Slurpee fiasco

I am from Grand Blanc.  In Grand Blanc, everyone lives within walking distance of a 7-11.  During the peak years, we lived within walking distance of two.  This was an important factor in buying my own home as an adult.  Luckily, we found a home close to a 7-11.  However, we did not consider that the road that leads to the 7-11 is Michigan Ave.  This stretch of Michigan Ave has no sidewalks, so we had to drive to 7-11 like suckers.

Then came the new subdivision.  With the new subdivision came a new road that cut through to the next main road.  The new subdivision had sidewalks and so does the other main road.  This was wonderful.  When the new subdivision went in, my sister came over, we put baby Charles in the bike trailer and we headed to the 7-11.  The new route was great as far as sidewalks go, but it was definitely the long way to get there.  I swear it was up hill both ways.  We rode our bikes to the 7-11 once and then realized that there were alternatives.  The new route to 7-11 led us paste a movie theater and a Meijer gas station.  Both have frozen cokes.

I would like to be a snob, but the truth is, I can't tell the difference between a frozen coke and a slurpee.  Our remaining bike rides have gone past the movie theater (no one wants to pay 4 bucks for a frozen coke), and onward to the Meijer gas station. 

Odessa is still a little young for the bike trailer.  Today I thought it would be a good idea to walk with a 4 year old and a baby in a stroller to the Meijer gas station.  I am stupid.  In Grand Blanc this would have been easy.  It was not easy from our house.  It turns out it is way farther than I imagined.  Half way to the gas station I had to send Nathan back to get the car.  I figured we might be able to make it there, but no way were we making it back.  That left me alone to cross the major roads with the children.  We did pretty well, but I almost considered stopping to get the 4 dollar frozen coke at the movie theater.  Amazingly, Nathan saved the day and pulled into the movie theater to pick us up.  He took us right to the Meijer gas station.

To top off the fiasco, I didn't even get a frozen coke.  I am trying to give up pop.

Wrestling is very much like Glee

One of the great things about the type of work I do is that I get to work with wonderful people.  One of the downsides of the kind of work I do is that we get moved around a lot so the wonderful people I get to know don't work with me forever.

One of the wonderful people I have worked with is named Tom.  Tom and I worked together for years with a great team of people.  The situation was horrendous, but the team was amazing.  It has been a while since I have worked with Tom.  Luckily, with my new job being in Downtown Detroit, Tom and I can meet for lunch occasionally.

Tom is a wrestling Ref and recently he couldn't meet me for lunch because he would be at Regionals.  I had to ask if it was the same as Regionals on Glee.  Tom is hilarious and this is his response.

"Yes, those wrestling boys like to think of it as being very much like Glee. Except their uniforms aren’t so much like costumes. They do have regionals too.


At one meet that I reffed, this kid who wasn’t very good at wrestling, and everyone knew it, except his mom who thought he was good (but she wasn’t very knowledgeable about anything anyway) tried to wrestle the champ. When I blew the whistle to start the match, the kid started running around the wrestling mat snapping his fingers and singing that song from West Side Story, you know the one:


"When you’re a Jet, you’re the top cat in town, you’re the gold-medal kid, with the heavyweight crown!...”


The champ looked at him like he was a weirdo (which he was in fact) and the kid’s Mom was yelling, “…take him down, Snowboy, take him down…”, which also didn’t make sense to those watching since the kid was clearly dancing like a Puerto Rican and not really a Jet. Suddenly, his teammates too started dancing, as did everyone in the gym.

The champ, yelling and cursing, chased the dancer/wrestler into the hallway wanting to beat this kid’s ass, but stopped short because now there were like 200 people in the hallway doing the same Puerto Rican-like dance. The look on the champ’s face was priceless—he didn’t know what the hell was going on, he was scared. He just stared with a panicked look on his face. Out of nowhere, the weirdo wrestler who was also a bad dancer but could sing pretty good, walked up to the champ and, in a falsetto voice, sang, “Don’t be angry, I am your brother.” The champ immediately puked, and while everyone started laughing at him, Howie Mandel walked from out of the crowd and said, “Champ, this isn’t a real wrestling meet, or even an episode of Glee. You’ve been mobbed. The champ started crying while everyone clapped and cheered. The weirdo tried to kiss his brother but was quickly punched unconscious.

That’s why I like reffing, but I digress. In wrestling, it starts with eight Districts. If you make it out of Districts, you advance to one of four Regionals.

Here is where the pressure builds. Everyone wants to make it out of their respective regional (one of four regions) to the State meet, or “State” for short.

Now, there is much disagreement and discord about whether a wrestler advances to “State” or “States”. I am in the “State” camp. To me, a number of districts make up a number of regionals make up only one state meet. So I say “State”. Others disagree with me. Of course many of them say Fords, Chryslers, K Marts, Wal Marts, Meijers, etc. Not me though."

Semi-successful pinning

I am into mustaches lately. I don't want to grow one myself, or have my husband grow one, but I find them fascinating. Because of this, my friend Cheryl sent me this link. http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=304275.0. I pinned it.

The pattern is for knitting, but I wouldn't let that stop me. It seemed so simple. It was so simple I was going to make a ton of them. I was going to hand them out like chicklets. I made one. It was way hard. First of all, you can't just take a knitting pattern and do the same thing with crochet. I don't know why, but it turns out to be completely different. So, I crocheted something that looked terrible and then just filled in the gaps with embroidery. Somehow it turned out way bigger than the one in the pattern. oops.

Adventures in Crochet

Well, I have learned to crochet, but so far the one thing I have not mastered is a hat. I have a lot of hat books with fabulous hat creatures and creations, but they are all sized for little kids. I try to alter the pattern so they will fit me, but so far, no good.

To torture me further, THE gift this Christmas was the creature hat. I so wanted to make these myself.

Here is the hat I tried to crochet.

You are thinking, my goodness, What a great orange Hershey's kiss hat you have crocheted. Why thank you, except it is supposed to be ERNIE. So I ripped this one out and tried another approach. I confess that I knitted the hat part and crocheted the rest. I barely know how to knit and I cannot pearl. Everything I know about knitting is what my hands remember from when I was 6 years old and my Great Grandma taught me how to knit. However, as luck would have it, I own one of those hat knitting looms they make for children. It is amazing. It allows me to make a hat. They all turn out the same size, the perfect size for my family of big heads. Once I knitted the hat, I crocheted Ernie's ears and the ear flaps. I found some big chunky black yarn and it became the magic hair. Originally I bought black fur, that was a big mistake. when you buy fur, it gets everywhere.

Anyway, here is the finished product. I was going to make the rest of the face, but I decided I like it better as a high concept Ernie. It would be condescending to the public to put a face on Ernie, assuming they couldn't figure out that it is Ernie as it is.


Maybe I will finish the Bert hat for Nathan by next winter.

Feel free to pin this.