All posts tagged with "my-stories"

I encountered a technology this week that I haven't come across before. Normally, that would be a source of great joy for me, but this time, not so much.

Every year, I create a big photo book from our activities over the year. It's mostly of the kids, with some other family portrait or maybe one pet picture. I print off three copies, and those get given as gifts to both of the grandmothers and to Mrs. theskinnyonbenny.

A couple of weekends ago, we headed out for the annual cutting down of the Christmas tree. We drive out in the parts of rural Louisiana that are in the hour or two from Baton Rouge, and there's not really another time that we get to these parts of the state. I forget from one year to the next that rolling hills of East Feleciana Parish are kind of pretty. Even more so with the little bit of changing leaf color that we see up there. It's not New Hampshire in September, but it's prettier than you would think.

There are a lot of upcoming changes to the site, as I still try to get all of the old stuff re-posted. Not much here, other than to report on some planning that we've done, as well as some info on what site stuff is coming up. We finish up enumerating how immensely popular theskinnyonbenny family is this week.

A bunch of nonsense about getting a drink at Circle K and then going to work from the library. I had a couple of run ins with odd people. Also, I love the new checkout gadgets at Circle K.

I went to look for hurricane coverage this morning and found to my surprise, that Hulu live has The Weather Channel now. I hope the damage from this one is minimal, and that the loss of life is limited to unloved assholes. I thought this one would be too far east to affect us, but we're having a "way west of the hurricane" days, where there's a good breeze, lower humidity, and sunny skies.

I have a new morning routine that puts me in the line of fire for parking tickets. Today was the first time that it became an issue.

It's been a lot of driving lately. Coming back from Maine was two really long days. Camp pickup wasn't until 10:00. We left from there and drove until the wee hours. 11 states, and it was all bumper to bumper traffic from Maine through New Jersey.

We got off later than usual, but we're on the road again this summer. Here's how the first week+ of our trip has looked.

Back before the days of blogs and digital images, Mrs theskinnyonbenny and I got married and took a follow-up trip to Ireland. We toured around for a bit and happened to end up in Dublin at the same time that then-president Clinton was in town. You young uns won't remember, but back in the day, terrorists would occasionally blow up buildings in Ireland...

Your author discovers his disgust index and has some thoughts on the matter.

Marathon, boat related, beer drinking, swim meet. This post is just a disjointed mess of small things that have been going on.

Every time that one of my teams plays for a championship -- an experience that I may or may not ever have again -- I get better at how to do it. Here are my championship stories and how I get better at it every year.

A few guilty paragraphs about not posting more, a funny text message, and a video from New Year's that made us laugh.

Parts of our house haven't been updated since the house was built, which has been a little bit. Take a look at what it looks like behind one of our outlets. Scary.

Recap and pictures from the Kidder & Schultz third annual Oktoberfest.

There are a lot of reasons to take the city planners in Baton Rouge to task. Here's one of very little importance.

Driving a Jeep is great, as long as you don't mind rain dripping on you while you're driving, the check engine light being permanently alight, and if you want a consistently working stereo.

This is really short but funny. Not adding a spoiler here -- just go read the whole post.

The Louisiana Marathon — or as it's officially known in my skull, the Louisiana Marathon of Mimosa Consumption — was Sunday. I got up early and hauled a small tailgate party's worth of chairs, tables, and music out into the driveway so that I could collapse exhaustedly into my chair and nurse my breakfast alcohol as healthy people who had already run 23 miles (23!) that morning passed.

On Christmas morning, I went in for my morning deuce, and found that there was about three squares of toilet paper left on the roll. I had been in both of the other bathrooms the day before, and I knew that this was the extent of toilet paper in our house.

A couple of weeks ago, I somehow picked up a bit of a ringworm on my right calf. It sounds like I'm a filthy animal, and I am, but it's just a skin fungus that's easily treated.

It's been like a year and a half since I got photos posted to this web site in any sort of manner that is timely enough to share. Until now. We kicked off spooky weekend number one with a visit to a "haunted corn maze" out in the middle of nowhere. It ended up being a really big corn maze that I suspect looked very little like its map picture:

A couple of weeks ago, I had an external hard drive go bad. That's bad news for me, because it's the one I use for both my main laptop's backups and also my music/movie file storage. Not a huge deal -- I always keep two copies of everything -- but I definitely need it back in service.

This is just three totally unrelated short little posts about what's been happening around the theskinnyonbenny house.

Last week, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary. I'm not nearly old enough to have been married twenty years, just as I am not nearly old enough to have a younger sister who dotes on grandchildren, yet here we are in a weird parallel universe where both things are ture.

As I've mentioned in this space before, I'm an old man now. It's time to start publishing my gripes.

I keep hearing something that is turning me into a deranged, foamy-mouthed lunatic. I'm not sure if this has just started, or if I've just started noticing. But I keep hearing people say "bolth" instead of "both." Are these maniacs stooges for the "L" lobby? Also, comments on a podcast, some journalism, and a sailboat electronics installation. It's not as disjointed as it sounds.

A double post, first going into how I'm older than shit, and then followed by some cute daddy-blog crap.

A big nerdy reflection, a little Three's Company content, and then an out-of-the-blue joke that really hits.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we went to get our Christmas tree. The specific criteria we had made it hard to find a place to go:

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The other day, I came in to work, and was told that I look "snazzy." From my perspective, I looked like I always look, but there must have been something different that day. I like the thought of "unintentionally snazzy" being a phrase to describe me, though.

