I hate to tell you this

because I don't want the secret place to get too crowded...

But thanks to (Almost) New Dad, who lives down the street, we have discovered Dublin Dr Pepper AT A SODA FOUNTAIN. And this magical place is only 5 minutes from the house.

And they had the soda mixed properly, too. And they serve pizza. And ice cream. And they have chocolate syrup for your ice cream. And free muffins. And they have lots of stores in Atlanta.

Heck, they would not even care if you put ice cream on the free muffins. Well, they MIGHT care if you do that in Atlanta...

Anyways, I only know for sure that they serve Dublin Dr Pepper at the Jason's Deli by my house. If anyone sees it at other stores I may be willing to pay a finder's fee.

Football!

So tonight is the much discussed and hyped Dallas Cowboys vs Green Bay football game. Too bad that most of Austin can't watch the game, thanks to the standoff between Time Warner Cable and the NFL Network.

Truthfully I don't care that much about NFL football. I'll watch if nothing else is on. And if the Texans or the Cowboys make it to the Super Bowl, then I'll watch. Otherwise, whatever...

But I DO really dislike Time Warner Cable. Thanks to the fact that they kept my yard torn up for months on end. So imagine my delight when I realized last night that our crappy old basic satellite system includes the NFL Network. Evidently we have had the network for a while, I just never cared to check...

So while my neighbors who are served by TW's cable system are cruising to the sports bar to watch the game tonight, I'll be sitting in the big blue chair in my own living room. And I'll probably watching something else.

I might be hallucinating but all your cartoons are belong to us

And I swear I just heard Pablo on the Backyardigans drop some dope internet lingo. The writers adapted the line for the context of the show, where 2 of the Backyardigans were acting as gold prospectors and two others were playing like they were paleontologists.

Back to the line in question... Pablo, just thew down either "All you GOLD are belong to us..." or "All your BONES are belong to us..." in the background of a chaotic scene where the two groups meet up.

I could not tell exactly what he said and without TiVo, I'll just have to sit around for days on end waiting for a replay of that episode. Good thing I don't have a job to get in the way of my quest.

Too cold for family traditions

Every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we go to the Chuy's Children Giving to Children Parade. Our kids put a lot of thought into the toys they select for their give away. Anyways, we skipped this year.

True, it WAS only 40 degrees out there, but it was raining, too. Plus, NONE of us are currently sick. And that is a family tradition that I want to continue as long as possible. We watched the parade on TV and we will stop over at Chuy's which just so happens to be our favorite place to eat, including our own kitchen, and drop off our toys.

From the news coverage of the parade it looks like everyone in town took the easy way out,like us. The parade attendance was sparse, therefore the number of collected toys is really low. The crews are gathering toys at locations and events all over town. But now they are worried that they will not have enough toys to meet the needs all over the area. So that is where we come in.

The kids are going to be digging into their piggy banks this afternoon to see what other toys we can give. And I am hoping that if you are around Austin, you'll drop a toy or two in one of the collection bins around town, too.

Not in town? Go find a group collecting toys in your area and have the kiddos give a toy they selected. It makes for a great family tradition.

I am thankful for the other 9 toes and hundred year old chairs

I should have just slept late this morning. OK, the truth is I still slept later than The Boss Lady by an hour or so, but it wasn't late enough.

As I walked into the living room this morning, I slammed my pinky toe into the the blue chair in the living room. You know, the REALLY old and HEAVY blue chair that I like to sit in while I watch TV? Yep. It caused me pain, after all of the good times the blue chair and I have shared.

Pinky toe, broken.

I am not hassling with a trip to the ER for this. If it is killing me over the weekend, I'll hit up my doc's on Monday. Until then I'll be sitting in the blue chair waiting for it to apologize.

Otherwise, the day was a great success. Family reunion with Dad's fam at lunch and hanging out at our house all afternoon with Mom, Dad, my siblings and their families. We ate. We BSed. We ate. We watched the Cowboys. Then we changed things up and we did a little bit of BSing before we ate again.

Good times.


Edit: Just for the record, my mother never complained about the goatee. I guess It'll have to hang around until Christmas to see if she loves it then...

Guy's night out

The Boss Lady and The Princess headed down to Pop's place this morning. They are spending the night and heading home in the morning.

This afternoon, the boy and I cruised the neighborhood and met up with loads of neighbors to play for a couple of hours before dark. One it was too late to play outside, we headed to dinner. I left the location up to him and the boy picked well. We ended up at Texas Roadhouse.

While we were eating, The Talker looked at me and said "Dad, this is cool. Just you and me eating out. I like it." Nothing real profound, but it did make me realize that this is the first time The Talker and I have been out to dinner together, by ourselves since... Well, I am not sure it has ever happened.

But I bet it will happen again.

Yesterday

I stubbed my big toe and I made a pot roast. Turns out that my toe still hurts and I can make one killer pot roast!

Can't talk anymore. Eating leftovers for breakfast.

Too much information?

The Princess wanted to play Hi Ho Cherry-O this morning. But I could not find the rules once got the board all set up. So I googled for the rules and found this site. Someone at Brigham Young really cares a little too much about Hi Ho Cherry-O, methinks.

But I am not complaining, they did have all of the rules listed on a secondary page, AND they have done the same type of analysis on Chutes and Ladders.

So to our neighbors who sent a kid to BYU, I say thanks for supporting higher (and lower) education.

I'm just sayin'

I have read a couple of dad-blogs lately that have been discussing how BORING dad-blogs are. I am not providing links, because I don't really remember where I was when I read it, or how I got there. It wasn't any of my usually-read blogs.

Anyways, if you find the mindless drivel here boring, then OK. That is fine.

