Small Harvest

As you may know from previous blogs Tim and I are VERY amateur gardeners.  For the past couple of years we've tried our hand at growing our own veggies in a little box garden in the backyard with mixed success.  For some reason we can only seem to get large amounts of the things Tim likes.  Hmmm.  It feels pretty good to go outside and pick your own food and then cook it up yourself.  It's cheap and environmentally friendly too!  Yeah, we're pretty much saving the planet with our backyard garden.  Maybe we can use our compost to plug up the oil leak in the Gulf.


We've been trying to be a lot more home-made these days.  Recently Tim has endeavored to make his own beer, a venture that's been a lot more successful than I ever expected it to be.  He looks like a some sort of warlock in the kitchen with his giant pot of hops and whatnot.  Oh, and it stinks something awful in process, but if he's happy, I'm happy, and he's brewed enough beer to keep him happy for a long time.













Tomatoes!  Aren't they pretty?











These little guys have been breeding like crazy all over Athens, and they seem to be centered in our backyard.  They're cool to look at but bad for a little fledgling garden.

Roger Ebert: Please Review My Life as if it Were a Movie

Dear Roger Ebert,

I have respected you as film critic for many years now.  I used to buy your Movie Yearbook every year and read pretty much every review, but since Al Gore invented the internet I find it much more convenient to access your archives via the search engine on your site, www.rogerebert.com.  Something about reading your reviews is soothing to me.  Maybe it is your tone, your hints of knowing superiority, your I-don't-give-a-shit-what-other-people-think attitude, or a quality that's completely elusive to the human mind.  Whatever the reason, I find a comfort in reading your words, even though I disagree with you an estimated 18.3% of the time.

I want to say I am very sorry about all of your health troubles of late.  I find it a tragedy that a man with so much to say should lose his voice.  I can only rejoice that your preferred medium of criticism is the written word and not the spoken one.  I hope you live a long and fulfilling life.  However, before you get on with your long and assuredly fulfilling life, I would like you to consider taking on a project somewhat different from though not unrelated to your typical critic's work (not to say your work is typical.  If anyone could take criticism to an art, it would be you).  I would like you to review my life as if it were a movie.  Yes, this is the depth of my self-absorption. 

I often review my own life as if it were a movie, but I find that I lack objectivity and am prone bursts of self-loathing/self-congratulations that make it impossible to know if my reviews are accurate or not.

Here is what I propose:  you and Chaz fly down to Georgia for a few weeks.  You follow me around as I live my life in typical fashion, all the while taking notes and making inward observations for later use in the official review.  You would probably need to stay at a hotel as I don't think my couch would be at all comfortable for you or up to your usual standards.  Plus, my roommates are moving out soon and there might be a lot of coming and going of furniture.  In your review you might include, but should not be limited to, critiques of my personality, relationship advice, thoughts on my intelligence, a scolding of my unsuccessful working life, encouragements on how you know how much better I can be, learned references to other literary/film/historical characters whose lives or incidences in them mirror my own, and if you like, a fair review of my level of prettiness

The observation period would end whenever you felt you had a good grasp on the entirety of my life as it is now and are ready to write the review.  It need not be any longer than an average to long review of yours and should read as if my life were actually a movie.  For example, feel free to refer to me as "our heroine" or "the central figure in the plot".  Also, please go ahead and post the review on your website.  Although I don't want my life to actually be made into a movie starring whoever, I would like it if my ACTUAL life were regarded by all of your readers as a movie, thus allowing them to comment on your review of it.  The only drawback is that, since no one else besides you, me, and the people who know me will have seen this "movie" you'd be writing to a very small audience and a lot of confused readers who would spend hours Googling "the life of jenny winchell" to no avail.  There's just nothing I can do about this as I'm not willing to give all of your readers the same privilege of examining my life as I'd give to you.

After all is written and posted I will be free to read the review at my leisure, probably at home by myself to avoid embarrassment.  I will then gain significant insight from your thoughtful and well-placed words and will no doubt then be able to alter my life in just the right amount of ways to assure as much happiness in the finite amount of time I have on this earth as possible.

If you are interested in this unique opportunity, which might make a good book, please respond to this blog post so we can arrange the details.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely Yours,
Jenny Winchell

PS  I will not be able to pay any of your expenses.  I'm sorry for any inconvenience.
PPS  I disagreed with your review of the movie "Kick Ass".  I rather liked it.  Please do not let this influence your decision.

The Triceratops is Sean's Favorite Dinosaur. Now you Know.

Meh.  Tim has my camera.  The pictures I  take are usually the inspiration for my blog so I'm feeling in a bit of a rut.  Sure, I could just pull something off the internet but where's the fun in that?  Where's the creativity?  I mean, I'm not scrapbooking over here!  I think I can muster up a little creative energy of my own without the help of a Google search.  Okay, I'll just find something funny on the internet, like a video of a hedgehog playing the piano.  I just made that up, but hold on, let me see if I can find one . . .

