make that bad guys 3

A bus driver tried to run me down at a crosswalk on the way to Starbucks this morning. I actually had to run for my life. My heart hasn't stopped beating.

Figures.

making a first impression

I was concepting with my new partner for the first time a couple nights ago, and we started talking about a crabby guy in our department who seems to throw a lot of tantrums in the office.

“He seems like kind of a pain in the ass,” I said.

“Yeah, he kind of is.” He replied. “Did you know that he’s also a music critic for Heeb?”

“Ohhh, well there you go,” I said. “That explains it.”

“Take it easy,” he warned. “You’re talking to one.”

I looked up from my keyboard, confused. "You’re a music critic?”

good guys 6, bad guys 2

When Crissy and I first came out to NYC together to search for apartments, I was keeping a mental scorecard of the asshole to cool people ratio. I stopped counting after about an hour, because I thought I had a pretty accurate data my hypothesis: people are people. Some are assholes, some are not.

Some people hold doors for you, some do not. Some people take your coffee order with their backs to you, some do not. Some people fart in crowded elevators, some do not.

It doesn’t matter what city you’re in. There are plenty of assholes in Chicago, too. Like the dude at intelligentsia who wouldn’t sell me a double espresso over ice because they’d been “experiencing a lot of latte theft.”

Or the cab driver who wouldn’t drop me off at any other address than the incorrect one I accidentally gave him "because!" he screamed, “you’re trying to rip off me!”

Or the dude who pulled a complete f*ckface U-turn right in front of me with his entire family in the car, almost causing an accident, only to roll down his window and tell me he did it because, in his words, “I thought I’d teach you a lesson.”

Here in New York, I’ve found the asshole ratio to be pretty much the same. I really haven’t had any major incidents yet. I guess I kind of expected every third person to grab a handful of crotch and say, “I got your turkey sandwich…RIGHT HEEEAH!” So far, not the case.

Which, in a way, is a little disappointing. After all, it’s part of the reason I wanted to move here in the first place.

Saturday concepting session

"Got any ideas?"

"No. You?"

"I don't have shit."

"What if we.....is that asbestos?"

yikes

I needed to think about something other than work for thirty seconds…

Holy sheepshit. Day four on the job, and they weren’t kidding about the workload here in the big city. It might have something to do with the fact that my brain had atrophied into a veiny pile of chewed gum over the last few months (ok, years), but I wasn’t expecting the “who can leave the latest” contest that’s been going on since I got here. Which, by the way, I won last night. 11:48 pm bitches.

Not to mention the fact that everyone dresses like they’re attending a hipster funeral. So cool. So black. So tight. I just can’t compete. Me of the hillbilly New Balance and hayseed Banana Republic. Plaid shirts? I might as well be shucking corn at my desk.

So in an attempt to up my coolness quotient, I thought I’d start with the shoes. I ordered a totally awesome pair of black high top Nikes, and headed off to work yesterday with my spirits high, my tunes cranked, and my right toe quickly developing a blister. By the time I made it to the office, I was limping like a dude with a club foot.

I headed into my building sucking back a quadruple espresso over ice, digging in my pocket to turn off my ipod with one hand, and fumbling for my security pass in the other. Before I knew what the hell was going on, I stubbed one of my clumsy new shoes on an escalator step, and began a slow motion fall toward the escalator with both hands in my pockets. “No worries,” I thought. “My lips will break my fall.”

Suddenly, I’m face down, ass up on the escalator, struggling to get my hands out of my pockets. The iPod might have been half the reason I was in this predicament, but it did a nice job of drowning out the laugh track coming from the crowd behind me.

The really nice thing about working in a huge office of 750 people is that just when you’ve forgotten about what an ass you made of yourself that morning, there’s someone who was behind you on that escalator around every corner to remind you.

Regardless, things have been great. My incredible wife has transformed a 600 square foot shoebox into a home as cozy as a humidor. I’m surrounded by super-smart people working their asses off, and I’m slowly getting the hang of this thing.

Now let’s see if I can survive the weekend, or if this job will suffocate me. I mean, like, literally. The following is an actual email I got this morning, copied and pasted for your reading pleasure:

Good Morning,

Please advise if you and/or your department will be working this weekend and will be needing additional air circulation.

Please include an approximate time you'll be needing air, beginning to end and also copy Angela Burton on all requests.

