You’re A Shining Star, No Matter Who You Are

Can you believe that another month has passed us by already? Spring is here and it is really past due for me to cut the grass. Did anyone notice that winter just about forgot about us again? Sheesh! Anyway, it is time to delve through my feed reader again and see if I remembered to ’star’ any of ya’lls great posts that I read in March. Keep your fingers crossed.

Steve Martin’s Vanderbilt Epiphany – Thinktrain

Granny Killer Shoulda Chose Puppies – Dave’s Electric Blanket

I’m Gettin’ Old…And Crabby – The Sometimes Sophomoric Hijinks Of The G-Man

Flying The Nest – Solid Gone

Do You Know This Guy? – The Dry Spot

So here are five more smash-tastic posts from last month. Now, go read them and tell them how great they are…but don’t forget to come back and visit me.

Prioritizing

Today at work I ran into a buddy of mine in the “men’s conference room”. His son plays football at my high school alma mater and I was telling him that Little Harry was going to be on the football team at his high school.

He thought it was pretty cool and was willing to dole out some advice as a football dad. He thought I might share this with my son:

“Hard work pays off in football…and I guess in life, too!“

Let’s hope it does, sir! We both got a chuckle out of that one.

A Few Shots From Easter

Last Sunday was Easter and The School Girl, Little Harry and myself spent it with my side of the family. Here are a few photos from the day’s festivities:

We all gathered at the local Bob Evans Restaurant. After having our waitress quit on our 18-top because she was whiney (she wanted us to sit by who was on which ticket…we didn’t), I found this sweet license plate that every man should own:

A small egg hunt for the kids found our youngest nephew, The Evil One, making sure that no leaf remained unturned and no truck bed left unsearched.

Usually most family get-togethers find the guys in one place and the women in another. This day was no exception as some of us guys were outside yuckin’ it up.

(l-r: M-Squared, Little Harry [from behind], Michael TD, Uncle Grizz, me)

I sure wish I could remember what was so funny.

Klingons Around Uranus

I had another one of my (in)famous conversations with The School Girl on the ride home from work this afternoon. We were listening to the radio when a song by The Cult came on. She gave this weird look towards the stereo as if she wasn’t sure who the artist was. I informed her of the band’s name and we continued on from there:

The School Girl: It sounded a bit like Billy Idol for a minute.

me: Nope, they are British though. The singer’s Ian Astbury and their drummer joined Guns ‘N Roses and is a member of Velvet Revolver.

The School Girl: Did you say ‘the singer’s Ian ass-berry‘?

me: Uhh, no. A-S-T-B-U-R-Y…ass-berry? Like, as in butt-nugget?

And scene. There’s nothing like a good conversation about nicknames for poop to really solidify a marriage.

For those of you who don’t know The Cult, here is the video for the song we heard this afternoon:

Play Ball?

Baseball opened its season on Tuesday featuring the defending World Series Champion (and my beloved) Boston Red Sox taking on the Oakland Athletics…at the Tokyo Dome in Japan. Wow, how thrilling is that? (Why is there not a way to write/type sarcastically?)

When I was a kid, the thrill of Opening Day would wash over me. Nothing, save the playoffs, was as exciting in baseball to me as opening day. By exporting the season premiere overseas the year sort of begins stagnantly.

If Major League Baseball wants some sort of ‘spectacle’ to open the year they could do it quite easily here in the states. How about something in primetime? Maybe a television doubleheader with game 1 being played in Cincinnati. Cincinnati, of course, being the home city of the very first professional baseball club. This could be followed in game 2 with a home game of the defending World Series Champions. The team could unveil their championship banner and hand out their rings. It would be great. The next day the rest of the league could start and then move on from there.

If you want to showcase baseball worldwide then I propose this:

Take your World Series Champion at the end of the year and play them against the Japanese League Champion. I think that ESPN would eat that up.

If baseball is supposed to be America’s Pastime, maybe we should play it here in America, at least when the games count.

Happy Easter

I have no idea what to say since I am still a bit groggy so I will post a wonderful Veggie Tales song:

Hopefully everyone has a great day. I know I will since I get to see the grandparents who have come to visit from Florida!

