11/27-Tiger Woods was injured in a car accident this morning. It turns out he drove a bit right, and his balls ended up 20 feet into the woods.

This is a series that started on November 27th…and just kind of rolled forward through the last week and a half.    It is funny to watch it develop.  This is all from my Facebook updates as I was traveling around my projects…On 12/2, I was stuck in a traffic jam…sorry!

11/28-Oh…this only gets better. Reports are coming in that Tiger Woods’ injuries might have been caused by his wife. Looks like Tiger may have been sinking putts on someone else’s green?

11/30-Tiger Woods withdrew from his own tournament today…it sounds like he has been doing a lot of entering and withdrawing lately.

12/2-The Saints scored almost as many times last night as Tiger Woods does during an out-of-town tournament.

12/2- You non-golfers might not get this one…Tiger Woods is stuck in a bad “lie.”

12/2-True brilliance is measured by innovation. Tiger Woods changed golf by creating a whole new job in the sport…The Fluffer.

12/3-Uh-oh Tiger. Two more girls? Where there is smoke…

12/3-Elin Nordegren, in order to get back at Tiger, is going to be sleeping with Phil Mickelson.

12/3-Junior Gotti (yes, that Gotti family) had his fourth mistrial declared by a judge in five years on racketeering charges…the juries were unable to reach a verdict in any of the trials. I have no opinion on this subject.

I tried to shake loose from the bonds of Tiger Woods.

12/3-We all know Tiger’s drink of choice…Gatorade. His shoe of choice…Nike. Razor of choice…Gillette. Car of Choice…Buick. After a couple more voice mails get released, we should find out his condom of choice!!!

Back to Tiger.

12/3-I see former Senator and Presidential Candidate John Edwards’ name in the news today about the possible mis-use of campaign funds with his mistress and Baby-momma. His story makes Tiger look ready for Sainthood.

Almost.

12/4-We all know Tiger has a mixed racial background. Judging by the amount of “play” he is getting, A betting man would probably be able wager on which parts of him AREN’T Asian.

This really isn’t a “Tiger” joke.  This is an Asian-man-have-small-penises joke.

12/4-Honestly? Who DOESN’T answer the phone when Tiger Woods calls? And…I don’t even leave voice mail messages. You can see I called. Call me back. He is leaving voice mail messages? Tiger Woods? Maybe I need to rethink my voicemail leaving policy.

This looks to be the end of my run of “Tiger” humor…

…

…

…

NOT!

12/4-”Uh… Elin? It’s me Phil. I am just letting you know if you want to talk…I am here for you.”

It would just be too fitting if she got busted blowing Phil Mickelson next week…talk about revenge…for both her and Phil.

Some of you are new around here…if you have commented previously and would like to ask for a password for the previous post, you can ask here or shoot me an email (I like that method better…since It shows you don’t mind working for your information.)

For you old-timers…

Remember the clothes dryer and your usual capitalization issues.

Just thinking about that visual makes me laugh every time!

There is nothing “Tigerlicious” in the protected post…so don’t get your hopes up!

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Going out-of-town is always an experience and this day wasn’t any different.

Eighteen neighborhoods in three different cities at and over 300 miles of driving are enough for one day.  I was going to drive to my last city tonight and get an easy start in the morning, but I wasn’t sure what I was going to find in that last place, so Annapolis is where I am camping out tonight.

And the choice is the Holiday Inn Express in Annapolis, Maryland…maybe it’ll make me smarter.

The room, upon entry, looks normal.

But check out this bathroom…

How about a closer look…

This is just a horrible way to spend money on a renovation.    My GPS says that this was a different hotel chain about a year ago, so this has just recently been taken over by Holiday Inn Express.

When a chain gets taken over, someone on the corporate level, set the level of products that will go in the renovation.   Evidently someone chose a “fancy” sink, but stuck it over that blue tiled wall.

For the same amount of money, the tile could have been removed, maybe even paneling installed and a regular sink and vanity put in the same space.

It wouldn’t have mattered if the sink was gold plated…you hardly even notice it because of that wall…

And…the “luxury of the curved shower rod loses it impact if this is how the old holes were repaired…

All things considered, this is a clean room with a comfortable bed and a hot shower.

As an added bonus, the coffee pot wasn’t in the bathroom.

