Received in the mail today:
One wallet with accompanying note saying one word. "Sorry"
I seriously have the weirdest life.

The world's newest super hero! Sworn to stop the world from listening to poorly played trombone.
Go Here to make your own!

Minnesota Trip - Second Installment:

Why do I have a knack for finding myself in the most absurd situations? It wouldn't be my life if there weren't a few more amazing anecdotes to tell.
So, I went to my friend Mandy's wedding. Back in February, Mandy had asked if I would like to help out by being in charge of the guestbook at her wedding. I told her that I'd love to. Nothing else was ever mentioned, so I sort of wondered if she had forgot or what. Never-the-less, I decided to show up about 40 minutes early to the ceremony to make sure that it was taken care of.

When I got there - I noticed that someone was working the guest book table already. I walked up to them and asked - "Oh, are you in charge of the guest book?" "Yes," they said. Ok. I figure that she was stressed out with wedding planning stuff and forgot she asked me. No worries. I waved at her mom as I went to go see some friends that I hadn't seen in 7 years. (TOTALLY AWESOME, BTW) We sit and talk and do some catching up - and then it's wedding time. Hurrah! We open the program to see the order of the service which is when something horrifying is drawn to my attention by my mother. It says "Attendant to the bride" with my name next to it.

I suddenly feel very ill.

We watch the wedding party get seated - and then Mandy comes up (completely drop dead gorgeous) with her dad. We make eye contact and I see her point me out to her dad. A look of relief comes over her face.

I feel even more ill. Of course, I had not been asked to be an attendant to the bride, but even so, I just felt horrible!

The wedding was over by 4:00 and the reception wasn't until 7:00 - so I got to feel completely horrible that whole time, trying to figure out what I was going to say to poor Mandy. Finally, reception time comes. After a couple of hours, I was able to finally get her alone for a few moments. I apolgized profusely for not being there.
"I was just really worried," she said.
I said, "Did you mean to send a request for me to be your attendant with the invite? Because I honestly had no idea you wanted me to do that!"
She gave me a quizzical look and said. "Oh, it's ok, we just got someone from my mom's work to do the guestbook."
"Oh!" I exclaimed, "I knew about that! But when I came 40 minutes early and someone was already working it, I assumed you had forgotten you asked me!"
"You were there 40 minutes early?!" she says, "My mom was freaking out because she didn't see you anywhere!!"

Now, for those of you who have ever seen pictures of me, you will know that I completely change appearances every couple of years. Her mom hadn't seen me in 5 years - so she didn't recognize me at all until she saw me with my mom in the reception.

So anyway - what a mess! Turns out it had been written wrong in the program, too. Sigh. Drama. It follows me, I swear.

Other things that follow me:
Spiders. I HATE spiders. I'm ok with them as long as they are in their little corner doing their bug-eating thing - but NO - they need to be on my person. That's why I hate them.

I was at my parent's place and since my little brother is home for the whole summer, they gave him the guest room (my old room) - which meant that I got the little computer room in the basement. Last night it was about a billion degrees downstairs, so I opened the window and turned on a fan. I left for a few hours, and then came back down to practice. At which point I noticed the brown recluse on my sheets. EEEWWW. Luckily, there just happened to be a mini Louisville Slugger right next to the bed. So I smashed it's brains out. I decided thereafter to wash the sheets on the bed. Good thing I did - I found another spider after it fell all crunchy and dead off of the sheets when I took it out of the dryer. ICK! Then I went into the room to make the bed - and noticed 3 huge icky spiders in the window. That's when I closed the window . . .
I had dreams all night of spiders crawling on me. NOT COOL.

Needless to say, it feels good to be home. Really good. My cats, my clean and nice smelling apartment, food that I like and can eat in the fridge, my Lactaid Milk, my 400 thread count sheets. . . ahhhhh. Even though I hate it out here on the farm, I must say that it seems pretty great to come home to my own way of life again after staying everwhere else and being in a car for 30 hours over the last 4 days.

Aaaahhhhhh. . . .

