It's a frigid one again, Readers!
Snuggle up with your morning cup,
sit back,
relax,
and read your weekly lesson from the Lamp Post.
I mentioned morning cup, because so many people have mentioned to me that they read my blog early on Saturday morning. I write on Friday nights and post before I turn in for the night. A few night owls catch it shortly after midnight when the moon looks like this.
Others who like to turn in early, read it when the moon looks like this:
I love it when I catch the sun coming up in one direction and the moon still shows in the other.
The sky was purple just like this.
It makes me want to bust into Prince
the sky was all purple there were people running everywhere..
If you are an early riser and like citrus for breakfast, you may want to treat yourselves to these.
They were recommended to me by a facebook friend. I actually bought oranges from QVC!
You need a towel to eat them, they are so juicy. You can also buy them directly from their website.
Worth checking out. Here's the link:
Hubby won this cool trophy in the Times News Bowling Tournament which ended last weekend.
Someone came into a little cash and looky what Eloise got as a result.
That's TWO dozen!
The role I played in Hubby's big win was small, but Louie was right,
any victory in our house is a team effort.
We all celebrated the win,
Sam is still having a hard time dealing with the second place finish.
Second place is great!
(Look at his finger)
This was Louie's fortune cookie he pulled after the big victory.
I guess that was why I got the roses.
Sam is eagerly awaiting his dad's next big tourney in a few weeks because of his fortune.
He's already dusting off a spot on the shelf for the FIRST PLACE trophy.
Ellen doesn't know what to make of life.
Her cookie had no fortune in it.
Natalie could have cared less what her fortune read.
My girl makes her own luck.
She likes to cook and was thrilled with all the new possibilities from Asian Week.
We had a few good dishes, but cooking for Asian week was a challenge when you are on a sugar detox. I found out Chinese food is loaded with sugar. Last week my family farted all week from the Mexican dishes with beans. This week, they are guzzling water. I went through my second case before I figured out Chinese food has tons of sodium in it, too.
I tried some oolong tea and drank it out of this Chinese mug I received as a gift from a student.
It was good, but nowhere near as good as my beloved coffee.
I've uncovered the basket section of my old friend, Mr. Coffee Maker.
In about 20 more teabags, we shall meet again.
We were ready to be done with Asian week. The food is fun once in awhile, but rice is something I don't want to eat every day. The kids grew tired of it by mid week, so I tried to liven things up a bit with a Soup Taste Testing.
Those didn't go over well either.
Big surprise.
Sam, after one bite, accused me of trying to poison him.
Hey, it's not my fault he chose the Wakame soup made with seaweed first!
He kept a tally instead, and Clear Soup was the winner.
I felt kind of bad making them eat seafood and seaweed all week,
so I shopped for some Chinese treats.
These Yan Yan's looked interesting.
Fun, too! Fun words inside? Yeah!
I guess the intent is to pull a graham cracker-like stick from the container
and dip it in the pink, strawberry frosting.
But first I read through the "fun" words.
Ok--not quite fun, but I get this one:
Huh? And is that a rendering of a sheep's butt?
This one was just dumb.
I just don't get this one.
What is lucky about a goat?
Patience ran out on this one.
WTF.
Yan Yan's were just too weird, so I bought some Pocky instead.
Pocky is a similar snack, but the sticks come already dipped.
The kids liked those better, and I put the leftovers in Ellen's lunch.
I put a note in her lunch box every day.
I'm sure this went over well in Junior High lunch.
Hubby got some mail from PA State Senator Sean Wiley.
Enclosed was a newspaper clipping of his big bowling win.
Nice touch, Senator.
Senator Wiley wrote out a note of congratulations, too.
Then my eyes zeroed in on the signature.
Does this mean anything to you?
If it does, you jumped right out of your skin.
That means you must be reading the book I am:
S. by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst
(FYI: The book is titled S with period just like the cover art)
JJ Abrams, JJ Abrams---where have I heard that name before?
If you asked yourself this question, allow Eloise to answer.
JJ Abrams was the Executive Producer of LOST, my favorite TV series ever!
I am only a few chapters in, but I will call this the book a literary lover's delight!
