While preparing breakfast this morning, I started singing about my oatmeal to the tune of the song I use as my alarm every morning. The song is in the YouTube video below; feel free to listen to it and sing along. (RSS readers may not be able to view the video; consider this an invitation to come to the blog itself.)
Lyrics:
I love oatmeal
Tasty oatmeal
I love oatmeal
It's the best meal
Oat
Meal
I like my oatmeal
It's the best oatmeal
Better than boatmeal
It's oatmeal
I'll eat these oats
Wearing coats
On some boats
With some goats
Or some stoats
Maybe Croats
Not a rhyme
Oh well
etc.
I do this all the time in the morning, generally to my alarm song. It used to be a song from Mario Kart, which produced similarly hilarious effects. Try it sometime! Or not, whatever.
I've had Doctor Who sitting in my Netflix queue for a few years now. It's one of those shows that has been recommended to me countless times by countless people, but I never quite got around to watching it. And how could I, when there was so much else to watch? (Okay, pretty much just an endless loop of Top Gear, Phineas and Ferb, and MythBusters, but you get the idea. And a little Breaking Bad briefly.) I figured it would just sit there, staring at me, making me feel guilty for not giving it a chance for another few years until I finally got up the nerve to just delete it. Until two weeks ago, when I was sitting in the campus cafeteria holding water in my mouth, trying to keep my toothache at bay while I did the Thursday crossword (which I'd already done; it was the HOTCORNER puzzle). I looked up at one of the TV screens and saw the Doctor Who logo looking back at me. The sound was off, but the closed captioning was on, so I figured I'd give it a chance. And funnily enough, it was fairly compelling. The episode was "The Eleventh Hour," and it was the first episode with the Eleventh Doctor. He seemed nice enough. The show seemed nice enough. So I headed home, heated up my pack of rice, stuck it on my jaw, and played the first episode in the Netflix queue. Which was the first episode with the Ninth Doctor. This was not the same man as I saw in the cafeteria. There were mannequins running around. This was not what I signed up for. I watched the full episode, but came away feeling disappointed. Until I watched the credits and found that the person playing the Doctor was someone named Christopher Eccleston. I don't know much about Doctor Who, but I do know enough to know that I'm supposed to like David Tennant the best. So I did a little more digging through the queue and found an episode in which the Doctor regenerates. Maybe this has Tennant in it! I hit play and settled in. It wasn't Tennant, but it was the rest of the episode I had seen earlier that day in the cafeteria. I liked this Doctor much better, and ended up watching a few more episodes. And then I got the bright idea to search on Google for the seasons with Tennant in them. Turns out they're the ones sandwiched between the two Doctors I'd watched. So I watched some of his episodes. (Different day now. I know this term has been pretty easy for me, but I don't have time to watch seven and eight episodes after I get home from school. I mean, usually.) Turns out they're pretty okay, and Tamsen likes them too. So now we're Doctor Who fans, I guess. I'm still not sure I think they're as spectacular as some people seem to think, though. They're fun, and they're clever, and they go down easily enough, but I didn't come away thinking that it's the best show ever. Just a pretty solid show. But still! Now I am one of you, Doctor Who fans. Now we can make jokes about the TARDIS and Daleks and whatever. Sonic screwdrivers! Ha. (I was going to write a bit about the Boston Marathon attacks today and how I feel about that, but I think I'll let that cool down a bit before I write about it. Not that I have much to say, really.)
The root canal is finished, but now I'm just left with a big hole in the tooth until it's filled on Wednesday. This means I'm only supposed to eat soft foods until my follow-up appointment. So it was that while I was waiting for my antibiotics prescription to be filled, I looked around to try to find some soft foods. And I found this:
"So what," you may be asking yourself. "Alphabet soup, whatever. We've all been there." Not so! To my memory, I've never actually eaten alphabet soup before. (Alpha-Bits, yes.) So I bought a can of chicken alphabet soup so I could both eat something soft and become, as the label boasts, a Healthy Kids. I didn't even have to wait to open the can to start having fun. Take a look at the back!
Riddles! The answer is "teapot," for those of you unable to solve riddles or read answers craftily written upside down. (I'm not really sure why the riddle is written on this guy's nose, either, or who he is. But we're having fun here, so I guess there's no reason to pick at nits.) Of course, the whole draw of alphabet soup is being able to spell things out "Hi Dad" soup-style. (If you haven't seen A Goofy Movie before, I'll go ahead and give you a chance to remedy that before you finish this post. Not that you'll need to have seen it in order to understand the rest of the post, but just because I feel like we all should have seen it and appreciated the majesty that is Power Line by now.) So I heated up the soup, poured it into my bowl, and took a look. What could I spell?
RNTLB! TBAEG! Man, alphabet soup is fun. And delicious. (Thus concludes my tooth-related adventures. Hopefully. I miss solid foods.)
I found out on Friday that I need a root canal. The endodontist was booked until Wednesday, though, so I've been spending the last few days surviving on Vicodin and trying to find out which foods I can and can't eat on a rotten tooth. So I'll just go ahead and share what I've found with you here. Foods I have successfully eaten since Friday
Potato chips
French fries
One half of a chicken nugget
Italian bread
A banana (thinly sliced)
Soup (tomato, tomato bisque, chicken rice)
Ten oatmeal creme pies
A chocolate Frosty
Foods I have successfully eaten since Friday, but only just barely
Pizza (very, very slowly)
Toast
Chili cheese fries
Ritz crackers
Foods I have attempted to eat since Friday, but failed
Wheat Thins
A banana (unsliced)
Hashbrowns and onions
A grilled cheese sandwich
Soup (chicken noodle)
I'm looking forward to the root canal tomorrow so I can (hopefully!) get back to eating like a civilized person.
Tamsen and I headed to Seattle for a couple of days last week for Spring Break. We visited some friends, but mostly so we could justify a five-hour trip to a sports bar we really enjoyed on our honeymoon. (Verdict: The burgers weren't as good as we remembered, but the fries were better, so it evened out.) The highlight of our trip, as far as video documentation goes, however, was our trip to the Seattle Aquarium. (The videos are fun, but you may enjoy them more without audio, as it's just a bunch of people in the background making "boy, they look delicious" jokes.)
These fish are stripey, and therefore cool.
Jellyfish are bizarre enough normally, but they added colored lights to make it feel even more psychedelic.
These are baby cuttlefish. The fluttering of their fins reminded me of a cross between an octopus and a hummingbird. Weird, but fascinating.
Wait for it. This is a weird yellow fish.
Just some fish chillin'. Fish are friends.
This is a big fish. His friend is a little fish.
Otters! Everyone loves otters.
This fish was missing an eye. It was easily the most popular fish in the aquarium. People were falling over themselves to take pictures of this guy.
