On Sunday 11/17 from 10AM to 4PM We’ll be at the All-Zona Book Fest at the Tucson Sheraton Hotel & Suites. It’s a really cool idea for a book festival – the authors are all from Arizona – Tucson, Phoenix, Bisbee, etc. Lots of genres will be represented – mystery, romance, fantasy and adventure – for a total of 30+ authors (click here for the full list).

Ava and I plan to be in our ball gowns so you can’t possibly miss us.

Admission is free and there’ll be books there for us to sign.

I REALLY hope we get to see you. And you can find out if we’re really as insane as you think we are.

The answer is probably.

Hey – if you have any moisture in your part of the world, would you send a little down here to the desert. Holy COW, but it’s dry here. “How dry is it?” you ask ala Johnny Carson. It’s so dry that we think we might be slowly morphing into lizards. This is not an attractive proposition. It’s also very itchy. All this scratching is troublesome. People look at you weird and we have enough trouble with that as it is.

We’ve started telling people it’s fleas. It may make them lose respect for us, but it also frees up a lot of personal space. Here’s some funny stuff from this week.

1. Missing sheep. If you remember last week we brought up random meadows being mowed in Austria. Now there’s sheep rustling in Wool, England. Yes. The place where sheep are being stolen is named Wool. There aren’t that many times in this world were everything comes together with such symmetry, you know? This makes us very happy and comfortable, knowing that wool comes from Wool. We also suspect that the inhabitants of Wool are itchy, too. Look – we got off topic. Someone carted off 160 sheep from Wool. The people of Wool and it’s surroundings are asked to notify authorities if anyone offers them wool “for very low prices.” We think they should extend the APB to include a truck full of Austrian Grass following around a big truck that smells of sheep.

2. More politicians behaving badly. The mayor of Toronto was caught on video smoking crack. He refuses to resign stating, “I love my job.” He finally admitted the incident occurred “probably a year ago” when he was in a “drunken stupor.” Can you believe he thinks that excuse is the Get Out of Jail Free card? We’re keeping a very close eye on this story because if that excuse works we’re going to start using it all the time. Think of the possibilities. “I may have forgotten my children at the grocery store, but I was in a drunken stupor at the time.” or “I didn’t pay the electric bill, but I was in a drunken stupor.” This is going to really work out.

3. Dona Esperanza. All of us at Bank of No Forks have become addicted to the tortillas at Dona Esperanza’s. They are possibly the best thing we’ve had in our mouths in a really long time. Buttery and thin and glorious. One of us will head over to the factory and come back with dozens of them. At least two packages will be gone by the end of the day. They are the best $2.25 we’ve ever spent. The smell is heavenly and we’ll gorge ourselves on them until we’re holding our stomachs, feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ve started rationing them out – we’ve eaten six of them just writing this blog. We’re not sure if there is a real Dona Esperanza. We feel sure that if we did meet her, we’d squeeze her very hard and never let her go.

4. More members of our tribe. We’re involved in a book festival coming soon. (More news to follow). We received an email from the committee with instructions for set up and take down that convinced us these ladies were more of our people. Like this line for example: “Please do not attempt to shove anything larger than a toy teacup Chihuahua underneath your table…” We like the specific mention of “TOY” dog. It’s like they knew we’d try to smuggle a real teacup Chihuahua into the event. Now, if there’s a couple of things you should have learned about the Sisters by now they are that we dislike being told no almost as much as we love fuzzy creatures. Now, we’re bound and determined to find ourselves a teacup Chihuahua before the 17th – which we’ll try to shove under the table, just to see what happens.

5. More weird stuff missing. We don’t know what’s going on out there, but now there seems to be 140,000 pounds of walnuts missing from Escalon, California. Last month someone took 12,000 pounds of nuts. The same people? What’s up with that? Who the hell needs 162,000 pounds of walnuts? Who? Maybe someone should check with the fudge makers in the area. The Sisters like walnuts but not that much. You hear that FBI/NSA? We like ’em but not that much. The Sisters didn’t take ’em. And the sheep want you to know that they didn’t either.

As mentioned about a week ago – the Sisters put together a raffle basket for our local RWA chapter fund-raiser. It was to contain a bunch of our favorite things. At first, Ava was all in. It sounded like a great idea. After all, what could be easier than gathering up items that make us happy? Then she started to wonder – what the hell will people think of us when they see a basket loaded up with a bunch of stuff only crazy people would love???

Because we trust you to still love us, here’s the list of some of the rejected items:

.22 Handgun – don’t judge, we live in a state with no gun laws and we have a pink Hello Kitty model, honestly, we thought everyone would want one, too, but our spouses said “No.” See annoying spouses below.

