I brought my lappy in tonight to track the monthly backups for the first time since we got our new LTO3 tape drive at work (yes, I'm a dork). Anyway, the wife and I are both sitting on the bed in deuling dorkland with our two laptops, and then it happened.

Urchin 1.0 puked.

In bed.

And on her new electric blanket.

So now, she can't go to school tomorrow, we've had the emergency bed stripping and re-bath taking, and now we're waiting to see if the phenergan stays down or comes up like before. The wife didn't want to give her a cracker with the phenergan / tylenol combo, but I did.

Nobody's right or wrong in this. It's just the not knowing.

Anyway, instead of going to bed at 11:01pm after I was sure the backup ran, I'll be up until at least 11:30pm and probably until morning since I'll end up sleeping on urchin 1.0's floor on bucket duty.

I'm watching them on the camera now, and we've had three bucket false alarms since she got back in bed.

Fingers crossed everybody.

I'm not looking for total strangers here, but if anyone's interested in playing fantasy baseball this spring, we need a couple of extra folks.

There is no cost at all. No trade fees. Nothing. We just set up an eight or ten or twelve team league, draft around the 18th or 19th of March, and see what happens.

Anyway, if you want to play, drop me an email before the end of the week and we can get everything set up. Since I was "elected" commission, my final say goes. I can't wait to wield this power early and often this year.

Thanks.

The Management

I'd like to preface this by saying that I ordinarily don't think it's okay to laugh at kids, especially young kids, regardless of the reason. A little chuckle's fine, but you rish hurting their feelings and I wouldn't want to do that.

However sometimes it's impossible not to laugh. It's just important that you explain why it was funny afterwards so as not to do any permanent damage.

Now that THAT'S out of the way, get a load of this.

Sunday afternoon we celebrated several birthdays at the house, so the guests in attendance were my B-I-L and his family, his brother and family (plus another kid they were watching for the week) and their sister and her family, my M-I-L, my folks, and my wife's other sister and her family. The total was around 20 and, at the time that this happened, about half to two thirds of us were standing outside witnessing the event.

It seems that my B-I-L's nephew Mitch was scooting around on the latest fad to come back into popularity retro-style. He and his buddy Will (the guest) both had these on. If you've never seen them or haven't seen them in a while, they're now all over big stores (on the kids I mean), and it's quite amusing to see them all heel skating all over Sam's, WalMart, and other giant retailers.

Anyway, some of us were shooting some hoops and Will and Mitch were zooming around the driveway on their sketcher skates. Urchin 1.0 saw them and the rest should have been videotaped. Shame on me.

You see, one of them would run a couple of steps and then wheel around and skate away, and Lauren would run after them and, after running about 20 feet, jump stop and plant both feet with arms extending waiting for the skating fun to begin.

Only it didn't. See, she doesn't have any of these here fancy skatin' shoes.

So over and over again, Lauren would run full speed (usually right at Unk Todd's truck which I later tried to explain would be very dangerous if she had those shoes), jump stop, then stick her arms out to the sides sort of wobbly-ish, just waiting for the magic to happen.

We only let this go on for about 15 minutes before we were too sore from laughing and decided to tell her.

Actually, my 9-year-old nephew decided to tell her. We were too busy laughing.

So shoot me. I was laughing at my kid. But if you saw her doing this, you'd have been laughing too.

A lot. I promise.

p.s. No ninja visits the last two nights. Sophia slept for about 20 hours yesterday and was a little un-tired last night, but eventually went to sleep around 11:30, got up at 3:40am for a half bottle snack and was still sleeping when I left. Hopefully the wife won't have another morning where they're both up at the crack of snot wanting food, entertainment, etc.

Happy Tuesday ever-body.

I'm not having a bad day or anything. It just seems easy to grab a song with Monday in the title when I post on Mondays.

The lowlight of the weekend may very well have led to the hilight of the weekend for me and the wife.

Saturday was easily urchin 2.0's worst day so far since she's been ex-utero. She got up at 5am to eat, slept again until 8am and then cried for about 3 hours. She wouldn't sleep beyond catnaps, and except for a 20 and a 35 minute snooze, they were all of the five minute variety.

When she finally stopped crying and fussing and went to sleep at 10pm, she stayed that way until around 7am Sunday. Then she was happy as a clam and chatting away for over an hour. Then it was back to sleep for a while, which is great too.

Last night she went down around nine or so, got up at 5am to eat and then was back to sleep until 7:30am!! That's two consecutive days of basically sleeping thru the night, and for a long stretch too. HOORAY!!

No ninja visits this weekend, although 1.0 did come in at 6am or so yesterday, so I just told her to come into bed with us. I did laugh because she weren't wearing no drawers. It seems that she gets annoyed by her pullup at night now if it's a little wet, and she'll put a new one on herself.

Except this time she didn't put a new one on, so we had a very small in-bed accident and a child sleeping in the buff.

Egad.

Yesterday was a good day too. We hosted a joint birthday venture for the SIL, the BIL and his sister too. We had around 20 people there and we had a nice spread, complete with the best pork loins ever prepared, at least by me.

If you want the recipe, just email me. I'll be happy to give it to you.

This week's racing update:

Friday night there was a boring-ass truck race at California which was won by Mark Martin. That's his second win in two races.

Saturday there was a Busch race at California, and Greg Biffle won. (Another Roush car).

Oh, and yesterday's Cup race sucked ass. I've had afternoon dumps that were more exciting. There was no real racing to speak of, and one car ran away and stunk up the show until his car broke, but luckily his teammate was there to pickup the win.

That's two Cup races and only Hendrick or Roush cars have won. Again. Hooray for the huge teams and NASCAR tolerating a felon owning a franchise. Does this happen in any other sport?

Blech again. I can't wait until spring. Maybe then I'll have an excuse to get outside and stop watching racing altogether.

Nah. That won't happen. But I might watch much less and maybe only the first 50 laps / minutes and the last 50 laps / minutes.

Don't believe me? We'll see soon enough...

I'm warning you right now, so if you read on, it's your own fault.

I was just walking into the building from lunch at the same time as a few people I used to work with were walking in, and we were all talking and laughing and cutting up, etc.

Good times.

We all walked up the stairs together, but I turned right to go to the new side of the building and they turned left to go into the old side.

Except for one guy. I'll call him Glenn.

Glenn was always very quiet, but can be a funny guy if you are paying attention. So Glenn turns the same way I'm going to turn coming out of the stairs. I am heading into the bathroom (which is on our side of the building, just like the case of Brady vs. Brady and that bedroom split in half of 1966), and it is clear that Glenn is too, since he's turned away from his office and towards my side of the building. (I'm a genius when it comes to deductive reasoning).

Anywho, we walk in and I turn right for the standers and Glenn heads into the first sitter (since the more desirable handicapped sitter is already occupado).

Seconds later, as I'm relieving myself, Glenn drops one of the greatest public bathroom farts of all time. Literally. While public restroom flatulence isn't a specialty of mine in practice, I've heard my share over the years, and this was top shelf. Loud, resonant, even echoey, and I'm telling you, it may have been the longest lasting non-Howard Stern Show fart in the history of witnessed farts.

I immediately thought of the Tom Arnold character in a white cowboy suit sitting in the stall next to Austin Powers and saying "Yeah, that's it! You show that turd who's boss!!"

And that's when I laughed out loud, mid-pee, and there was no way to hide that it was me doing the laughing.

I'm glad you guys are moving next week Glenn, because I don't think you and I could ever look each other in the face again....

it seems that ninja 2.0 got up at 5:45am and ninja 1.0 got up at 6:15am.

Which my wife REALLY appreciated on her only real day off.

Never underestimate a good sense of humor.

Last night, for no particular reason, I was sitting in the la-z-boy, holding the baby and watching the women's gold medal curling match between Sweden and Switzerland.

Well, I wasn't holding the baby for no reason. I was watching women's curling for no reason. I was holding the baby because she was fussy for a few minutes.

Anyway, I'm watching, and if you've seen it, you know that once the stone-pushing player lets go of the stone, either that person or the person at the other end of the shuffleboard court starts yelling and screaming "SWEEP!" or "SWEEP LEFT!!" or "SWEEP RIGHT!!" or "FASTER!!" or "SLOWER!!!" or "MAN, YOU'VE GOT A GREAT RACK!!"

Alright, I made the last one up. But the rest is true and it's entertaining.

Unless you're watching the Swedes and the Swiss. Because I don't speak German or Swedish, so I have no idea what they're yelling about at all.

After about 15 minutes of this, my wife walks into the den like she's coming to check on the baby, and proceeds to scream "BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!"

