Results of the "Hot Chocolate Topping" Survey

In an interesting twist, this time I let people choose more than one answer. I tried to choose things that I myself enjoy while drinking a mug of hot chocolate, so if you have a favorite that didn't make the poll, let me know.

Mini Marshmallows	(16%)
Regular sized Marshmallows	(16%)
(Real) Whip Cream	(50%)
Reddi Whip	(33%)
Cinnamon	(33%)

I thought it was interesting that real whip cream won overall. And I believe (but you can go back and check and tell me if I am wrong) that this is the first poll where nothing has 0%, so that is exciting. To be honest, I am shocked - SHOCKED - that cinnamon came out ahead of either kind of marshmallows. Who doesn't like marshmallows? Of course, you are reading something written by the person that munches on marshmallows while cooking dinner or boiling water for tea, so perhaps I shouldn't be considered representative of the average population.

In other news, some pretty awesome things happened this evening. While volunteering with my (because they belong to me) old people , I got the quote of the day. We were all doing charades and trying to guess what the leader was doing. Then we played a modified version of "Jive" where one person had to do an action, and all the others had to do it, too. One sister got very confused when another was pretending to milk a cow. She looked at me and in her slow, drawn out voice asked me, "Now what is she doing?"I responded, "She's pretending to milk a cow! Now you pretend to milk the cow!" She looked at the other sister, looked and me and made a big O with her mouth. "OooOOh!" she exclaimed, "That's not how you milk a cow! The cow would be angry!"

Once home after volunteering, I started to go about my decompressing routine (take off my glasses, turn on the computer, pre-heat the oven, etc.). I received a phone call from an unknown number in the area. Usually I only get calls from telemarketers or people I know. And I will tell you I don't know many people around here. "Hello this is Ivy." I answered.* The person promptly hung up.

The phone rang again as I was about to flour the cutting board to roll out the dough. It was one of my students (We'll call him "Oliver")! After a pause from "Hello this is Ivy", I heard in a small voice, "Is this Ivy McDougalhopper?"

"Yes, it is. Who is this?"

"Can Oliver come to the basketball game?"

"Of course. Is this "Devon" (name changed)?"

"No, this is Oliver."

"Didn't your brother tell you you were invited?"

"Yes. But I mean the other Oliver. Can the other Oliver, my friend, come?"

"Yes, of course!"

"Ok. Good. Devon wants to talk to you."

And it only got more interesting from there as Devon proceeded to ask me what I was doing and what kind of food people eat at basketball games and did I know he likes Mountain Dew? I gave my phone number to a couple of families so they could contact me whenever they needed, and some families have it because I call them from my home phone since they won't answer when the caller ID says our school. But I guess I hadn't anticipated it falling into the hands of the students and having them call me on a Tuesday night!


And finally, for the last bit of awesomeness tonight, I made cheesey calzone-esque things for dinner. The one I ate tonight was delicious, and I am already looking forward to lunch tomorrow! YAY!


*Did you see this week's episode of "How I Met Your Mother"? People make fun of me for the way I answer the phone, but Marshall does it, too! Someone must know that we Minnesotans have some sort of polite phone answering patterns.

Midori Sours

Yesterday, Paula came to visit me. I made an extremely fancy dinner of spaghetti with zucchini, garlic bread, and strawberry shortcake. It took quite a while to eat because I did a lot of gabbing, plus I should not be allowed to eat spaghetti in public. Actually, I don’t know that I should be allowed to eat anything in public. I completely forgot, however, that I try not to eat spaghetti in front of people I don’t know very well. All in all, it could have gone worse, and Paula did not seem especially offended by my spaghetti eating.

Afterwards, we went out for a walk. Broadway proved to be rather disappointing, what with only closed stores. But then we saw a group of people down on a corner. Even though we figured they were probably all waiting for a bus, we ventured down.

And it was a thing! There were booths with people selling things, a farmers’ market, and live music. The live music was ok, but since country isn’t really my thing, and it definitely isn’t Paula’s, we didn’t stay long. It turns out, however, that this event may be occurring again on upcoming Thursday evenings. That should be fun. I can go out and people watch and listen to local live music.

After leaving that event, we went back the way we came and went into McGoon’s, where I discovered Midori Sours are not so bad. Paula and I watched the game and chatted. I ended up with two Midori Sours, and the second one had only about this much Sprite (imagine me showing you a very small amount with my hand). I did end up drinking that one faster than the first one, too, because Paula was drinking fancy shots including a Washington Apple and a Red Headed Slut (they could not make her the Pineapple Upside Down shot), and the Twins were losing 11-0 to the White Sox at the bottom of the 9th. There was no way we were coming back from that.

In the last few months, my alcohol intake has gone up dramatically. This may sound awful, but you have to take into account that before I was averaging one glass of wine or one Mike’s hard lemonade every 7 weeks or so. Since May, I have had several drinks a month. I still have never been drunk, but I don’t mind the occasional tipsiness so much anymore. I won’t lie, though. Even though that second margarita has become exponentially more delicious sounding, getting drunk still does not appeal to me.

Paula and I ended our evening by walking back to my place and watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother, and I informed Paula that I have dibs on the character of Marshall. We may have to fight it out later, because I also have dibs on Target. I’m thinking anywhere that lets me be in a committed relationship with a fictional television show character will let me simultaneously be in a committed relationship with a store, right?

All in all, it was a lovely evening. It was my first time entertaining someone in my very own apartment, and I think it went just fine. Too bad Paula is moving up to the Twin Cities soon.