A living animal – this idea was immediately abandoned, no way we wouldn’t keep a wiggly puppy for ourselves and then we’d keep buying them saying – “This next one really goes in the basket, really, the very next one . . .”

4 children – that had the FBI showing up written all over it, we’re pretty sure they’re already following us around anyway after the whole TSA Desert Airport fiasco.

2 annoying spouses – we realized everyone’s got one of those and they wouldn’t fit in the basket anyway.

Vegetables we grew ourselves – this one’s just a joke, we were looking for someplace to put last night’s dinner other than in a napkin under the table.

Then we realized this was a very inaptly named basket – we couldn’t really raffle off a basket called – The Quill Sister’s Favorite Things and Some Crap We Want To Get Rid Of.

We did let people know that we have a Chapstick obsession and we admitted to our great love for Hellboy which we think made us appear slightly eccentric but still approachable – rather than flat-out crazy.

We don’t know. Maybe we just need to face the fact that perhaps we’re crazy.

Wow! This week has really worn us out. Monday was a NIGHTMARE. We’re actually thinking some legislation needs to be passed restricting insane people’s access to email. Haven’t you received mail from someone that made your hair set on fire and it really would have been better for everyone involved if the sender wasn’t allowed to use email. Then Tuesday something SUPER EXCITING happened. You will be filled in at length in the coming week. Wednesday, Amylynn’s dog tried to commit suicide. Thursday something even more exciting happened that related to the wonderment of Tuesday. Friday came along and we’re emotionally drained. DRAINED. Still, funny things happened around the world and we found some of them.

1. Secret Mowers. The world has completely gone to hell. Criminal activity is out of control. Citizens of the world are running amok. If you were in doubt, we present this latest evidence. Someone in Liebenfels, Austria is running around mowing people’s grass. Really, what is the world coming to? How are we supposed to rest easy at night knowing that people are indiscriminately mowing fields? Why can’t people just leave other people’s grass alone? Why? Oh,the humanity.

2. Happiness and Health. A professor at the University of Arizona has stated, “We can design places for happiness and health.” We were pretty sure that’s exactly what Starbucks was, but we’re always up for an education so we read further. The good professor suggests that places that smell of lavender improve our mood. Also, seeing the trees outside will make you feel better. We are pretty secure in saying that there could be twelve-foot lavender bushes outside Bank of No Forks and that wouldn’t make us happy. We’re wondering how we’d feel if we just shoved a lavender twig up our nose. If nothing else, that might get us a leave of absence from work. That would make us happy, just sayin’.

3. Good restaurants. Amylynn had a hankering for a gyro this week so she took Ava over to a place she used to go – The Shish Kabob House. It was every bit as good as she remembered. Even better was the waiter. We informed him that the restaurant was going to be featured in Our Favorite Things and he was suitably impressed. Terrence expressed pleasure at the idea, stating, “I haven’t been anyone’s favorite thing in a really long time.” He was as awesome as the potato chip/french fries hybrid next to our gyro. Honest to Zeus, best potato option since the French invented the pommes frites .

4. The Vampire Diaries. Generally, the Sisters don’t watch the CW – too much drama. But, they’ve made an exception for the Vampire Diaries. Look at the photo right here to see why. This show is supposed to be about teenagers for teenagers. That is clearly not the case with all of the sex and drinking going on. You’ll love it too. Look here to see why. See?

5. Our cup runneth over. Every year the Sisters wait for Victoria’s Secret to present its bejeweled fantasy bra. We truly believe that one of our spouses will buy it for us for the holidays. We believe it, don’t judge. Every year that dream is dashed by the ridiculously small cup size of the bra. For some unknown reason, it’s always an A. Do the folks at VS think only tiny chest-free woman want a bra covered in gems? This year’s model has a 52-carat ruby dangling from the center the size of someone’s head. Rubies are one of our favorites. We also favor the 4200 additional rubies, blue and yellow sapphires and diamonds handset in the 18K gold. Sadly, we’re not getting the bra again this year. As hard as we tried, we weren’t able to diet down from our Ds to an A. Deep sigh.

I present to you the Amylynn and Ava read aloud from Dear Abby portion of our morning ritual.

This is the letter in question

Dear Abby,
My fiancée, “Tina” and I made a resolution to lose weight for our wedding. Everything has been going great except for one thing. (Here’s where we roll our eyes in anticipation of the “THING”) because men lose weight faster than women, I know weigh less at 6 foot 1 than she does at 5 feet 4.
Tina already has self-esteem issues. I want to look good for our wedding, but not at the cost of my fiancée’s hurt feelings. What can I do?
-At A Loss In Michigan

Abby suggested nice pop-psychology answers that are very newspaper friendly. We’d like to offer AALIM some real world advice. He’s gonna need it.

