Aunistee

Was the name of the cashier at In-N-Out yesterday. When my friend pointed it out, I mentally thanked my parents again for making me impossible to find on Google. But then my friend said "what a fun and creative way to spell that name!!"

And then I wept for her future children.

Watermelon

To all those of you who thought I was weird for making my friends carve St. Patty's Day watermelons with me all through college, I present the National Watermelon Promotion Board's gallery of carvings:

Finland is the best country because...

It's midsummer and high time to show some love to the Northern countries, so without further ado, here are some suggestions for how to complete the above sentence:

... they host the annual World Wife-Carrying Championships, and the winner of this obstacle-strewn sprint takes home his wife's weight in beer. Which leads me to ask, is it better to take a light wife so your chances of winning are better, or a heavy one so winning is more worth it?

... they don't just host the World Berry-Picking Championships, they divide them into 5 different classes. So if you are a hermaphrodite born in 1995 in possession of a rake, I suggest you high tail it to Finland to claim all five of your gold medals.

... Newsweek named them the Best Country in 2010, and if Newsweek says it, it must be true.

... Forbes and Gallup named them the world's second happiest country in 2010. The same poll ranked Libya at number 3, and we all know that civil wars and revolutions are excellent happiness indicators.

... they herd reindeer.

... if you are torn between your love of Ikea and your love of the sixties, Finland is the place for you.

... and did I mention the World Air Guitar Championships, World Mobile Phone Throwing Championship (complete with a freestyle category for the choreographically minded among you), and the naked 5k? *Warning: If you now have or in the past have had a sensitivity to saggy old man bottom, do not click that last link*

... sometimes it looks like this:

Want

Really, really want. Too bad it's a piece of installation art in a museum somewhere.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

My mom gave me this book for Christmas last year, and I sort of forgot about it until I noticed it on my shelf last week. I finished it today, and I loved it! I am a total crier with good books, it's true, but add this one to the list. I'm discovering more and more that I love books that are driven by their characters more than their plots. Not that the plots aren't good, just that the books are more about the people than the events. This one is about three women, two black and one white, in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. It's not quite like any other book I've read, so rather than make it sound weird by ineptly describing it, let me just recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone looking for a good fictional read!

And I've Never Been to Boston in the Fall!

But I did get to go last summer with my family! I totally forgot that I took my camera on that trip (really? Who wouldn't take a camera with them to New England?) until I got it out for something else just now and found all these pictures. So without further ado, I give you our trip to Boston:

Mom and Aaron and I went on a Duck tour, which is an amphibious tour of the city/harbor in a vintage WWII landing craft. Some of them are more vintage than others, but I took a picture of this one because it looks significantly less ridiculous than the one we rode aboard. We also ate fancy dinner at the hotel that invented Boston Cream Pie, and let me say, it was delicious indeed.

The three of us also walked most of the Freedom Trail through Boston's Revolutionary sites. The picture above is a statue of Paul Revere in the foreground (too bad for the other guy whose last name just didn't rhyme with 'hear'), and the Old North Church in the background (where the signal lanterns went up). In a successful attempt to evade capture for hanging said signal lanterns, the man who hung them jumped out of a second story window and ran away. Way to go!

We also visited Cape Cod where it was great to just lay on the beach and pretend you're rich like a Kennedy. The sand and the water were just gorgeous!

Aaron did studly stuff like dive into one foot deep water and scrape the better part of his stomach off, while Mom and I did studly stuff like not let people take pictures of us in our swim suits.

We were actually staying in New Hampshire near Dad's work, and on the last day we stopped by the Minuteman national park or monument in Lexington or Concord and learned more about that poor guy whose name no one can remember...Revere is just so catchy! Then we went to Walden Pond, and first things first, we need to have a little talk with those New Englanders about what constitutes a 'pond.' It was very relaxing, especially the part where I made my travelling companions listen to the Little Women soundtrack multiple times.

The water level was really high, causing parts of the trail around the pond to be closed off, and apparently causing us to almost match our shirts.

Dad is not a good sport about being photographed, but he was a pretty good sport about the Little Women business, so I guess we'll keep him.

Vitamin Nicotine

I was making chocolate milk in Germany one day when I happened to glance down at the ingredients on the nutrition label and see the word "Nicotinamid." Vitamin nicotine what? No wonder their kids start smoking so young! No wonder I love this chocolate milk so much!

