Oh. So THIS is how I'm going to die.

Last Sunday as I was getting ready for church, I got a phone call from Lauren. She told me to strap on my boots 'cause we were going up to the mountains to go horseback riding at her dad's house. Although normally I'd be all about it, I felt a little guilty about missing church. Of course, that guilt was quickly dispersed when Lauren assured me that God would want me to go to the mountains.
By the time we made it to Virginia, it was lunchtime and her dad was cooking up some sloppy elk. It looked exactly like a regular sloppy joe, but tasted about 235% better. Who knew? Elk is delicious! After lunch we went out to the pasture to pick out our horses. I was told that Minnie was the easiest one to ride, so I got her. Lauren got Glory, the blind-in-one-eye horse who also happens to still be nursing her baby.
It took about an hour to saddle the horses up and I hopped on. Unfortunately, I pulled myself up onto Minnie like used to do when I was 5 years old and would pull myself onto Gus (with every bit of arm strength that I could muster). I managed to tear a few muscle fibers from the bone in which they were intended to stay attached to with that move. Ugh. I'm an idiot. (I can assure you that the second time I got on, I did it like a normal person. You know...with leg strength and grace.)
After riding Minnie around the barn about 3 times (for some reason she was really loving that barn), Lauren was on her horse and ready to go. Her dad had been fighting some sort of illness all week and said he would just wait in his truck while we rode for awhile (the pasture where the horses are is definitely not within walking distance of the house, so her dad had driven us to the barn).
The first 3 minutes of our excursion was great! Minnie followed Glory out into the field with lovely wildflowers and then came the not so fun part...
Right when we got to the edge where "the field" became "the woods", Minnie decided that she had had enough and she wanted to get back to the barn...fast. She turned around and ran full steam ahead through the wrong gate and between two ponds. No matter how much I pulled back and screamed, "WHOA!!!!", she would continue on (and actually go faster). My first thought was, "Well, this must be how I'm going to die. I will be falling off this horse and falling onto a rock like Michelle did in the series finale of Full House. Dang." Eventually I realized that if I didn't want to fall off, I would just have to let go of the reigns and hang on tight until she got to where she wanted to go.
Right as Minnie was turning around, I had seen Glory rear up on Lauren. By the time we finally got back to where Minnie wanted to go, I yelled for Lauren's dad to help me. My favorite part was when he just stared at me when I screamed "HELP!", but when I said, "Oh! And Lauren is having trouble with Glory back there!", he went running. Oh, well...I can't blame him for playing faves.

So needless to say, we spent our Father's Day doing something that has bugged fathers around the world for years...
Begging to do something (in this case, riding horses) and then calling it quits 10 minutes later when the going gets tough.

That kid gets around...

After I got home from work today, I watched a Glee episode that I hadn't seen before (I didn't get on board with Glee until about 4 episodes in...so sad).
In this episode, they had this expensive jerk of a choreographer come in and be crazy-offensive to the kids of New Directions. I had to pause and rewind his scene multiple times to figure out where I had seen him before. Normally Chris is the guy to turn to for obscure "what-else-was-that-guy-in?" type questions, but I must say that I was proud of myself for figuring this one out.
This was him on Glee...
This is him as Duckface on Full House:

And the piece de resistance, my friends....
I knew I had seen him somewhere else, too. I could picture him...in the late 80's...in a really, really obscure video that they would show in Children's Church when they didn't feel like giving a real lesson.
Oh, yes. He played Phillip in McGee and Me. Bonus points (for anyone other than my mom) that has ever even heard of McGee and Me.
I couldn't find any pictures of him, but I did find a video on youtube. You'll find this kid at :18, so you don't have to look very far. Well, unless you want to...he actually does have speaking parts. (Also, check out Renee's hat. I remember thinking that she was just the coolest...)




So there you have it, my dears...I CAN be counted on to figure out what people starred in before they made it semi-big in a popular primetime musical comedy. Well, as long as that person starred in a family-friendly video series that may or may not have been produced by Focus on the Family and was frequently shown in conservative churches in the late 80's and early 90's.

Happy Father's Day

This is how you write a blog...

I read today that there are 12 ways to write a blog. Only 12. Who knew??
I'm going to try to cover them all in one fantastical bloggity-blog-blog. (You know what's a funny word? Blog. Blllllllllllloggggg. Go ahead and say it. It's super!)
Okay, here we go...

1. Respond to something elsewhere on the web. There is a top news story on MSN entitled "Evasive BP CEO leaves Congress Flummoxed".
Does anyone else feel like the author of this news story went a little nuts with his thesaurus? I'm not embarrassed to say that I had to look that one up on dictionary.com. Okay, maybe I am a little embarrassed. Whatever. And really, how perplexed (apparently that's what "flummoxed" means) could congress really be? There is a pipe that won't stop spewing oil. No one can figure out how to fix it. Did they really think they were going to get answers on how to fix it from Tony Hayward? Ohhh...silly rabbit....

2. Suggest an idea.
Let's hang out this weekend.
Wait, you don't want to??
Oh, well...at least I suggested something.

3. Interview someone.
Unfortunately I don't have anyone at the hizzy with me. Well, except for Gary. I guess I shall interview him.
Me: Hey Punky! (Yes, I call him Punky when no else is around. He likes it...kinda.)
Gary:
Me: Are you mad at me because I got home late from work?
Gary:
Me: Did I forget to feed you again?
Gary:
Me: You can't silent treatment me! I'm going to silent treatment YOU!
Gary: *sneeze*
Me: Ugh.