Dear At A Loss,
Go get some beer and some lovely carbs and start bulking up. Right now. Get in the car. There is nothing that pisses women off more than men losing weight faster and easier than women. There is no solution other than putting on some weight as fast as you can. We also suggest you do this in the closet because if she catches you eating cake when she’s had nothing but miserable meat and water for the last three months you’re going to die. Slowly.

This is actually a great test to see if you can become a successful husband. Women know they’re crazy. We’ve all embraced it. However, losing weight faster than her for your FREAKING WEDDING is the worst possible thing you could do. She’d probably take cheating on her at the bachelor party easier than you weighing less than her.

This is a problem. No kidding around.

Actually, we think your fiancée should reconsider this whole thing. No woman needs this kind of nonsense.

We all got a new boss today at Bank of No Forks. Ava is always excited about that, certain that this new person will be the one to help us. “I like him,” she’ll say. Amylynn, on the other hand, will give Ava that look and say for the umpteenth time, “Ava, you’re so pretty.” As the realist, Amylynn reserves judgment. She’s more of a let’s-wait-and-see kind of a person. She gets less disappointed that way. Still, we got a free lunch out of the deal. Free lunch is good. Especially when it’s egg salad sandwiches with mayo,

cream cheese and bacon. God’s honest truth, bacon makes everything better. This week there was all kinds of funny stuff going on in the world. This is what we chose for you.

1. Dollar Menu. The McDonalds corporation is introducing some higher priced options in their dollar menu. That’s not funny, just stupid. What is funny is that they’re calling it “Dollar Menu and More”. Don’t you think it’s insane how stupid corporations think we are. It’s not “Dollar and More”, it’s just Menu at this point. So we think we’re going to change us to Quill Sisters and More. The More will be more snark, more sarcasm, and more absurdist articles about animals our husbands, and sometimes the government, won’t let us have.

2. Crotchety old men. We have a lot of retirement communities out here. Usually they’re very quiet and you don’t hear anything about them except for maybe a string of burglaries once in a while. There was some excitement this week, though. A 68-year-old gentleman woke up and his wife wasn’t in bed, so he went out to the guest house and found his 63-year-old wife in bed with a 22-year-old man. The old gent poked the kid with his cane – we love that part – to wake him up and tell him to get out. We hope he poked him REALLY hard. We can’t wait till we can start poking people with canes. The kid got all belligerent and cursed the old man out, which prompted the old man to go get

his gun. The kid ended up getting shot in the hand by what seemed to be a ricochet. We didn’t learn the wife’s response to all this. And once again we have more questions than answers. The police did say it was really rather exciting since it happened in a senior community. We’ll bet this will be BBQ fodder for months.

3.British Tushies. The British Rowing Team does a calendar every year in an effort to fight homophobia. Naked. Yes indeed. Naked as the day they were born. Each and every one of these boys has a perfect body from all that…rowing. And being young. The calendar is a thing of beauty, we’ll tell you. There are pictures of naked rowing. And naked swimming. And naked shaving. And chasing puppies around in a field. Naked. With strategically placed weeds and such. Follow the jump and you’ll

get to where you need to order the calendar. Get one for your mother and sister and gay friend George. Or anyone else naked in your life. Down with homophobia. And strategically placed weeds.

4.Hall of Frames. We showed up at this business this week with an insane request. We realized it was outrageous, but nevertheless, we had every intention of making it. We needed some things framed for an event and we needed them in record time. AND we didn’t want to pay very much for it. We went to Hall of Frames because they guy who runs the place is really nice. He’s also a little odd, which we find appealing. We were waiting outside the store before it opened. To begin the schmoozing process we held his coffee while he opened the door. Then the man with the stars tattooed on his face proceeded to TOTALLY HELP US. Surely you know from our blog, that never actually happens. No one really helps us. Ever. So, Jeff from Hall of Frames, you are officially the most talented, nicest guy to put up with our crazy whims since our grandfather died. Good work. We’re going to keep you – you will be the only person we ever ask to do our framing. We’ll bet your sorry now.

5. Keancolor Nail Polish. Amylynn found this stuff on the internet and we’re officially in love. The colors are outstanding – especially the Holo colors. The sparkle is mesmerizing. Never in a million years did we ever think we’d consider wearing green nail polish, but there it is, on our toes. We can’t stop looking at it, which is a serious problem, especially when we’re driving or on the stairs. The best part? We’ll be able to compliment our full-body casts nicely when we’re released from the hospital.