How many is one a day?

I'm sure it's no surprise to that I have issues. They are varied and plentiful.

I consider myself to be a reasonable healthy person, but that doesn't stop me from inventing sundry ailments that cause me to hold mini-medical dramas every couple of months — some are concluded with an actual diagnosis, others are all in my head (big surprise — sistah has to keep her daily quotient of drama in the danger-red zone).

After the last mini-drama, I was reminded that I'm anemic. My doctor suggested taking a multivitamin laced with iron as part of a way to replace my flagging iron levels.

I told Bill of my need for a multivitamin and he dutifully came home with some.

I started taking them in the morning with the other perscription I now take (a drug that not only keeps my blood-pressure whipped into submission but has also reduced the number of migraines I get dramatically — so Woot! to that).

After about a week of taking the vitamins, I asked Bill if he thought I should be taking two vitamins a day. He looked at me, took the bottle from my hand and read the label, "One a day. Seems to me you should take one a day, but you may want to call the doctor just to make sure." Then he made that smug face that made me fall in love with him those many years ago.

Smart ass bastard.

But once the novelty of taking daily pills wore off, I started to forget to take them in the morning.

To remedy the situation, I started carrying the two pill bottles around in my bag with me. Then I could take them with my muffin the morning.

But there's a problem. I think I got a defective vitamin bottle; the lid keeps coming off and spreading my one-a-days amongst my camera, books, pens and other bag crap that I carry around.

The first couple of times this happened, I quickly scooped all the errant vitamins out of my bag, back into the bottle and firmly replaced the lid. But because I have to open the bottle everyday and because I can't be held responsible for closing the bottle firmly everyday, they keep spilling.

I've grown tired of rescuing the beige ovoids from the horrors of being free range in my bag.

Now, each morning I root around in the bottom of my bag, pull out a pill, inspect it for foreign material and ingest it. Good enough ... at least I remember to do this once a day.

more thoughts on myspace

Ever since I really began looking at Sean's myspace.com page, I've had some realizations.

One realization is that these kids aren't really doing anything different than teenagers of my or any other generation ... except for the fact that they are doing it in plain view of the world or at least the cyberworld.

They are publishing public comments in a forum that they naively believe is just for them, like somehow anyone over 21 can't see computer screens — like we're dogs that can only see 3-D. That in its self proves that they are very much like every other teenager who ever walked the earth ... inherently stupid.

Also I came to realize that they have created for themselves a community where they are both simultaneously connected to everyone, yet utterly alone.

They sit by themselves in front of their computers instant messaging their friends — both actual friends and virtual ones — being completely connected to all that is going on in their world without ever uttering a word or laying eyes on the flesh of another person.

Honestly, I'm fine with that.

The longer Sean's ensconced in his cyberworld, he's safely away from the actual flesh of teen girls. And really there's nothing a parent can say that will overide the power of girl flesh. *shudder*

I also realized that as advanced as these kids thing they are, they are still kids none the less. The pictures they choose to adorn their myspace account really says it all.

This is the picture on Sean's account:
Check him out, trying to look all cool.

Then look here:
This is Bill's nephew, Ryan. He's the same age as Sean. It's a good thing that Ryan has his cyberworld, because it's going to be a long time before he gets close enough to take a whif of actual girl flesh.

'cause some people just can't stand burnt bread

Margaret, with her serious, "I know something" face, says the other day, "My friend at school, she's black-toast intolerant. She can't have milk."

Black-toast intolerant.

We laughed. She got mad.

Sounds like the beginnings of a hit song.

(For those interested, you can read about the resolution of the myspace/Sean conflict here.)

Paying homage

Saturday night saw my band, Riveter paying homage to our namesake Rosie the Riveter, like only a girl band can.

Earlier in the week we trundeled ourselves to Murdoch's Ranch Supply in search of some Rosie-the-Riveter-type coveralls.

We had been wanting to dress up like a Rosie for a long time and decided now was that time.

