Y: 25 of 26

Here it is the ultimate in the Alphabet of SRH. The 26th installment of the soon to be defunct project. I was not sure this day would ever come, and then I looked at a calendar and realized that would only be half a year. We have had high points and we have had low points. Since starting this train wreck 26 weeks ago I have gotten 117 comments so far (sadly including mine).

Without further ado…

Y: Big y, Little y. Yawning yellow yak. Young Yolanda Yorgenson is yelling on its back.

Y is a fun little letter. It makes men, well, men. It is often an answer even though it sounds like a question. Y is the suffix that shifts verbs and nouns to be more adjective-y. It is a great letter. Even with all these wonderful everyday uses of “Y,” the letter has come to mean sooo much more to me. To me, Y will always be associated with Yeti.

The yeti and I have had many conversations both public and private since I started this blog. Sometimes nastiness ensues, sometimes bonding, but since the Yeti’s pronouncement of being my kind of sibling I have not heard from him at all. I fear for him in some ways, but in others I am confident in my older half-sibling’s ability to survive. He has been doing it for over 39 years. That’s right, the Yeti is cresting the hill, folks. He is nigh on 4 decades now.

Anyway… since finding out that The Yeti is actually my half-brother due to some dalliance my mom had in college. I did start noticing some subtle differences in The Yeti and a typical yeti. For instance, typical yetis stand over 7 feet tall (2.13 meters for the metric folk out there) and heavily muscled. The only exposed skin is their eye socket area, nose, mouth, ears, and hands. Also their exposed skin is a strong cobalt blue in color. They are heavily muscled and their straight haired coats are camouflaged such that they can survive and hide in an alpine environment.

The Yeti conversely is just over 6 feet tall (1.83 meters), a little pudgy, has a receding forehead, with light blue skin showing under his curly ruddy coat. He really isn’t a very typical yeti now that I think about it.

Poor Artist Rendering of a Typical Yeti and “The” Yeti
"Click pic to embiggen"

To recap:
Happy 10th Anniversary Wifey!
According to this chart I should have given Wifey something tin or aluminium
Disregard the “Modern Gift” section of the chart
Disregard it completely
It is entirely bogus
What will I fill my Thursday posts with now that The Random Yet Not So Random Alphabet of SRH is over?
The pic had to be created
There are no good pictures of yetis
Digital or traditional
Have a great weekend everyone

H: 8 of 26

Here we go with the penultimate entry in the No Longer Random Alphabet of SRH. Today’s letter is the letter, H. I have to say that I am relived and a little saddened that this segment is coming to an end. What am I going to write about on Thursday’s after next week? Coming up with drivel for everyone to read is difficult. Just plain difficult.

Anyway… here we go.

H: Big H, Little h, Hungry horse, hay. Hen in a hat. Hooray! Hooray!

When I decided to start up this here Alphabet of SRH 25 weeks ago, I knew that day, that hour, that minute, that second, that I was going to write about hippos for H. So without further ado…

It all started innocently enough. A casual lunch conversation was casually lunching when my friend uttered those fateful words: “Did you know that the hippo has no natural enemies?” There was only one true and accurate response to that statement.

“They do now!”

Since I made hippos my second (the Yeti got the 1st) slot favored enemy (all you 5th level Rangers know what I’m saying, PHB 3.5 in tha house!), lets see just what has transpired, shall we? My wife lovingly (it was lovingly done, right?) psychoanalyzed me for my irrational hate of hippos and I responded. My blog has become the number 1 entry listed for the Google searches Hippo Enemy and Hippopotamus Enemy. I had 2 blogaversaries, oh, and THE HIPPO WAS NAMED TO THE ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST!!! I am quite effective in my hatred (or h8red for the text monkeys --raise your hand if you were born after 1990. Excuse me, what I meant was: u born 90+? raze h& kthxby!lol). Sure they say that the hippo is becoming endangered by loss of habitat, but I work in mysterious ways, baby!

What have I Learned about the hippo since naming it as my favored enemy?

• The Hippopotamus amphibious is a large land mammal that spends much of the time in a riverine environment.


• Bulls are very territorial and will attack even when unprovoked.


• Most African animal encounter caused deaths in Africa are due to unprovoked attacks by hippos.


• The closest biological relative to the hippo are the cetaceans and not other grazing mammals.



• The name Hippopotamus is derived from the 2 Greek words “hippo" and “potamus” which mean “horse” and “river” respectively.


• A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside.
  
• A hippo can open its mouth 4 foot wide. (the "fact" above is just pure sensationalism)
  
• Maybe it should have read: A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall bomb inside.
  
• 'Cause it's true.
  
• In Egyptian mythology Taweret, Tauris, Toeris, and Reret are all names of a goddess of fertility portrayed as a hippo


• They do not like licorice or even the smell of anise


• Oh, and they go down like chumps!

Can I get an “A-men?”

To Recap:
I am not sure what my posting schedule will be for next week
There is a chance that I will be heading down to Alabama to see Capt. McArmypants
A very good chance, I just don’t know when exactly
I would like to know when soon so I can see if I am driving or flying
All that is left for the Alphabet is Y
Y is for Yeti
That’s good enough for me
The presentation from yesterday is completed
And there was much rejoicing
Have a great Labor Day weekend my US Readers!
Have a great weekend everyone

They are Evil I tell you!

S: 19 of 26

Okay, only 2 more of these letters posts after this one. We are in the 25th installment of the No Longer Random Alphabet of SRH. This week it is the letter S. I am slammed at work at the moment, so I will make this relatively quick. Here comes the letter.

S: Big S, Little s, Silly Sammy Slick sipped six sodas and got sick, sick sick

This was one of those letters that took no time at all to come up with a word. S to me is for Soccer. I am going to focus on one particular aspect of my soccer life.

I started playing soccer when I was 5 years old on a YMCA team called the Little Rascals, we wore green. Eventually I joined my neighbor’s team the FIREBIRDS! (the exclamation point is absolutely necessary), probably when I was 10 or so. When I was 11 we switched out of the YMCA-leagues and transitioned into a more competitive league. That summer my coach (who went by the name Bibb for some unknown reason) went to England to get his coaching certification. We kicked everyone’s ass that year. When I was 12 we decided to take the team to England so he could get a higher level coaching certification and we could go to the esteemed Bobby Charlton School of Football in Manchester England (I have written about it before). That year was 1986. 1986 was the first year that David Beckham went to that very same footie camp.

Since we brought over our entire team one of the highlights of the camp was our playing the camp all-stars in our age bracket on the Thursday night before we left. Now, at most, the camp ran for 1 months with 4 one week camps going on (currently they only offer 2 one-week camps, but I am being generous here for sake of argument). Beckham is one year younger than me so he would have been in the same age bracket. He performed so well at the camp that year that the following year he moved into an age category higher than he should have been. Therefore he would have been on the field as an all-star that week (provided we were there the same week). Beckham has primarily been a right midfielder and at that time I was a left fullback. One of my favorite past-times on the pitch was to slide-tackle wingers who were attempting to cross the ball into the box, and I remember quite clearly tackling most people who came down MY flank that day. We lost the game 2 to 0 that evening, but no one scored coming down the my side of the field (as far as I recall). I was an enforcer, what can I say?

I propose that there is a 1 in 4 probability that I have played David Beckham in the international game of soccer, and I further propose that there is a 1 in 6 chance that I planted his ass in the turf for trying to come down my side of the field. All in all I like to think that my 25% chance of playing Beckham is nice, but a 16.667% chance of shutting down someone who has become the icon of a sport is even better.

Oh, and this is for the ladies…

By the way, if he did play that night, I shut him down!

