Trivia Nugget — Ryde (population: 146) was named after a seaside town on the Isle of Wight.

The Ryde Hotel lies along the Sacramento River and is known for its wedding venue-ness. Coincidentally, we were there for a wedding.

A fun wedding.

With Yay flags.

Yay flags that waved while the groom kissed the bride.

If Christopher Walken had RSVP-ed to this wedding like he should have, he would have said right then and there: “This wedding needs more Yay flag”.

Because you can never have too much “Yay”.

The bride walked in to Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You” and they both marched out to “Baby, I Love You” by The Ramones.

Tattoos were everywhere.

Am I the only one left on this planet without a tattoo?

The problem is, I can’t think of a design that I could live with FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I’d want a tattoo that I could swap out on a whim like a handbag, based on my latest pop culture obsession.

Like right now it’s that old 1960s gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows, so I’d want that tall, dark and handsome rogue Quentin Collins somewhere on my body.

I’ll bet in the late 60s, every woman wanted Quentin Collins somewhere on her body.

Anyway, the wedding cake kicked ass.

The men’s room, however, did not kick ass.

Oh sure, it was clean and all, but there were just a couple of things wrong with it…

Or maybe there’s nothing wrong with it, I don’t know. Maybe it’s meant to be a place for social networking while you poo next to your neighbor.

Also? You can’t get away with saying, “Sorry, I can’t spare a square.” Because clearly, there is a square there. Lots of squares… How many do you need? Say, are those Armani cuff links? I love those! Where did you get them? I get all my designer stuff from Overstock or Rue La La these days. Here, let me show you how the app works on my phone… and the next thing you know, they’ve lost themselves in an Angry Birds showdown. Right there on the toilet.

Also? You could see directly into this cavernous room from the main reception area. I mean RIGHT INTO IT.

Yeah, there’s nothing I like better than to watch two poopers on the can with their tuxedo pants around their ankles, swapping business cards and playing video games as I’m hunched over the white linen shoveling in that last piece of chicken alfredo. Mmmmm-mmm!

Other than that, the wedding was quite lovely.

At sunset, a group of us climbed up to the road to oooh and ahhhh over the full moon rise.

Now isn’t that the most beautiful perigee-syzygy you ever saw? What? You don’t know what a perigee-syzygy is? Boy, aren’t you stupid.

Yes, I know what a perigee-syzygy is and so what if I knew it just before you did? The important thing is that there was a point in time where I knew it and you didn’t.

Okay, kidding aside, a perigee-syzygy is a super moon. Super moons happen when the moon is at its closest to the earth in its orbit AND when its a full moon. It’s supposed to be 14% bigger than normal, and I suck at taking pictures of the moon, but does this look 14% larger to you?

Well, I can’t tell the difference.

So, essentially, we risked our lives standing on the edge of the two-lane river highway teetering in high heels with our wine glasses, staring at something that’s been there all along.

And then we came back down for cake.

It was lemon and raspberry. Yay!

Why are goat kids so dang cute?

What would you say that white blotch on his side looks like? I say it’s that monster from the Bugs Bunny cartoon. Not the Tasmanian devil, but that big brown thing that chases Bugs around and at some point Bugs does his nails like a gossipy salon girl.

You know, this guy (who is apparently named Gossamer)

Hey, did I show you guys this pic my friend, Drew, sent me?

For example, you would DM someone if you were having, say, hamsters in a red wine reduction sauce, which while good for bragging about your new Paleo-Primal diet, is not so good for that whole public image thing.

And just like every privilege out there (e.g. driving, streaking, murdering, etc), plenty of other people in the world are abusing it and ruining it for the rest of us.

There’s a very popular direct message I often get from various unsuspecting souls whose Twitter account has been raped and pillaged and used for evil. This activity is called phishing (pronounced “PHISH-ING”).

It is baiting you to click on a link where they can then rape and pillage you as well. It’s annoying and obvious and I’m sick of wading through them to get to actual real messages from real people who have something real to say. The other DMs I ignore are those “automatic” ones you get as soon as you follow someone who then immediately wants something from you. Like buying their book. Or checking out their website. That’s all just noise to me and it is totally ignored by me.

So anyway, the latest bait is the following message:

“Hey Someone Is Making Very Bad Things About You…   www.some link to get jacked.com”

Now, in America, I would expect that link to take me to a cooking or DIY home improvement website where someone, no doubt, is making very bad things about me.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I look up a recipe or how to do something, I want to see a good example of it, not some ill-advised disaster, so this message doesn’t attract me. Unless, of course, it’s Cake Wrecks or something.

