Recent update
- ‘Tis the season … to instant message
- Some Post-Election Humor
- Pumpkins REALLY don’t have ankles
- The Great Birthday Caper
- Excuses, excuses
- I’m famous!
- Of Mustaches and Medicine Men
- Football
- Mis-adventures in Sparkle City
- “The Nutritional Value of a Food”
‘Tis the season … to instant message
November 29th, 2008 by witherow
Decorating for Christmas on the heels of Thanksgiving reminds me of last year at this time, when I was at the apartment decorating, and my roommate Steph was still at home eating turkey and stuffing and mashed potato sandwiches (I assume). I saw she was online and sent her a message.
ME
I decorated the tree. 
You’ll like it.
my theme was “bananas”
STEPH
oh boy.
so, are you friends with Dante yet?
[Dante is Steph’s beta fish]
ME
um, yes. Isn’t he there with you?
confused by your random question!!
STEPH
yes.
he’s here with me.
he’s been pouting all weekend.
i have Dogbook for Dante
he is friends with Marzipan and Becky
ME
Hahaha! can he be friends with me and Mocha?
[Mocha is my family’s overweight toy poodle]
ME
Oh, fyi
Dante isn’t a dog
STEPH
um, isn’t it what’s on the inside that counts?
ME
dog biscuits?
That’s what’s inside of mocha
STEPH
He’s the spirit of a dog in a fish body
OH!
you haven’t commented about my latest word in Scrabble . . .
ME
let me go look at it …
[I then proceed to look at our online Scrabble game, where I discover Steph has played the word “bridoon” and placed it in such a way that she earned 70 something points.]
STEPH
HAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!
ME
we hates you, precious
STEPH
bridoon.
used in horseback riding.
thank you, riding lessons in 7th grade!
ME
I cannot begin to describe how deplorable that is
STEPH
BRIDOONS!!!!
ME
I shall now lament.
brace yourself.
alaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas!
STEPH
I know you don’t have that many As.
ME
is this a slam on my academic record or something?
STEPH
no; it’s the letters you may/may not have for your Scrabble game
ME
That was a lament, not a move
STEPH
you might actually get more points that 3 per move if you use that many letters . . . 
ME
hey now …
STEPH
hee hee. jk
well, i’m going to go eat dinner now.
ME
Okay. I’m going to put mousetraps in your … I mean, eat some chips and salsa
Posted in Uncategorized | | | 1 Comments
Some Post-Election Humor
November 15th, 2008 by witherow
Now that the national elections are over and we can go back to our normal lives without tripping over “Schmoe for Senate” signs in our yard or listening to hours of “paid for by Rich Politicians” advertisements, it’s time to look back and make fun of the whole campaigning process.
Some time before the elections, my friends and I were emailing each other, trying to determine a night to celebrate our friend Brian’s birthday. We couldn’t decide whether we should go with Thursday or Friday. Then our friend S.Austin, who works as a grad assistant for our school’s English department and who had obviously had enough of all the political propaganda, wrote the following:
S.AUSTIN:
And now for the public service announcement about why everyone should VOTE YES FOR PROPOSAL THURSDAY: the dining common is serving pizza joes for dinnenr. Bah.
My name is Stephanie Austin, and I approved this message.
MY REPLY:
Stephanie Austin will tell you that the dining common is serving pizza joes. She will tell you that this is a BAD thing, using strong words like “bah.”
But sources tell us that back in April of 2004, Stephanie Austin in fact ate a pizza joe of her own volition! Can she really have it both ways?
Austin also claims to be an English teaching G.A.
Then why can’t she spell the word “dinner”?
Stephanie Austin: an expert on pizza-based meals? You decide.
Paid for by PumpkinAnkles, Inc.
STEPHANIE CONNORS:
I, a non-biased third party, would like to take this time to take about how, without the cooperation and help of all the world, we will never be able to have world peace.
Tell me, what is important in this world? Whether or not someone, someplace, at a pizza joe? Whether or not dinner may or may not be spelled correctly? Whether or not there are spaces between the words “pumpkin” and “ankle”?
What is important is that all of cross party-lines, put aside our personal preferences, and join together to accomplish Good. And that we Change. And that we Recycle. And that we Save Polar Bears.
So, bring your Polar Bears, Change your plans to Mellow Mushroom, and let’s all join together for the Good of Brian’s party.
(We’ll recycle the party hats.)
MIKE:
I vote for Friday. That’s my conscience. I must be true to it.
S.AUSTIN:
I vote for Friday too. Unless, of course, voting for Saturday will make me a more likely candidate in November.
