Netflix and a Food Challenge

Even though Vern swore off food challenges since his last excursion, he might attempt to eat this with a buddy tomorrow:

It is called "Meat Your Maker" and it's from a restaurant called Burger Jone's.  

LEVEL ONE: A bun, grilled with cheese and bacon. It supports a 7 oz. cheeseburger, chicken fried bacon, chili cheese dog-burger, 7 oz. cheeseburger, and chicken-fried bacon. 

LEVEL TWO: Grilled cheese with bacon, a 7 oz. cheeseburger, chicken fried bacon, chili cheese dog-burger, 7 oz. cheeseburger, and chicken-fried bacon. 

LEVEL THREE: Grilled cheese with bacon, a fried egg, cooked to order, topped with onion rings and garnished – no, crowned – with Faribault Creamery cheese curds. 

Calories: Approximately 10,000.

If he tries this, it will be his fourth attempt at a food challenge. (Click here for pictures from the other ones.)

In other news, we signed up for a free month of unlimited steaming of Netflix. So, basically every night this month I'm going to be watching a movie (in order to get my money's worth).

Last night we watched The Queen of Versailles, which was a documentary I had been wanting to see for awhile because it got excellent reviews in Entertainment Weekly. It was about an uber-rich couple building the biggest house in America. But then when the economy went downhill, so did their dreams of owning this 90,000 square foot house. It was really interesting and the wife was rather likable.

The night before that we watched Jim Gaffigan's Mr. Universe comedy special. He had a really funny bit about homebirth (he's had four).

Friday Finds

Just one find for this week. This one is from the 100 Days of Rejection Therapy blog. The premise of the blog is that he is "aiming to have one rejection per day by making crazy requests. His goal is to desensitize myself from the pain of rejection and overcome my fear."

So, he'll make these requests that are so crazy they will elicit a rejection. Requests like asking to be a live model at Abercrombie and Fitch, sending something to Santa via FedEx, asking for the #1 spot in Best Buy's line on Thanksgiving, requesting a burger refill, asking to play soccer in someone else's backyard, offering to deliver a pizza at Domino's, etc.

Well, this one request that he made to Krispy Kreme had a really sweet and heartwarming result. It was during their peak hours, and he went in there and requested donuts connected and colored like the Olympic rings.

Take a look:

Car and Other Updates

We sold our car a couple days after listing it, in case anyone was wondering. Got $350 for it. I just thought I should update everyone on that.

Here are some other things I will update you on:

1) I'm still thinking about getting bangs. Why do I keep thinking about getting bangs? Will these thoughts keep bugging me until I actually go ahead and get bangs (and then possibly regret it), or will they somehow magically go away on their own? (I think I may need to get the bangs.)

Here are some reasons why I keep thinking about getting bangs:

Zooey Deschanel:

And Jenny (from Jenny & Tyler):

I just keep looking at these girls with their cute little bangs, and I just can't stop thinking, "I want bangs!"

And yes, this was me when I was 13 and had bangs, but just shut up about that. I can do my hair a lot better than that now.

2) Vern and I watched "21 Jump Street" (the movie) last night, and it was really funny. Vern was laughing really hard during a fair amount of scenes in the movie, and I said, "I haven't heard you laugh this loud in a long time." And he said, "We must not watch a lot of funny movies."

And that's true. We don't.

3) I think I'm finally at a point in my life where I feel very well balanced in having enough alone time, enough time just with Vernon, enough time with the kids (that one isn't very hard to do), and enough social time. So, kudos to me on that.

Naked Pictures

I show my kids nude pictures on the internet sometimes, because I think they're beautiful. We look at them, and talk about different body shapes, and the beauty of the pictures and stuff like that.

I was showing Vern this one site that I had shown the kids, where this Minneapolis based photographer took these beautiful nude portraits of women in their own homes. And I was showing Vern how beautiful these pictures were, and he was like, "You showed these to the kids?" And I was like, "Yeah, I show them stuff like this all the time."

("All the time" is actually an overstatement, with me just trying to be cute. I had only shown the kids one other artist before this... Spencer Tunick, who is famous for taking pictures of large groups of naked people. His stuff is really cool.)

So, I explained to Vern how I thought it was important for a kids to grow up seeing what a wide variety of normal women's bodies look like (because that seemed like a meaningful and important answer to give, when, in truth, my intention was just to show the kids something that I thought was neat). And he was like, "Okay."

More Pictures from Christmas

Here are some more pictures from Christmas at my Mom's that I haven't gotten around to posting yet.

This is my sister and my niece:

This my mom eating the remainder of the pink squirrel out of an ice cream bucket:

This is my mom and this outfit that she made and wore to her "Alternative to a Christmas Sweater Party" that she threw for some of her friends:

This is my daughter, Peace, when I put some of my mom's curlers in her hair:

This is Peace wearing my mom's "Alternative to the Christmas Sweater Party" outfit:

This is Peace and Vern swimming at the hotel (because my mom got a night at a hotel for cheap in a silent auction, and that is where my sister and her family stayed because my family always wakes her up too early when she stays at my mom's with us):

This is what Vern and I look like in our swimsuits:

These three have the longest tongues in our family (or of anybody else I know). They pose for a picture like this every once in awhile:

That's it. Happy New Year!