Then she said "They were shouting nonsense, so I figured I should too." She then laughed and headed for the kitchen.

You need that kind of funny in your life. Or at least I do...

After last weekend's wood floor snow angel effort and booty calls to our possibly ex-friend Andy, i had decided to take a month or two off from drinking.

Not really because of that, mind you. More for the simple fact that I'm convinced I could drop ten pounds in two months by doing what I'm doing now and simply not drinking. The simple math bears that out, although I'm not about to reveal that delicate equation here for you, my faceless readers.

Anyway, I was going along having a great time not drinking, even forgoing the usual after work, pre-dinner cold beer with the across the street in-laws.

But then I realized something.

Today is Heather's birthday.

That may not matter to you, but I don't want to be a stick in the mud for her birthday. Also, her peer pressure tactics are very convincing. She even thought of a better idea: quitting drinking in March.

"But not March 1st," she said. "That's uncle Todd's birthday. So maybe you should just plan on quitting the Monday AFTER the weekend following his birthday."

See? It's logic like that that leaves lesser men homeless and living in a refrigerator box. But I can handle it. I'll just plan on not having any more replays of Friday night. The local businessmen and their families simply don't need that during tax season...

Happy Friday everybody!!

Our last two nights have resulted in miniature ninja visits to my side of the bed, complete with horror stories about "bad dweams" or some red spots in her eyes. (You try explaining why you can see light thru your eyelids because they're filled with a thin layer of blood).

Wednesday night, this occurred around 3am. Last night, my visit was around 11:30 or so. I was so completely out of it and asleep that I failed to get the exact time.

On the upside, Sophia ate around 8pm and didn't awaken until two something for a refill.

Good stuff...

Yesterday was a good day...

After a week of wrangling, hand wringing, swearing, barking at the moon, migraine headaches, poor sleep, and a general crabbiness right beneath the surface, we finally won our battle of car payment chicken.

The best part was when the HSD (head sales dick for those of you that haven't back-read yet) handed the wife and I each a business card (his obviously) and then headed out to talk with "The Cliche."

The wife then held the card down in the general direction of urchin 2.0's poop chute and said "here baby...crap on this, would ya?"

And the second after she said that, Sophia was making fists, turning red in the face and making that "it's really time to grunt one out" face. She dropped a beauty, and we actually discussed and searched openly for the perfect place to hid said turd catcher in this dude's office so it wouldn't be found for a few hours or days.

We then (obviously) won and went home with our new, old, new car, much to the delight of the wife. She was also delighted that we didn't have to explain to 2.0 why we didn't have on-board movie viewing capabilities anymore. Hooray.

When we got home, it was a little late to think about starting dinner, so we (at least Lauren and I) got our favorite dinners in a hurry:

She got re-heated spaghetti using Heather's famous and delicious butter noodle recipe.
(By the way, it's spaghetti in a bowl with a chunk of butter heated about 45 seconds to hot and then slather with parmesian cheese. I liken it to white trash Alfredo sauce. And you might say that's too much butter for a child not yet four years old, but considering she ate so much butter earlier that day that it was all in her hair, I think she'll be okay).

I got Stouffer's Creamed Chipped Beef over toasted white bread. YUMMY!!! My mom lives near (or near enough to shop at) the Stouffer outlet in North Cackalackee, and they brought us a case of it. A CASE!! She also brought two cases of some lean cuisines that were about six bucks a case. How great is that?!?!

Molly got creamed chipped beef too, but didn't feel like it, so she heated some noodles and threw on some jarred Alfredo and sun dried tomato sauce. Yummy too. Of course, Lauren ate all of hers and wanted some of mommy's so she ate that too. What an appetite that child has for pasta.

Then it was upstairs for 1.0's bath and bed, and then a feeding for 2.0 (which has been a challenge recently). I got her to eat five ounces and then she was asleep on our bed while I finished my workout (4.01 miles in 68 minutes), and when I came out, Sophia was asleep in her crib. Not a first, but it was hoped that it was to be the first night she slept the entire night in her crib.

She slept until the 3am feeding which I took. No muss, no fuss, five ounces in 15 minutes and back to sleep until 6:30am for a quick feed of three ounces and back to sleep immediately. It seems that whatever has been bothering her recently may have passed. HOORAY!!

(and don't be all judgemental asking "hey, isn't she three months old? Why is she still sleeping in your room?" The fact is that it makes no difference until they're about five months old. She sleeps in a bassinette thingy and not with us, so it's pretty much the same. We didn't do that out of some wierd "I want her near me" vibe, but simply because it was easier during our recoveries and then at night all the way around).

Hell. Judge us. I don't care. We'll raise our lump how we see fit.

Have a good Thursday everyone!!

A few weeks ago I posted a photo of some waste of DNA that had the words Fuck You ornately tattooed over his right and left eye respectively. His mugshot is terribly entertaining, and I asked what you thought his parents thought of him.

Today's photo is even better, because this one was done the old-fashioned prison way: with a Bic pen insert and a hot needle. It also is somewhat different because I'm pretty sure this is adult version of the pie-faced banjo boy from the movie deliverance.

If you ever thought about getting a face or forehead tattoo, remember that what you think when you see this is what everyone will think of you when they look at you:

I like how he's a tic cross-eyed. Maybe that happened from trying to look at his own tattoo so much without the help of a mirror. Or maybe his daddy and his maternal grandfather are the same person. Either way, this is the poster child for stupidity and for what you get in life when you make bad decisions.

Shalom everybody...

As I said earlier, the rubber was to meet the road this afternoon in the case of righteous honest consumers (us) vs. Big Behemoth Asshole Car Dealership (them).

I did a little research this afternoon and found out a few things, but the biggest thing was that, errors on the contract or not, we had "taken delivery" of our new car and if push came to shove big time, the dealer could tell us to suck on it and stick us with the whole thing. Our only hope was that we play it cool and hope that they discovered (or at least felt like) that they had stepped on their dicks in this case, if only a little bit.

On the way home, I also got some valuable advice from Unk Todd a.k.a. The B-I-L. He reminded me that actually money on the price isn't the only compensation you can ask a car dealer for in situations like this. You can also ask for various services to be rendered at no charge.

Knowing that, the wife and I decided the following (time for some algebra):

Our old payments added up to X dollars.
The new payment on my Trailblazer plus the new van were to have netted out to be X+31.00
The payment they came to was X+71.00

We wanted them to make that gap right, or at least dent it a good ways.

My wife did the talking early for fear that I might go off on a Tourette's jag and just unload on the guy. She did a great job.

The guy's point was basically that, while they wanted to "make this as right as they could," we both needed to "acknowledge some responsibility for the situation we found ourselves in."

At that point, the wife said "This is the fourth car we've bought from this dealership, and I took your employee's word that the VIN information and related prices and dollar figures were correct and accurate. I trusted you for that, and that was clearly a mistake by me."

ZING!!!!

The guy sort of looked at us, and while meekly defending their position, more or less realized where we were all at right then.

Then I said "Look, we can all take or not take as much blame as we feel like, but at the end of the day, we told your salesman what we wanted to do, he told us that's what he'd done to arrive at the price we got, and now we sit here with an error of around forty five bucks. Since that's more than 13% of the monthly payment, we need to see how we can bridge that gap."

In the leasing / buying world, for the most part, 20 bucks in payment is around a thousand dollars financed. My hope was that, at worst, they'd come off for half of the difference.

He said they'd be willing to take all profit from selling our vehicle (allegedly $785) and apply that to our trade. We sat silently as he calculated.

He said "That brings the total prices back down to X+15.00 and change. How's that?"

Deadpan as I could offer, I said "That's almost half, so why don't you throw in a year's worth of oil changes and we'll call it even?"

He wrote the coupon for that on the spot, and when it was all said and done, we walked out at X+$19.00, which is close enough for government work and, in my opinion, showed that they were at least willing to work to make this right.

That doesn't excuse their bullying tactics, their bait and switching with our old car and all of the other cliche'd car dealer smarmy salesman bullshit tactics. That was all wrong.

It also doesn't leave us knowing how we are going to fill out their survey. You know, the one they tell you about over and over again that, if you don't give them perfect scores on, people can and will be fired, killed, maimed, tortured, or forced to eat lead paint, or worse.

As I said, we are ultimately pretty satisfied with the result, but how we got there felt similar to how Andy Duphrane felt escaping from Shawshank when he "crawled to freedom through five-hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want too. Five-Hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile."

