Ding Dong

A lot of entertaining things happen at Supper Club, which is why it is the inspriation for so many of my blog posts. Last week's Supper Club was at Tomasso's, which is a great little pizza place in North Beach. The proscuitto, basil and tomato pizza was simply delightful. Orgasmic even. Another thing that is (hopefully) orgasmic? Dongs. I know, I know, this post is starting off slightly inappropriate, but such is the game of life (haha). Anyway, I'm not even sure how we got on the subject, but we started the banter with lots of dong length theories (3 times the length of the thumb, the length from the thumb to the outstretched pointer finger if making an "L" shape, proportionate to the size of the hands, feet, etc.). We of course had no answers to our questions, but it was interesting none-the-less. The next day our pregnant Supper Club friend forwards us an email that she received from her weekly pregnancy update of what I think is a very comprehensive list of what humans have to be thankful for, the first two items on the list pertaining to our discussion from the previous evening:

Count your blessings
• The dong of a rhinoceros is 2 feet long.
• The dong of a mosquito is a hundredth of an inch long.
• The praying mantis bites her mate's head off while he impregnates her.
• Elephants are pregnant for two years.
• Many animals give birth to a dozen or more babies at a time.
• Your baby won't be born with hooves.

That last one was quite the eye opener. I had never thought of it like that. So Emily, when you are in the delivery room remember to think positive and thank God that on top of the worst pain you've ever experienced that there aren't also hooves scraping your uterus.

Hello, hello, hello....is there anybody out there?

Welcome back my loyal readers (if there are any of you left after a 9-month hiatus)! Wow, until I just did the math I didn't realize it had been quite that long. I have no excuses, no interesting life events that prompted a blog hiatus - I guess you could say good old fashioned laziness kicked in. In this world of high-tech, high-speed, information overload, social network overload, work overload etc. etc. it's kind of nice to blame something that people from every walk of life can relate to. I could tell my grandparents that I stopped writing my blog because I got too wrapped up in facebook, twittering, finding contacts on linkedin, downloading apps on my iphone, going to social networking events and generally traveling down the information highway with the top down blasting Pink. They would stare at me, mouths slightly ajar, pat me on the back and ask if I want another Diet Dr. Pepper. Or I could say I stopped writing in my diary because I got lazy. Which is what happened.

Yawn, that was tiring. I wish I could write more but I need to ease back into it. Don't worry, I already know the topic for my next riveting discussion.

Flying dog turd

This might be the best piece of news I've read in a long time. The real question is, how do you become famous enough where displaying a giant inflatable dog turd becomes art? I probably could have come up with that when I was 5, but no one would have cared. Oh well, maybe someday I can put all my excel spreadsheets on display or one of my smelly work shoes or something (which are disgusting by the way, does anyone else's work shoes start smelling like an undiscovered species of crab after a year or so?).

GENEVA (AFP) - A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.

The art work, titled "Complex S(expletive..)", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.

Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.

How to (not) cure hiccups

In the spirit of a wiki-how, I would like to inform you of how to cure hiccups (or not to, depending on how you interpret this story). On Saturday my friend was suffering from a long stint of hiccups that were on and off for many hours. They didn't go on for days like that girl on the news a few years ago and they weren't reminiscent of a teradactyl screech like yours truly's hiccups, but they were annoying none-the-less. Now, said friend was a bit intoxicated at the time and was going on about it and finally Sean decided to tell her that the sure fire way to cure hiccups is to "massage your uvula." For those of you who think I typed "vulva" and are grossed out and also a little intrigued, no need to get too excited because he was talking about the dangling piece of tissue in the back of the throat (or the "thingy" as my Mom would call it).

About 15 minutes later I had to use the restroom and my friend decided to join me. It was a one staller so we were in there together and as I was relieving myself she decided to take Sean's advice and massage her uvula to relieve herself. Let's see...was it two or three seconds later that she ralphed all over the sink? I was personally disgusted because I can't stand puke; I literally cry every time I have the misfortune of experiencing it. After making my thoughts on the situation clear (WTF are you doing and?!?) we made our way back to the table and I must have looked traumatized because everyone in our party immediately asked what happened. I relayed the story and meanwhile Sean is in the corner laughing hysterically because he obviously was playing a prank on her. When everyone realized what happened they were cracking up (and my stomach was still turning). My friend was strangely unphased by the whole episode and seemed perfectly happy because her hiccups were in fact gone.

So if drinking water upside down, holding your breath and eating a spoonful of sugar don't work the next time those pesky hiccups are ailing you, if you have the stomach for it try massaging your vulva (wait, I mean uvula).

Muir Woods

On Saturday Sean and I went to Muir Woods for the first time. I can't believe we have lived in San Francisco for 6 years and had never gone before. For shame! It was absolutely beautiful. There were huge redwood trees all over and the park and trails were extremely well maintained. It only cost $5 to get in (plus $3 for the shuttle that we took because we were afraid there wouldn't be any parking). We didn't have much time so we went on a short 2.5 mile hike, but there are tons of trails with a lot of different terrains. The best part is that it's shady and cool so for a fog child like me who doesn't fare well in heat it's a perfect hiking environment. You can even walk all the way to Stinson Beach, the problem with that is you have to walk back. Here's a pic of me hugging the largest redwood in Muir Woods that fell down 5 or 10 years ago.

So people don't get the wrong idea and think I'm too outdoorsy, this weekend I also watched 5 hours straight of So You Think You Can Dance with a friend. That show is awesome by the way. Even Mary's cackling is entertaining.

Poddington McHybrid

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since I wrote a blog. Sorry to my loyal readers (who probably aren't too loyal anymore). About 2 1/2 weeks ago Sean and I finally got our brand new Prius! I had to wait 6 weeks and was paranoid the whole time that someone was trying to screw me, but my patience finally paid off and I got the exact color and package that I wanted. It had 6 miles when we bought the car and now it has almost 2,000. Yes, we have gone on a few big road trips in the past two weeks :). I won't bore you with the grueling details of how we finally managed to get the car, but I will say that the waiting list we were on never panned out and we got really lucky that another dealership had the exact car that we wanted. It took about 5 hours of negotiating, walking out of the dealership and then getting called at 10:30 pm to go back because they agreed with our price but had to get the sale in by midnight. Apparently buying a car the last day of the month is the way to go because you have more negotiating power because they want to meet their projections.

I've always thought the Prius looks like a futuristic pod (much like a spaceship or some sort of alien transportation device) so we have aptly named our car Poddington McHybrid. So far we've gotten an average of 45 mpg, which is good considering we are driving it like a normal car (versus accelerating slowly etc). I might start driving it more like the famous Prius driver to see if I can get 50 mpg. Watch out world, here I (slowly) come!!

Chicken of the sea

Today I was in the kitchen at work and I noticed something very peculiar. There was canned chicken salad in the vending machine. It was wedged between cappucino cookies and rice krispie treats and really stuck out because it was the only item in there for $2.00. I'm not sure why people would buy canned chicken salad from our particular vending machine. Unless you would eat it with a cliff bar or dorritos, it doesn't go with anything. That's why I think the vending machine guy mixed us up with the office that gets saltines and celery sticks. They must have our donut holes (happy national donut day everyone!).