Coupon Day

Wednesday is coupon day. I come home from work to find that my mailbox runneth o'er with a bounty of coupons. I grab them, I enter my home, and I inevitably need to pee. I don't know if I have to pee every day when I enter the door, or if I only have to pee on Coupon Wednesday. All I know is that peeing is always an inconvenience as it only increases the suspence of finding out what's on sale. I bring the coupons into the bathroom with me, though I don't know why I do this, because peeing only takes about twenty seconds and only about ten of those seconds are free, since the other ten are taken up by looking at the nasty bathroom floor, thinking that The Boy needs to clean the bathroom soon or by looking for a new roll of toilet paper.

Post-pee, I retire to the living room where I take my coupon-reading seat. I do not sit on the couch. I do not sit in The Boy's chair. I sit in my womb-like papazan, cross my legs, and start flipping through the coupons.

Each ad is scrutinized. I notice errors, like where the word "cantaloupe" describes a picture of naval oranges. Or where a company claims that their shirts compliment every body (actually, it may not be a bad idea to market talking shirts...). Those coupons and flyers that are useless, the majority, are discarded; I throw them to the floor in disgust. I even open the ValPak coupons. I know that few people do, but for the last six years, I've been convinced that one day I'll open it and find the special $100 check. Then I can get up in fast and testimony meeting and talk about the blessings of tithing. It hasn't happened yet.

But today, the ValPak coupons offered me a gem. If you haven't read Nemesis's blog about food storage yet, you're going to have to or else this won't be funny. I found a coupon and I doctored it up a little in Photoshop to properly reflect the most important item in one's food storage. Enjoy! (Find image below---I had image loading problems today.)

Emergency Essentials

Francis, the Christmas Fish

As soon as I arrived to Brother 1 and Sister-in-law's place for Thanksgiving, Brother 1 started showing me the Christmas decorations. He was trying to show me the things that they had purchased, but I couldn't take my eyes off the odd decoration. The one that didn't quite seem to fit, and the one that was far superior to any of the purchases he was showing me. It was a fish. Wearing a Santa hat.

I held it up, and said, "What about this? Where did you get this?" He explained that I was holding Francis, the Christmas fish. Earlier this month, he and Sister-in-law were babysitting Sil's nieces and nephews. They pulled out a bunch of felt and sewing materials to make Christmas decorations. While Sil and the kids were stapling pieces of felt together to make stockings, B1 was sewing a fish. Sil asked what B1 was making, and without missing a beat, he replied, "I'm making Francis, the Christmas fish." Turning to the kids, he asked, "Have you ever heard the story of Francis, the Christmas fish?" His nephew responded, "I have!" B1 started to think that maybe there was a Francis, the Christmas fish story, so he asked his nephew, "Would you like to tell us the story?" At that point, the nephew admitted that he couldn't actually quite remember how it went...

I immediately loved Francis, the Christmas fish, so I made my own while our turkey and Thanksgiving meal were cooking. During the day, I was talking to my dad and I told the story of Francis, the Christmas fish to him. He was very excited about it all, and decided that over the Christmas break, we'll all have to make our own Francis the Christmas fishes.

The next day, in Maryland, Dad went out to lunch with Mom and Brother 3. After lunch, they paid a visit to the little gift shop attached to the restaurant. There were many Christmas decorations, but a certain decoration seemed to be lacking. My dad asked the clerk, "Do you have any Francis, the Christmas fish ornaments?" She said they didn't. He asked if she had ever heard of them. She said that she had. So he asked, "Can you tell me the story behind them?" After a pause, she said, "I just can't remember it."

This year, it will be my family's task to invent and circulate the Francis the Christmas fish story. I expect it to see as much success as the Grinch Who Stole Christmas... Except that Francis is a kind, fish. A kind fish with magical powers, and when all the little kiddies are tucked into their beds on Christmas Eve...

Because I'm famous and you're not.

A couple months ago, I signed up to blogpatrol. Mostly I did it because I was jealous of Master FOB, Th, and Nemesis who seemed to know what keywords people used to access their blogs. I wanted to know what keywords people were using to find mine! So I signed up to blogpatrol. I have noticed that many of you have as well.

Before I move on to what's really interesting, let me share what people have googled to find my blog:

• I had a threesome (I did... but not like that!)
• I slept with my brother (Nope... never did this one... but someone was seeking for validation on my blog apparently.)
• BYU gay find (If they're playing a game of hot and cold, I'd say, "warmer, warmer, but not there yet!")
• phyllo-wrapped brie recipe (I am better than a recipe book.)
• spring board diving (they're getting more than they bargained for...)
• cicada (they're getting less than they bargained for...)

Now on to why I'm famous and you're not. So I also keep track of pages visited. Of course, the page most frequently visited is http://singingcicada.blogspot.com, but then other pages spike when one of you, my wonderful friends and readers, reference one of my stories in your posts. It amuses me to no end to be able to see how many people are actually clicking over from your story to find out what I had to say about it first. Thank you.

