Speak properly, and be understood

Last night, as I was doing fifteen things at once, I had the TV on for background noise. My wife was upstairs putting the kids to bed, and I didn't want to sit and listen to the laundry do acrobatics in the dryer downstairs. Obviously, one doesn't pay full attention to the TV when in that mode, let alone listening 100% to a commercial.

Let's just say that I did not hear the word "snack" at the back end of this one. Oops.

Those pants don't make me look fat, it's my hips

My wife calls me a wiseass (or some variant thereof) on a shockingly frequent basis. The shock, frankly, is more due to the infrequency with which she levels that accusation than anything else.

Unisys did their annual regional picnic at Hersheypark again this year, so I loaded the whole famn damily into our way sexy minivan and headed into Central Pennsylvania for a day of standing in lengthy queues for an aggregate total of three minutes of thrilling rides. Mother Nature did her bit to make the day exciting, by opening the celestial faucet the moment we stepped through the gates. The rain came down in a rather impressive downpour, and lated just long enough to raise the humidity to roughly 217%. Thunder followed, which closed all of the rides that anybody really wants to be on (anything tall, like roller coasters) for about 45 minutes.

Eventually, things evened out, and we all got to enjoy a day in the park where we looked at the newest of Hershey's coasters and decided that anybody who really wants to ride that thing ought to either have extensive psychiatric help or a reasonably lengthy stay in a substance abuse rehabilitation center. There are, apparently, a large number of people who fit those descriptions, though, based on the line to get on that bad boy looking like the queues one would see in the Soviet Union in the 1980's.

At the end of the day, we went to Chocolate World to ensure that we bought enough candy to stabilize the economy of at least once major cocao-producing nation and one or more overpriced toy per minor child in our entourage. For those who've not been to Chocolate World, I can describe it only as "All of the crowds of Commercial Street in Bangalore with tons of sugar."

A friend of ours (no, not like the mob movies "friend of ours," it's my wife's friend's husband) asked "Where do we pay for all this?" I replied with "On the bathroom scale, I suppose."

That's when my wife leveled the accusation which led off this post.

Humans 1-0 Amphibians

Today, I finally am well enough to get my entire lawn care regime done in one go without sitting down in dire pain afterward. Only took about fourteen weeks (and I'm sure my next-door neighbor who has been cutting my lawn all this time is just happy I'm taking care of it!)... It's still not "I can sleep comfortably," healed, but at least the vast majority of my day-to-day activity is back where I can do it. This is a good thing for me, but not so much for the toad in my backyard.

Let me go on the record with this... I do not recommend in any way, shape, or form doing horrible things to innocent wildlife. I'm certainly not going to start up some power tools, bust out my best manic laughter, and chase down critters, and I hope none of my readers are likely to do so, either. If you are the type that'd do that, please get the psychological help which you so obviously need.

Anyhow, let's just say that there's one less toad in the world thanks to it hanging out a thick bit of my lawn which I was hacking back with a string trimmer. That kind of thing just isn't pretty.