Magical Trip to Minnesota 1st Installment:
I've had an eventful couple of days. My wallet was stolen on Tuesday night, so of course my entire Wednesday was consumed by calling to replace every card in my wallet. Charming.
Naturally, this occurs the day before I'm planning to drive to Minnesota for a wedding. Travelling without any forms of ID or credit cards? Sounds great! Where do I sign up?
Meanwhile, back at the Tuba Ranch, exciting things were going on . . .
My vacuum cleaner literally exploded when I was cleaning up to leave. And I don't mean that the bag was too full - I mean with FIRE. Then my wireless router followed suite - only without an explosion or fire. By which I mean it just stopped working.
After finally getting my house clean, I went to IUCU to get some money out of the bank - we decided that the best way to do it would be to buy a VISA giftcard which works like a debit card. I took out 50 bucks to use for gas - which should have been plenty. (Note the use of foreshadowing)
Then driving . . . driving . . . and more driving. But stopping to practice every couple of hours in the reststops. Great if you want people to clap when you are done playing your orchestral excerpts. I don't know how many of you have ever driven across Illinois. I'll describe it perfectly in one statement: "206 miles of amazingly flat, boring cornfields"
I get to Peoria, IL and decide to get some gas since I'm down to a little under half a tank. Card is declined. Turns out, gas stations put a service charge on debit gift card fills at a station to "prevent fraud". They put a 30 dollar "service charge" on my 20 dollar purchase. Magical. How was I supposed to know that?!
Now, remember everyone - Jen does not have a cell phone. Now what? I still have 3 hours of driving and less than half a tank! I have a checkbook, but I can't find a place that will take a check without an ID - which of course, was stolen as well.
So no money, no phone, in the middle of Illinois. Special. I LOVE my magical ability to find situations like this.
So. . . I decide to drive to the next available reststop because those seem to be the only places left in the world with payphones. I have the idea to drive within an hour of home and have my dad meet me to buy me some gas. But first - getting ahold of them. . .
So, I decide to make a collect call. I try 3 times from the *11 number - and for some reason, it keeps saying that the party denied my request. Thinking that there must be something wrong with the number, I try to call with the Verison number that I see attached to the phone. This time, I hear who is picking up - my 12 year old brother, Tim. This is when I realized what was happening. I heard the voice say "to accept this call press one or say "YES" - to deny this call please just hang up." I can almost hear the sweat dripping down Tim's face as he is trying to figure out why this call keeps coming back and wondering what he is supposed to say. He hangs up.
But now, I have a plan.
I call again and Tim got a message that said. . .
"This is Verison with a collect call from 'TIM, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PRESS ONE!!' He pressed one.
So end of story - got ahold of my dad - he came and rescued me in Monmouth, IL. Fun times.

This will come as no surprise to most of you - but I'm pretty much a failure at life. In a comical/hopefully lovable sort of way, mind you.

I went out for some drinks with an interesting guy I met over the weekend. But me, being of course - me, had to randomly throw some hilarious bloopers into the mix.
Things were going pretty well and all, and then we decided to leave the bar and do something fun. We had discovered that hiking, etc was a common interest - so we thought that we'd head to Lake Monroe and hike some trails. First, we stop at our respective places to get appropriate attire (my place is still in post finals chaos - oops!) Then we get in the car to go to Lake Monroe. We get there - and the patrol is actually in his office. At 11:00 at night. Well, shit. We could get arrested because the park is closed.
So, we decide to drive all the way back and hike from my place to the lake. Which is when we realize how astonishingly dark it is outside. The moon, although quite full, was not out at all. AT ALL. It was so dark, I couldn't even find the entrance to the trail. Oh - and we, intelligently enough, had no flashlights, and no compass or GPS unit. We walked into the woods - and I realized very quickly how likely we were to get lost. Well, damn. Back to the messy house that for some weird reason smells strongly now of nail polish. . .
So we shared funny YouTube clips (on a side note, it's kind of funny how this has become a bonding type experience in our generation . . .) and talked. Then he mentioned that he was tired and wanted to go home. I thought nothing of it. We looked at each other - nothing happened. I wondered why he wasn't leaving. Was he expecting me to say or do something? There was a pregnant sort of pause and he says. . .
"Um, so . . . can you give me a ride home then?"
Which is when I realized that I had driven him to my place.

Sheesh. No wonder I have such a ridiculous romantic life!

So, last night after the Big Band Extravaganza, I did a very inadvisable thing. My mom and brother were in town, and they are really big geocachers. (For you geocaching muggles out there, geocaching is like going on a treasure hunt with a GPS device - usually in the woods) There are several caches in close proximity to my place, so we thought it would be good fun to go out and look for them. I called friend Sara, and we all decided to go out to Lake Monroe to Walk Pate Hollow trail and look for caches with delightful names like "Master Pater."

Now, here is the clincher - we LEFT at 1 am, and then proceeded to walk 5 miles of trail. In the wee small hours of the morning. This morning, my body hates me for two separate and distinct reasons.

Reason 1: I walked 5 miles last night.
Reason 2: We got home at 5:30 am. 5:30 AM!!
Ouch.
Ouch.
Ouch.

Here is a random call that I got today from a number that is my Dad's cell number. This, however, was most certainly NOT my Dad. Nor were there any references to ANYTHING that had anything to do with anything. AND my Dad apparently has his cell phone. Seriously weird, yo.

"Hi it's me, ummm. . .
It is extremely windy here. There is dust . .everywhere... trees down . .everywhere, including. . . . ours. A major half, uh, of the tree in the front came down. . . just twenty minutes ago. Scared the shit out of the cats. uh. Found mickey under my comforter in the bed. Uh. I arrived like five minutes after it happened. Uh. Izzy seemed to take it in stride - but he was under the covers and theres a whole entire front yard is covered in tree. And The city says it might be a day or two before they get out because they have trees downall over the city. So it looks like, well, man, um of course what that means is that I'll have to use more air conditioning this summer - because there goes my shade. . . .
anyway. . . . . . . talk to you later . . . bye"

Who the HELL is that?? How are they using my Dad's number? WHY are they calling me?!

I think the aliens are onto me. . .

Why do they add so much sugar to instant oatmeal packets? I have to add another packet of plain just to make it edible. Maybe I should get get plain.
Food for thought . . .

In other news,
I found myself deeply amused today by a high school conversation I saw on Facebook between my brother and a few of his friends that have, for some reason, decided to add me as their friends. One of them posted one of those stupid chainmail things that tries to use God as leverage to get you to perpetuate the email. Of course, this is the sort of post that has a whole list of obvious rhetorical questions posing as deep and profound thoughts - and then says things like, "of course, only people who really love God will send this on - remember God is watching you!"
And, of course, this makes a few people pretty upset.
My brother starts ranting about how a post like that is SPAM - and spamming is ILLEGAL - and God would NEVER want you to go something illegal.
Then an emo kid decides to answer all of the rhetorical questions "a-la-nietzsche".
Ahhh... the sweet smell of drama in the morning.
I will LOVE to see how far this goes.

It's been forever since I last posted because life sort of just exploded at me. Which is fun?

Here is the skinny on the thoughts currently occupying my mind:

• A 24% tuition increase is cramping my style for next semester - I'm not sure I'll be coming back to IU because I'm sort of spent on the whole loan thing. Won't know for sure if I will be here until April 27th.
  
• I absolutely hate where I live. It's a constant source of drama and general stress.
• My horse has been mysteriously losing weight, I can't quite figure out why. To date I have spent a few hundred dollars thus far with things like getting his teeth floated, etc.
• Due to the high cost of where I am currently living and the sudden horse expenses, I have no money for things - like food.
• I sprained both ankles last week.
  
• I got hit by a car in a parking lot thursday and my left knee hurts now to compliment the ankles. (Hit and run, of course)
  
• Boys. Enough said.
• 20 page paper due.
• 2 Professional auditions coming up next month. (Oregon and Honolulu)
• Recital in three weeks.

So.. basically, I'm going crazy constantly. It's not like my life is BAD right now - it's just stressful. Really unbelievably stressful. And it's sort of affecting my productivity and my relationships.
I'll post soon on the hilarious saga that is my less-than-romantic life. Should be good for a laugh or three.

Uh Oh - A SEMI-SERIOUS POST.

Funny how a random fun conversation with a group of friends can lead to the dredging up of emotions that you were unaware you were still harboring. I had a conversation like that tonight with a group of friends over drinks. You get to talking about your social life - your love life - etc. And it's fun. You make jokes, you laugh, you all learn a little more about each other. All around a good time.
But what happens when you go home?
Talking about one's past or one's habits invites recollection of the past. Which is something that I general tend not to dwell on. Starting the conversation - no matter how sterile it actually is with the present company, begins the thought processes that never really got mulled over. It invites a re-examination of how you got where you are emotionally, socially and romantically. I also tend to avoid this train of thought - because I find it painful.
But the point is that I didn't KNOW that I found it painful until this evening. I feel confused by this. I feel in general confused by myself.
For example - why do I ultimately hate being alone? Anymore, I can't stand to be by myself. And I don't know why. It makes no sense to me and it doesn't seem to fit into my personality.
Is it because I am an extreme extrovert? (even though I prefer to be at home with no neighbors?) Or is it because I am used to not having to be alone due to close friends and significant others who filled my life? Or is it just that I had at one time in my life made a decision that would mean that I would never be alone when I went home and now I have made a decision that negates that one without having a strong support group around me, so I am trying to rely on folks I hardly know to fill that hole?
I have no answers. But I do dread coming home to an empty apartment in the middle of nowhere and I don't know why. It was supposed to be a sanctuary. . .
Anyway,
The end of this story -
Coming home from this fun outing with my friends. . . I cried the whole way home experiencing a well of unexpressed emotions that I was unaware I even had inside me.
Seriously weird.
As Carl Lenthe would say - Food for Thought.

Stupidest. Cat. Ever.
My cat Milhaud is perhaps the stupidest cat that I have ever met in my life. He has no coordination, no sense of balance and absolutely no sense of "cause and effect" what-so-ever. So basically, I have a clutzy cat that has a hard time learning the household rules. Just trying to get him to stay out of the kitchen sink has been a chore! Most cats learn if you squirt them with the sink hose a couple of times to stay away. Not Milhaud. He doesn't like water - yet he doesn't seem to understand that he is getting squirted every time he goes near the sink.
Another fun method is to gently toss the cat 10 or so feet every time they get near. He came back Fourty two times.

Here is the only video proof that I have of his stupidity to date:
Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qZvyNt-VYE

I am a terribly lazy and cheap human being. Currently, I could be driving home - enjoying my nice warm apartment and playing Zelda. Or I could be practicing. What am I doing instead? Writing a blog post in the school library to occupy my time until someone with a car shows up on Google Chat that I can coerce into giving me a ride home.

You make ask yourself - "Jen, why don't you just drive yourself home?" Well - I decided that I liked sleep this morning and had to drive to school instead of catching the bus. When this happens, I have to park in the Jordan parking lot to make it to class on time. (I have to leave my apartment about half an hour early as opposed to an hour early to make this happen.) And you see, the Jordan lot charges by the hour. By the time I was able to leave, I had racked up 20 bucks in parking charges. DAMN.

However, I do know that they just open the gates after a certain time (11:00 pm on most days) and you won't have to pay. I know that it is earlier than 11:00 pm on Fridays - but I'm not sure exactly when this is. So, here I am. Wasting precious time because I'm too cheap to leave and too lazy to practice or study scores for my classical history class. I am excellent at this graduate school thing.

***************

In other news related to laziness. I have recently discovered that I am probably the least efficient human being alive.

Here is the event that alerted my attention to this problem:

I was playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess the other night while talking to friends on Google chat - which is my favorite form of procrastination. One of my friends happened to ask what I was doing on the Zelda game. It was then that I realized that actually, I was currently trying to get my character to walk backwards in metal boots across the entirety of Hyrule field. For absolutely no reason. What kind of person can't even be productive in a video game?! Here I should be trying to save Hyrule - but NOOOO - I choose to do things like:

• Trying to walk and change my boots at the same time.
• Cut all of the grass in Hyrule field.
• Roll across all of Lake Hylia in metal boots.
• Look at every picture in every house in every town.
• Watch the clouds for 20 minutes to see if there are any interesting shapes/changes in the weather.
• Dive off of a cliff just to see if I am allowed to do it. (Also applies to jumping into lava)

The best part? I've not even defeated the game yet. Good thing no one is really counting on me to save the world. . .