Sometimes there are anomalies. Like today. For some reason, Family Slide Show was being viewed more than any other page (other than http://singingcicada.blogspot.com). This was strange to me since I have been keeping up on all of your blogs (even though I don't always comment) and I was sure that none of you had referenced this post recently.

So I went to my referrers page, which is another one of my favorites. I get to see where people link to my blog. For example, if people read something on Nemesis's blog and then link from hers to mine, Nemesis gets a referral point. The referral page also helps me tabulate how much I owe to whom for Christmas. If present value were to be based on referral value, Melyngoch would be receiving eleven pairs of fish net stockings from me. It baffles me that she's my top referrer since she's so new to the blogging world.

Normally, I recognize every name on the top referrers list. But today, there was an anomalous one: http://southporcupine.vianet.on.ca/html/lessonfour.html. This was interesting to me, since recently someone googled "South Porcupine" and found me. So I clicked the link. It is, by the way, the community of South Porcupine's official site. This particular link leads you to some "Internet lessons." It then explains what blogging is and says, "To see examples of blogs:" then you find the hyperlinked text, "A former resident of South Porcupine." It links to my Family Slide Show.

I'm still laughing about this. I have now become the blogging world's representative of South Porcupine. I now have a weighty responsibility. You, my readers also have a responsibility. That responsibility is to be sensitive to Canadians. No racist comments here, please. Let this post be a marker of our renewal of our committment to be culturally sensitive. Let diversity thrive. If not, I'll club you with my hockey stick and sic my pet pylon on you, you hoser.

(For those who would like to try out blogpatrol, too: http://blogpatrol.com/)

One Wild Ride

Why is it that I have so many biking adventures?
Yesterday, I got all dressed up to go to work. I put on a long skirt, a shirt, a little fleece-lined jacket, and my red rabbit-fur hat. Then, I was stupid enough to spend about 45 seconds shooting off an email to Nemesis, Daltongirl, and Sahkmet. I wasn't even saying anything important. But then I hurried out to the bus stop and missed the bus by 15 seconds. Drat.

I didn't want to wait for the next bus. I REALLY didn't want to wait for the next bus. And, of course, because I've been eating well and exercising, then I was full of energy and love of life. I remembered that the few times I biked to work this summer, I wore different clothes so that I could change out of them and into something professional, but I dismissed that thought, thinking that surely I wouldn't sweat. Afterall, it was all downhill.

So I got on my bike and started pedalling. In my long skirt. And my red rabbit fur hat. And my aviator sunglasses. I'm sure I looked like I took my sport fashionably, if not seriously.

The problem was that apparently, it was all downhill from where I used to live. It is not all downhill from where I currenly live. I think it was slightly uphill. So I was exerting a little more effort than I had thought I would. And the inside of my hat is leather.

I also hadn't taken into account that there's currenly construction on the highway I was riding down. I suppose one doesn't really notice these things when one rides the bus every day and doesn't have to navigate construction. Normally it's scary enough to drive on the highway's one-foot shoulder. But the pylons (that's road cones to you Americans) indicated that all traffic had to move to the left. Following the pylons, and therefore the law, I ended up riding in the left-hand lane with all of the regular highway traffic. Of course, there was absolutely nothing going on to the right side of the pylons. It was just regular highway that was sectioned off, and the contruction was taking place on about 1/25 of the space that was sectioned off. I started to consider riding on the right side of the pylons, but one never knows why it's been sectioned off. I ran the risk of driving over land mines.

When the risk of being run over by a car finally seemed to outweigh my risk of running over a land mine, I started driving to the right of the pylons, or in the construction (land mine) zone.

Of course, since to the right of the pylons I was not where I was supposed to be and to the left of the pylons, I was in serious danger of getting run over, I started pedalling as fast as I possibly could. So much for my leisurely ride to work.

When I finally got to work, I was covered in sweat. I took off my leather hat and not surprisingly, my entire head of hair was soaked. Sick. At least everyone at work thought that I just got out of the shower...

Four hours later, I didn't want to ride the bike back home, so I decided that I'd take it on the bus. My regular bus driver (who is nice and shmoozy with all the other regulars but had yet to recognize me as a regular passenger) pulled to the side of the road and I poked my head in the door to indicate that I had no idea how to attach my bike to the front of the bus. A helpful man came out to do it for me and teach me how. When I got on the bus after the bike was secured, the bus driver said to me, "What did you do to your hair??" I said, "I dyed it red... and... uh... rabbit." And then I got a crush on him.

And thus concludes my biking adventure yesterday.

Unless, of course, you count the part that I rode the bus to school so that I could work on a project in the computer lab, and several hours later, I walked home and it was really cold out and I wished that there had been a way to get home faster... and then I realized that the bike was still parked at school. And there it remains.