I missed Blissed

I already mentioned that we recently finished a vacation odyssey. It was a fabulous trip (fab, fab, fab) - in total we covered 6 provinces and 15 states. 7500 miles of driving. Lots of friends and family. Lots of strangers. Long time on the road but also not long enough.

In looking back, there's one disappointment though.

I missed Blissed.


They were on the road and we had a (granted slim) chance to hook up with them somewhere in northern Pennsylvania. But time and tide and all that stuff meant we missed them by about 40 feet. Or three hours, depending on how you look at it. It was late, they were trying to get home, yada, yada ...

A few people might be surprised to hear that this is a group I would be willing to meet in a dark parking lot. Even a dark alley. But it still didn't work out.

And now I find out they're launching a new CD soon. MAN!!

So here's a sneak peak at the cover. Not autographed or anything. But still...


Keep an eye out. They may be driving past your place in the dark, too.

These are my favorite (Canadian) things

We've just returned from a vacation that covered more of Canada that usual. It was an odyssey. The funnest part was walking into a store and saying "Oh, yeah!!!" when something that we haven't seen in awhile was on the shelf.

So we've compiled a short list of some of our favorite Canadian things. (I know, some are available across various borders but not where I live.)

What tops the list?

Coffee Crisp (It's really the only way I do coffee.)

Lynch's Honey Mustard Sauce

Bird Custard Powder

Old Dutch Ketchup chips (and Creamy Dill, too - thanks, Julie, for the introduction)

Aero Bar (not so much the Bubbles, though)

Iced tea (real iced tea, not just tea that has been iced!) - particular favorite: No Name California Blend iced tea mix. The irony is almost as delicious as the iced tea.

SHREDDIES!! (The diamond thing? Really! Don't need it.)

Boston Pizza (only the Canadian ones, though. The US ones did something nasty with their menu. And the service typically stinks.)

Nanaimo squares

Creamed honey - preferably from Podolski Honey Farm (it's so good even customs' officials don't let it through)

Ozonol (the best thing for a red tissue-buffed nose EVER)

Matrimonial cake

Barq's Red Cream Soda


There's a few I've probably forgotten but if you are ever not sure what to put in my Christmas package or have a little more room in your suitcase, maybe put this list on the fridge.

I'm just saying...

Hotel showers & other strange weather

I've been doing some traveling lately. This year has had more time on the road than usual, in fact. And it has confirmed a suspicion of mine:

Hotel showers are like weather systems.

It's like this:

You can pretty much be certain that in most hotels in North America there will be a shower in the bathroom. (Occasionally, it's beyond the bathroom but that's a statistical rarity.) Likewise, most places in North America have weather.

People always try to predict the weather. "Red sky at night, sailor's delight" and that sort of thing. Some people even get paid to predict the weather: "Tonight's forecast is sunny with scattered lightening and big gloomy clouds." (This type of weather is perfectly possible in Kentucky, by the way.) Paid or not, there is pretty much an equal rate of success.

I've learned that some hotels will also predict their shower's capacity. Holiday Inn Express, for example, appear to have invested in some heavy duty showerheads that prompted an entire line of postcards. (Photo to come after I've dried my hands off. - (later) okay, that's it up in the corner...) Others promise downpours in the morning but the best you get is a heavy mist. Mist in the weather makes my hair curl. Mist as the shower makes my toes curl.

Some hotels fool you with those "space-adding" curtain rods but an actual curtain that leaves you feeling like you're fighting a ghost in a lo-budget remake of "Psycho" as it clings to your legs. Others use an exhaust fan that threatens to suck the curtain right off the shower bar.

And some wise guys, thinking a fan is too big an expense or that ventilation is a waste of time, put in heat lamps - you know the red bulbs that make you think a lizard was the last one to use the room? Or that the room doubles as a greenhouse for the local nursery when they can't dupe anyone into paying for it? I've never understood the logic of those bulbs. "Let's take a room that will get hot and steamy (depending on the capacity of the hotel's hot water tank and the tendency of the temperature to drop if a neighbor flushes the toilet) and add HEAT so it will let the air hold MORE moisture and turn that morning pick-me-up into a sauna instead!" And ironically, humid areas seem more likely to think this is a good idea. The chronic weather conditions of an area are, oddly enough, often reflected in the local restrooms of the area hotels.

