An ode to Yim.

Weddings.

Family fun for everyone. Right? I learned some things from my wedding season this year, which will be coming to a close in just a few weeks. First, make friends with the family. On both sides. Weddings are family affairs so if you're not in with the fam, you may as well just keep quiet and put your people-watching glasses on because you're in for a long night. Second, bring a good date. If it's not someone you can make lovey dovey eyes with on the dance floor during slow, country songs, then pick the next best thing - a funny friend.

Enter..........Yim! Possibly the world's best choice for a wedding date. Yim drove all the way to MN from Iowa to spend the weekend as my +1, giving up some of the last few precious days he had to spend with his girlfriend before they embark on the ever-awesome long distance relationship train. Once he got to MN, we drove four hours up north in fairly horrific traffic. He accompanied me not only to the rehearsal, groom's dinner, wedding, and reception, but he and I also had the great honor of entertaining the groom on his last night of freedom. It was basically two and a half straight days of wedding fun, rarely a dull moment, and many a stream of tears falling from my face out of laughter.

Also, whereas I am weak and delicate like a princess, he's strong and burly like a mule or pack horse. Observe the photographic evidence:

To entertain ourselves and the people who had the great fortune of receiving our calls that night, Yim and I invented a game wherein we meld our minds together and speak the exact same words at the exact same time. Sad you didn't get a call? No worries. Yim and I called my phone so we could delight in hearing ourselves the next day. It mostly resulted in what sounds like him screaming into the phone and me yelping with glee in the background...but you get the picture. Observe:

Dowload our wedding trick audio file.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, with highlights including being upgraded to a suite, Yim sleeping in a real life murphy bed, taking the groom out for his last night, going on a rogue morning canoe ride, finding the lake entrance to Narnia, creating the best wedding game ever, and piling our plates with more meatballs and turkey and rolls and salad and carrots than should ever be consumed by any one human being. Oh, and the beer. The beer flowed like wine.

Thanks Yim!

I love the state fair!

*illustrations by Julia

When the apocalypse cometh, can I be on your team?

As you know, we have about three years and change until the apocalypse. What's that? You didn't know ? Well, there's a film that's coming out called 2012 that would be happy to tell you all the horrible things that are going to happen to us in a few years' time. Meteors will rain from the sky, New York will flood, a ship named after JFK will crash into the White House.

I think this movie is the height of irresponsibility. There are enough weirdos out there who already know about the Mayan calendar and have made reservations for their cave in sub-Saharan Africa. There is no need to inform the action-movie-going masses that the world is possibly about to end. This is just asking for looting, mass suicides and crazy bomb shelter preparations.

That said, I need to start working on my Apocalypse Plan. A friend came over a while back and asked us to play her favorite game: What Skills Can You Bring to My Apocalypse Team? I thought about it and thought about it, and I came to the conclusion that I really don't have much to offer. I'm kind of an indoors kind of girl who eschews camping, so survival skills like making a fire and putting your food somewhere a bear won't eat it and tracking wild beasts are ones I am woefully without. I can cook, sure, but only when following a recipe. And I highly doubt I'll be able to find the pine nuts and feta I so love using as ingredients when the world ends. I can knit, but again, there will be no size ten knitting needles and worsted wool at my disposal in three years' time. I can't fell trees, I'm not handy with a weapon, my arches start to hurt if I'm on my feet for too long and I NEVER REMEMBER WHAT POISON OAK LOOKS LIKE.

I've read The Road. I know how important plastic will be in the world to come to use as shoe coverings and shelter. Oh, and a shopping cart. We'll need one of those for sure. Should I start hoarding them now? Would that make me team-worthy?

The one thing I have going for me is that I'm highly confident in my fertility. I'm one of four, and my ma was one of four as well. I don't want to brag or anything, but I'm pretty sure this womb could start repopulating the earth in a pinch.

So... um... pick me? Pretty please?

Why don't I live in Boulder?

Muddy waters.

Yesterday I discovered the wonderment that is a mud pit.

I'm totally late on the band wagon to this one, but Minneapolis has a hidden beach that boasts a fully-fledged mud pit around the corner from the beach, and holy bajeebus is it muddy. My friend (let's call him T-bot) and I first started exploring the pit by delicately dipping our toes in the gooey, chilly mess. A few minutes later, we had rubbed it all over ourselves and were delighting in the stickiness of the clumps of dirt we would pick up from the bottom of the pit and fling at the sides.

