A Very Potty Birthday to Me!

So, my reputation for potty and poop humor is known far and wide, both personally and professionally.  It paid off for my last birthday!  Look at these fantastic cards and gift I got!

From the staff at work:

Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

From my friend, Diane:

"It's a cute panda," you say.  "Why is it here on this poopy post?"  Well, here's why:

Yes, this card was made of PANDA POOP!  Ha ha! 

(In case you were wondering, it doesn't stink.  I checked.)

Then this card from my sister:

Oh, yes.  Kittens in tighty-whiteys.  Ha!  Hope they were clean!

And finally, this most excellent gift from Paula:

Are you confused?  Allow me to elaborate:

Oh, yes, it is.  And Sterling LOVES it.

Look at the drinking action!

We will return to our regular programming after this commercial...

Okay, I don't know when I quite became this adult, but every once in a great while I fall in love with a household product.

The first time this happened, I was talking to my friend, Miranda, on the phone.  She began waxing poetic about the Swiffer.  She loved the Swiffer so much that I began picturing her as a 1950s housewife in an apron dancing across her kitchen linoleum floor.  Since this was not something I expected from her, I, of course, had to buy one.  I love it.  I love it, I love it, I love it!  I hope I never have to live without a Swiffer!  It's really quite ridiculous, but I can't help it.

I love those new commercials where someone leaves a box of Swiffer stuff on a front stoop, rings the doorbell and runs.  Even though I am well aware that it's a commercial, I always think to the elderly couple or the man with one arm, "You will love it!  You will love your Swiffer!  You were so lucky to be chosen!"

And now it has happened again.  With a garbage can.  I've noticed that in my neighborhood our garbage men do not take tender loving care of our garbage cans.  All up and down the street are broken garbage cans and missing lids.  So I was on a quest when I first moved here: I wanted an unbreakable garbage can.  I perused Lowe's and found…get ready…the Brute.  For the past year and a half, I've watched garbage cans dying a violent death, but my can barely has a scratch.

However, I didn't fully recognize the Brute's indestructibility until this winter.  I wish I had pictures to show you for this story, but I don't, so you'll just have to use your imagination.  After a bunch of heavy snow, I lost my beloved garbage can.  I knew he was somewhere, but we'd had terrible winds and feet of snow, and I didn't know where he had gone.  I spent a couple of weeks walking on snow and ice poking down with a stick hoping to find it, but eventually had to give up and wait for warmer weather.

We got warmer weather, and I scanned the area where I thought my Brute might be.  Finally, I came home one evening and saw a corner of my can!  He was in one of the massive piles of snow at the corner of the driveway, where the snow plowed from the street AND the snow shoveled from the driveway had made the piles a good six or seven feet tall.  I realized what had happened.  We got our hugest snow on a Wednesday (I remember because I had to cancel our Crazy 8s math club at the Library).  Wednesday is also garbage day.  The garbage men must have come, tossed my can aside like usual, and then the plow must have come along and covered it up.

Anyway, to the rescue!  I actually had to chip the Brute out.  He was buried alternately under layers of snow and ice.  I found both him (yes, he's a him) and the lid.  The only problem was that the poor Brute  was no longer a nice circle on top, but had been squished into an oval from having feet of snow on him for weeks.  I couldn't get the lid on.  However, let me point out that there were no cracks, no holes, no missing handles, not even a bent lip in my hardy Brute!  The lid was in perfect condition, too!

I had faith in my Brute, though.  I put him back in his usual place and set his lid against the wall.  Two days later he had resumed his nice circle shape on top, and the lid fits as well as the day I bought him.

Seriously, the Brute is completely indestructible.  I paid a bit more, but when I consider that one of my neighbors has purchased, no joke, SEVEN cheaper garbage cans in the last two years, all of which have broken, I definitely came out ahead.  Plus, now I have another product to love.  I love it, I love it, I love it!

