The Crazy Days of August

It has been unbridled craziness here this weekend. Friday night I actually stayed up until 11pm, making it 45 minutes into a 55 minute documentary revolving around the discovery of a sunken pirate ship. Sadly, I succumbed to sleep and crashed on the couch before finding out the specifics of the techniques they were using to clean off the cannons. Still, it was a riveting evening. Then, fresh off the high of that wild experience, I walked into Kroger yesterday afternoon and came relatively close to buying one of their trays of sushi. Sushi…from Kroger! Talk about living on the edge. Ultimately, I found the risk greater than the reward and held off, but still. There’s something in the air I tell you!

"It can take years to meticulously clean the corrosion off of the sunken cannons..."

Perhaps my need for these edgy thrills comes from the lack of entertaining sports in my life at the moment. Consider the fact that in the past week I have learned the following:

1) There were over 40,000 people in attendance at a Little League World Series game.

2) Kris Jenner, matriarch of the Kardashian clan, recently got a $50,000 facelift in advance of daughter Kim’s wedding.

How do I know these things? Have I been watching E! and hanging out on youth baseball websites? Perhaps so, but that is beside the point. No, I came across these factoids while watching ESPN News and listening to sports talk radio. When ESPN and the talking heads on AM sports radio are covering topics such as these, you know times are tough.

Look, I know that football doesn’t start for another week and Major League Baseball is of declining interest to us as a sports-watching nation. But I really must ask that the Little League coverage on ESPN go away. Not only are they broadcasting the games, but “highlights” from these contests are finding their way into ESPN plays of the day. Here’s a good rule of thumb- if the game in question has a mercy rule that’s employed if one team is up by too large a margin, it doesn’t need to be televised or covered.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for kids sports. If my daughter wants to play little league softball or basketball, I'll be plenty pumped and into it. I’ll probably be the guy on YouTube sucker punching a referee for making a bad call against my daughter. But I like to think that even then I will grasp the concept that no one outside of friends and family will have an interest in the outcome of these games. It’s kids! Playing on a miniature field! I assume some people must be interested, because I know ESPN is nothing if not genius about maximizing their viewership. But this one is baffling to me. I knew it was a bad sign when I was actually relieved and somewhat interested when they cut from Little League coverage to back-to-back detailed segments on NASCAR and soccer.

But rest easy, weary friends. We are just one week away from Labor Day, the return of football, and indeed the return of normalcy to our lives. Until then, we'll just have to look for entertainment where we can find it. I believe I did see that there was also a documentary about a ventriloquists' convention, so there's always that.

Extreme Couponing

So here’s an interesting fact of which some of you may not be aware- turns out that having a baby in your care eats up quite a bit of your free time. As in, like, all of it. Don’t worry, though, I just got done lecturing my eight week old daughter about her monopolization of my time, and I’m fairly certain we made some nice headway. Granted, the conversation ended with her drooling out a large quantity of breast milk onto my shoulder, but it seemed like she got the message.

Anyway, one consequence of having a baby is a notable ramp up in the desire to find cheap deals. It sickens me to say that I watched nearly half of an episode of Extreme Couponing recently on TLC. Now I can take some solace in the fact that I didn’t seek out the show. My wife left the TV on the TLC channel, perhaps after taking in the latest riveting episode of Toddlers & Tiaras. Either way, I didn’t make a mad dash for the nearest sports channel. No, I sat there watching a rather pitiable Midwestern woman clean out a store’s laundry detergent and Ramen noodles supply for something on the order of four dollars. They then showed her returning home to unload her haul in the overflowing stock room of her house. It was pitiful, and yet…a part of me was intrigued. How do these extreme couponers ply their trade with such magical frugality?

I put it out of my mind until I was at the grocery store last week and got behind a real live extreme couponer! This lady’s efforts were much more pedestrian than the mammoth shopping sprees shown on the TLC show, but nonetheless she managed to pocket roughly 30 large tubes of toothpaste and a similar quantity of bars of soap for less than one dollar. My anger towards her was palpable for two reasons. First, she pulled her routine directly in front of me in the express checkout lane. 15 items or less! Stingy cheapskate hoarders expressly forbidden!

Note to extreme couponers- the express lane is based on the number of items in your cart, not the number for which you are actually paying.

Second, as I watched her savings pile up and her amount owed to Kroger drop coupon by slowly-swiped coupon, I’m not ashamed to admit a bit of envy crept into my mind. By the time I completed my transaction, I was flat out depressed. She even had the nerve to turn around to me and the cashier as she victoriously departed and inform us that the purchase was for charity, intent on robbing us of the one thing we got out of the whole fiasco- seething bitterness toward her and her $0.49 purchase. As the cashier processed my items and my Kroger plus card savings were tallied, I confided in the cashier that I was a little embarrassed at my meager savings compared to the coupon lady. “No, no, four dollars in savings is still good”, she kindly replied. I did my best to express my gratitude for her pity, headed for the exit, and mustered up the moral clarity not to sideswipe the lady's car with my cart as I made my way through the parking lot. Maturity is difficult but, I guess, rewarding.

Blog Absence

Hello? Is anyone out there? My sincere apologies for my recent sabbatical from posting. It's frustrating, because I was on a bit of a roll. I had managed multiple posts in a single week twice in a row! Add to that the stories from my personal life that were coming my way fast and furious, and Sic Transit Gloria was on fire.

Unfortunately, things took an unfortunate turn here at blog headquarters when my home's basement completely flooded last week. It was an odious mix of water and mud that came washing in from our storage room and covered the entirety of our basement. Unlike the Biblical flood in Noah's day, this one did not last for forty days and forty nights. Of course Noah didn't have access to contractors who, for a hefty sum of cash, will storm your basement with 15 or so industrial sized fans and dehumidifiers.

So the basement is dry, but I've spent the better part of the past week dealing with the aftermath of the whole event. Between the guys who got the water and mud out and the drainage specialists and soil engineers, my time and energies have been devoted to addressing this whole fiasco. Frankly, I haven't been in the right mindset for the jackassery this blog has come to represent. This space is better suited for complaints about the British Open or the noxiousness of tartar sauce than for the honest to God frustration of last week.

But enough. It's time for a rally! This video is dedicated to me, because I need it and because I say so.

If Daniel Larusso can conquer the All Valley Under 18 Karate Tournament, then I can conquer a flooded basement AND keep the blog posts coming!

So stick with the blog. I will battle through the challenges of raising a newborn and keeping my house standing, and you will keep searching for pictures of Brigitte Nielsen (the source of roughly 60% of this blog's traffic ever since The Murls contributed this guest post) and perhaps we will all get a little something out of it.