I AM STILL ALIVE

I just don't blog too much these days. I tend to Twitter and Facebook more. Who knew they were verbs? I'll try to improve my existence in the blogosphere. Leave me a comment and let me know if you're still stopping by and reading this thing.

Sick of getting beat up

Okay. For the umpteenth time I apologize for letting the blog slack. hehe... I wrote 'letting the blog slack'. Ahem. Anyway...

I've been sick the last few days. I thought it was just allergies. After all, January is the height of "Cedar Fever" in Central Texas. But my doctor jabbed enough stuff into me to make this highly scientific determination: "you may also have a cold." Gee thanks. Glad we didn't have to call in the CSI team for that diagnosis. Here's your check.


Elsewhere, Christmas has come & gone and I bought the family a Wii and I also got Patty a GPS. Apparently it was such a stellar, heartfelt purchase that Santa telepathically suggested I buy one for myself and he said he'd pay me back. However I still haven't seen that money yet.

I kinda suck at Wii. I got the Wii Sports game because I live in a house full of girls and I knew there was NO WAY that a chick could beat me in sports games. I stand corrected. My kid destroyed me at tennis, then at golf. She made me look like one of Jerry's Kids playing baseball. Both her and her mom annihilated me in bowling! So I figured my last shot at redemption was boxing. I lovingly told my wife that I would be gentle before I pummeled her into a lump of oblivion. WRONG!


Who knew I'd been sleeping with Smokin' Joe Frazier for the last 18 years?!!! She jabbed, she uppercutted, she threw a few right crosses and then she beat me like a trash can at a 'Stomp!' performance!

I think there might be something wrong with the Wii so I'm probably gonna go ahead and put it up on eBay.

Really, I helped.

A few nights back, Patty was working at the hospital so I got "volunteered" to make & bake a gingerbread house with Jenni. I've never made a gingerbread house, nor have I ever made ANY other house - although I once had a fullhouse while playing Yahtzee. Anyway...

Jenni is ALOT like her mom, in that I wasn't in the kitchen for 2 minutes when I immediately got scolded for doing something wrong. Apparently I made the icing too thin. So our 12-year-old 'Iron Chef' tossed out my icing and made a new batch!! She then ordered me to take on a new task (just like her mom would).

I was now in charge of pouring candy into separate bowls. I had no idea how difficult it would be to keep the Gummi Bears from trying to co-habitate with the M&M's and the gumdrops. Anybody that got outta line during my watch was summarily eaten!

Check out my/our/her creation! Notice how well-separated all the candy is? That would be MY handy work.

Beware the poof!

When exactly was it that we switched from wash cloths to shower poofs? Was it when Tom Hanks and that lousy actor nobody knows dressed in drag on 'Bosom Buddies'? Maybe it was around the same time that people thought Richard Marx was cool? By the way, if I EVER hear 'Find You Waiting' again, I'll hunt that guy down and smack him in his feathery mullet! Anyway, I digress...

How did the poof make its way into our bathrooms? I can understand women enjoying its combination of luxurious massaging texture and rich, foamy lather as you gently rub in the... nevermind...

Can you envision Dick Butkus in the shower after a Bears game and the original 'Monster of the Midway' yelling out, "Hey Buzzy! How's about squirtin' some soap on my poof?"

I didn't think so.

There was a time when one soggy wash cloth draped over the showerhead was good for 9 or 10 showers for 9 or 10 different people. No one was worried about germs or what scent the soap was or buying a liquid refill. Heck no! We all used that tougher than sandpaper Lava soap. If Lava couldn't clean it off, then it wasn't dirt to begin with!

But now we are all slaves to this evil flower of foam.

We all want our own color-designated poof. If someone uses our poof - and we can tell because the poof retains soap for about a week - we'll toss it out and immediately re-poof. If the poof is lying sudsy & limp in the soon-to-be-extinct soap dish and not dangling from it's all important string, we'll toss it out. When the poof expands and becomes flimsy and frail, we chuck it for a tightly compacted, uniformly round poof of perfect proportions.

You don't think the poof is out to ruin our way of life? Here are my Top 5 celebrity poofers:

5) Billy Mays - I think he poofs with Mighty Putty!
4) Prince - oh yeah, he poofs!
3) Clay Aiken - that dude poofs his eyebrows!
5) Michael Jackson - quite possibly the original poofer!
1) O.J. Simpson - he'll be poofing for the next 17.5 years!

It wasn't a day at the movies

My dear wife Patty, who has been an RN for 20+ years, recently reminded me (more like nagged) that I haven't been to a doctor in more than 10 years. I didn't see a problem with this. In fact, I take a bit of pride in knowing that I haven't broken any bones, suffered a debilitating concussion or needed to be stitched up for anything. I'm kinda like Rambo in some regards. Minus the phony tan.

But I figured since my waist measurement has exceeded my age, it might be time to get some mileage out of my medical benefits.

What was I thinking?!!

I think this quack stuck something in EVERY opening I've got! And he even created a few new ones!! Here's a little piece of friendly advice... anytime someone in a white lab coat says, "You may feel some slight discomfort"; you can count on the next 3.6 seconds to have the same euphoric sensation of a horse kicking you right square in the Cheez-Its!!