We paraded around the feed store trying on accessories and checking ourselves out before we knew we had the right ones.

We decided on these blue jumpsuits as they are lightweight, comforable and most importantly they were ripe for the pimping.

We each took our coveralls home with the promise that we'd adequately bedazzle them for our Saturday night show.

It took some doing, but we all tricked them out superstar style.

We all added patches with our new rockstar monikers. Kelley is, of course, KP (for Kelly Pants) as her fan club so aptly named her. Laurena became La La or Professor La La as one of the students in her department began calling her. Bridget (whose jumpsuit we didn't get a good picture of unfortunately) is now the Machine due to her drumming prowess. And I've adopted the stage name that I've been wanting Margaret to use, Midge.

We learned that these things are pretty much impervious to a nuclear war. Laurena bleached hers and even sanded the legs in an attempt to distress her outfit and give it more street cred. It just wasn't happening. The fabric on these things is so durable that hers looked just as it did when she pulled it off the rack ... except that it's been cut and adorned to fit our active rockstar lifestyle.

The amazing thing is that not only are they imprevious to bleach and sanding but they don't absorb smells either. So instead of smelling like a barroom floor at the end of the night, these things still smelled like new.

Needless to say, we were suitably cute and got lots of great feedback on their general hotness. The question now remains, do we wear them to our Sept. 9 show at the Larimer Lounge in Denver?

These are the people in your blogosphere

I like to read other people's blogs.

You can see the people whose blogs I read listed over there on the right.

I read most of those blogs whenever they update.

There's one blog that is not listed over there that I do check it on a regular basis.

But I never really read it. I just look at the pictures.

I'm sure he's very interesting, but it's like Playboy, I don't really care. I just want to see what pictures he's got going on.

This is a picture of the guy whose blog I look at but never read:
Here's the link to his blog.

I'll give you one guess as to why I find him so fascinating (and it's not the snappy hair clip he's sporting here).

Yeah, it's the eyepatch.

There's something about the eyepatch that is so ... retro, intriguing, unusual.

I could probably read on his blog somewhere just what happened to his eye, but I like to pretend that he's a pirate with a bent for shopping and chocolate, oh and boobies. He seems to have a lot of mams on his site lately. But that's very piratey, so it goes with the theme I've invented.

And now that I think about it, this isn't so strange for me. Richie and I invented complete life histories for all of the people who won awards and were pictured in our companies yearly awards magazine. We figured out who liked to participate in Civil War re-enactments and who spent too much time looking at Internet porn.

But lots of people do that, right?

I heart Google

So Mar had her first piano lesson yesterday. You can read about that here.

I've been running like that perverbial chicken sans cabeza and in my spare moments I've been stalking Sean's myspace page with a vengence.

I feel better after an IM conversation he and I had yesterday afternoon, but I'm still completely freaked about the whole "best way to parent a teen" thing.

Is there really a "best way" to parent a teen?

Laurena said that her kids were going to be spending all their spare time in intensive Bible study. That doesn't sound half bad.

On an unrelated but still completely uninteresting note, I did read about the phenomenon of the Google twin and now I've been stalking my Google twin.

See, you find your Google twin by Googling your own name. Then you can learn about other people with your same name or your Google twin.

This is what I know about my Google twin:

He or she (having a unisex name makes it a bit ambiguous) lives in Troutville, Virginia. (Don't say "Troutville.")

This person went to law school at Washington and Lee University. (Ohh, my Google twin could so get me out of a parking ticket.)

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (Mr. Goodcoffee?), a member of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, has named my Google twin to represent Virginia's Sixth Sixth District at the sixth annual “Angels in Adoption” banquet, which will be held in Washington, D.C. The banquet honors one nominee from each congressional district who is making a difference in the lives of children through adoption. (My Google twin is all up in the grill of that congressman — whoa!)

And finally, my Google twin is a qualified guardian ad litem for children in district 24.

