…this was totally the dinner that I shared with my wife this evening… 
I still can’t entirely believe that I’m actively enjoying sushi now, what with it still being very much raw fish and all, but I’ll be damned if that deliciousness wouldn’t at least be worth a shot!
I’m even starting to learn how to use chopsticks and everything!!!
TSA: Fail
http://gmancasefile.blogspot.com/2012/01/tsa-fail.html
This is probably one of the best fully fleshed-out critiques I’ve read about the TSA in a long time, and what particularly makes it special is that of all people, it was written by a former FBI agent of 25 years who specialized in counter-terrorism. It’s kind of a longer read, but it’s very thorough and well written as he addresses each of the biggest policies and procedures that are carried out on tens of thousands of passengers every single day and why for the most part they’re all worthless and utterly ineffective at actually preventing anything even remotely threatening…
I don’t know if Cleo is purposely trying to push my buttons, but she’s certainly doing a damn fine job of it!
So we’ve been known to give her bones from time to time, occasionally as a reward, but let’s face it – more likely as a bribe when we really need to get something done that requires a lack of Cleo-intervention. This normally works out well for everyone – we buy them in bulk from Petco for about $1.50/bone, and in return said bone typically buys us an hour or so of peace and quiet. Cleo’s happy, we’re happy – everybody’s happy … well, that is until she decided to start hoarding them…
…hoarding them outside, anyways…
You see, normally if anything she might hide one of her bones in the blankets of our bed or under a couch cushion, and it’s all cute and funny because she’s so intent about what she’s doing, even though nobody else in the house has any desire whatsoever to actually steal one of her bones! But the problem comes when she decided that it was far safer to store her most prized of treasures outside … underground … in the dirt, because well, as you might guess where this is going – who in their right mind wants to eat outside?! … and thus she brings said dirt-covered bones back indoors, proceeding to track dirty nastiness all over my freshly cleaned carpets!
It’s bullshit, I tell you! Bullshit…
Today they’re doing something a little special over at Disney World – the Magic Kingdom is staying open for 24 hours straight.
The latest I think I’ve ever still been in the park is maybe 1 or 2am, during the summer months combined with Extra Magic Hour Evenings when the place is sometimes open as late as 3:00am. It tends to really clear out that late, with the occasional exception of the headlining attractions, so we just never felt the need to stay until the very last minute because we had already ridden pretty much everything we had our hearts set on well before that anyways … but I still would’ve liked to attend this year, if only the 29th hadn’t been on such an inconvenient day right in the middle of the week!
The next leap year will have February 29 falling on a Monday in 2016, but 2020’s will be on a Saturday, so if we can’t make the arrangements to schedule it in advance in four years, I suppose I could always just wait until I’m 40?! 😯
Woof! I don’t even want to think about that just yet, so here’s a pretty picture of the castle instead…
By my clock, it should be turning this shade over there just about any time now! For all those lucky enough to be running around the park another 10 hours from now – enjoy it! Here’s hoping that maybe I’ll be able to tag along next time…
I was a bit saddened today to read the headline that Jan Berenstain, who with her husband co-created the beloved Berenstain Bears series of children’s books, had passed away.
Growing up, our house was filled with the Berenstain Bears books – we had dozens of the things, teaching lessons of not watching too much TV and eating too much junk food and not talking to strangers. Heck, every year when Easter comes around, I still hear the words from the song that Papa Bear sings when proclaiming that he’ll be the Easter Bunny! “If you want something done, then do it yourself…”
It never even dawned on me at the time, but looking back from a different angle now from a writer’s perspective, it’s actually kind of neat because Stan and Jan were actually a husband and wife team who together shared nearly every aspect of creating each book – from coming up with the initial idea, writing the story itself, and then drawing and coloring the entire thing, too. The entire process for a 32-page, full color book took the pair a couple of months to complete, and over the last 43 years, together they published over 200 children’s books … and that’s not even considering animated TV specials and a whole host of other products across the franchise!
In the 90s, their children also began getting involved with the family business, and after Stan Berenstain passed away in 2005, Jan continued creating the series with one of her sons while the other attended to the business side of things.
There’s a whole lot more to learn both over at their Wikipedia article and also in this interview that Jan & Stan did with Scholastic.
I’m going to pass on my quick summary post this week (even though I did lose another 0.6 pounds) because instead I want to talk about a bigger goal that I recently put on the horizon – this fall, my wife and I are going on another cruise!
It’s technically for a few different things – celebrating our 5th anniversary, as well as stress relief in preparation for some other big stuff this fall – but while we’re at it, I’ve decided that I’d really like to try and also make it a celebration for having shed a ton of weight as well. As the calendar falls today, we set sail in about 31 weeks, meaning that if I could merely lose a little over a pound a week, I’d be at my ideal weight by the time we leave the dock, thus leaving all the more room for the ridiculous indulgence that can only take place on what is essentially a floating buffet table with a swim-up bar…
At first I was a little hesitant to set a “big goal” like this because it can be so discouraging to miss them, but at the same time, the more I thought about it the fear of failure is a horrible reason not to set a goal in the first place, and especially considering that this is something that I’ve been trying to do for quite some time now and that without a doubt I certainly ain’t getting any younger here, even if I only get halfway to my goal, that’s a few steps farther than I got last year and if it takes even a few consecutive years of 20 pounds/year to get to where I need to be, that’s still a hell of a lot better than dying of a heart attack at 40 because it was too big of a task to even try.
