He was a good little guy, but most of you don’t remember him as Lee. Most of you remember him as Santa Claus from the Atom Kappa Christmas animations. I miss him terribly right now.

I remember the day I got him. My iguana, Christa, had just died, and I felt really really bad. I drove down to the most ghetto pet store in the area, Fin Feather and Fur. It isn’t even there anymore. It is the kind of place where they’d be smoking in the store right in front of the animals. The kind of place where you just wanted to go and rescue the animals so they don’t have to deal with that anymore. The guy behind the counter was smoking when I walked into the pet store.

There was a tank full of lizards, and each were being sold in pairs. Skinks, Long Tailed Lizards and one other kind I can’t remember. There was a little guy in this tank who was being sold as a single lizard. He was brown with little white spots on him, and the guy behind the counter told me in a raspy smoker’s voice that he was a desert iguana, and he didn’t get much bigger than he was right now. Also, he was a vegetarian. This pretty much sealed the deal for me, and i bought him. The guy behind the counter threw him in a brown paper bag and stapled it shut, which was disgusting to me. He also talked me into buying some sort of corn meal stuff to put down on the bottom of the tank. Knowing nothing about these lizards, I bought it.

I got the lizard home and named him Lee, after Lee Rinaldo from Sonic Youth, my favorite band at the time. He was such a good lizard. He never bit anyone. He always looked like he had a smile on his face, and he ate NOTHING but romaine lettuce for 11 years and never complained about it.

His first year of life was very rough though. The corn meal that the man sold me was infested with these little red spiders that were some sort of parasite. They latched onto lee and got deep in his ears, in his eyes, and under the scales in his tail. I didn’t know what to do! They were hurting him. I’d give him baths, but I couldn’t get them all off. Completely at a loss, I called my neighbors who own Tropic Pet Center in Wilkes Barre. They got me a medicine that I started to use. It took about 2 months, but I got all of the mites off of him. For about two years I was still finding one or two stray dead ones stuck to his tail. I truly believe he would have died had I not gotten that medicine. After this ordeal, he was fine.

I can’t write anything bad about him, because it’s far too sad. He was very sick at the end, but like my cat Nelson, I only want to talk about the good. I remember taking him out of the cage one day and forgetting that I took him out, and then going to the store. I remembered while I was at the store that I had left him sitting on the counter in my basement. I ran home quickly and ran down the basement, and he was still sitting in the same position as i left him.

I remember how he used to climb Amanda’s hair and sit on her head. He liked to be on people’s heads for some reason and he loved the way hair felt.

For a few summers, we used to put his tank out in the garage and let him bask in the summer sun. He’d sit in the window all day.

In 2001, I decided to use him in a short stop motion animation called “The Atom Kappa Show”, starring a frog, a kappa, and lee, who was the only thing that was live action in the animation. It was making fun of Scary Movie, because I really really really really really really really really really hated that film with the white hot intensity of 1000 suns. Lee played Keenan Ivory Wayans, and he was defending his movie. After this, he went on to star in the very first Atom Kappa Christmas animation, and many others.

Recently, when I would come home from work early, I’d take him outside and walk around the pool with him. He was pretty weak and had a hard time hanging on to my arm, but he looked like he was happy being out in the sun again.

He was my lizard for 11 years. Every morning since he died, I wake up and I go to get him food out of the fridge, and then I realize that there is no need for that. It’s going to be hard to break that habit. His memory will live on though, because I don’t plan to take him out of the Christmas animations anytime soon.

Rest in peace, my little Beebs. I love you and miss you.

I’ve been updating a lot, I have no idea why, but i’m not going to question it. Anyway, this is a post that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, so I hope you guys like it.

Back in 1998, I was dating someone who had those old magnetic letters that you put on your fridge and spell things with them. I guess they’re for little kids learning to read and write, but when I walked into my boyfriend at the time’s apartment, I’d see messages like this:

This to me was absolutely the funniest and most brilliant thing I had seen in a long time. Soon after, i purchased some of these letters myself and we would play what I call “the fridge letter game” … the name is not that original. I’ll think of a better one, but for now, I’m going with “fridge letter game” ! … We would spell all sorts of things, but throughout the course of a few years, several of the letters were lost, so it got extremely hard to spell certain things.

