Cas's Crazy Thoughts

Year of the house

2012-02-07T18:27:00.000-05:00

So, I’m sure everyone is wondering where in the world Cas has been? Well, I’ll tell you where I’ve been. I’ve been working. Not only at my job, but also at the house. 2012 is the year of the house. Little known fact, my bride and I have been in our house for just over three years and we are yet to put any paint on the walls, the horror. We’ve painted a thing or two in the house,furniture and such, but the walls are all the same bland color that it was when we purchased the house. So that being said, we’re forcing ourselves to customize our house and make it our own. Now I can read everyone’s mind, you’re all thinking, “Well what have you done so far?” Thanks for asking, below I will show you! There is a lot more to come folks so hold onto your seat!

The first thing we did was get rid of our old pantry system that we hated so much.

See how cluttered that is? With only 3 shelves we were limited in our organization.

Look at all this crap we had crammed in there!

But thanks to our good friends at IKEA we put in a new shelving unit and was able to cram even more crap into the pantry!

Next we decided to move our climbing rose to block our storage building from the road. Sorry I forgot to take a before picture, it’s just an ugly metal building. So I built an 8x8 foot lattice wall for the rose to climb on.

Now we just need to move the rose and that project will get the done stamp.
Then last month I was walking through the Home Depot and I noticed in the end cap they had a section of doors for over 200 dollars off retail. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s the exact door I wanted. Not the door the wife wanted, but at the price she couldn’t argue with me. After fighting with someone who thought that just because they had already paid for the door that fit my house they could have it, I brought the door home. You read that right, the door I bought had already been purchased by someone else and put on hold. I had the Home Depot call the guy and convince him that he didn’t really want the door as bad as I did.
Here is the old ugly door.

*Side note about the old door. I knew it wasn't installed correctly, but I had no idea just how poorly it was installed. When I ripped it out the hole I was shocked! Not one shim was used, and they didn't even glue the threshold!
And here is the new door, before it was painted. I need to get a picture of it painted, it looks much better black.

I also framed in a larger floor space in our tiny attic to store some stuff that is crammed in closets to make them a little more usable.
As we complete more projects I’ll keep everyone posted. Hopefully by the end of 2012 you guys will have seen a complete home transformation at the Smith House. *Curse you pinterest for adding even more projects to my todo list!

I'm Homeless!

2011-12-06T18:49:00.000-05:00

Well, after all my moaning last year, this year I did it. I raised my money and I did Homeless for a night. This is a fundraiser put on by the Fuller Center. The Fuller Center was started by the same man that started Habitat for Humanity. It’s a pretty awesome charity, and they’re doing big things in my area. I decided to help everyone see what was happening during the night I’d start a twitter hashtag and tweet all through the night. If you want to search for all my tweets, you can visit my twitter feed, or search for #homelessforanight in twitter. Guys this event was so awesome to be a part of. It’s really eye opening. Sure it was cold being out there with the frost and all, but I knew that this was just for a few hours. I knew that at 7:00 they were sending us all home, after donuts and chocolate, and I could go get in my nice warm bed and curl up with my sleeping bride. Speaking of my bride, before she left me for the night, I asked her for her socks. I already had on two pair and my toes were frozen solid. So she was nice enough to loan me the thick fuzzy socks that I let her wear out of my drawer before we left the house.
In total we all raised just over 29,000 dollars! That’s just over half of the cost to build a deserving family a home.
At the start of the night I figured I’d stay awake through the whole thing, but around 3:00 I decided that standing around a fire barrel wasn’t going to give me the full experience. I walked way away from the warmth of the barrels and climbed into my home for the night. Two cardboard boxes that I taped together to make one home big enough for my long body. I was surprised at how well the boxes kept in the heat once I was inside and closed off all the openings. Granted, this is not the ideal sleeping arrangement, but for one night, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I couldn’t imagine having to do this every night though.
To start the night we had local bands playing, some kids playing football, and a soup kitchen making potato soup. The rest of us were setting up our homes and decorating. Everyone kept it a secret from my Bride that there was a contest for the best decorated box. The prize was an iPad2. They all knew if my Bride knew there was a decorating contest they didn’t stand a chance so they cheated and left that little piece of info out. She would have had me a two story cardboard house with a dinning room and seating for eight. I would have had a working fireplace, a chandelier, DirecTV, and a white picket fence. My bride is crafty yo! But alas, no one told us so we had one sad little pumpkin that I had taken from our put away fall decorations and placed him in front of my boxes. Below are some of my tweets, in my sleep deprived mind these were twitter gold.

My home for the night. #homelessforanight

Hands are frozen, hard to type on the iPhone. #homelessforanight
Made my bride @howardsmithhome surrender her socks before she left for our nice warm house tonight. #homelessforanight
All these extra layers are making using the restroom a challenge. #homelessforanight
Getting a little frosty #homelessforanight

Someone apparently didn't check the weather before coming to #homelessforanight

Someones cardboard box just got jacked. It's hard out here on the streets. #homelessforanight cold blooded.
Cardboard box is very ineffective at dampening train noise. I think it's coming right at me. #homelessforanight
Now that I'm settled I really have to pee. Getting up would destroy my house. I'll have to hold it. #homelessforanight
As a grown man of 32 years I'm very disappointed in myself for not going to the bathroom before getting in my box. #homelessforanight
I can hold it no longer I will risk destroying my house in an effort for the comfort of an empty bladder. #homelessforanight
I'm all hopped up on mountain dew so sleep evades me. Standing by the fire it is. #homelessforanight
5:30 temp update. #homelessforanight the thick sheet of ice on my windshield tells me it's cooler than advertised.

Standing between two fire barrels is 360 degrees of heat and like beck said, where it's at. #homelessforanight

Final temp update. Weather.com is a lying pirate hooker. #homelessforanight

Wearing a toboggan for an extended period has made my head and hair quite itchy. #homelessforanight

And here are just some pictures from the night.

Here's my view from inside my box, iPhone 3G doesn't have a flash.

As Random as it gets

2011-11-19T22:10:00.000-05:00

So, I put on twitter that someone needed to remind to post a blog on Friday, and no one did. So here I sit on a Saturday night posting a random blog. This blog is all youse guys fault.
So, I don’t know how many of you guys are followers of mine on twitter, or on friends on the book of faces, but if you are you know that my cat Snoogans got out last weekend and was missing. How did he get out you might ask? Well Saturday morning my bride and I were getting ready to go to my folks for their Thanksgiving events. I woke up not feeling all that great and was dragging around the house. As the primary car loader in our family I’m guessing on one of my trips o the car to load stuff Snoogs snuck out behind me and into the great outdoors. Normally when we go out of town we close off our bedroom, which means we have to do a pet count to make sure no one is locked in. Well, we were in a hurry so we left our bedroom open and hit the road. Snoogans is out on his. That long story was told just to tell you this. My bride and I went out in our area looking for him. We made the standard flier that we posted around the area with a picture and our numbers. My Bride goes to a near by trailer park and talks to some of the locals. Upon speaking to one local and showing her a picture of Snoogans from her phone my bride ask, “Have you seen this cat?” The replied she received, “YES! His picture is on that flier posted to the mailboxes. I saw him in a picture right over there.” Thanks for your help lady, but no thanks. Side note, Snoogans found his own way home Tuesday evening and is once again safe at home.
While eating at a new sports bar and grill Thursday night we were told by the owner that he got a discount on his window tinting because he let the window tinter advertise in the window. The owner then said, “I don’t have a problem with it, if NASCAR can have sponsors, hell, why can’t Vic’s?”
A new liquor store has opened at the corner of my street. We pulled in the parking lot before it opened to see what it looked like inside. We noticed they sell, liquor, cigarettes, and prepaid cell phones. So you have everything you need for a night out. Drinks, smokes and cell phones to drunk dial and drunk text your exes.
I’m watching “Vietnam in HD” on History right now. I know that wasn’t a popular war, but those that fought in that war need to be treated as the hero’s they are. They went where they were sent and did what they were told. They didn’t want to be over there, but they were there for us. So to all our Vets, I thank you.
This dog has to go out again. This is serious the third time in the last 30 minutes. Has she been drinking beer or something?
As I am every year about this time, I’m already over Christmas. When Christmas is used as a money making event and not the Holiday it truly is, I get sick of it. It starts earlier and earlier every year because everyone wants to get in on this Christmas money. Radio stations in my area were playing Christmas music before Halloween. So instead of “nightmare on my street”, “Monster mash” and “Thriller” Kids in our area are listening to Jingle Bells as the Treat-or-Treat. People, this is just wrong. Someone needs to put Christmas back into check.
The last payment on my truck was made in May of this year and I still haven't gotten my title. Is that normal? I've never paid off a car before, but this seems like a very long time for them to mail me my title. I don't think they understand how bad I want this document.

To each their own

2011-10-26T14:11:00.001-04:00

Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam… (Name that movie). Alright, so I bet you’re wondering what that has to do with the price of tea in China. I’ll be happy to tell you how, (DirecTV is playing a commercial with that line from Rango in it over and over and it’s stuck in my head). A few weeks back my Bride and I went to a wedding of a friend of mine. The invitations had cowboy boots and said to dress “wedding casual”. Cool, no suit, just a tie. Well… what I define as wedding casual and other people’s definition is slightly different. My Bride told me I was going to be over dressed, but I told her I was still going to a wedding and I had to respect myself while I was there. More on that in a minute. I think a wedding should represent the couple getting married. It’s their day, let them have the wedding they want. If they don’t want the formalities in their wedding fine, take them all out. Stand up there in a bathing suit smoking a cigarette, it’s your wedding, and your wedding photos. I will not judge you for having the wedding of your dreams. BUT judging and laughing are two totally different things right? Before I go any further let me just say I enjoyed the wedding, it was perfect for the couple and all the friends and family just kept commenting on how it couldn’t have been a better fit for the bride and groom. Again, I’m not judging, I’m just making commentary on this beautiful wedding. With that out of the way, let the festivities begin!
The wedding was held on a local farm. A very nice setting I might add. The road leading in was lined on both sides by pecan trees just outside of a white post horse fence like you see in the movies. In this fenced in field is where the wedding would be held. I wish I would have thought to take a picture of this, but I didn’t. But I did get a picture of the Alter. As we’re sitting waiting for everything to start I lean over to my bride and ask her if she’s Tom Arnold or the crew of “My Big Fat Redneck Wedding”.

And I got a picture of what is considered “wedding Casual” here. Or basically as much college football attire you can pack on one body. It was a gameday though... I was a little more than slightly over dressed in my khaki’s and tie. (I'm also guilty because I purposely wore a navy and orange tie. War Eagle)

I also noticed that Granny got the seat of honor.

Something very fun about this wedding is that all the bridesmaids and the bride came in the back of a huge monster truck.

All the groomsmen had to help unload the bridesmaids. How gentlemanly of them.

After unloading everyone the groomsmen, in their very crisp overalls, escorted the cowboy boot wearing bridesmaids down the aisle.

I wish I had a better picture of this, but the ring bearer carried the rings in the bed of toy Ford truck instead of using a pillow. How cool is that?

And no wedding is complete without the bride. This might sound totally gay, but that is one beautiful dress she’s rocking.

Here’s the bride and groom at the alter.

And what wedding is complete without play Quad City DJ’s “C’Mon N’ Ride it”, or better known as the ride that train song, as they walk back down the aisle after saying I do.

Have any of you guys had a fun wedding like this, or been to a wedding like this? Again, not making fun of them, this was their day and they really seemed to enjoy everything about it. It was very short, sweet and relaxed. At the reception the groomsmen even took their shirts off from under their overalls.

Wednesday Randoms

2011-10-19T18:36:00.000-04:00

I haven’t had too much happen lately that was blog worthy so I’m going to put my small thoughts together in a randomness blog.

Tip: To save power and quickly dry your dishes if you’re around your dishwasher when it finishes the last cycle, open the door. The quick flash of cool air mixing with the hot damp air in the washer will flash dry the dishes.

One of our cats has been having seizures and it’s so sad to watch. We’ve taken her to vet and are awaiting the test results. She’s gotten some shots that seem to be helping though.

I haven’t flown anywhere since my trip to Canada in January, and I kind of miss flying.

I remember when you used to have to have a perfect dollar for a vending machine to take it, now the vending machine will take any wadded up bill you
have. You can even give some a 10 and it’ll give you change back.

Sometimes I don’t comment on peoples blogs because I don’t want them to think I’m stalking them or something. I think I feel this way because I’m a guy and most other bloggers are women. Does anyone get bothered that a guy keeps commenting on your blogs?

I might not be able to cook a lot of thing, but the things I do cook, I cook pretty darn well!

My bride and I are trying to get a jump on next years vacation by planning it now. If it works out it’s going to be beyond awesome.

Today is the coldest day of the fall and my company is serving us ice cream…

We only took about 40 pictures on our last cruise, most of which are all of the same things.

I’ve submitted a request with my company to get an iPhone4s. Fingers crossed it gets approved.

My bride thinks if I get the iPhone4s it will become hers and I’ll inherit her old iPhone4.

So that's it, my waste of time for the day that I don't really expect anyone to read.

Cozumel Mexico

2011-10-05T17:29:00.000-04:00

Well hello everybody! I hope everyone had as great of a weekend as I did. I don’t want to brag about all the fun I had soaking up the rays from the Lido deck while on the open seas, taking mid-day naps just because I’m so relaxed it’s making me tired, or driving around the island of Cozumel Mexico in a Jeep with the top down. Ok, I really do want to brag about that or else I wouldn’t have even mentioned it. The bride and I had a wonderful 4 day cruise out of Mobile AL to Cozumel Mexico. This was my first cruise out of my home state of Alabama, all my other cruises have been out of Florida. I heard things this weekend that I never expected to hear on a cruise. While going through the security check to get on the boat the man in front of us had the line held up. After standing around bored for what seemed like forever, especially since I can see the boat right out the window to my left, I decided to start ease dropping the conversation to see what the holdup was. Upon opening my ears this is what I hear, “Well I didn’t know I couldn’t bring my pliers!?” Really? You think if the boat breaks down they’re going to call on you to go down to the engine room with your pliers and get us rolling again? Really? Apparently this same guy thought Carnival was just going to let him walk onto their ship carrying 4 cases of Diet Pepsi, 2 bottles of wine, and a box full of assorted snacks? Really? Thanks for delaying me from getting onboard so I could enjoy my first of many hamburger buffets and endless Panini’s. But also thanks for giving my bride and I a good laugh since it became a running theme to randomly say, “I didn’t know I couldn’t bring my pliers!?” You know it’s bad when the cruise staff is making fun of Alabamians. While on stage performers would say something totally redneck, followed by “Row Tide”. All the classic Auburn/Alabama stereo types were in play as well. Well dressed older man with docker shorts and boat shoes, Auburn fan, a man holding a bud light, smoking in the non-smoking section of the boat, wearing a ratty bathing suit, Alabama fan. I don’t think I want to go on a cruise out of Alabama again because I realized that I cruise to get away from these people, not be trapped on a boat for days with them. Thanks for Classing up the Boat and Cozumel Alabama, and Row Tide. You guys have no idea how bad it was. Thank God I was on a cruise and completely relaxed.
When we got to Cozumel my bride and I signed up for the “Go Jeep, Tequila and Beach Adventure”. We really enjoyed this excursion. In the description of the excursion it clearly said that all jeeps are stick shifts. Apparently my bride and I were the only ones to read this part as most everyone else stood with their mouths open when our tour guide dropped that bomb. Four people had to get into one Jeep so we had to find us some riding partners. When they told us to find our jeeps I raised my hand and said, we have two and need two more. These two sweet old ladies came running to me and asked, “Can you drive a stick?” I said, “yes, I can”, so they hired me to be their driver. Off we went, driving through downtown Cozumel was a treat, there doesn’t appear to be any lines in road, and mo-paders just seem to do whatever they want, including, but not limited to, putting helmets on mom and dad, but no helmet on little Olga who is either sandwiched between mom and dad, or sitting on the gas tank drinking a juice box. *Yes we saw both of those situations. Helmet law for adults = yes, helmet law for childrens = no.

Once out of downtown we hit the open roads! That is until we stop at the Pee-Pee Station, complete with a urinating alligator painted on the sign. We saddle back up in our jeeps and continue down the road to drink Tequila, that’s right, all the Tequila we want driver or no driver, belly up to the bar. Since I was the driver and was being watched like a hawk by my passengers I didn’t partake in the sweet nectar of the Blue Agave plant.

Back on the road again we head to our final stop, the beach. The water is beautiful beyond words, blue, warm, and crystal clear. After a short hour and a half we go to jump back into the jeeps, only to be met by swarms of bees. Apparently the local gang of bees was enjoying our “souvenir” Margarita cups. Every jeep had dozens of bees in and around them. We quickly pulled our “souvenir” cup out of the jeep and poured out the contents and washed the cup out. I then stuck my leg into the jeep, started the jeep, and put it in neutral. (Also engaging the emergency brake to prevent rolling.) After letting the jeep run with the air on we noticed that most of the bees left so we hopped in and continued our journey. After driving about 5 miles the jeep in front of us breaks down. We have been instructed to just keep going, the guide in the back will handle such things. So we pass them and leave them for dead. Well a little while further down the road a caution light comes on in the dash of my jeep. I have no idea what this light is about, I check the temp, it’s good, gas is good, jeep seems to be driving fine, not my jeep, not my problem. We continue on to the drop off point with no apparent mechanical issues. I’m driving along happy as can be, I want a jeep, and I want a stick shift, I forgot how much I enjoyed shifting gears. All the while that light is still lit, and it’s still beeping at me, again, not my jeep, not my problem. We roll back up to the starting point to return our jeeps, I park, shut off the engine, make sure the jeep is in first gear, reach to engage the emergency brake… Oh, the emergency brake is already engaged… Um, hey babe, grab our bags and lets walk away, smile and keep walking… hahaha. Well, at least I’m pretty sure I know what all the beeping was about. Too bad that guy didn’t have his pliers to fix any issues we caused with the Jeep…

Sept 11th

2011-09-11T12:29:00.000-04:00

I hadn't planned on making a pot for today. Today is my first anniversary with my bride. The church we got married in was only open for this day because no one seemed to want to get married on this day. We viewed it as a way to bring the day back to the good. Something positive on a day that is so sad and emotional. On this day 10 years ago I was working second shift as a conference call operator. I was still asleep when the first plane hit. One of my roommates came and woke me up and told me something was happening and I needed to get up. As we sat in our living room watching in shock I still knew I had to get to work. Work was strange that day. On this day came one lowest moments as an operator. A call was put on my schedule to call 4 people and connect them to a conference. the first three numbers were 212 area code. I got ring no answers from all three. I then dialed the last number. On the last number I told the person that answered that I called the other three numbers and didn't get an answer. He then asked me if I knew where those numbers went too. I said 212 is New York, he said, these numbers go to the World Trade Center and then hung up on me. I felt so low at that moment. I don't know these people, I don't know if they lived or not. I pray often that they did live and that the man I spoke too forgives me and understands that I was just doing my job. After this I was moved to lead a call that was lines connected to a conference keeping communications up following the president. Where he was, if he was on the ground, in the air, where he was heading. It was interesting, but I couldn't wait to get back home and get this day over with. I think of this every year on this day. I was hoping I could replace these memories with new memories of what I did leading up to marrying my bride, but they're burned into my mind. I'm so happy to be celebrating my anniversary with my bride today, but sadden at what happened on this day 10 years ago. My bride and I have decided that we will spend one of anniversaries in New York in remembrance of those that lost their lives on that day.