So if you want the raw numbers, that’s right around 35 pounds in 31 weeks … the end goal being to be able to relax and just enjoy a long week with my wife, completely unencumbered by both stress and fat as we sail idly around the Caribbean. We’ve actually talked about not even leaving the boat this time – the last time we went, I admittedly felt a little rushed because we had excursions just about every day that demanded our rise before 8:00am, so this time we’re thinking it might be fun and different to just lounge around on the ship the whole time and really take in the atmosphere, enjoy the pools, stay out late and watch the stars, and that sort of thing. We also splurged for a room right next to the spa, so chances are there might be a few massages on the docket for each of us before our trip is through, too!
Now to just give that masseuse a little something less flabby to work with… 😛
The last 24 hours I spent way more time in the company of the Rug Doctor than I had originally anticipated, but nonetheless I was still quite pleased with the overall result…
Before
After
A couple of notes:
This is crazy.
I’m not gonna lie that I’ve spent the better part of this evening sorting through this thread on Reddit, and I think it’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read. It tells the story of a kid who, after admitting to his parents that he was an atheist, was kidnapped by strangers in the middle of the night under direction of his parents and driven 200 miles away to a facility designed to isolate children from the outside world while workers attempt to correct their behavior and alternative views.
WTF?! times infinity
What’s frightening and what took up so much of my time tonight is that this isn’t just one story – as the thread evolved, dozens of other kids came out of the woodwork, too, citing that this same thing happened to them, whether it was because they were atheist or gay or maybe just outspoken or misbehaved. Entire communities exist of survivors who made it through this horrible experience, trying to form a support system wherever they can because their most basic supporters – their own families – can’t be trusted because they were the ones who had them committed to these kinds of places in the first place.
In the recent years, several of these “schools” around the US have been shuttered, but some still remain. There are also a lot of talks about programs that would fly kids out of the country to places like Jamaica, where US law no longer applied and parents basically signed over custody of their own children to these programs because they felt that something was wrong with them and this was what it would take to help them get better.
I know that in reality, my childhood was probably pretty tame in comparison. I never really acted out – I may have fought with my parents from time to time, but never constantly and it never came to the point of physical violence. They also never saw fit to force their own beliefs upon me … maybe not really being religious themselves had something to do with that … I don’t know if I really would’ve identified myself as an atheist back then – I just didn’t really care about religion one way or the other, and the only point that even stands out in my mind was having to do some fast-talking about “my religious beliefs” at my review before I got Eagle in scouts. But it was never really a big deal, and I couldn’t in my wildest dreams imagine it being anything like this if it had been more in the forefront…
I don’t know how any parent could fool themselves into thinking that their kids would ever trust them again after doing something like this. The ones “taken willingly” weren’t much better, but to actually sign on a dotted line stating that strangers can come to your house in the middle of the night and throw your child in an unmarked van is simply unconscionable. How this is even legal, I have no idea, but if I made the rules, those children would immediately go into custody of the state because they don’t even have parents anymore. And granted, I also probably can’t imagine how to deal with truly out of control kids to the point where you can’t trust them or even feel in danger around them, but that whole debate can also be considered a product of their environment … to simply cast your children off into the unknown because they don’t have the same religious beliefs as you – I wouldn’t blame these kids if they never talked to their parents again after they got out.
Some talk of escaping, while others just endured and learned how to play the game to survive … either way, it’s reprehensible.
I don’t know what else to say. More here.
You know, it’s bad enough to regularly get my ass handed to me sometimes at triple my own score by my sister in Scramble, but it certainly doesn’t help my ego afterwards because with using a picture of Madelyn as her Facebook profile picture, it totally looks like I’m getting beaten by a baby…
So apparently there have been a few unforeseen necessities of consistency from when I first came up with this brilliant idea to take pictures of my food every single day this year!
Namely – sometimes I eat the same boring things every day and also, sometimes I forget to do the seemingly mindless things that I’m supposed to do.
I’m not going to just throw my hands up and scrap the whole thing, though – it’s still too oddly amusing to me to do a crazy thing like that, so instead I’m simply going to change the rules to make them coincide with my bad habits! I can get away with that because I made it up in the first place, right?! 😉
The deal is this – my goal by the end of the year is still to have 365 photos of food … maybe 365 Photos of Deliciousness would be a more accurate title though because instead of trying to religiously take a new photo each and every day, some days I won’t take any and some I’ll take more than one.
As we currently stand today, this is day #42 and so far I’ve posted 38 photos. I’ve actually missed more than 4 days, but I posted a bunch for my Valentine’s Day dinner at The Melting Pot which helped to close the gap a little. And since I want this to be fun and not a chore, I’m just going to continue that tradition and come January 15, 2013, we’ll see where we stand at the end of things!
I’m pretty sure that nobody out there is exactly grading me on this anyways, so enjoy the food pics whenever I happen to post ’em, and if you don’t see anything up for a given day, just assume that the highlight of my day was a bowl of cereal or a bagel or something, and really, if you’ve seen one bagel…