O' Christmas Brick

I used to consider myself to be a pretty Christmassy kind of person.  Not pretty in the sense of wearing pink tights and having freckles and ponytails, but in the sense that I really got into the Christmas spirit and had warm fuzzies about the holiday.

Sadly, it seems like each year those feelings fade a little further and further, especially now that Little Smoot has joined the squadron of non-believers.  It was a lot more fun when we could sneak around and pretend that a fat guy was going to come down the chimney and load us up with gifts.  We had fun with that for years, even though we don't even have a chimney.

I just got done, moments ago, hauling our damn tree up the steps and into the livingroom.  If you have a keen sense, you may already detect that I am not having fun with it so far.

This is a pre-lit tree, which is a very convenient feature since all you really need to do is haul it up the stairs and plug it in.  At least that's what's supposed to happen.  In reality, you drag the damn thing up the stairs and find out that three of the seven strands of lights do not function at all, causing Holiday Rage Syndrome (HRS).

I contacted Mrs. Smoot to give her a heads-up on this situation, and she suggested that our options are to put the tree up and just not light it (which would look dumb), add more lights to the existing burned out ones (which would look dumb), go spend a fortune on a new tree (which would cost a fortune), or wait until after Christmas and get a new tree at a discount (which kinda still leaves us without a lit tree THIS Christmas).

I want to suggest another idea... I'm thinking we should just move to a country that has an easier form of symbolizing the holiday.  Perhaps there is a country out there that, instead of having a Christmas Tree, uses a Christmas Brick.  Just bring the brick up to the livingroom and view it in awe, reminding us of that special night 2000 years ago when Jesus was born in a manger, which may have been... near a brick.  Whatever.

This Bites

I'm wondering if there's any way of making a kid believe in the Tooth Fairy again after the child has become a non-believer.

The Tooth Fairy used to be very helpful to me when Little Smoot had loose teeth.  I don't know whether she gets sentimentally attached to various teeth ("I once used this tooth for a particularly memorable bite of macaroni and cheese...") or what, but it seems like it takes forever for her loose teeth to fall out.

I'm sure it doesn't help that she knows that it makes me sick to see her teeth dangling around in her mouth.  She loves to show me that stuff, and I wince in agony every time she does it.  So right now she has a tooth that can probably hang a full inch below her gum line when she opens her mouth.  She complains about it constantly, and I obviously can't wait until the thing finally falls out.

Not too long ago I was able to convince her of all kinds of stupid things, thanks to the Tooth Fairy.  I'd tell her, "You know, I heard that the Tooth Fairy is most generous on Thursdays because that's her deadline for getting teeth to the factory in China."  Or whatever.

Surely at age 12 she's running out of baby teeth.  I'm sure running out of techniques to encourage her to get rid of them.

Cat Burglar?

I'm growing very suspicious of our cat.  Don't get me wrong, Murray is generally a very good cat and everything, but I am getting increasingly concerned about him.

Every day for the past couple weeks, he has attempted to thwart me from reading my newspapers.  The instant I sit down to read the papers, he'll literally jump up onto my lap and obscure my view, oftentimes sticking his butt right into my face.

So I can't help but wonder what it is he is trying to keep me from reading.  Is he worried that I'll see his name in the police blotter?  Murray is strictly an indoor cat, but there are periods of time where I have no idea where he is, and it's entirely possible that he has managed to sneak outside to commit some sort of crime wave.

One of the daily newspapers I read is the Beaver County Times, and they have a feature every week called "Mugshot Monday," where they show pictures of everyone who has wound up in jail from the previous week.  I always get a kick out of reading that feature, if for no other reason to feel good about myself and my remarkable ability to stay out of jail so far.

Anyway, I have this nagging feeling that Murray is going to be featured on this page one of these days, and he is trying to keep me from seeing it.  Thankfully he hasn't realized that I can read the newspaper on the computer, because I really don't want him sticking his butt in my face while he curls up on the laptop.

Making the World a Better Place

Ok, so it has been a few days (?) since my last posting here, but I'm sure you would understand that I have been busy making the world a better place.  Day in, and day out, that is precisely what I have been working on all this time.

You see, back in Junior High -- where all of the world's best ideas are hatched -- some friends and I came up with a truly remarkable idea.  It's an idea that will one day shape the whole idea of productivity for generations to come.  Clearly, something of this magnitude is worthy of the time and effort, and if a blog entry or 50 go by the wayside, well, that's the price we have to pay for this kind of progress.

The idea I'm talking about, of course, is the Lunch in a Straw initiative.  In Junior High, we came up with a few brilliant ideas.  One of those ideas was to flick Jello (or whatever that substance was... it was probably called "schmello" or something) onto the walls of the cafeteria to see what would happen.  As you're probably aware, after several months this substance formed a remarkable bond on the wall, and it's undoubtedly still there today.

As a result of that research, NASA is currently using cafeteria-grade Jello to seal cracks in space shuttle fuel tanks.  Obviously, our work paid off for the betterment of mankind.

Well, now we want to introduce our popular Lunch in a Straw concept.  During those formative days, we used to experiment by taking our drinking straw and poking it into our various school entrees.  The end result was a straw that had inch-long segments of various food substances, or whatever that stuff was on our trays.  Think about it -- an entire meal, compacted into the convenient size of a straw!

We believe that this concept will revolutionize the food industry, and productivity will soar like an eagle on speed.  Let's say the average worker has a 9-hour day, and one of those hours is wasted on lunch.  Not any longer, it isn't!  The worker can simply whip out his Lunch in a Straw, and with one long suck he can ingest a series of foods, even an entire turkey dinner with all the trimmings!

Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pie, coffee... one suck, and it's done!  That one-hour lunch has now been reduced to about 15-seconds, and 10 of those seconds would likely be devoted to unwrapping the straw and playing with the straw paper.

Of course NASA is also interested in this technology for their programs, since the space savings is tremendous.  That's assuming they're ever able to get another person back into space once they retire the shuttles next year.

Anyway, I apologize for this lapse in blog postings, but I think you can now understand and appreciate my absence.

Farting with the Stars

Yesterday I talked about the problems associated with farting in public restrooms.  My feeling has always been that it's best to be discrete in an effort to keep innocent bystanders from thinking you're weird.  I failed to mention in that blog entry that farts also tend to echo quite loudly in public restrooms, only making things worse.

There are other situations, of course, where it's a lot of fun to put on a show of flatulence.  For example, I always enjoy firing off a few rounds when Little Smoot is around.  Sure, she often pretends that she thinks I'm disgusting, but I know deep down she's impressed.  Farting loudly in front of your kids is right there in the Good Father Manual.  Look it up.

This past weekend I decided that farting in some public situations can be enormously fun, especially if there are celebrities around.  I was lurking on the sidelines of the Steelers game on Sunday, and for the second time this year Taylor Lautner was a guest of the team.

For those of you living underneath really large rocks, Taylor Lautner is most famous for his role as a werewolf in the Twilight movies, and girls swoon to the point of fainting just by merely thinking about him.  There was a girl in the stands on Sunday who was violently weeping because she was within 50 feet of him.  Seriously.

As you can see in the picture, which has not been Photoshopped in any way, shape or form, everyone enjoys a good fart in a football stadium.  As a semi-interesting side note, the girl with Taylor Lautner is Lily Collins, the daughter of singer Phil Collins.  And it is not merely by coincidence that Phil Collins had a hit song called "In the Air Tonight."

Farting in Public

Like many people, the Smoots enjoy visiting our local Japanese Steak House from time to time.  It's a lot of fun to watch these guys prepare your food right in front of you, and it's even more entertaining given that you never know if your hair may accidentally be lit on fire, or perhaps you'll suffer a puncture wound to the heart as the chef tosses knives around.

The only bad thing about the Japanese Steak House is that approximately 20 minutes after I eat at one, I have the obligatory "bad episode."  If I'm in the car at the moment this strikes, it can be a very uncomfortable thing.  This is why I found myself at a nearby Barnes & Noble the other night, about 20 minutes after enjoying dinner at the Japanese Steak House.

If you read my blog regularly (as if I have been posting to it "regularly") you know that it's pretty hard to embarrass me.  I have been on stage in front of hundreds of people wearing only underwear on several occasions, for example.  But for whatever reason, I do find it embarrassing if I fart loudly enough for other people to hear me in a public bathroom.

I always make a serious effort to keep things quiet when I'm in a restroom stall if there are other people around.  I'll go through pretty extreme and uncomfortable processes to ensure that no one else hears what I'm up to, even though if you're going to make loud farting noises, this is actually the appropriate place to do so.

Well, I am sad to admit that my experience at Barnes & Noble was anything but silent, and I wish I could apologize to the poor guy who was in the next stall.  It wasn't pretty.