The Rentals

2011-08-23T17:25:00.003-04:00

Here we are once again, me on my side of my blog writing, and you on your side of the blog reading. I had a good weekend, I hope you guys did as well. My parents came into town for their yearly vacation so my bride and I spent the whole weekend trying to entertain them. I don’t know if they’re trying to pay me back from when I was kid and lived with them or what, but they sure have become needy and demanding. We had to have constant entertainment for them, and they seemed to always be hungry. No lie, my bride and I are in the kitchen cooking dinner and from the couch we hear, “I sure am hungry, we don’t eat as late you guys do.” I’m cooking as fast as I can mom, I’m sure you don’t want to eat your chicken raw, I hear bad things can happen. One morning I’m in the kitchen making breakfast, my parents walk in and proclaim that they’re ready for breakfast. I tell them that we’ll be having cinnamon rolls and they are almost ready, so they decide to just have cake for breakfast. Then when I pull the cinnamon rolls out of the oven, they say, well I wouldn’t have had cake if I knew you were making cinnamon rolls. Really folks? Was I really this bad and annoying? It didn’t even stop with food, a picture was knocked off of a wall, we hear it hit the floor so my bride and I go to investigate thinking a cat has done something, what do we find? Our picture that used to be on the wall stacked on a bookshelf, I know our cats, they don’t stack. It would have taken just as much time to hang the picture back on the nail. I half expected them to give me the, “Are we there yet” when we went out Saturday! The other times they have come to the house they came to help us move, do some yard work and meet my bride’s dad. Apparently I’ve learned that when they come there needs to be tasks laid out for them to do or else they’re going to get bored! Apparently they see my house as their house as well, because my dad got up from the table, turned on the weather channel and promptly feel asleep. Welcome home dad, welcome home…
I really do love my parents, and I’m very thankful for everything they’ve given me, so don’t think I’m just off bashing my parents. It was just to the point of being comical this weekend with the goings on that just weren’t expected from my parents.

Cha-Ching!

2011-08-17T18:54:00.001-04:00

I hope everyone had as good of a weekend as I did. Nothing special happened, I just didn’t have to work. Well I guess I did have to work, just a different type of work, yard work. A while back I had my old push mower die on me so I had to get a new one. Well I didn’t really know what to do with my old dead mower so it just sat behind the shed letting the grass grow up around it. (And yes I did do redneck fixes on it to keep it running as long as I could, but it finally just couldn’t take it anymore.) Well, my bride has been on me for a while, I guess about 2 years, about getting rid of it. Since I was in the yard working yesterday it seemed like the perfect day to do something with the old mower. I’ve heard rumors about people cashing in scrap metal for money so I thought there had to be some big bucks in this. I tell my bride, we’re cashing in this old mower and some other scrap metal and we’re going to have ourselves a date night! We load up our old rusted and holey fire pit, some random car parts that I’ve gotten out of the ditch from in front of our house, and the old mower. I just know in my heart that I’ve got at least 40 dollars of metal in the bed of my truck. I pull up to the scrap metal place beaming with pride and thoughts of big bucks. I back up to the scale and we start unloading. I’m watching the weight increase on the digital screen, 75, 90, 124 pounds! JACKPOT! We’re going to Western Sizzler tonight, put on your fancy blue jeans, and a shirt that doesn’t have a hole, we’re living the high life! Aw man, I just can’t wait to have all these bills counted out into my hand. I’m doing the old Cha-Ching fast food commercial dance in my head. Now, my bride has stayed in the truck for all of this, and her window doesn’t roll down, if you remember from last week, so she has no idea what’s going on. This is going to be the surprise of her life. I walk inside the place to settle up my tab and end up having the biggest surprise of my life. We went from Western Sizzler to sharing a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. I walked away with a hole whopping $7.20, I spent more in gas driving to the place than I made. Talk about a blow to your ego! The ride up there was filled talking of ways to spend this money! Now I have to get back in the truck and hand over a 5, two 1’s and two dimes? Ouch, I’m never going to hear the end of this one.

There, I fixed it

2011-08-10T12:27:00.000-04:00

As of May 2nd, I became the proud 100% owner of a 2005 F150. That’s right the last payment was sent in and the truck is mine after 6 long years of making payments. The last three May’s in a row something has happened to my truck that has cost us a lot of money. With the last payment being made and the truck officially mine, I had a feeling that this May was going to be the worst May of all. I was on pins and needles all month, and on June 1st I was happy to report that nothing happened to the truck! Well Sunday August 7th, my luck ran out. My lovely bride rolled down the passenger side window to talk to a friend, and as she rolled the window back up we heard a loud, CRACK followed by a POP. My bride thought the window broke, but I knew what happened, because a few Mays ago the same thing happened to the driver’s side window. The pulley system that rolls the window up and down snapped and so the window fell down inside the door. The last time I had to get this fixed it cost me 360 bucks. With my bride’s birthday coming up and our first anniversary looming , I really wasn’t too hip to dropping that kind of cash to fix a stinking window. What to do, what to do… I know I’ll get my redneck on!

I started this repair job off the right way, at Home Depot! What redneck can’t fix their car with building supplies bought from the home depot? I knew to fix the window properly I’d need two small C-Clamps and four rubber washers.

I didn’t take any pictures of me taking the door apart, so the next photo is of the C-clamp in place. I raised the window to its shut position, I then positioned the C-clamp on the track right below the bottom of the window on the right side of the door.

One side down, now to the left side track. This side proved to be a bit more difficult due to there being no space for my hand or clamp at the bottom of the window. Again tapping my inner redneck I decide this is nothing that a scrap piece of trim and a coping saw couldn’t fix.

So I cut two pieces of the trim, one to be the stop for the window, and the other make a wedge to keep the stop in the track and in position. Next I took my handy C-Clamp and clamped the trim in place.

Now for the fun of putting the door back together. Because I’m left with this hot mess.

First I need to put the moisture barrier back in place.

With that done I bring the door panel back and take a look at it.

I snap the door pannel back in place after returning the hanging door handle to his home.

Then I need to hook the wires back to my electric door controls.

And snap them back into place.

Next the speaker needs to be put back into his hole, making sure I have clearance around one of my C-clamps. (Something I probably should have done before this step)

Lucky for me there was clearance, Clarance. I Returned all the trim, and the job is complete.

So, there you go, if you have an F-150 that has the window break like this and don’t want to spend the money to get it properly fixed and you don’t like the look of ducktape on your car, follow these instructions and you’ll be good to go. Other than the gallons of sweat I lost, the R rated words that were dropped and the skin and blood left inside my door it’s a pretty simple process. Just don’t forget to put a sticker on the door that says “winder don’t work”.

Weekly Report

2011-07-21T10:52:00.000-04:00

I know I’ve already posted one blog this week, but below is my weekly report lead in. I hope you enjoy.
Afternoon ladies! I hope you enjoyed your weekend. I enjoyed my weekend, but it was a busy one. Let me drop some knowledge on you about this guy named Cas that sends you a report once a week. I’m not a guy that has ever been around the childrens much, never really even been that big of a fan of the childrens. I’ve lived 32 glorious years without the childrens, and plan on living a few more sans the childrens. But this last weekend, my beautiful and loving bride, volunteered me to help her babysit two childrens for some friends of ours so they could go off and enjoy their anniversary. Seeing how I’ve never really been around the childrens before, I had no idea how much work they are! Sweet Baby Jesus, Toy Story, and Harry Potter 15, these childrens never stop! I thought little kids liked to take naps and go to bed early!? Apparently, not so much… Wow, I gained so much respect for parents, because “Mr. Cas”, as I was called all weekend, is way too selfish and lazy to be having the childrens right now. One of the main reasons I agreed to this “adventures in babysitting” was because our friends have a pool, and “I’ve got to get me one of these!”. So in my head I envisioned me sitting in or around the pool for 2 solid days. Well it rained for two straight days, so Mr. Cas was stuck inside playing Wii games while trying to remind myself that they’re just kids take it easy on them. Do you have any idea how hard it is to sit at the finish line of Mario Cart and wait while the other drivers aren’t even half way through with the first lap? All jokes aside, I had a great time with the childrens this weekend. It was definitely an eye opener for me though. I’ve got my work cut out for me when it’s my bride and I’s turn to have the childrens.
That was my weekly report, if you read this post as being negative please note that it was written for comedic value, even if I failed horribly at being funny. Having childrens is a challenge that I’m totally looking forward too. The more time I spend with my bride, and around these childrens, the more I realize I’m ready for some childrens of my own, as long as the childrens is singular and a girl.

Here is a picture of me with the childrens

*sidenote, I try to drop at least one random Will Smith movie or quote into each report...

Product Review

2011-07-20T10:19:00.000-04:00

I almost feel like a real blogger posting a product review! This is probably going to be a surprise when you guys read what I’m reviewing. I’m reviewing our cookware that we got as a wedding gift. We got Calphalon’s Contemporary 12 piece set.

I’ve been a stainless steal cookware person my entire life so I didn’t know how I felt about this black hard-anodized set. Most of my reserve was based solely on the look of the cookware. To me pots and pans should be stainless. That’s how I picture chefs cooking, that’s how I pictured myself cooking. I quickly got over this when I had to wash the pots. When they say non-stick, they mean non-stick! It’s amazing how everything just falls right off these pots. The pots aren't dishwasher safe, but that’s ok, I don’t like taking up valuable space in the dishwasher with huge pots, bowls, or other large items anyway.
We’ve added some other pieces to our set, another 1.5 qt and 3 qt sauce pan, a 13 in covered skillet, and a square grill pan. I love the square grill pan. It’s awesome for quickly “grilling” chicken and pork, it even puts the grill lines on the meat!
The one major downside to this cookware is the lids. The handles on the lids get super hot and can’t really be removed with the bare hand. It gets a little annoying always having to reach for a hand towel or oven mitt to remove the lid to stir.
So I’ve gotten over the lack of shine on my pots and really embraced the non-stick aspect of this set. We still hope to add some more pieces, we’d love the double boiler, and the Panini press, but we really don’t have to have them right now. And to be honest, I’d really like to add some of the stainless pieces from this line so I can still have a little bling.

Where have I been?

2011-07-12T18:34:00.000-04:00

I'm sure no one has wondered where I've been, but too bad, I'm going to tell you anyway. I've been working away, doing nothing too spectacular. But part of my job is to do a weekly report. At the start of the report I've started writing little lead ins that I try to make humorous. Apparently since I've started doing that I've been neglecting my blog. I've posted a few of my lead ins into my blog just so I'd have something posted, but no one knew that's what I was doing. But now that the cat is out of the bag I figured I'd post another one. This is my lead in from my report sent on July 5th.

Welcome back from the long holiday weekend everyone. I hope everyone enjoyed their 4^th of July and are back at work typing with all your fingers. I can just picture how much fun the first 4^th of July was. George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Davey Crockett, and Paul Giamatti hanging out around the pool, knocking back some brews, grilling some meat Davey C rocket had killed that morning, and telling stories about their wild and crazy youth. Those founding fathers of ours were having such a great time that they decided to declare every Fourth of July Independence from work day, which was later shortened to Independence Day to better fit on the calendar then shortened even further to ID4 to fit on the cover of the moving picture history book of the greatest Fourth of July ever when Will Smith stopped the Alien invasion. Those Brave men had the foresight to know that all future generations would enjoy a day off of work in the middle of summer to drink adult beverages, fire up the grills and hang out in and around bodies of water. George Washington, being the prankster that he was, thought it would be funny to light some explosives in the air to scare the other guys. While he did scare them, the sight and sound of the explosion was such a beautiful ending to a beautiful day it was decided right then and there that every fourth of July be ended with a bang, thus creating our tradition of the fireworks spectacular. Thinking like this is what has made our country the greatest country in the history of countries. Ask yourself, does Rome have a 4^th of July? What about France? I would bet my paycheck that if you looked at the calendar of any other country they skip straight from the 3^rd of July to the 5^th of July because only America is great enough to have a 4^th day in July. So God Bless our founding fathers, God Bless America, and God Bless, *company that this report is for*

Beach Vacation

2011-06-27T15:04:00.000-04:00

Welcome back everyone, oh wait, you guys didn’t go anywhere. I on the other hand, had a nice vacation in Destin FL. It’s hard to beat sitting on a beach taking in some sun rays and reading a book. That is, of course, until you get out of the shower, look in the mirror and notice the nice nerd tan that you have. Nerd Tan – a tan line created by the sun being blocked off of one’s stomach and chest by the shadow created from holding a book while sitting in the sun. Since everyone is trying to picture this, I do have an oddly shaped white spot on my stomach that was caused by the book I was reading while on the beach and sitting by the pool. You can laugh, it’s ok, it’ll only hurt me for a few years.
Other than reading I also really enjoyed snorkeling. It is kind of scary when you snorkel and see all of the shark’s teeth that are washing up close to the beach. We probably found 25 to 30 sharks teeth near the beach. I’d have to say the snorkeling find of the week would have to go to the unopened bottle of Smirnoff Blueberry Lemonade. Not because we planned on drinking it, but because we like to keep our oceans clean.

I guess I should go back and tell everyone of how my bride and I scored this awesome almost free beach vacation. My bride and I had talked about taking us a weekend beach trip, we were both excited as we LOVE the beach. Well then April 27th happened. It wasn’t even a question, our beach money was spent in the recovery efforts. I took off some days and we headed up to North Alabama to help. While up in North Alabama I was talking to a guy and he was asking me some questions about why I was helping and just general questions. Well I said that we were talking about going to the beach for a vacation, but then this came up so we decided we’d spend or beach trip volunteering. As soon as I said that the guy I was talking too told me we’d be rewarded 10 fold and that we would get a beach trip this summer. You hear things like this from people and you think they’re just being nice. Well let me tell you, we were rewarded 10 fold. Our two to three day weekend beach trip that we were planning turned into a seven day almost free.99 beach trip. We were only asked to chip in some money for food, and we were on our own to get there. Can you believe that? God is good…

You know you had a good vacation when you realize you forgot to take pictures. So other than the artist rendering of the nerd tan, we don’t have much for pictures from this awesome vacation.

Post Rapture Blog

2011-05-24T13:24:00.002-04:00

Well hello my fellow Rapture survivors. Hopefully none of yous guys maxed out your credit cards, or stopped paying your rent or mortgage due to the pending rapture that was supposed to take place this past Saturday. I’m real interested on what Harold Camping spoke about Sunday morning to his congregation. I have a feeling it might have gone a little something like this, “See, what.had.happened.was, Jesus was going to come back yesterday, but then… uh… his car wouldn’t start, then his dog ate his bus pass, he blew out a flip flop and stepped on a pop top?” I’m sure Harold Camping lost some friends on Facebook after this major bust. This might even be a bigger false prophecy then Al Gore’s Global Warming, or since the globe isn’t warming they now call it global climate change. But he’s still super super cereal about man-bear-pig. *I hope I’m not the only Soutpark watcher out there.
One good thing about the world not ending, I created a K-Ci and JoJo channel on Pandora today. Only down side to how awesome my K-Ci channel is, is that it’s very hard for me to fight the urge to bust out singing. If you heard my singing you’d be praying for the rapture. I think I might be the last person to get in on the Pandora thing. But the box has now been opened, I think my iPhone is starting to get jealous of all the love Pandora is getting lately though.

North Alabama

2011-05-11T18:38:00.000-04:00

My Bride and I went up to North Alabama this past weekend to help the Tornado survivors. We went to a small rural area around Moulton Alabama. We really had no idea what we’d be doing, but we were ready to work. My Bride worked her booty off before we went to gather donations, get trucks, and round up volunteers. We turned our church into a drop off site, and we were overwhelmed with the support our church and community gave us. It was so awesome to see how giving of a community we have. We loaded up my truck and hitched a trailer to it and took as much as we could, and we still had another two truckloads left at the church. It felt so good to roll up to Kierra’s Hope and unload all these supplies.
That was the easy part, the rest of this I just don’t know if I can put it into words… I have such a renewed belief in the spirit of people now. I honestly don’t know where to go with my words right now, so many thoughts, so many things to tell, but where to start? How can I describe with words the things I’ve seen with my eyes and felt with my heart? We got there a week after the storm came through. The people of North Alabama had all pulled together and cleaned a lot of the trees up. We took the supplies that we brought to Kierra’s Way and loaded up in a truck and open trailer and went down the roads handing out cold waters, cold Gatorades, and juice boxes for the kids. We had several people make us peanut butter sandwiches so we had those to hand out. We were also donated hotdogs so we grilled them and handed them out. If someone needed anything on our runs we’d take orders from and run supplies back to them.
Tents were donated, and I really hoped that since it had been a week since the storms came through we wouldn’t need to give out any tents, but I was wrong. People still didn’t have anywhere to sleep, and were very grateful to be given a tent.
We met some amazing people. We met a family that lost pretty much everything, but invited us to their child’s first birthday party that was being thrown for them by a local church’s youth group. We went to the party and they made us play on the inflatables and slide down the slide. This family said that after they made it through the storm they came outside to take pictures of their house and email to family. One family member called balling his eyes out after getting the pictures and asked if they had looked at them. When they looked at them they could see an angel over the corner of the house that everyone was in as the storm when by and ripped the roof off the house, almost sucking some of the people out of the house. Another family member was in a trailer that got picked up by the tornado and rolled several times, moving almost 400 yards from where it stated, before coming to a rest in a pile of debris. There were three people in the trailer, and all made out it out with only one of them having just as much as some cuts. The trailer? If you saw it you wouldn’t even know it started out as a trailer. How anyone survived in that I’ll never know.
We stayed with a family who’s house was in the direct line of the tornado. They put their faith in God, read Psalms 91, prayed and watched the tornado go by without as much as breaking a window in their house. Their neighbors that lived behind them were killed. The house completely destroyed. The man we stayed with found two of his neighbors bodies laying out in a field. A father and son killed. The mom wasn’t at the house when the storm went through.
We met a lady who had set up a tent on the slab of what used to be her mother’s house as she was waiting on the insurance people to arrive. Her mother was in the house when it was taken away. She was found a few days later in a pond wearing nothing but her bath robe and still holding her Bible. What do you say to someone that has just returned back to the slab where her mom used to have a house just a few hours after burying her? I’m not equipped to handle a situation like this. Saying, “We have cold water, Gatorade, and some sandwiches” just doesn’t seem to be what this family needs right now.
These same people that lost so much, pulled together and started picking up the pieces of their lives, but not only their lives, they went to neighbors houses and helped them remove trees, find belongs, and start the rebuilding processes. Am I a strong enough man to lose my Bride, and not only start picking up what is left of my life, but help a neighbor start picking up their pieces as well? Could I stand in my living room staring down a raging tornado, put all my faith in God that I will not be harmed, read scripture and just pray? I don’t know if I could, but I am strong enough of a man to donate what little money I have, and some vacation days to go and help these hurting people.
Please remember that this is going to be a long process, if you can donate anything, these people will need it. They no longer have a kitchen to go get a snack out of. They no longer have a car to get into to drive to get groceries, or a hot meal. What is left of some of their entire lives now fit in a Rubbermaid container that was given to them by someone that donated it. I know not everyone can do the things my bride and I were able to do, but at the very least, please say a pray for everyone that has been affected by this storm. I’ve taken some pictures, but I have uploaded to them to my computer. I’m still debating on posting them or not. They are just pictures to us, but to someone they mean a lot more and are so much more personal.

Don't worry, I got this

2011-04-25T13:18:00.000-04:00

I jokingly put “Don’t worry, I got this” as the caption for a picture of my Buddy Christ bobble head on Facebook. I was subtlety implying that it did mean that what he “got” was our salvation, but it was in a fun, light hearted manner. Friday night we went to our Good Friday service, and as our praise group was singing it donned on me just how right I was. When they sang “Jesus paid it all”, a light went on in my head, “He’s got my debt”. I’ve tried to keep my blog from being too religious. I don’t honestly don’t feel I have any right to try and preach to anyone, I know I have my bucket of sin so I don’t want anyone thinking I’m something that I’m not. I just couldn’t help but share the revelation I had Friday night though.

Don't worry, I got this...

I know this is a little out of order, but I thought I'd give the important stuff first. Our youth stuffed all our eggs for our Easter Egg hunt Tuesday night. I took my Buddy Christ to the egg stuffing event and it turns out he was a hit. So below are two pictures we took just having fun with Jesus.

And yes, my truck did come with a tape player, how jealous are all of you!?

Oh so random

2011-04-07T11:15:00.000-04:00

So I’m sitting at my desk today working and I have All4One’s song “So much in love” pop into my head for no reason. I’m singing right alone in my head when I get to some lyrics that I can’t remember. I hop on my good friend Google and search for the missing lyrics. This makes me happy. As I’m reading (reading = singing) the lyrics off the screen I notice in the margins of the page one of those, “If you like this you might like this” type of deals. What I saw changed my day for the good. If you like All4One you might also like Az Yet. Why YES! I do like both All4One and Az Yet. A few clicks later I’m watching “Last Night” by Az Yet on the Tube, it's a little dirtier than I remembered. From there a whole one click later I’m watching “Hard to say I’m sorry” also by Az Yet. These songs had all but been wiped from my memory, but now they’re back. How did I make it these past few years without these songs? How did I go my wedding day/night without that All4one song? We just didn’t know how good we had it musically back then. Now I need to start working on a R&B CD, something we used to call a “Panty Wetter” CD back in the day.

