Kinda like horse hooves, but in the mouth?

I came home today to do some laundry (Sunday is my officially unofficial laundry day) and found the laundry room in disarray once again. And just in case you guys thought I was over-reacting, I took some pictures.

This is what I see when I come in the door. Except, my clothes aren't in the washer yet, because she had a bunch of stuff in there.

That table is about 6 feet long.

On the upside, I found plastic martini glasses when I was shopping today. I've been looking for those for a couple years... Now I can bring them on camping trips so when I'm drinking girlie drinks they look all fancy and stuff but without risk guarantee of breakage.

Your nose moves when you talk

Okay - so I went to the fishing derby. Unfortunately, the only thing I caught was a cold. Fortunately, I was fortunate enough to eat the catches of others. It's nice when people share their fish!

This year was quite different than previous years. For one, C, the guy who brings us to the fishing derby, showed up sick. He ended up sleeping for 18 hours straight and missed the Friday night gong show. It wasn't quite the same without him. During the Friday night gong show, two guys decided to play some guitar. My best friend, K, said I should join them, but I said no because they seemed all professional and stuff and I didn't want any part of that.

I wasn't prepared for what came next, and I was deeply grateful for not wanting to be a part of it. These two guys tuned guitars (unsuccessfully) for at least an hour, enduring the drunken heckles of most of the spectators. At one point, I grabbed my guitar and me and K played and sang, while the drunkies bitched about the guys who couldn't tune a guitar. They didn't really even realize someone else was in fact playing a tuned guitar. Our campfire sing-a-long just wasn't the same.

Saturday seemed to be a bit mellow, but we decided to drink our way to a party anyway. But then, K up and broke her nose. It was a pee-related event and I don't think I'm at liberty to say much more than that. Needless to say, she wasn't feeling like ripping it up after she smashed her face in. Turns out, the party was on that night, we just missed it entirely.

Sunday was the day the derby wrapped up. I didn't win a door-prize even though that is totally my forte, but K did and she chose the prize that I would have chosen, and I'm sure she'll let me play the drinking game one day, so in a way, I did win. In a very long, convoluted way, that is.

OH AND I GOT BOOTS!!!

This place is particularly muddy down on the banks of the river and since we intended to fish we had to be prepared. On Wednesday, K informed me of her intention of buying some gum-boots. On Thursday, I realized that if I wore my hiking boots, I might ruin them, so I texted her during the day and asked if she could pick me up a pair as well. She searched high and low and finally found some cool ones in our sizes. She bought me a pair that she wasn't quite sure if I would like or not, but figured if I hated them, then we could trade. Luckily, I loved them and we got comments all weekend about how cool our boots are. Mine look like this:

That took far too long to draw and yes, they actually ARE that cool! Keeping in mind I'm not exactly a pink kind of girl, you can imagine why K suspected she was giving up her boots. The beauty part is, when I asked her how much I owed her she said "Nothing." and I said "What?!" and then she said "They're a gift for being such a great friend!" and I said "Aw, really?! Thanks!!! Now you're a great friend too!! :D "

Sunday was supposed to be the day where we fished, but since K smashed her face in, we went home instead. Despite having not gotten fishing-derby-drunk, and having went to bed by 1am every night and slept until 9am every morning, I was surprisingly tired, so I wasn't upset.

Monday, when I woke up I realized why I was so tired. I had caught C's cold. I cursed his name and considered calling him to tell him, but I'm not sure if we're "there" yet, so I let it go. But I'll likely inform him of all of this the next time I see him.

Let's see... other stuff happened... but the side story will make this post unbearably long, and no one really wants to read about vomit, so I'll just leave it at that.

One of the guitar guys, Ken (who had successfully tuned his guitar - yay built in tuners!!), is the person who originally was the campfire sing-a-long guy. Well, we are now friends on facebook and we will be working together to add more songs to our already long set list. So maybe, if all works out, we'll have a rip-roaring good time next year.

Also, C and T (the organizers) informed everyone that they are not organizing the derby next year. *major sigh* Our deal with C is, he gets us a motor home and we cook for the fisherpeople. Since he's not organizing next year, we won't have to cook, so we can actually fish. Bonus! Not so bonus: we'll have to foot the bill for our own motor home cuz there's no way in hell I'm tenting it at the fishing derby... not after three years of precedent.

Okay. I think that's it now.

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing an illustration that has been reused and recycled numerous times. Apparently I pout a lot in my stories. So over-dramatic.

Oh... a troll bidge!

Alright... this weekend is the weekend I've been waiting for. It's been a year in the making, but, finally, it's here. It's fishing derby time, boys and girls!!!

A bit of background: I volunteer at all the work events for my dad's union. So when I say the fishing derby is the event of the season, I mean it! The fishing derby is not exactly volunteer work. C, one of the organizers, needed some people to cook, so he asked my best friend to help out. When she found out the night time is comprised of campfire sing-a-longs she knew I had to go. To entice us even more, C rents an RV and lets us use it for the weekend. In return, we cook for the fisherpeople. A pretty good bargain if you ask me.

This is the third year that I've gone to the fishing derby and the first year where I'll actually fish at it (what a concept!). But fishing and cooking aside, there'll be a rip-roaring party every night we're there. There will be many-a-story about the fishing derby, hopefully some of them are PG enough to make it into a blog. Otherwise, all the poor saps at work will have to hear about it, yet again. Sorry guys! :)

I bet it's in the credits

I am unfortunately several weeks behind in posting about my recent endeavors. My apologies. My reasons are two-fold: 1) I was on vacation (Read: I was busy. Reality: I was lazy) and 2) I've been struck down by a crippling back injury (wait, there's nothing funny about that... moving on...)

