Humor

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Friday Dance Party – Who’s That Girl With Guy Sebastian And Eve

This is another edition of Friday Dance Party on Acorns On Glen.  It’s the time where we give thanks for another week of living.  We give thanks for making it through and for being able to celebrate this fact.  How do we celebrate another week of living?  We dance.  So take a moment and be proud of the fact that you’re here and you’ve made it to another Friday.  Not only you, but your family and friends as well.  So, to that end, are you alive this Friday?  Have you given thanks for this?

Good, now let’s dance.

This has certainly been the week to be glad to be alive and to have made it through another week of living!  On Saturday evening and through a long portion of Sunday, all of us here on Glen Road were part of Hurricane Irene’s passing through Connecticut.  It was a very frightening experience to say the least.  We first heard of Irene on the beaches of Kiawah Island down in South Carolina.  We were happy to fly back and be in our home during the storm in case anything happened to our house, but we were a little unprepared for the hard journey back to a normal life post the hurricane and not sure we are fully back to normal even as of today.  First off, in preparation for the storm, there were extremely long lines at the gas stations in town with cars getting filled up and containers being filled for generator use.  This resulted in the town being sold out of most gas by Saturday afternoon.  Supermarkets were jam-packed and were sold out of many essential items you would want before a major storm struck your town.  Primarily that was canned goods, bread, milk, batteries and bottled water.  We were lucky to eventually get each of the items before Irene hit.  Before the storm hit, we were in pretty good shape in terms of preparedness.  What we were not ready for was the storm itself, which was very scary in terms of high winds, many downed trees and then the eventual loss of electricity.  No electricity means no lights, no water, no air conditioning, no internet, no computer, no TV and no flushing…pretty much nothing.  Even today, a large majority of our town still remains without power.  Crews are working to remove the large number of fallen trees that snapped power lines.  Once the trees are gone, crews can then begin to repair the downed lines and restore power.  We have heard that some people are being told that they will not get power restored until September 8!  Many people you talk to are asking about who do they call…..who do they call for updates on restoration, who do they call for help, who do they call to express their unhappiness.  People are getting cranky and fed up and for good reason.  All of these “who” questions reminded me of this week’s song, “Who’s That Girl” by Guy Sebastian, featuring Eve.  Guy Sebastian was Australia’s first Australian Idol winner when the show premiered down under in 2003.  He has since gone on to release six or so albums and this song is one of his first U.S. hits.  Just like in our town in Connecticut, Guy is asking a question starting with “who”.  To all of the survivors of Hurricane Irene, I hope our dance party finds you safe and sound.  We’ve been through a lot this week, but we are still alive and kicking.  Hang in there and celebrate your life this week by dancing.  You are here and deserve to cut loose.  How have you been doing since Hurricane Irene hit your community?

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Charleston Introduces Us To The Firefly Half and Half

This is our new drink of the Summer discovered on vacation in Charleston, South Carolina.  It is a Firefly Half and Half and it is the second installment of our Charleston, South Carolina vacation review.  It’s discovery must have been fate.  It all started when my other adult vacationing friends ordered up some late-morning Bloody Marys.  Being someone who does not like hard alcohol or tomato juice, the idea of drinking a Bloody Mary was just not going to happen.  So I asked the bartender at the restaurant where we were eating to suggest something for me to sip on and she came up with the Firefly Half and Half.  It contains some Southern classics–Sweet Tea (infused with vodka), lemonade, a lemon slice and some ice.  As you can see by this picture, my Firefly Half and Half was much better than the Bloody Mary as mine is half gone and the other drink only just sipped.

Our discovery starts with some Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka.  It was first created in a small still on Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina, before becoming the world’s first hand-crafted sweet tea flavored vodka.  Keeping true to its Southern roots, Firefly is distilled four times, infused with tea grown on a plantation five miles from the distillery and blended with real Louisiana sugar cane.  It tastes just like real sweet tea, but with an even sweeter kick.  It is available nationally, but finding something made close to Charleston just seemed a little more special than say finding it in Iowa or Connecticut.