Hurray! Today is my birthday!

Born Under the Sign of the Retarded Bureaucrat
Installment 2

THEY LOST MY ENTRANCE EXAM. OMG.

Born Under the Sign of the Retarded Bureaucrat
That's what one of my friends deems only explanation for the stream of absolutely ridiculous red tape that I continue to encounter on almost a day to day basis. I've decided that this will be a regular section on this blog - because if I am going to have to go out of my way to avert this red tape B.S. then SOMEONE should at least get some amusement from it. . .

The latest fiasco:

Registration at Indiana University.
Compounded by the administration building at Truman State University.

1. Graduated from Truman in August - paid 25 dollars for my final transcripts to be mailed to Indiana University.
   
2. Get to Indiana University and realise they have not yet mailed said transcripts.
3. Call Truman - they say that 1 month is needed. Relay this info to Indiana University.
4. 2 months go by. . . . nothing happens, I assume that no further action is needed.
5. Time to register for classes! Go to get my program planning sheet signed and am informed that I have a hold on my account (that does not appear online).
   
6. Have to call registrar's office to figure out why the hold. Guess what?! No Transcripts!
7. Cannot submit planning sheet and therefore register until after transcripts are received.
   
8. Call Truman. Yell. They tell me that they will send them right away. It's been really busy. Fine.
   
9. Try to register again 2 weeks later. Still no transcripts.
10. Call Truman. Again. Yell. Again. "We never received a transcript request from you". What?! I have a receipt! "That must be from something else." What then. "We don't know." Fine. Can I pay you to mail them now? "No, you have to mail us a form because we need your signature on it." Fine.
11. Print out, fill out and mail transcript form to Truman. Pay another 30 dollars for transcripts and overnight shipping fee to Indiana University.
12. Another week goes by. Finally, Indiana University receives my transcripts! Too bad the semester is over.
13. Submit my program planning sheet on the last day they are open before Christmas.
14. It's approved! Hooray! Rejoice! But wait! Oh no. . . . I have 2 holds on my account that will prevent me from registering. One with the registrar and one with the bursar. And the offices won't be open until January 2nd. Great.
15. Look at my bursar account (which I couldn't access because of the transcript hold until now) It says that I have a past due balance (doesn't say on what) and that it has been there since the semester "Beginning of Time". WHAT?!
    
16. Wait. Wait. Wait.
17. January 2nd! Hooray! I will be able to register today. Oh no.... that never happens. Ever.
18. Call bursar's office at 3:50ish. On hold for 10ish minutes. Finally someone. Why is there a hold on my account? "Oh, you had a parking ticket from August." Why didn't anyone tell me? "We should have sent you a bill". Riiiight. I may have noticed that. Nope. "Well, I don't know what to tell you". Ditto. Ok, fine. I'll pay it. Can I pay it now? "Well, actually, our money processing abilities end at 4:00 although we are open until 5:00. You can submit the payment online - but it won't get processed until Wednesday night at 12:00 am." (Mind you the 4th is the last day to register.) Fine. Fine, Fine, FINE.
19. Slam phone down.
20. Decide to call registrar and see what the hold is. Suspect that it is nothing more than the bursar's fine again.
21. "Oh yes, you have a past due payment with the bursar. " Ok, I just took care of that. "Oh wait, there is something else here too." Oh no. What now?
22. "We need you to fill out a card detailing your ethnic background before you can register." You have got to be kidding me. "Oh, well. . . we have to give that information to the government. You should have filled that out with your application to the University, but you didn't" It said it was optional and that I didn't have to fill it out if I didn't feel comfortable. "Oh yes. Someone really should change that." What if I DON'T feel comfortable with releasing that information? "Well, you can come to the Registrar's office and fill out a special form that says that you don't feel comfortable. We need your signature on the form though." Wait - how is that not my application? Why didn't the application cover that? "It's just the way we need to do things here." Why wasn't I told about this? "You should have been sent an email about it a few months ago." Now, I KNOW I would remember something as stupid as that. Well fine - can I come in and fill out the form today? "Actually, we closed at 4:00." But it says online that you are open until 5:00. "That's the phone service desk." Oh. Fine. Whatever.
23. So, I guess I'll still have a few steps tomorrow. But this was too great not to post right now.
    

