kapgar

I think I'd rather go outside and play...

<group_rant>

Okay, everybody together now!

1...

2...

3...

While we don't hate you, Katie, we are very displeased with the fact that, starting tomorrow, you are on vacation from work until January 2. We find this to be exceptionally distressing and thoroughly unfair, especially since we do not get the same number of days off.

And we are disgustingly jealous.

</group_rant>

<self_pity>

Especially me.

Since I want to be home with you.

Totally not fair.

</self_pity>

<uncontrollable_sobbing>

*sniffle*

</uncontrollable_sobbing>

<acceptance>

404 Error: Item Not Found

And many more...

Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday, dear Kappy!
Happy birthday to me!

Okay, so I already kinda sorta wished myself a happy birthday a day in advance. At the time, I didn't think I'd actually post today. But here I am.

Actually, I just wanted to point out that I can finally listen to my iPod(s) in style! Katie bought me a pair of Bose in-ear headphones. While they take a little getting used to, once you do, they sound fantastic! Wow. You never realize just how bad cheap earbuds are until you hear good stuff. And these definitely constitute "good stuff." Thanks, hon!

Does the use of the die to convey the 33 kinda imply that I'm gambling with my life? Hmmm... maybe that wasn't the best choice, eh?

Oh, and on the dice theme... while I was searching for good dice images, I came across a real beauty. Since I've already solved the Rubik's Cube (now several dozen times - I've memorized it), I think I might try to follow the step by step and make the Magnetic Dice Rubik's Cube I found over at Instructables. It's pretty sweet!

Hey, got a meme for you in the extended post. Hope you're up for some holiday spirit!

When the lights go down in the city...

How about some snippets for my first second day in a row of blogging in quite some time?

NBC-Ya-Later
NBC has now officially removed all their TV shows from iTunes. Well, you know what I have to say about that? Screw ya, NBC. I'll watch your shows on TV and if I miss them, I miss them. I will no longer make an effort to watch any of your shows if you're not going to allow me TO PAY YOU so I can put it on my iPod! You're saying no to my money... the one thing, aside from ratings (which should result in money anyway) that you like most. I was about to purchase an episode of Law & Order from last season to watch on my iPod, but since you don't want my money, I won't give it to you. Eat my shorts, NBC.

Protection
I have to thank Yet Another Girl for this one. The township of Manalapan, NJ, is demanding that Google hand over the identity, e-mail address, associated e-mails, blog drafts, and and other information they have regarding a blogger who uses the name "daTruthSquad." Apparently this person has written some critical comments about a township lawsuit and the town thinks it was actually written by the defendant in the case. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is stepping in to defend the First Amendment rights of the blogger and of Google in their protection of this information.

Favre
I know I'm a Chicago Bears fan and our natural adversary is anybody donning the green and yellow of the Green Bay Packers. However, Packer rifleman Brett Favre was just named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year and I am having trouble thinking of a more deserving guy. After a couple seasons of subpar play from him and his team, the man has come back in a big way this season at 38 years old, an age when most NFLers have hung up their spikes. Plus he has consistently been the top scorer on one of my fantasy teams and I drafted him as my backup. He was bumped to starter very early on. Maybe I'm supposed to hate the guy, yet I cannot help but respect him. He's amazing. Damn him for being a Packer.

Frosty
I was given an early birthday present from a friend in the form of a six pack of special winter brew by my buddies over at New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, CO. It is the Fat Tire 2° Below winter ale and I am so jacked about trying it. From what I'm told, it can be a very hard beer to find as it sells out rather quickly upon arrival in stores.

Birthday
Nice segue, eh? Yep, tomorrow I turn a pair o' threes... 33 years old. I admit I'm old. But I'm still younger than you, Hilly! Hah! Yeah, that was mean. But she's constantly teasing me or expressing her disbelief that I'm not older than her. So she deserves the poke... um... yeah. I only wish ThinkGeek had a gift registry. Oh the fun I could have! Or maybe they do and I'm just too lazy to look. Oh well.

Power
The area I live in here in the Midwest is expecting one heckuva winter storm today and tonight. If you live in the area, please be safe. Stay home, put on pajamas, find emergency candles, and hunker down with someone you love. Best advice I can think to impart unto you.

His skin is green, but his mood is blue...

You would think that being an American male I would have an innate love of all things Thanksgiving. Heck, if there's one character trait hammered home by popular culture, it's that any holiday involving food is a favorite of men.

Sorry, not so much for me. Never cared much for it. Thanksgiving always seemed like a misnomer of a holiday to me. Kinda like Columbus Day, which is meant to celebrate the man who *cough* discovered North America and became a *cough* friend of the native peoples. We all know that, despite our grade school education, this entire image of Christopher Columbus is a load of crap. He wasn't even close to being the first one to discover North America and he was anything but kind to the natives.

That's how I view Thanksgiving. The image of Pilgrims and Native Americans sitting down side by side and enjoying a meal together always struck me as being too much of a stretch of how I perceive the reality of the situation to be. Maybe there isn't historical evidence to support my alternate theory, but it all still feels, well, wonky to me.

When you combine this historical skepticism with my continued quest to lose weight, you'll understand why I'm no friend of Thanksgiving.

