Search Term Rollup
“sharktopus colouring in pages” – Like, for kids to color? We’re still talking about this thing, right? That’s what you want your kids to be coloring?
“are zombies allergic to pee circles” – Well? Are they? Because that sure could simplify my zombie apocalypse plans quite a bit…
“what if a praying mantis sees himself in a mirror” – Indeed. What if.
“pipe manners meth” – You know, I’d hate to be impolite when I’m SMOKING METH.
“animated gifs allergic reaction” – An animated gif of an allergic reaction, or a person who is allergic to animated gifs?
“stomp on my glasses please” – WHAAA?
“bowling mustache” – Isn’t that redundant? Is there any other kind of mustache?
“president riding a dinosaur” – Yes please! You show me a president riding on a dinosaur, and I show you my vote, no questions asked.
“how to make baby stuffed quilts” – I’d go for wool myself, but I suppose babies would work too.
“how to draw the green bay packers logo” – IT’S THE LETTER G
“why u-shaped toilet seat pee on floor” – I know, right?
“negative points of putting sandhood and milk on face” – Because, I see the positives of rubbing sand (hood?) and milk on your face, but I just can’t see what the negatives are?
Welcome to the World, Sweetheart
Ah, that magical moment in every little girl’s life, when she first sees a naked homeless man.
We had only recently arrived at a park we don’t normally go to, when Evie insisted that she needed to go to the bathroom. “Why didn’t you go before we left?” I asked. “Because I didn’t have to go then!” replied every child since the dawn of time. Luckily(?), there was a small stone building of the kind that can only mean ‘Outdoor Public Bathroom that is Semi-Occasionally Cleaned’, so I started in that direction, daughter in tow.
As we got closer, I heard the distinctive noise of a shower. “Hmm, that’s kind of weird, they have showers in the park bathroom?” I thought. In retrospect, this was probably ridiculous, but the bathrooms reminded me of nothing so much as the bathrooms at a campground or state park, which do often have showers. So my brain failed to send up the proper warning flags. “Hmm, that’s kind of weird, there’s shoes and socks in the open doorway?” I wondered. But we find all kinds of clothes all over the place all the time in our neighborhood, so that didn’t jump out at me either. There was a bright pink girls shirt that sat in our parking lot for two weeks until I threw it in the dumpster. There used to be a power line down the street with an entire collection of shoes hanging on it. So again my brain failed to send up the proper warning flags.
“Hmm, that’s kind of weird, there’s a naked man standing in the bathroom even though there is clearly no shower in here, and the door which leads outside to the public park is standing wide open where anybody could walk by or even walk right in holding the hand of a 4 year old girl.”
To give him credit, he seemed more surprised and embarrassed than we did. I find that odd. I mean, if I were taking a shower in the sink completely naked in a public bathroom with the door open, I would probably be nervous and jumpy, expecting someone to walk in at any minute. On the other hand, maybe the people who frequent this park know better than to go into the bathrooms, so maybe he takes a nice relaxing sink-bath every day with no fear of anybody barging in on him. And anyway, I guess I shouldn’t really try to put myself in his mindset, because probably if I were taking a shower in the public bathroom sink, I would probably just remove my shirt or something, and not get completely naked. But that’s just me.
We beat a hasty retreat and found the women’s bathroom instead. Of course this meant I had to wait outside while Evie went in to take her sweet time. You would think this might be the end of the story, but unfortunately the man quickly put on his shorts and then came outside to chat with me, sans shirt.
“I’m really, really sorry about that.”
“Oh, that’s okay, no problem.”
“Well, did she see anything?”
::please tell me I’m not having this conversation::
“No, I think she’s okay.”
“Well, as long as she didn’t see anything.”
::please oh please oh please let this conversation end::
“I think she’s fine.”
I have no idea if she saw anything or not. And I mean really, what’s the worst case scenario? Her life will not be ruined by seeing a naked man. Her mind will not be shattered. Let’s not forget that for the past three quarters of a year there has been a naked boy running around the house every evening, and she’s been able to cope with that.
Suddenly, the man looked at me with deadly seriousness. ”If this were football season, I’d have to have words with you.”
Realization dawned on me that I was wearing a Packer’s shirt and ball cap, and this man did not approve. ”Evie, please hurry it up in there, I do not want to be knifed by a homeless man!!”, I thought. I mean, look, he probably wouldn’t have knifed me. He was barely wearing any clothes, so he probably didn’t have his homemade shiv on him at the moment. Besides, the Bears/Packers rivalry is just good natured fun, right? It’s not like we’re in Philly. On the other hand, this is a man who was standing naked in a public place. He probably isn’t the last word on proper behavior.
(Side note, I would think that if you had a place to watch the Bears’ games, you would have a place to take a shower, no?)
