Old School Breakfast

Mrs BigKat made me some toast and asked me what I wanted on it.

This is what popped into my head, so I told her I wanted some...

I don't think she thought it was as funny as I did though.

Roots

This picture made me laugh. I'm guessing that the game came out before the miniseries.

GPS

I need this:

Round-abound...hehe

According to this slickdeal, you can get a TomTom GPS for $89. Too bad we already have a Garmin or I would've bought one for sure.

The Bento Lady

Each week, Mrs. BigKat and I go out on a Date Night while my mom watches the kids. We normally go to this local Bento place. The food is simple, tasty, and inexpensive. Mrs. BigKat gets the pot sticker platter, I get the teriyaki beef or spicy pork (and every once in a while, the yakisoba), we get 2 orders of egg rolls, and 2 drinks (large for me, small for Mrs. BigKat). And the total is always $13.70. We've gotten to the point where the owner (who I call the Bento Lady) starts writing down our order right as we walk in the door.

A few weeks ago, instead of going to the Bento place like usual, we decided to go to the taco place down the street instead. It was a nice change of pace, so we went there again the following week. Well, when we went back to the Bento place, we wondered if the Bento lady had noticed that we had been gone.

Yeah...she noticed.

As we walked up to place our order, she started grilling us:

Bento Lady: So...haven't seen you guys in a while...

Us: Oh uh...yeah...we haven't been here for a couple of weeks.

Bento Lady: Oh...I see...I guess you haven't been able to get a babysitter then...

Us: Oh no, we have a baby sitter! We just...ummm...uh...can I get the terikayi beef?

Even her husband, Bento Guy acted different towards us. When he brought us our egg rolls, it wasn't "Here's your egg rolls! Enjoy!" or anything like that. Instead he just kind of flippantly tossed the plate onto our table without looking at us as he walked by. I told Mrs. BigKat "We cheated on the Bento Lady. I feel like Tiger Woods."

That was last week. This week, when we went to Date Night, the Bento Lady was still hassling me. I ordered the Hot and Spicy chicken. She looks at me and says "Are you sure you want that? Are you ok with spicy food?"

Wait a second...she's asking ME if I'm ok with spicy food? I was appalled! The guy who puts Frank's Red Hot on everything? The guy who only enjoys chili if it makes him sweat? Yes I'm OK with spicy food! I love spicy food! And to show her, I was going to eat all the spicy food on my plate in record time!

Only I didn't...

Now, normally, I eat all the food on my plate when we go out. The portions at the Bento place are a nice size for me. But it just so happened that I wasn't particularly hungry that day. I don't remember if I had a late snack or had a lot to drink before we left or what. But for some reason, I just wasn't that hungry. I only ate about half of my Hot and Spicy chicken.

Well, the Bento lady sees that I didn't finish my meal. She walks over to our table and says 'Oh! Was it too spicy for you? We can make it less spicy next time!'

GAAAAHHH!!! That sneaky Bento Lady! On the outside it appears like she's this sweet old lady who's concerned about one of her customer. But we both know that what she's really doing is calling me a spicy food wimp to my face! TO MY FACE!

After she left our table, she went into the back and told Bento guy what she said about me. They both laughed at me and high fived each other. Ok, maybe I made up that last part, but I wouldn't be surprised if it really happened.

Not so green

Do you like Sun Chips? Well, PrincessKat does. She asked for a bag at the store the other day, so Mrs. BigKat bought it. However, this bag was a bit different from other bags we've purchased in the past. It was LOUD! Really LOUD! Like if-you-were-getting-some-chips-out-of-the-bag-you-couldn't-hear-the-person-next-to-you-talking loud.

One time I was trying to get some chips and LilKat2 scolded me because he said he couldn't hear the video game he was playing on the computer. Another time, Mrs. BigKat had to keep repeating what she was saying to me because I couldn't hear her over the bag crinkling (ok, fine...so maybe I was crinkling the bag on purpose to annoy her).

It turns out that there's a reason that the bag is so crinkly. It's a specially designed compostable bag. Instead of throwing away the bag, you're supposed to be able to put it in your composter. Wow! Seems so environmentally friendly!

Well, the funny part is that Mrs. BigKat couldn't stand the loud crinkling. So you no what she did? She took out the chips and put them in a big plastic ziploc bag. The company spends all this time and money designing a fancy schmancy compostable bag to reduce waste, and my wife gets rid of all that work with her non-compostable plastic bag. For some reason, I really got a kick out of this.

However, she is still planning on putting the Sun Chips bag in the composter!

Snake

Mrs. BigKat and I were watching Food Network the other night and saw Kenny Stabler. He was tailgating at a Raider game with Guy Fieri. Turns out Mrs. BigKat had no idea who Ken Stabler was. I was SHOCKED! She grew up in northern California and didn't know who the Snake was? Back when I was a boy, that was who we all wanted to be. It was basically Superman, Batman, Fonzi, or Ken Stabler.

Well, today, I googled Ken Stabler to see what he was up to these days (other than eating chili burgers and ribs on Food Network). I saw he had a website, so I sent him the following email:

Hey Snake!

Saw you on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives the other day! My wife had no idea who you were. And I said 'Are you kidding me?' I told her about when I was a boy, you were they guy that all of us on the playground wanted to be. 10 or 12 boys running around yelling 'I'm Ken Stabler!', 'No, I'M Ken Stabler!'

Her excuse was that she grew up watching the niners (her family only started watching them because they found out that they had a quarterback that looked like Barry Manilow and they liked Barry Manilow).