But there is one good thing to come of the holiday this year... for the first time in a long time, Katie's not cooking the feast and we're not hosting the get together! Oh, it feels so good. We're actually going to spend the holiday with her family. We usually host it for my family, but we wanted a change this year. I think Katie is feeling a combination of relief and anguish. It's a relief to not have to worry about it, but then we watch shows on the Food Network and they're all about Thanksgiving right now, so she starts to feel like she's missing out to some degree. It's a painful mix for her.

What are your plans?

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): When I can find well-done schlock films, I tend to love them. Great stuff like John Waters' Cry-Baby make me feel like all's right with the world.

This is why I've been loving the short film Zombie Prom. It's schlock, pure and simple, mixed with comic art and a lot of singing.

Basically, it's the story of an idyllic little American town in the 50s whose world is changed by the arrival of an outsider, Jonny ("without the customary H"), who doesn't buy into the societal norms. At Enrico Fermi High School, he falls for a girl named Toffee but she dumps him because her parents do not condone of their relationship. So, in a fit of atomic adolescent angst, Jonny hurls himself into the cooling tower of the nearby Francis Gary Powers nuclear power plant and he returns as a zombie... a zombie who still wants to take Toffee to the prom, no less.

It's best to think of this film as what would happen if Cry-Baby, Pleasantville, The Mask, Grease, and Creepshow were all thrown in a blender and the puree button was left on for way too long.

Oh c'mon! This is great stuff! And it was free on iTunes when I downloaded it. While it's no longer free, it's still only $1.99. How can it get any better? Oh yeah, here's how... the line "This isn't about civil rights. This is about protecting the traditional values that made this country great" being uttered by none other than RuPaul. Yeah, that's right. Ru-friggin'-Paul ranting about traditional values.

Schlockity, schlock, schlock, and schlockers! Come to daddy!

[production image courtesy of ZombiePromtheMovie.com]

Pumpkins scream in the dead of night...

First of all, a big ol' Happy Halloween to everyone out there.

from ~Zefhar on DeviantArt.com

'Tis my favorite holiday and, as it has for a while, I'm sure it will disappoint me. This year, however, we pared back the candy to a mere two bags and I don't even expect to give all that out. I'm willing to bet I can count on two hands the number of Trick or Treaters we have tonight.

So, instead of disappointing myself further by rubbing in the fact that my holiday has gone downhill, I'm not taking part in SJ's Behind the Mask meme. I would be too sad afterwards. Sorry, SJ. But know I loves ya, hon.

Instead, I'm doing something else food related.

Last night, Katie and I were watching the Food Network's Unwrapped and they began talking about a guy who collects macaroni 'n' cheese boxes from products akin to the classic Kraft. This guy was kinda weird, in all honesty. After all, who collects boxes from mac 'n' cheese?

But, if I took nothing else away from it, I was very hungry afterwards. Hungry for one of my favorite foods growing up. Those wonderful elbow-shaped noodles smothered in cheese sauce. Of course, my mom would only cook the homemade variety when I was young. In fact, the only time I would have Kraft was either at a friend's house or when I got to college. For the most part, Katie and I make Kraft these days just because it's easy and cheap. But she recently blessed me with her on-the-fly homemade variety. Fan-friggin-tastic!

So yeah, it's pretty safe to say that mac 'n' cheese, along with grilled cheese sandwiches, was my favorite food as a kid. I could never get enough. I still can't. I've always sworn that if I became lactose intolerant, I'd likely throw myself off a cliff. Not that there are many viable "cliffs" in the Midwest United States, so it would be a very prolonged attempt at ritual self sacrifice.

I'm now noticing that this hunger is still not gone. As I type this, my stomach is grumbling something fierce.

Would it be entirely inappropriate to cook up some Kraft for breakfast?

Maybe I should bless that handful of kids that come walking by in costume tonight with a box of Kraft-y goodness.

Nah, I'm keeping it for myself. I'm selfish that way. ;-)

Bye bye, Miss American Pie...

They say that, sometimes, pictures speak louder than words. I'd like to take a moment to measure the decibel level of a few I took yesterday. If you're interested in more, click on over to Flickr.

Okay, so the last photo doesn't exactly fit in the theme I had started. But it's pie! Everyone loves pie! Why question it?

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): A happy belated sixth birthday to my friend, lover, and slavemaster.

The sky's the limit but my plane won't fly...

Paid Time Off...

Floating Vacation Days...

Personal Days...

Basically all are just different ways of noting that I have days off coming to me at work. But they're all designated differently. Some roll over from year to year, some expire at the end of a calendar year. With all this terminology, how is one supposed to keep it all straight?

I looked at my pay stub a week ago and discovered that I have one day's worth of personal days and three days worth of floating vacation days and they have to be used by the end of the year or I will lose them. Wait a second. I went on a five-day vacation at the end of May to Las Vegas. Why weren't they used up then?

Seems in my confusion over all this terminology, I marked the wrong box on my vacation request. I made the mistake of chalking up my time off to the only option that does not expire at the end of the year. D'oh!

And now I'm in the, I suppose, enviable position of forcing myself to take four days off before December 31. I know some of you are probably wondering why I'm whining. Wouldn't we all like extra time off? Well, yeah, and I've got plenty to do at home to keep me busy what with our wall project and everything. But I've got plenty to keep me busy at work as well. And trying to plan days off around my projects is never easy.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to lose these days. That's why I'm home today. I got to sleep in and, for the first time in a long time, was actually home while Katie was leaving for work. She's usually still asleep when I leave, so this is quite the change.

So I'll do some work on the walls, surf a bit, maybe watch Hot Fuzz since I got it from Netflix, meet Katie for lunch, work out, etc.

This grand list of potential accomplishments, of course, means I might get one of the above done. Probably the one about surfing.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I was in a Starbucks the other day and I noticed a sign by the register advertising a recall on children's mugs. The notice claimed that if the mug fell, it would likely shatter and, thus, create pieces with sharp edges.

Well duh.

Are we going to recall all ceramic, glass, wood, Plexiglas, and plastic products now? They all create sharp edges when broken.

Does anyone else think the Consumer Products Safety Commission is going a little overboard these days? A lot of these very same problems existed throughout my childhood and I like to think I turned out okay. I almost think the CPSC exists so people can be slack-ass parents.

It's an anniversary...

I wish I had more time to write, but I really don't. Sorry.

So just a quick note to say happy sixth anniversary to the love of my life.

Katie, I love you and I can't wait to see what the next six years brings us. And many more years beyond that as well.

Where I will annoy you... until you decide to wake up...

Hey all, sorry about the long weekend of no posting. But it felt kinda nice, so you won't really hear me complaining. However, it's weird to be here blogging again. It feels as though it's been nearly a month since I've posted. My fingers are even rusty when it comes to remembering how to type. Thank God for the delete key. Heh.

Another thing I had trouble getting reacquainted with was my alarm clock. Yeah, I remembered to set it, but this morning was like one of those days where you're using an alarm clock that you're not accustomed to. My brain worries that it won't sound at the right time, or the volume is turned down, or I set it for PM instead of AM. That sort of garbage. As a result, I woke up more than an hour in advance of my preset just to make sure I was up in time. I had a lot of trouble falling back asleep, as well. So I sat there and thought about what to blog. How sad is that?

Speaking of strange wake-up calls, I had one of those yesterday morning. Katie's been dying for me to finish reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, as you know, so she can talk to me about it. Well, on Saturday night, I made it to the next-to-last chapter before I decided I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.

The next morning, she crawls out of bed for a bathroom trip. Usually, when these happen, she just crawls back in bed. If you were to watch her, you'd swear she wouldn't even make it back up on the mattress and might just fall on the ground and start sawing logs.

Not yesterday.

She, instead, comes bounding out of the bathroom and jumps on top of me and shakes me awake like a child on Christmas morning. "TIME TO READ! TIME TO READ!" You've gotta be kidding me.

Well, I finished it. It was good. Not the best book of the bunch, but I did enjoy the second half much more than the first half. I do have a few questions that went unanswered, but I can deal with it. And I only got misty-eyed once. Just once. And not when you might have expected it.

One final wake-up call for the weekend... well, more like a rude awakening, I suppose. Katie and I went to the Northern Illinois vs. Iowa football game on Saturday at Soldier Field in Chicago. This was a home game for the Huskies of NIU even though it wasn't played on their home turf.

First, here's a quick geography lesson...

• University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, to Soldier Field, Chicago, IL = 227 miles according to Google Maps
• Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, to Soldier Field, Chicago, IL =  69.1 miles according to Google Maps

We, the Huskies, have a much shorter drive. And, while I realize that Iowa, being a Big 10 team has a larger fan base than the Huskies do, I really don't like witnessing a stadium filled with nearly 80% raving, yellow-clad beakheads when WE ARE THE HOME TEAM!

Huskie fans should be ashamed. That's all I have to say.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I have made Metalmomma smile! She says it was my Lyrical Challenge post about my shop class incident in middle school. Well, I'm glad it made you smile, but I'm truly afraid of what I'm going to have to do to elevate that smile to outright laughter. Severing a limb entirely is really pushing it, don't you think?

But, anyway, she gave me an award for it. My first blogging award ever!

Since I cannot find the origination of this award, I'm just going to do what Metalmomma did and hand it out to a few random people that I feel deserve it. This is not to say that you all don't deserve one of these puppies, but here are a few I'd like to point out for recent posts.

August at Girl on the Run... she could use a good smile in light of recent events and she's always made me smile in the past, so I'm returning the favor.

Brandon at Down With Pants!... his blog is very much like mine, completely disjointed and all over the place and we like it! Plus, he's secure enough in his heterosexuality to admit when a guy is good looking enough to make him potentially go gay. BTW, mine is Chris Isaak.

Sandra at Internal Monoblog... apparently something's got her real happy these days, and it's rubbing off. Damn you!

Michelle at This Fare City... who knew driving a cab could be so much fun and blog worthy? I wonder if any of her fares have found her blog and thought, "Hey, that asshole is me!"

Greg at What Greg Likes... I love his taste in music and have followed up on several albums he has recommended, although my credit card probably hates him right about now.

That our flag was still there...

I love that the Fourth of July holiday wound up in the middle of the week. Of course, I would not have minded a long weekend by having it fall on a Friday or Monday, but breaking up the week right in the middle was pretty nice, I must say.