One of the biggest reasons that I started blogging about the kids was so that The Mother of the Bride and The Queen Mother could keep up with the daily events in the kid's lives. And I just DARE you to tell the grandma's that their grandkids are boring.

One of those chicks has a bionic knee and she will kick you into next week for talking bad about her favorite grands. The other lady will hit you with her cane for disparaging the two best looking of her brood. I'll leave it up to you to decide which of the grandmas will do the most damage.

Now on with the drivel and drek:

The Talker is out of school today. The Princess has school. So the boy and I will be hanging out at the pre-school today. (A big YEE-HAW for getting paid to hang out with my kids!) It looks like we will be playing with the smallest kids there for a while and then hanging out with Joe McDermott for a school wide concert later in the morning. Big fun today.

Sorry if we bore you.

Time to put my boots out to pasture

It is time. I can't avoid it anymore. They are threadbare and the leather is cracking. The soles are shot again and after I wear them, my toes hurt. So I have to retire my cowboy boots.

Some guys wear fancy dress shoes. I wear cowboy boots. Suits, slacks, blue jeans. whatever. I do not own a pair of loafers or wingtips. Instead I have black cowboy boots. And I have worn them for a long time.

I can't even guess how many times these boots have been re-soled. Over the years I am sure that we have spent more on sole repair than we spent on the boots brand new. But I just like them soooooo much.

Besides that, these boots and I have been through a lot of good times together. I bought them to wear when The Boss Lady and I got married a dozen years ago. All that talk about it being the bride's special day was almost overshadowed, because with my black double breasted suit, these boots and I looked GOOD!

A side note, I should have looked good that day. Somewhere along the way we got off track with our wedding spending. we ended up spending more on my suit and boots than on the bride's dress. The suit quit fitting me about 40 pounds ago, and the wedding dress just hangs in the back of the closet. But the boots have stuck with me all these years.

I am not 100% certain, but I bet I was wearing them when we signed the papers to buy our first house. Since we bought in May, I might have been wearing shorts that day. And I usually don't wear the cowboy boots with shorts. That's what my brown boots are for...

I do know that I have worn them at the hospital when each of the children was born. Of course, I wore the same shirt both times, too. And you might not think that black cowboy boots and a shirt plastered with Sugar Daddy candy wrapper logos would match up, but it is a good look for me.

This will most likely be the first year in 13 that I haven't worn my black boots to our Thanksgiving family reunion. That, my friends, is a lot of turkey and dressing lunches, chicken stew dinners and Cowboys football in between.

So after payday, I guess I'll be headed to the cowboy boot store. And maybe another pair of black boots will be coming home to stay for a while, But these old boots are going to stay up on the closet shelf. Because someday the Sugar Daddy shirt, these old boots and I might have to head back to the hospital again.

Or maybe I'll just wear them to Thanksgiving dinner one last time.

Did so...

A photo-documented follow up to HH5's comment.

A riddle for you

What is 3.5 years old, partially blond-headed and banished for life from her arts and crafts project scissors?



Too bad we actually spent $20 on her hair cut less than a month ago...

SSDD (Same Store, Different Day)

Last Tuesday I whined on ADHDaddy about our soon to be ex-regular grocery store. Turns out Mondays aren't any better around there. This time I did manage to contain the damage. We only loaded up on the essentials, Q-tips, 'nanners and breakfast cereal. The extra stuff did not find it's way to our basket, so I did not have to make a protest pile today.

But I did stop the store manager on the way out. I told her that we would have to make a stop at another store to really stock up on groceries for this week. I am not willing to fight the piles of empty boxes and stacks of stuff waiting for shelf space that is piled everywhere. I also let her know that this was the second week in a row that this has happened. I guessed that during these 2 trips her store lost out on at least $75 of 'extras' that we would have bought but can live without.

She promised to "look into it". But she also wanted me to know that the stockers were finished up early every day last week, including Tuesday. I did not tell her that I knew differently since one of those guys spent at least 30 minutes putting back all of the crap that I piled in the middle of the canned veggie aisle...

Anyways, a new, closer-to-the-house store is supposed to open in late November or early December. And I am ready for the move, even though I this store has provided lots of entertainment over the years...

An Open Letter to the lady at the grocery store (From Jan, 06)
Fun and Frolic on Aisle 5 (From Aug, 04)

Of course, over the years it hasn't all been roses. There is a reason our prescriptions come from Costco, now (From Aug, 04)

Quantity time is over-rated

I am thinking about just skipping the whole time change next year. And maybe every year until the kids are grown AND out of my house.

You see, time change sucks. It was dark at like 3 in the afternoon yesterday. The Princess wasn't tired at bedtime, so it was a fall back to the old standard hour ordeal to get her to sleep. Lately we have gotten pre-sleep negotiation time down to 20-25 minutes per night. Or to put it another way, we have been THRILLED to ONLY spend 2 1/2 hours a week putting the sleep monster to bed.

But now the farmers come along and screw up the kid's sleep schedule. To heck with the corn crop, I need this kid to sleep. And I need her to stay asleep once she is there.

This morning The Princess bounds out of bed at 6:11, wanting me to peel an apple, to eat powdered -sugar donuts and to paint with water colors. First of all, we have no donuts. Secondly, do you really want to give a guy like me a knife at 6:12 in the morning? And point C is...

Well, I don't have a point C. If I had gotten to sleep worth a dang, I might be able to bring up point C...

Must be November

Every year I TRY to grow some good looking facial hair sometime after Halloween. It always ends up looking like ass. So every year I shave it off before Thanksgiving.This year is no exception. The goatee is taking shape.

But maybe this year I'll keep it until New Years, just to annoy mom. I'll see her 3 or 4 more times this year and there are only so many things I can do that really get under her skin... Plus, it is already too cold to shave my head again this year.