Dinner! Bacon! Beer! Wednesday!

I'm back!

So I decided to make dinner. Well, I always make dinner, but I didn't want to tonight. So it was an active decision to do it anyway. I decided to make hamburgers. We don't have hamburger buns and I'm forbidden to go to the grocery. So they are going to be more sandwich-ish than usual. I saw a thing online some time ago where the dude made a hamburger patty, cut a hole out of the center with a glass, and then fried an egg in it. He claimed it was the best burger ever.

I also ran across a link while twittering where some lady made beer candied bacon. She obviously had some weird desire to be the most popular woman on the internet. Key words here kids are as follows:

Beer.^[1]

Candy.^[2]

Bacon.^[3]

THIS IS A THING PEOPLE.

And then I got the notion that this delicacy could quite possibly make the egg/burger even better. Hell, I got the notion it could make anything better. Eating this bacon could make Cheerios better. It could make the last Ghost Rider movie better. Well... maybe. It might even make me a better person! I dunno... It's in the oven RIGHT NOW.

Ok, while it cooks here's a link to the some lady. She's at Tide & Thyme. Here's a link to the drrrooooool.

Sorry, no links for the egg/burger thing. You'll just hafta live with the pics I make. Just know that I make no claims to credit for this fabulous idea. Unless it completely rocks my world. Then yes, it was all me.

Ok, first things first... I cooked the bacon. PICTURES!

How to Keep Your Marriage Sane

Also could be titled: How Unlimited Texting Can Save Your Marriage.

Stephanie: Can u take the girls and get the van washed, coupon expires today should be on dry erase board

Me: ok

Me: Damn, it's hot out here.

Me: Bubbles carwarsh is closed.

Me: There's a new PetCo over here.

Stephanie: Yes meant to tell u that

Notice how "Me" uses punctuation? Yeah... just pointing that out.

Me: So I drove to Katy. This one is not an Express. Even though it said it was one on google maps.

Stephanie: What? When did that happen?

Me: Well, that only took an hour and 30 miles. Still have coupon and a dirty car.

Stephanie: Lol u didn't have to go to katy we could just let it expire honey

Editor's note: Right. Yeah. Just let it expire... Right.

Me: Right.

Me: Z is signed up for soccer. Took almost as long as it did to not find an open Bubbles Carwash Express.

Stephanie: Lol good where?

It only now ocurs to me that she might have assumed I was talking about the carwash.

Me: FFPs games will be at Westside High.

Me: Eta?

It's 5:22 pm just wanna know when she's coming home. No answer. And this is what happens when I get ignored.

Me: Sara's already drunk screaming "Woo hoo! Three day weekend!" She's topless too. Zoey is doing lines on a Hello Kitty mirror. She's being safe though! No razor blade. Using a toothbrush.

Me: Dinner is animal cookies and clif bars.

Stephanie: Sweet, literally

Me: Oh. My. Glob! Strippers just showed up! Kinky. Dressed like cops.

Me: Not strippers.

Me: I started to suspect when I tried slipping a $20 into her bra. Thought it weird she was wearing a kevlar vest.

Me: Help! I'm hiding in the neighbors bushes. Shhh! Call 911! I'm being stalked by two gun toting lesbians wearing all blue. They got batman belts too!

Stephanie: Did u drink all my vodka again

Me: Z is so sweet! She just ran outside and yelled, "He went that way!" Pointing in the opposite direction of where I am.

Me: Sara just tackled and throat punched the bitch that stole my $20!

Me: I need a disguise.

Stephanie: Just emailed you one

Perfect

Me: Yes! Hurry too! I'll be the inconspicuous naked guy behind Walmart. Ignore all these conspicuous bastards.

Me: Z & S have each respectfully submitted a request for vampire teeth. Jut putting that out there.

Me: I'm sure CPS will allow them.

Me: Sweet! Pretty blue helicopters!

Stephanie: U r nuts

Me: They can't see me if I don't move. Saw that in a documentary.

Stephanie: Send the slaves out please.

And that last one meant she was home.

See? Perfectly sane interaction between married people. Married to each other, that is. I talk to married people all the time and let's face it, those conversations are boring.

Life Update! My House Got Robbed!

Hi!

How are you?

Me? Oh, I'm fine.

...