This is just going to be in a rambling update form…forgive me.

Off I go tomorrow morning.  I am not sure if I’ll be back on Tuesday or Wednesday since I have a lot of ground to cover.

Alarm is set for 3am.

I have no reservation anywhere and will be going from city to city and neighborhood to neighborhood looking for things that no one else can find.

It is maybe what I do best.

This is where I start to get mixed in with a whole new group of managers…and I am REALLY an outsider in this group.

Without any reservations, I am not sure that my sleeping accommodations might end up being an adventure this time.   But, I don’t know where I’ll be when darkness rolls around.

Despite the long weekend, I didn’t get a set finalized for Thursday’s open mic night.  This Tiger Woods thing has me chomping at the bit to write a few minutes about that whole situation…how can I resist.

I come up with pretty decent stuff when I am driving, so we’ll see what comes up on the road.

After today’s longer run, tomorrow is a rest day for me.

Now that I am running a little more again, I really need to boost my calorie/carbohydrate intake.    My schedule of eating breakfast one or two days a week, lunch one of two days a week and decent sized dinner every night are leaving me weak during…and after my runs.

That, along with mild hypothermia, must have been what happened to me last Sunday…I think I actually blacked out on my feet for a bit.   That has never happened before.

Today, I ate a small breakfast and about a cup of beans for lunch and I was very weak after the run today.   Managing my diet has never been my strong suit.

My theory has always been that less is better.

What I do with my diet is going to have to be alone…since forcing the kids to eat what I need is pointless and sure to cause stress.  I can make improvements on my breakfast and lunch choices.

For me, the issue always comes back to what happens AFTER I eat…there is “waste” and it has to be put SOMEWHERE.

That, along with some “funny” reaction to some foods, is probably why I have limited eating breakfast and lunch regularly for years.

That is enough for now…sorry for the ramble.

 

 

Just about all secrets will eventually be exposed and if you have one…good or bad…you should prepare for how you will handle the situation when it comes to light.

For me, my secret has been my recent, or not so recent, venture into stand-up.

The secret began to become unveiled when an acquaintance of mine saw me on stage…I knew it would just be a matter of time before the cat was out of the bag.

About six months after it became known, some think it is a rumor, others know it to be true.

I have just changed positions in the company and with it, I am a member of a management team…they all know about my hobby.

After an hour-long staff meeting on Wednesday, the group participated in a potluck Thanksgiving lunch in their office (I have managed to find a way to have an office in a different location) with was classified as mandatory fun.

Despite having the ability to pretend to be sociable, I shy away from these things when possible.

As they sat around the table, people were sharing “funny” stories, one after another, about some of the “funny” situations they have found themselves in on the job.

This went on for about an hour.  I sat and laughed at their stories…letting the story-teller work their story and have their time in the spot light.

There is nothing worse than the “funny guy” injecting himself into every situation.

All the stories seemed to be “people-doing-stupid-things-at-work-and-expecting-to-stay-employed” stories and they were interesting, but funny in a boring-office-setting kind of way.

But, I could sense people waiting for me to jump in and start working the room.

Being the new guy, despite knowing the people in the room for more than four years, I was sitting this one out…this is a group of people who were adversaries of my old office for these same four years.

The only thing more surprising than the ability they possess to screw up the simplest of tasks is the frequency in which it happens.

Finally, someone came right out and asked…

“Steve, you haven’t told us any of your stories…I am sure you have something?”

Slowly, I leaned up in my chair, rested the palms of my hands on the table and said…

“Well, I need new material…

(long pause)

…you people sitting here are the subject of all of my old stories…”

I stood up and went for another drink.

The will be a preview post…because it is the day after Thanksgiving.

And the Friday after Thanksgiving, like each and every year that we have lived here, is marked my into the attic.

I have had two reoccurring dreams in the past decade.

(Well..three…but we can leave the Kristen Bell dreams for a completely different post.)

 

The the two dreams that I talk about are the two that involve my last breath on this earth.

The first is have this heavily used kitchen appliance blowing up in my face…

The second one is dying under one of many plastic bins of assorted garland, artificial tree limbs and Christmas lights at the bottom of my attic access door.

So…

If you do not see my words here any more, just know that I died trying to bring Christmas joy to my family.

It has been nice knowing you.

