The Blog: Laments From La Mancha

I’m not quite sure how to take this, but my wife sent this to me this morning. I guess she thought I would get a kick out of it

SEND THIS TO SMART WOMEN WHO NEED A
LAUGH AND TO MEN YOU THINK CAN HANDLE IT !

WOMAN’S PERFECT BREAKFAST

She’s sitting at the table with her gourmet coffee.
Her son is on the cover of the Wheaties box.
Her daughter is on the cover of Business Week.
Her boyfriend is on the cover of Playgirl.
And her husband is on the back of the milk carton.

WOMEN’S REVENGE

“Cash, check or charge?” I asked, after folding items the woman wished to purchase.

As she fumbled for her wallet I noticed a remote control for a television set in
her purse.

“So, do you always carry your TV remote?” I asked.

“No,” she replied, ” but my husband refused to come shopping with me,
and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally.”

UNDERSTANDING WOMEN

(A MAN’S PERSPECTIVE)

I know I’m not going to understand women.
I’ll never understand how you can take boiling hot wax, pour it onto your upper thigh, rip the hair out by the root, and still be afraid of a
spider.

MARRIAGE SEMINAR

While attending a Marriage Seminar dealing with communication, Tom and his wife Grace listened to the instructor, “It is essential that husbands and wives know each other’s likes and dislikes.”

He addressed the man, “Can you name your wife’s favorite
flower?”

Tom leaned over, touched his wife’sarm gently and whispered, “It’s Pillsbury, isn’t it?

WIFE VS. HUSBAND

A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word.

An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position.

As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically, “Relatives of yours?”

“Yep,” the wife replied, “in-laws.”

W O R D S

A husband read an article to his wife about how many words women use a day…
30,000 to a man’s 15,000.

The wife replied, “The reason has to be because we have to repeat everything to men…”

The husband then turned to his wife and asked, “What?”

CREATION
A man said to his wife one day, “I don’t know how you can be so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.”

The wife responded, “Allow me to explain. God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me; God made me stupid so I would be
attracted to you!”

WHO DOES WHAT

A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee each morning.

The wife said, “You should do it, because you get up first, and then we don’t have to wait as long to get our coffee.”

The husband said, ” You are in charge of cooking around here and you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee.”

Wife replies, “No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee.”

Husband replies, “I can’t believe that, show me.”

So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says……….”HEBREWS”

THE SILENT TREATMENT

A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment.

Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper, “Please wake me at 5:00 AM.”

He left it where he knew she would find it.

The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it as 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight.

Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn’t wakened him, when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, “It is 5:00
AM. Wake up.”

Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests.
God may have created man before woman,
but there is always a rough draft before the
masterpiece.

Who knows.. they made me smile. Especially the spider one

Game night turned into a huge T & E fest.

While Jim was missed (thus keeping us from having two games going on at the same time), we managed to squeeze in two plays.

The first round battle was joined by Tim, Brian, Bobby & Jon, while I played cube master and rule book guy.

Tim dug in well to the upper right hand corner of the board, Bobby took the upper left, Jon camped just below the river to Tim’s South and Brian setup his kingdom in the middle (hoping to the deploy the Soulliere Central Attack).

Tim decide to strike first and hit Jon hard to the south, however Tim under estimated his attack strength as well the order in which the battles should be resolved. As a result Jon took the first battle and shattered Tim’s well developing kingdom. The rest of Tim’s leaders fell quickly and left Jon sitting on the high ground.

The growing menace to the east was enough to cause Brian to go into panic mode (which I have no idea why he only had his blue leader out and waited nearly a 1/3 of the game before finally deciding to bring his king into play). As a result Brian broke out a disaster tile and arbitrarily dropped it somewhere in Jon’s kingdom in an effort to keep him from getting the southern most treasure. To Brian’s credit that did indeed keep Jon from going after that treasure and it remained undisturbed the rest of the game.

A battle began to brew in the north as Bobby’s kingdom started to expand in a strong sweeping black cloud towards the center.

Tim began to piece his kingdom back together slowly capturing small ground through out the area as well as causing internal strife within Jon’s solid right hand corner.