I found some excuse to dart into the women’s bathroom on the pretense of helping Evie (“What’s that honey, you need help reaching the soap?”), physically speeding her out of the bathroom. I gave him a nod as I dragged Evie by the arm back to the safety of the playground as fast as I could go and still maintain my “oh yeah, I’m totally cool with chatting with half-naked dudes I don’t know (who a very short while ago used to be completely-naked dudes I don’t know) outside of public bathrooms about our favorite sports teams” nonchalance.
This is one of those parenting moments they don’t teach you about in books.
Quote Monday pretends to pretend
Me: “We should get rid of the George Foreman.”
Evie, distraught: “But, then how would we make bacon??”
Evie: “Can you keep reading from your brain?” – In other words, “Can you keep telling me a story?”
Evie: “I wonder what Uncle Nathan is doing right now? Probably boasting that the Packers won the big game.”
Evie: “She lived long ago, back when pretend things lived, like fairies and dragons.” – She understands that pretend means they don’t exist. At least not now. Maybe she’s not so clear on the definition of pretend after all. Oh well, I’d rather live in a world where fairies and dragons at least used to exist.
Evie: “I wonder what it looked like!”
Sara, not paying attention: “Mmm hmm, me too.”
Evie: “No you don’t.”
Touché.
Superbowl Champions
Superbowl XLV is in the books, and the Green Bay Packers are officially the world champions!
The sun is brighter, the air is sweeter, traffic was lighter, and there were even Bears fans complaining on the radio. Life is good!
What a game it was. I don’t even know if I could say that I enjoyed the game, because it was so nerve wracking. In retrospect, now that everything is said and done and the Packers won it all, I can say that the last 6 weeks or so were about as fun of a ride to the Superbowl as anybody could ever want.
Having to beat the Giants and then the Bears the last two weeks of the season to squeak into the playoffs. Coming in as a 6th seed and beating both Philly and Atlanta on the road. Beating the Bears AGAIN in the NFC championship game. And finally winning the whole shebang, and putting up awesome numbers against a very good Steelers team.
The game itself was a nail-bitter for me. After all the injuries this season (15 guys on IR! Many of them starters!), then to see Woodson and Driver leave the game, along with Shields and Collins (who both ended upcoming back), was almost too much to bear. I told Sara, “Thank god this is the last game of the season…I couldn’t take another one.” Watching the Packers jump out to a 21-3 lead and then slowly squander it away through dropped pass after dropped pass. Just writing this paragraph is raising my blood pressure.
Evie caught my excitement and was pretty excited:
Evie: “Go Packers! I’m so excited I let some drool out of my mouth!”
I might have been a little overly enthusiastic myself, especially in terms of high-fiving:
Evie: “Ow, you hurt my hands!”
Overall, what a good year for football! I won my survival league, I finished the regular season in 1st place in my fantasy league, and even though I only ended up in 3rd after the playoffs, it still payed out. And now, the Superbowl of course. You cannot beat the trifecta of football wins!
In fact, I can only thing of two football related things to complain about:
- Due to some setting on either my Tivo or my digital converter box, the score board is off the side of my tv, making it impossible to see the score or the game clock. The score isn’t a big deal, but not knowing how much time is on the clock at the end of the game is a very bad thing!
- The Packers have a sore lack of a theme song of some sort. There are plenty of songs out there, generally of the one off, super-cheesy (no pun intended) variety. But I’m talking an official, Packers’ authorized chant or song, similar to Fly Eagles Fly, Bear Down Chicago Bears, or even J-E-T-S-Jets-Jets-Jets. Preferably something old and classic. Some kind of rallying cry that every Packers fan everywhere would know. The closest we come are the ultra-generic, “du-duh-duh-ch du-duh-duh-ch GO PACK GO” and playing “I want to bang on the drum all day“, which is used by several other football teams. You’d think a team with this much history and tradition would have picked up some sort of unique fight song somewhere along the way!
One more funny quote during the game:
Sara: “Don’t have another [diet caffeine free] pop. You’ll be up peeing all night.”
Am I really that old?
Brett Favre vs. the Green Bay Packers
I think I do a pretty good job about not talking about football on this blog, but I would be remiss if I failed to mention the big game last night. Of course I am referring to Brett Favre playing against the team he played for for 15 years.
I think I’ve made my feelings on the whole Favre thing pretty well known, so I won’t go into all that again. But I sure was excited about this game. I was listening to some of the pre-game coverage on the radio in the morning and I literally got chills. I even bumped all of our Monday night shows off the TiVo in anticipation.
