Tag: Hilarious

Humor, Husband, Life, Snark

Mother. Nature.

“Nature’s all well in her place, but she mustn’t be allowed to make things untidy.”
– Cold Comfort Farm

Pictured: Summer, after a particularly impressive bender.

Of course, summer is moving towards its inevitable end.  Though not quite in her death throes, she’s sensing that they’re not far off and so is  looking to have a last fling with a boy a third of her age, wear skirts that are far too short, and spend all her money rather than let her grasping nephew Fall get a penny of it.  In other words, generally behaving badly.

The other day J. called me up.
“Are you coming home for lunch?” he asked.
“Wasn’t planning on it.  Why?”
“Because you need to go to the store.”
“Again, why?”
“Because you need to pick up ant traps and spray.”

Summer's attack German Shepherd. And although I didn't catch a glimpse of this guy, I am sure he was lurking back behind the suitcases.

Augh!  Apparently ants had descended on our flat.  They were crawling in from a closet runner, bent on global domination (For the record, Mum, our flat is in no way in a state to attract the wildlife, please don’t wring your hands and bemoan anything).  Anyway, I dashed home armed with chemicals, J. vacuumed everything, sprayed and booby-trapped our closet to the point that those famed nuclear-resistant cockroaches of lore couldn’t survive, and we waited with baited breath to see if it had worked.  So far, nary a six-legged fiend has been sighted.

However, marshalling the ants to send them indoors was only Old Lady Summer getting drunk at her granddaughter’s wedding.  She finished the night by climbing up on the buffet table, shaking her bon-bon, and collapsing spectacularly into the punch.

That night we had a massive lightning storm.  I read later that in a half hour period we had nearly 150 lightning strikes in the area.  And unlike normal storms, where the flashes and rumbles are spaced out a bit, this was explosion after explosion for hours.  Neither J. nor I slept because every few seconds our whole room would light up and it would sound like someone had cracked a whip right next to our heads.  And this sort of weather has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, for the last three days now.  The power was knocked out yesterday, making getting home from work a nightmare.

Small Dog gets Summered-out.

Summer and I have a middling relationship.  Round about February of each year I whine and long for sunlight, but as soon as we’ve made it through July, I start glaring at bank signs along the road with their publicly displayed roasting temperatures and start mumbling things like, “October sounds good.  I could do October right now.”

*Photo of cracked old biddy, from mygutinstinct.wordpress.com
*Photo of the vile insect invader, still from the 1954 film Them!
*Photo of my approximate face come mi-August from: findavet.us/blog/2010/04/how-to-keep-your-dog-safe-in-the-heat/

Books, Humor, Movies, Writing

The Merry Month of May (or, Geeks Unite!)

“Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This is clearly the month for geeks, nerds, Avatards, etc.  Earlier in the month we were able to enjoy Star Wars Day, otherwise known as “May the Fourth, be with you.”  Now personally I’m a fan of the first three episodes (by which I mean IV-VI) and not so much the second trilogy (by which I mean I-III).

And this mind-warping chronology brings me nicely to today, which is Towel Day, in honor of Douglas Adams’ trilogy-in-five-volumes – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

This is a fan-holiday I can get behind, owning, as I do, the entire “trilogy” as well as (my preferred) Dirk Gently books, and The Salmon of Doubt, a collection of Adams’ speeches, essays, quips, and short stories.  Apart from a wonderful absurdist, he was a fantastically intelligent and clever man who despite his love for technology, was not limited to science fiction.  My personal favorite is the story of Genghis Khan who storms into Europe “so fast he almost forgot to burn down Asia before he left.”  Oh!  And God’s final message to his creation: “We apologize for the inconvenience.”

My parents are also fans.  They own the original radio series on cassette tape (which I may or may not have purloined when I went to university – sorry Mum and Dad!) which I listened to from a young age.  I’ve got them on MP3 now and they still make me laugh.

So yes, I know where my towel is.  Which reminds me.  J. and I need to do laundry rather badly.  So long and thanks for all the fish!

Family, Humor, Husband

Lys-Dexia

“Check and see the oven inside.”
“Something in the oven there is.”
“…wait, what?  What did I say?”
“Something along the lines of, ‘Do or do not, there is no try.’  Don’t worry, I speak C. fluently.”
“Go die.”
– C. and J.

I swear I have a speech problem, and not just Foot-In-Mouth disease (a tragic, incurable illness wherein the sufferer is constantly choking on their own stupidity and awkwardness).  I frequently speak in Spoonerisms.

Pictured: a Dad Face.

I blame Dad.  He has a bit of a goofy sense of humor, and one of the things he finds most funny is to switch up words.  Depending on how much sleep the siblings have had, our response to this can vary from a pity-chuckle to uproarious laughter.  So when Mika misbehaves and Dad sighs, “Dupid sog,” accompanied by a Dad Face, we will probably all find it pretty funny.

The irony is that I can’t make a Spoonerism off the top of my head the way Dad can.  But, without even trying, I CAN completely rearrange a sentence into one that utterly defies logic and grammar.  In fact, I do it quite regularly.

More’s the pity for me, J. is just as quick as my Dad in the comebacks.  Curses.

Fabulous, Friends, Humor, Marriage, University

Spunky Chap With His Hat at a Jaunty Angle

“Strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.”
– Samuel Pepys

The Marriage Mart, of Regency fame, is alive and well on this campus.  We’re getting close to the time of a semester (directly after finals, usually) that people rush to get married before the summer term starts up.  In fact I have a small horde of friends tying the knot in the next two months.  In a year or two, I’ll be attending baby showers.