Adventures in Boredomland
Well, this has been a rather exciting week for me. Not because I actually DID anything.. but because I really DIDN'T do a blasted thing. I had a really bad ear infection and couldn't play the trombone, so I decided to take time off and do the things that I've been wanting to do.
Here is a list of things that I did with my free time:

• I created a replica of my horse Sierra. For your viewing pleasure, here is a picture of my horse next to a picture of the replica: Yes, that is real hair from my actual horse on that replica.

How long has this been on my want -to-do list? 2 years.

Milhaud! NOOOO!! Run Sierra, Run!

• I also made Kolache - a Czech pastry. Amusingly enough, I thought that this had been a family recipe - turns out, it was a recipe modified by my Grandmother that she got out of a Betty Crocker cookbook. Oh well. Despite that slight let down, the recipe remains the "Holy Grail" of my family cooking. When I called and asked for the recipe, both my mother and grandmother expressed disbelief at my abilities to make this dish. Well, here it is - proof that they turned out.

How long has this been on my want-to-do list? - 6 years. It felt good. Also tasted good.

In other news:

• I was able to play the new Zelda game that my brother got me for Christmas. Hopefully, I will be able to resist the urge to play it incessantly.

• I cleaned my kitchen. Really well.

Yeah... that's pretty much all I've done this week. I can't even begin to express to you how good it feels to have had a vacation! Ahhhhhh.

Merry Christmas Benton!

So, I decided to make a cute little stall plaque for the one poor horse (Benton) that lives in the barn by himself. None of the other horses come in at night... so it seems kind of strange to me that MY horse who never comes in has this beautiful little stall plaque that my cousin made for me... but Benton has no such sign on his stall.

Anyway.. I thought that it would be a good idea to make Benton a little sign with his name on it to match Sierra's... How hard could it be? Well, if there is one thing that I should know about myself by now.. it is that I am NOT a perfectionist . . . well . . . at least not when it comes to arts and crafts.

When I finished, I thought it looked pretty good and all . . . but when I took it outside and hung it on Benton's stall, I realized that actually, it looked pretty second rate as long as there was Sierra's to compare it to. Oh well.

So I thought that I would post some pictures so that you can compare and contrast:

Sierra's Plaque:

• Made of nice quality wood
• Wood has been polished and lacquered
  
• Handsome Brass Hangings
• Cute pose for horse
• Name in professional looking letters

Benton's Plaque:

• Made of wood literally pulled out of a dumpster because it was the right size
• Wood has been sloppily sanded to prevent splinters, but not polished or lacquered.
• Handsome nails pounded into the top of the plaque with yarn tied around it for hangings. Works fine now.. but they'll have to CUT that off the stall.
• Horse was in quarter horse pose.. but when compared to the Sierra plaque he just looks sad or lethargic.
• Letters look vaguely like someone printed "BENTON" out of Microsoft Word in Times New Roman font, then traced the letters . . . poorly . . . onto the plaque

Oh well . . . supposedly it is the thought that counts. Hopefully they like it.
Merry Christmas, Benton!

Highlights From Christmas in Iowa

Presents
My brother John gave me a "Make Your Own Murder Scene Kit". It included two kitchen knifes, a box of chalk to with which to make a body outline, and four packets of Wendy's catsup for fake blood. I also managed to get THREE... yes THREE oven mitts.

When we called my Grandparents Cherveny to wish the folks in Minnesota a Merry Christmas, I was asked if I had gotten my Christmas card from Grandma and Grandpa. Well, I had.. but it had been unsigned and without the check that Grandma SWEARS she put in it. HA! She spent the next 10 minutes making everyone in Minnesota check their cards to see if she had put two checks in theirs. Yes, Grandma is starting to show her age. . .


