Holy shit

65 page views for crappy writing? Even with original artwork? Wow.

Had job interview today. Will post about it, after I completely process it. It might be positive, it might not.

So, greatness is coming... please be patient.  Just know that I got asked today by students if I liked beef jerky and what kind of firearms I own.

I ain't Strunk & White..

...but I was drunk and white 11 days ago. BOOMDIYADDA!

My inspirational source of finite awesomeness

It's a bestseller since 2000.

My own personal Strunk & White's Elements of Style (now on Amazon for $9.95! don't lose an argument due to your poor grammar!), my grandmother, emailed me five days ago about the infamous holiday "S". 


I quote: 

OOps!  Unless you are speaking of New Year's Day.  Which means the first day of the New Year.       


Happy Fifth Day of the New Year 2012 A.D.

I think she was in a hurry. Anyway, I'm sorry if the multitude of you were, for five days, laboring under the misapprehension that you were well-wishing it wrong all these years...


Hey Mary in Oklahoma! Thanks for the demand to post more. I can achieve.

That "s" business is just a colloquialism

In response to my previous post's title, my grandmother, a former English teacher, emails me:

"Sorry Pet...it is none of those.  It's the New Year or Happy New Year To You.  Hope you have a wonderful New Year.  How did you celebrate the New Year?   That "s" business, I'm afraid, is just colloquialism. "

Thanks GSus!

And since she wants to know how it went... here we go...

I struck a lovely combination of the two drawings... Fantastic hair, comfy sweater. I wore earrings, darling.

Did I ever tell you what my friend, Roo, says about wearing earrings when going out?

"No, I can't go to the local, darling. It's a bit grim. I don't want to go to a grim place. I've got earrings on. Fucking earrings, darling!"

I love her.

Because it's so true. My sense of dressed up style is indicated by what I think is "dressy", i.e., earrings, necklace, makeup, clean hair...and a belt. I ain't dressy if I isn't wearing a belt. Shoes optional.

So, the New Year Eve pub crawl began at the local regardless of my earlobe accoutrement. And I began the twitter...

Colpitts Pub

The blokes: Rob Scotty, John, and Bri who is Roo's husband

Excellent music choices at the Angel.

At some point while still at the Angel, I told a woman who was with us (for a short while) that I would happily foster her son and daughter-in-law's cat. I fully expect a call any minute.

This was outside the pub. The drink, it is my friend and warmed my brain.

Okay, so I got antsy and decided to take the rest of the tweets as one screen shot. They are in reverse order here... the top is the most recent tweet... so read from the bottom up for the reenacting or reliving vicariously through me.

Teenagers were crawling everywhere at the Angel. Some had pints in their hands, some had cigarettes...some had both. They were easily ignorable. I did commandeer the jukebox, choosing Radiohead, Johnny Cash and a couple of other songs... It was like home. 

However, the girl (old lady, possibly) in the red leather fringe boots was frowned upon by all in my group... Apparently, that's just not done. Snobs. I disagreed, 'murrican style! 

Went across the street to The Elm Tree to see if Rita and Mugsy (under-the-table-cash-bosses) were in. They weren't (yet, as I found out later) so it was decided that karaoke was a next must. According to the blokes, only one place for karaoke: The Fighting Cocks.

Outside Fighting Cocks pub. Very nice bouncer, I can't remember his name, but he knew  all three  men's names. Probably not a totally great thing.

There was no karaoke.

Taxi rank. Let me add now here that it was about 5:45 to 6:15 -ish pm.

We moved on to the Market Tavern from the dithering outside the Fighting Cocks. There, we got down to business...discussing politics and culture and cultural politics...

At the Market Tavern. I stood a round because, you know, I wanted to be a friend. John shall explain in the video:

John's the kind of guy who could "talk for England".

While at the Market Tavern, I get a text from Roo:

Roo: How is it going? Hope the boys are playing nice 

Me: Oh yrs (sic)*..they're talking me about Thatcher. And harry enfuelds women know your limits

Ruth: Indeed. Know your limits x 

Me: Am definitely past my limit 

*this means that I am writing verbatim the entirety of the text conversation.