Plus, if someone really wanted to make very bad things about me, they could do it in my comments section. Actually, some people already have (I’m talking to YOU crazy first-time visitor who goes off half-cocked because she doesn’t know a joke when it squirts in her in the face and honks at her, but anyway…)

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, Twitter rapists. They are sucking the life out of me.

Has anyone coined the term “social media vampires” yet? If not, then it’s mine, but you can use it.

image source: Flickr

Cheeeeeeese.

That pic is from the post “The Ladies in Waiting” over on the Bee Haven Acres blog. Thanks, Beverly! And it looks like you’ve just had kids! I mean, your goats had kids.

The Goat Hop

Orion Unleashed sent us to a goat hop (as seen on Cheezburger):

Hey, while you’re here I could really use your vote for Best Local Blogger.

Please click the image below to poke your chad:

BEST Local Blogger

From “Maybe I Just Have a Hole in My Lip“

So while I may have a drinking problem, it is coupled with the fact that I don’t know a lick about wine. I drink it. I like it. But I’m stupid when it comes to tasting it. The only thing I know about “legs” and “complex aromas” happens in the barnyard. (And stays in the barnyard.)

Anyway, between my ignorance of wine and a conversation during our weekly Bull Session at Thinkhouse Collective, the idea of a blogger wine seminar was born.

Story Winery in Amador County was kind enough to offer an exclusive Blogger-Only Wine Tasting 101 class this past weekend.

They told us to wear “farm-friendly” shoes.

I’m not the least bit self-conscious that my foot is three times larger than everyone else’s. Really.

Also? I left the white shirt at home.

Aaaand I brought my 64-ounce 7-11 Big Gulp tankard, but they told me to put that disgusting thing away as we were to have our very own complimentary tasting glasses. Sweet! Free stuff.

With the bloggers all seated and ready to start, I went up to the front and did a thank you all for coming blah blah blah sort of thing. Apparently I saw fit to do a song and dance number, literally kicking off the event.

(Photo Courtesy of Eileen of Bringing Up Bronwyn)

After a little history of the place, they poured us one of their white wines and led us out to the vineyard.

These Mission vines are over 100 years old.

This is Brian. He’s the assistant winemaker. Helpful, knowledgeable, and all-around nice guy. He told us it was okay to like two-buck Chuck. We should drink what we like, not what snobs tell us to like.

You may have noticed that you can’t see the ground between the vines. That’s because they are in the process of getting certified organic.

We saw the barrel room and they told us how they made wine and that they bottle it all themselves.

And I learned a few things about tasting wine, like the 3 “S”s: Swirl, Smell, and Sip. And when you sip, you let the wine roll down your tongue.

And when you spit, you put some air behind it. Oh wait, maybe “spit” is one of the three S’s. Or maybe there are four S’s. Oh, crap. Now I can’t remember. Whatever. Maybe the other bloggers can tell you.

Their tasting room used to be a barn a million years ago, but I told them it was full of holes.

Turns out they knew that already. Apparently, woodpeckers have their way with it and stuff acorns in there.

But boy, do they have a gorgeous view of the Cosumnes River Valley.

Now, if you want a decent intellectual review of the class and the winery, you should check out what the other bloggers have to say. They can explain it way better than I can. I just came for the schoolin’.

If you’re ever in Amador County, you should stop by Story Winery in Plymouth. It’s a beautiful place and the wine was lovely.

Is “lovely” a wine term? Can I say “lovely”?

Link to Story Winery website

A big THANK YOU to Cinde Dolphin of (Marketing for Mavericks) and Marketing Director for Story Winery for helping us put it all together.

A Correction…

I totally screwed up the announcement of the giveaway winners in a previous post by claiming that Nicky of We Work for Cheese won a T-Shirt when in fact, it was Nora of Door in Face. I am now Margaret of Egg on Face. Sorry Nora!

Here are some Story Wine blog posts from other bloggers:

I did a little presentation at a conference in Rocklin, CA, on Saturday for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, or SCBWI, pronounced “scubb wee” among the dark seedy underbelly of children’s book writers. It was held at the City of Rocklin Event Center, formerly known as the Sunset Center.

Thank GAWD they didn’t rename it the Power Balance Event Center – I would have had to reconsider my attendance.

You’re probably saying, Hey I didn’t know you were a children’s book writer, too! Well, you’re WRONG, Mr. Presumapants. I am not a children’s book writer.

So now, you’re probably saying, Then why were you presenting at one of their conferences?