While cleaning the back of my cellar one day, my father came across a little green tin. He showed it to me and said “this is going to make you very happy!” … I opened it, and right before me were like 3 sets of the alphabet letters. This brought the game to a whole new level! Soon, we could make two part messages, like this:

One of us usually takes the top part of the fridge, and another takes the bottom, and we try to make a coherent sentence. In the above example, Larry did the top, and I did the bottom. And yes, Larry creatively used those mega man magnets as an exclamation point. They have also been used as many of the other punctuation marks as well.

We still spell things with those all the time, and most of them are very very ridiculous, but a little while ago at work, my coworker Katryna dug up a few old pieces of movable type from the pressroom and spelled out her name. I guess I probably don’t have to tell you what happened not long after that:

It was pretty challenging spelling things with only the letters that made up Katryna Snyder, but surprisingly, we had a lot of variations:

One day, when we weren’t super busy, I ran downstairs and got myself one of every letter of the alphabet, except for D and U, because for some reason we didnt’ have any of those left. Here are some of the ones we got with those letters:

Lower the pink ax of skumbagz… words to live by. By the way, if anyone is wondering, they’re backwards because they were used on a printing press, and obviously they had to be in order for them to print the right way.

Tedd, my boss, changes mine daily. I actually have the next two days off of work, and I sort of can’t wait to see what I come in to. This was a recent one that I walked in to that I thought was particularly funny. Katryna had made the letters say “Love can bite” and Tedd changed it to this:

So anyway, I’ll upload any new funny ones that I get, but here’s your assignment, America. Go out and buy yourself some fridge letters and send me some funny sayings. Nothing vulgar or sexual… just funny random stuff will do, like “Batman ate six pancakes and then went to Dr. Shabadu” …. you know, stuff like that ^_^

Anyway, until next time!

For some reason, the Cranberries song, Yellow Skies Forever, always has to be playing when I roll into Ocean City, New Jersey. It’s just such a “going to the beach while the sun is setting” song. I have theme music for everything in my life, really.

I want to start this blog entry by thanking Dan Guzek and his family for letting Larry and myself stay with them last weekend. It was seriously a very awesome thing to do, and we had a wonderful time, and you are all about to find out from this journal entry.

We left last friday, right after larry got out of work. It was about 10 pm when we got there. When I was a kid, I don’t think that Ocean City seemed as far away. I have been there twice in the past 2 years, though, and it seriously seems like it takes forever. There is a roundabout right before you get into town though, somehow making the whole trip worth it.

Dan and his family rented out a house and he said that it was a really nice, spacious place, and he was right! The place was seriously beautiful! It had 4 bedrooms, 2 half baths and 1 full bath, a tv with a dvd player, and wireless internet access. I have to say, talking on instant messenger to jamie on saturday was possibly the weirdest thing i’ve ever done at the beach.

Anyway, here is what the living room looked like:

After we got there, we went out on the boardwalk immediately, considering the boardwalk is open until 12 on weekends, and friday night is technically considered a weekend. A lot of the shops were closed, but we did hit some arcades, and I played The Simpsons arcade game, while larry and dan found out via Let’s Go Jungle that they are “lovers, but only in appearance”. We also were introduced to the wonderful frozen treat that is polish water ice! I got mango flavored, and it was amazing! I also was having terrible trouble with my wisdom teeth that weekend, and the ice helped with the hurting sensation.

We went to bed and dan woke us up REALLY early the next morning. It sounded like it was raining outside, but it stopped as soon as we got up. We walked to the boardwalk and it was WAFFLE TIME! We ate at this place called “Bob’s Grill”, which was a place I used to go with my mom and dad when we used to go to the beach together. It sorta brought back a lot of sad memories about my mom, but I made new memories with dan and larry, so it was all right in the end. Here are larry and dan on the boardwalk in front of bobs:

After this, we went on the beach, and that was probably one of my favorite things we did all trip. There is nothing better than waking up early and going on the beach and seeing all of the creatures and shells that washed up. We also did a fair share of running around like idiots, which is always good. I was so happy, i kicked my shoes off in a fit of joy.