T-bot was braver than I, as he took two gigantic glops of dripping mud and rubbed them all over his face and beard. I was a little more ladylike about it. But we learned a lot that day about how to have fun in a mud pit. So as a special present to you, I give you Anna and T-bot's top 10 list of ways to have fun in a mud pit!

10. Just get in it.
9. Explore all parts of the pit.
8. Cover your entire body in mud.
7. Make sure to get any spots that your friend may have missed.
6. Hold out your arms and say "wraaaaaa!" when you see little kids.
5. If you get some mud in your eye, well, good luck.
4. Muddy up a makeshift slide on the side of the pit. Slide down.
3. Try not to think too hard about what may be inside the mud pit.
2. Probably just don't smell anything in the mud pit.
1. Place large glops of mud in each of your right hands. Pull your right hands way behind your head and up high into the air. Give each other a gigantic, forceful high five. Let the mud, in all its splendorous glory, splatter all over your faces.*

*you best close your eyes for this one

Scrabble with Brother Bear

Hopixie: (n.) A pixie of the whorish sort.
Entgnome: (n.) A gnome tree herder. Found in the bonsai forests of Japan and NE Asia.
Erioky: (n., adv.) Australian curse word; Belgian oyster.
Flang: (v.) Past-past-tense of "flung."
Gront: (v.) To grunt whilst grinning.
Drent: (v.) To dream whilst farting.
Fluic: (n.) (colloq.) Flulike.
Jiwtir: (n.) Highest level of management in a jewelery store.
Gadawaj: (n.) Holiday celebrating yeast in India.
Tronc: (n.) (colloq.) Trunk.
Ditali: (n.) Halibut cheeks in Denali (Mt. McKinley, Alaska).
Weeebo: (n.) Baby earwig. Common to the coastal regions of Belarus.
Sizourfy: (v.) To cut up things with ones legs.
Sheett: (n.) (colloq.) Self-explanatory.
Pabsod: (n.) Grass grown with the water content of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Ovaly: (n.) Oval-shaped, oval-like, oval-scented.

Where did the summer go?

I was just looking at my calendar from now until October, and this is what the rest of my summer will consist of: Wedding, wedding, Denver, Portland, cabin, wedding, camping. I have nary a weekend left where I will be in town.

To me, though daunting, this seems like a good list. I'll be cooped up in this teeny apartment trying to keep warm all snowy winter long so I need to go out and explore and go on adventures while I can.

That being said, the fourth thing on my list means there may or not be a Liveblogging Truth Pirates sleepover version 2.0 in a few weeks...........

You're welc!

Who's got the beat? (Hint: Not I)

Last night a coworker invited me to a hip hop class at our gym. It'll be fun, she said. You'll be great, she said. It can't be that hard, she said. ALL LIES. I'm scared, I said. PREACH.

I got there early, while a conditioning class was finishing up. The teacher was pretty hardcore, making her students alternate jumping squats, leg curls with weights in their knee pits and jumping rope. I wondered what the hip hop teacher would look like and imagined a delicate flower of a dancer with long, flowing hair. WRONG. Conditioning teacher IS the hip hop teacher. Woe.

She put on some beats for us to loosen up to. That's when I knew I was in for it. The ladies and gents around me were shaking their booties like they were in da clurrrb, whilst I did some of my patented robot moves and felt awkward. Teacher then announced that she was going to build on what everyone had learned the last two weeks with three new eight counts. "I'm a fast learner," I thought to myself. "I'll be able to pick up on this no sweat."

I caught the first three moves, which were a snap to the side with some 'tude, a punch to the right and a punch to the left. Then there was some jumping and some falling backwards and some "drive that car!" and some booty shaking and some dipping. As a lovely young man behind me pointed out, I looked a hot mess. The only part I could do with some semblance of confidence was the eight count of "walkin' it out," which entailed walking in a circle. With some 'tude.

Reader, I was so bad. It brought me back to my failed attempt to try out for cheerleading freshman year of high school. I felt like I was insulting our teacher, who looks like she's straight out of a Missy Elliot video, merely by being there.

The worst was at the end of the class, when she had half of us perform for the other half. Twice. I immigrated to the very back of the room where I prayed their eyeballs would gloss over me in favor of the overweight dude at the front who was dancing his big ol' heart out.

Actually, I lied. The worst is that when I text my buddy to commiserate about how very, very awful I was she insisted we go together next week and I agreed.