Place Ya Bets!

Birthday: _______
Weight: _______
Length: _______

Same rules apply: 5 points for each day by which your birthday guess is off, 1 point for each ounce, and 2 points for each quarter-inch. Lowest score wins. Psychics, clairvoyants, seers, oracles, and divinators will be automatically disqualified.

For reference:

Damien:

July 25th (his due date)
7 lbs. 7 oz.
20"

Anthony:

July 24th (one day late)
8 lbs. 3 oz.
20.5"

Regina is due February 2nd. Given a linear trend, this would mean she will be born Feb 4th, 8 lbs. 15 oz. and be 21".

Bomb the World

If that headline doesn't get me on some sort of NSA watch list, I don't know what will.

So, over at The Pickles, Mrs. Pickles was letting us know all about their wonderful holiday fun times, which included a spectacular photobomb by Mr. Pickles (fig 1):

That is a truly spectacular photobomb, which made me suspicious. No one is naturally that good at photobombing. That level of bombsmanship requires much practice.

So I started googling around, and as I followed the bread crumbs deeper into the rabbit hole, I came to realize just how dark and massive the conspiracy goes. Mr. P. hasn't just done this before, no. I discovered that he is the ringleader of a shadowy and sinister organization that seeks to rule the world through photobombing. Behold, the totally-legit and not-at-all-fake evidence:

**IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT**

It's time for another Important Ann–

Joe's singing in an Advent Lessons and Carols concert, this Friday at 7:00pm. He will be music by Tye, Ferris, Cherubini, and Bieber.

Oh, wow. Thank you for the—wait, did you say "Bieber"?

Yes, Justin Bieber. It was on that flyer you showed me.

You mean this flyer?

Yes, right there. It says "featuring music by Tye, Ferris, Cherubini, and Bieber."

That's Biebl. Franz Biebl. Famous for the Ave Maria made popular by Chanticleer. Which is the piece we're singing.

Oh. That... makes more sense.

Yes. Yes it does.

And here I was looking forward to your rendition of "Boyfriend."

Maybe later.

But come to our concert! I promise there will be absolutely no Justin Bieber songs!

You Probably Won't Regret It!™ (Unless you're a fan of the Bieb.)

What We're Watching

Cop shows. All cop shows, for some reason.

Now that we're approaching the mid-season hiatus, I finally have enough time to stop watching things long enough to write about watching things. We were off on a bad foot to begin with this season. I had two international journeys as soon as the season started, so we were behind to start off with and are only now gradually catching up.

So here, in particular order, is a list of the TV shows we have given what could have been otherwise productive hours this year.

Hunger Memes

You know what that last post was lacking? Memes.

AMTOTHGJTIOP

That's "All My Thoughts On The Hunger Games Jumbled Together In One Post." Spoilers, or something.

It's 12:20 AM, and I've got fifty pages left in Mockingjay. A certain firebomb has just gone off in the Capitol (you who have read it know what that means). I have to get up at 6 AM. Do I push through, stay up an hour or two longer to finish, then just be a wreck the next day? Do I risk simply not being able to keep my eyes open and falling asleep with twenty pages left? I opt to save it for later, so I can plow through until the end in one big chunk.

The first thing I do when I get in to work the next morning, after answering the two or three emails waiting for me, is finish the book. This proves to be a mistake, as I can't concentrate on anything else for the rest of the day, and keep going over the ending in my head, trying to make sense of it.

I don't think I've ever read a book which changed tone so quickly. At 100 pages left, it's a war thriller; with 50, a shock; at 10, I have resigned myself to the fact that it's a deeply depressing book about the futility of struggle, mired in the inhuman morality which infects all the characters. Then, on the next to last page the tone of the book completely turns and it ends with one of the most hopeful, positive endings you could ask for.

(If you disagree on that last point, I'll explain myself at the end.)

Happy 10th Anniversary, Dear Blog

If you're reading this, it means that I forgot to come up with something funny or insightful between April, when I created this scheduled post, and today.

Actually, I did, but thought it would be funny to leave that message there.

But today is, in fact, the blog's 10th anniversary (or, at least, the anniversary of the old blog). So in honor, I'll try to dig up the 10 most memorable posts—one from each year—of this blog's existence, and give a little write up of what was going on that year.