And today...

Congrats to Capt Cue ball and Mrs Cue ball as they found out recently that they are expecting their third child.  They already have a boy and a girl and now an alien growing in mama Cue ball's tummy.  She is like 5 or 6 weeks, I think she said. I am not sure if that is good or not but it is what it is.

Is that how you spell tummy? I guess so.

And congrats to Capt Cue ball who beat me on a run this afternoon.  I wasn't really planning on running (in fact the last time I ran was the triathlon from hell) and then I find myself in a 3 mile race.  He beat me by 15 seconds, which is a long distance.  He looked like a little ant he was so far ahead of me.  Ok, not really but he still did a good job.

This past weekend we had wifey's brother in law in town and we also had friends from San Diego visiting. They were attending a wedding in Winter Park of all place.  This week my cousin from Baton Rouge is visiting Disney World so we will probably see them this week too.  I think I am taking Thursday and Friday off from work so that the wifey and I can go to Disney World ourselves. It has been on our "to do" list for a while and why not now.  Poppop (my day) will be in town this weekend and Marmie (death to mimi, my mom) will also be in town but at separate times. 

Wow, what a whirl wind of people and the madness is only partly over.  I am already tired thinking about all the visitors.

Anyways, that is about all I got for today.  

Anniversary weekend...

Ok, I am so out of order now... we (the wifey and I) have been quite busy and in my efforts to blog I have been blogging my life out of order.  So here is the blog about the wifey and me's 5 year anniversary.  our anniversary was the same day as the new kids concert, and the next day she had a anniversary adventure surprise for me.

Well the wifey surprised me on Saturday with an anniversary adventure. She didn't tell me what we were doing and even when we got there I didn't exactly know. We ended up going zip lining or zipping. It is essentially where you get connected to a cable 50ft in the air and zipline from one tower to another of speeds between 15 and 25 mph.  

Here are some pics...

I know...I look so cool in protective head gear.

WTF of the day...

How many medals did the USA Olympic Gymnastics Team win (men and women, individual and team combined)?

Answer: none. Not one.  WTF? How did the we (the USA) put together an olympic team and NOT WIN A SINGLE MEDAL?  Ok, I know this happened 9 years ago, but I just learned this fact.  How did we screw that one up so badly? Seriously? 

 

Yeah, about that Triathlon...

So some have asked, and I forgot to mention  it... here is the recap...

Everything that could go wrong did.  I started off with the swim and did fine. I estimated 30 mins for the 1500m swim and I got out of the water at 28mins.  So far so good, right?  See below picture:

So the guy in the black wet suit with his arms behind his back is me. And what am I doing? Struggling with the zipper of the wet suit.  I struggled so much the zipper broke off.  When I got to the transition area I asked someone to help unzip me, to which he replied, "The zipper is gone. You need to find someone with pliers." Awesome!

So I find a guy at the "fix your broken bike" stand (foreshadowing for all the english majors out there), and I wait patiently as he changes some chick's tire. Who gets a flat tire already? She didn't ever ride anywhere. Hahaha...bite my tongue.

So I waited and he finally got around and used the pliers and unzipped me. While waiting I even thought about riding in the wet suit, but I figured it would be faster to wait for pliers than to ride in a wet suit and die of dehydration. Anyways...I finally get out of the wet suit and now it is go time. My overall strategy for a triathlon is to just finish the swim, even if I come in last, and destroy everyone else in the bike and run. 

So I take off peddling.  About 3/4 of a mile down the road there is a sharp turn. I slow down a bit and in the turn my front tire gets wobbly and I almost lay the bike down and I skid.  Flat tire. Crap.  What now? I figure the best thing to do is ride back to the start and air up my bike.  People who do triathlons regularly actually carry everything they need to change a tube on their bikes.  They make very small bike parts now.  Anyways... I am riding on a flat tire back to the start yelling out to people on the side of the road "Does anyone have a bike pump?"  Lo and behold a kind woman yelled back, "I do!" Perfect.  I pull over and use her bike pump and start pumping.  With each pump I hear fzzzzzzzz.  Pump. Fzzzzz. Pump. Fzzzz.  The inner tube is bad. Great. The super nice lady, whom I will call "Super Nice Lady," offered for me to take the front tire off her bike (she does triathlons but didn't do this one) and let me use it for the race.  I took off my front tire while she took hers off, but unfortunately boys are different than girls (tires that is) (reminds me of a conversation my dad had with me when I was in 5th grade).  But I digress... next, "Super Nice Lady" says "I think I might have an extra inner tube." Awesome.  She didn't. Not so awesome.  Now, I have a spare inner tube back at the car, back at the start line, and wifey has the keys so what do I do. I guess there isn't much I can do... I take off my bike shoes and socks and run back to the start looking for wifey.  I find her and get the keys, grab the spare tire and run back.  Then "Super Nice Lady" helped me change the tire and even pumped it up for me.  I offered to pump but she said to save my energy. She even at one point offered to give me her bike to ride. How nice is she?

