Also a surprise? Since the virus debacle, our readership has plummeted. We now have about four readers, so I’m going to guess it’s Brad, Peggy, Kristi and me. (Lloyd never reads this.) So, say what you want, guys! We’re all alone in our own little club!

So, we had to have flouride treatments at the dentist’s office when I was a kid. I don’t know why – I guess because that toothpaste I was slathering on daily wasn’t cutting it? Whatever.

The fluoride treatment the absolute worst part of the dental visit for many reasons. One reason was because of The Machine. The Machine was (and remember, this is from the faded memory of a kid) a hulking steampunk monstrosity that had hoses and tubes and grinding gears and such. It was kept in a back room of this old victorian house, where it was dark and full of fluoride-loving spiders. (I’m positive about that.) They strapped you into a restraining chair and asked the dreaded question, “What flavor?” Here’s where you had to decide what delicious flavor you didn’t want to love anymore. The choices were cherry, orange or grape, but they all tasted like slightly-sweet vomit. The doomed flavor was poured into a tray, hooked up to a bubbler hose, then put into your mouth. You had to bite down on the tray while The Machine bubbled grape vomit around your teeth for an interminable length of time. Then the Assistant pulled it out, making ropes of grape-spit string all over your face. Rinse, spit. Rinse, spit. Gag.

Then – HORRORS – you had to do the whole process for your BOTTOM teeth, so now the tray was upside down and leaked grape vomit into the bottom of your mouth.

I’m getting woozy recounting this story. I have to stop.

In reality, I had to just get it out there because it’s irrelevant now. It’s a gripping documentary about how cold I keep our house in winter, except now that the new windows are in, I am allowing degrees and degrees more heat to be BTU’d around here. (Like – two of them!) Also, now you know about the nose warmer.

Here is a list of things that are wrong with this movie:
1. It does not star Julia Roberts and Adrian Grenier, who are our preferred stand-ins.
2. Lloyd doesn’t like how he’s singing.
3. I don’t like how I’m singing.
4. I think Lloyd doesn’t like how I’m singing.
5. The drawings are terrible.
6. There are no transitions and the timing is off.
7. I have some typos because I forgot how the song went.
8. There is a LOT of white-out on those drawings, but not enough.

All that being said, here it is: Baby, It’s Cold Inside.

This is not new to Lloyd, however. Many, many years ago he complained that his nose would get cold when he typed on his computer, so I knit him a nose warmer.

“Lauren, I didn’t know you could knit,” I hear you ask. Well, the answer is, “Yes! I can knit!” I can knit nose warmers, and that is all. I know one kind of stitch, and I can make a very small something with that one stitch, and then I don’t know how to finish it and make it not fall apart. It was very useful for Barbie scarves as a child, though they unraveled quickly. (Once in college I finger-knit a scarf that went all the way around our tour bus. The bus thanked me, but I think it was just being polite.)

Oh. Back to the nose thing. Lloyd was cold last night and when I brought him the nose warmer he said, “I can’t believe you haven’t posted about this yet.”

You can see this nose warmer in a starring role in our video!

I have a definite caffeine addiction, and it mostly rears its ugly head on the weekends. On weekdays I usually have had two or three cups of coffee by 7:30, and on weekends if I don’t wake up until 8 or 9, the headache has already set in.

I forgot to make a batch of cold brew coffee this past weekend (it’s an overnight process), and my old one-cup coffee maker met with a terrible end after I discovered it had been put away in the basement with coffee grounds inside. (Can you say ‘mold farm’?) Anyway, I went to my tried-and-true method of brewing coffee with a funnel.

It’s just folding a coffee filter, putting it in a coffee mug with some coffee grounds and pouring water over it. If you use a little funnel, it has an advantage over those one-cup-coffee gadgets that just sits on top of the cup and brews weak coffee. With the funnel, when you pour the water in, only so much water can actually go into the cup before it reaches some sort of equilibrium. The water gets stuck in the funnel, steeping until you lift the funnel out. A larger funnel will still work, but you get weaker coffee due to less steepage. (That is a word, spellchecker! Sheesh, live a little!)

See this very technical diagram, drawn on the back of my bank statement:

The funnel – almost as multitasky as a stool. (Get a hobby, spellchecker.)