Since I try to learn something new everyday, what I've learned from Az yet today is that apparently no matter what you've done, giving a puppy to a woman equals instant forgiveness. Thank you Az Yet for that knowledge.

See Rock City?

2011-04-05T17:17:00.002-04:00

So the Smith’s have started a garden. We have planted all our below ground veggies, and will start on the above ground veggies this weekend. I knew our yard was rocky, but jeepers creepers! If anyone has ever ran a tiller before than you know that tillers and rocks don’t really get along. It’s like the bloods and the cripts shooting it out and I’m the poor lone cop trying to control the riot. Everything is fine and going great, me and the tiller are getting along great, moving at a nice pace, then BANG, the tines hit a rock, the tiller bucks up in the air like a spooked horse, and we’re off to the races. It’s a good five feet of me being drug through the yard before I can calm this beast of a horse down. Apparently I have Alabama’s rockiest yard! I think I’m going to put Rock City out of business! I need to put a booth up and start charging admittance to come see Alabama’s Rock City! I really hope all this hard work is worth it. If we have another summer like we did last summer, all the money we would have saved by growing these veggies will go right back out the hose pipe in watering the garden. Time will tell if all this work will be worth it or not. If this turns out to be a big bust we won’t be doing this again next year. If it works out then I’ll build my bride a stand so she can sit out at the road with her straw hat and overalls selling the fruits (and veggies) of our labor. I wish I had some pictures to share of me fighting the tiller, and my bride being a hoe, I mean using a hoe, but we left the camera in the house. Maybe I’ll break the tiller back out and have my bride snap a few shots of me acting like I’m being drug through the yard for sh*ts and giggles.
On another note Rock City is a special place to me and my bride, so I didn’t mind the rocks too much at all. Every time I would hit one I’d think of our wonderful weekend together in the late crisp October air. I’ll also always remember our “wonderful” *insert as much sarcasm as possible here* hotel choices. I will say that at least the hotel I chose had heating and air, can’t say that for the hotel my bride chose for us. You know it’s never a good sign when they hand you your remote when you check in and demand that you turn it back in with your key when you check out. I swear someone was murdered in our room. But the blood stains had all but disappeared into all the other stains and unmentionable fluids that made the carpet so matted and sticky. Bad as it sounds, those things are what made the trip great, and they’re memories we’ll always share and laugh at. I’m sure the story will get funnier and more meaningful as the years pass. Love you babe! We need to head to the beach this summer and Rock City this fall!

Just because

2011-03-31T18:56:00.002-04:00

Just so I’ve posted more than one blog this month I’m posting a quickie. Things have been crazy busy here lately. One, work has picked up, and two the rentals are coming into town tomorrow! GASP! So our house has to be spotless. My Bride is a bit of a Martha Stewart so she always has the house looking cute and homie, is that how you spell it in that this context? Or did I just pour out some liquor for a homie? We’ve been scrubbing and cleaning things that often get over looked. We’ve vowed once again to make a chore list of these task that are forgotten about so we’ll know each week/month that on a certain day the task needs to be done. Do any of you guys have such a list? We’re normally very good at the normal task, laundry, dishes, trash removal, with our pets my bride vacuums no less than twice a day. (FYI, if you have cats with white fur, don’t EVER buy black rugs, OMG at the amount of times you have to vacuum that.) Were we’ve been lacking is the cleaning of the blinds, baseboards, our rarely used guest bathroom and bedroom. With the pets we keep our guest rooms closed and forgotten about, don’t want pet fur on the bed and pillows. And holy hot hell, our office was post wedding storage central. So many little things from the wedding that needed to be put away/filed/etc. I’m happy to report that the office is once again in Martha Stewart order (minus a few things that my bride has been on me about hanging that I just haven’t gotten around to yet, oops), all the brides craft supplies bought for the wedding are neatly put in their respective bins, and all the wedding gift boxes that we were hoarding for God knows why have been properly disposed of. Maybe we thought if we kept these things as they were the honeymoon would never end? I don’t know if I told you guys this, but we were in a mad rush to try and get out the door for our honeymoon, 16 hours to Key West is a long time. We unloaded both our cars, had to finish washing clothes for the honeymoon, pack, reload my Brides car for the LONG drive, and get everything ready for our friends that were stopping by to check on the cats. (We ended up walking out the door around 3:00 am.) We carried our stuff in from the cars to the office and opened our arms and let it hit the floor. (ok, joking about that, but you get the mental picture right?) The wedding planner told my bridge that she holds the record for most stuff brought to a wedding, if that gives you any indication of the amount of stuff hauled in. However, it is a title my bride wears with pride. (She probably also holds the record for most stuff taken on a honeymoon. Wow this post is going to get me in trouble.) I don’t even know how I got to this point? Oh well, my rentals are coming this weekend with their tiller and they’re going to help us get our garden started. Here’s to living the Green Acres life in our little country home. My Bride is trying to talk me into letting her get chickens, but that’s a negative ghost rider, we’re not that far into the country. Sam’s sells 18 eggs for under 2.00, that’s cheaper than these chickens are going to be, and those eggs don’t come with the all the poop! Here’s to good weather and back breaking labor at the Smith House this weekend!

iPhone Photo Dump

2011-03-17T17:31:00.000-04:00

I just got a new iPhone so I don’t have many pictures, but here are three that I figured I’d dump on everyones.

This first one is a parking fail. My bride met me for lunch at work one Friday and while I was trying to find a place to park I was denied by this great parker. When I parked the minivan wasn’t there, so I was very happy to find the minivan parked that close to them when I returned. So it’s a parking fail with a parking win.

This is a picture of the TV I mounted over our dresser in our bedroom. I’m pretty happy with it there. (Notice me watching The Dan Patrick Show on the 101)

Last is a text message that I received one night and my reply that I thought was pretty funny.

Friday Movie Magic

2011-02-25T12:27:00.000-05:00

I figured it was time for another movie quote quiz. See if anyone can name this line from a very famous movie.

"The next time I have to come in here I'm crackin' skulls."

Weekly Random

2011-02-22T19:24:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to the weekly rundown of everything Cas. This week we’ll be discussing my picks for the Academy Awards, but since I haven’t seen most of these movies, I’ll be basing my picks solely off the title or the movie poster. And the Nominees for best picture are…

Black Swan – Haven’t seen this movie, but wanted too, it has the cute girl from “That 70’s show” and Darth Vader’s wife in it, to me that’s a win-win.
The Fighter – one of the movies I did watch, and it was amazing! Also staring my current Hollywood movie crush of Amy Adams, and don’t call me Marky Mark, Mark Walberg. A must see
Inception – Rented this one from the redbox, started watching it late, my bride started talking, so I just turned the movie off and returned it 5 days later.
The Kids Are All Right – Haven’t seen it, but I have a feeling the Kids aren’t really all right
The King’s Speech – Haven’t seen it, but I sure do hate when the president speaks and bogarts all the channels, I have a feeling this will be just like that.
127 Hours – That’s just way too long of a movie, there is no way I could hold it that long after drinking a bucket of movie Coke
The Social Network – My bride and I had a date night to see this movie, it was a nice date, had steak at Longhorns, extra points for the steak
Toy Story 3 – Pixar, enough said, but I want to say more, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and the main character’s name is Woody! If that doesn’t say children’s movie then you can get out of here
True Grit – Sounds like a rough movie to me, oh it’s about cowboys, yeah, probably a lot of stubble on their faces, ouch
Winter’s Bone – This sounds like a movie you’d watch on a pay channel! I wonder if it’s main character is also named woody?

And the winner is… The Highlander, Ricky Bobby said it won the Academy for best movie ever.

But for real, my real vote for best movie, The Fighter, if you haven’t seen it, make it a point to rent it from Netflix, Redbox, ondemand, or I think Blockbuster is still renting movies. It is worth it. Plus I was told that you can see Amy Adams nipples through her bra in one scene, that's worth the price of admission in itself.

Has finally become a twit

2011-02-17T14:09:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I finally joined Twitter, I wasn't going to join, but I was missing out on a lot of contest by not being on twitter. So if anyone wants to follow me there, I'm @TheCasSmith.

Very sad news from Auburn

2011-02-16T17:53:00.001-05:00

It appears that some knucklehead, trying to be Christian here, has poisoned the Oaks at Toomer's Corner. At this time the chances of the tree's survival is not looking good. I would hope that as Auburn Fans none of us will stoop low enough to damage the Statue of the Bear. If you want to see more on this check out this blog.

Valentine's day recap

2011-02-16T14:38:00.000-05:00

Good day everyone! I hope everyone had a great Valentine’s day. This was my first Valentine’s day with my Bride, and I guess things could have gone better. Apparently my definition of romance is different than hers. Who would have known she would have been so offended by getting a new vacuum cleaner for our first Valentine’s? I figured it was a great gift since she’s so unhappy with the one we have? When she told me she wanted to be a homemaker I first got her a hammer, a nice 16 inch 22 oz Estwing with the waffle head, but I soon learned there is a big different in home “maker” and home “builder”, glad I dodged that bullet. I also learned that getting dressed up to go renew our Sam’s clubs card and grabbing a sandwich at a local Deli, mmm Momma G's, isn’t considered romantic? I thought I would redeem myself by picking up a movie for us to watch together, but apparently “Inception” isn’t romantic either. It has Leonardo in it, I thought the ladies liked him? No? Hopefully I’ll get another chance next year. ;) Guess I should have just ordered the flowers and Shari’s Berries she hinted about, but I wanted to go for the element of surprise. Well Surprise! She hated it...

Any events appearing in this blog post are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. No animals were harmed during the drafting of this blog post, however, pork and poultry may or may not have been consumed while at a local deli, the pork and poultry were already deceased before consumption. The consumption of raw or undercooked meat could lead to sickness or death. All employees must wash their hands before returning to work, especially Carl.

RoMANtic Valentine's ideas

2011-02-10T18:37:00.000-05:00

It was posed to me by Charity at Charity's Chatter to give my readers some ideas for romantic Valentine’s day ideas. I’m pretty sure if you asked my bride about my romantic ideas she’d get a good laugh out of it. I don’t come from a family that is “romantic”. In the Smith house showing emotion and affection is not all that acceptable. My bride has been working on me and she is constantly trying to make me aware that Romance exists outside of the movies. Example, here is a exchange between my bride and I while watching a romantic move, my bride: “Isn’t that so romantic, you’d never do anything like that for me”, my response: “It’s a movie, it’s scripted for him to be romantic, no man is really like that.” So with this being said, let me take a crack at a RoMANtic Valentine.
Every year you hear of “love coupons” good for one “favor” or “act” that is written on the coupon. Well this is a new generation so why not Love Gift Cards? Come up with fun names for the places that the gift cards are valid for. Here are some of my ideas, please don’t think I’m a perv…

Movie Pass – Good if he/she wants to see you put on a show
Downtown Pub – Good for a meal “downtown” if you’re picking up what I’m laying down
Victoria Secret – Good for a night of dress up
Outdoor World – Good for a “hike” in an exotic location
Mardi Gras – Good for a free flash
QuikTrip – Good for a quicky
Home Depot – More saving, More doing, that’s the power of the Home Depot

I think you guys get the point. I’m trying to keep this somewhat G-rated, but you guys can be as risqué as you want. And of course the card will have to have a spending limit on it, and I’ll let you guys set that. If you put a limit on it you know us guys will start to use it like a charge card. I would think you’d probably want to stick to a 12 “dollar” max, one for each month.
If you don’t like that idea, how about a giving him a certificate for a topless car wash, I’m not suggesting you go and take your top off and wash his car, I’m saying you wash the bottom half of his car and leave the top half dirty. But I’m sure he’ll be excited when he first reads it, until he reads the fine print and learns the catch.
Not liking that idea either? Maybe find a couples “adult” movie that has tricks and pointers in it. Something to watch together and learn from.
Men really aren’t that hard to please, we really just want to spend some time with you doing things we both enjoy. Not sitting on the couch while you watch “Real House Wives”, that’s not fun nor romantic. Be fun and flirty on Valentine’s, send flirty text, or provocative pictures if he’s at work, nothing to get him in trouble or fired though! Sneak in some free flashes, or suggestive poses to build the anticipation for later in the evening. Ask him to join you in the shower, I promise your chesticals will have never been cleaner. Just make the day about each other. That’s what Valentine’s day is all about.

Feels the need

2011-02-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

I feel the need to be creative, but am having serious writers block. I know this will probably end up as a fail because I get so few reads, but if you guys will give me a story idea, place, event, activity, I'll try and create a story off of it. If no one gives me any ideas, I'm giving up blogging and submitting this post to failblog.com

Something interesting this way comes

2011-02-02T19:04:00.000-05:00

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but I just haven’t had too much going on lately. I was watching the old boob tube the other day and saw a segment on a show where a group of guys were playing “I’ve never”. They played I’ve never as a drinking game, where someone would say they’ve never done something and if someone playing the game had done said task they had to take a drink. Well, I said all of that because it got me thinking about some interesting things that I’ve never done and other things that I have done. Here are some of the things on my list.
I’ve never been drunk, not once, not even close.
I have been the designated driver for a pastor.
I’ve never owned a flat screen TV. I think my bride and I are the last people in the world to still have the old box TV’s.
I have spent somewhere close to $20,000 dollars on accessories for cars that I have owned. For some reason I thought it would help me get “chicks man”.
I’ve never skinny dipped, but that’s a good thing for everyone else’s sake.
I have used the woods as a public restroom.
I’ve never been in a fight.
I have had a black eye, that darn desk corner sucker punched me out of nowhere!
There are others, but I don’t think I’m willing to share them with the public just yet. Maybe you’ll learn them when I release my tell all book.

Oh Canada

2011-01-20T15:58:00.000-05:00

Did you guys know I was going to Canada? Yeah, me either, I was told Thursday that I was needed in Canada Saturday. Which is fine, but a little more of a heads up would have been nice. My Bride wasn’t happy about the last minute trip, mainly because we didn’t have time to get her a ticket to go with me.
I’ve always wanted to go to Canada, it’s been way up on my list of places to visit for a long time, so getting to go for virtually free is what we, in the industry, like to call outstanding. So Saturday morning I boarded a plane and headed to the Great White North. This was a work trip so I didn’t have too much free time. I landed Saturday afternoon in Toronto and after getting my rental car I headed downtown to see some sights. I visited the CN Tower, which was pretty cool, but it was so overcast there wasn’t much visibility. Then I headed to the Eaton section of downtown to visit the Hard Rock Café. Eaton was very cool, had a Times Square sort of feel to it. After getting my shot glass I decided to head to the hotel to check in and meet my co-worker for some dinner. I was given a GPS by my bride for Christmas one year. And I told her that I didn’t need a GPS with Canadian maps on it, mainly because I’m cheap and didn’t think I’d ever need them. Boy was I wrong. After I left the parking garage at the HardRock I got stuck on some roads that wouldn’t let me turn off of them. So I kept driving further away from where I needed to be. My thinking was when I was able to make a turn I would turn and then head back in the other direction until I reached the road I needed and then continue on my way. Well, when I reached the road I needed to be on I wasn’t allowed to turn on it. So my next thought was to drive up one more block and run parallel to the road I needed to be on. My plan was working, for a minute, then at some point one of the roads took a dramatic turn. So this begins my tour of the suburbs of the greater Toronto area. After driving around trying to find the road I needed to be on I broke out my phone and used my maps to get me pointed back in the right direction. I learned that in Toronto it’s ok to park anywhere as long as you have flashers on, and since people park anywhere it’s best to stay in the left hand lane or you’re going to get stuck behind someone’s parked car.
Sunday was a day of work, we got started about 9:00 am and finished up around 10:30 that night. Giving me just enough time to eat, get back to the hotel, pack up and go to bed. The main story from Sunday is that I discovered a lovely little place called “Tim Horton’s” OMG peeps, the combo meals there are a sandwich and a doughnut! A SANDWICH and DOUGHNUT! Anyone that knows me knows just how much I heart a doughnut. It was simply heaven up north. I told my co-worker, who’s a Canadian, that he could laugh if he wanted too, but I was taking a picture of this.
Then comes Monday, or as it was to become known, the day of delays. I’m a hurry up and wait type of guy so I got to the airport early, I didn’t know how long it would take me to return the rental, my soccer momish Dodge Gran Caravan, get through customs and then security. I return the minivan with no issues, get to customs and then stand and wait, about 30 minutes of waiting and I didn’t even get a stamp on my passport. Next is security, pretty quick through security except the guy in front of me has apparently never flown before. Take your shoes off buddy, do you have a belt on? Ok, take that off and come back through, do you have any change in your pocket, place that in this little basket, come on through. Then to top it all off the guy tried to balance the change basket on his coat, so guess what happened when it hit the divider going into the scanner? That’s right, change everywhere, so let’s have everyone help dude pick up his 5 dollars in nickels, dimes and pennies. After all of this I start my trek to my gate. Toronto has to be the poorest laid out airport I’ve ever been in. Two moving sidewalks, no trams and a sign that said “7 minute walk to your gate”. That’s right folks, 7 minute walk, no other option. I walk down stairs and through long narrow hallways to get to my gate. I use gate loosely also, it’s 6 degrees outside and I have to walk out the double doors across the tarmac and climb the steps to my plane. I swear I think Donald Trump has a bigger jet than this commercial jet I just flew on. All this was after a nice 40 minute delay to my flight. I had a layover in Cleveland, which was to be a long layover, but due to the delay it was shortened so it wasn’t so bad. As soon as I land in Atlanta and turn my phone back on I get a text from my bride saying that there is a huge wreck on 85 and she’s sitting with the car in park in LaGrange. So for the third time that day I found myself sitting in an airport with a plenty of time to kill.

Leaving on a jet plane

2011-01-17T17:41:00.000-05:00

A quick blog since I'm waiting on my flight home. I was sent last minute to Toronto Canada to do some work. The trip has been fun, it's mostly been work though. I flew out early satuday morning and had a few hours to tool around Toronto. I found out do last minute that I didn't have any time to plan a todo list. So I went and visited the CN Tower, and hit up the hardrock for a shot glass. I hope to post a better blog later with some pictures and my adventures of traveling without a gps in a foreign country. I should be back in the south around 8:00 and in the arms of my bride around 8:30. I can't wait, she's so good to me. Between Cleveland and Toronto I've seen a lot of snow, flying above the snow covered landscape has been amazing. Alright time to get back to my good friend an keep me busy partner John Grisham.

Is it just me?

2011-01-13T17:58:00.001-05:00

Or has it been slow out here in the blog world. I'm not getting any comments and most of the people I follow aren't posting any new blogs. What's going on? I've been bored at work. Somebody please talk to me.