The building requires these requests to be in by 1pm Fridays.

Thanks and have a great weekend all.

Regards,

Angela Smith

random update

well, we are all moved in and most everything is in place. i forgot the camera at home but i'll post pics of the apartment tomorrow so you all can see how cozy and inviting it is. (hint hint)
the only thing that's outstanding is getting the cable and internet hooked up, and that is happening soon! i called time-warner and begged and pleaded with them in my best eyelash-batting voice and got them to come this saturday instead of next tuesday. huzzah!

and for those of you who've asked about it, i'll answer. the job hunt is well, a hunt. it's a little difficult to find something coming into Q4 when companies are trying to meet their bottom line, but i've got a couple of things hopping around and i'm certain things will be fine. it's just going to take a couple of weeks. and on kev's job front, he's been working like crazy, and it's only week one. they have him doing quite a bit, so you might not be hearing from him on here for awhile (unless he feels the need to procrastinate at work).

i saw my first new york cockroach last night. it was SICK. DISGUSTING. DISTURBING! i wanted to scream but didn't want to act like a sissy. luckily it wasn't in our apartment, it was outside on the sidewalk NEXT TO OUR APARTMENT. so you know what that means. oh well.

i'm seeing an old friend tomorrow. she has the day off of work from her job as a producer for the CBS early show. she asked me what i was doing tomorrow morning at 6:45am and if i wanted to come in and be on-air asking a question to some financial advisor dude. i can't actually imagine anything worse than that. #1, waking up at the butt-crack, #2 be ON CAMERA ON NATIONAL FRIGGIN' TV and #3 did i mention it was national television? in the morning? no thanks. sorry laura!

ps-i think one of these rings would make a fantastic christmas gift. i'm putting it on my list.

zzzzzzzzz

i know they call new york a "walking city" but i think i've taken the term too literally. i just used gmaps pedometer (if you've never used it, look it up. it's awesome) to figure out how far i've walked/run in the past 3 days we've been here.

sunday - 6 mile run, at least 2 mile walk
monday - 6 mile walk
tuesday - 4 mile walk

total over 3 days = 18 miles!

holy shit. no wonder i was exhausted this morning. i snoozed my alarm for almost 2 hours.



***breaking cable update: time warner isn't coming until NEXT EFFING TUESDAY between the hours of 2pm and 6pm! i honestly don't know what i'm going to do without internet or tv for a week (especially since kevin will be at work). maybe i should set up a tent in the apartment and pretend that i'm camping.

First Day of School

So, yesterday was my first day on the new job, and everything went great. No wedgies, no swirlies, no stolen lunch money. Everyone was very nice and civil. In fact, my orientation provided plenty of comic material, albeit unintentionally.

The cross section of people that joined me for orientation was so hilariously stereotypical that I simply can’t be blamed for noticing it. I am not making these up…they are based on actual observations, NOT exaggerations. The blatant, and totally un-PC, stereotypes were the following:

The toothy, pistol-fingered Gameshow Host Guy. Everything this guy said was loud, addressed to the entire group, and with one eyebrow raised. He was, by his own estimation, the handsome-faced comic relief, who’s sole intention was to look good for the…

Skanky-looking just-graduated-from-college chick. Jet black, straightening-iron-damaged hair, band-aids all over her feet, and a bored look on her face, she sniffed out the high douche factor of Gameshow Guy before roll call.

All business, pants-suited African American chick. She asked a lot of questions by raising her pen. Her hair was so perfect I thought it was a wig for several hours.

Puffy-eyed, red-faced guy with an Irish accent who couldn’t stop yawning. He yawned for 6 hours, and drank at least 15 cups of coffee. He winced his way through the day.

Meek, quiet, shockingly pale red-headed girl who didn’t say a word all day, except to whisper, “It’s so cold in here. So cold.”

Bespectacled Hispanic chick with intentionally curled and styled sideburn hair who asked a lot of pointless questions, but didn’t understand the answers to any of them. During the benefits discussion, she asked what the difference was between a colonoscopy and a digital colon exam. The pants-suited African American chick raised her pen and answered the question.

Tiny-armed, tiny-handed gnomish IT guy with a blond goatee and a Queens accent (or at least what I imagine a Queens accent to be). He’s actually been working here for about a month, and I guess during that time a water pipe burst, and a lot of equipment was damaged. Also quiet, the only thing he said all day was, “Fucking mess, bro. Fucking clustuh-fuck.”

