Category: This & That

It’s Improv, Eh?

I’m stretching Canada Day to Canada Two-Day. Why? Because we had record-breaking heat a couple of days ago and my air conditioner is on the fritz. I need an infusion of the Great White North.

For those too :::ahem::: young to recognize this pair of hosers, Rick Moranis (playing Bob on the left, looking at your computer screen) went on to play that geeky guy in Ghostbusters who turns into a living gargoyle, and he also starred in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movies and is in perpetual re-runs at the Honey, I Shrunk the Audience 3-D show at Disneyland and DisneyWorld. Dave Thomas (not that Dave Thomas), who plays Doug on the right, is probably best known to American audiences for appearing with Brett Butler in the nineties sitcom, Grace Under Fire.

See, you can start off as a bumbling fool and go on to greater and better things. Maybe there’s hope for me after all, eh?

Tell Me Tuesday Summer Hiatus

Popping in for a quick TMT. As usual, I’m finding the summer is getting away on me, what with the kids’ odd hours for their summer jobs, friends visiting from out of town, and RWA National coming up, etc. So there’ll be a few changes around the ol’ blog until early September. Tell Me Tuesday is going on hiatus, as I’ve decided to reduce my posting to about 3 times a week. I haven’t yet decided on a schedule or whether there’ll be a schedule. Ie. I might blog Monday, Wed, Friday, or I might blog Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or any combination thereof. So keep checking in, because I’m not disappearing completely. I do have posts planned for the rest of this week, featuring a fun quiz tomorrow, so drop back in.

My Tell You Tuesday: The WIP is motoring along, I’m finally so glad to say. I’m also coordinating the 2007 Golden Heart Alumni offerings for the Jo Leigh Fundraiser, and I have a packet of Maggies entries to judge. Lots of fun! I’m even getting outside to do some of my writing, because the rain has finally decreased to a few showers a week. It’s about time.

What do you have going on? Do you find it more difficult to blog and keep up with your writing schedule in the summer? How do you prioritize?

Seems I’m Not the Only One…

…concerned about the weather.

CBC news story from about a week ago:

B.C. has endured weeks of unseasonable drizzle and grey skies this spring with temperatures touching record lows in the months of May and June, and growers are worried about mildew killing the seedlings.

And…

The economic value of B.C.’s illegal marijuana industry is difficult to determine, but over the years experts have estimated it exceeds a billion dollars a year.

Gee, poor pot growers. (For those who don’t know, “B.C.” = British Columbia). (The western-most province of Canada, right above Washington state, for those who really don’t know! 😉 ).

To read the full account of the “dilemma,” click here.

Well, I’m happy to report that it is raining less than it was a week ago. In fact, we’ve had more than two days in a row with bursts of sun! Yeehaw. I’m happy, but don’t you pity those poor pot growers? Whatever shall they do?

Ding A Dong, Dong, Dong

The Ding Dong lives! I’m ecstatic to discover this. For years, I wondered, “Whatever happened to the Ding Dong?” Dare I confess that for decades I worried I made the name up?

My kids love a chocolate-covered, chocolatey-cakey, white-cream-filled concoction called a King Don (okay, so do I). Every time I buy a package, they gobble them up. However, lately we’ve been arguing over whether they’re supposed to be called Ding Dongs or King Dons. I mean, really, King Dons? Sounds like you should be genuflecting before some fat royal guy named Don (and let’s not get into genuflecting before Don King).

When I was a teenager, The Queen of Sheba (a.k.a my mom) introduced our family to Ding Dongs. For some reason we never had Twinkies in the house, but Ding Dongs were consumed by the barrel-full. One day I opened the Ding Dong cupboard and discovered the name on the package had changed overnight to King Don. WTF? Why take a perfectly wonderfully cupcakey name like Ding Dong and mutilate it like that? 

Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that I didn’t make up Ding Dongs. They do so exist! Under that name! However, apparently the Ding Dong name is only in use in the U.S. now. Yep, up here in the Great White North, we still have to call them King Dons. But at one time, YES, indeedy, at one time, the Canadian packaging did say Ding Dong. Now when my two teenagers tell me that “ding dong” isn’t a name for a cakey treat, but rather slang for male naughty bits, I feel quite vindicated that they’re wrong and I’m right.

Guess what else I discovered? Ding Dong recipes. Who’da thunk it?

Here’s one called Ding Dong Mousse, by April Vandecamp:

Ding Dong Mousse

Cool, huh? Click here for instructions how to assemble. And let me know how it turns out. Because I’m not making Ding Dong recipes for my kids. Not when they insist on calling them King Dons.

Have any Ding Dong recipes you want to share? Twinkie recipes? Uses for a Twinkie? Naughty uses for a Twinkie? Just please—no, no!—no naughty uses for my Ding Dongs.

I’m Still Here!

I love Friday the 13th. For years I thought I was born on Friday the 13th, hence my fondness for the day. When I was 13, I learned I was really born on a Wednesday—how woeful! But it hasn’t stopped me from loving Friday the 13th.

Youngest Son graduates high school today. Hence the quick and dirty blog post. Oh, I have a lot of drafts of good posts I could post-date and put up, however, in the event that my blog upgrade does not go well, I’m saving them.

Have a great weekend, bloggers. Enjoy your Friday the 13th.

Update 11:30 a.m. – My WordPress upgrade went off without a hitch! Next week it’s back to blogging as usual (well, I still have computer issues to address, so there’s a possibility I still might disappear, but I hope not).

Early Happy Father’s Day to all you wonderful dads out there. It looks like it’s gearing up to be a bee-oo-tiful day for Y.S.’s high school grad. Over and out!