On Tuesday night, Katie and I met up late to go see License to Wed. Not a spectacular movie by any means. In fact, parts of it were just downright bad. But if you go into it realizing that Robin Williams is not even a quarter the actor he used to be and that now he's a guy that just relies on over-the-top behavior to get a few pathetic yuks, then you'll be okay. Clearly, it was he that ruined the movie for us. Not that the rest was great, but we can easily pin a vast majority of our frustration on him and his "acting." Discussing it afterwards, we think we would've preferred someone like Dustin Hoffman in the role. It would've made for a better movie.

The next morning, we slept in late and made ourselves breakfast. Then we watched this week's episode of Miami Ink and flipped on the full version of the Concert for Diana on our Music: HD channel (I guess it's part of the VH1 family since it kept all the VH1 commentary throughout).

Let me tell you, NBC dropped the ball with their Matt Lauer-hosted, one-hour rebroadcast of the show. Katie had been looking forward to the concert for a couple weeks and so we watched it. They played, maybe, a grand total of seven songs of which only two were even decent and then they kill it after an hour??? What? They had something better to play on their fourth-ranked network over the summer dead season? They butchered the entire purpose behind the concert which was to capture Princess Diana's love of music and the arts and share it with the world. All NBC execs did was pick out a few of what they considered to be the more popular artists and play one song by each. They missed out on letting the world see a ballet company that Diana loved as well as reproductions of several songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals sung by some of the artists that made them popular on Broadway. Between each artist, they would either flash over to commentary by VH1 veejays or to a pre-filmed testimonial on how Diana affected the life of someone personally. The person would speak to the camera accompanied by archival footage or photos and then, when it was done, the camera would show that the person was in attendance at the concert.

The full-length concert was very well done and the Princes William and Harry did a fine job planning this six-hour spectacular (with help, I'm sure) only to have it slaughtered by Never Broadcasting Cualidad (okay, I was having trouble with the "C" so I resorted to Spanish. Sue me).

Of course, during this concert, we were cleaning the lower level of our house. We finally gutted our pantry closet and made it much more usable. It's quite nice now actually. We followed this up with shopping for new bikes. I think we found ones that we like and may go buy them this weekend. We've been using the same old $70 Target-purchased bikes for six years now and they're just not holding up well. This has a lot to do with the fact that for the first three years we owned them, we didn't have a garage in which to store them, so they stayed on our back porch during the winter and I would have to clean the rust off each spring. Not pretty. So we'll soon have new ones. Yay!

And now, the fireworks! As we did two years ago, we headed to St. Charles, the next town north on the Fox River, and watched what I consider one of the best suburban fireworks displays around. They did not fail us this time around either. Brian and Jen drove up for the display and I'm pretty sure they enjoyed them, too. It was about 25 minutes long and we had prime seating right across the river from where they were being launched.

God, I love fireworks. And me, of all people, forgot a camera. Go fig, eh?

Hero du Jour: I would be remiss if I didn't mention my eternal gratitude to Baba (I know it's not his name as I'm pretty sure this translates to "Papa") of Baba's Groceries, a small Indian grocery store in the strip mall where we parked for the fireworks. On a day when everyone either closed early or never opened in the first place, Baba kept his tiny little grocery open until just an hour before the fireworks started. On this hot, muggy day, he made a killing selling water bottles and snacks to the lumbering masses that forgot to bring their own and needed some cold refreshment. Smart man. And he was a nice guy, too. "Oh yes, those are very good cookies!" he said to me as I tried to figure which Indian cookies (made in Canada, of course) to buy. I chose the Pista cookies and they were, as he promised, great.

Asshat du Jour: A recap of our Fourth of July holiday would not be complete without pointing out the fact that Katie's earth science teacher kept her in class on the third until 9:15 at night. With people wanting to leave on holiday combined with the fact that half the other classes at the college were canceled and those that were in session were being let out a little after 7:00 p.m., you'd think this yahoo would be kind enough to forego any additional teaching. Nope. Instead he makes Katie and her class finish out the time with an hour-long video about how weather changed the course of World War II.

I hope you all had a good holiday as well.

Oh, and if you haven't submitted song lyrics for the second Lyrical Challenge, please do so today. I'll be picking one lyric per person and posting them tomorrow to have you vote on which ones you want me to use.

As long as the price is right...

Kapgar Readers, COME ON DOWN!!!

That's right, folks. Today is a big day in the history of television. Mr. Bob Barker, the very long-time host of the very long-running game show The Price is Right will be stepping down today at noon, eastern time, after nearly 35 years at the helm.

Personally, I have very fond memories of The Price is Right. It was one of the few game shows ever that appealed to me as a kid and, yet, my parents still enjoyed as well. Katie and her family loved it as well. It was simple to understand and incredibly thrilling to watch.

Will he roll his $100?

Will she guess the right price?

What's in Showcase Two???

My mom clearly recognized my love of the show and, when I was much younger and Bob took the show on a road trip around the country, she got us tickets to see him live. Granted I don't remember too many details as I was relatively young, I do remember enjoying it.

As I got older, my tastes evolved into slightly more challenging game shows such as Jeopardy! Ones that, in my opinion, involved more skill. But I always enjoyed Price regardless.

And my appreciation of Bob grew when I saw him move beyond just his hosting duties with a brief, but highly memorable, cameo in Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore. How can you not love seeing Bob kick the crap out of Happy on a golf course?

Oh the fun that Bob has given the world.