Out And About On A Saturday

The wife managed to drag me from the house kicking and screaming this afternoon. Here are some random notes from our travels:

- While driving through our town square a group of people were attempting to sell us (and everyone else in town) some donuts. They get right up to your window and stare at you to make you feel bad if you do not donate to their random charity or club. Of course I rambled on thusly (is that really a word?):

me: “Maybe I should grab one of their donuts and put it on my weiner and scream ‘hey eat this donut’.”

The School Girl: “How about not doing that.”

Fair enough.

- We made a stop at the local Goodwill Store to find that there was nothing of interest to be purchased. Also, it was apparent that someone had replaced their previous stacks of LPs with my mother’s record collection (Linda Ronstadt, Barbra Streisand, Christopher Cross).

- The local dirt mall antique dealer hasn’t gotten any cleaner since we first visited them 4 years ago. Now I remember why we never went back.

- We visited the local $1 store where I managed to find a copy of a book by the late, great Red Auerbach. Please notice the signs before asking aloud about how much these things cost. See photo below (and thousands of other places around the store) for the answer. My wife’s eye rolls are not included in this price.

- Hunger struck me but the plan was to buy groceries next. This is never a good idea so we walked next door to the local oriental food establishment. I received the following fortune in my cookie:

Initially this sounds great until you analyze it a bit further. In order to receive an inheritance someone must die! Yikes, I got some bad news in my fortune cookie today.

- I almost slapped the crap out of a young lady who managed on three separate occassions to just HAVE to be in the same area of the music department that we were in. Everytime I turned around she was waiting impatiently and sighing.

- The new Lenny Kravitz CD rocks. Lenny is bringing sexy? rock ‘n’ roll back! If you don’t believe me then take a listen to this new track (with amazing old school guitar solo @ the 2 minute mark) called “Bring It On“:

That is all for now, thanks for playing along.

Not Quite Living Up To Expectations

Back in January The School Girl and I went out to party (if old people still party) with G-Man & SueBoo and Cool Ronald & Heidi. The quick recap of that evening was documented over here.

Now during that evening’s festivities someone, and I am not naming names, dropped our digital camera from the table to the hard floor below rendering it crippled and then completely kaput. This annoyed me a bit since we had some photos in the camera that I just couldn’t get to. Luckily, SueBoo also took pictures that evening and I stole borrowed her’s for my blog entry.

Now we fast-forward to present times. Last weekend G-Man & SueBoo came to the boondocks for a visit and were nice enough to loan us their extra camera. Hooray, no more reliance on my cell phone camera. I was also able to pull the much anticipated photographs from our memory card.

I began to peruse these pictures and realized how lucky we were that we couldn’t get to them.

The evening began with a van ride and The School Girl blinding me repeatedly with the camera’s flash.

Later the waitress was nice enough to suggest a group photo. She grabbed our camera and before Cool Ronald and I could finish our heated conversation on southern rock in today’s musical atmosphere we were captured for posterity.

The wife wanted a nice shot of our favorite couple in all of their loving glory. Aren’t they just the sweetest things? Nice how they managed to get a couple of ‘birdies’ in the shot.

Here I am talking about boogers I think. Great conversation to have in public, right?

The G-Man is making his ‘baby pooping face’ for the whole bar to see. It is amazing how realistic this is.

It appears that we must have been talking about 80s videos or something as I show my “Thriller” face.

The G-Man looks a bit tired here as I…uhh…rub…err…my nipples? Yep, that sounds correct. It may have been thoses Jager shots Cool Ronald kept ordering!

The School Girl is obviously telling some story that makes fun of me. Mostly this picture is important as it documents the hidden smoking habits of SueBoo. Evidence to be used by G-Man for later no doubt.

It was at this point of the evening that we began to play shuffle board and had to fight through bleary eyes. This looks like a point of view photo but in actuality is the first to be taken after the camera made its leap to its slow death.

The evening wouldn’t be complete without a few more pics of our great friends. Here you see the wonderful artistry that is my wife’s photographic talent…oops, the camera finally emitting its dying breath.

I now wish that these photos never saw the light of day. I am sure that ya’ll agree with me. Anyway, as you can see we can really make fools of ourselves and love every minute of it. Let me know if you want to participate and we can take some hilarious shots of you out in public for the whole internet to see.

Cereal Box Prize?

I got this video in an email a few weeks back from SueBoo. I love stuff like this and felt the need to share. Enjoy!

