The Superb Owl

Ah, the Superb Owl. An elusive creature, indeed. Many groups of hunters have spent the past six months in hopes of reaching the Superb Owl, but only two will have the honor of ruffling her mighty feathers in Tampa this weekend.

Warriors from Pittsburgh and Arizona will exchange fire in hopes of conquering the Superb Owl, giving one group the opportunity to hoist a mighty trophy in celebration of the kill.

I do not wish to brag (ok, maybe I do), but I have an opportunity to view the Superb Owl in person this weekend, so in a matter of minutes I will be hopping into the Smootmobile to head south. My plan is to get as far as Jacksonville tonight, make the rest of the pilgrimage on Saturday, and spend a night with my uncle before the Big Hunt on Sunday.

As per usual, I have packed way more stuff than I'll ever need for a four-day adventure. Given the climate changes, I have your warm weather clothes, your cold weather clothes, your cold weather clothes that you have to wear in a warm climate that is experiencing unusually cold temperatures, and various combinations of black and gold, and gold and black.

And in case it gets really cold, I'll have Groundhog Brew available for warmth. This is a special beer made especially for Groundhog Day, and hopefully I'll be able to spread some cheer with it in Florida. Speaking of which, I'll be missing my first Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney in about 25 years. A chance to see the Superb Owl only comes so often, you know…

Anyway, you can rest assured that I'll return with a plentiful supply of boring stories to share next week!

Attack of the Mutant Pepsi Cans

As you may be aware, I have a fondness for Diet Vanilla Pepsi. By "fondness," I mean that I wish I could simply hook them up to an IV tube and allow it to flow directly into my veins. It would probably save me from repetitive stress syndrome related to hoisting the cans to my mouth as frequently as I do.

When Pepsi goes on sale we stock up on it and keep many, many 12-packs stacked in our garage. During the holidays, Pepsi was on sale a couple times for very cheap prices, so we bought enormous quantities of it. I had fun stacking it in the garage, making Lego-like buildings out of it.

Anyway, we have had these nasty cold temperatures these past couple weeks, and it has had an interesting effect on some of the cans in my stash. As far as I know, there was only one can actually exploded all over the place, but with the cold temperatures many of the cans mutated in such a way that the top of the can has expanded upwards. Some cans did the same thing at the bottom, making it impossible to stand them up.

I'm getting close to the end of my current supply, hoping that they'll go on sale again soon. Since I'm running low, I've resorted to drinking the mutated cans, and that has been a weird experience. If I wasn't so addicted to these things, I'd be tempted to see how much some goofball would be willing to pay for a mutant can on eBay.

Egyptian Death Flu

Well, it's that time of the year. Mrs. Smoot has the Egyptian Death Flu (EDF). At least I assume that's what it must be called.

She woke up around 3:00 yesterday morning, and was feeling less than 100% healthy (that's the politically correct way of saying she was repeatedly barfing her guts out). For the rest of the day she was permanently affixed to the couch, and all I could see of her was the top of her head sticking out of a gigantic mound of blankets, surrounded by mountains of Kleenex. Every once in a while she'd speak up loudly enough to remind me that she thinks she's dying.

It probably doesn't help that we have been watching House marathons on DVD lately. If you're not familiar with the TV show, Dr. House is the leader of a team of diagnosticians. He's sarcastic and rude, but he almost always figures out what is wrong with people who have unusual ailments.

Since we've been watching this show for hours on end most nights, we can't help but try to diagnose what Mrs. Smoot might be experiencing. I don't have the right equipment (as far as I know) to carry out a lumbar puncture or an MRI like they do on the show, so we're stuck with basic symptoms for the basis of our diagnosis.

Could she have an infarction? Huntington's disease? Pulmonary fibrosis? Guillain-Barre syndrome? Sarcoidosis? Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia? So far my best guess is that it's either the Egyptian Death Flu, or Munchausen syndrome.

Journalistic Excellence

Obviously the title of this entry is not referring to my own blog. I do, however, enjoy viewing some of the world's best samples of journalism when I have the chance. I had just such an opportunity this weekend.

We took a trip this weekend to visit Mrs. Smoot's family so we could finally exchange Christmas presents with them. Mrs. Smoot's sister pointed me to an article in a local paper that exemplifies the excellence in journalism to which we should all be aspiring.