Hmm, am now understanding tons more after watching this video. Was told that yogurt is the cure for a hangover.


Also, received communiques from SciMan...his responses to my asking if I could stay out just a bit longer were always "Yes". The blokes would always ask if I was in trouble whenever I sent a text, so I finally showed them what SciMan said about me staying out a bit later. To a man, each said, 

"Oh you're alright then."

I guess they're so used to having to try to interpret their women's texts when they're out on a night with the lads.

We leave the Market Tavern and mill about trying to decide what was next. I knew I was at my limit and I needed/wanted to let SciMan have his turn out with the lads. But not before we go back to The Fighting Cocks for one last pint for them, a "full fat" Coke for me. Since none of the lads were "on the pull", there was dancing like eejits, namely me and John. A grand time, definitely. And then homeward bound, where the taxi fare started at £4.50 and ended over £10. Normally, I would've taken a bus home, but buses stopped running at 6pm and I hadn't yet had my fill of drink by then. Ah well.

All total: 5.5 pints consumed that night, which I guesstimate to be about 15 Oklahoma beers. I got home around 8, maybe? Immediately I crashed onto the couch where I stayed until 5 am or so. SciMan joined up with the gang after I got back, so at least he got to have some good times too.


I'm okay with the tag-team party rounds one must do if one does not want to pay through the nose for babysitting, but someday I'd like to be able to stay awake, on purpose, on the New Year Eve.

Is it New Years, New Year's, or New Years'...

or does it matter? Any which way you put it, I hope yours is great. Me? I'm going to go out with a few friends at 3 pm.

Yes. I shall get my drink on from 3 to 6 pm because I fall asleep by 10 usually. Ideally, I will look something like this...

Regrettably, and in a way, predictably jejeune, I'll most likely end up going out like this:

So I'll come home and get my New Years/Year's/Years' kiss and then go to sleep. Pathetic. ABOUT THE GOING TO SLEEP EARLY PART NOT THE KISS PART! THE KISS PART IS AWESOMERAD! I mean, I'm still 17 in my head but I'm not physically capable of doing what my past-17-year-old self used to be able to do. That's the pathetic part.

What are you doing tomorrow night?

So I finally get around to playing with

my birthday present: a new Bamboo Tablet and drawing software.

self portrait. Whaddya think?

It's taken me five months to get around to actually sitting down with it. Oh yeah, I got a crockpot and hairdryer for Christmas. I used the hairdryer immediately upon receipt. 

What? I had dirty hair and needed a shower. Obviously my husband was telling me something without telling me something.


I took several days away from teh internetz and am slogging through all the new stuff on reddit and catching up on my Google Reader. Happily, I am doing this while watching one of SciMan's pressies, Blue Planet/Planet Earth/Frozen Planet. Orca whales are bastards.

In which I compare the local law enforcement to cats

Here's the 411 from a 405'er... Living in this part of Durham is like living with a cat. Without fail, every night, police sirens go by our window, heading south to Brandon (and Crook, I assume but that's just too obvious).

Making the connection yet? Well, it's like this: you cat owners have a cat. Cat is in a room. Cat decides to run at breakneck speed from that room to another, bottlebrush tail bristling. Cat comes to full stop. Cat sheepishly looks at you as if to say, "What? Haters gonna hate." Yep. That is just how the Durham vehicularly mobile constabulary behaves.



I imagine the police cars in some sort of rank, a la taxis. All of a sudden, they leave at breakneck speed, sirens blaring. They're tearing down the A690 and  upon reaching some chav's terraced council home, come to a full stop.

Having never seen Co. Durham police in action in my sleepy village, I can only infer that this is all they do. I picture it like this: they tear down the road, wahwahing at top volume only to stop abruptly and park the police car.





Oh, it's quite within the realm of possibility that arrests are being made, but riddle me this... why is it that the sirens don't come back?

Alcohol is the best thing about this.

I follow MichonMichon/Jules and she had a video on yesterday's post. It was Epic Meal Time's Breakfast of Booze. I think I was in some way inspired by that yelling man, hence all the curse words.