So do I have a point? No. But unfortunately I am a slave to my morning routine. And if two teaspoons of shampoo and a bald pipe gushing out of the wall are all that's available to me, I'll have to pretend.

But don't expect to see me in any of my vacation pictures.

Two - for - one

I love a good sale. (LOVE a good sale.)

But reality says that if I don't need it, it doesn't matter how deep the discount it. (Right, honey?)

Like the ad I saw last week -

2 for 1!!
Just what Dad wants for Father's Day!!

What were they selling? Recliners. You know, the oversized chairs that lay back and (depending on your budget and your Dad) vibrate, play music, cool your canned drinks and drive you to the airport.

Does Dad really want TWO recliners? How would that work? One for each foot? And does everyone really have the floor space for TWO recliners for Dad?

I thought that was really the all-time silliest idea I'd seen spring from the current economy (not including any government "recovery" plans, of course) until I saw this:


This is an honest to goodness sign on a road out of my town.

Aren't cemeteries in a "sure thing" market? Like gasoline or groceries? "The only two things in life that are certain are death and taxes"? Somehow the idea of a cemetery site sale is oddly disturbing to me. And hysterically funny, too. Sort of like having the giggles at a funeral.

It's a great sale, though ... (what do you think, honey?)

Random observations to round out the week

More hairdressers than not wear their pants at least 1 1/2" too long. Is that advice they get at beauty school?

If a tree falls in the marshland and snaps a power pole, does anyone hear the sound as all the lights go out in the surrounding neighborhood?

It takes a downgrade of at least 6% for a Hyundai Accent to maintain highway speed on momentum alone.

Cinnamon buns are not about the bread dough.

Neither are sandwiches.

Imagination means that I can come up with 8 different reasons why that spinach is stuck in your teeth. 56 if it's in your hair.

The size of a thumbdrive is in inverse proportions to how much trouble you're in when you LOSE it because it's so dang small.

Do you suppose that the woman who drove her car into a river because her coffee needed sweetener will start drinking it black? Or will there just be a new warning printed on the cup lids?

Do boy ladybugs worry about their masculinity?

If an octopus was arm wrestling a different opponent on each tentacle, how many matches do you suppose it would be likely to win?

And is it a coincidence that the local Curves is two doors down from the Baskin Robbins?

"Mr. Bean" in tights

I studied Shakespeare in school and still some of my favorite movies are Shakespearean in origin. Add Rowan Atkinson and this is FUNNY!

Small occasional inappropriateness warning, though...

Viagra and Vicodin (or ... Harbingers of Spring)

Ahh, spring. It's been randomly sunny, windy and raining here at home and I never quite know how carefully I should be dressing for an period longer than 10 minutes outside my front door. But that's just typical of spring here - although this one seems to be running cooler and longer than the average spring. It makes the weather reports and random statistics about the weather much more interesting - right up there with baseball stats.

"It's the first time since 1945 that a left handed hitter sat on the bench for the entire game without chewing gum on a Tuesday when it rained for the first five innings."

Apparently it's also the season for spammers to crawl out of winter hibernation and get to work like little radioactive bees hitting every spot they can. One of my accounts after a period of relative quiet, overnight got 115 messages filtered through to the spam folder. And the astonishing thing to me is - THEY WERE ALL SPAM. Not one innocently diverted message in the lot.

During my quick if conscious-driven perusal, I noticed that they were pretty equally weighted between Viagra and Vicodin taking up about 80% of the list.

Then came the daughter/son of Mr./Mrs. Johann/Meulich/Akibobo from Cote D'Ivoire/West Africa/New Guinea with a request for god-bless-you assistance to get funds out of the country, followed by offers to enlarge a body part I don't have for the pleasure of people I don't know. (Ick!)

One was marked (and this is roughly translated) "I've got stuff for you to buy! Whatever you think I can sell you!" I suppose that person deserves some credit for getting to the point.

So I've emptied the trash in the spam filter and I'm going out to my garden. Because that's really the type of dirt I prefer to be looking at this spring. And it's going to look real good today.

Provided it doesn't rain.