Camping: How to Show Your Ancestors Who's Boss

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Recently the wife and I ventured into the cold, dark heart of nature in order to prove to our long-gone ancestors that we are capable of surviving as they did, in harsh and angry world devoid of modern comforts. Just as they did, we spent our days walking and our nights under the stars. We cooked our food over a roaring fire and raised a toasted marshmallow in tribute to those who came before us.

                Oh and also like our ancestors, we kept a car close by. You know, to keep us and our food safe from marauding bears and to drive in case we wanted to go somewhere that was really far away and we didn’t feel like walking.    

                Alright fine, so maybe our ancestors wouldn’t exactly have been bowled over by our definition of roughin’ it, but still, we did survive a weekend spent predominantly outdoors. That has to count for something. Get off my back, ancestors.

                Probably the most important part of any camping trip, after the tent, a knife and finding a cool walking stick, is the fire. Without a fire, you got nothing. No s’mores, no light, no warmth. (Editor’s Note: These things are listed in order of importance from most important to least important.)

As I’ve found out from past camping experiences, lighting a fire without the benefit of electricity or propane or what have you can be trying. Very trying. You got to find the right blend of large and small bits of wood, you need something to get it going with, be it matches or flint, etc. So this time, I planned ahead. On the way home from work on the day we were set to depart, I stopped at a local grocery store and picked up two Duraflame logs. Duraflame logs are amazing. They’re what Prometheus got busted stealing from the gods. At my wife’s suggestion we also packed a bunch of wood that’s been collecting in our backyard. We had prepackaged corporate/Ancient Greek fire and we had lumber. We were set.

Halloween Planning and the Return of a Beloved Gym Mystery (with pics)

Right off the top, I want to apologize for the sudden scarceness of posts on the site. No, I didn’t get too “Hollywood” for this blog, despite what the buzz on the Internet may say. The actual story is that it’s late September which means I’ve been in full-blown preparing for Halloween mode for the last … I don’t know. July? Since July. All of this planning and such has finally begun to eclipse my devotion to my other favorite pastime: writing nonsense on the Internet.  

                Some years I handle my spooky season business a little bit better than others. This year not so much. I’ve got three trips to the hardware store invested into my Halloween costume (making a T-800 arm, dressing as Arnie from Terminator: Genisys). I’ve also got some designs worked up in my brain for new homemade outdoor decorations. It’s just, it’s a lot. I don’t want to say planning a wedding was easy compared to planning Halloween … so I’m just going to leave it at that. Hahaha kidding … or am I?

                Anyway, so even though blogs are light right now I still love you all to bits and pieces. And that is precisely why I felt it was imperative to interrupt my Halloweenings to share this news with you.

                So, remember my classic blog post from August 29 entitled “Gym Mysteries: The latest and most adorable new chapter?” Here’s the link in case you don’t. The long and the short of it was I walked out of the gym one morning and saw a cat napping in the rear window of a car. This sent me off on fits of wild and rampant speculation about the true nature of the car’s owner, life in general and cat’s place in it, etc. Then I didn’t see the cat anymore, Halloween took over my life and that was that. 

Transforming Labor Day into the Greatest Holiday Ever: 6 Easy Steps

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Happy Labor Day to all! For over a hundred years now, the good citizens of the US have celebrated Labor Day. It’s a day designated to honor the hard work and sacrifice of the American workforce. That sounds just dynamite … in theory. In practice, however, Labor Day is a little bit blah.

                Allow me to explain.

                See, Labor Day is the third holiday is a row that’s celebrated in essentially the exact same way. We wave American flags, shoot off fireworks, go to the beach, hold a BBQ and maybe watch a parade. In practice, it’s exactly like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, except it’s worse because while those fall at the beginning and middle of summer, Labor Day falls at the end. So it’s exactly like those other summer holidays, except that it’s also the unofficial start of the school year.

