Friday Faves. Or, conversations in Starbucks and an inappropriate board game.

Hold on.
It’s Friday?
Seriously, kids, I just sat down at a cozy little table in Starbucks (after lapping the place at least 5 times giving the stink-eye to all the computer-less people sitting at the tables with outlets which I needed because the Things use the laptop 90% of the time in our house and never ever ever recharge it), opened up my blog roll and was inundated with ‘Friday Letters’ posts.  And I am not lying when I tell you I then opened up my handy iCal because I of course thought I was right and pretty much every blogger I follow was wrong.  Nope. Friday.
So I guess that means I have to write a post today.
Hold on….going to get a scone. I might be here longer than I originally planned….

*sidenote* There’s an older man (let’s say around 70) sitting at a table doing a Rubick’s Cube.  No lie. And he’s spinning those sides like nobody’s business.  Odd? A little. Fantastic? Um…yeah.

 A harried young mother juggling an infant in a baby carrier over her arm, a cup of scalding hot coffee  tipped at an alarming angle over the carrier and in the other hand, a cup of hot chocolate (which I know to be true because of the fact that she kept saying to her screaming toddler (in a very angry voice), “If you don’t come right now you are not getting this hot chocolate” and then when he planted his snow boots and little butt firmly down on the entrance mat pushed the door open with her butt which made the scalding hot coffee cup tilt even more dangerously close toward the baby and walks out saying (in an angrier voice), “Nope. No hot chocolate for you.”
I swear I’m trying not to judge but holy hell I’m totally judging. Plus, I bet 100 bucks the screaming boy got the hot chocolate. And the baby ends up in an ER).

And now I’m the (unfortunate) witness to a very awkward conversation between a high school couple on a morning coffee date (?) sitting right next to me who have nothing of real interest to say to each other as evidenced by the fact that they spent the first 6 minutes after the boy sat down talking about how tired he was and how he’s been staying up way too late over break and how he better start going to bed earlier which then moved on to this scintilating exchange.

Girl: Is your hand the same size as your cup?
Man/boy (slowly holding hand up to look at it and then even slowly-er wrapping giant bear-paw hand around the cup): I never thought my hands were that big. My fingers are small, though. I have calluses on my hands from football.
Both take several sips of coffee.  Crickets.  Crickets.  Crickets.  Girl snaps in front of boy’s face…he startles and acts like she woke him up.
Man/boy: I watched Terminator last night. It’s awesome. There’s Terminator 1. Terminator 2. Terminator 3.  Terminator 4.  Rambo’s a good movie.  It’s frickin’ awesome. I mean, it’s horrible but awesome. I just watched The Notebook. (girl dissolves in laughter) It didn’t suck.  How do you cry at that movie? They somehow die at the same time? It’s so cheesy I laughed the whole time (Dump him, sister).
Girl: STOP IT (pretends to slap him). It was sweet!!!!!! (insert giggle). What kind of movies do you like? (Uh, hello genius. Were you or were you not listening to his intelligent take on the Terminator?)
Man/boy: Rudolph is pretty cool.  It’s claymation.  That’s a word.
Both sip coffee and stare at the wall opposite the other one’s head.
Crickets. Crickets. Crickets.
Man/boy: I really like the color blue. (I could NOT make this shit up)

Oh man, I’d love to eavesdrop on this conversation forever but I would rather have a small sharp-toothed lizard eat off my eyelashes one at a time while ants run around in my ears.

Inserting earbuds.

So since it’s Friday, I’m guessing you came here for the weekly faves and your weekly gif.

If you’re wondering why I chose the image of a very young Courteney Cox dancing with Bruce Springsteen at the end of the “Dancing in the Dark” video (1984) it’s because 1) it’s awesome and 2) it’s a good segue into the faves list.

1.  Friends –
Oh, yes I did get the complete series on Blu-ray DVD from Husband for Christmas.
And oh, yes, I am starting at #1 and watching all 236 episodes in order. Again.

A few other favorite Christmas gifts ~ GROVER GLOVES!!, SkullCandy headphones, a phone receiver for my iphone +  a new case, and an AWESOME book of AWESOME (which I’m totally pissed that I did not have the idea to write).

2.  New board games – 
I loooove board games. The end.
Here’s a review of 2 new games the cats gave the family for Christmas.

Headbanz – Judging from the comments I’ve been reading on facebook and twitter this week, I’m thinking this game was a popular gift choice this year.
The premise is simple.
Stick a card with the name of a person, place or thing in your headband and ask as many questions as you can in 30 seconds to try to figure it out.  Like 20 questions.  Sounds easy, right?  WRONG.  Impossible, frustrating, and infuriating because everyone else is sitting there chuckling at your idiocy and you know they can all see the stupid word on your stupid headband and you’ve asked a billion questions (many of them over and over again) and they keep answering with a cheerful “COULD BE!” and you want to pop them in their stupid mouths and finally you give up and rip the card out of your headband and it says something stupid like RONALD MCDONALD and seriously, who in the hell would ever guess RONALD effin’ MCDONALD??
It’s a pretty fun game.
We got the adult version because the kids’ version had pictures on the cards and even though it says “ages 14 and up” and Thing 2 is only 11 I figured it was totally fine.
Until she got this card.

Wits & Wagers – Kind of like poker meets Trivial Pursuit.  Basically it’s a bunch of impossible to know trivia questions that you answer (or in my case, totally guess) on fun little white-boards and then everyone bets on whose guess is closest to the correct answer.  Very fun. Better for a group of adults, though.  Thing 2 didn’t care for it as much as Headbanz.  Not as many strip club questions, I guess.

3.  Les Miserables – 

This post is getting waay too long so I’m not going to say much about this movie except that it was brilliant. Gorgeous. Unbelievable. Sweeping. Impressive. Emotional. Amazing.
A definite new favorite.

And now….now it’s time to go start picking up all the Christmas crap odds&ends laying around my house and try to find a place to put it all away.  I’m nearing the point where it’s all becoming too much of a cluttered mess and I’m ready to do some big-time closet cleaning and organizing and get things cleaned up and put back in some kind of order.  OR tell myself I’ll do it next week and take a nap.
Yeah. That sounds better.