Regifting

Okay, okay - my "Blogging for Dummies" (a bit redundant, don't you think?) book indicates that the quantity of blog posts is MUCH more important than quality of blog posts (a defining motto here at SaveMeTheCall). So even though I am still crushed after the Titans' loss Saturday, I thought I would provide our special year-end recap of the very best SaveMeTheCall blog posts as determined by number of mouse clicks (okay - they were all MY mouse clicks, because I re-read these things ALL the time, but you get the idea). I kind of look at it like regifting previous posts - like i did at Christmas with my present from....OH...you get the idea.

So here they are...top ten posts form 2008...

Earth Day (i'm sorry - i love this one)
Easy Listening Music
Dick Cheney hat
Things I have realized now that I have a blog
Brother's visit
Shopping for Rio
Another day at the office (aka - the plate glass wall)
Top 10 things about my kitchen
Belly ring removal
About that suntan
Brooklyn Heights (aka - Riyadh Rockettes)

Man - there's only 11 good posts out of 100+?? ...discouraging. (Hey Eddie P...i mean Eddie Q... i know i shorted you one on a previous top 10 list - now we're even)




This is actually my shameless attempt to see if you actually click on old posts. I'll let you know if it works.

The MOST Wonderful Time of the Year

Awesome blog nonwithstanding, I knew I had a higher purpose in life - and NOW i have figured it out - to bring football to people who think they already have a life. (does this count as missionary work?). Turns out Californians have better things to do on sunny Sunday afternoons than to watch football games (something about beaches....enjoying what's left of the environment...stuff like that). Aren't there any dark, smokey bars in this town? So WHAT if the games are on at 10 in the morning - you people are okay with Bloody Mary's every OTHER day of the week. Get in the game.

Now that the Titans are in the playoffs (however temporary that may be), I am getting REALLY obnoxious [What? - you thought I was ALREADY obnoxious?? Are we still talking about football?]. Some examples:

• Someone gets their car tagged with one little old Titans' car magnet and next thing you know they're moaning about their clear coat. Listen - you have a Nader sticker - I don't want to hear about your precious clear coat.
• If you think a car magnet is bad, you should see LoMo's car back in Nashville - Titans window flags flapping in the breeze, pom-pom's peeking out of the back hatch and a car magnet on every panel. Come Sunday, LoMo looks like she's joining the presidential motorcade (except she would have to tone it DOWN to get into a presidential motorcade).
• Quit calling my team the flaming thumb tacks (really - look at the logo)
• Rita keeps telling me NOT to hang that Titans' flag off the front porch because "someone is going to egg the house". But by "egg the house" I think she REALLY means "think I'm a redneck". (HA - wait til gameday when she sees the twelve-foot inflatable lineman I borrowed from Judy. And YOU thought you had to own a gas station to get one of those things. All of Kensington will be talking =)
• I have noticed that certain football-watching rules are different here. Apparently, the "it-doesn't-count-as-cussing-in-front-of-the-kids-if-it's-during-a-football-game" rule does NOT apply to California (and they don't teach their kids the good cuss words as early either)
• Regarding the weekend invitation to our house - you don't come over to watch ME watch the game, you come over to watch the game - what am I, a zoo animal??

GO TITANS!!

New Year's Resolutions

It's time for New Year's resolutions again. (Yeah, yeah, yeah - blog more - I get it. Blog more, work less...try not to get so much sleep either, wouldja??)

