This Week In Blogs, Volume IX
Hi Friends. Thanks for coming back and spending some of your holiday weekend with me. I hope you enjoy the long weekend. I think we’re going to buy a mattress. That’s what the loud guys on the television commercials are telling me to do. Kate is settling in with her new blog reading machine. Thanks to everyone who suggested various bookmark storage methods (as well as Google Reader). probably not gonna happen, but thanks anyways.
We were kind of bored last weekend. When we’re bored and have lots of time on our hands, we usually come up with ideas that may or may not be good. Like in college when I wanted to buy two aquariums, hang them on opposite sides of the room and connect them with some clear tubing. Then we were going to buy a hamster. The brilliance comes in with the food and water distribution. I wanted to put the food in one aquarium and the water in the other aquarium. That way the hamster would be forced to walk back and forth through the tubing to entertain me. To this day I consider this to be the best idea that I’ve ever come up with, but unfortunately it never got past the diagram on napkin stage.
I bring this idea up because Kate had a similar idea this weekend. The previous owners of our house installed a massive hot tub on our deck. I’m not quite sure why they did this, but based on the popcorn ceilings and mountains of brass throughout the house (that have since been removed), I assume they never moved out of the 1980s. So for the past 11 months, we’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this damn hot tub. It would cost too much (and leave a massive hole in our deck) if we got it removed, but we really don’t see ourselves taking outdoor baths with our friends anytime soon. So Kate decided that we would turn it into a cool tub or mini pool (still working on the name). I didn’t think she was serious, but then she came home with his and hers inflatable rafts. Our weekend was spent draining, cleaning, and refilling the cool tub/mini pool. I wasn’t buying into this idea when her pitch was “you can just lay around and read magazines,” so then she changed it up and said “you can lay around and drink beer.” That’s all it took to get me to buy in. Here’s the cool tub in action:
Snap, I’m like 400 words into this post and I haven’t started talking about blogs yet. I better get going.
The Gilded Clam is packing up her apartment and getting ready to move. If she is as good at packing as she is at arranging fruits and vegetables on a plate, then moving should be a breeze. I swear she eats more fruits and vegetables than anyone I know. And by ‘know’ I mean people who have blogs that I stalk. Her fruits and veggies are always so neatly arranged on her plate too. Reading her blog always makes me feel guilty about my lack of fruit and veggie consumption, and motivates me to go buy produce. After reading this post, I went to the grocery store and bought an orange. But instead of just eating the orange, I went to the beer aisle and bought a 12 pack of Blue Moon to compliment the orange. The beer is almost gone, but the orange is still in the fruit bowl. I blame you, Clam. Oh, and I know the blog name is Gliding Calm, not Gilded Clam, but Gilded Clam is more fun to say, so I’m going to stick with that.
Kath’s house is apparently turning into a wildlife preserve. In the past week or so, we’ve seen the love ducks, Winston the Garden Snake (there is only one Gilbert in Charlotte blogland, and he’s my dog), a family of squirrel babies in her garage, and a roach on the ceiling. This is getting out of control. I think word has traveled through the animal kingdom that you have a compost pile filled with Matt’s beer ingredients and that food companies send you lots of free stuff. I’m going over to Kath’s house for dinner tonight, and I’m thinking about dressing up as Brian Fellows and staying in character for the entire evening. Oh that is one fuzzy bug!
Speaking of animal sightings, Kelsey took an amazing shot of a moose knuckle in this post. I would love to provide more detail on this post, including the meaning of moose knuckle, but this is a family show. You can look it up on Urban Dictionary, or just look at the pictures on the post and you can probably figure it out. I’ve sat here for about five minutes trying to come up with a family friendly way to describe this post, but I’ve got nothin. You’re just going to have to check it out for yourself. I’m just glad I wasn’t wearing 3D glasses while reading this post, because it might have poked my eye out.
The beautifully bald ZestyCook is holding a pimp my blog contest here. I would prefer if he held a scalp giveaway contest so I could have his beautiful bald head (instead of my white man afro that the humidity is taking from Will Ferrell to Bob Ross style), but his idea is good too. It’s such a good idea that I almost didn’t tell you guys about it. Not that I need a blog makeover (this blog is a hot mess - thanks to Pinky’s husband) but 10 hours of Zesty magic seems like a good idea. If I win, I’d like him to focus primarily on figuring out how I can make money on this thing, or optimize my blog for free shiz. The UPS man drives by every day and never stops, and that needs to change. For those of you that don’t know, Zesty provides about 96% of the tech support for the food blogging world. When anyone has a design or formatting issue, they just contact their Canadian blog guru. It’s like he’s some kind of one man Mountie Geek Squad.
Stock Up
Extreme Close-ups of fingers and toes - These are taken both pre-mani/pedi and post-mani/pedi. I have a recommendation on this one. Just include a link to a picture of your fingers and/or toes. Then blog readers can make a personal decision as to whether or not they want to see your fingers and toes. Just a suggestion.
Tofu - Tofu posts are outnumbering Tempeh posts 2-1 this week. I expect Tempeh to make a strong comeback next week. These two are going point/counterpoint like Obama and Cheney these days.
Pancakes - Caitlin is really the only blogger that is rocking the fried cake and syrup, but since she eats them every friggin day, she has single handedly brought them into the stock up category. We’re currently calling her Caitlin Pancake, but might change that to Pancake Tipping Point or Healthy Tipping Pancake.
Tattoos - Lots of blogger ink out there
Stock Down
Staying at home - I never realized that bloggers were such road warriors. Lots of blogger travel in the past week, and I don’t like it. I like consistency in my food blogs. I’m probably just mad because all of my blogger friends are traveling too much which means I can’t hang out with them. I’ll stop whining now.
Danielle and Gucci Model’s Phone ‘Relationship - This one is for all the Real Housewives of New Jersey fans out there. That lady is a piece of work. In other RHNJ news, I’m a big fan of Albie.
Smoothies - Juicing and Green Monsters are still going strong, but overall blender usage is down 28% from last week. Perhaps it’s related to the recent cold streak that hit the east coast. Or maybe I’m just thinking too much about this.
That’s all for this week. I’m going to try to do two posts next week. One for the blogs that I usually stalk, and then one where I talk about blogs that I haven’t talked about before. Should be able to swing it, since most of my TV shows are now in re-runs. We’ll see how that goes, and I’ll try to do better next week.
Update: Alright…I have to update this post. Big news here…I got my first free shiz delivered in the mail today!!! Hangry Heather sent me some throw back Mountain Dew, throwback Pepsi, and some delicious baked goods. I heart Hangry Heather. I feel like I’ve made the big time now. I’d take a picture, but I’m sort of busy eating some Hangry Muffins.
Alright. Now I swear I’m done. Thanks again, Heather!
