Stella B

This is Stella:

Stella, as you may have deduced, is a cat.  She is a good cat.  But.  She has very short legs.  This will become relevant.

So, last night I went to bed early, because I knew I had to get up early, because we are going to Disney World next week.  And I needed to be up early so I could book lightning lanes because waiting in lines is fine with me but according to my back, it's just not on.  So early to bed, early to rise, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.  Hubs stayed up while I went sleepytime.  

Around 11:30pm I wake up because Stella is being VERY insistent that attention be paid to her.  

She sounded something like this:

MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEEEEEOWMEOOOOOOWMEOWMEOWHEYMOMISAIDMEOWWAKEUPMOMMEOWMEOWMEOWMEEEEEFUCKINGOWWWWWW

And then she stood on me and starting making biscuits while continuing to insist that she requires pets RIGHT MEOW.  I was sleeping on my side.  She stood on my shoulder and started making paws on my hip.  Except....see those short l'il legs?  They make it hard for her to maintain her balance while she does her kneading so she is constantly shifting her weight from side to side in a motion that is very much similar to a humpty hump.

So finally, between the MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW and HUMPTY HUMP I'm all like gaddangit cat, I am awake, WHAT DO YOU WANT????

And then I realize the husband has not come to bed yet and I'm all OMG what if something is wrong and the cat is trying to alert me so I run down to the basement and there he is, playing video games.  

Sigh.

I mean, he was basically killing time because he was waiting for his meatballs to finish cooking so he'd have them for lunch the next day but STILL.  

He left me vulnerable to the Midnight Humper.  I must be avenged.

Stella B

Battle: Crabcake!

 But first, let me tell you about my best friend.  (Well, one of them but really, they're both the same person, don't ask me, I don't make the rules)

It all started in high school.  Well.  No, wait, that's not quite true.  I met Krumpet (subject of this post) back in 9th grade, but I met Tea (my other best friend) the summer between sixth and seventh grade.

No wait, that's not true either.  I became friends with Tea the summer between sixth and seventh grade.  I first met her on the school bus in sixth grade when she wouldn't tell me her name.  I guess her family was in WITSEC or something?  (that's not true either, I am apparently nothing but a LIAR LIAR LIAR today just call me Henry Rollins).  But we rode the bus together during the school year and then, on my first day of summer school (voluntaryish - voluntary because I wasn't repeating a class, I didn't HAVE to go to summer school in order to pass, ish because YES, I did have to go to summer school because my parents wanted me out of the house).

Wait.  I digressed.  Again.

So, during the school year, we had different bus stops and different class schedules, so we didn't really interact.  For summer school, they moved our respective bus stops so we were at the same stop, and it turns out we were taking the same (VOLUNTARY) class, this was 1980 and we were learning how to program in BASIC.  So that's how I met Tea and we were basically inseparable.  

And then, when we started ninth grade, in 1982, we met Krumpet.  Now, I have written the "how we met" story before, on an old blog, but I don't feel like linking to it so I'll just excerpt here:

I met Krumpet in ninth grade. In Mr Zoulias' Biology class. Mr Zoulias was not a good person to be teaching Bio as he was a bit of a perv himself, always leering down the young girls' shirts. Plus, he wore hideous plaid pants which might even be a worse offense.

Also, we had Biology seventh period, near the end of the day so rowdiness was usually setting in by the time we got to his class.

Our desks were arranged in the shape of a big ol' U, with a few rows of desks situated in the interior of the U. Tea (my oldest bff (in terms of tenure, not age!)) and I sat at the top of one end of the U, Krumpet and HER bff, Lilibet, sat at the other end of the U.

One loooooong boring afternoon, I look over and this strange girl (that would be Krumpet) is making faces at me. More specifically, she is pretending to be hanging from a noose with her tongue sticking out. It must be noted here that her tongue? Was pointing the wrong way.

I poked Tea. "Hey! Look at that girl over there!"

But the moment Tea looked over, Krumpet ceased her shenanigans and went all nonchalant and stuff.

