The Produce Beagle

My husband, Chris if you missed it, is from New Zealand. It is tiny island nation that is sort of like Australia's fat cousin. Everyone can remember Australia and facts about it but no one remembers New Zealand for anything except being close to Australia (and Lord of the Rings).
Since I have been to New Zealand, I think this is sad because it is really one of the most spectacular places I have ever seen.

Today my friend got a call from animal control. Her neighbor complained that her beagle was out of his pen. I am glad someone brought this to her attention. I mean have you seen Snoopy? The dog has a war plane in his dog house. And my friend's beagle? Named Maverick. She is just lucky he hasn't shot anyone.

Anyway, all this talk of beagles made me think of The Produce Beagle. When you come through US Customs or Mexico Customs or most places where they "check you". There is a German Shepard or Doberman who sniffs your luggage and checks for drugs of the illegal kind. New Zealand on the other hand is not concerned with drugs (Hello! The home of bungee jumping and zorbing, stoned people fuel their economy) but with produce. The number one industry in New Zealand is agriculture and the worst thing that could happen to them is for you to bring a rotten apple with some exotic disease into their country. So just like in the states a dog comes and sniffs your luggage but it's a beagle.
I watched him bust a girl with a banana in her purse. He just walked over and stood beside her bag. The agent came up and asked her if she had any produce. She opened her purse and gave the agent a half eaten banana in a ziploc. The agent then took it to the fruit bin. Once she threw it away, the dog who had been so calm got all excited to get his treat for doing a good job. It was too cute. I have found my next career. I want to be the lady who handles the produce Beagle.

Reprised from my travel blog Jen and Chris go to New Zealand which includes the best picture of my husband drunk in a paisley shirt evah!

It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to

So it was just my birthday. I'm 29 (because I know that you wanted to know). My birthday this year was totally lackluster.

1) It was a Tuesday
2) I was depressed (not about my birthday)

Anyway, it got me thinking about my best and worst birthdays.

Worst - 19. Nothing happened. I think my roommate got me a cake at the store but that was it. No going out, no fun time, maybe a present from my mom.

Best - 23. So Hurricane hmm, remember to google this Isabel was going to hit the Virginia Coast and since my best friends parents lived on Long Island (Isabel target #2) she evacuated herself to Knoxville. She always said it would take a Hurricane to get to Knoxville and it did.

Now I don't know how or why we decided I needed to have a monkey themed 23rd birthday party (drink much?) but we did. We printed out lots of pictures of monkeys and posted them up in my apartment. We also bought drink mixers and replaced all the recommended liquors with 99 bananas. That's right 99 bananas IN EVERYTHING! You could have a cosmo-monkey or a slut monkey or a monkeys naval.

I recall a few things about that night. I was quitting smoking because I said I wouldn't smoke past graduation, I recall this caused me to act out. I do know I wore my door wreath on my head at some point. I also bit a guy on the ankle.

See I was getting my MBA and my laptop was out and my friend (a classmate) was on it chatting with another classmate and pretending to be me. I tried to stop him and he put his hand on my head and smooshed me to the floor (yeah, you try to fight someone after you've had 97 of the 99 bananas) and so since I was down there I made a strategic move and bit his ankle. This is the only incident in my adult life that I have bit someone, I am much more of a slapper. Anyway, once you bite someone's ankle there is really no competing with that.


What is your best/worst birthday story?

An important update

1 - go vote for me in the Aunt Becky Goes Places and Does Stuff Contest, it's #10

2 - my at work WW may not make. This means I will have to go with the masses to the WW main office. I will still go but reserve the right to complain about it. For reals people - the WW it works. It is worth the money - would you pay money for someone to wave a wand and make you thin? Yeah, so then you should pay for this (of course it's not magic fast but nothing is and the point is in 5 years when you haven't lost any weight you will be all like Dammit! I should have listened to Jen)

3 - The flu. I do not have it. If you think you have it then stay home. Do not touch me. Do not touch people who will touch me or things I will touch. I am not a baby about being sick (unlike every man ever) but I am dancing here in 2 weeks and going on vacation here the week after that and if you ruin that for me I will haunt your sweaty flu dreams.

THE Weight Watchers

I do Weight Watchers (jeez, that feels like a confession). It's true. Without disclosing my actual weight lets just say in 2003 and again in 2008 I topped out at exactly 100 lbs more than I weighed when I graduated high school. For reals.
Anyway, in the interim of athletic to tub I tried LA Weight Loss - I don't remember this working at all, South Beach Diet - lost 40 gained 60, Slim Fast - lost 28 gained 48, and something I can't remember the name of but I could have any salt - lost 10 in week and binge drank it all back on in 1 hour. Weight Watchers is the first one of these plans where the weight hasn't magically melted off. It is also the first plan that hasn't made me say, "Man, as soon as this diet is over I am going to eat _____."
So on the one hand WW is frustratingly slow (read healthy) and on the other hand I feel like I could do this forever and not continually to yo-yo my way up to 300 lbs.
I thought I would lay out the back story so I could share a bit about how WW is going on the blog.
I am worried about moving and being weeks and even months without a meeting. Hopefully, I can make is seamless and only miss a few. I use etools which is the online tracking so I can still track even if I am without meetings.

Nearly Fat Free Buffalo Chicken Dip

My friend Kelley and my mom both make the same recipe for the most incredible buffalo chicken dip. Mmmm....