So when you are in the market for a new garbage can, may I recommend the Brute.  You will love him so much I bet you'll name him (although just the name Brute is pretty awesome).  Like an African Grey Parrot he will live so long you'll have to put him in your will and bequeath him to one of your children.

If you happen to have a household product that you love so much you would marry it if you could, please share in the comments!

The Best Hot Chocolate in the World…in New Hampshire?

This weekend, in addition to candlepin bowling, I also went on a field trip.  I was being very New Englandy.

Ever since I have moved here to New England I have been told how amazing the chocolate at Burdick's is.  There is a Burdick's in Cambridge, and I can attest to the fact that it is amazing chocolate.  Particularly the hot chocolate.

And it's not just me!  A while back I came across an article that listed Burdick's hot chocolate among the ten best in the world.  So I've been meaning to visit the mother ship of Burdick's in Walpole, New Hampshire for a while.  Yes, L.A. Burdick originated in New Hampshire.  If you read that hot chocolate article, you see Paris, Vienna, Chicago, NYC, Buenos Aires…and New Hampshire.

So, in random honor of our illustrious history of U.S. presidents, I headed out to Walpole!  It's about a two-and-a-half hour drive from Newburyport, but it was a gorgeous day.  The route changes from highway to road to highway often enough that it's not boring.  Not like driving I-70 across Indiana and Illinois which is an exercise in staying awake.  It was a beautiful drive, too.  New Hampshire is a gorgeous state.

So I arrived, and discovered that Walpole is so cute!  If it wasn't so cold, I would have taken time to explore the town.  These aren't the greatest pictures, but they kind of give you the gist:

And here is Burdick's:

Unlike the Cambridge store, this Burdick's has three elements: a restaurant, a cafe, and a store.  The restaurant was closed, but I ordered a Burdick Blend Dark Chocolate hot chocolate and this lemon chocolate cake-pastry thing that was delicious.  Then I sat in the cafe and read and ate and used their wifi for a couple of hours.

Here is the restaurant and part of the cafe:

The restaurant is at the far end, and the cafe is at this end.  However, the other half of the cafe is in the store.  That's where I sat so that I could spy on what everyone was buying.

This picture only shows half of the store.  It's at least twice this big, plus has half of the cafe.  I bought an obscene amount of stuff in the store.

I definitely plan to come back with friends to eat in the restaurant.

The drive home was also lovely.  I had some favorite parts.  First of all, I passed numerous "Moose Crossing" signs.  I wanted to stop and take a picture, but there was never a shoulder to pull over on.  I would have loved to actually see a moose cross the road.  I mean, assuming I was driving two miles per hour so as not to hit it and kill myself.  I hope that, living in New England, I will at some point, probably in NH or Maine, see a moose cross the road.

I also saw several "Snowmobile Crossing" signs.  Sadly, the roads were clear so no snowmobiles actually crossed, though there were snowmobiles driving parallel to the road and down frozen rivers and across fields all over the place.  So I also want to ride a snowmobile.

I also saw mysterious "Frost Heaves" signs.  I had no idea what on earth these signs could mean.  Is the frost throwing up?  Is it heaving snowballs at people?  Today a friend explained that the frost causes the road to lift up (heave up!).  So you could be used to a road you drive all the time, then all of a sudden one day there is a huge bump.  That's a frost heave.

It was a lovely day.  Great driving weather.  Lots to look at.  And lots and lots of chocolate.

Bowling vs. Bowling

So, when I say "bowling," apparently I mean "10-pin bowling."  Who knew?  Here in New England, when you say "bowling," you mean "candlepin bowling."  What on earth is candlepin bowling you ask?  I went for the first time this past weekend.  Let me tell you what I learned.

First, I have to explain that I don't understand all of it.  I went as part of a birthday party, so no one had the time to describe every detail and rule to me.  But I got the gist.

First of all, the bowling ball is small!  It is slightly larger than a ski-ball ball.  In fact, candlepin bowling reminded me a lot of ski-ball.

The ball doesn't have holes or anything.  You just palm it and roll!

