Five pounds of salmon, just over four pounds of unbleached flour, six cooks, two couches, four salsas, one pound of beef, five avocados, two heads of lettuce, two cups of organic, trans-fat free shortening, five bags of frozen peppers, two lemons, four onions from three different people, one cup of olive oil, four and a half cups of boiling water, one pair of pliers for pulling salmon bones, twenty delicious cupcakes, one cake, six bottles of wine, two dishwasher loads, six pans, seventeen guests, one mom, two fat but happy dogs, one pregnant lady and one fake blog post later, we have one successful communal dinner.

I have won the ever prestigious 2005 SBW Award! I will be forever honored for this award!

From Megan's site, I received the news:

2005 SBW Awards

I just wanted to pass the title of Smallest Bladder in the World back to the lovely and talented Kitt. My bladder really hasn't been that bad lately, and she's right, her bladder is dinky. So here you go, Kitt. You are now the reigning SBW queen.

I am so honored! I'm so excited! I've never won such an amazing award before! Oh, thank you, Megan, for passing the torch (walnut?) to me!

If I hand you my car keys in, say, a car swap for the weekend, or, to let you borrow my car for some reason, don't change the radio stations. Really, it's for only a weekend.

But, if you absolutely must reset the radio stations because my selection of NPR, modern crap and 70's-80's-and-90's crap don't meet your expectations, don't return the car without the stations reset back to my settings.

And for goodness sake, don't leave it set on some All-Religion-All-the-Time station. Or leave three of the five buttons set on Spanish stations when 1. I know you don't speak Spanish, and 2. none of them are my one favorite local Spanish station.

Not that any of my car-swapping friends would actually do such a thing.

Doyle.

Today at work, I wandered over to the bag of trail mix I had brought in last week. The mix contains almonds, cashews, peanuts, raisins, and plain m & ms. Kris bought it for me for Regionals last week, but it was a Costco purchase and I had a lot left over.

So, I opened the bag, peered in, and started picking out the chocolate and almonds. About three almonds later, Doyle said, "Hey! No picking out the almonds and chocolate. Eat it all."

Did I mention I hate raisins?

I like other dried fruit, dried cranberries being my favorite. But not raisins.

I was reminded of two events when I heard Doyle's voice.

The first was of my grandparents, and a road trip with them and the rest of my family. I have no idea where we went, I'd guess Colorado, but have no idea if that's correct. We were sitting in their hotel room, I was sitting on the bed. The room was of orange/red decor.

I was eating the chocolate out of the trail mix, and my grandmother was upset about it. "Eat the peanuts!" she admonished.

Ugh. Peanuts.

I compromised and would eat a peanut with an m & m. That was about the right proportions.

That memory was similar enough to the experience with Doyle that remembering it would be completely expected. But as I looked at Doyle, and continued to eat the almonds and chocolate out of the trail mix bag, I remembered when I was 24 and went grocery shopping with Roland, my then boyfriend.

We were in the cereal aisle, looking for tomorrow morning's breakfast. Halfway down the aisle, Roland turned to me and asked, "What cereal do you want?"

"Cheerios," I answered, reaching for the biggest box.

"Why do you want Cheerios? How about a sugar cereal?"

I turned to look at him.

"Oh, no, my mother doesn't allow sugar cereal in the house."

blink

blink blink

"And you're how old?"

Warning: guaranteed ramble that you can safely skip.

No, really.

"You have more gray hair up there than I realized. I never noticed it before."

Hmph.

I've been amazed at the number of people who have commented about reading this site. I don't think I can count you on one hand any longer (Kris, John, Megan, Mike, Paul - and two of you were because I insisted). Warren said today that he's been feeling a little gypped with the posts as of late, they being short and not very informative.

To which I respond, "That's because you haven't been logged in reading the good stuff, Warren."

Since this site is more for me than for you, not everything is publicly viewable. There are chunks of my life I'm happy to share with my friends and family, but I'm really not interested in telling some random person I don't know.

This is probably the fundamental difference between my introvert personality and, say, an confirmed extrovert's personality. I'm completely enjoying the "social web" and participating the various social network sites. Some are completely entertaining, some have become stale, some are tools but still networks, and the world it opens up, meeting lots of new and interesting (fascinating!) people, working on projects I wouldn't have imagined four months ago.

The whole concept of being able to learn the arc of a recently-met person's life is fascinating, if not a little (a lot?) voyeuristic. Google and Yahoo! are certainly a starting point, but you can also walk through various websites, reading someone's life for the last few years, if they've been putting it out there. (Sorry, Andy, you were an easy target and a clear example of how you can learn about a person's last few years quite easily.)

Fundamentally, a large part of me still resists putting information out there. Resists sharing even though I think this stuff is cool.

And part of me fears losing my voice here. Fears I might start worrying about what "they" might think. Might stop writing as if I'm talking to myself, and start talking to you instead.

I know there's enough information on this site for someone to destroy my life. As Andy puts it, "I could destroy your world. I know enough about how you react to situations to ruin your life. Fortunately, I'm not interested in destroying worlds." How lucky for me.

But it's true: there's enough information to find me, enough information to know what my buttons are and plenty enough to know how to push them. There's enough information to make my life a living hell.

But, I guess I have to trust that won't happen. That the people who read this site are my friends, or at least people who know me somewhat or some way. If I've met you before, then, "Hey! Drop me a line if you haven't recently. If I haven't met you, introduce yourself.

I won't bite.

Too hard.

Reading this from Bloglines or blogher? I'm sorry if this makes no sense. You're not my "target audience," so all of this may be completely boring.

Hell, it's boring for me, and I wrote it.

I'd say "I'm sorry," but I don't know you, and have no reason to feel anything (positive or negative) there.

Eh.