What's Up With That?

Little Smoot has now developed some sort of sense of humor, at least in her mind.  That's just what our family needs:  another person who thinks they're funny, but are actually the opposite.  That's my role!

I'm not sure where she picked it up exactly (I'm looking in Sponge Bob's direction, though), but she has decided that you can say pretty much anything, and add a rim shot to the end of it and voilà!... it's funny.

She has also decided that for maximum comedic value, she should also add the phrase "What's up with that?" to everything.

So out of nowhere she'll say something like, "Airplane food.  What's up with that?  (Bah-dum bum... psssh!)."  Or "Salad dressing.  What's up with that?  (Bah-dum bum... psssh!)."  "Car keys?  What's up with that? (Bah-dum bum... psssh!)."

I have to admit that this was funny enough to make me laugh the first 300 times or so, but it might be getting a little stale.  I'm sure that eventually Mrs. Smoot and the cat will gradually go insane, what with two of us making really stupid comedic attempts back and forth.

My Second 21st Birthday

Yep, I have done it again.  For the second time, I turned 21 this past weekend.

My first 21st birthday was pretty uneventful.  Most people mark that particular occasion by filling up on alcoholic beverages to the point where paramedics are often involved.  But for whatever reason, I spent that day hitting a bottle of Mt. Dew.  Yawn.

The second time around, I was able to enjoy a mostly peaceful day with my family.  We headed to our favorite Japanese Steak House, where I ate an obscene amount of food and enjoyed a couple Diet Pepsi drinks.  I spent most of the rest of the day on the couch, groaning, while the Olympics were on in the background.

I don't know about this whole aging thing.  So far I have definitely been able to keep my maturity level firmly on hold.  I'm quite certain that I haven't aged, maturity-wise, since my first 21st birthday.

I was running an errand yesterday morning, and I started thinking ahead to what my third 21st birthday might be like.  I got a little worried about it as I was following a dreaded OMWH (Old Man With Hat) down the highway.  I really, really hope that I don't follow that trend.

My Latest Rant

Ok, enough already.  I feel the need to express my extreme displeasure with a new trend in television advertising.  For some odd reason a number of business owners have begun this habit of having their kids participate in their TV commercials.

Here in the Smootville television market, I can think of at least three instances of this phenomenon.  One, naturally, is a car commercial.  Another is a father and daughter who want to remodel your bathroom.

It just seems like the guys who own these businesses decide, "what the heck, I have a hot-looking daughter... if they see her in my ads people will want to hire me to remodel their bathroom."  I'm sorry, but in reality, it just makes people want to make out with your hot daughter.  The heck with their bathrooms.

By far, the winner of the Most Annoying Father and Daughter Contest is the owner of "Allgood Home Improvement," which recently set up shop in our market.  Dad and the hot daughter go back and forth, yelling at us about how they can't wait to sell us windows at 2-For-1 Savings!  For the First Time Ever!  Woooo!

If you can watch this commercial and not want to smack both of these people in the head with a brick -- especially at the end when they scream, "We'll save you a LOT OF MONEY!"-- then you are a much better person than I:



These folks also have a new commercial (which, quite unfortunately is not yet available online) that features a very young, frizzy-haired brother of the hot daughter, who remarks, "Dude that's awesome!" after learning about the 2-For-1 window sale, as though at age 7 he has many years of experience dealing with the issue of purchasing home improvement products.

I am wearing out my mute button.

Losing My Freakin' Mind, Part XVIII

Yes, I can cite numerous instances in my blog that would suggest to any normal person that I am indeed on the brink of insanity, and other blog entries with nearly the same title as this one.  Sure.  But I fear I may definitely be crossing the line into True Insanityland nowadays.

For example, I can never, ever, ever remember whether or not I have turned off my space heater.  I have this fancy "Presto Heatdish" thing I got at Costco several years ago.  It's like a little satellite dish thing that aims wonderfully warm air at me on cold days, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'll often curl up into a ball beside it, much like a cat by a fireplace.