But hey, it's better than having to tell Lauren that we didn't have the car with the television in it anymore. I'd rather pluck my own eyes out and sell plasma while working nights at IHOP than do that.

I love you punkin. Enjoy your terrible kids shows on DVD in car. With mommy. I can't listen to them.

GM corporate has spoken with all parties, and although they can't force the dealer to do anything, they are strongly encouraging the dealer to make this right.

I am headed over there now to see if this little turd is going to be arrogant or contrite. That will determine my mood...

Stay tuned for more tonight.

And if you haven't read the prior post, that stands for Head Sales Dick.

Now it seems that our old car HAS been sold. So it also seems that the keys AND pewter Trailblazer that they were willing to hand to me and had a written contract for LAST FUCKING NIGHT was NOT the same 2004 Pewter Trailblazer with 13,000 miles on it.

So let me ask you, what on earth were they going to do when we signed the contracts, accepted the higher payment and then discovered that what they had given to me WAS NOT MY CAR?!?!?!?!?

Anyway, after the wife involved GMAC corporate AND the general manager of XXXXXX Chevrolet dealership, the HSD has called me and wants to meet with me and the wife. I asked "what is there to sit down and talk about except you giving us our car back and taking back your van?"

His tone was cool and measured.

"You obviously think enough of our service to buy two cars from us and come back for another."

(We've now bought four by the way, five if you include the third Trailblazer they fucked up on and currently show us as owning).

Then he said "And we'd like to do what we can, within reason, to work things out. Now, having said that, we need to have an understanding about equal responsibility as well."

(This doesn't sound like an apology for telling me how to spend my money and how much I, a paying customer and member of the GMAC family, can afford, but maybe that's what he wants to "sit down to talk about.")

Our move instead was to call GMAC corporate and have them call the GM since in 48 hours our car has been sold, found, lost, sold, found and sold again. I fully expect to be carjacked by Al-Queda bandits the next time I set foot on the property.

Stay tuned for updates as the situation warrants. And if it gets to us going tonight, WITH THE TWO KIDS, to "sit down and work this out," you can expect WAY more fireworks, including the hit "How can you write a sales contract on a car you've already sold to someone else, you ethics-less cocksucker?" and "Wait'll an independent arbitrator hears this story."

Back with more shortly, as I expect the GMAC-general manager phone call will produce yet another call from the smarmy head sales dick.

I could make a top ten list of sorts, but instead, I'll just give you the facts about a recent transaction there.

As some of you may know, recently my wife purchased a 2006 Chevy Uplander. She bought it from XXXXXXXXXXXX Chevrolet in XXXXXXXX, GA. (I'm guessing that you knew that from the title of the thread).

She did this deal on her own and did a great job. Of course, we were familiar with the folks at Bill Heard, given that this was the fourth vehicle we'd bought there over the last six years.

From the beginning, my wife explained what she wanted to do, which car she wanted to trade in, and what the payment had to be. Period. No surprises.

And the guy first came back with "I found the perfect car for you, and the payment is $X," which was only $105 more than she said we wanted to pay.

The wife and I both knew the game, so she said "That's not the price I'm looking for, so either make the deal better or no thanks."

This went on for four or five days. Finally, our salesman found the perfect vehicle in Dahlonega, GA and had it brought to the dealership on a Friday afternoon about three plus weeks ago. Then the wife and I dropped urchin 1.0 off at the in-laws across the street while we took urchin 2.0 and our trade to the dealership.

Everything went fine and took the usual two hours longer than the "We'll be done in 15 minutes" that they give you, but we expected that too.

We checked over the numbers, shook on the deal, took possession of the car and went home, my wife giddy as a schoolgirl, or in this case, as giddy as a soccer mom.

Jump forward about 2.5 weeks and we get a late notice on the payment for the vehicle we no longer own. We also receive a bill for the new Trailblazer we just bought.

That's right. Somehow the dickbags messed up the VIN AND description on the contract so that, according to GMAC and XXXXXXXXXX dealership, we were now the proud owners of three Chevy Trailblazers and zero Chevy Uplanders.

My wife, diligent and with great attention to detail, began unraveling the "mystery."

The first mystery was that the guys that wrote the contracts were dumbasses, and that starts with our salesman and goes up to the finance guy and the sales manager. I'm sure that it's SOMEONE'S job to make sure that the car you put on the contract is actually the car you sold to someone.

Step back to when we bought the two Trailblazers in 2004. To make things easier, the dealer applied all rebates and discounts (we get the GM employee discount) to one vehicle, making the payment for one Trailblazer forty bucks more per month than the other one.

Anyway, we then, we come to find out that the wrong vehicle has been traded. We advised XXXXXX dealership that we were willing to trade whichever vehicle gave us the better deal, and our salesman insisted that trading the vehicle with the higher payment would benefit us the most. He never said "the one with THIS VIN," or "The silver one." He just said "the one with the higher payment."

Now, since he has access to our original purchase info, our current GMAC finance file and has spoken to us AND GMAC at the same time to confirm the details, we are sure that he's aware of which vehicle is which.

Then we got a bill for the Trailblazer we still had, and it was the one with the forty dollar higher payment.

Oddly enough, we got a call last Thursday from the dealership. They wanted to "stop by and correct an error on the mileage listed on our contract." We checked that and found it to be right, but realized that basically every other piece of information on the contract was wrong.

So I called said salesman last Thursday to discuss this and to ask why, among other things, did he take the wrong vehicle after recommending the wrong vehicle based on payment amount, he denied ever having that conversation about trading either vehicle or which trade benefited us the most or anything else.

He also advised us that our old Trailblazer was already sold.

We then got to play the "He's not here but he'll be back Monday" game trying to reach the salesman, finance guy or sales manager by phone.

Right. Like the sales manager doesn't work Fridays. Please.

We got no call on Monday, nor could we reach anyone. (No surprise there).

So I called yesterday, explained everything, and the sales manager asked if I could come by and that, "if we were lucky, we would somehow find that the old vehicle wasn't gone yet and just swap them and make everything right."

I said that right to me meant getting my old vehicle back with the $319/month payment and the van at it's current payment of $390.

"No problem," he said. If we can get lucky enough to locate the old car.

I quick got my Trailblazer washed and headed over to the dealer, sure that, now that we'd agreed to a deal, they'd "magically" be able to find the old Trailblazer.

And sure enough, they did. "You're so lucky," the sales manager said. "One of our guys found it WAY in the back," and then he explained how dealerships can lose trade ins all the time.

Riiiiiiight.

So in we went to the Finance guy's office (who by the way is a walking cliche: former pseudo-successful college football player that got signed by an NFL team, but blew out his legs in year two, and now he's the assistant finance guy at a disgusting car dealership on the wrong side of the tracks in Buford, GA).

He explains about all of the hours he's spent re-hand writing the contract. (why do I give a shit? That's your job). By the way, if you can't tell, by now I'm getting a bit testy.

So I sit. And sit. And sit. The only (and I do mean only) good part was that I got to read a LOT of my most recent book, "Masters Of Chaos: The secret history of the Special Forces" by Linda Robinson. If I could make an emoticon, I would insert a VERY small semi-smiley right here.

Finally, as we're sitting in the finance office, I glance over at the new contract and it says the payment is $433.02

$433.02!!! What the mother fucking fuck is that?

This entire thing was about having a lower net payment in the household by trading our vehicle with the higher payment, and now the new van payment is $53 higher than it was, while the Trailblazer payment only dropped $40, so basically this whole new process has upped my net payment by fifteen damned dollars?

Uhh...no fucking way there, Joe Willie Namath. Not gonna happen.

So then we start the "what do you mean, you aren't going to make the deal" part of our program where they let you sit and stew and then tell you how great the deal is and ask why you wouldn't make the deal over fifty five measly dollars, etc. They also explained that the $50 difference was due to the fact that my car (a 2004 model identical to my wife's except it's black and has a whopping 20k on it vs. her 13k) is worth two grand less than hers as a trade.

I am now boiling. If you know me at all, you know that I'm beyond boiling and nearing much worse.

So I said "Look, you guys dropped the ball on this from minute one, and I'll tell you what. My wife really wants this car. I'll eat $20 of the $55 if you guys find the rest in the trade-in. How's that sound?"

Then I get the head finance guy telling me (and showing me some screen that could have been from a fucking etch-a-sketch) that they were already losing $158 on the van in the current deal and that since I was a GM employee discount recipient, there was no wiggle room.

I said "If you're losing money selling me that car then no wonder your manufacturer's on the ropes. And if there wasn't wiggle room, then where did my sales-genius over there get another three grand out of my wife's car on the original deal from? Was that money he found in the fucking ashtray?"

