Tuesday, November 30, 2010

1000 gifts: Thanksgiving edition

The 1000 gifts is a list of all the gifts God has given me that I'm thankful for.

105. the Buzz Lightyear Spanish Button
After watching Toy Story 3, I posted on Facebook: "ladies, wouldn't it be nice if our husbands had a "Spanish mode" button like Buzz Lightyear? When Buzz got switched to Spanish mode, he suddenly turned into a sweet-talking Latin-dancing romantic fool! A friend on Facebook replied: "Personally I think they should come with GPS locators so when they wonder off when you are out with them, it's easier to find them!" Another friend posted: "I would love the French button too!" I added another comment: "while we are at it, how about an Italian button" (why not have a guy that can speak all the romantic languages? ;)

106. Amy Grant's song "Better Than A Hallelujah"
The video made me cry. I love this song! It's worth watching on YouTube.

107.  Horses trained to dance with bulls
Beautiful and heartbreaking in an entirely different way is this video of a famous horse trained to fight bulls in these Portuguese fashion. It is basically torturing the bull, but you can see why people love it: the action of the horse is absolutely breathtaking. I love this horse's name: "De Orpheo a Merlin de Rafi a Pablo"

108. Dogs aren't the only ones who mark car tires
At my friend Treva's birthday party, I ran into some old friends I hadn't seen for a while: Pete and Debbie. Somehow I got Pete to talking about how and Debbie got together. He said the reason why she went out with him is because he scared all the other interested parties away. In fact, he "marked her car" so that everyone would know she was his girl. I about died laughing.

109. Dragons on Facebook
My friend Jim posted this on my Facebook page: "Please put this as your status if you know someone who has been eaten by dragons. Dragons are nearly unstoppable and, in case you didn't know, they can breathe fire. 60% of people won't copy and paste this because they have already been eaten by dragons. 38% of people are sitting in the shower armed with fire extinguishers, and the remaining 2% are awesome and will repost this. Happy Gobble Day!" He knows I have a great love of dragons... but its also a spoof on those earnest Facebook requests to re-post some dramatic fact or event that we think everyone should know about it!

110. "Just beat them with your cane"
We drove to South Dakota to spend Thanksgiving with B's parents and his brother and sister's families. My sister and brother-in-law, Monica and Tyler, helped me plan a surprise 40th birthday for B. We bought a bunch of gag gifts and "Over the Hill" balloons. But the best decorations were the posters that my nieces Taryn and Breanna made, with sayings like "if they tease you about your age, just beat them with your cane."

111. Exploding birthday cakes
And the birthday cake - oh, the birthday cake! Tyler set four rat traps in a cake pan and then covered them with cake batter and baked them. Then we made B. cut the cake, of course. He sliced into the cake with a funny look ("doesn't feel like it got baked all the way, or something") He had it all sliced up, and still nothing had happened. Then Monica gave it a few more probes with a knife, trying to get it go off. Finally after we'd pretty much given it up as a failure, the traps started going off and flinging cake across the room. B. didn't get hit, but he was surprised!

112. A pinochle "consultant"
One of my husband's family traditions when we all get together is to play partner pinochle, but this year I refused to play because the game just gets too cutthroat for me. Of course everyone harassed me all weekend about not playing! Tyler even kidnapped my laptop and held it hostage to try to force me to play. So I kidnapped his laptop in return. I assured everyone that I was more than happy to be a pinochle "consultant" instead of playing myself. A "consultant" of course looks at every body's cards and then drops hints about what they might be holding.

113. Finishing NaNoWriMo right before the deadline on November 30
...for my third win. I'm so excited about this novel. It's a love story that I got the idea for over12 years ago. It's finally coming together now that I found a historical setting for it at the end of the Roman Empire.

114. Getting a friend to do NaNoWriMo with you
This year, my friend Nicole joined me for NaNoWriMo and finished her book about genies - I can't wait to read it! (I still have 1/3 of my book left to write, but then we will exchange manuscripts).