Worse yet, I had tried to wait it out so that he would be long gone before I left because I didn't want him to see me, thus connecting my face to the noises he heard.  But fate got in the way of that plan, too, as I found myself washing my hands next to him.  I have a feeling that he planned it that way because he was morbidly curious to see what I looked like.

Anyway, I'm going to try to be more discrete in the future, as best as possible.  I can tell you that I still have no real problem with farting in public in general; tomorrow's installment of the blog will be "Farting with the Stars."

Stupid Bandz

In my never-ending quest to come up with a way to earn a jillion dollars with zero effort, I am thinking about inventing "Stupid Bandz."

For those of you who have no reason to ever interact with other members of the human race, you may not be familiar with "Silly Bandz."  These are colorful rubber bands that are shaped like various things.  I realize that some of you have probably already stopped reading this, dropped what you were doing, and have already run, screaming out of the house because you think this is the most amazing thing you've ever heard, and you have to run out and by a few hundred.

This is what has apparently happened with many people around the country, especially if those people are my daughter's age.  And really, really especially if those people ARE my daughter.

Silly Bandz became really popular a year or so ago, and they've driven many a teacher insane because the kids are paying much, much more attention to who has what Silly Bandz instead of whatever drivel the teachers have to offer.  Of course if they were really smart, the teachers would incorporate these products into their lessons as teaching tools ("143 Silly Bandz times the square root of 84 Silly Bandz is X minus the hypotenuse of another Silly Bandz...")

The odd thing is that it's not just kids who are into these things.  I've seen a shocking number of adults wandering around with these things on their wrists, making me wonder how many important business meetings have been interrupted by suit-wearing individuals who have to stop everything so they can make trades.

Anyway, once Silly Bandz were introduced, a whole bunch of knock-offs hit the market, too, like "Fun Bandz," and "Crazy Bandz."

I would like to introduce "Stupid Bandz" as the next generation of the craze.  Mine will be just regular, brown rubber bands, the type we all have hundreds of sitting in drawers right next to us.  Except mine will be nicely packaged, and at a hugely inflated cost.  There will be ones shaped like pebbles.  Maybe clouds.  Dinner plates.  The moon.  Anything that's already a circle could potentially be a new Stupid Bandz product as far as I'm concerned.

Or just send me a bunch of money in a bag.  That would be fine, too.

Things a 42-Year-Old Shouldn't Be Doing - Part III

There's something very alluring about a Slip-N-Slide.  It could be the slipping.  Or perhaps it's the sliding.  I don't know.  Whatever the case, I was unable to control myself when the organizers of our church picnic unfurled one last weekend.

We had been playing volleyball in some pretty warm temperatures, and I saw a couple folks erecting the Slip-N-Slide at the top of a perfect hill.  Several other kids were already in line, and I knew I'd have to sprint up there to avoid standing in an even longer line.

I was very tempted to push my way to the front of the line because I'm a jerk, but then I remembered that this was a church picnic and God warns us against doing things like this ("Thou shalt not pushest thine way to the fronteth of the line for thou Slippest-and-Slideith").

So I waiteth my turn like everyone else, and debated how I should approach my ride.  Should I catch some air and jump down the hill, or should I just lie down and give myself a gentle push like an elderly person on a Slip-N-Slide should do in an attempt to avoid total organ failure?

Well, naturally I went with the "catch some air" approach, which really does launch a person pretty far, especially if that person has a few extra pounds in the gut region.  I decided that the Slip-N-Slide people should really consider making the plastic just a tad bit longer -- say 100 yards or so -- to accommodate people of my age and size.

I found that the standard Slip-N-Slide was woefully short, considering I continued slipping and sliding a long, long time after the plastic had run out.  This meant that I was whooshing through a grassy area, arms flailing, for quite a while before I came to rest practically out of sight of the picnic.

I should also note that my chest looked like some sort of weird Christmas display, glowing with red (from brush burns) and green (from grass stains).  But I am happy to say that I learned my lesson from that experience, and only repeated it three more times before calling it quits.

Things a 42-Year-Old Shouldn't Be Doing - Part II

Continuing my "what I did this summer" series of immature things, I must say that I had a blast at the Noah's Ark water park in Wisconsin last week!

Back in 1985, when cavemen still wandered the Earth, my uncle took my brother and me to this same park.  I have fond memories of that trip, and the great time we had splishing and splashing through the various rides.

Well, a lot has changed in the last 25 years.  The biggest ride at Noah's Ark back then was called "The Plunge." It was a pretty simple ride -- you lie on a mat and go down a fairly tall slide.  It's a bit of a wussy ride nowadays, by comparison.

This year they opened a new ride called the Scorpion's Tail (pictured above on the left; The Plunge is beside it on the right), and I must say it was the most awesomeist, butt kickingest ride ever.  I had seen it on the Travel Channel before we took our trip, and I knew that I had to do this baby.

You climb up a seemingly endless number of stairs (which is why my calf muscles are still aching), and you come to a transparent capsule thing.  You climb into the capsule (after being weighed by the staff, purely so they can mock you, I assume), and before you know it, a creepy woman's voice is giving you a 3-2-1 countdown.

Once the countdown is over, the bottom drops out of the capsule and WHOOOSH!  Away you go, falling 10 stories at 40 mph down the tube, and through a freakin' LOOP!  They should make a video of the faces of people as they get to the end of the countdown -- it's a riot to watch them!  Of course I faked a yawn each of the times Little Smoot and I rode it.

I will reluctantly admit that at the end of our first day, I was praising the good Lord for whoever invented the concept of the "lazy river" raft ride, which involved no line, and absolutely no physical exertion.

Coming Soon:  Part III -- The Slip-N-Slide

Things a 42-Year-Old Shouldn't Be Doing - Part I

I hope you have been enjoying your summer as much as I have.  I am happy to say that I have spent a disturbingly significant amount of time doing things that aren't appropriate for my age.  Actually, most things I've done this summer are more appropriate for the 9-13 year old demographic, if not younger.

Today's installment of "things a 42-year-old shouldn't be doing" is:  Capture the Flag.

If you're not familiar with this game, let me give a brief description (the term "brief description" will seem funnier a little later).  You divide into teams -- the more players the better, and you set up a field of play that can be pretty much any size.  Each team hides a flag on their side, and when the game starts, you try to find the opposing team's flags and bring them onto their own side of the field.  When you cross into your enemy's territory, they can tag you and haul your butt off to a jail area until someone from your team tags you to free you.

Ok, enough about the rules.  I should also mention that it's best to play this game in the full darkness of night, which I did a couple weeks ago with some of my closest friends from high school.  The full darkness thing was also beneficial for those of us who used the opportunity to participate in other "co-ed activities," back when we played this game in high school.

Our friend Todd has the world's most awesome field for Capture the Flag, the very same field we had a blast using back in our high school days when these things were much more appropriate.  As an aside, I feel that I should mention that Mrs. Smoot and another female friend in our age bracket opted out of our games this time around.  Booooo.  Hissssss.

Anyway, friends who did play came prepared for battle.  They brought their darkest clothes along, which helped them skulk through the field undetected.  I didn't have nearly as much foresight; I was wearing tan pants and a bright shirt which made me as invisible as a flashing neon sign.  I did, however, remember to bring my health insurance card along.

So as we began playing, I kept getting caught because everyone could detect my neon flashing shorts, and this got to be a bit frustrating.  About an hour into playing the game, it dawned on me that I was wearing really dark-colored underwear, so I made a strategic move.  I ditched my shorts, and put them in a spot that made it look like they could be the flag.  My shorts were now a very convincing decoy.

Sure, I was now running around in only my underwear in the middle of the night, but this actually worked fantastically well for a bit.  It's a terrible shame I don't have pictures of this, and I can only imagine your disappointment.

Anyway, the opposing team fell for my ploy perfectly, grabbing my shorts instead of the flag, as I sneaked into their territory.  If I had pulled that sort of prank the last time we played this game (20+ years ago) people would have thought I was insane.  Nowadays it's hardly breaking news that I'm running around on a field nearly naked.  It would have been more surprising if such a thing hadn't happened.

Coming Soon:  Part II -- Water Parks

Insert Automated Title Here

I think the automated checkout lady at our grocery store hates me.  Then again, I think she might hate everyone.

It seems like automated checkout lines are getting more popular.  I see them at most grocery stores, Wal-Marts, etc.  When they first set them up in our grocery store, the automated voice lady seemed pleasant enough, and it was a nice change of pace from using the human-operated lines.  Our local humans are often unpleasant or generally miserable people, so I don't mind scanning items myself.

But a few months ago they changed the voice behind the automated lane, and I think she sounds a bit cranky.  She has this pompous-sounding inflection in her voice, like she's so smart just because she's invisible and everything.

Not only that, it seems like she makes a point of loudly announcing every item as I'm buying it, which can be a bit annoying.  ("Please re-scan your box of EXTRA SMALL CONDOMS... Please put your box of EXTRA SMALL CONDOMS onto the conveyor belt... Please put your box of EXTRA SMALL CONDOMS into a bag...")