Well, if you’d just give me a cotton pickin’ minute, I’d tell you. So, relax already and maybe scale down on the coffee.

Anyway, as I was trying to say, if you’d let me get a word in, is that I disscussed how to market yourself or your book using social media. I got to wear a very important looking badge and everything:

They had a “Freebie Table”, from which people could pillage and pilfer to their heart’s desire. So I added a Nanny Goats in Panties coffee mug and a bunch of NGIP pens.

Would you believe they took all the pens and left the mug??? Do you think they were afraid to take it, like it wasn’t really free? Or do you think people prefer pens over coffee mugs? I mean, what would you swipe from a “Freebie Table”? Everything, right?

Yes it was the only coffee mug on the table, the other goodies were primarily bookmarks, postcards, and brochures. If I put TWO mugs on the table, THEN would you believe they were free?

At the conference bookstore, amongst all the children’s books was my humble little book, Sticky Readers.

Bitsy Kemper, one of the authors moderating the panel I was on (and yes, her name really is Bitsy) is also a local actor in one of those mystery dinner theater shows. Here she is autographing one of her books. Isn’t she the cutest little thing?

I was shocked when not only did people buy my book, but they wanted me to inscribe their copy as well.

My head got so big, I think I sprained something.

Giveaway Winner Announcement

OK, enough about me, let’s celebrate the winners of last week’s T-Shirt Giveaways. Congratulations go out to:

Meleah of Momma Mea Culpa

Nicky of We Work for Cheese   Oops! I mean Nora of Door in Face.

Cindi H.

Yay!!!

My local City Councilman, Kevin McCarty, knocked on my door Saturday to introduce himself and tell me he was running for re-election. And I just stood there, listening to him, thinking about how he was probably younger than I was, impressed that he was walking around my neighborhood, keeping it real, shaking hands, one by one.

But did my blog brain kick in and think, OMG, I have to take a picture. This would make such a great blog post! I could pose him in such a way like you see at ribbon cutting ceremonies or whatever, two people shaking hands, smiling for the camera. I could have told him we had something in common. That we were BOTH running for re-election.

I could have told him, hey, I’ll vote for you if you vote for me.

I could have taken away a great photo of the two of us, but instead I got of photo of him with OTHER PEOPLE.

And he would have gotten all kinds of good publicity out of it because I would have blogged about it, and it would have been awesome and you people would have tweeted and Facebooked my post. It would have gone viral. And he would have become a nationwide sensation, and sixteen years from now, he would have been elected President of these United States.

And I would have that picture. Back from that day when he darkened my door step as a mere city councilman.

He seemed like a nice enough guy. He probably would have been a good sport about being the subject of an absurd and ridiculous NGIP post because this is not a political blog and I would not have pushed his political agenda or his political party, whatever THAT is. No, he would have just been a regular guy, like you and me.

But since I blew it, there will be no blog post today about Sacramento City Councilman Kevin McCarty.

I’m still kicking myself.

It’s absolute chaos over here as we celebrate Nanny Goats in Panties Chaotic Out-of-Control Call-Me-Crazy Insane Turbotacular T-Shirt Giveaway Week.

(As you may or may not know, we started a different giveaway over here on Monday’s post)

But now we have a brand new super-exciting prize to hand out: more T-Shirts! Yay! And that’s not all. For this giveaway, we don’t have ONE winner, but two (TWO!) winners! Each winner will receive a $20 gift card toward Crazy Dog T-Shirts.

That’s right. Crazy Dog T-Shirts for a Call-Me-Crazy giveaway.

And what do you have to do to win?

I’m so glad you asked.

You can enter up to 4 different ways:

1. Leave a comment.

T-Shirt from Crazy Dog T-Shirts

2. Tweet this giveaway.

Use the URL of this post (www.nannygoatsinpanties.com/2012/04/another-t-shirt-giveaway-crazy-dog-t-shirts.html) and be sure to include @nannygoats and @crazydogtshirts in the Tweet.

If you want me to make it easy for you, just cut and paste this into your Twitter Message:

Holy Banana Boats, Batman! @nannygoats & @crazydogtshirts are giving away TWO gift cards! http://is.gd/LInNf2

Then come back here and leave another comment saying you tweeted. Try to leave the URL of the specific tweet if you can. Not sure what that means? Here’s how you do that.

T-Shirt from Crazy Dog T-Shirts

3. Share this post on Facebook.

Come back here and leave a comment that you did that. If we’re not Facebook friends, I’m just going to have to trust you on that one. Alternatively, you can tell me that you wipe your elderly dog’s butt with my blog posts. Either way, make sure it’s in a separate comment.

