Who me? Weird?

The Scottish dancers are doing a fun game to learn stuff about each other, so I figure I'll post my answers on here each week after they've been revealed. This week's question was, "What is the weirdest thing you have ever done?" After scouring my college yearbooks I recalled the following:

I have taken a bite of a Cheeto being held between someone's toes. At an APA retreat, we were divided into teams and competed in various ways. The winning team got to mete out "punishments" to the losing teams. Not only did we have the fewest points we were the most annoying team because one of the contests was to come up with a cheer, and we kept doing our cheer at random times. If the points had been awarded based on which team had the most fun, we would most certainly have won. Here's the annoying cheer we made up to go with our team name, "Dirty Dozen":

Bang! Bang! Choo choo train!

Come on Dozen, do your thing!

Dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty!

Dozen, dozen, dozen, dozen!

Huh! And let it roll!

(repeat until other teams tackle to silence you)

Happy Birthday, Robert Burns!

Here's a lovely poem Burns wrote on his 34th birthday:

Sonnet Written On The Author's Birthday

On hearing a Thrush sing in his Morning Walk

Sing on, sweet thrush, upon the leafless bough;
Sing on, sweet bird, I listen to thy strain,
See aged Winter, 'mid his surly reign,
At thy blythe carol, clears his furrowed brow.

So in lone Poverty's dominion drear,
Sits meek Content with light, unanxious heart;
Welcomes the rapid moments, bids them part,
Nor asks if they bring ought to hope or fear.

I thank thee, Author of this opening day!
Thou whose bright sun now gilds yon orient skies!
Riches denied, thy boon was purer joys --
What wealth could never give nor take away!

Yet come, thou child of poverty and care,
The mite high heav'n bestow'd, that mite with thee I'll share.

Never

Never drink caffeinated soda on the same day you're running low on your regular prescription medication and a stressful work deadline is going to make you tense and give you adrenaline since you've got to rush to not be horribly late for an already nerve-wracking first date.

Never.

It's the little things...

I encountered the following tidbits in my ordinary course of work today:

~ 34567 was an actual end figure I wound up with in a regular monthly worksheet.

~ There is a road in Oklahoma called Flowery Mound Road.

Happy 2006!

This year my main New Year's resolution is to learn to embroider. I like to make my resolutions fun. Of course, that doesn't always work. I sure didn't learn to knit last year. For bettering myself in more boring ways, my resolutions include taking better care of my teeth and skin before bed and tracking my budget more carefully. People seem to think fitness is a mandatory resolution, but my fitness plans aren't really a resolution because they're mainly just to do water aerobics and I started that in November.

Cheery Christmas!

I was thinking about various holiday greetings recently and found myself comparing the phrases "Happy Hanukkah" and "Merry Christmas." "Happy Hanukkah" has such nice alliteration to it as opposed to "Merry Christmas." I did find an explanation of "Merry Christmas" and other Christmas phrases here, but I'm going to start using "Cheery Christmas" anyways. It still isn't alliterative, but I think it has a much nicer ring to it than "Merry Christmas." What do you think?

Christmas party roundup

I had the last of my Christmas parties today, so it's time for a summary of the good times.

First off, Friday night was the dancers' Christmas party out in BA. The nice thing about this party is you get to people who don't come to dance whether by choice or by health. The guys' and girls' gift exchanges are done separately so the men don't have to put up with our stealing fun. I gave a crystal swan I had bought in Scotland, but I made it a bit too difficult to open. I wound up with shortbread, a glass mug, and some specialty coffees, but the person who bought that gift knows I don't drink coffee, so she offered to take the coffee for herself and get me some tea. The most popular gifts of the evening were a pair of singing Scottie dogs.

The Previous Christmas party was on Sunday afternoon, but the cook was sick so the festivities were scaled down to a trip to Cafe China without a gift exchange. At the previous Previous meeting, they made a big deal about dressing in festive attire but nobody was festive but me. I didn't feel awkward. I was just just disappointed for everybody else that they didn't have so much fun with the holiday spirit. As for me, I was quite happy wearing my red kilt and a poinsettia in my braid.

One more party to go - the office party. We have a super-sized version of our monthly birthday lunch. After stuffing ourselves full of great food, we have a stealing-style gift exchange. The stuffed puppy and cocoa I gave went through a couple of steals. I was all set to steal a red fleece blanket for its last steal when the round of stealing right before my number went one steal to long and someone else beat me to the last available steal on the blanket. Nothing else seemed stealworthy for me personally, so to the tree I went where I unwrapped a jam server that I hung onto until the end of the game. It is decorated in clover - pink and green - so it matches my other ceramic kitchen decor, but not the overall theme I'm trying to give my kitchen. I've got a kitchen with a split personality half dark green and dark red, half light green and pink.