My GPS doesn't talk, thank goodness, but I have always found those voices to be a little unpleasant, too, for the most part.  I think it would be great to be the voice behind those units.  I'd make a point of getting really annoyed with people who miss turns and so forth ("Hey MORON!  You missed the turn.  Now I have to RECALCULATE the route.  Are you HAPPY NOW?")

I'd have a lot of fun as the GPS voice.  I'd also probably try to intentionally steer people into oncoming traffic or lakes, too.  And I'd program it to say things like, "You let that old guy pass you?  Perhaps you should stop and buy a box of EXTRA SMALL CONDOMS!"

Come Sail Away!

I had the opportunity to go sailing last weekend, but I still don't understand the whole thing.

I have cousins who have a sailboat up at Lake Chautauqua in New York, and I had the opportunity to join them for a ride last weekend.  My brother also went along, and he shares my vast knowledge of how to operate a sailboat (not a shred of knowledge, in any form whatsoever).

I love being out on the water, and we even owned a powerboat for well over a decade.  But sailing is a whole different experience.  For one thing, it clearly defies several laws of physics.  The wind pretty much just blows in one direction, yet sailors manage to trick it into allowing them to travel in whatever direction they want.

One would think that you could put up the sail and the wind would take you whichever way it was blowing, and then you'd have to call a buddy to come pick you up in a truck at whatever shore you drifted to.  That's pretty much how it goes with hot air balloons, right?

I have no idea how they accomplish it, but my cousins were able to do some wacky maneuvers to get the boat to go where they wanted.  Sometimes this involved having my brother and me yank on various ropes.  And my cousins knew all of the technical terms for all of these things; they were always mizzening their ballasts through their daggerboards on the port side, or some such thing.

I'm not sure if we were even accomplishing anything by pulling the ropes, or whether our cousins just wanted to make us feel like we were contributing.  Maybe they were having us pull the ropes so we'd stop being inquisitive about stuff ("Hey!  What does THIS thing do?!").  Whatever the case, here it is, four days later, and my right arm still hurts from pulling on one of the ropes.

While out on a boat I generally like to relax and take in the scenery, but you don't get to do a whole lot of that while sailing.  Mostly I spent my time worrying about whether this gigantic mast was going to swing over and knock me out of the boat, which turned out to be a pretty valid concern.

At one point, one of the Andys (everyone on the boat except for me and my brother was named Andy) decided to turn around, which meant swinging the giant mast thing around.  And when they swing that thing around, you have to duck under it and move to the other side of the boat.

Or you can do like I did.  You can sit there and contemplate a route to the other side, and at the very last nanosecond duck under the mast and get stuck in a very awkward yet hilarious position while all of the Andys and my brother howl with laughter.

We did somehow make it back to the dock in one piece, and I honestly did enjoy and appreciate the experience.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go take a dinghy.

Socks of Doom

I had a harrowing experience with a pair of socks the other day.  It was so bad that I felt it was worthy of a blog entry.  That, and I haven't had anything better to blog about for a couple weeks, apparently.

So I went on a weekend excursion which involved a lot of Geocaching.  If you're not familiar with Geocaching, it's basically a sport in which we use billions of dollars of government-owned equipment to help us find tupperware containers in the woods, some of which contain valuable toys from McDonald's.  It can also involve a great deal of hiking.

I spent most of the day on Friday finding caches up around St. Marys, PA, and I wasn't going to let the fact that it was pouring down rain stop me from finding my tupperware. At the end of the day, I was rather extremely moist, and in retrospect I should have simply abandoned my clothing -- especially my drenched socks -- in the woods, or set fire to all of it, or something.  As a side note, as I was hiking through the woods, on two separate occasions I found pairs of underwear in the middle of nowhere.  I'm not sure what goes on in those woods.

Anyway, instead of burning those clothes, I stuck them in a secret compartment in the back of my Prius.  There's a little "cubbyhole" kind of thing in the hatch, convenient for keeping bug spray, windshield cleaner, illegal aliens, WD-40, etc.  This is where I tossed the Socks of Doom for the weekend.

I came home on Monday night after spending a couple days in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, and it was pretty warm for most of that time.  When it came time to extract the socks from the car, I was concerned that they might stink a little since I could already smell them a bit while I was driving.  But nothing prepared me for the amazing stench I was about to endure.

Remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Nazi dudes were standing there around the ark, and with great anticipation they opened it up and these demons came bursting out, all honked off?  And the faces of the Nazis melted right off as the demons roared into the sky?  I think my socks were actually a little worse than the demons.  I managed to hold my breath as I held them away from my body as I literally ran them to the basement to toss them into the washing machine.  And now they're clean again.

Beyond that, there really isn't a real point or moral to the story.  But then again, I rarely have a point, do I?

Extreme Mediocrity

I don't mean to brag here, but once upon a time I was extremely mediocre at playing tennis.  Nowadays it kinda stinks because I can rarely find anyone to play with.  So I am making it my mission to train Little Smoot to be my new competition.

At the pace we're going, she'll be getting really good right around the same time that I will be dead, but that's not going to deter me.  Actually, she has made some decent progress in these past few days, so I am rather encouraged.  She does have the world's worst teacher, after all.

I tried to teach Mrs. Smoot how to play tennis a number of years ago, and it ended up being one of those famous instances where we almost drove straight to the divorce lawyer afterward.  I am not a patient teacher when it comes to anything, let alone tennis.  I just expect that people should be able to pick up a racket and automatically know how to hit a ball over a net.  But that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Mrs. Smoot will also be more than happy to tell you about the time I attempted to teach her how to drive a manual transmission car, but that's an entirely different near-divorce attorney story.  And the heck of that story is that we were already in the car, and I'm sure she would have driven us straight to the attorney's office if she had any idea how to get the car out of first gear.

Anyway, I finally got a chance to play tennis this morning against my brother.  The two of us used to spend our entire summers on the court (the tennis court, not divorce court).  We'd ride our bikes all the way into town, play tennis for a few hours, and then go grab a bite to eat at a place that served food so greasy that it would easily counteract all of the exercise we had gotten.

I am happy to say that I was still able to play in a seriously mediocre fashion, judging from our matches this morning.  Unfortunately, my brother was able to play a level or two above mediocre, and he handed my butt to me on a platter.  Things went quickly downhill after I dove for a ball and did a very impressive face plant right into the net.

During this beautiful play I did manage to get the ball over the net, and with my nose still pressed on the ground I was still able to ask my brother whether I had scored.  Of course it turns out he was able to return the ball into my side of the court, in bounds, even while laughing himself silly.

At least I can still beat Little Smoot.  For now.

It's in One of the Conditions

I have been known to do some odd things in my sleep.  When I was little I fell asleep on the toilet one time, which is really kinda convenient if you think about it.

I have also awakened myself with the loudness of my own snoring.  Come to think of it, there was one time when my brother threw a pillow at me while we were staying at a hotel, and then he yelled at me for snoring.  As serious as could be, I answered him by saying, "How could I be snoring if I'm sitting here talking to you?"  It made sense at the time.

But I would like to point out that I'm not the only one who has weird nocturnal issues.  One time, shortly after we got married, I was trying to find a pair of scissors in our apartment late at night, and I went in to wake Mrs. Smoot to ask her where where I could find them.  She appeared to be perfectly awake when I asked her about the scissors, but she responded by saying, "They're in there."

"Uh, where?" I responded.  "They're in there!" she replied again.  "WHERE?!" I asked impatiently, apparently because I really needed to cut something.  "They're in one of the conditions."  Finally, I knew where to find the scissors.  They were in one of the conditions.  I gave up on cutting anything that night.

But my favorite sleepy Mrs. Smoot story was the night when she sat bolt upright all of a sudden in the middle of the night.  She calmly looked around for a moment and then said, "H-o-l-y $%#&!"  And then her head fell back to the pillow and she was sound asleep again.  Of course I was up for quite a while wondering exactly what had just happened.

Mrs. Smoot will be glad to tell you that I am much more annoying and bizarre late at night, and I've done much weirder things while being asleep.  To her I offer these words:  Get your own blog!  It's in one of the conditions.

The Mucus Permeates the Cavern

We were at church last Sunday morning, and a few minutes before the service started, one of our church leaders approached me in the narthex and quietly said, "If you see Grant, please tell him 'the monkey is up front.'"

Naturally when I heard this, I was pretty excited.  Judging from the tone of his voice, facial expressions, etc., I could tell that this was a very top secret communique, and that I should treat this message very seriously.  I excitedly and immediately began to search for Grant, who is a member of our youth group.

Sure enough, I found Grant in the back of the church, and I pulled him aside so I could deliver the message.  As quietly and carefully as I had received the message, I passed it along to Grant in the same way:  "The monkey is up front," I told him.  Grant nodded, and began to walk way.