I am posting a scan of the article; you'll want to click on the image to see the full-size version so you can enjoy it as thoroughly as I did. If you're at all like me, you'll definitely take great pleasure in the first two sentences of the story.

Shoving the Shovel

I am against shoveling snow. I know this is a harsh stance, but I just don't see the point, frankly. My feeling is that if God is going to put snow and ice all over our driveway, He can also take responsibility for removing it. If I wait long enough (say, July) He usually does take care of it all.

Our driveway is a nice, short, level surface, so it's not all that difficult to navigate into it no matter how bad the snow gets.

We have neighbors who have similar driveways and are obsessed with shoveling for some reason. A few of them will be out there in frigid temperatures, shoveling away while it's still snowing. What is the point? I often wonder if they finish up, go inside, and are surprised to see that the driveway is covered with snow again an hour later.

I must admit there are cases where I do kinda wish some other people would consider tending to their parking lots a little better. I picked Little Smoot up after her Girl Scouts meeting last night, and the parking lot was a complete sheet of ice. As we walked to the car, we had the following conversation:

ME: Be very careful, because this whole parking lot is covered with ice!

-- 2 Second Pause --

LITTLE SMOOT: (WHOOOSH! Little Smoot falls flat on her back)

ME: I JUST told you to be careful! Weren't you paying att… — (WHOOSH! I fall flat on my back)

Stupid irony.

American Goofballs

This is definitely my favorite time for viewing American Idol. At the beginning of every season they travel to numerous cities to conduct auditions for the overall pool of contestants, and they spend a lot of time featuring the worst of the worst singers they could find.

It seems that a huge percentage (98%?) of people have some sort of tremendous delusion when it comes to their own singing abilities. I guess if it sounds good in our own heads, it must sound even better if we have a microphone and an audience! I'm sure this premise is what has made karaoke as popular as it is.

The best part of the whole show is when they feature people who are immensely overwhelmed by their own "abilities," and then they wind up getting berated by the judges. I don't know why I get so much pleasure out of watching this happen. I suppose it's largely because I'm not the one being berated.

As you're well aware if you watch the show, the contestants are judged by Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell, and Randy Jackson. This year, for reasons I cannot explain, they decided to add a fourth judge. For some demented reason they decided to add Kara Dioguardi to the show, even though she appears to be evil.

Kara is easy on the eyes, sure, but what else does she add to the show? She reminds me a lot of "New Coke." Remember back in the 80s when Coke decided to change its formula, even though people seemed to be perfectly happy with the old stuff? Eventually people revolted, and Coke went back to the old formula. Kara is the New Coke of American Idol. It's only mildly ironic that Coke is a big sponsor of the show, and the judges are always drinking it, being sure to have the Coke logo facing the camera at all times.

Anyway, I'll be interested in hearing your opinions about Kara. I say let her off at the next rest stop, and speed off.

The Invasion of the Snuggie

Last month I posted a blog entry to complain about the amount of junk e-mails I was receiving, specifically about a stupid-looking product called the Snuggie Sleeved Blanket. I go out of my way to boycott any company that feels the need to fill my mailbox with crap, especially if the crap they're selling would make me look like a moron.

The television commercials for the Snuggie show a family of people watching a football game while wearing this blanket, and they look like the kind of people you'd like to use for target practice.

So last week I was away for an afternoon, and if you're at all familiar with the literary concept of foreshadowing, you know what happened when I got home. There's Little Smoot, brimming with pride while wearing her fancy, new Snuggie, along with the complimentary book light (a $1,199.99 value!). My heart sank.

She wears this stupid thing all the time now. I'm not sure if it's merely a chance to rebel against me specifically, or if she really enjoys the warmth it offers. Maybe she wants to be used for target practice. I don't know.

I'm worried about what's next. If she was that eager to get this product, will she be actively seeking more dumb products, like any of the things offered by annoying shouting pitch-man Billy Mays? One of these days I'm going to come home and find the house filled with OxiClean, Kaboom, Mighty Putty, The Ding King, and who knows what else. I can barely wait.

The Electric Slide

Electric. Such a wonderful thing when it's working properly. When it's not working properly, it's rather freaky, as the Smoot clan has recently learned.

We were doing our part last week to watch our 12 hours of television a night when lights in the house started doing this weird thing. They'd go dim for a bit, and then they'd return to normal. The lights in our bathroom would get doubly bright and flicker, as though being operated by people who make horror movies. For a while we figured it was one of those things that just go along with the temperature being 5 below outside, and we assumed it affected the whole neighborhood.

