(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...