Mason Jars and Ben Folds Five

If you are ever a guest in my house you can expect a scene like this:

Me: Hey, come on in. Make yourself at home. Would you like something to drink?
You: Thanks. That would be great. I'll have water.

Then I'll bring you a mason jar of water.

Or maybe if we are having a fancy dinner (which actually never happens at my house because I don't have a dining room table) the scene might look like this:

Me: Hey, come on in. Make yourself at home. Would you like a glass of wine?
You: Thanks. That would be great.

Then I'll bring you a mason jar of wine.

Are you seeing a theme here? Politeness and mason jars. Politeness because my mother would kill me if I wasn't a good hostess and mason jars because I only have two kinds of drinkware in my house: mugs and mason jars, and mugs are for hot beverages (and sometimes cereal, if I'm out of bowls.) I'm not talking about those cutesy mason jars either, the kind with the handles that you get when you order sweet tea at some bbq restaurant, these are regular old mason jars meant to be used for canning and preserving.

Mason jars are the handiest item to have around. I have one in every room in my house. One holds spare change in my bedroom, one holds pencils on my desk, one hold spoons and spatulas in the kitchen, and, assuming the dishes are clean, I have a cabinet full for drinking.

Just poured a glass of ice tea but now have to leave the house? Put a lid on it and put it back in the fridge or put a lid on it and take it with you. Because all mason jars COME WITH LIDS. How great is that? Want to take soup to work? Put it in a mason jar. Need to shake up some homemade salad dressing? Or maybe you are making a marinade? Mason jar. Making butter? Making whipped cream? ALL OF THESE THINGS CAN BE DONE IN A MASON JAR. It doesn't get much handier than that. And they are cheap. A quick Google search reveals you can get a dozen for $11. So if you break one (although I'm pretty sure that's nearly impossible) it's not a big deal.

Okay, so it's virtually impossible to tell how much wine you've had when you are drinking it out of a 16 oz. mason jar, but accidentally getting drunk on a Tuesday night while you are cooking dinner seems like a small price to pay for having the world's most useful item in your cabinet.

This week's hot jam is One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces by Ben Folds Five. (Full disclosure: I have a major crush on Ben Folds. I think it's his spirited piano playing and our mutual love for Dr. Dre's song and censorship nightmare, Bitches Ain't Shit.) One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces has some fabulous lyrics: "September '75 I was 47 inches high/Mom said by Christmas I would have/A badass mother G.I. Joe", it's fast, a little angry and a little funny and I love it.

Denali National Park and Jesse and the Rippers

For those of you not up on the workings of Denali National Park, you can't just drive in like other parks, you have to go on a bus. Except for one weekend a year. Every year the NPS holds a lottery for the chance to drive into Denali and lucky for me, Maggie J entered and won! So Friday afternoon, Maggie J, me, and 8 of our friends loaded up our borrowed 15 passenger and hit the road. It was amazing.

Here are some my favorite things from the trip:
1. Friday night we got a pretty sweet, unexpected northern lights show. Gotta love solar flares!
2. Sunshine - only 30% of visitors to the park ever get to see Denali because it's almost always covered in clouds. But we had several hours of clear skies Saturday morning, meaning we got some sweet views of The Mountain.

Denali/Mt. McKinley is the beast covered in snow in the background. It's ~30 miles away in this picture.

3. Lots of animals (even though they were mostly far away.) Including moose, bears, caribou, and dall sheep. The park is 6 million acres so it's pretty amazing that animals are ever anywhere near the road.

Or on the road, like this grizzly bear.

We even got to see a bull moose trying to get the attention of a lady moose. (It's rutting season.) But she wasn't having it. Maybe because there were 20 people watching on the side of the road or maybe his rack just wasn't big enough. (Or it could have been the van of ten adults shouting things like "Yeah moose go get some!" and "Oh girl, he is not good enough for you!")

