Halfbrown

OK, he didn’t actually take a step, but at ~11:16AM this morning Evan stood on his own. Yep, without even a hand on a table/wall/parent/household pet, my boy stood right up all on his own. I don’t think he realized what he did though, because he was playing with a bottle of water and he just sort of let go of the side of the bed to check it out, and for about 3 seconds he fully upright. Pretty cool stuff, actually.

I’ve been browsing eBay again. It’s an addiction… one which I must satisfy every few months or so, but is very dangerous since I find so many things that I like (and want). I just love the endless possibilities of what I may find (and possibly buy).

For example, we’ve already established that I’m a big dork… that’s a given. So what do I look for? Paintings or prints from old Savage Sword of Conan comics. And, of course, I find an original painting from one of my favorite Conan artists Joe Jusko. And it’s a cover from SSoC #112 that’s I’ve been looking for for about 10 years now. And the starting bid is $4,500.00. Damn the luck…

Here’s what the cover of the comic looks like:

Funny, sick, cute-n-cuddly, demented, laugh out loud goodness, and scary “not for children” shenanigans. All of which are appropriate descriptions for “Happy Tree Friends“.

So yeah… several bad things happened to my head today:

• While eating pizza from Sbarro’s in the mall I had what seemed like 2 full ounces of piping hot pizza sauce erupt from a doughy fissure in the slice of pizza I was eating. Said fissure completely covered my left eye with red sauce, momentarily blinding me and created a loud laugh from my son, Evan, who was steadily devouring the Enfamil in his bottle at the same time. This experience was not only painful, but embarassing. I’m considering litigation (just kidding).
• Headed over to Home Depot afterwards to look for some paint for Evan’s toybox as well as some junipers to border our yard. Saw one called a “Spearmint Juniper” and thought to myself “Wouldn’t that be cool if it smelled like spearmint?”. As I leaned my head into the branches of the bush to see if the description matched the aroma, I got a head full of spiders and their webbing. I spent the next 2 hours (before I got home) feeling like I had spiders crawling all over me.

My buddy Shawrk and I challenged 2 friends to a game of doubles ping-pong during a break at work. However, to make it interesting we bet that we could win by 10 points or more since we’re better than they are. To add insult to injury, we all agreed that whomever the losers were would have to either put “Mary-Kate” or “Ashley” in the email description field of their email for a month.

We won by 8 points. Damnit!

Luckily they let us challenge them again for essentially a pseudo-double or nothing (6 weeks of being called an Olsen twin in your emails, and we had to win by 12 or more points).

We won by exactly 12 points.

Whew!

Today Evan voluntarily shared his pacifier with me, which I thought was kinda cool; especially since we’re worried (like most parents) that our child won’t give up the pacifier very easily. I’m holding him in my arms and he looks at me, pops the “binky” out of his mouth and into mine. Sweet, yet gross at the same time; especially considering that it was chock full-o-drool.

You’d have to be a parent to appreciate this post, I think. You don’t have to be a parent, however, to feel squeemish about the drool on the pacifier.

Overheard in a public restroom:

Cell phone user: Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?
*Sound of #1 splashing on porcelein*
Cell phone user: Hello? Hey, it’s me. No. I’m in a bathroom. Bathroom.
*Continued sound of #1 splashing on porcelein*
Cell phone user: Hello? What? Hello?
*Sound of what is apparently cell phone user peeing on his shoe*
Cell phone user: Shit! Damn it!
*Sound of zipper*
Cell phone user: Hello? Fucking cell phone!
*Sound of man leaving bathroom. No apparent hand-washing.*

I love ping-pong, table-tennis… whatever you want to call it; and I’m not too shabby of a player. But one thing about me and games is that I am a big rules-lawyer, so naturally I decided to check out the official USATT rules online. One of the really intersting things about the rules is “24. Doping”. It says:

There shall be no doping before or during play in any competition. For the purpose of these regulations, doping is the introduction into the body in any way of any of a list of prohibited substances as provided by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and/or the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA)…

blah blah blah.

Now I just have to wonder exactly what drugs you would use to increase your ping-pong game? I mean, for runners, weightlifters, etc. I can see someone taking something to enhance their game, but ping-pong? C’mon… is there really a big run on drugs for ping-pong players? I have a hard time imagining someone looking for the perfect drug to help their spin during the game. But maybe that’s just me.