For those of you who want to cut down on the sugar cane, Firefly also makes it in a skinny version using the natural sweetner stevia.  It’s the same great taste, but less sugar.  The choice is up to you.

You really can’t mess up this recipe for the perfect Half and Half.  Here it is:

Firefly Half and Half

  • 3 oz. Firefly Sweet Tea Flavored Vodka
  • 3 oz. Lemonade
  • One Lemon Twist
  • Mix over ice in a highball glass

You will also hear this drink called an Arnold Palmer or a John Daly.

An Arnold Palmer is a beverage consisting of half iced tea and half lemonade named for pro-golfer Arnold Palmer.   It is often called a Half and Half.  A John Daly is an alcoholic mixed drink, named after pro-golfer John Daly.  It is simply an Arnold Palmer with vodka.  A John Daly could also be made by combining vodka with lemonade and sweet tea.  Anyway you order it, as a Half and Half, as an Arnold Palmer or as a John Daly, just add Firefly to the beginning and a bartender seems to know what you are talking about….at least in South Carolina anyway.  However, no one that I talk to seems to know why this alcoholic beverage and its non-alcoholic cousin are named after golfers.  I can imagine the correlation, but I will wait to write about it until I can find facts and not just my evil conjecture.

By the end of our vacation, the adults had made a batch to take to the beach on a daily basis.  Name something better than vodka iced sweet tea to drink on a hot beach!  I also must give credit for the lead-in photo of my Firefly Half and Half to my 16-year-old traveling companion.  Since I was on my second (o.k., maybe third, but I was on vacation) drink, I was a little shaky with the camera and so my friend stepped up to the plate with a great shot.  Give the Firefly Sweet Tea vodka a try.  It is actually the perfect drink for your Labor Day festivities and a farewell to Summer…but I’m sure it will be great in Winter too.  Is there such a thing as an out-of-season cocktail?  Have you ever sipped on any of the Firefly vodka products?

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Our Charleston, South Carolina Vacation Review Begins!

This is a big welcome to Acorns On Glen’s “Charleston, South Carolina Vacation Review” festivities!  Yes, we are back from our vacation to Charleston and the beach on Kiawa Island and we are ready to show you some of the highlights of our trip.  First off, we were in South Carolina when news of Hurricane Irene started.  We did fly back to Connecticut before the hurricane hit land and we were impacted on Glen Road when it hit Connecticut on Saturday evening.  Most of our town is still without electricity as of today, but everyone we know is safe and sound (just a little cranky at this point).  To all of you that were impacted by this storm, we hope that you and your families are doing well.

I will start off with a confession.  I wasn’t expecting much of this vacation.  I had done some research on Charleston and learned that during August, Charleston is:

  1. Hot
  2. Really hot
  3. Super humid
  4. All of the above

Not sure that this is really a good match with a person who:

  1. Is experiencing male menopause, including hot flashes
  2. Doesn’t really enjoy the beach
  3. Has not had a tan since the ’80s
  4. Has thick, coarse hair that does not do well in humidity
  5. All of the above

Let me tell you this.  I have learned in my life that when expectations are low, you usually have one of the best times of your life.  An example, when Les Miserables was a hot play on Broadway, I bought tickets.  I was so excited to see this show.  All of my friends that knew I was going called me and told me that I was in for a treat.  It would be the best show I ever saw in my life.  My expectations were super high.  I went to the show and, guess what, I left at intermission.  I mean, come on, how long can that revolution go on?  Shoot your guns and die.  Get it over already!

It’s the same with our trip to Charleston.  One of my best friends (love her) and her husband (who I’m crazy about as well) take their kids (love them too; an all around super-duper family) down to Charleston and then a drive over to Kiawah Island (about 30 miles east of Charleston) for some beach time.  She knew that we had not had any vacation this year and knew that we didn’t have any plans and so she graciously offered for us to travel down to SC and be a part of their vacation.  She also knew that our saying “yes” was dicey because of the points listed above.  After a lot of persuasion from my dear friend, we said yes.  I set expectations low in my mind….thinking it was better to get away to a place that you probably wouldn’t like versus not going away at all.  In my experience, low expectations usually produce the best times of your life and this was the case here.  What a week of great fun!  To anyone that is ever on the fence about going to Charleston, I have to tell you to just pack your bags and get down there.  From history, architecture, GREAT food, nice people and a great opportunity to relax, Charleston has it all.

