This family is all about hair-brained schemes. We come up with crazy ideas and pursue them. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. We have a big hair-brained scheme in mind but we can't act on it unless we can come up with a fat wad of money and the economy suffers a mild recovery.
So I told my wife, "We should get super serious about saving a bunch of money. We should buckle down for as long as we can stand it. If we can't stand it, then we can binge with whatever money we actually saved."
My wife agreed so we started brain-storming ideas on where we could save money. It turns out that all I do is work. The only place I can possibly save money is to not eat out so much, but that is hard to do when you work anywhere from 8 to 22 hours in a day. My wife said lamely, "I guess I could stop using paper plates, but that means we'll have more dirty dishes that I won't have time to wash." We buy everything on sale. We get DVDs from the library. We go out to see a movie about every six months.
It's funny that we sat down to think of ways to save money but only came to the conclusion that we need to spend money and have some fun for once.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
When Will I Meet My Fate? Baby I'm A Man And I Was Born To Hate
We were driving through our neigborhood looking at houses.
Me: "When we get divorced I'll probably rent one of these apartments."
My Wife: "Why?"
Me: "So I can stay close to the kids. They aren't much to look at but I'm sure they're cheap and I can live there with a younger, skinnier, prettier version of you and pay off my bills."
My Wife: "It sounds like you've really been thinking about this. How can you even think these things? Even if you're joking?"
Me: "I'm a man. That's what men do, isn't it?"
Now that I type it, it sounds REALLY mean. But I assure you that it was quite funny. Don't let my wife's crying eyes dissuade you. She cries about everything you know.
Me: "When we get divorced I'll probably rent one of these apartments."
My Wife: "Why?"
Me: "So I can stay close to the kids. They aren't much to look at but I'm sure they're cheap and I can live there with a younger, skinnier, prettier version of you and pay off my bills."
My Wife: "It sounds like you've really been thinking about this. How can you even think these things? Even if you're joking?"
Me: "I'm a man. That's what men do, isn't it?"
Now that I type it, it sounds REALLY mean. But I assure you that it was quite funny. Don't let my wife's crying eyes dissuade you. She cries about everything you know.
All Us Boys On Deathrow, We're Just Waiting For a Pardon
I'm lucky enough to be working a lot of overtime, so I haven't been around much. But Jonah stayed home on Monday with a fever so I took a day off. It was nice because I had plenty of one-on-one time with my other kids when they were his age, but this is the first time that it was just me and Jonah. His daytime personality is much happier than his nighttime personality.
I've heard good things about the show "Super Why!" on PBS so when I saw it was on TV I paid attention. It didn't make a very good first impression though and here is why:
There is a group of kids and a pig and the pig starts feeling sad and says, "You're all human and I'm a pig. I feel different and it makes me sad."
And I'm sure they did this just so they could talk about a story, "Well here is a story about a Little Mermaid who also felt like she was different..."
They didn't say, "Hey! You're a pig! You've got that curly-Q tail and you get to roll around in poop and you taste delicious!"
Suddenly they were just IN the story, talking to a little mermaid, but they never seemed to get to the part where she sold her soul to the sea witch for a chance to be human just to watch her prince marry another woman and pass the opportunity to regain her soul by murdering him and instead choosing to cast her human form into the ocean where is dissolves into air or foam or something... and by a stroke of luck, as a spirit in limbo, she is given the chance to regain her soul so she can get into heaven after she does good deeds for 300 years or so, all so that the kids can turn to the pig and say, "See... if you feel different and sad just commit suicide and maybe you can go to heaven one day."
I guess they don't tell you the end of the story because they want kids to read it for themselves.
Last weekend I was supposed to go snowboarding the mofos from the furniture store but I was too tired and I missed my family so we went and saw that movie "Coraline." I enjoyed it. It was very strange. I thought there would be more music in it but I will settle for the one song that They Might Be Giants contributed. I don't care if this is a spoiler. Anyone who takes their kids to see Coraline should be prepared to see gigantic naked bouncing old-lady puppet boobs. There. I said it. Coraline did a better job of delivering their message than Super Why: Be happy with what you have.
Business at the furniture store has been pretty slow. I heard one of the mofos talking on his cell phone, "I used your credit card at the furniture store so don't be surprised when you get a bill in the mail..."
When he hung up, I said, "Did you steal your girlfriends credit card and go on a shopping spree again?"
He said, "No. That was my wife. With our discount we can get $30 headphones for $4. So I used our credit card to get some and I didn't want my wife to freak out when we got an extra bill at the end of the month."
I said, "Why didn't you just pay cash for them?"
He said, "I don't have any money. These are tough times. But I did do 90-days-same-as-cash."
I said, "You only have 90 days to come up with $4? You'd better get your butt to work."
At my daytime job, I did some work at a military facility. It was out in the middle of nowhere so I had to go to the store on the base for lunch. I thought I would just get a drink and a candy bar but they were hard to find. I had to walk down a 30 foot aisle with alcohol of all kinds on both sides and I finally found a box of Almond Snickers, Watchamacallit, Skittles, and Red Vines tucked away on an end cap.