This is the ingredient list. We're in England, so weights are grams and kilograms for the dry fruit ingredients. Yes yes, Derpina, there are some tsps and tbsps but those aren't necessary to the story.  

Assembly table #1

The cauldron. Normally used for the Christmas Chutneys, but this year, it was decided that the making of the chutney was far too dangerous for their relationships with one another. So, cakes it was.

 This is Ruth's mother, Susan. She's lining the cake tins with parchment paper. Notice the coffee mug. The cuppa is ever present in this house, in this country. Omnipresent, really...like a Route 44 Sonic drink in a teacher's classroom: ubiquitous.

 Commence round 1 with all this butter!

 It goes in the cauldron! Add lots of sugar! That's smart.

Count those mutha-fucking eggs! 12! And we ain't even done yet!

The stuff that goes in cake.

Put some peel there, bitches. Life's too short to drink alone.

Mixed fruit and currants soaked in Courvoisier

They all go in!

Divide it evenly, yo. Make some divots in the middle for the alcohol collection. Was told that one of these would be mine. Dammit.

Start round two. That's me folks. I was a mixin' fool! Roo's mom brought an industrial strength one because she learned from last year's mishap: the mixer's motor burned out.

 Whoomp! Dere it is! Shakalaka. This one was mine. It has crystallized ginger, dates, nuts, and other mixed fruits too. I think there was mango. Not positive. It too has a divot for the alcohol. It was my "practice cake".

 Take it to the pub and eat that brick. Fucker was massive. This was only half of it. Gave the other half to Peter the Bartender. Haven't heard back from him about it, so it must've been alright.

So theoretically speaking, there'd be a cake in a tin on my counter (aka 'bench' in this neck of the woods) and I'd be "feeding" it spirits each week... Like I have some minor cake god to appease.

I couldn't wait for that though. I wanted to try it out. And you know what? It was like fruitcake. I don't like fruitcake really. Neither do SciMan and Kiddo. But you know what else? When Roo gives me the Christmas Cake that I helped to make, I'm going to eat some and be grateful that I have such a great friend in her. She drives me places that would take me an hour by bus (not counting wait times). We have a lot of laughs together; our taste in alcohol is similar: I like it straight from the bottle and not in a cake, so does she. My kid loves her and vice versa. She's my first grown-up friend* and I'm very very lucky to have one like her.







*to all my other friends that I made before I was "grown-up": I love you realhard. It isn't that I don't think you are "real" friends, it's that you met me when I was young and stupid and you liked me. You even like me now when I'm older and more stupid than before and I imagine that you'll keep on keepin' on when I'm way old and catatonically senile. I sure as hell hope so. You know my skeletons, so to speak. And maybe, just maybe it's because of that that I'm wondering what's wrong with you.

SciMan and Kiddo are forced to get to know the natives on a very intimate level

I take today's general bemusement from SciMan's Google+ entry from earlier today.

"Today's cultural exposure hit a bit of a new low. While Kiddo and I were waiting for a bus at Durham bus station, I heard something that caught my attention, turned, and sure enough, there was a man standing in the corner of the room peeing on one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Clean button up shirt, black slacks and sport jacket. He was less than 10 feet from the public restroom, which costs 20 pence to use. There is a restaurant next door. There is a pub across the street. He chose to pee on the floor inside the bus station and then trail footsteps of urine as he walked away. It was 2pm on Sunday afternoon."

This is England. Land of the pee, home of the depraved.

Want to know more? Tough.

I made Christmas Cake. In October. I'm still reeling from it. I have pictures, just have been too lazy to find the cable to connect my phone to the laptop in order to upload pictures. But really, who cares? It's a damn process of making cake, that after baking is soaked in alcohol. The only reason why I'd bother is to show the magnitude of ingredients and the size of the cauldron it was mixed in.

That's right, bitches. C-c-c-c-CAULDRON!

 So, let me know what you want me to do. If there's enough interest, I'll get off my fat ass and find that damn cable so you can see my lovely long hair tied back in a ponytail as I struggle with the mixer of mixers in the massive cauldron of a 14 egg cake.