For me, Charleston will always be remembered for great food.  Because the landscape is marshy and swampy, they refer to their cooking as low country.  The food that they produce is down home, comfort food and I believe that it is similar to the food I grew up with in Iowa, where the cooks in Charleston work very hard to take the ingredients that they have and work to develop the best taste that they can with the simple ingredients that are present.  So to give you an example of this, I thought I would start our vacation review festivities with a recipe for Pimento Cheese.  To make this Southern classic, I turned to Matt Lee and Ted Lee, two brothers that have brought Southern cooking to life with their cookbooks.  I turned to their first cookbook, ‘The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook’, to help me make my Pimento Cheese.  This cookbook by the Lee Brothers is fantastic for a would-be Southerner like me.  It won the James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year Award for Food of the Americas in 2007 and is as fun to read the stories as it is to read the great Southern recipes.  It is my newest addition to my vast cookbook collection.  Halfway through my visit to Charleston, I saw it in a shop window and looked it up on Amazon.com that night and knew that my new-found lust for Charleston made this a must for my collection.  So let’s have the Lee Brothers take it over and let’s make this Southern classic, Pimento Cheese.

The Lee Brothers say that there was a time when you could eat pimento cheese sandwiches at lunch counters throughout the South.  Today, you are more likely to find this orange spread of sharp cheddar and mild pepper served as a dip, on crackers, in someone’s home during cocktail hour.  That’s how we enjoyed our dish of Pimento Cheese over the weekend.

Traditional recipes for Pimento Cheese call for canned pimentos, but this recipe broils a fresh red bell pepper, removes the blackened skin and then cuts the pepper into small dice before mixing it with the cheeses.  The Lee Brothers do admit that some of their Charleston friends roll their eyes that the recipe uses red pepper versus pimentos, but they believe it is a simple route to a more vibrant and sophisticated (and less chemical tasting) pepper flavor.  If you are a die-hard pimento lover, you can feel free to replace the pepper with 3 1/2 ounces of pimentos, but make sure that you dice them finely so that they get distributed throughout the spread.

Ingredients:

For the spreadable Pimento Cheese:

  • 1 red bell pepper
  • 8 ounces finely grated extra-sharp cheddar cheese
  • 2 ounces softened cream cheese, cut into pieces
  • 3 tablespoons mayonnaise (I made the Lee Brothers homemade Lemony Mayonnaise and used it in the recipe….see the recipe below)
  • 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

Directions:

Turn on the broiler.  Place the pepper on its side on a dry cookie sheet and slide it under the broiler until the skin blackens on the side facing up.  With tongs, turn the pepper so that an unblackened side faces up and repeat until the skin is blackened on all sides.  Place the pepper in a small bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and let it steam for 5 minutes as it cools down.  Uncover the bowl.  When the pepper is cool enough to handle, transfer it to a cutting board, reserving any liquid in the bowl.  Remove the blackened skin with your fingers and discard.  Using a paring knife, cut the pepper in half, remove and discard the stem and the seeds and chop the pepper into 1/4-inch dice.  You should have about a 1/2 cup.

After chopping, you have to admit that these peppers do a pretty good job impersonating pimentos.  The choice is yours, but I have to think the Lee Brothers know how to make some good Pimento Cheese.  You be the judge and do what you need to do.

Place the grated cheddar in a medium bowl and add the cream cheese pieces, the mayonnaise (homemade version coming up), the diced red pepper and its liquid and the red pepper flakes, distributing them evenly over the cheese.  With a rubber spatula, blend the ingredients together until the spread is thoroughly mixed, about 3 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.  Note that Pimento Cheese keeps in the refrigerator for 1 week.

Are you adventurous?  Here is the homemade Lemony Mayonnaise that I used in my Pimento Cheese recipe.  This takes less than 5 minutes to make.  Give it a try.

For the Lemony Mayonnaise:

Ingredients:

  • 2 large egg yolks
  • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 1 lemon)
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon vinegar (white, white wine, champagne, red wine or sherry…I used red wine)
  • 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper

Directions:

In a small bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the lemon juice.  Add the oils in a thin stream, whisking constantly to emulsify.  When the mayonnaise is thick and consistent, add the vinegar, salt and pepper and whisk vigorously to incorporate.  Store in the refrigerator up to 2 days.

This is my new favorite dinner party appetizer dip.  If you are really trying to get back to your Southern roots, spread this Pimento Cheese on some white sandwich bread and enjoy a sandwich for lunch.  Thanks so much to the Lee Brothers for this delicious recipe and please buy their great cookbook.  This is just the start of our Charleston, SC vacation review.  Come back to enjoy more of this jewel of a city.  We have more stories….from hats to our hotel to restaurant fun.  Come back and visit us, y’all.  Have you ever visited Charleston, SC and what did you think?

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Friday Dance Party – Getting Faster With Matt Nathanson

This is another edition of Friday Dance Party on Acorns On Glen. It’s the time where we give thanks for making it through another week and for being alive and present here on Earth. How do we celebrate another week of living? We dance. So, are you alive this Friday? Are you and your family safe and sound? Take a few seconds now to be in the moment and realize what a great life you truly have. Did you give thanks for that?

Good, now let’s dance.

So you all know that we are on vacation. Taking a little time off to recharge physically and mentally. Of course we didn’t forget to give thanks for another week, so while posts are slim during our vacation time, our Friday ritual with all of you remains. For the next few days, we will be enjoying the city of Charleston and then off to the ocean and the beach on the South Carolina shore. Sitting on the beach or by the pool allows you to spend some quality time with a great book (and we have a few that we are dying to read) and to listen to all the great music out there that is new. This is how we ran across this week’s song, ‘Faster’ by Matt Nathanson. It was a pleasant little surprise after a friend recommended that we would like this new song. Who doesn’t like a nice little upbeat love song? So this week, while we are giving thanks for living through another week, maybe we should also give that someone special in our life a little hug of appreciation for making our hearts beat a little faster. A partner, a child, a sister or brother, a dog….there are so many choices. Go ahead and give that special loved one a little squeeze….and remember, you’ve survived another week. It’s time to celebrate! Turn up those speakers and dance. Who are you going to give that little hug to this week…don’t be shy?

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Friday Dance Party – Enjoying The Lazy Song With Bruno Mars

This is another edition of Friday Dance Party on Acorns On Glen.  It’s the time where we give thanks for making it through another week and for being alive and present here on Earth.  How do we celebrate another week of living?  We dance.  So, are you alive this Friday?  Are you and your family safe and sound?  Take a few seconds now to be in the moment and realize what a great life you truly have.  Did you give thanks for that?

Good, now let’s dance.

This week’s song is what I’m thinking of doing on Saturday of this weekend…nothing at all.  It’s been a really rough week at work as my company had one of its official ‘closing of the books’.  This is the time when we close all of our systems and take a look at the numbers.  This means we see either how much we made or didn’t make to our profit forecast.  Given the rough economic times, you can understand the pressure people are under to ensure the company stays profitable.  So besides doing the work, there are lots of questions and concerns that every department raises that you need to answer.  Bottom line, when you are finally done with the week-long close process, you have devoted some late nights and have been under some wild pressure.  So what’s the best way to get back on track?  Chill out on one day over the weekend.  So, just like ‘The Lazy Song’ by Bruno Mars, Saturday is the day where I’m not doing anything….nothing at all.  I’m just re-charging, re-fueling and re-laxing.  Sounds great, huh?  So let’s get back to Friday.  You’ve made it through another week and deserve to celebrate this fact.  Turn up your speakers and dance.  Get some rest this weekend too.  What are your plans for this weekend?