Anyhow, just wanted to say hi!

Thanks!

BigKat

Well, he wrote back to me! The Snake wrote back to me! He even signed it 'Snake' at the end! Here's what he wrote:

BigKat

What a fun e.mail....I played with and for a great group of people and we played for all the right reasons..for each other, the city, ownership, and fans like yourself.

All the best to you and yours

Snake

I'm so happy. I feel like I'm 6 years old again. It's cool knowing that Ken Stabler is my new best friend.

Telemarketers

I enjoy having fun with telemarketers. One time, a guy called who said that my car's warranty had expired and they wanted to extend it. I told them that my name was Dennis Anderson and that I had a 1950 Ford truck. I said that I had made some modifications to it and wanted to know if that would be covered under the new warranty. He asked me what model my truck was, so I told him it was Gravedigger. He said he wasn't familiar with that model, and I said something like 'You've never heard of Gravedigger?!?! It won the Monster Jam World Championship!' I think I thought my joke was funnier that he thought it was.

Anyhow, I was on my favorite board game website, and I ran across someone describing what they say to telemarketers. It's a little mean, so I guess I shouldn't really suggest that anyone actually say this to someone. But it made me laugh (is that bad?).

*ring*
Me: Hello?
TM: We'd like to sell you blah, blah, blah (for a few seconds)
Me: Um, excuse me... excuse me.
TM: Yes?
Me: (in a low, conspiratorial voice) Look around you.
(I can usually hear a bit of movement as if they are looking to see if they've called a co-worker.)
TM: What?
Me: Is this what you wanted to be when you grew up?!

Turducken 2.0

Just saw this link. When a regular turducken isn't enough, now you can get your turducken stuffed inside a pig. Sounds like a good idea, but I'm actually waiting for the next version when they stick the pig turducken into a cow.

Phone Fishing II

Remeber my Phone Fishing story? Well, I got a good one today! FOUR AND A HALF MINUTES!

Know what worked for me? Everytime I heard her start to say something, I said 'Hang on a minute! I'm almost done!' I think I must've said that about 10 times.

Hopefully, I'll be able to break the 5 minute barrier at some point!

Fixed

This is a great idea. Next time our house needs fixing, I'm raiding the boys' Lego bins...

You can see more pictures here.

Get Clean...FAST!

I pride myself on being able to take fast showers. I think showers take up too much time, especially if your exercise routine or yardwork or whatever has you taking multiple showers a day. I realize that people need to take them in order to not be stinky, but each minute wasted in the shower is a minute that you could've been doing something else, like playing boardgames or eating fudgsicles or learning how to whistle by putting your fingers in your mouth (something I've recently been trying, unsuccessfully, to master).

Here are some tips to help you minimize your time in the shower so that you can have more time for doing fun stuff:

• The most important thing is to stay focused. Your goal is to get in and out as quickly as possible. No wasted movements. You need to be efficient. (But at the same time, don't cut any corners. You still need to get clean!)
• Those poofy sponge things may look like they're for girls, but they will definitely get you clean faster. Yeah, your friends might make fun of you. But you know what? They're the ones wasting their precious minutes with inefficient washcloths or whatever else they're using. I figure that over the course of a year, your time saved using the poofy sponge will have allowed you to have mixed and drank at least 300 glasses of chocolate milk more than your slow friends. Who's laughing now?
• You need to figure out the right amount of shower gel to use. Using too little is a huge mistake. Having to reopen the bottle and squeeze out more soap is a big time waster. Better to use a little more than you think you'll need. Don't use too much though, because you'll end up wasting time at the end wringing the excess soap out of your sponge.
• Keep your hair as short as possible. Shave your head if you can (this will also save you money, since you can do it yourself without having to go to the barber). Less hair on your head means less hair to clean, and less soap to rinse out. Most importantly, it takes less time to dry.
• A shower gel that says 'For Hair and Body' will make it so that you only have to open and squeeze one bottle. Definitely a good investment.
• Make sure your water temperature is a little too hot or a little too cold for your liking. This will help prevent you from wanting to hang out in the shower.
• If you have glass windows on your shower, you'll need to wipe them down. I use a squeegee thing with the following technique: Bend your arms and/or back so that your shoulder is positioned midway between the top and bottom of the window. Unless you have an unusually tall shower door, this should allow you to clean the window with up and down arm movements only (moving your back or legs will slow you down. Arm movements are much quicker.). Start on one side and use a shuffle-step to move on as you wipe off each section.
• For clothes, t-shirts and baggy basketball shorts are by far the fastest clothes to put on. I try and stick with those exclusively. And try to get socks that aren't too tight. Remember, getting dressed is part of the deal too. You don't want to waste any time here either.

Now, you might be a little skeptical. You might be thinking to yourself, can I really save that much time doing these things? Well, let's see...how long do you normally take in the shower each day? 15 minutes? 20 minutes? A half hour?

Well, yesterday, I used my stopwatch and timed myself. I was able to get cleaned AND dressed in 3 minutes 59.31 seconds. Clean and dressed in under 4 minutes!

While you were wasting a half an hour with your bar soap and your washcloths and your singing and your separate bottle of shampoo and your just right temperature water and your shirt with buttons, I was able to get cleaned, dressed, eat a bowl of cereal, and watch a whole episode of Happy Days.

See? I knew you'd begin to see it my way. And don't worry. With the right focus, the right tools, and a little practice, you too could be a Sub-Four Minute Showerer. Good luck!