I should have taken this as a sign of things to come and run far far away, but instead.....I giggled.

Tea went back to pretending to pay attention to Mr Z and Krumpet resumed her noose routine.

I poked Tea again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

And that's how Tea and Krumpet and Lilibet and I eventually became The LADIEEEEZ.

Oh look, here comes another digression by way of confession!  I have NO CLUE how to use this site for blogging.  In my heyday I knew all kinds of HTML and ish and I am sure I will relearn it but for now?  Yeah, no clue.  That is not the point of this digression.  The point of this digression is that I decided to use the little embedded quotey thingy but I can't figure out how to close the quote and I am SURE all you smart and lovely people were able to figure out where the quote ended but it annoys ME that there is no closing quotation mark.

Imma need a copy of Blogger for Dummies kaythxb

MOVING ON.

So, the hubs and I were out to dinner with Krumpet and her long term boy toy, Not-Jesus.  Hubs and I both got crabcakes.  We're Murlunders so we are pretty picky about our crabcakes.  Romano's has MAGNIFICENT crabcakes.  Nice big ol' hunks with only enough filler to hold them together.  If you don't know Maryland, you don't know crabcakes, I have spoken.

We each only finished about half of our respective 'cakes, him a tad more than half, me a tad less.  Our server came by and asked if we needed boxes.  We all said yes (Not-Jesus' fried fish filet was bigger than his head and Krumpet also had leftovers) so our server asked how many boxes and I said that hubs and I only needed one, we could put both crabcakes together.  Because I care about the environment and conservation and stuffs.

Hubs immediately was all "Heyyyyyyyy, you're going to steal my [bigger] crabcake!" and I'm all "Nooooooooo" while secretly thinking "that's a brilliant idea!" and then Krumpet piled on, insisting that we must differentiate my crabcake from his in some unmistakable way because apparently his being a tad bit bigger and a tad bit darker wasn't enough.  So we tried to create a citrus barrier between mine and his but that was less than ideal because the citrus refused to stay stationary, lemons migrate apparently, so then he put his on a lettuce leaf but that wasn't idea either as the crabcake could wick moisture from the lettuce leaf and turn all sad and mushy so then we started casting eyes around the table looking for other props and that is how my husband's crabcake ended up wearing a hat.

Kinda like this:

Except, nothing like that.  

Moral of the story?  Avoid AI abominations, use real human artists.  

Battle: Crabcake!

Lacking Inspo

Typically, when I write, it's because I've had a flash of inspiration, something that makes me say "OMG I need to tell the internetz about this thing!" but since I am trying to get back into a regular writing habit and get those muscles flexing again, I don't necessarily want to sit around and wait.  So instead, I went to the Wayback Machine to dig up this old post from 19 years ago.  Let's discuss, shall we??

But first?  Who is Connie?  I do not remember a Connie.  I remember a lot of people from those days, some fondly (Hi Terri!), some not so much (::coughcoughSMEDcoughcough::)  I did click through the hyperlink but her page is defunct.  I searched the user name to see if she had a profile elsewhere, found an old Live Journal but couldn't get any of the pages to load.  So, we'll never know!

1) This has not changed.  I am still obsessed with spell check.  We have a very contentious relationship by which I mean it doesn't believe that the made up words I make up are real, they are TOTALLY real.

2) Eh, this one doesn't bother me as much these days.  Although......a-ha!  Here is the inspo I was looking for!  I will tell a story!