A couple hours later it was still going on, so we finally called the electric company. They came out and happily informed us that everything was fine on their end, so neener neener neener, it was our problem. As a precaution, we turned off the furnace and enjoyed a "restful" night of sleep. It was 46 degrees in the house when we got up the next morning.

I spent the next day calling everyone in the phone book who might have any knowledge at all about electric, and as a result the house quickly became a convention center of people peering at various wires and making extremely helpful and optimistic remarks like, "Hmmm. In 20 years, I've never seen anything like THIS before!"

And into the night it went without a resolution. Mrs. Smoot and Little Smoot fled to a hotel for a night, while I stayed here with whatever Poltergeists were infesting our wires. I took the precaution of setting a smoke detector right beside our electrical panel, and I took my cell phone to bed with me. I thought about pressing "9-1" on the phone so I could just push the other "1" really fast if I needed to.

Finally, on Day 3 of Electrical Mayhem, a contractor found the problem. Turns out the geniuses who put the house together didn't properly seal the wire that comes into the house from the meter, and it had corroded after years of having water dripped onto it.

As I type this, the contractor is here for his third – and hopefully final – time. Which means I'll be writing him yet another handsome check. I'm finding myself admiring those Amish folks more and more each day…

A New Beginning

I normally don't write about politics here, and I most certainly don't spend a lot of time writing about anything in a serious tone. I'm not really a very political person, and if you've read anything here, you are well aware that 99.9% of what I write is done with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

I thought I'd veer from the norm today, since this day has the potential of being a turning point for our country. With the swearing in of Barack Obama, I have to admit that I have a sense of optimism that I haven't felt in, say, eight years or so.

I'm sure George Bush is a good, well-meaning person. The fact that we have not seen a terrorist attack in our country since 9/11 is to his credit. But so many things have gone terribly wrong in this country on his watch, and I'm sad to say that I've rarely had the feeling that he genuinely wanted to make things better.

The wake of Hurricane Katrina is a good example. President Bush visited the affected region a few times, frowned at the devastation from various angles, and promised to make it better. But most of the "real" help came in the way of getting highways and other infrastructures fixed. Individual people were left with little help and little hope.

I witnessed that firsthand when I visited Mississippi on two mission trips. I've met those people, and I've heard their stories. I met people who had lost all hope of getting back into their homes, at least until church groups came to offer help.

Mr. Bush made similar empty promises closer to home when the remnants of Hurricane Ivan blew through portions of Pittsburgh in 2004. He came to town, promised help, and eventually businesses were offered low-interest loans. That was pretty much the extent of the help that was offered here, and many of those businesses have closed their doors for good, and individual people have struggled to rebuild their homes.

Again, I respect the man, but I honestly feel as though Mr. Bush has simply lost touch with the common man over the years, if he had ever been in touch to begin with. When gas prices were up to $4 a gallon, I had joked that the solution would have been to force the president to swipe his credit card every time they refueled Air Force One. I don't think he had the slightest grasp on how badly these prices were hurting the economy, and individual people.

I had the opportunity to see Barack Obama speak on three occasions during the presidential campaign, and I count myself among those who see him as a voice of inspiration. He speaks from the heart with such remarkable charisma that it's hard not to hang on his every word. Not only does he have that likability and charm, but he seems to back it up with remarkable intelligence and concern.

There's a whole lot of fixin' that needs to be done to the country. The economy is obviously horrible. We need to get our men and women out of Iraq. People need to get back to work. The health care system is screwed up. And on and on and on.

Hopefully, in a few years I'll be able to look back at this blog entry and know that things did get better. But I am optimistic and excited about what is to come. As I'm typing this, we have about 2 ½ hours before Mr. Obama takes his oath of office. Godspeed!

Here We Go Steelers…!

Those of you who know me know that I am an avid Steelers fan, and that I am lucky enough to photograph the games for a newspaper. Needless to say, last night's AFC Championship Game was a lot of fun, despite running the very real risk of being run over by Rush Limbaugh on the sidelines during pregame.