Auburn got a dusting of the white stuff

2011-01-12T15:06:00.002-05:00

As most of my readers probably know by now, the Auburn Tigers are the National Champions of the world in the United States. This makes me one happy dude. I’m pretty sure my bride was ready to divorce me during the game. I was a nervous wreck. I couldn’t sit down, I was pacing, I was fighting back the urge to hurl every second, I even quit making cornbread for dinner because the Tigers started doing bad when I was mixing up the batter. Yes, I understand that it was bad planning and timing on our part to not have already eaten by kick off. When dinner was ready I could barely even choke the food down due to my nerves.
My thoughts on the game? Totally not what I expected, but I couldn’t be prouder. One, our defense was outstanding. Two, I was so proud that Kodi Burns got the first touchdown. For people not around Auburn, Kodi has been a leader on this team since he was moved to Wide Receiver. With Cam getting all the national attention, Kodi has quietly been leading the team behind the scenes and the team has been following. Three, how fitting was it that the game came down to a Wes Byrum field goal? What a way to cap off his career! And lastly, people are already talking about the title not standing and that the NCAA will take it away. Well you know what? They might take away the title, but they will never take away the feeling I felt Monday night when the football went between those yellow goalpost. So do what you want NCAA, Auburn will ALWAYS be the 2010-2011 College Football Champions of the World. All we do is win win win no matter what…
More poor planning on the super fan’s part… I had planned all along to go to Toomer’s after the game to celebrate with untold members of my family. As the game was winding down, tied 19 to 19 my bride asked me if she should get up and start getting ready. I said "heck to the no!" This game isn’t over yet, we are not going to jinx this by acting like we’ve already won! As soon as the scoreboard said Auburn 22 Oregon 19 with 00:00 left, I told my Bride, get up, get dressed, we’re going. We throw on some clothes, grab our warm coats, talk to a friend who wanted to ride with us and dash off to the truck. What do we see when we get to the truck? About an inch of ice caked on the entire truck. I chip away at the door and bust it open, fire up the big blue beast, and put the defrost on full blast. Back to the house we go to wait on ice to magically melt away. This did allow me to watch some post game celebration, and calm down before hitting the roads like a wild man. We allow 15 minutes to pass before checking on the Blue Beast with the horses inside her thundering ready to be let lose to roam the plains, but alas, still an inch of ice on her holding her back. With no more time to spare a dash to our storage building to fetch the overkill for the south ice scraper/snow brush combo tool we received for Christmas ages ago. This tool is awesome, it blasted the ice off the windshield as if it was a hot knife scraping the top layer out of a tub of butter. The brush is also a bright Orange color, so totally fitting, and can also be used to help flag down help if stuck in a ditch, or land an air craft if you're on the deck of a aircraft carrier. With fully charged camera in hand we’re ready to get our party on.
Once in Auburn, it was a mad house, cars, people, and toilet paper everywhere. Here are a few moments we were able to capture before we ran out of space on our memory card, guess that should be up in the poor planning section of this post…

While I'm posting videos

2011-01-06T10:32:00.000-05:00

Here's a video of a friend of mine singing at my church.

His voice is a Ferge and Jesus.

You never know who you'll find on Youtube...

2011-01-06T10:26:00.000-05:00

Here is a video of a friend of mine's parents from their trip to AZ for the National Championship game.

So jealous they're getting to go to the game.

Eff you Lifetime!

2011-01-04T11:21:00.000-05:00

Hey Lifetime, why don't you stick to entertaining women and leave me the F-bomb alone? Quit trying to suck me in by playing my favorite shows, PawnStars, American Pickers, and How I Met Your Mother. I'm sick of it! You knew I was a sucker for watching reruns of these shows, so you put them in time slots when I'm the most vulnerable to watch them. Thanks a lot A-hole. Then last night you suck my bride and I into the //the.craigslist.killer. Again you knew I was a sucker for movies based off of true events. You knew I want to watch that movie and then research about the real events and people involved. Why couldn't you have stuck to making male bashing movies that only women would watch so I could skip right over you and not have to an embarrassing conversation about having seen something on Lifetime. Lifetime I curse you, but will continue to watch you because you're playing the shows I want to watch.

Side note, Susannah guessed the movie correctly, the movie was Elf. The first quote was when Buddy was talking to the snow man about finding his real father and the snowman well telling Buddy to be thankful that he had a father.

Another side note, this is my 100th blog post, so go me! I never would have thought I would have had so much to say.

I am resloved no longer to linger

2011-01-04T10:43:00.000-05:00

Every year most people seem to make new years resolutions. I’m sure most resolutions don’t make it through the first week of the January. I know I’m guilty of not seeing resolutions through to completion. So with that being said, here is a list of resolutions that I don’t see myself following through on this year.

1.    Getting into shape. I say this all the time. I’m a former athlete so I know how good it feels to be in peek physical condition. How you just feel better, seem to breathe easier, and have more energy. But now with life happening all around me I find it hard to get back into shape and stay in shape.
2.    Be healthier. I need to start watching what I eat and drink more. I will admit that I’m addicted to soda. Not even the taste as much as the convenience of a 12 oz drink that’s only a pop top away. I need to force myself to drink more water, eat less at seatings, and eat healthier snacks. Before anyone thinks this is about weight loss, it’s really not. I’m getting older and I really need to start worrying about my health more. My father is nowhere near a perfect image of health, and I’m starting to see a lot of him in me, so it’s time to nip it in the bud. (If for no more than my bride’s sake)
3.    Cut back on TV and reading more. I’m starting to think I could go without TV, it’s a luxury and a time waster. Do I enjoy TV? Of course I enjoy watching TV. Do I think I could not watch a program and feel like I didn’t miss anything? Yes I do.

And for the resolutions I intend to keep.

1.    Be a better and more supportive husband. A marriage takes work, and even though we haven’t been married long, I already see areas that I need to improve on.
2.    Pray often and with more purpose. Not to win the lottery or anything selfish, but more or less opening up a dialogue with the man upstairs.

Last hint for the movie quote

2010-12-27T16:11:00.001-05:00

It's another line from the movie.

"The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear."

I hope this helps.

Movie Quote hint

2010-12-21T14:12:00.000-05:00

The movie isn't half baked, even though after rereading it I can see why someone might think that. The movie is very fitting for this time of year. I'm sure if you've been watching USA lately you've seen this movie.

Since someone else isn't doing it

2010-12-20T10:11:00.000-05:00

Since we haven't had a Sunday's Saying in IDK, forever? I'm taking it upon myself to post a name that movie line. Sorry I don't have a prize to give away, but you guys will just have to play for pride, even though you can't cash pride at the bank. So everyone think long and hard and see if you can guess what movie this line is from.

"At least you have a daddy, I was just rolled up one day and left out here in the cold."

Comment me with your guesses and I'll post the answer/winner.

Weekend wrap up from Griswoldville

2010-12-13T10:56:00.003-05:00

Exciting things happening around the Smith clan this weekend. It was my direct and extended families Christmas parties. Let me just say that my extended family is kind of large and gets bigger every year. Kids just keep appearing every year at family outings and I personally don’t know where they came from. I end up playing a game of match the baby to the parent. With so many kids, they’ve tried to find ways to entertain everyone and spend time together as a family. Well this started out as something to get the kids out of the house while everyone got to my Granny’s house and got everything set up and ready. It has now turned into a yearly event that everyone waits to start until everyone has arrived. Normally they have a county wide scavenger hunt with the kids broken up into 3 groups and they have to drive all around completing task and finding items on their check list while being video recorded. This year though someone was apparently inspired by the hit TV show "Minute to win it". They still broke the kids up into 3 teams, but instead of driving all over creation, they had to complete a task in a minute or less. My bride and I don’t normally compete in the scavenger hunt so we didn’t compete in this years event either. One, it was cold outside, and two, we’re both just too school for cool, (thanks Pink). I’m pretty upset that I was a slacker and broke the number one rule of blogging and didn’t take a camera or any pictures this entire weekend. There would have been some classic shots of the competition. One thing I’m the most upset about not getting a picture of is the ridiculous amounts of food that we have every year. Mainly all sweets, cookies, brownies, cakes, pies, dips, sausage balls, and every other goodie you can think of. The spread gets setup in the morning and we all just graze on it all day. If you leave there hungry it’s your own fault.
On our way home from the Christmas Extravaganza my bride and I saw some white on black dog relations. The white dog always trying to keep the black dog down, the white dog trying to screw over the black dog, I’m talking about some roadside dog loving if you weren’t picking up what I was laying down. Again, another time that I wish I had a camera handy. Since most of you guys don’t know my family, they live out in the COUNTRY, it’s almost a 45 minute drive to the nearest Wal-Mart, an hour if you want to hit up a Target. So I’m sure seeing a dog giving another dog the business is quite the norm to those folks, but not something my bride and I see everyday.
Sunday Morning we went to my parents church. My Bride and I showing up almost doubled the weekly attendance. You’ll be hard pressed to find another small country church smaller and more countrier than this one. It’s so country there’s a dog there at the front steps to greet you. Now they just need to train the dog to hand you a bulletin when you walk in.
After Church we went back to my parents house to enjoy our Christmas lunch and exchange gifts. We open gifts one present at a time starting at the youngest and going to the oldest so that everyone gets to see what everyone else got. It can take some time to open gifts this way, but it’s nice to see everyone’s reactions to the gifts they got.
We used to open our families gifts on Christmas Eve, we’d light all the candles in the house and my dad would read the Christmas story from the Bible as we sat in the glow of candles and the light from what has to be one of the world’s ugliest Christmas trees. How we started doing this, I have no idea, but now that we’ve grown up, moved out and away, it’s something we don’t do anymore. I guess part of the reason is we open gifts during the day now so no need in candle light, and my nephew’s are little too impatient to sit through a reading of the word with gifts sitting in front of them.
After all the gifts had been exchanged and all the food eaten my bride and I headed home. We made a few stops to look at Christmas lights in the falling flurries, there are some pretty big displays in Columbus this year, and one is raising money for Make a Wish, so we stopped by and made a donation. All in all, it was a good weekend.

Guilty Pleasure

2010-12-09T14:27:00.001-05:00

So, I have a new guilty pleasure. The Sing off. Have you guys been watching this show? I LOVE good music and I love R&B. I used to sing my heart out to Boyz II Men, Jodeci, Keith Sweat, Soul for Real, Tevin Campbell, Immature, Shai, Hi-Five, New Edition, and Uncle Sam. I remember driving around singing my lungs out to these songs. Me and My Boy, like how I went old school R&B there, used to break the songs up into parts, especially KC and Jo-Jo, and sing them like we were paid. Watching the Sing Off on NBC has brought a lot of these memories flooding back, and reminded me why I used to be Boyz II Men’s #1 fan. Golly I love good music. Did any of you guys rock the beats back in the 90’s? What are some of your favorite groups, songs? Please leave me comments with your answers, some times I feel that Ms Jenkins is the only one reading my blog! While I’m at it, Thank you Ms. Jenkins for being such a loyal reader!

And yes I know this is four blogs in four days! Just call me butter, cause I'm on a roll baby!

What I've learned

2010-12-08T14:13:00.000-05:00

Don’t know if any of you guys are sports fans, or used to watch SportsCenter back when it was actually watchable, but if any of you did then you’ll probably remember a guy named Dan Patrick. Well a few years ago Dan left “the Mother Ship” and went out on his own. He now has his own radio show called “The Dan Patrick Show”, creative name right? A friend of mine got me started listening to Mr. Dan Patrick’s show and so now I’m able to kill 3 hours a day with some enjoyable sports talk radio. One of the last segments of each day is a segment called “What we’ve learned”. In this segment each Danette has to say one thing that they’ve learned from the day’s show. What they learned each day is usually something comical, but maybe we should all start taking note of the things we learned from day to day.
What have I learned today? I learned a good friend of mine and his wife cut their Christmas budget in half and have used the excess to adopt a family in need. I’ve heard some of the gifts this family is getting and I’m jealous and I know they’re going to have an awesome Christmas this year.

Stop! Its potty time!

2010-12-07T17:15:00.000-05:00

Can you guys believe it? Two blogs in as many days!? It’s a miracle!
It’s my job when I’m at home to take our little dachshund out to go to the bathroom. This can sometimes be a pretty boring task. To make this event more enjoyable I will spend time on my iPhone and Facebook, or sometimes I’ll sing to Mags. All the songs I sing to her are reworded of course, so that they fit the task at hand. Below are some of our favorite songs when it’s potty time.
Barbie Girl: “Come on Barbie let’s go party”. Mag’s likes: “Come on Maggie, let’s go potty”
California Love: “California, knows how to party” Mag’s likes: “Maggie Doddle, has to go potty”
Smoking in the boys room: “Smokin’ in the boys room” Mag’s likes: “Peeing in the front yard”
Hammer Time: “Stop, it’s hammer time” Mag’s likes: “Stop, It’s potty time!”
And of course there are countless others that I can’t seem to remember right now because I decided to write a blog about it. Go figure.

Feeling Regret

2010-12-06T16:24:00.000-05:00

I’m going to be honest, I don’t have too many regrets in my life. I’m very happy with most of the choices I’ve made in my short life. But right now I have one big regret laying heavy on my heart. This past Friday night my church had a fund raiser/outreach type event where you could be homeless for a night. Money was being raised for the Fuller Center, a charity for housing started by Millard Fuller, you guys might know him best as the founder of Habitat for Humanity. When I first heard of this event, I was very excited, it was something I really wanted to take part in. But as they say, life happens and I thought I was going to be sent to Canada for work during this event so I pretty much gave up all hope of taking part. Then last Monday I find out that my trip has been pushed back one week so I’d be able to participate, yay! Well, there was a monetary donation needed to join in on Homeless for a Night, it was a fundraiser by the way, and on such short notice I couldn’t come up with the money needed. Why do I regret this so much? I could have tried harder. I could have posted on Facebook that I needed donations to make me homeless for a night, I could have written a blog, before this post, and maybe my handful of followers would have pitched in, or maybe God would have put someone on my blog just to read it and donate even more than the needed amount for me to sleep in a cardboard box outside in the cold. Would of, could of, should of, didn’t happen and now it’s eating at me. My church is a church focused on the community, they plan to do much more with the Fuller Center, and I know I’ll have other chances to give back but I really want to give this time. I believe this is only the second outreach event my Bride and I have missed since becoming a part of Refuge Point Church, but this one really hurt. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t even go out to listen to the concert put on by our praise band and show support for those poor souls out there freezing. This has been weighting on my heart since Friday night. If anyone knows me they know that I don’t show much emotion and I don’t really let anyone know when something is bothering me so it’s been difficult to put this down in digital ink and post it to my blog. Hopefully I can forgive myself, because I know I’ve already been forgiven. Let me end this pitty party because there is nothing I can do about it now. If you guys want to be blessed by a worship service and see what a small church can do for a hurting community come visit us at Refuge Point Church, you won’t be disappointed.

It's just a number, right?

2010-12-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

Every so often a number will flash into my mind, a number that I have a very hard time believing. My age. For a good minute I honestly had no idea how old I really was. I almost had to count it out on my fingers to know my true age, and when all the counting was done I was in complete shock. Not for one second do I believe that I’m 31 years old. If you ask me I’m a 22 year old that’s taking a little longer than average to finish college. I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that I’m already in my 30’s. I still feel young, I don’t know how being 30 is supposed to feel, but I’m sure it’s older than I feel. Other than my growing spots of missing hair I still look like a young man. It’s funny, you hear people say, “I remember when 30 was old”. I think I’m at that point. I know that 30 got on me much quicker than I ever imagined. I don’t know, maybe I just thought at the age of 30 I’d be a much different person. I thought I’d be waking up early every morning just because the sun was coming up and that’s what I was supposed to do. I thought a good fart joke wouldn't make me laugh as much as it did when I was in my 20's. I was watching a Professional sporting event not too long ago and they showed the ages of the players, and I noticed that I was older than everyone playing. At that moment I knew all my hopes and dreams of being a professional athlete were crushed. Oh well, as long as I still feel like I’m a 22 year old college slacker, that’s what I’m going to let myself continue to believe. *sad face*

A note to Christmas

2010-11-16T17:51:00.000-05:00

Dear Christmas,
I am writing to you to issue a formal complaint of your habitual line crossing, or month crossing as it is in this case. I am sick and tired of only being a side note for your 3 month long invasion. I remember back when, in the golden days, it was considered faux pas to decorate for Christmas before celebrating me. It used to be standard operating procedure to decorate for Christmas on the Friday after me, now known as Black Friday. Now I am just a day of rest before the biggest shopping day of the year, A shopping day spent buying gifts for you! I myself enjoy Jesus’ birthday as much as the next holiday, excluding Martin Luther King Jr’s day, as that holiday has a dream that all holiday’s will be celebrated equally, but Christmas, you have taken Jesus’ birthday and turned it into a birthquater. Christmas, it is not your manifest destiny to rule the entire calendar. New Year’s eve and I are fed up with your blatant disregard of our holiday status, and Halloween has joined us this year as he feels that this year you have encroached into his designated holiday space. Fourth of July has starting to turn more red than white and blue because he is being pushed from the shelves to make way for your decorations! I don’t know if you know when the Fourth of July is celebrated, but it’s on the effin 4th of July, which is almost dead center of the calendar, give or take a month. I’m not 100% sure on this, because I wasn’t paying attention, but I’m pretty sure Hanukkah said something about him being celebrated in December too. Kwanzaa is very irate and has already held conference calls with Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan to get this encroachtion, of the holidation, validation, emaciation, abomination, and some other tion words that I couldn’t even begin to spell, corrected! In closing, Christmas, consider this as the first official warning for you to back off, or else further holiday actions will be taken.
Sincerely,
Thanksgiving

Bringing more enjoyment to my dishwashing

2010-11-09T15:18:00.000-05:00

If you follow Lowe’s Home Improvement on Facebook then I’m sure you’ve seen the pre-Black Friday deals they ran this weekend. Well my Bride made me aware of the deals so she and I spent our weekend trying to win coupon codes for 90% off of items. Out of all the ads we tried we won one. But to be honest, it’s one that we really wanted, and needed. We won an Aquasource faucet for our kitchen sink. Yay! The faucet normally cost 130 some odd dollars, we paid 14 for it. Can’t beat that with a stick! We fought nobly for several other items, but didn’t win any other battles. We really wanted to the kitchenaid mixer, and the Dyson vacuum.
Here is what we used to be working with.

Here is what we were given

And here it is all finished up and looking pretty

The faucet didn’t get great reviews online, but let me tell you, coming from what we had this thing is awesome. Cleaning behind it so much easier, I wipe everything down after I wash the dishes. It has the removable nozzle built into it, so all we have to do is pull on the head and we have a sprayer. (That’s what she said) Our old sprayer broke so we bought a replacement, and then the replacement didn’t work so it was pretty much just there for looks. I believe we’re going to try and find a stopper or something to put in place of the old sprayer, just so it looks a little better. Next we hope to completely replace the sink though. We think we want a black sink, and one of higher quality than what came in our spec house.

Make your own Sodas?

2010-11-04T10:55:00.000-04:00

So I listen to the Dan Patrick Show at work and he’s been pushing this product called SodaStream where you can make your own soda. Have any of you guys heard of this? Anyone used it? If this thing really works I would really change the 2 liter bottle game at the Smith house. It doesn’t say anything about recharging store bought drinks on the website, that I’ve found, but just wondering everyone’s thoughts and reviews?

Forcing my hand

2010-11-03T12:39:00.000-04:00

I’m forcing myself to write a blog today. I’ve had writers block lately, than mixed with the fact that I haven’t really done anything of note lately has made for a lack of post. Just a warning, this might turn into a “random” blog at any point. I like for my blogs to be funny and informative, but for some reason I just haven’t felt funny lately. My Bride would probably say that I’m never funny, but I tend to disagree.
Something that I’ve learned since getting married, everyone wants to know when you’re having kids. Seems like an innocent question, but what they’re really asking is, “Are you guys boning with a mission, or still just boning for fun?” Think about that for a second. And really why do you want to know what’s happening in my bride and I’s bedroom? When we’re ready to tell you we’re having a kid, we’ll send you a picture of the kid on a Christmas card.
On our Honeymoon I finished Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol”. It was a decent enough book, but to me it didn’t come close “Angel’s and Demon’s” or “The DaVanci Code” I was really excited about this book, especially since so much of it was focused on Washington DC. Maybe I had just set my expectations too high, I’ve been known to do that. Has anyone else read these books? If so, what are your thoughts?

After finishing “The Lost Symbol” I started “Playing for Pizza” by John Grisham. Now this has been a very enjoyable book. Being a sports fan I’ve really gotten into it. The only problem is for some reason I’ve had a hard time finding time to read. I don’t know what it is with me, but sometimes I’ll just read and read and read with what appears to be endless time, then I’ll get to point where I can’t seem to find a single free second to read a word. Anyone else go through these ups and downs? I feel like I’ve only read 5 or 6 books this entire year. I’ve almost read that many in just one month in years past. Sometimes I know it’s the book that’s making it so hard for me to read, but I’m really enjoying this book.

Halloween made me thinking about ghost and ghost hunting. I really want to be a ghost hunter. I watch “The Ghost Hunters” on TV and what they do amazes me. I’ve never had any kind of a run in with a ghost or spirit, so part of me doesn’t believe in such things. But some of my family members say they've had encounters and you don't think your family is crazy, so you tend to start to believe in such things. Any of you guys ever had any run ins with ghosts?
I know this blog wasn’t funny, probably wasn’t entertaining, and posed a lot of questions. But I thank you guys for reading my forced blog post. I need to find a blog a day thing. Maybe I’ll get my google on and see what I find out there in the vast interwebs to keep the posts coming.

We're Number One!

