Christmas with the Cardenas Clan

Despite the fact that Christmas has come and gone, I'm going to tell you a little about mine.  Enjoy.  Also, disclaimer, this is a little long so if you have things in the oven or on the stove, cat needing brushing, socks that need washing, go do that.  I think you'll probably find it more satisfying anyways.  What's better than warm socks?

That time of year has come and gone again where families around the world get together and celebrate the holiday of Christmas.  Trees are decorated, houses are lit (with lights, not fire), and gifts are exchanged and promptly returned and exchanged for something else since you overheard that Susan wouldn't be caught dead in that tacky pink dress.  But you thought it was a pretty dress you tell Susan.

"If anyone gave me that dress, I'd set it on fire in front of them and then I'd set that person on fire.  So who'd you get for Secret Santa?"

Damn you Susan...

Anyways, I digress.  One more thing that people usually gather around is the decoration of gingerbread houses.  My family goes along with this tradition and decorates a gingerbread house, but somewhere a few years ago this tradition went a little off track and we added some of that Cardenas Flair.  Now, I'm going to give you some examples of a traditional gingerbread house that I just pulled off a Google image search:




I think I heard some "Ahhhhh"s and some "Adorbs!" from a couple of you (you know who you are).  These are cute little houses  with fun decorations that just scream Christmas. Listen...CHRISTMAS!  See?  Normal house.

As I said before, the Cardenas gingerbread house took a turn for the different some years before.  I can't recall the exact reason it changed, possibly due to modeling after some Calvin and Hobbes ideas, or just because we thought it would be fun, but either way, it is what it is.

Now when I show friends and others our gingerbread house, they respond appropriately with the "Ahhhhh"s and the "That's a cute hou--!" Then they start to look closer.

Here I present to you the Cardenas Gingerbread House of Horror with commentary:

Here we come to the front of the house where we happen upon a happy pirate/evil Communist genius.  Communist due to the fact I watch too many old James Bond movies and he has a glowing green eye.  Anywho, he is urging on the gummy bears to attack those poor marshmallow people who never had a chance.  Then we added some holiday cheer by covering it in sugar sprinkles!

 Here we have a marshmallow man trying to escape from the carnage that is going on behind him.  Did he make it?  We'll never know

Off to the left, we can see a happy marsh--oh wait, he's decapitated, there's his body.

In the back, we have our oblivious giant gingerbread man who is just taking it in.  Poor guy.  On the tree is also an angry pink guy, what he's doing there, I'm not sure.  Maybe he's a bird.



Next is the back of our house, with a beautiful gingerbread man's head decorating the entryway.  The decorator told us it would add more retail value to the house.

As we round the corner we find an alien chasing down some marshmallow men, one who appears to be laughing.  I bet it's because he's the only one who got away.

Next is the roof.  Up here we find the house decorated with brightly colored candy balls which add some nice texture to the house.  Also, there's an alien with a leg in his mouth and a poor man who apparently fell to pieces.

Upon the chimney who do we find? Santa!  Just kidding, it's another alien.  Got you, didn't I?  He has just recently gotten that gingerbread man who's leg is in the previous aliens mouth.

Looking underneath the awning of our house we find one man who had some sort of accident that left him blown to pieces up here *points to head*.  I wonder where that ended up...

Oh there it is!  Splattered all over the concrete and shingles!  I do have to say that these deep ruby red does wonders for the color scheme of the house.

Moving on, we come to the train station next door.  Why anyone would live right next door to a train station is beyond me.  Maybe that's why the house was so cheap, if only they knew...

Our train has apparently just pulled straight out of hell and is being commandeered by an evil man with a mustache.  If you have a curly mustache and a black hat, you're automatically evil, deal with it.  A tribal head is placed perfectly in the center of the train creating a nice balance as it runs over a poor pink man who wasn't fast enough to step out of the way.

Or as I learned from drivers ed, he must have not looked before crossing train tracks.  Silent killers those trains out of hell are.

Here is a larger picture of our hell-sent train.  Leaning on it you can see a giant snowman who has so fashionably used a peppermint as a stylish belt. FABULOUS *hand flip*

Up on the top you can see the real conductor with a nice green hat.  I would be that happy too if I got to drive the party train from hell.