So with a new tire I rode off to catch up with the race, because I was in dead last place.  That's right, Super man was in last place.  So I pedal and pedal and pedal. I catch and pass two people. I finish the bike in about 1 hour 13mins...a few mins over what I expected.  I transition to the run and try to catch even more people. I did the 10k in 43 mins and passed about 8-10 more people.  I finished in 2hours 55 mins when it was all over. A few more pics the wifey took...

An Addition to the New Kids Post

Ok, I forgot to mention and people have asked me "how did they sound, now that they are like 100 years old?" Let me tell you.  I think the ones with the pre-pubescent high pitched voice back in the day worked EXTREMELY hard at making their voices sound like teenaged kids.  One in particular, Jordan Knight (the wifey told me his name, I'm not that gay...not that there's anything wrong with that [Seinfeld?]) must have listened to old CDs for months trying to get his 40 year old voice to sound like a 16 year old voice again.  You could tell he was faking it.  Every now and again, you could hear his man voice slip in there but he quickly returned to the voice that made him famous.  I am not even sure how a 40 year old man can make his voice sound like a kids voice (range, pitch, tone...) but somehow that guy did it. 

I guess your WTF moment of today is this:

How can a 40 year old dude make his voice sound like a 16 year old kid's voice?  How does that happen? How do you even train to do that? WTF? Really? 

REALLY not a proud man...

So before you read this post you will need to read yesterday's post if you haven't already. 

(pause to allow time to scroll down and read yesterday's post)

Well, the New Kids Concert last night... what can I say... those old guys really put on a show.  The whole thing was really intense. Never before have I heard such a crowd.  40,000 screaming women and 45 men plugging their ears.  The crowd was SOOO loud, and so random.  I mean Cougars everywhere who listened to them years ago when their daughters were teenagers, women who were the teenagers now grown up, and little girls who were new fans.  There were drunk, slutty college girls there having a "girls night out", there were drunk, slutty older women having "girls night out" and families with 3 generations of girls... all singing the words to songs which I didn't know the words.  Now, I know maybe New Kids top 3 songs...but they performed for almost 2 hours.  They sang new stuff, old stuff, they even had those members who attempted solo careers sing their solo songs.  One guy, who didn't try a solo career, but apparently spent the last 18 years learning to break dancing showcased his ability to windmill like a Jr High (middle school) kid.  Impressive.  Each one of them had their moment in the spotlight (well except one of them, I think the gay one) but the major downfall was they kept trying to sell their sexualness.  There were more crotch grabs and ass shots on the jumbo-tron than I care to admit.  One of the dudes starting singing a solo from his solo career, then ripped open (probably fastened with Velcro) his shirt and sang the song with a wind machine blowing so it looked like his shirt was blowing in the wind.  He might as well been the cover of a cheese romance novel.  Gag and puke. 

I guess the highlight of the whole show for me was the opening act.  We didn't know who the opening act was going to be until we got there but the Jabbawockeez opened up. For those that don't know, they are a dance group from San Diego and they won the first season of "America's best dance crew".  These dudes are awesome.  Check out a clip from the show: Jabbawockeez and Jabbawockeez  .I hope you actually watched the video clip because the Jabbawockeez are seriously awesome. I am tired of this post so I am out.

I've got the right stuff...baby

Well as embarrassed as I am to admit that I've been once after tonight I will have to admit I've been twice.  New Kids On The Block... they just won't die.  I'm not sure how old these guys are now but they must have some pretty big bills to pay for them to be back on tour after a thousand years of not being in the spot light. 

So, Bud, the second time you have been?  Yes, in third grade I went with my two older sisters.  I don't know how old they were (although I could do the math) or if we were old enough to go by ourselves but I am pretty sure mom and dad weren't there...it was just us kids. And now after like 20 years of therapy to finally put the tragic memories behind me, the wifey drags me back.  