To recap:
All that is left in this alphabet are H and Y
Hippos and Yetis…
I have to by a new DVD-ROM drive for my home PC
So I guess I have to travel to Best Buy this evening
If you want to watch that che-che-froo-froo midfielder I potentially pownd he will most likely play tonight on ESPN2 at 10pm EST
It has been raining buckets this week
I am back in the throes of my true addiction
Little Man calls it “caffeine sprite”
Wifey says she used to call her mom’s marijuana “seaweed”
She somehow connects these two things
I don’t see it
Wifey says a bunch of things
Great, now Mom-in-Law is going to be all defensive about the “seaweed” thing.
I myself think the world would be a slightly better (if smellier) place with an increase of the “seaweed”
I already have a drug of choice
It is green, cool, and tastes like heaven
Have a great weekend everyone

Z: 26 of 26

Here we are at week 23 of 26. Only three more letters left. Today we will focus on the 26th of the 26 letters in our English alphabet, Z. Z is an odd letter because it is not referred to in the same manner even within the same language in different countries. Queen’s English speakers (I shall call them Queens) refer to the letter denoted by the symbol “Z” as “Zed.” Their transatlantic Anglophones (I shall call them Trannies) on the other hand, refer to the very same symbol as “Zee.” What’s up with that? Why can’t the Queens and the Trannies get along? Hey, you Canadians, the English speaking ones, (Je ne touche pas que les Quebecois appellent la letter “Z.”{please feel free to correct my French if anyone is so inclined. My vocabulaire is rusty and my grammar is pretty bad as well. ) are you Queens or Trannies?

Anyway… on to the letter:

Z: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, I, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and … Z! Big Z, little z, What begins with Z? I do. I’m a zizzer zazzer zuzz as you can plainly see.

The last letter of the alphabet is a tough one. I really cannot think of anything to associate myself with the letter Z. I thought about Zebra, but ruled that out since I still want my wife to talk to me. Even though my child’s multi-ethnic background is a big portion of my thoughts, the “zebra” angle would get me divorced.

I thought about Zero, but I couldn’t come up with zip, zilch, nada to describe how Zero related to me. Zealous was an option, but with my aboundance of apathy it did not work. The only thing I am zealous about is my lack of zeal, and really that is even too contradictory than I can handle.

Zoom? No. Zig Zag? No. Zipper? No (I prefer button fly). Zanzibar? Nope. Zarf? Well, I have been known to quaff a zarf now and then, but is it really me? Not really. Ziggy? Nope, that crap is duller than Garfield. Zephyr? I do fart a bunch, but no. Zeitgeist? What the Hell is that? Zionism? Sorry, protestant, agnostic or atheistic here. Zen? You gotta be kidding me. Zeppelin? A bit before my time. Zombie? Nope. Zoot Suit? RIOT! Zoophagous? I do like meat, but that is more a trait of Wifey. Zodiac Sign? I am a cusper, that system doesn’t work that well for me. Zany?...ummm, has no relevance to my life. Zenith? Only time will tell when I was at my zenith.

So none of the words I could come up with really worked. Instead I will select a Z word at random from the dictionary, give the definition and use it in a sentence.

zig·gu·rat: (zĭg'-ə-rāt'); n, A temple tower of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians, having the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories.
[Akkadian: ziqqurratu, temple tower, from zaqāru, to build high; see zqr in Semitic roots.]

A sentence… Hmmmm…

Zoser’s architecture was very derivative of the Babylonian’s since his “innovative” step pyramid was basically an encased ziggurat.

To recap:
Looks like we will be having a casserole tonight
It shall be yummy
I shall call it Cream of Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole a la SRH
And it shall be good
So it shall be written
So it shall be done
I just had lunch and am already hungry
Big Thunderstorm last night
We lost power and had a difficult time explaining that to Little Man this morning when we got up
When one wants chickies, power loss be damned, one wants chickies
Damnit!
Luckily, the power came back on this morning
I need to do some laundry before I go to the gym again
Even at the gym I like to have relatively clean underwear
Have a great weekend everyone

V: 22 of 26

Since there are only 5 letters left I have decided to take them in a less than random order. By random chance, honestly random chance, H and Y have stayed out of the mix. They shall be the last letters. So sayeth the author, so it shall be written, so it shall be done. Of the remaining letters, H, S, Y, and Z, the only one I do not have a word for so far is Z. Any ideas?