Dan also kicked his shoes off in a fit of joy, and then took a break to stare at the ocean’s relaxing waves.

also, I have to say, I cannot take credit for some of these pictures, because larry took a lot of them too. Here he is, doing what he does best:

When we were walking around, we did find a lot of shells, but we also found this:

Here is the detail, too:

I had never seen anything like this before. I thought it was most likely an alien or something, but then tedd from work ruined the fun by telling me that it was something called a “sand crab” and that he used to go to the beach and dig them up when he was a kid. It has some sort of eggs all over it, so we’re thinking that either it was eating the eggs, or that it was a female who was laying her eggs.

After the beach, we went back to the house and got the sand off of our feet. I almost typed “feets” … I has sands on my feets! help!

Anyway, we then went back out on the boardwalk, and it was oldschool mini golf time! I LOVE the oldschool obstacle mini golf courses where you have to hit a ball into a duck’s mouth and then it goes through a series of tubes, possibly scoring you a hole in one! Goofy Golf is by far the best one of these on the Ocean City boardwalk, but Tee Time gives it a run for it’s money as well. We played a LOT of mini golf. ALOT. I won a free game at Tee Time, which was really cool. Also, RIGHT before Larry and I had to go home, we both won free games at Goofy Golf, so we ended up playing again, since we were leaving that day.

Some of the obstacles and statues at those golf courses are just great. Here are a few from goofy golf. This one reminds me of those giant dinosaurs in california that they go to visit in the movie “The Wizard”. Also, check out that whale next to the dinosaur… wait… that’s me! ARGH!:

I am not too into monkeys, but this guy was my friend. His name is Carlos. Why does every name I come up with have “Karl” or “Carl” in it. I wasn’t even trying to do that, and it happened!

It’s funny, because when I was a kid, this next one was definitely there when I was a kid, except he was holding a pizza and he was definitely michaelangelo rather than raphael. Also, for some reason he’s snowboarding. I don’t think that turtles snowboard.

See if you can guess what this next one is.

Give up? It’s a pink hot dog dog in a hot dog bun. It definitely didn’t look like that though.

After that, the hippo ate the hot dog dog, along with dan.

The Tee Time mini golf place didn’t have obstacles that were nearly as funny, but … well, it made up for that with the signs that were hung around it telling you what to do and what not to do:

I don’t know about you… but I would NOT let that guy give me golfing lessons. And I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s horrifying:

After mini golf, we went to this cool water park. I obviously don’t have any pictures from inside there, but it was still a really good time. There were these really high slides called the serpentines… I started to freak out a little because I am extremely afraid of heights. Dan and Larry got me up there and I went down the slide and it was great, and after that it wasn’t as scary.

Also, there was one ride called “the lazy river” where you just float and relax. We were doing just that, and it was so nice… when a stampede of wild children appear out of nowhere. They were seriously out of control and I feared for my life. They entered the one tunnel and it was an explosion of tubes, rafts and body parts or something like that. Finally, they got tired of being behind us and pretty much ran us over. None of the lifeguards were effective in stopping them at all. It was nuts.

After that we walked around and went to some shops and I got some pizza with ziti on top of it which was AMAZING. I had some friends hanging around me when I was eating. I named this one Jake:

I’m a sucker, and he did end up getting some pizza from me. I tried to feed the birds peanuts though, and they were having none of that. They’ve gotten spoiled from all the junk people give them.

We walked around and played a little bit more mini golf, and then we returned to the room for a bit. Dan’s family cooked us a nice meal, and that night we hit the boardwalk yet again! This time we went to a lot of arcades. I played so many old, good games that I felt like it was 1989, and it was wonderful! They had 6 player xmen, which i didn’t get to play. We did play turtles in time, turtles, simpsons, pump it up, and the fastest ms. pacman i’ve EVER played. I suck at ms. pac man, but i was actually really good at this because of how fast it was. I was so excited! Here’s me getting pwned by metalhead in Turtles in Time. I had to be donatello, who is my second favorite character, because raphael was completely broken.

