A winner and...a winner!

I announced my first ever give-away last week. The winner is AL!

His answer cracked me up! when is a raven like a writing desk?

Al's answer was: "An orange, because a vest has no sleeves." Oh, I laughed out loud!
Be certain to visit Al at "The Adventures of Killer and Fruitbat." Al is a Corgi Dad, and Dad to several other critters (including a giant cat,) that he writes about.
I would also like to thank Classy Chassy at Expressly Corgi for responding. Be certain to join her tomorrow for Tuesday Show & Tail.
I would also like to give a shout out to Sandie at Chatty Crone and Corgi Dog Mama over at Corgi Dog News.
Yup, I know lots of Corgi parents. We all exchange notes like "is is normal for her to barf her dinner up all over the sofa without any warning?" and other fun topics.

The other winner, for being the first ever of my blog world friends that I've met in person is Lisa over at LifeUnity. Be sure to visit LifeUnity. Lisa also writes Create Me and Move me.

Lisa and me...with our canvas creations

I love the blog world and social interaction- making connections. I met Lisa online and we began to email one another off blog. She is articulate and artistically talented and I am certain...a whole lot more! He website is cool and interesting. I look forward to taking part in the conversations that are generated, there. And I have to say...look at those arms! (Hers, not mine.) Wow! I know she works out often. Of course, some of it may be due to the fact that she tells me that she carries a child on her hip nearly 24/7. Whatever the reason, as you can see, she is beautiful and you can see the beauty shining from within in that smile and from her eyes.
Lisa and I met locally this past Friday when an art world celeb came to our tiny corner of the world to teach. I will share about that soon in a later post.
So, to AL and Lisa...KUDOS! You are both NUMBER ONE in my book!

You must be from Indiana

Because we live out...as in out in the country, and I was home alone for three nights this past week and then we were both out of town the last couple of days- I've waited to tell you about his after the fact.

Doug rode his bike from Bloomington to Goshen. For those of you who are not from Indiana, that may not mean much, but that is two hundred miles. Day one was past Wednesday and he rode from Bloomington to Westfield, near Indianapolis. Day two, he rode from Westfield to North Manchester. He stayed with a kind couple, Dorothy and Barney, who open their home to bicycle riders doing long distance. Dorothy asked Doug his approximate arrival time and told him she would have dinner ready. Not only did she have dinner ready, she had arranged for a reporter from the North Manchester paper to interview Doug and take photographs. I hope to get to see the story, but I would imagine the headlines will read "old fart rides bicycle a very far distance." Doug has been wanting to ride his bicycle to Goshen for quite some time. He will turn fifty-five (no, I am not that old) soon and I think he just thought "the time is now!" ready to go
on his horse

there he goes!

Doug had studied the weather and on Wednesday and Thursday it was clear and dry. On Friday, it rained but he only had to ride forty miles, then he was in Goshen where he has family and he was able to get a hot shower and get out of his wet clothes.

Yesterday morning Chelsea and I drove up to Goshen to fetch Doug home. I took 37 North to 465 East to 69 North to 13 North to 15 North which goes straight in to Goshen. Again, if you aren't from Indiana, this may mean nothing to you, but the further north you get, you are into desolate farm land. A couple of times I didn't even have any cell reception! I saw a sign in a small town that read "hog roasters for rent." I was stuck behind a farm truck pulling a tank of Anhydrous Ammonia. (You don't want to get too close to that!) and anther time I was stuck behind a semi with a load of Beck's seed corn. These experiences made me think about the email I've received entitled "you must be from Indiana if..."

You must be from Indiana if...

-Down south to you means Kentucky

(All of my life I heard people say "down home," which meant Kentucky.)

-You know several people who have hit a deer

(I once hit a deer with a Chrysler Neon only seven months after I drove it off of the lot.)

-You have no problem spelling or pronouncing "Terre Haute"

(My Great-Grandma lived in Terre Haute.)

-Detassling was your first job
(Not my first job, but many of my friends...and my son had a brief detassling stint.)

-There's actually a college near you named "Ball State."

(I am a proud graduate of Ball State University. Founded by the Ball brothers of the Ball jar fortune.)

-Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway.

(This sort of traffic jam was my only traffic jam experience until moving to Columbus, OH.)

-You measure distance in minutes.

(This is true.)

-Stores don't have bags, they have sacks.

(This came from the time when a paper sack was your only choice.)

-You've heard of Euchre, you know how to play Euchre.

(This is true, except I don't enjoy Euchre. I talk to much and never know what is trumps.)

-You've seen a running car, with nobody in it, in the parking lot of the grocery store, no matter what time of year it is.

(This is also true, and environmentally stupid.)

