That thieving little bastard.

The tranquil peace of my backyard was shattered early this morning by that devious little turd known as Stinky the squirrel. I had put up a bird feeder on Friday to get some of that chirpy bird action that our next door neighbors enjoy.

It only took Stinky about 36 hours to figure out how to get at the food. I reckon he jumped on top of the thing and the string broke, allowing him and his girlfriend complete access to the tasty wonders within.

It was so sad. I got up this morning to find the both of them gorging their greedy little faces, while 5 or 6 birds stood by, watching helplessly. I present you with pictures of the quote, scene of the crime, unquote. No, they may not be twenty-four eight by ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, explaining what each one is*, but they still convey the horror.


The quote, scene of the crime, unquote.
The thieving little bastard in action.


This is so you can get a good look at him, in case he comes to your neighborhood to try similar shenanigans.









I have enhanced the details of his face for you to get a really good look at him. Don't give in to his cute appearance -- this squirrel is an unreformed criminal. He will come for your family sooner or later.





*If you find yourself humming "Alice's Restaurant" for the rest of the day, I fully accept all blame. If you don't find yourself humming "Alice's Restaurant" for the rest of the day, there's something wrong with you and you might want to go out right now and find a copy of The Best of Arlo Guthrie. Because it's a movement, people. It's the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar. And remember, if you want to end the war and stuff you got to sing loud. With feeling.

The magical pizza joint.

Here in Colorado, they're big on the "take-n-bake" pizza concept, wherein they make you a pizza to your specifications right there while you wait, and you take it home and bake it. It's delicious and gets around that whole "not quite hot" situation you so often find with delivery pizzas.

Our local Papa Murphy's Take and Bake is magical. From the outside, it looks just like a strip mall pizza joint, but just like in Narnia, we become a king and a queen the moment we step inside. The last time we were there, we hadn't brought any coupons (If you're familiar with the work of Ron White, this is the time to whoop "coooo-puns!"). We asked Mitch there behind the counter if he had any specials running.

"Um, not really. How about six bucks?"

Six bucks sounded fine to us -- it was about half price. We paid for our pizza and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Today, we went back and asked Mitch (different Mitch) about the specials situation.

"Well, tell me what you like," he said, "and maybe I can help you out."

We thought about it, and just about had decided on a pepperoni, sausage, and bell pepper when Mitch says, "Fine, I can make that for you... or I have an alternative."

Intrigued, we asked what the alternative was. He told us that he had a few pizzas in the back that had been ordered earlier and never picked up. He wanted to give one to us. We did the math and figured it was a pretty good deal. We tipped the helpful young man $5 and walked out of there with pretty much the same pizza that we would have ordered fresh.

This would never happen in California, and illustrates yet another reason why I love living in the most cosmopolitan city on the plains. Everyone's nicer than us. Sometimes I feel like we're taking advantage, but then I eat some pizza and the feeling goes away.

I smell sitcom!

Chris has saved the day. I was ready to leave yesterday to go interview at the meadery, and when I attempted to open the door that goes to the garage, nothing. The knob did not turn. One might say that it was locked, except the locking mechanism has long been missing from this particular knob. It was just jammed shut.

To recap: I had timed my departure perfectly so that I would arrive to the meadery on time after a 45 minute drive. I was all ready to go. The door was jammed shut, and both of our garage door clickers were inside our respective cars. You couldn't write this, people.

Chris jumped into full-on Man Saves Day mode, gathering up an impressive array of screwdrivers and getting to work. He unscrewed the doorknob. It fell off. He jiggered around with some of the little inside pieces of the latch. They fell off. After about five minutes, he was down to hitting the latch inside the door repeatedly, as hard as possible. Finally, the knob turned and I was off to live my bohemian dream.

Moral of the story, kids? "Don't force it" and "Violence doesn't solve anything" were lies. All lies.

Do it your way. No, really.

As I was driving home today from the meadery (ask me about my new bohemian lifestyle!) I had on one of the three or four unobtrusive pop/rock stations in Denver. As they came back from commercial, I hear this:

DJ: Hi, and welcome back to YOUR 97.3, the home of the all-request workday! We play what YOU request. Just call in, we'll take your request and play it right away! Hi, who's this?

Listener: Hi, this is Rachael.

DJ: Hey Rachael, what's going on? What can I play for you?

Listener: Can you play [some terrible Nickleback song]?

DJ: Well, listen. We've been getting a lot more requests for the new one from Nickelback, so why don't we play that one instead? Thanks for calling, Rachael.

