A Little Adult Time

Tomorrow Diane and I are going to take a little midweek respite from the organized chaos that is our lives to enjoy a little one-on-one adult time. It's OK. You can think dirty here. I can't wait, and not just for the dirty part either. We're heading up to Phoenix to see Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, of Once fame, on their The Swell Season concert tour at the Orpheum Theater tomorrow night. Once was one of those movies that stuck with me for days, and I found myself constantly humming or singing Falling Slowly, this year's Academy Award winning song. When I found out they were coming in concert, I jumped at the chance to get tickets. I'm stoked.

We're going to spend the night in Phoenix, sans children, and after the concert the sky's the limit. Perhaps we'll go out and have a few drinks, do a little salsa dancing, sing some karaoke, and generally party 'till the cows come home. Yeah right. In reality, we'll check into our hotel room and fall asleep watching Leno. We're becoming old souls in our not-so-old age. Oh well, at least we're getting away.

Enjoy the clip!

One. More. Week.

There's only one show on television that I consider "Must See TV", that show being LOST (just in case you couldn't put things together from the pic there). Season 4 begins next Thursday night and I. Am. Stoked. I can't really classify myself as a LOST fanatic, although Diane might. I just love the show. I don't spend time scouring the internet looking for clues that might solve the mystery of the island anymore, or contribute to message boards, or wear LOST merchandise. But I did get goosebumps a few weeks back when the first promos for the new season came out. I guess that at least makes me a LOST geek.

No. This makes me a LOST geek. A co-worker showed me the rapid fire promo, frame by frame...and I watched. Eagerly. And we oooed and ahhed and bristled with excitement at the perceived secrets contained within. Why was Hurley in the water? What's up with the number "6"? Whose blood was dripping on Kate? And who's in the frickin' coffin!? Next week we start getting some answers.

So here's a little LOST promo of my own. For all of you LOST uninitiated, there's a summary show next Wednesday night, 9pm/8pm Central. Watch it. It won't give you all the gory details of the show, but it will bring you up to speed enough to enjoy the 2 hour season premiere on Thursday, 8pm/7pm Central. My work here is done.

Just My Luck

Last week I came across an opportunity to win concert tickets to a Guster/Toad the Wet Sprocket concert in Costa Mesa, CA. Where Costa Mesa was, I had no idea. I figured it was probably located within the mass of humanity surrounding Los Angeles, roughly an eight hour drive from Tucson. The concert is next Wednesday night, July 25th. I have to work that day. And Thursday. The likelihood of me being able to attend the concert was close to nil. Since I've never won a single thing in my life, I figured what the hey, and threw my name into the proverbial "hat".

I like Guster, but I'm a big Toad fan. It's weird, I enjoyed their radio hits in mid/late 90's, but it's only been in the last couple of years that I discovered their full repertoire. And since that time, I always find myself coming back to Toad. I have a million songs on my Zune, and I'm constantly downloading new artists and listening to new music, expanding my musical horizons, but Toad has become a sort of "comfort food" for me. I don't know why. There's nothing flashy about them. They are just a solid pop/rock band. Last summer they began touring as a band again, and I kept a tight watch on their tour schedule to see if they would be making any stops in Arizona. They didn't. The closest they came was California. So I guess I went a little out of my mind when they were offering a contest for free tickets. Though the cards were stacked against my being able to go to the concert, I entered anyway.

I won.

SCORE!!

Awwwww CRAP!!

Yesterday I received an e-mail confirming that I was the contest winner. So now I'm trying to figure out if I can finagle my way to Costa Mesa for a couple of days next week to see one of my favorite bands in concert. Stay tuned.

Battered Randomness

A smattering of events in the past 48 hours:

Oh No...Not Another One

I hate that I watch reality TV, and even more, I hate ADMITTING that I watch reality TV. It's like driving by the scene of an accident: you really don't want to see the blood and gore, but you can't help but rubberneck as you drive by. I blame Diane. She's a reality TV junkie. Quick, somebody organize an intervention. Current shows that we watch fairly regularly are Top Chef, Little People, Big World, Dog: The Bounty Hunter, and Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. You have no idea how painful this is for me. Please bear with me as I cleanse my conscience as well as my soul.

Sunday night we added a new show to the list (please forgive me, Lord): Scott Baio is 45...and Single. What's worse is that we stayed up until 11:30 to watch it when we knew we had to get up EARLY the next day to get the girls off to school. Scott (don't call him Chachi) has hired a life coach to help him get through his mid-life crisis, and we get to ride along as he tracks down old girl friends who confront him and tell him EXACTLY what's wrong with him. It's too delicious to pass up! I need serious counseling.