So, what have I learned? My Google twin is a way better person than I am. The Google hits that come up on me personally show that I'm in a band and I have a kid. Um, woo? Yeah.

Damn that Google twin for being all productive and contributing to society in a thoughtful and caring way.

The evil stepmom

Damn, being an evil stepmother is hard work.

Mostly because I'm not sure how much or how little to get involved. My stepson is 15 and inherently a very good kid.

But lately he's been making some really stupid choices.

I see no reason to lecture him. He's smart and knows the difference between right and wrong. What he doesn't know if the difference between is up and down.

Stupid teenagers with the thinking they know shit.

Stupid adults with the thinking that they can some how prevent stupid teenagers from thinking they know shit.

It's making my blood pressure go up. I'm sure that I think I have an ulcer.

My kid's 6. I should have 7 or 8 years before I have to start tearing my hair out, but I can't just leave Sean out there to hang himself.

Lord, give me strength.

It's an update

Yeah, so the first day of school was survived by all in the McCracken family.

I'm going to write about Midge's first couple of days on my Haute Mamas blog for Thursday so I won't belabor the topic here.

So what's left ... oh yeah, the one thing that has been on my mind since I found out about it last week — Riveter's playing the Larimer Lounge in Denver.

Woooo! Hoo.

I'm very excited and I'm motivated.

I spent two days last week scouring the 800 myspace friends on the Larimer Lounge's page and adding bands that weren't too scary.

Then today, I pimped our page. Check it out.

No really, click on the link. I'll wait. I can totally keep myself company while you lookit.

Nice, huh. Yeah, I know, it's not fab, but it's better than it was so cut me some slack already. It's not like I'm fully versed in HTML or anything.

Did you notice the free ticket to our show in Denver? Yeah, we totally have free tickets for anyone who wants to come. It's a sweet deal.

Damn, it's almost time to go pick up my kid from the pit that is the after school program she attends, so I'll have to leave this entry incomplete and in limbo.

School time

It's the first day of school for everyone in our family today.

Last night we got all our respective school gear ready and tried to get to sleep early.

Mar woke up a couple of times and I was restless all night. I kept worrying about Mar forgetting her lunch or Sean getting hijacked on the bus ride home (which is ludicrous in that the kid is so buff he could kick much ass if he needed to).

The alarm seemed especially early this morning as Bill got up to get Sean to his first day of his sophomore year. Three more years of school for him ... what is it with kids and the growing up?

I got up as usual and went to work. I got some of my Monday morning tasks done and came back home so I could walk Mar to her first day of first grade. You can read about that experience here on my Haute Mamas blog.

I tried not to cry and even though I said I didn't in my Haute Mamas post, I did a little while I was sitting here at my desk like some sort of pathetic pollyanna.

Classes start at the college, too.

Bill's got an incredible pile on his plate this semester. He's working with two brand new instructors in his program. He's teaching a math class at night and he's got to begin work on the projects funded by the $450,000 National Science Foundation grant projects they won.

I'm surprised he doesn't have an ulcer. It makes me nauseated just thinking about it.

And I start teaching my class tonight.

I really enjoy teaching this class, but man, it's just another thing filling up my bucket.

I keep thinking that at some point, I'm going to have to cut back on something. But why? So I can have more time watching television?

I think about the people who have one job and wonder how they spend all their time. Then I remember that I used to have one part-time job ... and that's it. No kids, no class to teach, no band. I didn't have hobbies, but I sure as hell watched a hole poop-pot fully of the Gameshow Network.

I need stuff to do even if I whine about having too much stuff to do.

Emenemily the Dill Weed Donor

Please take a moment and read the comment on my last entry from Emily.

Emily is my co-worker who is flying the coop and heading south for winter that is her life.

I'm glad for her but oh-so-sad for me. Who, just who, is going to be my dill-weed donor now?

I hate saying good bye to people, so tonight when we're hanging out in my front yard making the new neighbors hate us, I hope to get my fill of Emily — which is going to be hard because I have the most amazingly bizarre conversations with her.

I'm gonna miss you, Emily. Please spend lots of time at your new job goofing off and reading this blog ... and leaving comments.

Parting gifts

I've always wanted to be on a game show, Price is Right, Jeopardy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, whatever.

I figure I would have a hard time winning, but it sure would be fun to play a game then get great parting gifts.

What a great concept — the parting gift, that is.

Or at least I thought it was until I started accruing parting gifts of another sort.

It seems that whenever someone I've befriended at work leaves, they give me a token, an item by which to remember them.

Here are some things that sit on my desk that used to sit on someone else's.

And while I am truly saddened by the departure of my friends — those people who make my day-to-day work life so enjoyable — I am glad to have such things to remember them by.

My most recent aquistion is the jar of herbs pictured on the right of the picture.

Yep, that's dill weed. (Snicker, I said dill weed.)

I love calling people dill weed. I use it as a derogative. It sounds so bad and it really isn't — it's a herb. It's like calling some one ginger or marjoram (which I would never do becuase I haven't the faintest idea how that is even pronounced).

But still, I've given it that connotation and now I have a jar of it sitting on my desk.

My plan is for it to sit prominently so that I will be asked why I have a jar of dill weed on my desk. My planned reply is "So people will know."

Man, I crack myself up ... oh well, even if all my friends leave, I'll always have me.

Bummer

I keep getting spam comments in older entries. I was gonna just ignore them but I started getting several a day, so I've had to limit comment to those who register.

It sucks but on the plus side, it's not hard to register if you wanna leave a comment. And I always encourage legitimate comments.

So come on, let's hear what you've got to say.

Look out Denver

Here comes Riveter.

Yep, we got ourselves a bona fide gig in Denver at the Larimer Lounge on Sept. 9.

That's right, THE Larimer Lounge, the one voted AOL's CityGuide Best Music Club for 2006. And it's won various awards from West Word, like Best New Rock Club in 2003, Best Rock Club in 2004 and Best Small Venue in 2005.

Here's what Frommer's has to say about Larimer Lounge:

This bar on old Larimer Street has been serving drinks since 1892 and serving loud punk rock and alternative music since 2003. The place is out of the hustle and bustle of LoDo, in an old neighborhood east of Broadway, and has seen such national acts as J Mascis and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club take the stage. The average patron is young, tattooed, and a bit rough around the edges.

And that's how we like our fans, young, tattooed and a bit rough around the edges. Sounds like a match made in heaven.

We've got a big show coming up here in town at the Spotlight Lounge — a venue that we love and was the first club we ever played. Then we're off to Denver next month.

Oh yeah, baby.

Check that shit out ... that's the backpack that Midge is going to start carrying to 1st grade next week.

Next week.

Next week my kid starts the first grade. How the hell did that happen?

Last night we went to Target to buy all the "because the school says so" required supplies and all the "because mama says so" not actually required, but definitely useful supplies: Crayons (pronounced "cran" not "crown" like some misinformed people around here like to say), markers, paints, paper, notebooks, glue (two bottles — as Bill says, "One for gluing and one for eatin'."), colored pencils, the aforementioned Hello Kitty backpack complete with giant pink rhinestone adorning Miss Kitty's ear bow, lunch box (they aren't boxes anymore, but insulated bags) and a soup carrier ... or thermos to those who aren't 6 and obsessed with the idea of carrying soup to school — now really what kind of kid obsesses about carrying soup to school? I was convinced that all soup was toxic sludge until I was about 20 years old.

So she's got all the necessary (and unnecessary) crap to start school. And more importantly, the purchase of these supplies has cranked up her enthusiasm for school exponentially.

But Monday is still going to suck. She's going to get scared and shy and I'm going to cry, hopefully not until after we drop her off.

I'm equal parts excited and terrified of these landmark days. Growth and change are inevitable but it doesn't mean that it's easy.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

We have the good fortune to have friends with neat stuff.

