No One You Can Save That Can't Be Saved, Nothing You Can Do, But You Can Learn How to Be In Time, Its Easy, All You Need is Butt

I don’t like to constantly go after the bulleted or numbered points theme, but sometimes its just easier to keep things in brief un-related paragraphs. I didn’t use numbers in my last writing, so I will go with the gimmicky thing for today. In no particular order:

1) Department store Santas need to suck it up and grow a beard. I mean, I get that you aren’t going to necessarily have a foot long Z.Z. Topp style Kris Kringle thing going on, but you at least need the dedication to stop shaving post Halloween so it’s not a complete sham. In today’s globalized hyper-competitive market place a cheap beard with a head strap is not gonna cut it. I remember the Santa we went to when I was a kid at the Minnesota Zoo. Not only did we have donuts and hot cocoa with him, but he came with reindeer. That is Santa dedication, but I suppose it should be attributed more to the Zoo having reindeer than this d00d’s personal dedication. Still, he had a real beard. You could tug it if you wanted. I had full faith (and credit) that my request for Fireball Island would be satisfied come the 25th.

2) I defended my doctoral dissertation last Thursday. I do not actually have my degree in hand or anything, but I have a PhD. If nothing else goes well in my life, I got married, got a doctorate and have a Persian cat. That’s better than most people can say. Also, I have season tickets to the Packers. And a hawt TV. And my couch has recliners. More relevantly, I have some good leads and advice about turning this into a book manuscript. I’m actually pretty excited to begin that process.

3) The John Carroll tournament, this past weekend, in Cleveland, had its ups and downs. The significant downs: we did not advance very far in outrounds (i.e. our only victory was a walkover), we did not clear some of the teams we expected to clear and arguably more importantly, John Carroll no longer has the soda fountain in the judges lounge. Apparently Pepsi no longer makes those big metal cylinders of soda-juice and I am sad. They did at least have plenty of cold Diet Pepsi on hand. The ups included having some great kids who haven’t debated together for a little while clear and some food related comments, for instance: there was a Chocolate fountain!! That’s right, I got to dip pretzels, bananas, apples, and DOUBLE STUF OREOS (the little things, like the decision to have Double-Stuf Oreos rather than the regular Oreos, is a sure sign that the people in charge think the right way) in a beautiful stream of chocolate. I could even load up a bunch of them and head back to my debates. I also got a van full of kids to join me for the CRAVE. ♦, who is an awesome kid who is simply better known by a symbol than he is by his actual name, actually went so far as to actually purchase a Crave Case. That meant that even through the Lake Effect blizzard and the Bills home game traffic, we had slyders to help us make the way back to the Roc.

I am not satisfied with a three item list and feel bad for having wasted such a delightful mechanism with so few numbers. I guess I will have to try and update regularly for a little while so I can get access back. Hippo suggests that I label all my next bullet points “meow,” but she does not understand how difficult it can be for humans to understand the subtle differences in print.

Peace,

MB-K