"Stupid Survey"

I got this forwarded from Chris and thought, Hey, why not? (I'm not too good at one-word answers, though.)

01. WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR KITCHEN PLATES? one set is clear glass, t'other multi colored
02. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? I don't remember the name of the current one, but I'm getting ready to re-read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
03. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? My mouse isn't on a pad, but I have a really cool one from Scotland that has Edinburgh Castle, a Westie, Castle Urquhart, Wallace Memorial, a Scottish piper, the Forth Bridge, highland cattle, Balmoral Castle, Greyfriars Bobby, and St. Andrews.
04. FAVORITE BOARD GAME? Shetland Yard, maybe
05. LEAST FAVORITE SMELLS? sour milk
06. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKEUP IN THE MORNING? what I need to do that day
07. FAVORITE COLOR? green or brown - brown just seems rather underappreciated, but it has such a wonderful variety of beautiful shades
08. LEAST FAVORITE COLOR? pink
09. HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE? however many it takes to find the phone
10. WHAT WOULD BE YOUR NEXT CHILD'S NAME? Janna Kathryn
11. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? that depends on too many outside factors
12. DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE FAST? when the speed limit is fast
13. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? on occasion, Sammy Sad Sack
14. DO YOU LIKE THUNDERSTORMS? of course
15. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR? '93 blue Ford Escort, the same one I've got now
16. WHAT IS YOUR SIGN? Taurus - maybe that should be my next car
17. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI? umm, yeah
18. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB WHAT WOULD IT BE? a board game tester
19. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY COLOR HAIR, WHAT WOULD IT BE? light strawberry brown
20. IS THE GLASS HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY? half full
21. FAVORITE MOVIE? Singin' In the Rain
22. DO YOU TYPE WITH YOUR FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS? usually, but lately stuff's been coming out garbled
23. WHAT IS UNDER YOUR BED? a table
24. KETCHUP OR MUSTARD? both
25. HAMBURGER OR HOT DOG? hot dog
26. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON? Fall
27. BEST PLACE YOU HAVE EVER BEEN? Scotland
28. WHAT WALLPAPER IS ON YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT NOW? some inland view of St. Croix
29. FAVORITE FAST FOOD? Long John Silver's or any taco joint
30. SPICY OR MILD? mild

Scottish Word of the Week

So I was just reading about Ernie Els return to golf after his knee injury earlier in the year, and I came across the following description of it: "Ernie Els' timeous recovery from his knee injury will enable him to play in his 14th Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City." What? Wait a minute. Is "timeous" a word? Yep, it sure is, and it turns out it's chiefly Scottish at that even though it was used in a South African news posting.

Per Encarta World Dictionary.
timeous
time·ous
adjective
Definitions:
Scotland timely: happening or done in good time
time·ous·ly adv

Kelpies!

Last Thursday didn't get any more normal by going to dance. We actually only danced two dances - and super easy ones at that - Circassian Circle and Petronella. The majority of the evening was spent walking through a 7-couple dance called "The Kelpie of Loch Coruisk." Yes, a 14 person dance. Beth's patience with us was admirable as she did an incredible job conducting us through the dance.

What a day!

Today has actually been interesting enough to seem a little blogworthy.

My morning sleep was restless, so I gave myself an extra 15 minutes to sleep in. Then it took me three tries to find an outfit even with my system (which I'll blog about later). Sleeping in requires breakfast on the go so I popped a couple of waffles in the toaster and ate them in the car. Upon arriving at work, I decided I needed some grapefruit juice to rejuvenate me. When I went to get the juice, the vending machine ate my quarter.

The rest of my morning was uneventful except for the surprising news that David Duval is leading the Dunlop Phoenix golf tournament in Japan. For all you non-golf fans who think that name slightly rings a bell, I should explain that DD was the number one golfer in the world for a while back around the beginning of 2000. Since then he has gone into a slump of monumental proportions. This year on the PGA Tour (where he still has an exemption to play being a major champion) he only made one cut. That is why much of the golf world was stunned to awake this morning to the news that Mr. Duval is at the top of the leaderboard, a stroke ahead of Tiger Woods.