In regards to all the hype, I’ve noticed that some people seem to have their facts a little mixed up. I kind of think they know that and did it on purpose to make it a better story. But let’s be quite clear – the Packers did not run Brett Favre out of town. The Packers begged him to come back. The disagreement was over when exactly Favre was going to decide if he was going to play or retire. Remember every football fan in the universe? You were all pretty annoyed with that too. I’ve even heard McCarthy’s now famous “that train has left the station” quote used out of context to imply that he was referring to Favre’s ability. So it’s a good story to pretend like the Packers told Favre, “You’re washed up, we don’t want you anymore!” but that’s not really how it went down.
So the actual game began and I was very excited. Everything quickly went downhill. The Packers put the “offensive” in “offensive line”, taking 8 sacks. They had many, many opportunities in the red zone that they didn’t convert. Overall, however, with the exception of the o-line, they played pretty well. They contained the best RB in the NFL. They moved the ball fairly easily. In fact, between the two, I think Rodgers might have played better than Favre, considering he was scrambling for his life the entire night. At the end of the day, Minnesota was just clearly the better team in almost every aspect, so the fact that they managed to pull within a touchdown at the end was quite impressive.
Watching Favre play against the Packers was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. In fact, I felt really good for him when they pointed out that Favre became the first person to beat every team in the NFL (obviously he had never beaten the Packers before). I felt good about that, the same way I felt when he got most wins, most yards, and most touchdowns. Like somehow I was a part of that. And quite frankly, I think I am! I might not have caught any passes, but don’t tell me all the positive vibes I’ve sent his way for 15 years didn’t amount to something cosmically.
But man-oh-man did I want the Packers to beat him! Still, everyone is saying, “Oh, Favre really showed them!” I don’t see it that way. The only thing you can compare Favre to is Aaron Rodgers, because that is the only consideration you have if you’re thinking about whether you need to appease Favre or not. And I think anybody watching that game could see that Rodgers is a pretty good QB. The Vikings’ o-line being better than the Packer’s o-line has nothing to do with it.
Every great football unit needs a great nickname. So, in the spirit of the “Gang Green” of the late 80′s Eagles, the “Steel Curtain” of the 70′s Steelers, or the “Purple People Eaters” of the 70′s Vikings, I am now nicknaming the Packer’s offensive line the “Wet Napkins“. Hopefully this new nickname will give them something to aspire to.
Misc.
I just have a lot of random miscellany to update on, so here you go, in no particular order:
Some Norwegians came to visit. Meg, I really appreciate the effort you put into keeping in touch with me. I can’t count the number of friends that I’ve regrettably lost contact with since college. And giving me bacon / cheese popcorn doesn’t hurt either (although it wasn’t all that bacony, mostly just tasted like cheese popcorn).
Evie finally learned how to jump on Friday. She’s a little behind schedule on that one, so I was working on it with her. I’d like to think that my excellent advice to “put your feet together, bend your knees, and push with your toes” are what put her over the top. She’s going through a bit of a trying phase at the moment, so, after our initial giggling and hugging fit, the fact that we wanted her to jump again pretty much guaranteed she wouldn’t. She did jump some more on Sunday though.
Everyone was sick, back to back. It took each of us about 4 days to shake it, so we had a rough patch for about 12 days.
American History X, good movie! Really good! Has anyone seen it? Oh yeah, Sara and I were the last people on earth who hadn’t.
We finally checked out the Harry Potter exhibit at the MSI. It was pretty cool, and well done, but not exactly what I expected. It’s pretty much a tour through a bunch of movie props. Since it was in the museum of SCIENCE and INDUSTRY, I kind of thought it would be like explaining about the special effects, or like “real life invisibility” exhibits or something. Not just, “Here’s the clothes Ron wore in this scene…” Also, our scheduled time was before the museum opened, which was pretty confusing to begin with, but they had a lot of trouble getting people lined up for the right times and stuff. You’d think for the money they’re pulling down, they could have invested in a couple of signs or something. Still, it was fun. I can’t say if it was worth the price of admission or not, since it was free for us.
Football is officially underway, and what better way to start the season than to beat the Bears? And the best part? I get the double win in the morning when I get to ride to work and listen to Chicago sports talk radio rehash the game!
We had fun at the 57th Street Children’s Book Festival over the weekend. Every year that we go, Evie enjoys it a little bit more as she gets old enough to appreciate the events. We listened to a story teller, made a crown, dug for pirate treasure, attended a music class, watched a dance troupe, painted and glued a paper box, and danced to some music (including jumping on some bubble wrap). Side note, Sara said, “Jeeze, there sure are a lot of pirate themed things here.” When will people realize, it is not me who is obsessed with pirates, but rather all rational human beings who are obsessed with pirates when confronted with their awesomeness.