The next time we were at the store I checked the ingredients labels on several brands of kids chocolate milk, and sure enough, they were all nicotine fortified. I decided to check my translation of the word "Nicotinamid" against my trusty dictionary and was surprised to find that it actually translates to Niacinamide, Vitamin B3.

Well, I went home and forgot all about this incident, until this morning when I once again encountered Nicotinamide, on the ingredients of my generic Life cereal. Two minutes with wikipedia later, I can now inform you that Niacin is a made up word for NIcotinic ACid vitamIN. Turns out the first niacin was isolated by treating nicotine with nitric acid, but once its nutritional value came to light, the powers that be thought it best not to actually name it vitamin nicotine. They thought it might stress people out to think there was nicotine in their cereal and vitamins in their cigarettes :).

Love

For these two guys. Fifth year please? Pretty please?

Dear Friends in Bahrain

Dear Friends in Bahrain,

I just discovered the "Stats" tab here on Blogger, and was pleasantly surprised to find that after Americans, you guys are my biggest fans! Now I say surprised because I'm not aware that I know anyone from, in, or who frequents your small, gulf nation. Known for your pearls, oil, and protests, I was flattered to discover that you celebrated my 18th birthday by offering women the vote and legally saving us all from the embarrassment that is line dried underwear, but a bit dismayed to learn that your national sport is drag racing. We were getting along so well for awhile there. Ah well, only time will tell if my love of a good royal family can surmount my growing fears that you might be terrorists or, dare I say displaced Nigerian princes?

Best of luck in your future internet endeavors,

Emily

I'm Going to England!

If you had any plans to see me this summer, you'd best hope they've already been made because I'm running out of time in a very good way! My work is sending me to Tahoe, I'm going to a family reunion, my work is sending me to the less exotic destination of Ogden, and I'm sending myself to England! I've even purchased the tickets, so this is for real! Aside from all those destinations, I'm hoping to move, and at some point I'll need to be in Boise for my bro's big send off. Whew! Also, now would probably be a good time to mention that I do get my own classroom at the high school next year, so I'll just be trying to plan a couple courses, assemble supplies, and get my room set up in the midst of all this. No biggie. I'm kicking it all off with spring break in California, too, and suddenly writing this post is making me see how wonderful it is to be employed! I'm kidding myself to think I'll ever be able to save money in the face of wanderlust...

101 Ways to Stay Busy in Smalltown America

So my brother is in med school in a town that he and his wife affectionately dub the middle of nowhere. I beg to differ, and I have the US Highway Division (not to mention national Wal*Mart distribution) on my side. Regardless, rather than buy them something to pack back with them after Christmas, I made them a list of 101 ways not to get bored. Ninety-Seven of them come from either my own experience or my own imagination.

Foreword: The best way not to get bored might be to skip reading this list....but there are a couple of gems hidden in there, you know, for when it's 3 am and you run out of things to see on Failblog.

1. Do all “50 Things to do at Wal*Mart,” since, you know, you have one.

2. Come up with your own nicknames for all local landmarks. Insist on giving directions ONLY using these secret code names. Feel free to use personal references like “Pete’s old place.” The actual existence of a Pete, while considered a bonus, is completely unnecessary.

3. Do not underestimate the importance of this step: watch TNT weekend marathons, especially when it’s House or Psych.

4. Haunt the bathrooms of the local Taco Bell. Keep stats on which employees actually wash hands before returning to work. Change your consumption habits accordingly.

5. Take a different route to work/school/church every time. This eats up huge chunks of time both devising the routes and actually taking them, since you will have to get creative after the first two days.

6. Grocery shop in alphabetical order. Crisscrossing the store as often as possible burns time and calories!

7. Rank the local bums in order of most likely to least likely to sleep on your lawn. Keep score in the manner of a March Madness pool.

8. Use the word ‘denizens’ as often as possible.

9. Inquire as to how many local restaurants have sombreros on hand. Find out what it takes to wear the sombreros, and take necessary steps to do so.

10. Attend hearings at traffic court. Bring ESPNesque posters to root for the defendants.

11. Check out the local cemetery. Write a newspaper review, being sure to rate it between one and five buzzards.

12. Write satirical letters to the editor every Tuesday and Friday. Deliver them by hand.

13. Hide treasure hunt clues in several library books. Make sure it’s one gigantic loop of no less than seventeen clues.

14. Attend all home high school basketball games. Always sit in front of the cheerleaders. Once you’ve learned the cheers (arm movements included), cheer along.

