Jitterbug's Beat

Correction.

The "white van" in the post below apparently was not a white van at all.  It was some other type of car.  I could have sworn, as the story unfolded, that I had at least five confirmations of a white van.  But, as it stands, that's the only constructive criticism I got. Say it with me people:  Not. A. White.  Van.  Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

What to do with a long weekend.

Camping is fun.  Camping in LaPine is more fun.  Camping in LaPine on the motorcycles with 16 of your most entertaining friends is the mostest fun.  That's what I did over Memorial Day weekend.  We took off Friday morning 'round 10-ish after loading up the bikes in JW's front yard, and it was a mustache kind of morning.  My gloriously, ridiculously mustachioed man woke me by pouncing on the bed on all fours, like a kid at Christmas.  Do all men do that?  We managed to get packed up with nary a fight - extremely unusual in high-pressure-time situations - and on our way.  

I got about 114 miles into the trip before things started to feel not so great - you take a sunburn on the face, and then blow dust, rocks and bugs into it at 70 mph.  It's involuntary dermabrasion.  Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have another rider to take over for me the rest of the way to the camp site, and I cooled off in the car with my friend A.  

We'd been worried while riding into town - there were SO many cars - we were thinking the campsite would be packed, but we completely lucked out and found enough space for everyone to be together.  I would NOT say that was lucky for anyone camping probably within a 50-mile radius of us... yes, we're grownups, but we're loud.  Some of us burp, others swear, and all of us laugh, LOUDLY... and what can I say?  Except sorry, folks, who came out there for peace and quiet and nature over the long weekend... I want you to know I felt guilty, but not enough to stop having a blast.  Really especially sorry about that day we all roared off on the bikes at 2 in the afternoon, lulled you all into a false sense of serenity, then blasted back into camp around 2 in the morning just as raucous as ever... yeah, my apologies.  

Anyhoo, camping involved a rousting game of Apples to Apples - poor Tongo for having brought it, being teased mercilessly about having brought a "board game" to camp... "Aw what the hell Tongo?  Board games?  That's so stupid..." et cetera, et cetera... few dozen beers later... "This game is SO COOL..."   Breakfast at the truck stop, where our waitress was great, but all the rest of the locals (?) looked at us as if we were ... well dirty bikers dressed in black and leather... which we were, but still, we're harmless!  And quite nice.  We rode into town to take over the local Karaoke bar where we sang rousting renditions of such classics as "Push It," "Ice Ice Baby," "Islands In the Stream," "Looks like we made it,"  and many, many more.  On the way, M ran into some relatively fresh roadkill and arrived at the bar with (seriously) meat on his face.  His poor wife's pantleg was covered with what used to be deer.  And his bike fared even worse, as we discovered in the morning when we picked it up.   There's actual deer jerky in that picture there.  Poor thing.

    

We went to dinner at this great old-fashioned honest-to-god cowboy ranch called the Cowboy Dinner Tree.  It's a big sit-down few-course meal consisting of salad, homemade biscuits, giant glasses of either iced tea or pink lemonade, either steak - and I mean STEAK - or a chicken, yes an entire chicken, dessert and the best cup of coffee I've ever had in my life - just so happens they boil it in a never-washed-out copper pot that's been aged for about 40 years or so.  The cream actually mooed at me.  Note to self: I simply must start aging a copper pot.  And get a cow.

We left dinner, and got a little ways down the road before one of our bikes inevitably ran out of gas.  Ask the two wives and one girlfriend sitting on the side of the road here, which one of them asked which one of the men at the gas station if they needed gas.  Now try to figure out which one of the men said "Oh of course not, I'm fine on gas."  Then ask yourself, how many men does it take to figure out how to siphon gas from one motorcycle into another?

 

And one more adventure on the way home with a very angry old man in a white van, deadlocked traffic and motorcycles - my gallant friends took off after this uber-pissed old man swerving around in a white van who cut them off and swiped a fellow motorcyclist's bike, then refused to pull over and exchange information. The van took off through a parking lot going about 25 mph - a CROWDED parking lot, trying to get away from the bikes, but the bikes kept up and stopped him in a dead end.  The boys "gently" albiet loudly and forcefully emphasized that he'd hit this man's bike, and he needed to exchange information.  And he did.  And away they went.  We arrived home dirty, dusty and tired on Monday night - and after sleeping on the ground for four days, wouldn't you know I couldn't sleep a wink in that comfy bed?  Oh and a side note, JW and I can't sing duets.  But it never keeps us from doing it.

 

More Tri-Met Tales of Terror.

Text messages between R & K on the bus coming home yesterday:

R:  this bus smells like that old stale cigarette smell. three bums got on at once and I thought we were being hijacked. smelly pirates. 
K: Bus Pirates!
R: Fucking bus pirates. I am not going to be a smelly bus pirates bitch?
K: You'll be their wench! Argh me matey!
R: Watch out for the hook!
K: That would be one hell of a reach-around. 
R: Boy is totally helping you out!
K: He's not even here! I'm offended. 
R: I am not saying you aren't creative it just sounded like Boy would say it.
K: I've been living with Boy too long.