Here is larry playing the fast ms. pac man:

Seriously, that pac man was probably the best game I played the entire time, and I wish i were playing it now. If i could have anything, it would probably be a ms. pac man game for my house, so i could put it on that fast setting all the time.

After all of this, we walked around for a while and found an amusement park called Wonderland. I don’t know what it is about amusement parks on the boardwalk, but when I think of them, i picture old, run down haunted-looking amusement parks. This one was very much full of life. Still, i’d love to see one of those run down haunted amusement parks one day and solve mysteries with a talking dog. But Scrappy can’t come. Anyway, here’s a picture of Wonderland at night:

They also had a carousel, and seriously, the horses on those are scary looking. Especially the one at knoebels, but this one was pretty scary too. I always think about that Dane Cook skit where he talks about punching bees in the face and how they aren’t scary, but how it would be horrifying if giant flying killer horses were flying through the air kicking you in the face. I think they’d look something like this:

Anyway, that’s about it. We got some ice cream, sat on the boardwalk and talked for a little bit, and then we went home. Seriously, the next morning, i felt like I got run over by some sort of large vehicle. I had a really good time. I don’t usually get to go on vacation like this, so it was really exciting to finally get to go somewhere and…. well… i was going to say relax… but i didn’t do too much of that. I basically ended up running myself into the ground even more than i do when I was here. But it was fun, so it doesn’t matter. Anyway, I hope you guys like the pictures.

Until next time!

Hey everyone! I made Taiyaki this weekend! For those of you who don’t know what the HECK that is… well… it’s a japanese pancake-like pastry that is shaped like a fish. I see it a lot in various anime, and I have always wanted to have it! It always looks so good, but then again, doesn’t all cartoon food. Heck, I used to want those chili dogs that Sonic the Hedgehog was always eating in that silly cartoon, and I DEFINITELY don’t like chili dogs!

Whenever I tell people “I made the fish pancakes this weekend”, they think “Ew… pancakes made out of fish”… but that’s not what they are at all! They are really just a kind of pancake batter filled with whatever your heart desires (please don’t fill them with liver though. That’s just gross) … We filled ours with red bean paste (which was surprisingly good), and chocolate which was AMAZING!

What you have to do is mix the pancake batter and then heat the little grill thing. The grill is basically this cast iron mold that makes the fish shape. You don’t have very much time to do what you need to do with these little fish cakes. Once the grill is heated, you spoon some batter in the bottom part of the fish. Then you fill the head with your desired filling, be it chocolate, bean paste or even vanilla cream! After this, you have a small amount of time to cover your filling with more of the batter. If you aren’t fast, the bottom part of the fish might burn!

Here is a picture of the bean paste. It looks TOTALLY unappetizing here, but i swear it was good.

After you do the steps above, you pretty much just have to turn the grill over one of the burners on your stove, and pray that the batter doesn’t stick to the top. I wrecked a few pastries because i was too hasty in opening the taiyaki grill.

Here is a picture of our first one. It’s a little bit burned on the top, but it tasted very good! This was one of the ones we filled with red bean paste.

The skewer is there to lift the fish out of the grill. They stick no matter what you do, and you really have to pry them out of there!

Here is Larry, waiting patiently and hoping that none of the batter got stuck to the top of the grill!

We started these at around 3:00 on saturday, and by 5:00 we had a pretty decent batch. We haven’t quite gotten it to a science yet, and some of them do still burn. Just last night we lost almost an entire batch because there wasn’t enough milk in the recipe!

Here is a pic of the finished taiyaki. The brown stuff on most of them is the chocolate oozing out. On the other ones it’s just burned pieces, because they are REALLY hard to cook.

I am absolutely the messiest cook in the entire world, and while cooking these, i wouldn’t have been surprised if I got some batter on the ceiling. I get the same reaction from everyone who sees them though. They’re like “What the heck are THOSE things?!” …

I’m so happy that I was able to get a grill and taste what taiyaki tastes like. It’s actually quite good, and next time I make them, I think I’m going to try vanilla cream inside of them! One of my friends who just recently returned from japan told me that some taiyaki in japan has a weird green tea batter that is used for the pancakes! I would love to try that!

Man, why am I so afraid to fly! I wanna go to Japan!

Anyway, until next time!