on a side note

3:42 there and back

so, while the location of the place we’re living at in michigan might not be the prettiest of locations (ie: we back up to a liquor store, mcdonalds, and dunkin donuts), it was very inexpensive, not half bad inside, and actually quite resellable, because, well, thats just how people roll here. backing up to a liquor store and a mcdonalds makes it a prime location- kind of like being near a metro stop.

but all things aside, the liquor store really is a fantastic convenience- it’s like i’m still working at the office! for example, tonight, i wanted a pepsi. now usually when someone is at home and wants a pepsi, they go in the fridge, go “damn, out of pepsi” and fall back on some old milwaukee’s best sitting behind a jar of olives in the back of the fridge. but no, not me.

when i want a pepsi, i go “yay i get to leave the house today!”, put on some pants and sandals, and walk out my door, and about 100 steps later i’m facing the sign in front of the liquor store that says “WE NOW ACCEPT FOOD STAMPS!”. great, ill keep that in mind.

next, i walk inside. i say hi to the guy at the counter, letting him know i’m a friendly, and make my way to the fridge with the pop (yes, pop, not soda, i’m back in the midwest now, bitches). i grab my pop, poppity pop pop, walk to the counter, give him $1.89 (no tax either. too bad- it would probably do some good for the state), leave the store, and make my way back around the corner, past the broken beer bottle glass, down the sidewalk, and into the little side complex where my row of townhouses are.

from start to finish it took 3 minutes, 42 seconds. less time than what it took me to pull a similar maneuver when i’d be in the office. along with that, i got to get some fresh air, use the Stopwatch feature on my iPhone, and have my once every few week sodapop-y beverage.

oh and i picked up some beer too while i was at it. 

i rarely babysit, and here's why.

last night i got to babysit for my wife Katie’s niece, Grace (i guess technically she’s my niece too, weird) for about 2 hours until Katie got off work to come help. it wasn’t just me and her though- Grace’s 12 year old brother, our nephew, Nate was there too.

in that time, we were able to accomplish the following things:

1) got Grace to believe that, once she went to sleep, that we were going to eat her. at that point she stopped pretending to be a dog, saying we didnt have to eat her anymore, but we told her we didn’t care.

2) when we were all playing, i was messing with one of Nate’s airsoft handguns. Grace was spidergirl and had to disarm me. once she took the gun, it was funny seeing her holding one. so, we took Nate’s airsoft shotgun, put some combat (safety) glasses on her), and told her to make her mean face. this is what we captured:

I had made a “You’ll shoot your eye out!” joke in the name of A Christmas Story, but neither of them got it, nor had they ever seen the movie. I’m not THAT old. And regardless of age, A Christmas Story is a classic- I was hand-crafting my own leg lamps by the time I was two years old. WTF?

We also talked a lot about poop, and how you can rub poop all over your face if you want to look like a Berenstain Bear. Good times.

All in all, I guess I had a good time with it. She’s fun, still has that young anything-goes creativity, and could care less if I fart when she’s sitting on my lap. She just laughs and returns the favor.