Yuck

While I was home this past week for Thanksgiving, my mom made tacos one night. Now, I was pretty excited about this because I love tacos. I was even more excited when I was the container of what I assumed was guacamole out on the kitchen counter, along with all the other tacos fixin's. I LOVE guacamole, and I've been in avocado withdrawal since I moved to DC.

So I spoon some of the "guacamole" onto one of my tacos, but there's something kind of off about the texture. It feels really. . . .thick, and almost. . . .gelatinous? This makes me suspicious, so I taste some of the "guacamole" off the spoon. Hmm. Doesn't exactly taste like avocados. So I finally look at the container and discover I'm not eating guacamole at all, but "Guacamole-flavored dip"! And as I look at the list of ingredients, my stomach churns a bit. Because of the 23 ingredients listed on the label, avocados are number 12: well behind water, salt, dried onion powder and several chemicals I cannot pronounce.

I guess I'll be waiting for my next trip to CA before I attempt to feed that craving again.

When your pet surpasses you in popularity

Many of you know that I come from a family of dog lovers. As long as I can remember, we've always had at least one dog (always a dachshund--or weiner dog), and more often than not, we've had two or three at a time. Right now, we have three dogs, one of whom has made it to the ripe old age of 17 1/2 years old.

I'd never really stopped to think about how amazing it is to have a nearly 18 year old dog, until a friend of my parents called the local paper and suggested that they write a story about it. The paper jumped at the opportunity, and early last week, an article profiling my parents and Rudy--our dog--and talking about the challenges more people are facing in having older pets appeared in the paper. And mind you, this was no small, single column newspaper story. There was a small picture of Rudy on the front page of the paper. There was a HUGE picture of Rudy on the front page of the Lifestyle section. And then there was the actual article--complete with more pictures of Rudy and our other two dogs on an inner page of the Lifestyle section.

A good month

I realize it's been a long time since I blogged. This last month or so has been really fun, but sadly, I have virtually no pictures to prove it. So what have I been up to?

In the last month, I:

Went apple picking twice. Once we went in the pouring down rain, but we got lots of yummy apples. And a pumpkin. And some cider. The second time we went when it was sunny and beautiful, but didn't actually come home with any apples. (This is partly because I already had plenty and partly because there really weren't many left on the trees.)

Carved pumpkins for Halloween. My pumpkin was a landscape of Colorado. My friend carved his to represent the way that capitalism--like a boiling cauldron--consumes us.

Got lost in a corn maze (or maize maze, as I like to call it) and watched people shoot pumpkins out of a cannon.

Mike and Claire try valiantly to find their way out of the maze

Dressed up as a "Smarty Pants" for Halloween, while my friend Brianne dressed as a "Fancy Pants."

Brianne has the bling and ruffles to make her pants fancy, and I've got the Smarties

Finished my first short film--an autobiography.

Went to my dear friend Abby's beautiful wedding.

Becky, Abby and Claire at Abby's wedding

In addition, I have not been bitten by any small animals (or large ones), and there has been no more flooding, so that's been good. All in all, not a bad month.