I didn't want to pester him, or risk breaching national security or anything, but of course I really wanted to know the meaning of all of this.  So I just came right out and asked him whether this was some sort of secret code phrase, like the type of thing they may have used back in the old days to warn troops that an enemy force was approaching, or how they might communicate the timing of an attack or something.

Stone faced, Grant looked and me and said, "No, it's literal."  Turns out there was indeed a literal monkey (in the form of a puppet), and it was in the front of the church.  Grant was in charge of shoving his arm up the monkey's personal region and providing it with a voice during the service as a means of promoting our Vacation Bible School week to the kids.

Nonetheless, my enthusiasm for the whole spy communication thing was piqued, and I knew Little Smoot would join me in turning it into something really annoying for anyone around us.  So for the rest of the day, including a long drive to take her to summer camp, we were saying stupid things to each other like, "The crow flies at dawn."  And, "The cashew rests upon the mantle."  And, "The sloth has crawled upon the carpet."  Oh, and let's not forget Little Smoot's favorite one: "The stain is in the underwear."  Of course we both giggle ourselves silly each time we come up with one of these things.

While she was at camp, we were able to send her e-mail messages that would be printed out and delivered to her at the dining hall.  In one of my messages, I concluded by telling her, "The platypus barks in the shadows."  And that was the first thing she said to me when I picked her up from camp yesterday.  I like to think that the camp staff reads these things before giving them to the kids, and they were really wondering what was going on.  Little do they know that I was being literal about the platypus.

Weechers and Bocks

When Little Smoot was a little girl, around age 3, she came up with this song that she would sing when it was raining.  I have no idea where she got the idea for these lyrics, but her song went like this:

"The rain came down... the Weechers had a Bock!"

The tune was pretty catchy -- and short and to the point -- and we really did enjoy listening to her sing it from time to time, but it left us with just a few burning questions.  For one, who are the Weechers?  And what the hell is a Bock?  And why do the Weechers only have Bocks when it's raining?  Can the sun destroy a Bock?  Do the Weechers enjoy the Bocks, or are they bad things?

It goes without saying that I have spent many sleepless nights worrying about the state of affairs with the Weechers, and whether or not they had enough Bocks.  Could there be a Bock shortage?  I have no idea.

She wouldn't tell us much of anything when we quizzed her about these things.  We'd ask her all the time what these things were, and she'd just giggle and refuse to tell us what it meant.  It's like it was some sort of deep secret, and the magnitude of revealing these things could destroy the common fabric of toddlers everywhere.  It was clearly serious stuff.

So I asked her about this again recently.  I figure now that she's 11, surely we have earned her trust to the point where she could tell us the meaning of this song so we can finally get a solid night of sleep around here.  When I asked her about it, she remembered the song just fine, and sang it just like she did seven or eight years ago.

But she claims she has no recollection whatsoever of what a Weecher or a Bock might be.  And I doubt that she would even know who to ask about such a thing.

So I am reaching out to my vast reading audience (both of you) to see if you could please do a little research amongst your three-year-old friends to see if they could shed some light on this subject.  If they won't talk, I am going to have to condone torture in this particular instance.

Summer "Camp"

So we dropped Little Smoot off at summer "camp" this weekend.  I have to keep putting "camp" in quotes, because her version of "camp" this summer is a drastically different-looking experience than what she has done in past years.  And it's a whole HECK of a lot different than when I was a camper, back in the Paleolithic era.

We dropped Little Smoot off on Sunday, expecting that she would be staying in the same sort of cabins where she spent her time the last few years at the same place.  But this time she was assigned to a building that hardly seems like a "camping" experience to me.  In the future, if we visit a fancy Hilton Hotel, she is going to feel let down, compared to her "camping" arrangement this week.

She has a room that she'll share with one other camper and two counselors.  It's modern, nicely furnished and carpeted, has its own private bathroom and shower, and it even has air conditioning for heaven's sake.  Air conditioning!

Let me tell you about the accommodations I had at camp when I was little.  Note that I didn't use quotes around the word camp this time.  We had these musty, cinderblock cabins which were mostly held together by dust and spider webs.  In fact, we often took showers with spiders that were the size of soccer balls.

Our rooms were lit by a few light bulbs that hung down from the rafters, and most of the time only a couple of them actually illuminated when they were turned on.  (Being young adolescent boys, we were always illuminated and turned on, but that's another story entirely.)  And if you were creative, you could actually trap a fellow camper in his sleeping bag and tie him up to the rafters, not that any of us ever did such a thing, of course.

Camp food was another issue entirely.  It was always consistently horrible, and we used to drink "bug juice" with it, which I do believe was made from actual bugs.  Not Little Smoot's camp, though!  I have had the opportunity to be a counselor at her camp for a couple summers, and the food at this camp is not only edible, it's actually GOOD!  They have a fancy little salad bar and everything.

Last summer when I was a counselor there, we stayed in a typical cabin.  It was much fancier than what I had grown accustomed to while growing up, but it was still something I would call camping, without the quotes.  We immediately discovered that something had apparently died in our bathroom, either somewhere in the ceiling, or in the floorboards, and it smelled putrid for the entire week.  But that is camping!

Frankly, when I go back as a counselor next month I am hoping that we'll get the typical old-style cabins that I'm used to... if only because I really think of that as being a big part of the whole summer camp experience.  I have a feeling that when Little Smoot gets home this weekend, we're going to have to put little mints on her pillow for a week or so, just to ease her back into life at home.  Yeesh.

Maker of Labels

I like labeling things.  Always have.

I can remember having one of those old label makers when I was a kid.  Remember the ones where you had to twirl that round thing around to each individual letter, and then squeeze the trigger with all of your might to emboss the letter into the tape?  And then when you screw up a single letter you have to start all over again?  I can attribute my amazing wrist strength to all of the exercise I used to get with that thing.

Nowadays things are much more convenient when it comes to making labels.  I have had a "Brother P-touch" label maker for several years, and it's just awesome.  It has a regular keyboard, so I can just type what I want, and *poof*, out comes a very professional-looking label.

Since it's so easy now, I label everything.  If you look closely in our house, you'll find that there are labels all over the place.  Any time we buy a new appliance or electronic gadget (which I tend to do almost weekly) I always label the date on it, along with where we bought it.  This way, I can see how long our stuff lasts without having to guess when we bought it.

I have even labeled some of our new, allegedly energy efficient lights to see how long they last.  They claim that they're supposed to be good for many years, but my labels will reveal the truth!  Take that, light manufacturers!

I also labeled the cat the other day.  He didn't seem too enthusiastic about it, but for an hour or so he ran around the house with a label on his tail that said, "CAT."  That way, I knew exactly what type of pet I was looking at, as he ran around in circles in an attempt to remove the label.

I thought I'd share all of this with you in case you ever wanted a reliable way to see how long your various appliances last, or if you want to keep track of what types of pets you have.

A Cat-spiracy

What is it with cats?  I like cats, I really do.  I'm not one of these manly people who won't admit to liking cats because they're more "feminine" sorts of animals.  I like them just fine.  But they really seem to have it in for me.

When I was little we had a cat named Pumpkin.  I don't know what I ever did to honk this cat off, but it was always retaliating against me for some reason.  We had a bean bag chair at my parents' house, and I always enjoyed using it as I watched TV.  And this was one of those vinyl types of beanbag chairs, one that would not simply absorb liquids, if you catch my drift.

It seemed like once a week or so, the damn cat would drink as much water as a feline can handle from its bowl, and she'd take a giant whiz on that beanbag chair.  I know this wasn't a coincidence.  I am absolutely positive that Pumpkin knew precisely when I was heading home from school, and that Three's Company was going to be on soon, and that's where I was going to plop myself.

I can remember one time I watched an entire show before I realized that I had cat whiz covering my body from my armpit down to my knee.  Damn cat.

Nowadays we have a cat, too.  Murray, or "Furry Murray" as we like to call him, is really a great cat.  He is Little Smoot's best buddy.  Little Smoot will go upstairs to go to bed, and if Murray is downstairs, he'll look at the stairs for a second, then he'll leap into action to follow her up to bed.  In the mornings he'll sit there in the bathroom while she gets ready for school.

And he's out to get me.

The other day he decided to barf all over the floor -- a floor he knows I walk on -- just before I was getting Little Smoot off to school.  I am certain that he calculated this, knowing that I had to get the kid off to school, and I didn't have time at that moment to clean this mess up.  And he knew that by the time I got home from dropping her off, I would have forgotten all about it.

And I know that he knew that I was going to be walking around in my bare feet for a bit, and that he had positioned his work in just the right spot so that I'd step directly in it.  And he was right.  I don't know what it sounds like when cats laugh, but I am positive that I heard him chuckling at the same instant I stepped in that treat.  Thanks, Bud.

And the Father of the Year Award Goes to...

