I take orders from my toothbrush

So we finally got out kayaks. It took a couple of trips to Bass Pro to convince them to get off their lazy asses and sell them to us. We still need 1 more life jacket though. Apparently they are expecting hundreds of morbidly obese people to take to the lakes this summer. We could only find 1 small and everything else was like XXXXXL. America is truly the land of plenty!

On Friday we had some of Kelly's intern friends over for a Cajun tur-duc-en which was surprisingly delicious. The turkey part was a bit dry, but we didn't want to add gravy for fear that it would rob some of the meat upon meat upon meat experience. Saturday we went to a wedding in Ashland. Thankfully it wasn't too long and we don't know the people well enough to stay any longer than necessary. Sunday we hosted a surprise birthday party for Monica. Apparently she is 20 years older than she looks. Who knew? We stayed up until the wee hours talking about religion and ghosts! Ooooohh. Scary...

Monday was pretty lazy. We met Jess and Monica at Finger Lakes to test out the kayaks. I had never actually been in one so I'm pretty glad I enjoyed it since we bought 2 of them. Transporting them is an adventure in itself. We are able to put them both on top of my Contour and tie them down with straps and rope. It's pretty scary getting on the highway because you can see them move around a little bit. We try to judge the faces of the people in the cars passing us to see if the boats are going to fall off or not. Nobody seemed to be too alarmed. I'm either going to look for a car with a real roof rack or maybe a trailer with which to carry them, but Uncle Bush's money is almost all spent. I invested in the economy! I feel like a productive citizen. I'm doing my part to stop the bug invasion from Klendathu, are you?

After this week's dentist appointment I was issued an Oral-B® Triumph™ with SmartGuide™ProfessionalCare™ 9900 (1.21 gigawatt) toothbrush. Apparently there exists a need for people to be told which quadrant and for how long to brush. It's very powerful too. Feels like the dentist is right there with me in my mouth! After 30 seconds it will inform you it's time to move to another quadrant of your mouth for optimum cleaning. If you do it right you get a smiley face! I used to make fun of people with power toothbrushes, but they do get the job done a bit better. And in a couple of years they will develop sentience and dominate the fallible human race.

I just remembered that my phone is a model 9900 just like my toothbrush. I guess that's the most official sounding number that the product-naming-people have come up with recently. That's really something to think about...

Pointless Low Quality Video!

Double Fish'ed

Saturday morning Kelly and I got some licenses, worms and poles. We went out on some lake, I think it's called Little Dixie, with Jess and Monica on their boat. I had more fun than I thought I would. Usually fishing is boring as hell, but if you get some friends and a boat it can be a blast. We didn't catch anything big, just a dozen ... uh little shiny guys. I don't know what they were, but they were delicious. About halfway through the day Jess broke his captain's chair and flew into the lake. The chair was saved and he has plans to reattach it with 1 inch bolts instead of 7/8 inch bolts. Good luck, Jess! Clicking the picture goes my Picasa Fishing 1 folder.

Sunday was less fruitful. We got up, played with the bunny (oh yeah, we inherited a bunny) made some muffins, then went out to Ashland Lake. It's a beautiful little lake, but we only caught 1 little fishy. People around us were catching like crazy, but the 4 of us had no luck. Even worse there was a mildly retarded woman sitting on the wall who would yell out "I got him, he's huge" every time she caught something. I wanted to accidentally cast my hook into her face, but Jess said that would be slightly rude. Apparently there is some kind of fishing etiquette of which I was previously unaware.

All in all it was a great weekend. I did not let the mean ol' dentist dampen my resolve to get outside and kill some nature.

Cabbages and Patches

Another exciting week of... uh... stuff. We had some awesome storms which was cool to watch, but it cause intermittent connection issues which is not fun if you're trying to kill monsters. Which we were, a lot. Very dorkily. So dorkily that when we got kicked off the the 4th time we went to the library. Then later on when we got kicked off the 6th time we to a coffee shop to drink spiked lattes and margaritas while we played wow.

In the evening we watched another episode of Jericho and I think that will be the last for me. The writing is just terrible. It's almost as bad as Kyle XY, which is actually pretty funny if you watch if for the right reasons, which makes Kelly clear her throat while you giggle at its horribleness.

I had some Pranks cereal this morning. It's a knockoff of Trix, but I can not find a picture of it online. Apparently there are hundreds of actual cereal pranks played on people with amazing results! Instead here are some of my fav cereal from the days of yore:

I remember these being very good. They were pretty rare so we didn't get them very often. Then when we did have it I was so excited I would often get in trouble and have to eat oatmeal. Oh cruel fate! Why hate you forsaken me? Why am I personifying you? Oh yes, I'm bored. Oops I mean I'm working hard as I should be. Well I would be if there was something to do. I only have a couple of tickets so one must pace themselves.

