizzed a lot about these. I wear them ALL the time at work because my hands are always cold, especially the mousing hand. My mom then knitted a couple pair too! I also bought them for a coworker one year since she was always cold.

And no, that’s not me in the picture, but it looks like one I might take. It even looks like my Where’s Waldo turtleneck that everyone hated but I loved. They hated the pink and navy striped one more, though.

Anyway, there is a rare sale on them. All in stock items are 15% off through September 1. Apply the code LABOR2008 at checkout at wristies.com. Good luck navigating the website… they also sell through third parties so you may have seen them elsewhere.

I also saw a similar item in the Athleta catalog recently if you want to be trendier and broker.

And now a few pictures from an 18ish-mile ride the other day after work on the White River Trail and back down Central through the hood. I discovered later that my tires are way low on air which might explain why the bike felt even heavier than usual.

And finally, more proof that people who make and paint signs are often idiots. (Right under the WANTED part in case you aren’t drawn to it immediately like I was.)

Another good one from Samsara! Except that link isn’t including her meme for some reason. After I posted it and traced it back I discovered it was meant to be all-veg stuff, so I guess I’d eat haggis, etc, in that format, but should you really recreate stuffed intestines?

1) Copy this list into your own blog, including these instructions
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
(I removed cross-tagging instructions… who has time for that?)

1. Natto
2. Green Smoothie
3. Tofu Scramble
4. Haggis
5. Mangosteen
6. Creme brulee
7. Fondue
8. Marmite/Vegemite
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Nachos
12. Authentic soba noodles
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Taco from a street cart
16. Boba Tea
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Gyoza
20. Vanilla ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Ceviche
24. Rice and beans
25. Knish
26. Raw scotch bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Caviar I’ve had roe, though, pre-veg
29. Baklava
30. Pate (though in the more general sense, I’ve eaten vegetable pates… I just assumed they meant some tortured goose’s liver)
31. Wasabi peas
32. Chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Mango lassi
34. Sauerkraut that smell makes me want to barf
35. Root beer float
36. Mulled cider
37. Scones with buttery spread and jam
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Fast food french fries
41. Raw Brownies
42. Fresh Garbanzo Beans
43. Dahl
44. Homemade Soymilk
45. Wine from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Stroopwafle
47. Samosas Last night for dinner! Love these. Of course I ate these for dinner because the vegetable dishes at the family party managed not to be veg*n…
48. Vegetable Sushi
49. Glazed doughnut
50. Seaweed
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Tofurkey
54. Sheese (a different brand anyway)
55. Cotton candy
56. Gnocchi eh
57. Piña colada
58. Birch beer
59. Scrapple
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Soy curls
63. Chickpea cutlets but not the much-touted ones of a recent cookbook
64. Curry
65. Durian
66. Homemade Sausages
67. Churros, elephant ears, or funnel cake
68. Smoked tofu
69. Fried plantain
70. Mochi
71. Gazpacho
72. Warm chocolate chip cookies
73. Absinthe
74. Corn on the cob
75. Whipped cream, straight from the can
76. Pomegranate
77. Fauxstess Cupcake
78. Mashed potatoes with gravy
79. Jerky just got a soy jerky the other day–yum!
80. Croissants
81. French onion soup
82. Savory crepes
83. Tings
84. A meal at Candle 79 I wish
85. Moussaka
86. Sprouted grains or seeds
87. Macaroni and “cheese”
88. Flowers
89. Matzoh ball soup
90. White chocolate
91. Seitan
92. Kimchi My Korean-American roomie in college ate this… sorry, it’s stinky!
93. Butterscotch chips
94. Yellow watermelon
95. Chili with chocolate
96. Bagel and Tofutti
97. Potato milk
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Raw cookie dough I think they’ll have this in the good-themed-afterlife I hope to go to

I just put together a self-inking stamp with tiny letters, allowing you to customize your message (I was making a boring protocol number for a document appendix). Shortly after, I examined all the black smudges on my fingers. One finger actually says O P P. hehehhe