Neat stuff like this cabin about an hour out of town, up on Grand Mesa:
This is where we spent our weekend. It was glorious.
It rained and the wind blew at night and was warm (not hot) and sunny during most of the day. I sat on that porch for a good portion of Saturday afternoon while Bill helped our friend, Tom, cut wood for the winter.

Margaret, who Tom nicknamed Midge, learned how to cut up a salad. I was under strict orders to only supervise the knife usage, but to let Midge to the actual work — which was hard work for this slightly neurotic mom (yeah OK, perhaps the correct modifier should be "desperately pathetic and completely neurotic" but I'm gonna cut myself some slack this Monday morning).
We hiked down to the creek a couple of times.

Midge loved walking along the rocks and trying to dam up the falls. I loved sitting my sorry ass on a warm rock and reading my book (I read this crazy memoir and really enjoyed it).
Bill caught a fish.

I would have gotten a better picture but the darn fishy couldn't keep its gills shut for half a second while I zoomed in and flopped out of Bill's hand.And we saw more different varieties of mushrooms than I've ever seen anywhere before. I took a bunch of pictures and I am hoping to identify them.

I need a good mushroom book.

Daughter knows best

It seemed like teaching Margaret to read was a good thing.

OK maybe it is, but it's given her so much power.

Yesterday when I got home from work, I threw on a tank and a pair of shorts and went out to wash our very dirty car (now our car is often very dirty, but recently it was coated with a very-sticky, yellow, granular substance that was sprayed all over the parking lot at my work from the fish-food manufacturing plant across the street — and let me tell you, as messy as their explusions are, the smell is even worse).

Mar and Bill helped me try to get the car clean (I noticed this morning that the windows are still all stickied up with fish goo). Afterward we were hanging out in the front yard.

Mar noticed the t-shirt I was wearing and read it aloud:
"Chicks kick ... ass? Does that say, 'Ass'?"

When I told her that my shirt did indeed say "ass," she promptly told me, "You should not wear that shirt around the neighborhood. You are setting a bad example for the kids."

I was equally horrified and delighted by her comments.

Being told that you are a bad example by your 6-year-old child is more than a bit disconcerting. And I was hoping that she wouldn't figure this out until she was at least 8.

But on the other hand, I love that she has the presense of mind to not only recognize that moms shouldn't be a display case of profanities but that I should have the decency to remedy the sitution ... which I eventually did.

I hate it when my kid knows better than I do.

Birthday boy

It's Bill's birthday today.

He's ... old, but it's cool. Getting old beats the alternative.

Lookit this picture I took of him earlier this week when he had to spend two days digging out the back-flow preventor plumbing again and again on our sprinkler system until it stopped leaking.
You can tell he was really enjoying himself.

For his birthday, I got him ... a gift that he hasn't received yet so I don't want to ruin the surprise. But I can say that while it's nice, it's not nearly as nice as the bike he got me for my birthday.

He always gets ripped off when it comes to birthday presents. See, my birthday is at the beginning of the summer when we still have money from my teaching and whatnot. Bill's birthday is at the end of the summer when we're broke.

Yeah, it sucks for him, but it rocks for me, so who am I to complain.

But we are going away for the weekend to celebrate — not too far which is good because I'm not in the mood for any long-distance driving. But far away that we won't have cell-phone reception and we will have access to a gorgeous sliver of nature complete with a trout-filled stream that Mar can throw rocks in all day long.

I'm looking forward to doing a whole bunch of nothing. Bill's looking forward to doing some fishing. And Mar will most likely be looking forward to doing her typical compliment of whinning alternating with being hilariously entertaining.

Good times.

All for yoga and yoga for all

I've been known to do yoga at home.

I've taken a bunch of classes and have a couple of books. I like to get up early sometimes (my alarm is set early so I have time for some sun salutations, but I rarely actually drag my sorry bag of bones out of bed and do it), but I often practice before I go to bed (and I always sleep better when I do).