I like to think of myself as being a pretty good dad.  Really I do.  But it seems like there are a lot of times when I'm trying extra hard to be a good dad, and that's when I wind up doing the most damage.

Of course we can go back to the summer of 2005 when I took Little Smoot on a super-fun camping trip and she wound up getting run over by a pickup truck, breaking three bones in her foot.  Let's just not go there... but suffice it to say, there's a fine example of trying to be a good dad but ultimately winding up at a hospital.

The other night Little Smoot had softball practice, and she asked me if I'd stay late and do a little more practicing with her.  So my "let's be a great dad" instinct kicked in, and we stuck around and tossed the ball around a bit.  She practiced some batting, and I got it in my head that I should do some batting, too.  You never know when the team might have too few players, and they'll call upon my services to pose as an 11-year-old girl on the team.

Little Smoot headed into the outfield, and I amused myself with my manly ability to smack the ball consistently to the outfield fence with just about every hit.  And Little Smoot would field the ball and throw it back in to me.

Well, you can probably guess where this story is going.  It was just starting to get a little dark, and I was heaving the ball into the outfield in a manly fashion, and one of the balls hit a little rut in the field and took an odd bounce... directly into the path of Little Smoot's nose.

I sprinted into the field as soon as I saw it bonk her in the face, and she looked like a human version of Old Faithful, only instead of spouting water and steam into the air, she was a blood geyser.  I bounced into First Aid mode, trying to figure out how to simultaneously get her to stop bleeding, and figure out how to keep her from ruining the shirt she was wearing since we bought it in Maui and it was one of her new favorites.

It was interesting to try to get her to walk from the outfield all the way to my car with her head tilted backwards and with blood literally dripping from her arms.  Nice job, Dad!

Father's Day is just a couple weeks away.  I'm just hoping that I won't get a lump of coal on this special occasion.

Let the Anxiety Begin

I have a dentist appointment on Thursday.  The folks at my dentist office are actually very nice people, but I still cringe every time I think of them.

Of course I'll attempt to trick them into thinking that I'm an avid flossing fanatic; I'll floss a few times a day between now and then in order to make them think that I've been doing this religiously the last six months.  But they'll see right through that, and she'll whack away at my teeth with that pointy little spear thing of hers.

Mrs. Smoot often wonders what would happen to me if I ever faced an actual, serious medical situation.  I'd probably explode in flames out of pure fear, that's what would happen.  When we watch TV shows that feature blood and stuff, I always ask Mrs. Smoot to add things to the list of stuff I don't want to have done to me.

For example, we love to watch House, but I really get antsy about the stuff that happens under the care of their doctors.  Like the season finale where House had to amputate a woman's leg while she was pinned in a building.  I have had bad dreams about that one for a month or so now.

There was an article in the newspaper a few weeks ago about this great new surgery that allowed doctors to remove brain tumors by going in behind the eye socket.  They were ecstatic about how non-invasive the surgery was, because they could go back there, suck the tumor out, and never have to go through the scalp to get to it.  Cosmetically, it's supposed to be just wonderful, and the healing time is supposed to improve dramatically.

Sounds great, until you realize that they have to pop your eyeball out of your freakin' head, and drill a hole back there, and then say a little prayer that you'll actually be able to regain your vision when they stick your eye back in place.  No thank you.

I know a guy who had to have some sort of horrible, horrible surgery where they had to pop his eyeball out WHILE HE WAS AWAKE.  Just imagine that your vision is being controlled by someone who is pointing your eyeball in different directions for you, and you can't do a thing about it.  And maybe while they're working, they leave your eyeball dangling there and you have no choice but to stare at your own nostril while they do whatever it is they're doing.

And now I have to be even more worried, now that I know that I am apparently the only person who operates my knife and fork with the wrong hands.  Clearly I am lucky to have gone this long without major spleen damage.

All Forked Up

Please help me settle a dispute with Mrs. Smoot.  Hey, that rhymes!

Anyway...

We seem to have a serious difference in opinions about how to use a fork and knife, and as a result, we're probably screwing up Little Smoot's meat carving abilities for life.

First, I should point out that I write left handed, but I do everything else right handed, which instantly makes me a freak of nature to begin with.  I don't dispute that.  I know I'm screwy that way.  Nonetheless, I think Mrs. Smoot's method of cutting and eating food is wrong, counterproductive, and potentially fatal.

Under normal circumstances, I always use my right hand to work my fork.  My method of cutting meat and eating it is pretty simple.  I use my right hand to operate my fork, and my left hand to operate a knife.  So if I cut a piece of steak, I use my left hand to slice it, and my right hand is still in charge of elevating the food from the plate up to my mouth.

Mrs. Smoot does something entirely different.  Like me, she normally uses her right hand to manipulate her fork.  But when it comes time to cut meat, she actually switches her fork to her left hand so she can use her right hand to control her knife.  This seems crazy to me.  It seems to me that even a professionally trained juggler would risk stabbing him or herself in the heart while maneuvering utensils all over the place like that.

Yet this is what Mrs. Smoot is trying to teach Little Smoot to do.

When we die, most of us hope that our obituaries will say that we finished our lives doing something heroic, like saving a young child from drowning in a river, or tossing someone out of the way of a runaway train or whatever.  You don't want it to say "Mrs. Smoot, 40, of Smootville, died in an unnecessary accident involving her spleen and a very sharp knife."

So here's what I am asking you to do.  Go have something for lunch today that involves a knife.  A slice of ham, for example.  Midway through your meal, look down at your hands and see what utensils they're holding, and report back to me.  If you find your knife in your right hand, report back to me quickly before you stab yourself in your heart and/or spleen.

The Fashion Family

It's not just me.

Most people who know me will fondly remember the Easter Sunday when I went to church, greeted numerous people, and then realized that I was inexplicably wearing two ties.  As odd as that was, I am happy to say that I am not the only member of the Smoot clan to have issues with fashion anomalies.

Last night was Little Smoot's band concert, which featured students from three elementary schools, the high school jazz ensemble, and an auditorium that had no air conditioning.

Moments before we were about to head out the door, Mrs. Smoot looked down and realized that she was wearing two different shoes.  This wasn't a case where she had two extremely similar shoes that were technically different, like having a black shoe and a really dark blue shoe.  She has done that before, and even after hearing her say "these shoes don't match," I couldn't tell the difference.

No, these shoes were quite extremely different, almost like wearing a boot on one foot, and a flip-flop on the other.  So she fixed that problem before we left.

And then Little Smoot came down the stairs, all dressed up for her big night of trumpet playing.  But Mrs. Smoot happened to notice that Little Smoot was unknowingly wearing her dress backwards.  Yes, backwards.

Of course neither Mrs. Smoot nor Little Smoot managed to actually go into public with their own wardrobe malfunctions in place, but perhaps that will happen soon.  I just thought it was rather ironic that I was the only person in the house who managed to dress correctly for once.  At least as far as I am aware...

Thank You for Thanking Me!

I think I may have started something that could spiral into a never-ending chain reaction.  I'm a little concerned.

See, when we went to Hawaii, one of the highlights of our trip was an awesome luau on Maui.  We had reserved the luau several months in advance, and we were seated right up front and center as a result of booking so early.  We had the pleasure of sitting with a very nice couple from Wisconsin for the dinner and show.

While we were there, I had taken a photo of this couple, and they asked if I would mind sending them a copy, and I told them I would.  I'm sure they never in a million years expected me to actually send them a print, but I was born with this stupid conscience that would have kept me up at night had I decided to simply blow this off.

So a week or so after we got back from our trip, I mailed them a 5x7 print and a nice note letting them know how much we enjoyed visiting with them that night.

Here it is, a couple weeks later, and I got this mysterious package in today's mail.  Inside was a nice note from them, along with a block of Wisconsin cheese and some locally-made sausage!  Very cool.  I enjoy snacks like that, especially when they come directly from an area that's famous for particular kinds of food like that.  I'd probably be in my glory if someone sent me a fresh potato directly from Idaho, or a fresh bowl of chowder from Boston... or a fry from France.

Now I feel compelled to drop them another note to thank them for their kind gesture.  But what if that prompts them to send me another note, thanking me for thanking them?  Obviously I'd have to send them yet another note, thanking them for thanking me for thanking them, and so it would go on and on.  I just don't envision any possible scenario that involves a peaceful ending.

When I posted this dilemma on Facebook, one of my friends suggested that this is just the kind of gesture that can progress to the point where we exchange cards on holidays forever, and eventually we'll vacation together and ultimately we'll all move into the same retirement village.  I would not be at all surprised.

Artificial Sweetener

I'm not particularly good at sugarcoating things.  I have always had a tendency to say pretty much whatever is on my mind, and more often than not the content of my mind doesn't go through a sugarcoating filter in my brain first.  Nope, things go straight from raw thoughts to verbal communication with me, and that's probably not a good thing.

