Say It Ain't So.

Whoa, whoa. There's just something about the blue album. It never gets old.

Scum.

If you're a serious cyclist, or even someone who rides frequently, it's not a question of if you are going to get hit. It's a question of when.

It happened to me about two years ago in July. It was two days after I bought my first bike, on my first ride to work. I was coming down first south and entered the intersection of first south and second east just as the light turned yellow. A lady (who worked a floor above me) who was headed east on first south turned left in front of me. I broke her windshield with my back, flew over the top of the car and landed on my hip. The force of the impact was so great it sent both of my tightly-tied shoes flying in different directions into the intersection.

Thankfully, I was fine and she was decent. This guy wasn't. Driving along in his BMW with his girlfriend, he hit a guy roughly my dad's age, on a route my dad regularly rides, and left him for dead. I'm glad he got arrested.

I don't know why I bought the french fly.

I was trying to come up with a good rhyme ala I don't know why she swallowed the fly, but I've got things to do.

I'm currently wearing a pair of pants with a french fly. I've got several different pairs of them. They are dangerous pants though. For about the tenth time, I left the house thinking I was fully dressed, and I was wrong.

Shirt, check.
Socks, check.
Shoes, check.
Belt, check.
Pants, check.

Pants done all the way up, no check.

The french fly is supposed to help the front of your pants lay "naturally flat", but they have a serious side effect - they give you a false sense of security. You do up the button on the flap, the hook & loop slide thingy, and the button under the belt. Fastening that many fasteners leads you to think that you're secure. The zipper falls by the wayside, until it's drafty.

I walked all the way to the front of the class and sat down to take the quiz, barn door wide open. I took the quiz, turned it in, and much to my horror realized I was wearing a well ventilated pair of pants. That's awesome.

Two things that public bathrooms need

1. Music. No one wants to hear what's going on in there. It needs to be just loud enough to mask a fart. You're in the bathroom, it's the place where farts are legal.

2. TV or something interesting to read over the top of the urinal so people's eyes don't wander where they ought not.

That's assault brotha.

At least it's olfactory assault. There are unwritten rules in life. One of them relates to lunch at work. More specifically, what you can and can't bring to work for lunch. The absolute, top of the list, number-one, no-no is bringing seafood that needs to be reheated in the communal microwave.

Two days in a row a co-worker has broken this rule. The first day is borderline excusable, but two days in a row? That takes some hutspah. We're not talking tuna either, but orange roughy, a particularly fishy fish. The stench has permeated the entire floor. What's even worse is the kitchen is right around the corner from where I sit, and said offender's desk is across the hall.

If it happens again, I might have to call Michael Scott for a PowerPOINT presentation on office courtesy.

Where's the 7-11?

Maybe it's because I'm an old man that I haven't thought about this before. There's no 7-11 in my neighborhood. That means I had to drive around for about 20min before I found caffeine and sugar to fuel my studying efforts at 3am. There's a hole in the market.

Charlie's Playlist

I read a post by Fatty a while back where he posed the question "if you could pick one trail to ride for the rest of your life, and one trail only, what would it be?" He then answered that such a question was designed by torture experts or really mean people. Such a punishment would be inhumane.

In that spirit, I decided that I couldn't create only one playlist for Mr. Brown. There are rules for this sort of thing though. To quote one of the finest films ever made:

"Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.To me, making a tape is like writing a letter. There's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again.

A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind," but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules."

Attempting to follow some of those and most of my own rules, we started the Lullaby list and the Awake list. After a preliminary alphabetical run through (I stopped at the Jeff Buckley), here's what we got:

Lullaby-

Happy Ever After In Your Eyes - Ben Harper
Pictures of Jesus - Ben Harper
In the Lord's Arms - Ben Harper
Three Little Birds - Bob Marley
Beyond the Sea - Bobby Darrin (not really a lullaby, but it makes my top 30 songs of all time)
Sparks - Coldplay
Parachutes - Coldplay
Little Man - Count Basie & Sarah Vaughn
O Great Telephone - Cub Country
Disappearing World - David Gray
Return to Me - Dean Martin
Solitude - Ella Fitzgerald
When You Wish Upon A Star - Glenn Miller
Better Together - Jack Johnson (Chels lobbied for this, also not really a lullaby)
Breakdown - Jack Johnson
That's All I Ask - Jeff Buckley (easily top 30)
Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
Satisfied Mind - Jeff Buckley
God Bless the Child - Billie Holiday