Now I ask you to help remember the good times with a memorial salute to three-and-a-half decades of televised enjoyment. We have International Towel Day to commemorate Douglas Adams. Now, how about International Price Tag Day to celebrate Bob Barker and his tenure on The Price is Right?

To participate, you simply need to print out this price tag image (68.3 KB), cut out around the edges, fill in your name, and wear it with pride all day!

I've got mine set to wear. Will you join me?

Show The Bob some love!

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I now have a new favorite photo of Katie that I took at my brother's wedding. After some cropping out of the background and playing with light levels, I finally have it where I want it and have posted it on Flickr. Totally hot!

This is our country...

Well, here's the second post I promised. Sadly, I remember this essay about flying over the Rockies and parts of the southwest U.S. being a lot longer as I wrote it. As it turns out, it's only a few brief paragraphs long. Not sure what happened there. But to flesh it out a bit, I'm going to include some photos I took. They're going to be rather small here on the page, but you can click through to Flickr to view them at full size. Some of the photos may look a bit muddy; I blame that on unclean airplane windows and the fact that I was sitting in the aisle seat reaching over Katie's sleeping body to take some of them. The really clear ones were taken by Katie when she was awake.

The view from up here is spectacular. White-peaked mountains struggling to break through the cloud cover. An attempt by the planet to say "good morning" as we pass overhead. Their majesty is second to none and it makes me long to live among them instead of the featureless flatlands where we currently reside.

An hour later, the view changes dramatically. The peaks collapse upon themselves into the earth forming plummeting canyons and ravines. Vast lengths of dried-out riverbeds no longer providing sustenance to the sun-baked clay. Low-level mountain ranges extending as far as the eye can see. Together, they comprise a multi-level, earthen tattoo... the planet's ink... made forever indelible by eons of weather-related phenomena.

And yet, despite the longevity of these features, an occasional and unnatural cut weaves its way into the fabric of the terrain. A man-made road winding its way through the earth or some other structure interrupting the natural flow proving that we, as mere mortals, can, far too quickly, undo what has taken millennia to create.

Sit down and talk to me...

Let's see... story about guys who made me ashamed to be male and human or my creative writing about flying over some of the most fantastic scenery ever? Well, I've got the latter recorded in my Moleskine, so I think I'll opt for the former before it fades from memory forever. Wouldn't want to disappoint Sandra by forgetting the story. Sound cool to you?

I want to say this was Friday morning in Vegas. Katie was out doing some of the girlie things that bridesmaids do and my brother and I decided to head poolside. We searched for nearly 10 minutes for chaise lounges before we finally found a pair at the very last pool furthest from the hotel property. We were the final two lounges in a row about 10 feet away from the actual pool. Right next to us were two guys in their early 20s.

My brother and I sat out and tanned for about 20 minutes before going into the pool. We went through this routine once or twice more. However, on the second-to-last tanning session, I heard one of the guys next to me on his cellphone talking to some buddies about coming down to the pool and hanging out and drinking some beer. Yeah, whatever. No big deal.

In our final time in the pool as we were passing around a Nerf football we purchased the night before, I looked over and saw that the two guys now had two more guys with them. They were all standing up talking and drinking basically because they had no place to sit. We watched them as we continued passing the ball to ensure that they didn't try to take our seats. Several minutes later, my brother and I got out of the pool and headed over to our lounges. We were cooked and ready to head in.

We sat on the ends of our seats and dried off. My brother grabbed his Blackjack and started to check messages and whatnot. I figured we would just get up and go leaving our lounges for the two new arrivals next to us.

However, during the next several minutes of my brother's message checking, I started listening in to what they were saying. And I quickly changed my mind about simply ceding our chairs to them.

"Oh, I'd never get it on with a fat chick... no way!"

Dear Christ no. Please don't tell me I'm sitting next to assholes (that's a quarter, I can afford it).

"Well, I did it once with one, but only because she had an awesome car."

And I am. Yay.

Several more comments such as this were passed among them. Then I heard one of them say, "I hope these guys next to us leave soon. I want their chairs."

The mental gears began to grind.

My brother hung up his phone and looked over to me to see if I was ready to go. I said not quite. He asked why and I relayed what I heard to him. He hung his head in disgust and asked what my plan was. I told him my plan was simply to leave when I was good and ready.

"Good and ready" arrived in the form of two 50-something women who were sharing our earlier frustration searching for lounges. I looked over to them and asked if they were, indeed, looking for a place to sit. They confirmed that they were and I offered them our seats. They were more than happy to accept. I remained seated until they were close enough that it was clear to everyone around us that they would be sitting in our lounges and no one could try to cut them off in a mad dash to sit down.

We walked away to profuse thanks from the two women and we also stopped about 20 feet away to make sure that the jagoffs didn't try to bargain them out of the seats. They didn't, so we continued on.

I got knucks and a "nicely played" from my brother.

I felt good about myself the rest of the day.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): As Katie and I were unloading our suitcases last night and separating the clothes into washing-machine-ready piles, I overheard her as she discovered the side pocket containing dirty underwear and socks... "It smells like crotch!"

I couldn't stop laughing for five minutes.

Welcome back...

What the holy heck happened here while I was gone?

My stats are through the roof, subscribers to the site are way up, and all my guest bloggers get a ton more comments than I get? On my own site??? Is this a sign that it's time for me to give it up and just let you all take over? Wow.

