Something's not right...

This is an actual cake purchased by an actual friend of mine. I don't know what else to say...

MFWL story by MFWLW

Remember My-Friend-Who-Lies (MFWL)? Well, his wife (MFWLW) has a weblog. The other day, she wrote about a funny story that, oddly enough, MFWL has never told me about. They had a baby last June, and this story is from right after the baby was born when they were leaving the hospital to go home. Here it is in her words:

I hope (My-Husband-Who-Lies) doesn't mind that I post this, but one of the ones that still brings a smile is when (MHWL) was getting the car to pick us up to go home. His sense of direction got turned around in the parking garage and he couldn't find his way back to the main entrance where we were waiting. (The baby), the person who pushed the wheelchair out, and I sat watching the poor guy drive all around trying to find where we were. The parking garage is maybe fifty feet from the main entrance. :)

I love this story. And it doesn't surprise me one bit.

My Birthday

My birthday was last Sunday, so we had a nice long birthday weekend. Here are the highlights:

Saturday

• Took the whole family out for a round of frisbee golf. There's this elementary school not too far away that has its own frisbee golf course on it. It ended up being perfect because the holes weren't too far away from each other, so the kids had an easier time with it. And the whole place is fenced in, so we didn't have to worry about PrincessKat running away somewhere.


• Mrs. BigKat took LilKat1 shopping, so I was able to have some time with LilKat2 playing boardgames. I showed him a couple that he'd never played before: DVONN and Carcassonne: The Castle. I thought he might be a little young for them, but he caught on to the rules for both of them quite easily. He actually thumped me pretty good on Carcassonne. I think the final score was 101-38. Sure, I helped him a bit on his turns, but he really did quite well for himself.

Sunday

• I taught Sunday School. It was my last regular class of the year! Next week, we're having an in-class celebration. And the following week, we're having awards and games. After that, it's summer. I'm a little sad to see all of my 2nd graders 'graduating' out of my class!
  


• After lunch, I got to open my presents. I got a bunch of cool stuff! First, I got a whole bunch of boardgames:

Yspahan - I've been wanting this for a long time. A fairly quick, family oriented boardgame that uses dice in an interesting way. The rules are pretty simple, but there are a few different ways to score points, which I like.

Powerboats - A fast paced boat racing game with a modular board. Mrs. BigKat and I tried it out right away. It's quite fun. The interesting blue 3 sided dice that it comes with are quite cool. I'm looking forward to showing it to the boys.

Jamaica - Another racing game, but this time it's pirate ships. I still have to read the rules, but it looks like something that will be fun for grownups and kids to play together.

Stratego - Did you know that there's a revised version of Stratego? I showed LilKat1 how to play the original version a while ago, and we had fun with it. He bought me the revised version. In this one, all of the pieces have their own special abilities. Can't wait to try it out!

• I also got a big pile of candy. Did you know that they made chewy lemonheads? They're really good! And they come with apple, grape, orange, and cherry too. They're called something like Sour Chewy Lemonheads AND FRIENDS. The only problem was the PrincessKat got ahold of them, put a whole bunch in her mouth, decided they were too sour, and spit them on the carpet, leaving a kind of rainbow colored shotgun blast of candy stains on the carpet.

• In the afternoon, I got to cook. I made paella! I was going to make it with chicken and linguica. But I don't know how to get the chicken to be done at the same time as the rice. So I cheated and made the chicken separately on the grill (using my new favorite chicken grilling technique that I saw in last month's Cook's Illustrated). The paella turned out pretty good, but not perfect. The flavor was great, but some of the rice was undercooked. But I still got to spend the whole afternoon cooking and grilling, which is fun for me.
  


• I did take one break from cooking. The ice cream man came by and LilKat1 bought himself a missile pop with is own money. LilKat2 felt left out, so I grabbed my wallet and chased the ice cream man down the street. Just like when I was a kid!

• That evening my mom and My-Friend-Who-Lies (MFWL) and his wife (MFWLW) came over. After the kids went to bed, we all played a couple of games of Cash 'n Guns. It's an absolutely silly game where you're a bunch of gangsters trying to split up the money that you got from robbing a bank by threatening each other with orange foam pistols. I lost pretty bad at this game. And it's quite possible that I will never win at this game. It turns out that everyone likes to shoot me with orange foam pistols. I don't know why. But even though I lost, it was still a lot of fun.
  


• I think the best part, though was when Mrs. BigKat said that she would never let the kids see this game. After all it uses real foam pistols!

REAL...FOAM...PISTOLS!

Ok...I should probably stop making fun of my wife now...