Listener: Um...okay...

Outrageous weather update.

Friday: 80 F and sunny.

Saturday: 80 F and sunny.

Sunday: 75 F and partly cloudy.

Monday:




Have you ever seen anything sadder than this? Everyone else in Denver, including these innocent passerby tulips, believed that it was safe to come out on April 24. Apparently not.

The FDA is hopelessly out of touch.

I just read an article about how the FDA is planning on releasing a statement today saying that marijuana advocates should stop trying to legalize the drug for medical use, and instead wait for further scientific review.

They're releasing it today. On 4/21.

Look, FDA. I know you're all old, retired military guys and doctors and stuff, but surely you have college interns. Surely, if you listened to them, one of them would have been able to tell you that releasing an anti-marijuana press release the day after 4/20 simply invites ridicule. Perhaps one of them did. But you, in true stolid old man fashion, just harrumphed to your wives about it on the way to the early-bird special at Polly's Pies.

Now you just look silly.

Hey, I'm all for scientific study, as it's more palatable than a bunch of dropouts trying to tell me that hemp has approximately 7434 uses and that to wipe my ass, clothe my body, or consume any other substance is so bourgeoisie that I should be ashamed. But seriously, if you're trying to get people's attention about the most widely-used illegal substance in America, perhaps it's wise to play along by the kids' rules for once.

*steps off soapbox* Good day to you, sirs.

Quality of life update

It appears that the World Famous KROQ has finally been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. That's right, kids, KROQ is now available for streaming online.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH WHOOOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!!!

Ever since I moved away from California, all I've been able to do is flip sullenly through radio stations in the car, moping that "it's just not KROQ." For the last couple of years, I've entertained myself by listening to Triple J, Australia's finest youth radio, and I really can't complain -- the jjj is great for no commercials, undiscovered-in-the-US music, and overall great tunes. Point is, the lack of KROQ was a matter of principle. It shouldn't be easier to access Australian radio than a gigantic LA station.

All of that sadness is over now. KROQ is streaming, and life is pretty damn good.

Update: There's a crappy song on right now. Back to the Aussies.

Things on walls! Yay!

We've been waiting to put up our pictures from Argentina because we were looking for the perfect frames. Considering how long it's been, we just went out and bought something, anything, to get them up on the wall.

The two smaller pictures look pretty nice in the frames we bought. The big one... yeah. It's a $10 cheap-ass poster frame. But it's up on the wall, and now we won't forget about it. In case you're wondering, the collage (or whatever you would call it) is a service from Kodak's online picture printing thingy. I highly recommend it.

I made this!

Thanks to the DIY book that Chris bought me for my birthday, I've made an awesome picture frame that looks great on our new bookshelf. It's an old book that I took the guts out of and cut holes in. There are more steps but that's the general gist.

For those of you who recognize yourselves in these pictures, this is the Easter weekend I first came out to Fort Lauderdale, when I was living in Vegas. Three years ago, I think. Anyway, I'm super stoked that I made this all by myself and that it rocks so thoroughly.






The shelves are from Room & Board. Yay. The walls are still a little bare until I can paint something.

Also the curtains aren't done yet. We've got a new curtain rod to put up, and we have to get tiebacks.

Spring update.

I never thought I'd be one of those people excited to see stuff turning green by mid-April. Ah, well, here are some of the latest photos of our backyard.


I waited a day too long to take a picture of the daffodils, as they're wilting now, but still pretty. I don't think they're getting enough water. We're still sorting out the sprinklers and hose situation.


The tree's got little purple flowers on it, and you can see that the grass at the side has gone green. We also have another blossoming tree on the side of the house -- it's got white flowers.


Before... (when we moved in)



... And now. The snow kind of looks the same, but we can tell the snow level has raised dramatically. And you can see how things are turning green on the ground.

The Po-Po visit Highlands Ranch

We don't see too many cops round these parts, mostly because we live in a lily-white, upper-middle-class neighborhood. Not as tony as Rio Vista, but still.

Anyway, we were watching CSI last night, minding our own business, when a cop pulled up on our curb. He had pulled over a Trans Am that had probably ran the stop sign at the end of our street. We did what any red-blooded humans would: turned off all the lights and opened the window so we could watch the drama.

While this cop was running this guy's info, a second cruiser came by, herding another victim. He pulled further up the street so we couldn't see him. At any rate, the fellow in front of us took a long time to process, because he didn't have his license on him -- a friend drove by and gave it to him. No, I'm not making this up.