Note: Someone is actually searching for this! To improve drainage, put a skewer or something between the filter and the funnel wall. Happy drinking!

Maggie over at Mighty Girl posts about stuff she wears on trips, which interests me, and she’s talked about circle scarves. See? Right there – ‘circle scarves’ is not something that enters my fashion-less vocabulary. However, the article intrigued me. The scarves you buy from stores are super-long and cost many dollars. I’m far too cheap to ever buy one, and far to insecure to wear one in public. I needed the experience of wearing one with minimal investment.

Initiate. prototype. sequence.

Old t-shirts with stains? Check.

Scissors? Check.

Wearable in the house? Check. Bring on the cold!

Wearable outside the house? Um, not really. But I probably will. (Lack of fashion sense, y’know.)

Also, after this was all over and I was patting myself on the back for being so resourceful and inventive, I googled it. Turns out I am very late to the cutting-up-t-shirts game. I made three – this white one (very warm), a gray one (not warm at all – it’s from a t-shirt from college that was threadbare and ancient), and a green one (men’s t-shirt – that’s the winner).

(Hey, here’s T.M.I. – for the past couple of years, I can’t have anything touch the front of my neck. No turtlenecks, no scarves touching the front – not even a sheet when I sleep. It icks me out and gives me a gagging feeling.)

Awesome.

Good luck, vampires. Try and get me and I’ll barf on you.

There were a couple of bare spots in the… in the… in the area of the back yard that doesn’t have a name yet. You know, the spot with the mulch and the rocks and the fire. Well, Brad started filling it in before he left, but I think he wants me to take more of an interest in the part of our house that is outside the house. So he left some obvious things that (a) I would be able to recognize as needing to be done and (b) would be able to do.

So I picked up some Pine Bark Nuggets (which I can’t say without thinking of the song No Name City from Paint Your Wagon). And proceeded to pretty much just dump it anywhere then kick it around a little bit. Mission accomplished.

Well, almost accomplished. We still need to figure out what to call that part of the outside of the house.

The rooms are still mostly empty, so there’s lots of room for driving. There were tracks everywhere. I bet he did 2 miles.

Today I had a goal to get to Lincoln and get a different haircut. Lloyd and Brad went along for moral support, but first we spent a little time doing some internet searching. Brad searched for ‘hairstyles for women of a certain age’. Grrrrr….. He came up with Martha Stewart’s ‘do.

I made a page of internet photos to show what I liked and didn’t care for. (Note to self: That was a good idea.) I only had the vague idea that I wanted it shorter than my shoulders, and I’d like to try the layer-y thing.

Jaime did a fine job. She was very thorough, and it took a long, long time. I was done talking a third of the way in, but kept being polite and social so she wouldn’t get mad and give me a mohawk for my impolitenesss.

It’s alright, but will take some getting used to. As always, though, it matters very little to me, because I almost never see my head.

Case in point: Beth had an UppercaseLiving party a couple of weeks ago where you can order vinyl words for your walls, and while I love having words all over, I was having trouble figuring out what to get and what it should say. You could order standardized, heart-warming phrases or make up your own. Lloyd and I had some good chuckles coming up with our own, but Lloyd’s won out.

It’s true, isn’t it? So, so true. *sniff*

Yesterday we had the data in a handy table. Nice, but who wants to take that kind of time? Today we have the same information culled from state by state news reports, blog posts and tweets. Click on a state for more specific data.

Technical Details: a python script grabs the state by state data from google and twitter then saves an xml file that the flash map (from the lovely people at amMap) displays.

You might also be interested in these fine people:

• The Undead Report especially their map.
• Zombies Defined especially their tip of the week
• The Zombie Research Society especially their Keller Zombie Survival Scale
• ZombieDefense.org
• Zombies Are Coming
• Zombie Reporting Center

Wake-up time:
First thing you do:
Shower before or after breakfast?
Shampoo?
Conditioner?
Soap?
Average time in shower?
Toothpaste flavor:
Hair routine:
Breakfast?