ME:
SEE HOW SHE FLIP-FLOPS AND PANDERS TO THE WHIMS OF THE PEOPLE???
paid for by PumpkinAnkles, Inc.
S.AUSTIN:
Yeah well, I’ve spent years as a GA office wing organizer. Check out my amazing experience.
Finally, our friend Rebecca set us straight, using a dictator name she once chose from a how-to villain book:
REBECCA:
And then Mistress Blood Scourge sweeps in to do completely away with all democracies. Mistress Blood Scourge says that Friday night seems to be the general consensus so we will go on Friday night. Any who complain will become stains.
Posted in Uncategorized | | | 1 Comments
Pumpkins REALLY don’t have ankles
October 31st, 2008 by witherow
Some people have wondered why this blog is titled “Pumpkins Don’t Have Ankles.” The reason is … because I am a firm believer that they don’t. And to prove this statement is true, Christy and I went to the infamous Pumpkintown Pumpkin Festival.
No, for real. There is a place called Pumpkintown and they have a pumpkin-themed festival every fall. See? Here’s photographic evidence:
I figured if there were any place in the world that might be weird enough to have a pumpkin with ankles, Pumpkintown would be the place. So off we went.
Can you believe over 30,000 show up for this thing?? And all of them just stand there in the way when you’re trying to get from point A to point B, which is especially difficult when you’re trying to maneuver with a guide dog!
Anyway, Christy and I did our little investigation. What we did find:
1. Lots of homemade crafts. I got a tea cozy for my little Irish grandma! (a tea cozy is like a toboggan for a teapot—keeps your tea warm!)
2. Barbeque sandwiches and fresh mountain apples (mmm)
3. An entire section of booths decorated with Confederate flags (umm … the two Northern girls didn’t go there).
4. Some obnoxious Pomeranians in a baby stroller that barked at Reba like they wanted to take her on
(Reba, rolling her eyes): They ain’t even dogs, I mean it! Can’t even walk on their own. Man, I ain’t got the time o’ day to waste on them! [For a fuller description of Reba’s inner monologue, please visit her blog, People Are Dumb.]
5. Pumpkin butter! (we won’t think about the fate of the poor little pumpkins used to make said butter)
6. A creepy old redneck dude who tried to get us to look inside a doll-sized outhouse and talk to the Barbie inside … um … yeah … um … there is no word in the English language adequate to describe the awkward creepy crude weirdness of this moment, so I am forced to invent one: awkreepudeness. Blech!
7. A magical mini-donut making machine, in which the baby donuts float down a river of boiling oil only minutes before they are covered in cinnamon sugar and consumed. A health nightmare, but Christy found them heavenly, and I must admit they were kind of toothsome!
8. Bluegrass music
9. And finally, though not as plenteous as one might expect … pumpkins!
See how happily the children frolic in the orange round delightfulness? And not an ankle among them!
Among the pumpkins, that is. I’m assuming the children did have ankles. But the pumpkins didn’t. Pumpkins don’t have ankles.
Which is what I’ve been saying all along.
Posted in Hijinks, People Are Weird, That's life | | | 0 Comments
The Great Birthday Caper
October 10th, 2008 by witherow
So … Steph neglected to remind us of her birthday last month. Because of this, we (her caring friends) decided to make her pay with an evil birthday scheme that put her powers of logic to the test! Bwahahahaha!
Ahem … But such an undertaking cannot be done without a lot of careful planning. Our first priority was, of course, to play mind games with our dear friend. This entailed telling Steph we were doing something for her birthday, not tell her what that something was, and then make a concerted effort to make her worry about it. *evil grin*
I made her a nice ransom note that read “StEPh—wE kNoW abOUT the biRThdaY. yOU WoN’T geT AwAY wiTh It. BwA-hA-Ha-ha-HA.”
Brian and Mike wrote some lovely email haiku, including:
What plans lie ahead?
Nothing but time can tell that
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Tar and feathers? Worse!!
Birthday cakes with rocks? Better!!
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
It’s your destiny,
It is unavoidable
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
And our personal favorite:
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Mel waxed philosophical:
A Birthday Formula for deep consideration: by Anonymous Party-goer
Birthday + Friends + Party = Good Birthday
Three holes we all can fall in:
Birthday + Friends – Party = Cheap Friends
Birthday + Party – Friends = Lonely Birthday
Birthday – Friends – Party = Travesty
One slight deviant off the Good Birthday…
Party + Friends – Birthday = Procrastinating, or perhaps simply impish Friends
Brian gave me a simply brilliant idea, in which I sent Steph link to a website renting out dunking tanks. A little while later, I emailed her back and said I really meant to send her a link to a picture of fuzzy kittens and that I hoped I hadn’t frightened her.
