surprising singalong story

Every Saturday night the boys of the house hide down stairs while I enjoy my favorite radio program. When we go places during the 8pm-12pm time slot they all fight over who has to ride with me so not to be tortured by "Show Tunes Saturday Night". And so it was two Saturdays ago. Evan announced that he was buying a 50" Plasma TV, well then Levi had to run and buy an Xbox 360, leaving Jamino and I to procure a copy of Halo 3 and some Xbox controllers. It was 7:45pm and not quite time for the torture to begin. Jamino had some gift cards to Best Buy from previous birthdays and Christmas. Best Buy was empty so we took some time looking at all the gadgets then bought two controllers and the game. Getting back in the car I turned on my show. There was a song from Gray Gardens followed by one from The King & I. Jamino trying to drowned out the sound by asking me where the songs were from and whether I had heard them before. The next song came on and to my utter amazement he started singing along. It was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Sobbing Women. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LO1h6iZW54

Duh, Big Red Truck!

Now this has nothing to do with trucks, but everything to do with a big red BLOND moment! I decided probably to no ones surprise to paint a wall in the living room red. This comes as no real surprise since the last two places I have lived have had a red wall, a painted one in my last apartment and a fabric one in our 1st apartment. But this time around I didn't want anything subtle, soft or subdued. I found the brightest red paint I could find, and due to the pigments in this paint it was only available in a high gloss oil medium instead of the normal latex everyone uses now in days. Having never used an oil on anything but canvas I was a little leery about covering a wall with it--the fumes and drying time . . . but since I love to paint walls and do so often I thought --no problem. Of course there are some big differences. Multiple coats of latex can be applied on the same day since there is less drying time. The paint store told me to wait 24 hours to apply any additional coats of the oil based paint. The problem here is that painting is suppose to be cheap instant gratification--change a room and have it all put back together in one day. So as to save myself the extra prep step I elected to ignore the foremost, cardinal rule of painting. You should always pull the tape off before the paint dries for nice straight lines. This prevents the paint from bleeding out on the molding or from drying on the tape and pulling off the wall. Since I hate taping I decided I would leave the tape on until all the coats were done so the tape stayed on for several days since each coat was dried for 24 hours. Well, Duh, Big Red Truck--what did you think was going to happen when I pulled the tape off?

Paper Tigers and Other annoyances

Sad that my very 1st post on my very first blog is a list, but I haven't written much in the last 10 years. I used to love to write, and believed I couldn't begin to dent the plethora of worthy topics available, I now find myself at a loss for how to begin and what to say. I once read, and don't recall the source, "When one finds that they have nothing of note in their lives, it's not the life but how they look at their life that needs to change." On that thought I am endeavoring to record the random events, methods, routines and thoughts of my days so that I might enrich my perspectives and create a compilation of thoughts, memories, regrets, and gratuities. As I am a fairly somber, and solemn creature I'm not promising any sort of great insight or entertainment from this blog. So with that disclaimer now laid out I begin with a list of paper tigers and other annoyances.

1. Dishes
2. Cleaning the fish tank
3. Deciding what to wear in the morning
4. When the toilet seat and lid get left up
5. Dirty socks left wherever people take them off (under the computer desk, under the dining table, stuck at the end of the bed where the flat sheet tucks under the mattress . . .)
6. Girls with big hair who giggle a lot, make lots of noise and yet offer no substance in conversation
7. Men and businesses that assume that #6 describes all women
8. Public restrooms that don't have push doors to get out thus requiring you to touch the handle to let yourself out, and then don't at least put a garbage by the door to toss the paper towel you then have to use to open the door
9. Barky dogs
10. Carpet in bathrooms
11. Spiders
12. Weeds (except fireweed, sunflowers, iris and poppies)
13. Shelves that lean
14. Cracks in sidewalks
15. Blatant liars
16. People who don't use turn signals
17. People who don't believe in global warming
18. Tap water with an aftertaste
19. Okay-anything with an aftertaste
20. Bright lights
21. Junk Mail
22. Cleaning ceiling fans