Finally, the other day I opened the back door to discover an enormous spider web over the opening, trapping us inside. Right in the middle of the web, directly at eye level, sat Lillith the spider queen, bigger’n a quarter. I quickly slammed the door shut before she could spray venom in my eyes. Now I ask you, what could that mean with the web directly across the door opening like that, other than this enormous spider was trying to catch humans? Finally I took it out with a broom, shrieking and cursing the whole time. The spider sat for a while on the porch, memorizing my face before slowly sauntering under a potted plant. I could have squished her with the broom (at least so I told myself…that was a big spider) but do I really need the wrath of all the spiders in the world for killing their queen? No sir, I do not. So I let her go and the next day she had spun her human trap over Evie’s chair on the porch. That’s right, I put a little fear into her and she decided to try for smaller prey. Me 1, spider queen 0.
And now Favre is a Viking
I thought this would have been the last time I had to make such an announcement.
After publicly declaring several times that he was retired, wanted to stay retired, and would in no way be joining specifically the Vikings, Favre surprised no one by signing with said Vikings.
Despite what many people would have you believe, I don’t much care about Favre signing where ever he wants. And if the Vikes want to have the drama that will be surrounding this whole thing, more power to them. In fact, that’s really the tragedy about this whole thing…my apathy. This was a guy who was a god, and now I hardly even care, other than to say, “Ha, good luck with that you idiots.” How the mighty have fallen.
Oh well, at least this will distract some of the media from the Michael Vick thing in Philly.
First Football Weekend
Well, the first weekend of football is over and my fantasy football season is already sunk.
I’m only in one league this year. That league is my keeper league that I’ve been playing in since 2002. Every year you select the 2 best players from your team the previous year and keep them into the next season. Last year I won the league and the main reason why was Tom Brady. Obviously I kept him for this season. After netting me a grand total of 2.53 points he received a season ending knee injury. I don’t mean to be callous about a guy with a serious injury, but lets face it, he is paid extremely will because of the risk. But consider how his injury affects ME! An entire season of fun down the tubes. And not just me, it has been estimated that Brady’s injury will shift $150 MILLION dollars of Fantasy Football winnings to different people. Economics are weird.
In other football news, I watched the first quarterback since 1992 not named Brett Favre start a football game for the Green Bay Packers. And actually, he was pretty awesome. Not awesome in the fact that he was unstoppable, but considering it was his first start ever he looked like an old hand. Despite the fact that many penalties put him in bad situations, he played very well and against a team that many people picked to go to the superbowl. Certainly against a tough defense. He made plays when he had to, he never looked rattled, and he displayed traits (especially eye techniques used to freeze or move safeties) that some veteran quarterbacks never master.
I always had complete faith in Rodgers, but I think the rest of the world now sees what most of the Packers’ faithful saw a long time ago…that the team is honestly really good and in no small part because of Aaron Rodgers.
Musings on Favre
As a Packers’ fan and specifically a Brett Favre fan, many people have come to me for my reaction about all the things going on lately. I don’t claim to represent every Packers’ fan, and in fact I assumed that most of them would disagree with me. But the more I talk to them and the more informal polling I do, I find out that in fact many of them do agree with me.
Let me start by saying I think Brett Favre is absolutely qualified right now to be a starter on an NFL team. Probably his best years are behind him, but that being said, he’s easily in the top 5 of current QBs. Even if you only put him in the top 10, that is still better then about 2/3rds of the starting QBs. So I was not a person that was saying he was washed up and needed to go, even before last season’s renaissance. I am also very protective of his legacy and I sort of breathed a sigh of relief when he went out on top.
I honestly believe the Packers’ organization (or at least McCarthy) when they say that they didn’t want him to retire and that they flew down to his home after the season to try to convince him to come back and he said no. I honestly believe that they made the best choice available to them at each juncture and tried to do the best thing they could not just for the franchise but for the fans and for Brett. Brett says that they forced him to retire. I don’t think that is true. They may have forced him to make a decision, but not that decision. And quite frankly, he’s the one who put the idea in thier heads in the first place with his talk of retiring at the end of every season for the last 4 years. Every year the drama gets dragged out longer and longer and you just can’t wait until a week before the season starts to find out who your QB is going to be. So yes, they forced him to make a decision one way or the other and he went with the other.
I don’t blame him for wanting to come back. I think there are very few of us who can put ourselves in his shoes, but I’m sure everybody who retires misses it. And they aren’t super famous with thousands of fans screaming for them every week. I’m sure when you retire it is hard to imagine your life without something that you feel defines you as a person. So I don’t blame him for that. But I just can’t figure out why he can’t understand where the Packers are coming from. They had to have a decision from him and then having that decision they made all the necessary arrangements to carry on without him. He doesn’t seem to remember that he works for them, not the other way around.
