The Cadbury Bunsy

We bought Buns a chicken costume - well, at least we bought her a chicken hat. (We bought Ralphie a dinosaur hat but have not been able to get him to hold still enough to get a photo...yet.)

Ha ha ha ha ha. Unfortunately the Buns does not seem to be enjoying this as much as I am.

Beer + Chowda = Fall

Back in May I blogged about the Springfest and Chili Cook-off. Last night, we went to the fall version of the same event, Oktoberfest, which essentially just swaps out chili for chowder. I don't think chowder goes quite as well with beer as chili does, and I wish there were more microbrews instead of major distributors, but this is still a great event and a lot of fun. As a bonus, we had PERFECT fall weather - cool and crisp, which continued into today (making my aquarium shift extremely pleasant as well).

There's not much to say about Oktoberfest that I didn't say about Springfest, so I'll just leave with some stolen photos courtesy of Brian Samas:

Seven Random facts About Me

Apparently there is now Blog Spam. Just like those email chains that go around and I tend to ignore, I have been blog tagged to tell you seven facts about me that you may not know. While I would simply delete this from my email box, I decided to give it a go on the old blog because Google Analytics is telling me that I may have a very small contingent of readers who actually don't know who I am. They may not care, but that's beside the point.

I dedicate this post to Becky Berry. Seven weird things about me:

7. I have never, not once in my life, eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Sorry, but this combination sounds gooey and disgusting. Maybe on toast it would be OK, but on just plain old bread? Nasty. I won't even eat peanut butter alone on untoasted bread, and I love peanut butter - but you have to have a crunchy surface to put it on. And mixing fruit flavors with my peanut butter, well, that is just uncalled for. This idea is only made more unappealing by the thought of putting it in a plastic bag and letting it sit for several hours in a desk drawer or refrigerator before consuming.

6. The sight of baby food makes me gag.
I'm sorry, friends of mine with mini-mes, but baby food is probably the most disgusting "food" substance on earth, followed closely by the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Just the thought of pureed meats and vegetables makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth. I seriously can not look at baby food without gagging. Not metaphorically gagging; physically gagging. I don't know why; canned cat food and dog food don't bother me at all, but show me a can of pureed bananas and I am running for the nearest garbage can.

5. When I bowl, I have to take my fingers in and out of the ball several times every time I go up to make sure my hand will actually release it.
I am sure it looks like I am doing some weird ritual, and in a way I am. I have an innate fear of my hand getting stuck in the bowling ball (even though I have my own ball custom-drilled to fit my fingers). I am quite sure that if my hand gets stuck in the ball I will fall down, or drop the ball on my foot, or pull my arm out of the socket...you see the potential for injury and embarrassment here. Therefore, I have to test the release capability any time I prepare to throw a bowling ball.

4. I had my own snowmobile when I was eight years old.
I am not talking about one of those kid snowmobiles, either - I had one of those when I was five. By the time I was seven, I inherited the old Bombardier. Since you don't have foot brakes in snowmobiling, I guess the fact that my feet barely reached the runners was of minor concern. I drove this hand-me-down snowmobile for two years, until dad went all out and bought me and Kristen our Arctic Cat Lynx, which was brand new and had pink and purple decals.

3. When I was in middle school and Kristen in elementary school, the school bus dropped us off a bar.
Kristen and I went to this terrible little Catholic school in Belleville called St. Anthony's. Mom and dad worked until four or five. How were we to get back to Ypsilanti? Mom's solution - convince the bus driver (we shared buses with the public high school next door to St. Anthony) to drop us off at the family bar, which was right on the county line. Every day, the bus would pull up at the bar, Kris and I would walk through, say hello to Uncle Dick (our senior-citizen relative tending bar) and the regulars, get some pop from the soda fountain and go do our homework in the back. Or play skeeball, if our homework was done. And people wonder why I like dive bars so much...

2. I love the book Hearts in Atlantis so much that I can not bear to read any other Stephen King books.
HIA is probably my favorite book of all time. I think Stephen King is actually a spectacular writer. However, I have not read any other book by him. Not a single one. And I don't ever plan to. Most of the summaries on the backs of his books just don't sound like anything I am remotely interested in reading, and I have a completely irrational fear that giving one of these books a chance and not liking it would diminish my love for HIA. Seriously. I honestly believe that. So I will continue to list Stephen King amongst my favorite writers although I have only read one of his books.