15. Get to know the clerks at the dollar store.

16. Map your escape routes in the event of every conceivable natural disaster. Don’t let your continental flatland status dissuade you from planning for tsunamis and volcanoes.

17. Memorize lists of commonly misspelled homonyms. Go around town with a Sharpie and correct the signs in the windows of all local businesses.

18. Obsessively make lists. Make sure each one has 101 entries.

19. Move the couch 1 centimeter to the right every day. See how long it takes your spouse or roommate to notice.

20. Play Secret Iron Chef by hiding a single theme ingredient in each dish of a three to four course meal. For an extra challenge, use your spouse or roommate’s least favorite vegetable as the secret theme, giving yourself a point for each dish they like, and deducting one for the opposite.

21. Choose your three ideal countries to visit, and celebrate ALL of their holidays for one year. For advanced revelry: speak in an appropriate accent on said holidays.

22. Collect one free sample paint card every time you go to the store. Attempt to cover an entire wall.

23. Buy and cultivate a Chia garden.

24. Search your local grocery store for DIY sausage and jerky kits. Purchase and use them.

25. Watch and paint along with episodes of Bob Ross’s “The Joy of Painting.”

26. Prep for item 25 with an at-home perm kit and a plastic pick.

27. In the event that items 25 and 26 fall short of their desired results, move on to plan B with an at-home art aptitude test from the Art Institute or mail-order paint by number kits.

28. Take up a portable stringed instrument, like banjo, guitar, mandolin, or ukulele. Practice in the park with your case open. Advanced level: do this while you still suck; call it an economic study on the dollar value of pity.

29. Observe Argyle Thursday, Casual Friday, and Sweatpants Saturday every week.

30. Argue with the ladies on the Home Shopping Network. Take their rebuttals personally.

31. Grow your own wheat grass. Try using it as a theme ingredient for item 20.

32. Experiment with dark purple nail polish.

33. Create your own juice of the month club. Try pairing it with different entrees and including a juice recommendation with all your recipes.

34. Visit every museum in a twenty-mile radius, even if a creepy old woman runs it out of her living room.

35. Send at least one holiday greeting card for each of the 365 Catholic saint days.

36. Stop attaching stamps to your mail. Instead, tape exact change to the top right corner of your envelopes. See how long it takes for your mail carrier to personally contact you with a brochure about stamps for sale.

37. Beat SuperMarioBros. 3 on the Wii.

38. Name your WiiFit trainer and invent his or her back story. Talk about this person in your every day conversations like an actual friend.

39. Try a new cheese every week. ‘Importing’ from outside the county is both acceptable and encouraged.

40. Plan your Halloween costumes for the next five years. Sew costumes and gather props.

41. Use the dictionary.com word of the day every day. If anyone ever calls you out on a malapropism, just claim to be studying for the GRE. Then sulk because they reminded you how badly you did last time.

42. Watch stupid human tricks on late night shows. Choose one from each episode to learn.

43. Consider doing the same thing with stupid pet tricks.

44. Use your laptop to film, edit, and burn your own at home workout DVDs.

45. Look for 7^th grade science project ideas online. Conduct the experiments in your apartment, and constantly refer to them as “my research.”

46. Run all your errands as a mime. Go in costume and paint your face for extra points.

47. If 46 goes well, research local busking laws and carry a tip jar with you on said errands.

48. Shrink-wrap your windows for the winter. In the springtime, tag the plastic with spray paint and wait for your landlord to notice before you take it down.

49. Write “XO from Greg and Christa” in the memo line of your rent and utility checks.

50. Do fun kids craft projects like find and make a recipe for homemade bubbles or playdough.

51. Learn to make granola and granola bars.

52. Write nice notes for people in sidewalk chalk all around town.

53. Actually read War and Peace.

54. Update old sayings in annoyingly tech-savvy ways, like “No need to reinvent the cell phone!” and “That’s the greatest thing since the IPod Nano!”

55. Crochet all your own winter accessories.

56. Rent a metal detector. Study all available maps from the US geological survey, choose a site, and have a competition to see who can find the weirdest or randomest object. Use the internet to help you identify all objects before the prize is awarded.