Since I am totally original and unique, there is no stereotype that exists for me. But if I were to make one up for myself, I guess I’d go with, I don’t know…

The smug, quietly judging, asks a lot of questions about Mac compatibility, slovenly dressed to prove my creativity guy.

About that party...

As mentioned by the missus, last Friday was our official official going away party, thrown by our incredibly generous, awesome friends the Likers, in conjunction with my sister Heather, and brother-in-law Tom*. In an attempt to keep the tears in check, it was referred to as our New York Launch Party. And while it might have been unsuccessful at keeping the floodgates closed, it was highly successful at kicking ass.

Though it did get off to a strange start. First, we left the garage door open after a grocery store run and got Alex’s lawnmower stolen by a bum. A bum who now has a lawn to be truly proud of, I guess.

Then I stepped on Oksana’s paw. That is, the Likers’ tiny chocolate poodle that fits in the palm of your hand. I feel guilty about this for two reasons. The first being that I love their little doggy and never want to see her hurt.

The second is that Oksana might actually be the cutest dog ever manufactured by the gods of dog**. Oksana is ridiculously, painfully, almost maddeningly cute. So, when I stepped on her paw, I couldn’t get myself to admit that it was my fault. When Alex asked me what happened through Oksana’s yelping and crying, I answered, with a completely straight face, “She jumped under my foot.”

Then Christine stabbed the hell out of herself while cutting open a huge hunk of salami with a sling-blade. She rammed the knife about 3 inches into her hand, calmly looked up as arterial spray repainted the ceiling, and said, “Hm. I just cut myself.”

While everyone but Christine panicked, Alex ran to the store to grab some gauze. She wasn’t about to miss the party for a night in the emergency room, blood and guts or not. Proving for the eight billionth time what awesome friends we have, sacrificing life and limb for a good time. And it was, as anticipated, loud, hilarious, and extra painful the following day.

Which, of course, made leaving even tougher to swallow. But we managed to force it down with Portillo’s cheese fries, hug our friends, and get here safely. Thanks again for everything, everyone.

P.S. This is Oksana. If this picture is any indication, she’s still mad at me.

*HOLY CRAP did this entry get me into hot water. PLEASE LET THE RECORD SHOW THAT my sister and brother-in-law Tom are EQUALLY AS INCREDIBLY GENEROUS AND KICK ASS IN EVERY WAY AS THE LIKERS.

**PLEASE LET THE RECORD SHOW THAT Oksana is the cutest TINY BROWN POODLE OWNED BY OUR FRIENDS THE LIKERS dog ever created by the gods of dog. THERE ARE MANY OTHER MADDENINGLY CUTE DOGS THAT WERE CREATED BY THE GODS OF DOG OF VARIOUS BREED AND COLOR.

updatin' slack-uh (said in my best NY accent)

lots to tell - sorry for the lack of updates.
here's a quick rundown for those of you who have been starving-

1. i DID to kiss nonna and nonno before i left.

2. our going away party on friday night was awe. some. humongo special thanks to the guillen's and the liker's. we have the most incredible friends and family anyone could ever imagine and we will miss them so much. thankfully for us people want to visit new york city so i am hoping we won't have a shortage of visitors.

3. we checked another thing off the list and had our last meal at portillo's.

4. i had a minor meltdown at the airport but everything is A-OK now.

5. our hotel room is really nice and we're so lucky to be staying here until our stuff arrives on wednesday.

6. i am thankful for dear, sweet meghan ficca - a close friend from college who is also currently "freelancing" and has a lot of free time on her hands to hang out with me.

7. i am fantasizing about my first trip to the neighborhood whole foods to get supplies so i can pack kevin gourmet sack lunches to save money (i am already thinking of menus)

8. we move out of the hotel on wednesday and time warner "can't" come to hook up our cable service for almost a week later. bitches.

9. i emailed lots of people about jobs today. heard back from one lady. keep your fingers crossed, otherwise it's panhandling on the street corner for me. i can already see the sign i'll be holding up: "not a bad person, just made bad decision to quit my job during a economic crisis and nationwide depression"

10. i walked kev to school today and i was SO proud of him. he helped us accomplish one of our life goals. god DAMN it, that sure feels good.

