Congratulations to Marija, the winner of the Natural House cleaning products giveaway! Thank you to everyone who entered -- it was great to see such a good turnout for this giveaway.
As an interesting aside, it looks like the most abhorred cleaning task is cleaning the bathroom: 19 commenters indicated this was their least favorite. Toilet-scrubbing was also unpopular. Personally, the only cleaning task I detest is unclogging the shower drain. Every time I see the giant Furby my husband pulls out of the drain, I want to hurl.
As you may know, I ♥ Chobani. I wrote about it here about a year ago and my feelings haven't changed one bit. It's the best yogurt out there, hands down. The mango flavor is out-of-this-world, and black cherry is a close runner-up. They recently introduced three new flavors: apple cinnamon, blood orange, and passion fruit. I think I will probably die from excitement when the grocery stores around here catch up with the modern world and finally start carrying the blood orange flavor.
Anyway, last month, I participated in a fun Chobani Twitter party and ended up winning a membership in the Chobani-of-the-Month club. Every month, I'm slated to receive a case of 12 yogurt cups. I just filled the fridge with my first shipment, which was delivered by a rather chagrined-looking UPS driver (he drops off packages here often enough that my husband teases me about having a brown-suited boyfriend on the side). Of course, it could be that the box was marked as weighing 29 lbs., or that I told him I would be getting one of these every month for the rest of the year. His reply to that was, "Congratulations, I guess." (that's not a picture of our driver; I just wanted something corny to put here. also, I found out it's not a good idea to Google "sexy UPS guy")
Now, our fridge contains 12 apple cinnamon Chobani yogurt cups. I can't wait to try this flavor! I had a mango Chobani for breakfast, and while I'm not opposed to eating multiple yogurts in a day, I... oh, what the heck, maybe I'll have one for lunch. They look so darned good sitting there, with their green and white lids staring back at me...
UPDATE: I ate a cup of this for lunch and have to say it's one of my new favorite flavors. It tastes like apple pie a la mode, without all the calories!
I am Internationally Delighted to announce the winners of my giveaway: in first place, winning three coupons, is Kristen; in second place, winning two coupons, is Chandra. Winners have been notified and have 48 hours to respond, lest their prize be awarded to someone else.
Since there were only ten entries, I wrote everyone's name on a little slip of paper and tossed them into my Twins baseball cap:
I then had my husband draw two names:
I also took a picture of him drawing the names, but he didn't want his disembodied, ghostly hand posted on the internet, so you'll just have to imagine a man's hand in a hat.
The lovely Julie from the eponymous The Daily Julie informed me yesterday that I won her Amrita Singh giveaway! Soon to be in my possession is the Ray Cuff: Hopefully, this looks as nice in person as it does online. I won something else from Amrita Singh a while back and it was just god awful (*cough*Chinolli necklace*cough*). Sorry, Amrita, but not everything you design looks good on a "skinny white girl" (as my brother is fond of calling me).
Yesterday, my husband got his renewed driver's license in the mail. He opened the envelope and shied away from me when I asked to see his picture. I asked, "What's wrong? Is everything ok?" He turned to me and exclaimed, "I LOOK LIKE CHARLIE SHEEN!" I looked at his card and holy crap, he was right. He looks like Charlie Sheen. I wish I could post the picture here, but that's just wouldn't be kosher. So, I'll post a picture of Charlie Sheen and let you draw your own conclusions.
Heck, we've got booze in the fridge, a half-smoked cigar on the desk, and more pairs of women's underwear than you can shake a stick at. It does sound like we're living in Charlie Sheen's house.
All joking aside, I have some conflicting feelings about Sheen. On one hand, I feel sorry for him: everyone on Earth except the man himself can see that he's suffering from some kind of manic delusion that he's a "Vatican assassin warlock" and a "total bitchin' rockstar from Mars" with "Adonis DNA". You can just see him dissolving in front of the whole world. After all this went down, it just makes "Two and a Half Men" read like a documentary of Sheen's life. For all any of us knows, he may have had mental problems his entire life. After all, we only know what the media tell us; we're not privy to his private life, regardless of how many of his coke-fueled sex binges are reported in the news.
On the other hand.... he brought a lot of this on himself. He's a drug addict. He's a sex addict. No one forced him to start "using", a term Sheen decries for its association with the "cult" of Alcoholics Anonymous, and no one forced him to start poking everything with breasts and a pulse. He's irreversibly altered his brain chemistry with the "7 gram rocks [of crack cocaine]" and countless other substances he's smoked, snorted, injected, eaten, and otherwise introduced into his body. He's a hedonist of the highest order.