If we come in a littler closer, here we find the result of some experiment: The gummy bear centipede.  He enjoys long walks on the beach, sipping pinot grigio, cooking waffles at 5am, and discussing the benefits of drinking acai juice.  He's also enjoys devouring gummy bears and adding them to himself.  Hard to believe he's still single.

Being tugged along in the caboose of the train is a marshmallow dragon cow.  Often thought to be a ferocious creature, the dragon cow is docile and grows his own bonsai trees.  He puts hours of care into each one and has consecutively won the award of "Feng Shuist Tree on The Block" award for five years.

I'm just assuming that guy ate a lemon.  Probably his eternal punishment for having a marshmallow hand.

And last, but certainly not least, we have our interracial confused snowman.  I think this needs no other explanation than to look near his bottom.









So there you have it, a Cardenas family tradition.  Like I've said before, we all have our family traditions.  Mine just might be a bit stranger than yours, but that's what family is all about isn't it?  A place where a bunch of weirdies can get together and even if they judge one another, they're still connect by genetics.  If you're adopted, then I guess you're out of luck, you guys all get what I mean though.

A couple more things to add some holiday cheer to your day, Cardenas Quotes (not as many as last time, this is just from sheer memory):

"Get up or die!"

"Matt Damon is bald?! NOOO!"

"A homeless man thought I was David Archuletta so I sang for him so he'd go away."

"I just hate all people."

"Sooo, are we giving this away or can we just eat it?"

"Just say they're ethnic marshmallows."

"The children are restless. " (Christmas church 20 minutes in)

"That's an...interesting sweater."

That's all my mind is bringing up right now.  Family, if you can think of any, feel free to add your input.

Hopefully we can all feel some holiday cheer this season and get together with our families, whatever that family consists of (around 35, mine will be a cat and Ben and Jerry's ice cream)

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!

Hold On, I'll Call You Back

It's finals week.  My brain is full of knowledge that I am not going to use next semester and rarely in everyday life.  It's time for me to empty some random crap I have in the old noggin' so that I have room for what I need.

Alright, here we go...

There's a good friend of mine that I actually talk to on the phone (I know, you're thinking that I'm actually getting human interaction, yay me!).  Anyways, this is how our phone calls usually go:

*ring ring*

Me: Hello?

G: Oh my gosh, I have something I need to tell you!

Me: I can't talk right now, let me call you back, 5 minutes!

5 Hours Later...


*ring ring*

G: Let me call you back

Me: Ahhhhh...

The Next Day


*ring ring*

Me: Hello?

G: Hey you called me

Me: Did I? Huh, now I can't remember why...

G: Maybe I called you...

Me:  I do seem to remember calling you though

G:  Ope, gotta go, bye!

*sigh*

Occasionally, we do have a decent conversation, but this is what happens a majority of the time.  I'm on ly writing this because I need to focus on something else rather than how monopolies work or what I'm going to have to pay in accounting when a hurricane hits my plant.  It's been a long day...this makes me laugh and relax a bit.  One day I'll have a phone call where we only pick up and hang up once.  One day...

Also, to lessen the pain on my brain, I dance around to Robyn's Dancing On My Own.  It really helps, I promise.

Oh...Obviously

Well finals week is now descending upon us like the snow has from the sky, so all my classes are winding up final lessons and making sure everything is in order.

So, of course, I'm going to talk about class.  Biology, in fact.  Never done that before.

So we were finishing up the last chapter in our Biology book today when we get to a discussion about common ancestry.  My professor brought up the point that dolphins and humans have similar bone structure in their fins/hands and that way back when, we must have had some funky looking common ancestor.  Jokingly, my professor says, "I wonder what that thing must've looked like."

A student from the other side of the room, "It was the little mermaid!"

*laughter*

"You know, I always wondered how she got air to sing and why she didn't sound like muamuauaauaaa," my professor said.

*more laughter*

Then, with a face of cold stone and complete seriousness, the girl in the second row,

 "It's because she had gills."

Oh...obviously that's it, how could we have all been so foolish.  *awkward shiver*

Let's just say that the humor in the room at that moment threw itself off the top of the library.



Sidenote:  I'm usually a Scrooge about Christmas music, but apparently my black heart has melted and I can partake in the Christmas spirit.  I've recently been obsessed with the She & Him Holiday station on Pandora as it is all very classy Christmas music.  Mostly, it doesn't make me want to stab my ears.