2010-10-29T18:52:00.001-04:00

So for the past two weekends I’ve been lucky enough to be given tickets to the Auburn games. Man, there is nothing that can match being in Jordan-Hare stadium on game day. I get goose bumps in that place. When the crowd is cheering and the tigers are winning, it’s hard to beat. Heck I just got goose bumps sitting here thinking about it as I write. Don’t know if any of yous guys have had a chance to go this year, but before the game they play “All I do is Win” and when the song says “Everybody hands go up”, the entire stadium throws their hands in the air, chills. And don’t even get me started on the Eagle flying, the jets flying over, and the players running through the tunnels. When I played football there was maybe 100 people in the stands, so few that you couldn’t even hear crowd noise. I want to know what it’s like to be on that field and to hear what they have to hear down there.
I’ve been to games in a bunch of cities, but nothing has ever matched Jordan-Hare. Even to the point that visiting teams and sports casters have written about how awesome it is to go to a game on the Plains. Incase you guys haven’t seen this article after the South Carolina game, I believe everyone needs to give it a read. Scott Van Pelt of ESPN wrote this article a few years ago after his visit to the plains, another must read for all Auburn fans.
Now that the Tigers are number 1 in the BCS, I must say it makes me a bit nervous. Let me tell you why, the number 1 team has been upset in the last 3 weeks. I was kind of hoping Auburn would fall into the two spot and let Oregon take the #1 so we could still win for the BCS game, but wouldn’t have the pressure of being the Number 1 team. And Oregon stands a good chance at the upset this weekend against USC. Oh well, I have faith in my Tigers.
After the first few games I wasn’t completely sold on Cam Newton, one reason is I missed three games because I got married and went on a two week honeymoon. Two of the games I missed were the South Carolina and Clemson games, pretty big games to miss for Cam Newton. Missing those games only allowed me to see stats, which didn’t tell the whole story. I didn’t get to see how Cam could pick up the entire team and carry them to a victory. After watching a few games on the TV and live I now give him the respect he’s due. So Cam, I apologize for not jumping on your bandwagon sooner.
Another thought I’ve had, how awesome would it be to have a Heisman winner, and win the National Championship one year after Alabama did the same thing? They can say they have more, but we can say we’ve won one more recently. And you can’t forget that Auburn already has more Heisman winners then they do.
So to all my Orange and Blue, Weage Weagle cause all I do is win win win, no matter what

Hippie man...

2010-10-22T17:59:00.002-04:00

So I haven’t had my hair cut since a week before my bride and I said I Do. If you’re doing the math that’s a month and a half. My hair is getting kind of long and is need of being cut. I keep begging my bride to cut my hair to save me the 15 bucks it cost at the cuttin’ corner, yes that is where I go to get my hair did. If the name isn’t funny enough, it’s not even on a corner, it’s sitting across the street from a church. I’m half way tempted to just break out the clippers tonight and go #3 guard on my head. I’m getting sick of doing this comb over and from looking at my wedding pictures, the comb over isn’t really doing that good of a job. A lot of scalp being shown in those pictures. I guess tonight I’ll go home and beg my bride one more time to cut my hair, if she won’t do it, it’s off with his hair!
Here are some pictures of from my last long hair days.

Update, of sorts

2010-10-19T18:36:00.000-04:00

I don’t know how everyone else writes their blogs, but I write mine during breaks or while I’m running a report or some other time consuming task at work. I type them up in word and just leave my word doc open all day until I finish the blog then I copy and paste it into blogger. Well I’m telling you this story because I started a G-rated blog about the honeymoon that my Bride and I went on that has vanished. I don’t remember closing the document out, but I do remember titling it and saving it to my blog folder on my desktop. I have no idea what happened to it, but it’s apparently gone. I’ve learned that when I have to rewrite something it never turns out as good as it was the first time I wrote it so I’m not even going to try. Sorry guys and girls, I know I’ve disappointed you. Below are some random thoughts to help fill the disappointment.
Driving from Rome GA to Auburn AL and then to Key West FL in one day sounds good in theory, but really sucks in practice. That’s a lot of time spent in one car.
It took me a good week to get back into the swing of working again, and apparently even longer to get back into the swing of blogging.
If you don’t like eating boogers, don’t pick your nose with your tongue out. Not a true life experience, just a funny thought I had while driving the 17 hours from Auburn to Key West while my bride slept.
It cost a lot to drive the entire Florida Turnpike. Especially if you have to stop for gas.
You can use frequent flier miles for more than flying! We used my miles to get a nights stay at a super nice hotel in Orlando.
Susannah, thanks for the awesome recommendation of lodging in Key West. We enjoyed it so much we had to send you that post card.
Dreaming about winning the lottery never seems to get old.
Today starts the busiest time of the year for my industry, followed by the slowest time.
The more games Auburn wins the more nervous I get before every game. Each win gives us more to lose.
I had a great weekend last weekend, saw the Globe Trotters Friday night and then took my bride to see the Auburn/Arkansas game Saturday, followed by another fun day date with my bride at the Hummingbird Festival.
Apparently walking a dog with a pink leash/collar combo, and a shirt with a rhinestone Hummingbird and a Huge flower isn’t enough for people to realize the dog is a female and to not ask me “What’s HIS name?".

Fried Oreo’s aren’t as good as one would think… I take that back, they’re pretty much exactly what you would think.
I’m waiting on Charity to blog about our visit to see them and the Shrimp Festival so I won’t have to try and remember anything and I can just copy and paste her blog. She’s better at it than I am.

Wedding Weekend Wrap up

2010-10-06T10:15:00.000-04:00

Every girl dreams of her perfect wedding, and let me tell you, this girl right here got hers September 11th. I mean, wait what? I’m not a girl… But I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect wedding. My job was simple, stand up there and look handsome, NAILED IT! For those of you that don’t know, my Bride and I got married in a little stone chapel on top of a hill, just like in the fairytales. I honestly couldn’t be happier with the way the wedding turned out. My Bride was as beautiful as ever, if anyone has been by my Facebook page and seen the photo preview from our photographer you’ll agree. I was not in the least bit nervous about getting married, I was nervous about standing in front of everyone and kissing my Bride, but once the service started all of that went away because it was just she and I standing up there, no one else seemed to be in the room.
I was very proud of myself for only laughing once during the ceremony, and I tried my best to hold that in, so it came out as more of a full hearted giggle. Is that even possible?
I don’t really think I can ever put into words how pretty the setting of our wedding was. Frost Chapel at Berry College is an amazing place, Berry College itself is. If any of you get a chance to ride out there for the day I highly suggest you do it. It’s not all that far from you Susannah, *hint hint*. Being that I was the groom in this event and my Bride was well, the bridge, we don’t have any pictures of our own. But here are some pictures from a fellow blogger, and the person that set my Bride and I up, Blog 1, Blog 2, and Blog 3. I encourage everyone to go and look at her pictures.
We did things a bit differently for our wedding, I got to see my Bridge before she walked down the isle. We did what is called a “reveal”. I stood at the alter with my back turned, and when my Bride was ready she walked in and tapped me on my shoulder. As I turned around to see her our photographers took pictures of us seeing each other for the first time. I liked doing it this way because after a few pictures were taken, everyone left the church and it was just my Bride and I alone for about 10 minutes just enjoying each other, not in that way you perverts! Then we all went outside and finished up some bridal party pictures. BTW, or photographer was amazing, if anyone needs some pictures done we suggest you look them up, their website is www.hedgehogphotos.com. They are a young married couple that does this for fun. I hope they thought our wedding day was fun, because we feel like we put them through all kinds of heck.
One last little boring detail, my Bride gave me the one thing that I asked for out of this entire wedding. I let her have her wedding, so everything you see in the pictures is all her doing, and I think she did an amazing job. But I requested one thing, and one thing only. We left the church to Linus and Lucy, aka the Peanuts theme song. My cousin played the Organ and Flute for us, and one of my Groomsmen, Adam, and another good friend Casi sang when “God made you” during the lighting of the Unity Candle. Which by the way is something I tried to stop, the church had no A/C and it was hot, I wanted as few candles burning as possible!
Since all this wedding stuff is over with I’m hoping my Bride will get back to blogging, I know she’ll do a much better job recalling and telling this wedding story than I did.

Getting in on the wordless Wednesday

2010-10-06T09:24:00.000-04:00

Greatest weekend EVER

2010-09-07T14:02:00.002-04:00

I can’t believe I forgot about this until just now. Maybe this will bring me out of my blogger blah. Guys, the most awesome thing ever happened a few weekends ago in the back yard of the About to be Smith House. There is a church right across the street from our house that owns the land behind our house. Every year they have a large event called “Celebrate America”. It is normally held on the weekend before the Fourth of July, but for the last few years it has rained on that weekend so they moved it to the last weekend in August. All their thinking and planning didn’t really pay off as it didn’t rain for the entire month of July, or any of August, until the last weekend of August. They moved forward with the event though, and people came out, boy did they come out, on foot, car, truck bed, four wheeler, and I believe I saw a lawn mower. The event has a car show, a rock wall to climb, inflatable jungle gyms, food vendors, fire trucks, live music, and a fireworks display at the end of the night. It was what we in the country like to call “A big to-do”. This year though, they added something extra special, something that we haven’t seen in years past, something that excited me very much. They had MONSTOR TRUCKS! That’s right, Monster trucks, you know, “Sunday Sunday Sunday, come one come all to see the monsters of mayhem, the goliath’s on grass, high flying, death defying Monster truck rally, 5 dollars for the entire seat, but you’re only going to need the edge edge edge.” My Bride and I had some running around to do so I was pretty nervous that I was going to miss all the car crushing action. Reluctantly I agreed to go to town to finish up these errands. As expected, it took us longer than expected to do our running around in town. Heartbroken that I’ve probably missed the monster trucks, we headed home in hopes of at least catching the fireworks, if the entire thing hadn’t been rained out. As we start to get close to the house we notice that there are still cars parked on the side of the road, this lets us know that the fireworks show is still on. It’s getting dark, but not dark enough for fireworks so we hustle to the house to unload our goods and get ready for the fireworks. As I’m driving past the opening in the field my bride ask, “What is going on? Everyone is standing in one area looking at something.” It wasn’t until we pulled in the drive and parked that we saw a Monster Truck in all it’s glory, air born and ready to lay the vengeance reserved for God Almighty on some poor sinful cars. We pull the truck into the back yard for our front row seats, roll the windows down, It’s still raining at this point, and enjoy the sights and sounds of Monster Truck Car crushing goodness. When all was said and done we heard the announcement that these trucks are from Monsters on a Mission. If there mission was to thrill, as the great former president George “Dubbya” Bush said, “Mission Accomplished!” At this point I wasn’t even sure if my heart could handle the excitement of a fireworks display, but I was willing to give it a shot and test my old ticker out. We moved out of the truck and to our covered porch to watch the display as we sang “I’m proud to be an American” over and over again, because no Fireworks display in the south is complete without Lee Greenwood. After wiping away our tears, screaming USA, and making Toby Keith for President signs, we called it a night, thus ending the GREATEST WEEKEND EVER.

Blogger Blah part deux

2010-09-03T11:35:00.000-04:00

I'm still in my blogging funk, but I really want to post something. I haven't thought of anything to post and then I was searching through some photos on my computer to show our photog about the area we're getting married and I stumbled across these photos. So I thought I'd share the ridiculousness that is the soon to be Smith House for 6 pound 4 ounce little baby Jesus. I'm sure Melissa has posted most of these pictures on her blog, but I thought I'd refresh everyone's memory. So I hope everyone enjoys.

First here is our tree next to a normal person's tree in the back of my truck.

And here it is finished.

People, I'm 6 foot 4 inches of twisted steel and sex appeal, and I can't touch the top of this tree...

That was just the main tree, we have a tree in EVERY room in the house, even the bathrooms. I couldn't find pictures of every tree, but I found the Master Bedroom tree.

And the Kitchen Tree

Next one really isn't a tree, but we make a tree out of our chandelier over the kitchen table.

We put out a nice setup for baby Jesus

And we all get ready for bed because Santa is coming!

And in the morning we find that Santa Paws visited us! (Santa Paws is serious about her work)

And Santa Paws guards all the stockings to make sure everyone gets their gifts.

Maggie over sleeps every year and misses Santa Paws, but she still puts on her Christmas Colors and her Christmas Smile.

I wish I could have found pictures of my Charlie Brown tree, (it's in the office) and the guest bedroom Bear tree. Every year I look forward to Dec 26th so I can start taking this stuff down. Melissa loves it and she decorates from Thanksgiving until Dec 24th. The sad thing is, even with all our trees we have ornaments left with out a spot to hang. Sorry for the lame post, but like I said, I'm in a blogging funk. I need help to get out of it.

Blogger blah...

2010-08-27T16:28:00.000-04:00

So, I know I haven't been posting much here lately. I"m sorry for that, but right now I'm at a point where I'll think I'll have something good to post, but then it just goes no where so I give up and stop writing. Everything just seems so blah right now. Anyone else get like this? For the last 3 days I've wanted to blog, but when I went to blog nothing came out. I have blog constipation. I need more fiber in my blog? Here is the latest blog I started, but couldn't finish.

Two days in on the reboot of 30 day Shred
With the wedding fast approaching I decided I needed to make sure I could still wear the 34 in waist pants I've ordered for my tux. I have to make sure my butt is small enough to cash the check my mouth wrote. So for the past two days I've completed level 1 of the 30 day shred. Few notes I'd like to share with Jillian Michaels. 1. two 30 second sessions of push up? Yeah, ok, alright. Really? I'm a man in some kind of shape other than round and I can't do a minute a man push up. If this DVD is focused for women, I'm thinking you lost a lot of them of them right here. I started out the 1st day doing my first 30 seconds like a man, set two of my man push ups saw me complete one and half before going to my knees and finishing like the little girl that I really am. 2. We don't have the 5 lb free weights that they say you need, and I'm so glad we don't. I'd probably be dead now if we did. I mean, I had already punched 911 in on my cell phone after starting the work out night one and was ready to call for the Wife to Bee to press send if it was needed.

And right here is where I ran out of steam. I didn't even get to my thoughts about me day dreaming of punching her in her lady balls, as the Landreth's like to say, during the squatting and punching part of the work out. Oh well, maybe I'm losing my mind, or at least my thoughts. I guess I'm too focused on being on a beach some where with my new bride soaking up the rays and planning the rest of our lives together. *sigh*

January 2nd, 2001

2010-08-17T16:00:00.000-04:00

In my past post I put that I was in a car wreck before Melissa and I met that pushed back when she and I were going to meet. Someone asked for what happened, so here is what happened as best as I can remember from January 2nd, 2001. The day the Itsybishi died.
As you can see from the pictures, it had snowed the morning of Jan 2nd, something that is very rare here in the South. I was working the evening shift at my job which put me in a little more danger. I was asked by several people to not go to work due to the roads, but I’m a man and I knew I could make it with no trouble in my little low to the ground front wheel drive car.
I made it into work with no problems, the snow had started to melt and so the roads were kind of wet, but with the temps above freezing it wasn’t a problem. The problem didn’t start until the temperature went down with the sun. We started hearing reports of road closures in the area so people were being sent home. Me, being the valuable employee that I was at the time was asked to stay to handle a few things before they let me go. When I did finally get out of there for the night it was a little too late.
I was on I-85 heading south from GA into Alabama. I was just crossing the Chattahoochee River when I got my doors blown off by an 18 wheeler that was driving way too fast for the conditions. As soon as he passed my car the wind off his trailer knocked my traction off and the poor Itsybishi started to slide. I lost all control of the car and slid from the right hand lane into the barrier of the bridge of the left hand lane. I hit the barrier pretty much head on and then I bounced back into traffic. I knew other traffic was coming so I started the car back up, since the kill switch tripped when I hit the barrier. I had just put the car back into gear and was coming off the clutch to pull myself back off the road when disaster struck. And by disaster I mean another 18 wheeler rolling along at speeds to high for the road conditions. The truck didn’t see me, it didn’t slow down, it didn’t hit it’s breaks, it just plowed right into my driver’s side door. Due to the ice on the bridge the itsybishi started to spin from the collision, I spun right under the rear trailer tires of the 18 wheeler, where I became hung. Not sure how many of you have ever crossed the Chattahoochee River bridge on i-85, but it’s not that short of a bridge. Keep that in mind as I tell you that I was hung under the trailer of this truck until it was able to spit me out into the median at the end of the bridge. The truck was moving so fast that it traveled for about another 200 feet before rolling over onto it’s side. Now I just realized that I forgot to mention that I wasn’t alone in the car. A good friend of mine, that didn’t have a car at the time, was in the passenger seat when all of this went down. My first thought was him. I checked on him and he was alive, thank God!
Now that I knew both of us were alive my thoughts were too of course get out of the car. Drivers side door, not opening, as you can see from the pictures there was a good reason it didn’t open. My passenger wasn’t in his right mind due to him hitting his head so I’m not really sure if he tried to open his door like I asked him to or not, but none the less it appeared we were trapped in the car. Then I noticed that every window in the car had been knocked out, so we both went up and out of the sunroof to icy cold freedom. I ran down to where the truck flipped to check on them. Neither of them were hurt and they were real concerned about us. At this time I was feeling no pain, so I’m thinking everything is fine except for the poor little itsybishi. Guys, this little car was my life, I <3-ed this car so much I probably would have made sweet car lovin’ to it had the tailpipe not been so hot. I’m looking over my car about to break down in tears when I see a guy standing next to me that stopped to help. I looked at him, not knowing that I had a broken rib, glass embedded in my face with blood pouring out of my open wounds on my face and arm, and ask him if he thought the car could be fixed and where is the missing wheel? I just knew I’d need that missing wheel when they went to fix the car. Oh the things you think of at times of crisis.
The ambulance arrives to take off my friend because he is still quite loopy. At this point he doesn’t understand that he was just in a car wreck. The EMT staff ask me if I’m ok and I reply that I’m fine, but it hurts just little bit to take a deep breath. So the strap me into the ambulance with them and away we go. I’ve already listed my injuries so no sense in listing them again, but my friend had no cuts on him, but he had a huge knot on his head and a concussion.
Last little funny part to the story, as I said in the beginning I was crossing the river coming from GA into AL. GA state troopers and AL state troopers arrive on the scene. The two of them start discussing who should write up the report. AL said it should be GA because the wreck happened in GA, but GA said AL because the cars came to rest in AL. This issue hadn’t been cleared up by the time I’m hauled off to the hospital so I had no idea who I needed to see to get my license back, or to get the police report. The hospital staff was finally informed by the GA state trooper that GA took the accident so I needed to see the GA state patrol to get my accident report, and license back.
I didn’t know how badly my face was cut up, which was the main reason I didn’t want to meet Melissa, until I was sitting in the hospital and my face was warming up from the cold and I started to feel pain. At this point I asked what was wrong with my face, why was it burning it so much. (question to myself, why didn’t I notice the blood that was covering the front of my shift?) The hospital would not show me a mirror and they wouldn’t let me look at myself. All they did was lay me down and take a dry cloth to brush some of the glass off my face. Can you say ouch? I had to get the rest of the glass off of and out of my face and hair myself when I got home. And in case anyone is wondering why I kept calling the car Itsybishi, it was a Mitsubishi Eclipse, and everyone said it looked so tiny when I was next to it or getting in or out of it so it was named the Itsybishi, think itsy bitsy spider…
Sorry this story is so long, but I wanted to make sure I got all the details I could remember in.

That's me in the second picture looking at the car.The people at the junk yard were talking to Jason and I when we were looking at the car and they asked if we knew the guy in the car, and that they were pretty sure that who ever was in the car didn't live. Jason told him that the guy in the car did live and that he was standing right over there, and pointed to me.

Answers to Susannah's Quetions

2010-08-12T19:02:00.001-04:00

Well, I left the blog out there for a little while in hopes of getting more questions to answer, but alas, there were none. To me this could mean a few things, 1.) No one really cares so why waste time asking questions they don’t want to know the answers too, 2.) I’ve told you everything you ever wanted to know about me in my blog post, or 3.) everyone that reads my blog has already known me for a long time so they pretty much know what the answers are going to be. That being said, Susannah and I have never met, I found her through Melissa asking me for the answers to Sunday’s Sayings so I started stalking her blog through Melissa’s blog. She has known Melissa for a quite some time, and they reconnected through blogger, so yay blogger. Speaking of which, Melissa has shown me some old photos of yous guys at a birthday party years ago. I might just have to scan it and post it for everyone to enjoy. ;) Now, on to the Q&A.

