The Airport

For me, the airport still holds some novelty. That's probably because I don't get to go anywhere all that often. I don't even mind showing up early for a flight because it gives me a little time to take it all in.

My absolute favorite part of the airport is hands-down the moving sidewalks. I am not generally a fast person. In the animal world, I would have been one of those poor gazelles that gets caught and eaten by a tiger. But with the moving sidewalk, all that changes. I love to look at the wall as I'm walking down the moving sidewalk and pretend that I am receiving no assistance from the sidewalk. For once in my life, I am fast. Certainly, I am faster than all the crazy people who stand STAND to the right of the moving sidewalk. And I am most certainly faster than those bores who walk on the normal floor next to the moving sidewalk. Obviously, they have no need for speed in their sorry little lives. If I could, I would run down the moving sidewalk because I'm sure that would be the thrill of my life, but I'm pretty sure they might keep me off my flight if I tried that.

The airport is the only place I can think of where you'll find grown men and women racing to pile their belongings into a plastic tray while simultaneously removing their belts and shoes. I have to admit that I don't normally notice the awkwardness of it all when I'm in the midst of it because it is so fast paced. I always find my bin has nearly crept inside the x-ray machine before I get all my junk inside of it. Then, I get a little nervous because here I am on the WRONG side and all my stuff has made it through and some random businessman on the other side may be claiming it as his own. Who I am to tell? I can't see past all the gadgetry to monitor my stuff...which is, of course, the first rule at the airport: Watch your stuff. The lady, I'm sure she's the same one that used to tell time on the telephone when you dialed GRA-NDMA, reminds you to never ever, ever let your bags out of your sight several times an hour over the loudspeaker. Yet, this is exactly what you must do when you go through security. When I finally clear security and am lacing up my shoes on the other end, I have to admit that I feel dirty. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's something about taking off my shoes and belt and jacket in a public place while disobeying the lady over the loudspeaker.

I have some recommendations on how to improve the airport, too. I have noticed that there are not many clocks. Maybe..sometimes...they will stick the time up on the big monitor at the gate telling you what time your flight is supposed to leave (yeah right), but that really does me no good when I'm in the bathroom or waiting in line to buy a magazine. I have come to the conclusion that this is planned so that maybe you'll forget how late your flight is and not complain too much. I would also like the American airports to take a hint from the Mexican airports. Where is my beer stand when I arrive? Where are the throngs of people begging me to let them take me wherever I may want to go. Of course, all that without the heavily armed guards would be a plus.

Experiment

I don't know if it's the snow plows driving down the street, or if I've been reading too much Twilight, but I've been inspired. You know when you're listening to the radio and a really sappy love song comes on? So, I have two responses to this. One response is the one I do when I'm all by myself in the car. I turn the song up really loud and then sing and then get embarrassed and then stop and turn the channel because the song is really mushy and I feel like I'm moments away from becoming a total doofus. My other response happens when Daryl's in the car with me. If he's in the car, I crank up the song and sing out of tune really, really loud. In all fairness, out of tune is really the only way I can truly sing anyways, but I go more out of tune on purpose. And I look over at him during the most poignant parts of the song. When he tries to turn the station, I usually comment about how he must not like my singing, then I continue to torture him some more.

So, I don't know what my problem is, but I was thinking that maybe one whole mushy love song is maybe a little too much for me. So, I took all my favorite love songs and chopped them up into more tolerable pieces and fashioned my own love song. It's nice, if I do say so myself.

If Daryl's lucky, I'll come up with a melody and sing it for him on Valentine's Day next year to make up for my non-gift-giving this year.

Love Song #37:

When I want to run away
I drive off in my car
but whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are
Now, I'll never dance with another
I brush my teeth and put the cap back on
I know you hate it when I leave the light on
There's nothing more dangerous than a boy with charm
If you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth
And who would've thought what they said was true
But it was and you are light and darkness coming through
We were both young when I first saw you
They buy me all these icees
I walked, I ran, I jumped, I flew
Right off the ground to float to you
Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you
bouquet of clumsy words, a simple melody
this world's an ugly place, but you're so beautiful to me


"That's a pretty good." -Strongbad

Martha, My Dear

I love nothing else more than people who rile up Martha Stewart. It's possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen. And I love Joel McHale. And, if you've never seen Amy Sedaris...well, here's your chance. Amy is David Sedaris' sister, and she's just as funny. Don't you dare ask me who David Sedaris is.

Amanda's List

My friend Amanda made herself a crazy list of 1,000 things she wants to do by May 1st or something. I guess she did this because she has all kinds of free time now that she has baby-o-rama going on at her house. I don't know.

But as soon as I saw that nonsense, I told her to stop it right away. It's not that I'm averse to getting things on a list done, but this list was like some kind of list you might put together if you had spent all day at the engineering building at MSU and came home and were still in that mode of thinking. All people MSU will know what I'm talking about here.

So, I offered to make her a new list. This list, I think, is more practical and certainly more fun. You won't find any rubbish about saving money or buying a new pair of sensible shoes on this list. No, this is far more daring and exhilarating.

1. Find the tallest tree in your neighborhood. That way, when people come to your house, you can say, "Did you notice the tallest tree in our neighborhood?" I'll tell you right now that nobody will notice because people (unfortunately) are not usually that perceptive. Then, when they tell you no, you can point and say, "Yeah, it's that one over there."
   