-You carry jumper cables in your car regularly.

(Doesn't everyone?)

-The biggest question of your youth was IU or Purdue.

(The biggest question of my youth was IU, Purdue or Ball State. I was accepted at all three and Ball State gave assistance, so I went to Ball State.)

-Indianapolis is the BIG CITY.

(The biggest city in Indiana and our state capitol.)

-Getting stuck by a train is a legitimate excuse for being late to school.

(Getting stuck by a train is a legitimate excuse for being late to work, too.)

-To you, tenderloin is not an expensive cut of beef,

but a big, salty, breaded piece of pork served on a bun with pickle.

(Don't knock it until you've tried it. I once dated a man from Connecticut who said "why does everyone eat pork tenderloins all of the time and why do they eat pork tenderloins bigger than their head?")

-You know what the phrase "knee-high by the Fourth of July" means.

(Corn.)

-You can say "French Lick" without laughing out loud.

(Floyd's Knob makes me giggle, though.)

-You know Batesville is the casket-making capital of the world.

(That is what they claim.)

-You say things like catty-wampus and kitty corner and know what they mean.

(My mother always said these sayings.)

-You know that strangers are the only ones who come to your front door.

(The house I lived in for eighteen years before moving here and...true of this house, too.)

-High school basketball games draw bigger crowds on the weekend than movie theaters,

IF you have a movie theater.

(My home town, New Castle boasts the world's "largest and finest high school fieldhouse."

And, to this day, only has one theatre that shows one movie at a time.)

-Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.

(As long as it isn't icy.)

-The local paper covers national and international headlines on one page but requires six for local sports.

-You end your sentences with prepositions, as in "Where's it at?" or "Where's he going to?"

(I don't, but most do. They also say "the Wal-Mart" and make business names possessive plural.)

There you have it.

EGGS-actly!

Doug and I are a "second time around" couple. When he and I met, his mother said he had met his match. He is 6'1" and I am 5'2" and what I don't have in muscle, I make up for in meanness. With my former, I was docile as a little lamb. (Wait, did you just hear him snort? I think I did.) But after I had been single for a few years, the tough times took their toll on me and I became a hard-hearted, jaded woman. A.K.A. "I don't take no crap off nobody!"
This is how it goes around here:
Doug: "Oh, are you going to make some boiled eggs?"
Me: "Does it look like that is what I'm doing?"
or, "Maybe."
Then he says "Hey, would you make me one?"
And I say "What is wrong with you? Is your arm broken?"
or "Who was your servant this time last year? Oh yeah, that was me!"
or some equally sarcastic, smartie pants response.
Then Doug says: "Never mind, you don't know how to boil an egg, anyway."
or "You'll just mess it up 'cause you don't know what you are doing."
This very conversation took place in our kitchen the other morning and I informed him that I have been boiling eggs since I was ten years old.

Doug and I were both single for around 18-20 years. He comes from a family where the men all cook and he cooks. He thinks he knows it all when it comes to the kitchen. Because he has more of an affinity for cooking, or he just likes to eat more than I do, I let him think he knows a few things. But boiled eggs? C'mon. my little farm fresh brown eggs dancing in the bubbles

I cook my eggs exactly ten minutes from the time they begin to boil. Ideally, I like a teensy bit of orange color right in the center, but I don't want any mushy, gooky, yucky, runny stuff in my eggs. Gag.

Then Doug has this whole routine about how long you leave them in the water, then you plunge them in cool water then hot water, oh, I don't know. I don't pay enough attention or listen to his whole spiel about the perfect way to make a boiled egg, because my way works just fine, thank you very much! perfect!

I take my eggs off of the heat, drain the water, run some cool water over and drain again. Then I peel them. If I can't get them to peel easily, then I run a little water over them as I peel. Whenever we couldn't get an egg to peel when I was growing up, Mother would say that it was "too fresh." "Too fresh?" How can an egg be too fresh? What we ate growing up came from the grocery store. I buy mine from the egg lady. (A colleague at the university.)

The other morning Doug saw that I had little pats of butter (actually, mine was Brummel and Brown yogurt spread) on my eggs and he said he had never heard of that. I swear sometimes, I think the man was raised by wolves. Doesn't every one put butter on hot boiled eggs? You pick it up to take a bite and the butter runs down your arm?

Growing up, my mother would bring her eggs home and just leave the carton on the kitchen counter. I don't ever remember her putting them in the frig. And no, I never died. Never even came close. First of all, there were five of us and a dozen eggs (or even two dozen eggs) never lasted too long at our house. And they sure aren't cool in the hen house.

Now, y'all know that ever word of this is true, don't you? I'm not eggs-agerating one 'lil bit!