The second cop finished up, turned around, and said to the cop in front of our house - "Hey! Turn off your lights so I can go catch another one!" Ladies and gentlemen, if ever before you have doubted that cops can be douchebags, here is your proof. They're not all douchebags, but the tendency is pretty high.

The second cop never did come back, but for a while we felt like we had our own Felony Phone* right in front of our house. It was awesome.



*My cousin Jon is a cop in Irvine. Stop that sniggering, they do too have crime there. Mostly at night. There is a particular payphone at a particular gas station that Irvine's Finest call the "Felony Phone," because every time there's someone using it after about midnight, you can be sure as shit that they're up to no good. Never fails, Jon says.

Update: The Trans Am left an oil stain on the street in front of our house. Thanks, buddy.

No, thank YOU.

I've been researching whitewater rafting trips for Chris, Andy, Jen, and myself. On one of the many many rafting tour guide websites, I signed up to receive a brochure. Today, I got the following email. It is effusive, to say the least.

Thank you, Elizabeth for your interest in Four Corners Rafting.
We appreciate the opportunity to provide you with information. We will be contacting you at *Liz's email here*. Thank you again Elizabeth for visiting our Web site, we will respond to your request within the next 24 hours. Thanks Again!

They're so grateful that I'm kind of worried. Am I the only one to ask them for information this year? Does Four Corners Rafting pretty much consist of a one-legged man with a leaky dinghy? We shall find out.

Jay Leno: Contact us immediately

Chris bought a flat-screen black computer monitor over the weekend. It's very nice. As with most things that come in large boxes, the actual box has brought us more joy than the monitor. Almost. It's a really nice monitor.

You know how sometimes you'll see something placed right next to something else, with an unintentionally humorous effect? Chris' dad saw a great example of this at Disney's California Adventure, where they put a smoking area right underneath an "explosives" warehouse.

In this case, the result is more redundant than anything, but still super funny. First the box, then the close-up.





If any of you point out that he may not, in fact, be black but rather some form of Pacific Islander, I will rip your face off. Just let it be.

Where's my knife?

Is that my knife?

It goes "schiiiiink!"

It is a mystery knife!

No, that's not my knife!



This, by the way, is all very funny if you've read Terry Pratchett's latest novel, Thud!. And I suppose that will be approximately one of you, so never mind and I'll tell you the story. My mom found an old pocket knife between the cushions of one of the chairs at grandma's house. According to her, it didn't belong to grandpa, and just about everyone who's ever been in that house in the last five years has been questioned. It doesn't belong to Chris. It doesn't belong to my cousin Jon. It doesn't even belong to Funundrum's Southern Hemisphere correspondent, Craig.

So the question is begged: exactly how long has this knife been in the chair? Could it be from Crazy Great-Uncle Johnny, who put on gardening gloves to touch his dog that had to live in the car when he visited with his wife Maxine? On second thought, the garden-glove guy could have been Crazy Great-Uncle Van, who visited with his wife Jerine. Neither one of them was actually crazy, but to a six-year-old who couldn't understand why they would keep their dog in the car in the driveway and put on gloves to touch it, they might as well have been nuts.

Anyway, if this resembles a knife you once had before visiting my grandma's house, or if this resembles a knife that you'd like to give a good home, contact Funundrum immediately.

Disclaimer: the knife is kind of old and from what I understand, rather crappy.

Disgusting product of the day

Okay, I stopped throwing up long enough to post this. There is a specialty cookie company out there called Good Fortunes that will put any picture you want on graham crackers covered in white chocolate. They are very festive and pretty and probably tasty. And expensive. And I acknowledge that there's a market out there for that kind of thing: wedding favors, sweet 16 birthday parties, birth announcements... actually, let's stop there.

Good Fortunes offers a very special way to share the good news with your loved ones. For only $22.50, they will create 8 lavishly decorated cookies, each emblazoned with an edible keepsake photo of your ultrasound. Nothing says "Mmm mmm good" to me like a fetus, I tell you.


I want to go back in time to when being pregnant was just something that you did. Like, you get pregnant, you're pregnant for a while, then you have a baby and everyone thinks it's cute. Now people are photocopying their ultrasounds for the office bulletin board, putting their ultrasounds on t-shirts, hats, mugs, their mantle, and apparently cookies too.

LISTEN -- it is just an ugly smudge. I know it's an ugly smudge that represents the purpose of your whole life, but it is still a nasty ugly smudge of a naked undeveloped fetus. Do not put it on a goddamn cookie and expect me to put it in my goddamn mouth.

