Breaking news

This just in, I will be spending the entire month of March in Australia . . . FOR FREE!!!!!! That's right, I applied with the Rotary club for their annual cross-cultural business trip where they have an employee exchange program of sorts. Every year a country is chosen like Denmark, France, Australia, etc and a group comes from their country to ours and gives presentations and learns about us and then we send a group over to do the same. Well friends, I am in that group, along with one of my best friends, and we are going to rock Australia.

We will be based in Sydney and will get to go around all over the SE quadrant of the country. The only problem is that the Great Barrier Reef is in the NE quadrant. Our mission is to find time to sneak away and high-tail it up the coast, dive the reef and race back for our duties. I feel good about accomplishing this.

Also, we are getting matching Australian tattoos.

AUSTRALIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's no lady!

I recently ventured to Portland, OR for a librarian conference. And we got crazy! Crazy enough anyways.

Every night as we ventured through the town I kept passing this sign:



It intrigued me for obvious reasons. Our last night in Portland I finally talked three other gals into going with me. And it left me wide-eyed.

For one thing, these were not dainty men . . . women . . . whatever.



Some were also not young.





They sang, they danced.





Liza was there,



as was Whitney.



And can I just say that Whitney makes a better woman than I.

For their final act, they flashed their little guys at us, or at least a close copy that took liberties.



Afterwards we were ambushed by strippers. The sign said that the drag show was at 8:30 and 10:30 with stripping at midnight. They ushered all the 8:30 people out to let us 10:30 people come in. We figured the same would happen with the midnight show. However, that did not happen. All of a sudden men in ridiculous costumes came out. Their hips began swivelling. They got this glint in their eyes.



Since we were there we thought we might stay for at least one guy. However, once the cowboy was down to a g-string (is that what they're called for guys?) he came down into the audience to begin humping random people. It was at that point that we fled. I really only appreciate the humping of one fella.

Anywho, the whole thing definitely felt like a fun symptom of a quarter-life crisis!

Christopher Moore rocks my fuck-stockings!

While in Portland I had the glorious experience of hearing Christopher Moore speak about his new book, Bite Me. This took place at the historic, beautiful and over all cool place, The Bagdad Theater. The whole experience was just hipster fun.

Upon getting off the bus, I knew I was in the right place since there was a guy sitting on the patio reading a Chuck Klosterman book with a wall of Bite Me novels just inside. Portland is really a wonderful place for me.

After getting nachos and liquid fun, we sat down and enjoyed about an hour of literary joy just listening to Christopher ramble on about whatever came into his head. This ranged from his pet polar bear, Whitey, that he adopted since global warming melted his home to insightful commentary on the evolution of language. There was also a wonderful moment when an audience member asked him whether he found the 24 foot dinosaur lawn ornament he wanted in order to piss off his neighbor. He was unable to find the dinosaur, but he was able to find multiple smaller dinosaurs and a variety of military figurines to set-up a range of dino-war scenes. Civil War soldiers fighting dinosaurs, Revolutionary soldiers fighting dinosaurs, etc.

At the end audience members were allowed to come up to the front and ask him questions, in exchange for a t-shirt!!!!!!! I immediately went up to the front while texting those who have read him asking if they could think of any questions. My beautiful sister-in-law came through for me in the nick of time. However, by the time I got to the front of the line, there was no more time. They weren't taking any more questions. But there were more shirts!!!!!!! And I got two, one for me and one for my sister-in-law (the fabulous!).

The shirts are black with white writing. On the front it says, Bite Me. On the back it say, And don't forget You Suck. I love it. A lot.

If any of you get the chance to hear him speak, DO IT! We recorded it and I hope it turned out well. It should be available for listening soon.

Drowning . . . every bit as bad as advertised

So, my family and I recently took a little trip down a river. The river roared with rapids and white water galore. It has always been a dream of mine to white water raft, so I was incredibly excited about it. And I will say, it was fun. Really fun. Pretty much the entire trip was a blast, except for the quasi-drowning part. I would recommend that anyone who takes a trip down the river do so in a raft, not sans raft like my father, husband and I did.




The lower picture is of Mr. Neruda being thrown from the boat. The top picture is of me experiencing drowning first hand. I have to say, it would not be a pleasurable way to die. At all. Really, it sucked. The best part was when I finally surfaced in less rough water, finding myself right by the exact "wall" the guide said to not be anywhere near if you wind up in the water. It was a little something called a swimmers' trap.

There were frankly a whole lot of "Oh Craps!" spoken on that trip. But man was it a hoot.