is it just me?

Well, after a lovely sojourn to sunny VA to see my family for the holidays I have returned to Wisconsin where, I fear, the sun may never shine again. It has been cloudy since some time in early December. Without pause. It’s starting to wear on everyone.

Now, in my last post I told you about the potluck. Not being able to come up with any convincing reason why I could not attend (and believe me, I tried) I went. In the morning I went to get this lady to sign something and they said “She’s in the conference room working on her meatballs”. That was the first sign that a potluck at work was a bad idea. Anyway, I walk in and there she is with her crock pot full of meatballs, a jar of “Shrimp Sauce” (which to most of America is known by its more flattering though less descriptive name of cocktail sauce) and a jar of currant jelly. She has emptied the contents of both of these jars into the pot of meat. There is all this glistening, gelatinous mess sitting on the top. I make a mental note not to try the meatballs. Apparently it is common knowledge that these two items (apparently there’s room for creative interpretation on the flavor of jelly) go into meatballs. I was doing fine living life without that information, but now I feel more sure that I may have eaten my last meatball that is not floating in something I know to be comprised of tomatores. That was the least appetizing item, with the most appetizing being some dee-licious chicken that a guy upstairs ran out and bought from the local rotisserie place. See, we should have all just gone there for lunch. The only really unfortunate incident was biting into something which I thought was a bread product (like a hush puppy or something tasty like that) but was actually a chicken ball. Potlucks should always, always have labels for the food.

The holidays passed relatively uneventfully with a lot of time spent entertaining and cooing over my nieces, who are both coo-worthy. There was only one major fight between one sister and her husband, which involved her stomping upstairs and slamming the door. I don’t recommend doing this in front of your family since my other sister and I told the story about ten times afterwards. The best was after she finally re-emerged and was sitting across the room from her husband still seething he says (across about six people who all witnessed the incident) “is something wrong?” Good going. I am sure she’s not mad anymore after that.

On New Year’s we went to see a rockin bluegrass (sort of) band called the Hackensaw Boys who are from Charlottesville (where I am also from). They put on a great show, and the crowd was very enthusiastic. The only mistake they made is for some reason they decided to have a costume contest where you were supposed to dress like a celebrity. I am not really sure what the point of this was. There were not very many contestants, and they mostly sucked. But the worst part was they let the contestants on stage. This was a bad idea. Drunk people and microphones never lead to good things. Some drunk guy who was not even in costume was up there yelling “Nelson County in the mother fuckin house!! Fuck yeah, motherfuckers!” Excellent. The guy who was wearing a crazy costume of balloons who was allegedly dressed as “Evolution” (and made a brief attempt to make a political statement about teaching evolution in schools) was declared the winner, but it was mostly due to lack of good alternatives. After he won some drunk guy with a lighter started burning the balloons and popping them one by one. That part was funny. The only other bad part was the opening act. It was a woman with a very nice voice who sang lots of slow, depressing songs. Happy new year’s eve, everyone. Now go kill yourselves.

Unfortunately we left town at 7:35am the next morning which was not that much fun (but saved us hundreds of dollars on our car insurance). Not surprisingly, I returned with a cold and laid on the couch for two solid days watching a lot of college football.

The end.