But REAL FOAM PISTOLS! It just makes me smile everytime I think about it.

• Oh yeah, MFWL also got me the expansion for Galaxy Trucker, bringing my birthday boardgame total up to FIVE!

The next day was good too. Got to beat MFWL in a round of 18 holes of frisbee golf (although he did lose Mrs. BigKat's frisbee by throwing it over a barbed wire fence...that wasn't so good). I also got to spend some fun time with LilKat1 shopping for Star Wars legos. And I bought myself a small game: Hula Hippos! I'm definitely going to have to make a video for that one.

Color Blind

My Friend Who Lies (MFWL) is color blind. When we were in college, he would have me help him figure out what color clothes to put on his video game people (What color is this?...Blue...What color is this?...Brown...What color is this?...Red...What color is this?...Greenish Blue...What color is this?...Yellow...Ok! Now for the pants!). His sister numbered his clothes and made him a chart so that he would always know which pants went with which shirts.

So when I found out about this application, I thought of him. It's called Color Oracle, and it changes your computer screen so things look like how a color blind person would see them.

You know what's funny? MFWL's favorite teams are the San Francisco 49ers and the Portland Trailblazers, who both have red as one of their team colors. Take a look at these pictures using the app...U-G-L-Y!!!

Edit: These are the original pictures. For the color blind version, go here.

Funny MFWL story

My-Friend-Who-Lies (MFWL) has a lot of funny stories about him. You can read a bunch of them here, here, and here. And these don't even include some of the classics, such as the 'Naked MFWL story' (where my other college buddy who was living with him at the time was sitting on the couch watching tv and suddenly saw MFWL running naked from the bathroom to his bedroom because he forgot to bring his clothes with him when he took a shower) and the one when MFWL went skiing, but didn't have any ski pants, so he duct taped garbage bags around his jeans.

It's been a little while since we've had a really good MFWL story (he's just been doing his normal weird stuff, nothing outrageously weird). But this weekend, the 'MFWL's Lost Cat' story was born. Here's what happened...

Last Thursday, I got a call around 8am from MFWL. He sounded very worried. One of his cats was missing. He couldn't find her anywhere in the house. So I went over and helped look. We looked all around the inside of the house and looked outside as well. No cat. MFWL put up some 'Lost Cat' signs around the neighborhood and went off to work. The following day, there was still no cat. MFWL and his wife both looked around the neighborhood a whole bunch. Mrs. BigKat took the kids on a bunch of walks to see if they could find the kitty. Still no luck. MFWL was getting very worried about his cat so he decided to take drastic measures.

He hired a guy with a tracking dog to come to his house and try and track down his cat. And this was not just any guy with a dog. According to this, this guy is the BEST search and rescue dog guy in the WHOLE WORLD. He's helped find lost cats, lost dogs, lost people, dead people, alive people, people who have murdered other people...this list goes on. The guy came over and his dog quickly found the cat's trail. It led them through all of their neighbors' backyards (including Portland Trailblazer All Star Brandon Roy) about a quarter of a mile down to a big, huge patch of prickly bushes. They couldn't go into the bushes, so the dog guy took his 200 dollars and left. 

Now all MFWL had to do was help his cat get from the prickle bush field all the way back to his house. He decided to make a scent trail to help guide his kitty home. Now if he was a dog, he would've just peed on everything between his house and the prickle bushes. But he's not a dog, and that would be disgusting. So instead he decided to be more civilized and peed in a spritzer bottle that he used to spray his urine all over the neighborhood (including Portland Trailblazer All Star Brandon Roy's house).

Fortunately for me, I live in the opposite direction of the prickle bush field.

Now the problem was that it was starting to get cold. His cat is an inside only cat, so MFWL was worried that she was going to get too cold. So he got a kitty carrier and put one of his sweaters inside (because it smelled like him. And no, he didn't pee on it). He brought it over to the prickle bush field so that the cat would have a little shelter. To make it easier for his cat to find the kitty carrier he put urine all around the area (and no, he didn't use the spritzer bottle this time. He just used the regular, conventional method of spreading pee). 

Now, you may thing that MFWL is a complete weirdo and totally disgusting for spritzing his urine all over the neighborhood. But you know what? You can't argue with results. Monday morning, MFWL's wife heard a scratching at their garage door. She opened it up and saw their lost cat. Yay!

Edit: Oops, looks like the garbage bag pants story was in one of the earlier posts, even though I said it wasn't. That's ok, it's one of my favorites, so it can be mentioned twice.

