Open 24 Hours

The Boy is now gainfully employed and already the victim of corporate brainwashing towing the corporate line.  

To wit: 

The Boy: Mom, I'm going to have to work Christmas Day. 

Me: What??

The Boy: Well, it's a great business model.  No one else is open on Christmas Day.  -> 

Pan Seared

I love gumball machines.  I've always thought it would be cool to have one.  But then, of course, you're forced to chew bubble gum everyday.  Not that this is a bad thing, but your dentist might take issue with it.  Or maybe not, when I stop and think about it.  Maybe our dentists secretly want us to chew gum.  


Gum=sugar=cavities=visits to the dentist=dentist gets new Lexus.  -> 

2/$3.33

If this photo looks familiar, it is.  I took essentially the same picture on the third day of the project on August 22, 2010.  It was a Sunday.  

And so, on a Sunday almost a year later thus coming full circle, I returned to the same store and recorded the same subject matter. Note the price of the items increased by 11% in less than a year.  This is what prompted me to take the picture.  But there's more to the story, because the day before I took this picture I lost my uber phone.  I got it in October of last year, a full two months in to the project. Therefore I was forced to take a step back in time and start using my old iPhone (a first generation, I'll have you know) again. So not only did I take the picture using the same subject matter, I'm using the same equipment.  

The end of the project then, which is rapidly approaching (!), will be as it started: Hipstamatic application on a first generation iPhone.  

By the way, I'm SO upgrading.  I'm just holding out for the 5, which doesn't hit the market for a few weeks. -> 

3104 NW 23rd

Do you have one of these places in your town? This right here is evidence of how our fast food nation business model has run amuck.

The Dental Depot. Complete with a cute little train engine in the parking lot and lots of cookie-cutter landscaping in an poor attempt to make the customer the patient feel as if he's walking into an actual medical office. As opposed to some kitschy franchise. Which is all they are. I know of three of these offices in the Oklahoma City metro area, and I've no doubt there are more.

What really baffles me is who on earth came up with the concept of coupling train depots with root canals? How does this marriage even work? Because I don't know about you, but when I think of getting my teeth cleaned in conjunction with the hygienist fussing at me for not flossing regularly, the first thing that comes to my mind is "laughing gas" not "steam engines."

Oh!!

Never mind. DUH! Laughing gas was impetus.

Makes total sense now. ->




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Chewy

Breakfast.


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Enter Here

So.  You've heard of a Man Cave, right?  


Well, our local grocery store now has a Beer Cave.  Brand new for the 2011 football season and 2011/12 academic year!  Check it out: 

Pic o' the day

But don't be fooled by its sliding doors and enticing blinking sign.  


First of all, it's freezing in there.  Unless you're donning a winter coat and gloves, you're only good for about 90 seconds, so there's no willy-nilly browsing.  


Not that you would want to.  Because it becomes abundantly clear pretty quickly that the offerings are, dare I say, insulting:  

Yeah....


No.  


And when you think you've found some good beer....

Behold, the Oklahoma liquor laws spoil the party.  Because every bottle of seemingly quality malt beverages is defiled with this disclaimer: 

So.  I will continue to patron my local liquor store for real, room-temperature beer.  

+Calcium

Well. So much for One a Day vitamins or drinking milk. From now on, I'm turning to Hershey's for all my calcium needs. ->



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Collect

I don't like Mountain Dew. At all. And 7-11 had the nerve to serve Mountain Dew Icee's for a while. What the...?

Jawgs

My brother, being a tru blue Gator, is going to kill me for this one. I didn't see any gator tents on the beach, though, so UGA wins. ->

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Location:N Seaside Dr,Myrtle Beach,United States

John Deer

King of Beers

Not my brand. But a lot of people here drink it and there were cans everywhere, so I felt compelled. Me? I prefer real beer, thanks:






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Enjoy

I took this in rural Georgia today. A bit of a back story might help with perspective. This is the big picture of my shot:



Once upon a time, you could buy a cool refreshing beverage here. Look, it was even air conditioned:



I love dilapidated infrastructure. The Geek isn't nearly as taken with it as I am, but I think it's quite photogenic.

On vacation (again. I know, I know. If that's not consumerism, I don't know what is) so the next week will be shots from our family trip. ->


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2 Squares

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midnight

I cannot tell a lie. I am an utter sucker for most Bath and Body Works products. (Plus in June everything goes on sale! Whee!) This shower cream stuff is completely frivolous but it's so, you know, creamy! And Sudsy! I realize I can get shaving cream for a buck at the Dollar General store for essentially the same experience. But then I would smell like a man. And not pomegranate. And what woman doesn't want to smell like pomegranate when she gets out of the tub? ->



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FILA

font color="black" face="Times New Roman">
Say you: That picture looks vaguely familiar.
Say me: Guilty.
Say you: You really like that quilt.
Say me: It is 19 kinds of awesome. Sixteen square feet of tacky, 70's polyester goodness bought at an estate sale. Perfect for nights at the park. Take a gander:






And that's just part of the blanket. Seriously. How can you possibly not love that? ->


-Posted using (enter requisite phrase which brags about your cool gadgets and applications for said gadget here. And let me just say said gadget highly irritates me because once you post an entry to one blog--say, your family blog instead of your other blog, then there's no posting again. Even though you've told it to post to the other blog FOUR TIMES, it gives you a "server" error. Thus you're forced to re-type the entry which is a PITA, because there is simply no way to easily cut and paste using this application. Oh, I did. Cut-n-paste, I mean. But you have to save the original entry, and then start the new entry and then save the new entry and open up the original entry again....Like I said: PITA.

