Wish me luck, folks ...

I need it.

And for those who have taken the time to complain about my lack of posting, what can I say? Other than custody squabbles, buying a house, Thanksgiving traffic, realtors, lawyers, home inspectors, a department-wide reallignment at work, moving, a kid's birthday, Ms N's and my second anniversary, quirky car issues, and the bitterly painful collapse of my beloved Gigantes, there really hasn't been much to write about.

Thanks for checking in, anyways.

Oh, and don't forget to wish me luck!

Rollin' wit da homies

I found my theme song ...

Jersey Magic

I couldn't figure it out.

I'd been watching Monday Night Football and going N-V-T-S nuts.

In a nutshell, the Giants had been sucking like so many $10 whores. Were it not for Jacksonville's bad opening drive and a quirky fumble in the red zone, the score would likely have been 20-0 at the half. There had been no Giants running game – Brandon Jacobs couldn't even pull off third and short. The team's very first first down was immediately followed by an interception. Eli Manning had been throwing the ball all over the field. And over all the receivers.

Psst! Eli! You’re supposed to throw it to the receivers!

Psst! Receivers! When Eli throws it to you, catch it!

Psst! Plaxico! If you are ever near a defender who has just intercepted the ball, you are supposed to tackle that guy, not push him gingerly towards the end zone!

Nuts, I tell you.

So halftime came and went and los Gigantes were soon down 13-3 in the 3rd quarter. Eli had just thrown the ball away to avoid a nearly dreadful sack when it hit me.

I wasn't wearing my lucky jersey!

I have three Giants jerseys – one Shockey and two #73s (one home blue, the other away white) with my own last name on the back.

Why my own name, you ask. Well, I'm never going to be cut, traded, or lost to free agency, of course. Besides, if they ever need me on the field I'll be ready to go.

I have found through extensive trial and error that the away jersey must be worn on game day if the Giants are to have a chance of winning. I can't explain it; it's some magical connection that I have with the team even though they are sometimes thousands of miles away.

Well, here we were in the third quarter and I was just in a T-shirt. (And shorts. I don't watch football naked – at least not when the kids are home.)

A T-shirt! Oh, how I was letting my team down.

I quickly got the jersey, threw it on, then sat down in front of the TV and tried to send cosmic signals to Florida to let the guys know I was in uniform.

Lo and behold, on the very next play, Eli dropped back to pass, spun to elude the Jaguar pursuit, brought his arm up to throw ...

[insert pregnant pause here]

... and then he dropped the ball on the ground, whereupon it was promptly picked up by a defender and run into the end zone for a Jacksonville touchdown.

At that moment I gave birth.

(Quite a surprise, what with my XY chromosomes and lack of uterus and all. It's a boy.)

Half the Jaguars were doing line dances, circus acts, and the Macarena in the end zone. While I was prepping the jersey for use as a swaddling cloth, I noticed that the rest of the defense was not celebrating at all.

There was a flag on the play. Face-mask, defense.

The touchdown was nullified, the Cirque du Soleil artists were lowered back down from the goalposts, and the Giants got the ball back plus a few yards and a first down.

Manning and Co. finally got things working and pieced together an amazing drive of their own, culminating in a touchdown. An apparent 20-3 suddenly turned into 13-10! The jersey worked! We were back in the game!

Note to self: leave the celebratory spike to the guys on the field who know for certain that what is in their hands is indeed a football. Oh well, I didn't want a third kid anyways.

It’s upon this type of success that I think the team needs to better capitalize. I'm more than happy to bring this jersey to the sidelines where the mojo will undoubtedly be so much more potent; I'm just waiting for the team to send down the limo. I'd even settle for the luxury box. We're talking about a playoff run, guys.

OK, so the excitement was short lived. The Giants quickly restored their severe barometric pressure deficit vis-à-vis the Jaguars. They gave up 13 more points and a couple turnovers while failing to score again before the game mercifully ended. The Giants slipped to 6-4, three games behind the Bears and tied with the suddenly resurgent and always detestable Dallas Cowboys.

How disappointing.

I can only imagine what would have been different if I had put the jersey on earlier.

Happy Birthday, Ms N

For this,
your [redacted] trip
around the ol' sun,
here's hoping:

your
birthday
wishes
come
true

your
dreams
are
fulfilled

... and there's never a shortage of shoes

What have you blogged for me lately?

Ooo-oo-ooo-yeah!

Some people are never satisfied.

I've been blogging for about as long as Brittany Spears and K-Fed have been married. During that time, I have had some extended spells where I have failed to post. A week here, a month there ... you get the picture.

Postless in New Jersey.

Lo and behold, after going merely the length of Brittany Spears’ first marriage without a post, Alaska Jen tells me that I am letting her down. "You haven’t posted in a long time," she whined, er, said Thursday night, granting me no credit for hanging on into the wee hours of election night to complete my Est-iest awards. "I’m getting bored."

"Don’t worry," I assured her. "There will be something posted tomorrow."

Sucker.

OK, so now it has been a week. But I think my material today will make up for the lapse. Quality over quantity, you know.

Wikitainment

While mindlessly trolling through Wikipedia, I stumbled upon a spiffy idea for a web challenge.