So there's this event I volunteer for every year, Fright Reads Book Festival (which, if you're in the Maryland area, I definitely recommend checking it out!).  This past year, 2024, my involvement started Friday night and ran all the way through Sunday evening.  EVERY.SINGLE.TIME I'd walk the floor I'd see this one vendor who would greet me with a bright "Hi Vicki!".  EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.  Like, she was someone I knew from outside the event, like we shared some inside joke about something, there was this air of "I know you and you know me but we are going to act like we are just here as vendor and volunteer" I don't know how better to explain it, and it certainly wasn't weird or creepy or anything, there was just an air of familiarity that didn't feel justified.  The whole time I kept figuring she was someone I knew, like a friend of a friend of something, but I couldn't place her and I didn't want to let her know I had no idea, so I would brightly reply back "HI!" and continue walking the floor, looking for chainsaws and firearms and clowns and such.  I asked the event runner (Hi Harry!) later and he told me she was the wife of one of the authors so no, not someone I knew (although I guess we'd met at prior years' events?) (but I have facial recognition disorder which is a totally real not made up thing).  Anyway, she was a very nice lady and this year maybe I will learn her name!

Guh.  Not the most interesting story.  Maybe at some later point I will tell y'all about the firearms and chainsaws and clowns.  Orrrrrr....come out to Fright Reads this year, September 13th and 14th, Howard County Fairgrounds.....orrrrr....come out to Halfway to Halloween, April 26th, Marley Station Mall!

(ummm...not sponsored)

3) Men?  Approach me?  Eh, not so much.  Married, older, fluffy so, basically invisible to the menfolk.  I am ok with this.

4) OMG this, so much this, I try to keep it under control as much as I can, especially post covid, because, y'know, licking.  The tip of a pen, the blade of a pair of scissors, those are the worst offenders.  Something about the sound of a pair of scissors cutting through cardboard gives me the heebie jeebies like you wouldn't believe.  Ick ick ick.

5) Yeah.  Still.  The Neverending Worry, I would make a Neverending Story joke here but I've never seen the movie so have no context for jokery.  (SRSLY SPELLCHECK, GET OFF MY ASS, IT IS TOO A WORD!)

Okay, that should do ya for another day.

Lacking Inspo

NO CHEESEBURGER FOR YOU

Saturday morning the husband made breakfast.  He asked for help with the bacon because he doesn't know how to cook bacon.  He pulled out a low sided griddle pan and I said "no, not that one, because the sides are so low and if the bacon grease runs over the edge we could have a grease fire" and I pulled out a more appropriate skillet and made bacon and it was good and we moved on with our day.  There is no story here.

Until.  The not-story became back-story.

See, last night I made bacon cheeseburgers for dinner.  I cooked the bacon in the more appropriate skillet.  Then I cooked the burgers in the same pan I always use, the low sided griddle pan mentioned above.  Everything was fine.  Until I rotated the pan on the burner and sloshed some grease over the side onto the stove top and burner. 

So I quickly pulled the pan off that burner and moved it to another one and turned on the exhaust fan and readied my box of baking soda JUST IN CASE.  But everything resumed being fine.  Burgers were cooking, fries were in the oven, lettuce and tomato were prepped, bacon was ready, cheese was unwrapped and ready for deployment, everything was FINE.

Now, normally I make Bubba Burgers which are already ready already.  Well, I mean, not ready for eatin' but ready for cookin'.  Please do not eat a Bubba Burger straight out of the freezer.  I will not be held liable if you do.  

But I did not have any Bubba Burgers so I had to make the damned patties my own damn self.  Which meant they were way too big and way too misshapened.  

(EXCUSE ME SPELL CHECK THAT IS TOO A WORD QUIT YOUR SHIT RIGHT NOW)

Fine.  It was malformed.  Happy now?

Anyway.  It was lumpy and bumpy and oddly formed and bulgy in the middle and yes, I know where I could take this sentence but I am very mindful, very demure, whatever tf that means.  Plus also, body shaming isn't cool.

MOVING ON.

So they were big ol' burgers.  And I wasn't for certain they were all the way cooked so I went to grab my newly acquired meat thermometer which I had not yet taken out of the box.  While struggling to get all the plastic ties off I realized the timer for the fries was going off which I had barely heard because 1) the timer was in the other room and 2) the exhaust fan was running.  