Reading is Fun

Kailey picked this book to read last night before bedtime, and we had a lot of fun with it. The book is Smelly Socks, by Robert Munsch, and it chronicles the adventures of Tina who vows to "...NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER...take them off." You can just imagine some of the chaos that ensues. Kailey and I shared several laughs as we read the story and enjoyed Michael Martchenko's illustrations. Several of the illustrations totally cracked us up prompting Kyra to yell from the other room, "Hey! Keep it down!" If you're looking for a good, slightly gross book to share with your kids, give this a shot.

Life as a Not-So-Handy Handyman

I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon, OK, ALL of yesterday afternoon repairing the leaky shower head in our master bath. Since I usually have no idea of how to fix stuff, and I'm too prideful to call my father-in-law to come over and fix it, I jump on the computer and surf the net to read various do-it-yourself articles until I'm sufficiently satisfied that I won't completely screw up the house by venturing out on my own to do the job.

Two trips to Ace Hardware, two faucet cartridge installs, and several hours later, the repair was complete and the shower head no longer leaks. I ROCK! Sorta. If I would have followed some of the instructions I read online I would have been done much, much quicker. I stretched what should have been a 20 minute repair into a couple of hours. Oh well, live and learn. No sooner had I finished my shower head repair than I noticed one of the zones in our backyard sprinkler system wasn't working. I guess a handyman's job is never done.

Happy Tuesday.

My New Weekly Ritual

"I'm not stupid...I'm an idiot!"

This was recently quoted to me by one of my co-workers, and it's been banging around in my head all week long. He basically was commenting on how he didn't lack the mental fortitude to analyze information or situations and come to a rational conclusion (i.e. being "not stupid"), but rather lacked the moral fortitude to do the sensible thing with that information (i.e. being "an idiot"). He's going through some relationship issues which would make idiots out of most of us.

I think this is going to become my new mantra. Say it with me: "I'M NOT STUPID...I'M AN IDIOT!" Case in point, my new weekly ritual. For the past few weeks, I've been watching movies on Saturday nights. Well that's not so bad, you might say. Only "Saturday nights" are really "Sunday mornings". I've been staying up until 3 am watching "stupid" movies (Diane says they're "stupid". I say they're "stupid AWESOME").

I am a Dad, and Sundays are family day. It's the one day of the week where our family is able to spend the whole day together, yet I stay up until 3 am the morning before. That makes me an idiot. I don't care. It seems like that's the only time of the day where I get to watch what I want to watch. No Toon Disney. No Cartoon Network. And as long as it doesn't inhibit me from fully engaging in family day, I'm gonna keep doing it.

My new movie ritual began a couple of weeks ago with Braveheart. I think it was on Bravo, but what do I know; it was frickin' 2 o'clock in the morning. I was flipping through channels when I came across Mel Gibson rallying the Scotsmen for the first major battle scene of the movie. I've seen Braveheart hundreds of times, but I watched it anyway.

Last week's movie was The Dirty Dozen with Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Telly Savalas, and a very young Donald Sutherland. And last night I watched Paul Newman's 1977 hockey classic, Slap Shot. It's been probably 20 years since I saw this movie, and it did not disappoint. Slap Shot isn't so much a hockey movie as it is a fighting movie. As the old saying goes, "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out." That's Slap Shot in a nutshell. My favorite scene in the movie is when the nerdy trio of Hanson brothers finally get their chance to play and hit the ice for the first time. They are hell on ice, chucking guys into the boards, low-sticking the refs, and high-sticking their opponents. All three are ejected after a couple minutes of play and exit the ice to thunderous applause. I had to stifle my laughter for fear of waking up the house. I may be an idiot, but at least I'm considerate. That rhymes.

So here's the considerate idiot looking forward to next week's movie.

You Know It's GOT To Be a Good Day

I'm a creature of habit. Every day before work, I stop at Starbuck's for a little caffeinated pick-me-up. As a cost-saving measure, I'll usually go for a straight coffee, which is still $2.00 for a venti. It's been way too hot to be drinking coffee in the afternoon, so I've been splurging on iced lattes. This afternoon I dropped the girls off at my in-laws, then pulled in to the nearest Starbuck's to get my fix. There was one gentleman in line in front of me. I call him "gentleman" because he was wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt and tie. That puts him in "gentleman" status in my book. If he's wearing a t-shirt and shorts, then he's a "dude". Why I'm trying to explain all this, I don't know.

Anywho, this "gentleman" was purchasing a butt-load of gift cards, only I didn't realize it at the time. The barista asked me what I wanted and proceeded to create my tasty beverage. In the meantime, I waited behind the gentleman. And waited. After about a minute I wondered what was going on. Admittedly, I was a little slow on the draw, but give me a break, I hadn't yet enjoyed my caffeinated beverage! The gentleman was just standing there while the cashier was running transactions. I peeked around him and noticed a hefty stack of gift cards piling up on the counter. This was going to take a while.

