best desk toy ever

this is on someone's desk at work. awesome.

i was surfing on hulu.com and i found these awesome sesame street clips.

enjoy!

martians and clock



monsterpiece theatre - the king and i



counting to 20 with herry monster



rubber duckie



ladybug picnic



johnny cash & oscar the grouch



captain picard in a fruity dress

hannah defacing

saw this in the meijer store the other day.

somebody really doesn't like hannah montana.

i blame the goth kids.

the funnier pages

i must confess that when i was in junior high i checked out every garfield collection that my local library had.

i think he first few years of the strip were quite inspired.

but around year 5, is when i think garfield became more a corporate icon and less a unique comedic expression.

mickey mouse suffers from this same affliction.

however, that does not mean that the strip cannot be reinterpreted or reimagined to great effect.

witness the website, garfield minus garfield.

basically it's garfield strips with garfield and odie photoshopped out so it's just jon, the owner, talking to himself.

check it out.


here is the site description.

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

i find it disturbing and hilarious.

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dog swap! the new fox reality show!

i think my wife has a sticker adhered somewhere out of my sight the indicates the need for a new canine every 30,000 miles.

here's a picture of snackie when we got her. definitely a fixer-upper dog.


here she is 2 months later, completely refurbished.


i guess it was time to trade up.

snackie went to live with richard and kim, so we adopted chewbacca (the name was my contribution to the adoption).

he's a good puppy and he likes to wrestle with stanley.

plus he has his very own theme song!

i think this one's gonna be around a while.

and he totally makes wookie sounds. it's awesome!

now if i can just convince monica to let me place a plaque above our door that says "casa kashyyyk."

cool sneaks!

check out my wife's new kicks.

pretty cool, right?

take a rebetter look

and the best part is that this person must have convinced the sign manufacturer that this was grammatically correct.

awesome.

---

don't go toward the light!

i took this picture the other day before doggy class.

i thought a halo would be ironic for our little poochie.

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dad in hospital

so i mentioned earlier that i was at the hospital.

dad went in cuz he was feeling funny and ended up being there for 5 days.

doc says he's gonna be ok but has him on new medicine.

here he is looking pretty chipper after his cardiac cath.

i think he was reminded by my previous post about how much he loved his little stint last year.

aye yay yay.

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worst branding ever

saw this at the hospital last week.

i mean, come on!

how an i supposed to keep from snickering any time i imagine the brilliant marketing campaign that must have accompanied this?

call me the next bob dylan

because i think i wrote the song that will define true love for a generation.

i was inspired while out to eat with my beautiful bride.

the song is entitled, "i burnt the roof of my mouth on the crab rangoon (of your love)."

that record deal should be coming any day!

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awwww!

just a quick one to show my dear readers that, at one point, i was as cute as a bug's nose.

this made my day

words cannot explain the awesomeness of this picture.

medlen photo archives

i thought i'd post a pic from my ongoing photo archiving project.

there's me cheesing in the middle.

and why does my baby brother look like a ventriloquist's dummy?

awesome.

heck on 3 wheels!

here's lily.

i was going to say "go, speed racer!" but she's a girl.

anybody remember penelope pitstop?

one year later... she's the gal for me

a few weeks before dad had his "cardiac event" i started talking to this really cute girl on the phone.

i confessed to my sister, jenna, shortly thereafter that i thought this one had baby mama potential.

on the day of the incident, jenna drove up from tennessee to be at the hospital with the family.

within 24 hrs, dad was in the clear and recovering and we felt confident enough in his condition to leave the hospital to pursue more enticing cuisine than the cafeteria had to offer.

jenna called me out to the hallway and whispered, "i want to meet this monica girl. do you think she'd meet us for dinner?"

i told her i could ask and monica readily accepted.

we didn't want to stray too far just in case dad's condition took a turn for the worse so monica did more than her fair share of driving.

we agreed to meet at a chipotle for it's casual atmosphere and moderately inexpensive menu.

however, when we got there the line was wrapped around the door.