Fun and Games

And finally . . . another Christmas, another messed up game of Balderdash. Why one of our family traditions is to play a game that rewards those who are the best at the B.S? . . . One could not say, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
Here are some of my favorite responses from this year's verbal battle:

Q: What does N.A.L.G. stand for?
Mom: The National Association of Gorillas Intellectual.
John: Never Ask Indigenous Giraffes (for directions)
Me: National Amiable League of Garotters

Q: What is the plot of "Beyond the Doors"?
John: A Nuclear power plant lets out radiation which infects a small garden where the vegetables came to life and have to fight off rabbits.

Q: What is the plot of "The Cow"?
Paul: A cow turns into a serial killer in New York City, but manages to escape the local police.

Q: What is the plot of "The Terror of Tiny Town"?
Me: A Christmas Special parody where the elven residents of Tiny Town are attacked by a venomous fanged beast from hell.

Q: In Oklahoma it is still illegal to destroy. . . ?
John: A hornet's nest with your bare hands.
Correct Answer: Another man's melons at night.

Q: What is the plot of "Wild Women of Wongo"?
Dad: Part 7 of the "Girls Gone Wild" series.
Me: In this comical version of an ancient Greek myth, Hercules must travel to the island of Wongo to stop its women from turning into murderous walruses.

Q: Who is Marta Espina?
Correct Answer: 75 year old lady who was accidentally killed by a poodle after it fell out of an apartment balcony and landed on her head.

Q: Who was Max Kiss?
Me: Man who evaded authorities for two weeks after escaping from prison by hiding in a dead moose.
John: ARG! There's a rabid hibiscus plant eating my leg! The pain! The pain! Oh... look.... a nice shiny quarter. (My favorite response of all night)

By the way, when it comes to the game of B.S, I am usually the definitive winner. This game was no different. I wonder what this says about me. . . ?

How to make your very own copy of the world's most ghetto microphone stand in nine easy steps!!

Step One:
Be very very poor and unable to find a microphone stand within your budget. (Under 15 dollars)
Step Two:
Drive to Lowe's and wander around looking for things that you might potentially use for a mic stand.
Step Three:
Settle on a PVC pipe and five gallon bucket.
Step Four:
Cut a PVC pipe sized hole in the bucket.
Step Five:
Stuff PVC pipe and dirty laundry into the bucket. (To prevent the PVC pipe from moving around too much)
Step Six:
Apply Masking Tape to the junction of pipe and bucket.
Step Seven:
Put mic holder into PVC pipe.
Step Eight:
Realize that mic holder is too narrow.
Step Nine:
Wrap the mic holder in a super absorbent "Feminine Napkin" and replace into PVC pipe.

Huzzah! You have just created your very own completely ghetto mic stand! Total cost - six dollars. Total awesome - immeasurable.

Dear Self 1,

Sorry for the Dear John, but Self 2 and I think that it's time that we parted ways. Self 2 and I have been doing fine on our own without you - and in fact, we have been realizing more and more how much you are getting in the way of our success and happiness.
We thank you for all the good times that we've had. Well actually, now that I think about it, we really haven't had any "Good Times". All of our "times" have been at our expense! You know, the preventing us from playing the trombone well with your incessant prattle ("Don't screw up! Don't be distracted!") - the telling us that we don't really have any friends - the telling us that we are pretty much doing nothing of any value on a day to day basis. You know, although in some of these instances you are probably right, it doesn't mean that we want to hear about it nonstop all day long. It prevents Self 2 and I from doing anything useful or meaningful when you start your inane yakking. It prevents us from getting a full nights rest because you won't even shut up at night - and we've had it!
Self 2 has been feeling especially put off by you. She tries so hard to just do what she is good at. But it's kind of hard for her to do anything right with you looking over her shoulder and shouting the wrong commands at the top your lungs. She is afraid that you make her look bad. And she's right, you make us BOTH look bad. That's just annoying, OK?
So in conclusion, we think that's it's best that we just go our separate ways like responsible adults. That is why Self 2 and I have filed for a divorce from you. We are filing under "irreconcilable differences". You can still have custody of the cat every other weekend if you so choose.

Cordially,
Apkiwa and Self 2