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+ i wrote up a blog entry for the Burnside Writers Blog that details the latest battle that Erica and I waged on the mini golf course. I think you’ll like it. (if you do, leave a comment there, eh?)

+ the trip i was planning on taking to Nashville next month to liveblog the Release Week of Caedmon’s Call’s new album Overdressed, was canceled. I was bummed, but not surprised. Then i get an email this morning telling me that it is back on, only it looks like I’ll be heading to Houston now instead. More on this when i get more details…

+ a few weeks ago i finally went to the dermatologist after years of prodding from Erica. I’ve got quite a few moles (or ‘beauty spots’ as my mom calls them) on my body, especially on my back. The mole she was mainly concerned about on my stomach was fine, but the dermatologist wanted to biopsy 3 moles on my back that looked suspicious to him. One came back OK, one came back as atypical, and one came back as a probable melanoma. the doc informed me that he wanted to remove the latter two, so yesterday i went in and had the melanoma mole taken out. Despite being in situ, they have to be sure the skin surrounding the mole is cancer-free, so they take a margin of skin around it, and a whole bunch more skin so that it sews back together real nice. the result is that my back is pretty sore today with 17 stitches holding together a 2.5-inch incision on my back. i’ll find out next week if the margin of skin was cancer free, and the week after i’ll have the atypical mole removed (which will be a much smaller incision…no skin margin). Erica, being the wonderful wife that she is, has not played the ‘I told you so’ card more than a couple times since we found out. In this case, though, I’m pretty glad she did tell me so. thanks, honey.

About a month ago I had the idea to start a blog up with a funny fellow named Chad Gibbs. I met Chad in Alabama last October through the Don Miller connection. Chad has written a handful of pieces for the Burnside Writer’s Collective, and when i was down in Birmingham to hear Don speak Chad and i got to meet for a bit before the show. Since then Chad and i have kept in touch somewhat regularly, mostly chatting about writing, golf, and how i don’t care a whole lot about college football.

So anyway, Chad’s an extremely talented writer of humorous things, and I thought a joint blog venture would be a good idea. He agreed (well, he didn’t say no at least) and so I told him I would get it going. Fast forward a month to this week (i still hadn’t started up our blog) when i see that the Burnside Writers have started up a blog and that Chad is writing for that one as well. I was crushed and heartbroken, but he assured me that like Bill Paxson in “Big Love”, he could split his time fairly between more than one entity.

I quickly built the blog and emailed Jordan over at Burnside to tell him about it (which i had titled “Chad and Bryan Save the World”) and to ask him to link to us, and he said “just join up with us”. and so i did. I’m easy that way.

All that to say that you should add the Burnside Writers’ Blog to your feed reader or bookmarks because not only will I be posting there from time to time, but also you’ll get some insightful and amusing commentary from the likes of Chad Gibbs, Jordan Green, Susan Isaacs, Aaron Donley, Penny Carothers, Ariele Gentiles, and some guy named Robert who (i think) writes music reviews for Relevant and HM.

Should be a good time. Here’s my first post.

+ My Dad and my Uncle Tom finished first in their division in the annual July Invitational Golf Tournament at the Fall River Country Club last weekend, earning them a spot in the Finals. According to my dad, they “played like crap” in the Finals, but i guess that gives them something to shoot for next year. Congrats, dad!

+ I thought this table was pretty interesting. It lists out a whole slew of liquid beverages and gives you the caffeine in milligrams for each. click on the “mg/oz” column header to sort by potency. some interesting ones: Coke Classic and Coke Zero: 2.88 mg/oz, Mountain Dew: 4.58 mg/oz, McD’s coffee: 9.06 mg/oz, Starbucks Coffee: 23.25 mg/oz, regular drip coffee: 18.13 mg/oz, Jolt Cola: 9.36 mg/oz, Monster Energy Drink: 8.75 mg/oz.

+ Best.Thing.Ever.Alert: Google Mobile Texts. For those of us without iPhones who need info from the internet but cant get access, maybe now you can. You can text simple searches to Google (466453) and get results back to your phone. I’ve used it 4 times in the last few weeks and it is brilliant. it’s like having the internet on your phone, but not paying cingular the $40 stinking bucks a month they want. you can even preview the service using your computer to see how it works. i’ve used it so far to get the weather report, check the score on the red sox game, get a directory listing for a golf course, get directions to that golf course, and to get a movie time. Color me impressed.

+ With Dan Patrick leaving ESPN Radio, I’ll cast my vote for his replacement as Eric Kuselius. Eric did the Sports Bash show on ESPN during my commute home for many years and I came to love his insightful commentary, his enthusiasm for sports, and they way he did his job. I’ve missed him since he went to do NASCAR Now for ESPN TV. (His replacement John Seibel grates on me like nails on a chalkboard, i can’t take him). If Eric takes Dan’s place as the 1pm-4pm host on ESPN Radio, it will become appointment listening for me while I’m at work. The only other person who would do that for me would be if Tony Kornheiser came back.

+ Big Brother 8 has been enjoyable as always in its first week. I have one suggestion for them to improve the show however. They need to fix the Power of Veto. It’s still broken. There’s very little incentive for anyone to ever use it, because doing so usually puts you at odds with those in power in the house. Here’s my suggestion on how to fix it. There needs to be a veto bank. At the beginning of the show, stock the veto bank with $2000. If whoever wins the first veto chooses to NOT to use it, $2000 is added to the veto bank for the next time. This continues until someone uses the Power of Veto, at which point they win all of the money in the Veto Bank. Then the bank goes back down to $2000 (or whatever value works better as a starting point) and it starts all over again. Like i said, there’s just not enough incentive for folks to use the Veto right now, and tugging at their wallets and purses with a little cash would make Tuesday nights so much more interesting. what do you think, geof?

+ An alarm clock that wakes you up without noise? Sounds good to me. you put those rings on your finger and they vibrate to wake you up (and not the other person in your bed). pretty cool, i say.

+ going golfing today…woot!