Cue the Celebration!

I really thought I was going to try on the last day, but I can't think of anything and I need to pee.



Congrats to all, specifically Cadiz, Madelyn and Syar for accompanying me on yet another miserable Nablopomo journey!


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Stuffing

I came home to this:



Looks like the cake monster has a new vice. I guess it's my fault though, I did say all I needed to make more stuffing was two loafs of bread nicely torn to pieces...


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Seems like only a month ago...

And yet, does this really surprise anyone?



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Mmmmmmm whatcha say

Maybe I didn't invent this, but I made one tonight:



It's a hot dog with mashed potatoes, mustard, relish, mayo, ketchup, cheese and sour cream.

Also, I have trouble with puffy letter "R's." <-- I have no idea if the punctuation in there is correct.


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Learning

I shaved my head for a number of reasons. One of those was to find out exactly what was happening with my hairline. I have my answer:



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Just in case it wasn't clear

Had dinner with some friends tonight. This is what we learned:




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Turkeys playing football

I'm guessing you can see the problem right now. What play would you call?



I really didn't think this one through.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!

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No time tonight!!

I'm too busy experimenting with mini apple pies!!



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ok then

Since my recent trim, I've been called the following:



I don't even know what that last one means, but thanks for the support everyone.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad 2, the best sequel ever.

Peru is a dangerous place

This picture makes a lot more sense if you were in my writing class last night. It's also quite a bit more heartbreaking because you know how the story ends. And I don't even have any pomegranates!



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Quick question:

Is it just me, or does this seem a little twisted?



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Head Shaver Secrets

There are things that nobody tells you before you shave your head. They might tell you if you let them know you were going to shave your head, but that point is moot now.



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Experiment over

So today, I started off looking like this:



Then I looked like this:



Finally, I looked like this:



And if you think that I did this just because I dropped my comb on the bathroom floor right next to the toilet... well, you know me a little too well.


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The follies of youth

I was much, much younger yesterday than I am today. Upon waking up this morning and looking in the mirror, I realized what I had done. I walked around all day looking like this:



Some people may think that it's because my nose was itchy, or that I was in some serious thinking mode and should not be disturbed. Most people probably just thought that I was trying to avoid work. While they may never know the truth, I will. Next time I won't be so careless with my hair. Next time I'll remember no to make that shaved strip so darn narrow. I look like an idiot.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad 2, the best sequel ever.

Testing phase

Suffice to say, we're working on some pretty important stuff here at the Shuck N' Jive.



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With great freedom comes almost no responsibility.

Since I traded away my dish doing for a few days, I've become pretty cavalier with my eating habits. Take today's dish tally for my dinner:




I had Samosas for dinner. I ate them with my hands. That is to say, I used my hands to put the Samosas in my mouth, not that my hands were also ingested with dinner. They were delicious. Again, the Samosas, not the hands.


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I trimmed my beard today.

I know. Exciting stuff. But I was almost at a level 10. That's not ok unless you're going after a level 20 or higher:



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Pie Chart time!

This is pretty self explanatory, but for those that don't quite get it, this is my monthly goal:



So far, I give my self an A special gold start plus!


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Leveling up

I've decided it's time to take my archery to the next level. I can't just keep going to the range to find targets, I need to hunt them in the wild, where I'll need my wits and keen vision to track down and nail a four, or maybe a five ringer right in the bullseye. You know, before they get me first.



As you can see, on a day like today, it'll take all the training I've self taught myself (?) if I hope to come out of this alive. You may have noticed that I've only got two arrows in my quiver. One is for the kill shot. The other is to split the arrow that delivered the kill just to prove it wasn't a lucky shot. The hat is obviously ugly, but I needed something to keep the hair out of my eyes. It's getting way too long up front. And the last thing anyone wants to hear when you come home empty handed is some lame excuse about how you had the target right in your sights, but a slight breeze blew your unnecessarily long hair into your eyes and you missed. I've heard way too many drunken hunting stories that ended with the old slight breeze hair in my eyes routine. I won't be one of them.


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In our house, we barter.

Today, these two things are worth the same amount.



Madelyn wanted me to build her a dresser that we bought from Ikea a week or two ago. In exchange, she offered to take one of my dishes shifts. The jokes on her though because it took me 45 minutes to build the dresser, where as the dishes usually only take about half that! Nobody tell her what a sucker she is, ok?


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Ever had an MRI?

