rustypants speaks

the latest excitement:

• i’m down 41lbs from last june to 244lbs
• i continue to run 5x / week, lift weights 3x / week, bike infrequently, watch my calories, do some circuit training a couple times a week, drink lots of water, and juggle daily.
• i started doing yoga 3 weeks ago and am enjoying it quite a bit – very relaxing, yet also a workout. i frequently do it at night before heading to bed and it helps the insomniac in me fall asleep.
• this pic was taken this afternoon while hamming for the camera:
  
• the picture drives me to ask the question: if you had a high school teacher with guns like that, would you be messing around with him? no? then why the heck do my students mess with me? is it the shoes? is it the smile? maybe i don’t flash the guns around enough?
• i’m neck-deep in IEP writing, with somewhere around 18 IEP’s due in the next 2 months. oy vey.
• add to this that i’m taking a course on educational assessments at UWF and it’s a double oy vey.
• stephen king’s Under the Dome was a great read until the last 30 pages. he really is a master of plot development, but his endings are so frequently just blah.
• i’ve now worn my Vibram Five Fingers every day for three months and i’m telling ya: these things are absolutely awesome. i did acquire a second pair of them (seen in above picture) and do all my teaching, workouts, running, etc. in them. my feet / legs / knees / back have never felt better. i realize i have a followup i need to do on my previous post – it’ll happen, promise!
• spring break is the last week in march – i’m planning on being in Cincinnati for a couple days. am thinking of arranging some kind of party for a couple hours one night and see if we can’t get everyone together in one room to visit and catch up!
• there’s more to tell, but this was unplanned and as such, my brain is mush.

thanks to kate for the kick in the ass.

Click the pic. Why?

Pensacola – Spring 2009

Some places, people, and things from spring 2009.

Download C’mon down.

we were 17. we were young, stupid, and bored.

scott and i managed to swipe a bottle of old granddad and were out on a saturday night, mercifully without a curfew. we’d been driving, without the drinking, but now our master plan was to be enacted.

we pulled into the I-275 theater on the east side of cincinnati where every saturday night was a midnight showing of some concert film.

tonight’s film?

pink floyd’s The Wall. we’d been singing it in the car at the top of our lungs for the past year or so but had never seen the movie.

we sat in the parking lot and hit the bottle for a while, getting a buzz on. and then went a bit further.

we bought our tickets, grabbed seats in the mostly empty theater and settled in for what we were sure was going to be an incredible, mind-altering ride through one of the greatest albums ever made.

and all i can say now, even 23 years after the fact, is this:

the shaving scene had us stuttering like sylvester in a crazy, mouse-infested haunted house.

we were still twitching while the credits were rolling.

i never drank old granddad again.

the movie still disturbs me.

yeeeesh!!

an incredibly fun conversation with one of my girls who is super-smart, over-analytical, logical, gorgeous, who, at times, suppresses her “girlishness” as being illogical, and has at last found a boyfriend who is seemingly like-minded (after a… less than fitting relationship):

Adrienne: well I am writing a paper
and i was at the library
but I decided to pick another study place
so I could meet my bf when he gets out of class
:-)
rustypants: haha
wow
that was like, an OMG moment
sweet
Adrienne: why is that an OMG moment?
rustypants: because i have NEVER heard it from you before, and i’ve known you for…
4 years?
5 years?
Adrienne: heh
I LIKE MY BOYFRIEND
rustypants: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Adrienne: I THINK HE”S REALLY CUTE
rustypants: stop it!!
NIEFPOinhQP[W3ORA;owei”W{ISN
Adrienne: AND I WANT TO KISS HIM ALL NIGHT
rustypants: STOP STOP STOP!!!!
Adrienne: but I can’t
rustypants: NOOOOOOOOOOOO
Adrienne: :-/
rustypants: OMG
my equilibrium will never recover

when we lived in the D.C. / Baltimore / Annapolis area we frequently asked others for suggestions on the local fare, hidden restaurants, hole-in-the-wall joints – places that you only get to know because you’ve lived in the area your whole life, right?