My wife got the call from ADT that our alarm had gone off. She ignored the call because it came from a number she didn't recognize. I do it too. Let's face it, for most of us if we get a call from an unfamiliar number it's most likely a.) wrong number if it's local, b.) political survey scam if it's not local, or c.) an 800 number that won't leave a message or wants to save my soul (those ASSHOLES).

So when she got the beep that she got a voice mail it was a bit of a surprise. She called them back and said, "CALL THE COPS! IT WASN'T ME THIS TIME!" And then she called every family member she could think of that might, just maybe, have broken into our home.

Then she got to the house and found a Sheriff's Deputy's car parked out front and him poking around inside.

I was 3-1/2 hours away with the girls at Gramma & Grampa's house. I was in my swimming trunks fixin' to jump in the pool.

One hysterical phone call later and we were packed and driving back to Houston. I called a friend of mine that worked not too far away from my neighborhood and had him go check on my wife. Ben was awesome. He left right away and stayed at the house while my wife finished with the deputy. He helped search for the now missing cat. They did not find the cat. Stephanie searched the neighborhood in her car for the cat. Yeah, no luck.

So I got home with the girls. I found the cat! And this:

Huh. How 'bout that.

Then I had to figure a way to lock the door.

There. Fixed it.

Using the education I received from reading The Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, and watching Murder She Wrote here's how I think things went down.

Our friendly neighborhood hoodlum, after casing the place for the week I was gone, came by at 11:30 am Monday. He rang the doorbell and knocked really loud. Getting no answer and completely unconcerned with the sign he had to walk right by that we have an alarm, he kicked the door in. Now, as people with alarms know, you have about 30 seconds from the time you open the door to enter your code to kill the alarm. I think this guy knew how long he had. Because once the alarm goes off here's what your alarm company does. They call the home. No answer? They call your second number, usually a cell. This is the call Stephanie didn't answer. Not getting an answer there, they call a secondary person that does not live at your house. Ours is my best friend who, on that particular day, was in Oregon.

He texted me. "ADT just called - said your alarm went off at your house"

Me: "Our house was broken into. Would you mind going and checking on her? I'm coming home tonight, but not until at least 8 or 9."

Him: "I'm on my way back from Oregon. At the airport but won't be home for a little while."

Me: "Fuck"

For the record, this qualifies as an appropriate time and socially acceptable use of the word.

Our perp having kicked the door in now has 30 seconds to scan the living room and decide on his first target. The master bedroom. Not being his first breaking and entering, he knows where to search first and what to search for. First he headed to my side of the bed, the far side of the room, identifiably male by what was on the nightstand. Stacks of books and the remote controls. He searched the drawers and doors. Why? Guns. He was looking for a gun. Then he went to the wife's side, but didn't get a chance to search before the alarm went off. This thing is screaming throwing off his concentration. So he grabs the pillow and yanks the case off. He quickly grabs most of the jewelry boxes off my wife's shelf and leaves the room.

Left behind are two laptops, cash, her most precious and valuable jewelry, and the matching pillow case. He had already identified the office on his way in and quickly ran into this:

I call it the "convenience store"

And this.

Granted these are the after pictures. If I had a before pic there would be a firesafe visible somewhere. Well, Perp Eagle-eyes found the safe. So, with a pillow case full of jewelry boxes, he lifted the safe and managed to make it out the front door before setting the safe down. He discovered it was unlocked! And full of file folders and documents. He abandoned it in the bushes and ran.

What he got away with:

A fat stack of empty jewelry boxes
Stephanie's high school class ring
A promise ring (I have no idea)
Some neat jewelry she was saving for the girls
A box of safety pins
A pillow case

So what have we learned? Three things.

1.) Having an alarm system can be useful.
2.) Clutter is useful! Keep that shit out! Shake it up!
3.) Make a goddamn display with those empty jewelry boxes and hide the good stuff.

And I won the "find the cat" contest. Took me like two minutes.

And this guy was arrested breaking into a house the very next day:

LINK!

I think I now know why he gave up on the safe, if this was the guy that robbed my house. 5' 9" and 113 lbs. Certainly no heavy weight.

My house was broken into on a Monday. There were two other houses broken into the next day, and this skinny shit was caught at one of them. That makes seven homes broken into over the past 3 weeks in my immediate neighborhood.

We made the news! That's exactly what our property values needed.

