UnrealisticExpectations 3.0

I think I’ve raved a few times in the past about how much of a fan I am of the XM Radio. I’m a huge, huge fan and I have a lot of guilty pleasures that I like to turn on and crank through the garage and off the deck when I’m doing yard work.

Fortunately, the neighbors have yet to have a reason to complain, so all is pretty good about it.

Then again, I don’t ever listen to Opie & Anthony out in the yard or in the garage; generally just throughout the house when I work from home and generally on the morning commute to the office (which is now all of 8 miles, so I get to listen for nearly 3x as long as I used to when just going to the train station).

These 2 guys–along with comedian Jimmy Norton and a smattering of others (Bill Burr, Patrice O’Neal and just about anyone else who ever showed up on Colin Quinn’s “Tough Crowd” on Comedy Central) grabbed my attention about a year and a half ago while my drive commute could be anywhere up to 1.5 hours, depending upon traffic. They had just come off of the Premium (Pay For) channel and I caught one of their commercials, changed stations and gave it a listen.

After all, until then, I was flipping amongst the morning drivel in Chicago–from Mancow to the Country station to Eric and Kathy to XRT and whatever else was on the pre-sets. I call it drivel because… well, Mancow is formulaic and amped up, but not really very intelligent… and the others all have peak points that you can listen to, but then they dry up or miss and my attention would wane and I’d have to find some other topic.

Insert 10 minutes of trying out Opie & Anthony. I didn’t have a clue who these dorks were, but I was surprised that they seemed to talk just like… well, you and I would talk at a bar over a beer. Assuming you’re a guy or can do the “guy talk” thing.

I got hooked.
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Bah.

Still irritated. AND the same damn thing just happened to me ALL OVER AGAIN!!! (this time I was a little smarter about it, I think; I didn’t lose the post entirely, at least…). Bah. A zillion more times; now it’s some stupid IE setting that I didn’t happen to mess with. Fun times… I’d better not lose this post this time…

Amazing what a reboot can accomplish. Bastards.

Okay, so all this time has passed since I’ve last posted and I thought I had articulated this nice little bit about what’s been going on in my life.

It was probably the type of post that dreams are made of and you would have lost yourself in your suspension of disbelief and would have thanked me for allowing you to read it after the fact.

But it’s cool. We’re all good.

So, let’s see… We’ll turn back the wayback machine and see if we cannot run-down what’s happened in the last couple of weeks…
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Nothing irritates me more than writing a post–and even doing the copy to clipboard thing… only to find that WP has dumped it or that some oddball setting’s been changed that causes it to get dumped.

Bah.

Irritating.

If you’re at all like me–and I suspect you really are not all that similar or different… At least not that you’d admit on either part–then you’ve heard of this silly claim about the Mentos and the Diet Pepsi.

See, Alan told me about this. He linked me to some Google Videos that showed it in the works. Not the one I just linked, but regardless, I expected the truth to be somewhere along the lines of this.

I had a little spare time today, so I decided to try it all on my own… Just for you, and just to tell Alan what a fucking joke this was and to give him a “hahahaha, you got me, I fell for it and tried it” type of thing.

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The weekend blurs. Truly.

I’m in a holding pattern at work. It’s boring as hell since I have NOTHING to do and I’m simply waiting until “last day” to arrive. I seriously just waste time in one of their chairs.

Sheer brilliance, if you ask me.

Friday, however, Sydney was sick and from the odd coughing, crying and messed up breathing, so we both took the day off to get doctor appointments lined up and handle anything we needed (such as correcting the permit for the patio!).

After a long day of “It’s probably allergies” even though the snot was green… we ended up with a couple of naps and then headed out to run the necessary errands.

After 2 trips to Costco for a shed and 2.5 trips to Home Depot for the John Deere Lawn Tractor–that’s right, I said it: John Deere, baby!

Hey, you grow up in the midwest, you have a pretty good idea of what’s what in these types of products. I’ve had relatives with Deere products that have spanned generations.

To me, it’s something to be proud of.
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No good weekend goes without it’s footnote. Or silver lining without its cloud.

My mother called Saturday afternoon to let me know that my 24 year old cousin had died. He was 24 with a wife, a baby and another on the way, and the only real results I have right now are that he apparently had an enlarged heart and no one ever knew. And it gave out after he and his brother had been taking some laps on race track.

I’m not as close as I could/should be with my family in Missouri. Between my parents finding out that after almost 30 years of marriage that they no long want to be husband and wife, my father not having the stones enough to actually talk to me, even though he had the stones enough to adopt me almost 30 years ago and then rifts in the family as people take sides in divorces and such, well, things get challenging at times.

I do recall this cousin very well. Everyone does, really. Him and his brother were big highlights–and that’s not to say that their beautiful sister is not / was not a highlight, but she was far enough behind them in years that I was too far into my too-good-to-be-into-my-family teenage years that cost me my last visit with my grandfather. I know he forgives me, if not completely understands…but I need to remember him more.
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Easter is coming and we’re just about due for the 1.5 photos. Or at least one.

We’re going to keep her. You can see the whole set at The Gallery.

We took Sydney to see her first movie in a real movie theater this weekend.  Ice Age 2 came out, and it just made sense; she “gets” a lot of humor, she’s got a great sense of humor herself, so it was definitely good timing.

Sydney sat in her chair–holding on to Mommy or Daddy a couple of different times, but was completely into it–laughing, giggling, cheering, squealing, and the best part of it all…

Sitting there, legs crossed, absently grabbing popcorn from the big tub and eating it, you know, just like a big, grown-up adult person does who’s all wrapped-up in the Suspension of Disbelief bit.

I love watching her grow. Can’t stand thinking about her being all grown up.