over dinner with friends one evening, we’re asked if we’ve ever had ann’s footlongs in glen burnie. we replied that we’d seen the place before but had not stopped to eat. oh my goodness, the litany that followed this was stunning: greatest hot dogs in the world, been there 50 years, we used to go there after school every day, they’re like hot dogs from God, when you go you HAVE to get the “double-dog” because those are the best, oh, remember that time when we went there, blah blah blah, 100% beef dogs that, if you get them done correctly, have chili, onions, mustard on them as well, and if you’re going to do it, you have to do it all the way, etc. etc.

well, it just so happened that i worked not a mile away from the mighty ann’s footlongs! oh, goodie!!

a plan of attack was devised and a week after this exchange i left school at lunchtime to grab an ann’s double-dog footlong.

i walk into the place and could tell it was a genuine greasy-spoon, hole-in-the-wall, been here forever kinda place. old-timers hanging around, folks behind the counter who look like they’ve been there since the eisenhower administration, grease that looks like IT’S been around since ike, too, old-timey seats and a standing-room-only lunch crowd waiting.

and the first red flag? instead of cooking their dogs on the griddle, they tossed them into this humongous pit of bubbling grease. i stood in awe (and disgust) at the sheer amount of grease and the huge number of dogs percolating therein.

i step up and boldly demand a double dog with chili, hold the onions. into the festering grease fly two more dogs.

red flag number two? they pull the dogs out, put them on a huge bun, slather chili on top, put the results in two sheets of aluminum foil, wrap several napkins around it, and put it into a paper bag. this wasn’t the red flag, though – the red flag came less than a minute later when, walking out to the car, the napkins and paper bag have soaked through with grease. and soaked through my clothes. and was about to soak through my seats in the car.

why, oh mercy, why didn’t i stop right then?

i ate the ann’s double-dog. it was a mess. it was a greasy delicious mess. it slid down my throat and began a toxic chemical reaction unparalleled in the anals (sic) of history.
it. was. disgusting. worst hot dog ever. period.

anyone with an iron gut would love it. otherwise, find another hole-in-the-wall place to eat (like the honey bee restaurant on rt. 2).

—————

edit: one of the best hot dogs ever? chicks drive-inn in west haven, CT – mark took us there one of the times we went up with him. there’s something about open-air dogs on the beach with good friends.Â

driving was what we did. every weekend, sometimes both friday and saturday nights. pink floyd in the tape deck, a bag of chips, a couple cokes and the open road. we would intentionally go off and try to get lost on the backroads of clermont and adams counties in ohio. funny thing about that: when you do it for a couple years, it gets harder and harder to get truly lost.

but this post is about the day we got really stupid.

we were bored. it was summer. a saturday afternoon. the sun was out, it was warm, there was nothing to do. we hooked up early that day because we weren’t going to be able to go out that evening.

scott was driving that trusty old granada that had taken us so many miles down so many roads. we drove around for a while trying to think of something to do when he finally turned to me and said, “do you want to jump myrtle’s tit?”

well, this was a new one on me.

“myrtle’s tit? you get a girlfriend or something?”
“no, you dumbass,” he replied, using his hands to give a visual. “myrtle’s tit is a stretch of downhill road in anderson township that has a big bump halfway down it. you can jump it and go airborne!”
“woo-hoo! let’s do it!” was my response.

we arrive at the hill and sit at the top, making sure there’s no oncoming traffic before making the big run. coast is clear, we’re buckled in, tunes cranked, scott guns the engine, and we speed off.

now, i’ve heard of instances where people talk about life suddenly going in slow motion but it always sounded a bit fishy to me. this was the first time i ever experienced it myself and it was stunning.

we hit myrtle’s tit at a high rate of speed and the world slowed to a crawl. you feel the crunch of the road, see your knuckles white on the dashboard, feel the car going airborne as the back tires finally follow the front, severing contact with the pavement. time stretched and it felt like we must’ve been free falling for ten seconds or more. the adrenaline hits around this point, and you think you can do anything.

then the film speeds back up, the thud of 3156lbs of steel reestablishing ties to terra firma brings you back to your senses, and you let out a loud cry of victory and surprise – you left the full ashtray open, both of your cokes are uncapped, and your bag of doritos unsecured – all of these items now occupy space throughout the interior of the car.

we pulled off at the bottom to collect our wits, relive the excitement, and clean up our mess.

we drove a couple more hours that day, but we kept hearing this metallic ka-thunk-ing sound coming from the rear. we stopped to look several times but found nothing. it wasn’t until we got to east fork lake that scott finally realized what it was. we pulled over, walked to the back of the car, and took the hubcap off the passenger side rear tire.

the rattling ka-thunking? two of the lug bolts snapped off, the third one was stripped almost to the end, and the fourth one was quite loose. we’d been driving on essentially one lug bolt all day.

that was the beginning of the end of that sweet car. it didn’t last too much longer after that. but the memories of myrtle’s tit? they’ll last forever.

scott went into the air force right out of high school. that we kept in touch was pretty amazing, given both of our personalities and lack of letter-writing skills, but hey – we were best friends! (still are!)

so at some point, he’s stationed in okinawa, japan for the long haul. i was living in some crap apartment in mt. washington that had an annual fly problem that resulted in literally dozens and dozens of drunk flies that appear in the apartment, sit on the patio door for 2 days, and promptly die.

in a fit of brilliance, i scoop up a dozen or so dead flies, put them in a little tiny plastic baggie, stick it in an envelope with a note inside the baggie saying, “genuine ohio shitflies,” and send it off.

months later, i get a letter from scott telling me the reason it’s taken him so long to write was that he was imprisoned for introducing a foreign organic substance onto japanese soil, how this is illegal in that part of the world, and the consequences could have been worse.

and me – i stopped breathing for a minute and my heart skipped a couple beats. i was floored that i had gotten him into that much trouble sending him a baggie of joke shitflies.

at the end of the letter, knowing i’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, he tells me he’s “shitting” me and ha-ha-ha.

i’ve never been so relieved and so wanting to kill someone as at that exact moment.

we were seventeen years old. it was labor day weekend & scott’s parents were out of town. i “spent the night at scott’s house” and we, in turn, spent the night driving all over tarnation.

this was our usual routine on friday and saturday nights: scott comes and picks me up. we pick up a couple cokes, a bag of doritos, make sure one of us brought the pink floyd tapes, and hit the road, driving scott’s ‘77 ford granada through the backroads of clermont county, ohio and beyond until i had to be home.

but this night? it was the longest we’d been out driving ever. we took off around 7pm and drove all over clermont county, out to adams county, probably into brown county, and then decided to hit hamilton county. it’s probably 4 a.m. and we’re driving through delhi, where the hills are crazy big. we’re running on adrenaline and talking all kinds of silly crap.

we crest the hill and head down the steep ravine-like road when i spot a huge pile of trash sitting on the curb at the very bottom of this hill. the following conversation takes place:

me: …and you better watch out because if you hit that garbage at the bottom of the hill, it’ll be like, ‘BOOM!’ shit flies everywhere!!
him: shitflies? what are shitflies?
me: no, no – you hit that pile of garbage and shit… flies everywhere.
him: yeah, i heard you the first time, but what are shitflies? i’ve never heard of those.
me: no, dude – look… you’re driving down this hill and you run into that pile of trash. if you do that, shit will fly all over the place! shit – flies, not shitflies.

we give each other “the look” like the other is crazy, and bust out laughing. there are few times i can remember laughing so hard and re-telling it live is one of my favorite stories to share.

and the code word, to this day, is shit flies. or is it shitflies?

we were young. 23 years old. we had been married a year and were moving from cincinnati to washington d.c. we lived in a third floor apartment in an old house (damn, that place was hot!) and had packed for days.

when i rented the u-haul and the tow-hitch for the car, i was wiped out. lise was famished.

but our friends – oh, they were the best friends in the world.

they showed up on moving day and as a collective, single-minded unit informed us that they, not us – THEY were going to pack the truck for us. we were so grateful and we stood by in the apartment while they climbed all those twisting, winding, creaky old stairs, grabbed another load, and took it down to the truck. they were the awesomest friends ever for packing the truck for us.

