Who knew my kickball team was so trendy? We've been drinking picklebacks after our games for over a year now. Way to catch up, New York Times...
(And in case you don't know what a pickleback is, it's a shot of vodka, chased with a shot of pickle juice. The NYT article cites it as a shot of whiskey [Old Crow bourbon or Jameson, specifically] followed by the brine from a jar of spicy dill pickles, but I'd rather have vodka any day. Ouch.)
I know it sounds disgusting, but it's actually really good. Just as the bite of the alcohol (vodka, bourbon, whatever) hits your throat, you shoot the pickle juice, which has a salty/sweetness to it that totally vanquishes the burn of the liquor. Check out the full article here for a more eloquent and entertaining description, plus an interesting "history" of the drink. Maybe you'll try this green treat for St. Patty's Day?
I'm done posting about the snow after this, I promise (welllll, I might have to take that back in a few days, since we're supposed to be getting more snow on Tuesday/Wednesday), but remember the uber-amber-alert snow warnings we got on Friday? It came. Here in Annapolis, we got 33 inches of the powdery stuff, and in some parts of Maryland it was up to 38 inches. Yikes!
It took us three solid hours of shoveling on Saturday to get B's Outback out of our parking spot. The first 30 minutes of that time might have been slightly wasted since we don't own a shovel (yes, B dug with a camping hoe/mini-shovel contraption and I used a combo of ice scraper, ice sweeper and...stick. Yes, stick). Thank goodness our neighbor took pity on me with my silly stick-shoveling and lent us his shovel. The work was much more productive after that. :) [Stop judging about the stick shoveling! It's not our fault! Every store in town was sold out of both firewood and shovels by Thursday evening! Marylanders are very afraid of snow!]
Anyway, all the hard work was well worth it, because with B's all-wheel drive, we were able to make it safely and fairly easily to a bar on Saturday night to hang out with friends, and head out to another friend's house to watch the Super Bowl yesterday. Too bad when we got home last night, some giant SUV had taken our hard-earned shoveled parking spot! Technically we can have people towed for that (since the spot is reserved for us), but we were feeling charitable (and tired) so we let them stay for the night. But if you are the owner of a green SUV monstrosity parked in a spot that is not your own, somewhere in Annapolis, and you're still there today, watch out - I have a stick-shovel and am not afraid to wield it! (Kidding.)
Did you all get snowed in? Did you have fun? We made snow angels like in the photo and had a blast enjoying the "snowpocalypse" of 2010. Hope you got to enjoy the weather too!
I think at this point it's pretty obvious that I am a big ol' word nerd (see here and here for examples), but I'm glad to see that someone else is too. These "Grammar Nerd Corrective Labels" are the perfect way to stick it to grammar offenders. (Ooh, sorry for the bad pun.) Stickers available for purchase on Dylan Meconis's site, as seen on Brown Sugar Design.
Do you think you'd have the cajones to leave one of these stickers for someone? I know of a few bars' bathroom walls that could use more than a few of these labels (and a censor. And some soap.)...
Photo from Flickr - evidently this place is owned by a guy named Cocktail and his friend Eat.
Grammar nerds rejoice: I've just discovered a site with a lovely flow-chart explaining the proper usage of apostrophes. It makes me happy. I can't tell you how many improperly used apostrophes I've seen. For example, why don't people understand that "its" is a possessive pronoun and "it's" is a contraction of "it is"? - they're different things!
Check out the full site for further enlightenment on the usage of apostrophes.