I’ll start: (That will keep the above copy-and-paste-able)
Wake-up time: 5:15
First thing you do: Put on my glasses, which is funny because I wear them for three minutes and then take them off again.
Shower before or after breakfast? Before
Shampoo? J.R. Liggett’s herbal bar shampoo
Conditioner? Pantene
Soap? Dove – the white kind
Average time in shower? 10 minutes (the water’s off & on, though)
Toothpaste flavor: Tom’s mint something, paste – not gel
Hair routine: towel, let sit while I eat & check the web, hair dryer, two squirts of hairspray, then sigh that it doesn’t look better.
Breakfast? Cereal – generic Honey Nut Cheerios (from the giant bag).

Sparkle Cartel is a ‘we have one thing right now in limited supply so hop to it and buy one before it’s gone’ kinda place, so when Lloyd said he liked this style of ring, I had purchased two before he finished speaking. A size 7 and a size 9. Select! Add to cart! Check out now! Confirm my order! Pay! Done!

(then read – ‘Comfort fit bands tend to run 1/2 size large, therefore we recommend ordering a 1/2 size smaller than your regular ring size.’) (Dang.) (Double Dang.)

They are too big. In fact, I’m not actually sure what my ring size is, so this was a major goof.

To make matters worse, before I got home Lloyd checked the website and they had the ring that he really wants.

We will not be buying it.

Triple Dang.

I like movies, and there are a fair number that I always meant to see, but I never did. Now if someone mentions a movie they like, or I see a reference to one that sounds interesting I just add it to the list (there’s an app for that). My list is about 12 movies long, so it’s about 3 months later that they send me that movie. It’s always a surprise when it arrives. Their turn-around time is amazing. If I put a movie in the mail on Thursday I get a new movie on Saturday.

But there are some drawbacks. Since we started we’ve rented 36 movies and spent about $99.00 doing so. Roughly $2.75 a movie. Much cheaper than going to a movie, but maybe not worth it if you compare it to renting movies in Seward (which costs around $2.00). Except we never do.

The other big downer is that I always feel like I should watch the movie right away to that I’m getting my money’s worth. There are no late fees, but if I sit on it too long then I feel like I’m wasting my $8.99 per month.

There are currently 14 movies in the queue, and I don’t know if I’ll keep going after that. Lauren doesn’t use it much on her computer anymore, and my dad is retired from the Post Office, so I don’t have to worry about covering his paycheck.

There’s a neat NetFlix feature where you can see what your friends are watching. So far Kristi is my only friend. If you have NetFlix, will you be my friend?

I bought some things that I needed, but on impulse I also ordered a combination spoon/fork. It arrived today, but ‘spork’ is a word too lowly for this beautiful, gadget-y thing.

“Foroon” sounds much better. I christened it by eating ice cream with Grasshopper cookies mashed in.

Verdict: The bowl of the spoon is a bit too deep for ice cream consumption, but I will totally keep it in my bag in case of an eating emergency.

First: I was….. 11? 12? and was picked – out of the three other girls my age in our congregation – to sing Mary’s solo. While flattered, this was my first time singing in front of people and I was terrified. I figured it wouldn’t be so bad if I couldn’t see the people, so I took off my glasses. So, here I was – a shaking, myopic Mary – sitting on a hay bale so I wouldn’t tower over the 6-year-old Joseph at my side. Awesome. Just awesome.

Second: I wasn’t actually in the program for this one, and I must have been – 6? 7? Anyway, we sat behind a woman who wore a TON of perfume and apparently I’m allergic. My eyes were swollen and teary, and I later I was too distracted by my constantly runny nose to appreciate the fantastic Barbie kitchen that Santa brought. I couldn’t help it – my head was melting.

Ah, Christmas programs as a child. Full of terror, tears, and “Slow down! You’re talking too fast! Speak up!”

The Chemistry and Biology classes had much better weapons*, but couldn’t figure out how to deliver them, so the physicists were ultimately victorious.

*Classical, not modern physics, you twit.

Yes, she’s in his shirt with her evil eyes.

I can’t take credit for this, since I saw it on Slashfood a while ago, but we had french toast made in a waffle iron. The Texax toast pieces fit in my cheap-o Belgian waffle maker perfectly!

I liked them a lot. I was so pleased with the result, we made garlic toast for dinner the same way! Slap some butter on both sides of bread, sprinkle on a little garlic salt, then leave them in there a couple of minutes to get really crispy. The best part is how they break off into little strips, then squares, perfect for filling with sauce. I shouldn’t have even made noodles.