But I suppose this is what I get for letting the peanut gallery run rampant here on kapgar... they all bring their own nuts along with them. Hmmm.

I must take a second to thank all my guest bloggers. While I have not yet had a chance to read all the guest posts, what I have read has rocked! You are all awesome and very near and dear to my hearts. If I had a cool Friendship Circle rating system like Dave does (I'd link if I could find it on his site), you'd all be Circle 1. But I am curious how Dave's post yesterday wound up attributed to Snackie. Did I miss something?

So how was Vegas? Quite nice! Thanks for asking. We really did have a blast to be perfectly honest with you. Much moreso than I ever thought possible or ever wanted to have considering I was not looking forward to going. The ironic thing about it all is now that we've gone, I don't think we're welcome back. Katie and I violated two cardinal rules of vacationing in the city of Lost Wages.

1. We came back with more cash than we left with.
2. Despite being in the city of sin and buffets, we lost weight. This has never happened to us on a vacation ever before in our lives. We're shocked.

How much money and how much lost weight? For money, not a lot, but enough to make us smile. And I dunno the number of pounds exactly but I forgot to put a belt on my shorts one day and they were literally dragging down to my hips and Katie was hiking up her bridesmaid dress the entire night of the wedding. As much of an inconvenience as that may be, they are more than welcome and we hope they decide to extend their stay with other outfits we own.

Vegas itself was quite nice. But a week there is far too long. We were dying to come home by Friday of last week. However, I have compiled a list of things I learned about vacationing in Las Vegas in an extended post should you be so interested.

The sky's the limit...

Some aspects of the Vegas trip may be looking up a little bit... just a little.

Remember how I was griping last year about how useless our frequent flier miles proved to be when we were flying out to San Francisco?

Wait a sec... looking back through my posts, I apparently never did gripe about it. What the heck??? I found a post in which I optimistically noted that we planned to use our points. But I seemingly never updated you on the fact that we were never able to because American Airlines makes using their points nearly impossible.

I swear I typed up this post. Maybe I chatted with one of you about it? Sandra, perhaps? Jeez, tack another one on the list of signs that I'm losing my mind.

Hmmm. Interesting.

Well, the hope for SF was that we would save money on the airfare by using the points we had amassed. When we signed up for AAdvantage, we were told 30,000 points would get us tickets "anywhere in the contiguous 48 states." This proved to not be the case by the time we finally got ourselves up to the 30K level. By that time, the necessary amount jumped to 60K and, even then, there was no guarantee. Sorry, no grandfathering of members from the old "promise." So we never used the points and swore to ourselves that we would find a way to finally use them and cancel these worthless accounts.

And find a way to use them we did.

We're flying to Vegas first class, baby!

Neither Katie nor I have flown first class ever in our lives, either before our time as "Us" or after. This should be fun.

But you wanna hear the funnier thing? My parents and their neighbors will be on the same flight as us... back in the regular seating... back with all the dregs of airborne society... the cloud-bound losers... the Mile-High Self Loathers... (can you tell I'm hoping they read this?).

Sorry, Mom and Dad. But this opportunity presented itself and we had to take it.

Mwahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Ha.

Hey, considering the cost of airfare, I doubt Katie and I will ever be able to do this again. So I gotta enjoy it while I can.

This is ourselves, under pressure...

First, to the demons that clearly were possessing me for last Friday's far-too-beautifully-written-to-possibly-come-from-me post, I do thank you. But do you think, next time (if there is a "next time"), that you could send the Supplemental Demon in Charge of Spell and Grammar Checking? As cool as that post turned out, I found myself correcting about a half dozen different errors throughout it. So not like me. One or two is acceptable. Six to eight and I bang my head against a wall repeatedly.

It really hurts after a while.

So, I'd appreciate any help you could give me. Thanks.

And moving right along...

The two-week countdown to Vegas is now on. And I'm looking forward to this trip even less than I was several weeks ago. The thrill of travel always seems to take a backseat to practicality as you sit around making the final arrangements before you leave. We've arranged with our neighbor to water our outside plants and collect our newspapers. We'll soon put a stop order on our mail. And we're also going to start putting things aside to be packed for the trip.

Packing is far and away the worst part. How little can you get away with packing while still bringing everything you need?  What should we bring for entertainment? What should we take as carry-on luggage and what can we safely risk putting in the underbelly of the plane?

This last question terrifies me the most considering someone Katie met this past Wednesday.

She was talking to this woman at a local drug store while shopping. She was in town visiting her son and his family and flew out. The reason that she was shopping despite being on vacation is that she was waiting for her heart medication to be filled. Seems that the airline security checkers wouldn't let her take all her heart meds on board with her because they exceeded the maximum amount of three ounces of liquids that they allow on board. Even though she had a prescription for them, she couldn't bring them on board. Oh, and they wouldn't let her dump out a little to make it all equal three ounces. Instead, she was forced to put them in storage under the plane. And the airline lost them. All of them. And she was spending her first day of vacation on the phone with her doctor getting emergency refills to avoid dying.

Some vacation, eh?

But it gets better. The woman who was waiting in line in front of this elderly lady to file a loss complaint at the airline counter was in tears because she had traveled out here to Chicago for her own wedding. And the airline had lost her wedding shoes, headpiece, veil, and undergarments. Luckily she had the dress in carry-on with her. The others could potentially be replaced in time for the wedding.