Rarely do I practice yoga during the day or when Mar's around — not for any reason other than the house is quiet only when the kid is asleep.

So I find it remarkable that Margaret has taken such a strong interest in doing yoga herself.

Yesterday, I came home from work to find this:
She had the yoga book with all the pictures out and spent the afternoon going through all the poses — all by herself.

This isn't her first foray into yoga by herself, I wonder what motivates her to seek out the therapeutic benefits of this practice. Regardless, I guess it's time to find a mommy and me yoga class.

It's not good bye, it's good bye

"I'm glad for you, but sad for me."

I 've said that more times than I'd like to count recently.

A whole slew of people are abandoning ship at my work and I don't like it much. A couple are good friends of mine and Bill's and Margaret's.

When I first started working here, a sage co-worker advised me to not make friends in the newsroom. Not because the reporters aren't worthy, but by the nature of the business and the size of this newspaper (it's a smaller community newspaper — perfect for cutting one's teeth and using as a stepping stone), there is a lot of turnover.

Because I'm an utter nincompoop, I rarely heed such good advice. And now I'm watching a couple good friends get ready to leave.

One such friend is Emily. She's not just my friend but Margaret's, too (and she reads this blog, so I'll just be careful to only write about her many postive features and offer that I'm sure she would never set fire to anything or rinse shoes where she shouldn't).

Today for a brief time, I had Margaret in the office with me. I had forwarned her that Emily was going to be moving away to live closer to her family. Margaret was honestly distraught.

While we were visiting with Emily, Margaret very boldly told Emily that she was "big enough now to live by herself."

Ah, the observations of a 6-year-old.

Emily tried to explain that her brother had children that she wanted to see grow. Mar's response, "Ewwwww!"

I mean, how could someone pick their own flesh and blood over her? She is Margaret after all, daughter of Robin.

I should note that Margaret now owns her very own, "It's all about me" t-shirts. She and I should have our picture taken while wearing them.

Aw! He's so sweet

Y'all can see from the guest post from Uber-husband, I've got myself a kick-ass husband.

Lookit how cute he is after a long night of drinking and carrying on:
Bill's birthday is Thursday. But it was decided that instead of just a birthday "day," we'd celebrate his birthday week.

So Saturday Mar and I baked a cake (you'll can read about my love affair with the Easy Bake Oven on my Haute Mamas blog) and planned a typical Saturday evening front-yard hang.

It turned about to be less than usual in that we met some fun new people ... normally it's the fun old people. Oh and we had cake that I made ... that's unusual.

Sunday I forced Sean to mow our lawn for free as a nice thing for his dad. He didn't seem convinced that him mowing the lawn was really the nice thing that he wanted to be doing, but I'm persistent and a bit scary, so he relented.

We spent most of the afternoon at the pool. I even got the bottom of my swim suit wet. Yes, people, I got in the pool. First time this year.

Sean had a friend over to spend the night ... or at least I'm pretty sure he did. The kid got to our house, they went into Sean's room and that was the last I saw of 'em.

I could hear giggling so I assumed they weren't dead, but you never really know with teenagers.

Bill checked on them several times and even woke them up this morning to watch Margaret while he ran an errand. But as of lunch, there was still no actual sightings of the elusive teenagers on my part. The phone has rung several times only to be answered by the giggling voices in the front bedroom.

All I care is that they aren't doing anything illegal, they aren't doing anything gross that I find out about and that they aren't making a bunch of weird teenager noise.

So far so good.

Day off for rivetergirl — guest blogger Bill Halen

Hola Rivetergirl fans, hope to not disappoint but this is uberhusband-Bill Halen sittin' in for the day. I usually enjoy being an unemployed bum during the summer and was hesitant to write this when asked (see unemployed bum) but, decided, why not! It's not like I'm going to paint the house or anything (we are on the 3 year house painting plan).