57. Learn about Feng Shui, and then do that to your apartment. For a bigger challenge, read Interior Design for Dummies and rearrange your furniture at the end of each chapter to reflect one of the design principles discussed therein.

58. Write your own new favorite novel.

59. Go Box Pulling (also known as Redneck Baiting). Tie a long string to an empty cardboard box. Place said box on the side-ish of a country road. Hide in the bushes and wait for a redneck to drive by. When the redneck swerves to hit the box, pull the string and watch them try to follow the box. Laugh maniacally.

60. Complete the Guerilla Art Kit.

61. Create your own board game. Like for reals. No wimpy 3^rd grade science fair poster boards here. Use real wood, plastic, and cardboard to create the board, pieces, cards, and rule sheets.

62. Take up whittling.

63. Learn to whistle while you whittle.

64. Memorize a tongue twister a day.

65. Write an epic screenplay based on either your board game, or your own life. If it’s the board game, try selling it to Pixar. If it’s your own life, find someone who knows a guy at Lifetime. Be sure to subtitle it “The Christa Cox Story” before you pitch it to him.

66. Become an online movie critic. For online movies. As in, watch and critique movies that have been out long enough to be on Netflix streaming. Publish your reviews online as if the movie were a new release.

67. Take up guinea pig husbandry.

68. Start a mail-order guinea pig business.

69. Invent an ASPCA approved method for shipping guinea pigs.

70. Write your own chain emails and send them to everyone you know. Make sure to put a whole bunch of > symbols and FWDs throughout the email so it looks legit.

71. Leave people notes from their future selves. Be sure to say positive and reassuring things like “turns out the space-time continuum is a lot sturdier than we thought. I’ve been back and forth seventeen times and haven’t had a single glitch yeeeeeeeeeeee….”

72. Learn the Dewey Decimal system and rearrange all your books and DVDs accordingly.

73. Realize how antiquated the Dewey Decimal system is and change it all over to Library of Congress.

74. Join Twitter.

75. Lose a little self-respect after completing number 74, and quickly cancel your account.

76. Learn another language, preferably with some cassette tapes that will both require you to find an actual Walkman and enable you to endlessly repeat inane foreign phrases everywhere you go.

77. Start a bug collection.

78. Cultivate an ant farm. Make sure they can’t see your new bug collection because it might freak them out.

79. Rewrite the scripts from terrible movies. I recommend starting with Van Helsing, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, and anything Keanu Reeves (Bill and Ted and Much Ado About Nothing excepted).

80. Operate a by-appointment shuttle service to the nearest airport, but only if it’s several hours away.

81. Consider expanding said operation into a one man taxi service. Reupholster your backseat in cracked vinyl and get a Cigarette scented Car Freshner to boost your authenticity.

82. Become a Wikipedia contributor.

83. Give up boredom for Lent.

84. Play chess against yourself, like the old man in the Pixar short.

85. Start a lemonade stand. If it goes well, start selling franchise rights to third graders all over town.

86. Invent the next fad diet.

87. Go star tripping. Go out into a dark-ish field and choose a bright star. Stare straight up at it and spin around 25 times. Stop spinning. Then have your partner in boredom shine a flashlight at you. Try to keep standing up.

88. Start your own political party. Carefully research your state’s minimum membership requirements, and try not to get discouraged that all the good names are already taken (see: National Barking Spider Resurgence Party).

89. Start an online advice column.

90. Chum the waters of your online advice column by sending in the first several questions yourself.

91. Become a karaoke rockstar.

92. Reinvent the wheel.

93. Become the world’s foremost living expert on semicolons; use this knowledge for good, not evil.

94. Memorize all of Hamlet’s monologues. Backwards.

95. Become an online survey-taker. You know, the kind where you get a 14 cent check for every product you test and complete a survey about.

96. Screen movies to find THE definitive worst movie ever. Dub your own MST3K sarcasm track.

97. Take an online martial arts course.

98. Figure out what flavor red velvet cake actually is.

99. Submit recipes for the backs of Pillsbury dough canisters. If you’re successful, try doing the same for all your favorite food brands!

100. Start a blog to chronicle your attempts at numbers 1 through 99.

101. Get a lucrative contract to convert your bloggéd anecdotes into a full-blown memoir. Should things look temporarily bleak on the book deal horizon, write the manuscript anyway and I’ll give you 5 bucks for the rights to it J.