Loot!

i have been remiss in not publicly thanking bloggers who have been filling my mailbox on a fairly steady basis with loot. really cool loot. some surprising and out-of-the-blue loot; some earned loot--earned through my extremely hard work of winning various blog contests, or perhaps being the only person to take blog contests seriously enough to try to figure out the proper answers.

anyway, pictured above are just some of the riches i've gotten lately. the stuffed raccoon is from -ann, over at for the long run. so are those cookies, which are baked fresh daily at a bakery within smelling distance of her little house in the Middle of Nowhere. you have no idea how good those cookies are..... but i do! caramel and chocolate and oh, yum.

this is the second time she's sent 'em to me. each cookie is individually wrapped, so for me to show you what one looks like would necessitate unwrapping one, which would lead to my eating one, which .... well. ... maybe i will. stay tuned.

the chicken poop, of course, is from the Rotten Corespondent, who claims it's better than Chapstick. to each his own.... i'm gonna die with my paw wrapped around a tube of chapstick, i'm afraid. but i love having the chicken poop. just having it is enough.

not pictured in the group shot is a DVD of "the nativity story," which i won from Sandy over at Myanderings, merely by identifying a picture of a bunch of rocks as being, well, a picture of a bunch of rocks. (these contests are made for me, i tell you!)

it's not pictured because we brought it up to the nursing home for doug's mom to watch over christmas, assuming she can figure out how to work the portable DVD player we gave her as a christmas gift. that's a big assumption and i'm not entirely sure she will... but we're hopeful. (her room is tiny. it has no TV. the light is bad. hard to read. all incentive for her to get strong and go home. but i digress.)

also not pictured, a big box of Barrys Gold Tea, also from -ann; it's now on my desk at work, for my frequent tea breaks.

(NOTE: the dog pictured above was not loot. he was already mine.)

the biggest cadbury bar you ever saw is from Jo Beaufoix, loot from yet another contest, where i had to figure out flag-language (jo can explain it better than i can) and translate a phrase on her blog. which i did. only to find that the translated phrase made absolutely no sense.

but nonsensical or not, i won, and i have the cadbury bar to prove it!

anyway, i'm thinking it's time for me to pass some of this loot on to some of you. not this particular loot, which i plan to eat (except for the raccoon--boscoe has his eye on eating that, eventually)--but other loot. some kind of quintessentially minnesota loot. a twins cap? a snowball? some lutefisk? i haven't yet decided.

so watch this space. coming in early '08 will be a Three Dog Blog Contest! with fabulous prizes!

in the meantime, thanks to all of you who have gifted me.

(NOTE: should anyone else feel the need to bestow gifts upon me, just drop me an e-mail and i'll give you my mailing address. alcohol accepted. explosives and tobacco, probably not.)