Since it's very un-like me to leave a story untold because it's "so last week", I'll tell you a tale about something that happened on my vacation. To clarify, my vacation wasn't a traditional vacation; I wasn't anywhere tropical, I simply wasn't at work.

I started my vacation on a Wednesday (how very ramdon of me). I was set to volunteer at my best friend's work picnic. And so I did. We were supposed to go camping right after that and stay there for four nights and five days. As per usual, circumstance reared it's ugly head and our camping expedition was cut short. I arrived home on a Saturday night, one night earlier than expected.

I spent the first while reveling in the luxuries of home: hot showers, cold drinking water and comfy chairs. Also, the internet. I was sitting at my computer minding my own business.

I live in a basement suite and the upstairs people are very loud, so I pretty much hear everything they do. This day was no exception. I heard someone go into the bathroom and draw a bath. Roughly 15 minutes later, I heard them let out the bath water and start draining it. But then I heard this noise that was really loud but I continued on my merry way.

But then I started hearing what sounded like water dripping and hitting some sort of surface. If the upstairs guy was a "shower after having a bath" kind of guy, I would know. He's not. Besides, it would take awhile for the bath water to drain in order for me to hear the water hitting the tub. And then I realized, this noise, it's really loud. What IS that?!

I got up from my chair and cautiously peaked around the corner and looked in my bathroom.

When I wasn't ambushed by the water monster, I ventured further in and found this:

My sink overflowing and no sign of the water coming out of the faucet. In fact, it appeared to be coming up and out of the drain. Up? Water doesn't flow up, what's going on? I freaked out.

I had a brief lapse from the panic and recalled a conversation I had with my landlord when I first moved in (four years ago!). He brought me into the storage room and showed me this switch and said "If anything ever goes wrong with the water, this valve shuts it off for the whole house" and then he showed me how to use it. I ran into the storage room, but by the time I got there, was in full-blown panic mode again and couldn't figure out how to operate the switch.

I decided as a compromise, I would turn off the water going to my sink. Not at all logical since I was already aware that it was not coming out of my faucet, but then again, panic often over-rides logic, doesn't it? I crawled under the sink and turned off the water. For some reason, the water was still freely flowing up and out of my sink.

GEORGE! He lives where my landlord used to live and is clearly the person equipped to help me. I dashed out of my suite and around to the front of the house. I knew before I even reached the door that George wasn't home, yet I rang the doorbell and proceeded to bounce around on the stoop like a kid waiting for the candy store to open. It didn't.

I ran back to my place to call my landlord, but I couldn't find my cell phone (and thus, his phone number) anywhere. Crap! I eventually found my phone and called him. Meanwhile, water is still pouring out of my sink. I tried to sound nonchalant, as if I always call my landlord on Saturday nights. He wasn't buying it. I explained my problem and he said he was on his way.

While I waited, I thought it would be a good idea to stem the flow of water and try to keep it contained to the bathroom. As I'm laying down towels I hear the upstairs shower turn on. I turned and watched the sink with horror written all over my face. Again, water started pouring out of my sink. Nnnnnnnooooooooo!!!!!!

I ran up to the front of the house and knocked on the upstairs people's door. "Can you turn the water off?!?!??! My place is flooding!!!!!". Although, I'm sure I was much less coherent than that. In the end, the shower got turned off and I ran back downstairs to continue monitoring the situation.

Upstairs guy came down into the storage room to see how bad it was. As we were talking I hear the water turn on. I cut him off mid-sentence with "OH NNOOOOO!!!!!!". I can only assume I had a look of terror on my face because he immediately looked concerned "What's wrong?!?!" "THE WATER!!!!!! NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!" I bolted out of the bathroom, grabbed a bowl, came back and started bailing water out of the sink (and secretly wished I'd thought of that tactic earlier). All the while, he's yelling upstairs:

Him: HONEY! Turn off the water!!

Her: What?

Him: Turn off the water!!!

Her: Okay.

(water still running)

Him: HONEY! Turn off the water!!

Her: Sorry!

(water still running)

Him: HONEY! Turn off the water!! We're flooding down here!!!

Her: Sorry!

(water still running)

Seriously. He ended up having to run upstairs to tell her to turn the water off. "Sorry - I forgot!" She's not exactly the most considerate person in the world. So, finally she stops using water, my landlord showed up with a wet-vac and started cleaning up the mess.

He knew what the problem was but couldn't fix it until the morning. In the meantime, do not use the water in the bathroom. I nodded in agreement, the upstairs people looked horrified.

Them: No showers!?!?!?

Landlord: No showers.

Them: But we have a big day tomorrow we need to shower.

Landlord: Well you both just bathed so shower when you get home.

They continued to make a big production about it. My landlord and I just rolled our eyes. Once they left, my landlord turns to me and says "You know when a grown fucking man will only have baths that there's some major fucking issues going on. I mean, what grown man only has baths?!?!!?" My response "I dunno... the same one who gets mad that he can't have a bath in 12 hours when he just finished having one?"

The next day he came over to snake my drain. When he'd been there a whopping 15 minutes, upstairs lady comes down to see how it's going (and to see if she can have a shower). Get over it! Once he actually got the drain snaked, he pulled out this giant mass of black hair. Upstairs lady came downstairs again to see how it was going. He took one look at her long flowing black hair and said "What the fuck are you doing up there? Giving yourself a fucking haircut?".

Needless to say he was quite annoyed at them and their shenanigans. But it does make me feel better that someone who doesn't even live here is more annoyed at them than me. That just might warrant it's own post.

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations!