It’s that special time of year when we purposely drive into the most congested part our city to wait in long lines and spend money we don’t have. After all, nothing says “Thanks for being born, Jesus!” like flipping somebody off in a parking lot.
I kid, I kid.
Seriously, I hope you’re able to enjoy time with your family today as you remember the reason for the season. I tried everything I could to avoid using the phrase “reason for the season,” but I couldn’t do it.
Anyhow…I’ll stop writing now and just encourage you to watch this short video message:
Some day I’ll carve a really intricate design into a pumpkin.
For now, I’ll leave that to the experts.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve never been that into pumpkin carving. I mean, I’ve done it, but mostly because it’s what you’re supposed to do at Halloween. Some people get super into it and make pies and roast the seeds, the whole nine yards. Not me. I mostly just complain about how nasty the innards are that you have to remove.
Ok, have a ruined it yet?
So excited.
The truth is, though, I do have a favorite part. The fire part. I love seeing what the final product looks like all lit up in the dark. I stick that candle in there, light it, then stand back and ooh and ahh at that hacked-up fruit. If you wanted to get real philosophical here, a person could say something about how light brings beauty to darkness…but, I’m not going to do that.
Without further ado, I present to you my somewhat instructional video on how to carve a pumpkin with one hand:
I almost made it out of the bowling alley without getting stared at.
Almost.
Last night Sam and I went bowling and it was great. Total “Guy’s Night Out” material. Sam was disappointed in his scores, as was I with mine, but we still had a lot of fun. Plus, we made these videos:
You couldn’t write it any better. Then I was like, “Stand over here and try it so you can see the pins.” And then this happened:
I’m really good at keeping an ice cream cone from dripping.
Its one of my favorite skills.
I’m incredibly careful, with wide licks around the entire base of the ice cream first, then I work my way up to the top making the scoop as smooth as possible on-top of the cone. It’s a very clean and enjoyable experience.
This makes me SO uncomfortable.
My kids, on the other hand…not so much.
They try, but they’re kids, ya know? They get messy. And as much as I want to grab their cone from them and “fix it,” I don’t. I let them enjoy it. I let them get messy and covered with chocolate.
In that way, eating an ice cream cone is a lot like life. It can be really messy sometimes, but also really yummy.
Yep, I just made that metaphor. And said life is yummy.
With that in mind, here’s I scoop an ice cream cone with one hand:
When I was a kid my mom made me floss every night.
My step-brother and step-sister and I would sit in the bathroom, whining for what seemed like an eternity while we flossed our teeth. We’d stare out the doorway, longing for our freedom.
In reality, it was probably about five minutes.
Sorry about that, mom.
Now I actually love flossing my teeth. There’s just something about getting those chunks of meat and cilantro out after eating at Chipotle.
This is the kind I like most.
I usually use regular floss, though sometimes those floss picks come in handy (pun intended). Those floss picks can be painful, though, in my experience. Especially with your back teeth. I’ll try to get that little piece of floss between my teeth and then SNAP, it jams up into my gums. Youch! So, regular floss is still option one for me.
This one time I ran into a van with a riding lawn mower.
I had told the person I was mowing for that I knew how to use it. That was a lie. But, how difficult could it be, right? Well, apparently it’s important to know how the gears work. Especially on a hill. As I started to roll backwards, frantically trying to figure out how to stop, I saw the van out of the corner of my eye. Before I knew it… WHAM! I looked around. As far as I could tell, nobody saw it happen. I put the mower in gear and off I went.
Sorry…person that owned that van.
I’ve mowed lawns with a regular lawn mower my whole life. Never made any adjustments. Starting it can be a bear, depending on the setup of the mower, but it really hasn’t been a problem.
This is a lawn mower.
I still like mowing the lawn, but these days it’s a little more painful than it used to be. Having to push the mower with one hand is hard on my wrist. And the vibrations don’t help. That said, it’s still doable. (Full disclosure: I live in a condo. I never mow my own yard. Don’t worry about it.)
Here’s a video of me starting the mower and mowing a little bit. Please feel free to post your thoughts and questions in the comments section!
As a kid, it was all about finding cards of my favorite players. There weren’t very many brands, so you bought Topps or Donruss and that was about it. I specifically remember buying a triple-pack of 1987 Topps baseball cards at a Madison Muskies game when I was ten and rifling through them over and over.
Wally Joyner’s 1987 Topps card.
I’ve written before about my Jim Abbott collection and I always collected Robin Yount cards because he was (and still is) my favorite Brewer. In the early ’90s, though, card collecting became about the “chase cards.” The inserts. We started to break open packs, and even entire boxes, without even looking at the “common” cards. We just wanted the rare ones because they were worth the most. And there were about a million different brands and styles and sets and…you name it, they made it. It became so confusing.
The thrill shifted from opening a pack and finding cool cards of the players you liked, to finding a rare card worth hundreds of dollars. And that makes sense. I mean, it also explains our obsession with shows like Storage Wars and Pawn Stars and American Pickers. Even their predecessor, Antiques Roadshow, captures my attention if I’m flipping around.
We all have that fantasy of finding an original Van Gogh at a garage sale or a box full of money tucked away in the attic. Chances are, though, that’s not going to happen. But it could…and that’s the allure, right? I think we need to remember to enjoy the common things in life, though, and then if we’re surprised by something out of the ordinary, it will be that much more rewarding! Whether that’s a rare baseball card pulled from a fresh pack or an unexpected visit from your wife at lunch, it means so much more when we re-learn to enjoy the common, everyday aspects of life.
Without further ado, here’s how I open packs of sports cards:
Here’s the thing: Volleyball has never been my strong-suit.
Maybe I just wasn't playing with the right people.
I like to play it and I’ve played it a lot…I’m just not very good. I was going to say that I’m not very reliable, but that’s not really true. You can rely on me to serve and spike well, and to struggle when it comes to bumping and setting. Bumping is the hardest. You have to hit the ball just right around your wrist or forearm to have any control and most of the time that hurts like the dickens. And what’s that mean, anyway? The dickens?
One thing I’m really good at, though, is trash-talking. You can hear my friend Jessica giving me the business at the end of the video below, but that’s only after I dropped this on her:
“How’s your throat, Jess?”
“Fine, why?”
“Because it’s about to be sore from me SPIKING THE BALL DOWN IT.”