Well, the break-ins stopped immediately there-after. More arrests have been made since then, but further away. We're looking into a more secure door but I'm not sure our budget can handle it. Stephanie wants something that should another attempt be made to break down the door, the twit will not only break his foot in the attempt but somehow our burglar alarm will proceed to castrate him as well.

Talk about a crime deterrent.

"Dude! The sign says they have a burglar alarm!"

"So? Smash and grab, man. We'll be gone before the cops know we're here."

"What if they have the new castration system?"

"..."

"You know the one where it senses the door smashing in and it grabs your ankles yanking them apart and the blades..."

"Fuck it. Let's try the next house."

I Got Plans

Is blogging starting to wear thin?

I wonder.

I suddenly realized that I hadn't submitted in a while. And then I realized that my blog roll is starting to indicate a few of the blogs I read hadn't been updated in months.

One of my favorites is submitting reruns. From 2008!

Right now I'm sitting in just my shorts wondering what the long term effects of heat exhaustion coupled with vodka might be. Both my girls are bouncing around the house pretending they are the Teen Titans wearing just pajama bottoms. As the three of us are topless I asked my wife if she was starting to feel a bit over dressed.

She said, "Ha."

I'll take that as a "no".

Today I removed the row of bushes on the west side of our front walk.

I call it "The Tim Burton"

I was going to add some bush trimming jokes, but there are just too many. Personally I prefer the nude look, but it does take a while to accomplish. Especially when you have to yank every single one out by the stump.

The heat index today only hit 110ºF. That's 43.3ºC for those that might think 110 is how many kilograms I weigh. I don't. I'm a slim trim 93.

So anyway. Me, a Black & Decker hedge trimmer, a limb trimmer, a shovel, and a small blue hatchet attacked the west bushes. After destroying the first one I started getting a headache and chills. From experience these are first signs of heat exhaustion so I quit. I chugged a Gatorade. I took a shower. I ate lunch. I took some Tylenol. I took a nap.

All in all, not so bad.

Then I put on some dry clothes (nobody sweats like a fat guy in Texas) and finished the job. Tomorrow I hit the East side. Which may be a bit more challenging because I'm only allowed clear liquids tomorrow. Got a colonoscopy on Monday. FUN! I like being sedated. Time just... oooooooooozes..... And then I wake up starving.

Not unlike weekends in college.

Oddly enough, cola and coffee are considered clear liquids. I'm gonna be a hyper hungry asshole tomorrow.

It's nice to have plans.

Ouch...

All I wanted to do was make some dinner. Some easy, simple, not from a box dinner.

That also involved using a knife.

OWIE OWIE OWIE OWIE OWIE OWIE

And then I cut the tip off my finger. It’s my favorite finger.

I point with it.

It’s the finger I use to hold down the string when tying knots.

Being my left hand (I’m right handed) I also use it in certain situations when I’m unsure whether I’ll get it back or not.

It’s my nose-pickin’ finger too. Just sayin’.

On that note, using my right index finger feels a bit like what I’d imagine driving a car in England might feel like. Familiar territory, but upside down.

It also throbs. In a bad way.

It’s goddamn pizza night tomorrow.

I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

Today my wife reminded me for the 923^rd time since June 6^th that I need to write our cancellation notice to Terminix.

Terminix bought the company we actually contracted with to come out regularly and spray around the house. That’s right. Six goddamn weeks after we signed our contract we get a note in the mail saying, “Congratulations! You are about to get completely screwed!”

Apparently when you sign up with Terminix, it’s forever. The contract is good for only a year, but unless you say in writing you don’t want them stopping by anymore, they’ll continue to charge you whether they show up or not.

As it happens, they actually served as promised over the remaining year. Notifying us in advance as to when they were scheduled to come, contact info if we needed them to come inside, showing up on time. At their last service the dude came by and it was just beginning to rain. He was like “Dude. If I spray today it will be totally useless. How ‘bout I come by next week?” Whoa. That was unexpected.

Don’t care. I didn’t sign a contract with Terminix. I didn’t want Terminix. So now I’m done with Terminix.

I know what yer thinkin’, “So, you got what you paid for, got good customer service and you don’t like it?” Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

Here’s why. I’m 100% convinced that for a fraction of the cost I can treat my own house and yard for bugs.

And there’s the infinite contract extension thing. Now bug companies aren’t the only one to do this, but to have to actually write a letter? I can’t just call or email?

