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.

The Keys

If you haven't been to the Keys I'm not sure what you are waiting for.  If you listen to the news there is impending doom coming your way so for a long weekend shelve your plans to stockpile weapons of mass destruction and put off building that bomb shelter for another weekend and get yourself down to paradise.  Did you know Key West is the southern most point in the US?  Do the tourist thing, have a vacation where getting a cocktail is your first, second and third priority.  You know there are roosters running all over town and there is nothing more entertaining than grabbing a beer and watching chickens cross the road while telling hilariously dumb jokes about, well, chickens crossing the road.  Did you know, on average there is roughly 7 degrees between the high and low in Key West?  I know, that sure does make packing easy!  Four days of speedos!

Care and I took a much needed winter breather to head down to one of our favorite places, Key West.  They say when you shake the US the weirdos fall down to the Keys.  Fine with me.  You're surrounded by pirates, music, art, the occasional cigar and people watching like you have never seen before.  The food is outstanding provided you enjoy seafood.  I had shrimp, oysters, crab, mahi-mahi (some may call it dolphin - it's not actually the flipper variety), grouper, sushi and who remembers what else.  It makes for a low cholesterol diet. 

We try to do something different every year.  This year we left as an impending blizzard moved into town.  That works right? The night before was not pleasant as we were glued to the weather channel praying to the vacation Gods that our plane would beat the storm.  Rules of flying, always take the earliest flight out you can stomach because when you get delayed/cancelled it means you'll be the first rebooked on the next flight(s).  Unfortunately the weather wasn't the only thing we were trying to keep down.  Gavin came home with the flu on Wednesday.  He threw up on Care and me at separate moments in time.  That's called team work.  I love it when that happens. 

Carrie woke up with the flu on Thursday morning around 4:30 am.  We needed to leave at 7:30 am to catch our flight.  The trooper that she was, packed her bags, tossed her cookies not once, twice but thrice and brought her luggage and a barf bag into the car for the ride to the airport.  What a champ!  The things you'll make yourself go through to leave the snowy part of the country in winter.  She made it through the travel day with no public displays of, well, there were no further incidents. 

Most of what went on down there is censored so I'll provide the PG version.  We rented a hog and cruised around the island stopping at various points and beaches.  We hung out at Hogs every night, our favorite haunt.  We saw Capt'n Tony's, got sloppy at Sloppy Joe's, saw a big tree, took not one but two sunset cruises, took a pic with Jimmy Buffett, saw dolphins, went to Irish Kevin's, one of us took a breakfast shot and we watched the Badgers sink a half court shot at the buzzer to beat #3 Michigan at the Key West Big Ten Pub (owned by a Wisco Alum!),. 

We requested Mustang Sally and for the second time in 3 weeks and were publicly chastised for our poor taste in music by the band.  Honestly, why do they ask for requests if they don't expect you to request Piano Man and Mustang Sally?  But seriously people stop requesting Piano Man and Mustang Sally.  And under no circumstances yell, "Free Biiiiiiiiird!!!!"  We found a pretty sweet boat you can rent for $37,000 a week and it came with  a helicopter (on the boat) you know to make a beer run if you needed it. 

Lastly, we went shopping.  Well, Carrie did.  I tried to stand there and be the money man.  The girl saw a mark.  She put a shirt on me and it was a pretty sweet shirt.  It was our first stop so Care set some dresses aside and the girl told me I looked really hot in the shirt so she would stash it with the other stuff.  It turns out it was a $200 shirt.  I didn't know they made $200 shirts.  All I kept thinking about was where do you wear a $200 shirt.  Right, right, right, at Hogs....  Get to the Keys.  You'll go and then you'll understand and then you'll thank me.

PS  I took the shirt back. Do you know how many beers a $200 shirt return can buy?

Sunday Fun Day

Gavin posing in his snow pants

I really need to write more blogs!  Not a day goes by that I don't feel guilty about not writing one.  I should've made a New Year's resolution to write more blogs.  I didn't.  Instead I made one to eat more cheese and I'm totally succeeding in that department.

The look out hole in the fort

Have you noticed winter slowly comes into your life but then like a stalker won't ever leave?  Everyone thinks fall is so nice; the leaves changing color, the cool nights, the bon fires, the Badgers going to the Rose Bowl and then it gets cold.  Then the snow comes.  Then it snows some more.  And some more.  And it's still snowing outside right now!  Our snow banks are as high as our pool fence.  In other words if you wanted to get over the fence you only have to walk up the snow bank and back down the snow bank on the other side and you can begin frolicking in the pool.

This Sunday we decided to take full effect of the snowy weather.  We had a super Sunday fun day. There was sledding. We built, and I don't want to brag here, but a pretty sensational snow fort with walls and everything.  There was a snow ball fight.  There were sled races. 

We did learn something about the owning of a dog and the snow, though.  It turns out during winter when you let the dog out every day, generally several times a day he's actually doing his business somewhere.  You think, hey, let's go sledding down this awesome hill with our kids.  You don't think, "hmmm, I wonder where the dog has been doing his business for the last 3 months?"  Have you heard of that old adage out of sight, out of mind.  Ya, that actually came to mind on fun day Sunday.

Luckster still has track speed!

There we were having the time of our lives.  We were laughing, making snow angels and chasing each other around in straight up Spiegelhoff euphoric merriment.  We decided to take some family runs down the old toboggan run.  Carrie and Q in the old skool red racer sled in front and Gavin and I in the sno-tastic-tube in back.  The four of us in one superb sno-train heading erratically down the hill...oh snikes!  And that's when it all came together.  The snow, the dog, the impending impacting tree, the myriad of times wondering where he was doing his business, the crash all meeting together in one juxtaposed, too warm of a day, melted snow moment. 