Maybe the manic persona we're seeing in the myriad interviews is a clean Sheen, the man at his baseline. Maybe he does drugs to keep his "tiger blood" from boiling, or to quiet the Vatican assassin voices in his head. Personally, I think Sheen has always had something wrong with him -- after all, some of the symptoms of (hypo)mania are hypersexuality or engaging in risky sexual behavior, impulsiveness, use of recreational drugs, and squandering of money. He could have been hypomanic his entire life. Whatever the case, I hope Charlie Sheen gets the help he needs.
In the past week, I've won 1,994 lbs. shy of a ton of candy. Since my husband is not a big fan of anything sweet, it looks like I'm going to have to suffer through it myself. And my "suffer through it", I mean "eat my way out of this situation from the bottom up".
In December, I won a convection oven from Martha Stewart Living. What? I like Martha Stewart. We don't have room for a convection oven in this apartment, and had I known that's what the prize was, I wouldn't have entered (in my defense, I thought I was entering to win a Christmas tree). However, I still filled out the prize claim verification affidavit thingie and mailed it back to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, since I imagine we'll have more space when we eventually find a house. A few days after I sent the form, I received an e-mail that said, "Your verification form has been approved and you should expect to receive delivery in approximately six to eight weeks."
Over a month later, I received an e-mail from someone else at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. She said the person with whom I had been corresponding initially was "unfortunately ... no longer with the company." Her e-mail went on to say, "After going through [her] emails and mail files we did not find your Verification form?" I can just hear that whiny voice in my head, the voice the cutesy talking heads on CNN Headline News use so they can tell you bad news without you thinking it's bad news. The voice that takes declarative statements and turns them into questions because it makes them seem cute, mild, and inoffensive: "A bunch of people in Russia died today? But it's ok because I said it like a question?" Of course, I could just be taking this the wrong way because I'm irritated by this situation. To top things off, though, she even forwarded the original e-mail that said "your form has been approved"!
So, I had to fire back. I replied, "I'm curious as to why you claim to be unable to find my verification form, since you even forwarded me the e-mail from [her recently-departed predecessor] stating '[y]our verification form has been approved and you should expect to receive delivery in approximately six to eight weeks.' If it was approved, surely it had been received and processed." I concluded the message by saying I would send them a new form if necessary.
When she replied, I her tone had changed from the ebullient "OMG congrats on winning!!" to a more authoritative, "Yes. Send us a new form." Sigh. We'll probably have just closed on a house by the time the oven shows up, given all this hooey. Well, not really.
For anyone not in the know, Chobani is just about the best yogurt out there. I started eating it because it doesn't have high fructose clown syrup, aspartame, sucralose, or any other less-than-savory ingredients. It also has a ton of protein, as it is a Greek yogurt. According to Chobani's website, it takes 3 pounds of milk to make one pound of their yogurt, so it's proportionally creamier, richer, and protein-ier.
If you're a vegetable-arian, Chobani yogurt contains no animal-based thickeners. Yeah, that's right, if you've been eating Yoplait or FiberOne or whatever other fruity yogurts are out there, you're probably eating animal byproducts. Chobani is also low in lactose, so it won't make you poop uncontrollably, either. Hey, I'm just telling it how it is.
In addition to plain nonfat and 2% varieties, Chobani also offers
Black Cherry
Lemon
Blueberry
Honey
Raspberry
Peach
Pomegranate
Strawberrry
Vanilla
Mango
Pineapple
Strawberry Banana
Very Berry
and
Honey-nana
If, like me, you live in Minnesota, chances are poor that you'll be able to find more than about 9 of these flavors. It looks like there is a paucity of Lemon, Honey, Mango, Very Berry, and Honey-nana around here. That gives me a sad, since I love lemon-flavored yogurt. And honey-flavored yogurt. And mango-flavored yogurt.
And, if you are hesitant about shelling out $1.40 for a cup of yogurt, Chobani offers a coupon for you to print.
Anyway, I want to extend a big "THANK YOU!" to Cake Duchess and Chobani for giving me the opportunity to gorge myself on delicious yogurts! Looks like someone won't be having a calcium and Vitamin D deficiency again!
As you may know, I ♥ Chobani. I wrote about it 