                I’m not saying we ditch Labor Day. I enjoy days off from work and celebrating America as much as the next guy. In fact, Labor Day can easily become our greatest holiday. It just needs a slight face lift. Here’s what I’m proposing:

                Step 1: Reformat all Labor Day parades. Typically in a parade, at least the smaller ones, you get a bunch of kids riding their bikes in red, white and blue, maybe chucking candy at you. This is nice, but it’s too Memorial Day-y and Fourth of July-y. For Labor Day, how about we keep the kids, but dress them from head to toe in rags, cover them in grease and have them throw severed fingers and hands at onlookers? You know, to symbolize how all of our children could be spending their youths crawling around inside machinery, losing digits left and right? I mean, the fingers and hands could be gummies at least. That might be fun.

                Step 2: Put some Union classics in theaters. Movie studios tend to shy away from Labor Day weekend in terms of big releases. The most successful Labor Day opening of all time is Rob Zombie’s hot pile of garbage “Halloween.” Since new-Hollywood isn’t using Labor Day correctly, let’s flood cinemas with some old school Union classics like “How Green was My Valley.” No non-workforce-related movies allowed! Make it a day of learning. If this so happens to give movie theater people a slower holiday, well then don’t say I never did anything foryou.

                Step 3: Do something with costumes. Adults, kids, we all love dressing up as stuff. What if on Labor Day we all dressed up as our favorite labor leaders? Imagine going to the grocery store decked out in your finest Samuel Gompers attire and seeing your typically straight-laced neighbor rocking a Cesar Chavez ensemble? You two can ask questions about each other’s outfits, maybe share a laugh. Fun and educational.   

                Step 4: We need some sort of game. Easter has its egg hunts. If I was a less politically correct man, maybe I’d suggest some sort of game where someone hides a Jimmy Hoffa action figure and then others have to go find it. But I’m very politically correct and thus I will not suggest that. Not. At. All. Not suggesting it.

                Step 5: Needs a signature horror movie. All the great holidays have them, Labor Day needs one. I’ll tweet at Eli Roth about this. Maybe my bestie Alex Aja will want to help.

                Step 6: Must-have TV tradition. After a long day of cos-play, union movie marathons and morbid child parades, families may want to settle down together in front of the TV. What better way to do that than with one of the greatest “Simpsons” episodes of all time?” An episode which may also be one of the greatest pro-Union works of all time? That’s right, from season four, episode 17, 1993’s “Last Exit to Springfield.” Homer as a Union head battles Mr. Burns over the nuclear plant’s dental plan. It could easily become Labor Day’s answer to the Charlie Brown Christmas Special or Rudolph.         

Gym Mysteries: The latest and most adorable new chapter

Not actually "Car Cat." Courtesy: www.calautomuseum.org

I’m going to pull back the curtain right at the start here and tell you I had no blog topic for this week. As late as Friday morning, my plan was to take maybe ten of the roughly 12,000 pictures I took during my honeymoon and do funny captions. Spinning pure gold here at The Cheese Life. That was the plan – it may still be a future plan, so if that sounds like fun, stay tuned – but then on Friday morning, inspiration struck in a familiar location: the gym. Well, more accurately in the parking lot of the gym.

                There I was, crossing the parking lot to my car, my old grade school and high school backpack full of dirty clothes on my back. The morning had the chilly feel of Fall, by the way. As I was walking passed a seemingly run-of-the-mill, plain old car, it happened. I noticed four things which gave me a blog topic. This blog topic. I will now relate to you the four things I noticed, not in the order I noticed them, but in a calculated order based on dramatic effect.

                So, the first thing I noticed –and this was actually the first thing I noticed – was two open Tupperware containers were sitting in the back window of the car. This seemed an odd place for Tupperware, and upon further inspection I noticed they also contained little bits of food. The back window of a car seemed a very strange place for containers of food. Front window or passenger seat, those would make sense. Someone was eating and tossed them there when they got to their destination. I get that. Back window, that’s a hard place to reach from the driver’s seat, maybe whoever it was, wasn’t traveling alone.  

                That brings me to the second thing I noticed – not really the second thing this time, dramatic effect: the car had a handicapped tag prominently hanging from its rear view mirror, but it wasn’t in a handicapped spot. It was actually parked across from the handicapped spots outside of the gym, all of which were empty. While the car was close, many of the empty handicapped spots were even closer. Again, odd. Maybe the tag is for a relative who wasn’t traveling in the car that day or the person just wanted to challenge him or herself.