Monday Basketball

We play basketball at our church on Mondays. In the bulletin, it used to say 'Men's Basketball'. But I've heard that a couple of women were interested in playing, so I had them change it. It now says 'Co-ed Basketball' or something like that.

Anyhow, yesterday, a woman came to play with us. My-Friend-Who-Lies (MFWL) got to guard her. It didn't go so well for him. She was taller than him and scored on him repeatedly in the low post. He ended up having to ask the other guy on his team to switch with him on defense so that he could guard someone else.

He told me that he did this to save him some embarrassment. But what fun is that? I thought I'd give him his embarrassment back by letting everyone on the internet know that MFWL got beat up in basketball by a girl.

First week of August

Lots of stuff going on this week. I thought I'd smash them all into one post:

1) Soccer started! We had our first practice on Tuesday. LilKat2's team was first, followed immediately by LilKat1. You know what? Running 2 soccer practices back-to-back takes a lot out of you! Especially when it's hot. The dinner schedule on soccer nights is a little crazy, we end up eating in shifts. But it was a lot of fun. We have our second practice today. I think it's going to be hot again, so I'm going to break out the dribble-the-ball-quickly-to-the-other-side-before-I-pummel-you-with-my-water-squirter game.

2) Got some free money at Costco yesterday! Mrs. BigKat and I had our weekly date night last night, and after we ate, we ended up at Costco (I know, Costco doesn't sound like a great date night, but we actually really enjoy walking around a store with no children. A lot). Earlier this summer, we bought a new tv. It's a nice tv, but just a shade too big for the space that we put it in. Mrs. BigKat wanted to see the tv that was a size smaller. We went to the tv section to take a look, and we noticed that our current tv was listed with a $100 rebate. After we were done shopping, I went to the customer service desk to find out if I could get the rebate for my earlier purchase. The lady said that it would be fine, but only if I bought my tv in the last 30 days. We went home, and I checked my receipt. 30 days! Perfect...no wait...there's 31 days in July...oops! 31 days! Not so perfect! I went back to Costco and saw the same lady and asked if it was ok even though I bought the tv 31 days ago. She asked her manager, and he said it was fine. Woo hoo! She handed me a $100 and off I went. Free money!

3) So last week, I ordered a big pile of games. Well, it turns out that the place I ordered from ran out of games, so they canceled my order. Which actually worked out nice because it saved me a lot of money! To celebrate my good fortune, I ordered a different big pile of games from Boards and Bits, one of my very favorite places to buy games. Here's what I got:

1. Taluva - A cool tile laying game where you build up a little island with volcanoes and stuff.
2. Ubongo das Duell - Another game in the Ubongo series. It's a puzzle game where you have to figure out the right way to fit these tetris-like pieces together. But this version is really hard! It uses crazy, monstrous, misfigured tetris pieces! And there's lots of them!
3. Roma - I've been wanting this for a while, but I've read that a new version was going to come out soon. Well, I couldn't take it any longer and just bought the old version. It's a 2 player card game that uses dice in an interesting way. Looks like a lot of fun.
4. Thebes - I got this mainly for game nights with my mom. She doesn't like it that I win so much, so I thought this would be a great game for us because it adds in a bit of a luck factor. It's an archeology game, where you travel to various places around the world in search of ancient artifacts. Part of the skill of the game involves doing your research so that you have the best chance to find something good. But in the end, even if you've done your homework, it's always possible that all you find is a big pile of dirt. This one looks like a very well made game, and I can't wait to try it out.
5. Scripts and Scribes - This game was the equivalent of standing in line at the grocery store, seeing a Whatchamacallit in the candy bin, and buying it even though you're not sure what it is, but it just looks kind of tasty. I hadn't heard of this game before, and I just saw it on the Boards and Bits website as I was about to check out. I researched it a bit and it looked pretty good. A lot of comparisons to For Sale, another game I like quite a bit. Always nice to have a game that you can play in just 10 or 20 minutes when you don't have time for a big game.
6. Mykerinos - We actually got to play this last night. What a great game! Another archeology game, although the theme doesn't seem as quite as important as in Thebes. It's really more of an abstract puzzle type game. You place cubes down on the excavation sites and try to control areas while blocking everyone else out. If you win a region, you get a card, which not only helps your score, but gives you special abilities in later rounds. Pretty simple, right? Well, there's a whole seperate component that you need to keep in mind: the museum. When you win a region, you have a choice of collecting a card, or getting a spot in the museum. Ignore the museum and your cards will not be worth that much at the end of the game. Focus too much on the museum and you won't have enough cards to gain control of the board. Also, you need to keep in mind when to save your resources for later rounds, and when to get as much as you can during the current round. This was really a fun game. Even as we were getting ready for bed, I kept muttering 'What a fun game!' It's funny, because the game itself it really small. The board is tiny, the pieces are tiny, the box is tiny. But the game itself is quite substantial. This one is one of my new favorites. The only problem with this game is that I don't know how to pronounce the name correctly...