Mmm. Who didn't love the creepy blandness of Cabbage Patch Kids cereal? I liked to think it was made of real dolls (and it kinda tasted like it was) because Becky had a few and they were ugly. Ugly as sin! But there was something about the crispness and odd tinge of some unnameable ingredient that kept me coming back for more and more and more until I puked all over the dog.

The end.

Mmm muffins

The weekend was pretty nice. Very slow and I slept way too much, but what'r'ya gonna do? I've spent the last hour updating my Good Reads page (you should join!) and trying not to itch my poison oak spots. They are from pulling weeks last week and I may have added to it this week as well. But at least 99% of the garden and lawn is weed-free. Now I have to hope the castor oil keeps the moles at bay. Those little buggers teach the heck out of my beautiful beautiful lawn. Any by my I mean the bank's.
Let's see... anything exciting happen? Nerp! Saw Ironman. It was as cheesy as I thought, but not so bad that I asked for my money back. Oh no, his enemy is a bigger one of him! Scary! Just like the new Hulk coming out. His enemy is a bigger Hulk? Will he find it in himself to overcome the adversity? Probably.
We went for a nice little hike around Cosmo Park. It was hard to get lost in the woods because there was a softball game going on in the park. We could hear the yells and cheers (as if it's a real sport) from blocks away.
Jess is planning a canoe trip in a couple of weeks. Kelly and I really want to go, but we both have appointments that weekend. I have a dentist appointment Friday morning which will leave me numb for some time afterwards and Kelly has a summer school meeting Saturday morning. We may still go and she'll just have to drive to the meeting in the morning and meet up with us later. We are planning on camping and floating all weekend, but not sure where yet. Maybe the Meramec or Huzzah Creek.
Well I had better pretend to do some work now... or play with Inkscape!

Erf

Phew now that Earth day is over we can begin the more widely celebrated holiday that lasts all year long: F*ck the Earth Day. I'm leaving a trail of styrofoam peanuts everywhere I go. Are you doing your part? Come on, people! The sooner we destroy the planet the easier it will be for our grandchildren to die a quick, relatively painless death. And by our grandchildren I mean your grandchildren. I'm not such a heartless bastard that I would bring life into this crumbling world of shit knowing full well that we'll soon be short of habitable land and breathable air.

Damn that got a little depressing. Sorry about that, folks. I bounce between having great faith that humanity will put the needs of the Earth above its own instant gratification, then I'm reminded of the stark reality that we are selfish bastards. It's wonderful!

Michael Stipe recently said "If you would have told me in 1973 that in 2008 a black man and a woman running for president would still be a big deal, I would have laughed at you." I still see posters around my schools that have a picture of a 10 year old girl and the caption "When I grow up I want to be the first woman president." Sorry, kid, that's only 40 years away. 'Merica's gotta vote for someone with 9 houses and women can't own property! Oops, that may have changed. I'll check my state legislature this afternoon.

Maybe I'm just pissy. I paid the house note too soon and now we're broke until payday next week. Here's a random comic from PLIF:

Balls

Happy Monday, everybody! That includes everyone who will read this later in the week, but not those of you who never read this. Those people can go to hell.

Anyways! The volleyball tournament was on Sunday. That didn't turn out so well for us. We started out playing a team wearing shirts that boasted previous volleyball tournament championships. They were playing way too aggressively. It was plainly obvious that we weren't that good, but they kept spiking the ball as if it was necessary. Plus there was some crazy rule that kept costing us points. Each team had to have 3 men and 3 women. A guy can hit the ball over, but if 2 guys hit the ball then a woman must also hit it before it goes over or the other team gets a point. So not only do you have to worry about just getting the damn ball over the net, but you have to make sure a woman hits it too without exceeding 3 people touching it.

But enough complaining. More stuff happened. Like on Friday. Kelly's dad wrecked his motorcycle and broke a bunch of bones. He was driving down the road when the van in front of him decided to turn left. Sources say she didn't use a turn signal and had no break lights so he didn't have time enough to stop. He hit the back of her van and got thrown over it. He broke a few things. I'm not sure exactly what but he will forever have a metal plate in his pelvis. So I guess he's a cyborg now. That's pretty cool. His recovery is going much better than expected.

Kelly drove to Nashville on Friday through some heavy rain which took about 8 hours. She got to come back home by 6 on Saturday so we went to Jess and Monica's for homemade tacos. Apparently people make their own taco shells from tortillas instead of pulling stale crap out of a box. Who knew?

They were a bit greasy, but so damn good. I learned a few tricks and can't wait to try them out. Like chopping up cilantro and mixing it with lettuce. That was amazing. There was just enough chili powder in the chicken too. Damn now I'm hungry just thinking about it.

Let's see. What else happened? We went to the Earth Day festival in Peace Park. We didn't stay too long because it was pretty boring. We decided to go home and do yard work instead. But then the yard work turned into cleaning out the garage. A lot of work but rewarding. Then we tried to level our Horde toons up a bit, watched Napoleon Dynamite and ate some leftover enchiladas. All in all not a bad weekend.

I don't have a picture of Vince on his bike, but here's a picture of his butt: