Weekend Wind-Down #33 - Thanksgiving 2008 Edition

Saturday morning, Missy's younger brother JOE took us to VILLAGE CANDY, this awesome candy shop in nearby Sewickley, Pennsylvania. We stocked up on fancy chocolate, gourmet beverages, and weird candy...













I was especially impressed with their selection of socially-irresponsible candy cigars and cigarettes...TRUTH:



Some of the sweets we hauled back to the house included this "Catatouille" candy dispenser that flips a tiny grilled fish on a pan when you push down on little lever :



A bag of gummi pasta:



The edible "Kandy Teef" that demonstrates how horrible your teeth will look if you eat too much candy:



This plastic toilet comes with a pair of plunger-shaped lollipops. The bowl is filled with a candy powder that you swirl your plunger in, before you plunge it into your mouth:



Hard to find candy cigarettes:



Missy got some more of these great 3400 PHINNEY chocolate bars with the super cool and cute packaging that we like so much:







FAVORITE MOMENT OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Finally getting home!
JOE - The candy store - gorging on sweets.
RITA - When Missy and Raoul came.
JOHN - Seeing the Beetle Bug pull up!
RAOUL - Going to the Carnegie with everyone.

WORST MOMENT OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Leaving Nilla behind.
JOE - Gorging on sweets and horrendous gas from lentils.
RITA - Going to work!
JOHN - Walking from the parking lot to the museum.
RAOUL - All the sleepy moments after each large meal.

WORD OR PHRASE OF THE WEEK?
MISSY - "Bush Baby"
JOE - "Bush Baby?"
RITA - "Oh Gawd"
JOHN - "Life On Mars"
RAOUL - "Bush Baby"

FUNNIEST MOMENT OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Playing the snowcone game and dragonfly game on Furu Furu Park.
JOE - Horrendous gas from lentils.
RITA - Greg!
JOHN - Watching Greg do the "Sprocket Dance"
RAOUL - Trying on my long underwear!

FAVORITE MEAL OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Thanksgiving dinner!
JOE - Thanksgiving dinner.
RITA - Thanksgiving meal.
JOHN - Thanksgiving dinner.
RAOUL - Rita's pasta dish.

WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU USE TO DESCRIBE LAST WEEK?
MISSY - Naples Yellow.
JOE - Blue.
RITA - Brown.
JOHN - Rainbow!
RAOUL - Gray.

NAME SOMETHING ON YOUR TO DO LIST FOR NEXT WEEK?
MISSY - Unpack and draw a Tofu Baby comic
JOE - Find a new job.
RITA - Laundry!
JOHN - I gotta finally rake some leaves!
RAOUL - Deliver Missy's art to the RFD Gallery in Atlanta.

FAVORITE THING YOU SAW AT THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM?
MISSY - The wishing wall and the cat mummy.
JOE - The Froot Loops box.
RITA - The miniature doll house furniture and gems.
JOHN - The dinosaurs!
RAOUL - Barry McGee and David Shrigley artworks...and wishing wall!

PERSONAL SOUNDTRACK FOR THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - (see Raoul's list)
JOE - Reggae Christmas....rrrrrrright?
RITA - Los Lonely Boys.
JOHN - My iTunes mix.
RAOUL - Reggae Christmas, B52's, Depeche Mode, Echo And The Bunnymen, New Order, OMD, R.E.M., Sparks, This American Life podcast, Kill Rock Stars podcast.









(a selection of tasty gourmet beverages we brought back to the house)

Home Again

(Harry, the family cat, taking advantage of the warm spot left on Joe's bed)

Thanksgiving morning we headed outside into the cold, wanting to take photos in the quickly melting snow. Missy decided to dress up her HAPPY HARBOR Blythe doll (A.K.A. ISOBEL CREAMPUFF) in a warm bunny suit and take some glamour shots in and around her house:





The front of the Kulik homestead, which belies the actual size of the house, much like the tip of an iceberg:



A couple of painted gourd birdhouses up in a tree...Missy painted one to look like Pinocchio:









Isobel Creampuff posing on the picnic table in the backyard, overlooking a woody gorge:







After a morning spent in the cold, Missy and Isobel settled in for a nap:

Feeling The Power

(hand dryer, Gaffney, South Carolina)

It's now post-thanksgiving and we're stuffed. Don't know how or why, but it's well past midnight now and Missy and I are on the interbot. Wednesday, we took a thirteen-hour drive up to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from Athens, Georgia. The weather was gorgeous and made for a perfect road trip...

...we saw the giant peach-shaped water tower while passing through Gaffney, South Carolina. From certain angles, the water tower looks more like a giant ass than a giant peach:



We stopped at a FRIENDLY'S restaurant in Huntersville, North Carolina, for breakfast. I started to obsess over this really funky-bad Photoshop job on this little advertisement for their snowman ice cream dessert thing:









We went through a couple of tunnels to get to West Virginia before winding up at the TAMARACK welcome center, which boasts "The Best of West Virginia"...











Missy posing in the children's play area:







"I like turtles"...





After 13 hours of driving we ended our trek by adding on a couple more hours of (virtual) driving playing SUPER MARIO CART on the Wii, along with Missy's brother JOE and other people from around the world, via the on-line gaming mode:

Happy Thanksgiving 2008!

(yummilicious veggie stuffing, glorious green bean casserole, mouth-watering Grit gravy, and mind-melting mashed potatoes hot off our stove last Thanksgiving)

Well, Missy and I are leaving for Pittsburgh, PA in like, 4 or 5 hours. It's midnight right now, and dammit, I should be sleeping. We've got a long 13 hour-long roadtrip ahead of us. We'll be in Pennsylvania to visit Missy's family and to see her brother's new house. We also plan on seeing the 55th CARNEGIE INTERNATIONAL art exhibition, titled "Life On Mars", at Carnegie-Mellon University...the awesomely wonderful BARRY McGEE is part of the exhibition and I've been dying to finally see his work in person for the longest time now. I'm sooooo excited about this opportunity, you don't even know. Of course, no visit to Pittsburgh would be complete without a visit to the ANDY WARHOL MUSEUM, so we'll probably stop there too, time and weather permitting. And if I'm really lucky, Missy will take me for a ride on the INCLINE. We'll see. We won't be back until next week, so you probably won't be hearing from us again until then. I'm sure we'll have lots of photos and stories to share. Until then, please enjoy the early "Nilla post" below and have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Eat till ya pass out!