Say you: You digress
Say me: I did. Sue me. )

WSOP

For those of you who aren't poker widows wives of geeks who play poker as a serious hobby, WSOP = World Series of Poker. Yes. There is such a thing. The Geek went to Vegas last week to play in the Big Event. He didn't win the $600,000 purse (he came in third in a smaller tournament, though) but he's all set to go next year. 

Me? I'm still grasping what "backraise" means in poker jargon.


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"Marbled" Paper

I interrupt this regularly scheduled blog for a Mommy Blogger Craft Post. 


I'll give you some time to hurl.  


(...waiting....)


(You drank some water on sucked on an Altoid, right?) 


OK.  


So.  


Summer doldrums kick in pretty early and I thought making marbled paper would be a happy, happy, fun, fun, minimal cost project.  Before we go any further and in the spirit of keeping with this year's theme, "minimal cost" translated to $9.50. 


I saw a Youtube tutorial on it, but I'm going to give you the step-by-step complete-with-pictures post, thereby channeling my inner-Mormon-Bloggy-Mom.  But I'm warning you.  I digress from their style in that some of my pictures are fuzzy, and I'm just not one to care enough to re-stage the photographs. My pic of the day isn't fuzzy, which is good enough for me.  


Say you: You have an inner-Mormon-bloggy-Mom?
Say me: Apparently.  


Ready?  Here goes.  


Materials you need: 

• card stock or regular paper 
• food coloring
• shaving cream  (Yes.  I'm serious) 
• A scraper of some kind
• a fork (Trust me.  This all comes together)
• plates
• big towel to cover your work surface  

Prep time:  Five minutes
Time distracting the wee ones: 1/3 the time it's going to take me to blog about the whole thing. In other words, not nearly long enough. 


Step one.  Get out your shaving cream: 

Step two: Spray out an alarming amount of shaving cream onto your allotted plate.  Don't freak about using a plate.  This is soap for crying out loud.  It will wash off.   (Please ignore paper plate in the pictures)

Before we go any further, can we just talk about how fun shaving cream is?  No joke. That stuff is as squeezable and irresistible as a fat baby.  I mean really, you can just stop right here and play with the whipped shaving cream, it's so mesmerizing....


Onward.  


Next, take your food coloring (gratuitous picture alert)

Pic of the day

and put dots of color randomly on your mound of cream: 

Oh, let's add one more color, just for shits and giggles. 


Say you: I don't think Mormon Mommy bloggers use the word "shit" in their posts. 
Say me: I bet this ex-Mormon Mom uses worse.  


Anyway, one more color.  Just for shits and giggles: 

Now for the fork.  Take your fork and swirl those colors around, but not to the point that they're mixed completely together.  You know, "marble" it.  

(Do you like how I kept the fork in the picture?  More artsy, no?)


Next, take a piece of paper and squish it down on your mound of cream and swirly colors.  This, my friends, is why the first thing you did was place a towel under your work surface....


Say you: You said step one was getting out the shaving cream! 
Say me: Did I?  Oh.  I guess I did.  Well, step one SHOULD be covering your work surface with a towel.   


Anyway.  Squish. 

Pull it off 

And scrape away the shaving cream: 

Ta da!  (please excuse the REALLY blurry picture.  My hands were covered with all kinds of shit)


Say you: There's that word again
Say me: Bite me.  
Say you: I don't think a Mormon Mommy would use such a retort.  
Say me: Bite me again. 


As I was saying....


Ta da!   

If you're so inclined, now is the time to clap with glee and hurryandmakeanotheronebecauseWOWsosocool!  


 The excess on the scraper can be reused to cover the remaining paper, not the mention the leftover shaving cream sitting on your plate.  You can also add contrasting color to this used mixture for a more vibrant look. 


At this point, you're free to use your paper for all kinds of silly crafts home projects. 


Here was the end result of our endeavors: 

I would also like to point out that we tried this method, which was referred by a Mormon Mommy.

Disaster.  


I know she insists you get "beautiful results".  Which I suppose is one to describe oil spots on paper: 

 Trust me when I tell you that this was pretty much the way it went for all my efforts.  So I sorta improvised, wadded up the paper and dipped it right into the coloring:  

Which simply resulted in more coverage on oily, now-scrunched up paper.  And stains on my picnic chair:

And my picnic table: 

Did I mention I forget to wear gloves?  ->

Super *

Winf

This little gem will only set you back $9.95.  The boy counted the pages for me.  There were 45.  Needless to say, I didn't buy it. -> 

Sprite