• Family - Fun - RemoteDance

    Party Like a College Kid

    December 27, 2009 - By 

    After Christmas in Iowa, it was time for the annual (although a first for Chris and I) Ugly Christmas Sweaters and Edward 40Hands Party. Here is how you play. Find a safe venue with plenty of blankets and pillows so that no one has to drive home after the party. Invite all your friends. Make sure they know that if they participate in the game they will be staying the night. Beg, buy, or borrow an overly-festive sweater.  Purchase two 40-oz beers for yourself and any other players with whom you are supplying beverages. Ignore the strange looks from the…

  • RemoteDance

    Product Advertisement Fail

    December 25, 2009 - By 

    After spending part of the holidays with my brother and his family in Kansas, we high-tailed it for Iowa, trying to beat out an incoming blizzard. We had to leave the plane in Manhattan and rent a car, since the weather was already too poor for driving. At one point on the drive, we stopped for gas and to pick up a little lunch. See if you can figure out what is wrong with this picture: Got it yet? Here’s a hint: That’s right. For the low, low, price of just two quarters, you can get yourself an ice cream…

  • Family - RemoteDance

    In Which we are not Smarter than a Coffeepot

    December 23, 2009 - By 

    On Sunday, we flew to Manhattan (Kansas) to spend some time with my parents, brother, and his family. This is Chris’s first visit to the city where I grew up, so I have big plans to show him all the sights. We saw the mall, downtown (all 4 blocks of it) and some of the new developments (there’s now a Bed Bath and Beyond and a Best Buy). But mostly, we have been hanging out with family and relaxing. Apparently my brother’s coffee pot has “intelligent design.”  I say this not because it is a special super-fancy coffee pot with…

  • RemoteDance

    How to freak out your dental hygienist

    December 16, 2009 - By 

    I had a dentist appointment today, and while I won’t go so far as to say that I like going to the dentist, I will say that I don’t mind it so much.  This is largely due to the fact that I have never had a cavity and therefore never been subject to the painful and tedious side of dentistry. Everything looked good on my checkup, but I did need some work done to the sealants on my back molars.  The original plan was to sand down the sealants and apply new sealant without anesthetic.  This plan did not last very long.…

  • Marriage - RemoteDance

    The Marriage Test

    December 14, 2009 - By 

    There is this commercial on TV now… I think it’s for a discount department store?  It features a group of people drinking wine, eating hors d’oeuvres, laughing and chatting in their cocktail-party clothes, while candles on the table gently illuminate the fancy place settings.   And every time I see it, I think, “I WANT TO BE AT THAT PARTY!  It looks like fun and it doesn’t even involve objects that must be thrown, driven really fast, or smashed into each other.” Don’t get me wrong: redneck stuff is fun.  Well, the redneck stuff that I’ve done anyway.  Which is actually…

  • RemoteDance

    The Price of Beauty

    December 12, 2009 - By 

    Q:   What is the difference between the $40 hair spray and the $9 hair spray?A:   Whether or not you want to smell like a classy lady or a cheap hooker. When one has to be at work at 6am to stand outside in the dark/early dawn for half an hour, having wet hair is a big downside (especially in the wintertime).  And getting up earlier to allow hair-drying time?  Ugh… I believe we’ve already established how I feel about the early morning hours. So I have become a fan of the “dry shampoo.”  It’s basically really expensive baby powder in an aerosol…

  • Food - Marriage - RemoteDance

    The Sniff Test

    December 7, 2009 - By 

    Chris and I have differing opinions on when food in the refrigerator is still edible. For the most part, as long as the food item still passes the “sniff test,” I figure it is still edible. The only foods which don’t get the sniff test: bread, and meat. Bread does not get the sniff test because you can usually tell if it’s bad long before you need to smell it. It’s either hard as a rock, moldy, or (if it’s been long enough) hard and moldy. Meat does not get the sniff test because the thought of eating rotten meat…

  • RemoteDance

    Why, oh why, do you taunt me, food commercials?

    December 6, 2009 - By 

    So recently I joined a new gym. I am super excited because this gym is very clean and does not smell like dirty socks, like my last gym did. Also, I do not believe the homeless schizophrenic lady who dances at the corner of the AM-PM has a membership to this gym. Maybe you think I’m joking. No, there really is a homeless lady (at least, I think she is homeless since she spends 95% of her free time in front of the AM-PM) and she really is schizophrenic (it’s like listening to a one-sided telephone conversation, only the other…

  • RemoteDance

    Put Away Your Tinfoil!

    November 29, 2009 - By 

    People are silly. Hollywood makes a movie and suddenly, everyone believes that the world is going to end in 2012?  I mean, it’s all fine and good if you follow some sort of conspiracy theory based on Nostradamus’ predictions or Mayan calendars or even actual scientific fact… but don’t start jumping on the bandwagon because Hollywood tells you so!  I mean, c’mon, if everything Hollywood says is true, giant alien robots are secretly living amongst us, vampires are mostly-harmless tortured souls struggling against their evil nature while falling madly in love with teenage girls, and every bachelor party in Vegas ends up at…

  • RemoteDance

    Minor Details

    November 22, 2009 - By 

    I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the small, teeny-tiny, almost-inconsequential snafu in our Nascar plans.  No big deal, really…. The flight out of our rural airport near LA was a little hurried.  In the space of an hour, the sky had darkened significantly, and the wind was picking up.  If it got much windier, we wouldn’t be able to take off, so we hurried to get everything in order for flight.  We (or rather, Chris, I can’t really take credit) made a smooth takeoff and were on our way to Phoenix.  We had a decent tail wind so…