Why is this blog different from all other blogs?

Yeah, this post? Let's just say that if you didn't think my whole "Taco Seder" thing last year was funny, you might want to go check out something else. 'Cause we're all about the blasphemy here at PoBaL, especially during the Easter/Passover season. Now, on to our story...

I turned on the tv, saw this, and was intrigued. Turns out, it's the story of Passover. Or, as the Christians call it, Exodus. I also find the term "Israelite" interesting. Like no one's going to know you're talking about the Jews or something.
Look, it's a plague! And another plague! And, uh, raising dust that will turn into a plague!


Man, when God smotes you, he does a thorough job.
Oh, check out Jewy McHeeb-bergstein. He's our narrator and host.
I'm not sure, but I think those dark, Semitic circles under his eyes might be painted on.
For the record, there were a few Jewish cowboys, ladies and gentlemen. Big guys who were great shots and spent money freely.
More plaguing it up (this is my favorite of the plague pictures):

Every time Moses talks to Pharoah, he's in the bath. What is this, Old Testament slash?

And check out Moses' expression in this one:

That's not, "Let my people go!" That's, "Hey buddy, you know--heh heh--we were both drunk, things happened..."
If you're interested there's more on my flickr. I'm putting them in a slideshow so everyone can enjoy the magic of this seasonal and poorly animated show my TV can barely get a signal for.
Melissa, feel free to use this post in your godmotherly duties to Rose.

...or the dogs that shoot bees out of their mouth and when they bark they shoot bees at you.

I got home yesterday to a giant box from my mom, by way of the Everything Jewish website/catalog. Yes, it's a real place. The best thing about this catalog is the truly weird shit, like the bag of plagues (or, more accurately, cheap plastic things that sort of symbolized plagues) mom sent me a couple years ago, or this adorable plush Torah they used to have. Not that one on the site now; he's weird looking.
So here's what I got:

It's a plush Judah Maccabee! He's like 18" tall. I can't wait to have him meet Tree. Tree, incidentally is MIA, by which I mean he's probably under a bunch of laundry I haven't gotten around to putting away yet.

By some miracle, the unwrapping lasted for 8 nights:

But then the cats had plenty of twisties to play with, including the one I broke and left in the box, which Legs spent 10 minutes with his head in a too-narrow box trying to rescue. Because the 300 other bits of plastic around the apartment he's commandeered to play with aren't enough.
Here's Judah off to buy some Kosher for Passover food. Or, standing in front of where I keep my perpetually in progress ill-fitting Koigu gloves.
But wait, there's more! I also got a tenpin toy bowling set where each pin represents one of the plagues suffered by the Egyptians. That's right, BOWLING with the PLAGUES. Hell's yeah.

And here they are all artsy and backlit and shit.

I kept the key. It's easier to figure out what some of them represent than others.


They're all such happy plagues!

...except for "1st Born".

Only my mother would send me a Maccabee and a plagues bowling set as an Easter/Passover present. Although I prefer to think of it as a psychic YA-circ-stats-doubled-this-month present. Yeah, that's right--teen materials went out twice as much as last month. I am a golden god.

You're melting snow angels all over town.

We had several snow days awhile ago and I got projects finished.


I finally stretched out and blocked the finished Argosy scarf from Knitty I made for a family friend in Paton's SWS. Pretty yarn, splits a lot, needs a crap ton of blocking. But very squishy and nice colors.


That thing underneath it is my Target stuff the college kids don't want sale ironing board. Cute, hunh?

I also decided that I hated the collar on Teva Durham's Lace Leaf Pullover, so I cut it out, picked up a bunch of stitches, and made a better collar. This is scratchy and warm Lamb's Pride Bulky, so I probably won't wear it quite as much as some other things, but I still really like it.

That wet spot is when I started to block, but gave up. My feeling on sweaters is that I beat them up so much, they kind of stretch out and block just from that. Or, I'm lazy.
Here's a close-up of the cute leaf device:


While I got things done, Johnny made a fort:

Gobble Gobble Hey (yes, I reused my awful Thanksgiving title)

So, I have this 4-part theory of animal usefulness. A truly useful animal:
*is cute;
*tastes good;
*creates some other foodstuff (like eggs or milk);
*and creates some other useful good, like suede.

For example, sheep are cute and tasty. Sheep's cheese is also tasty, and who doesn't like yarn?

Turkey, on the other hand, are kind of useless. They're ugly, and no one really eats turkey eggs, do they?
They are damn tasty, though. Especially their skin.
And you can't draw a sheep by tracing your hand.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Vase of carnations from central Ohio.