this wasn't a new franchise so i was curious as to why the sudden interest in gargantuan mexican foodstuffs.

the answer was soon revealed to us by fellow burrito enthusiasts.

it seems that every 31st of october this fine establishment offers free burritos to anyone who comes dressed in foil.

this particular location, however, had lowered the standards of participation to the basic level of foil coupons.

the person behind us in line had brought a whole roll and gladly shared with us.

the food was good, the company was better and best; the cost for three adults plus beverages?

only four hundred and four pennies!

best first date ever.

we celebrated the anniversary of our first date this past weekend.

more on that later.

so we returned o the hospital and i was able to go into dad's room and visit with him.

once we were alone, i confessed that i had left for a semi-romantic rendezvous.

i can still remember dad laying in his hospital bed and smiling. he asked, "so do you think she's the one?"

"i don't know," i replied "but i do know that she completely does it for me."

and now, actual footage of me on the prowl and the first time i caught sight of the woman that i would later come to call my wife and number one sugar lump.

one year later... dad's myocardial infarction

i can't believe that it's been a year since dad's heart attack.

that was not a good day.

much love goes out to everybody who came to support my family.

had to put on my amateur photojournalist's hat that week and document it.

here's the fam hanging out in the lobby.





that was tuesday, 10/30/07.

here's dad on saturday, 11/3/08, leaving the hospital.




i joked with dad that i hoped he'd get a hot home care nurse, so I could walk in the room and say "HELLOOOOOO, NURSE!"

Alas, this is what I walked in to see that weekend.


Spider-man 3 had also just come out on DVD at that time and I had purchased the DVD with a mask enclosed.

Here's Jenna modeling it in Dad's hospital room.


(Note: this was after Dad's surgery was a success and we were starting to breathe a little easier. Plus we were all sleep deprived and had to do something to entertain ourselves.)

Love ya, pop. Glad you're still alive and kicking.

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snackie earning her moniker

monica sent me this video of our weight challenged canine's latest adventure.

monica had just come downstairs to find that snackie had discovered an empty bag of chips. she must really love those crumbs at the bottom.

this is why i love my wife; rather than rescue the dog from her predicament, she followed the little piggie for 15 minutes and video taped her running into furniture.

d'oh!

i wanted to post a good picture of monica and me as a couple.

check it out.


you can do yours at simpsonizeme.com let me see how yours turns out.

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who you gonna call?

those ectoplasmic dust bunnies don't stand a chance.

nice dress!

i'd like you to meet my sister's husband, nancy.

yikes.

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

i found this site that will add cowbell to any MP3 that you upload.

i thought i'd stump it with the least likely cowbell artist i could find.

i immediately fell on coldplay.

check it out.

	Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj

my weekend in the trenches

it sounds more dramatic when i say it that way.

two weekends ago, on the saturday before the great wind whiplash of '08, the wifey and i went to my father-in-law's house to help him dig 1400 feet of 3 foot deep trench for his soon to be installed geothermal home heating/cooling system.

there was much to do and i was anxious to get started.

monica's sister, lauran, lauran's husband, dusty and our adorable niece, audrey, also came into town to help.

once we were all there, jeff quickly assigned us jobs.

"dusty," he began, "you and i will alternate operating the trencher."



"you girls can help pull the large rocks out of the trenches." he continued.


"audrey, can you help auntie caco put all the rocks in the wheel barrow so we can take them away?"

"okay, pappaw!" she quickly replied.



since he waited to give me my job last, i figured he had saved the burliest job for me. i was ready to put my awesome man-strength to work.

"and noah," he said turning to me. "what would really help me would be if you went in the house and drew me a picture."

what?!?!?!

i mean, i know i'm not the handiest of men, but come on!

even audrey was busy moving rocks.

later that evening, i called him on it and he started to laugh.

it turns out that he actually needed a diagram of the trench positions in case he had to get at them later.

of course, i complied and i actually ended up laying all the pipe in the trenches.

a few days later, we were still laughing about it.

here's a pic from half-way through the job.


and what's becoming a recurring theme of these posts, adorable images of audrey!

after the job was complete, we went to applebee's and jeff treated us all.

rock on, bourbon street steak!