Of all of the NFL teams he could choose to like, the master of right-wing spin is a big Steelers fan ("big" both in the sense of "fanatical" and "gargantuan in stature"). For two weeks in a row, he has shown up on the sidelines before the game, along with a woman on each arm. I'm not sure if he is dating both of these women – perhaps as an audition to see who will ultimately become his next ex-wife.

You may have gathered that I'm not a big fan of Limbaugh, and you would gather correctly. I used to hear him on KDKA radio, mainly because I was too lazy to change stations back and forth every day when he came on.

He has this amazing ability to defend George Bush, no matter what dumb thing he has done. Bush could have walked into a press conference with a machine gun, firing away at everyone in sight, and Rush would justify his actions by saying that some degree of stress is only natural for someone in his position.

I must admit that I did get a great deal of satisfaction that my press credentials gave me greater freedom to roam on parts of the field where he wasn't allowed to be.

Anyway… the Steelers beat the Ravens, and are heading to the Big Dance in Tampa, which means that Pittsburghers will be weaving around in traffic, waving Terrible Towels out the window with one hand while honking their horns to the tune of "Here We Go Steelers, Here We Go!" with their other hand, while steering with their knees. I may stay off the roads for a bit…

My 100th Blog Post Celebration

Well, here it is. The big milestone has finally arrived: my 100^th blog posting is here! I'm not sure if Willard Scott recognizes and congratulates people for 100^th blog postings or not, but we'll see.

As I look back on these past few months in the blogosphere, I am reveling in the many accomplishments and accolades that have been piling up here at Smoot Central. For example, readership has been climbing exponentially! Back in September, there was just one regular reader (me), and since that time I have picked up at least one more reader… at least I think someone else is reading this!

Mathematically speaking, that's a 200% increase (or is it a 100% increase? I'm terrible at math) in readership. Show me another well-respected publication that can boast numbers like that.

I are very proud of my attentions to detail when it comes to proper grammer and speling, too.

I am extremely grateful to those of you who have taken the time to comment on various postings. Hoosaid Dat has been very consistently adding comments here and there, even though his name sounds suspiciously like he may be an Al-Qaeda operative. "Anonymous" and a few others have had his/her share of comments, too, and I'm grateful.

I would like to take this opportunity to strongly encourage you, my loyal minions, to keep the comments flowing. Those comments are just the fuel I need as I am devoting 12-15 hours a day in an effort to keep up the high standards I have set for myself (mostly by sleeping for that length of time in hopes of having a dream weird enough to blog about).

I ran into one of my casual readers at the Steelers playoff game last weekend at Heinz Field. She complimented me on my consistent track record of excellence (naturally), but mentioned that she has always been "tempted" to comment, but never does. Hopefully she and others like her will begin commenting on a regular basis. Either that, or I'm going to start signing on anonymously to make glowing comments to myself for fun.

Not So Bright

Several days ago I was driving in front of Mrs. Smoot and I noticed that one of her headlights had burned out. Anyone with my meager mechanical abilities and the slightest shred of common sense would have done one of two things in this situation:

1. Conveniently "forget" that I noticed such a thing, hope that she doesn't notice it, and pray that the problem resolves itself.
   
2. Flee the country.
   

Instead, I chose option 3, which was to blurt out the fact that the light was out, which was obviously going to lead me into an inevitable situation where I was going to have to attempt to resolve the issue, being the Man of the House and everything.

Yesterday afternoon I made the bold move to stop at the car parts store to purchase the new light. I never feel comfortable even going into these places, because all the guys who work there are all hairy and are brimming with testosterone. I have some sort of fear that they're going to ask me some easy mechanical question that will stump me, and then they'll all chase me around, snapping me with towels or something. Probably irrational, I suppose.

In any case, I obtained the bulb after answering all of the trick questions at the parts store ("What make of vehicle is the bulb for?" My response: "A car").

When I began fiddling with it last night, I went in with a positive attitude, thinking that maybe I'd be able to complete the mission before dawn. I took a gander at the general area of the light and quickly realized that I had no idea where to begin, so I broke Guy Rule #1: I got out the owners' manual, and looked up the instructions.

The instructions seemed benign enough. Take out three screws, pull some plastic doodad off, turn the bulb counter-clockwise and like magic, you'd be done. Somewhere in Japan there's a group of very evil men in Suzuki lab coats who are laughing their butts off at the thought of me following these simple directions.