we went down, closed up the truck, put the lock on, hitched our hideous ‘81 datsun 310gx to the back, and had a tearful goodbye. our friends hugged us hard, cried, & promised to keep in touch. we thanked them profusely for making our day so much easier before we began the 550 mile trek to d.c. and swore we’d never forget what they meant to us.

our friends left. we got in the truck. we looked at each other with the kind of love that only newlyweds have for one another. we held hands, wiped away the last of the tears, and fired up the truck.

i lightly depressed the gas pedal to pull out when the most horrendous sound i’ve ever heard crunched into my ears from behind.

me: wtf?
lise: sounded like the truck.
me: i barely touched the gas!
lise: sounded like a wall fell somewhere.
me: we better check this out before we go.

we unlocked the padlock, flipped the handle, and pushed up on the door.

it was stuck. wedged. jammed. superglue of the gods held that door shut tight.

our friends, whom we loved, had truly packed the truck. and no one gave a second thought to placement of any items. they were just… chucked and tossed wherever they could find.

it was elementary physics. sadly, none of my friends were physicists.

a tradition as old as civilization itself, the end of a meal at any chinese restaurant is always pure joy. how can you go wrong with those sometimes flaky, sometimes rock-hard, sometimes bland, sometimes sweet fortune cookies served after you’ve stuffed yourself silly?

who passed on the tradition to me? i’d be hard pressed to remember at my advanced age, but i will say that once it clicked, it’s never been forgotten.

the check comes.
the fortune cookies, individually wrapped, are placed before you.
the fight to get the one meant for you.
the crinkling of the cellophane.
the cracking of the cookie.
your fortune revealed!
BUT
incomplete!

much breath has been wasted arguing about the proper phrasing necessary to reveal one’s true fortune, but i have come to the conclusion that the only totally encompassing and acceptable phrase is “in your shorts” – it fits almost all situations and fortunes equally well.

many years and hundreds of fortunes later, i’ve whittled down to two the ones that truly reveal the power of chinese fortune-telling and the magic phrase needed for complete revelation.

fight with me if you must, but i will go to the grave standing by my fortune-unlocking, future-revealing phrase. you need to try it yourself – order some chinese tonight, crack that sucker open and give it a run. let me know how it ends. add your own phrase if you must, but at least give this one a shot.

and besides: what guy doesn’t want great physical powers and an iron constitution… in his shorts?

when i was in middle school my family went to catholic church every sunday.

it was lame no matter how “cool” they tried to make it (the “guitar service” at st. theresa’s comes to mind…) and it always seemed to take forever – but i always loved staying overnight at my best friend’s house on saturdays – besides the fact that we had a great time being silly and staying up all night, ken’s family went to St. Simon’s church – NOTORIOUS for the 15 minute sunday morning mass!

wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, drop your dollar in the hat, dominus vobiscum, sit, kneel, stand, greet your neighbor, “body of christ” “amen,” Christianos ad leones, “great sermon, father!” *ken’s dad starts car up* back to the house you go.

surely our motivations were wrong, but doggone it – it’s middle school, dude! long live st. simon’s 15 minute mass!!

or is benjamin linus really jon weatherly?

linus: the leader of The Others
weatherly: refers to the other CCU profs as “those others”

linus: buggy eyed
weatherly: bugs eyes out at incredulous statements

linus: condescendingly sarcastic
weatherly: well, duh

linus: asks cryptic questions that rarely get answers from dumbfounded captives
weatherly: asks cryptic questions that dumb students don’t know the answers to

linus: is cruel to his captives
weatherly: routinely abuses students trapped in his courses

linus: uses classical conditioning to train his captives and underlings
weatherly: uses classical conditioning to train his students and underlings

linus: always has a way out planned in case of emergency
weatherly: thinks several steps ahead of the present situation “just in case”

linus: has lived his whole life on an island
weatherly: thinks he is an island unto himself

linus: ends up in Tunisia
weatherly: likes dizzy gillespie’s A Night in Tunisia

linus: frequently uses aliases such as henry gale and dean moriarty
weatherly: frequently uses aliases such as SWNID and michael j. fox

linus: captured, imprisoned, and attempted to brainwash his daughter’s boyfriend to end the relationship
weatherly: promises much of the same for any boy trifling with his daughter

uncanny similarities.