**this painting was done by the incredible christine richman. look at those brushstrokes, and those colors! HIRE HER NOW WHILE SHE'S STILL CHEAP!

the big day

It’s officially moving day. Right now I’m hiding in the back room of our apartment, hunched up in the one remaining chair in our place while the moving guys close up box after box with every BRAAAAAAP of moving tape.

I’d like to think I’m just staying out of the way, but mostly I’m avoiding the dirty looks of movers seeing an able bodied red-blooded American man sit around and let them do the job they were paid to do. I’ve been furrowing my eyebrows for the last hour to let them know that I’m typing important documents here. Maybe they’re financial documents. Maybe I’m brokering big deals here. Deals worth billions. Oh, and please try to keep all the refrigerator magnets together…they’re irreplaceable.

Right now Crissy’s on the phone with Crate and Barrel, ordering the couch that we decided to pay for by selling our two current couches. When the buyer asked how old the couches were, Crissy guessed 3 or 4 years. Later my Dad called me and asked if I’d like to know the history behind the couches we were pawning off for peanuts. “One of them we bought the year you were born.” That makes it 32 years old. Crissy was close. “The other one we bought for our second house. In 1985.”

Also of note was the bratty rich woman who laid on the horn of her Range Rover so long we thought maybe she fell asleep on it. When the missus went out to investigate (I was, uh, predisposed), she got attitude for our moving truck blocking her driveway. “I’m planning on being in and out all day, so…yeah.”

When Crissy asked if she might not mind parking on the street for a couple hours, her response was completely understandable: “Um, no.”

Since our movers are pretty nice guys, they moved just enough to let her out. And since karma’s a bitch, someone else's cable guy promptly parked in front of her garage. She got back 10 minutes ago, and we haven’t stopped cackling yet.

P.S. this is a before picture of our back door. I'll post the after tomorrow.

As promised...

604 square feet of fury

success

Well, we did it dammit. We found an apartment. It’s small. It’s overpriced. And it's perfect. Plus we did it in one day. Which gave us three more days to pay for meals in change.

We ended up finding a place in Tribeca. It’s 604 square feet of pure awesomeness. Yes, it’s a pygmy paradise, but there are many things about the place that make it truly kick ass. They are the following:

1. The ceilings are almost 20 feet high. No exaggerating. So if we want to add a little excitement to our living experience, we can always add quadruple bunkbeds. Or a totem pole. Or a trapeze.
2. It’s got large windows that make it super bright. Which will help pull us out of our inevitable winter k-holes come February.
3. We have a…(wait for it…wait for it….) DISHWASHER. I’m still in shock about this one.
4. We have a washer/dryer 3 doors down from our apartment. Not three doors down from the building. Three doors from our door. It’s on our hallway. Which means I’ll be able to do my most hated chore twice as frequently. Wait. Maybe this actually sucks.
5. The rooftop deck is ridiculously kick ass. We have an incredible view of the entire city, facing the Empire State building and the Hudson River. There are 4 or five picnic tables. There’s a full sized basketball court. There’s a soda machine. There’s a…uh…did I mention the view?
6. There an Equinox gym connected to our building. So we don’t even have to go outside to get to spin classes…I MEAN…get totally massive.

The only thing that kinda sucks is that it has one, albeit huge, walk-in closet. That means absolutely everything we own has to fit into one closet that we share. Clothes, shoes, winter jackets, beekeeper suits, battle axes, Segways, fencing foils…everything. We’re gonna have to dump much, MUCH more than we thought.

Which we were pretty confident about until about an hour ago. All the crap we thought we did such a good job of purging weeks ago? Peanuts. It’s like our crap’s cells divided, cloned themselves, banded together, and attacked.

And by the looks of this apartment right now, we got our asses whupped up on.

P.S. blogspot is being extra finicky tonight, so this is the only picture of the place I can upload. I'll try to add a couple more tomorrow.

Phil

This morning the little lady and I hopped on a New York-bound plane to begin our apartment-hunting adventure. But more about that later, because that actually doesn’t begin until tomorrow morning. Right now we’re lounging around in Crissy’s friend Meghan’s apartment…in silence. Why are we not talking right now, you ask?

It’s not because we were tired from getting up early. It’s not because our flight was cancelled. It’s not because we were put on a later flight, which was also delayed.

It’s because we were sitting in front of Phil.

