Sandra Cookie's Christmas

Merry Christmas!

I had a great holiday and hope you did, too. One of my Christmas presents was a digital camera - yay! - so now I can more easily share recent photos! Here's the Cookie family minus Alicia on Christmas Eve:




Here is our cutesie country living room all decked out for Christmas (after Santa had come!):





Here is my failed attempt at Stuff on My Cat - Xmas Edition:

And here is some Christmas Artwork from a much younger Sandra Cookie:

This last one is a quilting that I sewed by hand! Can you believe it? I don't (and I'm pretty sure can't) do stuff like this anymore!

Haha!

Whew! I was feeling kinda down today (actually very down), so I decided I totally needed to cheer myself up. I thought I would share the things that made me laugh out loud:

1. Reading The Onion. They're featuring some of their best 2006 articles. I especially liked the pieces about consoling Pluto and defending marriage.

2. Rereading some of my favorite comics. Is it legal to repost these or am I breaking a copyright law? Anyway, most of these are from the washingtonpost.com comics section:









3. Some new (to me anyway) "yo mama" jokes (from A Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Joke Book):

- Yo mama's armpits stink so bad she made Right Guard turn left.
- Yo mama's so ugly the Red Cross talked her out of being an organ donor.
- Yo mama's so ugly all her neighbors chipped in for curtains.
- Yo mama's so fat she sat on a quarter and a booger popped out of George Washington's nose.
- Yo mama's so old she sat behind Jesus in the third grade.
- Yo mama's so slow her ancestors arrived on the June Flower.
- Yo mama's so dumb she only changed your diapers once a month because it said on the box "Good for up to 20 pounds!"
- Yo mama's so fat when she was walking down the street and I swerved to miss her, I ran out of gas.

Top 10 Cool Places Where Sandra Cookie has Tossed her Cookies

I love traveling, but something I've had to deal with most of my life is my weak stomach. I've barfed on sailboats, ferries, cars, buses, planes, and once on a train traveling at 5 mph. Fortunately I seem to have outgrown my motion sickness, food sensitivities, and other causes of stomach issues (for the most part). So now when I look back fondly on all the places I've been I realize hey, I've upchucked in a lot of neat places, including 5 countries and at least 4 national parks. Hurling is much more pleasant when you have pretty scenery to look at instead of porcelain. So, I thought it would be fun to compile a list - plus it would give me an excuse to prance out a few vacation photos! Thus, I now present...

The Top 10 Cool Places Where Sandra Cookie has Tossed her Cookies

10. Mt. Washington (on the Cog Railway)
My dad was the 500,000th person to enter the Mt. Washington visitor's center, and our family won a trip on the Cog Railway up the mountain. Luckily I had a plastic bag with me.

9. Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park
The combination of my father's driving style and winding Skyline Drive was never good.

8. Beautiful downtown Philly
The Philly marathon and half marathon have got to be the most scenic urban race courses. This is one of my better race photos - taken at the 2005 half marathon - but it was my worst race. I tossed my cookies twice after this moment:


7. sailing on Lake Erie
It was a gorgeous windy day - perfect for sailing - but my friends felt bad that I was sick. "Really," I assured them, "I'm having a great time! [dry heave]"

6. off the coast of Nova Scotia
On a ferry. It sucked.

5. Grand Canyon National Park
I tossed my cookies both ABOVE it (in one of those prop planes) and NEXT to it (on the North Rim). These pics suck, but that's because I took them with my cheap camera in 1994:



4. Yellowstone National Park
At Mammoth Hot Springs. This is also where I got the worst sunburn of my life.


3. a rainforest in Panama
This was definitely from something I ate. I also threw up in the "porn room" where we were staying - so called because the hot tub and shower were right there when you entered the room, there was no door to the toilet, and there were mirrors everywhere. I.e., if you were peeing you could be seen from anywhere in the room. ALL of the rooms at this quaint little bed&breakfast were like this!




2. Galapagos Islands
Both on our boat (many times) and on Isabella Island, not too far from the iguanas, who were totally sympathetic.



1. Iceland (right into a crevasse!)
I only barfed once, but I could've 100 times and the scenery would've totally been worth in.


Most amazingly I did NOT toss my cookies while traveling on this road in the Andes while riding BACKWARDS in this van. Go figure.