(Okay, I didn't say the ashtray line, but man I should have).

So the sales manager comes in again and just tersely says "So where does that leave us?"

I replied "The deal's off and I'll be returnng the van."

He then shook my hand in that "I'm gonna squeeze your hand so you'll know how powerful and important I am despite being a foot shorter than you" way, and I went home.

Mind you, I had gotten there a bit past 4pm and it was now 7:30pm.

The wife cleaned out the car, cried some very angry tears, and I headed back up to Bill Turd and got there at 8:15pm.

The sales manager (whom I will now refer to as the head sales dick) said "did your salesman know you were coming back tonight?"

"Ummmm...I don't know," I said. "But I'm here and would like my other car back."

He replied "I don't know where the keys are and I'm not sure where the vehicle is at the moment."

Really? You had it 45 minutes ago on the fucking curb with the keys in your smarmy little fucking hands, but since then you, the Head Sales Dick, has lost both my keys AND my fucking car?

"That's fine. You find them both. I'll wait."

And I did. For ninety God Damned minutes.

While I did read more, I was having difficulty comprehending the information since I was busy plotting two crimes: the deaths of the Head Sales Dick, the sales weasel AND the cliche as well as my own very public boycotting of Bill Turd Chevrolet.

Of course, he came back to me and sat next to me to tell me "we're still looking real hard for the keys and the car" every fifteen minutes. He was also kind enough and professional enough to say "What's the big deal about fifty five dollars? I mean, you know your personal finances more than I do, but I would think that fifty five dollars would be worth keeping your wife happy."

You may now correctly assume that I was .000001 percent away from my fit-pitching, obscenity-laden boiling point right there in the lobby full of smoke stained sales weasels and young go-getters cold calling and wearing five gold bracelets on one hand.

Instead I said "That's fine. I'll be back for it tomorrow."

However, I don't think I'm going back. I think what I'm going to do is park it on the curb in front of my house, lock the keys in it and call Bill Turd Chevrolet and say "You can come get the car as long as you bring mine clean and full of gas along with the coupon for $1,000 off my purchase and the $1,400 you owe me."

I'll keep you posted, but know that this isn't over by a longshot.

Stay with me here.

You are sitting in a chair and are sitting on your hands so your arms are straight down and thus your hands would be about 1/3 of the way down the backs of your legs. At the tip of your left index finger is a spot that's not quite inner thigh, but it's not quite just leg either.

Anyway, at that spot on my left back-thighish area I have a bruise that looks like the ones that were on my arms after my arterial IV's: Purple-black and about the size of a computer mouse.

Anybody got any ideas where I might have gotten that?

Today is already sucking, but let me go back and preface with some details.

I have been having iPod troubles recently. Troubles as in every time I plug it in to my pc, it reloads all 60GB (over 11,000 songs). Every time. And since that generally takes about four hours, that's pretty annoying.

So Saturday I decided to format the iPod, uninstall iTunes, reinstall iTunes and reload the iPod.

Except that after I deleted the music from my library, I said "yes" when asked if I wanted to put it all in the recycle bin. So the music's gone.

No problem though. We've got the 110GB of music on an external drive hanging off of a server at work, so all I have to do is bring my external drive to work, copy the music to it and VOILA!

So this morning, I disconnected my external drive and put it in a bag along with a tape that I'm supposed to ship to a friend of the Bud Shootout. I put that bag in front of the bathroom door so I wouldn't forget it as I was heading out to go downstairs to leave for work. I took the bag, went to the kitchen, set it on the table, got the rest of my stuff, and left the damned bag in the kitchen.

I also owe my company a reimbursement on the short term disability payments I received since the company never stopped paying me (that's how it works). I tried to call our carrier for the total, but they were closed until today at 8am. However, I forgot to bring a blank check so I can't pay them today anyway.

I left my laptop in standby mode instead of turning it off yesterday, so when I took it out of the bag at work today, it wouldn't work. It had to be charged a little first.

And Felony Motorsports and Jimmie Johnson won the freaking Daytona 500.

I can't have this kind of stuff hanging over my head on a Monday. I think I'm gonna run home around 10am (after urchin 1.0 is already at school) and get all of that stuff. Doing that and finishing all of those things would probably turn this from a "shit it's Monday" day into a "Hell yes!! It's Monday!!" kind of a day.

(No animals were harmed during the writing of this story).

I'm gonna do this in a sort of stream of consciousness, Larry King in the USA Today style, and then I might end it with a story.

I keep finding out more and more funny things about my brother in law. Today we were going to the home and garden show at the Gwinnett Civic Center. We went to a nearby restaurant for beers and lunch beforehand to knock the edge off of what was left of last night. (More to follow on last night later).

While having lunch, my brother in law and his brother were laughing about some old stories from when they were wee lads. It turns out that, among other things, these two knuckleheads sprayed a neighborhood dog's balls orange.

Read that again. They had one of those old neighborhood dogs that nothing ever bothered, so they spray painted his balls orange.

How funny is that?

This was just one of the funny things from our day. That and my wife making up names for the registrations at the H&G show. That's was funny too...

Now, my commitment to get drunk this weekend was very successful. I am doing that because I am planning to NOT drink for at least a month and maybe two so I can facilitate some easier weight loss. i feel confident that, without beer, I could easily lose the remaining fifteen pounds. not that it's a big deal, but i figure that there's no reason to put it off. Staying at a lower weight HAS to be easier than getting there...right?

Anyway, we had our usual Friday dinner of a big fat ribeye on a paper plate and a few beers.

Nothing spectacular happened. Until...

The sister in law went home to put her son to bed, and we kept at it, but there was still nothing exciting going on. It was just me and the wife and the BIL having a nice time.

And then we ran out of beer, which should have been our signal to stop.

So I went across the street and stole half a dozen beers from the BIL's deck. And we talked and laughed and drank those. I also called my folks at 10:24pm to ask if they could babysit today while we were at the home show, which they graciously agreed to do. If it were me, I'd have either hung up or not answered at all...

Until the wife had to go across and steal six more beers from the BIL's deck. And we drank those too.

And then the wife went across the street and stole a dozen more beers. (Egad).

While we were drinking those, someone (Uncle Todd, I believe), had the bright idea to call our friend and local pizza proprietor Andy. It seems that Uncle Todd (The BIL) wanted to hear Andy's bacon tree joke.

So I dialed the number.

At 1:45am. Needless to say, he was thrilled to hear from us.

I found out today that Andy thought the phone call was funny, given that despite making the call, I was saying nothing. The wife was yelling "You should come over!" and uncle Todd was demanding that Andy tell us the bacon tree joke. Over and over again.

Andy laughed politely, tolerated us, and hung up.

And what do you think we did next?

Of course, we called him again. He with the wife and the 2 year old daughter who he certainly didn't want us to wake up.

This time he left the phone off the hook and laid it down next ot him, hoping we wouldn't call again.

It was at or around this time that, during a conversation about heaven knows what that I made the night special.

I fell out of my chair.

That's right. I wasn't leaning or getting up or anything. I was talking and sitting, and the next thing you know, I was laying on the floor.

Needless to say, this night will now live in infamy like many other nights we have had.

Anyway, we (apparently) went to bed at 3:30am. And I woke up a little after 5am when I promptly showered and got dressed for work.

I then came downstairs and proceeded to go to sleep in the La-Z-Boy until 9am.

Those of you that have children know that the number of times you get to sleep until 9am can be counted on one hand from the time you have kids until the time they're about eight years old, so I was especially appreciative of the wife's efforts to keep the kids away from me despite her own tiredness.

I am also surprisingly not hungover given the number of beers we had and our lack of sleep.

Just so you know, I called and apologized to Andy and his wife this morning. I also assured Andy that, given the fact that his wife doesn't find the bacon tree joke funny anyway, she most assuredly won't find it funny now.

(since I've mentioned it twice, here's the bacon tree joke):

There are two guys who have been lost in the desert for weeks, and they're at death's door. As they stumble on, hoping for salvation in the form of an oasis or something similar, they suddenly spy, through the heat haze, a tree off in the distance. As they get closer, they can see that the tree is draped with rasher upon rasher of bacon. There's smoked bacon, crispy bacon, life-giving juicy nearly-raw bacon, all sorts.

"My God, Pepe" says the first bloke. "It's a bacon tree !!! We're saved!!!"

"You're right" says Pepe, "Praise the Lord!"

