here you have it

riddle me this...

so i was just going through a random pile of stuff that had accumulated on my desk, and i found some little bits of ribbon. ribbon? oh yeah! riddles! for valentine's day, abby put together the best present *ever* for me, which consisted of a scavenger hunt around the house. to find the next clue, i had to solve the riddle and figure out where the next clue was. at the end, it all came together like a little puzze. yay for puzzles! so, without any further ado, can you find your way to my valentine's day present?

1. i get wetter as i dry. what am i?

2. a skin have i, more eyes than one. i am very tasty when i am done. what am i?

3. i have keys, but no locks. space, but no room. you can enter, but not go in. what am i?

4. what force and strength cannot get through, i with a gentle touch can do, and many in the streets would stand were i not a friend in hand.

5. what begins with t and ends with t and has t in it?

6. runs over streets and woods all day, at night sits not alone, with a long tongue hanging out, a-waiting for a bone.

7. when young, i am sweet in the sun. when middle-aged, i make you gay. when old, i am valued more than ever.

8. this thing devours all, birds, beasts, trees, flowers. gnaws iron, bites steel, grinds hard stones to meal. slays kings, ruins towns, and beats high mountains down!

9. big as a plate, deep as a cup, even a river can't fill me up.

did you get them all? remember, these were the clues to a scavenger hunt in the middle of february in wisconsin .as in, the answers are things that can be found around the house. except number 8 which can be found around the house in an abstract sort of way.

in other news: how do you fix a broken gaydar?

the weekend list

happiness is:

~janice doing 'mr. roboto' in it's entirety right there in the bar.

~snuggles when i'm sick.

~snuggles anytime.

~challah bread: homemade, vegan, hot, and fresh from the oven.

~knowing that i don't have to go to work today. or tomorrow.

~comfy pants.

~being the cheering section for abby's game of super mario allstars.

~sunshine in the windows. all of them.

~saturday. aaaah.

tha weekend

on wednesday, nobody will ask you if you had a good weekend. so since this is my blog, and you didn't ask sooner, i'll tell you...

friday was the first day abby and i have been out of town since christmas. it was difficult to break her from the mountain of schoolwork she had on her list to do, but it was exciting to be getting out for a few days.

saturday was hang out with the family day. my mom joked that she spent my inheritance on a giant tv. but it's not a joke when it's true. there was indeed a GIANT tv in the living room. by giant i mean, you could easily use the thing to frame a LIFE SIZE picture of you and your immediate family. mayhaps one of my esteemed parents will leave us a comment with the exact specs for everyone to awe at. seriously. the thing is ginormous. so what better to get for the parents to have the hugest tv in the world? aside from the hugest tub of popcorn in the world, a tivo. for christmas, while they were waiting for one of those wide load semi trucks and a construction crane to deliver their colossal television, i gave my parents the coolest tivo i could find. on saturday, mom and i battled at least 600 feet of av cables and 87 color coded plugins to wire the tivo to the massive television and its thunderous sound system.

ok, so there probably weren't 87 plugins.

saturday night, abby and i headed to winona to pick up mike for some food and fun in lacrosse. earlier in the week, i had snagged us the only hotel room left in downtown lacrosse so that we could easily access the bars of our choice by foot. after dinner, we got to the hotel and found out why it was the only room left: the place had been taken over by dogs. there must have been some sort of show in town, the dogs were better groomed than most of the people i deal with on a daily basis. so we walked across the street and had some very yummy martinis at a really retro bar that made me feel like i was in the cartoon 'the jetsons' before we had shots of 'liquid cocaine' and a bar that made me feel like 'family.' yay for small town gay bars. a blast was had by all, partially due to the aforementioned shot which consists of nothing more than jägermeister+jack daniel's+southern comfort, suggested by some very random woman at the bar. my favorite part was as the bartender was pouring us our second round, he went to pour himself one on an upsidedown shot glass. guess you just had to be there...

anyway, it was suuuuuper duuuuuper good to see mike again. it's cool to have friends that you can have a good time with even though you only get to see eachother once or twice a year.

breathe.

on a complately unrelated note: something has been stressing me out this week. i think it has to do with my job, but i'm not convinced that that is 100% of it. i feel stuck. i have no energy, my body is physically sore, my mind is cloudy, i let myself get annoyed at things, i don't feel creative. stuck. grr.

on another completely unrelated note: someday the kid who lives downstairs from me is going to have a music album or something. he's around 6 years old, and he sings. all the time. and he's not half bad for a 6 year old. but if he keeps playing the piano like that, he's going to have to hire a band...

say what?