‘It tastes better hot” are good words to live by when dealing with foods that are prepared warm.

With some deep thought, I could probably come up with a few exceptions, but I feel comfortable in making this one of my rules to live by… (I should write down and publish this list.)

These words were first uttered to me by my mother.  If forced to pin down a year, I would have to say 1977.  My recollection of the day was that it was a Thanksgiving Day.  The Detroit Lions were playing the Chicago Bears and, as usual, we were having a meal at my Grandmother’s house.

She had the incredible ability to prepare the largest of meals and get the whole thing ready as the final seconds of the second quarter were counting down.

The meal was the same every year…Turkey, stuffing, , hot rolls, mashed potatoes and a couple of her special recipes…

1.  Green Beans with a Mushroom sauce

2.  Sweet Potatoes with a Marshmallow topping

It is possible that she had everything timed perfectly because she prepared the same meal each year.

My disdain for both of the aforementioned (and pictured) dishes were not  a secret to ANYONE…except for Grandma.

The smell of them turned my stomach.

The rule in our house was that you had to do two things.

1.  Eat what is on your plate.

2.  Eat some of everything.

When I saw the dishes of green beans and sweet potatoes in the kitchen, I began to cry.

My mother, in an attempt not to create a scene, whisked me away until the meal was ready.   She gave me the most amazing pep-talk about even though I didn’t like it, if I ate it first and fast it would be better.   As bad as it tasted, it would taste even worse when it was cold.

I had eaten this stuff cold before, and it was bad.   This reasoning made perfect sense to me.

Well, being the youngest in the family at the time, my seat was positioned to the left of my Grandmother.  She sat at the head of one end of the table and my Grandfather sat at the other end.  This must have been the first year that I actually sat in a real chair because I remember sitting on top of a couple of phone books.

She served my plate first before passing each dish around to the right.   Sure enough the first two things on my plate were the green beans and the sweet potatoes.

My eyes watered as everyone else was watching my grandfather cut the Ham and Turkey.

My mother looked at me and nodded.

I picked up my fork and tore through the beans first.   They were steaming hot.

My mother smiled…no one else noticed.

Then I moved to the sweet potatoes and marshmallows…gone!

More smiles.

I did it!   All of the bad stuff was gone and all I had to concentrate on was delicious turkey, ham, stuffing and hot rolls.

Then…all of the sudden, in the blink of an eye, my Grandmother looked down and saw that I had finished the beans and sweet potatoes.

The biggest smile crossed her face.

I remember that expression like no other I have seen since.  But it was what she did next that changed my life forever.  She said this…

“Ohhhhh!   You ate them so fast, you must really like them.   I knew you would…here is some more.”

No sooner did that scoop of sweet potatoes with overflowing marshmallows hit my plate before every bit of green beans, mushroom sauce, sweet potatoes AND marshmallows that I so quickly inhaled, came right back up out of my stomach.

It was a scene right out of Stand By Me…

Not sooner did I get sick, than my sister, who was sitting right across from me did the same thing.    She had also heard the same pep-talk my mother had given me and was, evidently, shoveling in the things she didn’t like as fast as she could down her throat.  I believe that the cause of her vomitting was a mere reaction to what I had just done, because she can actually eat both of those dishes today and I cannot even smell them without being forced to leave the room.

It isn’t like I vomit very often…probably less than 10 times in my whole life.   That is what raises this situation to a point where it impacted my life so much.

To this day, my stomach churns at the sight or smell of either sweet potatoes or green beans with mushroom sauce.   I can stomach the beans and the mushrooms separately…if forced to prove a point to the children.

This whole story came about because I had mentioned it came up in comments in two different blogs.

Nandango was writing about homemade pumpkin pie and I mentioned that I couldn’t eat pumpkin pie because it looked like the sweet potatoes that caused my “issue”.

Pammy Girl gave her list of 10 things that should be banned from future generations. On her list were both pumpkin pie, because of it having “the texture and consistency of baby vomit,” and the same sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping that disgusts me…I guess we also googled the same image too!

To this day, those dishes are banned from the house.  My wife and children enjoy pumpkin pie, but I tastefully decline and just leave the table.

But to this day, I tell my son and daughter that when they are eating something they don’t like that “…it tastes better hot than it does cold.”

I also always eat the things I don’t like first and save the best for last.

