Challenge Accepted

Monday morning, Liz, a former co-worker, posted that she would be creating a Whitney Houston Pandora station and listening to it for 24 hours. 

Me: UPDATE: After two hours of Whitney, Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross, Boys II Men, Toni Braxton and Tina Turner, I finally had to give a thumbs down to Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On. I guess what I'm really saying is: I don't want any white people singing on my Whitney station.

Liz: End of day 1: I laughed, I nearly cried, I reminisced and I danced. I'm exhausted from all the emotions but will start again tomorrow.

Me: Day 2: Zero Crackers. Happy Valentine's Day!

Liz: Day 2: Heard "I will always love you" for the first time early this morning, I can't believe it's taken so long. Still haven't heard " I want to dance with somebody either". Too much Mariah, not enough Whitney, I'm going to have to be more severe with my likes and dislikes today.

Me: I'm not entirely sure Pandora knows the difference between Toni Braxton and Whitney Houston. Racists. Serious Question: If they had Dolly Parton singing "I will always love you" would you let it slide?

this is VERY close to what it sounded like when *I* tried to sing it. 

 (Deb can confirm.)

At 7:30 on Tuesday morning, I received a very disappointed message from my HS friend Stephanie, complaining about my lack of witty facebook updates for Valentines’ day.  Mind you, I hadn’t looked at fb yet.  I did however, put some effort into it, but it still took 4 updates until she finally deemed one to be “witty.”  Good thing she wasn’t my Valentine this year. 

When I called my parent’s house, I wished my father a very cheery Happy Valentine’s Day, to which he replied, “You don’t mean that.”  I thought I DID mean it, but I had to look back to last years “Reason’s why I’m not Bitter” to confirm, that I really did mean it.  Meanwhile, he told me that my mother was busy making a meatloaf into the shape of a heart, which is nothing short of adorable. 

I went over to Dr. Rach’s on Tuesday night for a dinner party.  My co-worker, Christy thought the dinner party meant that we were all going to make dinner together, but I assured her that Rach would never expect me to help cook. 

Me (watching Rach drink a bottle of beer): Are you okay? You keep drinking out of the side of your mouth.
Dr. Rach: I've had a minor stroke. (Spilling some beer on her very light brown shirt) This shirt used to be white.
Me: That's funny because it's something I would say. 

Over a year ago, Matty bought part of a cow, brought it to a butcher and then had copious amounts of meat that he stored in the fridge of the Brown House.  He then moved out, and left this meat in the fridge.   There must have been a two week period in which no one went into the basement of the brown house, and during that time, the fridge broke.  Lucas told me that on Wednesday, he (who is for all intents and purposes, a vegetarian) and his brother Zach had to clean up the bloody, rotting carcass of a cow.  When it was all done, Zach didn’t quite make it up to the house before vomiting outside on the stairs.  As you can imagine, they both stripped at the earliest moment to shower and was swearing hours later that the stench was still lingering in their nostrils. 

Me (tentatively knocking on Zach’s door): I’m sorry you had a bad day, buddy. 

15 minutes later, Zach came down to the living room and asked if I would get him some dinner (because he lost his lunch earlier.)  While we were eating, he asked, “Did Lucas tell you how we almost died today?”  I had only heard the rotting flesh story, so I was all ears.  I’ll do my very best to recreate what happened for you. 

Lucas has been driving to practice for his driver’s exam, mostly driving home from school (which requires you to go onto I-90).  He was driving along, and Zach was on the phone (I say this only b/c Zach was telling the story and admits that he and Lucas still don’t fully understand how this story happened) when Lucas merged into the next lane.  (In Luke’s defense, I am guessing this happened on the part of 90 that I hate because in the same two exit lanes of 90 are also being used by the traffic exiting 405 onto 90 so I’m surprised more accidents don’t happen.)  Anyway, either Luke looked failed to actually turn his head, or this guy was in his blind spot and before anyone knew it, the other car was coming at him, crossed in front of Luke’s car, and spun 180 degrees across 4 lanes.  No one was hurt, no accident occurred and Lucas kept driving.  Here’s my interpretation:

I thought about finding a car chase from Gone in 60 Seconds or The Fast and the Furious, but a post-it note works too.   Either way, after these two stories, I had a really hard time complaining about Casper chewing up 4 pairs of my heels – not an IMPOSSIBLE time mind you.  I just told the heel story first.  

Becky: So, I had to take the bus on Wednesday, and my driver totally reminded me of you.  He says, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?  If tomatoes are classified as a fruit, does that make ketchup a smoothie?"  LOL

I said yes, because in PGH we practically drink the stuff.

Speaking of Pittsburgh, we were watching a movie the other day and the mom asks the kid if she realizes why she loves Pirates baseball team, and before the kid can say because you were born in PGH, Lucas interjected with, “Because you’re a Pirate and you steal my soul.”  In this same movie I had to explain to Zach and Lucas that not everyone with a mustache is Tom Selleck, and not everyone with curly hair is Keri Russell. 

Kelly: Okay, I went out with this guy last night and, this might sound a little nerdy.  He told me that his birthday was in June and I said, “Oh Yay!  That’s the end of the Fiscal Year!”