Brain seemed to forget every that he had learned from his last win and seemed to be lashing out at all the kingdoms around him like a pinwheel of death. However, the only destruction that Brian seemed to bring was to his own people.

The maelstrom had been delayed as long as it could and battles began to erupt from all sides. More disaster tiles fell breaking and re-breaking long standing empires. A feeding frenzy began over a monument that Bobby had created in the north central plains.

But the end of the game Tim had managed to completely dislodge Jon from his mighty throne, but sadly it proved to be too little too late.

The first game went to Jon, followed by Tim, Bobby and Brian.

My initial thought was to move on to something else, but the group was hungry for another playing.

This time Brian decided to sit out and be cube master (though as he got involved in watching the game unfold – and rooting on others to destroy me I might add – he started to neglect some of his duties).

So Jon, Tim, Bobby and I headed once more into the breach so to speak.

After all the trash talk and advice I offered before, during, and after the last game (as well as my avid playing of this game online) I knew that I was a target right away. So I made sure I played a very clean game.

I don’t have as detailed account of this game as I did the first one because I was involved in it. A lot of my free time was spent taking a look at my tiles and what I needed to do to get what I wanted.

One of the keys to T & E is to know when to loose a battle. Sometimes its in your best interest to loose and make another person waste titles where they don’t need to; because in the end, it can come down to just 1 cube between a win and a lost.

That’s how this game broke down. After some powerful battles and Tim having to step out at 9:30 things went down to the wire.

I managed to pull out the win with a score of 9 – 9 – 9 – 9 and Bobby came in second with an 8 – 8 – 9 – 9. Tim and Jon both tied at 5 with Tim having the edge over Jon.

If you’re a board gamer and you haven’t sunk your teeth into this game you really need to give it a try.

Okay, this is 100% ripped off from my buddy Gaines Blog:

LOST and the Periodic Table

Calling all science geeks and fans of LOST. I have a question.

We re-watched the first few minutes of the LOST season premiere last night and I noticed that the bottle of liquid the guy in the opening montage injected himself with had the numbers 4-8-15-16-23-42 on the label.

Here’s my thought– what if they stand for elements on the Periodic Table? What if the solution is made up of those 6 elements? So, my question to all who are much more knowledgable than me about these things is: what would happen if you put all these elements together? Here they are in order:

4 — Beryllium
8 — Oxygen
15 — Phosphorus
16 — Sulfur
23 — Vanadium
42 — Molybdenum

(Molybdenum was always my favorite element name to say. I used to remember to spell it correctly by thinking of “Moly B. Denum”)

I know all LOST theories are far-fetched. I thought I’d just throw mine into the mix. Maybe there is some sort of crazy scientific experiment where they test this formula on people and the remaining 45 survivors are going to be new subjects? Or already have been? We know that these numbers have been circulated since at least as far back as WWII, when those army guys first picked up the signal before they went insane. What would these elements create? What would it do to someone if there were large amounts in your bloodstream?

I don’t read the messageboards or anything so I haven’t seen this idea or theory before, but if it has already been shot down please let me know. Or feel free to shoot it down yourself. It’s all in good fun, anyway. I’m not obsessed, I tell you!

I thought it was pretty clever (dang it, now I have to go back and watch that episode and look for those numbers) and pass it along to the rest of you and see what your thoughts were.

Way to go Gaines!

This morning’s Real Life Comic hit me right where I lived.

After the boys left on Saturday night, Michelle and I spent much of our weekend catching on up LOST, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica.

For those folks who aren’t avid watchers of the SciFi biggies (as I like to call them), their season starts in mid-July and runs until the end of September. From there they take a 3 month break and start up again in January to finish out the rest of their “season”.

All I can say is UGH!

Three awesome shows all ended with big cliff hangers that left you wanting for more.

I’ve said this one, and I’ll say it again. Battlestar Galactica is one of the best shows on TV right now hands down. Heck, I don’t even care if you’re not a fan of Sci-fi. It’s just that good.

Every new television season brings with it a host of new shows all doing their best to keep (or steal) your attention.

Most of them are flops. Crappy rehashes of shows that were actually good. Last year there were a few stand outs for me that I’m still totally hooked on:

Lost – Enough said. If you aren’t watching this you should be. No excuses, it’s not even on cable. Go, get the DVDs of the first season, and watch this season.