...

and you have a beautiful man voice!

that's a brak show reference...

cuz zorak is a mantis

guess you had to be there. ;-)

...

ticket to the gun show

and then monica asked my to speak louder into the microphone.

that's the last thing i remember.

...

who was that masked couple?

sometimes i forget how awesome my wife is.

and then i find forgotten pics like this one one my phone.

...

if you are what you eat...

then our dog must have been on a "snausage only" diet.

meet the newest member of our family.

this poor girl is 11 years old and probably 10 lbs. overweight.

we inherited her from a friend who had no choice but to get rid of her.

when she tried to take her to the pound, they said they would most likely put her to sleep since they foresaw no one wanting to adopt her.

it should be noted that my wife is the biggest softie when it comes to dogs and putting this overstuffed jelly donut of a dog was not acceptable to her.

our newest acquisition is a jack russell whom her original owners unimaginitively named jackie.

monica and i both agreed immediately that the only name lamer for this type of dog is russell.

we also understood when we adopted her that it's best to choose a similar sounding name when choosing a new canine moniker.

so within two minutes of owning her she was renamed snackie.

you know, short for snacqueline.

we just couldn't get "lunchbox" to rhyme.

hopefully we don't hear any more doggy sob stories for a while.

otherwise our house might end up like this.



though having a rotund british housemaid would be pretty rockin'.

hello wisconsin!

another weekend road trip has once again come and gone.

thanks to my awesome employer, i had a 4-day weekend.

we went to visit my sister-in-law and her family.

it was audrey's last weekend of freedom because today was the FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN!!!

on friday we took audrey and the doggies for a walk.

she totally dressed herself and was proud of it (thus the thumbs up).


here they are running at the tennis court.


possibly my favorite picture of the weekend. i guess it's hard being a girl.


that night we went to the county fair and i took in my first country concert. the band was little big town, of whom i had never heard of before but they closed the show with the eagles' "heart ache tonight" so that was cool.


i think the funniest part of the evening was when the band started playing their most popular song "boondocks". monica and lauran turned to each other and both shouted "I LOVE THIS SONG!" and then they broke out into copious amounts of white girl dancing. right in the midddle of the song, audrey looked up at lauran and i could read her lips saying, "mommy, I have to go potty!"

lauran, too busy busting a funky move, just patted her on the head and said, "okay, honey."

i realized that lauran must not have heard her over the cacophony of pabst blue ribbon scented whoots and "git-r-duns"®.

and i certainly did not want my adorable niece to have an accident. that would have been an evening devastator.

so, i leaned over and tugged on lauran's shirt and yelled "audrey has to go to the bathroom!"

"what?" she yelled back.

i pointed down to audrey who had now switched from doing her her favorite "happy feet" dance routine to placing both hands between her jittery legs and performing the traditional native american "ohwigottapipi" dance.

"ugh!" she exclaimed (i'm learning that she and my wife are quite prone to such emphatic phrasing.) as she hurriedly ushered her daughter to the nearest facility.

here's the girls shortly before said incident.


thankfully no accidents were had and we were able to appreciate the rest of the night at the fair.

we saw both the beautiful...


... and the bizarre


(yes, it's a custom burnished toilet lid. and, yes, there was a whole booth. jenna, i found your anniversary present!)

on saturday we went to lake geneva for a little retail therapy.

check out the weird toe shoes that we found!


more pics of the 2 cutest girls in wisconsin.



then on sunday we broke out the slip and slide. oh yeah!

monica's dad also brought a miniature bounce room for audrey to play in.

i guess ionized air inside a vinyl enclosure creates a lot of static electricity.

here's my favorite pic from that experience.


we packed up and headed back home on monday.

here's some pics of stanley wallering on our bed and in my half of the suitcase.



before we left, we took audrey to target to purchase her a brand new backpack!


now if you'll excuse me, i have to use the restroom. all that wisconsin cheese is going to have me bound up for months!

...