MMR - YouTube Find o' the Day

I put in about 12 hours yesterday and I'm coming to end of another full day, after this busy weekend. I'm burning out, so I decided to go to one of the ultimate time-waster sites and found this little gem. Hell, it's funny to me. Don't judge me harshly.

So very busy. I'm a busy, BUSY man

WHOA after this past weekend, I need another weekend to recover.

Saturday was the BIG day, we kicked the day off waking up around 7AM so that I could get a haircut. From their we took the kid to his class at the Little Gym. This was his 3rd/4th class I can't remember. It's a morning class and the morning isn't always his strongest time of day to perform (like father, like son). But he did his forward flips and played. He enjoyed himself for the most part, I could tell he was ready for a nap by the time we were done.

After a quick breakfast we got home to allow the little guy to that nap in. We wanted him well rested for his 10 month photo session that we needed to get done today. After taking he took the longest nap possible we got him together and down to the Picture People in Bethesda, for his photo session. This kid isn't shy about the camera, we've been taking him to get his photos done every month since he was born. So he knows the routine. During these photo sessions my job is to basically be a total idiot trying to get him to smile or laugh for the camera or at the very least keep his spirits up so we don't have any tears. Fortunately the place wasn't busy that day, so we were able to get in and out of their in about 20 minutes, BACK on the ROoooooad.

From there we went into DC to my Grandma's house for our little cousin's first birthday. She's a month older then our Little man almost to the day. Grandma has a nice little row house, but I emphasize "little". That place was packed with people for this birthday party. I was happy we weren't too late, everyone had a good time. She got great gifts of clothes and toys. There was cake and ice cream... but we couldn't get too relaxed. NOPE, it was time to move again.

We said our goodbyes and headed north to Frederick, MD. We were having dinner with a friend of ours at a Japanese restaurant near her house. Since she was on her own that night we didn't want her driving too far on her own. The food at this place, Matsutake Japanese Restaurant of Frederick, wasn't bad. But wow the prices were pretty far out. I've eaten my fair share of Japanese cuisine in restaurants around Rockville and Columbia, but I never thought the most expensive one I'd go to would be in Frederick, MD of all places. I'm talking about a 5-8 dollar difference in prices from what I've gotten at comparable places in my area. After visiting at her place after dinner, we enjoyed a Starbucks recharge and headed home around 10pm, waaaaay past the Little Man's bedtime.

Sunday he and his mother got to do some serious napping. I on the other hand did stuff around the house, messed around the garage. Basically keeping to indoor activities, since we had more of that damn snow. At least is just a snow event and not ice.

Oh and the Oscars blew. Booooring, looong and most of the movies I couldn't of cared less about.

Random thoughts from my President's Day holiday

I had the day off today for President's Day, and though it was a good day nothing really gelled for an anecdote. So just random thoughts.

- Why doesn't Barnes & Noble have terminals available for customers to look up the location and availability of books & other media? I understand the human interaction factor that comes from the customer service desks in the store. But damn it that just isn't efficient. The boy and I just need to find one book, but we don't know the author. There is only one customer service dude at the desk this afternoon. It's already been almost a half hour and we still haven't found this book, or even talked to a customer service guy yet. In this digital age where customers are often more then comfortable enough looking books up on a terminal, Barnes & Nobles should offer this service. Hell, even the neighborhood library offers up that ability and the local B&N is larger then most of the libraries around here. We're outta here, Little Man, we'll just order the book off of Amazon.

- How does Target always know NOT to stock the video game that I've made up my mind on purchasing? Guess I'll just order it off of Amazon...

- The new location of Beyond Comics at Lakeforest Mall is great. Much more elbow room, the only space I don't appreciate is all the empty space on the new titles shelves. How is it that this store has a terrible record of having the new titles on the shelves that I'm interested in, sometimes on the shipping date? I can run up the Frederick location and they are always stocked. I'm going to just start ordering them off of Amaz... oh wait they don't sell comics, well there is some online solution I'm sure. Better then trekking to Frederick.

- Having another day with the kid is great. Between taking care of him, the dogs and trying to get laundry and dinner together I'm pooped.

Okay so the Snow came this time... or Punxsutawney Phil can Take a Flying Leap

Snow, ice, sleet, and rain is that what the worthless furball in PA thinks an early spring is supposed to include? Here in Gaithersburg, MD we got a decent about of all of it. Now those readers unfamiliar with winter weather such as this let me explain. Snow on its own in my opinion is easy to deal with. Its easy enough to shovel the crap out of the way, even if its a blizzard I can deal with it. But when you have a couple inches of snow that is then soaked down with sleet and frozen rain you end up with something that resembles glacial concrete. I mean this stuff is unplowable, impossible to shovel and a pain in the ass.

Last night in our neighborhood a crew came through to bust this stuff up. I welcomed them with a combination of emotions. I was happy to see these guys armed with blades, shovels and a front-end loader ready to chip our neighborhood out of this slice of late winter hell. I wasn't happy that they chose to start this work at 2AM. Since they were practically working under my boy's bedroom we had him sleeping in our bed until the crew was done.

I finally took advantage of the above freezing temperatures today and chipped away our driveway and front walk. After about an hour and half of chipping & shoveling I'm able to see concrete and asphalt again.

Most of the days I work outside of my office either at home or at my folks place while my kid is taken care of my mom. The timing of this storm was perfect because both me and the kid are suffering from a cold. With neither of us feeling well and our neighborhood looking like an icey wasteland we stayed home. The Lady had to go into work since her office had only a delayed opening. So I was left alone with the Little Man for two days. This was the first time I'd had to take care of the kid on my own, in addition to fitting in working and trying to get over a cold. It turned out to be quite doable and a lot of fun. Me and the boy get along very well, we had a good time. He plays well on his own and stuck to his nap schedule so getting in some work over the past couple days was a piece of cake. It was fun having the one on one time with him, not something I get too often. I especially got cheated out on it earlier in his first year with the hours my previous job had me working.

Overall, it was a week of inconvenience and frustration in regards to the weather and my health. But I have some good memories to show for it with the couple of days I had with my boy.

Real Men of Genius

It's sites like this that remind me why the web is so great. Listed here for your listening pleasure, an extensive collection of audio files of the Anheuser-Busch Real Men of Genius radio commercials: http://arc.diis.net/cache/page/budlight.html?story=budlight

Big Snow No Show

No big shocker, but the snow that had everyone whipped up here in the DC Metro area pulled a major no show. Now in all fairness this wasn't forecasted to be a big snow storm, we're only talking about an inch of snow followed by frozen rain. But it was enough to whip our local newstations into full Storm coverage. Each news cast lead with the Weather guy/gal giving us the low down on this blob of moisture inching its way northward towards DC & Maryland. Winter weather advisories were set to start a 9AM yesterday morning. This was it people, two rush hours were due to impacted by this wintry mix. School Superintendents, the salt and snow plow guys and the man on the street were all interviewed to see how prepared they were for the pending wintry doom. But of course the advisories kept getting pushed back until they were cancelled all together. And the most we got was some rain last night which froze a little.

The general rule around here is, if the weather guys see a storm coming far in the future there are pretty fair odds it wouldn't be a big deal,if it doesn't fizzle out first before even hitting our area. The big storms are the ones that come out of no where and surprise everyone. That's the shoe I'm waiting to drop. Still waiting for the mid February -early March blizzard of 2007.


(edit) Right after posting this I looked out the window to see it snowing like gangbusters. Now who knows how long it will last or if it will stick... but I don't remember this being in the forecast for this morning...