Got this from Samsara

1. My uncle once: had a new heart transplanted
2. Never in my life: have I been able to dive
3. When I was five: I liked to read and draw
4. High school was: full of really smart kids
5. I will never forget: getting fired
6. Once I met: my college dean’s basement pinball machine collection
7. There’s this girl I know: who was on Sesame Street
8. Once, at a bar: I kissed my boss
9. By noon, I’m usually: finally awake enough to be productive
10. Last night: we watched the U.S. women’s eight win a gold medal while we ate sushi
11. If only I had: been emotionally available about ten years earlier
12. Next time I go to church: it’ll probably be because someone is dead
13. What worries me most: is people being mean to each other and the planet
14. When I turn my head left I see: David playing the Olympic fanfare on the piano
15. When I turn my head to the right I see: Casper sacked out
16. You know I’m lying when: I say I’ll call you to go out and do something (most people anyway… but I try really hard not to lie)
17. What I miss most about the Eighties is: how the biggest problem in school was if the boys were allowed to wear an earring
18. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: Emma Thompson! Oh, that was just a movie
19. By this time next year: my rabbits will be bonded
20. A better name for me would be: Arrogant elitist liberal? At least that’s what I heard today
21. I have a hard time understanding: the desire for shoes and purses. And makeup.
22. If I ever go back to school, I’ll: never get rid of my school loans
23. You know I like you if: I tell someone else about you
24. If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: Casper
25. Take my advice, never: need to replace all your teeth
26. My ideal breakfast is: skipping it and sleeping in
27. A song I love but do not have is: I already stole them all from Napster
28. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: raft down the river
29. Why won’t people: stop pitching cigarette butts out the window
30. If you spend a night at my house: you’d better like dog hair
31. I’d stop my wedding for: a stray dog
32. The world could do without: the fashion industry guns
33. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: be a telemarketer
34. My favourite blonde(s) is/are: I don’t like blonde hair
35. Paper clips are more useful than: shoehorns
36. If I do anything well it’s: remember a lot of stupid little things like gas prices and the content of a study someone wrote at work eight months ago and how many calories a Taco Bell bean burrito has
37. I can’t help but: point out mistakes in grammar and spelling
38. I usually cry: for some stupid hormonal reason
39. My advice to my child/nephew/niece: help those without a voice
40. And by the way: I heard about two hoarding cases today. Fort Wayne: 53 animals, from dogs to lizards. Tennessee: 119 minilops.

David called on his way to a client’s house. “Well, I finally did something I always thought I’d screw up. Every time I think, Hey, don’t forget to do this stupid thing you’re going to forget to do. How many garbage disposals have I installed? About {large number which shall remain undisclosed}? Yeah, that’s right, about the same number of women I’ve slept with.”

This is how I found out the Previous Number of Partners. We haven’t really been interested in discussing the numbers in the last four-plus years.

It was actually pretty funny, since he just kept going about how he apparently forgot to remove an inlet plug and the client called to say the recently-installed disposal wasn’t working, and of course I was at work at the time, which prompted all the guys in our trailer to start discussing this way of relating previous partners to appliance installations, does he give discounts, etc. Meanwhile I was listening to our CEO’s voicemail about quarterly earnings, which I had to replay since all this discussion kept interrupting.

When I told Nicole later, she admitted she had only installed one garbage disposal and forgot to remove the inlet plug too. I thought this was a sweet euphemistic commitment to her husband, to which she replied, Oh puke.

Update on the Six Pound Challenge: It’s still six to go but in a lot less than six weeks since I regained a couple pounds! Oops.

Hey Matt! Check this out.

I still know all the words… I remember traveling to a school in Columbus to stay overnight for the yearly convention of the Little Hoosiers. Mrs. Chambers was our sponsor, and she was in her 40s and had braces. We made Indiana-shaped cookies at some club meetings and went to Feast of the Hunter’s Moon (would you believe I bought a rabbit pelt?) and Council Oak and Pierre Navarre Days. I was the secretary at least one year. I wasn’t popular enough to be President. We had a Sergeant-at-Arms too, but it’s not like elementary kids were that rowdy in the 80s. However, this is a mimeographed paper, and the room where they made the mimeos was also where they paddled the bad kids. Good old Nuner school.

I believe I still have my blue History Is Fun shirt from the club. I’ll have to find that.

Also in old-school coolness:

Found my old sticker collection! It includes Garbage Pail Kids and a Michael Jackson sticker that came from a gumball machine.

Pizza Tyme sponsored my dad’s slow pitch softball team. We’d head down to the city parks to watch his games (or rather play in the park with the other players’ kids) and then go to Pizza Tyme afterward and say “Put it on my dad’s tab” to get all the Mountain Dew and pizza we wanted. We played Gorgon pinball, and on the jukebox was Eye of the Tiger, Beat It, Thriller, I Just Called To Say I Love You, and Elvira. I miss Pizza Tyme. It was on the Memorial Day parade route, too, which we went to every year.

One time I got sand in my eye at the playground and had to go to the hospital to get it out. And I remember driving to a game in the new Green Bomber, a crummy old green Buick my dad bought from the neighbor’s son that had to be hit in just the right spot to get out the passenger door. I thought it had a “new car smell” because it was new to me!

Proof!
Week zero:

Week one:

Note my Teva-farmer-tanned feet and my pink capri jammies with turtles. That’s our very unfinished basement bathroom.

Of course tonight David discovered I have cellulite when I sit a certain way. I can’t believe this is its first appearance in the last four years. Ah well.

This man is in denial about his baldness:

Walt snoozes on my pillow on the couch. He’s not supposed to be up there.

I took the dogs out on the front porch last week. They really enjoyed watching the world go by. Now you can see why we need to paint the porch–we are not responsible for (nor can we remove) that seafoam green.

Sorry for the dim lighting… Harry the big bun met the pups a few days ago. He jumped away when Walt licked his nose.

As seen in Carmel, IN

Now what do we do with them?

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My keyboard did have to be replaced after the wine incident a couple of nights ago; space bar and enter were casualties. Apparently while connecting and testing the new one, the blog software saved a draft! The zeroes appeared when I plugged in the USB connector, not from typing.