Thank you for your time.

Possessed fridge.

Our fridge has an ice and water dispenser in the door. It works pretty well. You stick a cup under it, it spits out stuff, and then it stops.

Except for today. I've been sitting downstairs all day, and every 20 minutes or so, the fridge has been spitefully throwing pieces of ice on the floor. I'm not sure what I've done to anger it, but I'm damn tired of picking up after it. Perhaps I need to feng shui the condiments or something.

Attention: I can make things.

As Nathan can attest, I've got a little problem that I like to call "I can make it" disease. Whenever I see something funky but fairly simple in a store, I will inevitably try to convince whoever I'm with that I could make it. If I had the time. And wanted to.

Usually that doesn't work out so hot because I never get around to it. In this case, though, I actually followed through on my threat. The victim in this case was the terrible burgundy plaid nubbly fabric that was upholstering the window valances downstairs. I regret that I do not have a picture of them. Just imagine a La-Z-Boy, and you're pretty close.

With a staple gun and $20 of fabric from the clearance aisle at Jo-Ann's Fabrics, I forced these valances to make a statement. The statement might be "help me," I'm not sure yet. But for right now we think they're kind of neat. The colors show up a little differently in the photo, but you're looking at three various shades of tan/brown, and some bright blue.

Witness the coolest lamp in all of Christendom. I didn't make it, but it's our favorite purchase so far. It functions in both regular and dim and makes us feel like we should be serving our guests cocktail weenies on sticks, buttered rum, and unfiltered cigarettes. Mmmm. Fifties.

The biggest change to our home over the weekend were bitchin' new curtains. But I haven't taken pictures yet, so I'm sure no one will mind the update later.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for something funny to happen to me. Stand by.

The sexifying of our house.

Sexyfying? Sexyfing? Sex-up-ification? Whatever.

The outrageously boring family who used to live here, the Klotzes, left behind all of their window coverings. I mean, we can't blame them too much, as we asked them to so we didn't have naked windows, but DAMN were their window treatments ugly.

Chris and I have been blessed with similarly brilliant taste in furniture and the like, so we've taken comfort in the fact that these hideous swatches of countrytime terror were temporary until we could find curtains that were as cool as we are. Here's what we got rid of:

It's like the circus is coming to town, but in our living room, every day.

This terrible thing was so much the sadder on account of the saggy Wal-mart curtain rod that it was hanging from. It's what I would expect to see if someone held a funeral at a Cracker Barrel.

According to some, I've been told that I look like some sort of character from the Curtain Fighter 2 video game.

Stinky update.

Stinky has a girlfriend. Last week, the two of them were running around outside my window and I startled one of them by standing up quickly. Hoping to get some sort of entertaining reaction, I beat on the window a couple of times with a handy skein of yarn.

I was not expecting Stinky (or Other Stinky, I can only tell them apart by their tails sometimes) to play dead. It was awesome. He laid on the fence like that for a solid minute. "You can't see me, I'm flat, therefore invisible." I'm going to try that the next time I screw up -- just lie flat on the floor and remain quiet.

Mom's Birthday

Here it is, in all its glory. That there is a Kahlua cake. Mmmmm. It's got chocolate chips in as well.

For those of you keeping track, the cake does indeed say "Yay Mom." You will recall that Chris' birthday cake was similar. I assure you that this is out of necessity rather than stupidity. Mom's cake was round with a hole in the middle, and therefore had limited horizontal space.

Chris' cake was big and flat, but someone (*raises hand*) forgot to buy the icing with the decorative tips, rendering my letters ham-fisted. I promise that if you come to my house, I will try to make you a cake that says something other than "Yay [your name here]" but that's not a guarantee.

Childhood goodness.

Chris was unable to come home for lunch on one day last week, and with a limited amount of food in the fridge, I decided to indulge in one of my favorite meals from childhood. Before I started school, I spent some time in the care of a lady named Jean Vanderveen. She was from Holland and everything. Jean ran a daycare out of her home, and took care of kids of all ages. To keep the kids from doing that whole "hey, he got 2 hot dogs and I only got one" thing, she devised something called simply Hot Dogs Jean Style.

Cook hot dogs like normal, cut them up into pieces, and put them into a bowl along with pieces of hot dog bun that have been spread with mayo. Squeeze ketchup on the top, eat with a fork, and wonder why you feel like you're five again. Good times.