Peanut Butter Candy Lovers Beware

"Hey, you got a little peanut butter on my Three Musketeer bar!"

"No, you got a little Three Musketeer bar in my peanut butter!"

This could be the ad copy for the new commercial promoting Reece's new creation, Whipps. Yummy. It is like a peanut butter flavored Three Musketeer bar. I highly recommend it with a good cup of French Roast coffee.

Guitar Hero

Recently I had a conversation with some young people about the latest video game craze Guitar Hero. If you are unfamiliar with Guitar Hero it is a game that is played on a video console and the controller is a plastic guitar with five colored buttons on the neck and a strum bar on the body. The object is to match the colored button and strum on the screen which in turn is playing to a popular guitar song. If you've played Dance Dance Revolution or are at least familiar with the concept, it is the same idea but using your hands and a toy guitar instead of your feet.

The main part of the discussion was based upon a comment my brother-in-law made: "You can spend hours playing this game or you can spend hours learning to play a real guitar." Yes! Exactly. The youngsters had been surfing YouTube to watch some of the Guitar Hero superstars do their thing. I decided to show them a real Guitar Hero.

I leave it up to you to decide.

Do you want to be this???


Or this???

Just in case you were wondering if my kids were talented, check this out.
She's got skilz.

In A Perfect Kids World

I wish the world was as simple as kids see it. Tonight on our way home the kids were telling me the ideal places that they would like to see me work. Here is the short list:

• The Sweet Factory
• Baja Fresh
• 7-11
• Target
• Krispy Kreme

When you look at the list you can see that their motivation for my employment at these places isn't the income potential but the perks. Free candy, donuts, Slurpees, toys, etc.

It would be nice if it were that simple. No need to worry about income levels, medical/dental & retirement benefits, or suitable hours just what you can get for free. I imagine heaven like this. The jobs or work we will do will suit us. It will be the perfect job, one that gives us great pleasure to do. Yes, people I do think we will work in heaven and it will be glorious. We will work for the King and maybe sometimes work with Him. We will have smiles on our faces and dirt on our hands and each day we will have a Slurpee to celebrate the work that was done. We will look forward to working and be greatly rewarded when the work is done.

Kids see things better than adults do sometimes. It pays to listen to them and dream like them. I just wish their reality was ours sometimes.

Short work week.

Turkey.

Stuffing.

Family time.

Mashed Potato's.

Gravy.

Settler's of Catan.

Football.

Extra sleep.

Short work week.

It's after 10 and I am sitting here securing my place in the ranks of Bejeweled lore while listening to the new Demon Hunter CD Storming the Gates of Hell. The kids are upstairs sleeping hopefully having pleasant dreams. Before bed my daughter kept telling me that she couldn't stop seeing the dying gerbil. I will grant her that it wasn't pretty. Poor Ghost just lay there having seizures, eyes bugging, and sucking in deep breaths.

Kathi just walked in the door after a night with the ladies playing Bunko. It is time for bed.

Goodbye Ghost

We lost Ghost tonight. She died as I held her. She was a good gerbil. The kids took it hard but will be okay. Kathi was just glad that I got home when I did so she didn't have to handle them by herself.
Emily is alone now. One day it will be her turn to be mourned and cried for and buried under the rose bushes.

Ghost the Gerbil

We have a crisis at home. One of our gerbils, Ghost, is on the brink of death. My daughter, the kind-hearted sweet young girl she has grown up to be is taking it hard. I spoke to her on the phone this morning and she is very sad. She has Ghost wrapped in a cloth and is holding her. She has told me that she has a Cheerio that Ghost took a bite out of, a tissue that she used to pick up her poops, the cloth she is holding her in, and some gerbil hairs in a plastic bag that she wants to keep to remember her by. It is going to be a long day for her (and my wife). My son was still asleep when I called so he doesn't know yet. I don't think he'll take it as hard as my daughter but Ghost is his gerbil so it won't be easy.

Before I left the house this morning I checked on Ghost and she wasn't moving too much. The first thought that went through my head was to pull a "Dwight" and put Ghost in the freezer and leave a goodbye note on the cage to my kids from Ghost. Then I remembered that my daughter is ten and knows that gerbils can't write. To bad because the note would have been in sloppy gerbil writing with a little paw print next to the signature. Cute, huh?