Yeah, neither had I until today. It's pretty interesting what they can do with magnets these days. If you'd like to know what it's like, but don't have the money, look at the picture below and follow these instructions:

1. Hold the picture about 5 inches away from your face.
2. Rent a jackhammer and have a friend break up concrete about 3 feet away from your ears.
3. Do not move. At all. For 2 hours.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad 2, the best sequel ever.

Guess who's out of ideas?

This guy.

But apparently I've put on a little weight.  Except perhaps in my right thigh.  That's always been a problem area for me when it comes to weight gain.  Kinda throws off my whole look, plus there's that whole problem of finding pants that fit right.  Ugh, what a nightmare.

I used two 28 cent stamps on this one...

You're not going to believe this, but I only used one tool in my massive drawing arsenal to complete this one:

 Isn't it crazy how much it looks like me?  Like a real human being?

Hippie Hair

My hair is getting uncomfortably long.  It's pretty much only good for one thing now:

Further proof:

I don't even have a fan on me right now...

The end of week one...

...with my iPad.  It occurs to me now that I basically just tolerated life up to this point.

Also, I need a haircut.

Blasted from the past...

Ok, this one comes to you from over a decade ago. I picked this up today while rummaging through some old stuff. I don't even really remember writing it, but it is unmistakeably my handwriting. It's interesting to look at it now and try and figure out what was going through my head at the time. Well, that's not totally accurate. I believe it will be quite obvious what was going through my head at the time. That's all I'll say for now. Meet me after early 20's Jon's notebook scribblings:

Person 1: Where is everyone?

Person 2: Gone. Spring Break.

Person 1: So there's no one on campus?

Person 2: I wouldn't call the people that work here nobodies.

Person 1: That's not what I meant. I mean there aren't any students on campus.

Person 2: I'm a student and I'm on campus.

Person 1: Besides you.

Person 2: No. It's pretty much just me.

Person 1: So let me get this straight, there are no other students on campus, but you're here working the desk at the student center?

Person 2: That's correct.

Person 1: Why?

Person 2: That's a good question. One I'm not willing to ask myself because they might realize that I don't need to be here. And if I don't need to be here, they don't need to pay me. And I need to get paid, so I remain quiet about the whole thing and I'd appreciate it if you'd do the same.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand SCENE!!!

OK, mid 30's Jon here again. So, what was that all about? I know some people have conversations with themselves, but how many people write them down? Thank god I did though, because otherwise I wouldn't have a post today. See you tomorrow!

The Harsh Reality

We don't live forever. Yesterday's post really got me thinking. Our clothes don't live forever either. There will come a day when my sweatshirt will be no more. This is a day accompanied by my obvious rue. Oh how I will rue that day! But I like to be prepared, so I've thought about what kinds of things I'd like to have on the eventual replacement for my beloved Mr. T Experience Sweatshirt.

Behold:

I might be wrong, but I think I'm taking "pants off impressed" to a whole new level.

I have this thing

It's a sweater.  Sweatshirt to be more specific.  It is by far my favorite garment I've ever owned.  I bought it while I was in college and felt like treating myself.  It came with the new album from one of my favorite bands at the time.  (unnecessary side note: I do still listen to that band, but I'm not as into them as I once was.  It's cruel what time does to your favorite things.)  In the 12 years I've had the privilege of wearing this wonderful hoodie sweatshirt, it has started many conversations with it's "Price is Right" style font and confusing words.  "The Mr. T Experience."  That's the name of the band.  If you're totally into emo punk rock, you might enjoy their work.  I recommend their 1997 Album, "Revenge is sweet, and so are you."

This sweatshirt is faded brown in some parts from a few too many days crumpled up in the back seat of my car with the sun beating down on it.  The string that runs though the hood has been lost for several years now, but aside from that, it's still in pretty good condition.  I live in Chicago now, where a sweatshirt is hardly enough to keep you warm in the winter, so it's often buried under several other layers of more appropriate clothing.  I will be absolutely heart broken when I can't wear it any more.  Fortunately for me, I have no fashion sense and a willingness to wear even the most tattered and torn garments.

Sorry if this was a little more melancholy than usual, but I've been reading The Hunger Games and they can be a little depressing on many different levels.  I hope to finish by the weekend.  

This one hasn't been spellchecked.