Then there was another wine incident tonight. I knocked over a full glass again, this time while eating dinner, and the glass crashed into an empty glass also on the table, breaking both, and splattering wine on the couch, wall, me… and one side of Casper was also purple. Then she moved around and wiped the wine on two more walls. Geez.

Dinner in our apartment in Rome. Note the wine.

Somehow I asked for this red wine and how much it cost in Italian in a little grocery…

Feel free to suggest a caption for this one.

I was just going to share a couple of reviews with you but then some really random material came along for the ride.

EcoSelect 100% Biodegradable Dryer Sheets: I found these at WalMart, of all places, a couple of months ago. They are made with a vegetable derived softening agent. They aren’t tested on animals and they totally degrade (buried in soil) in 21 days. So, I figured I’d give ‘em a try.

They’re great! The texture of the sheet seems a bit odd, but my laundry behaves the same as it did with Bounce and I feel much better about this product. But, alas, I can’t find it anymore. I tried to find it online and only saw a few notes from other people who can’t find these dryer sheets either. Let me know if you see them, or tell me about a substitute!

Tossed is a new-to-here franchise that has, well, salads. I picked up dinner last night and was impressed that they made the whole wheat crepe right in front of me from batter, though he messed up one of them and had to start over and it took a long time. David liked his crepe with roasted chicken, portobellos, roasted onions, spinach, and balsamic vinaigrette, though mine with tofu, carrots, sugar snap peas, shiitakes, romaine, and honey sesame dressing was just kind of eh. It may be NYC’s best salad, but it was just kinda plain to me. The crepe itself was the best part and reminded us of Ethiopian injera bread. I guess I’m not much of a salad person, but if you are, try Tossed in Fishers. You can put together your preferred ingredients in salad/sandwich/crepe, or choose one of their combination ideas.

So, the doorknobs:

Note the product placement, PQ.

Nicole and I meet regularly to exchange odd items. They make total sense to us, but most people probably don’t save their Wall Street Journals for their friend’s litterboxes, trade coupons, collect and pass on #5 plastic recyclables, or order detergent and hay for each other. This time I was surprised to get a bag of doorknobs (along with the books and detergent); Nicole had replaced all the knobs in her house and I was to give them to David to use in his remodeling jobs. (Never fear, if he can’t use them, I will donate them to Habitat for Humanity’s Indianapolis HomeStore where they resell them and use the funds to help build houses.) Here I thought I had brought the weirdest item, named The Quiet Check Valve which David had sourced for her sump pump, but then it was all topped by her rented fish in the front seat. I guess it eats a particular aquarium pest and once it eats all yours, you return the fish to the pet store to be sold to someone else who has this unique stuff that causes tank problems.

In other news, I spilled an entire glass of red wine in my keyboard last night, but it seems to be working fine at the moment. Also, David looked up an ex-girlfriend online, described as “90210 pretty,” and discovered she works for World Wrestling Entertainment (you know, as in SmackDown). And Nicole picked up a disease in Puerto Rico last week, so I hope she didn’t touch the doorknobs.

ETA: This morning my spacebar and enter keys have stopped working in their alcoholic stickiness.

Also tonight, I was all warm and fuzzy at seeing goose parents leading their juveniles across the Menards parking lot. There was another adult with about five fuzzy gray followers behind this batch.

If you notice the motorcycle in my mirror, you’ll see some punk guy who thought it was hilarious to zoom at them and rev his engine. His buddy on another excuse for a small penis also found this to be a great activity. I’ve never been so close to yelling DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE out my car window. The adult geese stayed with the juveniles who could not fly yet. The 15 seconds summed up how I feel most days: Aww, animals are awesome, and there’s no hope for humanity.

David is usually still in bed when I leave for work in the morning (that’s what I get for working for The Man while he is self-employed), so I leave him reminder notes occasionally. A couple of weeks ago I didn’t have time to give the dogs breakfast, so I left this:

Note the torn corner. That’s because Walt took the note off the kitchen counter and ate it! We found it on the floor.

A coworker took this picture for me at a local golf course.

This morning I found squashed dog poo in the dining room, right next to David’s work boots, so I warned him that he may have stepped in some and I cleaned it up (thank goodness for hardwood floors). Except I didn’t think about the fact that it wasn’t there until right before I left for work, and he hadn’t worn his boots since the previous day.

I got to work and smelled something funny. It was on MY shoe.

Operating theory: it fell out of Casper’s butt after she went out this morning. That happens with her fairly frequently; I think it largely has to do with the amount of paper she ends up finding and eating and the way it just doesn’t come out very efficiently. Then I stepped in it, blamed David’s boots, and went to work where my nose finally noticed. I hope it’s not in my car.

Nothing like scraping your shoe with a plastic knife and Windex in your cubicle to start the day. I got most of it but I keep getting ghost odors and the people around me keep teasing me.

I picked up about fifty bunny poos this morning, but they don’t stink! Ah, what a shitty life I lead.

I saw this church sign on New York Street on my way home Tuesday.

I think the Pastor Reverend’s name is suspiciously funny too.