Since my sugarcoating filter seems to be largely missing, I make an honest effort nowadays to keep my mouth shut in certain situations, even if I think of something that I believe would be rather hilarious, but hurtful to someone else.  Of course there are also plenty of times when I've let loose with the hilarious comment, only to regret it later.

Anyway, I got to thinking about this whole sugarcoating thing this weekend while visiting an acquaintance I hadn't seen for nearly two decades.  He is actually an old friend of Mrs. Smoot's, and we learned (thanks to Facebook, naturally) that we were going to be in the same area this past weekend, so we got together for a delicious, gourmet lunch at Wal-Mart.

As soon as Mrs. Smoot's friend saw me, before even saying hello, his eyes got wide and he said, "GRAY HAIR!"  And then he laughed in my general direction.  Ok, so he's not always good at sugarcoating either.  But as we were about to leave, he said, "Good to see that you're looking... healthy."  I had to think about that one for a bit.

Was he being serious in stating that I looked "healthy" in some way?  I mean, I wasn't using a Hoveround, nor am I visibly missing any major appendages or anything.  I didn't have boogers dripping from my nose, and I wasn't hacking on my food... so I guess by all accounts, I appeared to be "healthy."

But I have a feeling, especially given that his first comment was about the gray hair thing, that the "healthy" comment was really an attempt at sugarcoating.  I kinda think he meant "healthy" in the sense of "You look like you have been eating well.  Really well.  Like way too much, lard butt!"

For the record, though, I do feel healthy.  Now where are those leftover chips from Memorial Day?

New Addition to the Family

Yes, the Smoots have added a new family member.  Its name is "Droid."  No, it's not a new child, or a dog... it's my new phone.  And it's not just any phone.  No, it's the coolest new toy I have had in a long, long time, and I am including my extendable fork in that statement.

This phone does everything.  It has a built-in GPS with voice navigation.  It has a decent web browser.  If I'm on a trip I can hook it up to my laptop and use it to connect to the Internet.  It has a surprisingly decent camera.  There are a bajillion "apps" that I can download, like one that will identify a song you're hearing, and where you can buy it.

If it's raining outside, a little animated windshield wiper will flash across the screen.  I can play Tetris on it.  You can point it at the night sky, and it will identify what stars/planets you're seeing.  I can talk to it, and it will translate my sentences into a myriad of other languages.

With the new "Fartalyzer" app, I can record the sound of myself farting, and not only will it tell me what musical key the fart was in, but it will also let me know, based on the characteristics of the recording, whether I should immediately change underwear.  It's that good.

So anyway, if I continue to have giant gaps in between blog entries, you can be sure that the phone is to blame.  I'm probably spending all day playing with it instead of blogging.  Of course if I find an app that allows me to post blog entries by merely thinking of stuff, there will be a LOT more new posts here.

Honked Off

It's not a good idea to go up against me when it comes to acting immature.  You'll lose.

Little Smoot's softball season is in full swing, and her team played a rather obnoxious opponent a couple weeks ago.  The team members themselves weren't terribly obnoxious, but the parents certainly were.

We played at their park, and many of the parents parked their cars on a hillside overlooking the field.  And other parents had various forms of mobile horns with them.  Any time any of their girls did anything, and I mean anything, positive -- like not falling over -- the parents would start honking like a flock of defective geese.  Unfortunately, the best we could do in retribution was to yell "HONK!" when our girls did something right.

So last night this team played on our turf, and we were prepared.  One of our parents went out and bought a whole bunch of those annoying, plastic hand clapping things that light up, so each of us had one of those.  I'm not sure it mattered, but they were pink.

I figured I would take things to a new, higher level of obnoxiousness, so I brought Little Smoot's trumpet along.  It turned out to be an awesome tool against the folks from Monaca.

I suggested to our gang that we let the other parents make the first move.  For one thing, we didn't want to look like we were the ones starting this little war.  And for another thing, we were a little concerned about whether their town may have had two teams of girls, and we would end up just looking like rude morons honking at the wrong team.

Thankfully, it was the right team, and a couple of their horn honkers were there for the festivities.  During the first half inning we let them do their honking, which, while annoying, was absolutely nothing in comparison to the noise I was able to generate with the trumpet.  I also made note of the fact that the main honker for the other team was an 80+ year-old guy, and if I annoyed him with the trumpet, I didn't have to worry too much about him beating the crap out of me after the game.

I haven't really touched the trumpet since high school, except for a one-time gig at church.  (Oddly enough, they never asked me to play again.)  So I wasn't necessarily playing things well.  But I was playing things loudly.  Quite loudly.  I suspect that I interrupted the play of games at adjoining fields.  If only I could have captured the expression on that guy's face the first time I whipped out the trumpet.  It was a Kodak moment, to say the least.

Our league has a rule that says that if a game is more than an hour and 40 minutes long, a new inning cannot begin and the game is over.  A coach from the other team, knowing that we were closing in on that mark and that our team was gaining some momentum, went up to her pitcher and began a lengthy conversation to kill some time so we wouldn't have an opportunity to catch up.  After watching this charade for a bit, I played the theme from Jeopardy!, which got a rousing reaction from our girls and parents.

Her ploy did work, however, and the game ended a few moments later.  There were two winners in that game:  the other team won the game, and I easily won the contest as Most Obnoxious Parent.  Woo hoo!  The other team's primary honker actually came over and delivered a concession speech.  Thankfully he thought it was hilarious that I brought the trumpet, and we all had a good laugh.

Tonight I'm going to try to figure out how to get an operational fog horn into the game.

Lost

I think I am nearly recovered from Sunday night's 18-hour Lost finale on ABC.  And I'm pretty sure that the name of the series relates more to the people who are trying to follow the show than it describes the actors who are stranded on the island.

For those of you who haven't been watching Lost, here's a basic recap of all six seasons.  A bunch of people crash in a jet that was en route from Australia to Los Angeles.  They crash landeded on a mysterious beach (which we actually visited on our Hawaii trip, pictured on the right!) which features a smoke monster and a lot of magnetism or something.

Jack is one of the plane survivors, and he is a doctor.  But it turns out he is now dead.  The end.

A whole bunch of other weird stuff happened in between, but we have a long way to go before we figure it all out.  Mrs. Smoot and I didn't watch the show from the beginning.  We started buying the season DVDs a few months back, and we're only up to Season 3.  So watching the finale was even more confusing to us than it was for the people who had seen the whole thing.

This has become a ritual for us at night.  For the last few years we have picked a TV series, bought all of the DVDs, and watched them all on a nightly basis.  Prior to Lost, we watched every episode of every season of House, and then Fringe.  And at the risk of losing a bunch of "Cool Points" I will not even mention the series we watched from start to finish before that (Dawson's Creek...).

I'm not sure what we'll do when we run out of episodes of Lost, frankly.  Is Three's Company out on DVD...?

Shifting the Time Space Continuum

I have always considered myself to be a pretty adaptable person.  In particular, I have never had much trouble with time changes.  In fact, I often find it amusing when the TV news people give suggestions about how to cope with the big 1-hour time shift in the Spring and Fall.  Are people that regimented that they can't deal with Daylight Savings Time?  I dunno.

But here I am, almost a week after getting back from Hawaii, and I don't seem to be adjusted to the time change yet.  Hawaii is six hours behind us, which is a pretty big difference.  There were times on the trip when I was tempted to call someone back home as a prank at 9:00 p.m., which would have been 3:00 a.m. for them.  But I figured whoever I'd call would surely get revenge by calling me at 9:00 a.m. their time.  Or maybe it's the other way around.  Whatever.

Our last week of the cruise involved crossing the Pacific Ocean on our way to Vancouver (where Olympics-related memorabilia is half off, by the way!).  Every other day we would set our clocks back an hour as we crossed a few time zones, so by the time we got to Canada, we were only three hours different than our home time zone.

And I remain three hours off as we speak.  It seems that every night at midnight I'm still wide awake because my brain thinks it's only 9:00.  And mornings really stink.  I've been waking up to get Little Smoot off to school, and I'll sit down to have breakfast only to wake up several hours later wondering why I have oatmeal all through my hair.

There have been a couple days where I have simply gone right back to bed after getting Little Smoot to school, and I'll wake up at noon or some such thing.  Today I'm forcing myself to stay awake in hopes that I'll be able to fall asleep at a normal hour tonight.

Of course this might cause problems later tonight because I am the emcee for a banquet at our church.  Hopefully they weren't expecting me to stay awake and alert for the whole thing.

Honest, I'm Not Ben's Keeper

One of the things that I really enjoy on cruises is the opportunity to meet people from all over the world.  Any time you run into other people, whether it's in the hot tub or at dinner, the first mandatory question is, "So, uh, where are you from?"

People on cruises ask this question first for a couple reasons.  The main reason is that it's an obvious ice-breaker.  It would probably be weird to come right out and ask them what the deal is with a giant mole coming out of their neck, or something, right out of the gate.  Emily Post suggests that one should wait at least a few minutes before making that inquiry.

It is genuinely interesting to find out where people are from.  I often make my own mental game of trying to guess a person's home state/country before asking.  I can usually come pretty close based on a person's accent and personal hygiene practices, or lack thereof ("Hi!  Judging from the smell, I'm betting you're from Indonesia!").

I found it interesting on this trip that every time I introduced myself as being from Pittsburgh, every single person had the same reaction.  They'd pause for just a moment, let out a small sigh, and then say, "So.  What are you going to do about Ben Roethlisberger?"

Since when am I personally in charge of Ben Roethlisberger, and why do I have to do something about him?  I'm quite sure that I have very little to do with his fate.  Maybe this picture of me and Ben was circulated around the web much more than I would have ever anticipated, and people assume that because we occasionally dress up in nice clothes together, I obviously have a say in his punishment for being an idiot.

Maybe people make the easy mistake of identifying me as Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner?  We do look quite a bit alike.

Anyway, let it be known that I really don't have a hotline number that I can use to call the Rooney family and demand specific punishments for our quarterback.  Maybe that could be my next life goal, however, now that I have completed the peeing-in-all-50-states thing.

As a side note, the photo at the top of this page was taken on the Big Island of Hawaii at a business.  This place had over a dozen Steelers banners hanging all over the place, making it known that the Steelers Nation definitely extended well into the Pacific!  It was amazing how few Cleveland Browns banners we saw along the way...

Where Does One Go From Here?

I have finally accomplished my life goal, which brings me to the obvious question:  What now?

It is disturbing to think that I have achieved the one thing that I have always wanted to do -- peeing in every state -- and here I am at age 42 with no specific goal or direction ahead of me.

I have written about my urination goal before, and of course I was able to get it crossed off the list while we were visiting Hawaii.  The actual location of this milestone is depicted in the picture on the right, with my apologies to those who think that peeing outdoors is disgusting.  I can't help but ask those people where they think their pee eventually ends up, or if they really believe that it's always going to be carefully stored right there below the toilet.

Anyway, I wish I could have somehow managed to go a few extra days without peeing on our trip, because it would have been the most awesomeist thing ever if I could have polished off my 50th state by peeing in the "World's Most Scenic Urinal."  Seriously.

Feel free to Google it if you don't believe me, but the World's Most Scenic Urinal is located on the Big Island of Hawaii, in the community of Kealakekua, and it lives up to its reputation!  It's located in the Kona Hotel, which is a pretty run-down place.  I'm guessing that they established this urinal as a way of encouraging people to stop peeing randomly in the lobby or parking lot, because those places are certainly gross enough that you wouldn't necessarily feel bad about peeing there.

For me, this pit stop was like visiting Mecca.  I approached it slowly, as though it was a religious shrine, and I savored every moment of the view as I took care of business.  I was able to see the Kona coastline and community, and even a great view of our ship in the distance.

In addition to the men's urinal, there was a toilet for women with an equally scenic view out the window.  But unless you had an unusually flexible neck, you wouldn't be able to enjoy the view while takin' care of business since it was aimed toward the door.

So anyhow, I'm wondering what I should possibly do next as a new life goal.  Several people have suggested that I take care of peeing in all US territories, which I suppose is something worth trying for.  There was some talk about the possibility of Puerto Rico becoming a US state, which would make it a mandatory pee visit for me, but I don't know if that's going to happen.

I guess I'm open to suggestions, which I would kinda prefer didn't relate to peeing in various places.  Feel free to sound off with your ideas.  Mrs. Smoot would certainly agree that I need some new direction in life!

Cruising Epidemic

We're baaaaack!  We had a super, fantastic time on our Hawaii cruise these past couple weeks, and we arrived back in Smootville a little after midnight last night.

There are all sorts of things I hope to blog about regarding our trip since we saw many spectacular things along the way.  I am compelled, however, to start by discussing a terribly disturbing trend we noticed on the cruise.

First off, I must point out that we were easily the youngest people on the ship, by a long shot.  The next closest person to us in age was, I'm guessing, somewhere in their 90s.  So there were definitely some generational differences between us and the Hoveround crowd.

But imagine this scenario:  You get up in the morning, and you and your spouse get dressed in separate rooms of the house.  You meet at the door as you're about to leave to go somewhere together, and you realize -- EEEEP! -- we are wearing identical matching outfits!

Clearly, normal human beings would look at each other for a split second, share a hearty laugh, and then SPRINT back to their rooms to change into something that didn't match, right?  But this is not what happened on our ship.

No, it seemed that a startling number of people actually planned this sort of thing, with extreme flare at that, and they were parading themselves around the ship in a way that seemed to strongly suggest that they were doing this with no sense of irony or humor at all.  The first time I noticed this phenomenon I said to Mrs. Smoot, "Do you see that?  You know what that is?  It's a blog entry waiting to happen!"

These are people who obviously woke up in the morning and one of them said to the other, "Honey, how about we go with the obnoxious flower outfit today," or, "Dear, I think we should both dress up as cafe awnings."  Or, "Sweetheart, give me 10 minutes and I'll fashion these drapes into outfits."  And for some vastly inexplicable reason, they both thought it was the right thing to do.

I apologize for the terribly out-of-focus cell phone picture I posted, but I knew that you wouldn't believe it unless you saw it for yourselves.  I have several other pictures of other similar couples, but I thought it was priceless that I was able to get two of these couples to POSE in this manner.  Don't even ask what I used as an excuse for taking their picture.  Suffice it to say that it's probably blurry because I was giggling while taking it.

Anyway, I would strongly suggest that we watch this disturbing trend (at a distance, preferably), and report future instances to Homeland Security if necessary.

Yes, Yes, I'm Still Alive

Ok, I thought I'd check in so that people didn't think I have fallen off a large cliff or something.  It strikes me a bit funny that there have been people who have not only noticed that I haven't updated the blog in a while, but some of those people actually seem to be visibly shaken by this.  Alrighty.

See, the problem is that nothing weird has been happening in my life.  Nothing remotely interesting has been happening, for that matter.

I spent most of last week painting portions of our house.  Going into this project I remember thinking that this would certainly spawn numerous blog entries for several reasons.  For one, I'm just not a handy person, and I've never painted anything in my life.  Surely, at the very least, I'd spill a couple gallons of paint down the staircase, creating a flowing green paint waterfall, and I could blog about it.  But, remarkably, that didn't happen.

I figured if I didn't create an Exxon Valdez-style paint catastrophe, surely I'd fall off my homemade scaffolding that I had to construct to get up to the highest point of our stairwell (I did make sure that Mrs. Smoot never saw that contraption in all of its glory).  But, defying all odds, I did not fall and maim myself either.

In the end, the paint stuck to the wall, and everything turned out just fine.  That just doesn't make for very compelling blog writing if you ask me.

I did get a new phone the other day, and I have to say that it is the most amazing gadget I've played with for a long, long time.  If I leave it on the kitchen counter, it does the dishes.  So maybe I'll blog about that sometime.

I am happy to say that the Smoots are leaving for Hawaii in two days, so one would surely think that something blog-worthy will happen while we're gone these next couple weeks.  The lady who organized our trip arrived in Hawaii last night, after having her connecting flight canceled in Phoenix.  See, she already has ripe blog material!

Stupid Brain.

So I woke up this morning and looked at the clock.  Yikes!  Ten til, already?  That's terrible news!  Little Smoot should already be at school... we're late!

I hopped out of bed and ran over to wake Little Smoot this morning, while wondering why my alarm failed to go off.  She bounced out of bed like a trooper, and managed to be ready to head out the door within literally three minutes.

I grabbed my keys and started for the door, and I glanced up at the clock again.  And just as I was turning the door knob, it occurred to me:  It's nearly 8:00, not 9:00, you dork.

My wonderful brain has failed me once more.  For whatever reason (NyQuil, probably), my brain decided that we were late for school, and it didn't realize that I was off by an entire hour.  So I apologized to Little Smoot, and we took our good ole time finishing our preparations for school.  I do seriously hope that she ultimately did wear pants this morning.

I can remember one time when I was in high school that my brain tricked me like this before.  My brain got me up literally in the middle of the night and decided it was time for school.  My dad came staggering out to the kitchen to inquire as to why I was eating Raisin Bran at 2:00 a.m.

Stupid brain.  I'm guessing this was my brain's way of playing an April Fools Joke on me... a couple days early.

Brookville Bruce?

Being a native of Punxsutawney, PA, it's only natural that I often catch grief from people because our community happens to be the home of a specially-abled groundhog with weather forecasting abilities.

Of course those of us from Punxsutawney see nothing unusual about this; we've been celebrating Punxsutawney Phil's amazing abilities for well over a century now.