1. I met Neil Patrick Harris at a boy scout disaster convention when I was eight or nine years old.
Sad to say, I was not impressed. I thought Doogie Howser was a stupid, boring show. So when Uncle Tom's old girlfriend Mary Beth took Kristen and I to this simulated disaster thing the boy scouts were throwing (MB worked for the scouts) and Doogie showed up, I was kind of like "ehhh." He even autographed a napkin for me, which I promptly lost about three days later. Given how hilarious NPH has proven to be these days on How I Met Your Mother, I wish I had gotten a picture or at least hung on to the napkin. But alas, I did not.

So there you go. Seven completely random facts about me. Is your curiosity satisfied? Did you learn something new? Or do you wish that spammers would leave the blogosphere alone?

(Feel free to consider yourself "tagged" by the way.)

Searching for Answers

This Young House, a home improvement blog I read when I am daydreaming that I may actually some day hang pictures and paint walls, recently did a post on funny search terms that brought people to their blog. Because I like to be just a little Big Brother and have Google Analytics tracking my traffic, I decided to look and see what keywords were bringing random people to A Wiseman Once Said. Obviously I got a few hits from people searching for Dev's on Bank Street, Thames River, Brie and Blue, and the Book Barn. However, I also had some more obscure searches...

Five Movie Men Worth Loving received several random hits from the search terms "attributes of rick blaine character"; "rick blaine attributes" and "rick blaine's personality."

No doubt mentions of my BFF Rose and her hometown of Ubly/Bad Axe delighted the person who searched for "thumb label polish records in bad axe". Rose, did you know there was a Polish record label in Bad Axe? It's probably owned by one of your relatives.

I sincerely hope that my Staying Classy post helped out the searcher looking for "tips for being classy." This post may have also helped the person who was searching for "cheeses that white people like."

And perhaps my personal favorite: somebody found my Raiders of the Lost Art mix tape post while googling "build me up buttercup ghetto mix." That's a song I'd like to hear.

Due South

Last night I was watching TrueBlood, the television offshoot of the Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels I have blogged about recently. TrueBlood is set in steamy Bon Temps, Louisiana. As I was watching a scene where the townspeople drink lemonade on a front lawn while watching the coroner carry a body out of a duplex, I started to wonder what makes the deep south such an appealing setting for legal thrillers, crime stories, and supernatural fiction.

I realized that many, many of the books I consider my "literary crack" (mostly paperback legal thrillers and the aforementioned vampire novels) are set in Mississippi, Alabama, or Louisiana. I have never visited any of these places. The closest I have been is Tennessee, and then I was in Nashville - great for music history but not exactly a hotbed of incestuous small-town criminal activity.

As an ode to the territory of the country I have oft read of but never visited, here are my top picks for literary crack deep south novels:

Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
The sixth Sookie Stackhouse novel features an inbred community of werepanthers, a New Orleans party barn fit for a vampire queen, and an action-filled chase through a Bayou swamp. Now that's what I call atmosphere. Really, the whole series is worth the read, but four, five and six are my favorites so far...

The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and The Client by John Grisham
I can not pick just one of John Grisham's novels from what I call his glory period (anything from A Time to Kill to The Rainmaker), but I can pick three. These are great books. Once again, skip the movies - although they are actually pretty well cast, the scripts are terrible. Every time I think The Firm is my favorite (love those Cayman Islands scenes where they drug Avery Tolar) I remember how cool Darby from The Pelican Brief is (holding hands with an internationally wanted assassin right before he is shot!) Just when I think PB is my favorite, I remember the digging-up-the-body-in-the-middle-of-suburbia scene from The Client. It is simply impossible for me to pick a favorite Grisham novel, or even narrow it down to two.

The Quiet Game and Turning Angel by Greg Isles
If Greg Isles would write more Penn Cage novels, we would have a John Grisham situation on our hands. Isles is sort of my new Grisham (since Grisham's gotten lame), except he's naturally a little darker and edgier. And Penn Cage makes my list of fictional characters that I'm sort of in love with - he's like a modern-day less goody-two-shoes Atticus Finch (not that I don't love Atticus.) Seriously, try these out if you're looking for a good legal thriller. Technically The Quiet Game comes first, but you don't need to read them in chronological order.


Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
This one technically shouldn't qualify for the list, as it is non-fiction and while as readable as the literary crack, is actually critically acclaimed with a journalistic bend. But it is one of my all-time favorite books and in a weird way, makes me like that fictional stuff even more because it sort of convinces me that the south actually is THAT weird.

What about you? What's your literary crack? And on the off chance that any of the eight people who regularly read this are from the south, do you ever read any books about us weirdos in the northeast or midwest?

Let me offer you a tip

Frank Bruni recently posted a piece in his New York Times dining blog about a letter he received from a waiter. The waiter complained about receiving low tips from foreign tourists who do not understand the American tipping system (read it here). Bruni asked the readers of the blog to weigh in on their feelings about the issue.

One point that came up repeatedly was that perhaps it is time for America to banish the antiquated tipping system. I could not agree with this sentiment more.

I worked in fine dining in Ann Arbor at various restaurants for over five years. Yes, part of the reason behind getting a job at one of these places was the expectation of high tips. However, as I became older and my expenses expanded, I realized the value in receiving a regular, steady paycheck and being able to count on a set amount of money each week. The occasional $200 or $300 dollar night were sandwiched between numerous $45 slow summer nights or getting stiffed on stupid parent's day tables (I will not turn this into a rant on the University of Michigan Parents Day - though it is tempting).

While the article focused mainly on European customers who are supposedly unaware of the American tipping system, I found as a waitress that there are many, many ambiguities with well-meaning Americans who should be completely familiar with tipping practices.

For instance, when I go out to eat, I tip on the whole bill. Period. I do not subtract the booze or even the tax (in my case, subtracting the tax would not make much of a difference on the majority of my restaurant bills). However, I have seen some people who do not tip on liquor, or bottles of wine, etc.

I tip on everything because it has been my experience as a server that the person who waits on your table will be tipping out (giving a percentage of their sales to) the person who made your drink or poured your wine. The Earle is a perfect case in point: say you ordered a $100 bottle of wine with your meal. I would not have poured it for you - our sommelier, Stevie G., would have come to your table, guided you through the list, made some recommendations, and ultimately opened and poured your wine. Why should you give me a tip? Because at the end of the night I have to run a report on the amount of bottled wine I sold and tip Stevie G. 6% of that total, that's why. By choosing not to tip on your wine or drinks, you are most likely taking money out of your server's pocket because they will still be expected to tip out their bartender and sommelier (not to mention the busboy).

Still, if you don't work in a restaurant, do you know that? Maybe not. To the non-restaurant employee, it seems like the server is being fairly tipped for the service provided.

That is why tipping needs to go. There are too many ambiguities. Tipping is a way for restaurant owners to keep expenses down by not paying a lot of money to employees. But it is confusing to the customer and not dependable for the server. American restaurants should go to a flat wage. Yes, prices would most likely go up slightly or many restaurant owners would possibly institute a "service fee" (many European restaurants do so) but the upside is you would know exactly what you were paying for ahead of time. The server gets a regular paycheck, which in this economy is not a thing to be discounted. Nobody makes any social faux pas. And if your server really is spectacular, you can always slip them a ten or a twenty, and they'll be appreicative rather than disdainful.

What do you think?

Help me make my house my home

Now that we've been here a year, it's finally time to start work on some of those room redecorating projects I've been thinking about.

We were lucky enough to move into a house formerly owned by young cool people. Matt and Kendra took care of a lot of updates, as well as putting in some really awesome light fixtures and appliances (and they picked some amazing paint colors, particularly in the kitchen and upstairs bathroom).

However, Matt and Kendra had one thing that we do not have, nor do I wish to have: a kid. And that kid had a pastel blue and pastel green bedroom with green and white checkered curtains.

This bedroom has since become my office, and quite frankly, I can't stand doing my work and extra-curricular internet usage in a room that looks like Babies R Us exploded in there. The curtains drove me so crazy that I removed those six months ago.

Anyway, now that gross, sticky, hot summer is over, I am finally ready to paint. I am putting my color choices below. Weigh in on your favorite color or offer suggestions. I want to start this in the next couple weeks, so don't hold back the ideas!