So Pepe goes on ahead and runs up to the tree salivating at the prospect of food. But as he gets to! within five feet of the tree, there's the sound of machine gun fire, and he is shot down in a hail of bullets. His friend quickly drops down on the sand, and calls across to the dying Pepe.

"Pepe, Pepe - what happened?"....

With his dying breath Pepe calls out ... ."Ugh, run , run ! ... it wasn't a Bacon Tree it was a........Ham Bush."

See why we had to have someone tell us that joke again? It's hilarious.


Congrats to KHI (Kevin Harvick Incorporated) for their impressive run at Daytona in the Busch race today. Tony Stewart won and the other KHI car, driven by rookie Burney Lamar, finished second.

Well, that's about all for now. Look for more upates tomorrow as I end my drunken weekend by watching the Daytona 500 and quite possibly playing tennis illegally for an ALTA mixed team.

Sayonara everybody...

And more specifically, NBC's coverage of the Olympics.

I was riding home yesterday and listening to TC&RS. (For those that don't know, that's The Cindy & Ray Show on Star94 here in the ATL. I know it doesn't sound manly, but there aren't many options in the afternoon. Sports talk is "The Stews," 96rock sucks ass every second of the day that the Regular Guys aren't on, The River 97.1 is 96Rock but up one on the dial, and the rest is just drive time crap. And I'm man enough to admit it, so just pipe down already.).

Anyway, yesterday's "what to the listeners think" question was "Why aren't you watching the Olympics?"

That's an interesting question. They didn't ask "What do you think of the Olympic coverage?" or "Are you watching the Olympics?" They asked "why are you NOT watching the Olympics?"

(Despite paying a Go-jillion dollars for the rights, I don't think the Olympics EVER pays off for NBC, or at least the Winter Olympics don't. According to the USA Today,"Prime-time viewership for the first six nights of the Winter Games is down 36% from Salt Lake City in 2002, 17% from Nagano in 1998 and 44% from Lillehammer in 1994.").

So, the question was "Why am I not watching the Olympics?"

My wife and I have discussed this at great lengths this year (and at not so great lengths), and I think I've got a couple of answers.

Before I start though, let me mention my fundamental belief that the Winter Olympics aren't really Olympic events. They should be called "The Winter Exibitions" or "The Winter Competitions" or maybe "The Goodwill Games." But to me, the Olympics are all about the Summer games and competitors being faster, stronger, etc. Show me running, swimming, track and field, wrestling and weightlifting, and that's the Olympics. Tennis isn't Olympic, and neither are equestrian events or beach volleyball.

Having said that, and assuming that there will continue to be Winter Olympic Games, let's just focus on them.

The first problem with the Winter games is that it's almost like little sports vignettes stuffed inside of a bunch of Barbara Walters/Oprah Winfrey sob stories. I'm not being mean here (or at least I'm not trying to be mean), but why does every story they run have to be tragic, sad, or just plain depressing? I mean, why not run a profile on Shawn White (who has KILLED this year at the Olympics and the X-Games) and show how nine months out of the year he's just snowboarding, eating junk food, sleeping in late and smoking dope with his buddies and laughing at how much money he's making at his age? Kind of like the Olympic version of MTV's "Cribs." I'd watch THAT in a second.

Secondly, the tape delay thing is absolutely ridiculous. This isn't 1976. The internet and cable news and sports channels and sports talk radio make it impossible for me to get thru the day and not know what's transpired. NBC acts like the earth is flat and that we somehow don't already know everything they're going to show us.

Remember the Miracle on Ice in 1980? That game was actually played in the middle of the day and that was here in the States. But thanks to no internet, they could pull off that shitty move and act like it was live. No more. Just cruising any old news site will give me a medal count in one corner and a crawl across the bottom telling me who just won in the biathalon, so I don't actually sit at work all day pining for your coverage and for you to enlighten me. I just don't.

Thirdly, I'm not stuck with only three channels to watch and waiting desperately for you to start your coverage. I don't have even have satellite tv and I still have over 250 choices to watch besides you. If you want me to watch, give me something worth watching.

But the biggest reason I (and I suspect 85% of the other heterosexual male television owners in this country) don't watch your crappy Olympic coverage is because of one overriding factor:

ICE SKATING!!

And I don't mean speed skating. I mean figure skating, in any form, in any combination and at any time.

See, every night you show us 45 seconds of luge or curling or bobsled or hockey (or relegate it to CNBC during the day live) and then you show us 20 minute biographies of one gay man after another talking about his dreams that involve wearing tights and makeup and carrying a purse.
And would you like to know why we, the American male (and some of our enlightened female partners) don't like figure skating?

BECAUSE IT'S NOT A FUCKING SPORT!!!

You can sell it and package it however you want to, but it's not a sport. Period. To be a sport, it must have a scoreboard or a finish line or a clock / time to beat or a clear victor (i.e. speed skating, biathalon, etc.). What you have is a demonstration or an event.

Any event whose winner is decided by a scoring format that is 45% content and 55% opinion is nothing more that political bullshit.

Example: The other night, a couple finished 8th in the short program (which is a misnomer because it is most certainly NOT short), and they were thrilled. They clearly outskated everyone else and should have been, at worst, in the top three, but they were 8th. Why? Because there is a pre-olympic order where these teams and skaters are ranked, and everything runs thru that. You could never have a "miracle on ice" in figure skating, because the 30th best figure skater could never ever even win a medal, let alone a gold one.

So you see, NBC. It's really not that tough. To get people to watch, you have to show something worth watching, and not just in 90 second pass throughs. Showing an entire hockey game or speed skating event would rule.

But why would you do that when there's some russian chick skating to Revelle's Bolero?

Last night's workout was a little shorter than usual. Only one hour total. But at about the 18 minute mark I started running. 5.2 mph for exactly 11 minutes, or one mile total.

That is causing me a little more soreness in the mornings in my knees, ankles and lower back, but it's not a "holy shit...I can't do THAT anymore!" pain. It's just a "dude, you're 37 years old now. Take it a little easy for a while."

Like I said, I don't know if the running will last. According to my treadmill, it really only offers about a very small increase in benefit (calorie and carb burning wise) over walking at 3.5 or so mph on a six or seven degree incline, so I'll have to keep an eye on the aches and pains and make sure it's worth it.

This morning I was 208.5 pounds, which is down 41.5 pounds from my weight before "the incident." My goal is to reach 200 by Memorial Day, but I would really like to hit 195 so that when I return from my Hilton Head vacation in the end of May, I'll still be under or at 200.

Either way, I feel great and am feeling better every day. I eat better even on bad days than I ever did before, and I am constantly finding ways to eat better and enjoy it as well.

That said, last night was country fried steak and white gravy with rice and garlic green beans. The key for me is very little rice and gravy, a moderate amount of the meat and eating my green beans. We've decided that since Lauren eats green beans, we will probably eat them more often than not. I eat so few veggies that finding ones we all like will require eating them constantly.

So there you have it. The Thursday TMLSB healthwatch update.

Come back over the next few days to read about this weekend's action at Daytona for the trucks, the Busch cars AND the Cup cars.

Just a note: The qualifying races start at 2pm today, but the race of the weekend should be the Craftsman Truck Series race tomorrow night. Check for your local times and stations.

Oh, and I'll probably post a recipe for some brats or ribs or some other good and snacky race day food.

Aloha everybody.

p.s. Last night urchin 2.0 slept from 11:30pm until 5am. She's using level two Doctor Brown's nipples and getting six ounces per feeding, although she eats between three and five ounces per sitting.

Urchin 1.0 has not gotten up at all for two nights in a row, which kicks total ass.

One more thing, in going thru some photos, I found a bunch that I am going to post today, but I can only do them five per post thanks to Blogger. That's fine, but I'm just telling you so you don't expect a lot of my usual blather with them. It's just for fun and to remind ourselves that the 'new one' hasn't always been the center of attention, but that someone else had that title for quite a while.

TMLSB

So, the treadmill has been in my office for exactly 29 days. Any of you know me that have talked to me since then or if you know me at all know this:

I will never run for fitness.

As I've said for years, I really won't run for anything except for free beer or maybe to save my life. Maybe. If it was a really short run.

So, now that we've cleared that up, would you like to hear something really really crazy?

I ran tonight. For fitness and possibly for fun.

I'll wait a minute for that last sentence to sink in.

Here's how my workouts go. I am excited about working out every day (well, six out of seven days. I take Fridays off). Once urchin 1.0 is in bed and urchin 2.0 is fed and / or settled, it's my time to put in a little sweat equity.

Then, once in my office, I stall a little, then look at the clock and realize that every minute I waste is a minute taken away from blessed sleep, so I get dressed, stretch a little and get on the treadmill.