I made numerous trips down to the basement in attempts to locate appropriate tools, and before I knew it there were random car parts strewn throughout the garage and elsewhere into the neighborhood. Once I got to the bulb itself, I found that it was secured into place with a Mystery Clip, which apparently did not like being disturbed.

After a significant amount of time, and some outbursts of questionable language, I got it off and changed the bulb, and then had to figure out how on Earth to get the Mystery Clip back into place. I'm usually good with puzzles, but even my ability to solve the Rubik's Cube didn't help with this mess. After yet another big segment of time I managed to get most all of the parts tucked under the hood in such a way that I was able to close it up. Oddly enough, the light actually works.

When Mrs. Smoot starts the car to head off to work, I am planning on being out of the country, though, just in case.

Reverse Puberty

I'm going through a little dilemma here. I have this gigantic zit on the side of my face. At the age of 40, one wouldn't think I would have to be concerned about this sort of thing. But here it is.

Thankfully this wasn't one of those zits that are within my field of vision. Ever have that happen? I've had pimples in the past that were big enough that I could actually see them out of the corner of my eye. In those cases, no matter what I'm doing during the day, all I can concentrate on is the fact that there's this stupid zit on my face.

This zit kind of snuck up on me a bit. I discovered it while brushing my teeth a few days back. I don't know how long it went undetected; usually Mrs. Smoot would be right there to make fun of it, give it a name like "Norman," and/or start picking at it. I'm not capable of just leaving these things alone, either, so I've been messing with it in hopes of getting it to go away, but of course I'm just making it worse.

This has brought back all sorts of memories from my teen years. I can remember going through practically an entire tube of Oxy 10 (or whatever it was called) a day, in an attempt to get my face to look less like a pizza.

And of course I have many fond memories of trying to pop zits in front of the mirror. I used to make a game out of it, kind of like darts. Come to think of it, that would be a cool item to market to teens: a transparent dart board that could be stuck onto mirrors. Ready… Aim… Fire! That's disgusting. I'll make sure I remember to delete this paragraph before publishing this to the blog.

Anyway, I guess my main concern is, what if I'm going through some sort of reverse puberty? If I wake up one of these mornings and my voice jumps up an octave, I'm going to be seriously worried.

Snow Wimps

We had a few inches of snow here in the Pittsburgh area over the weekend, and that was enough to bring out the Snow Wimps.

People here are hilarious, really. When the forecast calls any amount of snow beyond an inch, people nervously line up at grocery stores like you wouldn't believe. We'll inevitably see stories about these people on the news, and when asked what they're doing, the Snow Wimp Interviewees will almost always tell the reporters they're at the store to "stock up on toilet paper" in advance of the snow.

Apparently these people can think of nothing better to do to pass time during a snowstorm than to poop the time away. I really don't care to think about it. Maybe they're simply afraid they're going to be "wiped out" by the storm.

And needless to say, people in Pittsburgh are crappy (sorry for yet another toilet-related word) drivers when it comes to snow. If we get flurries, you'll start seeing a giant list of cancelations on TV, because event organizers know that when Pittsburghers try to drive in snow, even if there are just a couple flakes floating in the air, they'll start spinning sideways into one another.

Go to Erie sometime. They could get seven feet of snow and not even delay school. Those people know how to deal with it. And, presumably, the lines for toilet paper are much shorter up there.

Undecking the Halls

There's only one thing worse than putting up Christmas lights, and of course that is: taking them down.

There's usually at least one unseasonably warm day in November when I'll get all warm and fuzzy and enthusiastic about putting the lights up. Of course my enthusiasm turns to rage really fast once I start putting lights up, only to find that 25% of the lights actually illuminate once they're attached to ridiculously unreachable places, even though they worked perfectly fine when I tested them on the ground.

This year was particularly harsh in the rage department. I got rid of some of my icicle lights because they weren't consistently lighting up. I went out and bought brand new ones so I could avoid that problem. Naturally, literally within days of hanging them on a very high gutter, the new lights would only partially light.

Then we took our trip at Christmas, and we came home to find half of the highest ones dangling vertically from the house thanks to some strong winds. In order to celebrate this yuletide treasure, I donned my gay apparel and yelled fa la la la la around the yard for a while.

Now it's time to get all of these stupid lights taken down, and in theory I should organize them in some fashion. I chose an unseasonably warm January day earlier this week, which meant it was almost warm enough to hit freezing, and my method of "organizing" the lights was to rip them off the house and shrubs and stuff them all into a pathetic pile in the garage (see photo). And that's where they'll be for quite a while, I'm guessing.