The Life Of Brian

Driving home from Wal-Mart today produced another wonderful conversation between the wife and I. A Pearl Jam song was playing on the radio and I mentioned how I really love the song. Pearl Jam (at least their first 3-4 albums) is one of my favorites. The School Girl comes out with this:

“Yeah, I don’t really like Pearl Jam that much.“

I was flabbergasted. I mentioned how she doesn’t like a lot of my favorite bands half as much as I do…Pearl Jam, The Faces, The Beatles, Pink Floyd and the list is ever growing.

The School Girl: “I don’t dislike those bands.”

me: “These songs are the soundtrack to my life!”

The School Girl: “I don’t like the soundtrack to your life.”

Profound. It hurts in some strange, obscure way that I can’t explain. I can actually see that phrase on some teenager’s t-shirt.

In complete defiance of my wife and in honor of my life’s soundtrack I give you “Footsteps” by Pearl Jam:

March Madness

So yesterday was day one of the big NCAA basketball tournament. Every year the wife and I fill out our brackets and go head to head in a friendly competition for superiority of the homestead. This is one of the few times during the year that The School Girl is very militant about paying attention to sports.

In the past I have generally shown dominance in our little game. I have a feeling that this year may be different. This year, as in the past, we fill out two brackets each for the men’s and women’s tourney. One bracket each that we fill out completely and then one for each that is a round by round selection.

After day one of the men’s tournament we have the following:

My bracket that is filled completely: 14 wins and 2 losses
The School Girl’s complete bracket: 12 wins and 4 losses

So I have a two game lead on her in that one but today’s games could really make a world of difference. Now in the other bracket, the one that we choose games after each round, it is a different story.

The School Girl has the same record as in her other bracket by coincidence: 12 wins and 4 losses. I took a bigger risk in this bracket as it won’t mess up the overall look of everything. I have only 9 wins with a whopping 7 losses! Yikes!

So she has a decent chance of pounding on me in this one. I may up the stakes a bit and create some type of prize for the overall champion. I wonder what I would like as a prize. Hehehe.

My Inner 12-Year Old Strikes Again

The School Girl and I were watching a TiVo’d episode of the SciFi Channel’s Destination Truth. This is a great show by the way for you urban legend type lovers and believers. Well, you see, the team hopped over to Africa to look for this dinosaur that was supposedly living in a Connecticut sized lake. Before jumping in a boat they wanted to talk to some local residents and wildlife experts so they picked this guy:

His last name starts with the word ’shit’ ya’ll! Yes, my 12 year old alter-ego paused it and grabbed the camera to take a picture of this poor man and his unfortunate name. Thanks for playing along.

Personal Needs

I came across this room at work the other day:

It is amazing at what stuff is hidden on the other side of the building. Anyway, this ‘Personal Needs Room’ is locked. I am pretty darned curious as to what in the heck might be hidden in there. What type of personal needs would be locked behind a door at work? I don’t know either but I do know that I must gain entry…for personal…needs…reasons.

How Many Of Me?

I got this sent to me from Auntie P via email. This says that there are over 1 million people in the U.S. with the name ‘Brian’ like me. It is the 29th most popular first name. I really find this hard to believe. Also, as far as the surname ‘LeBlanc’, there are over 51 thousand of us. Again, that seems like an unusually large number to me. Oh well. This is sort of interesting so give it a try.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 190 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Shocking Surprise

Last Sunday evening before the sun went down, due to Little Harry, I made a little discovery of sorts. He was unplugging his cell phone charger from one of the living room outlets and the power for the entire house blew! The whole house!

I trudged down to the basement to flip the breakers back on and found that the living room and the main breakers had been shut off. So I turned the living room on then the main power. They immediately popped off again. So I did this in reverse order: I turned on the main power and you could hear things turning back on. Next I turned on the living room. This proceeded to pop all the power again. Hmm, that wasn’t good.

Little Harry proceeded to inform me that when I did it the second time sparks flew from the electrical outlet. Yikes, also not so good. Well, we shut off all the power again, got out some handy tools and proceeded to remove the outlet completely. This is what we found:

The outlet was all nice and crispy! That is definitely not a good thing. Obviously the outlet was bad and we just so happened to have a few new ones in our large stores of junk that we don’t throw away. I replaced it lickety-split and everything works wonderfully now.

It is scary to think what may have happened if we weren’t there to notice it…or worse if everyone was sleeping!