For those that may not know, I have learned that there is a pretty strong market for concert tickets. Long story short, I promised Carrie Underwood Tickets to a good looking girl for her birthday, but forgot to buy them when they went on sale.  Introduction to third party ticket sales, and I realize people charge A LOT of money for concert tickets to suckers who just were too lazy to log onto Ticketmaster.com in a timely manner.  So, now I buy tickets to concerts when they go on sale and re-sell them to suckers, i mean people that were to lazy to log into Ticketmaster.com in a timely manner.  Well, one weekend I had a list of concerts that were going on sale and gave the list to the wifey and had her buy tickets. The guidance I gave her, was if you would want the tickets personally, then buy them. When I returned home, I found out she had not just bought a pair of tickets... she bought 3 pairs.  Each time she checked for tickets the seats just kept getting better and better, so she kept buying and buying.  Little did we know at the time the only other people buying tickets for the concert was people like us trying to make money.  So let's just say the concert isn't sold out and demand has been low. So now I have a pair of tickets that didn't sell and we are going.  That's right. We are Hanging Tough.  Now I have flashbacks of my mom and the PTA mothers doing a dance to the song hanging tough in my head that will take 20 more years of therapy to repress.  

No big deal. Not mad at the wifey. The ticket selling thing has mostly been just for fun and something to do. I lose on a few (NKOTB) and win on a few (Eric Clapton 4th Row at the Hollywood Bowl, awesome rate of return on those tickets) but no worries.  So tonight for our 5th year anniversary we will be going "step by step" to the concert hoping that I "please don't (have to) go, girl".  And yes, those were New Kids Song titles.  

I'm not a proud man, people. Not a proud man.

And instead of a question today I bring you the WTF? moment of the day...

From an actual ad in Japan: (click on picture to see a larger, easier to read version)

Those crazy Japans...

I don't read so good...

So I mentioned before that I have a triathlon this Saturday...well a guy at work, let's call him Capt Reservist (for obvious reason, he is a reservist) is also in the same triathlon.  I mentioned it was on Saturday and he was like "um, no it is on Sunday". I quickly pull out my handy dandy pocket organizer and check. Sure enough, Saturday.  I just checked online and the race is on Sunday. I don't read so good. Numbres were always touhg. Sometimse I swicth around numbers and such. Regradless, the race is on Sunday.  

1500m swim, 40Km bike, and 10k run.  Or for those in America... just under a mile swim, 22mile bike ride and a 5.5 mile run. We hold on tightly to the Imperial system, don't we?

Well just like my sister's blog started off about her and her running shoes, and she probably doesn't know when the last time she ran was... this blog started off to track my training for the Florida Ironman.  But, that dream will have to be put on hold. It seems there is a war going on in Afghanistan and I am the only person in the world that can save the day.  Sarcasm? So in about a month I will be, yet again, deploying but to Afghanistan this time.  After this deployment I will have been to every front line the Marine Corps has.  Iraq...check, Horn of Africa...check, Islamic terrorist cells in Indo-China...check, War in the pacific...check, Kuwait...check.  I think the only thing I am missing is south america and no one really cares about SOUTHCOM right now.  Oh but we will. Give it 10-15 years, and I guarantee South America will be the new Iraq... just guessing. But I digress. 

So I am deploying in about a month and I will be there for six months.  So there we are. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle... G.I. Joe!!

And tonight's random question...

What was your favorite childhood toy/tv show?  Mine would be G.I. Joe or Thundercats.  Although I have to admit, I had quite a collection of Transformers too.  What say you?

PS: If you read this but don't provide input in the form of comments/answers to my questions then you suck. 

And they did it again...

I am an uncle again for the third time. Here are some pics of my sister's new beautiful baby girl.

Little bit is so cute btw...

Me - Out

So what is the difference between...

a really big cupcake and a regular cake?  My buddy Capt Ponch brought cupcakes to work today from a local bakery.  This particular bakery claims to make the biggest cupcake.  My buddy asked what was the difference between the regular cupcakes he was buying and the "biggest" ones.  The girl at the counter told him the "biggest" ones could be cut and eaten by 16-20 people.  What? Is that even considered a cupcake anymore?  Isn't that just a cake?  So I pondered this for most of the day (ahh the life, you are jealous. you wish you could sit around and ponder the difference between a big cupcake and a regular cake).  So here is what I thought of... a cake us flat on the sides (round, square or rectangle) and there is  one solid edge that connects the side(s) to the top. A cupcake (much like a muffin) is straight on the sides but "muffin tops" out from the side.  But is this just a gimmick because lets be serious. A cake is a one piece baked good to be eaten by many. Cupcakes on the other hand are individual baked goods to be eaten individually.  I guess though if you are a fat person and you could eat a whole cake then that last point is moot.  Hmmm what say all of you?

Ok today my shin splints put my almost out of commission.  I am icing them now....mmm icing.  Sorry, had a fat kid moment day dreaming of icing.  My shins hurt so I will focus on biking and swimming for now.  I have lifted the rule that I have to run to the gym... for now anyways. 

ARSM out

By the way, while spell checking this post I just learned eaten is spelled e-a-t-e-n and not spelled e-a-t-t-e-n.  And now I know...