But I simply can never remember whether I have shut the thing off or not.  So when I leave the house during these winter days, I'll hop in the car and drive up the road -- sometimes as far as several miles -- until my mind will latch on to the Heatdish Issue.

I'll try really, really hard to remember whether I turned it off before leaving the house, but I just can't be 100% sure.  So I'll turn around and drive all the way home, even if I have reached another state already, just to check on the stupid thing.  I should note that I have never gotten home to find that I did indeed leave it on.

What's worse is that now, oftentimes when I get home to check on the heater, I'll suddenly get distracted by my computer, which is near the heater.  If I see that I have new e-mail, I'll have to check to see what the message is.

Then I'll head out to the car again and start buzzing down the road, only to realize that I never actually checked to see whether or not the heater was on, what with the important junk e-mail from Nigeria weighing heavily on my mind.  So then I have to make a second trip back home.

Then, finally, I can head off to my destination.  At least until I inevitably start worrying about whether or not I left the burners running on the stove.

So I would have to imagine that I qualify for some sort of insanity defense, should I decide to go berserk at some point.

Oh, and don't even ask me how many times I have needed to go back out to my car after being seated at a restaurant because I can't remember whether or not I have locked the door.

Good News / Bad News

So we have good news, and bad news.  The good news is that we got a brand new sled!  The bad news is that we got a brand new sled.

I was reasonably enthusiastic about getting a new sled.  We usually go entire winters where we would not have enough snow to go sled riding.  But this year we have so much damn snow that if I'm not careful when I open the door of the house, we could easily go sled riding in our living room.

Little Smoot had been bugging me about getting a sled for several days, so we ventured out to a sporting goods store on one of her numerous snow days and actually found a few sleds in stock.

Well, that was all good and well, but now Little Smoot wants me to join her outside in the actual snow, and of course she insists that I ride the sled.  And being the fine father I am, with the mental maturity of a young child, I thought it might actually be fun to ride down the hill in our yard.

We created a track that begins beside our house, goes down over a pretty steep hill, and ends somewhere in the bottom of the yard.  I went flying down the hill a couple times, and then it suddenly occurred to me:  "This sucks."

And I hate to think that way, because this is yet another sign that I'm not getting any younger.  Sled riding used to be a blast!  My brother and I would make elaborate trails in our yard, and we had our share of near death experiences on a giant pipeline hill adjacent to our property.  We'd be out there for hours and we loved it!

Yet after just a couple rides down the hill, the only thing I could think was:  "This sucks."  Something about freezing my butt off while my clothes get all soggy from the snow just isn't nearly as appealing as it used to be.  And I have to admit that I hate the terrible things that happen to my hair when I wear my dorky wool cap nowadays.

I hope this stuff melts sometime before July.

Olympics Bucket List

When I was little, I promised myself that one day I would attend an event at the Olympics.  I have always enjoyed the Olympics, and I still hope that someday I'll have the opportunity to see some sort of Olympic event live and in person.

I hadn't shared this Bucket List item with Little Smoot, so I thought it was interesting that as we were watching the opening ceremonies she said, "I hope we can go to the Olympics someday."

Well, here we are, several days into the events, and I'm starting to think that not only should I aim for watching the Olympics, maybe I should actually try to be a participant.

I enjoyed lunch with my good friend John this afternoon, and while we were eating, Olympic Curling was on the TV at our our favorite chicken wing joint.  It didn't take us long to decide that this was an event in which we could realistically compete.

Curling involves taking long strands of otherwise straight hair and heating it to the point where it takes on a new shape.  Ooops!  Wrong Wikipedia page.

Ah.  Here we go.  The sport of Curling is basically like playing shuffleboard on an ice rink.  You have this big stone thing that you whisk down the ice, aiming for a target a hundred or so feet (or meters, or hectacres, some such thing) away.  Your goal is to get as close to the target as possible, and you're allowed to bonk your opponents' stones out of the way.

Oh, and for some reason which neither of us could quite fathom, after the initial person launches the stone, a team of other people run off in front of it and sweep the ice with brooms.  We're a little unclear about the purpose of that whole thing.  Maybe the audience is full of rude people who throw litter onto the rink or something.

