After winning the Shipshewana Hotdish Cook-off last month, I’ve found myself locked in a brutal rivalry with my next door neighbor, Barb Larson, for knocking her off the throne she so unrightfully occupied for three consecutive years (again, a seven layer dip is NOT A HOTDISH and should have been DISQUALIFIED!!!)

Numerous times now I have discovered her lurking outside my house, seemingly plotting something sinister. Just this morning I walked out to my carport and discovered her crouching down to examine the exhaust pipe on my 1997 Ford Taurus holding a banana! Uff da! After contacting Sherriff Strongbottom to report her suspicious behavior, I was advised to keep a diary of each encounter with her, and thankfully I’d just gotten a shipment of these Comfort Touch Hardbound 5" x 7" Journals with my face printed on them — never too early to start campaigning for next year’s Hotdish Cook-off!

So I rushed home, cracked the spine on one of these fellas, and could not believe my eyes — the journals were the perfect fit for the job, down to the 80 lined pages to write down every single move Barb made, a color-coordinated elastic band to keep her filthy, seven-layer-dipped paws off the pages, and a ribbon to bookmark the most important page — a detailed account of a particularly unsettling encounter I had with her involving what I believe were low-frequency sound waves intended to alter my memory. Barb may have been trying to cook my brain, but little did she know, I was cooking up a little Justice Casserole myself! And you can bet your soaking snow tires that at Janice’s house, we don’t use microwaves!

Sherriff Strongbottom says I’ve got a strong case (as well as excellent penmanship, which I already knew, of course, being the 10-year-champion of the Annual Shipshewanna County Penmanship Competition)! As I write this, Barb’s being relentlessly questioned by the FBI regarding the delta wave situation, as well as possible involvement in the Havana Syndrome conspiracy! Trust me — if you are the target of a potential biological attack, these notebooks are the perfect solution!

Janice Lundberg-Bloomquist is a consumer product reviewer and social media influencer for the Askov Weekly Standard. She has been reviewing products sine 1992 after a stapler jammed while she was teaching 4th grade and wrote a strongly-worded letter to the manufacturer (which she did not send – heaven forbid) and a new career was born. An amateur ukuleleist and enthusiastic coffee addict, Janice lives at home in Mora, Minnesota with her three “children”, a British-shorthair named Smokey, and her two prize-winning Tabbys, Jennifur and Mitchell. Janice was the 2012 Bea Stevenson’s Award Winner for Excellence in Consumer Reviews and Reports and has been featured on the television show Extreme Couponing: Midwest Madness.