Tag: party

eat chili responsibly

For the “big game” last weekend, my church had a SOUPer Bowl party, where we had a soup / chili cookoff.  (FYI, this was after service, on time-delay, so we could skip the commercials and halftime show.)  I made a pot of chili-cheese chili, which didn’t win, so it must’ve been a conspiracy.  But whatever…

Before the event, I was looking online at some different chili recipes, and I was reading the user comments on a few that I thought sounded good, and I came across this:

I’ve had his Texas Chili many years ago.  My spouse forced me to buy an air filter shortly after.

Eat Chili responsibly.

If that isn’t a great endorsement for chili, I don’t know what is!

Not only is that funny, but it’s good advice.   You do need to eat chili responsibly.  In fact, towards the end of our party, I saw one of our regular readers sitting at a big round table all by himself.  I had to remind him to be responsible with his chili and the associated after-effects.   While he certainly has the right and freedom to conduct his flatulence* however he pleases, there may be the consequences of sitting alone.  It reminds me of this proverb:

Man who farts in church sits in pew.

Okay, so that doesn’t really directly apply, but it’s funny (or punny), and some folks appreciate such humor.  (I’m doing it for you, my readers.)

* The phrase “conduct his flatulence” applies in more ways than one.  This is the same person who has what we call “Active Gas On Command”.   He is, in fact, able to conduct his flatulence better than anyone I know.

how I’d party in Obama’s situation

I was just reading about the crazy-huge inauguration party that Obama is having.  The budget for it is $49 million, but the estimated actual cost is around $150 million.  I could think of much better ways to allocate taxpayer funds, but I already ranted about that on my other blog.

Here, let’s take a more humorous view of it.  The $49M will cover the standard amount of food, security, and other necessary items for a Presidential party.   (That still seems very excessive, but whatever.)  So Obama is spending an additional $100M for his party.

Let’s see… if I was hosting a party and had an extra $100M to spend, what would I do?   That’s so much money that it boggles the mind.  I don’t even know where to start.

I’d have the world’s largest nachos buffet, for starters.   (Although that could be covered by saving money on the standard food package — you know they’re overpaying for that stuff.)   Actually, with all that money, I’d have available ALL the types of food I want.  There would be lots of games with fabulous consolation prizes.  I’d have huge virtual reality gaming booths, with the latest technology.

I need to start thinking bigger or I’ll never spend that kind of money.  Let’s see… I’d buy my own private island.  Yeah, that’s it.  And I’d have a castle built on my own island.  I’d buy my own private plane (along with carbon credits so folks couldn’t complain).  And I’d fly all my friends to said island for a massive after-party party that lasted for weeks.  They’d all get vacation pay so it won’t hurt to miss work.

I’d probably still have some money left over after that, surprisingly.  So I’d build a weather-controlling satellite and take over the world.   Wait, maybe I should hold off on that one for a while.

I’d create my own TV station, and it would play only programs approved by me.   So of course it would be awesome, and I’d make millions more dollars.  🙂

This could go on for a while, I think.  So I’ll stop for now.

our buffet o’ bacon

Last night I had the entire Buffet o’ Blog staff at my house, and we created a Buffet o’ Bacon.  There was regular crispy bacon, baked bacon-wrapped smokies with BBQ sauce (which were awesome!), shish-ka-bobs with bacon, ham, and cheese, and there was some bacon-wrapped croissants.  It even got a little crazy when someone put candy corn on some of the bacon-wrapped croissants before putting them in the oven.

Needless to say, we had a great time.  We shared our unique analysis of the second presidential debate (and it’s too bad our discussion wasn’t recorded for a podcast), and we did some multiplayer network gaming (to build an empire and conquer the world), and we ate lots of bacon.

I do have to say the bacon-wrapped croissants didn’t turn out as well as expected.  Here’s a picture before cooking, when it seemed like a good idea:

The problem was, most of the croissants absorbed all of the bacon grease, and thus were quite “heavy”.  We’re gonna have a talk with that “Important Doctor” that frequents this blog, because he’s talked of using bacon grease in your diet, and there’s some flaws with that plan.   I still think the bacon and cheese plan might work, as long as you drain the bacon grease.

Ironically, the ones with the candy corn turned out pretty good.  The candy melted and most of it ran off, and the bacon grease drained off some, too.  So what was left was like a cracker with bacon and a honey glaze.

All in all, that evening was the awesome!  I do think we’ll have to do this again…

the special days of October, pt. 2

Here’s part 2 of our analysis of the special holidays in October.  These are all valid holidays (as far as I can tell — at least I can say that I didn’t make them up).

First, let’s look at the week-long celebrations.  Week 1 is Get Organized Week.  Oh, whoops, I missed that one already!  (I reckon I wasn’t organized enough to get this posted in time.)  Week 2 is Pet Peeve Week.  One of my pet peeves is stupid people, so I’m going to fast from stupid people this week.  🙂

Now we’ll look at the single-day holidays in October, with some custom narration and analysis that you won’t find anywhere else :

  • 1 Homemade Cookies Day — It’s already past this one now, but it should still be observed.  Better late than never.  Besides, it’s Cookie Month, so you should be celebrating cookies all month anyway.
  • 2 Name Your Car Day — I could name my truck Budro, but it already has a name : Rolling Thunder.  What would you name your vehicle?
  • 5 Do Something Nice Day — That’s a good idea.  It’s too bad I didn’t get this posted in time to observe this one.  Maybe next year…
  • 6 Come and Take it Day — This is interesting-sounding, but you won’t be able to take any of my stuff, so don’t even try!
  • 6 Mad Hatter Day — This is a day to be silly and celebrate silliness.  It’s based on a character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  The date 10/6 was chosen because the inside of The Mad Hatter’s top hat it says “10/6”.  So be silly this day.  (And this blog is a great place for that!)
  • 8 American Touch Tag Day — Tag, you’re it!
  • 8 Indigenous People’s Day — Hey, that’s me!  I’m an indigenous people!  (Really, my family has lived in this area of the country for generations.)  So we get to celebrate me today!
  • 9 Moldy Cheese Day — This is an actual holiday, but I don’t know why.  I’m not eating moldy cheese!  Although, if you think about it, mold is part of some cheeses, like blue cheese — the blue parts are mold.  I prefer non-moldy types, like American, Cheddar, Mozzarella, etc.  Mmm… cheese…
  • 10 National Angel Food Cake Day — This is more like it.  Someone should bake an angel food cake and bring it by the Buffet o’ Blog office.
  • 11 It’s My Party Day — If you need an excuse to host a party, here ya go.  The baseball playoffs are underway now, which is also a great occasion to host a party.  And it’s a good idea to provide food, like pizza and/or cheese dip.
  • 11 Take Your Teddy Bear to Work Day — I read about this on a website that was giving advice on these holidays, and it said, “We think you know how to celebrate this day.  Dress him up for the big event.  Plan for a big day.  Take your Teddy Bear on a tour of the workplace.  Bring Teddy to lunch in the work cafeteria.  If your boss allows it, let Teddy do a work-related project.”  Hmm…  That’s not what I was thinking about, but whatever floats your boat.  Just know that some people might not think it’s all cute for you to be carrying your teddy bear around work with you.  Some people just wouldn’t understand.  I think a better use of this holiday would be to work from home, then you could show your teddy bear what kind of work you do, from the privacy of your own home.
  • 14 National Dessert Day — What you should do on this day is obvious.  As one website put it, “take an extra helping, or two”.  Sounds good to me!
  • 16 Dictionary Day — This is in honor of Noah Webster, who was born on this day in 1758.  He started writing his dictionary at age 43, and it took him 27 years to finish it.  (If he had just put less words in it, it wouldn’t have taken so long.)  I’m not recommending you read a dictionary this day, because that’s just nonsense.  But I do advocate learning a new “big word” that you can add to your vocabulary.  I’ll recommend a few for you : duplicitous, logorrhea, erudition, chicanery, purveyor, debacle (this one comes in handy a lot), fatuous, elucidate, inscrutable, bloviate, juxtapose.
  • 27 National Tell a Story Day — This can be from a book or from memory, or you can just make it up as you go.  Perhaps on that day we should put special emphasis on our original stories (that everyone is invited to participate in), in the free-for-all-stories category.
  • 30 National Candy Corn Day — Ah, what a wonderful treat!  Little pieces of candy, made mostly of honey and sugar.  One word of warning, though — I’ve seen with my own eyes what can happen if you eat excessive amounts of these just before bedtime.  One of my college roommates did this (and drank cream soda with it), and he went to bed while the rest of us were watching TV in the other room.  We kept hearing noises that sounded like Cornholio, and it was because that guy couldn’t sleep (and couldn’t relax at all!).  It was funny, for us anyway.
  • 31 Carve a Pumpkin Day — No surprise here, as it’s also Halloween.

There’s the (partial) list.  There’s some more obscure holidays we didn’t list, but hopefully among these you found some you could celebrate and have fun with.  We should all make time for having fun, or better yet, have fun with about everything you do (when appropriate).  I heard that laughing adds 8 years to your life, so be sure to laugh every day (and then we’ll all live for a long time).