Anyway, we decided that it doesn't appear that this particular "sport" involves a heck of a lot of physical prowess, and therefore we should be Olympians.  As my friend John noted, "I can't imagine they could possibly turn too many people away who show an interest in being on the American team."

So look for us in the 2014 Olympics, which are slated to be held in Russia of all places.  I would expect that we'll fare very well, and will undoubtedly be overwhelmed with endorsement deals from broom companies and whatnot.

Too Much Time on My Hands? Nah.

Sorry I haven't posted for a number of days, but I've been busy shoveling.  And as soon as I get done shoveling, it's time to go shovel some more.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Greater Smootville Region, we got around 20" of snow beginning last Friday into Saturday, and then yet another half foot or so yesterday.  And there's talk of more snow in the next few days.

I figured that if Mother Nature was going to give us lemons, I was going to screw with the neighbors (isn't that how the phrase goes?).  I created a little illusion in one of our snow mounds by sticking an old pair of pants and shoes upside-down, along with a pair of gloves.

An hour or so after putting this into place, I got a call from our next door neighbor, who was laughing so hard she could barely speak.  Apparently another neighbor had called her and thought that a guy from next door was "standing at the entrance to our driveway, but something doesn't look right."  She replied after looking out the window, and said, "You're right he doesn't look right -- he's upside-down!"

Knowing that I'm demented and everything, she knew it was a prank right away.  But other people have apparently been momentarily fooled by it.  I ran into yet another neighbor at the grocery store today, and she reported that one of her co-workers had driven through the neighborhood and almost stopped to help!

Oh, and I should note that I saw a police car drive by earlier, and he just shook his head.

Mission accomplished!

Full Moon on Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day is always a unique experience, and this year was no exception.  I headed out the door on Monday with the Smootmobile fully packed with layers of additional clothing so that I'd be nice and warm at Gobbler's Knob while watching Phil make his annual prognostication the next morning.

But instead, I was out until around 1:00 a.m. with my brother and some close friends, and I ultimately decided that it would be in my best interest to just sleep through Phil's forecast in a nice, warm bed at my parents' home.  I have officially become a big wimp upon seeing the 12-degree reading on the thermometer under a cloudless sky.  We could feel the frost starting to develop on our heads, just by walking through a parking lot.

So, rather than getting ready to watch a groundhog predict the weather, we spent much of our Groundhog Day Eve watching a 20-something year old guy proudly display a bruise he had gotten on his butt while attending a recent event at Madison Square Garden in New York.  He said he had fallen down a flight of stairs there, and I will just go ahead and make the wild assumption that alcohol may have been a factor.

A group of these folks (I guess now that I'm elderly I can call 20-somethings "kids") came to Punxsutawney from Long Island so they could see what Groundhog Day was all about.  I seriously doubt that any of them were able to actually attend Phil's forecast either, because their blood alcohol levels were probably beyond what any modern instrument could possibly measure.

My new "friend" from New York seemed to continually insist that he stand right next to me to display his bruise -- and the rest of his hairy butt -- in case there had been some sort of new development there since the last time he showed me.

It was admittedly funny at first, but it became increasingly disturbing as the night wore on.  I found myself thinking rhetorical questions like, "Why couldn't the lone girl in their group have suffered some sort of bosom injury instead making me see this every few minutes?"

At one point he had left for about half an hour only to return wearing only a bathrobe, presumably because that made it much easier to display his butt, without the unnecessary added inconvenience of unzipping his pants and everything.  (My apologies for the poor quality cell phone picture... but if I had to suffer, YOU have to suffer.)

Earlier in the night we had the chance to see actor Stephen Tobolosky from the movie Groundhog Day.  He portrayed "Ned Ryerson," the annoying insurance salesperson who accosted Bill Murray's character each morning as they headed to the celebration ("Ned Ryerson?  BING!").

It was fun to watch him speak at the annual banquet, and he and his wife seemed to be genuinely thrilled to be there to take it all in since they had never visited town before, let alone on an actual Groundhog Day.  And best of all, not one time did he feel that it was necessary to display his butt to us.