So I dropped the thermometer and pulled the fries out of the oven and gave 'em a good salting, forgetting that the fries were in an air fryer type basket (made for convection ovens) so now I've got grease AND salt all over my stove top but my mentality shrugged and went back to the thermometer, finally got it out of the packaging but couldn't find the hole for the probe (I KNOW WHAT I SAID) and eventually figured out that this was some kind of fancy new fangled high tech thermommy with a remote and a base and srsly, wtf?  But I eventually got it all assembled and thrust my probe into the meat and....nothing happened.  

(The men out there know that feel, amirite???)

By this point, though, I figured the burgers had to be cooked so I pulled the pan off the burner, transferred the first of the two burgers onto my ready and waiting paper towel lined plate....and that's when the grease on the pan caught fire.

So into the sink went the pan and thankfully the fire went out on its own so I didn't have to serve a baking soda covered burger because that'd be ew.

Right about then is when the husband got home.  "Hi honey, dinner's ready, don't mind the all enveloping cloud of smoke or the stove-top battlefield, I'm just over here firefightin'!".

He was wise enough not to sass me about starting a grease fire two days after telling him not to start a grease fire.

But you know the saddest part?  I was so busy fighting the blazing inferno I forgot to put the cheese on the burgers.

 

NO CHEESEBURGER FOR YOU

For SCIENCE!

 Here I am, sitting quietly at my desk, minding my own business, when our VP walks into the office I share with Ann who is my boss and also one of my best friends.

"I have a very technical question for you ladies", he says.

"It is very unlikely we have a technical response for you", I reply.  

He continues, "Which of these machines should I use to make tea, the Keurig or the water cooler?"

Ann quickly replies, "The water cooler".

(side thought:  I am deeply uncomfortable referring to it as a water cooler in this context because that's misleading and imprecise and just all around wrong wrong wrong.  Kinda like how the term "global warming" implies warming only, which, no.  So going forward, the machine shall be called a "water change device".  I have spoken)

Anyway.  So I ask Ann, why do you say that?  Just out of honest curiosity since, had it been me, I probably would have used the Keurig.  Not for any Keurig related reason; it wouldn't even have occurred to me to use the water change device for hot water because, as I mentioned, it is more commonly referred to as a water COOLER, do you see my discomfort now, do you???

Ann explains that the water change device produces hotter water than the Keurig.

Does it though?  At my last job, the hot water tap on the water change device was significantly less hot that the water from the Keurig.

Sooooo.....I propose an experiment, to compare the two and find out once and for all.  Our VP says he can go get a thermal gun from the shop.  I say, "No need!  We're not interested in the difference between the two temperature, just which is hotter, all we need is a finger!"

I grab a cup from the water change device and fill it with hot water.  I immediately realize the error of my ways as the cup is pointy bottomed and the water is HOT and I filled the cup all the way and now I can't hold it and I can't set it down so I am trying to grip it from the rim while VP gets a NOT flat bottomed cup and starts a brew cycle.

By this point, hot water is starting to drip out of the pointy bottom.  I quickly dip a finger into both cups, proclaim the pointy water is TOO HOT (in the hot tub), VP says "let me get rid of these" and he takes the pointy cup from me before I can warn him and I watch AGHAST as hot water droplets get the drop on his palm and we both bolt for the side door, me to thrust it open for him and him to dump both cups out.

So now I have an owie on my finger.  For science though.  Hooray science!

For SCIENCE!

Once Again, I am Here asking you to Read my Stuff

 Complete with wonky capitalization!

I have no idea if this will work.  I forgot how to blog.  I forgot how to keep from getting overrun with spam spam spam spam spam spam spam eggs and spam.

But I am here.  I will make no promises.  But I will try.

All for Annie.  Cus I love Annie.

Also for Krumpet.  Although she doesn't know yet.  But she 'bout to.

I mean, she knows I LURVE her, man.  She don' know about ye olde return to blogginge.

STEEEEEEEEEE

AAAAAAAAYK!

Once Again, I am Here asking you to Read my Stuff

Yeah, OK, maybe

 I might try - AGAIN - getting back into regularly writing shit and stuff. Maybe. 

Yeah, OK, maybe