Let Me Be Frank With You

I’ve been Facebook target marketed again. I think it’s great that the program is now open to 45 year olds, especially since I’m a 45 year old.

It’s great to know that if I pull the trigger on this, within 1 month I’ll be taking steps to put on rain gear and war paint to begin a new career that involves standing in the woods in the rain with a menacing look on my face!

Before I click any buttons, I think I’ll give it a trial run tonight in my neighborhood by dressing up in this outfit and choosing a random house to on my street to stare at for a few hours. How else will I know if I’m really cut out for this?

It’s good to know that whenever I decide to take up vaping as a hobby, there are about 15 vape stores within 2 miles of my house.

The newest, Avail Vapor, must have just opened a week or so ago because I just recently noticed it being there. I believe that the sign is going to cause an accident sooner or later. I say this because I know that every time I have passed it, I have done a double-take because when you’re about 200 yards away from that sign, at night, driving 35mph, you’d swear it says “Anal Vapor” – and each time, a “what the hell did that say?” reaction instinctively comes out of me.

When we drove past it last night, Jason and I talked about it and we both thought that Anal Vapor sounds like the superhero that nobody wants to be around. Like the one who huffs flatulence to gain superhuman strength but he’s sad because people don’t ever call him to help because his behavior is so off-putting.

I hope that we’re not visited by a choir of carolers this year. Not because I don’t like Christmas or Christmas music – I like both of those things.

I just don’t like when strangers from a choir group try to impress me with their singing. I always feel like they’re watching my facial expressions closely while they’re singing to see if I’m giving off non-verbal signals that indicate whether or not I’m truly impressed. Mainly, I think my hangup with this situation is that I never know where to look when they’re singing. If I stare at them with direct eye contact the whole time, I feel like that’s weird because do I lock eyes with just one of them the whole time? Share an equal amount of eye to eye contact or continuously move my gaze back and forth over the group like I’m scanning them? If I look at the ground or away from them it feels disrespectful. And what do I do with my mouth? Should I just grin like an idiot? Do I sing along? Should I remain stoic? It’s really way too much pressure for me.

Maybe I’ll search for YouTube videos to learn to make myself temporarily pass out as a defense mechanism to avoid the whole thing because surely they’d stop singing if I crumpled to the deck before they get through the first line of Carol of the Bells?

Anyhoo, if you’re in a choir and you stop by my house while out caroling or you’re with your choir buddies at the mall and you see me at the food court and think that I might like to watch you perform the new song that you and the choir wrote to see if I like it or not, please keep in mind that I would not like to see that. It’s just painfully uncomfortable for me.

Late this afternoon, I was notified by one of my sons that a large styrofoam cooler was sitting at our doorstep.

Upon further investigation, I noticed that it was a huge assortment of Omaha Steaks addressed to me! There wasn’t a card inside or anything to reveal who would be so kind as to send me the gift of meat but there it was – an assortment of tasty steaks, chops, meatballs, apple tarts, sausage and other things that please me. Only a message that said “Merry Christmas” appeared on the shipping label where the sender can personalize a note.

For a moment, I had to think back to see if there may have been a point within the last week or two where I may have had too many drinks and ordered online meat for myself but I’m certain that couldn’t be the case because I stay in control of myself these days.

I’ll find out who did this and when I do, I’ll seek you out so that I might gaze longingly into your eyes where you will see my soul and how it dances at the receipt of mail order meat. We’ll follow up that gaze with a long and meaningful hug that conveys my appreciation of your thoughtfulness.

I’m pretty sure that it isn’t supposed to work this way but as I sit here watching the alcoholic on A&E’s Intervention repeatedly chugging cold 22 ounce beers, she made me REALLY thirsty for a beer because of the way she was going after it so hard.

They probably showed her taking 20 or so huge drinks throughout the first have of the show. She wasn’t sipping it either. Each tip of the can involved about six of those “glug, glug, glug, glug” kind of swallows. It looked SO refreshing each time. I know that these shows are designed to highlight the perils of excess so I tried to put my desire for a cold one out of my mind and focus on the lesson to be learned here, but after only 10 minutes into the show, my thirst could no longer be denied so now I’m chugging my own 16 ounce PBR with her as I ready myself for the big intervention.

On a positive note, she also has a huffing addiction and to this point, I don’t find myself to have the urge to sniff my household cleaning products…but the night is still young.

Shepherd Boy and his lamb wish the bus driver and kids a very Merry Christmas. (That’s me and my dog dressed up to wave at my son’s elementary school bus.)

The Cubs just signed a new prospect today – an unknown from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

When reporters asked routine questions about his background and the typo on his batting practice jersey, he pulled his hat down low, stared at the floor and mumbled something strange and incredibly random about having never been to Cuba and not knowing anything about faking one’s own death.

(An actual picture of me on an actual skateboard. Balance courtesy of my sweet pair of gray New Balance sneakers.)

Question to me from guy at the skatepark this morning:

“Sir, do you have a pocketknife on you?”

Me:

“No, but I’m flattered that you think I look like a guy who might.”

I have seen a lot of election/debate drinking games circulating recently. Now that all of that is over and Bowl season is upon us, I wanted to share with you the drinking game that I’ve been playing for years. It’s really fun and easy and it’s always ‘your turn’ whenever you want it to be. Have fun, players!