Divorce Fireworks

A month or so ago I was at a wedding in Wisconsin. At the reception hall I went into the bathroom and was pleased as punch to find those bathroom stall advertisements posted all over. I was even more pleased to find the above advertisement.

Fireworks By S.A.M. will do year round fireworks shows for weddings, anniversaries, graduations and even divorces! What a great way to celebrate the dissolution of a marriage! Invite the kids as well. Hey Johnny, I hate your dad, let's party!

Side note...when I was a kid I thought the term was firecracks, which i think is actually a better word than fireworks. It's more expressive. I was a genius child.

Dairy Queen Slushie in My Car

I have a problem. A couple of years ago I got a DQ Mr. Misty in Grape. I don't even know why, but I know I was running to some kind of outdoor event. I drank about 3/4 of the Misty and then had to go. I left the remaining 1/4 of the Misty in the DQ Cup in my car's cup holder. That was the worst mistake.

Later that day, after only a few hours of the damn thing sitting in my car, I picked up the cup and the bottom fell out. The 1/4 of the Misty had eaten through the tough paper! That's how sugary and syrupy and concentrated those effers are. The Misty juice ate through paper in just a few hours! That's worse than Diet Coke!

So, now I have a real issue. There is standing Misty liquid in my cup holder (and it had overflowed to the next cup holder so really ruined both cup holders). How do you get that out? My solution was to spoon it out into another cup. That didn't work and made more of a mess. The only thing I could think of was to take a shit ton of paper towels and sop up the Misty. That worked, but left sticky Misty residue all over my cup holders.

Then I took steamy hot water and soap and scoured the cup holders within an inch of their life. The scalding water didn't make a dent in the stickiness. I tried scraping...that got some of it off, but still left a residue.

Here I am, two years later, and every time I put something in the cup holder it leaves with a sticky layer of Misty. That shit has staying power. Plus a random penny fell into the holder and is now glued down. And every once in awhile, my long luxurious locks fall from my head right into the holder and get stuck there. It's disgusting, but I'm out of options.

Lesson for you all...when drinking a Misty, never leave a wounded soldier (and by that I mean drink it all up or dump it out, but never leave it unattended...actually the wounded soldier analogy doesn't really work, but I'm too lazy to change it). But question...any ideas on how to get this stuff out of the cup holder for good?

Random Acts of Douchebaggery

Is this picture clear enough for you. Let me explain it. Here I am, in a car, in downtown Minneapolis during rush hour. I'm trying to get somewhere. You see, I am a person who goes places, does things. And here's this douche on a bike also driving down the middle of a downtown Minneapolis road during rush hour.

Let me just explain something for all the bikers of the world. Your bike does not go as fast as a car. Lance Armstrong can't even ride his bike as fast as a car. That's science. So, when you take your douchey little bike and clog up an entire lane of traffic, then all of the cars behind you have to drive at mind-numbingly slow speeds. Do you understand how obnoxious this is? You don't, I know, because you are a douche, but I'm just here to tell you. You are obnoxious. I mean look at this:He's turning IN FRONT OF ONCOMING TRAFFIC. It's like he thinks he owns the road.

And since I'm RADding the bikers of Minneapolis, I'm going to take a spin over to St. Paul. I will not leave those assclowns out. I live near Shepard Road. For those not from this area, Shepard Road is a side road that runs along the Mississippi River. It's sort of like a split highway, two lanes going in each direction with a tree-lined median down the middle. Shepard Road's speed limits vary, but it's usually around 45 miles per hour.

Shepard Road also has this awesome walking trail along the river. Last summer I spent almost every night walking the trail and it was divine. In April of this year, they tore the whole pathway up and it was unusable until just last month. The reason that this walkway was ripped up was so that they could widen the trail and include a lane for walkers and bikers. You see, the bikers don't like biking where other people are walking and they bitch about it nonstop. If you are on the walking trail and a biker is behind you, they will rudely yell at you to get out of their way. Why do they do this? Because they are douches who think they own the effing road and also because they don't like riding behind people who will slow them down. Irony, anyone? So, now they have their own lane to ride where they don't have to worry about walking peeps and they don't have to gum up the traffic on Shepard Road.

Why, then, have I been caught behind four different bikers on Shepard Road this past month. Is the brand new biking trail not good enough for them? Do they just enjoy being totally obnoxious and douchey? Or do they have a death wish to ride their bikes in the middle of a highway?

You be the judge. I've already judged and the outcome is not good.

Quote of the Week

Judge: Did you attend the educational programs?
Defendant: I went to the thing where you piss in a cup.
Judge: Pissing in a cup is not an educational program.

Couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

It Was a Two Epi-Pen Kind of Weekend

I did not have a good weekend. In fact, it would be safe to say that I had a pretty awful weekend. Here's photographic evidence:

This, my peeps, is a heinous picture. But, please notice a couple of things. For once, notice my upper lip. That's not botox and I wasn't in a barroom brawl. Also notice my left eye...also swelling. Plus my face is not normally that flushed. All of this is due to hives.

How does one get hives like this, you might ask yourself? Well, the story is this, I was taking an antibiotic for 3 days. After the third day, I woke up and had a few bumps on my neck. I thought they were insect bites. It was weird, however, because there were at least four of them and they were so very itchy. As the morning progressed, I realized it was hives as my body was now completely broken out into these red, itchy little devils.

After a panicky call to my doctor's office, they told me they had no appointments available for me to come in and I should instead take Benadryl and call 911 if I can't breathe. Awesome! Here's where I am going to say something controversial. I don't think that Universal Health Care will work. I was having an allergic reaction. I had hives all over my body. All they could do at my clinic was say, call 911 if you can't breathe. Are you kidding me? I guess there is no such thing as preventive care anymore. To me, this is just a glimpse of the overcrowding that will occur with Universal Health Care.

Anyways, by 4:00 p.m. on Friday, my lip was completely swollen and off to the Urgent Care I went. They shot me up with an Epi-Pen and gave me a prescription steroid. That's right, I'm on the roids...and I have noticed some roid rage. But, after the Epi-Pen, I felt soooooo much better. I thought this was the end of my saga. Not the case.

On Saturday, I again woke up with the hives. I took my meds and the day was fine. A little scratchy and so out of it due to the Benadryl mixed with steroids mixed with my new antibiotic. Then the hives started spreading to my face. Luckily my lip was spared. I woke up at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday morning with the most unbelievable itching you could imagine. When I looked in the mirror, I was terrified! One eye was swollen again and the hives were all over my face. Off to the ER! This time I got an IV bag of fluids, epi-pen, pepcid and another small pill. They upped my steroid dose (more roid rage) and gave me a prescription for zantac. They also gave me a couple of these babies:

My very own personal Epi-Pen! Although, I'm feeling much, much better and the hives have receded tremendously, I'm still carrying this sucker around to save my life.

I Welcome October With Open Arms

September has never been my favorite month. It's too much of an in-between, like May. With these in-between months I never know what to wear. This morning I was cold, so I wore to work: tall boots and thick socks, skirt, longsleeved tshirt and a long sleeved cardigan. I am so effing hot right now. And it's warm and sunny outside, so when I walked outside to get lunch, I started sweating and now I'm a hot and sweaty mess and can't really change anything about it. I'm giving a big middle finger to September right now. Are you summer or fall? Make up your damn mind.

But, not to fret because tomorrow is October and I love me some October. This October will be particularly sentimental.

My October goal will be to do Octobery things like pumpkin carving, apple orcharding, leaf viewing and picking and hot apple cider drinking.

Happy October's Eve to all!

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

This was a book I sort of wanted to stay away from. I have this thing with books where when everyone else is reading them, I don't want to. What is that? Then my boss lent it to me, so I read it and I will admit, I was hooked. Although, I think this book could have been better. It took a long ass time to get into it. And then there were two endings. There was an ending to the story that was interesting and then there was an end to the story that sucked. Basically the author sidetracked at the beginning, got to the meat of the story and tied it all up, then went back to the beginning.

It was a super fast read and the story really engrossed you. I could not put this book down, I just had to find out what happened. So, that's something. However, I was a little bit annoyed at how our hero Mikael Blomkvist figured the murder mystery out. It was pretty far fetched not to mention the fact that the author really telegraphed the ending. From the beginning it was clear that the answer to it all was in the pictures.

If you haven't read the book, you are probably confused. Here's a recap without giving too much away. The hero is an author who has recently been shamed. A rich guy offers him solace in writing a family history in small town Sweden. In addition he asks him to help solve a mystery of his niece's death. So, the author hero goes digging and the murderer gets angry and starts coming after him. Then this young woman enters the picture and begins helping our author hero with his investigation. Is it love between the two or just raw sex? Who can tell? Then they figure it out! The mystery, not the casual sex, because really who can ever figure that out? Elementary! Now comes the serious danger. Don't worry, our heroes always live! Then we go back to the author hero's shame and delve deeper into the young woman...then cliffhanger! Because there's another book and this author knows that true money is in a series.

Here's the real thing. Has anyone else looked into the story of the author's death? It's actually super interesting and mysterious on it's own. He planned writing at least 7 books, I think, but the publisher only has the first three. Major bummer. The books only get better.

So, 3/5 or 7/10 stars. I just wasn't impressed with the beginning and was so annoyed that they ruined the real ending by ending with the beginning. You dig?