Phil was a fire hydrant of a man in his mid-50’s with a flat-top haircut, a finely trimmed mustache, and three buttons open on his shirt. I knew his name was Phil two reasons:

The first being that almost every story he told began with, “So the guy says to me he says, Phil…”

The second being that the three-inch medallion dangling from his neck read, “Phil.”

Phil didn’t stop talking for 2.5 hours. He didn’t stop to eat. He didn’t stop to go to the bathroom. He didn’t stop to breathe. It was an all-out verbal assault on a wide-eyed, pixie of a woman sitting next to him who, by introducing herself to Phil, unwittingly entered a tank battle with a spear.

“Phil, they says to me, Phil, lemme tellya, you look great in that red hat, and I says to them I says, I tellya what, me and the wife we bought matching red hats, so it’s part of a set that we bought for a party, and I’ll tell you what, this party we went to, you woulnta believed it, you hadda be there to understand, …”

Sadly, Phil wasn’t about to leave anything to the imagination. Whether or not you had to be at that party to understand, Phil was gonna take a crack at explaining it. The woman sat in shock as Phil bounced word after pointless word off her face, periodically remembering to gasp for air like an auctioneer or a high school spread debater.

Though I’m not sure the woman wasn’t at least partially to blame for locking in a rictal smile and nodding just enough to keep the corners of his mouth frothy. “So funny,” she’d say. “Hilarious.” “Wow, that’s so neat.”

And all the while, Phil’s bugged out eyes were framed by his permanently arched eyebrows, as if to suggest that the things coming out of his mouth were shocking or awe-inspiring. Instead, it was, “You woulnta believed the way people looked at this red hat.”

Phil was in heaven, and he wasn’t about to let it go. Every story his wife wanted to murder him for repeating for the billionth time was fresh, every pointless anecdote new, every non-joke ripe for virgin ears.

Phil talked so long that he ran out of stories and began scrambling for material. He gasped and fumbled for the in-flight magazine. “Sky Mall? What’s that supposed to be? Some kinda mall up in the sky? I tellya, one time me and the wife went to the mall, lemme tellya, you woulnta believed the selection of hats they had at this mall, you just woulnta believed it…”

The second we got off that plane, we sprinted to the bathroom, wiped the blood from our ears, collected our luggage, and got right to not talking for hours. It’s been glorious.

But I gotta say, after an experience like that, I hope we know what we’ve gotten ourselves into.

I'll need your computer, your ID pass, and your soul

Monday ended up being pretty uneventful. Crissy and I didn’t have our exit interviews until 3 and 3:30, so we spent most of the day at the Apple store getting technical help from the incredibly patient support guys at the Genius Bar. When the guy helping us couldn’t get something to work on our computer, he decided to give us an $80 upgrade for free just to make it work. So be nice to those people…sometimes an IT guy’s bruised ego works in your favor.

Crissy and I both found our exit interviews to be pretty unceremonious as well. Crissy went first, so I expected to have to kick down the door and save her from the six-headed, fire-breathing, she-lizard that I understood our H.R. lady to be. Armed with a mini-baseball bat and one of my three beauty mirrors (in case she also had the power to turn me to stone by looking directly into my eyes), I headed down the hallway in search of my betrothed. I ran into her about 30 seconds after the start of her interview. “Bring your employee handbook,” she said cheerily. “They don’t need your computer and ID pass until 5 pm.”

Naturally, I found the H.R. woman to be friendly and helpful. She collected my things, smiled, shook my hand, and wished me luck. But just in case, I made sure not to look her in the eyes.

Which I later found out was the right thing to do over drinks with a couple friends after work. My friend Alan informed me that she actually IS the devil’s spawn, but she combs her red-headed bowl-cut over her horns when instructed to do so by Lucifer himself.

The Great Purge, Part 2

I’ve been slacking on the entries lately. Sorry about that…

Friday afternoon was supposed to be our last day, so in keeping with the original plan, I began the process of dismantling my office by throwing away the 8,000 lbs. of useless crap I’ve gathered over the last 5 years. I mean, my god, where did I get all of this guano?

One of the drawers I opened no less than 4 Halloween wigs, one of which still had a $36 price tag on it, and three hand-held beauty mirrors (I swear to god I didn't buy these). I found VO5 shampoo and conditioner, a bottle of Static Guard, and a Choose Your Own Adventure book called “The Lost Jewels of Nabooti.” I found a tiny baseball bat, and a normal sized baseball glove. I found a pair of binoculars, a greasy rubber fish mounted on a stand, a green bandana, and just for emergencies, a white bandana.