1. Where did you grow up? I grew up all over Middle GA. I’m a PK, preacher’s kid, so my father moved us around quite often. When I was born my family was living in McIntyre GA, then we moved to Meansville, GA, from there to Macon GA, from Macon to Atlanta, and from Atlanta to Beulah Alabama. If anyone else asks me though I always say I grew up in Atlanta.
2. Where did you go to college? I started my long college career at Southern Union State Community College, after 7 years of Southern Union I took my 92 useless credit hours and successfully dropped out of college. This is probably my biggest regret, but when I ran out of money after having to take the same classes over and over again at SUSCC, I decided it was time for me to just give up and go on. Keep in mind, I wasn’t retaking the classes because I was failing them, I was retaking them because they kept telling me the class I took was no longer any good and that I had to take the newer version of the same class because something had changed. So after taking Accounting 1 twice, then Pre-Cal, which became Pre-Cal with Trig, that then needed to be Business Cal, and the same story for my English classes, and Biology, and then other classes that I took because they told me to take, to find out I didn’t need the class. Do you see why I gave up? Seven years is a long time to be at a 2 year school. I guess they just saw a sucker and milked me for every penny they could. Who’s the goose?
3. How did you and Melissa meet? Melissa and I were set up on a blind date by Charity, read her at Charity’s Chatter. We were supposed to meet on a certain day and go on a double date with Charity and her man, but I had a horrible car wreck and was in no shape to meet anyone. After a little healing time I borrowed my roommate’s car to go meet Melissa in Winn Dixie’s parking lot. (you can’t make this stuff up folks) Funny story, when my roommate met his wife for their first date he had to borrow my car for the date. So he and I both used each other’s cars to meet our wives. What are the odds? After a brief courtship of 10 years, Melissa and I will wed this Sept 11th. An anniversary I should never forget, or so the posters say. Melissa tells this story much better than I do because she remembers the day and what we were each wearing, but all I remember is meeting her and then us hanging out and talking all night at my place of residents at the time.

Pictures of my car that I wrecked, in the second picture you can see the car I was in when Melissa and I met.

Wednesday Rant, posted on Thursday

2010-08-05T12:31:00.002-04:00

I thought up this post yesterday, but wasn’t able to type it up and post it until today. So, here’s some of my random thoughts.
1.)    Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie are UGLY. Why does everyone think these ladies are attractive? I’m so sick of hearing people talking about how good they look. Angelina looks like white trash with saggy lady parts, and Julia looks like a medicine man shrunk her head but left her eyes, lips and nose their normal size. If her face was a sheet of paper her features would be outside of the print margins.
2.)    My assumption that biker chick = saggy boobs was confirmed yesterday on my way back from lunch. Thanks wrinkly skinned biker chick for the imagine that will unfortunately be burned into my eyes forever.
3.)    Why is it that I can iron a shirt, it looks perfect on the ironing board with no wrinkles, I’ll pick it up off the board put it on, think everything is great, but then I’ll look in the mirror to brush my teeth and hair and notice that the shirt still looks like it’s been wadded up and rolled around on?
4.)    There are so many movies out right I want to see, but just don’t have the free time to sit in a theater and watch. Toy Story, Dinner for Schmucks, Shrek, and The Other Guys.
5.)    I’ve decided that when I get to retirement age I’m moving to a Historical area so I can give tours.
6.)    I’m ready to retire now…
7.)    Susannah did a post where she opened the floor for people to ask her questions, I’m going to do the same thing. Any questions you want to ask me about anything I’ve blogged about, or any other personal questions fire away. That will give me another blog that I can post so I won’t have to think of anything new to write. (I’m super lazy people)
I know this was short and sweet, but I want to go ahead and put it out there. Oh, and Welcome Brandy, my newest follower, I don’t know how you found me, but I’m glad you did.
Leave me some love peeps!

And boom goes the dynamite...

2010-08-02T13:04:00.000-04:00

A little update from the Soon to be Smith household. Friday we went for my Grooms fitting to make sure we like the tux and we have all the right measurements. If you’ll remember I was complaining that they measured my waist as a 41, I pitched a fit and so they ordered me a 36. Well guess what… My pants came in and they did not fit… They didn’t fit because they were too big! Take that measuring tape, in the face, in the face! My order has been changed to the rightful 34/34. My coat also needed to be altered. Apparently I have freakishly long arms, so they’re having to add an inch to my 44 long coat.
Saturday we were thrown a couples shower from some friends. It was a great time and I’m so thankful for all the friends that showed up to show us support. We got even more goodies, people even brought me tools! The venue was amazing, it was a barn at an old plantation house, which, FYI I LOVE old plantation style homes. The house was turned into a bed and breakfast, but they shut that down about 3 years ago and only hold events there now. The house was opened so we got to go in and walk around. I so want to live in one of those when I grow up.
Sunday was a day of rest, as the Good Lord intended. We were both just so tired from everything, me from celebrating my tux pants being a size 34, and Melissa from, well I don’t know I was too busy celebrating to notice what anyone else was doing. We turned on the TV and curled up in the bed with the pets and napped. The only down side to our great nap was that I missed the rain. That’s right, it finally rained at the house. I don’t know how much or how long (That’s what she said) but life giving water, the nectar of the God’s, blessed our poor parched earth. Now if we can get a few more days of rain I’ll cut the grass without fear of killing it.

Sunday Randoms...

2010-07-25T18:11:00.000-04:00

I haven't been all that happy with the quality or quantity of my blogs lately. I'm beginning to think that I'm a horrible story teller. Or maybe my memory is degrading the content of my stories? I'm normally a funny guy, but my blogs here lately haven't been humorous at all. I'm going to work on this though. I want everyone to enjoy reading my blogs.

On another serious note. I'm not sure how many of you guys watch Deadliest catch on Discovery channel, but these last few shows have been tough to watch. They have been dealing with one of the most popular captains passing. Discovery channel has done such a great job of covering this. It has been handled with so much class. Thank you Discovery for taking this incredibly touch situation and showing it in such a tasteful way.

Melissa and I have two showers down, two more to go, unless anyone else wants to throw us one! So far we've done pretty good on the goods. Registering for all our gifts was exciting, but stressful. After looking at everything we put on the list we started to fill selfish. Does anyone really need all the stuff we put on this list? Oh well, getting gifts is FUN! It's like a Christmas every weekend here at the soon to be Smith House.

Now we're getting ready for the honeymoon. We know what we want to do, now we're just buttoning down the details. Thanks to Susannah we've picked us a place to crash in Key west for a few days. Then we're going to board a boat in Miami for a little cruise. I <3 to cruse. It's so nice to not have to worry about anything. I so love being on the water, and being stress free. No phones, no access to the internet, no work emails. I think my job will be on a cruise ship.

Speaking of next jobs, I've decided that with my love of history when I retire I'm going to get me a job as a tour guide at some historical place. I think I would really enjoy sharing my love of history and knowledge of history with strangers. My only problem is that I'm pretty shy. Melissa is the spokesperson for our family. A lady at church told us the other day that our marriage will last because I'm quite and I let Melissa do all the talking. Hopefully she's right.

I'm on a huge pizza kick right now. I just can't get enough pizza. It doesn't matter what brand of pizza it is. It can be from a chain for a frozen pizza we warmed up ourselves.

FYI, it's kind of hot outside. Good thing I handle the heat well. Bad thing, our A/C never seems to stop running, I fear what our power bill is going to look like. I'm sure Alabama Power is loving it though.

If you spray carpet cleaner, make sure you have carpet brush in hand after spraying because a cat will lick the carpet cleaner, and carpet clean will said cat puke, a lot. I stepped in some dooty in the yard the other night and didn't know. When I noticed it I started trying to remember everywhere that I had walked so I could clean carpet. I sprayed the foaming carpet cleaner on some of the spots that I knew had I walked on and then walked off to find the carpet scrubbing brush. As I'm in the cabinet with all the cleaning supplies I hear a God awful screaming moan come from a cat. Then I hear Melissa saying, "Possum licked the carpet cleaner and he's throwing up." I guess it was good thing that I already had the carpet cleaner out because I was about to really need it. Possum is fine now and back to his normal crazy self, we were really worried about him that night though.

I noticed this post was kind of long, it's Sunday and I'm lazy so I'm not proofreading. If there are any typo's or miss spelled letters you're just going to have to deal with it.

Need some help...

2010-07-20T18:57:00.000-04:00

Little bit of back ground here. Melissa and I are planning to honeymoon in Key West so I've been looking around for things to do. I've been to the keys before and I remember there not being too much to do on the island. Have any of you guys been to the keys? I think Melissa wants to just sit by the pool or on a beach and chill, but I'm afraid I will bore of this and want something else to do. What fun things are there to do? I know I want to snorkel, so I've been looking at that. But when you google what to do in Key West it pretty much says snorkel, scuba, or take a ride on a boat. Keep in mind this will be in September so I might be going a little stir crazy over being away from my TV during college football season.

The most I remember about Key West from my trip down there in the late 90's was that the beaches are crushed coral, and I bought a T-shirt that had a pretty profane saying on it. Oh, and we got spanked at some beach volleyball by some locals. (Diving on a crushed coral beach HURTS! especially when you get in the water afterwards.)

I map quested the drive today, I must say I'm not looking forward to it! 744 miles, 13 hours. Thank God for cruise control! I'm no stranger to a long drive though, so Key West, here we come! Might turn out to be Griswald Honeymoon!

Is this cheating?

2010-07-19T10:06:00.002-04:00

Is it cheating that my bride and I keep checking our online registries to see what gifts have been purchased for you us so far? We have another shower coming up this weekend and we’ve been checking all three of our list to see what’s missing. Then we play a game to try and guess who bought us what from the list. So far we have one shower down and 3 coming up in weeks to follow. We’re going to my folks house this weekend for a shower my fam is throwing, then I’m invited to a couples shower, and then Melissa has one final shower in Birmingham. In case any of my loyal readers out there want to surprise me with a gift, we’re registered at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Target, and Dillard’s. So far we haven’t gotten anything from the Dillard’s registry.
Since we’re talking about showers, Melissa had a shower last weekend thrown by her Step Mother, and two other friends of family. We went to Birmingham for the event, I did some yard work with her father, and he and I went to Cracker Barrel for lunch during the shower. We got some fun stuff and we couldn’t wait to get home and admire our new goodies. When we arrived home we were shocked to find just how hot our house was. At some time over the weekend while we were gone our A/C unit quit. The third summer in a row that we’ve had to call a repair man. Turns out our line to drain the condensation got pinched so the drain pan filled up, triggered the safety and killed our system.
In other wedding news, we have the tuxes picked out. I go for my groom’s fitting next Friday. This is just to make sure that we like the colors and style of tux we chose and make sure everything fits me. I was very hurt when they measured my waist and told me I wear a 41 inch waist. There is NO WAY that is right! I told them to order me a 36 because I am NOT wearing a 41 inch pant. I guess I’m about to have to get off my arse and do something incase they weren’t lying to me about my pant size.

Domestic Duties - FAIL

2010-07-08T13:37:00.000-04:00

As I’ve stated in my last few blog post, I’ve been crazy busy at work. Well yesterday wasn’t an exception. I’ve been working late every night for the past two weeks. Tuesday Melissa threatened my life if I worked late yesterday because we had an appointment to meet with a photographer for our wedding. Well low and below I’m sitting at my desk, head down, pounding away on a project when I get the angry phone call from mission control. Its official, I’m late, and still at work. The appointment was for 7:00, and it was 7:15 when I got the call from the boss. I try to neatly put an end to what I’m doing so I can get out the door. I rush over for the meeting, arriving around 7:30. We meet with the photographer, the same guy that did our engagement session and we believe he’s going to do our wedding as well. His prices are great and his work is amazing. As we’re leaving the meeting I make a comment that doesn’t go over all that well with the boss, “I’ve got to log back in and finish up this work.”
We get to the house a little after 8:00 and Melissa starts making dinner. I log in and continue working. I take a quick break from work to eat when it’s ready, then right back to my computer. At this point I’m sure you’re wondering why the blog is titled “Domestic Duties – FAIL”, and the answer is… It’s my job to wash the dishes every night. Something I don’t mind doing because I hate a cluttered sink. I load the small items into the dishwasher, plates, forks, spoons, glasses, those types of things, and I hand wash the bigger items, Pots (which are Revere ware that has copper that I have to polish after every use) , pans, mixing bowls, our non dishwasher safe knifes, and the wooden utensils, I also wipe down the stove, counter tops and the sinks. My thinking was, if I can finish up this work real quick, I’ll wash the dishes, clean the cat box, walk Maggie and get ready for bed. Well, real quick didn’t really happen. I finally finished up and logged out around 11:45, 45 minutes past my normal bed time. I walk in the kitchen and peak at the dishes, it kills me, I think about washing them, but I can’t be late for work so I have to get in the bed. I decide to clean the cat box, a task that has to be done nightly with our four cats or they’ll start looking for other places to make potty, walk Maggie and go to bed. When I woke up this morning I realized how disappointed I was in myself when I saw the kitchen. Did the cats get up there and use more dishes? I don’t remember it looking so bad. So this may sound weird, but I can’t wait to get home and handle these dishes. Melissa has told me that I have “Dishues” because I have a certain way that I like the dishes loaded in the dishwasher, and a certain way I like to hand wash the other things. Since we’re talking about it, do any of you use this amazing drying mat? I heart this mat.

My only complaint is sometimes I have more dishes than it will hold. But it’s great because we didn’t want a dish strainer thing sitting on the counter, but this thing just folds up and gets put away with the other wash clothes and towels. My only other complaint about washing the dishes is that my sink is too low. I have to do a lot of bending to get to the sink. I need a taller sink.

Let's kick the tires and light the fires

2010-07-06T14:06:00.002-04:00

Where has Cas been? I’m sure that’s what everyone has been asking. Well, I’m about to educate yous guys on all the goings on. Work has been crazy busy, but you already knew that. Highlight of my work week, receiving an email from Mr. Wang on Long Dong Ave. in Beijing, true story.
Thursday the wife to be and I went to our friend’s house for their son’s first Birthday party. Then Opelika had their city fireworks display so we stayed and watched that.
Friday I took Adam to the Airport so he could get back home, another failed chance for the triple play.
Saturday we picked up Bridesmaid dresses and looked at tuxes, wedding stuff is so boring. *It’s so worth it for the prize at the end though babe. ;)
Sunday we had a “connection” event at church. We all went to the lake and mingled with each other over BBQ and games. Somehow the event turned to kids pelting adults with water balloons and squirt guns. After “Church” we were invited to a friend’s house to swim in their pool. They grilled hamburgers and hotdogs, people brought deserts, FYI, if anyone wants any Banana pudding Melissa and I have a ton of it, swing on by the house and get some we’re really pushing it. Later in the afternoon the men decided that we needed some fireworks to really celebrate the fourth. All the guys load up and head out to find big boom. I say all the guys, I thought I was a “guys” but apparently not. I was like Kirk Cameron and was left behind because of the seating capacity in the car. It wasn’t long after they left that I realized I was the only dude sitting at a table of ladies talking about ladies issues. I have become that guy… I’m the gay straight friend, my life is so sad. When the men returned from the hunt … for fireworks, they wanted ice cream. Melissa and I brought our ice cream maker so she got to mixing and I got the ice and the maker ready. Making ice cream is innocent fun right!? Well, not when you use your own home made perpetual vanilla made with Vodka and vanilla beans. Something Melissa and I didn’t think of was there were some recovering alcoholics at the party. When they heard about our Vanilla all heck broke loss. We were being blamed for them getting back on the wagon, and for getting the kids drunk. One party goer took the tube the ice cream was churned in and wanted to drink it like a milkshake. Hardy har har people, that’s how vanilla extract is made. Now Melissa and I are known as the church drunks. You try and do something nice for people and they make you feel like “one pathetic loser”.
I hope everyone else had as much fun on their Holiday weekend as we did.

Heluva day

2010-06-29T19:31:00.000-04:00

Wow, so we're in the process of major upgrades here at work and it's killing us all. A lot of long hours, extra work and blah blah blah, same thing everyone else deals with. I thought I'd bang out a blog right quick while I'm waiting on the results from my query to populate to tell everyone that I've stopped watching the news. The news is too depressing right now. I don't even like looking at the headlines anymore. If it's not the economy, it's the oil in the gulf, or the war. I just can't take it anymore. I'm going to stick to my happy place, ignorance. Ignorance really is bliss. Not knowing is now my key to happiness. Can someone come whack me in the head so I can forget all the things that I already know? Maybe I can slip myself a roofy like in the hangover, aka "dude I lost my groom", and forget about everything that is going on right now. Alright I'm going to try and finish up my work so maybe I can get to the field in time to sit on the bench and cheer on my teammates that get in the game. If you need me I'll be fist bumping everyone as the walk in the dugout.

"If you're not first you're last" Ricky Bobby

Update on sideburns

2010-06-28T13:11:00.000-04:00

So it appears that most people like me better with sideburns so I've started the process of growing them back. right now I'm just growing a full beard then I'll shave off most of the beardage to be left with the sideburns that everyone knows and loves. As a side note, I've been given more responsibilities at work so I really don't have but a few minutes of free time to type up my blogs. I'm going to continue to try and keep everyone entered as best as I can though. Hope everyone is as bumped as I am about the 4th coming up.

Great Suggestion

2010-06-21T10:21:00.000-04:00

LG suggested that I post a poll for everyone to vote on rather they like me better with or without the sideburns. If you'll scroll down you'll see a poll on the right side of my blog. Please vote so I'll know if I should grow them back, or keep on shaving. I dug around and found some pictures for everyone to judge.

With sideburns:

Without:

More than just a threat

2010-06-21T09:44:00.000-04:00

As promised, I shaved the burns off. I didn't tell Melissa, I just went into the bathroom and did work on them. I've already gotten two votes from some people at church that they like the sideburnless version of Cas better than the sideburned version. Most people haven't noticed, and some have just asked me if I got a hair cut. I forgot to take a before picture, but you can pretty much just look back any any picture of me from the past 12 years and see what they looked like. Sorry for the crappy pictures, but this is all I have right now. Weight in, let me know what you think. All I know right now is that it feels pretty strange shaving so far up on my face.

Do I look younger?

30 day shred day 2 FAIL

2010-06-17T14:58:00.000-04:00

When I got home last night I had all intentions of completing day 2 of the 30 day shred. Well... I guess what they say is life happens. Melissa was cooking when I got home, so when she finished we ate. Well you can't just eat and then get your butt kicked by Jillian. So we decided to take on the task of grooming the animals. Melissa bought some new nail clippers and a defurring brush for the cats. Let the fun begin... First kitty was possum, he's so easy going, he pretty much doesn't even care you're cutting his nails. Victim, I mean kitty, number 2, my man, Snoogans. He likes to moan and complain, but really he's easy to do. Killer number 3, Momma Tills. Sweet Jesus, Mary and the shepherds. She is the words smallest, quietest, sweetest cats, until you try and clip her nails. The demons come out of her when she sees the nail clippers. Melissa is scared to death of her, and she's Melissa's cat. We ended up having to wrap her in a towel, Melissa held her, and I clipped while she bit my hands.Snittens was the final kitten to be clipped and he was pretty uneventful. Maggy was last in line to her pedicure. She is probably worse then Tilly to try and clip. Not that she bites, growls, or becomes aggressive. She is just the hardest thing to hold on to. Well, by the time we finished giving everyone their pedicures it was my bedtime. Tonight I get to sit on the bench for another softball game, but after the game I'm going to make sure we get our Jillian on.