It's not as though brides don't already have enough to worry about in the final few days before their wedding (in this woman's case, this past Saturday), but now she was forced to replace vital elements of her wedding gown that had already been taken care of once before. All I can say is that if the airline balked at paying ANY value for the lost items (she is at the mercy of what stock the local boutique shops have available at such short notice), the person in charge of making that decision should be beaten.

Yes, I realize that it's not the desk clerk's responsibility when luggage is lost. But the least they can do is show sympathy to these people who have lost very personal and, sometimes, life-giving things due to the irresponsibility of some of their coworkers. I find it completely unforgivable just how uncaring airline employees are about such matters. We, as travelers, are nothing but additional paperwork to them and, therefore, we don't even merit a hint of compassion. The least they can do is slide us a card with a name of their superior and a direct phone number so we can give them crap directly. But, nobody at all wants to take responsibility for these lost items. The buck keeps getting passed around and around in a giant, mad, never-ending circle until we, as the victim, get so frustrated that we have no choice left but to accept the apology-lacking pittance of money they give us to replace our items. Asshats.

So yeah, Katie's carry-on item will be her dress and shoes and we'll each also have one change of clothes on board with us. The rest we'll have to risk in the underbelly storage and pray nothing happens to it.

Typically, when we travel, we pack light. Everything we need is in our carry-on bags so we don't have to worry. It's a wonderful skill we've developed. However, being a wedding that we're going to Vegas to attend, we have to pack a lot more than we normally would.

And, thus, we have one of the many reasons I'm not looking forward to traveling in a couple weeks. But this is, like I said, just one of many.

Bringin' ev'ry girl and boy a basket full of Easter joy...

As per usual with most major holidays, Katie and I spent the weekend with two different families, Saturday night with mine and Sunday afternoon with her's.

No, this is not going to be a recap of all the events that went on at both celebrations. Actually, it's more of a decrying of a family tradition whose time has passed. Sadly, too.

The Easter Egg Hunt.

For years, we've been doing Easter Egg Hunts with Katie's family simply because there were young kids around that enjoyed being a part of such a vaunted event. Some of us adult-like people would hide the eggs in the yard and then let the younger ones go find them. They would then be treated to a bag full of chocolate and, perhaps, money.

However, I think it may be time to officially kill this tradition. At least until new "young-uns" are brought into the fold.

You see, currently, the youngest of the bunch is E, and he's 12 or 13 right now. At yesterday's celebration, not only was it a struggle to get some of us off our butts to go hide the eggs, but we also had to "wait until the end of the inning" of the Cubs-Brewers game and then pick E up by the collar of his shirt to make him go out and find them. Then, when we realized he was pretty much the only one taking part, all of us 20- and 30-somethings had to go out and search for the eggs as well just to make it look good.

And we were the ones that hid them in the first place.

So somebody tell me how wrong that is? Time to kill it, you think? Yeah, I do too.

But at least Katie and I found four bucks. That's my allowance for the week, baby!

Got a meme for you in the extended post, BTW...

Hoppin' down the bunny trail...

Ohmigod! He's posting on a Sunday!

Well, not really. Just wanted to drop a note to wish everyone a Happy Easter!

Surprise...

"Surprise!" They all yelled in unison.

And the victim, my lovely wife, stood there. No jump. Just a look of shock on her face emphasized by her bugged-out eyes. Any less self control and it's possible her jaw would have hit the floor.

That's right. I threw Katie a surprise party for her 30th birthday this past Saturday. I know it was two weeks after the fact, but it was the only weekend I could bring just about everybody I wanted together to celebrate without it being too far gone from her actual birthday that it would have lost all effect.

19 people were in attendance in all, including our parents and siblings, some neighbors, and our gamenight friends save for one couple that were snowed in up in el Campo de Queso (that would be Wisconsin).

Two weeks late has an advantage, too, in that she didn't suspect a thing. That's right, I kept it a surprise, baby! The fact that I managed to keep from acting freaked out all day is a shock even to me. That I didn't slip and eke out word of the affair in the weeks leading up to it is also noteworthy. That not a single one of the 19 other attendees slipped in the slightest is nothing short of a miracle.

I wish I had photos, but I forgot that I changed jackets and left my camera in my other one that day. Some people took photos, but I have yet to see them. Maybe someone will take pity and e-mail them to me. Please?

Happy birthday, dear Katie...

Okay everybody, let's get lined up!

Sopranos and altos in the front. Yep, that's right. Can we cluster all the sopranos right in the middle and have the altos flank them on the sides? Perfect!

Tenors... I need you to surround the sopranos and altos! Yes, that's it!

And basses, you know what to do. Yep, you got it. Great, we're ready!

On three.

One...

Two...

Three...

Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday, dear Katie!
Happy birthday to you!

And many moooooooooorrrrreee!

Today is a big birthday for Katie. Admittedly, it's not one she's been looking forward to, but I've been trying to convince her that it's really not so bad. You know that fifth anniversary of her 25th birthday? Yeah, that's the one.

However, I think my words can only do so much to ease her suffering. After a while, I'm sure I sound like a broken record. Plus, it probably comes across as a 32-year-old guy trying desperately to make his own age not so bad.

So, can any of you help? Tell her it's not a big deal? It's just a number? That she can be "thirty, flirty, and fun"?