Yet another T-Shirt from Crazy Dog T-Shirts

4. Vote for Nanny Goats in Panties to be the #1 Blogger in Sacramento.

(Or tell me that you already did). (Or tell me to buzz off). Whether you vote or not, leave another separate comment.

Click here to vote. I’m in the “Best Local Blogger” category.

Bottom Line: You need a separate comment for each entry. You can have up to four entries (aka four comments)

Everyone is eligible, even if you live outside the U.S. Yay!

This giveaway ends at 11:59pm Sunday, April 15th. The winner will be notified soon after and announced right here on the blog.

Meanwhile, go follow Crazy Dog T-Shirts on Twitter or check out the Crazy Dog Facebook Page, or check out the Crazy Dog website and start picking out which T-Shirt you’re gonna get when you win.

Welcome to the Nanny Goats in Panties Chaotic Out of Control Call-Me-Crazy T-Shirt Giveaway Extravaganza Week where we’re giving away T-shirts all week. (OK, it’s actually only two giveaways on two separate blog posts…but it runs all week!)

So anyway, we here at NGIP feel you’re not getting enough fiber. And to help you out with that, we have partnered with Fibers.com to give away $30 worth of T-Shirt.

Fibers.com sells pre-designed T-Shirts, or you can design your own.  You can check out their selection at Fibers.com.

But meanwhile, how do you win? I’m glad you asked. You can do one or all of the following things:

1. Leave a comment.

Fibers T-Shirt

2. Tweet this giveaway.

Use the URL of this post (http://www.nannygoatsinpanties.com/2012/04/t-shirt-giveaway-fibers-com.html) and be sure to include @nannygoats and @fibers in the Tweet.

If you want me to make it easy for you, just cut and paste this into your Twitter Message:

Holy Regularity, Batman! @nannygoats & @fibers are doing a T-Shirt #giveaway http://is.gd/fJeNPH

Then come back here and leave another comment saying you tweeted. Try to leave the URL of the specific tweet if you can. Not sure what that means?  Here’s how you do that.

Another Fibers T-Shirt

3. Share this post on Facebook.

Come back here and leave a comment that you did that. If we’re not Facebook friends, I’m just going to have to trust you on that one. Alternatively you can tell me that you line your bird cage with my blog posts. Either way, make sure it’s in a separate comment.

And yet another Fibers T-Shirt

4. Vote for Nanny Goats in Panties to be the #1 Blogger in Sacramento.

(Or tell me that you already did). (Or tell me to go pound sand). Whether you vote or not, leave another separate comment.

Click here to vote. I’m in the “Best Local Blogger” category.

Bottom Line: You need a separate comment for each entry. You can have up to four entries (aka four comments)

Everyone is eligible, even if you live outside the U.S. Yay!

This giveaway ends at 11:59pm Friday, April 13th. The winner will be notified soon after and announced right here on the blog.

While you’re here, we have ANOTHER GIVEAWAY for the Nanny Goats in Panties Chaotic Out of Control Call-Me-Crazy T-Shirt Giveaway Extravaganza Week!  Woo hoo!!!!! Click here to go to our other T-Shirt giveaway.

Meanwhile, go follow Fibers.com on Twitter or check out the Fibers.com Facebook Page.

 THIS GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED

Now, I realize I’m no Julia Child (or whoever is hip to reference these days) in the kitchen, but this tool has FOUR sides to it. It always has and it always will. In my entire life, I have only ever used one side and completely ignored (or neglected if the thing has feelings) the other three sides.

Why?

Because I have no idea what they do.

Why?

Because I took Band instead of Home Ec in school.

Now, one of these sides I can at least guess what it does. It probably slices or something.

Like maybe cucumbers or fingers or whatever, but I just use that other kitchen staple….the knife.

However, there are still two other sides to this thing. And that is where the mystery deepens for me:

What the bleepin’ bleep do these two sides do? I once thought they might super tiny grate the cheese like how they used to have in Taco Bell tacos. One day I fruitlessly scraped and pretty much just mangled a hunk of cheese and created a virtual pile of nothing but a cheese grater that was then impossible to clean.

Am I the only dummy here?

By the way…

If you’re not doing anything right now, I’m currently groveling for votes to go for my 2nd win in the KCRA A-List Contest. Click the image below to poke your chad for me and Nanny Goats in Panties.