While talking to my daughter about Ghost I told her that we could make a nice coffin for her and bury her in the yard. She was quick to list her desires for the burial. One, we couldn't bury Ghost in the woods as the raccoons would desecrate her grave. Two, we are to bury her under the rose bushes in the front yard so the kids always know where she is. Three, we can't ever move. There you have it. I guess we will live there forever to watch over the grave of our beloved Ghost.

This is a must see video for those that are fans of The Karate Kid. Don't kid yourself, you know you loved that movie.

Let's all thank Billy Zabka for having a sense of humor and helping No More Kings get this video together.

Vince Flynn

By the by I finished Protect and Defend by Vince Flynn. Rocked! Mitch Rapp is a bad ass.

That is my review.

Endless E-Mail

So far this month I have received 385 emails at work. This does not include spam which is filtered by our server and I never see it. Since today is the 13th and there has been 8.5 working days so far that is 45.3 emails per day. People come on really now stop it. This is ridiculous. I spend my day chasing things down in order to respond only to get another email response back asking for something more.

I know sometimes email is easy and quick but many times it is unnecessary. I have one person who sends me emails where the subject line is the whole email. Puhlease. Couldn't you just call me or instant message me with that? Are you trying to CYA so you send an email you can save in a secret file only to be pulled out later just to show you sent it?

Then there are the email threads where my name is in the CC so I get all 88 of the back-n-forths between all parties. I have no power to remove myself from those so I end up shortening the life of my delete button by hitting it with excessive force just to make myself feel a little better.

On the CC note, I also hate getting emails from somebody and seeing others CC'd on it. Okay sometimes I understand this, but most of the time I don't. Why did you CC Joe Schmo who doesn't have jack to do with this? Why? Is he part of some secret information society or a junky who must know everything.

UGH.

What did we do before email? Talk? Eww, that would be awful (let me pull my tongue out of my cheek).

Weekend Stuff

I wouldn't categorize this weekend as one of the best in my life but it was a good one. I accomplished some things. Not a lot of things mind you but enough that made me feel like I did something other than lay around and recuperate from a busy week.

Accomplishments:

• Finished reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to my kids. As a celebration we stayed up late and watched the movie.
• Changed the brake pads and rotated the tires on my car. This only took 20 minutes which made me proud. It used to take forever. I also did it without referring to the Chilton book I own. Plus I save a bunch of money doing it myself. Yeah for saving money.
  
• Read a book. I Sold My Soul on eBay - Hemant Mehta. I will be honest and say that I did not read the last chapter and a half, I only skimmed them. I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. He was predictable and repetitive. It bugged me that he felt like he needed to remind the reader, as if we were numb in the brain, that he is an Athiest. Duh. Tell us once and we'll remember that especially since it is in the subtitle of your book.
• Bought the new Vince Flynn book - Protect and Defend and started reading it. I'll be done soon. He's one of my favorite purveyors of mind candy.
  
• Knocked my wifes last high score off the Bejeweled top scores for the Action level. You've now got to get a million points to even get on the list. Take that! (I'm not at all competitive - right Daniel)
• Bought a battery for my bike along with a trickle charger to keep it fresh through the winter.
  

Minor as the seem it made my weekend feel complete.

November

I love November. Often known only as the month that contains Thanksgiving November is probably considered a lesser month. For me that is not the case. November brings on the cold. I like the cold. Bundling up, layering, turning up the heat, using extra blankets, slippers... all these are good things.

This morning I had to scrape the frozen dew off my windshield. Brrr! It was cold, yet oddly refreshing. This is a ritual that I will participate in for the next few months as my car in not pampered with its own garage.

There is not a cloud in the extra blue autumn sky. The shadows are deep and long. The crisp air holds my breath for a fleeting moment before returning to chill my lungs. Perfect.

November also brings the hope of snow. Although we don't get that much here it is still fun to hope for and still more fun to get. I hope that this year is a big snow year. Lots and lots of the fluffy white stuff that brings joy to all of us with the little kid still dwelling in our hearts.