ma-nure

a few weeks ago i had a birthday, and i am now as old as other 28 year olds. to celebrate my day in the sun, i got in my car and drove into the sun. well, i actually drove to play some golf-a-roo at a nice local course.

after driving an hour in the wrong direction and yelling at meagan's navigation device, i arrived and saw this. it was early december, and i was pleasantly surprised to see that i had indeed found the sun.

it was a really nice course, and if you hadn't played it before you could get lost in the dr. suess bushes.

well, i had never played here before and i got myself into a bit of trouble.

nevertheless, it was still awesome. i played 25 holes, walked like 8 miles around a very nice area, and finished the round with a few snickers bars. i also got some mcnuggets because i really like that new commercial where there is a tower of wedding cake made of mcnuggets.

the week after my official bidet. when meagan finished her exams and papers (good job mego!), we headed out for some indian food and to furnish our home with a holiday-themed tree. i think we got a 40-footer, and it barely fit into our limo.

we also got all the other requisite crap people drape around and over their homes this time of year: stockings; garlands; shopping carts.

a pinch of mom....a touch of dad....and boom! tree baby! it was really fun to put this little guy together. except for the lights...the new lights sold in stores are different from the ones i am used to working with. that is, unlike normal lights, the lights we purchased from walmart would not connect to each other. this would have been very agitating if meagan hadn't been supplying me with margaritas.

the mantle was also festooned with the usual array of christmas balls and holiday bones.

this was all very exhausting, so we retired for naps and prepared for ensuing night activities.

indy was also very tired from chasing decorations around the house and eating tinsel.

to get the night going, we had few people over, ate a wonderful football-themed cake (provided courtesy of meagan).

post-cake, a group of friends headed to the local bowling lanes where we all proceeded to make complete fools of ourselves. even so, good times were had by all.

since bowling, i have been enjoying the warm southern weather with our newly adopted cat, "other", and have been preparing papers for a doctory conference in vancouver(!) this coming may. i really hope my papers are accepted, as i have never been to the northwest and desperately want to drive through canada.

i am now philly, and this is what awaited me when i arrived yesterday. ick. it wass 65 degrees when i left nc! ahhh!

well, it's not so bad, as my gmom let me borrow her ride for the week i am here. i think i'm gonna have to go carousing now.

here toblett makes his strike, then waddles joyously.

turkeys are for riding and calling, "whoa, big kitten!"

so i'm not sure if anyone was aware, but last week was thanksgiving. it's a little holiday my close friends and family like to celebrate, and it commemorates when the pilgrims successfully warded off an invasion of aliens and predators. there was a movie made about it a few years ago with danny glover, but it was set in futuristic L.A., so it wasn't very realistic.



squirrel is only 5 months old, so this is her first thanksgiving. meagan forced her to get excited.

anyhow, this holiday is essentially an eating event. well, it's also a drinking event, and if your family is anything like mine, it is also an arena to air your familial grievances and catch up on juicy gossip about unknown relatives.

meagan and i, being displaced northerners, decided we would host this year. this meant we woke up early, survived the throng of shoppers at our local mart, and made side dishes to complement a turkey stuffed with a duck, that heretofore, had been living inside of a ham.

here meagan made a yukon potato something to complement my ham sauce. yum. our guests also brought stuffings, greens, pies and much to drink.

i don't really know why, but we always eat this dinner at a ridiculously early time. why is that? when we are old people, will we eat this meal even earlier? that would be scary.

anyhow, our friends began to show up at like noon and joined squirrel to watch the detroit lions get massacred. those poor lions. they're not going to win this year, are they?

right, so we had about 8 people come over

and they wanted what indy wanted....

a kitty cat! oh wait, that wasn't it. they all wanted a turkey. this was the first turkey i've ever made, and i didn't really know what to do. i called my mom like 10 times to ask inane questions, like, "where did the head go?", "should it's tail be this long?", and, "is a giblet the same as a gerbil?"

my mother, while stupefied with my idiocy, was extra patient, and in the end, kitty city et al. had exactly what they wanted.

when the food eating was over, we undid our belts, aired our grievances, and sat, drinks in hand, in front of the football proceedings.

and when i say football proceedings, i don't mean toby's junk. i mean we sat on the couch and consumed many-a-bag of cheese balls served from a football. why are these the best food in the world? anyone? anyone? cartwright?

my first southern thanksgiving was wonderful. as far as i know, people had a fine time, didn't stuff their food into their napkins, did not get boccilism, or food-related misery, and meagan had an excuse to terrify squirrel with drunken snuggles for an entire day! the only thing that could make this better is what i think makes everything better: an unrelated theme! maybe next thanksgiving can be "dress as your favorite animal", "80's rich", or "bring your lost son to thanksgiving day."

food is for eating, mostly.

the holiday season is upon us, and this makes me think about all the food i am about to consume. moreover, it makes me think about all the wonderful food i have eaten since moving to north carolina. pictured here you can see a soup meagan made last month. my bowl had a footprint in it. i'm pretty sure it was an alligator.


