RHODA HAS AN OWNER!!

Firstly:

GET IT? Val-INTESTINES!?!? Funny eh? This valentine doubles as a valentine for Neil.

Secondly, it's time to roll out the pretend red... carpet? Because it's time to draw a name for Rhodaaa.

Rhoda.

I had an overwhelming response to this years' giveaway, that is to say 9 people entered. NINE. Someone fan me, I'm going to faint. No really, nine is splendid. It multiplies by three. And seven eight nine. Get it? EIGHT=ATE? Like you do to bread? No? Ok. (You 8 the bread).

Well I am happy with 9. I mean sure I wanted a celebrity like Prime Minister Stephen Harper to to enter by posting himself baking some hilaaaarious, ugly bread on his super exciting blog, but we just can't win them all.

Stephen Harper! Stop getting fresh with Rhoda's cleavage. She's dead, you know. *tsk*

I had imagined myself getting Rhoda all ready, putting her in an envelope for Mr Harper, licking the glue part, putting on stamps lovingly and popping it in the mailbox. I KNOW Stephen Harper would be pacing around Parliament with his blackberry, combing his hair, palms sweating while he waited. But he missed out, Readers. I guess he just doesn't have his thumb on the pulse of what is happening in Canada as much as he thinks, because he totally missed the sock zombie floozy gravy train.

If he had entered and won, I'm pretty sure he would have asked me to deliver it in person anyway, but you can't just go meeting people from the internet willy nilly. I don't know Stephen Harper from Adam. He could be some kind of freak sitting in his Mom's basement, only taking short breaks from World of Warcraft to troll on parenting forums. PSH. I'm glad he didn't win.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah.. sock zombie!

I was going to photograph the name being pulled, but I found a WEBSITE that will do it for me. Namely, Random.org. This way, I can just paste all 40ish of the entries from the pages document I was keeping and hit randomize. That sounds pretty easy! I don't have to cut any dangerous paper! Whomever is at the top of the list after hitting "generate" will be the winner of Rhoda. For transparency, I've taken a half assed screen shot of it.

I am not going to lie. I want Jen O to win because the postage to her place from my place would be pretty cheap.

H'ok. Drumroollllllllllllll:

Breathe, Self
Breathe, Everyone
Calm down.
Here we go...............
Just a second, I got too excited and spilled my coffee.
By "I spilled my coffee" I of course mean that I missed my mouth when I tried to take a sip...
*I do realize that you can just skip ahead of my irritating pretend suspense*
*mopping up coffee*
*changing shirt*
*Refilling cup*
*some cream, some sugar*
*stir stir stir stir stir*
What was I doing?
Oh yeah, telling you about the new coffee I bought. Van Houten or something, dark roast. It's pretty awesome. I'm switching brands from Nabob Full City Dark.
I KNOW! I said I'd never change!
Yeah, I use three heaping tablespoons to 10 cups of water.
I know it sounds like a lot. Just tap the bottom of the spoon twice on the side of the can before putting it in the filter. Perfect every time.
Try it. I'll wait.
You're taking too long.

ALRIGHT. Now that I'm done being hilarious to myself like Jeff Propst does when he announces the winner of Survivor, here we go. I'm going to hit randomize and then take a screen shot of it riiiiiiight.......
NOW!




AJM! IT'S AJM! AJM HAS WON! SHE'S GOT THE GOLDEN TIIIIIIIIIICKET, SHE'S GOT A GOLDEN CHANCE...TO..... LOOK up the lyrics to Willy Wonka songs... or whatever...

She won thanks to her Amish Orphan Laser Finger Bread!!!!1!

Gross!

Congrats, AJM. I know that this will probably change your life. Don't forget who you are. You're probably about to find out which of your friends really care about you and who just wants a piece of what you got (which is Amish friendship bread starter baggies). So now you just have to send me your mailing address (You didn't think this through did, you!?). You will find my contact information in the new CONTACT ME link. I feel like a pretty important business person now that I have that CONTACT ME page. Like I'm futureshop or something. I'd link you there from this post, but I really want you to have to click CONTACT ME up at the top of my page, just under my header.

I had to embed this dumb homemade version of Golden Ticket instead of the real Grandpa Joe version because apparently the embedding was disabled on the awesome one, ruining this whole blog.

For those of you who didn't win, I think you'll be able to relate to this :
Hitler doesn't get a Golden Ticket.
(except I don't think any of you are horrible, angry, murderous dictators... At least none of you are all of those things.)


Now go see the other entries:

Ryan made bread! There is also a bonus photo that I won't tell you about in there. You'll just have to see for yourself.

Alli's Human Baby Bread. I call it Maury. Maury has a skin condition: Dermalicious-itis


DBS's Pupae Alien Buns. I've never said that sentence before. Weird. I'd resolve to say it more.. but.. *inaudible*.



Baron's middle of the night sandwich messages in mustard. I really think he should make it a weekly feature. It could be the new twitter.



Cookie Monster's cookie monsters, featuring heavily: Hanky the Christmas Poo.

Vapid's really excellent photoshop. My readers are all about Hanky the Christmas Poo... And obviously relate bread to poo cartoons. I keep a high caliber of internet company. :)


Elly sings a song by Bread with Herbert, the ukulele I covet... And posts a picture of this guy.

Jen O is not a serial killer. She's a Mom and a writer and a nice person.


Thanks, guys! I was surprised by how many people actually MADE bread! You could have just made pancakes, dummies.

Until next time!

Feb 18: *edited to bury.... It's an OCD. thing.   This was posted on Feb 14th.

Sources.

Um. So.

Writey write.

