I was tagged by my sister Carla, and have had a very difficult time coming up with them! Yeah… not really.

1. I stand on one foot in the shower.

Before you mock, you need to try it. Step 1: Choose a foot, any foot. Place it firmly on the floor within a foot of the shower wall. Step 2: Take your other foot and curl your toes and rest it on top of the planted foot. Now, tell me this is not the most natural shower position ever devised! For added comfort, try leaning slightly on the wall… I have created a nation of one-footed showerers!!!

2. I never grew up.

Evidence: Homstarrunner.com, Silly music, I read young adult fiction… a bit nerdy too, I doodle in my work meetings, and… I could go on, but I’ll save whats left of my dignity and move on.

3. I wear my watch on my right wrist and I am right-handed.

I refused to conform, I assert that this is the true way to wear your wrist watch if you are right handed. To quirk this up a bit, I also wear the face of the watch on the inside of my wrist.

4. I am a music snob.

I have a very distinct music taste that takes into account more than the song that is played. It takes into account the band and its members, future and past efforts from the group, the groups involvement in the making of the songs and albums, etc. It is a tribute to the wonderfulness of my wife that she not only puts up with my snobishness, but allows me to express it with out throwing blunt and heavy objects at me after rambling on about this band or that band for 30 min.

5. I hate talking on the phone.

If you are ever on the phone with me, and it appears that I am trying to wrap up the conversation… please don’t take it personal. I get very anxious when there is a lull in the conversation. This can be with anyone from my wife to a customer service agent. While if I am jabbering, I can go on for hours, but as soon as that lull hits, I’m running for an exit!

6. I have no sense of style when it comes to dressing my children.

I can usually dress my self without embarrassing anyone, but when it comes to picking out clothes for my kids, I am truly clueless. I don’t think I am alone in this either, this is why it is very smart for wives to have a few full outfits on hangers for dad to dress the kids. Then we just get the shoes and socks wrong!

I will now tag, anyone who has commented on my blog…. that should be about five people.

When I was attending high school, a friend and I decided to write a little “Ask Abby” type column, except it would be funny… at least to us.  The other night I was going through some stuff in our basement and found a little pamphlet that my friend had written for a class, that included our two columns, and I will share the funny one with you!  So without any further ado, I give you “Mr. Smarty Pants”.

Q.  Why do girls have so many colors?

-Oomyek Nomyeknom

A.  Dear Oomyek,

Mr. Smarty Pants knows where you’re coming from.  Mr. Smarty Pants once had to find his date’s house (Don’t be so surprised!  I have a long list of girls who want to date me!) using a set of instructions that included “turn left at the Burgundy/Rock house”.  Now I know what you men are thinking.  Your exact words are, “BURGUNDY?  What the heck is BURGUNDY?”  But that is not what Mr. Smarty Pants thought.   Being the Mr. Smarty Pants that I am, I immediately recognized that Burgundy was a former region of Europe.  Mr. Smarty Pants was very concerned.  Was this some kind of hint?  Was she trying to tell me to FLEE THE COUNTRY?

So I treated this the way I treat anything that concerns me, namely, by ignoring it altogether.

This tactic eventually proved successful, as I did manage to find her (which, incidentally, was not in Europe, though it was in Bear River City, which is probably just as foreign as Europe, only more remote).

Later that evening I consulted my “Mr. Smarty Pants Dictionary” concerning the term “Burgundy”.  By that point, I had determined that my date was not trying to send me to Germany, but I thought that maybe this word had some sort of secret meaning (I couldn’t help but notice that the letters in the word “BURGUNDY” could be rearranged to spell “DRUG BUNY”).

Indeed, I was correct.  The word Burgundy not only referred to  a certain regioun in Europe, but also to a certain alcoholic beverage that makes this region famous (True story!  Look it up for yourself!) and the term is also used to describe the color of this beverage.

So there it was!  Finally I began to understand.  She wasn’t trying to send me to Europe, she was merely trying to get me drunk so that she could steal my wallet and car.

No, I’m only kidding, but we’re getting to my point: girls are not content to give you a vague description of an item’s color.  Girls have loaded their memory banks with the names of hundreds of different colors so that when they tell you what color something is, there will be no question in your mind as to the exact tint, shade, tone, degree, and flavor of the object in question.

Of course guys don’t do this.  What a girl would call “burgundy” a guy would call “purple”.  If he wanted to be extra descriptive, he might call it “kinda purplish” or “sort of, ya know, a purple color.”  Only if he wanted to be EXTREMELY specific would he ever get even remotely close to being as descriptive as girls, and the he would call it “the color of the beans in a five-week-old burrito.”  What a guy would call “blue” a girl could call navy blue, azure, periwinkle, midnight blue, cerulean, sky color sapphire, aquamarine, turquoise, dusty blue, powder blue, kitchen blue, French blue, decaffeinated blue, fat-free blue, my baby done made me blue, or (my personal favorite) blue on a stick.

Mr. Smarty Pants thinks that life would be much simpler if girls adopted the guy method of color distinction.  In my example, for instance, I would have been a lot less confused if my date had just called the house, “the color of wine made in a former region of Europe.”

So what make girls this way?  To answer this question, you must dig way back into your childhood,  Remember a simpler time, a carefree time, a time when your social status was based on the cartoon character on your lunch box.  Now think about your crayons.  Everyone had to have crayons.  This was when color differences arose between genders.  Girls packed around huge 128 crayon sets that came in a carrying case that resembled designer luggage with wheels, built-in-crayon sharpener, and a V-8 engine.  Boys on the other hand had little boxes with seven or eight crayons in them.  Parents didn’t buy their boys huge crayon sets, because boys didn’t use crayons the same way girls did.  While girls were painstakingly coloring the chicken mauve, boys were in pain from sticking the green WAY too far up their left nostril!

Beck is seriously one of my absolute favorite artists.  He is one of the most ecclectic, rounded, and random artists that I have listened to.  This album, The Information, was released two years ago, and the only song that I heard on the radio from it was “I Think I’m In Love”.  However, like most Beck albums, the whole album is very listenable and is a lot of fun to listen to.  My favorite track is “No Complaints”, and should be the song that you’re listening to now on my player.

Beck has a history of doing really odd things with his releases.  With his 2004 album, Guero, he gave a master tape of all the songs to various groups to re-mix and released it soon after Guero was released.  With The Information he decided to let the fans choose their own cover art and included 4 pages of stickers to us on the blank cover for the album… kinda weird, but also kinda cool!  Another “unique” thing that he did with this album was to make music videos for all of the songs using fairly low-budget means.  So when you buy the album, you get a disc of the songs, a DVD of the videos, 4 pages of stickers and the booklet of linear notes.  What a deal, eh?

Seriously, give the songs a listen and learn to love the music by this truly unique and talented artist!

Well I think it’s time to post, mainly to spite my wonderful sister.  (love ya Carla!)

My company was recently acquired, and the new company offers a gym membership in their benefits package.  Anyway, I knew that I was very low on gas, but I was 90% sure that I would be able to make it to the gym…. I was not right.  I was so lucky to be very near to a freeway exit, and I was able to coast to within a few hundred feet of a gas station.  So I was able to get a gallon of gas and run over to the gym, shower, and hop back in my car and go to work!  So much fun!!!

I really shouldn’t be complaining because I am so very lucky to have run out in a good spot.  It’s a funny story anyway, and a good excuse to update my blog.  I think I’ll update the music too, I hope the “auto-play” feature doesn’t annoy too many people… let me know if it does.