B. Zoar and V-man

Let me introduce you to a fun little medical term: Bezoar (BE-zor). A bezoar is a collection of "stuff" that ends up as a wad in the gut, basically. Hair, wax, any sort of nastiness that can potentially end up in this ball can be part of a bezoar. Well, I don't have a bezoar. Matt doesn't have a bezoar, either. That's not why I'm telling you about it (thank goodness). My best friend, Kristin (the cute girl holding the cute baby in the picture) is a GI nurse. She used to work on a unit at Spectrum that specializes in digestive disease and now she works for a colorectal surgeon in Grand Rapids. I'm sure if you pressed her for a good story, she'd come up with way more than you could stomach (no pun intended).

Well, one night when Kristin and I were roommates a few years ago, we went to Grand Haven for dinner. On the way back she said, "Have you ever heard of a bezoar?" and proceeded to regale me with a grand description. I don't really know why, but it was one of those moments where everything in the universe must have been in just the right place because I found it maniacally hilarious. Just the way she described it or something, but I nearly had to pull over the car because I was laughing. So. Hard. Anyway, all that to say, ever since, the word (now a name ) "Bezoar" has stuck, and that's what we call each other. She's Bezoar to me, I'm Bezoar to her. Seriously, you can't say it without smiling or giggling. Bezoar-Bezoar-Bezoar!!

This past weekend I went up to Northern Michigan to see my Bezoar, where she was vacationing with her husband and their 10-month-old (Baby Bezoar). We hardly have a chance to spend much time together anymore, so it was well worth the drive up there for the afternoon. I was lazy and didn't really take any pictures, so the picture on the post is from this past spring.

There's a couple we know from church, and our husbands are like two weird little peas in a pod. Their last name is Verkaik (Ver-KIKE - gotta get used to these Dutchy names), and Mike calls Matt "G-man" (and I'm "the Jen-ster") and Matt calls him "V-man." They have this strange engineer-weird-humor-share-one-brain-cell type of thing going on. Well, when I got back from spending the day with Bezoar we went to the Verkaik's for a "fry fest." Matt was told, "you bring it, I'll fry it." Hmmm...so we rotted our guts with deep-fried everything, from onions to banana bread. Yes, the banana bread that I so lovingly made for Matt's lunches, cut up and thrown in a roiling pot of molten lard. The not-so-flattering picture above is them, and though not flattering, it captures the oddness that flows between the two of them fairly well. In that picture we had just had a bonfire deleted by the Storm of the Century back in June, so G-man and V-man were discussing the design and development of their prototype for making s'mores under the broiler in the oven.

So there's part of what happened over our weekend. We spent Sunday afternoon painting "the stupid ugly room" in our house, the room that was more of a junk receptacle than a functional space. It will be a guest room by the end of the week, and a quite cozy one at that. I'll thrill you with pictures when it's done.