Steph was sufficiently worried, much to our delight.
So on Saturday morning, Steph arrived at my apartment. I answered the door wearing a trench coat and sunglasses and handed her a clue.
Me: “Agent Lucky, get in position. ETA 15 minutes.”
Steph successfully cracked the code and figured out the clue. It led us to Red Robin out on Woodruff Road, where we found her friend Rachel, waiting with a balloon and another clue.
This one led to P.F. Chang’s Chinese Bistro. where we found Brian, sitting under the giant horse statue and listening to his IPod.
He gave Stephanie a clever “Haiclu” to solve. Part of it read:
Perhaps you like clues,
Although I think that you don’t.
Nice time we’re having.
Eat bread with your friends,
Read stuff online with coffee.
Atlanta? Uh no!
You’ll notice that the first letters of the lines spell out “Panera,” as in Panera Bread, where we found Rebecca waiting with an evil “get the people across the river on the raft with impossibly hard conditions” puzzle on the Internet. And Steph actually solved it—and fast! (I tried a few times and couldn’t do it, so either Steph’s really smart, or I’m really … uh … wow, Steph sure is smart!)
The next stop was Barnes & Noble, in which Steph had a mini scavenger-hunt-within-a-scavenger-hunt, in which the names of certain authors and titles of books led her to spell out the next clue, leading us to Mike in the Snack Shop.
Mike had an unassembled puzzle of a deceptively cute baby polar bear licking his cute little paws. But when we assembled the puzzle, we found a hidden reference leading us to Performance Hall.
At Perf Hall, we were accosted by two suspicious-looking people (Mel and Vanessa) in trenchcoats and sunglasses.
Mel handed the tormented birthday girl a final poem:
On Elusive Parties and Partiers
You seek us here, you seek us there.
You seek your party, you don’t know where.
You’re gaining friends along the way.
(You’ve let them know that they will pay.)
Your birthday came. Your birthday went.
But there’s still some birthday to be spent.
For nothing more do friends enjoy
Then plotting plots and scheming ploys.
Solve this riddle, and use your brain.
Fix the cube without going insane.
It will lead to a place of rest,
Of cake and party, of no more tests.
All Steph had to do then was solve a Rubik’s cube! … (or just unscramble the letters I’d taped onto it.) (Mel, by the way, knows the secret of how to solve the cube, so she gets like 5 and a half cool points).
The letters spelled out “Pavilion,” where Steph finally found her party and could finally relax without having her brain taxed and tested! Steph passed every test! See how she grins in triumph!!
The best part of the whole party, for me anyway, was seeing my best friend have a good time.
The SECOND best part is that the whole scheme actually worked!! I was quite afraid someone would be left stranded at a restaurant, or have to wait for an hour, or get attacked by wild possums on the way to the next location … any number of things could have gone wrong. So hurrah for a successful party, and hurrah for my new vow never to attempt another birthday this complicated ever! Ah-haha!
Posted in Brilliant ideas ..., Hijinks, Poetry that oughtn't | | | 2 Comments
Excuses, excuses
September 23rd, 2008 by witherow
OK, OK, so that last blog post was totally just pirating my friend’s post. But she said everything so perfectly, I figured why mess with perfection?
Even if that is true, I do admit that I have not been blogging as faithfully as I ought. However, as I said earlier, I have only the finest excuses to offer. Here are my top 10:
1. I am trying to finish writing a drama for a Christmas cantata by Sunday.
2. I am collaborating on a second Christmas cantata, which also is supposed to be done by next week.
3. My sister and I have been watching very interesting cartoons recently, which limits my blogging time significantly.
4. Eunice and I had a stressful fight last night. I whacked her with a box and knocked her down, which made her mad, though I’m not sure why. Then I chased her around the porch with said box for a while until I finally pushed her off the edge (and yes, we live on second floor). I have a feeling she’s been sulking and plotting revenge ever since. This is unsettling, and this stress makes it hard to concentrating on blogging.
5. I have been spending a couple nights a week exercising with some of my friends. An indoor track is much more fun with three blind girls, a dog guide and a Miss Kawen. Rachel and I can run circles around everyone!
6. My room is a mess and needs to be cleaned.
7. OK, so I haven’t actually been cleaning my room, but if I were, it would take away from blogging.
8. I like sleeping.
9. Eating sometimes, too. These activities also take away from blogging.
10. Have I mentioned I’m working on two full-length cantatas??
So there you have them. My top 10 excuses. Only the best for my faithful readers! (Thanks, Mom!)
