Massacre

So, last weekend was the Massacre (my family's ridiculous annual memorial day camping trip that consists of binge drinking, binge eating and pit toilet purging). This year's edition featured a couple of major developments. Most important to my readers, of course, is the fact that Chris attended. This created many opportunities for O:DB to complete its mission. Chris and Daniel had the 3 hour car ride for QT. Daniel was able to show Chris how manly he is in the woods and how he can protect her from woodland predators (of which there are many in the Hoosier National Forest). This was also an opportunity for the entire extended family to audition for the role of in-laws. They did not disappoint. I'm sure my Aunt Nancy digging a vomit trench (of which Chris had to avail herself) and seeing the majority of my male cousins wearing nothing but business ties on the upper half of their bodies made her feel right at home. Again, the stage was set for ODB success and once again, Daniel squandered another golden opportunity. There was a lot of talk about how Chris would leave the woods with a ring but I don't think Daniel even considered going to Jared.

Another major development of this year's edition of the Memorial Day Massacre was the inaugural Daniel Booneyhands tournament. For those of you who are familiar with the game Edward Fortyhands, this is the same concept but played with the sweet, sweet nectar known as Boone's Farm. I got the idea (the best idea of my life) to do this a couple months ago and had been using any means necessary (coercion, blackmail, physical threats) to get people to agree to participate. The numbers were sketchy heading into the woods despite my making a facebook event. When the time came to buy provisions, I got a bit of stage fright when I saw all those bottles of neon colored goodness staring back at me. The thought of walking up to the cash register with 24 bottles of liquid diabetes was almost too much. But, after the amount of trash I had been talking over the last couple months, I decided I could not let good sense take control of me now.

Man, was that cashier impressed with us! The looks we got when placing 2 dozen bottles of the finest apple wine product on the conveyor belt were priceless. We were also quickly informed that in the State of Indiana, one is limited to only 15 bottles of alcohol per transaction. I guess that's what happens when we let a foreign born socialist into the White House...they start taking away our freedoms little by little. Fortunately, I was not alone so we were able to split the purchase into two transactions and get the provisions necessary for our event. While we were bagging everything up, a helpful employee came up and offered us special cloth wine caring bags to aid us in carrying the bottles free of charge. Apparently, it's not every day that someone comes in and drops $80 on Boone's Farm and this is something that they want to encourage at Marsh Supermarket in Bloomington, IN. Despite this friendly gesture, there were indications that our purchase was out of the ordinary. The guy that gave us the bags said, "Yeah, they should help you carry these....wherever it is that you're going" in such a way to suggest that my two males companions and I (two of us were wearing neckties over t-shirts) were going to go off and do something strange after consuming an excessive amount of wine product. He was way off.

The event itself was a smashing success. We had twelve participants with their hands taped to the bottles with pink duct tape (for Breast Cancer awareness - I wouldn't worry about that as a threat any more). My Aunt Nancy had the foresight to dig a small trench for competitors to "disqualify" themselves in. Her actions proved prophetic within about 15 seconds of the start of the event. Our winner finished in about 6 minutes. I got it all down in about 13 minutes - good for 4th place. The real intense battle was between Kate and Chris for the ladies' crown. Around the one hour mark, they each had about a quarter of a bottle left. Chris made her move. By the time Kate realized what was happening, it was too late. Despite heroic chugging efforts, she was just a second too late. Kate was clearly miffed at losing to her little sister but did not hold a grudge for long as the two of them immediately shared a touching moment at the trench.

All in all a great weekend even if ODB missed another opportunity to succeed.

Been awhile...

So, clearly, I'm not that great at blogging whether the rating be based on frequency or actual content.

I got a job. I'm psyched about that. It doesn't start until April 5th so I have another two weeks to be irresponsible and not feel guilty. Unfortunately, I'm wasting some of that time feeling nervous about whether or not I will be successful in this job. It's a sales job which I'm not completely ecstatic about and it's going to require a consistent amount of effort on my part. The good news is that if I put in a lot of effort, I should be rewarded with more money (this is how sales jobs work). The benefits appear to be great and there is an incentive trip I can go on if I do really well... The job is pretty much exactly where I want to be geographically. It's right off our "L" line and two blocks from Kate's office so I can keep tabs on her.

I just got home yesterday from visiting my parents. I went to Middletown in order to see my grandfather who had been staying with my parents for the last three weeks. That was tough. He has pretty advanced Alzheimers. He's basically not a person anymore. At least, he's not the person he was. The only remnant of who he was is his laugh which he still offers quite liberally. It's a little haunting actually. It's almost impossible to interact with him. He can handle yes/no questions (or at least give a yes/no response) but anything more than that is not really happening. Part of what makes it so awful is that he is very healthy physically. His arms and legs are still relatively strong and he had a pacemaker put in about ten years ago (whether or not that choice was a good one has been the source of some debate) so his heart isn't going to give out on him any time soon. So, it appears that he is doomed to have his mental faculties degrade further and further until the universe has pity on him. I saw him at Christmas and he seemed worse than when I saw him in May for my wedding. This week, he seemed worse than when I saw him at Christmas. My mom claimed that she had noticed a decline in the three weeks that he had been there.