The barista finished preparing my drink and brought it over to the registers and slid it across the counter in my direction. He analyzed the situation, studying the mound of gift cards and the ratio of cards processed to total cards. He then looked over at the unused register and I could see the wheels of his mind churning as he weighed the time/energy aspect of logging into the register and ringing up my transaction. This took mere seconds, and after reaching a conclusion, he grabbed my drink and slid it further in my direction as he declared, "Here you go, it's on the house."

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

I thanked him profusely, grabbed my FREE drink and skipped out the door like a school girl (as a father of two school girls, I'm an expert on this). I LOVE Starbuck's, and I LOVE FREE STUFF! How could today NOT be a good day?

Wait...don't answer that.

The Price for a Weekend Alone

It was a memorable Memorial Day weekend. Several weeks ago, my in-laws decided they were going to take another trip to see my sister-in-law, and they asked us if they could take the girls with them. COOL! They also asked if we would watch Rex for the four days they'd be gone. CRAP! Kidding. Watching Rex is a small price to pay for a long weekend alone with my honey.

On Sunday, Diane treated the two of us with massages, using the remainder of a gift certificate she received. Diane went with a sixty-minute hot stone massage and a face brightening facial while I indulged in the ninety-minute signature massage, and it was awesome. It sounds crazy, but a sixty-minute massage goes by too quickly. Needless to say, we left the spa feeling happy and shiny. We spent the rest of the weekend utilizing the grill, resting, catching up on some videos, and doing a little house/yardwork. Oh yeah, and watching Rex.

Sunday night, we let Rex out so he could do his busy work, and after a couple of minutes I heard Diane cry, "Oh crap...the sprinklers are on!" I rushed to the window to find that the sprinklers, indeed, were on, and that a thoroughly soaked Golden Retriever was frolicking in the midst of them like a swimsuit clad ten year-old on a hot summer day. I grabbed the video camera and captured the video you see below. It was quite the sight.

All in all, Rex was a good boy. It sounds like the girls had a good time with their Aunt, and I'm excited to have them home tonight. We'll see how long that excitement lasts because I'll spend the next six weeks trying to keep them entertained during their summer vacation.

THEY'RE BACK!!!

One of my guilty pleasures is pumpkin pancakes from IHOP. This goes way back almost fifteen years ago, shortly after Diane and I were first married. We stumbled into an IHOP (I make it sound like we were drunk. Not that there's anything wrong with a drunken pumpkin pancake binge, but we were sober.), saw pumpkin pancakes on the menu, thought they sounded intriguing, ordered them and fell instantaneously in love...with pumpkin pancakes. Oh, how we loved our pumpkin pancakes! We quickly discovered two problems, though. First, IHOP did not offer pumpkin pancakes year-round. They were seasonal, usually introduced around mid-October and served through Thanksgiving, perhaps through Christmas. Second, neither Diane and I are very good at planning or marking things on the calendar, so quite often we would miss the window of opportunity to enjoy our beloved pumpkin pancakes. It's actually been five or six years since I last enjoyed pumpkin pancakes (can it really be a guilty pleasure then?). Until Sunday.

We were sitting in the van after church going through the ritual of putting together a plan for lunch. After much discussion and some opposition from Kailey (one of the girls always opposes the lunch plan), we decided upon IHOP. You can get breakfast OR lunch there, even though it is the International House of PANCAKES. We arrived and sat down in a booth, arranged the activity mats and distributed crayons to the girls. The hostess gave us only three crayons and I was surprised when there wasn't a fight over who had more crayons. After helping the girls decide on their order, Diane and I perused the menu. I was investigating the omelette section when I heard a gasp. I looked up to see Diane reaching for the little advertisey-tent-display-thingy that restaurants always adorn their tables with to inform patrons of the latest cuisine and beverage specials.

"They have pumpkin pancakes," she breathed.

My eyes exploded from my head and we stared at each other in a competition to see whose eyes could bulge out the farthest. "Do you think we can add them on to our omelettes?" she asked.

I would have paid any amount of money to add pumpkin pancakes to my order. Turns out that for an extra $.79, we could add pumpkin pancakes to anything our hearts desired, at IHOP anyway.

They were delicious. Just like I remembered them. Kailey likes pumpkin pancakes too. HA HA...a convert! Kyra declined to try them, but she too will be turned. So head out to your local IHOP today and try the pumpkin pancakes. Tell 'em I sent you (at which point they'll cock their head and look at you strangely). But stay away from the coffee. IHOP coffee still sucks.