Diamond in the Rough

My wife doesn't see the potential in this.

Bad Photoshop Skills

I won't quit my day job to live my dream of being a graphic artist*























*Not really my dream

Bring Out Your Dead

A plague of sorts swept through our house this past weekend. Starting Wednesday evening, my youngest son started things off by puking on the couch, then the rug and other various places on the floor, continued onto the bathroom floor, and finally made it to the bathroom sink, where I had to clean the chunks out by hand because they were too big to fit down the drain.

That night, or the wee hours of the morning actually, my daughter went through a similar event, but you can replace couch with bed and it was a different bathroom.

This happened several times during the night with both kids and I'm embarrassed to say my wife did most of the work cleaning up the mess.

I worked from home the next day to tend to the kids (and mop every floor in the house). We had a few repeat performances, but mostly they were just comatose on the couch all day. I considered myself very lucky to have escaped unharmed healthwise.

That evening a couple of friends and I went out for hot wings and fried pickles and around midnight I thought to myself, this might not be the best food to be eating when there is a pretty good chance I am going to be sick tomorrow. Oh well, I couldn't undo what I had already done.

Got home from that and one of my friends (Big A, if you are interested) and I crashed on separate couches around 3 am after watching Office Space.

Five AM hits, I wake up shivering like an addict, stand up and run to the kitchen sink. It was violent. And it wouldn't stop. And stupid me, I went in the sink that doesn't have the garbage disposal. Fifty/fifty chance, right?

Days later the muscles in my neck and shoulders are still store.

I went upstairs and collapsed in my bed, still shivering like an addict and didn't get up until 9 when I called in sick to work. (Sorry I didn't say good bye when you left, man). After which I curled up on the couch with my semi-comatose kids because going back up the stairs seemed really really hard.

My wife went to work and I thought I was hallucinating when I saw her walk passed the living room and up the stairs. It had gotten her too.

There was one of us left who hadn't been affected yet. My oldest son who was at school.

Ahh, yes, at 12:30 I found myself out on the road driving to the school to pick him up. My eyes hurt something fierce. An after effect of my body trying to expel them from my head along with the chicken and pickles.

So, there we all were in our own private bubonic plague. A little medieval Europe all of Friday and most of Saturday.

Emmulints

In the almost-four-year-old speak. There's one in my cul de sac

Hey, what's the literal translation of cul de sac?

bottom of bag, according to babel fish a subsidiary of Yahoo corporation formerly a service of Alta Vista formerly owned by Digital.

taking away one of my neighbors. Nice people. I hope they are okay.

Godspeed people across the street.

I Refuse to Get Climatized

I don't know if that's a word, climatized. I suspect by the squiggly red line underneath in Live Writer that its not.

It was 28 degrees here this morning.

You'd think it was the end of world.

I wear a thin fleece probably suited for a late evening jaunt into the woods in New Hampshire in September.

People think I'm nuts.

You realize its cold? they say.

Last night I went outside to turn off the Christmas lights without a shirt on.

Ok, thats nuts.

Ok, thats nuts, not because of the cold but because I am 165 pounds of white skin and bone. Nobody is dying to see me outside shirtless.

Biking in shorts and t-shirt.

You can't let yourself get complacent.

What if I decide to move to Alaska someday? I don't want to be all crying like a baby because its 40 in July and I'm not used to it.

Its not the cold, its the snow I hate.

Ok, I'm nuts.

Food Poisoning

Alright, so we know all about the Chinese lack of quality control in regards to children's toys and food. Well, tonight I was shopping at the local Five Below for my kids for Christmas and not finding what I wanted for my oldest I went next door to Dollar Tree (I was looking for a paper airplane book, that I swear I had seen at Five Below, but maybe, just maybe was at Dollar Tree).

So, anyway, at Dollar Tree I spied a box of candy that looked funny, it was candy boogers. I thought, ok, thats funny, if I can find something else to buy I'll get that for him as a joke.

First of all let me declare that I never ever buy food at dollar stores or two dollar stores or even 5 dollar stores. Oh wait, thats a lie, I bought candy bars at Five Below on Sunday.

I walked around for a bit and as is usually the case, I found nothing, so I grabbed 4 rolls of Sponge Bob wrapping paper and headed back to the candy aisle to get the candy boogers.

When I reached the boogers, I picked up a box and shook them. There was no rattling inside like Milk Duds or Whoppers would do, so I picked up another box and another and another. All were the same.

Guessing that wasn't unusual for a box labeled as being "sticky and chewy", but remembering the box of Milk Duds (my personal favorite boxed candy in case you are wondering) I bought in August from CVS which had melted into a solid block of choco-caramel, I decided to check the box for some sort of expiration date to reassure me that this product was manufactured when Clinton was President.

What I found was something worse.

"Product of China"

I'm sorry but my shoes, ok, sure, tools, alright, but food? Even joke food. No.

Sorry China. You aren't getting my capitalist pig dollar this time.