Okay, I'm back.  No luck.  Come on!  This is the INTERNET.  I thought you could find anything.  "Hamster on a Piano" was closest/cutest thing I found, plus a lot of videos of nerdy teenagers playing the Sonic the Hedgehog theme song.  I also found this print from boygirlparty  I knew other people shared my interest in spiny mammals performing for the amusement of their friends.

This week my friend Sean is going away, very far away.  Not to jail or heaven or anything, just to Alaska.  Still, that's pretty far and I'm pretty sure they've never heard of things like cell phones and email up in Palin country so who knows when I'll talk to him again.  By then he might have gone from being a vegetarian to shooting wolves from helicopters while fighting off Russian spies.

Sean is having a dinosaur themed going away party this weekend so I thought I'd kick things off a little early with an exhibition of some of the finest dinosaur-themed wares the internet has to offer . . .

First, a robot riding a triceratops, which happens to be Sean's favorite dinosaur.  Get it in t-shirt form from Happy Family.  They have a lot of non-dinosaur-related awesome-ness as well.  Wow, that's a lot of hyphens.

Okay, now imagine that you're back in prehistoric times and dinosaurs are roaming the earth, but instead of actually roaming, they're ROLLING because now they have wheels for legs.  The creator of these toys imagined this scenario and then MADE IT HAPPEN!  Now that's positive thinking.  You can find these guys at Happy Squash Toys.

Sean, I hope you ordered enough Chocolate Dinosaurs for the party.  If not, you can find these here.  Maybe you can get her to overnight them to you.  Kentucky's not that far away.

And check out these dinosaur buttons!  They're, well, you know, cute and colorful and stuff.

And last but maybe the best, a freakin' dinosaur chair!  I might buy this for myself if it weren't for the fact that it's sized for a child, and you know my butt isn't fitting into that.  Maybe I can just find the fabric somewhere and reupholster a thrift store chair.

You can find this chair in a bunch of places online, including here.  Let me know if you buy it so I can come over and try it out/probably break it.

Good luck in Alaska, Sean!  May all your dinosaur dreams come true!

Back from the Brink

So, yeah, ok.  I haven't posted in a while.  Sorry about that.  My excuse is that I've been in bed trying to breath through 6 inches of mucus in my lungs which caused me to miss work for a week.  I know, being in bed for a week sounds like the perfect opportunity for me to blog about my slightly creepy obsession with having a zoo full of miniature animals.  But listen, I was completely focused on trying not to swallow my own lungs so give me a break.  Anyway, here's what's been going on . . .

A couple of weekends ago, before Influenza 2010© Tim and I headed up to the north Georgia mountains with a bunch of folks to celebrate our friend Blake's birthday.  It was a great weekend, but I have to say my favorite part was exploring the abandoned grounds of an old cabin resort which we discovered tucked away off the highway.  I don't know, maybe I just want to be Nancy Drew, but when I see this I kind of thing I freak out.  I mean, there was an old piano.  A PIANO.  I feel like I'm in an alternate version of "The Shining".  There was a piano in that movie, right?

And then, THEN came the bamboo forest.  So, here's what I figured happened to this place.  The owners decided to add a little exotic flavor by bringing in some bamboo.  But then, slowly, the bamboo started to take over.  Then the owners mysteriously disappeared.  No doubt the bamboo took over their bodies as evidenced by these partially disintegrated shoes I found.  That's my theory anyway.

We also found this old oven.  At least, I think it's an oven.  Maybe they made pizzas in it.  Or maybe there's a much creepier explanation for it which I'll let you use your imaginations for.  Hint:  psychopathic owners, unsuspecting tourists.

We made our way through the bamboo and came across the only cabin remaining on the grounds.  Whoever was living there must have really loved Texas Pete because we found four bottles of it.  As we walked the grounds we came full circle to the other side of the main building and realized that the bamboo was so dense that without realizing it we had been standing about five feet from the pool.  I'm guessing this was the source of the bamboo, the owner's wanting to creating a "tropical" atmosphere with tiki torches and the like. 

We left soon after.  I think everyone had a bit of the creeps.  The whole trip was a lot of fun but I can shake the feel that someone was watching us.  OOOOOOOOOOO!

And the Winner is . . .

Mickensey!

Tina Ann Merriweather
Brunswick, GA
Hair Stylist and (recently promoted to) Colorist at the LA Hairport of Hwy 163.


 I loved it, especially the "LA Hairport" part.  Is that a real place?

Mickensey, I can either mail you the cards or just give them to you next time I see you.  Trivia night, maybe?

Thanks to everyone for commenting.  I love having these contests so you'll definitely see them popping up in my blog periodically.  Tune in next blog in which I explore an abandoned cabin retreat with friends and head up to the mountains,

Orphans and Oddities and Another Contest

Now that Tim and I have decided to open our vintage/handmade store in some yet to be determined city (did I tell you guys this?), I've been sharpening my eye for those one-of-a-kind vintage finds.  Here are some recent finds, some of which weren't really found so much as unwillingly thrust upon us, and others that aren't worth the paper they were printed on except as a hilarious reminder of the collective foibles of our society, i.e. Glamour Shots.