Not only that, but we have seen numerous pretenders crop up over the years.  There are groundhogs in Atlanta, GA, Dunkirk, NY, Quarryville, PA, and many others who have tried to latch onto Phil's popularity by claiming that their own groundhogs have these special powers.

Naturally, they do not.  Phil is the only groundhog with time-tested, accurate weather forecasting abilities.

Even closer to home we have had trouble with people trying to come up with their own ripoff animal prognosticators.  In the very nearby community of Big Run, for example, there's a guy who claims that his backyard frogs can predict the start of spring.  They have a banquet and everything (the townspeople have a banquet, not the frogs.  At least as far as I'm aware).

And now, just within the past couple days, we seem to have another potential fly in the ointment.  Not a literal fly, although I'm sure someone will come up with a weather forecasting fly soon enough.

Some idiot from Brookville (about 20 miles north of Punxsutawney) was caught trying to revive a road kill possum last Thursday.  There can only be a couple logical explanations for such a thing.  A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article suggests that alcohol may be to blame.  Well, duh... if you're going to try to give mouth-to-mouth to a possum, one would think that alcohol may be a necessity, indeed.

I would suggest that the suspect, Donald Wolfe, had reason to believe that this was a weather forecasting possum, and he just wanted to get in on the action.  I mean, let's face it... Brookville doesn't have a whole lot going for it, so why not recruit a weather forecasting possum to boost its popularity.  They could call it "Brookville Bruce," and have a special event for it every year so it could announce its forecast to the world.

It's only a matter of time before DuBois, Indiana and yes, even Sligo, try to hone in on the action.

How To Bake a Cake

Since Mrs. Smoot had her birthday earlier this week (notice that I didn't bother to point out that it was #40!), I took it upon myself to make my first-ever attempt at baking a cake to mark the occasion.  I thought I would pass along some instructions in case any of you in the vast viewing audience wish to attempt this feat in the future.

First, you need to go to the store and buy some stuff.  I made a list at the house so I would know what I needed to purchase, and I made this shopping trip a day ahead of time.  After all, you want to be sure to have this kind of thing organized so you don't need to make multiple trips to the store!

My list looked much like this:  "Cake mix.  Frosting."  So Little Smoot and I headed off to the store.  I chose a chocolate cake mixture that looked like it would be within my baking abilities, and I put Little Smoot in charge of selecting the frosting, which is why we had a chocolate cake with "triple chocolate" frosting.

If you're going to bake a cake with plans on celebrating with it that same evening, I would recommend beginning the process at about 3:00 a.m., or perhaps sometime during the previous week, by the way.

Anyhow, I began the process late after dropping Little Smoot off at school on Mrs. Smoot's birthday (which was her 40th, by the way).  I carefully read the instructions, which said something about greasing the pan.  First, I had to locate a pan that was in the appropriate dimensions (allow two hours for this), and then deal with the grease (add another hour).  I considered WD-40 as an option, but later went with Crisco, or some such thing.

Just a few short hours later, I had my pan all greased and ready to go.  Hooray!  So I started mixing the batter, which included some brown stuff in a bag, supplied by the cake people, eggs, water, and vegetable oil.  It was at this point that I didn't know if the oil I had in front of me was "vegetable" oil, or some other oil, or whether it made a damned bit of difference.  So back to the store I went to buy "vegetable" oil.

Back at home, I added the oil to the mix, and had to figure out where our mixer was, and how a person uses such a thing.  I was apprehensive, but after fiddling with the knob and getting it to work, I successfully had a bowl of brown glop in front of me, so I was happy (allow three hours for figuring out the mixer, and actually mixing stuff).

I carefully poured the brown glop into the pan, and I was pretty excited to see what looked like the beginnings of a cake.  I had pre-heated the oven to 350 degrees, and I popped the pan in.  It was a couple minutes after this that I happened to glance at the box and see that I was supposed to have sprinkled flour into the pan before pouring the glop in.

So, I poured the glop back into a bowl, and of course headed to the store to get flour.

Upon arriving back home, I poured the glop back into the pan (which I had to wash and re-grease), and then back into the oven.  I spent the next half hour or so nervously pacing back and forth, wondering if this would actually turn into cake, or if this was merely a practical joke of glop that the cake people thought they'd have me create.

Oddly enough, it turned into cake.  When Little Smoot arrived home from school, I let her apply the frosting because I knew I'd make a mess of it.

Then I realized that, as tradition, some people like to have candles on the cake.  So back to the store I went.

Well, thankfully everything worked out for the best, and we actually ate the cake with very few fatalities involved.  Even more strange, after a few days we finished the whole thing!  In 40 more years or so, I may even attempt to make another one.

Time for Some Disinfecting

I would say that I am 97.6% better, having been ill for the last week or so.  It had been a long time since I had a cold, so I was definitely due for one.  And I was glad to get it out of the way with now so that hopefully I can be good and healthy for our vacation next month.

Mrs. Smoot and Little Smoot are now also under the weather.  Mrs. Smoot has virtually no voice, which is nice in the sense that I know I can get away with anything without being yelled at (ok, she doesn't normally yell at me for things, but I had to say that anyway).

The worst thing about this particular cold wasn't my scratchy throat, or my stuffy nose.  I didn't cough a whole lot, so that wasn't so bad.  No, the worst thing about this cold was reasonably disgusting, and I'm not terribly proud of it.

This cold was unique because for many nights in a row, I would wake up in the middle of the night and make the lovely discovery that I had been drooling all over my pillow.  How wonderful!

So I would do what any normal person would do.  Namely, I'd think about how gross this was for a few seconds, and then I'd flip the pillow over to the other side and hope to God that the other side had gotten dry since the last time I flipped it.  And back to sleep I'd go.  Yuck.

Some people would probably have gotten up and changed pillow cases, I suppose, but we only have so many of them.  Maybe I should keep a bottle of Febreze by the bed, or something.  I dunno.

Mrs. Smoot Hits a Milestone!

Go ahead and mark Monday on your calendar.  If you have a modern calendar, you'll probably find that "Monday" is already on there.  But this coming Monday is Mrs. Smoot's 40th birthday!

She doesn't seem to be particularly thrilled with this milestone.  And I can't really blame her; I remember being a little depressed about the whole thing when I hit that mark two years ago.  Age 40 is definitely another step on the path to elderlyhood.

We were talking to a woman at a restaurant the other night, and in the course of the conversation we learned that she was 43.  This was a woman I had met at an event a few weeks back, and I would have assumed she was waaaaaaay older than I am, not just by a year.  She used a CANE for heaven's sake.  I dunno.

Mrs. Smoot has already been suffering from a variety of pre-40 Imaginary Illnesses.  I did the same thing when I was turning 40.  When I was getting close to hitting the big 4-0, I spent a lot more time being extra aware of my health, as though we start falling apart limb for limb at the stroke of midnight on a 40th birthday.

I remember worrying about every little "symptom."  Was this spot here before?  Say, I don't remember having this much nose hair.  And let's not even speak of the issue of gray hairs.

It definitely doesn't help that we are avid viewers of the TV show House, either.   From watching that show, we know that it's definitely possible to be feeling perfectly normal one moment, and then have blood shooting out of our eyeballs the next.  Probably Sarcoidosis.

So I would expect that Mrs. Smoot will have some number of imaginary health issues for a couple months, until she settles in with the whole 40 thing.

Mrs. Smoot is also not too fond of having people make a big deal out of her birthday, so whatever you do, try your best to keep it our little secret (I'll give you her cell phone number if you ask...).

Ok, I'm Back

I officially survived our trip to Louisiana last week, and I am back.  Actually, I've been back since Saturday, but I brought back, as a souvenir, a nasty head cold.  I've spent most of the week hacking, snorting, sniffling and wheezing, and in general being fairly miserable to be around.  More miserable than usual, even.

The first couple days of our mission trip involved a lot of sweeping at a building where they hope to one day host future mission trip visitors.  I eventually succumbed to peer pressure and wore one of those stupid dust mask things, but I'm sure I had already inhaled plenty of nasty stuff by then.

I'm finally to the stage where I only need a normal night of sleep, instead of getting up in the morning to get Little Smoot off to school, and then going back to sleep until the time I need to pick her up from school.

I'm pretty sure it was the dust that made me sick, but also may have been my exposure to an excessive amount of Frank Sinatra, too.  My car companions on the trip were significantly older than I am, and they have a fondness for Ol' Blue Eyes.  They also had satellite radio in the car, and Channel 73 is "Siriusly Sinatra," which we listened to for the majority of the ride home.

I can be very happy to go years without hearing Frank Sinatra, but we listened to it from Northern Alabama all the way back to PA.  I'm pretty sure that I was the only one in the vehicle who was getting a nervous twitch after being subjected to him for that long.  I can normally drive long, long distances without getting tired, but I could feel myself swerving around a bit, thanks to Frank lulling me to sleep.

Anyway, I think I'll avoid dust AND FRANK for a while.  Maybe I need a nap.