I had so many CD’s in my office people must’ve thought I was selling them out of my trunk. Which I would’ve, if I could ever get anyone to buy “Donnie Klang, Just a Rolling Stone (as seen on MTV’s Making the Band 4),” or “One Chance, U can’t,” or “Pants! Twice the Snake You Need.” When I tried to give them away, people lined up outside my door to tell me what kind of nerve I had.

Though I will say, there is just no telling what the office vultures are going to feed on. I threw away what was possibly the world’s most disgusting shag rug, only to find it on the floor of a youngish dude who occupies the office next to me. When I warned him that it was old, filthy, and potentially booger-filled, he reassured me that he wasn’t for his office, but rather for his living room.

In the end, I left the crap I couldn’t get rid of in my office on a table that said free shit/awesome stuff, O.B.O.*

Something tells me whatever the vultures don’t get, the nocturnal creatures will devour when nobody’s looking.

*Thanks Hez

for the last 64 months...

...i have spent an enormous chunk of time at the office. and even though i am leaving with an ever so slightly sour taste in my mouth, i can't deny all the unbelievably fan-frickin'-tastic people that that place has brought to me. and as the sand runs out in my e79 hourglass, i would like to take a moment and pay a small tribute to a few of the special ones-

AK - my first real friend at the office. my big sis. my everything. i am certain we will be in each others lives forever. long live special print rulers and the people who steal and then write notes about how they did not steal them (ahem, D.M., ahem!).

TT - you are such a bad-ass and you don't even know it. or maybe you do. either way - you. are. awesome. and. will. go. so. far.

EP - the one who first discovered the scandalous office romance that k & i so poorly hid. thank you for being my other big (and equally wonderful!) sis.

TC - my mentor. the one who taught me how to do so many things - especially how to be calm in crazy situations. and also how to watch important bears playoff games while shooting on rodeo drive.

AD - although our time together has been short, i sure am gonna miss you. you are one funny little ho - you better ichat me regarding horrible reality tv (and boys!) on a daily basis. SPANK!

and most importantly to KJM, my BEST work friend- june 9th, 2003 is a day that should be celebrated forever! along with february 28th, 2004. oh, and may 3rd, 2008. i love your guts.

U-S-A, U-S-A

This past weekend the little lady and I headed up to my parents’ summer home on Lake Geneva for the Labor Day weekend. Let me tell you something. That’s one little getaway opportunity we are gonna sorely miss. In fact, I think we’ll have to introduce ourselves to potential new friends in New York with a not-so-subtle, “I’m Kevin. This is Crissy. Do you have another home, or just this one?”

If you’re like me you’ll agree that all lake houses are really tiny little microcosms of America, in that A. everyone has an American flag hanging from their front porch, and B. consumption is sport. When I wasn’t eating my weight in spicy Italian sausages and Oreo cookie ice cream, I was doing the open-mouthed breast-stroke through a pool of wine. Crissy’s hair still smells like turkey bacon.

I’d have to say, for our last hurrah in Lake Geneva for a long time, it was a pretty eventful weekend. My brother-in-law Tom and I threw a baseball for, like, three entire minutes before clutching our chests and drinking glasses of sausage. I stepped on an angry bee in bare feet not 30 seconds after having a discussion over how much bee stings suck (it’s true, they suck). And Crissy discovered that the phantom bat living in the large guest room isn’t a phantom at all. It is quite real and, at least as far as Crissy’s concerned, turns into a dapper, bloodthirsty 19th century gentleman at the stroke of midnight. Oh, we also discovered the "dirt" in our bed was actually bat shit. Which I revealed to the missus with a contrite, “Hon, we’ve been sleeping in guano.”

I’m not really sure what we’re going to do without Lake Geneva at our fingertips. We didn’t use it enough when it was an hour-and-a-half away. It might as well be in Alaska when we get to NYC. I guess we can always get a kiddie pool and fill it up with wine and bat poo, but it just won’t be the same. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere:

Don’t take what you have for granted? No, that’s not it.

Hang out with your parents more often? Mmmm, no.

Eat and drink like a hog because it’s patriotic? Yes yes, that’s it.

Also-my neck has been sore ever since returning from the lake. This picture is the reason why. Please note the rope recoiling in horror from what it’s about to witness.