Turkey Emails

Daniel had an idea for a Thanksgiving email prank. I shot off a bunch of emails to different cooking blogs and had a couple respond. The following turned out to be the best exchange. This lady is awesome. You can tell she doesn't really believe this is serious, but she wants to keep responding just in case.


From: June Snapple
To: Cooking Blog
Subject: Did someone say TURKEY!?!? :)

Hey there!

The last 2 years I have tried to do a turkey for my family and it was a total NIGHTMARE! I tried it in the oven one year and tried to deep fry it last year. Both years made a huge mess and the kids were practically traumatized. Am I missing something? Is there some way to ease the struggle a bit?

Thanks!

June Snapple
PTA President

Thanksgiving Panic

Happy Thanksgiving week, strangers. I hope your Thanksgiving goes better than the time in Ukraine when I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for three other Americans and gave them all food poisoning. It was the deviled eggs. I escaped unscathed because I didn't eat them.

They seemed iffy to me.

Things are trucking along just fine down here on the equator. But I have to let you know, I had my second "I'm living on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean" freak-out a few days ago.

I suppose I should tell you about the first one before I get to the most recent incident. The first one happened the night I got to Palau. It was already dark when we landed. And after going through customs and immigration, I found out that my bag with all of my clothes was lost. We were picked up by a couple of people from the court who drove us through a torrential rain-storm/hurricane/Armageddon and we were dropped off at my apartment, which had only half the boxes we shipped. And the boxes that made it were almost completely destroyed. And the apartment smelled like rotting bodies.

Pictures From My Phone & Weekly Distractions

The end of another week is upon us. Today I bring you 5 new pictures from my phone and a few other links to distract you from more important things. Enjoy.


I found this picture in my parents' house right before I left for Palau. This was taken in 2001 when I was in high school. This was one of my better part-down-the-middle days. And, no, that is not a trophy I earned. It was a "team" trophy that I was assigned to take home for the night.

Yahoo! Answers IV

I hope it's not too soon, but today I bring you Yahoo! Answers IV. I want to scoop all of these people up and take them home with me. I think my favorite part of this one is that people actually tried to give real answers for question 6. Also, I am officially awarding Ninjai from question 1 the "Tellin' It Like It Is" Award. Congratulations, Ninjai. Join the list of mind-speakers proudly.


Question 1: Am I too old to have children? My husband and I will both be celebrating our 90th birthdays next summer. We are thinking about adopting a baby because everyone needs a home. Is this crazy? My husband has a hard time remembering things, but I'm in pretty good shape and can usually drive a car and we both know how to play a mean game of canasta!

The Joys of Cool Air

An update on the Stormtrooper/Vehicle of Despair air-flow problems: Only moments before I planned to get the president of every country in the world on a conference call all at once to demand that they each declare an international state of emergency, marshal law, and threaten to press their little red buttons to blow up other countries, things took a turn for the better. Good thing I didn't overreact. But it wasn't without some struggle. We (and by we, I mean Daniel) took the Stormtrooper to the local mechanic 461,000 times, give or take, before any progress was made.

I'm still confused about why we had to take it in 461,000 times. Daniel swears it's because the woman at the front desk hates him.

The woman at the front desk HATES me.

Why would she hate you, Daniel?

I have NO idea. I didn't do ANYTHING to her.

Well, what makes you think she "hates" you, then? [And I used finger quotes for "hates" to be clear that I was mocking him].

[And he said this next part like we were little girls in middle school and this woman stole his boyfriend] Every time I go in she's always just like, "blah blah blah" and she's rude and stuff.

Seat Belts & Rotting Bodies

Alii, dear strangers. First, an update on the Stormtrooper/Vehicle of Despair. That thing that I mentioned might happen--the thing that would undoubtedly lead to my death--well it happened. The fourth window stopped working. You know that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail when King Arthur finds that knight and chops each of his limbs off one by one until he's just a torso and head? Well that's basically exactly what happened with the Stormtrooper. Except instead of arms and legs getting chopped off, it was automatic windows that stopped working, one by one. Also, less blood.

