Well, I signed up for this year’s NaBloPoMo. Are you with me?
Look at this teeny tiny hamster!
He’s almost - ALMOST - as cute as those hedgehogs (that I thought were porcupines). Remember them?
**Edited to add: Ok, upon further inspection, this hamster may actually be even cuter than the hedgehogs!
Yesterday was a glorious 80-degree fall day, so we packed up and drove 2 hours south to pick pumpkins. Seriously, Illinois is 95% farmland, and there wasn’t a closer pick-your-own pumpkin patch? I’ll have to do more research next year. Anyway, the place we went, Eckert’s in Grafton was a very nice place with a large pumpkin patch, a little country store with all sorts of preserves and apples and cider, and a kids play area where Jack stood enthralled by some chickens for about 15 minutes. Here’s a sampling of our day, but you can see all the pictures on Johnny’s Flickr page.
Jack found his pumpkin!
I found my pumpkin! (The first one, anyway)
Hey look, there’s rocks for me to pick up!
The two Johnnys: Peel and Appleseed
Little Farmer Jack
And just for some comparison, here’s Jack from our trip to the pumpkin patch last year:
Last November I started reading a whole lot of new blogs. Many of the blogs over there in my left column, in fact, and those of course led to even more blogs. The reason for the influx in November? NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month. It’s an alternative to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, the program wherein you crank out a novel in thirty days. I can’t even remember how I found out about NoBloPoMo (maybe Kathryn?), but I did and I scanned through the (very large) list of people who were playing along and found some very nice new internet friends. This year, I plan to participate myself. All right, enough laughing, I realize I haven’t been very good at updating. Ever. I consider this a challenge to myself. And although I don’t actually have the book, I will keep in mind Mighty Girl’s reprimand that No One Cares What You Had For Lunch.
Now then. Tomorrow there will be pictures of pumpkins!
In a recent post, Johnny talks about Purple Jesus, aka Adrian Peterson, the Vikings’ rookie running back. While searching the Urban Dictionary for that post, he found that Purple Jesus is also the name of “The ultimate party juice! Fill a bathtub (preferably a clean one) with grape kool-aid, quartered citrus fruit, Everclear (or another high proof grain alcohol) and ice. Let it sit for a few hours then party on! The best part is eating the fruit towards the end of the party! Enjoy!” It’s long been known in this household that during Johnny’s college days in Northwest Washington, this beverage was known by the disgusting name of “Spodie”. While I was at school in Northwest Ohio, we called it by the much more appetizing name of “Hairy Buffalo”. And although we usually made it with some flavor of red drink mix and it was mixed in a (new) garbage can rather than a bathtub, the most fun part was, of course, telling the inexperienced that they should just eat the fruit, because then they wouldn’t get drunk. Heh heh, noobs.
Anyway, the point is, what did YOU call this drink, and where did you call it that? I’m continually intrigued by different words/names for the same thing, even in the same language.
