Ohio, I hardly knew thee.


After my final day of work, some of the girls and I went out for drinks and marginally Mexican food. There's Kelli, our cleaning lady. She works 8:00 to 2:00 four days a week, after which she goes to her real cleaning job, wiping down one of Dayton's many strip clubs. Then there's me, looking a bit round in the face. Too many tortilla chips, perhaps. Next is Karen, to whom I never know how to refer aside from "the other woman who does my job." Then Allison, who moved all the way down from Rhode Island to accept their goldsmith position. I've never been to Rhode Island, but I can't imagine that any state north of the Mason-Dixon Line is worth relocation to Ohio. And finally, there's Lupita, our repair manager and one of five Hispanic people currently living in Dayton.


Ok, now multiply these by five.




I agreed to pizza as our Last Ohio Meal on the condition that we not gorge ourselves and instead get a smaller size than usual. Everything was going swimmingly until Ben confused the pizza guy with his "pie cut" instructions. As we got into the car with our mis-sliced squares, the pizza guy ran out after us and handed us our corrected re-cook. So much for ordering the smaller pizza.


Me, with pizza and floorfuton.


And! Bonus pictures! From the new apartment!

NO ROOM.


I can't for the life of me figure how to force the flash on my camera, so in lieu of decent lighting, I offer you the addition of this hand-drawn pipe, because I thought that Ben resembled Popeye.

The last time I was morbidly ill due to alcohol was a few summers ago at Ben's cousin's house. We went out to dinner with Byron, his ex-wife, and their two-year-old, Oscar (incidentally, I highly disapprove of Oscar as a baby name, though the fact that this particular Oscar is at least one quarter Brazilian makes it acceptable by a small margin), where we had pizza and two bottles of wine, which only three of us actually drank. Then we retreated Byron's house where he rooted around in the pantry until he unearthed some bottles of his father's infamous rotgut wine of choice, Charles Shaw. Charlie Shaw's, or Two Buck Chuck, tastes like prison liquor, made from month-old fruit scraps and brewed in a garbage bag. It is acceptable only when one is already moderately full of alcohol. The true tragedy of this story is that Ben and his cousin switched to Coors Light and failed to offer me any, leaving me with all the wine. The consequences were unpleasant.

When Karen, my work buddy, found out I was leaving, she insisted on bestowing on me some sort of farewell gift.

YUM YUM.


Also: I cut myself bangs.

Santa and Rosebud Restaurants already gave me the greatest gift of all this year, the power to leave this stinkhole known as Ohio, but that doesn't mean that you guys don't have to get me anything. 'Cause I got you stuff.


One night Ben and I were sitting around watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and he said, "You know what I've never experienced before?" I looked at him and asked, "What's that?" "Type 2 diabetes." So we baked enough sugar cookies for a medium sized gathering, which we then consumed entirely on our own.


This is a stick of butter, an entire box of powdered sugar, and some food coloring. If you were to consume everything in those four small tupperware containers, you would die.


Camera angle definitely not helping the manhands.




Three-year-old motor skills.


I said we should open the B&B Bakery to showcase our splendid decorating skills. I'm still checking around to see if operating a bakery out of the trunk of your car is legal, but if it is, come by in 2009 for 3/$2 cookies!

Half of our pond is frozen over and no one has come to rescue Mr. Swan. He can't fly, guys. He's gonna freeze to death and die. And then we might as well find out what deep-fried swan tastes like.


Now for some gratuitous food pictures. Ben's revered blueberry cheesecake, unprepped.


And fully garnished.


A whole lot of Swiss chard...


..when cooked down...


...makes a tiny pile of mush. (Also, it doesn't smell fabulous.)


Pumpkin soup with buttery cinnamon croutons. Main ingredient: Pumpkin Heavy cream.


Steak with fingerling potatoes, Swiss chard death casserole, and a puddle of egg yolks and butter. I forgot to take a picture before I started eating so, oops, sloppy food photography.


Casserole. Now, I don't know a whole lot about cooking, but I think you should always be wary of recipes that say "kills six to eight people."


Finale to Creamy Thanksgiving.

My apologies for the lack of recent photos. It's difficult to get a decent shot of the beautiful Ohio scenery when you can't escape the shadows of 25,000 McCain/Palin lawn signs.

Here's a nice picture of Ben and me at the company holiday party, taking a malicious-gossip break.


Ben's mom has been helping him out financially for the last month or so, giving him money for things like rent, loan payments, and LEGOS. Yeah, I think it's offensive to retarded children when he makes that face, too.




(Not as cool as the Island of Takalupia.)

After the power went out for fifteen hours and ruined everything in the freezer, I realized that the way to keep your over-eating under control is to simply not have any food. I just bought those popsicles. :( Anyway, earlier in the week there were muffins. Only eighteen, thank the Good Lord above us.






Here's the hideous bright orange shirt I had to wear that afternoon for Day One of Moving. Traffic cone couture.


And here's a bonus shot of the old store being eaten, as taken by my disappointingly shitty camera phone.

Doing my best slouchy, awkward Top Model pose to show off my new winter coat. You know, should anyone get the itch to knit me a long, cuddly black/black-and-white(?) scarf. (As always, click to enlarge to see the finer details.)

Ben started pointing and giggling at the people in costumes and I was like, "Look, you forfeit all right to laugh at people by being here yourself."




Seven out of ten males cannot smile properly for pictures.


This glass blowing guy looked a little like Orlando Bloom if Orlando Bloom had disappeared off the face of the earth for a few years and maybe only bathed every fourth day. Come to think of it, has anyone see or heard from old Orlando lately?


Crystal glass musician.


Ben tearing into the Italian sausage that would haunt him the rest of the night.


Check out these chicken fingers and fries, ok? Have you ever seen such a spectacular display of grease? It's like they stuck a ladle into the deep frier and dumped the contents, oil and all, into the paper basket.


I left my gross, ratty hair down so that I could have it done in a fancy-schmancy braid, but the wait at the braiding booth was, no joke, two hours long. NO THANKS.


Instead I bought a gaudy ring. It's still less hideous that 80% of the stuff at work, plus it didn't require any financing.

This is downtown Dayton. As suspected, there's not much there.




Except this nice park.










Donny Osmond was hanging out by this statue too, but he declined to be photographed.