the email surprised me, i’ll admit. my reaction surprised me, too.

i thought the anger had passed. i really hadn’t thought about it in a while.

but last saturday it reared its ugly head again and i was left angry and speechless.

i received the following email that day:

it was one of the two pastors who screwed me over two years ago from impact church. and after that anger and bitterness passed, i laughed out loud at what the email was asking me to do.

“confirm that you are, in fact, friends with _____.”

and i thought about how “friends” don’t do what he did. how “christians” aren’t supposed to do what he did. especially in light of our extreme need of being ministered to during one of our most difficult times. and how no ministering was offered, only an offer of hush money to cover up their gross mishandling of the situation. and how i was allowed to come up with whatever lie i wanted to tell the church about why i “decided to leave” and they would parrot that to cover their asses, offering no chance of any reconciliation, only more lies and fabrication.

and after i laughed a bit, i thought about how surprised i am at the disappointment that still resides in me because of that situation. i lost a church family because of this guy’s mismanagement. i lost a trust that has always been fragile for me. my integrity was trashed in order to save his (and with the church’s money to keep it quiet).

dunno. the guy certainly has a pair, though.

mile 50 (12-21-07):

dolby and i are on the road to cincinnati. lise flew to toledo on the 19th. i had school until 11am (when my principal, who could kick your principal’s butt, told me i could take off). i got home, loaded up dolby and we hit the road. we’re in the car chillin, although dolby’s not particularly happy after about 200 of the 750 miles. poor guy.

mile 750 (12-22-07):

it’s 2am. i’m dead. we arrive at the house after too many stops for pooping and eating and running around. dolby’s thrilled. i’m just dead. everything’s vibrating.

mile 780 (12-22-07):

christmas dinner at my brother’s house in Monroe, Ohio. good time. good food. good company. debbie (sister-in-law)’s parents were there. my niece. my mom and her man. it was a good time. everything’s still vibrating.

mile 810 (12-23-07):

on the road again. this time 210 miles north to toledo to spend the day with lise’s family and pick her up to come down to the house. everyone was there but for her brother, sean, who has taken up long-haul trucking on a temporary basis to stockpile some cash and pay off some bills. he was missed, but we did have a good time! the picture to the right is NOT how i felt after 6 hours with the in-laws, but simply a mask one of my nephews left laying around. the switch is actually a comb. or is it? come a little closer, family!! muuuahahahahahaaaa…

mile 1245 (12-24-07):

had christmas eve dinner with my mom, her man, and my uncle. had a good time with untraditional christmas cooking that included some of the best potato soup i’ve ever had (even o’charley’s!). we played ping pong (got my butt kicked – damn this tennis elbow and carpal tunnel) and hung out for the evening.

mile 1290 (12-25-07):

christmas day was spent with my dad and his wife’s family – good food, good company again – i swear i’ve gained 4-5 lbs of the 50 i’ve lost back. gaah! we had a great time hanging out with everyone and catching up.

on the way there we stopped and bought Hot Fuzz, one of the funniest movies i’ve seen in all of 2007. seriously, i’ve not laughed like this over a movie in a long time. if you’ve not seen it, pbbbtthhh! jog on! mom had a coupon for hollywood video, and we got the thing for $7 and change. woo!

mile 1331 (12-26-07):

my friend mark meyers and his excellently cool wife melinda came in from minneapolis, MN and they spent the day with us on wednesday – i miss mark a lot. and his excellently cool wife is so excellently cool! we hung out, grabbed mexican food, drove to mt. adams and snapped disturbing photos of misunderstood minnesota rituals (such as the one at left, “face licking”) and concluded our day by playing simpson’s monopoly (how did this end? well, let’s just say that when lise tried to set mark up for the win, melinda and i formed an air-tight alliance and brought mark down to his knees). we were sad to see them go, but then SOMEONE has to go back to minnesota and freeze their asses off for the local economy.