All joking aside. I love you, Kate. Happy birthday! I hope you enjoy your gifts and your dinner tonight. It's going to be nice actually celebrating one of our birthdays on the night it actually happens for once.

I love you!

Pretend that you love me...

Before I delve into the meat of this post, I do want to say Happy Valentine's Day to all of you. But I would like to float the biggest heart of hearts that I can find to my wife. I love you, hon. And I don't know what I would do without you in my life. You're everything to me.

Carrying on in the "love" theme, I found a rather interesting concept from my blog crush, Hilly, who came up with an intriguing idea she has dubbed "Self-Love Day." And, while that name can come across as rather, erm, interesting sounding (and the tagline on the image isn't much better), I must say it is a novel idea and one in which I would like to take part.

Here's what you are supposed to do...

1.) Post one of the banners from Hilly's site and declare Valentine's Day as the day you not only love your one and only, but the day that you love yourself!

2.) Post one nice thing about yourself... then ask others to post one thing that they really like about you.  

3.)  Enjoy yourself!

So here we go... in addition to being 100% truly, madly, deeply in love with Katie, I also love myself. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonnit, people like me!

Okay, enough with the Stuart Smalley interpretation of life. Seriously, though, people are so worried about making an impression on others and making other people like them that their own self-love really does go by the wayside. Don't most therapists say that the only way to make others love you is by first loving yourself? So you can see why this idea of Hilly's, as odd as it sounds initially, does really have a pretty high level of merit.

So, right now, I'm declaring that, while not perfect, I am a decent human being with strong personal values and the ability to love those people I feel are deserving of my love.

Anybody out there willing to take a stab at saying something nice about me? And remember what Thumper's mother said, "if you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nuthin'."

Oh, what the heck... my sense of humor is another positive, I feel. So you can even have a little fun and rip into me, if you feel so inclined. It could make the comments that much more interesting!

I want too much, too much...

Clearly "efficiency" is not a problem for FTD. "Accuracy," on the other hand...

Yesterday, just as I was grabbing my coat and heading out the door for work at a little past 7:00 a.m. (CST), I remembered that I had wanted to order some roses for Katie to be delivered to her on Valentine's Day. Knowing how jammed up the floral services tend to be around this time of year, I questioned whether or not an order placed yesterday would be enough time to allow for such a delivery to happen.

But I logged in to FTD.com anyway and tried to place an order for a dozen long-stem red roses. No problem. I paid what came out to an exceptionally exorbitant amount (unaware that because of frosts in California, their rose crop was for crap this year driving prices through the roof) and received a guarantee that she would get the roses when I designated.

About 9:15 that morning, I receive a call from Katie at work...

Katie: So why today?

Kevin: Why what today?

Katie: Why did you have them delivered today?

[I knew exactly what she was talking about with her first comment; this second one cemented it. But I wanted to play it safe anyway.]

Kevin: What are you talking about?

Katie: The roses. Why did you have them delivered on Monday the 12th?

Kevin: They came today?!?! They were supposed to be delivered on Wednesday.

Katie: Well they came today. And my boss would like to point out that you misspelled his name on the card.

Kevin: Tell him "ha ha."

Katie: He liked it.

Kevin: They really came today?

Katie: I'm looking at them.

Kevin: Hm. Happy Valentine's Day?

Katie: You think this gets you off the hook for a gift on the actual day?

Kevin: Again, ha ha. And considering what I spent... yes.

 Katie: Sorry. But they are beautiful.

Kevin: Well, that's good. Now I'm off to throttle someone at FTD. Love ya. And Happy Valentine's Day two days early.

Katie: Love ya, too.

Am I just expecting too much?

Here I was worrying that I wasn't going to be able to place an order two days prior to a major flower holiday and not only was I able to order, but they had the order delivered within three hours!!

Well, at least I know where to go for last-second flower orders. Just don't ever plan ahead again, apparently.

To FTD, thanks for filling the order. But can you do it on the right day next time?

Y nuevo ano felicidad...

Would you like to hear a recipe for a great New Year's weekend? Here you go...

1. A showing of Wicked at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago. This is our second time seeing this musical and it has not failed to impress us either time. It's fantastic. But, this time, we were able to introduce my brother and the FSiL to it. Both of them loved it also. If you ever have a chance, we highly recommend it.

2. An Ugly Betty marathon on ABC Family. The entire first half of the season replayed in order. How can you go wrong? That is such a fantastic show and one of our favorites of the season.

3. Watching the Bears v. Packers game despite the fact that the Bears did lose miserably. Notable comment from the game...

Me: "Do we have a quarterback we can rely on?!?!"

Katie: "May-nard! May-nard! May-nard!"

But I will say that the only way to watch football is to TiVo it and then tune in a bit later. You get to fast forward through all that insipid announcer commentary. God I hate sports announcers.

4. Tear apart a gingerbread house that miraculously survived the entire holiday season. Couldn't eat a bit of it as the gingerbread was stale out of the box, though.

5. Have some fantastic food like a homemade taco dip courtesy of Katie and a dessert of Edy's Vanilla Bean ice cream covered in rum-glazed bananas courtesy of me (using a recipe book we own, though) and chocolate sauce courtesy of Katie.

Yeah, good weekend. Check that... great weekend!

Hope your's was great as well.

Happy 2007 to all of you!