This vid gets a Tip O’ My Hat to Sav for finding it, and check out her site for another dose  (that one in honor of the mutual lambasting by colleagues, acquaintances, and Fox News we endured for our less than hateful attitude towards current events in the capital).

Family, Humor, Husband, Marriage, PBS

Viewers Like You. Thank You.

“So Amanda stays with Darcy and Elizabeth stays in the modern world?  Why does she want to do that?”
“Birth control, indoor plumbing, and women’s rights?”
– J. and C.

Whether against his will or not, J. is slowly getting dragged into my PBS obsession, and it’s been fun to watch.

Pictured: a post-modernist moment. You may close your mouth now.

For someone who dislikes Jane Austen pretty strongly, he liked Lost In Austen quite a bit (granted, we both loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).  He laughed just as loud as me when the main character asked Mr. Darcy to take a dip in his pond so she could enjoy a Colin Firth-esque “post-modernist moment.”  He found the fact that Caroline Bingley was a lesbian hilarious, liked that Wickham was a good guy after all, and that Jane and Charles run off to America together.  One Sunday night he called back to where I was in the office and reminded me that Masterpiece was on in a half hour and asked if there would be another LIA installment.

She heard you, J.. Beware.

And when Dorcas Lane (of Lark Rise to Candleford fame) stated she doesn’t like to judge people, to the face of the man she’s refused to marry for having a scandalous, mistress-mongering past, and said man snaps back, “You’ve never had a problem with sitting in judgement before.  Good-day,” … it was incredibly satisfying to hear my red-blooded, football/basketball loving, hamburger devouring, man’s man, all-American husband cry, “Oh no he didn’t!  Burn!”

I’m sure he’d like me to reciprocate by learning to love basketball and Sports Center, but I’m not quite there yet.  I’ll work on it.

Humor, Office, Stupid People, Weird

A Slice of J.

“I love being married.  It’s so great to find that one person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”
– Rita Rudner

The other day, J. came to my office earlier than usual and so he went to the break room to study for a while before my lunch break.  A bunch of the student officers congregate there between shifts or to eat so there was a group of them there at the time.

Helper, a notoriously unobservant young man, was among them. 

Helper is an interesting kid.  He spent several months trying to flirt with me, mostly by slinking up to my desk, lurking behind me for a while, and then informing me of what I was doing quite suddenly.
“You’re reading CNN.”
“Where’d you come from?!  Um…yes.  I am.”
The weirdest thing he did was hover silently one day while I went online to my bank account to pay my credit card bill.
“You use [name of bank]?” he drawled.
I jumped, as I’d had no idea he was there, and demanded why the hell he was looking!
“No reason.  Is that your email too?”
I shut my windows and pointedly asked him if he was on duty.
“Heh, yeah,” he gave me a ‘I-get-it-we’ll-talk-later’ look and meandered off.

This was two months after I’d gotten engaged and had this nice rock sitting pretty on my left hand that was supposed to protect me from the over-amorous attentions of clueless men. 

It never registered.  It wasn’t until a couple months after that he must have figured out I was getting married in the near future because he came to me while I was reconciling a report, lurked behind me for a couple minutes, and finally muttered, “So, you’re engaged.”
“For about five months, yes.”
“I see.”  He sat looking at me for a few more seconds before sighing and murmuring, “I won’t bother you anymore.”

He wandered off while I sat with my jaw slack, wondering where he had pulled this supposed relationship out of.  I don’t think he’s spoken to me since, though I have caught him glaring furtively before he whisks himself around a corner.   And once I overheard him once complaining to a co-worker that I had flirted with him, and the ensuing guffaws.
“Are you kidding?  She’s married, and she was dating the guy before she ever worked here.  Besides, she thinks you’re creepy.”

The reason for this back story?  Well, there J. was sitting in the break room for quite a while before Helper realized he had no idea who J. was and enquired.
“I’m J., C.’s husband.”
“C.?” Helper asked nonchalantly, “Who’s that?”
“You know,” Lexie said, “she works at the front desk.  Dark hair, green eyes, pretty?”
“Short?” offered J.

I still much prefer him to Helper.

Food, Humor

I’ll Never Bake Again!

“Angst!  Angst!”
– C.

Yesterday after heading home an hour early from work (sick + tired + nausea + cramps + no lunch break + 2-3 hour long meeting = blech) I recovered enough to, or rather the drugs kicked in and I was able to, cook.  I put in one of my new movies and got to work marinating steak (to be used tonight) and then whipping up a spinach quiche…

…sort of.

See, I got all the cream cheese, egg, and spinach into the crust (which I bought at the store, not trusting myself – rightly it turns out – to make pastry) and popped it in the oven.  But then two minutes later, glancing through the recipe to see how long it should cook, I realized I’d forgotten the parmesan cheese!   Quick as you’d like, I dragged it out and mixed in the parmesan and tossed it back into the furnace. 

Then I realized that if I had forgotten the parmesan, I might have forgotten the cheddar as well…and I had.  Back to the oven, quick quick!  The crust was turning a lovely golden color by this time, and I couldn’t have been more ticked at it for looking yummy when I’d apparently left out half the ingredients. 

"Did you remember the onions, my dear?" "GAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" "Now, now, there's no need to fret."

And THEN, after I put it back in the oven, I banged my head (metaphorically) against the counter when I saw the green onions sitting in smug little rows on the other cutting board, taunting me with their not-in-the-quiche-ness. 

Finally I got everything mixed in (at various stages of baking) but THEN I forgot about it after I collapsed on the sofa in defeat.  All in all, the crust has come out a fearsome black…but the inside still tastes pretty good.