Next year I'm thinking about converting to a less-electricity consuming religion of some sort. Those Amish folks have it good.

My Pleasure!

I'm starting to run out of boring stories from our Christmas cruise, so today I'm going to relate a boring story from a previous cruise. Lucky you!

Last March we took a cruise to celebrate my 40^th birthday. During our first dinner, our waiter introduced our assistant waiter by saying, "This is Kerman. He does not know what he is doing." We all got a good laugh out of that one, not realizing that he was being completely serious. Poor Kerman had only been with the cruise line for two weeks, and judging from our experience this was apparently the first time he has ever had contact with other human beings.

From what we have heard, Royal Caribbean teaches its workers to respond to people by saying, "my pleasure," instead of saying "thank you" to cruise passengers. Kerman apparently took this directive very seriously, because no matter what we would say to him, he would say, "my pleasure." Here's a verbatim transcript from one of his conversations with one of the ladies who was sitting at our table:

Kerman: (noticing her bowl of soup was still full) "You did not like your soup?"

Woman: "No, it didn't suit my tastes."

Kerman: "My pleasure!"

Needless to say, right from Day 1 of the trip, we began referring to him as "My Pleasure" instead of any other name.

My Pleasure (later in the trip, we simply called him "MP" for short) was also amusing for his ability to completely forget what he was going to get for us. Most nights I would ask for a refill of Diet Coke, and he'd take a few steps away from the table and we could tell that he had already forgotten where he was going.

My brother would ask him for iced tea, and this would confuse him further. We could see him standing at the drink station, looking toward the ceiling with no clue why he was standing there. And he'd almost never get our drink orders even close to correct. He was also obsessed with offering us a tray of rolls numerous times each meal.

Normally we get annoyed by this kind of service, but in this case we were pretty amused by it. I looked forward to dinner each night, not knowing what kinds of drinks we'd wind up with. The last night of the trip I somehow ended up with 10 – yes… 10! – glasses of Diet Coke in front of me. We were all laughing so hard, but I composed myself well enough to ask him for another one when he came back to the table after finishing them all.

We often wonder whatever became of My Pleasure. Is he still waiting tables on a ship? He could still be in therapy after enduring us during our trip.

What’s Next? Driving Upside-down?

As Americans, it seems like we spend a lot of time and effort trying to improve situations around the globe. In recent years we helped Kuwait to battle Iraq's occupation, we got rid of Saddam Hussein, and we helped drive the Taliban regime out of Afghanistan.

Now it's time to turn our attention to countries where people drive on the wrong side of the road. We Americans drive on the right side of the road. That's why it's called the "right" side, for heaven's sake.

My feelings on this subject are based on our recent visit to Grand Cayman, where driving on the wrong side of the road is not only encouraged, it turns out it's the law! I discovered this peculiarity when I decided to rent a scooter there during our Christmas cruise.

I walked from the cruise ship terminal to the scooter rental place, and I was heavily concentrating on the fact that I was going to need to remember to drive the scooter on the left (or "wrong") side of the road. And when it was time to cross the street to the rental place, I looked to my right to check traffic, and I stepped directly into the path of an oncoming bus full of tourists in the other lane. Seriously.

I didn't get to hear whatever announcement the bus driver was making to the tourists while he was slamming on his brakes, but I'm sure it was along the lines of, "Look at this moron. I sure hope he's not going to go rent a scooter." I was just hoping that Mrs. Smoot and Little Smoot were not on that bus, since they were on their way to a tour at about that same time.

Anyway, I somehow managed to cross the rest of the street without dying, and I learned that I had to obtain a temporary Grand Cayman driver's license. I was very happy to learn that this did not involve a driving test, considering I couldn't even pass a walking test.

After signing enough documents to drain several pens of their ink, I was finally allowed to venture out on the scooter. "Remember to drive on the left," the friendly lady reminded me as I exited. Grand Cayman laws also require scooter operators to wear a helmet, so I spent the rest of my afternoon looking like Captain Dork. And after removing the headgear, I had a severe, non-flattering case of Helmet Head.

Anyway, I did a pretty good job of driving on the appropriate side of the road most of the time, and I managed not to drive over too many pedestrians along the way. I still think that once we get this Iraq thing under control, President-elect Obama really needs to give this region some serious thought.