Find us on the A-List



Nanny Goats in Panties

Vote for us

Smockity Frocks posted baby pictures in a post entitled “Triplet Baby Goats“. Click on over to her site to see more of these cuties.

Image from: Smockity Frocks

(Thanks, Colette!)

Buy a Cabinet, Get a Goat

Avid reader Keith forwarded an email to us where Cabinets To Go was giving away goats last week with each purchase.

Goats in the News

This just in from our Kiwi friend, Mirjam…

Out back in the Outback, a central-west Queensland town is planning Australia’s only goat expo, which will highlight the history and contributions of goats. There will be races and maybe even a goat museum. You can read all about that here.

Parents were either just as hooked or they forbade their kids to watch it. And not because it was empty trash rendering children into TV zombies.

Dark Shadows was the Harry Potter of its day, filled with magic and witches. It was the Twilight of its day filled with vampires and werewolves.

It was campy. It was cheesy. It was melodramatic.

It was awesome.

My only excuse for not being an addict to this gothic soap opera and the vampire Barnabas Collins is that I was three years old at the time. I also managed to miss hearing about it when they reran it in the 1980s.

Did you catch that? They re-ran an afternoon soap opera in the 1980s. A soap opera!

Joan Bennett as the matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard on Dark Shadows

I had never heard of Dark Shadows until last year while trolling the internet for information on the classic actress Joan Bennett, where I discovered she was on some soap opera called Dark Shadows, and where I discovered that a remake of the show was aired many years later, and where I discovered that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp were doing a movie and the next thing you know I’m adding it to my Netflix queue and watching it and thinking, Gawd, this show stinks. It’s awful. It’s horrible. It’s laughable. My husband pretty much thought the same thing.

That was five months ago.

Now we’re on episode 702.

When Netflix DVDs stopped after “Collection 8″ (300 something episodes), we began buying the DVDs.

40 episodes per collection. We're on Collection 13 of 26. You do the math.

Yes, Dark Shadows is melodramatic. Yes, the production quality is bad. Yes, the actors flub their lines. Yes, the special effects are hysterical. But dude! That’s just it.

Soap operas back then were filmed live to tape, so they shot everything in one take. And based on that alone, this show is incredible. What those guys pulled off was nothing short of amazing. The actors, true professionals with theater backgrounds, didn’t have the luxury of cracking up in front of the camera when they messed up. If someone forgot their line, or a set piece fell over, or a crew member’s arm was seen in the background closing a door, they kept going no matter what.

And the live special effects of this show! Like a rubber bat jiggling on a string, warily swooping in on their screaming victims to bite them on the neck! And the way a character will leave the “old house” at Collinwood and suddenly show up at Eagle Hill Cemetery in the next scene without tripping over camera cables or appearing out of breath from running between sets. And the plastic trees in the woods that wobble if anyone touches them. And the way Joan Bennett delivers her lines the same way, as if she’s reading off a list of grocery items.

And Nicholas Blair. Moustache-twirling, tie-the-girl-to-the-railroad-tracks Nicholas Blair.

Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows

The characters are either extremely irritating or ultimately charming. Or both. Barnabas Collins, the brooding Bela Lugosi-like vampire seemed so evil in the beginning, hell-bent on destroying his family and killing everyone in the quaint seaside town of Collinsport.

He also has this creepy obsession with Maggie Evans, a wholesome cheerful girl who he psychologically messes with to become his lover from the past.

And what. Is up. With those bangs?

But then you’re taken back in time (200 years) and you find out why he’s so evil and how he became a vampire and then you feel sorry for him. Poor Barnabas.

And then you’re on episode 702.

We watch it nearly every day and have managed to cram about two years worth of shows into five months. And then this weekend, for the first time, we saw the trailer for the Tim Burton / Johnny Depp version and I can’t tell if I’m going to like it or not. For one thing, it looks like a comedy.

Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins

You know how trailers always blow it by showing you the best lines so it’s a let down when you watch the movie because the trailer is as funny as it was going to get? The lines in this trailer are kind of hit and miss and the ones that are “hit” won’t be funny in the movie now because I already heard them and jokes are most often only funny once.

The classic example of this happened for me in the movie, When Harry Met Sally, when Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in the middle of a restaurant across the table from Billy Crystal. I saw that trailer a million times and when I finally saw the movie, I was perturbed by everyone else in the theatre when they laughed uproariously after the woman said, “I’ll have what she’s having.” It wasn’t funny after the 30th time hearing it. Why was everyone else laughing? IT WAS IN THE FREAKIN’ TRAILER, PEOPLE. IT’S NOT FUNNY ANY MORE. STOP LAUGHING, YOU FOOLS!