Awake -

Animal's Scat - Muppets (nope, that's not scat like poop, scat like bebop)
On the Sunny Side of the Street - Benny Goodman
Miss Brown to You - Billie Holiday (for the future Miss Brown)
Nice Work If You Can Get It - Billie Holiday
Doop-Doo-De-Doop - Blossom Dearie
Cheer Up - Bob Marley
Blessed - Brett Dennen
When the Red, Red Robin Comes - Carmen McRae
Yakety Yak - The Coasters
Mrs. Potter's Lullaby - Counting Crows
Boys on the Docks - Dropkick Murphy's
I'm Walking - Fats Domino
You Make Me Feel So Young - Frank Sinatra (Chels request)
Fly Me To The Moon - Frank Sinatra
Would You Like To Swing On A Star - Harry Connick Jr.
Bubble Toes - Jack Johnson (Chels request)
Mudfootball - Jack Johnson (Chels request)
I Feel Good - James Brown (gotta represent the Godfather of Soul)
Pappa's Got a Brand New Bag - James Brown
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Jerry Lee Lewis (even though he married his 13 year old cousin)
Waiting On The World To Change - John Mayer (Chels request)

It will likely get a remodel, but I feel like it is a respectable start.

Knock on wood.

I feel like things have been going so well lately. Charlie is an awesome baby. He is hardly ever cranky, he sleeps well, eats well and smiles when he reaches the "giddy full" state, just like me. Chels is doing well and everything else is going just fine.

I was talking to Chels on Saturday morning about how great Charlie is. I joked that he must like us because he hasn't soaked us yet. He peed all over the pediatrician when he was getting circumcised (he let's face it, if you are a guy you would too) and then pooped on the table as a parting shot. I narrowly escaped one blast at the hospital, but since then it has been fine.

The three of us went shopping on Saturday at the Gateway to get out of the house for a while. While we were out and I was standing awkwardly in Anthropologie (truly, that is the only way I can stand in that store. I feel supremely out of place there.) and I picked up this book:
I read a little bit about knocking on wood. Knocking on wood is apparently a pagan tradition based on the belief that gods live in trees and that by knocking on wood (a tree really) you either enlist the help of the gods to scare off the bad spirits, or the bad spirits think that the gods are going to help you so they bug out. Whatever the reason, I should have knocked on the large table before me whilst gloating about not being soaked.

We had just returned from the synchronized swimming/ward party, and I was snuggling a sleepy Mr. Brown. He started to squirm pretty good and let out some serious gastrointestinal pyrotechnics - fourth of July style. We cheered for him as we usually do. Someone ought to. The poor kid has to work so hard to make it happen. I slowly moved my hand up his back, rubbing the left side (the side where his stomach is) to try and help things move along.

Me: "Oh no."
C: "What?" (worried)
Me: "We've got a blowout."
C: "You're changing it."
Me: "Okay."
C: "Just use a wipe."
Me: (after pulling back the onesie for inspection and seeing it between his shoulder blades) "This is definitely not a one wipe operation, it's bath time."
C: "Seriously?"
Me: "Yep."

See for yourself (this is after I washed it out, by hand).
On the way to the tub, he peed all down Chels' new red silk pajamas. In the tub he got about an inch away from peeing in my mouth before I pointed that thing the other way.

I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. It's official. We're parents.

Can you guess what this is?

One of the first times we took Charlie out was on the 24th for my little sister's birthday. Dinner was nice except for the fact that the menu online got my hopes up for something they no longer served. I was totally looking forward to double cut pork chops with a peach glaze. Update your website weenies. Toll House pie was good as always.

After we finished dinner, I was surprised to find that little thing on my shirt with a little trail of goo next to it. Have you guessed what it is yet? Nope. I didn't pick my nose, pull that out and wipe it on my shirt. Nice try though. It was Charlie's umbilical cord. Chels wanted to throw it away, I wanted to find a microscope and open it up. I managed to grab a picture before she made me through it away.

I was going to show my nephew, who's favorite word is currently eyeball, this little gem, but I decided that it might not be the best thing to show him in a crowded restaurant. Whatever his response, at that age, most little boy comments are not restaurant appropriate. My better judgment prevailed.

Synchronized Swimming

The video doesn't quite do it justice. It was pretty hilarious. The dude in the middle choreographed it all from start to finish.