A variety of topics for your friday reading pleasure:

1. This blog post made me laugh. Thanks to Guster Liz Liz for the find.

2. I entered myself in the lottery for a spot in the Nike Women's Half Marathon. I read a friend's tweet that her card had been charged but she hadn't received a YAY YOU'RE IN email from Nike yet so I checked my card and nope -- I haven't been charged. I'm not sure if I'm relieved that I don't have to do it anymore or if I'm bummed that I don't GET to do it.

Of course, I could still be charged and I could still be accepted and if I am I'm sure it'll be a pleasant surprise but for now, I'm happy to not spend the money or have those 13 miles hanging over my head for the next six months.

[UPDATE: Speak of the devil! I just got an email telling me that I didn't get a spot in the race!]

3. I will, however, be ROCKING the Willow Glen Elementary 5k next month. Who needs big, fancy races with Tiffany necklaces as prizes for crossing the finish line when I have the chance to run my fat ass in front of a bunch of 5-10 year olds!

4. Guess who has the most awesome boyfriend ever in the history of the world?

ME!

Here's why:

It'll come as NO surprise to the people who know me that I am easy going about plenty of things but there are plenty of things that HAVE TO BE EXACTLY RIGHT or I get twitchy and annoyed and I can't rest until I fix them. I KNOW THAT PLENTY OF YOU FEEL ME ON THIS, so don't go thinking I'm insane because it bugged the CRAP out of me that after six or seven years of using the same stickers to track my exercise and WW points, they are no longer available in the wild.

Here, look:



The hearts indicate days I stuck to my WW points and the stars indicate days I got at least 30 minutes of exercise. (Let's pretend not to notice the pathetic month this photo represents.)

I have many packs of the star stickers but I ran out of hearts and I couldn't FOR THE LIFE OF ME find them again. It was always kind of a crap shoot so when I did find them I'd buy several packs, but I had been to four Michael's and two scrapbooking stores looking for the exact right heart stickers but my efforts were FRUITLESS. I gave up trying and tried to come to terms with the tiny heart stickers I found that weren't the same as the old ones, but were at least prismatic and uniform looking.

I would learn to live with them.

EXCEPT!

I was in Washington going to the Tulip Festival and there was a Michael's near our hotel so I was like "OMG HANDSOME AND STRONG BOYFRIEND CAN WE PLEASE GO TO MICHAEL'S TO SEE IF THEY HAVE MY STICKERS?!?!?!"

And because he's awesome, he obliged me but DAGNABBIT, no stickers. They had the brand I was looking for, which gave me hope, but no actual heart stickers.

GRUMBLE GRUMBLE

The brand has a website and you can buy the stickers from them and I went to the site a couple of times and put several packs in my cart but each time decided that no, even the crazy in my head couldn't convince me to spend $7 on shipping for $5 worth of product.

Back to the tiny heart stickers I go.

THEN YESTERDAY I got home and there was a package waiting for me.

From the sticker company.

What? Is that what I'm doing now? Getting drunk and placing online sticker orders?

I was so confused.

But then I saw the date on the invoice was two days ago. No way did I buy these two days ago and already forget.

Wait.

Is it possible?

Did my handsome and wonderful boyfriend send them to me?

Or did I just forget that I ordered them?

But you know what, Internet?

He really is THAT awesome:



So the next time someone accuses me of being high maintenance, I'm gonna tell them about how blown away I was by someone being so kind and thoughtful with heart stickers.

5. Speaking of my thoughtful and handsome boyfriend who is unfortunately still a secret from the internet, we went to the Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley, Washington last weekend with my friend Marcy and her husband, who recently moved to WA.

I have a bunch of pictures to share but here's the takeaway:

It's on the list of 1,000 things to see in the US and Canada before you die. YOU SHOULD GO. And take a bike tour. It was unbelievably beautiful and striking and breathtaking and FUN and it was all I'd hoped it would be AND THEN SOME.

I mo-blogged this one but I wanted to include in it my tulip wrap up too:



We had lunch at a farm type place where we joined our co-bike-tour'ers for sandwiches and soup and salad and cookies served up by Margie, a kick in the pants lady who just so happens to own 230 acres of Skagit Valley land, which seemed like a lot to me.

You know how sometimes a sandwich is just a sandwich but after you've just spent a few hours riding your bike in the rain, that same sandwich is the best sandwich you've ever tasted?

It was one of those.

Margie's garden had a baby goat!



At dinner the night before I introduced Bob (I feel so lame with the "my boyfriend this, my boyfriend that" so for now, his name is Bob) to the glory of a cheese plate (which they don't serve at Red Robin, which is probably why he'd never had one before) and he discovered that he LOVES goat cheese. I am not a huge goat cheese fan (I think it tastes like feet), but I was glad that he liked it. Fast forward to the next day and we're standing there looking at the goats and I was like OH MY GOD THEY SMELL LIKE GOAT CHEESE!

Big stretch, right? Goats smell like goat cheese. Except really, cows don't smell like cow cheese...they smell like poop...so the fact that goats smell like goat cheese was kind of amazing to me. (And made me think that no, I really don't need to eat goat cheese again...whereas Bob was like "NOW I WANT MORE GOAT CHEESE!")

But enough of that.

Look! Pretty flowers!



Look! A child-size Farrah/Hedwig cutout!



More tip-toe'ing through the tulips. Note the wet pants.



More color:


These are out of order and I don't care enough to reorganize them, but here I am getting ready to be sporty!



Purple!



A little something I like to call "Bears in the Wilderness of the Oil Crisis":



Seriously. Next April. GO GO GO!