When he announced that he was coming back, it seemed like a nightmare scenario. There was no good way out of it for the Packers. He set himself up so he couldn’t back down, which meant he was definitely going to play somewhere. It would have been hard for them to welcome him back as the starter and throw away all of the preparations and plans and commitments they had made while he was away. It would have been bad to pay him $12 million to sit the bench, although maybe they should have out of spite. It would have set up a terrible situation for Aaron Rodgers (whom I like and think will do quite well) to be second guessed to the point that he would be unable to perform. It would have been hard to trade Favre away because you couldn’t hope to get much for him considering the other team could only really count on one year out of him at the most, after which he may retire again. So do you want to be the guy who traded away a superstar for a 4th rounder? No, there really wasn’t any easy way out of the situation.
I think the Packers’ organization handled it about as well as it could possibly have been handled. First off, they ran the risk of the fans being pissed that they traded away an icon, but they let it go on long enough and they were (at least on the surface) nice enough that all the fans are just fed up with Brett. Second off, they got a 4th rounder that could hypothetically go all the way up to a 1st rounder based on the Jets going to the superbowl. So it’s probably not going to be much but it’s something and it will be something even better if Favre ends up being good. But really the main thing is that they traded him to a really sucky team! They have practically guaranteed that Favre will look worse than Rodgers, which was really the danger of the whole situation. Even on the Bucs (and certainly on the Vikings), Favre could have potentially shown up Rodgers. The Packers have a really good team and especially really good receivers that will tend to make a QB look even better than he really is. Also, everybody and his mother knows that Favre didn’t want to go to the Jets which means a) everybody knows the Packers forced him to go, meaning he lost that round and b) another thing stacked against his success since his teammates and the fans all know he didn’t want to go there. And something tells me a New York media storm isn’t exactly like a Green Bay media storm, so he’ll have that to deal with. So maybe the Packers did find a way to salvage the situation after all. And to top it all off, you’ve subtly sent the message to Rodgers that you have so much confidence in him you sent BRETT FAVRE packing. That’s got to feel pretty good.
So, to summarize, I wish it had never happened but I put most of the blame on Brett. I think the Packers never wanted to upset him but really tried to make the best possible decisions at the time. I think Brett has put them in a tough spot time and time again and yet they have never bad mouthed him. Although I understand why he wants to come back and I empathize with him, I think he has lost a lot of respect and gained very little.
That is all.
Brett is a Jet
As I live and breath, I never thought I’d see the day. You have no idea how this breaks my heart.
“Brett has had a long and storied career in Green Bay, and the Packers owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude for everything he accomplished on the field and for the impact he made in the state. It is with some sadness that we make this announcement, but also with the desire for certainty that will allow us to move the team and organization forward in the most positive way possible.
“We respect Brett’s decision that he could no longer remain here as a Packer. But there were certain things we were not willing to do because they were not in the best interest of the team. We were not going to release him nor trade him to a team within the division. When Brett ultimately decided that he still wanted to play football, but not in Green Bay, we told him that we would work to find the best solution for all parties involved. We wish Brett and his family well.
“We appreciate the tremendous passion shown by our fans. We, like them, always will see Brett Favre as a Green Bay Packer and our respect for him never will change. Moving forward, we are dedicated to delivering a successful 2008 season for all Packers fans.”
It is probably the best for everyone, but it still feels like a punch in the stomach.
BREAKING NEWS!!!
You heard it here first folks, after 16 years and about a million records, Brett Favre announced his retirement today.
Today is truely a day that will live in infamy.
Wha happa
Well first let me start on Thursday of last week. I was leaving work kind of late and it was very cold and dark and there was nobody around. I stopped at a stop sign and trotting down the middle of the crossing road was a coyote, cool as a cucumber! I just waited at the stop sign as he calmly trotted by in front of me, probably 5 feet from my bumper. He gave me a little grin like, “What’s up?” as he went by. What is going on with Chicago and coyotes?? My dad suggested that perhaps some ancient Indian spirit guide is trying to get a hold of me or something.
So on Saturday we went up to my brother’s place at Madison and there are two things to note. The first is that I ate a Bacon Brat Burger on Pretzel bread with some sort beer mustard. That’s something you certainly can’t get just anywhere! It was like a double patty burger but one of the patties was made out of a brat. It was interesting enough sounding that I passed up the daily special, the Brat Favre. It was pretty delicious, but I could have done without the pretzel bread.
The other interesting thing is that we went by a theater downtown and on the marquee it said that they were showing the Packer’s game there on Sunday. How cool would that be? I would definitely go for that if I lived there.
After that, we went to my Grandma’s 80th birthday party. It was good to see a lot of my dad’s family that we don’t usually see. We haven’t been to a family gathering for that side of the family in a long time.
YIKES!!! The Packers are one win away from the Super Bowl and it doesn’t look good! Game is currently tied with 4 seconds left, but the Giants are about to kick a FG!
YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSS!!!! Missed FG, overtime it is!