4) My Friend Who Lies (MFWL) is getting married tomorrow. The wedding is at the beach. I'm taking the boys with me. They're very excited. This will be their first time at the beach ever! They've been wanting to go to a beach for so long.

5) My computer has been broken in one form or another for the past 2 weeks (ranging from 'Can't start SQL Server' to 'Can't run Windows in Safe Mode' to 'Randomly shutting down at some point during the day'). 3 video cards, 2 motherboards, 2 lcd's, a power supply and about 16 hours on the phone with tech support later, everything seems to be working fine again. Thank goodness!

More MFWL

Ok, back by popular demand...more things about My-Friend-Who-Lies!

62. If he is a passenger in a car for more than 20 or 30 minutes, it is pretty much guaranteed that he will fall asleep.

63. We had a friend in school that would drive MFWL around in the back seat of his truck. When he saw that MFWL was asleep, he'd start making hard turns so the MFWL's head would bonk the window.

64. Once, MFWL had a girlfriend who took him to see a San Francisco 49er game. They lived in Southern California, so it was a pretty good drive to get up there (probably about 6 hours or so each way). They drove up, watched the game, and drove home all in one day. MFWL's girlfriend was driving back. She told him that it late and it was a long drive and she really wanted him to stay awake to keep her company. He fell asleep right when they hit the interstate and didn't wake up until they pulled into his apartment complex.

65. His mom owns her own store. She makes him work in the store sometimes. He hates this because not everything has prices on them and he doesn't know what to say when customers ask him how much things cost.

66. He ends up just telling them to come back later when his mom is working.

67. Once in college, he went to turn left out of the parking lot and onto the main road. The problem was, you couldn't turn left onto the main road, only right. There was a big island in the way that forced you to turn right. So he drove over the island so he could make his left turn.

68. In college, he bought an old helmet that used to be part of a video game. It has a funny red scope with crosshairs on it that went over your eye and a microphone that went in front of your mouth. He used to wear it around and go 'Fire! Fire! Fire!'

69. In college, we went out to a Mexican restaurant once. He ordered a hamburger and the waiter made fun of him.

70. He owns a complete set of Operation Desert Storm trading cards. But he's never opened them up because he's afraid that they'll go down in value (by the way, I took a look on ebay...the box is selling for just under $3).

Number 51

Ok, just one more thing about My-Friend-Who-Lies.

51. In high school, he worked at Arby's. When you worked at Arby's, you got a free sandwich for lunch. Their biggest roast beef sandwich is called the Giant. So of course, MFWL would take one of those for his lunch. But apparently, it wasn't enough food for him. You know how you can order sandwiches with extra mustard or extra lettuce? He decided that he wanted his with an extra chicken patty. So his free sandwich was a Giant Roast Beef sandwich with a chicken patty.

Ok, fine. You talked me into it. Here are a some more:

52. He is notoriously cheap.
53. In college he agonized for weeks over whether or not he should buy a $4 paperback book. No matter where we went, the mall, the book store, the grocery store, if we saw Congo on a shelf, we had to listen to the whole 'Should I buy it? No, it costs $4. But maybe I should buy it...No, I shouldn't buy it...Should I buy it?' deal over and over again.
54. His car was hit by a tow truck and declared totaled by his insurer. But he still drives it around to save money.
55. He got it fixed by an uncle of a friend to save money too.
56. That uncle of a friend fixed parts of his car that he didn't want fixed.
57. That uncle of a friend charged him a few hundred dollars to fix those parts that he didn't ask to be fixed.
58. Even though he's cheap he spent more money on the rehearsal dinner for his wedding, than I did on my whole wedding.
59. His wedding was probably the fanciest wedding that I've been to. There was fancy food, the aforementioned Chinese dragons, and you even got to tour an art museum.
60. He's divorced now.
61. But he's engaged again and has guaranteed me that his next wedding will be much cheaper.

50 Things

One of my friends has recently made her 100th blog post. Apparently, when you reach this milestone, you're supposed to write a '100 things about me' post. Unfortunately, I didn't know about this and passed 100 a while ago. I like the idea though, so I decided to quickly come up with a shorter version of it. I'm only going to do 50 things instead of 100 things. And it's not going to be about me. It's going to be about someone that everyone should know about...My-Friend-Who-Lies (MFWL).