My week has been inexplicably boring, except for that one time where I got a little obsessed with the news and fringe American politics. I couldn't help it, though: I watched network news. You dummy, Self! The pulsating pile of bullshit that feeds on itself and spews horrors and scandal at my fragile mind. It took me days to settle down over it.

I've had to periodically quit the news, you guys. It ruins my mental health and I start to think about fashioning an aluminium foil do-rag to keep the governments out. (I also feel compelled to force you to pronounce it AL-ew-MIN-ee-əm and not A-loo-minum in case you don't already.Trust me, you'll sound way more impressive at all the parties you attend when you're not blogging.)

"Why, Mrs Hilton, are those AL-ew-MIN-ee-əm chaise loungers I see? Why I just ADORE AL-ew-MIN-ee-əm and these AL-ew-MIN-ee-əm breezers are just to DIE for!"

She'd be pretty impressed that you noticed.

I'm not crazy. YOU Are.

Anyhow, I've had the sound mental faculty to shut it off and continue to just receive my current events from my neighbor, Lawrence who periodically strolls by with information on the whereabouts & social encounters of my cat , Fluffy Sparkles (entertainment news) and also through my 4th grader who filters information to me through her classmates' secret underground ring of knowledge (current-ish events). Really, what more do I need?



Did you know that Hitler chewed off his own arms? I heard it through my news sources. Also, Fluffy Sparkles was spotted consorting with the other neighbor's cat, Charlie (AGAIN!!). That Charlie is out of control if you ask me.

Don't you challenge ME about cinnamon buns.

Oh. So you don't believe I'm making cinnamon buns right now, eh Steffaneveryone Facebook? Eh? You don't believe me? Hmm? Do you? No. You don't. Oh facebook, you are a fool because I AM. I'm making them. Well I've started. I have an hour and a half to kill until the dough is ready so.... here I am proving it on the internet instead of cleaning the bookshelf.

Normally, I might have crapped out and turned my bread dough into a regular loaf of bread, but since my ladylike integrity has been put to the test, well now I have to follow through. It's my great gran's recipe/word of mouth-ipe, save for the convenience of the bread machine to do all the thinking. The REST is her way. After the dough is done, I mean. But the dough is her recipe too, you guys, it just happens to be bread-machineable. Hurray Great Grandma Sammy! You forward thinker. In case you missed, or are incapable of scrolling down 4 or 5 blogs, this is her:

"I'm making cinnamon buns, fools"

So HA! Lookie: The dough is on it's way:

Yep. This adventure has started. I'm all the way in now. I've even shown you my Grandmother & my lard. *oh my*!

But alas, I've done all I can do for now. Cinnamon buns involve quite a lot of waiting. Photographic Update coming in 1 hour 45 mins.

In the mean time, here is a story: Once when I was about 9, I tried to put together a mostly decomposed cow skeleton with my cousin, Billy. The idea being that if we rearranged it and made it look like an alien, we could convince a scientist to give us quite a substantial amount of money to study it. It was like a Looong snake-cow alien. We wished that the OTHER dead cow would have decomposed faster so that we could have used its bones, too. Killjoy. It would have been almost fool proof.

Oh what a fool that scientist would be! But he wouldn't discover his grave error until we were long gone in our ferraris. BwahahahahAAAA!! No scientists came along to the pasture, though. Opportunity-MISSED.

Here we are on our way to Disneyland. We look distracted because we were busy thinking of ways to extort the owners of this mini merry go round. Notice my intimidating outlaw neck bandana and Billy practicing his Mr Burns-hand. Brains & Brawn. PS.. somehow, my hair magically turned a natural shade of platinum blonde between then and now... *cough*


Stay tuned...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that day.....PART 2Tada! So the dough finished up its magic- time to take it out and try to remember how to make cinnamon buns.

Here's a tip: don't leave your dough alone for even a SECOND. You know, you turn around once and BAM. It has a sexy slave. Hassle.

So I set aside the princess and rolled out the dough, added all the secret ingredients and rolled it up, like so:

Patting it out. Sorry dough. Funtime is over.



Cutting it into 12 even parts is where my math skills really come in handy. Thanks, Mr Shoultz.... for FAILING me so that I have complete meltdowns every time I think about scary, scary numbers. *bitter glare*


arrange arrange arrange

Now I have to wait for it to rise for like 45 min. This is why I don't make them often. It's an all day kind of commitment.

More to come. Let us have a spot of tea while we wait, shall we, internet?

So, Miss Honytrinkle, I DO hope you brought those scumptious home made pickles to the tea party! And you, Mr Furthermore? Are you going to play us a tea-time tune on your harpsichord? What a lark! Have you finished taking inventory of your rare sweater collection, Mrs Beenile? Any luck with those ideas you were pitching, Mr Himmler?.... Oh I KNOW, he can be so bossy. Yeah, I totally saw those pants *snicker*. Does he think he looks emo or something with that moustache?? WHAT? Oh Himmler... Oh NO HE DIN'T!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part 3- They're done! Yay!


They have risen. Hallelujah.


All done.


Flip 'em over and they are sticky, freaking awesomeness- because I ALWAYS double the sticky stuff and never ever put in raisins. Any other way is a total waste of time.


So THERE, Internet. Now I can have a shower. Yay!

OOOoooOOH!
I'm a leetle Teapot
Short und Shtout!
Das ist Mein Handle
Das ist Mein Shpout
Ven I get all shteamed up
He-ah me SHOUT:
ZE VERY FIRST ESSENTIAL FOR SUCCESS IS A PERPETUALLY CONSTANT UND REGULAH EMPLOYMENT OF VIOLENCE!!!
Toot toot!
*moustache waggle*

I know. Hell.