The Everywhereist

Rand and I are back home this week (after a brief trip to Ashland) and I’m pleased to say that I’m feeling more and more like myself. Which is an interesting thing, especially considering that this week, “myself” is irrevocably changed: I became an auntie.

Yup. My brother spawned. Oy.

Jokes aside (and believe me when I say, THERE ARE MANY), I’m kind of excited beyond belief. I’m going to let the as-yet-unnamed little bugger watch R-rated movies and eat nothing but candy and fried food when we’re together. Then I’m going to tell him ghost stories and let him run around with his shoelaces untied. IT IS GOING TO BE AWESOME.

Oh, and you know what else is awesome? The links in my round-up. Enjoy.

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Is there anything better than novelty Twitter accounts? I’m going to answer that question for you: No, no there isn’t. Specifically, the Honest Toddler account is a riot – even if you don’t have kids. (Oh, and this one is pretty clever, too.)

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Cracked.com discusses one of the most disturbing McDonald’s ads in existence, and brings up an important question: do McNuggets have a death wish?

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Lunch at the Arts Factory: plantains with pomegranate sauce and goat’s cheese.

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It’s hard to hate everything about a destination.

Don’t get me wrong – there are certain specific places that I hate with a burning passion (there is an Ashland hotel that is right now on my OH-NO-YOU-DIDN’T list, and my blood pressure spikes just thinking about it), but it’s hard to hate everything about a country, or city, or town.

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Note: The steroids are still in my system, and consequently I am still talking about food. And Vegas. Bear with me, kids.

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I am a 31-year-old woman of reasonable intelligence (even after my brain surgery, I feel this latter comment is safe to say). I would like to think that most of my tastes are fairly sophisticated. I can enjoy a decent glass of scotch. I appreciate liver pate. I think Woody Allen is funny and still sort-of-relevant.

But despite all of that, I have a confession: I really like rainbow sprinkles.

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My favorite thing about travel is that you can often discover the most amazing meals in the most unexpected of places.

And I don’t mean the discovery of a candied peanut at the bottom of my bag in a hotel room in Bulgaria. (For the record, Rand wouldn’t let me eat the peanut, which I was able to trace back to an earlier trip London. I am still a bit peeved about that).

No. I’m talking about truly fantastic meals.

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For several days, there were staples in my head. I wish there were a more technical term for them, but there isn’t. They were not sutures or metallic head brackets or anything like that. These were good, old-fashioned, industrial-size staples, like the kind you’d find at the hardware store.

Miraculously, I don’t remember most of them going in, save for one. I do remember that last one, because it felt like … well, it felt like someone putting a staple into your head. The poor doctor wielding the staple gun apologized repeatedly.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “This is why no one likes me.”

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Just give me one of everything. No, I don’t need a napkin.

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Friends, let me tell you something: steroids are terrible.

Many of you are probably wondering why a perfect physical specimen such as myself would need to resort to steroids in the first place. After all, my body is temple (albeit one dedicated to sloth and cupcakes). The answer is, simply, brain surgery. Steroids are commonly given to folks to stop their pesky brains from swelling up and killing them, post-operation.

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Brain surgery was not what I thought it would be.

As ridiculous as it sounds, going into it, I convinced myself it wouldn’t be a big deal. I know, I know. How does one actually convince themselves that brain surgery isn’t that big a deal?

I don’t rightly know, but believe me when I tell you: I almost managed to do it. I knew that if I started freaking out about the whole process, there would be no calming down, so I just strolled into the pre-operating room without a care in the world (or rather, I was wheeled into the pre-operating room on a little bed without a care in the world. This made me feel a little bit like royalty, with my fancy-bed-on-wheels and the fact that I didn’t have to wear underwear. I highly recommend you try it, especially if you can skip the part where they cut open your head.)

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