We’ve all heard of six degrees of separation – the notion that any two people can be connected through six other people. I, for one, have some entertaining contacts just two or three degrees away. For example, my former insurance agent’s son has three Super Bowl rings, my grandfather knew the pilot of the Enola Gay, I’ve had one-on-one conversations with a member of the Reagan administration and with Nixon’s Secretary of the Interior, and my mom works with Mary Kay Latourneau’s ex-husband.

Presidents to pedophiles … oh, yeah.

So here’s the challenge. Start with a topic on Wikipedia – say Hillary Clinton. Then pick another topic – say Castration. Now see how many (well, few) clicks it takes using only linked Wikipedia articles to connect the two.

(Hillary-to-Castration takes five clicks: Prostate Cancer, Androgens, Vas deferens, Vasectomy, Castration.)

The challenge, then, is to find two topics which seem to have no bearing on each other and find the shortest route between them. Bonus points are awarded based on degree of obscurity.

Please pass this idea on and send back your challenge ideas.

It’s like butt-ah

My daughter's Girl Scout troupe had a bake sale at our church Sunday. Our church has two services, so we had two rounds of sales. In between, the girls diligently readied the tables for the second rush of customers and we parents hung out just out of earshot sharing off-color anecdotes.

One of the dads had a great one about the one that didn’t get away. It was a true inspirational tale for all of us who had those moments where, three hours removed from a conversation, we suddenly come up with what we should have said.

My wife had to make several batches of cookies, so I went to the store to get ingredients. This really snooty woman was standing right in front of the butter looking through ingredients of the gourmet yogurts.
"Excuse me," I said, "can I please get to the butter?" She moved about six inches – still in the way but I could reach what I needed.
I took out five boxes of butter and was about to walk away when I realized it was salted. I needed unsalted.
"I’m sorry," I said to her, "I grabbed the wrong kind. Can I get in here again?"
She leered at me as I switched the boxes. "It’s not going to make a difference," she huffed. "Salted or not, the cholesterol is still going to kill you."
"Oh, I'm not going to eat this," I replied. "We use this as lubricant for anal sex."

On a related topic, I am adding another new word to the vernacular. Those militant snotty elitist know-it-alls who insist that you comply with their view on diet, the environment, fashion, etc:

Snotzis

Out of the Ordainary

My brother doesn't surprise me much.

It's not that he’s mundane, he's not. He is the polar opposite of mundane. He is, shall we say, very much his own person.

In some ways I envy him. He is blissfully unburdened by the expectations of others. He is comfortable enough with himself that he is able to act as he chooses. When he felt like having a unique style, he didn’t go down to Hot Topic to pick up the current version of uniqueness that everybody else has, he shaved three-quarters of his head and braided the remaining hair. He personifies the notion that those who matter don't mind and those who mind don’t matter.

I got a call from him Saturday night. He wanted to know if I'd heard the new Weird Al CD and if I'd heard the original R. Kelly song "Trapped in a Closet" and, oh, by the way, he just got ordained.

Screech!

OK, he surprised me with that one.

So my brother – the octopus head – is now clergy. He's now part of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.

Some would say he’s not really clergy because he got his ordination on-line. But I doubt my brother is bothered by their scoffing.

Faith is like that, you know. Besides, Tyler Durden says we should let that which does not truly matter completely slide.

Later in the call, after the conversation had shifted to a few different topics, he mentioned that he was going through his collection of adult-oriented videos.

"Oh," I said. "Is this part of your ministry?"

That explains it!

I just noticed ... it's Monday the 13th!

Just another manic Monday

The Bangles didn't mention this in their song.

I'm having one of those "had to disassemble and remove the lock on my front door so I could leave the house" kind of days.

Our admin said I was the first person to call out late for such a reason.

I almost didn’t encounter this problem at all. I was about to drop my son off with the people who watch him until the bus comes.

"Oh, no," he said with a somewhat panicked tone as he was getting out of the car.

Oh crap, I thought silently.

You see, a panicked tone from my son means there is not really a problem, he just thinks there is and is overreacting accordingly. It’s the somewhat panicked tones that tell me something is definitely amiss.

"I grabbed the wrong bookbag."

Yup. Problem.

He got back in the car and we rushed back home. I opened the door, got the right bag, tried to leave, and the key was stuck.

Nothing out of the ordinary, I thought. Humid day ... cheap-o apartment lock ... the Fates farting in my general direction because they find it amusing ...

This lock has done this before. Many times. I already have a key extraction routine down pat that requires just the right amount of wiggling, wriggling, twisting, swearing, and, of course, a mallet.

Note to readers: Never, ever, ever twist a key with too much force or hit the key handle from the side with blunt object. The key will snap in the lock, and you will be hosed.

By the time I repeated step 14 for the 23rd time, it occurred to me that this one was definitely out of the ordinary.

Out came the screwdriver, off came the lock. I had to twist the deadbolt mechanism so I could actually close the door. Fortunately, about the time my then-toddler son showed a propensity for walking out the front door, I installed a chain lock up near the top. I locked the chain, left the house, and then left a colorful message on the apartment complex's emergency maintenance line that I sure hope sounded amusing when they heard it.

I did take a moment to reflect on perhaps the only nice thing about apartment living ... someone else is paying to fix this.

I had some weekend-related posts ready to go, but they'll have to wait for tonight.