                Now we come to the third thing I noticed – but not really: Not one or two, but all four of the cars windows were slightly open. Just ever so slightly. Now, I usually leave my back two windows cracked when I get to work to air out the towel I use at the gym, but never all four. Also, the day, as I mentioned when I set the scene for you earlier, wasn’t hot. All four windows cracked was certainly overkill on a day like that, when even in direct sunlight, a car likely wasn’t going to get all that stuffy.

                And now the last thing I noticed: but not really: There was a full-sized adult cat, white with a few black and brownish spots resting on the car’s dashboard. My mind couldn’t process what I was seeing. I reeled. The cat paid me no mind and continued lounging.

Honeymoon themes and Disney World improvement ideas revealed

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While reading through the ample fan mail this blog generates – shhh, just go with it – I noticed a few of you felt rather shortchanged by my wedding post the other week. After all, I’m the same guy who wrote so many words about selling a bass guitar he hadn’t played in years that the post had to be split in two to be manageable. Somehow that guy had put up only 150 words of vows and a paragraph of “Thank Yous” to commemorate the biggest event of his life. Well, second biggest after that time I saw “Terminator 2” on the big screen a few years ago. 35mm print. It was pretty sweet. But the wedding, definitely a stranglehold on second. By a mile.

Anyway, it was wrong and lazy of me and I apologize.  Never fear. I plan on making it up to you by giving you a full, unedited, play-by-play of the honeymoon which followed. Nothing is off limits. No snack break too uneventful to be typed up. No encounter with another human being too brief or inconsequential to be given a permanent home on the Internet. I plan on breaking down the upper atmospheric conditions which created the weather each day, demonstrating the course of each storm which threatened us with detailed, exhaustive maps.

No one will be spared. You have been warned.  

My Wedding: The Long and Epic Tale of Surgically Joining Two Lives as One

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"With this ring I ask you to be mine." It was with those words that Johnny Depp accidentally married a zombie in "The Corpse Bride." That was our first date. It wasn't the last Johnny Depp movie we watched together, which I think you're alright with, and it wasn't the last zombie movie we watched together either, which I think you're less-alright with. Sorry.

It took us ten years to get here and in that time I learned a few things. Perhaps most importantly of all, I learned that there's no one I’d rather drag to a horror movie or be dragged to a movie where people talk about their feelings by.

The good news is I promise to keep dragging you to horror movies and I hope you'll keep dragging me to your Janice movies. I promise to keep nagging you for your opinions on things even if you don't want to chime in if you’ll keep nagging me about my day. I promise never to take you for granted and to never stop thinking of you as my favorite person ever, no matter what adventures or misadventures we go off on today, tomorrow and for the rest of our lives. You’re everything I could have ever wanted and even better you’re not a zombie, so with this ring, I ask you to be mine. 

Thank you to everyone who was there yesterday, in-person or in spirit. You mean the world to us. That's kind of a cliche and it doesn't really mean all that much, but it's the closest approximation I have to how we really feel about you all. Sincerely, thank you.  

Lies and the Surprise Birthday Planners Who Tell Them (Part 2)

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(Editor's Note: Read Part 1 here ...)

 

The only answer? Call AAA. By the grace of God and Buddha and everyone else, I started carrying my phone with my when I run to track my miles. There was a time, just like two months ago, where that would not have been an option.

I called them. They gave me a 45 minute window. That would put me at about an hour before guests were supposed to arrive. Still enough time to get my shopping in and get to the adoption center, definitely not enough time to shower. Despite that, I tried to go for a run, but I couldn’t really get into it. I was too nervous. Instead I went over to a small playground and messed around on the monkey bars and stretched to pass the time.

Then I wandered the park. Multiple times. About an hour later, a full fifteen minutes late, the AAA driver pulls into the lot. I’m starting to panic at this point. My window is shrinking. He lets me into my car, asks for an ID. I go to retrieve it from the trunk and nothing. I left my ID in the pants I was wearing the night before. I own and wear far too many pants. Again by the grace of all things, he was willing to accept me knowing where I’d hidden my keys and my registration as proof that it was actually my car.