Back to my day... When I got back from lunch, a button fell off of my sweater vest so I exchanged it for the spare navy cardigan from highschool that I keep hanging in my office. Much to my amusement, I actually got a comment on my "pretty blue sweater." Walking down the hall later in the afternoon, I was surprised to find a puzzle piece in the pocket of the sweater until I remembered it was something the assistant APA coordinator gave all the APAs my junior year of college. One of those odd memories that springs up from time to time.

My task lately at work has been what I call "The Taming of the Muckle Muck." It's a reconciliation that got passed to me this summer, and now that I have a good grasp of it, I thought I'd go back and clean up the report because the prior accountant working on this reconciliation passed it to me with pages of items that they hadn't cleared against other months reconciliations. Anyways, at one point I became so flabbergasted that I couldn't stop laughing.

My day at work was capped off with a nice messy piece of chocolate cake, and now I get to go Scottish dancing.

New apartment

First off, I want to mention that I edited the arrangement of my Scotland trip to give it its own page in my links.

On to the subject at hand, I moved into a smaller apartment in my same building last week. I loved where I was but it just seemed silly to me to pay rent for a 2-bedroom just for me. Now, I'm in a loft style apartment with the bedroom upstairs and the living area downstairs. Sneaking a few extra trips up and down stairs into my life should be good for me.

The move over went well. With the help of Mom and Dad, 2 Scottish dancers, 1 church friend, and 1 random guy from ORU that recruited we got the task done in an hour and a half.

Well, that's about it. Nothing too exciting about it other than the mere fact that moving is an event in and of itself.

Flapjacks

I've searched far and wide for a good recipe for flapjacks, those wonderful oat bars I discovered while vacationing in Scotland. After several tries, I've finally adapted a recipe that works for me and was met with hearty approval by my fellow dancers.

Scottish Flapjacks

5 ounces butter
2 heaping tablespoons light brown sugar
4 tablespoons honey
2 heaping cups steel-cut oats
1 medium banana, mashed
2 heaping tablespoons chopped dates

Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray a small baking tin (8"x8", 7"x11", or 9"x9") with cooking spray. Melt the butter, sugar, and honey. Add the rest of the ingredients mixing everything well. Pour the mix into the baking tin and bake for 25 minutes. Cut into fingers(bars) whilst still warm and allow to cool completely before removing from the pan.

Enjoy!

(Edit 11/11: I just noticed that I used the word "whilst" above. I don't think I did it intentionally just to use an uncommon form of the word "while." I believe it was simply a typo, but since it's a typo that actually works in a way I can't bring myself to correct it.)

Oktoberfest 2005

Oktoberfest was as wonderful as always. It was nice to have new costumes again and dance in our kilted skirts. (Come to think of it I never mentioned my new skirt here. How did that happen? I got a beautiful Royal Stewart kilted skirt made by Edinburgh Woolen Mills on E-Bay for less than $20 including shipping. It was all I could talk about for the week after I got it.) So, anyways, back to Oktoberfest... The performance went great. Laurabelle was actually able to do all the dances she was going to do before breaking her wrist except for the one she broke her wrist in.

A little on our program...

O! My America! - Originally written by Scots immigrating to America. We learned this dance after Hurricane Katrina in honor of the way Americans came together to help each other. This dance features Schiehallion's Reel - a figure like a Grand Chain without touching. My partner: Lara.

Lost in Edinburgh - We danced this in honor of the adventure I mentioned in the last post when Beth broke her wrist. My partner: Brian.

Belle of Bon Accord - Beth and I learned this Strathspey at the dance class we visited in Strathaven, Scotland. My partner: Lance.

Quarrie's Jig - A complicated dance several "learned" after I left Scotland, but no one really learned it until Beth sat down and made sense of it for herself and taught it to us back in Tulsa. I didn't dance this one.

Preston Mill - A very new 5-couple dance Beth introduced after several travelers visited this National Trust of Scotland site. I was the alternate, but Laurabelle was up for dancing.

Hebridean Weaving Lilt - A unique dance performed to mouth, or waulking, music and danced as a running step rather than the usual skipping or strathspey step. This dance features an intricate weaving/unweaving figure that the audience really liked (judging by their applause). My partner: Sara.

Of broken wrists and resulting adventures

Several of my fellow travelers to Scotland stayed there an additional three weeks after I had left. In this time, Beth, the group leader, managed to fall and break her wrist during a visit to Edinburgh. According to the recounts I heard upon their return to Oklahoma, this led to quite an adventure trying to find a hospital in the unfamiliar streets of Edinburgh followed by the experience of a Scottish hospital complete with "hat bowls" and purple gloves.