-witherow
P.S. I’m not sure my mom actually reads my blog.
Oh, and Eunice is a spider.
Posted in That's life | | | 0 Comments
I’m famous!
September 22nd, 2008 by witherow
Looky, everybody! I made it onto my friend Karen’s blog post! Check it out!
http://aussiegirl08.edublogs.org/
Isn’t that cool?
Posted in Uncategorized | | | 0 Comments
Of Mustaches and Medicine Men
September 12th, 2008 by witherow
Ahh! I’ve been a bad, bad blogger and have let PumpkinAnkles sit unattended for two weeks! Let me assure you that I have only the best of excuses to offer, which I can supply upon request.
So, anyway, TWO WEEKS AGO I had an experience worth blogging about. My father came to visit for a few days. He’s been all over the world on business trips, including places as far-flung as China, Iraq, Holland and Greenland. Yes, Greenland. People actually do live there, though a “town” may consist of four houses clustered together. And there are no roads between said “towns” … you are expected to take a plane. Or maybe a dog team. Or maybe a bike, if you’re stupid.
So my dad got me a souvenir from this oft-ignored island (which, thankfully for him, he visited during the summer months, when the sun never quite sets).
This is a pendent … carved by a medicine man … made from a antler … that came from a reindeer … that was buried in a glacier … four thousand years ago. So basically, at about the same time that Jacob was wrestling with angels and trying to keep tabs on his kids, this antler was on the head of some reindeer that was frolicking around and getting run over by glaciers. That’s pretty cool if you ask me. Well, cool for me. Maybe not so cool for the reindeer.
On Saturday Becky and I took our dad to downtown Greenville.
Here Becky and I are looking off over the Reedy River while standing in “that building with holes in it where people get married,” as Becky’s old roommate once described it.
Here’s me and my dad in front of this cool fountain in front of an amazing hotel along Main Street.
OK, this sign wasn’t particularly spectacular, except that from a distance it looked like the first line read “smoking pets.” Which we thought was funny. And it kind of was. At the time. Just laugh, okay?
We also went to Mast General Store and found curiosities such as “pickled garlic.” (As soon as you open the jar, some vampire in Wisconsin drops dead.)
We also found this lovely set of artificial mustaches—one for every day of the week. I decided this would be a wonderful and unique gift for our very own Daniel Stephen Moses Nickerson, who was compelled to shave off his facial hair before returning to school and would possibly be going through withdrawal. So I bought the set and presented it to him on the day of the Great Shearing.
After our downtown adventure, our dad got some of the photographs from his world travels enlarged to poster-size and then framed them for our apartment walls.
Here are the ones now displayed in our living room:
An iron gate to a garden in Prague
An old stairway in China
And our personal favorite … A pile of rocks in Greenland. But what a cool pile of rocks it is! It’s probably the remains of a Viking settlement. Or an ancient grave marker. Or something some extremely bored Greenlandish teenagers did to pass the time. But still it’s pretty cool.
So there you have it. Greenland rocks!
Posted in Uncategorized | | | 1 Comments
Football
September 1st, 2008 by witherow
For a long time I didn’t understand the mysterious game of American football (which, incidentally, is not the same as non-American football, which is the same as soccer. They make this confusing on purpose). Now, after doing a little research online, and even going so far as to watch a game or a half, usually in the middle of talking or eating salty carbohydrates, I now understand the basic premise of the game.
Basically, American football works like this: One lucky team member catches the ball and runs as far as he can with it until all of the 400-pound guys on the other team jump on top of him in an attempt to crush him. Then the officials blow the whistle, all injured players are cleared off the field, and they start the exact same process over again, just about 9 feet closer to the goal than the last time. If a player actually makes it into the end zone, he does a goofy dance to show everyone how glad he is that all of his bones are still intact.
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Mis-adventures in Sparkle City
August 21st, 2008 by witherow
This past weekend, Christy, Rachel and I headed to Sparkle City—a.k.a. Spartanburg—to attend a National Federation of the Blind (NFB) convention. The plan was that all three of us would go to the conference all day Saturday, then I would drive them to a hotel and go home since I was singing in church on Sunday and couldn’t miss. On Sunday morning, Rachel and Christy would walk from the hotel to the convention, finish up, and I would pick them up that afternoon. In reality, the weekend didn’t quite go as planned … but it was definitely an adventure to remember.
We started bright and early on Saturday morning. First stop: Sonic, where Christy and Rachel got breakfast and I got a latte. (The only reason I didn’t get breakfast is because I had just eaten some of my favorite breakfast food of all time: pie.)
