Perhaps beer is good for you.

June 5, 2010

Vacation, day 1.  I have been waiting for this break from work, and they have probably been waiting for this break from me.  They made it seem like they were going to miss me, but they were just being nice.

So, tomorrow is our departure for Atlanta to see my sister (unless you are reading this to gauge when to break into our home, then we actually don't leave until 6/12).  Today we are volunteering for Target down at the Lung Walk in Cincinnati.  There will not actually be lungs walking, but I think it is meant to raise money and awareness for prevention and treatment of Lung Cancer.  Several members of my store are meeting me down there to volunteer.  I told the smokers it would probably not be a good idea for them to choose this event as their one volunteer event of the year.  Yes, we have mandatory volunteer events.  Oxymoronic much?
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We have been home from the walk for awhile and have also accomplished some clothes shopping for vacation.  No time like the last minute.  In reality, the only time I can get Beth to buy clothes is when we are going on vacation.  I know, who is the lucky dude?  I am.  My wife does not spend money on clothes.  Won the wife lottery there I did.

So the walk was a bit boring, but otherwise not very exciting.  We did our share by cheering on the walkers and finding a short-cut for the walkers who were taking an hour longer to walk the course than everyone else.  To be fair, they did both have canes and it was great that they were showing support for a lost relative-someone named "Paw".  Apparently, he will be missed.  We then helped clean up the event and avoided any participation in the air guitar contest that was going on.  I have done my one stint in an air guitar contest that finished with me fully dressed in a pool.  If I have never told that story before, perhaps another time.  I will need to revisit my own past posts.

In two bits of other news, Diane and 12days, the sound you are not hearing is our new dishwasher.  It is running right now and the only issue I foresee is that I will have no idea when it is done.  Weird, the technology.  Beth picked this one out.  Scratch and dent days are gone.

Finally, Beth and I actually went out the other night.  I haven't posted much about going out shenanigans because we rarely do anything social that does not involve CJ.  However, we went to a local church's summer festival on Friday night.  A coworker of Beth's had texted her that a band they liked would be there.  Beth had worked with one of the band members 20 years ago, so she wanted to see if she could tell which one he was in the band.  It took some doing, but Beth finally had to ask the sound crew which one he was.  No hard liven for him, apparently, he looked good. 

However, while Beth was checking out the band, I saw the wife of my college roommate walk by.  I was friends with her too back at Xavier, but her husband and I always got along great and it was good to know he was in the neighborhood.  I have not done a good job keeping up with anyone from college since I had moved away with Kmart when I was in my early 20's.  By the time I moved back to Cincinnati, either we had lost touch, they were busy with their own families, or they had moved out of town.  So Brian and I had a beer together at the festival and caught up on things.  We may even be able to get together with our other college dorm mates as one is moving back from Tennessee soon and Brian has kept up with a couple of the others.  One he has kept up with is a guy who is married to a girl I dated for two years at Xavier until she cheated on me with him while I was away for a weekend.  I see them around about once a year, and it is still a bit awkward.  Perhaps that will make for good blog fodder one of these days.  I am surprising myself with some blog topics for later that I didn't remember I had in the crevices of my brain.  It is weird how suddenly drinking beer is jogging old memories.  I thought it was supposed to have the opposite effect.  Maybe I better go buy a 12 pack and see if I can remember what I did with my first wedding ring.  Oh look, another story!!

What's that sound?

May 25, 2010

Currently, I have the dishwasher running while I attempt to come up with something to blog about.  This may not seem that difficult, you may be thinking, but have you heard our dishwasher?  I would think maybe you have, you just don't know it.  It makes a sound something like that of a jackhammer drilling into metal.  I know a couple of you who occasion this blog are on the west coast, so I apologize if the sound has awaken you early.  It is 8:45 here in Cincinnati.  I think that makes it somewhere around the middle of the night out there in California and Oregon.  They say you get what you pay for, and I am paying dearly for cheaping out on this dishwasher.  It was a scratch and dent bargain from Sears/Kmart.  I found it over in a corner because someone had returned it because it "didn't have the capacity she was looking for."  Boy, am I a moe.  Fell for that sales pitch.  Perhaps it did not have the capacity for being able to hear the person next to you while it was running.  Therefore, I run the dishwasher while Beth is at work so she cannot remind me what a good deal this dishwasher was.  Every once in a while she asks if the president is landing his helicopter on our roof.  Sarcasm much?  Next time he visits, I may need to ask him for one of those presidential pardon things.

So vacation plans will be finalized today.  We leave town on Sunday June 6th, so hotel reservations may be a good idea.  I know some people prefer to wing it when they go places, but I am not really a fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy.  I like to know where we are going, when we are going to get there, and where I am sleeping that night.   If it were possible to know the name of the housekeeper and/or if the room will be clean in advance, that would also be helpful.  My family and I like to stay nice places, but our budget dictates we don't go too lavish.  Especially, since our hotel stays are going to be one night stopovers.  When we have gone to Orlando for a few days, we splurged on the Hardrock Hotel near Universal Theme Park, and it was AWESOME.  But for a one night stay in Chattanooga or Nashville, I think we are destined for the Holiday Inn Express.  They will feed us before we leave.  Did I mention that CJ is 13 and filling up with testosterone as we speak?  He eats about every 20 minutes.  He has gone from 5'5", 120 pounds to 5'7", 135 pounds in about 3 months.  Beth keeps lamenting the fact that this large CJ ate her baby CJ.  That sounded a little more morbid than she intends it.  He isn't a dingo.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghCTZF61ey0&feature=related

Anyway, that wasn't too abstract.  I am a bit surprised that I figured out how to do that.  Go me and my mad computer linking skills.  As June Gardens likes to say, I am Abraham linkin'.

So, yes, I am stalling.  I am going to pick the hotel, but am worried that I am going to pick one that sucks.  What if there is a jackhammer right outside our room?  We are leaving town to get away from that sound.  What if the room isn't clean or is right next to the ice machine?   These things have happened.  It has caused undue stress.  Screw it, trip cancelled. 

Wait!  Good idea coming in...I'm heading for the gym.  That should put hotel picking off for another hour or so.  Then, when I get home, maybe June will have posted.  That should buy me some more time.  I will see some of you over at Bye Bye Pie shortly, and I will look much more buff.  Smell you later.