Mild Amusement

A while back, my extended family and I started a fantasy football league . The first two weeks alone were full all of sorts of shenanigans, and that prompted me to write a blog post about it. Well, it's been a lot longer than two weeks, and I thought I should report out on how it all turned out. First of all, my sister in law won the whole thing. Yup, I called it and/or jinxed myself back with that very first post. As it turned out, the stars aligned in the right way so that she won. Mind you, she was really getting into it, so I was amused the whole way through. I remember getting text messages in the middle of football games, and she definitely kept track of which team was playing at which time. That alone was amusing, but the contrast with her past record of hating (her word, not mine) football was what really put it over the top. It was hilarious to watch. Now, the other thing to keep in mind was that there were two married couples in the running. I hadn't really though...

Since I am around a fair number of munchkins, I am a part of their dealings. I play with them, I read to them, and I teach them stuff. Basically, I am just another part of their world. That's great, but it comes with all of the other trappings of their worlds, too. That involves playing by their rules, and abiding by their justice system, too. Essentially, it's possible for one of them to tell on me . And if I'm just lucky enough, this will happen with more than one kid, on more than one occasion (hint: I am that lucky). Let's start with the part that's my fault: I will occasionally stick out my tongue at one of the little kids. It's all in fun, and it's more like a game than anything else (think Peek-a-boo). In fact, they always laugh about it. It's not a malicious thing, even though we know it's not something you're supposed to do in polite company. Still, it was just one of those things that I do, and everyone has a good laugh about it. Re...

Last time on this Bat-channel , I mentioned that the Mild Girlfriend and I spent some time in Colorado a few weeks back.  We managed to get some fun pictures, though I also managed to scratch up my hand and bang up my knee. Still, our trip was not all about hiking and injuries. No, there was a beanie involved, too. First off, let me start off by explaining that a good friend of mine recently had a son. It was his second son, in fact. Since I've known him for so long, he's met my parents, and they're somewhat fond of him. So, when my mom heard that he was having a kid, she was really happy for him. In fact, she was so happy about this turn of events that she dedicated some time to making the newborn a beanie, baby clothes, and baby booties. Yes, I said "make;" she crocheted all of these things. My buddy and his wife were quite thrilled with the gift(s), and I even heard his wife comment that she wished they still fit the older son at one point. Basically, it wa...

Over the winter break, the Mild Girlfriend and I spent some time hanging out with family in Colorado. I don't head out that way as often as I would like, so it was good to see folks. However, the trip was not without its drawbacks. As it turns out, it's possible to hurt yourself on vacation, when you least expect it. On one of the warmer days, we decided to take a stroll through Garden of the Gods , in Colorado Springs. Sure, it was cold, but it wasn't snowing, nor was it freezing outside. All in all, we figured it'd be fine to walk through the park. There were a bunch of other people there, too, so we couldn't have been too wrong (either that, or we were all suffering from mass hysteria). Regardless, for all that it has an impressive sounding name, the Garden of the Gods park is mostly just some flat walking. There are lots of really, really tall rocks and peaks, but none of us were trained climbers. That was out of the question, especially in that weather. How...

My sister has always liked playing softball. She used to play in high school, and she still likes to go to the batting cages every now and again. Given that, her husband decided that it'd be a really nice gift to give her a batting cage of her own. Better yet, he wanted to surprise her with a batting cage. Oh, the hilarity that that decision led to. First off, she has access to all of the credit card and bank account information that he does. So if he had just ordered it all on the credit card, she would have noticed. The gift wasn't a ridiculous price or anything like that, but she would have noticed if there was a charge that she didn't talk to him about. That meant that the first order of business was to find someone who could purchase the gift on his behalf. He would pay that person back, of course, but it just couldn't be his credit card or his bank account. My brother and I both volunteered to fulfill this role, figuring that we'd be useful in the proce...

A while back, the Mild Girlfriend and some of her friends wanted to go to a sunrise ceremony on Alcatraz. The problem, however, was that they all lived far enough away that they'd have to drive a fair bit just to get there. This was a sunrise ceremony, so they would've had to arrive at the crack of dawn. This sounded appealing to very few of them, so instead, they decided to crash nearby. Specifically, they crashed with us. I should also mention that both the Mild Girlfriend and her crew had occasionally lamented that they didn't have access to good restaurants. Well, that was a problem that I could remedy. I don't know all of the newest, hippest spots in town, but I can certainly point people to decent food. So, we went out to dinner at one of these spots the night before. Put it this way: one of them asked if she could have her birthday dinner AND her graduating-from-college dinner there. I figure we did all right with the selection. Now, the other bit of perti...

A while back, I helped the Mild Girlfriend move. Luckily, we had plenty of time to do so, so we were able to move all of her stuff with just our two cars. We also made more than one trip, spread out over a couple of weekends. All in all, it wasn't the worst move I've seen. It took time, but that's just how that goes. During the last weekend, we had to make one last push to get everything done. She had to be out of the apartment by about 11AM, and we'd parked the cars in a zone that ended up becoming commercial parking around 8AM. Since we wanted to be on the road by about that time anyway, that wasn't much of a problem. However, it did mean that we got up pretty early to pack the last of the stuff into our cars. Like I said, it wasn't horrible, but it just meant a lot more movement than most people are used to at that hour. We did get out of there when we expected to, but the process had a very unexpected consequence: I tore my pants. Even now, I have no ide...