Why I Oughta...

Back in May, Nat and I joined some of our closest friends (and family!) at Solemn Oath Brewery's "2015 Oath Day " - which was a celebration for their third anniversary.    We had a great time with some good beer (and one bad one!  One of the 'tea' ones was terrible!), lots of laughs and a new appreciation for what it takes to grow a brewery from scratch to a major regional player. The folks at Solemn Oath bill Oath Day as "Arcades, Beer, Vans, Babes, Motocycles, DJ, Miniramp".   From their site : There’s no need to dress up, but Oath Day 2015 will rock a not-so-subtle ’80s vibe. Again we’ll be skipping out on long lines and obnoxious crowds in favor of closing down for the day and opening up as much of our entire facility as we can, including a massive chunk of the parking lot and brewery. Oath Day is Saturday, May 16th, and here are the details. Again this year we’ll have two sessions and there will be even more room to spread your wings. We’ll h

Last week, we received the latest quarterly issue of the D23 fan magazine. In addition to the regular magazine, we received this #Fanniversary kit featuring items to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of Disney's Lady and the Tramp .  There was a background from "Tony's Restaurant" (which you can see in the photos on this post) as well as some 'punch-out' cardboard props. We set up the background in our living room and the girls took over.  After putting all the props on sticks, they hamm'ed it up for the camera.  The Bird loved the mustache (or...'moo-stache' as she calls it) and The Babe wanted to try ALL of them. Here's a shot of all the props.  You can see the mustache, but there were also some fun Lady/Tramp-related prop like the accordion and dog bone. The D23 folks also included this instruction card: We're (obviously) Disney nuts, but the girls really loved this D23 Fanniversary stuff and said they can't wait for

I just peeked down at the total number of posts right here on the blog and noticed that although we're just in the sixth month of the year, 2015 has become the #4 in terms of ranking of total number of posts.  I took this screenshot you see above from the right rail of the blog.  If you're reading this on your mobile phone, you're likely seeing this either in your email or the mobile version of the site, so you can't see the sidebar.  You can click "view on the web" at the bottom of the mobile version if you'd care to see the archives.  Or...just trust me that the screenshot above is all you need to see?!? There's certainly no talk about ranking in terms of quality over the years, but we're just talking quantity here.  Total number of blog posts. Back in 2012 and 2013, I had back-to-back years of writing a post every.single.day.of.the.year .  Then things dropped off in 2013 and 2014.  With the advent of Medium and Facebook and the various ot

Looks like a little typo slipped past the editor of the Menards O Gauge Train 'stuff' advertisement that they're running in Classic Toy Trains.  And...yes...let's get this out of the way:  I am a subscriber to said magazine.  Painful and nerdy; yes it is. But, if you look on the Menards' site, you see that they call out/spell O Gauge the right way with the 'u' in there.  Was it a space issue?  Could they not fit in the 'u' in the green box?  Or just sloppy editing?  I'm guessing the later. As an aside...I used to keep a blog that highlighted things like this (typos) in the political world.  Boy...those were the days.

As seen on the 'to-go' cup I was given at Egg Harbor recently is this new slimmed-down/modernish logo and font setup featuring an egg and a reflection of the egg.  Are the Rooster's days numbered in terms of serving as the icon/symbol of Egg Harbor Cafe?  Perish the thought. We *love* Egg Harbor.  Our family of five goes there just about every week for breakfast and the kids love everything about the dining experience - even though they got rid of the little rubber ducks!

The mulch is all spread out and set up in the front, back and sideyards.  Nothing looks (or smells!) better than day one of new mulch in your landscape beds.  Seven yards of the stuff this year.  There's a bunch of grades of mulch and for the first time we went a click up the chart from mid-grade to one higher.  Not quite the most premium stuff, but better than the grade of mulch we normally get which contains some larger chips and not as fine. Here's the post from 2013 featuring the mulch. And here's the post - and video - of the mulch arriving back in 2011 .

I picked this guy up at a garage sale recently.  The Babe and I went to a few of them one morning and didn't find much at all.  At this last stop, I spent some time talking to the guy who was selling his stuff and stumbled across the box of his old Christmas stuff.  Buried, deep in the bottom of the box was this little guy.  With two skis and just one pole.  For some reason, he's wearing a "25" bib - which I suspect might be his price tag?  I didn't try to peel it off. I pulled it out of the box and asked the guy how much?  He gave it to us for free!  Well...gave it to us is a nice way of saying that if we didn't rescue this guy from the bottom of the box, he was destined for the garbage can.  What a shame that would have been, right?  He'll go great next to the rest of our collection of little vintage Santas, I think.  He'll add a bit of 'sporty-ness' to the group.

We Americans load our homes and kitchens with uni-taskers .  At Menards last week, I spotted this "Melon Splitter" for just $4.99.  What is a melon splitter?  It is a device that slices your water melon into 12 equal slices.  That is - as long as it fits inside this contraption. This thing is HUGE.  You'd have to live in a really big McMansion with a really big kitchen to be willing and able to store this thing for the 3 or 4 times you'd use it every year. As you can guess, after mocking this thing in store, I had a moment of weakness where I actually thought about taking it off the hook and sticking it in my cart.  Fortunately, sanity overcame me and we left without this gadget.

It was earlier this year that I posted about my "Africa" badge that marked the 5K mile mark from FitBit , but this week, this note landed in my inbox. Meaning, I've gone 500 miles in the past five months.  100 miles/month = average about 3 miles/day. All in?  5,500 miles through two devices over three-plus years.  Quantified Self FTW.

Found this guy 64 floors up when I arrived at the office this week.  Not sure what he is, but he's not afraid of heights it seems.