Awesome

Back in their glory days at Evergreen State College, Crazy Uncle Nick and The Man Who Lives In My House used to refer to a spectacularly stupid screw-up as "whipping an awesome".

(Nick wants to say that they never did anything stupid in college.  They just studied.)

Example:  "Dude, I was skateboarding home from the co-op carrying a case of Oly (or Rainier)  on my shoulder. I hit a bump in the sidewalk.  So the beer went everywhere.  Do you have any cash so I can get us some more beer?"
                  "Dude, that's whipping an awesome!"
For some reason, this phrase has never become part of the general vernacular.

Please note: I made this scenario up. When canvassed for real anecdotes, The Man claimed to remember nothing.  Nick suggested I tell about the time The Man bit a girl on the leg, which got her attention, but not in a good way.  The Man said it wasn't like that at all.  Then he took the 5th.

I whipped one the other day when I thought I set up an automatic bill pay account for one thing, only it went to another thing. Huh.  I felt all technologically competent there, for a minute.  And now we're not sure where a $1200 monthly payment really landed.  Just to make it more awesome, it was The Man Who Lives in My House who noticed this error and pointed out it's awesomeness.  And he may have gone on a little about how now I've got a project for Monday, figuring this out.  I sure do, and I'm really looking forward to talking to customer service and hanging out in line at the bank.

It was ok though, because not 15 minutes later, he was making some pancakes.  I'm not talking about adding water to a mix, here.  He was whipping egg whites and measuring cornmeal and debating the merits of bananas vs. blueberries with the hooligans.  AND he was heating up the real maple syrup.  Which lived in a (cute, vintage) glass jug.  Which he set directly over the gas flame, "just to take the edge off".  Only it kind of exploded.  The good news is no one got glass in their eyeball.  But there had been quite a bit of syrup in the jug, which was now pooling around the burners and dripping into the inner workings of the stove.  Have I mentioned that we have an ant problem?

Interestingly,  The Man's main concern was that I hustle over to the market A!S!A!P! for more syrup.  It should be noted that I stayed out of this whole episode. I was compelled to inquire, though, whether he intended to cook pancakes before cleaning up the syrup.  Just curious.  On second thought, I decided I'd rather be at the market than in the kitchen at that moment, so I grabbed my wallet and headed for the door.

Our house smells like IHOP.  It's awesome.