In the words of the lovely Stacey, I am so punished right now.
Let me explain.
I was supposed to leave work at 3:30 yesterday afternoon. I wound up finishing work at 3:45. I wound up leaving the library at 4.
Then I drove around town for 2 hours looking for 2 large bottles of reisling. Does reisling even come in a large bottle? At one place, the proprietor started to get on me about the disparate types of wine I was attempting to buy (also a bottle of cabernet sauvignon). With my last ounce of class, I managed to not precede my explanation of the different people drinking different wines with "Listen, Bub..."
Then I went out to dinner with Stacey, Melissa, and Ashleigh, and that was pretty fabulous. As was the strawberry margarita.
Then I went home and proceded to pack my car full of as many boxes, crates, etc., of books, records, cds, fabric scraps, legos, etc., as I could. Pausing for a lengthy and repetitive conversation with my one remaining sketchy neighbor about our crap landlord.
This morning, I was up at 6:30 and on the road around 9. First I had to drop my apartment key with Melissa, who has once again agreed to look in on the jerks from time to time while I'm gone. What can I say? I think she's a saint, actually.
I spent a good part of the first leg of the drive taking my life in my hands and texting while driving.
Oh, did I mention I woke up with the beginnings of a cold this morning?
I hit Thanksgiving, accident traffic, and rush hour in 3 of the 4 large cities I pass through to get to my parents' house.
And all those boxes of heavy, heavy books and records and things? They all went up 3 flights of narrow stairs into my next apartment. By me.
I'm going to go fall over now.
On the plus side, though, I did hear "Do They Know It's Christmas" for the first time this year around Washington, PA.

The neckbone's connected to the wrist watch.

(Is it neckbone? I can't remember.)
In case anyone wanted further proof of my family's wackiness.

I'll be acting as family bootlegger again this year for Thanksgiving. Anyone who's ever bought alcohol in Pennsylvania knows why.
My mom sends me a check for a few bottles of wine, and she usually includes a note.
Here's this year's:

Here's the money for the wine. Please use it carefully as I am still trying to save for the operation. (huh?)

You know, in case anyone was wondering where my nonsequitory goodness came from.

keeping your enemies closer, or just not letting them leave

I'm getting kind of bored of my glasses. Any thoughts on what my next frames should look like, aside from not all bent and crooked like these?
But that's not why you're here, I know. You're here to read all about my lovely Christmas. I haven't had a shittier Christmas (even that year I got an alarm clock, or when I had the flu or whatever that was). Well, let's face it--December hasn't exactly been going well, what with programs with zero attendants, Buddy issues, and general crap-town problems. Which is why I was looking forward to being able to leave and see my family for a few days. Which is why this snowstorm was an especially large "fuck you", particularly due to the following things.
Thursday was still a state of emergency around here. So how come the local Fox affiliate news, the local NPR station news (who did, however, mention that there were still places closed "in spite of the weather"), weather.com, the state police website, and the road safety hotlines all failed to mention this? I may take risks sometimes that smart people don't, but I do know better than to drive during a state of emergency, provided SOMEONE TELLS ME.
Also, someone wanna explain to me the point of plowing interstates when the snow is allowed to just sit on the entrance and exit ramps to said interstates? What's the point of having clear roads if no one can get to 'em? And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got stuck. Of course, it could be infinitely worse: I heard of a woman who was stuck in her car for over 23 hours, and at least one of the other cars stuck on my ramp had been there all day. But this isn't the sort of thing you want to think about when, instead of greeting your family at their door and attempting to get Brett to do his trick, you're fighting back tears and attempting to stay on the plowed part of the road, a task made a whole lot harder when no one has salted yet, because plowing to get rid of snow only winds up revealing the inch or so of ice underneath. Who plows and doesn't salt? Why am I paying municipal taxes again? Especially since, several days later, my street still has not been salted, and most of the cross streets I need to use haven't been touched.
Christmas Eve was spent making sure Johnny wasn't throwing up anymore, trying to figure out why he had been in the first place, giving up on keeping the boys out of the tree, watching the first season of The O.C. (more on that later), and desperately trying to pretend it wasn't Christmas Eve, which I kind of like even better than Christmas itself, what with tree-putting-up and no poorly disciplined small cousins.
On Christmas, the work friend fiance (these would be the same people who loaned me the car when Buddy had the water pump issues, and who pulled me out of the on-ramp. I think it's getting to the point where, if I call Becca, she just assumes emergency) picked me up and I spent Christmas dinner with them. This was as nice as spending Christmas with a group of people you've never met before when you were hoping for your family and hate crying in front of strangers can be. That's not a criticism, I swear.
Sunday I watched more TV-on--DVD and had a lovely conversation with Alison Farinacci's grandmother. Alison is this friend of mine from college. She was the second person I met at Pitt (does Janice count, since I technically met her the weekend before our advising session?); we were roommates for 3 semesters and neighbors for a summer; we worked together for awhile; in short, great friends. She came up to Philadelphia for New Year's when I was living there, and then she fell off the face of the earth. Her number has been disconnected. Her parents have a new number, that I don't have. However, the grandmother has my number now, and hopefully she'll call. I miss the girl. And as I'm learning more and more, particularly here in Holeville, silly is hard to find.
Barring a tsunami (yeesh, it's hard to feel sorry for yourself when over 21,000 people are dead from one natural disaster, but I've been perservering), New Year's will be spent in Louisville.