I start at around 3.2 mph and 3 degrees of incline. Over the course of the first five minutes, I increase the incline to 6 or 6.5 degrees and the speed to 3.5 or 3.6 mph depending upon how I feel.

Then comes the 15 minutes I don't like very much. It takes me some time to become one with my stride and to get comfortable, regardless of the pace. It could be that my 37 year old body is still protesting a little, or maybe it's trying to rush me to get rid of the 20 years of damage I've done to it, but either way, that part more or less takes forever.

But then, between minutes 20 and 30, I become one with the treadmill. The stride and pace are effortless, I've got a good sweat going and I feel great.

At 30 minutes I take my pulse to see where I'm at and adjust accordingly to try to maintain my desired 140 beats per minute.

So tonight, I stepped off to take my pulse, went to check on the wife and baby, and when I came back into my office, I looked at the treadmill and it hit me. I wonder if I could run? At a decent clip, I wonder if I could do ten minutes? Five minutes? I had no idea.

So I turned it up to 5 mph and started running. Well, you know, jogging anyway.

I kept speeding it up trying to find a comfortable pace, and I think I did around 5.5 mph. They were 11 minute miles I believe, so you might have to do the math.

Anyway, I ran for about six or seven minutes, or roughly a tick more than half a mile.

I then slowed it back down to 3.6 mph and cruised the last 23 minutes, including a faster than usual 10 minute cool-down of 3.2 mph at around a 3 degree incline.

Am I crazy? Did I snap for a few minutes? I can't say.

All I know for sure is that I'd like to see if I can run for ten minutes tomorrow, and maybe find a more comfortable pace.

Like I said, I don't understand any of this stuff, and if you told my family or friends 100 days ago that in early 2006 I'd be walking a brisk 4.0 miles per day and would start running on purpose and for fun/exercise, they'd have told you to find the guy you were actually talking about and stop joking about me.

And yet here I am. The guy that ran for fun and exercise.

If I do ten minutes tomorrow night, I'll let you know. If not, I'll just try again the next day and see what happens.

p.s. I'm not crazy. I took some Ibuprofin before I went to bed tonight. I have to be able to get out of bed tomorrow, after all...

Peace.

But I did it.

It seems the jury in the case of Southwest Airlines vs. the verbally abusive very fat woman who happens to be black came back with a resounding NOT GUILTY. Here's the story, courtesy of the Portsmouth Herald...

PORTSMOUTH - Nadine Thompson said she did not get a jury of her peers when an all-white jury on Friday ruled that Southwest Airlines did not discriminate against her for being black. But Lance Hellman of Portsmouth, a juror in the case, said race had nothing whatever to do with the verdict.

Thompson, a cosmetics executive from Exeter, said Monday she would not appeal the verdict because she said has no desire to again be characterized in public "as a fat, black, foul-mouthed ghetto momma. It was the most humiliating thing I’ve ever gone through in my life."

A U.S. District Court jury of eight people deliberated for just over an hour Friday before finding against Thompson.

In 2003, Thompson, who is significantly overweight, boarded a Southwest Airlines flight in Manchester. She was asked to leave her seat, under the airline’s "customer of size" policy, and talk to airline officials in the airport lobby about buying two tickets to accommodate her size. There, according to testimony, she became verbally abusive and was escorted out of the airport by sheriff’s deputies.

During testimony, Southwest Airlines employees said they did make a mistake in the way they asked her to leave the plane, but they never used racist words and were concerned solely with her weight.

Nadine Thompson Exeter resident who sued airline

Hellman said he knew nothing about the case when he was first seated on the jury, and on first seeing her "I had a great deal of sympathy for her. Here was this overweight black woman being picked on by the big airline. It was kind of a David vs. Goliath thing, I thought. And I’ve always been partial to David."

He said it was true that of the 100 potential jurors called to the district courthouse that day, he did not see people of color "but that’s a fair sampling of New Hampshirites."

Over the course of the four-day trial, he said it "became apparent to me that she didn’t have a case. She was trying to make an issue of race and it was really her weight," he said. When the jurors were finally able to deliberate, Hellman said, it became quickly apparent that everyone felt the same way he did.

He said he was particularly swayed by the testimony of the employee who asked her to leave the plane and whom she subsequently called "a racist motherf*****."

"I could sympathize with her anger. But she lost it," he said.

When Thompson said afterward that there was "no one to advocate for race," he felt it implied he was racist. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

Lance Hallman Juror from Portsmouth

But Thompson said that wasn’t at all what she meant.

"I honor and respect that he did the best he could. I respect that all of the jurors did the best they could," she said.

"But it was not a jury of my peers. There wasn’t even an ethnic minority there to advocate for me."

Hellman, who said he would be glad to meet Thompson and talk with her, said he felt in the final analysis that she should consider looking within herself.

"I am sympathetic for the underdog. And I can understand her not wanting to feel undervalued. But I think she has some growing to do."



The plaintiff's response?

To complain that she didn't get a jury of her peers. Never mind that I think you'd have a hard time finding a black person in New Hampshire at all. According to the 2000 census, the state of New Hampshire is 96% white. 96%. That means that the remaining 4% is divided amonst blacks and African Americans (0.7%), American Indian and Alaska native (0.2%), Asian (1.3%), Native Hawaiin and other Pacific Islander (<0.1%), some other race (0.6%) and two or more races (1.1%).

Did you get that? 99.3% of New Hampshire is non-black, and she's mad because she thinks she didn't get a jury of her peers.

HONEY!!! YOU GOT EXACTLY A JURY OF YOUR PEERS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE!!!

What you did NOT get is a jury of your peers in Atlanta or Charlotte or Detroit or Montgomery.

There are 1,235,786 New Hampshirians, or at least there were according to the 2000 Census. Based on the percentages, that's only 86,505.02 black people. In the entire state.

In 2004, there were 20,786 citizens in Portsmouth, Maine. And the breakdown there was a whopping 2.7% black. That means that there were only 561 black residents in Portsmouth at all. Given that, say, 1/3 were kids under the voting age, that knocks the number down to about 375. And if you divide jury duty up into 52 weeks, there were only seven available black jurors that week at all, and that assumes that they all showed up instead of opting out, being sick, having to work or travel, etc. And given the fact that statistically somewhere between 15 and 35% of people that get called don't show up, that knocks the number down further to around 4 or 5.

That's right. This woman's mad because the city wasn't able to bring all five eligible, available and called jurors for that week and put them on HER JURY (and it STILL wouldn't have been half of the panel).

If you ask me, if her jury had come up with four or five black people on it and I'd have been the airlines' attorey, I'D have been screaming about the jury not being a representative sample of the population.

So please woman, for the love of Christ, shut your hole and leave us all alone!!!

The wife and I don't like Valentine's Day.

Well, it's not that we don't like it. We just don't give in to the ridiculous corporate pressure to buy something else expensive just six weeks after Christmas to show "how much we love you."

Like my brother in law said, "If you don't know how much I love you after the other 364 days, this one day isn't gonna make any difference."

There's no good reason to dislike it like I do really. I just don't like being hit over the head for three weeks by the various jewelers/chocolatiers/florists/car dealers saying "don't you owe it to her to buy (insert product here)?"

No. I don't owe it to her. If I wanted to buy her something nice, I would just buy it for her. I won't wait until I see some commercials from Zale's to do it.

So, in honor of that, I bring you this story that's turned into a gift.

Three weeks ago, my wife and daughters were coming to the office to visit. Before they arrived, I had been at Publix picking up lunch and decided to get her some flowers to surprise her. I got back to the office and put them in the overhead storage bin at my desk.

That night at the car dealership, we were sitting in the salesman's office going thru the minutia of buying a car when out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman carrying a bsket of flowers.

"FUCK!!" I exclaimed.

Startled, my wife asked "Ummm...what's wrong?"

"I bought you flowers today to surprise you, and they're still sitting in the cabinet above my desk, and by Monday they'll be worthless."

"Awwww..." she said. "That was awfully sweet."

Anyway, move forward three weeks and I have still forgotten to take those flowers out of the cabinet...until today.

Happy Valentine's Day honey.

p.s. Don't mention this to her. She doesn't read my blogs until the evenings and not usually for a few days. It'll be our little secret.

Last night's visit came around 2:11am. It seemed that someone wanted a new pull-up. That's what we get for letting her have juice right before bed.

But to her credit, she didn't come to our room first. She went looking for her pullups in the nursery, but couldn't find them. Then she told me she was cold, which she was.

