Old Man

I am now 35 years old.

I weigh 185 pounds.

I cannot run 5 miles without stopping.

I can eat a Big Mac in 6 bites.

I cannot do 20 push-ups.

I can take a nap any time, any place.

I cannot carry my kids up to bed without panting.

I can collect ludicrous amounts of lint in my bellybutton.

That all changes this year.

Except the nap part. I love naps.

Oh, and it will all be made more dramatic by taking ostentatious self portraits.

Darwin Award

You know how your kids do something over and over again that impresses you enough to make you go grab the video camera but when you finally return with the camera they never replicate what attracted your attention in the first place so that you're once again left with some insipid video footage that you just end up deleting?

Well, this is not one of those situations.



When you've got a big booty, make sure you clear the ottoman. (The only injuries were to Darwin's ego, so I was totally allowed to laugh. A lot.)

Failure Is the Best Teacher

It's December.  Time to check in and see how the ol' New Year's Resolutions are coming along.  Isn't it a little late in the game to check my progress?  Why yes it is.  I have no idea what I even resolved.  Well, let's take a look...

1. Use protection.  
- Um, OK. I mean who can really say what is and isn't protection, anyway, right? Darwin's still the baby of the family, so let's just leave it at that.
2. Stop drinking soda. Unless there is rum or ice cream in it. Or both.
- Didn't give it up entirely, but cut back drastically. Really only have it when I need a pick me up and I don't have a Red Bull handy. Cuba Libre is still the over-the-bar medication of choice.
3. Only use that toilet paper with lotion in it. My ass deserves only the best.
- Kept a roll of the good stuff with me at all times. Had to use the sandpaper variety that one time. My ass and I agreed never to talk about that day again.
4. Become literate again -- finish at least twelve books. Harold and the Purple Crayon and such do not count.
- Epic fail. I haven't even finished one book. Unless you count The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. It's not that I haven't read at all, but I started with The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. It's a good book, but not exactly a page turner. And 736 is a lot of pages. Le sigh.
5. At any given time, limit the DVR to recording no more than eight shows that I will never, ever, ever watch.
- This was easy. We moved in with my wife's parents and I never even hooked up the DVR. Success by default!
6. Only eat bacon on odd days or days that are divisible by two.
- I ate loads of bacon while still falling short.  My doctor rejoices at my failure on this one.
7. Find out what it's like to go to bed before midnight.
- Meh. I tried it. Life is boring when you don't need a Red Bull by 10:00 AM
8. Redesign this ugly ass standard blog template.
- Done and done.
9. Create the sweetest iPhone app ever and sell it on iTunes and make billions of dollars and buy the Chicago Bears and fire everyone from Jerry Angelo on down.
- Well, the Bears are having a good season. This no longer seemed prudent.
10. Find one redeeming quality about Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. There's got to be something.
- Fail, but totally not my fault.
11. Face the fact that McDonald's is not a healthy lunch just because I got the Apple Dippers.
- I faced the fact. But I still don't care.
12. Find out what it's like to eat a vegetable more than once in one day.
- I'll tell you what it's like. It's like SUCK.
13. Go un-bald.
- Efforting. Efforting. Efforting.
14. Beat Julie at something. Ideally soccer, but anything will do.
- I totally pwned Julie this year. You KNOW it.
15. Build something that can actually be used/displayed somewhere in the house besides a dark corner of our unfinished basement.
- Nope. But there's still time.
16. Potty train the twins. Or teach them to change their own diapers. (And Darwin's diaper while they're at it.)
- Amelia: check. Truman? Close. I mean, I wouldn't let him sleep on your new leather sofa or anything, but that could be said about some of my college buddies, too...
17. Finish painting that friggin' Sponge Bob project that I started for Jameson ages ago.
- Done.  Like really, I did this one.
18. Either get in shape or get my own mini-series on the Discovery Health channel. No more of this spare tire purgatory. Shit or get off the pot, so to speak.
- I'm 12 pounds lighter than when I started. I still have a spare tire, but it's more like the space saver variety rather than a full size spare.
19. Appreciate my wife and kids at least enough so that when I'm ninety and I wander out of the house and get lost that they'll come looking for me in a matter of hours, not a matter of days or weeks.
- You'll have to ask them.
20. Use protection.
- No announcements. Yet.

Size Matters

Taxation without representation, indeed.  The kids brought in quite the Halloween haul this year and I've had to familiarize them with the "dad tax" on their trick-or-treat bounty.  Unfortunately for them, since I made their costumes and took them on their beggar's night rounds, they fall into a very high tax bracket.  Current tax legislation also applies the "dad tax" to Easter baskets, ice cream cones, bowls of popcorn and, of course, McDonald's french fries.  Sure it sounds like an onerous burden, but c'mon, those piggy back rides and really high pushes on the swings aren't going to pay for themselves.

Freedom isn't free, baby.

Regrettably, it doesn't look like tax rates will be easing any time soon.  Have you seen the atrocities that are being passed off as "fun size" candy these days?  It's a joke. They're an abomination.  The Great Pumpkin must be rolling over in his patch.  And who pays for these crimes?  The children.  I have to dip into their candy bowls dozens of times a day just to keep my blood sugar up.  The kids are left with little else than Tootsie Rolls and marshmallow peanuts.  Maybe a half-melted Jolly Rancher if they're lucky.

I have a feeling things are only going to get worse.

Based on current trends, this will be a "fun size" Snickers in the year 2018.

Epic Dinner Fail

It's pork tenderloin.

I don't want to talk about it.



(The kids were happy. They got emergency hot dogs for dinner.)

Rain Cometh

Golf outing = FAIL!