Next, the pins are, well, like candles!  Taller than the pins I'm used to, and much, much skinnier.

This, I discovered, led to several interesting tidbits.  First of all, there is a lot more space between the pins.  The pins are much less likely to knock each other down.  For me, in what I consider "regular" bowling, the perfect roll lands the ball between the 1 and 3 pins.  In candlepin bowling, a ball hitting the 1 and 3 pins will maybe knock down a pin or two.  Argh!

Second, the pin setter does NOT clear the fallen pins between each roll.

The pins just lay there.  Sometimes this is great!  One time, I knocked down a pin that laid right in front of two other pins.  On my next roll, I hit that pin and it knocked over both the upright pins behind it!  This is called "using the wood," which sounds pornographic, I know.  However sometimes these fallen pins get in the way and are a real pain in the butt.

Another odd thing is that you get three rolls per frame in candlepin bowling.  A strike is if you knock all of the pins down in two turns.  A spare is if you knock them all down in three turns.

Finally, you have to work a lot harder to keep score in candlepin bowling.  "Regular" bowling has gotten so high tech that once you enter your name, the computer does all the work.  Not so here!  First, you have to tell the lane when your turn is over.  You hit a button by the ball return.

It doesn't recognize when you have taken your three rolls.  

Second, you have to enter your total score per frame.  This required a lot of peering at the pins from different angles to figure out which ones were still standing.

Anyway, it was really, really fun, and I can't wait to go again.

Next up, duck pin bowling?  I don't know what that is, either, but I'll have to try it out.

Non-fiction Surprise

I have never been much of a non-fiction reader.  I would not have done well if STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) had been a big push in public schools like it is now.  Schools are promoting the reading of non-fiction over fiction now, and that has never been something I'm very interested in.  For fun, I mean.

But recently I've begun reading non-fiction, and if the book is right, I love it!  What I'm noticing is that the non-fiction I like tends to read like fiction, which makes it all the more amazing, because it's true.  The old adage that truth is stranger than fiction is apparent in these books.

I thought I'd share a few of these titles, just in case any fiction-readers out there might want to dip a toe in the non-fiction lake.

First up is Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff.  For comparison purposes, this is like a historical Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum book (without Clancy's incredible detail for every military weapon and machine).

I've discovered I'm not very good at describing this book, so I'm going to keep it brief.

In WWII, the Allies set up posts in Greenland, both to provide air and sea routes to Europe, and to keep Germany from using Greenland for air and sea routes to North America.  Greenland is much more treacherous than I ever imagined, and airplane were constantly crashing into and on the glaciers.  In 1942, there was a domino effect of crashes as plane after plane attempted to rescue the crashed plane before it.  Many men died, and some men lived.  The men who lived survived harrowing conditions: five months during winter in Greenland, living underneath the wing of their destroyed airplane.  Boats are also involved, as well as rescue attempts on foot via snowmobiles and dogsled.

Interwoven through this incredible adventure tale is a modern story.  A company wants to find, in particular, one of the planes that crashed while trying to rescue some men: a Grumman Duck which had been attached to a Coast Guard cutter.  The Coast Guard decided to help, because this particular Grumman Duck pilot was the only Coast Guard soldier who had never been brought home to the United States.  (A side note, in case you are thinking that this wouldn't be a big deal: the Coast Guard is NOT, in fact, limited to patrolling the United States.  They have fought, internationally, in WWII, Vietnam, and other conflicts.)

You must remember that this plane crashed 70 years ago, on an active glacier.  So it would have been moving over the years, and buried under who-knows-how-many feet of snow and ice.  In addition, the records are not clear about where the plane crashed.  Flight conditions were terrible, and almost all of the notes from anyone concerned were contradictory.

Amazingly, the boat has been found!  Thought it hasn't been recovered yet.  Hopefully next summer, 2014.

This book was non-stop adventure that was wilder than any military and/or survival fiction I've ever read.  I read it in two days, and it would have been less if I hadn't had to go to work.  Here are some more links if you're interested.