Now I know my lovely wife usually writes about herself, it is all about her after all, huh honey, so I will continue with that tradition and write about her also only with the uberhusband slant. Rivetergirl and I have now been together 7 years and time has flown by, I'm sure you all have seen pics of wee-one our little sweetheart, who, just the other day, was telling me that she is no longer a little kid but an adult. When I tryed to convince her that she needed to slow down and that she was still a kid and had cool kid stuff yet to do, she looked at me and patted my knee and said " No dad, I'm an adult now, really." I tried to point out that she didn't even have adult teeth yet, but she was having none of it, she just retorted " It's OK dad, I go down the waterslide by myself, I'm an adult." Where she gets that determination and conviction, I don't know, huh honey.

As you know Rivetergirl plays in an all girl rock band "Riveter" who are truly Grand Junction's Sweethearts. I remember when Rob first told my they were statring the band, I was excited and totally supportive, but they have surpassed my wildest dreams for them. They work hard and are truly my favorite band ever!

Robin is absolutely the love of my life, I adore her and appreciate her sense of humor, her quick wit and her beauty. She is my soulmate and lover for life, I am definitely a blessed man! What else can I say except thanks for reading and peeking in to our lucky monkey life and as our favorite songwriter Eddie Spaghetti says: "... much too good to be true. It's in my blood and in her life, far between and way to few, but I hope it happens for you!" BH

More on Bill

I love this picture of Bill.

He's all cute playing his little harmonica and stuff. Lookit him:I think he prefers not to be "cute" as much as he'd like to be "hardcore" as seen in the picture below:
Look at his head, it looks like it's about to spin completely off his neck; like he's on the verge of a pea soup eruption.

Katy don't

Do you see it?

Right there on the big leaf.

It's a katydid or a walking leaf bug or the bug that will likely end up dismembered on my bathroom floor.

They are such crazy bugs — all making noise and being all flat.

But as deft as they are at being incognito, my cats can not only see them but catch them and fillet them like a sous chef ... and they don't have thumbs.

Saturday night, after a long, long night at the Wrong Impressions show, I came home to find not one but two lime-green bug carcasses and their various legs and heads strewn around the house.

I hate when that happens.

Google Girl and the Flaming Carrot

Google girl: whatcha doin?
Me: feelin' all good about myself, the job I did this week while (my co-worker) was gone and being happy that I have a good jump on weekend pages. (I'm so smug here I could smack myself — I still might.)
GG: good for you'
Me: How about you?
GG: looking at people who dress up like carrots
Me: fer reals?
GG: that makes me laugh just typing it
Me: yeah
GG: wanna see
Me: um yes!
GG: k
GG: http://www.flamingcarrot.com/FC/FanGallery/FCcostumes.html
GG: i'd make a great character on the office*
GG: the girl who always is googling stuff
Me: yep and is totally funny
GG: what the hell is this website and why do they like to dress up like carrots?
Me: and they don't dress their wholeselves up, just their heads.
GG:i know
Me: that kind of freaks me out
GG: i really don't understand
GG: there's no explanation except that people have been doing it since the eighties
GG: is it a band tribute????
Me: uh, i dunno
GG: me either
GG:they make action figures too

That was the iChat conversation I had with one of my most favorite people and co-workers last week. She googled "pictures of carrots" and was led to the land of the Flaming Carrot.

After our extensive research, we learned that the Flaming Carrot — despite the vigorous assertions by another co-worker that the Flaming Carrot is some sort of homosexual avatar — is a surrealistic comic-book hero.

I never learned what about the carrot-headed dude made him special. I also could never get over the fact that he was a regular guy except for a giant carrot head and flippered feet. But I did learn how to make a Flaming Carrot costume.

If I cared more and had less of a life, I'd totally make this costume ... because, like the Web page says, "Flaming Carrot gets allllll the ladies."


*That's a reference to the American TV show, "The Office." Google Girl doesn't actually watch the show as she finds the situations and characters too similar to events and people that work in our office.