Pop the Champagne! It's Celebration Time!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Stuff

I have a bit of a dirty secret that I'm now going to share with you. For the past couple of weeks, I've been cheating on you. I know, I know. Where's the trust, eh, blogosphere? It's just that, every so often, I come across your chest a blog that is spectacular enough, I become--for the lack of a better term--infatuated. I read. And then I get bored because the author only updates once a day, yet the author drips with such a profound exceptionality that I want, nay, need more. The only way to get said fix is to dig through the archives.

This has happened recently.

People, I want you to meet Kristine. She's over there, waiting in the van. Now, originally, I caught a glimpse of her in someone's comments and thought "Holy shit! That looks like my attractive friend, Kristine! I better check this shizz out." Well, it turns out that she isn't my attractive friend Kristine. However, she's now my new attractive friend Kristine! She's smart, she's funny, she puts stuff on her kids' heads and takes pictures, she hates her asshole cats, and, like me, she is a MASTER--or will be someday soon. Unlike me, she will be a MASTER in a field where she can get a job in ten years, whereas I'll be living under a bridge, reciting the periodic table and cursing the far east.

While she's as sarcastic and foul-mouthed as they come *dreamy sigh*, apparently her former blog is even more foul-mouthed, even more sarcastic, and even funnier. Alas, it remains hidden, and since I at least pay lip service to people's desires to remain as anonymous as the internet allows, I have gone looking for it. However, I'm sure it was fantastic, like the Lord of the Rings acted out by ninjas and stuff.

Because awesome oozes from every pore on her body, she's recognized the content and character of this blog with a fabulous award. Behold, the James Frey Award!
She's right, you know. 95% of the stuff here is bullshit. The other 5% is dick jokes and Leelee Sobieski pictures.

So, join Kristine in her van. She drives it around, wanted by the government, and serving as a soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find her, maybe you can hire Kristine to put shit on your kids' heads and take pictures.

Now, Gwentabulous over at Everything I Like Causes Cancer, posted a picture of her naughties yesterday. I'd say "unmentionables", but since I provided a link to the story, that pretty much supersedes "unmentioning", doesn't it?

Anyway, her challenge for today was to not tell a story revolving around shit, semen, sex or something else gross that starts with 's' (hooray alliteration!). Jesus, Gwen, you just knocked out 95% of my arsenal. Good thing I was planning on publically felating Kristine. Wait...

Gwen's challenge was to have us post pictures of our favorite sleeping shirts. I received mine rather recently. So recent, in fact, that it still carries the sweet, sweet smell of victory. Behold, the TRIVIA SHIRT!

Oh, oh, that's not the TRIVIA SHIRT you were expecting, is it? No, my friends. See, I won this shirt the other night when I went to Trivia Night at a local bar with the Comely and Buxom and Ailurophobic Boudicca and her friends from work. See, they had a three-round trivia contest (we placed third), but in between the contests were special mini contests. Do you want to know the question I answered correctly and quickly?

"What disease takes it's name from the Latin for 'bad air;?"

The answer, of course, is "malaria". I emboldened a couple of parts. Since you're here every Friday morning learning conjugations and shit, you know I'm all about the Latin. However, you probably didn't know that I'm all about the tropical diseases. It's true. I work on a "neglected disease" program at my company. I don't want to brag too much--especially since none of my compounds have done shit to the parasite--but we've pretty much taken Sleeping Sickness by the balls, swung it around the room a couple of times, kicked it in the grundle, and then, for good measure, while it's lying there on the floor, we've whipped it out and pissed right in its battered and beaten face. AWESOME!!!

Also, the person who introduced me to Yuengling, that sweet, nectarous lager from Eastern Pennsylvania, reads this blog and I wanted to taunt him with my victory. I'm expecting an email shortly that will read something like "Bastard."

I Was Right

Do you guys know what I like? Well, yes, boobs. And butts. Oh, and legs. Don't forget college basketball. And bacon. Sweet, sweet bacon. *drools Homer-style*

Sorry, got off course. Helmsman! You're fired.

While I like all of the aforementioned--some, a little too much *slaps belly*--one of the things I like most is being right. If you go back and read the last paragraph of my previous post, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I'm going to backtrack a little here. When my sister died in September of 1997, I was a sophomore in college. Now, I went to a small, midwestern Catholic college where the community was fairly tight-knit. Yeah, there were some douchebags who went to school there, but most of the people there were good, kindhearted people. I learned this the "hard" way. My aunt and uncle got the call on that Tuesday morning with the news about my sister and they sped off to St. Joe's to pick me up and bring me back home. My school was only a few miles up the road from Purdue, where my cousin Scott attended. My aunt and uncle had often said they might pop in to visit me on their way to visit Scott, so I thought nothing of it when I saw them in the hallway in front of the cafeteria. Of course, a couple minutes later, I knew why they had come.

Being that it was a small school and fairly tightly-knit, and that the news was delivered to me in the cafeteria, people knew something was up. I finally found the strength to drag myself to the computer lab to email my professors and let them know I would be gone for a few days--bawling the whole way, despite the fact that I have this illusion about myself that I'm the emotional rock that others can cling to during a storm. Apparently, while I was in the computer lab, the news spread as to why I had been reduced to tears like that and...wow...the caring outreach that was offered by people I hardly knew and--guiltily--didn't really like struck me hard. Every person who came up and offered kind words or a hug or offered to help in any capacity caused me to choke up once more. In fact, I'm a little choked up now.

The reason why I tell you this is because I had the exact same reaction whenever I got a new email telling me that one of you, dear readers, had the same effect. I knew it would. I knew you all would be absolutely as kind and wonderful as you were. And still, it choked me up to no end.

Thank you. Thank you all. That's all I can say. I would go back and thank each and every one of you personally...but let's be honest here. You know I'm lazy. Plus, it'd be really boring to say "Thank you" 30 times. Just, please, know that I am eternally grateful to all of you, but, best of all...I was right about you all. And that made me happy.

The funeral for little John McMillan was today. My wife read at the funeral, and she said it was one of the hardest thing's she's ever had to do. Couple that with the fact that she is coming off a nasty cold, and her voice is pretty hoarse, to the point where she sounded like a teenage boy going through puberty. I told her if things got too bad, she could just bust out with "When it's time to change, you've got to rearrange." For some strange reason, she declined...not sure what was going on there. I guess the funeral was beautiful and awful at the same time--beautiful because it was so well done, and awful because he was a baby. So, now we're all going to begin the coping process knowing that he's in a better place now where he doesn't have to suffer any longer.

So, once again, thank you all. You're the best friends a blogger could hope to find and please know that your kind words and prayers and thoughts were received warmly and that they made me feel better over the past couple of days. Tomorrow, I'll try to get things back to normalcy around here.