But to turn things around, here's MY take on New Year's resolutions for the SaveMeTheCall readership. And just in case you missed one of my previous posts - you must remember that I have a tracer on the site that tells me what computers are accessing through what IP addresses =) smiley face! =)

• For chrissake's will someone please get Mikee Wi-Fi? All those hits from the St. Louise Panera Bread are bringing my blog down-market.
• Eddie P. - i'm rationing your comments. People are starting to think i made you up just to make comments at my own family.....
• I'm as proud of Nicola's promotion as the next guy, but ummm....you're not answering the help desk anymore (email's been flaky - my ass) AND you don't have time to read the blog? Seriously.
• Is NO ONE at Nationwide Insurance working during the first 30 minutes of the day?
• MOM is the only one who has figured out how to mask her IP address??!?
• Walk into your own plate glass window
• Everyone starts making their smiley faces with equal signs =) (what's not to love??)
• Ummmm, no more checking the blog before 7:30 local time - deal? I mean cut me and my PACIFIC time zone a little slack - wouldja?
• We're really going to do this another year???

The Bad News Bears do Christmas

Honestly...if the Bad News Bears had done a holiday movie - it would look a lot like a certain week of my life. First of all, one should not even ATTEMPT 4 cities, 3 holidays and two families in 7 days. That is WAY too many times to taunt the travel gods. And so it was, as many of you know, that Portland, OR (where Rita's family is), got snowed in at Christmas. So despite MULTIPLE trips to the airport (only to be told that flights were canceled) and multiple plane tickets, we were NOT able to get home to Portland for the holidays. =( Then to top it all off, I didn't plan the present-thing very well - expecting to give Rita her Christmas presents when we returned to San Diego (as we agreed) after Christmas (turns out that celebrating AFTER a holiday makes the actual holiday a little ummmm...disappointing). So let's just say that Christmas week was not...exactly as we had planned:

• Can I just say - it's not like we were going to MIAMI to see Rita's family...has the city of Portland never heard of a snowplow???
• If you are interviewed on TWO successive evening newcasts showing families stranded by bad weather on the holidays - you have officially hit the hard-luck sweepstakes. (That's not Tivo - it's Maeve & Rita.)
• One good way to end up on a watch list at the airport? (well ASIDE from being named Mohammed) - go through security every day for four days. Couple that with multiple appearances on the evening news (see: stranded holiday travelers) and you are guaranteed a strip search.
• I don't care HOW much time you think you have til boarding....it is best that you are NOT on an un-interruptible work call when your partner finds out she is NOT going to see her family for the holidays. The correct response to "all flights to Portland are canceled" is NOT "I will be off this call in 20 minutes, I swear".
• I did get bonus points for the question "how long would it take to DRIVE to Portland"? (it's all the same time zone - who knew it was a 26 hour drive).
• No matter WHAT the agreement is on when the present exchange is...ummmm, bring a present for Christmas day, ok? In the relationship hierarchy - not having a present available on Christmas Day trumps breaking Christmas gift rules by a score of 7 to 1.
• As of noon on Christmas, the only thing Rita had gotten for Christmas was my cold.
• The one-year subscription to the savemethecall blog is probably NOT an appropriate present for Christmas day.

Savory Shrimp & Grits

Rita and I like to host little "dinner parties" where we invite people over to cook for us. It's a great trick - you should try it. Each couple gets assigned a different course to make/bring and you end up with this excellent meal where you only made one course (unfortunately - "ice" is not a course, so my participation is limited). Well....a couple of weeks ago - we hosted just such a get together and one normally reliable couple brought an appetizer course entitled "Savory Shrimp & Grits". Well...apparently...in Texas, savory means HOT, like smoke-coming-out-of-your-ears hot. I don't think it was intentional - but there WAS an awkward moment where I thought one of our guests was trying to kill us with tabasco.

Which (of course) led me to a few observations from the experience:

• When the chef has to serve the dish cloaked in a hazmat suit - bad sign.
• If I EVER actually MAKE a course for a dinner party...I will now have my eyes peeled for an uncomfortable silence following that first bite...which apparently means: "Holy crap - I can't feel my face any more."
• At what point have you eaten enough of a course to be polite? I can barely handle barbecue potato chips - I wasn't about to finish the nuclear shrimp.
• The dessert course assignee smugly announced "I ate the whole thing". Called her the next morning - not mobile.
• The person to my right very casually leaned over to me and whispered..."Savory Shrimp and Grits...more like Save-Yourself Shrimp and Grits". (which of course was followed by me saying "omigod - that is HILARIOUS. Listen to this, you guys... ")
• The pairing for the course turned out not to be zinfandel, but milk.
• Apparently, one partner made the grits while the other half of the tandem contributed the ummmm...savory parts. The sous chef spent the entire course declaring the innocence of her grits. I half expected the grits to turn state's evidence on the shrimp and sauce at any time.
• We looked at the hot sauce bottle later and a) it's called Inferno Hot Sauce b) they won't sell it without a parent or guardian present and c) what did you THINK the skull and crossbones meant??
• I looked at the pictures from the dinner....three courses later and Joe's face is still blotchy, there's a bead of sweat above my lip and the sous chef is in a corner still pushing her grits.

PoCo for Life

Christmas in southern Indiana - (Kentuckiana for those in the know) would be culturally educational for many. This year, we learned an endearing new term at the McConville family xmas - "PoCo for Life". PoCo being Posey County, Indiana - where no one thought twice of naming a county "Posey" and where parents dream of GEDs for ALL their kids.

The term seems to be a quaint carryover of my (now college-degreed, I swear) 23 yr old niece's high school years. And just to give you some context, I think Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol Palin's baby, (and especially his mother) are honorary "PoCo for Life".

And the term seems inextricably linked to synthetic urine - of the drug-test-fooling variety. Apparently, the MOST eligible bachelors in PoCo are the ones with a synthetic urine subscription...presumably allowing them to smoke dope with abandon? I guess the boffo combo of a quarter bag AND a job (that drug tests, no less) makes you hot property in PoCo. (What!??! - you guys didn't talk about the same thing on YOUR Christmas morning???)

Which is how we came up with the following ditty about my brother - sung to the theme from the Beverly Hillbillies:

Come and listen to a story 'bout a man in PoCo
Poor engineer should've moved a while ago
Then one day he was talking with his daughter
and UP came the case of the big ol' fake water
(urine that is, fake pee, synthetic piss)

Please tell my niece's boyfriend is not REALLY Seth Rogan.

Soda POP

Holy cow - world's best Christmas present ever. Rita got me a seltzer water maker. I thought the only type of seltzer makers anymore were those little squirtee ones from old Tom & Jerry cartoons, but Rita found the new Penguin Club Soda model. It is awesome. You put one of the special carafes full of water into the little vacuum chamber, slide the top down to seal the chamber and then pump it full of co2. There is a button to "release" the carafe from its little vacuum chamber when you're finished and...voila! Your very own Pellegrino.

Everytime I push that button - it sounds like the roller coaster coming to a stop at Six Flags - with basically the same level of anticipation. If I get particularly exuberant pumping the carbon dioxide...billowy white smoke comes tumbling out of the vacuum chamber like some special effect from an 80s rock video.

The kit even came with different flavor syrups so I can make my own lemon-line, root beer and.....diet soda. Follow me on this...with a little more recipe-tweaking, I could be making my own Diet Cokes by President's Day. (And you thought the economy was bad NOW - if I stop buying Diet Cokes.... You may as well add Coca-Cola to the bailout list right now.)

Between the espresso maker and the club soda machine (not to mention the UPS-looking wine fairy), Rita's house is like the adult equivalent of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Seriously, I don't see a reason to ever leave the house again. I am going to be the most hydrated woman in Southern California.

Although the responses from others to my Christmas present have been a little...ummm....interesting:

"What's the over/under on when you pop an eye out with that thing?" [Thanks Mom]

"Can you do whip-ette shots with it?" [if you have to ask what a whip-ette shot is, you obviously invested your college years more wisely than others]

"Have you tried it on milk? If I got a toy like that - I would try it on everything." [a) thanks for sharing b) no milk...but I AM working on my very own Champagne - a little number I like to call Estate Zinfa-cola....mmmmm (don't tell Rita).]