4. On our way home we stopped at 2 of the Parks Highway roadside attractions: Wal-Mike's and the Cantwell Igloo. Wal-Mike's is a super weird permanent garage sale? I'm not even really sure how to explain it, or who Mike is. But it's on the side of the road in Trapper Creek and they sell all kinds of weird stuff. For example: Musk ox pelt, old 3-wheelers, a jar of turkey feet, old Playboys, used oil filters, political yard signs, fake street signs, etc. The Cantwell Igloo is an abandoned building shaped like an igloo. It was apparently supposed to be a hotel, but because of some code violations (like no fire exits) it never got finished.

This week's hot jam is Forever by Jesse and the Rippers/John Stamos. Yes, from Full House. I realize I could have used the original version by The Beach Boys, but it just doesn't have quite the same effect. I'm presenting this without comment, because, honestly, what words could I even use to describe how amazing it is?

Actually I have one comment: how much would it cost to have John Stamos perform this at my wedding?

Golden Girls and Dashboard Confessional

 I know I usually have pretty weird combinations of favorite things and hot jams, but I feel like this one is weirder than normal. Let's just go with it, okay?

My love for the Golden Girls runs deep.

Yep, those are the first 2 seasons and I'm wearing a Golden Girls t-shirt. I love Golden Girls for a lot of reasons; regardless of the fact that is 20+ years old it's still applicable (not to mention there are some REALLY great outfits), it's witty and well-written, and even though it features women much older than me, I can still relate.

And does it get any better than Estelle Getty (R.I.P) as Sophia?

I want to be Sophia when I grow up.

My favorite Sophia moment:

Sophia: I have everything I need to make the cake: flour, sugar, rum...
Rose: Oh, you're making a rum cake?
Sophia: No (as she take a swig of the rum)

This week's hot jam is Hands Down by Dashboard Confessional. I've admitted before to still listening to some of  the music I listened to in high school (See Porch Sitting and Something Corporate) and my emo-loving, converse-wearing, high school self LOVED this song. I'm not an overly romantic person; I think roses are stupid, I don't particularly like valentine's day, and cheesy lines usually make me want to barf, but even with its emotastic chorus (My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me/So won't you kill me/so I die happy) I still love this song. It's really the last verse that gets me. Something about it is believably heartfelt. Maybe it's just because I still wish Chris Carrabba was singing about me. What a dreamboat. Swoon.

Pancakes and Whitney Houston

"You're not supposed to have cake for breakfast, of course, but somehow pancakes slid through. I don't know how that happened. It's like, 'Young man you're not having cake for breakfast. You're having fried cake with syrup for breakfast. Now load up on that and try not to nap.'" -Jim Gaffigan

If you have the time to make and eat pancakes you also probably have an empty schedule for the day. And it's probably Saturday or Sunday. All of which make for an excellent day.

I would like nothing more than for my day to be completely filled with making pancakes. (I would apply for a job at IHOP if I didn't have to make other foods.) In fact, I would like to open a pancake restaurant. We'd only serve regular pancakes, Mickey Mouse pancakes, and silver dollar pancakes. And you're only choice for syrup would be Aunt Jemima. I'm sure it would be a big hit.

Let's take a minute to talk about silver dollar pancakes. As a child (and still somewhat today) I'd eat about 3 bites of something and be full. Buffets, endless/bottomless servings, etc are totally wasted on me. So it was/is always kind of fun when I could feel like I ate a lot of something. Enter: silver dollar pancakes. I can eat a million and it makes me feel like I have normal eating habits. I order them to this day (Rather than ordering half a short stack, which always gets me weird looks.)

This week's hot jam is I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston. Okay, Whitney is a total nut job now, but that doesn't make this song any less awesome. Considering how much she says she wants to dance with someone, Whitney actually does very little dancing in this video, but the other dancers MORE than make up for it. There are some very sweet late 80's dance moves.

When I was in New Zealand my friends and I often went to a bar/club that played horrible techno until 1 or 2 and then started playing remixes of 80s and 90s songs. Thankfully I Wanna Dance With Somebody was always one of the remixed songs, and it totally made up for all the bad techno.