We arrived at the conference, sat through it for a few hours, and then left for good. The people there were all very kind, but let’s just say we have major philosophical differences with the NFB and didn’t really belong there (if you are interested in what our objections were, see the tirade below).
So we headed to the hotel Rachel and Christy had booked, which was easily within walking distance of the convention. It was a beautiful building, too, with marble columns, fountains outside, sculptures … maybe a little too beautiful for 80 bucks a night. This was Question Mark In Our Heads number 1. But the lettering on the building clearly said “Extended Stay Hotels.” It was etched into the marble, but it said it nonetheless.
QMIOH no. 2 was the fact that the main doors were locked.
“This is strange,” thought Emily. “Why would they lock a hotel at 3 in the afternoon?” But she could see a sign through the glass doors that said “Visitors must sign in at the front desk,” so obviously they expected us!
QMIOH no. 3 was the fact that we walked all around the building only to find that all of the doors were locked—except one. We walked into the big, echo-y marble lobby and found said front desk, looking very much like someone there had just stepped away for a moment.
“Hello?” we called. No answer but our own echoes.
“Is anybody here?”
Still no answer.
“Is this a hotel?”
Nada.
“Did we miss the Rapture?”
Finally I found a small directory with all of the Extended Stay locations in the U.S. Strangely, the location we were at was not listed. I found the nearest one in Spartanburg and called the number.
A nice man answered the phone. I explained the situation and told him we were at 100 Dunbar Street.
He paused. “You are? That’s the corporate headquarters. I didn’t know they were open on weekends.”
“Oh, uh … well, we got in, so you might want to check that out. Anyway, do you mind telling us how to get to the right place?”
The man kindly directed us to the actual hotel, which would have been impossible to walk to. So it was a good thing Rachel and Christy weren’t going back to the conference!
Then Rachel and Christy checked in, like for real, since they decided even if the conference was a dud, they could have fun goofing off and staying up all night in a strange place.
Since the rest of the evening lay before us, we called up my cool sister Heidi, who lives in Spartanburg, and met up at the local mall. We mostly chatted, walked off some of our lingering emotions from the conference, and threatened to sue one another for “impermissible discrimination.”
Then after conference-calling people in California and Arizona over Skype messenger (isn’t technology great?), I returned to Greenville and Rachel and Christy … did whatever it was they do wee hours of the night—something that probably involved junk food and instant messaging each other from across the room.
We reunited on Sunday for a lunch at Steak and Shake. So the weekend wasn’t a complete loss. We had a good time and now have a whole slew of new inside jokes. Impermissible discrimination!
****
Warning: what follows is a rare PumpkinAnkles tirade! Read on only if you dare.
Here is my take on the NFB philosophy: The sighted world is out to get blind people and doesn’t want them to have any rights. They show their “impermissible discrimination” when they do bigoted things like tell them where to sit on airplanes. If you’re blind and someone challenges your rights like this, implying that you are not fully independent, then run to the NFB and they will take care of you. Don’t worry, they won’t try to work out a solution with the company; they’ll just bring a nasty lawsuit against them. Obviously when people have had their pants sued off, they will develop love and respect for those who now have their money. Bleh. I say the NFB takes the cash they make in America defending the questionable Right to Sit Anywhere I Want To On An Airplane and send it to places in Asia and Africa where the blind aren’t allowed to get jobs or go to school. And if you think I sound disgusted with this, you should have heard Rachel and Christy!)
Posted in Uncategorized | | | 1 Comments
“The Nutritional Value of a Food”
August 10th, 2008 by witherow
Here’s a classic case of Asian little-girl cuteness gone wrong. Somebody gave my sister Molly a little journal from Korea. The designers were obviously enamored with English characters but not quite sure how to handle them.
The journal cover is designed to look like a cereal box. It features a cute kitten and a little green-haired boy pouring milk into a smiling cereal bowl beside a bar code and pretend nutrition chart.
The wordage reads as follows:
Cookietong ORANGE BOY
If you want to be happy. make a nice smile. Give you happy virus!!
“What a nice surprise!”
Sweet biscuit
NEW! Low-fat
The Nutritional Value Of A Food
Love 300point
STRAWBERRY
Happy ….. 30g
Power ….. 50g
Tropical …10g
Sweet ……20g
NET WT 12.2
QZ(300g)
Only Today 24$
Hmmm … I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t pay “24 dollar” for sweet biscuit strawberry cereal, especially if it’s going to give me a “happy virus.”
Posted in Uncategorized | | | 0 Comments
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