Have Yourself a Pants-less Christmas

I don't know how you spent Christmas night, but I spent it wearing a bra and no pants in front of several hundred people this year. I've done this several times in the past, but never before on Christmas.

For some reason, when we go on a cruise I feel compelled to win every contest I can be involved in. I must say that I did quite well on our Christmas cruise – I won the ship's variation of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which earned me numerous prizes that Mrs. Smoot was able to enjoy (a spa treatment, bingo cards, artwork, etc.). I won first place at the 80s "Name That Tune" competition (I tried to keep it a secret that I was a radio DJ for a good portion of the 80s).

I came in second place at the "Belly Flop Competition." I have placed second in that competition a few times before. I think if I would make just one more stop at the buffet line before the contest, one day I may come in first for that one. I came in third in the "Finish That Lyric" game. And that brings us to the popular "Quest" game.

Quest is the most awesome game ever. It's basically a scavenger hunt sort of thing, and you have to produce whatever items the host asks for, or do whatever the host asks, based on what you and your teammates have handy. They always start out pretty tame by asking for things like a credit card or comb, or whatever, but it escalates into an adult-themed event pretty quickly.

So by the end of the night, I was wearing lipstick, high heels, no shirt, a stranger's bra, all while carrying a purse. Alas, I have no photographic evidence of this, because Mrs. Smoot wasn't feeling well (or perhaps she was pretending not to feel well…) on Quest night, so I was there without the benefit of being photographed by anyone who knew me. The attached photo is one of me in similar attire from a previous cruise, just to give you a feel for what kind of whacky things I'll do in an effort to win a keychain (our group came in 2nd place this time. We won 1st place the last two cruises, so I guess I'm slipping a little).

I did, however, have the "benefit" of being videotaped by the ship's crew during the contest. And as a result, I had the pleasure of seeing myself in full Quest regalia as the cruise director showed a preview of the cruise's souvenir DVD at the ship's theater the last night of the trip. Mrs. Smoot just shook her head as she saw me in all of my feminine glory.

My philosophy is that I'll never see any of these people ever again, so what the heck.

Speaking the Language

Ok, time to go back to boring you with details of our Christmas cruise!

One day early in our trip I learned an important lesson about how to properly speak to foreign people. That lesson is: "know that they're foreign."

I was standing in line for the Flowrider (which is how I spent much of my week, actually), and I was making occasional witty remarks to the man who was standing beside me. After about the 20^th witty remark, it occurred to me that this guy never really added a witty remark of his own, or even acknowledged my witty remark other than by making direct eye contact with me while I was talking to him.

It wasn't until the next morning at breakfast that I figured out what was going on. His family was sitting nearby, and they were all blithering away in some foreign language. I don't even know what language it was, but it was one of those languages where they apparently forgot to add vowels, so everything they said sounded like they were choking on something ("Bkrpkck? Yhmnrqph tkchnppch!"). So it turned out that this guy had no idea what the heck I was talking about, and all of my witty comments were completely wasted.

If there's one thing I hate, it's having witty comments being wasted. That's probably why I started this blog in the first place…

Happy New Year!

Just a quick note to wish everyone a fine and dandy 2009! The Smoot clan spent New Year's Eve at our former Canadian neighbor's house, where I set the world record for losing the most games on a Wii in a single night.

I spent much of the night losing at Wii Bowling, Wii Tennis and Wii Darts. I was getting a Wii bit frustrated after a while, but it was all fun.

At midnight we watched what's left of Dick Clark dropping the ball at Times Square, and then we all participated in a rather bizarre ritual. I can only assume this is a Canadian tradition, which is why I fully agreed to participate in it.

I enjoy learning about the intricacies of other people's cultures, so I obliged when it was my turn to have my traditional New Year's Unibrow and Long Sideburns installed via an ancient ritual consisting of Hubert rubbing black goo on my face.

I'm including a bad cell phone picture of another of the participants, who probably had the evening's most impressive unibrow. I am guessing that the more impressive your Canadian unibrow is on New Year's, the better your luck will be throughout the year. I'll have to see if Hubert can clarify the origins of the tradition for me, but that sounds perfectly reasonable.

Several people have asked me about my New Year's Resolution, and much like last year, once again I can simply find no room for improvement in myself.