We found the little man to the right and his sheep/dog in an antique store in a small town in South Georgia.  The man who owned the store was very kind and gave it to us for the excellent price of $10.  Not a bad deal for the adoption of a creepy child AND what looks like a genetically mutated dog.  What really gets me are the shoulders, or lack thereof.  My question is, at what point in history did this type of  portraiture seem normal.  Whatever.  I'll gladly hang it on my dining room wall to freak out and amuse our guests.

I found this odd little chair at a Goodwill last year and for the longest time I thought it was a sewing chair because it had this little compartment underneath the seat.  Only recently did I find out that it's actually a valet or butler's chair that's missing it's hanger which would normally be screwed to the back, under the little wooden tray.  This type of chair was originally designed in 1953  by a Danish man named Hans Wegner to serve as an all-in-one caddy for a man's personal items.  I'm only sharing this knowledge with you because I just learned it on Wikipedia and I'm feeling super well-informed.  I doubt this chair is worth anything because it was made in the early 70s by a Michigan company that apparently now specializes in wooden hangers, but I thought it was a pretty cool show piece.  I've almost gotten rid of it a few times but something makes me hang on to it.  What can I say, I just like the weird thing.

Alright, let me just come out and say it, I'm officially obsessed with 1950s and 60s Pyrex.  I mean, it's just so cute and you can find quite a lot of it for pretty cheap.  I realize that I'm kind of jumping on a vintage bandwagon here but every time I go thrifting now I have my eye out for that unmistakable milk glass/brightly colored pattern.  Just this weekend I found this lid to a baking dish.  I didn't find the dish, but I had to get it because, well, look at the thing.  Look at those colors!  Come on!  After doing a little research I've only been able to find this particular pattern on a website called Pyrex Love which shows you all the Pyrex patterns.  Even on that site it's listed as an "unknown" pattern, but I think it's pretty awesome.  I'm just waiting for the day I stumble upon it's brother.  That will be a good day.

These "things" have kind of been creeping me out ever since they came into our house.  We got them in, what else, a secret santa exchange.  I believe they're bull horns carved to look like peacocks and made into bookends?  Whatever, the orange eyes are scary.  Plus, they seem to be slowly decaying.  Weird.  Tim wouldn't let me sell them at the yard sale we had this weekend, so here they remain staring down at me from the bookshelf as I type this.  One of them is missing an eye.  Eek.

Last but not least, an item totally out of place in this blog which I try to keep completely devoid of any glamour of any kind.  Especially glamour spelled with a "u".  We found this sitting on the shelf of one of the scuzzier local thrift stores and it was calling out to us.  What a throwback.  I don't exactly long for the days when there was a Glamour Shots studio in every mall in the country, but how can you not get a kick out of this.  Even back then it was ridiculous but now I feel like it offers us some sort of insight into the psyche of the average American circa 1993, which is when this picture was taken.  So, I'm having another blog contest.  Here's the scoop:

Come withe a name, hometown, and occupation for this lovely lady and leave a comment on my blog.
I pick the winner based completely on my own preference.
Winner gets a free pack of funny animal cards from my store, pictured here.
Now go out and be funny and poignant and don't disappoint me!

Growth, Decay, and Rock n' Roll Marching Bands

Many, many things going on of late. I'm just going to bunch them all together here and hope it doesn't sound too rambling.

Last week we trekked my little car down to Florida for the second annual Harvest of Hope Festival. I'm happy to report that there was a noticeable drop in the number of gutter punks roving the fairgrounds this year.  Much less smelly, even with the addition of the muddy ground.  Harvest of Hope is a great organization that raises money for the families of migrant workers.  We saw some great bands this time around, including The Mountain Goats, Billy Bragg, and Broken Social Scene.  One of the best acts we saw was a band from Chicago called Mucca Pazza, a sort of rag tag punk rock marching band.  They were awesome and amazingly well-arranged for having about 20 members dancing around the stage with horns, pom-poms, and guitars.  You should check out their music but don't miss a live show if you can catch it.

On the seven hour car ride back to Athens we drove the back-roads and meandered around some old Southern towns.  It was a bit sad to see the downtowns with all the empty buildings.  Tim and I are planning on moving in the next year and opening our own store in some unknown place.  All the empty storefronts made me feel both nervous and excited to get started.  It's like when you begin a big project and the task seems insurmountable but you can see a glimmer of the ultimate results.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . we've started once again planting our little garden.  I'm afraid we're not very attentive gardeners, but I'm determined that this year we'll get more than just a handful of beans and tomatoes from our harvest.  I spent the day digging up the soil, planting seeds, and redesigning our compost so we don't lose so much to little scavengers.  As I was digging through the compost I came upon a big colony of earth worms.  I love those little guys.  They're so simple and singular.

Cat in a basket . . .