It is amazing how that one day changed me forever.

Well…this has been a long time coming.   I have gotten out of the flow of any regular anything, so it is nice to be able to bring this feature back here again.

*  Congressman Emanuel Cleaver is trying to get next Wednesday declared “Complaint Free Wednesday.” I have a lot of jokes here…but let’s start with his name…CLEAVER? Only a Cleaver (Ward, June, Wally or the Beav himself) would come up with a stupid, utopian idea like this.

*  The Vatican has announced that they are not fans of the newest Twilight film “New Moon” …but “The Men Who Stare at Goats” received four sceptres.

*  J-Lo fell last night during a performance at the American Music Awards. She landed on the one body part she possesses that guaranteed her safety, but it only fueled the talk that she has ass implants after she bounced off the ground and onto her feet without missing a beat.

*  We have an Adam Lambert sighting at last night’s AMAs…Quoting the AP, ” Lambert fondled a dancer, led another around on a leash, had a dancer briefly stick his head in Lambert’s crotch and kissed a man.” I guess he is officially “out” now, huh?

 

*  The Public Health Agency of Canada has asked that some batches of the H1N1 vaccine stop being distributed because of the odd side effects.  Members of the Canadian Parliament have actually started to grow spines.

In my fifteen years of marriage, I have managed to do remarkable job of staying out of serious trouble.

Generally speaking, things around the this household only become unhinged when I neglect to remember that the four words  “I told you so” are better left unsaid.

Until now.

I have discovered a new method of getting into trouble.

Not having to buy an expensive jewelery for her kind of trouble… (See Kobe Bryant below…)

Not even sleeping on the couch kind of trouble…

It all started last Wednesday when I dropped my wife off at the airport leaving me alone with the children during the beginning of one of the nastiest storms this region has seen in years.

She left me a list for everything.

A list for breakfasts.

A list for home schooling the youngest.

A list for lunches.

A list for home schooling the oldest.

A list for dinners.

A list for things for me to do if I have “extra time.”

A list of acceptable snacks for the kids.

A list of what to feed the turtles, hermit crabs, crickets and frogs.

(BTW…Frogs eat the crickets.)

A list of unacceptable snacks for the kids…and pets.

A list of places I can take the kids to eat…with gift cards attached.

A list of what to use to care for my daughters hair…and the specified order for its’ application.

Before the storm would complete its’ path of destruction and leave 12″ of rain on the ground and blow tidal waters back through the cities storm drainage system, an estimated 75,000 homes were left without power.

My house was one of those 75,000.

We went black on Thursday at about 6:15 pm.

Three seconds after the lights went out, the sounds of a five-year old girl shrieking while she was trapped in a dark room pierced my ears.

I grabbed my flashlight…

As the responsible adult…remember that my wife was gone for the week…I was left to restore order to this chaotic situation.

First on the list was going to be getting some light throughout the house.

Easy.

There are candles EVERYWHERE…kitchen, living room, dining room, home school room, all three bathrooms and every bedroom.   I think we even have candles on the porch.

We have more candles here that at any Michael Jackson vigil…

This was going to be simple…we had enough candles to both light the house and provide enough heat to keep us warm.

Problem solved.

After grabbing one of the long fireplace matches, I started lighting.

Although the five minutes I spent lighting the 30 candles in the house that would bring peace to the house for the three days we were powerless, it would turn out to be an act that I would soon regret.

Due to the remote area my wife was traveling, phone access was limited and we didn’t communicate for the three days the Burgess were living like cave-dwellers…with windows and carpet.

Maybe high-class cave-dwellers.

Jump to Sunday morning…

*ring*

*ring*

ME: Hello.

WIFE: Hey.  It’s me…how’s everything going there?

ME:  You wouldn’t believe it.  That storm that started on Wednesday when you were leaving is still here and we lost power for three days.

WIFE: I’ll bet Haylee was terrified.

ME:  It wasn’t too bad.  It’s a good thing  we had so many candles in the house.

WIFE:  You DIDN’T use all of my expensive Yankee Candles I have out for display only, did you?   I keep candles on the top shelf of the hall closet in case of an emergency.

ME:  Uh… was that on a list?

I am in trouble now for my actions during the storm, but, for those three days, I had the nicest smelling house in Virginia Beach.