Knocking the Rust Off

Annual Buffett Show

I am not even sure where to start.  It turns out that I have been on a six month vacation.  I'm pretty sure I can still spell and potentially still throw a line of prose or two together to get this thing rolling again.  I have so much to spit out I could probably babble on and on for a solid 47 pages but you don't have the time to laugh that hard and I don't have the talent to string that many coherent pages together or I would be getting paid to sit here and drink wine all night, while pretending to write.  So let's get this party started.

First day of school!

First and foremost we have an announcement to make.  May I have a drum roll please?  My wife had an ultrasound yesterday for some stomach pain.  And behold, it's a Christmas miracle, she's pregnant, which totally ruins our chance of a great show on Mtv called I'm 20-something and knocked up but I don't know it.  So, there you have it.  Junior number three spent the entire 45 minutes with both his hands and feet in front of his face or as we coined it, a never ending money shot. But alas we're not those 21st century people that are d.y.i.n.g. to find out what they are having.  We're having a kid and he has 2 arms and legs and everything.  The shorty is also very flexible.  In another 20 weeks or so we'll find out the sex when it comes out of the womb like a normal person.  Did I mention that we're due on Super Bowl Sunday?  I have left cab fare on the credenza for Care to make sure she can get to the hospital safely.  Now that's true love.

See the Q shark stalking??

Gavin is slowing moving out of diapers.  Hooray and just in time to continue buying diapers.  Soooo awesome.  He's walking around telling people he's potty trained but not poop trained, which means the awesome part of potty training and by awesome I mean the really stinky, disgusting gross part - ya he's not good at that part it and isn't going so well.  You slap a pair of whitey tighties on that kid and he'll pee 78 times in an hour but he'll go hide out somewhere and leave a nice juicy turd in there for you to clean up.  That part isn't super cool.  Not cool at all.  Not even a little bit cool.  However, he's pooped in the toilet that last 3 out of 4 times and that's some serious progress.  We are bribing, big time bribing to turn that 75 into 100%.  I'd slip the kid a $50 per squat in the toilet at this point.  Hopefully the twins will potty train faster.  Kidding, just kidding; not about the $50's, the twins.

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Q-dog lost his first tooth a couple of weeks ago.  We really didn't know he had a loose tooth but one day he's sitting on the couch munching on some Chester Cheetos and had a total Q-drama-freak-out because he popped that suckah 79% out.  He literally stopped eating for the next 36 hours for fear he'd lost this piece of ivory, porcelain, whatever a tooth is made out of, gold?  Care made him a lunch to take to school, because he wouldn't eat whatever they were serving and his first bite, the tooth ended up in the peanut butter samwhich.  The next thing I know I'm running to the bank because the tooth fairy is dropping cash like it's growing in the forest out back.  The average rate of a tooth fairy visit in America is $5 and some crazies are paying out C-notes.  Can I get a what the...??!?!?  And she made it rain at our house because the tooth fairy pays baby, especially if it's your first tooth.  Parenting tip #820, pay in singles - they can't count and it looks like a lot of moolah.

Still got it

Shortly after departing with his hard earned enamel Q had his first day of school.  Yup, shorty number one has already graduated to big kid school. Believe it.  His teacher seems pretty normal so I don't anticipate any knock down brawls about how awesome he is and how it would be totally impossible for him to get into any kind of trouble.  He's had a total of 8 days so far and it's wearing him out, which is awesome for us because he actually crashes out at a reasonable hour.  And it only took 5 years so we're sleeping again.  Can I get an AMEN!?  Right, we're having a baby in 4 months.  I'm trying to focus on my glass of wine being half full so cut us some slack.

That's a pretty solid update for the last six months.  Not really, but I have to save some material for later.  I'm fairly certain I'll write more often so stay tuned. Did I mention I went fly boarding?  Pretty darn awesome.  Check fly boarding here.  And it's every bit as cool as it looks.

Tourney Time!

Before I started to fill out my bracket tonight I was thinking Iowa really has the kind of team that could make a nice run this year.  Then I printed it out and realized they didn't make the tourney at all.  They did win their first game of the NIT so there is that.  On the other hand, Wisconsin is a fifth seed and they have a pretty smooth ride to the Final Four.  Hopefully I didn't jinx them.  Did you know that Forbes listed Wisconsin the 7th most valuable college basketball team in all the land?  I can almost do one better.  Did you know that Cosmo named Mike Bruesewitz the 16th hottest player in the tourney?  Did I mention he plays for Wisconsin?  Wisco, they have all the hot gingers.  So if you're looking for a really tall Cosmo-hot rich ginger than start watching Wisco basketball.  First game is Friday at 11:40 on that sports network - what is it called again??? - oh ya True TV.  That makes tons of sense.  True, true.