   
2. Plan a day to clean the gutters on your house. Tell everybody that the day you've planned is gutter cleaning day. Make a big deal out of it. You could even send out an email. Then, when gutter cleaning day comes, get a ladder and go up on your roof. Then, take off your clothes to reveal your new snazzy bathing suit. And then get out your secret stash of suntan lotion. And then just lay out in the sun all day. When the day is over, come down off the roof and tell everyone it was a lot of hard work and the reason you're all hot and sweaty is that you were trying to get all this junk unstuck from the gutters. Then just go lie down and say that you're tired and need a nap. People will feel really sorry for you.
   
   
3. Come to Michigan and go real sledding. I almost cried when I saw the Texas sledding video.
   
   
4. Go to this website. It cleanses your soul and clears your mind.
   
   
5. Clean your house and get everything put away. Then, call someone from the National Association of Professional Organizers and ask then to come by and give you an estimate on how much it would cost to tidy up your house. Really talk your house up on the phone like it's really, really awful. Ask questions like, "What about if I just put all of the pizza boxes from the last five years in my closet? Then what?" or "How do you dispose of sour cream containers that have been left out on the counter for like...35 weeks?" or "I know I've heard of black mold, but what if it's magenta?" or "Do they sell things for like throwing away dirty baby diapers? We just put them all in the attic." Then, when they get to your house, be like...what?
   
   
6. Walk by a karate studio that has a big window out to the parking lot, and when the people inside look out at you, pretend to be a ninja. I did that the other day. Daryl was scared for my safety, but it was lots of fun.
   
   
7. Tell everybody that you smashed your car up and it's in the shop. Then, go and rent a Porshe and then when people ask, tell them that's what the rental shop gave you because they were fresh out of Ford Focuses. Drive it around for a week or two. Oh yeah, it should be yellow.
   
   
8. Give a little money to charity. What did you expect? You need to do something to make up for all the lying you'll be doing throughout the rest of this list.
   
   
9. You're going to need to take a few days off of work for this one. Read Twilight. Then, you'll of course want to read the next book and you will be addicted and...well, you need to take a few days off of work for that.
   
   
10. Listen to this song. Because how can you not be in a good mood when this song is on? Bobbyitsaybobbyiton.
    

Substitutions Not Okay

My dad likes to say that the definition of a fool is someone who does the same thing, the same way multiple times and expects different results. By this definition, I am many times over, a fool. However, there is one area of my life where I particularly stand out as a fool. This is in the area of planning for dinner.

Years and years ago, I mostly turned to my friend Betty Crocker for cooking advice. She offers solid, dependable recipes and clear step by step instructions. What a good cooking pal! Recently, however, I have adopted a new approach to cooking and meal planning that oftentimes waste a good hour of my life with nothing to show for it. Here's how my new approach works.

First, I usually see a commercial for some kind of delicious dish on television. Potato soup from Bennagin's? Yum. I want that. So, then I decide to cook it myself. Instead of turning to Betty, I go to www.allrecipes.com expecting to find the perfect recipe. Sometimes I do, and it works out really well. It's the actual process of searching through the recipes posted on the website that I expect to be simple, but it never is. I'll type in Potato Soup, for example, and find 1,245 recipes for Potato soup. Where to start? Well, I entrust my dining satisfaction to the allrecipe.com reviews, so I click "sort by reviews," which lets me see the best of the best recipes. All is well so far. But, how do you distinguish between the potato soup that gets 4.25 stars versus 4.27 stars? I like to click and read the individual reviewer's comments. Herein lies the problem. Usually, what I see is something like this, "I made this soup for my family and they ate it up like wild hyenas. But when I made it, I was out of potatoes, so I used mangos instead. Also, my husband doesn't like the taste of pepper or cheese, so I added bananas and whipped cream. Yummy! Will definitely make this dish again."

What? Listen, reviewer, you have no business commenting on the potato soup. That comment does me no good.

Somehow, though, I always forget about these comments and expect allrecipes.com to be helpful. When will I ever learn?

To prove that I'm not even lying, here are actual comments from the site:

A great way to use up leftovers, you could use chicken, beef, pork whatever. I had some leftover pork roast, so I simmered the diced pork in 6 oz of beer and the water in from the recipe for 15 minutes. Then I followed the receipt except I used black beans, didn't have pintos. WOW this was just great will make it again. OH yea I added the last 6 oz of beer into the pot as it simmered.

I used the frosting recipe, but only used 1 C. sugar. This turned out great. The store was out of german choco. squares so I bought a german choco. box cake. I modified it by making it a bundt recipe (a more dense cake) by using 1 sm. pkt. instant choco. pudding, 4 eggs, 1/2 C. oil, and 1 C. water. Spread evenly in 2 round pans and bake as instructed on box. I used instant chocolate mousse for the sides and decoration. It gave the cake additional flavor and texture. Who needs ice cream when you have chocolate mousse.

I prefer to follow recipe as written, I did not have any pork, I had left over chicken and took the advice of previous poster and used celery and onion, did not have cabbage. I steamed one batch, and then brown the next batch in a pan and then steamed. My DD prefered steamed ones. Also I halved the recipe.

Yeah, it's called go to the store.