Battlestar Galactica – Again, in my humble opinion, probably one of the best shows on TV right now. It just keeps getting better.

Numb3rs – I really dug this show. I was sad they didn’t use a lot of math in it, but they started picking that up more towards the end.

Aside from those three (Oh, make that 4, you cannot forget House, I despite what others may thing – and you know who you are – it’s a great show), I think those were the only shows I really dug from last seasons offerings. This September isn’t shaping up a whole lot better. Of the new shows that I’ve been able to take in thus far, it’s been a 50/50 split on thumbs up and thumbs down.

In the total waste of time bin:

War at Home. Ugh. Total waste of time, and the canned laughter isn’t even very convincing.

Bones. Oh, I wish I could be a CSI wanna be show too. Oh wait, it already is. Its fine if you want to copy show, but at least be just as good or better.

In the I’m liking things so far bin:

How I Met Your Mother. This show is kinda like a reverse Wonder Years. It takes place in 2030 and is a father telling the story to his two kids of how he met their mother 25 years ago. It was fun, tense, and not a bad way to spend 30 minutes. Toss in Doogie Howser and man, you’ve got hit brewing.

My Name is Earl. Hello!? Jason Lee. I mean honestly do you need to say anything more? Here’s a little snippet from the about section for the show’s website :

Before Earl can begin his journey, his inevitable attraction to misfortune surfaces once again. Seconds after winning the lottery, he is hit by a car and while unconscious; the winning lottery ticket blows away. While in the hospital, Earl watches “Last Call with Carson Daly” where Carson says that his success is a direct result of doing good things for other people. It is at that moment Earl discovers karma- and in hope of a better life, he sets out to correct every bad thing he’s ever done starting with a grade school geek, Kenny, who Earl used to pick on.

Carson Daly says, “Do good things, and good things happen to you. Do bad things and it’ll come back to haunt you.”

In a word: Karma.

As in intellectual, the concept of karma is one that appeals to me. The idea that there is some massive cosmic balance sheet; for every dollar I invest, I get one back. For any of you long term readers you’ll know that I have a strong sense of Justice, right, wrong and balance; the good or down trodden should be lifted up and the bad or self serving should be brought low. I hope that if you’re a good person and you do good things that good things will happen to you. If you’re a low-life, problem causing, gossiping, lying, self-serving evil scum hopefully a weighty object will fall from a great height and squish you to the insignificant thickness of your soul.

But as a Christian, I am compelled to see things a bit differently.

I know that I have done enough bad in this world that I cannot make up for it with money or deeds. That there is no way I can pay my debt to society.

I know that the rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Good things happen to bad people.

Bad things happen to good people.

Evil, for the moment, sometimes triumphs.

Life isn’t always fair.

Often times you do indeed get just what you deserve.

It is hard sometimes for people (myself included) to wrestle with why God allows the things to happen the way the do. “God, how can you be a loving, kind God and allow this terrible thing to happen to my life?” We in the church have a tendency to toss out, “Well John Smith, we live in a fallen world, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But those words bring no hope, no comfort and sadly no answers.

For life to make sense for me, I have to believe that what God says is true. That he does have plans for me, that all things do work together for the good of those who love and serve God. If not, then life just breaks down. When the storm comes, when the flood seeks to swallow, you have nothing to cling to.

The bad times will come.

Life will be hard. You will feel like you are on the verge of snapping. You will feel like your world is just one straw away from crumbling down to its very foundations.

Sometimes that’s right where you’ll find yourself.

But its right then that you’ll find yourself. Who you really are, what you’re really made of, what you believe in and the kind of person you are.

Again, even if you don’t buy into all this religion stuff, you have to have some hope greater yourself. If not, what keeps from just sitting down and dying? What causes you to pick up your feet and keeping going?

I do believe in a balance sheet. I do believe that I can store up for myself treasures, but its not in this life, not in this world.

I know I cannot pay my own tab. I am just thankful that someone else already has. My job here in life is do what I can for others. Not because I can fulfill my debt, but because I am grateful that it has already been taken care of.

All that aside, if you take nothing else away from this prattling, watch, “My name is Earl.”