that evening, several of our kids (ha ha – they ain’t “kids” anymore – “college attending adults”) from youth group past came over (including rocky and racecarr, seen left) for pizza, hilarity, hot fuzz (the movie, duh), and lots of talking. i’m so proud of these kids that i could pop. i love hearing about how growing up, college, jobs, etc. are going. rocky and i talked long into the evening about politics, school, christianity, and family – it was a great time.

mile 1402 (12-27-07):

today was a day of running around, relaxing a bit, making a trip to steve and barry’s for some shirts and stuff, getting things done around the house, and seeing my mom. lise got her old small group together and went out to dinner, then back to the house for fun, food, and games. they had a great time! christy came over that night for a couple hours and filled us in on her life and times, and then we kicked her out to get some sleep.

mile 1474 (12-28-07):

mom and i went to jungle jim’s today and bought staples (read: sauces and stuff you can’t get anywhere else, at least not in p-cola) and had donato’s for lunch. this evening was spent over at my brother’s house in Middletucky, OH with the family. definitely a good time eating, talking, and playing Rock Star. there exists some footage of my dad playing this game that will no doubt end up on youtube at some point.

mile 1540 (12-30-07):

back on the road again. i’ve said this before, i’ll say it again: i’m getting too old for this shit. driving 750 miles in one clip is too much for my ragged old body. but here we are again. the house is cleaned up and taken off the market. everything’s shut down and put away. the car’s been packed since the night before. the dog sits in the back seat looking sad (HE knows it’s 12 hours cooped up in the cramped car) and i’m getting ready to eat a blackberry jam cake muffin leftover from the previous weeks partying.

mile 2263 (12-31-07):

the drive is as long and painful as anticipated but it’s good to be home. we pull in late on the night of the 30th, unpack the car and pass out where we land. first thing next morning, we log mile 2263, ending at pensacola beach where it’s in the mid 60’s. the water’s warm, the air is warm, and the company is just right. we’ve had a great holiday visiting with family and friends that we sorely miss. now it’s good to be home and relaxing together before the craziness of real life returns.

• many thanks to the folks calling, emailing, texting to make sure lise and i were ok after the tornado ripped it’s way through pensacola on thursday. it got within 8 blocks or so of my school and we lost power from 10:15am through the end of the school day, but there was no damage and no one was hurt. definitely made for an interesting day, though!
• funny thing about the tornado: lise and i had NO IDEA that a tornado was going through until my dad sent me a text message saying he saw on the news (in CINCINNATI!) about it and wanted to make sure we were ok. even at the school, we didn’t know.
• many folks are asking how we’re doing since the news we received last wednesday and the answer is: we’re as ok as we can be. we’ve decided to stay the course down here and see where it leads us, but it won’t be without pain and (obviously) sacrifices we weren’t thinking we’d need to make. we’re ok.
• i finished reading Roots by Alex Haley a couple weeks ago. i remember watching the miniseries on TV waaay back in the 70’s when i was a wee lad and it must’ve made an impression on me – as i read the book i very easily visualized scenes and remembered in some cases what was coming next. it was a very good book, despite the apparent “controversies” surrounding Haley and the writing. recommended reading.
• florida has a Sunshine State Young Reader’s Award that is voted on and given each year. our librarian walked each class through this years books and i was so impressed that i took some of our classroom money and bought a couple copies to read aloud and share with the students – two standouts from the list include The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and A House of Tailors. both are excellent books with edward tulane being my favorite.
• we’ve kept with our decision to not watch any television and have been watching a lot of movies recently. we’ve also discovered Scrubs again for the first time. we’ve seen maybe one or two shows a season but always seemed to be busy the night it’s on – we rented season three and laughed our butts off. i love dr. cox.
• hollywood video is going out of business in several locations here in p-cola, and i stumbled on their liquidation sale at one store – all dvd’s were $1.99! now, there weren’t that many left, but i did end up with 12 movies, several of which are absolute favorites – the biggest of them being Cinema Paradiso. this movie won the best foreign film Oscar back in 1988 – lise and i saw it last year for the first time and we were totally floored with how incredible it was. what a sweet and touching movie! finding the director’s cut version for $1.99 made my week.
• red tide has hit the gulf coast in our area and it’s made it nearly impossible to go to the beach this week. we went last saturday and as we got out of the car, i said, “something doesn’t smell right” – dead fish floating all over and the water was a murky brackish green color. it’s spread up and down the coast and is still affecting the water. seafood friday is still on the schedule for tonight but i’m not sure how long we’ll be on the beach. :-(
• no bites on the house yet. may end up dropping the price yet again – at this point we’re losing more money than it’s worth, but dropping the price means we’ll lose even more. gosh, we just didn’t think it’d take this long!
• we’ve got a birkenstock store here in pensacola that’s bigger than any we’ve been in yet. it’s called comfort zone and one thing that makes it unique is that they have a LARGE “discount” section – we’ve NEVER seen this before from a birk dealer. i found a pair of waterproof birkenstock sandals, normally priced at around $180, for only $19.95. they’re fantastic! woo!! nothing like being flat broke and being able to say you bought a new pair of birkenstocks, yo.
• i’m heading out of school to hit maria’s seafood for some shrimp, then heading home to pick up the wife. be well and thanks for reading.