Guess who’s back….back again (and again and again)
Well, it’s official, Brett Favre is back for another season with the Packers! A lot of people will not understand, but here in Packerland (and by here in Packerland I mean here deep in enemy territory)(I guess I mean Packerland here in my head) we are very exited about this.
I don’t know any other way to explain it than 10 postseason appearances, six division titles, three NFC Championship games, two Super Bowl appearances and one Super Bowl win.
You can say whatever you want about the decline of his playing ability, but he’s still easily better than 1/2 of the QBs starting in this league. So do you go with someone you know for sure is at *least* in the top half of QBs and at best one of the greatest of all time, or do you go with some backup who has never gotten a chance to play?
As far as the Super Bowl this weekend, gooooo Colts! I’d love to see Tony Dungy and the city of Indianapolis get a title, but more importantly I don’t think I can handle living here next year if the Bears win. On the other hand, I would enjoy living here next year if the Bears lose! 
Long time no post
As usual, this time of year is kind of hectic, so there aren’t many updates. Well, due to some people demanding an update, here you go!
Three weeks ago my mom came to visit. I forget what we did other than play Acquire all weekend. I think we each won once too.
Two weeks ago we went to have Christmas with my Dad. Relatively uneventful I think. Sara had this idea to take all of my dad’s hundreds of pictures off of his old computer for him and put them on CDs. Nathan decided to do that for him for Christmas. So we tried to sneak down during the party and do it, but it turns out he had one of those old Compaqs that are impossible to do anything with!! So we had to remove like every component of the computer in order to get the hard drive out. I think we busted it beyond working condition. Oh well. Anyway, by the time we got the hard drive out, my dad was on to us so it wasn’t a secret anymore.
It was a good time. That was actually the first time either my dad or I had been to a game at Lambeau. If you have a snapfish account, you can see the pictures here. We had a good time, but there was one near disaster. So we wanted to go to the hall of fame first because it opened at 8 and the special tailgate that we had tickets for at the Brett Favre Steakhouse didn’t start until 9. So we went to the hall of fame, but it’s inside the new Lambeau Atrium which means they had to tare our tickets to get into it. I asked them if we would be able to leave and then get back in and they were like, “Oh yeah, no problem.” So we went to the hall of fame (which was awesome, but I’ve been there before) and got done with that at 9:30. So we were going to walk out of the stadium and I was like, “Wait, I just gotta ask…” So I asked a guy, “Now, they tore our tickets when we came in, but we’re going to be able to leave and then come back, right?” And he was like, “Nope. That only works if you leave before 9:30 and seeing as it’s 9:30 right now, you have to stay in the stadium until the game starts at noon.” I was pretty upset because I bought the tickets to that tailgate like a looong time ago and we were going to miss it. But my dad was like, “No, there has to be someone we can talk to.” So we talked to someone else who directed us to someone else who directed us to someone else who took us over to talk to someone else. So this guy is aparently like the head of all the ticket takers, and he says, “Oh, no problem. We’re done stamping hands for the day, but you can just give me your tickets and I’ll hold on to them and then when you want to come back in come and find me and I’ll let you in.” We were like, “Okaaaay…” because it seemed kind of shady, but he was like the official guy that the official lady took us over to. So we ended up giving him our tickets and we left and I thought, “We are never getting back into the game.” But when we came back we found him right away and he gave us our tickets and let us in and everything was good to go!
So the tailgate was pretty cool. I had 2 brats with sourkraut, a burger, some pasta salad and 2 cookies! They had all you could drink of pop, beer, bloody marys and screwdrivers. There was a DJ playing pro-Packer songs and they were throwing out tee-shirts and stuff. We didn’t get any, although my dad did get some beads. We also got to meet and get our picture taken with ex-Packer Gilbert Brown!!
The game was a good time too, although the offense was playing terribly. Also there was some drunk guy a couple of rows up from us who wouldn’t shut up the whole time It was a close one (10-9 at the end of the 3rd quarter) but the Packers ultimately won 17-9. I know my dad had a good time too.
In other, more typically blog related news, here is a tower defense flash game. It’s kind of slow at the begining but gets tough at the end.
On the other hand, here is a much more addicting time waster! Basically you draw lines for your little sledder to ride on and make him do loops and stuff. Check out the videos of other crazy ones that people have made! They’re nuts!
Finally, you should really check out the Keith and the Girl podcast. I’ve been listening to it quite a bit lately and I really like it, and I can’t get the opening song out of my head! (“Hey all you assholes, come and listen to us. It’s the Keith and The Girl show!”) Remember that this is a podcast only, it’s not broadcast anywhere, so there are no FCC regulations. Consequently, the language/content can be pretty bad! Consider yourself warned!
Time to update!
Okay, kind of a lot happened so I need to throw down a quick update here.