Meanwhile, I was texting this to R & K - and YES, this is TRUE:

"The man in front of me is reading porn.  He has a pen and is crossing out certain girls and circling others.  I believe this is like Buffalo Bill ala Silence of the Lambs and he is deciding which parts to use for his skin suit.  The bus is a scary, scary place."

Happy cake-eating, indeed.

So I have been waiting and waiting for the perfect list to submit to McSweeny's - and at long last I found it while pulling pages off my printer at work!  I submitted it, but was denied.  STILL, I got an email back from McSweeny himself:

Hi, Kelly -

A fun one, but I'm afraid we aren't going to use it. Appreciate the look, though. Happy cake eating.

Best,
Chris

My list:
1. Recipe for Rich Butter Cake.
2. Recipe for Buttercream Frosting.
3. Recipe for Almond Petits Fours.
4. Article: Tone Your Abs at Work.

A tale of trees.

Earlier this week a co-worker gave me a tree – a Red Cedar – for earth day.  Apparently until they become gigantic 7-foot-trunk-ish-trees, you can keep them healthy in a pot indoors.  According to JW, you can also make rope out of their bark without harming them.  It's true.  He looked it up. 

I had been going to call him Bruce – because originally I thought he was a Spruce.

I was laying in bed and said to JW, “I’m going to call him Bruce!  Because he’s a Spruce!”  And he said, “No – he’s a Cedar.”  I went, “Cedar… cedar… what rhymes with cedar?”  And simultaneous we said, “PETER!”   Then I fell asleep trying to think of what tree rhymes with Jason. 

And what rhymes with Jason?

I couldn’t think of a damn thing – at least tree-wise. 

So I planted Peter last night, and realized I’d never re-potted the tiny Christmas tree I’d bought from Trader Joes, so I re-potted him, and I put him next to Peter, and decided HIS name would be Bruce.

Very agreeable. Downright Zombierific.

HOW on EARTH had I not yet heard about this??? 

With quotes like this one...

"Have your ninjas left you?"
"We never had any ninjas."
"No ninjas! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without any ninjas! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your safety."
Elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had not been the case. (126) 

...how can I not buy this book, I ask you?  The simple answer is, I can't.  I just bought a copy at Powells, damnit.

Yick.

Recently with our whopping two days of dry, warm weather, I was inspired to re-pot some plants.  I had a big bag of soil that had been sitting out back on my slab-deck for... a year-and-a-half?  How long have I lived at that place?  Anyhoo, I grabbed my plants and headed outside.  I knew there would be creepy crawlies in my soil bag - I'd prepared myself - I was wearing gloves, which somehow, I felt, would protect me.  And protect me they did, but not from the shock of what I opened the bag to.

Now in Alaska, we had slugs.  They were these tiny, stumpy brown lumps that would congregate in the beer bowls we'd set out in the strawberry patch in our yard.  Tiny, drunk, totally harmless.  I always thought - if you have go go, would drowning in beer really be that bad?  Well - it was my dad's Old Milwaukee, so ... yes.

Anyhoo, back to my soil bag.  The monster-mutant-slugos in my bag of soil were a much different breed than those of the harmless Alaskan variety.  There were probably six of them in all, roughly the length of my hand, and about half as wide.  They had spots - almost like camo - all over their backs, and antennae.  Freaking antennae.  I swear to god I saw one of them squint when I opened the bag and the light filtered in.  Not to be deterred, I shook them all into one side of the bag, then dipped my cup into the other side.  Then I made my pretty new Hyacinth stay outside overnight JUST in case one of those mutants stowed away. 

Now my Hyacinth is on the table inside, and the remaining soil, slugs included, resides in the dumpster.  I think it will make a happy home for them.  I shared this story with Molly, wishing I'd taken pictures of them - she suggested I take my camera and go dumpster diving - but I wasn't about to challenge those slugs on their own ground.  My saving grace is that they are legless.  If they had legs and ran like spiders, I might heebie-jeebie myself right into heart failure.

Proving yet again that great minds think alike.

Kristi, upon arriving at her desk this morning: "What the hell is this?  Looks like an elf condom."

Ryan rocks.

An email from him this morning:

"So I put some of those finger condoms around Kristi's desk.  It looks like an elf had relations on her keyboard."

Why is the iron in the back yard?

I have a book-a-day calendar, and recently the recommendation was for a book called The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design.  This features such stories as the farmer who protected himself from bees by tying a plastic bag over his head, the man who tried to weld a hand grenade to a chain and the homeowner who solved his termite problem by filling his house with natural gas.

A friend of mine suggested an alternate title: "Things-my-drunk-ex-roommate-would-do-on-a- Tuesday-Award." 

PS - This would be the same drunk ex-roommate who inspired the title of this post.