They’re called “spoilers” for a reason because it ruins the enjoyment and I think it’s wrong for people to laugh anyway just because they paid money and feel they deserve to have a good time.

Anyway, where the hell was I?…

Oh yes! Barnabas Collins. Dark Shadows. The original.

One thing I’ve noticed: nobody ever eats on this show, but boy, do they drink. And smoke. And take drugs. It’s like Mad Men over there. You’d think THAT would be the reason for parents to forbid their children from watching it, but no. It was the vampires.

I think there should be a drinking game for Dark Shadows because certain predictable themes appear so frequently. The rules are that whenever any one of the following occurs, you have to take a drink:

1. Someone (usually having just poured themselves a brandy in the drawing room) says, “What’s wrong?” and the other person says, “Nothing.” (Both characters must be facing the camera when these lines are delivered.)
2. The fog from the upcoming outdoor graveyard scene seeps into the current indoor scene.
3. One character calls another character by his or her wrong name.
4. Somebody slowly opens a coffin. A creaky coffin. Two drinks if a hand juts out to grab that someone’s throat.
5. The cameraman can’t focus on his subject. Or stay on his subject. Or find his subject.
6. Someone knocks on the door in the middle of the night.
7. Someone says, “I can’t” and the other person declares, “You must!”
8. Dr. Julia Hoffman gives someone a sedative, or someone says that Dr. Julia Hoffman has given someone a sedative.
9. Someone goes missing in the woods on the Collins estate and they send out a search party.

I would advise limiting the number of episodes you watch in one night should you choose to play this game. Remember, friends don’t let friends watch too much Dark Shadows.

The Dark Shadows movie comes out May 11. According to my sources, the actors who played Barnabas Collins and Maggie Evans will appear in it, along with Christopher Lee and Alice Cooper. Fun stuff!

Link to YouTube video for Dark Shadows

By the way…

If you’re not doing anything right now, I’m currently groveling for votes to go for my 2nd win in the KCRA A-List Contest. Click the Vote button below to poke your chad for me and Nanny Goats in Panties.

Find us on the A-List



Nanny Goats in Panties

Vote for us

My opponents would have you believe that we need a change, that we need to TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY.

But let’s take a look at what I’ve accomplished in the past year as Best Local Blogger on the KCRA A-List:

1. Sacramento approved a new arena plan and the Kings are staying.
2. Unemployment has plummeted.
3. Osama Bin Laden was destroyed.
4. Prince William finally made an honest woman out of his girlfriend.
5. Charlie Sheen, man, Charlie Sheen.

And like every responsible leader, I will take credit for all the good stuff.

However, I also realize that I could not have done it without you. For if you all had not poked your chad for me last year, I would not have had the opportunity to take the credit for all that stuff.

And if I am re-elected in 2012, I promise:

1. A Girl Scout Cookie stand on every corner.
2. A job for every man, woman and child.
3. I will FORBID our new sports arena and entertainment complex to be named after fraudulent, bankrupt snake-oil salesmen hawking magic rubber bracelets for $30.
4. Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!
5. More Charlie Sheen.

I won’t let you down and remember…

A vote for NGIP is a vote for America!

And unfortunately, like our silly electoral rules in this country, you can only vote once.

(Click on the vote button below…and keep clicking yellow VOTE buttons until you see, “Ok, we got your vote for NGIP” or something like that.)

Find us on the A-List



Nanny Goats in Panties

Vote for us

If you voted for me last year and remember your password, you won’t have to re-register.

I’m Margaret Andrews and I approve this message.

Paid for by the Committee to Re-elect Nanny Goats in Panties and Establish More Fried Chicken and Waffle Eateries.

But that’s not why I called this meeting. No, I wanted to tell you about this exclusive invite-only launch party that I went to.

In Sacramento.

I know! Who has exclusive invite-only launch parties in Sacramento?

So, you can bet I donned my best toga and dreadlocks wig for this to-do.

And while the to-do was for the launch of Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets, it was held at the California History Museum. Where the lobby was dressed up to look like the parking lot of a Fresh & Easy market, I guess.

And while they had great food, a ridiculously large cake…

and plenty of people with which to mingle, we bloggers come for one thing and one thing only.

The swag.

Sweet, blurry swag.

Ok, not really. At least not this time. Because this time, they had the next best thing to a swag bag and that was a Encore photo booth. (Courtesy of Encore)

My date and I climbed in and did what we do best.

