New York Renovator

I hope you who celebrated Thanksgiving Day yesterday had a wonderful day! My holiday was so relaxing, it was GREAT. The day held quite a few learning experiences for me. Most notable was the one with the baking of the Green Bean casserole (the famous one, on the back of the French’s Fried Onions can). Oh, I’ve made this recipe many times before. I don’t think I’ve ever baked it in a disposable aluminum pan, though. This is where my little learning experience comes in.

Yah.

ALWAYS take off the flimsy plastic cover before baking in the oven at 350 degrees.

Oops. Hehehehe.

The casserole wasn’t ruined, so I served it.

I ignored the children’s protests that it tasted like plastic grocery bags.
(JUST KIDDING!)
(How would they know what grocery bags taste like, anyway?)

With hats in hands, we bid a sad farewell to the Yugo tomorrow (I’m such a sentimental schmuck, I know). The Yugo, mass produced in the 80s, was a simple car designed to be small and economical, compared to the futuristic, complex, gas guzzling SUVs with their flashy gadgets and flash memory microchip in the engines. The Yugo was also notoriously unreliable.

KRAGUJEVAC, Serbia, Nov 20 (Reuters) – Serbian auto maker Zastava, producer of the iconic Yugo, will make its last vehicle on Friday before closing its doors to revamp operations in a joint venture with Italy’s Fiat. The Yugo car dates back to 1978, and, since mass production started in 1980, nearly 800,000 Yugo vehicles have rolled out of the Zastava plant, 142,000 exported to the United States.

Socialist Yugoslavia created the Zastava car plant in 1953 to service its domestic market of about 20 million people.

Thus ends another chapter in the closing of what could loosely be called an automobile. It was imported into the U.S. by businessman Malcolm Bricklin, who:

…wouldn’t be satisfied until he had forced every American to walk to work. To that end, in 1985, he began importing the Yugo GV, which turned out to be the Mona Lisa of bad cars. Built in Soviet-bloc Yugoslavia, the Yugo had the distinct feeling of something assembled at gunpoint. Interestingly, in a car where “carpet” was listed as a standard feature, the Yugo had a rear-window defroster — reportedly to keep your hands warm while you pushed it. The engines went ka-blooey, the electrical system — such as it was — would sizzle, and things would just fall off. Yugo. Or not. (TIME magazine, The 50 Worst Cars of All Time, 2007).

The Yugo became something of an icon, a symbol of everything that was wrong and inefficient about the Soviets, socialism, and later, wacko-liberalism. The Yugo was the brunt of many jokes over the years.

Yu*go (yoo-go) n. (1) A small, economical, Yugoslavian-built automobile. (2) a 4×4 hood ornament.
adj. 1) What doesn’t happen when you press the accelerator.

A man walks into an auto parts store and says,
“I’ll take a gas cap for a Yugo.”
“Sounds like a fair trade,” says the salesman.

How do you double the value of a Yugo?
Fill the tank!

What is found on the last two pages of every Yugo owner’s manual?
The bus schedule.

What do you call a Yugo with a flat tire?
Totalled.

Why do Yugos have a heater for the back window?
To keep your hands warm when pushing.

How do you make a Yugo go faster?
A towtruck.

Yuk yuk yuk! Goodbye, Yugo. If nothing else, you made us laugh.

My daughter sent me this video. It is so funny! It is a slideshow of hilarious signs outside churches. It’s nice to know that so many Christians have such a great sense of humor. Man oh man, these are so much fun! Be prepared– have nothing in your mouth while watching this, that is, unless you WANT to have it come shooting out your nostrils. Hehehe.

I was Entrecard dropping when I came across a great blog, The Snack Hound. This blogger is just so hilarious! Sometimes we can take “nutrition” and “fitness” a little to far, can’t we? This post was especially rip-roarin’ good. Here’s a tidbit.

For those of you who watch what you eat, here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

ROFL!!!!!

You really should go to the post yourself and see what fun is there. But I cannot restrain from posting the ones I found absolutely hilarious. Here are some “fitness” questions answered by a “fitness expert”:

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! ‘Round’ is a shape!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Pardon me, now, I’m going to laugh a second time by reading these to the family! Who needs Phentermine without a prescription when some big belly laughs will exercise that gut!