Awards!

Hugs and chocolate to all the whiners with Whines of Substance! Cluesticks for those who need them. Life sucks sometimes, which is why we are really glad to have this community of fellow kvetchers.

Style Award for bringing grace and poetry to the Whiner's Ball:

• to Liz, who wrote an ode to mysterious cat pee [thereby also bringing bodily fluids to the festivities]:

My five year old son

My much-loved little one

Has two pairs of shoes that stink

I've washed them in bleach

And scrubbed them each

In the black porcelain kitchen sink

The stench they emit

Is not normal foot sh*t

They smell strongly of pee from a cat

I have no idea

How feline urea

Appeared as we are petless and all that.

The Old School Award for those really pathetic little whines, the ones that we all have, except they usually just irritate us, only in this case they are awfully amusing --

• To Andy, for a classic whine: "All of my jeans have suddenly become significantly tighter. I think they shrank in the wash, because my weight is right where it always is, and I'm positive that my routine of walking around all day and night while forgetting to eat hasn't led to any increase in my waistline, but is it even possible for jeans to shrink? I surely do not know; I just know that it's a pain."
  


• And Bridgett, for a whine of trying an environmentally-friendly paint-stripper, only to find the piece she was stripping was, uh, veneer over plywood: " It went from crap to craptastic and only cost me 4 hours of labor and $15 for the very very sticky goo."
  

"Elevated Risk of Mullet" Award for funniest use of language:

• To Peripatetic Polar Bear, and "the chewing on tin-foil fun of an administrative retreat."

By popular consent, we have some one-time-only awards this week!

• For Lisa V., the "Plucky Comic Relief" Award for tales of woe stacked so high that all they can do is laugh and wonder when the locusts will arrive, delivered in an entry that begins: "It's cavernous, but it seems like an adequate place to whine. It's like we've moved from Phantom's living room to the church or rec center that lets the 12 step group meet in the basement. Hi, I'm Lisa and I am a habitual whiner."



• For Songbird, the "Pithy Sum-Up" Award, for concluding her whine thusly: "I have never been good at patting my head and rubbing my tummy. Seriously."
  


• For DevilMacDawg, the "Best Use of Wildlife in a Dramatic Whine," for her description of an epic stand-off between the family cat, and an intruding fierce! box! turtle! [Ed. Note: also, good luck on the bar exam. Turtles will not be on the test, which tells you just how removed those people are from real life.]
  

Thanks to everyone for playing this first Brigadoon edition of Wednesday Whining!

Per our brand new tradition, the whining thread has been closed, to appear from the mists like magic again next Tuesday night.

[As a general rule, we're not going to have comments on the awards threads, but we're opening up this post for comments so that y'all can leave any feedback about how this first week at the new location went. Got any useful suggestions? Positive feedback, in particular, is certainly welcomed! ;)]

Late edition: comments are closed. Thank you to all the pixies, and most especially to Phantom. See ya next week!