Friday at lunch, we started speculating on what actor would play Master Chief if there was ever a movie.  The candidates included a young Harrison Ford or young Tom Selleck (clearly, this isn’t for a real movie.)  This is how the conversations progressed: 

Young Harrison Ford, Young Mel Gibson,  Will Smith, Tom Welling, (Yes, those last two were mine), Channing Tatum, Clive Owen,  then one of the guys on the thread Angel said that the search could stop right there and sent a picture of himself (as long as no one put him next to the other candidates.)  Naturally, I sent this next:

Then someone asked about who would play Cortana.  Angel sent a picture of Smurfette, and I seconded it with:

Friday evening I went to a charity event in which I might have complained about winning only one prize even though, with only ten prizes total, three prizes went to people at our table.  We tried to get out of listening to the speeches, but after failing, Becky and I grabbed drinks (in which I needed Becky to assure me that my work from 4 years ago does have value even though the company doesn’t think so, in case anyone was wondering what level of constant reassurance I need.) Also, the peach sangria and the matador is amaze-balls.  While I was out with Becky, Zach called me 5 times and when he couldn’t reach me, called Dr. Rach (I wasn’t home, calling Rach was a good guess).  Nala (the 3 pounder) was missing.  Zach said his voice was still hoarse the next morning from yelling so much looking for her.)  Finally, Zach’s panic took a brief pause as he sat down with Casper to think about where she might have gone.  Ten minutes later, on HER schedule, Zach told me that “she came sauntering in (like nothing was amiss); that bitch.”  It’s hard to get mad at her though, because then you look at her and she gives you that, “What? I’m not late, I’m cute,” look.

Saturday, I did some more organizing in my room.  Zach was keeping me company, so when I found bright red lipstick and put it on, he was quick to tell me that I looked like a Toddlers and Tiaras contestant.   Saturday night a bunch of Zach’s friends came over and someone mentioned watching a movie in the theater.  Zach said the theater was on the other side of the house, so one of the kids walked from one side of the fireplace to the other, saw the three chairs, a couch and TV and asked, “Oh, is this the theater?” And, despite the fact that there is an 18 person theater upstairs, Zach, replied, “Yup.  This is it.”  Mind you, when he told my friends and I the story the next day we thought this was super funny, he still never cleared up the misunderstanding with his friends.  I guess the next time they are over he can just say it’s a new development in the house? 

While Zach was “pulling one over” on his friends, I was out with Dr. Rach, her roommate Kyle, and his firefighter friend.  We grabbed some drinks and then headed over to see Underworld: Awakening. (I wish I could say that I didn’t love it, but I can’t. It was as awesome as the other films in the series.)  I’m a lil jumpy, so there were a lot of startled scream/jumps when I watched this epic tale.  When we finished watching, I announced, “I got scared a couple times.” In case those around me missed my “subtle” fear.   

On the way back from the theater, I asked Kyle to drive with me so that I wouldn’t get lost.  If you’ve ever driven with me, you have probably wanted to comment about my performance.  Kyle, however, was so polite about it, that I almost didn’t notice.  I mean, I totally did, but almost.  He started out with, “Oh, you like to sit close to the steering wheel.”  Followed by, “The speed limit on the exit is 25 but you could probably get away with 35 or 40.” And also, “I like how cautious you are with going to the first line at the light instead of the second.”  (Later we saw a cab practically in the middle of the road and I commented that he didn’t respect the first or second line of the stop light.) Meanwhile, Rach was in the car with the firefighter, and he was commenting how he had never hung out with girls who genuinely liked Sci-Fi.  I asked Rach if she had responded with, “Well, I’ve never hung out with a guy who has read Twilight, Sookie Stackhouse AND Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”  Because I would have – though probably best that I didn’t because then I would have followed that statement with, “And that might be the hottest thing I’ve ever heard a guy say.” 

We were back to Rach and Kyle’s for a moment, when the firefighter got hungry and said, “I ate one of your frosted covered animal crackers.  Don’t worry.  I ate it head first so it didn’t suffer.”  Then we grabbed something to eat, and headed over to another bar to play darts.  I think Sean would have been proud of my performance for the first half (I was cleaning up) but then then ultimately lost because, for the life of me, I could not get the last bulls eye.  I’m much better on a team. 

Sunday, Rach, Shana, and Laina came over – we went to the dog park, got pedi’s and then ate some dinner and thought about watching a movie.  I find that when people come over, deciding on a movie is the hardest part.  Zach and I put out some suggestions into the universe, but ultimately tried to get them to watch Lesbian Vampire Killers – I don’t know why there was a sudden mass exodus at that point.  I’m sure it wasn’t related. 

Last week, I got to talk to my dad again in the morning.  He told me that the boys were home from school so if he started yelling, “Kevin!” it was not because he had a sudden case of Tourette’s.   Then the boys were suddenly sitting on the couch, each with a book.  Frita then proceeded to mock the fact that Kevin, the 8 year old, was re-learning the Alphabet, Patrick, 9 was studying a pop-up book, and Kyle, 6 was upset because he wasn’t allowed to take the dictionary OR the encyclopedia on the trip with them. 

Kyle: I’m going to get gooder at that.

Kevin: You’re going to get BETTER, Kyle. 

Frita wouldn’t be able to mock that.  (I am not challenging you, Frita. J )

Have a great Fat Tuesday everybody!