I went to pay and right next to the cash register was a magazine rack. It had an upper-section and a lower-section. The upper-section was nothing but pornography. Lots and lots of pornography. And the lower section was only magazines like Mens Journal and Guns and Ammo. There were actually a lot of girls in line behind me and it felt awkward being so close to the stockpile o' porn.
I told my coworker that it was weird that they have miles of hard liquor but you can't find a 3 Musketeers to save your life. He said the military bases are the only places in Utah where you can buy a keg of beer - if you're military.
The whole thing made me feel sad for the troops. The message of the store seemed to be: "Don't dream about a life off of this base, just get drunk and look at boobs when you're feeling down."
The last couple of weeks, I've been working in a frozen vegetable warehouse in Ogden. There are welders from Tennessee flashing blue lightning and spraying orange sparks everywhere and everything is made of stainless steel aside from the cement floor. So we set up our tristands and bandsaws and pipe-threaders with their oil guns and get to work builing something from Super Mario World. After lunch we come back and the workers have spilled peas all over the floor and a river of peas rushes through our work area and looks like the everglades from the sky.
Everyday is an adventure. What will it be? Brussel sprouts? Corn? Carrots? Mixed vegetables? And then someone drives through the everglades with a giant scissor lift and it just looks like a crappy warehouse again.
I've heard good things about the show "Super Why!" on PBS so when I saw it was on TV I paid attention. It didn't make a very good first impression though and here is why:
There is a group of kids and a pig and the pig starts feeling sad and says, "You're all human and I'm a pig. I feel different and it makes me sad."
And I'm sure they did this just so they could talk about a story, "Well here is a story about a Little Mermaid who also felt like she was different..."
They didn't say, "Hey! You're a pig! You've got that curly-Q tail and you get to roll around in poop and you taste delicious!"
Suddenly they were just IN the story, talking to a little mermaid, but they never seemed to get to the part where she sold her soul to the sea witch for a chance to be human just to watch her prince marry another woman and pass the opportunity to regain her soul by murdering him and instead choosing to cast her human form into the ocean where is dissolves into air or foam or something... and by a stroke of luck, as a spirit in limbo, she is given the chance to regain her soul so she can get into heaven after she does good deeds for 300 years or so, all so that the kids can turn to the pig and say, "See... if you feel different and sad just commit suicide and maybe you can go to heaven one day."
I guess they don't tell you the end of the story because they want kids to read it for themselves.
Last weekend I was supposed to go snowboarding the mofos from the furniture store but I was too tired and I missed my family so we went and saw that movie "Coraline." I enjoyed it. It was very strange. I thought there would be more music in it but I will settle for the one song that They Might Be Giants contributed. I don't care if this is a spoiler. Anyone who takes their kids to see Coraline should be prepared to see gigantic naked bouncing old-lady puppet boobs. There. I said it. Coraline did a better job of delivering their message than Super Why: Be happy with what you have.
Business at the furniture store has been pretty slow. I heard one of the mofos talking on his cell phone, "I used your credit card at the furniture store so don't be surprised when you get a bill in the mail..."
When he hung up, I said, "Did you steal your girlfriends credit card and go on a shopping spree again?"
He said, "No. That was my wife. With our discount we can get $30 headphones for $4. So I used our credit card to get some and I didn't want my wife to freak out when we got an extra bill at the end of the month."
I said, "Why didn't you just pay cash for them?"
He said, "I don't have any money. These are tough times. But I did do 90-days-same-as-cash."
I said, "You only have 90 days to come up with $4? You'd better get your butt to work."
At my daytime job, I did some work at a military facility. It was out in the middle of nowhere so I had to go to the store on the base for lunch. I thought I would just get a drink and a candy bar but they were hard to find. I had to walk down a 30 foot aisle with alcohol of all kinds on both sides and I finally found a box of Almond Snickers, Watchamacallit, Skittles, and Red Vines tucked away on an end cap.
I went to pay and right next to the cash register was a magazine rack. It had an upper-section and a lower-section. The upper-section was nothing but pornography. Lots and lots of pornography. And the lower section was only magazines like Mens Journal and Guns and Ammo. There were actually a lot of girls in line behind me and it felt awkward being so close to the stockpile o' porn.
I told my coworker that it was weird that they have miles of hard liquor but you can't find a 3 Musketeers to save your life. He said the military bases are the only places in Utah where you can buy a keg of beer - if you're military.
The whole thing made me feel sad for the troops. The message of the store seemed to be: "Don't dream about a life off of this base, just get drunk and look at boobs when you're feeling down."
The last couple of weeks, I've been working in a frozen vegetable warehouse in Ogden. There are welders from Tennessee flashing blue lightning and spraying orange sparks everywhere and everything is made of stainless steel aside from the cement floor. So we set up our tristands and bandsaws and pipe-threaders with their oil guns and get to work builing something from Super Mario World. After lunch we come back and the workers have spilled peas all over the floor and a river of peas rushes through our work area and looks like the everglades from the sky.
Everyday is an adventure. What will it be? Brussel sprouts? Corn? Carrots? Mixed vegetables? And then someone drives through the everglades with a giant scissor lift and it just looks like a crappy warehouse again.
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