Heartache Is A Bitch, But You Know What's Worse? Catching Fire While Barbecuing Drunk...It's No Contest.

No one but Peter has been blogging lately, and I've been spending many busy hours parked at my trusty FACSVAntage SE, going out of my skull because:

1. I have a hard time getting into a book at work.
2. I don't know.
   

So here's some BS.

Go to IMDB.com, look up Thomas Cruise Mapother III's biography, then laugh your ass off.

My favorite:
"While filming Days of Thunder (1990) at Daytona International Speedway, he enjoyed playing football with the truck drivers. He was the receiver - he loved going deep to catch a pass."

Then read this, and realize that young people might be smarter than we give them credit for. And the school board in Indiana might be dumber than we give them credit for. (It was Indiana, right?).

Then look at my pictures:

It's a damn shame that this doesn't happen in his crib, between the hours of 8pm and 7am, more often than it does.

Ma wife gots me some purdy wine glasses what're made outta some antlers. Did I marry well, pa?

Connor, aka "PoopTooth", eats an oreo.

BTW - if you google "Pooptooth," among all the bad things, you come up with this gem. Here.
Visit the gallery in that link...

You Tubery

Does doing it this way work better? I don't know about this.



Watch past Mariah's shit to get to the good stuff. All I have to say is - Who Knew?

Star Wars on a Banjo

Amazing. Turn up your speakers, then dance around like a crack addicted hill billy, then cry at what a nerd you are for liking this as much as you do.

Shut Uppa You Face

Another weekend - did B accomplish much? Lets see...

Saturday, I played a whopping 4 hours of video games with the boy. It was raining, so we couldn't do the fishing that we wanted to. So to spend time with Ethan, I dulled my brain to point of it leaking out of my ears with hours of Halo2.

Sunday, I cut my hair (no time for a real haircut, and, hey, it's summer):


Then I cut the boy's - he pulls off the short look far better than I:


And then, since we now have a spare set of clippers, I cut the dog's hair:

Turns out, he's afraid of the camera so not a great picture showcasing the new 'do.

Clipping the dog was...Interesting. And I'm not completely done with it. My first thought? Woah - it's like cheering sheep. Once I trimmed of the outer hair, the underfur was fuzzy, soft, dense, and white. So he's a different color now. My second thought? If I'm strategic about this, I can make my dog look like a lion...

Weekend Recap - Oops, I Crapped My Pants

Friday night saw me celebrating my recent promotion by blowing a good chunk of the associated raise on dinner with my lovely wife. We went to this little place on Upper Saranac called the Wawbeek. Fantastic duck, and the guitar player even mashed out some Neil Diamond for me.

Saturday saw mowing, getting fed by Cindy at her place of employment, then picking up the last of the crap that the roofer failed to take care of. I really can't complain though. Bombing stuff off of the roof and seeing how many pieces of wood I could get to stick up out of the ground from that height was kind of fun.

Sunday, Cindy and I drove Simon and his wife, Heather, and a dog named Woofit down to the Newark airport so they could all leave for the greener pastures of Porto, Portugal. Pretty pleasant drive, and I got the closest to NYC I've ever been. The skyline is kind of a cool thing to see, even for a city hating simpleton like myself. That also means that in the last month, I've visited three states and two provinces that I'd never been to before. Neat.

Lets see if I accomplish anything much this weekend.

Round Two

Okay. Finish this up. So last weekend was Montreal then Ottawa. Montreal. Quebec. One province in Canada that, for some unknown reason speaks almost exclusively French. It would be like going to the Midwest to discover that they speak ONLY German. Makes no sense, and they're complete dickheads about it (for the most part - we did run into one or two nice people that REALLY helped us out). On top of being strangers in a strange land, the car battery shit the bed the second day we were there, so we had to seek out a car part store in this land of the frogs. Turns out that it's "Car Pieces" in French, and the guy at Monsieur Muffler was very nice, once we found them, and really helped me out. The other people we talked to before we found them? Not so much.

That taken care of we made it to the bio-dome, which I'll have to find pictures for later, but was a lot of fun; and the Jardin Botanic - Botanical Gardens to you and me, which had an insectarium. Also a good time.

Ottawa - a much nicer, friendlier city, that might have less to do but has a better attitude about doing it. I played in four rugby games Saturday and one Sunday and now have a) A deep, dark tan in those areas not covered by my kit and b)A hip that won't support my weight when I do certain things. But we played well, taking second place in our division, and I even got the lovely wife away form the kids for a few hours one night.

Canadian Parliament - we took pictures at night as well, when I was along, but those must not have come out so well.

Parliament. I think this is looking across the canal.

I tol' that woman "Woman, ya better not be takin no pictures of me," and lookit wha' she did.
Or.
Brandon after a full days rugby, a stomach's worth of delicious Indian cuisine, and about three (expensive, damn, Ottawa) beers.
This, too, is looking out across the Canal. Or the Ottawa River, home of ...oh, nevermind.

Ethan, shown here with his great-uncle Fugganon.

The little one models his swimming dipe at the community pool (I was at the pitch when this was going on).


Iranian women ruggers. In Burkhas. How cool is that?

I demand you go see Keith and his awesome slideshow that showcases a few of the great things about Washington (Those pictures are nowhere near Seattle).

Then go check out this guy's microscopic slideshow. Ticks? Really? But fluorescent stuff...I know a bit about that...

Then read this, and wonder why everyone can't be as friendly as the Baha'i (who also encourage their followers to learn Esperanto!).

According to sitemeter, I have had several people doing GIS searches and looking at my enigmatic Santos guy. Why? Because he is Santos.

Finally, a tear for Syd Barrett (Read that if you've got the time - it's long - the telepathy stuff trips me out a little). I'll meet everyone at the planetarium with some blotter for a remembrance...

I just farted.

Three Simple Words: I Am Gay

At least, that's what I told the military recruiters. They didn't seem to care, though.

Well now, since last we spoke I've been a tit bit busy. Went to Montreal. Discovered why no one likes the French. Went to Ottawa and played a lot of Rugby. My supervisor, Simon, has left the employ of The Institute to seek better things in Portugal, so right now I'm flying solo in my lab. So far so good but wait until something major breaks, I've got a Post-Doc screaming at me, and a sugar crash because I didn't have time for lunch, and I'm sure I'll be found in the corner with the lights dimmed, sobbing gently to myself. Was that a run on sentence? Here's a picture of Simon:

The only thing I ever did with the machine that's in the picture is scavenge it's old, dead corpse for parts before throwing it out.

Remember the road trip to Maine and the New Hampshire for some learnin' and some ruggers I mentioned a while back? Cindy finally helped me (the delay is my fault, not hers - she's to thank for throwing these pictures up!) get some pictures flickred, which I present now, for your boredom.

A little rock play, while the young one shouts "Baby!" over and over.

Geez, ya try to share the OxyContin with the kids, and the party just stops. Amateurs.

That gay joke earlier? After looking at this picture...
Note the Hound of the Baskervilles and awesome Dodge Neon rental car in background.

I think this is just before (or after) my buddy Shawn (Captain America in the picture) and I stopped the other team's maul (our forwards are brutes), then Shawn told one of the meatheads he was fat. God bless ye, Shawn.

I really can't be seen at all in the scrum from this angle/distance, I'm packed in there somewhere pushing.

I've gotta take this opportunity to complain about digital cameras. They're great in most respects, but you just can't shoot action with them at all. Too much delay - you miss the good stuff photographically.

I see that Cindy's busy putting up more pictures (of Montreal and Ottawa, I think), so I'll post/ramble some more later today as well.