ahh nature. sweet, sweet nature. how you make my life complicated sometimes.

where do i begin? how about with the birds. Two weeks ago Parker and I were playing baseball in the backyard when he noticed a dead bird laying the mulch. He went to touch it, but after hearing me yell “DONT TOUCH IT!” he backed off. Then we noticed that it was barely breathing. I felt bad. This thing clearly was just about dead. I put it in a tightly tied plastic bag and hoped it would peacefully suffocate to death.

then yesterday Parker and I were playing baseball again (we do that a lot) and what do you know? another almost dead bird. i used a shovel to get rid of it (that’s all the details I’ll go into) and went on to lose 7-6 in 4 innings on a Parker walk-off home run.

Why all the dead birds? I don’t know. I’m guessing it’s a stray cat or something.

Then this morning I go out to bring in my trash cans and there are 2 robins in my garage trying to make a nest on the garage door opener like they tried to do two years ago. what is wrong with these things? Can’t they tell I don’t want them building a home IN my home?

But enough about birds, they aren’t nearly as frustrating as this rain has been. If i cancel games tonight, and I most likely will, that will mean that 19 of our last 20 league games have been canceled. It’s a scheduling nightmare that falls directly on the shoulders of the league president, which is me. Last year I had to cancel only 6 games in the regular season. I’m already tripled that and we’re not in June yet. Good times.

LOST was great last night, eh? 2 weeks until the Season Finale. Should be a memorable two hours…their season finales always are.

2 free things for your belly on Thursday:

+ DUNKIN DONUTS is giving away 1 small (16oz) Iced Coffee per customer. Offer valid from 10am to 10pm on May 15th, only at participating stores.

+ McDonald’s is giving away a free Southern Style Chicken Biscuit (7am-1030am) or Southern Style Chicken Sandwich (1030am-7pm) on May 15th (with purchase of a medium or large drink). This new chicken sandwich is supposed to taste like Chik-Fil-A’s chicken sandwiches, but I’ll believe that when I taste it.

kylie is always bringing home these ridiculous little jokes that kids have said for generations. you know the ones…

jingle bells, batman smells, robin laid an egg…

or

i bet i can spell mississippi with one ‘i’ (eye)…

or

trick or treat, smell my feet…

It’s only a matter of time before someone tells her that ADIDAS stands for “All Day I Dream About Sex” and that ADIDAS backwards, SADIDA, is “Sex After Dinner is Definitely Alright”. (I’m assuming you’ve heard those, right?) Let’s hope that’s not for a few years…like, ten years…but it’s bound to happen soon. These jokes survive like Keith Richards. They’re more resilient than the flu.

Who carries these foolish things on from generation to generation? Surely it’s not us parents, is it? Though not every parent is a good parent, I think it’s safe to say that most parents aren’t teaching these antiquated (and sometimes dirty) jokes to their kids. Even bad parents don’t teach dirty jokes to their kids, right?

No, the problem, I think, is sibling hand-me-downs. You’ve got a sister in 5th grade who heard the jokes from her older brother, and now she is telling them to her younger brother, who is in 2nd grade. The second grader doesn’t really know what sex is, but it sounds funny, and his sister thinks it’s funny, so he repeats it to his classmates. A few years later, when one of the classmates he told is in 5th grade, that kid will share the joke with his 3rd grade sister, who will eventually share the joke with her younger sister, and the foolishness will live on.

Do I think this is a huge problem that must be stopped?* Of course not. It’s kind of amusing, actually. I love the look on Kylie’s face when she brings a joke home, only to find that I already know the punchline. “How did you know that?” she’ll say. “Because I invented ’step on a crack and break your mother’s back’!” I’ll say.

*For the record, if you wanted to stop this chain from continuing on to eternity, all you’d need to is put a ban on couples reproducing for 8-10 years. That should provide enough of a gap for the jokes to die, as no self-respecting 16-year old is going to go through the trouble of teaching grade school jokes to their 6-yr old brother. But such a ban would probably have some other side effects on the economy and our culture as a whole, so I don’t think I’ll push for it.

The next time you drive by an elementary school, slow down a bit (i mean, slower than you were already driving because you were in a school zone of course). If you look really close you might see the ghosts of terrible jokes floating around the playground like ghouls in a graveyard. If you roll down your window you might even hear them. “What’s black and white and red all over?”

Just don’t stop and stare at the kids playing. That will probably get you arrested.

After 8 years of playing golf with the same crappy set of irons I bought on ebay for $59 from some dude in Florida who made them himself I finally took the plunge.

I went to Golf Galaxy the other day and got fitted for some new irons. Turns out that based on my height, arm length, and swing, i didn’t need any alterations made to the clubs. I hit some Calloway X-18s, but for some reason the ball was coming off of them with too low of a launch angle. The King Cobra FPs were better, but the set came with a 3 iron and not a hybrid. I hit the Nike Ignites as well as the Cobras, and the set came with the 3-Hybrid. Not to mention they were $100 cheaper than the Cobras.

SOLD.

I’ll put these things to test next thursday at the Charity Tournament I’m playing in, if not sooner.