I met MFWL in college. He really is a unique person. You know how people have quirks? Well, that's all this guy has. Everything about him is really goofy. So coming up with 50 things about him was pretty easy. Anyhow, here you go...50 things about My-Friend-Who-Lies

1. He is colorblind.
2. In college, he would play video games where you got to create your own character. I had to help him pick out his guy's clothes because he couldn't tell what color they were.
3. One time, he came over to my house wearing grey pants. I mentioned something about them and he told me that they were green. I tried telling him that he was wrong, but he wouldn't believe me. I had to have my son come over and tell him his pants color. And they weren't new pants either. He'd had them for a long time and just always thought they were green.
4. He can’t pick his own clothes. He had his sister look at all his clothes and number them. Then she wrote down the possible pants/shirt combinations that he could wear.
5. He also has a 'lazy eye'.
6. He sleeps with his eyes open. It’s quite creepy.
7. He has no sense of direction.
8. There was a mall a few blocks from where we went to college. After 4 years, he still could not figure out how to get to the mall.
9. We live in Oregon, but he sometimes ends up in Washington on accident.
10. He hates that.
11. One time, we were at his house and we went to get sandwiches. But first we had to walk to his work. As we got to the sandwich place, I noticed that we had taken a really roundabout way of getting there. I asked him why we couldn’t have just walked down this street instead of going all the way around. Turns out it was because he knew how to get from his house to his work and from his work to the sandwich place, but not from his house directly to the sandwich place.
12. He has a GPS Navigational thing now, so it’s not as much of a problem.
13. He calls it ‘Emily’.
14. He lies a lot (which is why I call him My-Friend-Who-Lies)
15. If you ask him who won the NBA championship last year, he will say ‘The Portland Trailblazers’
16. If you ask him who won the NFL championship last year, he will say ‘The San Francisco 49ers’
17. If you say that he’s wrong because you saw the San Antonio Spurs win the championship last year, he’ll say that after the cameras turned off, Tim Duncan took off his face and it was really LaMarcus Aldridge underneath.
18. Everyone calls his dad Pete.
19. His dad’s name is Richard.
20. He has a foster brother who was once on a boat that was attacked by pirates.
21. Before his foster brother lived with his family, he lived with a family whose last name was Porn.
22. He sometimes gets blamed for stuff that I do. It is very funny when this happens.
23. One time we were in a flag football class together. Our normal teacher was out, so we had a substitute. I got into an argument with him over a rules interpretation and said some things I shouldn’t have said.
24. I was absent at the next class. The new teacher was still there though and he told MFWL that if he did anything bad that he’d call security.
25. I went to the following class and was going to apologize, but our regular teacher was back.
26. One time, we were at Target and I threw a football to him. It went over his head and into the next aisle.
27. I ran away so I wouldn’t get in trouble. He went and got the ball and an old man yelled at him for messing around in the store.
28. He has a cat with no tail that’s shaped like a sausage.
29. One summer, he got a job packaging chainsaw chains. His coworkers called him ‘college boy’ because he knew how to multiply numbers.
30. When he was doing the vows at his wedding, he said ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Holy Spirit…Oh! And the Son!’
31. He can’t remember which one is Spring and which one is Fall.
32. He also gets September and October mixed up.
33. When he was little, he had a baby sitter make him eat cottage cheese.
34. After he ate it, he threw up.
35. To this day, he says he can’t eat white, creamy foods.
36. But for some reason, he can eat fettuccini alfredo.
37. One time he went skiing and didn’t have ski pants so he got some garbage bags and duct taped them to his legs.
38. He has been hit on by several guys.
39. One time, he made his own strength shoes by taping wooden blocks to the bottom of his sneakers.
40. He kept his money in a little safe in college. The combination to the safe was 5.
41. He can’t stand losing to me in anything.
42. Unfortunately for him, it happens a lot.
43. He has never beaten me in a foot race.
44. But if you ask him about it, he will say that he has (but that’s why he’s My-Friend-Who-Lies).
45. The day before they were going to shut down Napster, he downloaded all the Weird Al Yankovic songs that he could find.
46. He had big, dancing Chinese dragons at his wedding reception.
47. He looks younger than he is.
48. When we were in college, they would ask for his ID when he went to see rated ‘R’ movies.
49. His favorite move in basketball is this scoopy shot that he almost always scores with.
50. I can block his scoopy shot pretty much 100% of the time.

Looking back at my list, 50 things really doesn't do him justice. A list of 100 would really be better. Anyhow, hope you enjoyed a quick glimpse into the life of My-Friend-Who-Lies.