First off, Tuesday was
I didn’t miss it, but I forgot to blog about it. So, let’s see. Really the big thing was that we went to Janesville over the weekend. My uncle was visiting from Colorado so there was a big thing at my Grandma’s house and she called us to invite us to come! I just think that was really nice of her. I definitely got the feeling that she was excited that we lived so close so we could come to something like that. So anyway we went on Saturday and ate like maniacs! Grandma made a turkey and her famous homemade buns and a pan of apple crisp (I had 3 slices)…to say nothing of the full jar of her homemade pickles!! Oh man…heaven. I’ve decided that if I was trapped on a desert island and I could only pick 1 food to have, I would pick Grandma D’s homemade pickles.
Anyway, we played 1 game of acquire and several games of Apples to Apples and much fun was had by all. 2 people immediately put the game on their Christmas lists! Then Sunday we went over to my Aunt Lois’ house and watched the Packer’s game with some good ole Packer’s fans. And they even won!! My Grandma came with so that her and Sara could play Scrabble instead of watching the game. Oh also, everybody has gardens and stuff, so we got some fresh pears from Uncle Lenny and fresh raspberries from my Uncle Roger. Uncle Lenny has a pseudo-farm that my dad would *love*. He grows pears, apples, cherries, all manner of vegetables and has chickens and turkeys. Finally, Grandma gave me 3 jars of pickels to take home!! But she made me promise not to tell anybody, so it’s a good thing this isn’t public or anything.
Quote of the weekend:
Len: “The cat had a hernia so I just pushed it back in there.”
Pat: “How did you keep it in? Did you stitch it up?”
Len: “No…I just wrapped some duct tape around it. By the time the cat got it off, it was healed.”
Uncle Len, Veteranarian. What is it with my family and cats?
Improv Everywhere
You have to check out this comedy group. Some of my favorite missions include Cell Phone Symphony, The Moebius, No Pants, Megastore, and Look Up More.
Sara got that job! Also, my sister graduated from college on Saturday. Congrats to both of them!
We went to NYC one last time over the weekend. We saw the Wedding Singer (staring Stephen Lynch!) and Sweeny Todd. They were both pretty good, Wedding Singer had a lot of good 80′s jokes and references and Sweeny Todd was very creepy and weird. We tried to get tickets for the Tribeca Film Festival, but we didn’t get there in time. We also ate a ton of good food, as usual. I’m going to miss having that place so close! I love New York, it would be really cool to live there.
Oh, for mother’s day I bought tickets to see Wicked in Chicago. I’ve been trying to get my mom to see it forEVER! She’s a huge Wizard of Oz fan (she even collects stuff from it) and I bought her Wicked the book last year for Christmas. She could never get a trip planned to get out here to see it, so I got tickets when she’s already going to be in Chicago to help me move in. I’m going to tell her next weekend on Mother’s Day.
The big news of the day is that I convinced Sara to let me buy tickets to a Packers game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve never been to an honest-to-god pro game…I always end up going to pre-season games because they’re cheaper. In particluar, I’ve never been to a game at Lambeau field. The Packers play a pre-season game in Madison and also I’ve seen them here in Philly. I’ve been to Lambeau before, but only before the season to watch a practice. The game is Lions at Packers on December 17th. I booked a hotel in Appleton for the night before, since the game starts at noon. I bought 2 tickets, one for me and one for my dad for Christmas/birthday/other holidays to be named later. It’s been my dream for a while to go with my dad to a game at Lambeau…even more so now that Favre decided to come back for another seaon. This will be my last chance to see him play! I even went all out and got 2 tickets to the official tailgating party at Brett Favre’s Steakhouse before the game. All you can eat and drink for 3 hours before kickoff!
So the real question is, how am I going to keep a lid on a secret this big for months! I could hardly keep from calling my dad minutes after I bought the tickets!
This is not the money you’re looking for…
Okay, I know I’m a few days late on this, but this is one of the greatest stories I’ve ever heard!! Basically, a couple of armed guys tried to steal David Copperfield’s wallet and he thwarted them with magic! Of course he did. Don’t screw with David-freaking-Copperfield! He should have been like, “How are you going to escape with no getaway car?” and then *poof* their car disappears. Someone at work pointed out that if this was the 80s, Copperfield would get his own crime-fighting cartoon show.
So Sara is on her way to Chicago for a job interview and also to look at apartments. This is the one and only job that’s seemed interesting in the past 4 months or so, so hopefully it goes well. I’m not worried though…apparently the interviewer asked her boss, “What do we have to do to get her out here?”
So today was the annual Tredyffrin Library book sale. Paperbacks are 3 for $1 and hardcovers are $1…seriously, it’s better than Christmas. So, with no Sara to interfere and rein me in, I bought 26 books! 