Put me in coach

2010-06-16T17:01:00.003-04:00

Well, as I stated yesterday, softball season started last night. We had our first game and boy was it something. I discovered last year that our coach doesn’t think too highly of my softball skills. The trend has carried into this year as I found myself on the bench doing nothing more than being the “extra hitter”. Since we had 10 players he had to use an EH. At least since I had limited playing time, what happened last night cannot be hung on me. The game was very short. We pretty much got skunked. The game only lasted 5 innings, that’s right, we were mercy ruled in the 5th. I got one at bat, which I promptly grounded to 3rd.
Since I played so little I was well rested when I got home. Melissa made me a salad, and then we watched “Losing it with Jillian Michaels”. After watching this, Melissa and I were inspired to finally break out the 30 day shred video I bought her for Christmas. We took the DVD out of it’s wrapper, and slid it into the player. I had read reviews online about the video and I knew that it was going to be rough. We didn’t have any dumbbells so we just did those parts with our arms. I must say I kept up with the ladies pretty well. I believe I took 3 breaks, during the cardio. Hopefully we can stick with this and see some results. I’m going to weigh myself tonight to see what my starting weight is. I know, a little late for that since we started last night. I’m really doing this to support Melissa as she wants to look as good as possible for our wedding. But I also really want to get into better shape. I’m a pretty thin man, so if I lose the 20 pounds they promise in 30 days there won’t be anything left of me. Speaking of weight, I just had my license renewed and my weight is still listed at 165 pounds! Do you think anyone is going to believe that I weigh 165 pounds? Or can you believe that at my height I once weighted only 165 pounds? I was nothing but a rail with an inverted booty. If we can ever get our scanner working maybe I can find some of these old pictures of my weighting 165 and share with everyone.

America's Past time, (for old men)

2010-06-15T17:58:00.000-04:00

So Softball season starts tonight. My first chance to embarrass myself. We've had two practice games, both of which I did ok in. So here's to hoping that I'm not Casey at the plate and striking out like I used to do with the ladies. This brings me to a question. If someone tells me that I play softball like a girl, is that supposed to be a compliment? I took it as one. Everyone cross your fingers that I don't don't take any balls to the face. (That's what she said) In the famous words of Harry Carry, "I'm too drunk to taste this chicken"

The weekend to end all weekends

2010-06-14T12:50:00.000-04:00

It finally happened. After 10 years of dating each other Melissa and I took the big leap that has locked us together forever. No, we didn’t elope, even though we’ve thought about it, our parents met for the first time ever. To most people that probably isn’t that big of a deal, but for us this was a huge deal. Our families couldn’t be any further apart from each other if they tried. I think the only thing they have in common is that they both love me, I mean us. We kind of, but not really, invited them to our house for the meet, greet, and eat. Seems simple enough right? Well no… We had to plan the menu around my father, who doesn’t really eat anything but meat and potatoes. Melissa’s family and my mother will eat just about anything. We decided the cheapest and easiest menu would be to grill a drunken chicken. Sam’s has the whole chickens for hardly anything so Melissa scooped two of those bad boys up for us. We probably could have gotten by with grilling just one chicken, which is super evident looking back at all the leftover chicken, but a drunken chicken is cooked sitting on a beer can… Well my Southern Baptist Minister father doesn’t like to eat anything cooked with alcohol. So I grilled one Drunk Chicken and one Sober chicken. *funny side note, after Melissa’s father carved both chickens and separated the meat to a Sober pile and a drunk pile, my dad got chicken from both piles so he ate some of the drunk chicken, all that work for nothing. With the chicken I grilled Corn on the Cob, Melissa made potatoes, and Mary brought some yummy squash casserole. For Dessert, Melissa made a Paula Dean, “Not yo momma’s banana pudding”, Delish! And she also picked up a key lime pie from Publix.

Melissa and I tried our best to make sure that no two opposing parents were left alone with each other. This meant that we spent a lot of time checking on our parents and babysitting. I guess this is what it’s going to feel like to have kids and to having to keep an eye on them? It’s pretty stressful work. It was very hot outside and my father isn’t too much for getting out and doing, so he was easy to find sitting on the couch watching TV. My mom, Marry and Melissa’s dad were all over the place though. They were looking at our flowers, trying to find ways to help, and generally keeping themselves entertained. Since the meet, greet, and eat was at our house there wasn’t too much for them to do. Our house is pretty small, the yard is large, but it was so hot and muggy who really wanted to be out there? My mom, Mary, and Melissa’s dad wanted to be out there, that’s who! The three of them love to do yard work, plant flowers and have gardens. So they were out pointing out all our flowers and naming everything we had. We did get a lot of compliments for the work that we have done in the yard. All in all everything went great. We’re glad to have this over with. We were so exhausted that after we cleaned up everything Saturday and went to bed early we over slept Sunday morning and was super late for church.

Please, let me know how the meeting of your parental’s went? Were any of you guys as nervous about the meeting as Melissa and I were?

Side note, incase you’re wondering, I still have my burns. I planned to shave them Sunday, but overslept. I’m so scared to do it because they’ve been apart of me for so long. I know, it’s to suck it up and grow up. I mean have side burns really been cool since the original 90210?

(Yeah, I'm that cool!)

Question to the group...

2010-06-09T10:24:00.000-04:00

I posted this as my facebook status, but I thought I'd post this on here as well to get some more insight. I've had side burns for at least the last 12 years. Melissa has never seen me without them. Well with the wedding coming up I was thinking about shaving them. Do I really want side burns in our wedding pictures? Can someone give me some insight? I know I could shave them now and they'd grow back before the wedding. But, for some reason I'm just nervous about letting them go. I only grew them because I was tired of shaving so high up on my face, so they should be easy to let go right? Somebody please help me! Oh, and my rapidly receding hair line I was thinking about giving up on the part, it's starting to look more like a comb over, and just cutting my hair short. Maybe just use the clippers to cut my hair the same length all the way around. Any thoughts on this? If I'm going bald, I want to do it gracefully.

Here is one of the most recent pictures I could find.

Hard Knock Live Volume IV

2010-06-07T19:15:00.000-04:00

So, I’ve pretty much given up on getting the pictures from the Conan show to add to the blog so I’m going to go ahead and post the blog before I forget everything that happened at the show. Question, how do you know it was a great show? It’s been a month and I’m still talking about it. This might be a long blog so I’ll just jump right into it.
The opening Act was a Comic named Reggie Watts. He was funny, but has a different type of humor. You have to be ready for him and not be offended by cussing. If you want a little taste of Reggie click HERE. (just a warning it’s quite graphic with the F bombs.)
After Reggie I sat for a second trying to process everything that I had just seen and heard… After I gathered my thoughts the main show was beginning. The band came out and played some songs, and yes it was his band from the TV show. The band was amazing, since you hear so little of them while they’re cutting to commercial you really don’t appreciate how talented they really are. Then the Co-coets came out and danced for us, just a group of hot ladies dancing in tight outfits. Video starts playing on the jumbo-tron of an overweight Conan acting depressed because he had the tonight show taken from him. The excitement is starting to build. Ladies and Gentlemen Conan is in the building. Conan starts the show by filling everyone in on why he’s doing a live show, explains why his show is named, Legally prohibited from being funny on Television, because he is legally banned from being funny on TV. He talks about how they’re still hashing out what skits are property of NBC and what skits he has the rights too. Due to this legal matter the “Masturbating Bear” couldn’t appear, but the “Self Pleasuring Panda” could! There was also a video from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. They have the recorded Triumph bit and then crudely recorded over the city the show was in, and some famous land marks from the city. Conan apparently walked around the campus before the show and talked to some locals. He learned that school was out so he didn’t get to interact with too many people, but I’m guessing the ones he did talk to were pot smoking hippies. A lot of the jokes he did centered around the pot smoking hippies in Boulder CO. At one point during the show Andy broke out a camera and was scanning the crowd for “chicks” to hang out with after the show. Well wouldn’t you know, Andy stopped the camera right on Adam and I. More focused on Adam than me, but none the less I made the Jumbo-tron at the show. A high point in my life. The Show had a lot of props that they used. The ones I can remember are a HUGE inflatable bat from a Meatloaf tour, the crazy leather outfit Eddie Murphy wore when he did “Raw”, and then there was Andy wearing a horse around his waist singing a cowboy tune. These are just some of high points of the show. I really can’t express enough how much fun this show was. Conan has a super quick wit and interacts with the fans causing some classic moments. Sorry for the lack of pictures. Sorry this is so vague, but this has been a month since I saw this show and I have the memory of a gold fish.

Can't get more random than this...

2010-05-26T10:28:00.000-04:00

Just a question, If I say "Chester Copperpot" does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? I know Melissa doesn't have a clue. Phone lines are open.

Such a Slacker...

2010-05-25T15:40:00.000-04:00

Gees, what a slacker I’ve been. I haven’t shared all the goodness of the Conan Show with any of you guys. Well, I have a good reason. Melissa unloaded all of the pictures from the camera I borrowed from Adam. Well, we thought that all our pictures were being downloaded to the shared external hard drive that we spent so much money on, but turns out, somehow, Melissa’s profile has created a new iPhoto library under her login, which has filled up the Hard Drive again, and prevented me from accessing the newly downloaded photos. Melissa will be copying down these photos for me so I can get to them and then I’ll be able to continue my “Hard Rock Life” blog series. (In case anyone has noticed, that’s a play on the Jay-Z albums.)
In other news, weekend before last a good friend of mine lost her husband. This loss has been weighting very heavily on Melissa and I. Melissa only knew her through me, but she feels she knows her very well. For two years I sat next to this lady at work for 8 hours a day. We grew very close and she shared a lot of stories of her young son with me, she was a new mom at the time. I would come home and share those stories with Melissa. So please, everyone pray for this family.
A brighter story! My sister just gave birth to her third child, Emilee. I’m taking off this Thursday to go home and see my sister and baby Emilee.

Hard Rock Life Volume III

2010-05-14T20:23:00.000-04:00

I have a feeling that this blog post might get long, That’s what she said, so I’m just warning you now.
The whole reason I went to Denver was to accompany Adam to the Conan O’Brien show. I cannot thank him enough for inviting me to the show, flying me to Denver, and putting me up in house for this event. So now let’s get the day started.
Sunday we woke up and went to his church, nice church, not that big of a turn out because it was Mother’s day, but still a pretty nice turn out. I thought the sermon would be something I wanted to hear because he was talking about marriage and family and how to make your marriage strong. Since I’m about to be married I was ready to listen and apply what he was saying. He did give some good pointers that his parents, who have been married for 55 years, told him. But he kept harping on how wrong co-habitation is. Well… Melissa and I have been co-habitating for two years now. We know it’s not what the Bible says, but we had a unique situation that led us to living together. Don’t get me wrong, this is not the way either of us wanted it. We wanted to do everything right, but sometimes life happens.
After Church we went to the only restaurant that wasn't overflowing with the Mother’s Day crowd. You guessed it, Five Guy’s. We ate our burgers and then headed to the mall to kill some time. We checked out the iPad at the Apple Store, and then we walked around the book store. I just realized how nerdy that sounds. When we grew bored of the mall we headed back to the apartment. Adam decided that Barkley needed to go for a good walk, so we changed clothes and struck out on an adventure.
Nothing else exciting happened so I’ll flash forward to Boulder, the home of the University of Colorado, and the Conan O’Brien show. Before the show we wanted to grab a bite to eat on the campus. Try some of the local college fair. We picked a sandwich shop, the Half Fast Subs. I was super excited when I viewed the menu and saw that they had the sandwich that I’ve been wanting to try for the better part of this year. A Thanksgiving sandwich. You heard me right, a sandwich made of Turkey, Dressing, Gravy and Cranberry sauce. I’m quoting Rachel Ray here when I say “Delish”. Throw in some locally made Kettle chips, and you’ve got yourself a meal. I give thanks that the roof of my mouth was starting to heal so I could enjoy my Thanksgiving sandwich.

I was going to add the Conan show to this post, but I guess this is long enough, everyone has probably gotten bored and stopped reading by now.

Hard Rock Life Volume II

2010-05-13T14:42:00.000-04:00

Saturday morning Adam took his wife to the airport while I chilled at the apartment. When he got back we decided that we would head to Garden of the God’s in Colorado Springs. This is a beautiful place filled with amazing naturally formed rock formations. Adam and I walked around the trails as straight as two men walking a dog through a romantic park can.
Garden of the Gods didn’t take us anywhere near as long as we thought it would so we didn’t know what we wanted to do next. Adam had heard of the Royal Gorge Bridge and he knew it wasn't too much further down the road so we got our Wiki on, and decided that we would go check it out. So we drove for about another hour and a half through some beautiful country side until we arrived at the Royal Gorge Bridge. We were shocked to find that this is not a bridge that you can drive across, but instead you can pay 25 dollars to walk across the bridge. Even though it sounds cool, we decided it wasn’t worth our money so we went to an observation point, took a picture and headed on back to Denver. On our way home we drove by Buckskin Joe Frontier Town & Railway and we see that they have railroad tours of the Bridge for 12 dollars. We saw a Rail Road running next to the river at the bottom of the gorge and we get super excited because we just know that this train is going to take us down to the bottom so we could ride under bridge. WRONG! How about this train is basically a model train, and we would look even gayer than two guys walking a dog through a romantic park if we rode this tiny little train. That idea is quickly canned, so again we decided to make the drive back to the apartment. Buckskin Joe and the Royal Gorge Bridge are located in Canon CO, we believe it’s pronounced canyon because it has the ~ over the first n. A little fun fact on Canon CO, it is home to 9 State and 4 Federal correctional facilities. Doesn’t that make you want to just run out and buy a house there?
Stay tuned for Hard Rock Life Volume III, feature the Conan O’Brien Legally Prohibited from being Funny on TV Tour.

Here is a picture of a mountain creek with snow on the hill side.

Here is a picture from the parking lot of Garden of the God's.

And finally a Picture of the Royal Gorge Bridge.

Epic Fail

2010-05-12T15:27:00.000-04:00

The Chick-fl-a Triple Play was a total failure. Due to an unseen issue on the way from the airport to the second leg of the triple play, unseen meaning my truck dying and leaving Melissa stranded on the side of the road, we were unable to complete our lofty goal of the three state, three meal, Chick-fl-a triple play. But hey, Melissa bought me a steak for my Birthday so instead of chicken I had a nice grilled steak and shrimp. Yum. I am so sorry to disappoint everyone. The only other thing I can think of is when I asked for prayers everyone prayed that I wouldn't complete it, and so horrible things happened to me.

A proud moment in the making

2010-05-11T00:42:00.000-04:00

Thats right tomorrow I will be going for the three state Chic-fl-a triple play. All prayers are welcome.

The Hard Rock Life Volume I

2010-05-10T12:32:00.000-04:00

It’s me again, coming to you live from Sunny Denver Colorado. Let me get you a breast to what has been going down. It snowed here Thursday night, and Friday we went to meet my director who works about 30 minutes from Denver. We got a tour of their building and pretty much spent the day chatting it up with them. Then we went to eat at The Old Louisville Inn, I ordered the grilled salmon on sour dough, the sandwich was good, but the bread hated me. The bread picked a fight with the top of my mouth and I believe the bread won because I have been unable to eat anything pain free since this sandwich. We also did some driving up and down the mountains. The snow capped mountains were amazing. We tried to check out Boulder Falls, but due to fallen boulders we couldn’t hike up there to check it out. We kept driving until we saw a cool lake, and when I say cool lake I mean freezing cold lake. Adam and I decided that it would be the coolest thing ever to walk out to the lake and touch the water. And by coolest thing ever I mean it was freaking freezing. The wind was blowing at 40 knots the seas were rough, oops went all pirate on you there, yar. It was 33 degrees and the wind was blowing harder than Tiger Woods mistresses. After our forever hike across the “beach” to touch the water we realized that “milk was a bad choice.” Our never say die attitude kept us going and we both stuck a finger in the water, said wow that’s cold, then retreated back to the warmth of the truck. After this little adventure we decided that it was time to head back, we had to pick Adam’s wife up from work so that kind of made the decision easy. We told the GPS to take us home, country road, and it apparently listened. The GPS wanted to take us down every little dirt road we passed. I think it just wanted to get the truck dirty. We kept going on the main paved road because with the rain and snow that had just fallen we didn’t want to risk what we would find on a dirt road. Finally the GPS picked up that we weren’t listening to its demands to take a small dirt road and put us on the only other paved road on this mountain. We made it to pick up Adam’s wife just in time, then came home and ate tacos. I’m pretty sure that we have pictures of this entire event, but we can’t find the cord to the camera, so we don’t really have pictures…

Live from Denver, it’s Cas’s Crazy Thoughts!

2010-05-06T16:28:00.000-04:00

That's right ladies and gents, I’m coming to you from Denver Co. A good friend of mine gifted me with airfare and tickets to a Rockies game and Conan O’Brien’s Legally Banned from TV show. How awesome is that? Happy Birthday to me, Christmas, Hanukkah, MLK day, and any other random holiday you can think of. I’m having to work out the rest of the week from here, but I’m ok with that. My day starts 2 hours later than everyone else, so it’s nice to sleep in. The flight out here was long but smooth, (That’s what she said.)
When I got to my friend’s apartment we quickly found out that their dog doesn’t care too much for me. Or so we thought. After the dog running from me like I was the host of the “The Dog Rapest, with Cas Smith” for an hour or so, he all the sudden decided that I was ok and wanted nothing more than for me to pet him. So much so that when I didn’t pet him he racked me right in the mommy/daddy button.
Melissa has sent me a few pictures from home, mostly of Maggie enjoying my side of the bed since I wasn’t there. Funny story Melissa told me from last night, Melissa normally stays up a little later than I do, so I walk Maggie and then Mags and I get in the bed together. Well since I wasn’t home, and Melissa got home late from dropping me off at the airport she was getting to bed even later than normal. So poor Mags had to stay up way past her bedtime, and she did not want to get up this morning. That is why she didn't want to get up this morning. She really enjoys her sleep.
I will say it was nice being able to have room and roll over without killing someone, instead of having Mags cuddling my back, Snoogs sleeping under my chin, Possum and Snittens sleeping on my feet, and Till’s on my hip. I don’t know why all the animals want to sleep on me and leave Melissa alone?
I’ll try and post some more updates from the road when I get a chance so stay tuned. BTW, Denver's airport is kind of confusing.

I'm trying to do better...

2010-04-30T18:58:00.000-04:00

I’m sure you guys are super tired of hearing me say, "I’m so busy", and I know everyone is thinking, "we’re all busy too and we take the time to share our lives". Well I apologize, so here is my second posting of the day.
My 10 year anniversary with the company that employees me is May 2nd. So that’s an accomplishment to me. I’m proud to say I’ve worked somewhere for 10 years.
Random item number 2, I said Number 2, Melissa and I had our engagement pictures taken Sunday, and they turned out great. We had a lot of fun taking them. Cody at HedgeHog photography was awesome to work with. I don’t know if I can post the “preview” pictures he sent us or not, but if you’re friends with me on Facebook, he tagged me in the pictures so you can view them there.
Thought three, with the ‘use them or lose them’ policy on vacation days, I had to burn a few days before May 2nd so I took a few days off this week. We got a lot of yard work done, lots of flowers in pots, and we are now ready to start filling in the big raised bed around the crepe myrtles.
This posting isn’t funny at all. I feel like I’m letting everyone down. It seems like I’m not putting any thought into this and just rushing to get it posted so I’ll have something posted since it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything. Does anyone else get that feeling? Now I’m just writing random words to make the post look longer. That’s almost a good “That’s what she said” joke, but I’m not going there right now, that might distract me and take me off of the point I was trying to make which is that this is a really long sentence and yet I haven’t said anything at all. Is anyone still reading this?

Yay for awards!

2010-04-30T18:26:00.000-04:00

I've received two awards from two of wonderful ladies. Susannah from The Edwards Edition first gave me the Sunshine Award, which I couldn't complete because I don't know 12 bloggers. I know how am I going to get more followers if I don't follow others. I'm working on it though. Then LG from iGrzas gave me the I Love Your Blog award. Thank you ladies for the blogging awards. I'll fill out the ten things that make me happy and mention that you gave me props, but I don't think I'm going to be able to pass the awards along.

10 Things that make me happy:

1. The Wife to Bee

2. Snoogans

3. Rain

4. Sleep

5. A good movie

6. Spending time with close friends

7. Completing a project

8. A good Carnival Cruise

9. Food

10. Making other people happy.

Sorry I've been MIA for so long, but we've had a lot going on. Plus being so busy with work doesn't give me anything fun to talk about.

What a Horrible Blogger

2010-04-16T11:24:00.000-04:00

To my dear 3 readers, I'm so sorry that I haven't been blogging lately. I can't believe how busy everything has been lately. I've taken a little bit of time to jot down some of my all time favorite movies. This list is in no way complete and I'll probably think of a ton more as soon as this is posted, but this is the list of movies that I could think of at this very moment in time. Take a look let me know what you think, tell me the movies I left off, or the movies that make you think, "What the crap, he liked that movie?"