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – A Real Barn Burner

This is a picture of a barn in our neighborhood taken when the temperature was 94 degrees.  A real barn burner, get it?  OK, so some bad Summer humor.  This was another little “find” that we ran across on one of our evening walks over the weekend.  Next time we will have to see what is inside.  Probably equipment of some sort, but let’s hope for something more exotic like a cow or a pig.  Who knows?  How are you coping with the heat this Summer?

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Crafting and Orange Marmalade

This is a jar of my newly labeled orange marmalade.  After making my first-ever batch of orange marmalade, I decided that the finished jars looked a little plain.  I decided that they needed labels.  For many people, making and affixing labels to their canned goods would be a simple and rather artistic chore.  Not me, because this falls in the area of crafts and I am not very good at crafts.  I have tried.

There was one year when I made a real cranberry wreath from a ‘Martha Stewart Living’ magazine article I had read.  It jumped out at me from the pages of the magazine.  I had to have this bright red beauty on my front door for the holidays.  For days, I took real cranberries, inserted toothpicks into each one and then pushed the cranberry spikes into a foam wreath form that I had bought and spray painted red.  It looked pretty, but Martha did not tell me that for those of us who lived in California at the time, that real cranberries would quickly rot in the high temperatures that Californian’s enjoy at Christmas.  Within a week, my wreath had a bad smell and the squishy and wrinkled cranberries were falling off their toothpicks onto my front porch floor.  As well, pushing sharp-edged toothpicks into hundreds of cranberries messed my fingers up for a good week or two.  It was painful every time I jammed my two sensitive fingers into my computer keyboard after being mini-stabbed by toothpicks a hundred times or so.

Then there are the times I decide to make hand-made Christmas cards to impress my friends and family (and make them green with envy).  The last time this urge hit me was when a friend of mine convinced me to buy some stamps, card stock and ink from her new ‘Stamping Up’ business.  I bought like $700 of stuff that guaranteed me beautiful hand-made gems.  My stamps were three penguins with Santa hats and scarves on and each one held a candy cane and a string of Christmas lights.  Each one was stamped in black on white card stock and special markers had been purchased to color those penguins in with various colors.  Sounds easy, right?  Not for me.  After I realized that the date to mail the cards was two days away and I was only half done with the number of cards I needed to send, there were two all-nighters needed to finish.  There is nothing worse than coloring your festive penguins at 4 AM in the morning.  This was the last time I sent cards out.  Too much work!

Being wiser with age, I found a website that produces gorgeous writing papers and envelopes called Felix Doolittle.  This company makes canning labels available in the Summer months.  Perfect for me!  Even better, they had a label with oranges on it and I had them add ‘Acorns On Glen’ across the top.  My blog’s first product although they are not for sale so probably not a product at all.  The best part of getting the labels?  I decided that it made me crafty for the first time in my life without having a breakdown or a mess on my hands.  I like this new way of crafting.  I might have to keep it up.  What things have you accomplished in the crafts department?

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – Brook, You Just Keep Babbling

This is our neighborhood babbling brook.  Glen Road has taken on a strict diet and exercise plan starting last Monday.  Healthy eating and several walks per week is the charge.  If you notice our food posts, most are desserts, so it is time to work a few of those calories off.  Most nights this week, we put on our sneakers and put JoJo on a leash and we take off for a 45 minute walk.  Yes, even JoJo has indulged a little too much this Summer and needs to lose a few pounds as well.  What has been great about these outdoor walks versus walking on a treadmill inside of a gym is that you can really take notice of all the cool things nature has to offer.  Like this little brook.  We’ve driven over the small bridge that is on top of it for six years, but we have never really stopped and looked at the water that flows through it.  We’ve never listened to the babbling water rushing around rocks and tree trunks.  We’ve never really taken a look at all of the brook’s bends and turns.  Our walks started for the exercise, but now have also gotten us closer to nature.  Who would have thought?  We never thought we would like to exercise, but this seems to work.  What do you notice when you take a walk around your neighborhood?     

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Friday Dance Party – Aloe Blacc Needs A Dollar

This is another edition of Friday Dance Party on Acorns On Glen.  It’s the time where we give thanks for another week of living.  We give thanks for making it through and for being able to celebrate this fact.  How do we celebrate another week of living?  We dance.  So take a moment and be proud of the fact that you’re here and you’ve made it to another Friday.  Not only you, but your family and friends as well.  So, to that end, are you alive this Friday?  Have you given thanks for this?