tongue need a workout? try saying this ten times fast (courtesey of my handy-dandy uncle john's bathroom reader page-a-day calender):

mr See and mr Soar were old friends. See owned a saw and Soar owned a seesaw. now, See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw before Soar saw See, which made Soar sore. had Soar seen See's saw before See saw Soar's seesaw, then See's saw would not have sawed Soar's seesaw. but See saw Soar and Soar's seesaw before Soar saw See's saw, so See's saw sawed Soar's seesaw. it was a shame to let See see Soar so sore just because See's saw sawed Sore's seesaw.

repeat.

bah.

so today was one of those annoying days where things just annoy me a lot. i got halfway into writing about all of the things that i was annoyed about, but i decided that it's totally not worth it. but i will say this: I KNOW HOW TO DO MY JOB! NO, I DO NOT NEED YOU TO PLUG IN MY CABLES, BAG MY MACHINE, HOLD THE DOOR, OR DISPLAY MY IMAGES! I AM PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF PERFORMING MY JOBLY TASKS SO LEAVE ME ALONE! IF I NEED YOUR HELP, I KNOW HOW TO ASK FOR IT! seriously, sometimes i feel like a trained monkey at work, and when all the guys i work with insist on making sure i'm ok every 10 minutes, i get edgy. really, i think that it has something to do with the fact that i need to feel some sort of purpose in what i'm doing, and when people who aren't part of my department infringe on my doing my job because they think they know how, it makes me feel like i need to be doing something a little bit more challenging. whew, that feels so much better.

you want to know what else feels so much better? of course you do! when i went to work today, the house was a disaster, and i had been planning on spending the entire evening cleaning. when i got home, however, the trash was already to the curb, abby was home, and the house was spotless. i would have melted right there on the doorstep if it hadn't of meant that she would have had to spend more time cleaning. but then she took me to the gym with her. oh well. so now i get to sit here all wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket with you all and surf the internet and play monkey solitaire and eat pirate's booty and play with my kitty and... and... and... aaaaahhhhhhh. breathe.

listening to tempting tales of tantalizing temp work in new zealand...

off to dream...

a home for me

not much to report here this weekend.

i continue to contemplate the vast amounts of *stuff* that tends to sneak up on me and clutter up my life, both physically and mentally.

i continue to contemplate why campus bars suck so much, why i don't feel comfortable in them, and why i feel obligated to hang out with my coworkers there.

i continue to contemplate where i want to go and what i want to do with the remainder of my youth.

i continue to be driven speechless by the conversations that go on at work. on friday, someone had read a newspaper article saying that some state had passed a law or was considering passing a law that prohibits people in that particular state to wear pants with waistlines low enough to cause undergarments to show. you know, the low cut jeans and the thong or the lowly sagged baggy jeans with the boxers. apparently underwear is so offensive that a state had to step in and make a law against acknowledging it in public. the conclusion that a handful of my coworkers came to was that it is, in fact, offensive to see someone's boxer line or thong string poking out above their jeans, and that there ought to be laws against such public displays. i was totally speechless. land of the free? we send our loved ones across the world to ensure the spread of democracy and FREEDOM and we think there should be laws against pants that sag below the underwear line?? soon we're going to be required to wear head scarves and veils.

i continue to fear the direction of politics in this country. i have dreamed two nights now where lgbt people are hunted, marked, and put into camps. in my dreams i have escaped so far, but once only because i replaced my "war is not the answer" window sign with an american flag, and the other time because i was tipped off by a dark stranger. i continue to fear that people will start to trade tolerance for fear. homosexuals will become the new terrorists, the new jews, the new communists, the new witches. when will the hunt begin?

i continue to be soothed by the bluegrass styles of the lonesome rogues (earlier today), and the folk styles of ellis, who, as i am writing this very sentence is reminding me to "just take is easy, just close your eyes and drift off to sleep. i know the world is so unkind, i know it's taking a long time, i know it's hard to believe, but things will work out, you'll see."

sick day

puke.

so i've been curled up on the couch all day with my uber snuggly blanket (thanks mom!), daytime tv, my favorite kitty (who insists on sleeping on my aching belly). there are a ton of things i could be doing right now, but my spinning head keeps me from being upright for longer than it takes to get from here to the bathroom and back. blah.

thanks to my laptop computer and a wireless internet connection, i can veg here on the couch and make some long-intended changes to my blog. stay tuned for additions to the friends photo album, and an additional photo album for pictures from parties and such. also, i've been meaning to add to my lists of good music to listen to and good books to read.

or maybe i'll get wrapped up in this daytime tv thing, take a nap and call it a sick day...