Alas, it is not low fat. I had a serious craving for it one day and because I was terrified that fat police (and possibly my weight watchers group leader) would magically appear and take my cream cheese away I had to get to substituting.

First, you need some chicken. Kelley's recipe calls for canned chicken. I think that would work in mine too but I haven't tried it. I had been boiling chicken breasts and shredding them but tonight I cheated and pulled apart a rotisserie chicken. This was much more chicken and also got

mushy as it cooked - I like mushy but you might not.

Then I add:

1 can low fat cream of celery

8 oz fat free sour cream

1 packet dry ranch seasoning

1/2 cup buffalo wing sauce (not pictured) - 1/2 cup is the minimum, we are wussies when it comes to the heat

See all the store brands, that's the husbands doing. He is very cheap frugal.

Tonight we mixed it up and added chopped celery right to it. This gave it a nice crunch.

Let it all cook and when it is hot through and through you will have a delicious orange glop.

Chris and I do good to get it on plates and then scoop it with baked tortilla chips and celery (except when we jump the gun and put the celery in it).

If I were going to take this to a party I think I would put it in a small casserole dish, pour a little extra wing sauce on top for a nice orange color and then put a little pile of chopped celery in the middle because I am fancy like that.

You should make this and have me over, or better yet just bring it here. I will put my bathrobe on.

You are moving! OMG! WTF! LOL! NSFW!

So this blog wasn't meant to be live yet. I thought it would be fun to do a blog about moving so I set it up, made it pretty, did a few introductory posts and then I was going to let it sit until we moved but what happened was I entered a contest and that post just wouldn't seem right on my other blog. So I decided to go ahead and publish this one.

Here are the facts:
1. We are moving to The Boro
2. We don't know when
3. We have very mixed feelings about it
4. I am an extrovert and like to talk about my feeling on the interwebs

I would also like to take this time to apologize to my husband who is a private person and does not like his shit out there. I love you and you knew what you were getting into when you married me.

Chapter One: In Which We Take Aunt Becky to Dollywood

Preface: See it all started when I became concerned that I would end up like those moms (you know the ones) who can only send pictures of their babies and put their Facebook Status as "the baby is finally asleep." I am sure that having a baby does change everything but hopefully it won't change me into a robot, zombie, diaper changer. So in my quest for moms who rock. I found Aunt Becky, and the first thing I found when I got there was this.

Chapter One: In Which We Take Aunt Becky to Dollywood

They say you can't take Aunt Becky anywhere. But if you were going to take her somewhere it would be here. Dolly doesn't judge.

We started out leaving town and I had to take a picture of the Sunsphere because it is slightly phallic and has wigs in it.
Getting to Dollywood is an ordeal because it is in Pigeon Forge. If you ever go to Pigeon Forge you will see a lot of old people. That is because they have been stuck in traffic since 1986.
I got bored in traffic and had the camera out.

So here is me, trying to undouble the chin by angling my shot (it only made it worse, it only ever makes it worse),

and here is Chris wondering why we are taking business cards on a trip and if his wife is off her meds (answer: yes).

Yay! It's too late now. We spent money! I must say I like how Dolly puts her picture on everything. I might start putting my picture on everything.

Okay, so we tried to take a picture of ourselves and I can tell what I was thinking. I was thinking, "Chris is so tall. I will have to look up to be in the picture." Don't judge me.

Luckily one of Dolly's illegal immigrant photographers so good they must be imported took pity on us and took our picture.

The first thing we did was take the train that goes around Dollywood and into the Smokies. Dolly cares a lot about the Smokies and protecting them for the future, which is why she has a train that burns 5 tons of coal and 5,000 gallons of water a day. Don't worry I am drafting my letter.

The best thing about the train was the woman giving a baby (since I don't have a baby I cannot speculate the baby's age but let's say this baby could sort of stand up and maybe walk if holding something) a diet coke. Now I will cut a bitch for a diet coke but I am pretty sure if you aren't supposed to have one when you are pregnant that you should not be giving it directly to the baby.

Then we were hot so we went on a log ride. This was really the only ride all day wear I could take a picture without fear of death, at least for the camera.

So it turns out that Dolly loves the eagles - no, not those Eagles although I bet she loves those too.
That is a real eagle. It creeped me out because it looks plastic.

OMG, eagles just pick up any kind of crap for their nests.

Chris made his only request of the day. (Well, besides don't spend too much money and don't eat 10 funnel cakes and then cry about how you are fat.) He wanted to see the eagle show. I have a picture of an eagle in the show but I like owls and this is my blog.

After the show it was time to hit the good rides. It was 100 thousand degrees (on the Jen scale) so there weren't a lot of people or long lines. Here we are in line. I look happy, I must have just had a snack.

Here we scope out the view. That is the newest ride that is sort of like the Space Needle on steroids.

There is a lot of weird crap in Dollywood.

Chris was excited that the coffin was long enough. I went ahead and bought it.

This was some sort of moonshine device. Dolly seems to support the shine. It makes me wonder if she knew Popcorn.

Finally, we went to see Sha-Kon-O-Hey which is the current big production about living in the Mountains at the time the park was created. In was really good. I think most people can agree that Dollywood puts on a good show. I admit I teared up a little when Grandma decided she wasn't gonna move out West.

And of course what trip to an amusement park would be complete without strategic product placement.