If there’s an area where I consider myself a bit of an expert, it’s in grocery store etiquette. I’m the least offensive person in the grocery store. This is a point of pride for me.

My skills in this field developed, strangely enough, around the COVID years where everyone in the grocery business went batshit crazy attempting to control one’s behavior by posting arrows demanding one only traverse in a particular direction down an aisle to select food items for purchase. During these years I perfected my technique of getting in and out of a grocery store in less than three minutes from entrance to exit.

It probably saved my life on more than one occasion. Continue reading →

Prefatory Note: My son is eleven. He is awesome in ways that would fill up this post describing. He’s also the reason I carry a notebook around as he’s prone to spouting off some very…interesting…statements. Enjoy a few—CLS

ON STAR WARS
“I feel like if Darth Vader held up a sign that said ‘Come to the Dark Side: We Have Free Cake and Pie,’ it would get him more attention than him talking about it all the time.”

ON BRUSHING TEETH
Excitedly “Daddy, look! I’m cleaning my skeleton!” Continue reading →

This week I had to buy a new printer for my wife’s clinic as her old one bit the dust.

I’m not particularly upset about the loss of this printer. If we’re being completely honest, her staff tends to beat printers to death. It was repeatedly abused living in the back of an RV that regularly drove over bumpy roads. This is basically a ticking time bomb for printers. When they’re getting abused regularly, placed on inclines and doing shit that most household printers weren’t made for, then you’re probably going to see a high printer mortality rate.

Anyway, let me tell you what I had to do with this new printer. Continue reading →

San Juan, the capital city of Puerto Rico, is a neat place. It’s one of the few cities I’ve visited that felt old, dirty, fresh, and alive all at the same time. We docked in the port downtown and waited for our tour guide. The day’s mission? A cooking class, which delighted my twelve-year-old daughter.

Traipsing through the streets of San Juan, one gets a sense the city is rather proud of both the mishmash of cultures and capitalism that seems to make Puerto Rico so interesting. Everything’s in Spanish, yes, but there’s a lot of English signs and speakers to get where one needs to be if necessary. Continue reading →

Our next stop on the Caribbean cruise was St. Thomas, or as the locals call it, “Santo Tomas.”

They don’t actually call it that but it will get you some fun reactions if you refer to this spot in the U.S. Virgin Islands as such. Try it next time you’re there!

Anyway, today was to be a rather light day in excursions. We found a sky tram that takes tourists from the bottom of the island to the top of its mountains, where one can see some spectacular views. While walking to said tram, my wife and I noticed something very off-putting for us both: our ten-year-old son had basically worn through the only shoes he’d brought on the cruise to the point where he walked on the sides of his feet. Continue reading →

The cruise’s first big port destination was the Dominican Republic. The ship docked in Taino Bay, which is a very touristy area before one gets into the heart of the island itself. Today was going to be a big day: my family had a planned tour of Ocean World.

Ocean World is a theme park of sorts allowing one to interact with all manner of sea and land creatures from the island. Guests can meet capybaras, feed lovebirds and even learn snorkeling in the fishy pools splattered across the campus. My family and I were there to meet the main attractions as far as we were concerned: the dolphins. Continue reading →

HEYA MON! Feeling Irie? Want to get away from it all and sail to a warmer climate?

That’s what the family and I did last week when we took a cruise to the Caribbean for my wife’s birthday. We’d planned to do this for the better part of the year and it didn’t disappoint in the slightest.

As your humble humorist embarked on this adventure, however, I made the decision to chronicle the entire voyage so you would have the benefit of all my wonderful opinions and observations should you choose to follow in my footsteps.

You’re welcome. I’m noble and humble like that. Continue reading →

Once upon a time, in a far off land of make believe, there were two roommates: a hippopotamus named Hoopy Doopy and a unicorn named Gumdrop.

Hoopy Doopy was from a quiet neighborhood and liked to do things most hippos enjoy: eat snacks, lay in the sun, swim and watch professional wrestling.

Gumdrop, on the other hand, was from a place he often referred to as “The Dark Side of the Tracks.” He didn’t know who his mother and father were, and often sought solace in the ministrations of a French ferret named Pierre, who regularly sold him a magical powder he swore would make Gumdrop more sociable. Continue reading →

I was going to talk about this eventually, I swear.

What do you get when you take a business that’s known to be more “entertainment” than “sport” and give the pure entertainment side it’s own television show?

You get “WWE: Unreal,” the “docuseries” currently in its second season on Netflix that offers viewers a look inside the formerly-secretive “Writer’s Room” of World Wrestling Entertainment.

Let me be completely honest: I have a really hard time with this show. Part of wrestling’s allure has always been the suspension of disbelief that lets fans on occasion think that even though everything else is bullshit, that one thing they saw on the card was real. Continue reading →

I caught my wife muttering curses under her breath and filling out forms that looked strangely familiar the other day. On closer inspection, I realized they were Girl Scout Cookie forms.

“Sweetie,” I said, approaching the subject with trepidation, “didn’t you deal with Girl Scout Cookies last year? Isn’t it someone else’s turn?”

“Yes, and [REDACTED] said she’d do it, which means I have to do it or everything’s going to be messed up” she replied.

Oh boy, I thought. Here we go again. Continue reading →