Guys, I don't even know how to explain to you what that moment was like when we realized that the fourth window had finally given up the ghost. We casually walked to the car, talking about some important thing, like whether it would even be possible to, without the person's knowledge, perform a surgery on them where you loop the large intestine back up to the throat. We climbed into the Stormtrooper. It was exactly 195 degrees inside that vehicle. We gasped for air as Daniel started the engine. I reached over to push the automatic-window button on the passenger's door, the only window that could still roll down. And, nothing happened.

Our pleasant conversation then turned to this:

Hair Salon Emails

One stranger, Emma, referred me to a website of a pretentious hair salon in a big city. The website had a contact email for questions and explained that it would charge extra for any special accommodations. It also made a big deal about being "high-end" and not allowing children into the salon "for any reason." I'll give them props though for having a pretty good, and surprising, sense of humor in the end.


From: Jane
To: Passions Salon
Subject: Special Circumstances

Hi!!! I'm looking for a haircut from a high end salon but I have some special circumstances so I need to find someone who can accommodate them. Willing to pay four times your high end salon rate and refer my friends. Can you help?!


From: Passions Salon
To: Jane
Subject: Special Circumstances

Hi Jane

We would love to serve you! What kind of accommodations do you need?

Ice Cream Excessive Portion-aholic

No political rants here today, though I'm definitely feeling a bit reflective this week for all kinds of reasons. Maybe I'll share some thoughts later after I've worked them out. For now, I want to tell you about one problem I've recently admitted to myself. And hopefully, like always, no matter where you are on the emotion-spectrum this week, we can all bond over a few laughs.

A number of months ago I had a very unfortunate experience involving a body fat testing machine, the Bod Pod, through which I discovered that I can probably never be an underwear model. Unless it's for some little-known company that can't afford to pay above minimum wage and sells underwear that focuses on comfort and utility. To blind people.

After that experience I decided that body-image issues are SO last year and that I was just going to be happy being "me." This sounded fine and dandy at first, and tasted really good, too, because of all the Ben & Jerry's. But unfortunately "being me" involves a lot of behavior that is terrible for the pancreas. Not to mention, sometimes irritating to strangers online that I happen to email.

I justified this ice cream mastication in bulk for months on end, sure that I was staying active enough to cancel out any damage I might have been doing to myself and the world around me. Not only was the regularity with which I was eating ice cream increasing, but the portion sizes were big enough to feed The First Eye for the entire month of April (his feeding month).

But it wasn't until Monday that I realized how skewed my idea of the appropriate amount of ice cream had become.

The Stormtrooper

Before I got to Palau I bought a pretty inexpensive yet supposedly durable vehicle from a person who was leaving the island. It seemed risky at the time to make a big purchase over the Internet from someone I had never met for a vehicle I had never seen in a country I had never visited. But so did moving to that country without even being able to point it out on the map, so "risk" evidently wasn't much of a deterrent during those times.

The vehicle I purchased, lovingly known as "The Stormtrooper," is a 1997 Suzuki that I'm pretty sure somehow fought in World War II. Note, I did not say it was used in WWII. I mean, it actually fought in the war. This thing is tough. And each of its coconut-inflicted battle wounds looks like it has a story to tell.

I know it doesn't make sense that a 1997 vehicle could fight in a war from the 1940s, but since when do you come here to read about things that make sense?

Massage Emails

A few months ago a stranger, Jared, sent me an ad posted online by a guy we'll call "Paul" looking for an "intimate" massage swap. I emailed him as June and very sadly discovered that I wasn't exactly what he was looking for. Oh well. I'll just have to keep searching.

Ad: Looking for a younger girl to do a massage swap with me. must be attractive. Dont email if your ugly. Im a very attractive man. 35 years old. successful and wealthy. I like to explore intimate massages with people. you massage me, I massage you. You must be available during day.


From: June
To: Paul
Subject: Did you say MaSsAgE?!?

Hi Paul! Saw your ad about a massage swap. I'm very interested and also available during the day! Let me know if you are still interested!