It's difficult to organize my thoughts about this because it's such an emotional thing. Not everything makes sense. So many thoughts and emotions about this issue swirl around inside my head. His quality of life has declined so dramatically but he seems relatively content. Every once in awhile he gets a little agitated but mostly he's just happy to sit and "watch" TV. It seems like a miserable existence to me but I'm able to compare his current state to what he used to be like. I'm not sure that he can do that. These days, his life consists of watching TV, eating lots of ice cream, looking at old photo albums with his kids (not that he knows who they are) and sleeping wherever and whenever he pleases. Maybe he's just happy being in the present and doesn't think about the fact that up until he was 75 years old (and I think even older than that), he played tennis every day of his life and he can't do that anymore. I don't know....maybe it's not awful for him to live through, but it's certainly awful for me to watch.

I'm starting to feel like my brain is just a big pile of mush. It feels like it's been so long since I've had an organized and coherent thought. I think one reason for that is that I haven't written any type of academic essay in years. I haven't been forced to be have cogent arguments or write anything with an end goal in mind. I just kind of ramble on (like I am now) and completely lose sight of the original thought that I had that inspired me to start writing in the first place. I think it's especially true of blogging but it seems strange to me to start a blog entry with some kind of outline that I've prepared prior to logging in. It seems as though blogging (at least personal blogs) should be kind of a flow of consciousness and off the cuff because to me, it's supposed to be a documentation of your life, sort of like a time capsule. I guess you can still document your life even with a prepared outline. The problem is probably just that I'm too lazy and I rarely know exactly what I want to say before I start putting fingers to keys. But it seems like some people (repeat offenders) are able to effortlessly write beautiful entries with overarching themes and elements from the beginning of the entry that are referred to at the end. And maybe people are really thinking about their blog posts all day and how to make them flow properly and how to most effectively really the emotion that they're feeling to their audience but I don't see all that preparation and it makes me feel like a bad writer with a brain full of mush that can't relay a coherent sentiment (not that Operation: Double Brothers is really emotion laden) to his readers (few though they may be). This is certainly not a reproach of others; it's really flattery and jealousy.

I really need the mental stimulation of a job.

PENO

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I didn't anticipate this. With Jon out of the way (good job ODB Army), I figured it would be smooth sailing and clear skies from here on out. I was so confident that Operation: Double Brothers would be a success that I started designing all the memorabilia that we are going to sell (t-shirt, lunchboxes, condoms) with the ODB logo on it. Unfortunately, I didn't anticipate a new PENO would present himself so soon. I assumed it would take Chris a little while to get over Jon and that we wouldn't have major competition for awhile. I was deadly wrong. A new PENO has reared its ugly head and this one is even more intimidating than I could have ever imagined. This PENO is so terrifying because he is so powerful. He has already thwarted several attempts at securing this union between Daniel and Chris. First, he ruined our best and most clear cut shot at success when Chris gave Daniel a window of time to come down to Kentucky and marry her. Now, PENO is threatening to ruin the romantic weekend getaway to Chicago that I talked about in my last post. How is the new PENO so powerful you ask? He is so powerful because he knows all of our plans. He knows what we are going to do and when. He can anticipate everything and I fear he can not be stopped. He is two faced and he plays by his own set of rules. He is on the inside. He is the worst kind of vermin. He is a mole.

I present to you, PENO:

Ring Shopping

Interesting new developments on the ODB front. Chris is coming to visit Kate and I in Chicago for her birthday on January 28 (she'll be 47) and is desperately trying to convince Daniel to accompany her. (Why? Because she wants to marry him). If this were to happen, it would obviously create all sorts of great set up opportunities for the two of them to get romantical. For example, we've discussed creating some ridiculous situation where the only possible solution is to have Daniel and Chris sleep in Liz's bed. ("Oh, why don't you two take Liz's bed? Liz usually falls asleep on the couch with her bag of Cheetos anyway and she has to stay up late to catch Last Call with Carson Daly") Although posting this may significantly reduce the chance of them falling for this scheme considering they make up 50% of my readers...

So, in an effort to convince Daniel to come (who is babbling some nonsense about not wanting to skip his Friday classes), Chris placed a drunk dial to Daniel last night. Reportedly, they talked for over an hour and topics discussed include what type of engagement ring Chris wants (for realz) and an invitation to Daniel to go to Bourbon House in Burlington, KY and then stay with Chris at her mother's house (I can only assume this was an invitation to also share her bed).

Things are coming along very nicely and there seem to be no obstacles in the way. ODB WILL be a succcess.

Good riddance 2009

Well, 2009 is over. At this time last year, I was pretending to work at a job I wasn't very enthusiastic about and now I'm pretending to look for jobs that I'm not very enthusiastic about. In between, I got married and traveled a lot. It was a pretty awesome year.