Act like idiots.

Here is us at the launch party…

And here we are back in 1999:

Some things never change.

So, have any of you been to a Fresh & Easy market? If so, what do you think of it?

(image source: Napa Daily Photo) – Thanks, RuEtta!

I don’t have to tell you what it’s parodying, do I?

(Dogs Playing Poker: A Friend in Need, by C. M. Coolidge ca. 1903)

Goat Tossing

Every fourth Sunday in January, the Spanish throw a goat out the window.

(image source: Bizarre Events) Thanks again, RuEtta!

Even though the village has banned it.

Something about a tradition that goes way back in the little village of  Manganeses de la Polvorosa where they hold the annual goat tossing festival in honor of St Vincent de Paul, their patron saint. Somebody is supposed to be at the bottom to catch the poor guy.

(photo lifted from CBS Sacramento)

She’s a reporter for CBS Sacramento and she’s awesome.

Why?

Because her name is Checkey Beckford! I LOVE her name.

I’m going to have lunch with her someday just so the following conversation can take place:

ME (panting, out of breath): Guess who I had lunch with yesterday!

YOU: Who?

ME: Checkey Beckford!

YOU: Is that drool?

Checkey Beckford. Checkey Beckford. Checkey Beckford.

You can follow her here on Twitter. I am.

Maybe some of you out there have spent your lives dreaming of opening a business since you were twelve and already had a name in mind for it, right?

Other would-be entrepreneurs agonize and ruminate for months on end creating just the right name.

And then there are those guys who probably discovered themselves at the Articles of Incorporation Office hungover from the night before, not paying attention, filling the form out all wrong mixing up the name with the address and you end up with this: R15. Because it’s at the corner of….yep…R and 15th Streets.

Bar R15 in Sacramento, located at....wait for it.....15th and R Streets.

Or maybe they just stumbled out of the building onto the street corner and prayed for a sign. Or two signs.

Ah, but you see. That’s just it. This is Sacramento. In and around “The Grid”, so named because way back during the Gold Rush days,  John Sutter or some such nut designed our downtown streets in a waffle-like grid. And all the east-west running streets are named A through Z. In alphabetical order, no less. You know, so we lame-ass sense-of-direction-deprived Sacramentans would be able to find a street without getting lost, as long as we knew our ABCs.

Can you guess what all the north-south running streets in the Grid are named after? That’s right. Our good old friends, the numbers. Who knows what John Sutter was thinking? Maybe he was just showing off the fact that he had the alphabet DOWN, man! That, or he was hungover.

And so that insulting tradition carries on today, that lack of faith in the people who live here that we will be able to find our way around town, so they name restaurants and other venues after the intersection at which they reside.

Take Cafeteria 15L, for example. It’s a nice place and all, but guess where that is.

Cafeteria 15L in Sacramento, located at....um...15th and L Streets.

And need I tell you where F65 is ?

F65 strip mall in Sacramento

Actually, yes I do, because some nincompoop stole the intersection naming method, took it outside The Grid, and like the devil himself, twisted it to suit his own purposes. Because the F in F65 stands for Folsom Blvd.

I mean, this strip mall has a decapitated head, fer Chirissakes! Couldn’t they call it “The Big Ass Decaptiated Head Plaza” or something?

decapitated head fronting Dos Coyotes at F65

I don’t want to hear any excuses about how they named this stuff so that people could remember it, no matter how plausible or true that even is. Especially for the likes of me because if I can get lost, I will get lost.

Creative laziness. That’s what it is.

Having said that however, I can understand why our Capitol is on Capitol Ave. I mean, you throw up a building on a street called Capitol Ave., what else are you gonna call it? Plus, there’s lots of important stuff that goes on there and all the important legislators and the governor have to be able to find the place. And they have to be able to locate much needed nearby services in a short period of time. So of course you name everything in the vicinity Capitol This or Capitol That. Like Capitol Garage. Or Capitol Car Wash. Or Capitol Fried Turkey Neck Waffles & Shoe Emporium.

So, if I were to start up my own restaurant, say, and be forced to conform to such naming silliness, here’s what I would call them:

Under The Bridge: A little soup joint tucked away under the Tower Bridge that would become a full-on disco dance club at night. The great thing about this location is it comes with its own “bouncer” that we’d use to allow entry. This bouncer isn’t a huge guy in big black suit and lots of bling checking IDs. No, our bouncer is craggly, has one eye, schleps around barefoot and requires you to solve a riddle to get in.