This is to ensure my good health?!! Dr. Pepper - or whatever his name was - stuck a needle in my finger, a bigger needle in my arm, a stick down my throat and let's just say he knows where all my ribs are and what I had inside my pockets that day.

That's right. While the rest of the world has been admiring the conjunction of Jupiter & Venus, my doctor keeps staring at Uranus! (thank you, I'll be here all week)

The good news is we're meeting again in three weeks!!

Longhorn Lament

Dear Texas fans,

GET OVER IT!!! You're not going to the Big 12 Championship Game. Stop whining. You beat Oklahoma. Congratulations! But guess what? It was a three-way tie atop the South Division, not a two-way tie. You couldn't beat Texas Tech, yet we massacred them. If a head-to-head win is your sole criteria for winning the division, then the Red Raiders should go instead of you...

Until we get a playoff, the system will always be flawed. Just like in 2004 when the Longhorns got the Rose Bowl bid instead of California.

I suck!

Sorry that I haven't blogged in awhile. I'm tempted to use the excuse that I've been too busy, but aren't we all? I hope to have something riveting up here before 2009.

Just kidding.

Stay tuned...

Italian food and a little murder?

So tonight me and the lovely Mrs. E went out to dinner in San Marcos which is a college town of roughly 30,000 people about 20 miles south of where we live. I had seen this little Italian place near Texas State U. and thought we could try it out. It's called the Italian Garden and it rocked!! They served us warm homemade bread, salad with an awesome tomato vinaigrette dressing, and perhaps the best restaurant lasagna I've ever had! I highly recommend the place. The only thing that weirded me out was the interior. This is a photo from inside the restaurant...

Now is it just me? Or does this interior have some mild resemblance to the Italian diner where Michael Corleone blasted Victor Sollozzo & Police Chief McCluskey in "The Godfather"? Take a look and decide...

Creepy huh? For some reason I kept clutching my throat and gagging every other bite. You may wonder how did we enjoy a date night without our daughter Jenni tagging along? Well, she was at a friend's birthday party where they were acting out a murder mystery tonight!!

Fear the Doughboy

I woke up this morning kind of dreading the day ahead. I have to go in for a root canal this afternoon. Like many people, I fear the dentist's chair. I'd rather have my nose hairs plucked with pliers than to be drilled, filled & billed. But I thought I'd do something just for me (I sound like a girl huh?) and decided that for my last meal I'd make biscuits & gravy.

Now most people will tell you that it's all about the biscuits. I contend that it's all about the gravy. Here's why: you take your ordinary biscuit and aside from gravy, what else can you possibly put on it besides butter? Oh maybe some jelly but that really belongs in a doughnut. But gravy? That, my friend, is an entirely different kettle of monkeys. Gravy goes with EVERYTHING! Biscuits, mashed potatoes, stuffing, meat, salad, pie, etc...

I found this powdered cream gravy mix from the store a couple years back and after a few of my own secret modifications it may be the single greatest breakfast discovery since the Fruity Pebble. So I mix it all up. I've got a picture perfect wire whisk stir going. I pour the gravy into the pan and bring it to a nice simmer. Friends, I have got total gravy mojo working at this point. I was en fuego.

Now it's biscuit time. Perhaps one of the reasons I don't hold biscuits in a higher regard is that I don't care too much for made-from-scratch biscuits. They usually taste like made-from-chalk urinal pucks. Therefore, I tend to use "whompum biscuits". If you're not familiar with whompum biscuits, they're the ones in the refrigerated can that you have to "whomp" on the counter to open. I hate that part. Because the biscuits never seem to whomp when I want 'em to whomp. One time I'll peel off the paper cover and whomp 'em on the counter and nothing happens. I whomp, and whomp, and whomp, and the Pillsbury Doughboy just sits there and mocks me. I'll grab a spoon or knife to pry open his little can and then behind me I'll hear a faint "pop". On TV, there's always this nice 'Susie Homemaker' who gently pokes him in the belly and he lets out that cute little giggle. Personally, I'd love to give him a roundhouse kick to the doughy part of his head and turn him into muffins!

The only thing worse is when he pops his can prematurely when you're not expecting it. That's what happened this morning. Patty just got home from work; we were talking in the kitchen; I started peeling the paper off biscuit boy's can and "BLAM!!" That little yeast beast went off like a grenade in my hand! I dropped the can on the floor and kicked it across the kitchen where Daisy the Wiener Dog was waiting for her owner to do something stupid. I obliged.

I risked life, limb & appetite and was able to wrestle the biscuits away from the dog. Out of ten biscuits I'm proud to report only a 30% casualty rate. I put the extra gravy on Daisy's new carrot sticks and she thinks I'm the greatest pet owner EVER!

Bravo Bevo

Oh alright. I'll give some prop's to the Texas Longhorns for beating my beloved Oklahoma Sooners 45-to-35 on Saturday. Alot of people are saying it was "a great game". Phhffftt!! If it was a great game, OU woulda won. I'll acknowledge it was a game. How's that?

Anyway, I've been having to eat crow amongst all my so-called friends & neighbors here in Austin all weekend long. Enjoy your year to brag. I know I've enjoyed ALL the past 65-13 and 63-21 maulings at Bevo's expense.