This is kind of a problem because I still haven’t read all the books I got for Christmas yet and also because we’re moving, but hey! Buying 26 books would have cost me over $200 regularly, and instead they cost me $15!! I also bought 4 books for Sara, so hopefully she’ll like them.
They had this book set there written by Vince Lombardi. It was SOO cool! It was actually written by him and it’s about how you play the game of football, including hand drawn diagrams about how certain plays should work. It was full of full page color pictures of old school Packers like Bart Star, etc. It was leather bound and in a protective box. It was the coolest thing, but unfortunately it cost $50. 
I couldn’t justify that, so I didn’t get it. It would make a great present though!
Finally, today is the day of the NFL draft! (How was that for a segue from books to the NFL?) The Packers have never drafted this high as far as I can remember (basically because they’ve never been as bad as they were last year as far as I can remember!) so this is more exciting than normal. All of the pre-draft analysis is completely asinine, but despite that I’m still looking forward to it. However, every year I’m all excited and then after a few hours I’m like, “Oh my god, could this BE any more boring.” We’ll see how long I make it this year.
That is all.
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Season Ticket Waiting List
Lambeau Field has been sold out on a season ticket basis since 1960 and we’ve been accumulating names on our legendary season ticket waiting list ever since. To add a name to the list, please send a written request and include the name, address, phone number and the number of tickets requested (limit four) to the Packers Ticket Office.
Packers Ticket Office
P.O. Box 10628
Green Bay, WI 54307-0628
Go Pack GO
Last week was the week of hell.
I had to give a presentation in my class on Monday and then I worked all 7 days for a total of 60 hours. I’ve worked every weekend for the past 6 or 7 weeks. Plus everybody’s temper is short so I’ve been yelled at a few times lately. Seems like I can’t do anything right, although I think that’s more that everybody is stressed out. The deadline was last Friday and I’m still not done with everything. It has really been brutal. I could go into more details, but frankly I’m too tired. Also, Sara’s family is coming for Thanksgiving, which is great, but we have a lot of cleaning to do before then.
And now, the ages old debate, do I stay up late to watch the Packer’s game even though I have to get up early and it might just kill me?
Decisions, decisions.
Yet another good game
You know how much I like to shoot zombies! This is a suprisingly simple yet good game where you’re an old man de-animating some walking corpses with a revolver. My personal best is 131 zombies capped. One helpful hint is that you actually have to click on the zombie you’re trying to shoot. I had this crazy notion that bullets would actually hit things you didn’t click on and it caused my head to get pulled off.
P.S. Packers are actually doing kind of good…
Ah, Sunday
I’m writing this post from my new football command post in the spare room with my desktop and the small T.V. It’s everything I hoped it would be! AND the Packers game is actually on T.V. here in PA since they’re playing the Stillers.
Ugh, the Packers. What a mess. They’ll be lucky to win another game this year. It’s gotten so bad that they had to pick up a WR named Taco! No seriously: Taco Ordered (their title not mine, I can’t take credit).
I’ve been working overtime the past few weekends and this week was no excpetion. I don’t mind though because I get a lot done and I get paid for it too. But one thing that makes work a little more bearable is konfabulator. You install this program and then you can download widgets which do all kinds of things. Each one is sort of like a little specialized web-browser window. For example, I have one that showes me football scores, one that showes me the weather, one that gives me a daily Dilbert cartoon and one I can double-click for a Napolean Dynamite sound clip. How can you beat that??
So next weekend is going to be awesome. Sara’s friend from home is visting her brother in Baltimore so we’re going to go hang out all day followed by a Ben Folds concert!! It’s going to be a cool concert too, he’s playing with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. I’m excited to see which songs he’ll play.
Damn you Detroit Lions
First you beat Green Bay in the season opener robbing me of my dignity, but then you break Javon Walker and screw the Packers over for the whole season!!
Damn you!!
Ready to serve
Time to update because some random person told me to. I’m a slave to the masses…
Let’s see, what happened…oh yeah, I got MARRIED. What a head trip. I’m still not used to it and it will be 1 month tomorrow. (Happy Anniversary babe!) Let’s not forget the honeymoon to NYC and Alexis’ wedding last weekend.
For the photographer’s pictures go here, name: h*****h, password: s****k
For other digital pictures, including honeymoon pictures, go here, name ********, password ********. If anybody has any digital pictures from the wedding, please upload them!
Other than that it’s just been getting used to going to work every day again. We’ve been spending money like crazy and we’re digging a bit of a hole, so thank god Sara started her job today. Oh, did I mention Sara got a job? She’s working as a peds genetic counselor at CHOP (Children’s Hospital Of Philadelphia). Today was her first day! So far so good I guess. We can really use the money.
Last but not least, get pumped for the greatest time of year…football season!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Got fantasy drafts coming up and I’m getting into the full swing of things. Let me just say this:
I smell Superbowl for the Packers.
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