The book is two stories in one---the book itself The Ship of Thesus,
as well as the margin notes, written by two people.
The book comes loaded with "stuff" for the lack of a better word.
Newspaper clippings,
photos,
post cards,
decoders,
and a map drawn on a restaurant napkin.
All contents that lie within the pages are clues to a mystery the reader must solve.
I encourage anyone and everyone to read this book.
I'll be commenting on it over the next several months.
Contact me if you purchase a copy---it's a pricey $39
and Abrams is making a nice little game out of supply and demand.
You'll see if you try to order one.
Here is a link to a book teaser the Abrams released.
I hope you read along with me. It will be fun!
Another much anticipated event for me was the release of Tim McGraw's new song
(written about me)
Lookin' for That Girl.
It was supposed to become available on iTunes on Tuesday, and it still isn't on there.
I hope the delay isn't caused from this blogger known as Trigger.
Mr. Trigger sure ain't happy with the new song.
I never have met Mr. Trigger, but I can guess that he is one of those people who really likes to impress by using big words. On a scoring rubric, I'd give him high marks for vocabulary and creative use of language. Sentence structure would be a Walking in Cowboy Boots Zero.
A 53 word sentence--that's called a run-on.
I'd like to tell Trigger to stop running at the mouth, but it is a free country.
He's entitled to his opinion as much as I am.
Here are some excerpts from Trigger's January 15th blog post:
What kind of fresh hell has Tim McGraw unearthed here? Apparently the once high-flying country star has been inadvertently inoculating himself with inebriating bronzer agents from his incessant chemical tan treatments that have now seeped into his blood stream. And combined with an undiagnosed eating disorder that has rendered McGraw’s figure to that of a 55-year-old Venice beach female body builder succumbing to a lifetime of melanoma, Tim has robbed precious nutrients from his gray matter, stupefying him into such an absolute scientifically-infallible vacuum and void of self-awareness that physicists want to employ it to see if it is the ultimate key to tabletop fusion. “Lookin’ For That Girl” isn’t a cry for relevancy, it is a barbaric yawp, a banshee scream, a cacophonous ode to the onset of monoculture and wholesale mediocrity.
ELOISE SAYS: Intentional overuse of big words to make one appear intelligent, usually backfires. BOOM!
The icing on this urine-drenched urinal cake topped with cigarette butts, spent gum, and used inside-out prophylactics oozing their venereal slurry out on the diarrhea-infested floor is the fact that through the entire drum machine-driven song Tim McGraw is singing through an Auto-tune filter turned to 11. T-Pain, eat your top hat-wearing heart out.
ELOISE SAYS: Smoking is a nasty habit that can kill you. Time to take a cigarette break, Trigger.
Tim McGraw’s “Lookin’ For That Girl” is the worst song in the history of country music.
Two guns way down!
Trigger's comments may seem cold, but they sure aren't as frigid as the temps my friends and I have been trying to exercise in. Baby, it's cold outside!
Last Saturday's workout:
Sunday's run:
Tuesday's workout:
Kenyan's eyelashes froze!
Thursday's workout:
Temperatures like the ones Erie has been experiencing always makes me think of the birds.
The tree nests get abandoned,
so where do they go?
I caught some doves this afternoon in an unusual place.
There was a flock of about 20 that I was watching navigate the 40 MPH wind gusts.
I was thinking about how tough birds were while I was sitting next to a crackling fire watching them.
Suddenly they disappeared.
They had been sitting in my snowy yard,
and suddenly they were gone,
but they didn't fly away.
Then I watched them, one by one, take peeks at the weather from inside this tube.
All 20 of them were huddled in there together,
skating on top of that frozen creek water.
The tube provided a nice wind break.
And to think we call people bird brain as an insult.
I won't worry about the birds anymore,
because I remembered this verse,
and this one.
One thing I will worry about:
Look who has been added to my class roster.
Glad I got this fortune this week.
Hooray for Chinese Food!
It gives you hope,
(and makes you thirsty).
Enjoy the Lamp Post Photo Story of the week, set very appropriately to the tune Baby It's Cold Outside by Lady Antebellum.
Snuggle up,
Eloise