so there are many rewards to eating sumptuous meals; for one, they make me less hungry, so that's pretty important. many times they are laden with high fructose corn syrup or soon-to-be-banned chemicals, and this makes my insides excited. and all those delicious polysaturated fats, while leaving me logy and lethargic, pave the way for the ever-wonderful food coma.

speaking of food comas and things i like to eat, it is time to file a report of my recent foray into the deep, great wonder that is the NC state fair.

for those northerners who are unfamiliar with the idea of a southern state fair, i will inform you that it's kinda like the fairs i've witnessed in pennsyalvania, just weirder. nascar is a common theme for the rides and games, elephant ears abound, the ponies are much cooler (smaller), and the population is mostly large southern families wearing palin buttons and dudes showcasing wicked teenage mustaches.

the entire point of going to this event was to get bloated and to consume deep fried foods while riding upside down on a zany-titled ride. and since i am a recent transplant to this area, i wanted to do it all. as such, i withdrew $100 from the atm and proceeded to eat one of everything. this included such southern delicacies as frozen poo on a stick(above), frozen cheesecake, and fried twinkies.

i've had fried mars bars before, so i felt somewhat prepared for the "oh no, i'm about to poop my pants!" sensation following fried candy consumption and confident this would not interfere with my desire to ride in the teacups.

there were also all sorts of vegetables slathered in butter and frying sauces. pictured here meagan is countering her fried dough with an unfried corn.

here vickie had peppers on her italian sausage monster. very delicious.

toby, being the guy he is (a mummy), could not have the meats.

nevertheless, he took the plunge and purchased some fried cobbler. like everything else, it was awesome.

oh right, this was the twinkie. kinda looks like a caveman's club.

epic dessert.

i also had some fries, which were less epic. i gave them my lowest rating yet: 6 thumbs up.

and we all enjoyed the fried mac & cheese. it had this spicy nacho sauce, which was good because i'm a man who loves his spicy nacho sauces.

to wash this all down i think i had a water. but thinking this over now, i really don't recall if i had anything to drink. maybe i didn't drink anything. is that possible?

anyhow, toby did have a drink, but he experienced a severe brain fart because he purchased himself a limeade. well, the joke was on him, because as it turned out, this drink was in fact gasoline. epic fail.

there were a few other munchies eaten, such as cotton candy, hot dogs, more fries, a bunch of candy (graciously purchased by toby and vickie in the candy castle) and more funnel cake. these were all very epic. and oh yeah, meagan and i had a tiff about whether funnel cake and fried dough are the same thing, and which is the better option. it turns out they are about the same thing, but are oozed out of different tubes into different shapes. i think i still lost the fight.

after watching meagan ride the zipper, we played a few games. i lost at the ring toss, toby won a crappy stuffed animal at the balloon/dart station, but then proceeded to win a unc-themed ramses animal after beating a 5-year-old at the water gun race.

as far as he was concerned, this was epic.

the fair was a really nice time, but after a few hours i really wanted to leave and go eat some ruffage.

before we could leave we all wanted to go see the animal races. ill maybe post more videos later, but here you will see either pigs or ducks racing around a track for the reward of cheese doodles. at the time i though this was a extra shitty treat to give these special little guys, but after this past weekend (where i consumed a drums of cheese balls) i must say that these are very smart animals. i would totally run around that track for a doodle.

art core....velay

so i have not posted in a while, and i apologize to my friend josh, as he is the only one in the in cyborg/internet world who would ever notice. so, sorry josh. in the days to come i will post about many awesome things, such as the things meagan and i argue about, halloween, a footprint i found in my soup last month, hockey, bowling, hockey-bowling, and the NC state fair.



for this issue, however, i would be remiss if i did not mention that i am currently the champion of baseball. that's right, me! the champion! because i win at baseball! i am somewhat worried and confused about why this had to happen right after i moved south. but whatever, the phillies are the world champs!



having never had this experience, i'm not really sure how to feel about it all. the eagles are the perennial champs of licking their own butts, and then getting infected butts because they can't even do that half-way decently. and the phills, bless their little hearts, are never any good. well, they sometimes do ok and position themselves for the wildcard. but this is where it has always ended; in my lifetime the excitement has never resulted in a world championship, and every year the phillies have proceeded to not only shit all over thier playoff bed, but have succesfully scratched out my eyes and pissed all over my hopes.

at the start of this year's playoffs, the phills prospects again seemed bleak (well, they did to me). even when they were doing well, it was if there was no respect or hope for them, as indicated by the following: "The toast of Philadelphia is Matt Stairs, a balding hockey player with a squat body who was once nicknamed the Wonder Hamster."

(balding hamsters aside) i watched the playoffs in southern bars, twitching nervously as we slowly progressed into a contender. i even waited for a sign from above (like, say, a hale storm) that a world championship was never meant to be and that the phills would do as they always have and soon collapse.

well, as indicated by my joy above, this never happened. thus, when the last out was made, i jumped from my bar stool and yelped with such joy it sounded as if i had been trapped in some sort of orgasmatron machine.

so thanks, phills. ill never forget this! well, i won't forget this until next season, at which point i will forget and hate you again.