In the chaos of the poor steering from the folks up front, whom shall remain nameless Gavin and I were thrust to the front of the pack, backwards mind you, into the impending tree.  Being the father of the year type that I am, with my cat-like reflexes saw the impending impact and began to take evasive action.  I thrust my hands into the snow to create drag, friction, anything to avoid the ominous threat quickly approaching.  Eventually, with that quick thinking, we were able to thwart total demolishment.  We all took, perhaps for the first time on the whole run, a deep breath.  It was then that I peered down at those rock steady hands of steel that avoided this collision and noticed the poop.  There was a lot of poop.  We had discovered the lost patch of Stinks' sacred manure field, soon to be Carrie's well fertilized spring garden!  Can I get a collective Ewwwww!!!?  Ya, the positive was there was plenty of snow to "wash up" in. 

Folks there is a lesson to be learned here.  I'm not sure what it is but there is a fresh six inches of snow on the ground so problem solved!

Hobbies

 

Football season is coming to a close and for us Cheeseheads it's officially dead with a big fat fail to end the season against those pesky niners.  There are only 238 more days until the next Packer game, well, one that counts anyway so I'm hoping I'll have more time to blog.

It's ten degrees outside and I'm counting down the days until a plane drops me off in the Keys.  To get me in the spirit I thought I would put some Buffett on and tell you about some of my family's favorite hobbies.

I'll start with my wonderful wife who does so much good around this house it's blasphemous to talk about her bad habits but nobody said I was husband of the year. Father of the year, sure, but no one has accused me of being husband of the year.  Let me tell you about my wife's most recent distraction.  She has this fantastic new habit of trying to figure out how powerful our garbage disposal is.  She started out by tossing relatively normal stuff down there like left over food.  She graduated into chicken wing bones and plastic tops, like sippy cups.  This was all very entertaining for all of us.  She then decided to take it up a notch and move on to household items.  It started with paperclips.  They don't look all that intimidating but Mr. Garbage disposal didn't like that too much.  The first time the disposal jammed it took a few nice swears, a pair of pliers, some hard questioning like, "now why did you toss the paperclip into the disposal?  Uh-huh, and then why did you turn it on?  Right, right, but why did you keep it going right up until it jammed?  Oh, of course, you wanted to see if it was going to go down.  Makes total sense! 

Then the binder clip got tossed into the disposal.  I think the intoxicating opportunity of both plastic and metal formed into one sleek office supply item was too much for her and she couldn't help herself, so into the disposal it went.  Mr. Disposal with a grunt, a puff and a belch came to a screeching halt.  After much swearing this time, further questioning and many a pliers like instrument used to grab hold of it, Mr. Disposal refused to take any more abuse.  What to do, what to do?  A man grunt was released and there was only one thing left to do - take the whole garbage disposal apart.  Three hours later, much, much, much more choice language and miraculously the garbage disposal gods took pity on me and it was put back together and was back to operating.  I received a minor round of applause from my wife.  We put the wife in disposal rehab, packed up and moved to a new house.

Problem.  The new house has an gargantuan total gangsta' garbage disposal. Most are continuous feed, but this thing was batch feed.  It's a safety measure so when you're sticking your whole arm into the innards of the disposal to fish out things your wife fancies to throw in, it can't turn on and well, dispose of your hand.  It uses a magnetic lid/seal and that's what turns it on.  It's also a stage 3, believe it!, stage 3 disposal so there are three levels of chomping making sure no matter what is cascading down there this beast will chew it.  We thought the meetings were helping Care but I think the siren of the disposal was more than she could bear.  One day, while I was outside with the kids, they didn't need to see this, shoveling she broke.  194 days of unclogged disposal went down the drain and irresistibly she went for the whole coup de' grace, a full piece of silverware.  There was smoke.  There was fire.  There may or may not have been a minor explosion.  There was an insatiable itch that was finally scratched.  Kablamo!  My wife took out the Insinkerator Evolution Cover Control 9000.  Game, set, match.

Me, what's going on in here?  Wife, "nothin' why?"  I could tell by that capricious look something was up.  She couldn't hide it any longer.  The bead of sweat on her brow was her undoing.  She confessed.  "I did it!  I finally did it!  I fed a spoon to our disposal....and I liked it!"  I couldn't even figure out how she sucked Mr. Utensil so far down the disposal.  Oh, right she was testing all 3 stages. 

The disposal is so long that there is only about an inch of clearance from the bottom of the disposal to the cabinet so off to Home Depot for trip number one to buy a hex wrench.  Sure, I have 40 of them but not one that will fit with so little clearance.  So, as I'm perusing the shelves I decide no way I want to make multiple trips so I buy the biggest set they have.  I now have the sweetest set of SAE and metric hex wrenches one could ever aspire to have in their tool set.  Well, I get that baby turning and nothing.  It won't budge.  Guess what?  This thing is so cavernous I don't have a pliers long enough to reach that deep into it.  It's literally going to eat my pliers.  I said I only wanted to take one trip to Home Depot so I went to Lowes with both boys.  We grunted all the way there.  It was some sweet man time.  We buy the longest pliers they have and by that I mean I literally asked the tool department guy if this is the longest pliers he has.  With a slight wink, which was a little awkward I'll admit, he replied, you bet buddy.  I love this small town. We came home and did the only thing one could do in this kind of situation we, and by we I mean me, drank a beer.  New Glarus is to me like spinach is to Popeye.  The pupils dialated, a new found focus appeared, knuckles cracked and it was on.  With the right tools we were able to wrestle the silverware out of the disposal.  Viola!  My wife is back in rehab, I'm relatively certain I have every tool possible to disassemble, pry or destroy any stuck object in a garbage disposal and we can now go back to dumping all sorts of treasures back into our sink.