Anyway the whole thing gets under way tomorrow so we thought it would be fun to have Quinny fill out a bracket.  Well, let's just say that he picked a lot of upsets.  He's a fan of Florida so he picked both Miami and the University of Florida to make the Final Four.  (He also picked Florida Gulf Coast University to make it to the Sweet Sixteen).  Apparently, he's also a fan of New Mexico because he picked both New Mexico State and New Mexico to make the Final Four as well.  The eventual champion?  That would be Florida.  I will be upset if he upsets me in our household tourney.  If he wins the million dollars, less so.

Fence is 4' Ugh!

It's a good thing 12 hours a day of TV is about to come on because winter won't let up!  It was a whopping 10 this morning to start our first day of spring.  Yowsers!  I don't think winter is ever going to end.  My buddies and I have Opening Day for the Brewers and a few other baseball games starting next Friday.  And we aren't soft yet either, presumably that comes later like when we hit our 40s, so we're talking about a solid six hours in the parking lot tailgating in our newly built igloo.  Now we've been there plenty of times while it's snowing but the Brewers have never had to clear the parking lot of snow to let us in and the major snow removal project began today to get ready for the fans.  The good news is we won't need ice this year for the coolers or actually coolers at all.  The bad news is we are going to have to buy a sled to take the debauchery to a new level.

Speaking of bad news our oldest took our not so old friend Mr. iPad for a little ride through the tile.  Turns out the glass screen doesn't really care to take a four foot face first fall (how about that for some alliteration!) onto the impending doom below.  iPads and tile, can't we all just get along?  What to do?  I mean at this stage the whole fam is addicted to that thing.  So I take my sorry little tail to the Apple store and plead my case.  Guess what?  They don't really care you let your over-privledged four year old play with Dad's overpriced toy.  They did exchange it for another slightly less absurd priced new one but man that sucked.  So now we have to shell out for, and I mean this literally, a military style case that supposedly can take a shelling in Afghanistan and you just dust the debris off and go back to playing Angry Birds in the trenches.  Put me down for another $100, Alex!

PS  Did you hear the Badgers put Alabama on their football schedule?  I know right?  They play at Jerry's world.  I think I have to go. Don't tell my wife. 

I Roll it Slow

Dancing to the sweet jams of the lanes

As we brace ourselves for yet another impending winter storm (6-10 inches of more snow in the next 24 hours) we thank our lucky stars that we are fortunate enough to live in a place that has four seasons.  Oh, how I love the seasons.  The seasons are soooo beautiful!

As it's March and still holding steady at 24 degrees we are quickly running out of things to do.  Winterfest has come and gone, the escape to the Keys is behind us, sledding is growing monotonous and shoveling is developing into far too tiresome of a task to tackle every day.  I feel like a professional body shoveling builder.  I could really use some HGH.  We need to start getting creative to stave off the "redrum" chants that are appearing with greater frequency on the weekends so we dug deep my friends, and came up with the greatest idea ever - bowling!  Bowling, believe it or not has been around in its present form since 1895, but potentially dates back as long ago as 3200 BC and both the Romans and Egyptians played a form of modern day bowling.  You didn't think you were going to get a history lesson did you? 

Muscling down the roll

My kids were immediately bowled over once they realized they could chuck over sized unbreakable balls at unassuming pins patiently waiting to get bulldozed over.  And get high fives for doing so.  Quinny picked up an eight pounder and mauled that bad boy into the perfect position on his chest including holding the ball correctly with three fingers and kablamo! down the alley it went.  We had three players but it quickly turned into Quinny rolling two out of three balls and doing so with some decent consistency.  He's got a bit of a hook to his roll but if he can straighten that out he's got 300 written all over his game. 

Gavin was more of a granny-use-two-hands to get a solid roll down the middle kind of high roller.  It gave him some solid control but often he didn't get enough strength behind it.  In short he needs to find the weight room.  With a few more reps of curls in the 2.5 to 5 pound range he could really be an outstanding player. 

Steeeeriiiike!

We only had two instances that didn't go as planned  There was about an inch step to get onto the alley and Q was focused on getting his fingers in the correct position while he was walking up to the lane and took a straight up header falling flat on his face while holding the ball.  Fortunately the ball was immediately jettisoned and his man sized chest broke his fall saving his pearly whites.  It could've been a face full of toothless wonder for the next eight years.  Gavin, is a pretty smooth cat.  The only bowling faux pas that he created was not getting enough spin on his roll and stranding Mr. Fluorescent Orange in the middle of the lane, which required lane rolling personnel to take the long lonely walk down the lane to retrieve Mr. FO.  It was slightly embarrassing, for Gavin, but we told him his 78 was a totally respectable score for a two year old.  In short we had a couple of turkeys throwing turkeys.  Good times.