Random Curbs: A food truck that serves the best tuna melt sandwiches in town. Follow us on Twitter to keep up on our current location at @random_curbs.

Gutters: A competing food truck. Obviously.

Anyway, you get the idea. As you can see you have to be the first one at an intersection to have that name of H6 or B12 or anything else that sounds like something you’d overhear at a Bingo game. Otherwise, you lose out and actually have to use your creative mind to come up with a good name. And then good luck with anybody ever finding you because it’s not like the people of Sacramento are capable of using maps or anything.

By the way, someone just told me about this cool-ass smartphone app called HeyTell. Have you heard of it? It’s just like text messaging only it’s a voice message and it’s free and it supposedly only uses data like an email, so no sudden big cell phone bills. It’s kinda like a delayed walkie-talkie. And those of you breaking the law while driving and texting can at least lessen your chances of killing someone else. Have you guys heard of this?

Billboard at 16th and S in downtown Sacramento during February

I took a picture of this same billboard late last summer:

Billboard at 16th & S in downtown Sacramento in Summer 2011

Actually, I took this 2nd picture last October – we had a very late Fall this year (the season, not the billboard). But that’s not the point.

The point is, do you have the same question I do? Does it involve the words, “seasonal discount”? Does it include the words “KFBK” and “getting the short end of the stick”?

But seriously, the real reason I called you all here today is to say that there are two types of people: those that hug well and those that don’t.

A real hugger wraps their arms around you and makes it feel like they are really glad to see you. It feels warm and good like hot cocoa and wool socks in front of a stone fireplace with a fat glittery Christmas tree in the corner.

Then there are those that make a half circle with one arm around you and if you’re lucky, their hand will barely touch your back. Like you have cooties and if they had their druthers, they’d rather not have to participate in such a barbaric nasty germ-spreading ritual. They are probably the same people who would give you one of those limp fish handshakes as well.

Me? I’m a hugger. A real huggity hug hugging hugmeister. They call me Huggy McHuggenheimer. I like when people hug the crap out of me. That’s a figure of speech by the way, I don’t mean I hope that there’s a pile of poo afterwards. And I don’t want the wind squeezed out of me. Or broken ribs. I just like a good firm and friendly hug with pressure applied. A REAL hug. Not one of those mamby pamby I-have-touching-issues-so-you-get-a half-assed fake hugs.

Why is that? Are they afraid it’s too intimate? Like when it’s a co-ed hug, for example. A straight man vs. a straight woman. Is the guy afraid of feeling boobs against them? Like it’s not allowed? Is hugging too sexual for them?

Or is hugging seen as lower-class? Or blue-collar lumberjacky. It’s not sophisticated. You don’t see rich people or members of royalty bear-hugging each other. They lean toward one another and maybe purse their lips to the side while air kissing and lightly resting their fingers of one hand on a shoulder maybe.

I don’t get it. Can someone please explain this to me? Because for me, hugging is an innocent thing we are taught to do with everyone we like when we’re children.

Now, I realize there are exceptions. Like people with back problems or fibromyalgia who can’t hug beyond the limp fish level because it’s painful. Hugs should not be painful. So they get a pass.

Also? There are people I don’t want to hug. But these are the same people I don’t want to touch for any number of reasons. Primarily because they DO have cooties or a banana in their pocket or something like that.

But what’s everyone else’s excuse?

So tell me, are you a hugger? I mean like a real hug-o-rama huggity hugger? Or a limp fish? And do men have different views on this than women? What’s your hugging etiquette?

P.S. Today I am guest posting on mystery author Cindy Sample’s blog. Her latest book is called Dying for a Dance. I give a few blogging tips on her blog today and if you go over there and comment according to her instructions, you’ll be entered into a drawing for an Amazon Gift card. Wow! What are you waiting for? Check out her blog post today entitled: “Improving Your Blog: Helpful Tips and Reminders from an Award-Winning Blogger.

Pricilla (of The Maaaaa of Pricilla) wants you to know how much she enjoys her apples.

(Thanks, Patty!)

Goats in the News

Reports came in to Nanny Goats in Panties from all over this week about how goats bleat.

Did you know that goats have accents?  (Thanks, Sandy!)

They really do. (Thanks, Shannon!)

No, seriously, kids grow up sounding like the other kids they hang out with. (Thanks, Erin!)

A British study found that goats can indeed develop accents.  (Thanks, Pam of “Bloomers“!)

Goats on Video

And now, goats can give massages…

(Thanks, Nellie!)

Got Goat? Submit your goat thing.