Life Changers:
American History X
Saving Private Ryan
Seven
Schindler’s List

Comedy:
Dumb and Dumber
Zombieland
The Private Eyes
Harlem Nights
Blazing Saddles
Clerks
Chasing Amy
Forrest Gump
Talladega Nights
Step Brothers
Anchor Man
Old School
The Princess Bride
The Proposal
Van Wilder
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Demolition Man
She’s all That
10 Things I Hate About You
Rush Hour
Back to the Futures
Elf
Groundhog Day
The Sandlot

Thinkers:
Memento
K-Pax
The Usual Suspects
Fight Club
Deja Vu
Butterfly Affect
6th Sense

Action:
Snatch
The Bourne Series
The Transporter
Taken
Rumble in the Bronx
Tombstone
Gladiator
Scar Face
Star Wars

Drama:
Cast Away
Green Mile
Shawshank Redemption
Stand by Me
The Illusionist
Cinderella Man
Sling Blade

Chick Flicks:
PS I love you
Definitely Maybe
The Notebook
Devil Wears Parada
Julie and Julia

Made while husband with banging an ugly chick with a tat on her forehead:
The Blind Side

Cartoon:
Every Pixar movie
Sherks
Beavis an d Butt-Head do America

Easter Weekend Report

2010-04-06T12:43:00.000-04:00

Easter weekend! One of the two times a year that I’m a Catholic, the other being Christmas. Good Friday was truly a good Friday since I was allowed to work from home. As expected we busted butt early in the morning to get everything caught up, then we were able to coast through the rest of the day. After work Melissa and I made our pilgrimage to Birmingham to see her family.
Saturday was pretty uneventful. Melissa went bridesmaids dress shopping with two of her long time friends, I stayed at the house and worked on and cleaned her car with her father. Saturday night we went to Mass. Which Melissa and I thought was just going to be your standard, sit down, stand up, kneel, sit back, try to not throw up as you watch everyone drink out of the same cup, run of the mill Mass. But alas, this wasn’t a standard Mass, it was a combo confirmation/candle lit Easter Vigil Mass. The Easter Vigil was beautiful, the confirmation was long, but made enjoyable by the little in front of us that kept taking pictures of her parents and grandparents butts when they did the stand up parts. Two and a half hours later, they fed us. Side note, I think it’s so gross that everyone drinks from the same cup! Gag! Us that were raised Southern Baptist are used to everyone getting their own little mini shot glass with half a sip of grape juice in it.
Sunday I was tasked with Picking up the long time family friend who can’t get around that well. I show up at her house, get her loaded in the car and head down the driveway, at which point she turns to me and declares, “Oh, I know who you are! You’re Cas.” Apparently she’ll just jump in the car with anyone and go for a ride. Lunch was lovely, and then we headed home.
I count Monday as part of the weekend since I work 10 hour shifts and get a three day weekend every weekend. Melissa and I did some running around in town. We bought another tree for the yard, and after a loud “discussion” between the two us on where said tree should be placed, we planted it lovingly into the ground. Melissa stated that earlier she saw Mags dragging her butt, so that means it is time for the family gland expressing. *disclaimer, this is about to get gross, if you have a weak stomach or small children you may want to look away. We round up Mags, get her into the bathroom, Melissa holds her over the tub and with my gloved hand and TP I start the expressing process. This normally goes off without a hitch, glands express right into the TP, TP is flushed, glove is tossed, Mags is bathed. Everyone is happy, Monday…. Not so much. Starts out as expected, but then out of nowhere the gland goes into some sort of post sex split pee stream that covers Melissa and I with its smelly goodness. After this I’m not even sure if I got her glands fully expressed, there was too much screaming and gagging to continue. The bathroom window was flung open, the poot fan fired up, shower water turned on, and clothes started flying as Melissa, Mags and I all dove into the shower to get this crap off of us. Oh the things we’ll do to save 11 dollars and a trip to the vet…

Fake Mustachio Day

2010-03-26T14:52:00.000-04:00

My Thursday Randomness post brought back some good memories. I can’t help but laugh every time I see the picture of us in our Western wear and fake mustaches. I figured I might as well give everyone the story of how the infamous Fake Mustachio Day came to be.
It was during a time in my professional life, note professional is used VERY loosely here, when moral in the company was very low. The year was 2004 also known as Company Survivor season II, a group of my fellow co-workers and myself decided to take the task of boosting the moral in the work place for the remaining employees. We created a committee, because being the good Southern Baptist that we were we knew a committee needed to be formed to accomplish any task. So thus the *company name* Committee on Work Fun was created. (Left out the name of my company so I’m still very thankfully employed by this company) Our first task, create very wordy emails exaggerating the most simple of task. Moral of at least 4 employees was boosted by said emails. Next order of business, find ways to bring enjoyment to the entire building. But how could we do this and not get in trouble? Theme days, that’s how! So we rolled our underground theme day of Yellow shirt Friday into Hawaiian Shirt Friday. Fliers were created and posted around the building encouraging everyone to wear flowered shirts to work every Friday. Huge success, moral was boasted during the summer months. Just when things are rolling along as they should, bang! Cold weather hits. Even though we liked the idea of wearing a Hawaiian shirt in the freezing cold, we just knew it wasn’t practical. A new theme is needed, but what? Western Wear Friday, what else? We all rushed to our local Western wear provider, Perlis Truck Stop, and scoped up the clearance shirts, and bolo ties. We decided to keep this mission a secret so everyone would be surprised. Right before D-Day of Western wear Friday, a fellow co-founder decided we still needed to step it up, so he suggested it was time to wear fake mustaches to work. A quick dash to our local, or not so local in this case, Party City and it was on. D-Day, we all sneak in wearing our ridiculous clothes, we meet in the office picture was taken in, apply the mustachios, and stroll through the entire building two by two shoulder to shoulder, Armageddon style.

Now, if any of you have ever worked for a company that up holds a VERY strict dress code you know how brave and impressive of a feat this was. We honestly had no idea the impression our dress would have of the work force. I’d just like to thank Big and Rich for releasing “save a horse, ride a cowboy” because that became the theme song being sang to us as we walked through the building. No lie, girls were signing that to us as we walked, nay, glided by. Oh the fun we had, until we realized how itchy a fake mustache is, and then realized that the glue is only good for about two hours. But really who wants glue on their face that last for much longer than that, just doesn’t seem safe.
I’m not trying to brag, but several people compared me to the devilishly handsome Burt Reynolds. What do you think?

Random Thursday

2010-03-25T18:50:00.000-04:00

Wow, I’m so sorry about the lack of post lately. I know all three of my readers have been wondering where I’ve been. Well let me give you a very detailed description of my life lately. Wake up, work, home, sleep, wake up, work, home, sleep, wake up, work, home, sleep. Rinse lather repeat much? Things have just been crazy busy. I don’t even have the wits about me to witty right now. So since I have to jump right back into work I figured I wouldn’t let everyone go empty handed. Here are some of the most random pictures I could find. Enjoy.

Wonderful Weekend

2010-03-20T17:05:00.000-04:00

With the weather as nice as it, I've been out walking Mags and viewing the yard. Seeing everything it gave me a few ideas for new projects, and I decided to take some pictures of some of the older projects that we've completed. First is one of the things I saw today and decided to under take. I decided to keep the trunk of our Christmas tree this year and use it in the yard. I like the rustic look of a trunk that's had all the limbs cut off it. Melissa and I have had this Auburn Bird house laying around for at least a year so I decided I'd mount it to the stump. I did this awhile ago, so that's not the new part. With all the storms we've been having our bottle tree got blown over and it broke the tree. So I got the idea to take the bottles from the broken bottle tree and put them under the bird house on the old Christmas tree trunk. I like the way it turned out. I guess Melissa and I need to drink some more wine so I can finish the rest of the tree. If anyone has any Blue wine bottles that you can part with please let us know. Our single blue bottle broke when the tree fell. I'm very heart broken over this because Blue is my favorite color.

Next is a project I did last spring. Melissa got a steal on some crepe myrtle's so we planted them next to the drive way. Then Home Depot had a big sale on landscape timbers so we bought 30 or so of them, didn't really have any ideas for them, just thought we'd find something to do with them. The first thing I did find was to make these little boxes to frame our discount crepe myrtle's. Nothing hard or special, just a project checked off the list.

Sorry for the bad picture, Melissa has the camera so I took all of these with my iPhone.

at the end of the planting season last year K-Mart had a huge sale on all their trees. We wanted some kind of flowering tree for the front of our house so we scooped up these three Bradford Pears.

The outside project that I have going right now is a big planter box using the rest of my landscape timbers. Unfortunately 30 just wasn't enough to help level out my land and make the box look good. So we're hoping they go back on sale some time soon, if not we'll have to pay full price to finish out this box. Since I can't finish it with what I have I've just crudely laid the remaining timbers out so you can get an idea of what it'll look like. None of the top layer is fastened, and the very front of the box is just laying on the ground. I have one more level to put down to get it to it's finished height, then I'm going to have to get some fill dirt to fill in the box. I have some big mounds of topsoil in the back that were left from when they built the house so I hope to use all of that off first. In this box we have three more Melissa Super Sale finds that were being clearanced. I believe she paid 5 dollars each for these large crepe myrtle's, they were even larger, but they had to cut the tops off of them to get them in her Jeep. We also plan to fill in between them with some small shrubs and bulbs. I'm thinking of moving two of our Forsythia's in between the myrtle's, but I haven't gotten clearance for that yet.

And finally is a finished project inside the house. We picked up some bookshelves when they went on sale at Tarjay, notice a trend with us? We put them together, moved my old TV stand in between them, hung my Thomas Kinkade, also bought on sale, signed and professionally highlighted by an artist trained by Thomas himself, in between the bookshelves. (sorry for the computer on the desk, I'm on call and have been working all weekend. This is just my on call setup, I'll take everything down when I return back to work.)

And since it's such a nice day I have the windows open and the ceiling fans going. To my right are my "co-workers" for this weekend.

Snoogans' Story

2010-03-19T17:50:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the first edition of Snoogans' story. Snoogans is a Christmas present given to me years ago from Melissa. He’s a full blooded blue point Siamese. He’s the first one to greet me when I get home from work and wants nothing more than to be picked up and petted by me. Well, that might not be entirely true. Apparently he would like for me to take him to the vet more often to have his anal glands expressed. It appears that his little problem with impacted anal glands hasn’t gone away. We found this out the hard way Saturday morning as he was licking his bottom none stop. As I tried to make him stop I noticed a big red spot on his bottom. Turns out his right anal gland was so full that it ruptured. Melissa and I jumped out of the bed and rushed him to the vet to have his bottom looked at. Over 300 dollars later we returned home with the most loving drugged up cat you’ll ever see. Melissa thought it was quite entertaining watching him try to walk. What I didn’t find entertaining was that this medicine was making him sick so I was following him around cleaning up puke. Living in a house of 4 cats I’m used to cleaning up the puke though. Thank goodness he's back to normal now though. I just have to give him oral antibiotics twice a day, which he LOVES by the way, sarcasm much? So from now on, once every 6 to 9 weeks, Snoogs and I will be going to the vet on my off day to have his anal glands expressed. I know you’re wondering why you’re just now hearing about this since it happened almost a week ago, but work has been super busy and I haven’t just been working late and too tired to sit down and bang this out.

The Greatest Song never heard

2010-03-12T18:32:00.002-05:00

I want to bring to everyone’s attention the greatest song that I don’t believe anyone has ever heard. I only know of three, including myself that has ever heard this song. Of us three, all three of us love the song. Granted it is also one of the most depressing songs ever written, but that doesn’t take away from how great it was. Now, let’s all go back to the golden area of 90’s R&B and Uncle Sam’s, “I don’t ever want to see you again” Enjoy it’s greatness.

Michael Lorrow

2010-03-05T14:31:00.002-05:00

It is with a heavy heart that I write this blog. Early this morning an all time great guy and friend of mine lost his long battle with cancer. Michael Lorrow, you will truly be missed by everyone that ever knew you. I know I got to visit with you yesterday before your final hours, but that is not the way I want to remember you. You will always be “McLovin”. Thank you for never losing your quick wit, humor, and smart ass mouth. The way you handled your cancer has been an inspiration to me. I will never understand how you could stay so positive and funny facing death and all the tribulations you were faced with. This world will be a far less entertaining place without you on it. Those of us who have known you will speak often of the experiences we shared with you.

Here’s to you pal! Keep chasing those angels, you’ll be bound to catch one eventually. Yeah Boy! Giggity Giggity, Giggity Goo…

Eat more Chicken

2010-03-03T11:32:00.000-05:00

The gauntlet has been laid down for one of the world’s greatest accomplishments. Coming this May, the Lawn Dart Champion of 1962, but most of you know him as the lead singer of Falcon 550, the one and only Mr. Adam “Dubba” Landreth, will go for the Ultimate Chic-fil-a Triple play. The Chic-fil-a triple play in its self is a great accomplishment, until Adam raised the bar by completing the triple play at three different restaurants. But now! Oh, I don’t know if you’re ready for this, Wait for it… The three state Chic-fil-a Triple play. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, 3 different states, 3 different Chic-fil-a's, 3 different meals! Can this feat be accomplished? When asked for a comment on this amazing feat Adam pondered the question and replied, “yes”, followed by “I can eat Chic-fil-a in three different states.” When asked what he planned to eat for his 3 different meals, he deliberated and responded with “Chicken”. Insightful! Such a bold promise by such a young, and might I add handsome, man. I’m sure everyone is wondering how such an impossible feat can be accomplished, I mean let’s face it not all states for Chic-fil-a, and of those states the Chic-fil-a’s may not be close to each other. I’m not sure if any of you have looked at a globe, but a State is kind of a big thing. Not in the Ron Burgundy sense, but in a more literal land mass sense. (I said mass) However, due to the recent invention of a contraption called an aero-plane, Adam will make his journey across the country allowing him to partake in “Chicken” in 3 different states. The three lucky states you ask? Alabama, Georgia, and Colorado. Adam assures me that he has begun his training and will be ready for his date with Destiny, he ask that you please keep this a secret as his wife has no idea he’s seeing a stripper on the side. In the immortal words of Dale Doback, “Boats and hoes”

Saturday night pictures

2010-03-02T17:57:00.000-05:00

Here are pictures of my team from the scavenger hunt. We came in dead last, but we all had fun so that's all that matters.

Extreme Weekend Update

2010-03-02T13:06:00.003-05:00

To keep everyone abreast, I said breast giggity, with the goings on in the world of Cas, we lost our last regular season game pretty soundly. The first half of the game went by with us only being down by two points. We have a Shaq type player on our team that no other team can match up with. Basically all we have to do to win is get our Shaq into the low post and feed him the ball until they start to double and triple team him. When they do that we send one guy to cut through the lane, and spot up a shooter for a kick out pass. This play works like a charm through the entire first half. It doesn’t even matter that they have 15 players to our 5. Second half rolls around and everyone is feeling good, we all know that we’re going to keep riding our Shaq and hopefully get a few stops to put us in the lead. Well, everyone knows this but our Shaq. You see Shaq decided he wants to run point for the second half and shoot threes. So, yeah, that was pretty much the rest of the game. We’ll fog up a bad shot, they’ll rebound and run with their fresh legs.
Saturday, Melissa and I had plans to go to a friend’s birthday part in Atlanta at Dave and Busters. Melissa had been helping Extreme Make Over Home Edition most of the week, and the big reveal was Saturday. She was begged to come back and help on the Saturday so she did. They even gave her 4 VIP passes to give to friends to watch the family come home and yell “move that bus”. Melissa and I pride ourselves on being stand up people, and if we say we’re going to do something then by God we’re going to do it. I say this because just the weekend before we stood in Wal-Mart telling our friend that we were going to be at Dave and Busters for the birthday and we hate when people say they’re going to do something and then back out. Flash back to Saturday, Melissa has these four passes for this amazing once in a lifetime event, but we’ve already promised a friend that we would be at a birthday party. What should we do? Melissa knows how badly they need her help at Extreme, and so I told her to go and help them because it is an important thing she’s doing and we’re always down to help. But I decided to not take my VIP pass and to go on to Atlanta since we had already confirmed that we would be at the party.
The party was a ball, I don’t know if anyone knows about this, but at Dave and Busters you can hold a party there and they will give you your own room, a buffet, game cards, and send you out on a scavenger hunt. We were broken up into teams and sent out to the gaming floor to scavenge for our booty, yar. Only down side to this, this Dave and Busters is PACKED! You have an hour to complete your list, which is only 6 pages log of easy to complete task. Easy IF, you were able to walk through the building. After fighting through the crowd for about 45 minutes of the hour we called it quits and went back to the room to rest. We were pretty sure we weren’t going to win, but it was a good time none the less.
After the party I embark on my journey back home. Had Melissa been with me we might have stayed the night, Susannah, would you have a room to rent? Haha, j/k. But since it was just me I left the party a little early and headed back to Alabama. All was going well, it was late so traffic wasn’t all that heavy, until I made it close to the Varsity’s exit. All traffic comes to a grinding halt. Police cars have all 6 lanes blocked, and the exit ramp is also blocked so no one is going anywhere on 75/85. Ok, I’m in Atlanta, traffic is stopped, this is to be expected. What I didn’t expected was the four fire trucks to come rolling by me, two of which were the big ladder trucks. Now I’m intrigued as to what in the world could be going on? So I start flip stations on the FM dial, all stations are playing some prerecorded countdown or interview, no help to me. Swap to AM, finally after listening to WSB750 for a minute someone cuts in to announce that we have a jumper on the bridge right in front of me. This explains the ladder trucks and why the entire interstate is stopped heading south. After sitting with my truck in park, playing on facebook on my iPhone traffic starts to move again. The man has been talked down off the ledge and life goes on, for him and everyone else.
Sunday I was pretty much sick all day so I slept about 18 hours. I got up, got dressed, made Melissa and I waffles, which I thought tasted like crap, Melissa said they were good and tasted like a waffle. I guess my taste buds were off because I was sick. After fighting for about 2 hours I went and laid back down for what I thought would be a short nap, flash forward six hours, I awake.

Two more to go

2010-02-23T20:43:00.000-05:00

That's right, only two more regular season games to go before the playoffs start. I'm proud to say that we won our game Friday night, but then lost tonight. We simply gave out of gas this evening and couldn't run with a team that had 8 subs sitting on the bench. We had 6 players show up tonight so I knew I'd get some playing time, especially when one of our players pulled his hamstring. Now, FYI, I'm in no shape to really be playing basketball so leaving me in for long periods of time really hurts the team more than I can do good. I try to save myself for defense and grab every rebound that comes off the rim, but my legs just gave out way too early tonight. Try as hard as I could I just couldn't get off the ground. One good thing about me being so lazy is that it leaves me standing around the 3 point line with nothing to do on offense. Tonight I was forced to do something so I fogged up some 3 pointers when another teammate was in trouble and had no one else to pass the ball to. Wouldn't you just know it, I still have a little bit of a shot in me, and I nailed both of the 3's I shot. Layups... Well that's a different story. I missed about 5 or 6 layups, or shots that were within 10 feet of the goal. I did put the ball on the floor and drive hard to the rim, but my poor tired legs left me standing on the ground which in-turn led to my shot getting pinned up against the back wall of the gym. So my stats for the night are about 6 rebounds, 6 points on 2 for 2 threes, two blocked shots, one blocked on offense and then I blocked one on defense, and I maybe had 1 assist, but I'm not positive about that. We have a make up game tomorrow night since the Friday before last's got snowed out, then our final game is Friday. Single elimination playoffs start Monday March 1st, so our season ends Monday March 1st. It was good times, great oldies out there, and by oldies I mean me.

NBA Jamz!

2010-02-18T10:19:00.002-05:00

I know everyone has been wondering where my latest basketball game update was! Well the thing is, our game Friday got snowed out and Tuesday was our bye week. So I have no update, to be honest with you, I really don't have anything entertaining or humorous to say today. Sorry to disappoint. As a reminder no one has been able to guess my movie quotes yet so don't forget to swing by and take a crack at Movie quote one and Movie quote two. (if you need a hint click here.)

*Yes, I did go back and add the links after Susanna asked where the quotes where.