See, we got her an electric blanket last week, but she still doesn't understand that it works much better if the user is actually UNDER the covers and not on top of them.

So I got her changed (actually, I got the pull-up...she did the rest herself), got the bed arranged and got her back into it, but this time she was under the electric blanket.

She was asleep again in about two minutes.

We're getting there. I figure in another 11 years I'll actually get a good night's sleep...

I'd like to preface this entry by saying that I fully intend to swear. A LOT!! There is no way to adequately and appropriately discuss the subject that I am about to talk about without obscenities, so I plan to use plenty of them. If you are easily offended, then I'd suggest heading back to some other, less obscenity-laced website, like this one.

You might not know it, but I have had an assful of the celebrity stalking and star fucking that goes on in this country. Every day on every radio and television station, there are segments talking about pop stars and actors and wannabe actors and no-talent hacks and who's married to whom and who's diddling whom and who got arrested for what and who is which starlette's baby daddy, etc.

Enough.

The simple fact is that it's all envy, pure and simple. People demand access to celebrities and athlete's private lives and private moments because they can't live that way in their own lives. These are the same people that will bitch about Michael Vick or Roger Clemens making 15 million a year "just to throw and / or hit a baseball" and how "no actor is worth 25 million a movie.

Yet people still watch and listen. Shit, entertainment tonight's been on so long that I bet Mary Hart no longer even has a working vagina, yet people still watch, just waiting to hear that new morsel about Bennifer or Brangelina or whomever else is in the news, like Kenne Cheswigger and Chenise Risheen and others.

But there is an exception to my rant about the media and the people doing this. And that exception is the clusterfuck that is the marriage of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline.

These two media whores couldn't get enough attention if the government added a 25th hour to every day to extend the non-stop coverage of their pathetic, drug-haze, DFACS needing existence. I don't think Britney or that turkey buzzard she married leave the house without thinking of some way to get their name/picture/image/film snippet into the daily celebrity stalker news reels.

Just look at the last few months and years. There was Britney's repossession of meth-head's ferarri, the baby in the lap fiasco, Britney's Hindu ceremony (including media), Federcletus' new Popozao single which stands to be the most mocked arrangement in the history of man, and I won't even go into their coon-ass, white-trash courtship and wedding or the subsequent breeding.

Anyway, last week the Grammy Awards were aired. I know it's not the Oscars and that some of the folks attending don't hold it in the same regard as other awards shows, but it's still the Grammys, and she has actually won one of the awards, so she should respect the event a little.

Anyway, here's what she and Cletus wore to the event:


A number of things stand out in this photo. First, Kevin still thinks that that turd-looking ponytail look of the 1990's on the professional tennis tour is cool. You will also notice that despite wearing a tuxedo jacket, the dickweed is wearing an untucked and unbuttoned pseudo-dress shirt revealing his mustard-stained wife-beater t-shirt, blue jeans and (not shown here), he's wearing Chuck fucking Taylor All Stars to boot.

And now for Britney. For the first time in a while, she's dressed better than a homeless crackhead visiting a swap-meet or some single mom cruising the local mini-mart for a latte and a pack of Newports. Oh, except for this little thing:

Hey Britney, you know-nothing nearly talentless whore!! Your fucking nipple is hanging out!!

I mean, is she so desperate for attention this week that now it's an "accidental nip slip?" What's next? Some paperazzi stumbling upon Britney giving herself a Brazillian in the snack chip aisle at the local Super Walmart?

"Oh gosh fellas. I didn't expect to see YOU here. What am I doing? Hey, why can't you guys just leave me and my family alone? We're just regular people like you. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish waxing my taint for my loser-ass husband who's in Vegas blowing my money like it's going out of style and fucking hookers and crack whores alike. And I left my beloved child locked in the car outside, and I don't want his brain to melt. Bodyguards, confiscate everything but the film they've already shot, act surly, and then demand that I be given the space I need to see if they have anymore addidas track suits here, along with some horribly out of stle Ug boots. Oh, and get me some fruit roll ups too..."

This child has no shot of being remotely normal. Zero. Shit, I bet Francis Bean Cobain is more likely to become the President of the United States of America than this kid is to even know how to read or write. But know this, little Shaun Preston will most assuredly be able to speak wigger.

So that's it. Much like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and most of the rest of the local 96Rock playlist, I have had a lifetime ass-full of these inbred turds and I will tolerate it no longer. I will change channels, stations, and grocery aisles and do anything else I have to do to avoid them any longer.

Oh, and I can't wait for the impending bungled murder / suicide that should happen within the next three years. I'll watch and read about that.

Thanks for reading everyone. Have a great Tuesday.

I copied a bunch from home last night and thought I'd throw a few up here so you could see what's up at Casa de TMLS lately.

Here are the ones the wife had taken for Valentine's Day:

A few days I posted an entry about a really fat woman suing Southwest Airlines for discrimination because they asked her to buy two seats to acommodate her enormous self.

If you don't think she's as fat as I say, here's her photo.

Now, today I stumbled upon the following article that discusses the verdict of a trial of a similar nature, except that this offended fat woman was black. Here's the text for those of you that don't use tabbed browsing:

CONCORD, N.H. -- A jury on Friday said Southwest Airlines did not racially discriminate against a black woman when she was asked to buy a second seat on a plane because of her size.

The jury deliberated for a little over an hour before finding against Nadine Thompson, who sued Southwest in federal court. She claimed the airline's "customer of size" policy was unfairly applied to her after she boarded a flight at Manchester Airport in 2003.

Joel Drake, a Southwest employee, testified earlier that Thompson accused him of being a "racist pig" when he tried to explain the company's policy and swore at him. He said in 18 years with Southwest, he'd never encountered such horrible accusations and told his boss he couldn't do his job anymore. He took six weeks off and requested a lower position.

Thompson testified that Drake was bullying her and she felt scared, so words were her only way to fight back. She said that no Southwest employees, including Drake, ever explained to her why she needed to buy a second seat.

"Even if you're the only black person on a flight ... you still can't prove race," Thompson said after the verdict. "If they don't fix these problems with their policy, other people are going to come at them."

Yawn.

My first problem with this case is that this woman screaming RACISM devalues every other case of racism that actually exists in this country. But she can't see past the end of her supersized Jersey Mike's Sub to realize that.

Secondly, there has to come a point where this "take no personal responsibility and sue and blame everyone else in the world for our problems" mentality has to end.

Where that will be, I don't know. Maybe this case will help a little.

I don't know what it is, but it seems that you can be the biggest dumbass in the free world and not only get but keep the job as second most powerful man in the United States. How is it possible that these buffoons like Quayle and Ford and Cheney got to where they ended up in politics?

Unless you live under a rock, you've heard the story out of Texas the Cheney's office did it's level damndest to cover up:

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - A 78-year-old hunting companion of Vice President Dick Cheney was recovering in stable condition Monday after Cheney accidentally shot him during a weekend quail hunting trip, a hospital official said.

Harry Whittington "rested well last night," said Peter Banko, hospital administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial. The hospital listed Whittington's condition as "very stable," he said.

Whittington, an Austin attorney, was flown to the hospital after Cheney accidentally shot him late Saturday afternoon at the Armstrong Ranch, hitting him with birdshot.

"It's not critical. It's not serious. It's just stable at this time," Banko said at a morning briefing. He said admitting Whittington to the trauma-intensive care unit was "a fairly common procedure" for a patient hit by a spray of the small pellets.

"I don't know how much spray he has got," Banko said. "My understanding from the physicians is that after you get peppered, sometimes they need to do exploratory surgeries if it gets lodged in a little deeper. Sometimes, it's tweezers. I can't really comment on how extensively he was sprayed."

Banko said he did not know when Whittington would be released, but in the meantime he was being visited by family and friends.

The vice president visited Whittington and his wife before returning to Washington on Sunday. Cheney "was pleased to see that he's doing fine and in good spirits," said Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride.

Whittington sent word through a hospital official that he would not comment on the incident out of respect for Cheney.

Ranch owner Katharine Armstrong told The Associated Press that the accident occurred after Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of a car to shoot at a covey of quail.

She said Whittington went to retrieve a bird he shot. Cheney and the third hunter, whom she would not identify, walked to another spot and discovered a second covey of quail.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," said Armstrong, who was in the car.

"The vice president didn't see him," she said. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

Armstrong said the shotgun pellets broke the skin.

"It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that," she said.

Each of the hunters was wearing a bright orange vest at the time, Armstrong said.

The accident was not reported publicly by the vice president's office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after it was reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on its Web site Sunday.