4. Blog an event
Like a live event? Like what tech-savvy people do?? I'd have to make a few calls and it hardly seems worth it.

5. Ask a question
What is the most embarrassing thing on your iPod?

6. Pick a fight
Obama is brilliant.
Bush was amazing.
Ross Perot has big ears. (Not that anyone is really going to fight me on that. I just saw a picture of him and was reminded just how big his ears really are.)

7. Reflect on something
Remember that time we did that thing and it was really fun? We should do that again.

8. Do something visual



9. Review something
I'm going to review Stephanie Klein-Davis' picture that she submitted to The Roanoke Times of the concerned pregnant woman smoking.
AH-MAZING.

10. Make a list
Isn't this entire blog a list of ways to blog??

11. Write a how-to
What do you want to know how to do? You let me know and I'll do my best to write you a step by step guide.

12. Let someone else post
I actually have someone wanting to guest post. We'll see if that ever happens. Although, I do enjoy that one of the 12 ways to blog is to not blog and let someone else do all the work. Brilliant.

Cerebral palsy is the sexiest of all the palsies...

I was wasting time today online (shocker) and I found this guy as a top news story on Yahoo. It may have been the state of mind I was in, but I couldn't stop laughing at his stuff.

I guess Oprah is having a contest for people to get their own TV show on her new network ("YOU get a TV show...YOU get a TV show...YOU get a TV show...") and Zach Anner was one of the submissions. Out of curiosity, I watched the chick who is currently in second place (with, quite literally, one million less votes than Zach) and I can see why people continue to vote for him.

This is his Oprah audition tape:


Then he thanks the world for their response. Personally, it's my favorite because he's so stinking genuine and yet still super funny:


Then John Mayer video-blogged to Zach and made him an offer to write his theme song:


To which Zach replied with:


HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THIS FELLA?????

I'm quite sure it's going to grow on me...

Ray Lamontagne posted a new song! I don't think it's his best ever, but still...any new Ray is good for my soul...



August 17th is going to be a pretty awesome day. I have to make sure that I mark it on my calendar as such.

If you're spending more time on Facebook than in THE book...

I'm going to have to warn you that I'm feeling especially ADD tonight, so this blog may not be as fluid as my other blogs usually are. <-- (You see, that's funny because I'm acting like my blogs aren't usually a mash-up of ridiculous thoughts.)

This past weekend, the crew went out for Scott Steele's birthday. I'm honestly not sure at what point I started using the term "the crew" like I'm in the movie Clueless (Tai: "Who's Elton?" Dionne: "He's way popular. He's like the social director of the crew." Cher: "Yeah, and his dad can get you into any concert..."). Come to think of it...I'm not sure I can even clearly define who "the crew" consists of. And if this "crew" is missing a key member, is it no longer "the crew"?? Is it just a group of friends that ceases to be a "crew" until the wayward missing person returns to the flock???
Wow...sorry...back to the topic at hand...

So we went out this weekend for Scott's birthday. It was pretty low key. We started at Nakato where I was able to partake in some witty banter with the hibachi chef. Okay, maybe it was more "smiling and pretending like I knew what he was talking about" than "witty banter", but whatever...he seemed nice and I'm pretty sure he was only making fun of me for choosing sushi over noodles and bite-sized pieces of meat. Dang. Now that I think of it, he could have been making fun of so many things without me understanding. I'm just going to choose to believe that he was making fun of my love of the classic California roll.
After dinner, we went to Eastfield for a few drinks and some conversation. It was so loud inside, that I made my way to the patio where I learned a ton about college hockey and got to hear an argument as to why a hockey jersey is appropriate decor for over a fireplace. I also learned from the new guy that people that can't form a coherent thought while speaking, but can write one are stupid (at which point I told the story about how I had a particularly embarrassing night and when I tried to tell my mom about it, she stopped me and said, "Honey, why don't you just blog about it? It's so much better that way.") Beth pointed out that, yes, everyone at the table pretty much wrote how they spoke...except for Sarah. I'm not sure if New Guy understood that he had just offended me, but it didn't really matter. I'm a big fan of the I'm-rubber-you're-glue argument and I have a feeling that he really couldn't talk OR write, so there...take that, New Guy.
OH! I also learned that steel gray and black are "girly" colors. After that disagreement, I excused myself and headed back inside where I wouldn't have to deal with the mess after Beth's head exploded.
And that was pretty much that. A little conversation happened inside. Scott ordered his standard of a shot of Jager with the check. Chris got hit on by the cute girl with a horrific laugh. Sheeshers, well, Sheeshers wore a black shirt and jeans (sorry, Sheesh...I couldn't think of anything that happened with you at the end of the night other than you giving Scott the evil eye and telling him that you wanted to go home, but I didn't think you'd want me to say that on the ol' blog. Wait....oops....sorry...)
The ride home was really special. It pretty much consisted of me trying to form coherent sentences to a fairly buzzed Chris. By the time we were back to Cornelius, I realized that maybe New Guy was right about people who can't form a coherent sentence.
Ugh...dang you, New Guy...

And as for my blog title...
Beth, Mike, and I went to try out a church awhile back and the pastor was rather bitter about healthcare and technology in general. He said something about how if "you're spending more time on Facebook than in the book, then..."
I honestly can't remember the rest of his threat (Hey Beth or Mike...can either of you show off your stellar memory skills and help me out here?), but we've probably repeated that phrase 10 times since we heard it. There's nothing like creating hilarity out of a serious trip to church. I think the only thing I learned that Sunday was that I'm meant to remain at a jeans-wearing, drum-playing type of church and that no one should try to pack church, lunch, hiking, and book club all in the same day.