Phineas Blogg

Thanks to Janet Jackson's nipple football fans everywhere have een disallowed form having an enjoyable halftime. Where pop stars and rockers used to entertain now we stuck with octogenarians warbling through songs they once were able to actually sing. This year's "entertainment" was a group called The Who. For those of you not in a nursing home they are the band that played at Fred and Wilma's wedding.

The first song they played was called 'Pinball Wizard' which I don't think most of the audience got it. Let me help you out- pinball was a game they had back when the only other option was Tic-Tac-Toe. After that they sang the grossly inappropriately named 'Teenage Wasteland'. Geriatric wastland is hard to sing especially when your Pollygrip isn't holding.

The...who are we again?

Then it just got sad. I guess when they were popular there were not many rock songs back then because they gave up and started singing TV show theme songs. Bad then got worse. Pete Townsend got confused and repeatedly asked "Who are you?" and at one point was so scared by his dementia that he finally yelled "I REALLY WANNA KNOW!". Roger Daltry so busy trying to dance without jostling the contents of his colostomy bag that he never answered poor old Pete.

I guess it was an okay show, especially the synchronized wheel chair dance number. I'm just glad I didn't have to see either of their nipples.

I saw my shadow today.

Six more weeks of AWESOME!

Better than the movies!
I don't know what day this was but I do know this- I hate shoveling snow. It's cold and it's manual labor. If I was a superhero shoveling would be my arch enemy. He'd be all dressed in white and have a bowler hat on and I bet the jerk would smoke a cigar. Oh, I hate that guy.

Almost done.

Ringing in the New Year
Back in the olden days of 2009 we invited Chris and Kayla over to help us celebrate the New Year. I don't remember what happened as that was 27 days ago but I think we all fell asleep before midnight. Except RK who was taking pictures and putting Chris's hand in hot water.*

* Don't put someone's hand in hot water when they are on your own furniture.

Recently we switched cell phone plans to something much cheaper (yeah!) but with more features. One feature which I previously had not had is text messaging (hello 2001), which the kids call texting. I didn't have it before because 1) I'm cheap and b) no one needs to get a hold of me that much. But since it's free this time around I didn't argue and thought nothing more of it. Until the next morning when I got not one but two unsolicited messages.

The first one was a picture message of a teddy bear holding a heart saying something about happy holidays and the other one was some forward that I was supposed to forward to other mothers. I'm not a mother and unless there is a horrific and hilarious zipper accident I never will be. Spam makes me angry. Spam that can reach me no matter where I am makes me...I'm not sure, but it's probably not good.

Several days after starting this post I got another text message sent to "all my strong, beautiful sisters" and wanting me to forward it on to my "sisters". My phone really doesn't understand gender.

Don't text me saying "I'm not there yet". I'm smart and when I look around and don't see you, 9 times out of 10 I'll realize it's because you aren't here yet. Don't text me something that you can tell me when I see you in 5 minutes. If it's snowing, don't tell me that it's snowing, I can figure that one out on my own as well. If you have a picture of an adorable little puppy cuddling up to an even more adorable little baby chick don't send that to me either. I realize that's not strictly a text message but the thought still applies.

Let's say that for some reason you do have to text me. Do me one favor, learn how to spell. "LOL" is not a word. Neither is "U" nor "thx", nor is "l8tr".

And don't text me while I'm in the bathroom. Okay that may be my own fault for forgetting to take the phone out of my pants pocket. It doesn't help that my alert tone asked the guy in the other stall "How do you feel?" in a robotic woman's voice...but again, probably my fault.

So don't text me. It makes me grumpy.

Today was the Christmas lunch at work. We had good food; green bean casserole, mostaccioli, German potato salad and a bunch of other stuff. And there were a couple of suprises. John and Wendy got nods for Employee of the Quarter (3rd and 4th respectively) but the biggest surprise was a gift basket of food and toys for the girls.

It was a basket in much the same way Noah's Ark was a boat. It was huge. The food was in a large plastic tub and the toys were in a big "Santa's Sack". There was a tree with gift cards all over it for food and gas and Walmart. It was pretty overwhelming. In fact Don said it was the first time he'd seen me speechless, which I totally was.

RK and Work Goodies

RK and I sat down and went through everything to see what we'd been blessed with. I'm not even going to tell you how much the gift cards totaled because I'm kind of embarrassed by it. (Yes, it was that generous). The food was great, nothing fancy, but I could tell that time and thought went into it. One of my defining characteristics is that I'm a ridiculously picky eater. There isn't much food I like or will eat which makes what they bought so special. You see, there is not a single thing they gave us that I won't eat. And that's a feat. There was fixin's for tacos and nachos and cheese and salsa, the kind of stuff that not only do I eat but actually really like. To be honest I didn't really even notice at first but then RK pointed out just how much thought went it to it. Sometimes it really is the thought that counts.

The "Santa's Sack" had all sorts of toys that will be completely great for the girls. My favorite is a story songbook because it has Row, Row, Row Your Boat which is currently one of Nebraska's favorite songs. I can't wait for her to play with it. Another favorite in that bag was wrapping paper, tape and gift labels. It's an odd thing to be a favorite but if you look at this post of RK's you'll see why the wrapping paper is a cool present.

It's awesome. It's good to be loved. It's good to be blessed. If you haven't already read it on my wife's blog you should read about our other blessings.

My peeps from Busey mentioned that I suck. Well you can't argue with wisdom like that. In this particular instances the sucking stems from not updating my blog. I'd like to tell you that the reason I haven't been updating is because I have been busy doing something heroic...So I will.
You see I was in my friends Delorean when a bunch of Libyans in a VW van started shooting rockets at me. I stepped on the gas to get out of that joint. Somehow the car took my to when my parents were teenagers, and due to a series of events I had to reunite my mother and father so that someday I would be born. It's kind of complicated. Other than not having any Pepsi Free it was a pretty good trip. I would have been back sooner to get stuff posted but I didn't have enough energy to get back and it took some creative battery jumping to do it.

Hopefully you'll see a little more of me now.

My mom is awesome.