I am far too delicate to watch someone eat rare prime rib.

My favorite part of the Fair: Petting a piglet.
coprock's favorite part of the Fair: Chocolate covered bacon.

I saw a possum! With a pointy pink possum nose and pointy pink possum feet!

(kal - Live, non-flat possum.)

We have a little built-in desk thing off of the kitchen. Walking past it after I came home tonight, I noticed that the desk calendar we have there had a little puddle of water on it. Looking around, nothing else around is wet, the ceiling is not wet, the cabinets above are not wet, the floor below is not wet, and coprock won't 'fess to anything. So, I came up with the only possible answer.

A raccoon must have peed on it.

Democracy in action:

... was more crowded than the organizers expected.
... is disorganized.
... is full of babies and busloads of seniors.
... is weirder and weirder as the night goes on.
... is hard*! Let's go shopping!

*In my precinct caucus**, there was a vote for Romney and a vote for McCain.
**It was a democratic caucus.

"Hey. It's 17 degrees. I can wash my car!"

This lavender truffle tastes like bathtime.

(OMG aren't you glad I don't update very often?)

SO.

For no reason I can determine, we got several gallons (we're thinking 10 or so*) in our basement with the storm tonight. Started out with a cursed, yet not unmanageable sized puddle, so I called coprock home from the apartment and told him to bring the mop and bucket. By the time he got home, it was halfway across the room. Eventually made it to the other side.

kalmn is a rockstar, and brough her shop vac over and helped mop and vacuum. coprock hauled ass to Home Depot and got there just in time to get us a shop vac of our own, and a dehumidifier, both of which were on our list of things to buy soon anyway.

So, right now there are no puddles left and the dehumidifier is going. We'll see what it looks like in the morning.


(* Doesn't sound like a whole lot until it's all over your floor.)

w00t.

Buying a house.
Closing on Friday.
Will need lawnmower. (Assuming lawn has come back to life since the rain.)
Packing crap.
Getting rid of crap.
Packing more crap.
Will move crap.

Ook ook.

Saw a product at Target: Mouse Control Kit

Know what that's for?

COMMANDING YOUR TINY RODENT ARMY.

So, uh, can anyone tell me why I received a small Chick-fil-A toy cow in the mail today?

(coprock swears it's not his fault.)

How is a person supposed to accurately plan their mantid invasion if they don't know how many they'll get? 100? 400? Sheesh!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MR7B26/ref=cm_gift_gg_B000MR7B26/102-9830768-9601729

So, we're back. Got back home about 10:30PM last night. Woke up in Wellington 6AM Thursday (11AM Wednesday here) and travelled on through 'til 10:30PM Thursday here (5:30PM Friday in Wellington). Three flights (Wellington -> Auckland -> LAX -> MSP). Left Wellington early to try to avoid a storm (there had already been 100-130 kph winds for the last three days), so we got to sit for quite a while in Auckland. Slept a bit (6 hours?) Auckland to LA. Had a 5 hour layover in LA. (I now know I don't like LAX. I came up with a slogan for them: "LAX: It's Not Our Fault You Came Here".) Our flight to MSP got in a little early, but we had to sit on the plane for 40 minutes since our gate wasn't clear.

Slept like the dead all the days of the vacation. Slept like the undead last night. Bah.

Will post a few pictures once I get them sorted and labelled. Maybe some info on each city, too. (Auckland, Whitianga, Rotorua, Napier/Hastings/North Havelock/Clive, Wellington.)

Every person we met, New Zealander or other tourist, was shocked at what a short vacation we were taking. Only visiting the north island, not visiting the south island, not going to Australia or Fiji or anything else. We tried to explain that Americans just don't get that much vacation, and we were quite lucky in many ways to be able to do this vacation.

I hope that, in general, we came off as clueless but polite Americans. We didn't meet very many other Americans on the trip, but I felt kinda bad about the ones we did.

So, home.

There's a city in New Zealand called Te Puke. Just at the edge of town there's a sign that says "Come Taste Te Puke".

(They grow kiwi fruit there.)

Well, we just bought plane tickets to go to New Zealand in November. We'll ('we' being coprock and I) being doing a self-drive tour of the north island, Auckland to Wellington. (Then we have to fly back to Auckland to then fly back home.) I'm not looking forward to about 16 hours plane time each way, and I'm terrified of right-hand drive, but I'm trying to get excited about the time we'll actually spend there.

Run for the hills, jodi, I saw some with zippers!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_phrases_in_various_languages

If only they all had IPA entries. If only!