McBride said the vice president's office did not tell reporters about the accident Saturday because they were deferring to Armstrong to handle the announcement of what happened on her property.

Armstrong said everyone at the ranch was so "focused" on Whittington's health Saturday that it wasn't until Sunday she called the Caller-Times to report the accident. Her ranch is about 60 miles southwest of Corpus Christi.

Sally Whittington told The Dallas Morning News her father was being observed because of swelling from some of the welts on his neck. His face "looks like chicken pox, kind of," she said.

Whittington has been a private practice attorney in Austin since 1950 and has long been active in Texas Republican politics. He's been appointed to several state boards, including when then-Gov. George W. Bush named him to the Texas Funeral Service Commission.

Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year and is "a very safe sportsman." She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.

The 50,000-acre Armstrong ranch has been in the influential South Texas family since the turn of the last century. Katharine is the daughter of Tobin Armstrong, a politically connected rancher who has been a guest at the White House and spent 48 years as director of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. He died in October. Cheney was among the dignitaries who attended his funeral.

Cheney was legally hunting with a license he purchased in November, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman Steve Lightfoot said.

Associated Press writers Nedra Pickler in Washington and Paul J. Weber in Dallas contributed to this report.

__________________________

Now, there are several problems with this story, but here's the main one. Since when did it become protocol to "announce your return" to your hunting party? Here's what I figure happened:

Cheney, Whittington, a couple of guides and whomever are roaming thru thigh high grass trying to rustle up some quail. Whittington heads behind a tree to take a piss, but his 78 year old prostate's giving him trouble, so it takes a good while to finish the job.

Then, he starts shuffling back up to the group, Cheney is all excited and inexperienced, hears a sound and turns around and fires. After all, a 78 year old trial lawyer looks a lot like a four pound quail flying out of the grass.

Jesus Christ, people. The Vice President didn't just miss a dear and wound some redneck in the ass a mile away sitting in a tree stand. Shotguns are ineffective at 50-75 feet for hunting impossible to shoot by ameteurs from further than that, yet Cheney was close enough to a guy to pepper him in the face and neck and chest with a bunch of birdshot.

I figure Cheney was no further than 30 feet from the guy and shot him. And this is the guy who's a step away from having access to "the button?"

When's the next election again, and where do I sign up for a job where I get to do whatever I want, never work, and get in absolutely no trouble for shooting another citizen in the face at extremely close range?

I feel quite an awesome responsibility in making this 300th post. I'd like to be intelligent, profound, witty and political, but I'm not sure I can even fake being any of those things. So I will be content with being semi-reflective and boorish.

This was to be a big sports weekend on television and in person. Friday afternoon brought the almost for real return of Nextel Cup cars to the track in the form of practice for Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout.

For those that don't know, the Shootout is a non-points paying event similar to the Winston. To qualify for the event, a driver must have either won a pole in the last year or be a previous winner of the Shootout.

Although the guys don't use their "official" Daytona cars, you get a good idea about what each of them has and how things are going to look. But more importantly, it's CARS BACK ON THE TRACK!!! The 500 is only six freaking days away!!!

To celebrate, we decided to have steaks for dinner (surprise). But not before UnkTodd and Heather took urchin 1.0 to my eldest nephew's basketball game. Anytime anyone takes any of the urchins anywhere is greatly appreciated by the wife and me.

We also watched some of the opening ceremonies. In a nutshell, I always think these things are a disappointment, especially considering that the face value on some tickets was over a grand.

That said, I enjoyed the lighting proper (although the final four torch bearers were a little anticlimactic) and I thought the spider people were cool too.

Anyway, dinner was good and the company was better (as always) and we got to bed at a reasonable hour since our weekend looked to be full from that point forward.

A note here: For about the four of the last five nights, I have been visited by an apparition...a ghost...or possibly a ninja in the form of Lauren, my 3.75 year old daughter.

The thing that's odd here is that she can't do ANYTHING quietly. And yet, in the silence of our collective slumber and in the dead of night, she can get out of bed and her room and not be detected by the monitor, open our door without us knowing and walk around the bed and climb up on the sideboard thingy and stand there, perfectly balanced, and stare at me without making a sound about three inches from my nose.

And when I do finally detect her, it takes all of the restraint in the world not to scare the shit out of all of us when expressing my surprise.

Anyway, I just thought you should know what we're going through. She only did this twice last night under the guise of "I had a bad dweam" and "I'm firsty."

Anyone got any suggestions on how to curb this? Seriously. As my friends often joke, I've got a cardiac condition and I shouldn't be getting frightened like that.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled recap.

Saturday was to be the same as any other Saturday. 5am wakeup for a Sophia feeding, then a 6am-ish workout (turned out to be four miles at 6:35am), Lauren's soccer gactice (game and practice), a trip to the Krogers for some $1.99 per pound pork loin, some turkey tenderloin (yum) and a little London Broil. We then spent the afternoon watching some olympic coverage, cars on the track again (sort of, at least until weather messed everything up), and finally a quiet family evening of our famous pork loin, a couple of cold beers and bed at around 10:30pm.

We are now officially old.

Sunday started with a sensible breakfast of OJ, some eggbeaters with cheese (yummy!) and some new and exciting (get this) SQUARE BAGELS!!

How do they do that, you might be asking yourself? Making a traditionally round thing very square and intriguing? I have no idea, but I had to buy them and I had to eat one asap. And do you know what?

They were freaking awesome. I ate two yesterday (one for breakfast with peanut butter) and one as a sandwich for lunch.

The morning was also spent watch the airing of the rain delayed ARCA race from Daytona. I have concluded that, for whatever reason, these people are incapable of driving more than 10 laps without wrecking.

Ever.

Then it was Front Row qualifying day (and basically time trials for everyone else). Jeff Burton and Jeff Gordon won those guaranteed spots but both had some trouble in post-qualifying inspections, and the final details have yet to be released but I expect to hear about penalties and related info accordingly.

UnkTodd helped me with hanging a key holding cabinet thingy in the kitchen which was tougher than it sounds because the fucking screw holes in the back were uneven and it took me about half an hour to do something that, had I simply eyeballed it, would have taken about 3 minutes.

But the highlight of the weekend, without question, was our family's first outing to a professional sporting event as a foursome: a Gwinnett Gladiators game!

There was a special deal where you got four tickets in the lower level (not behind the goal either) plus two hats, two programs, and a coupon for a box of chicken from Kroger along with a two litre bottle of chek cola. (Do you like how I spelled litre all European like)? That's a deal in anyone's book, so we did it.

And it was AWESOME!!

Both of the girls were great. I even let some woman I'd never met hold urchin 2.0 for about 15 or 20 minutes. I know this sounds absurd, but I think a lot of folks do stuff like that with their second child.

Here's a picture of the nice lady holding my baby:


We spent as much on concessions as tickets. Considering the $7 beers that the wife and I had two each of, that wasn't hard to do at all.

A sidenote on $7 beers here. I'm not bitching at all about the cost. Charging $7 for a 24 ounce beer is like charging (stay with me here) $3.50 for a 12-ounce beer. Hell, you can't even get that price at Outback Steaks, let alone somewhere really fancy. And the bottom line about concessions is that if you don't want to buy them you don't have to buy them, so bitching about the prices is extra pointless.

Here are some pictures from the day:


Lauren expressing some general excitement, possibly after the Zamboni laps or a puck toss.





Oh, and to prove that I didn't make up anything, here's the box score. Notice the attendance. This was the perfect sporting event with both bigger and smaller children. The arena was very nice and clean, the place only seats about ten thousand full, and from door to door leaving was almost 15 minutes.

Can you say season tickets?

DATE - 02/12/06     Trenton ( 3) AT Gwinnett ( 4)

SCORE BY PERIODS
Trenton                    1  2  0--3
Gwinnett                   0  1  3--4


I was going to post the rest of the box score here, but it screwed up the formatting, so I
had to say forget it.

Then it was home, urchin 1.0 to bed (followed by ninja visits at 11:34pm,
which was 31 minutes after I fell asleep) and again at around 12:30 or for
"bad dweams" and a full pullup.

Well, that about covers my weekend.  Since it's my 300th post, I figured
I should writesome sort of haiku:

300 entries.
Talk about wasting some time.
That's a lot of words.

Happy race season everybody!! In just two days and a wakeup, we'll
be watching racing full on.  Here's the schedule for the week:

Thursday:  Nextel Cup Twin 150 mile qualifying races
Friday:  Craftsman truck race at night
Saturday:  Busch Series race
Sunday:  Daytona 500

(Insert Dukes of Hazzard rebel yell here).