Your Excuse To Get Out of Jury Duty

Tuesday: May 13, 2008 - Go Cubs!

The Cubs lost last night and I think this one is on Chris because he watched the game. The season thus far has ridden very squarely on the personal actions of Cubs fans and while we've done pretty well for the most part (the Cubs have the second-best record in baseball) last night we collectively dropped the ball. I was afraid to live-blog during the win streak since the Cubs lose every time I blog. I've also tried to stay as down as I could but there's only so much I can do. If you see the Cubs are losing though, it might be good to send me mean IM's; especially if it's late in the game.

I found a couple Cub-hating blogs last night and here's what I can tell you: only idiots root for the Cardinals, White Sox, and Brewers. This should come as a surprise to no one since the Cardinals suck, the White Sox suck, and the Brewers suck. In most sports, if your team isn't in first place you don't get to talk but apparently baseball is not like that since fans of the 2nd place Cardinals, 4th place Brewers, and (sub .500) 3rd place White Sox continue to run their mouths. I wouldn't worry about the Cubs you freaks, I'd worry about your crappy teams. [Comments: 4]

Monday: May 12, 2008 - May 12 of 12

6:00am: Chompy (and I) have to get up at 6am so she can get her 12-hour antibiotic pill for her paw infection. Neither of us are happy about it but we usually go back to bed afterwards.

6:05pm: The arsenal of medicines that are apparently required to fight a nail infection. I usually hide the pill in half a piece of summer sausage and then eat the other half (of the sausage).

10:30am: Marty, Chris and I play a game of MarioKart of the interwebs. I would usually win the first two races before Marty won the last two, taking the match. I like to play as either the ghost or "Mii"--where I have a bald version and a with-hair version depending on how I feel at the moment.

1:30pm: Chompy out mowing the lawn in between the torrential rains that we've had here for the past week.

2:30pm: Attempting to find the magical and hidden Chick-Fil-A on the AU campus. I didn't find it and God knows I spent a lot of time trying.

3:00pm: Reluctantly trying the soup from Balducci's and doing some general grocery shopping. Balducci's makes Whole Foods look like Aldi.

1:30pm: Oh my God, I'm on Lost because I got back from lunch and had TRAVELED BACK IN TIME TO 1:30PM! I have also been dead for twelve years and have a severe nose bleed.

7:00pm: Having a glass of wine (in a styrofoam cup) while writing out the chords of When you were young. I forgot that I was transposing as I went so that Ab- should in fact be an a-. Oops.

7:30pm: The yard is finally starting to drain. It was mostly a pool of mud for the past couple of days.

8:30pm: Playing with Chompy while watching the Cubs game. She was HYPER last night and was tearing across the house for no reason get mud everywhere.

10:00pm: I didn't see either Amy nor Steve at the game but I did see this big Lifelock sign and it made me smile.

12:00am: A MarioKart rematch! This time I didn't lose the second two races. Chris and I also took it to Marty on Coin Runner (granted it was 2v1).

BONUS: Trying out my $5 loaf of bread. $5 for a loaf of bread! That's just stupid.

[Comments: 2]

Thursday: May 08, 2008 - Another Big, Fat F

Warning: this entry is ALL LOST SPOILERS. I can only think of one explanation for this string of just abysmal episodes: that the writers are still on strike and that "Big Hollywood" has manipulated the media in such a way that we *think* they're actually back to work. Of course we'd figure this out after you keep airing HORRIBLE EPISODES OF LOST WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS. It's like you get our hopes all up during the commercials for the coming week and then the episode totally sucks. Yeah, it was cool to see young John Locke being given the Dalai Lama test but other than that...we already knew Miker wasn't going to die and that something bad was going to happen with the dudes on the ship. Admittedly, seeing Claire and her old man in the hut was a surprise but not like the good kind of surprise (Hey, I got you this Wii...) but the bad kind of surprise (Hey, the doctor just called and I guess it's a law or something that I have to call and tell you...). I did like Ben's line, "Destiny is a fickle b*tch". If I were the writers I would have said "fitch" and started that trend mainstream.

Since we know there are now problems with the flow of time on the island it might be nice to have a little more detail before things start happening out of order. We could obviously infer the doctor was going to die this week. I fear that all of these weeks of total and complete bullsh*t are going to come back to haunt us at the end when things aren't explained fully because there wasn't enough time to do it. Uh, you could have told us during Jack's tattoo episode! Or any of the episodes from the past month. You guys better unleash some serious main-character killings if you want me to keep watching the show. [Comments: 0]

Tuesday: May 06, 2008 - Prairie Home Companion @ Wolftrap

If you listen to NPR in the DC area then you know A Prairie Home Companion is coming to Wolftrap on Friday, May 23rd. I would like to go and I would like *you* to go with me. If you have any interest in seeing the pre-Whose-Line-Is-It-Anyway style "radio" show in person let me know ASAP. If you don't want to go, but have some nerdy friends who might like to go with other nerds tell them to read this entry so that they too can see A Prairie Home Companion when Garrison Keillor and company come to Wolftrap.

Now, that first paragraph is optimized to hopefully grab some search engine traffic so I might get some friends that way but if you (*you*) want to go (to A Prairie Home Companion at Wolftrap) leave me a comment, call, or email me.

In other news, Garrison Keillor doesn't look anything like how I expected him to. I'm not sure what I was expecting but this (see picture) was not it.

Finally, in the spirit of NPR, if you want *me* to leave your answering machine message, just let me know and I will happily do so. [Comments: 6]

Monday: May 05, 2008 - Cinco De Mayo

I took my now-walking dog for a nice one yesterday. If she keeps it up she might earn a walk in the park by the weekend. The first ten minutes are pretty rough since she's so grossly out of practice and pulls constantly on the leash but she's getting better at getting past that point and relenting to my domination of where we go.

I hung out with Amy in the afternoon and we got a very quotable line but sadly that can't be repeated in a public forum. While we were out I picked up a copy of Wii MarioKart so for you Wii users--I'm ready for you to beat me anytime. Anywhere. Anyplace (but preferably from the comfort of our homes).

The Cubs lost again, most of which was documented in the new Cubs blog. That is tedious, I'm going to go ahead and say it now. Trying to pay that much attention to each out, while not at the game, is just gruelingly boring sometimes. I have a new appreciation for the role of Len Kasper having to fill minutes of just nothing. [Comments: 2]