I'm cracking up over this, and I'm not sure why.

"That's my exciting day so far. My generous brother Larry bought me a taco from Taco Shack. Surprisingly good tortillas. I find that many Tex-Mex restaurants resort to using disgusting preserved tortillas. What are they thinking!!!"--http://sqwinch.blogspot.com/

Heh. I thought I had already copied it, but Ctrl-V only got me this:1591163366. I'm not so far gone in library nerdiness as to think an ISBN is funny, thanks.
People are going absolutely crazy over what the weather's supposed to do in the next couple days, while I'm driving back to Steel Town, USA. I'd be more worried if the exact same fucking thing hadn't happened before Thanksgiving, when I missed all inclement weather entirely. And the Nuggets box will keep me warm.
***
I'm wearing the exact wrong bra/shirt combination today. I've got a black camisole that masquerades quite well as a trendy, camisole shirt when really it was found at the thrift in the women's sleepwear section. Under that, I've got my black bra with little white dots* which has a habit of peeking out from under things sometimes. I'm really not a ho, I swear.

*How sad is it that I'm trying to figure out how much of my extensive readership knows what this thing looks like? Combination of too many former roommates and not enough modesty, I guess. Or that particular brand of Jessy impatience: I'll save 30 seconds if I don't wait for random friend to leave the room before I change my shirt! Mmmmm, trashy librarian.

the Thanksgiving recap

Dear god, driving from to Pittsburgh sucks. Especially when you stop at the Volvo dealership first to get the code so your stereo will actually work and the computer tells the jerk employee that your car does not, in fact, have a stereo. Oh, I think, so that's why I've been using the lighter to power my cd player and some cheesy walkman speakers. It has nothing to do with all that battery drama: I simply have no stereo. Then I went to Wal-Mart for wine and a six-pack (I've become the family bootlegger since I'm the only one who lives in a state without Quaker-made liquor laws) and my cashier was useless, even by Wal-mart standards. Really, the only things keeping me entertained on this drive were pleading with the giant storm clouds to avoid where I was driving on 71, 70, or 79 (thank you thank you thank you) and the pretty song I made up about driving through the Wheeling Tunnel.
I like the way Wheeling, WV looks a lot. Of course, I've only driven there on my way home, and what I should probably really be saying is, I like the font they used over the Wheeling Tunnel. I tried listening to The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place audio book during the drive, but my speakers weren't loud enough/it was boring. I think I'm going back to elementary school Jessy's original Konigsburg rating: just not that interesting. But it's nice to see Molly Ringwald earning a paycheck, no?
So I get to my parents, finally, and I'm trying to park on their bigass, brick-paved hill and it's not going so well, as there's a full foot of smushy, slick, wet leaf mess next to the curb. My dad suddenly materializes, and you know, there's really nothing that irritates me more after an insane drive than someone watching me park. I guess I got spoiled by my street being filled with so many un-lived-in houses for so long, because I really resent having to back up and do a full parking thing.
Incidentally, this is also my biggest beef with the SUV that's shown up on my street here in , with the Big Momma sign in the front and the "It's only kinky the first time" bumper sticker: it's parked where I have to use reverse to park in my favorite spot.
But then I get up the steps and into good ol' 1106 and everything's great. The pumpkin tart smells amazing, my cousin's on the phone telling me about this wonderful vacuum cleaner she got (though, since it doesn't turn dust into gold or move around by itself or is completely silent, I'm failing to be awed, even with the this-is-how-my-friend-caught-his-cheatin'-wife story. And if I was on "Last Comic Standing", I'd be cracking something about how that's how she finally got her husband to do some housework, but I'm not. And if I was, I'd be too busy chatting up that Iranian Jew kid to tell any bad jokes, anyway.), my sister's starting in on the first of 3 tantrums she performed over the weekend (I named them Martha, Semantics, and Reverse Psychology, if you're interested) and no longer liking Heinekin, or however it's spelled, and kicking my ass at Scrabble, Brett's getting ready to do his trick (he hops into your hand, because he wants to be petted so badly!).
And the greatness continued all weekend. Yumminess on Thursday; creepy urban mall with random Joseph Beth, Hong Kong Rice Bowl I've been dreaming about for the past couple weeks, kitties dressed as food, dragging Lara into the comic book store and hanging out with wonderful family friends, including people I hadn't seen in a long long time on Friday; Ikea and Spongebob on Saturday; and then the drive home on Sunday, which wasn't quite as bad, even with the pulling out-leafmess problem, probably because I gave up on Ringwald and Konigsburg.
And yes, I bought a couch. Not either of my first two choices, but now that I've finally got its 863 pieces together (cracking a couple in the process, grr), a damn fine couch nonetheless. It's this one, but blue. And it fit in the car, with no swearing at all! Now I just need to figure out what happened to my triangular pillow.
Kitten arrival: T-minus 2 days, and counting.