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Dry eyes, nosebleeds, itchy skin. You guess it! It's time to go to Las Vegas. I imagine that I will spend a good percentage of my time in a sports book. I've spent a lot of time in them over the years, and I've yet to find one that meets all of my criteria for an "ideal" sports book.

I've been begged by this guy before. He's usually after fifty cents or a couple of bucks. Fairly friendly. I wonder why I can remember people who beg from me three times in a year, but I can't remember to take out the garbage on Thursdays. Tonight, he wanted a ride to Tom drive. It was real close, so what the heck.

I woke up yesterday morning at around 5:00. I'm not sure why I was up so early, but I was fresh and ready to start the day. I went out to the living room where the gas fire still warmed the air. I watched most of Sports Center and a little bit of the news on CNN. Then I took a shower and went to work early. It was a normal start to a day that would end very abnormally.

Shelly Williams may have the foulest mouth that I know, but she can do research. Last time I saw her, she gave me a pack of dice and a laminated copy of the official Three Man rules (so spilled drinks don't ruin the page). I hereby reprint those rules for posterity.

We all know how the late fees work at every video rental place in the world. You rent a few movies, keep them too long, they charge the late fees to your account, and then you pay those the next time you rent movies. This is the unwritten agreement between all movie renters and rental places that was established right from the infancy of the video rental industry.

For a couple of weeks now, I have failed to mention my fight with a four year old over pajama-bottoms. No one has ever accused me of being the most mature grown-up in the crowd, but I proved over the Labor Day weekend that I can be as childish as, well, as a real child.

This was a mean little thing that I did, but also funny. Sorry about the offensive title.

I have really put this out of shape body through too much in the past week. Monday was one of the most sore days that I've had in several years. Today isn't a lot better, to be honest. I'm not really old enough yet to sit here an enumerate all of my aches and pains. (Although I could see getting to that point in 20 years or so. Won't that be exciting!)

The novelty of me shaving my head has finally worn off. My hair actually grows back quite quickly. It's hard to keep a good Charlie Brown look going. As you might imagine, showing up after lunch with your mane lopped off leads to some good reactions. I wish I had thought to set up the video camera to catch the expressions of passes by.

Brent and Crystal have raised good kids so far. Annika and Jake are tough, active little ones. No one ever stops to whine over a bruise; they just pick themselves up and keep moving, no matter what happens. On the other hand, I've heard Jake scream loud enough to blast paint off of a wall when he was put to bed. And I've heard him keep this up for 30 minutes or more. So keeping them for a weekend was certain to be an adventure.

This morning on Sports Center, we got a three-second snippet on the Rock-Paper-Scissors national championship. Yes, there is a series of people who go to a big city and compete in Rock-Paper-Scissors. Naturally, I'm intrigued, so I've endeavored to find out more. One thing to know about me is that I think mathematically and logically. And with that thinking, Rock-Paper-Scissors is a fair game of chance. It should be as predictive and as fair as a coin toss, or cutting for the higher card. Try as I do to believe that this is the case, my real-world experience with RPS proves this to be false.

I know a lot of people hate "lists," but don't count me among them. A couple of weeks ago, I started making a list of the 10 worst smelling spots in Baton Rouge. Every time I try to write down the list, I come up with two really legitimate entries, and some random lame filler entries.

I moved to Baton Rouge in the fall of 1989 to start school at LSU. Ever since then, I've never been more than a few minutes from the lakes that frame the campus. I've walked, driven, and cycled around the lakes countless times. I've seen them smooth as glass and frothy with whitecaps, teeming with wildlife, and covered with rotting dead fish. These little lakes can give you anything.

As I was looking through the refrigerator this evening, I picked up a bottle of food off of the door. It's funny how all refrigerator doors are full of the same bottles and jars of stuff. You never even see the things until you happen to want a pickle, or you wonder if there are any of those spiced beans left that you bought to put in Bloody Marys.

I'm planning to post many web log entries from Thailand during my trip over there in the next two weeks. There is only one problem with that. Every time someone looks at pictures or wants to talk about my last trip there, they get hung up on one particular story. It was actually Heather who was pretty insistent on getting to see the filthy side of Bangkok. We packed in a lot of activity, and I can honestly say that we could not have experienced more cultural oddities than we did in such a short time. Thai smut is just one piece of the big puzzle.

You know, this really is probably the best time of year in Louisiana. Consider all of this:

As you've guessed by now, the Baton Rouge St. Patrick's Day parade was this weekend. This is certainly the best one that we have in town. It always takes place at 10:00 on a Saturday, and the weather always cooperates. This year was no exception: enough clouds to keep it from getting too hot, but plenty nice enough to be outside.

I am surprised that I have managed to go this long without telling any of you about my Las Vegas trip. There are a few stories to share, but not too many. Before I get to the point on this one, I'll mention a star-spotting.

Yesterday was the final day of the Mardi Gras season, and as some of my regular readers might guess, I like to catch a parade or two during the month. I admit right now that I had a crappier parade-going schedule this year than most. We had pretty consistent cold rain in February, except for the final weekend, when we were in Las Vegas.

Here's an interesting question for the married men readers to consider. This came up in a conversation at work about a year ago. I can't remember how it worked its way into the conversation, but whenever I think of it, I can't help but laugh.

It started with an email last Wednesday from Shelly. Yes, we went to see little people wrestling. It's as problematic as you're thinking it might be.