Good, now let’s dance.

I’ve been reflecting a lot about my constant desire or need to buy things.  I’m absolutely someone who loves to shop.  Clothes and shoes, of course, but I can shop for dirt and be pretty happy.  There is nothing better than to scan the internet and see what things pop up that I feel that I need to buy.  My favorite internet items have to be books, music, jewelry and….again….clothes and shoes.  However, what’s scary about the internet and shopping on it is that it is too easy.  All you need to do is pretty much hit a button and you’ve spent money.  Not as real as actually counting $20 bills out to a sales clerk.  So while I enjoy shopping, I’ve been looking around and taking notice of all the things that I have.  We had to build onto our house to store all the clothes and shoes that we have.  I have more pots and pans and kitchen gadgets than you can shake a stick at.  Jewelry….forget it.  While I am lucky to have a great job and can pay for all of these things, that is just what they are….things.  Better yet, do I really need them and, if the answer is no, why do I keep buying?  Simple answer….no, I don’t need anything and I think I keep buying because that act of being handed a bag full of something at a store or a box full of something coming from the internet makes me feel good.  That feeling that there is something here for me.  I guess it makes me feel special and validates me in that short set of a few seconds.  I’m really trying to feel validated in other fashions.  It might never happen, but I’ve been trying.

Which leads me to our dance party song for this Friday.  With all of my soul-searching, I thought we needed a little soul music.  Aloe Blacc and his song ‘I Need A Dollar’ can help here.  He is a soul singer that I have recently discovered and can’t get enough of his music.  While he is from California, he seems to be much more popular in Europe.  I don’t think that is going to be for long.  Sometimes things come together for a reason…I’m thinking about all of my things and then I hear this song about needing a dollar.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to want or need something and not have a job or money to pay for it.  I can’t imagine the angst you would go through.  It would be even worse if you had a family.  Makes you think about things, that’s for sure.  So this week, we’re going to do a little soul swaying.  You’ve made it through another week so you deserve it.  However, this week, if you are financially secure, give yourself another round of applause.  Having your life, your health, the love of your family, friends and being secure is a blessing.  Who needs things when you have all that?  If we are going to keep it real, one day at a time, we need to make sure we understand this.  We need to re-define and understand what’s important.  Thanks for letting me preach.  Now turn up those speakers and dance!  What life lessons have you learned or are working on at this point in your life?

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Friday Dance Party – Will I Regret Blow by Ke$ha?

This is another edition of Friday Dance Party on Acorns On Glen.  It’s the time where we give thanks for making it through another week and for being alive and present here on Earth.  How do we celebrate another week of living?  We dance.  So, are you alive this Friday?  Are you and your family safe and sound?  Take a few seconds now to be in the moment and realize what a great life you truly have.  Did you give thanks for that?

Good, now let’s dance.

I’ve thought a lot about music this week and even did a post about it.  As I’ve been reviewing my collection of music in all forms:  8 tracks, cassettes, vinyl, CDs and now MP3s, I’ve realized that what I was listening to at certain times in my life was really a reflection of how my life was progressing at that certain point in time.  Great times seemed to attract great music and vice versa.  As my post this week discussed, there were some times that I have no idea what was going on in my life given the music I was buying and listening to at the time.  What was going on when I was listening to ‘Muskrat Love’?  You look back at some of those old tunes and just say ‘what was I thinking?’.  So that’s why it’s funny that I have this tune for us to dance to this week.  Again, while the song by Ke$ha is fantastic, what is going on in this video?  The dude from Dawson’s Creek, a party with unicorns and a laser fight?  I’m sure I will be looking back at this video ten years from now and asking again ‘what was I thinking?’.  For the time being, it is a great tune to dance to in front of your computer.  Remember, you’ve made it through another week and you deserve to celebrate through dancing.  So turn up those speakers and let it rip!  What other strange videos do you remember watching over the years?