My wife had July 4-5 off for the holiday. She cleaned the house from top to bottom. And now I can’t find a damn thing. I wrote and printed and signed the stupid letter. Then I searched and searched for an envelope. Couldn’t find one. I had to text her at work:

Me: “Ok, I wrote the letter. Can’t find the envelopes.”

Her: “Should be a box on my desk”

Me: “The only box on your desk says Puffs Plus.”

Her: “On the desktop there should be the envelopes, if not look in the built in for a new box”

Me: “Pool time”

So I found a new box of envelopes. Then I realized it may have been about 15 years since I’ve mailed a letter. I had no idea what postage costs nowadays. She has sheets of stamps in a folder, some say 44 cents. Some say 45 cents. Some say 1 cent. So I asked the Google. USPS said it was going to cost 86 cents to mail this. And I was like, “No it’s not.”  So I searched some more.

Found this website handy. http://www.degraeve.com/current-stamp-price.php

It’s 45 cents.

By the time I got the *!%^#! letter out to the mailbox the mailman had already come.

And we have a spider infestation. Tiny ones. Weird white striped jumping ones. Their white puff ball egg sacs are under all the furniture and undoubtedly behind things I can’t get behind.

"Hi! Wanna see my parlor?"

I have no idea what I’m doing.

UPDATE:

Just before going on vacation to visit the grandparents last week the Terminix robot called to say they were coming out to spray as scheduled. I called them and calmly explained I had written a letter and blogged about it to terminate our contract. So she terminated it. I was supposed to get a call the next day to confirm. Didn't. I called them again. They said, "Yeah. Says right here. Cancelled." And then while on vacation they came anyway. I had to call them back. Guess what?! They were 'sorry'. At least they credited me back and I didn't have to threaten them with anything homeland security would water board me for.

On The Art of Blogging and Writing in General

Some days I’m just not really into it. Haven’t been for a while. It’s not that stupid, funny, or just plain silly things stop happening around me. I just haven’t had the creative spark to write about it.

And for those people who say, “I just don’t have the time” I have this to say:

Bullshit.

You have the time. I have the time. Everybody has the time. We just don’t have that spark. Some people call it “ambition” or “motivation” (very similar if you think about it). Some people have those things all the time. Unfortunately. Too many of them aren’t any good at it. I’m still a tad jealous, though.

Experienced writers will tell you, in their short essays (when all compiled together are usually ingeniously titled How To Write or The Art of Writing and even So You Want to be a Writer?) just write. Write like you don’t care. Write when you don’t want to. Write write write write write.

Right?

For us normal folks that got the writing bug, but not the right stuff, writing when uninspired is kinda like working. I suppose if it was my job, I’d write all the time. As it stands, I don’t even have a job right now. People (Mom) might say, “So what’s your excuse? You write well. You have people that like your writing. With a little effort you might even sell something!”

Well, I’ve tried the writer’s mantra (write write write) and I gotta tell ya. When I’m not inspired, it comes out as drivel. I’ve got a dozen half-written half-hearted essays (that’s what these are ya know, essays, not articles. People get paid for articles. I think. Hell, I don’t know) that I really don’t like. As it stands, this one might be headed that way.

I've had some pretty neat ideas on how to work my blog, but I don’t really have the… what’s the word?... Not those other words I’ve been using…. But something that means “HUMPH!” like when you pick up something really heavy and are really proud of it. I don’t have that to really get into blogging like so many of the bloggers I’ve come to respect and admire. Too many of the bloggers I’ve enjoyed seemed to have succumbed to the same malady. They lost their HUMPH.

Humph.

Maybe I should have entitled this post the Humph Post.  Sounds too much like the HuffPo. So never mind.

Time for beer #2.

It’s a New Belgium Trippel. In case you were wondering. My first was one of my homebrews.  A standard brown porter I tend to drink too much of. Pace yourself, Eric!

Now there’s a mantra I should really pay attention to.

I’m not advertising this post as usual. I’m just gonna let it hang out there. Kinda like naked shopping. You seen this? Naked people shopping for free groceries. If it happened in Houston, you might have had an opportunity to see my hairy ass pushing  $276 in beer to the registers.

And yes, as reported on the HuffPo.

Dude, there's more beer over here!

"Is that a TOWER of Nutella? Hon, you OWE me for the last time we were naked in public.