The book on Amazon.

The U.S. Coast Guard, if you're interested in it's history and missions.  Note that Homeland Security is in charge of the Coast Guard.

Perhaps most fascinating, Mitchell Zuckoff's (at the time) live blog of the recovery effort this past summer, 2013.  He was part of the mission!

If you are wondering what a Grumman Duck looks like, here are some pix.

More non-fiction recommendations to come in the future!  If you have a favorite non-fiction book, please recommend it in the comments!

You Are NOT Going to Believe This

Soon after I moved to Massachusetts, a coworker told me about this furniture store called Jordan's that has all of this extra stuff inside: trapeze schools, candy stores, ice skating rinks, IMAX theaters, etc.  WHAT?!  I mean, seriously, WHAT?!  It made no sense to me.

It took me over a year, but I finally went to my first Jordan's (it's a local chain).  This Jordan's -- the one in Reading, MA -- blew my mind, and it is now my goal to visit every Jordan's, because every store is different.  I have no idea how the Jordans came up with this concept, but it is the weirdest, most wonderful thing I have ever seen.

Here is a shot from my parking space.  The place is as big as an airplane hanger.  Maybe bigger.  I'm not sure I've ever seen an airplane hanger in real life. :)

Then I see this sign.  Apparently I can expect ice cream, TVs, Beantown (which I've been told is a candy store), speakers, Fuddrucker's, and outdoor furniture.  Interesting combo, yes?

Then, oh, then I walk into the door.  To my right, I see this:

Yes, it's the trapeze school.

To the right, beyond the trapeze school, is this:

Yep!  Dancing fountains!

Across from the trapeze school is the ice cream store.  Yes, of course I got a hot fudge sundae.

Now, when I walked in the front door of the store, straight ahead and to the left was candy.  And I mean CANDY.

The candy store is made of jelly beans.  (Yes, I bought candy.  Don't ask silly questions.)

Then…a candy garden.  (These are all made of jelly beans, people!)

And a jelly bean version of "Make Way for Ducklings" by Robert McCloskey.

And then I went to the IMAX to see "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire."  Both the theater and the movie were amazing.  The theater absolutely rivaled the IMAX at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle where I used to go to see all the films I wanted to see in IMAX.

But it gets better.  There are Jordan's Furniture commercials on TV all the time.  Take a look at this guy.  He's Eliot Jordan, who owns Jordan's Furniture.  Now, I never paid him much mind in his commercials until recently.  In one newer commercial he happened to turn sideways and I noticed he had a ponytail.  I was hysterical!  I always think the stringy ponytail on balding men is hilarious.  If any readers are thinking of having such a "hairstyle," I strongly discourage you.  Let's be honest: hair in the back does not make up for hair on the top.

Anyway, the point.  As we were looking for seats in theater, we noticed that four seats were not only being reserved, but were actually being guarded by a Jordan's employee.  "Ha!" we laughed.  "Maybe a Jordan is coming!"  Then, right before the movie started, ELIOT JORDAN and three other people walked in.  I am not kidding.  My first visit to a Jordan's Furniture, and the Man Himself shows up, ponytail and all.  Luckily the lights went down almost immediately.  As I was sitting a few rows back from him, I cannot say what I might have done after staring at that ponytail for more than a few moments.

I shall continue reporting on my Jordan's visits.  I have a friend in Natick, MA (Kari, for all you U of Rochester readers!), so that will probably be next. It has a Bourbon Street!  Why go to New Orleans if you can just go to a Jordan's Furniture in Natick, MA?  Some stores may even require an overnight trip, such as the one in Rhode Island, but I am bound and determined.  Stay tuned.

Snow in Phoenix?

My Mom and I discovered that a local outdoor mall in Phoenix makes it snow twice each evening for poor little Phoenician kids who don't get to see snow.  We had to see it.  It was actually pretty beautiful, and the kids had a blast!  They shoot the snow off the roofs.

Don't you love the snow and the palm trees?