my friend matt was telling me about adding my new address to his gmail address book when he was given the following option:

i sure wish i could say i did it on purpose…

it was great seeing family and friends today at the house before we left

but all these goodbyes are killing me – i forgot how much it hurt

we leave tomorrow morning

one of the great benefits of being a youth minister is getting to attend weddings of past kids. and this weekend we went insane and drove to maryland to witness the wedding of karen and her man kevin. and it was awesome!

karen is absolutely one of Scott’s Girls. and you can read about why here.

the wedding was great. shortest one i’ve ever been to.

“do you take her?”

“i do.”

“do you take him?”

“i do.”

i now pronounce you….

it was pretty wild. :-) reception rocked. seeing her family again for the first time in several years rocked.

more stories and pictures to follow. we’ll be in maryland til sunday morning and then heading back to cincinnati.

you MIGHT be able to click here to see the other wedding pics. if not? sorry!

this is a crude caricature of one of my best friends, travis, otherwise known as t-bone. on this particular day that the caricature was drawn, t-bone was looking a lot like captain kangaroo.

travis and i met five long years ago at Cincinnati Christian University. it’s a rather funny story, but let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

travis is funny. i have been accused of being funny. together, we’re a bundle of inappropriate fun.

over the years, we’ve terrorized CCU proper and CCU faculty with such antics as going around the campus plastering the “every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten” pictures all over (on office doors, in place of peoples faces on pictures, in windows, under the Dean’s door, etc) and doing our Two-Headed Mr. Know-It-All routine (to the amazement and annoyance of all around) to pass the time. we also have swapped out and taught each others’ youth groups too many times to count, gotten our women together and been silly, eaten more indian food than is legally allowable in the state of ohio and we’ve plumbed the depths of urinals at rest stops in rural illinois. travis is my best friend and i love him to death. we have waay too much fun together.

but none of this has anything to do with why i’m blogging about him.

travis is one of the funniest people i know. he is able to do an imitation of Yoda that just makes me crack up (and more often than not, fall out of my chair in laughter and tears). not only does he do a killer Yoda, he is also able to do a very twisted version of Elmo. to make matters worse, he has the uncanny ability to imitate Yoda and Elmo together having a conversation and i must tell you that i’m laughing even now as i think about it.

it’s so bad that i was almost run over by a car in downtown st. louis because i was laughing so hard at one of his “conversations” – hahahaa…. oh. ok. stop laughing. breathe.

anyway, this Yoda “Got Milk” ad reminded me of him and as i told him at dinner tonight, i need to get it to him. what better way than by blogging about him?

as always, you can click on the pictures to see a bigger version of it. enjoy!