So yeah, the wife and I are blogging this whole month of November, or Noviembre as I like to call it. What you might not know is that I purge the contents of my soul onto these digital pages for about ten minutes then call it a night. Not so of my wife. She takes significantly more time than I do. For example, when I started this post, she had already been working on hers for the better part of an hour. I think she's doing research or something. I'm not sure. There's pictures involved, timelines to crosscheck, I think an overseas call was made at one point. She's thorough, she's meticulous, but best of all, she's my wife :)

She's still not done, but as you can see, I am. Will this finally be the year that I totally mail it in? I know, when haven't I mailed it in?

I'll bet you're thinking, "Aren't you doing this on an iPad? Don't you have some sort of drawing apps on there? How did we get this far into the month of November without a picture of some sort?"

You sure do have an inquisitive mind. I'll be answering these questions sometime later this month. For now, just know that the app I use to blog with crashes approximately 2 seconds after it opens. I can't attach pictures through the web interface because I live in the lockdown prison that is the Apple ecosystem. I like to think I asked for the bars to be installed though. I've been promised a fix for the crash bug in the blogpress app, so when the time is write, I will fill your eyes with horrors usually reserved for testing the criminally insane.

What I'm up to these days...

Archery.  Lots and lots of archery.  I can't tell you why without giving to much information away, but the ways of bows and arrows and I are engaged in a courtship of sorts.  I intend to become quite intimate before all is said and done.

Small side note, did you know that it is generally frowned upon to practice archery in public places?  The authorities are even less pleasant with you when you're learning and not very good yet.  And they don't play favorites, whether it's a recurve, reflex or longbow, all are considered unacceptable by the police.  It's a truly mixed message because they sell them at virtually every sporting goods store and there's no waiting period or warning when purchasing not to use said bow in a public park!

Anyway, that's what ye old shuck n jive author is up to right now.  It may not sound that exciting, but you should know that I consider it essential to my survival.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm typing this post on my desktop computer.  It occurs to me that I've become very dependent on my iPhone auto-correcting things for me and capitalizing the first letter of every sentence as well as those isolated "I's" I'm so inclined to use when describing myself.  There's really not much more to say about that, but I thought you'd like to know.

Lastly, I've started taking a writing class at Second City.  I have almost no doubt that over the next month, some of my writing assignments will butcher their way into this blog because I'm lazy and have no other good ideas.  Fair warning.

Walter Payton age

I've finished my 34th trip around the sun. A few interesting things happened this past year. Not much to talk about really. I've got to work tomorrow so I'll keep this short. Check out this years haul of sweet bounty from my loving family:

Oh yeah, they also got me this:

Now of course, it's time for another November of "will-he/won't-he" posting. Good luck to all, readers and writers alike!

The Cake Monster

I guess that settles that...

-- Post From My iPhone 4. And yes, it gets a little weezy after a run too.

Don't they know?

I don't do it for the money.



I do it for the snacks.

-- Post From My iPhone 4. And yes, it is risking arrest by posting this.

Land of the free

I feel like this sends a mixed message. Or maybe it doesn't. I don't know.




-- Post From My iPhone 4. And yes, it Is ambiguously patriotic too.

This just sounds wrong.

-- Post From My iPhone 4. And yes, it is properly lubed.

I have nothing but pity in my heart...

For the child that wants Sheriff Roscoe's Police car as his model to spend hours and hours upon, painstakingly recreating its every last detail.



And to be fair, shouldn't it really be a model of a completely smashed up police car? It occurs to me that the budget for police cars in Hazzard County was inordinately high. I wonder what the carfax on one of those would look like...

-- Post From My iPhone 4. And yes, it has insane jumping abilities too.

Yeah yeah yeah, it's been awhile. I get it. I really do.

This was a pretty intense game. I think it was as much of a nail biter as a game of words with friends can be. You can expect the story of this match to be relayed to our children and subsequent grandchildren.



-- Post From My iPhone 4. And yes, it is gorgeous.

This happens all the time...

I often take pictures with the intention of posting them so that everyone can enjoy my humorous and quirky slant on life. The sad truth is that I only post 1 out if every 7 pictures I take that I intend to post. (a super smart algorithm was used to calculate this highly accurate picture/post ratio) Why the disparity? Probably a lot of laziness, but also because I feel like the moment has passed. My question to you now is, Has the moment passed? I was going to post this a few days ago with the title, "When Pancakes Attack."



Is this still funny? Was it ever funny? Am I over thinking things? Should I just learn to stop worrying and love the bomb? Let me know.


-- Post From My iPhone 4. And yes, This probably should have been a poll and not a post.