Beth's wrist has since healed, and we've been busy preparing for one of our biggest performances of the year: Oktoberfest. All was going well - we could do the program several times in an evening with time to spare when it happened - Laurabelle broke her wrist in the middle of our dress rehearsal 10 days before the big event. She was laughing so hard during the dance that at the point where she's supposed to kneel then rise she lost her balance when rising and heard/felt a snap after she reached down to break her fall. So everyone hopped in their cars and caravaned over to the hospital where we managed to get lost in the parking lot even though it wasn't Edinburgh. The ER secretary was a bit shocked when a whole crew of kilted folk appeared at her desk at once. She was glad to find out that we were all just there for moral support for Laurabelle (and of course not to miss a second hospital adventure).

Stay tuned to find out how Oktoberfest went.

T.G.I. Friday's: Mild or Wild

You've probably seen the T.G.I. Friday's commercial for their Mild or Wild 3-course meal. Well, they've got a little Mild or Wild Challenge to help you decide which menu you should go with. The reason I like this particular quiz is that they are willing to admit they can't peg me and in doing so pegged me quite accurately as Mildly Wild. Try the challenge yourself here.

Pat on the back

I'd just like to briefly crow that I called the Seve Trophy score dead on (GB&I 16 1/2, Contintent 11 1/2) and was within 1/2 a point of the final results of the Presidents Cup (US 18 1/2, International 15 1/2). With two matches to go, the Presidents Cup was a little too close to a tie for comfort. That putt by DiMarco was such a huge relief. Every once in a while a tie might not be too bad of a thing but not two years in a row!

John Q. Hammons Hotel Classic

I suppose it's about time I report on my experience working at the golf tournament last week. My main job was to sit across from the golfers as they finished their rounds in groups of three and add their scorecards once they had checked the numbers for each hole. Christina Kim was in the very first group that came into the trailer and she stared at me intensely while I added the numbers. Inside, I was panicking and thinking, "What if I added them wrong. What will she think?" It was quite disconcerting, but of course I had to write a number down and so I had to get over those thoughts pretty quick. The golfers were all pretty nice, but naturally matter of fact as they were going about their ordinary business of course. A few were especially friendly and made small talk while waiting for the others from their group. A few were a little more sour simply because they hadn't played well and just wanted to get on with their days.

On Friday afternoon, I worked at the 18th hole scoring trailer, and took the role of the scoring volunteer who made sure that we got the walking scorer's tabulation. This meant I spent plenty of time out by the green and was able to watch most of the women play the hole. The hole placement was pretty difficult and very few birdied it. One of the grandstands provided plenty of shade where I was, so the heat was not unbearable. On one of the very few groups when I stayed busy in the trailer, a golfer overshot the green. I, minding my own business, found myself under attack with a sudden startling loud Klunk! as her ball bounced off the roof of trailer. The ball landed on the wrong side of the trailer, so she had to try to hit it over coming back and managed to hit the roof again on the return shot. Someone joked, "Does she get a bonus for hitting it twice?"

On Saturday, I worked at the 9th hole and the volunteers seemed a bit more disorganized, so I spent most of the time manning the scoring table in the trailer. Jennifer Rosales' caddy gave me one of J-Ro's golf balls and it was marked with two colorful flowers. I also got a golf ball that Michelle Ellis left behind. I did get to watch about 8 groups including Annika Sorenstam come through at the halfway points in their rounds. I also noticed that Catriona Matthew (of Scotland) had www.visitscotland.com on her bag.

All in all, I enjoyed working in the scoring trailer and would do it again in a heartbeat.

Team Golf

This week it's time for two big events in men's golf. The President's Cup between the US and International players and the less publicized (in America at least) Seve Trophy between Great Britain/Ireland and Continental Europe. I did an analysis similar to the Solheim Cup, but I won't bore you with the details just the results.

President's Cup - It's a close call, but I'll say US comes out on top thanks to strong singles play. US 18, International 16.

Seve Trophy - I came up with the British Isles on top, but that may be because I'm familiar with more members of that team. GB&I 16.5, Continent 11.5.

Interlude

"If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?"

This age-old metaphorical question visited my thoughts last night, and it occurred to me that the fitting answer for me would be, "Probably, but not from the bridge." Knowing me, I'd head for the high ground supporting the bridge and jump from there.