So for today the letter in question is the 22nd letter of the English alphabet, the letter “V.” There is a TV miniseries from the 80’s associated with the letter. There is a 1980’s comic book series with V very prominent in the title which was later made in to a movie in 2005. It has been a symbol of victory. It has been a symbol for peace. It is a very versatile letter to say the least. V is one of those letters that harkens back to the proto-alphabets of the pre-Roman eras. I think it started out as a bulls head or something like that. Anyway, the V is a letter that is near and dear to my heart. “Why?” You ask. Well you have to keep reading to get that answer.

V: Big V, Little v, Vera Violet Vinn is very very very awful on her violin.

Oh, where to start. V was an easy letter for which to come up with a word. I have waxed eloquent on the topic before, and I am sure that I will again. Some might find this word to be bland and boring, but it is not for me. No, not for me… In the lexicon of SRH, V stands for, and will always stand for, Vanilla.

The issue with using vanilla as my V word is not some much how much I love Vanilla, but more to the matter, where to start with my love for Vanilla. Should I talk about the wonders of stepping from plain vanilla to French vanilla and then to vanilla bean? Would it be better to start with how most other sweet flavors recognize their need for vanilla in their preparation? I truly am at a loss for where to start this process.

I will begin at the beginning. Why is vanilla unique? Vanilla is the extracted from the seed pod from a particular orchid. In fact, this seed pod is the only portion of any orchid which (correct me if I’m wrong) is not insanely poisonous and detrimental to humans if consumed. That will make pretty much anything unique. If I were an edible seed pod from the orchid family, I would be rather unique, I must say.

So now I shall go into the myriad of vanillas that I cannot live without.

Edy’s Vanilla Bean Slow Churned ice cream: mmmmmmm one third less fat than their typical ice cream. Really for ice cream, vanilla bean is the way to go. Bryers does it really well, but the double churned stuff from Edy’s is the whip shit. Lots of taste followed by less fat. I can eat 3 times as much and feel only twice as guilty.

Wendy’s Vanilla Frosty: I have written about that all ready, and been quoted by media as well.

Penzy’s Double Strength Pure Vanilla Extract: You know how with most vanillas and with most baking recipes you have to double the amount of vanilla asked for? Not so with this stuff. It is incredible, just plain incredible. One should not bake confections without it.

Penzy’s Vanilla Sugar: This stuff kicks ass. When you are looking for a more subtle flavor palette for toast than cinnamon sugar, this is the way to go.

Cheesecake Factory Vanilla Bean Cheesecake: I really am not going to take the time to explain this one. Much like a joke, if you need to explain it, the person is not worthy of it.

In conclusion: mmmmmmmmmm vanilla

To recap
Orange rice tonight
Methinks Little Man will be happy about that
I am really digging this game over lunches
Because I am both a geek and a Star Wars geek
At the same time
I know it is shocking
Not much else to recap about
Maybe Monday will be a better recap day
Oh, in less than a week both Mimma and my dad have gotten knee surgeries
Small world
Little Man’s knees are doomed
Wifey has had surgery on her knee
I have one bad knee and one worse one
My brother has had 3 knee surgeries as well
Yep, by 2053, I think both of Little Man’s knees will have been replaced
Have a great weekend everyone

Q: 17 of 26

So here we are in the 21st installment of the Random Alphabet of SRH. For the 21st trip into the historical alphabet we come to the much maligned and seldom seen by itself letter Q.

No, not that Q. Hey, Trekkers, Holla Holla!

Q is an odd letter (more odd than just being 17th out of 26) because it is almost a superfluous member of the alphabet. Usually the letter is followed immediately by the letter U. I am not sure as to the reasoning behind this unique letter symbiosis, so all the linguists out there who read this post, please educate me in the comments section. In all fairness, the letter could be replaced by “kw” in most instances without even increasing the letter count for the word.

Anyway, without further ado…

Q: Big Q, Little q, What begins with Q? The quick queen of Quincy and her quacking quackeroo.

Q?!?! I knew this day would come, and I had no idea what word I was going to choose. What did I do to remedy the situation? Did I randomly select a word in the dictionary? Did I look through a thesaurus at words I know describe me for “q” initialed synonyms? No, I called Wifey to see if she thought of any words that started with “Q.” Here is our conversation, and I misquote.

“’Questions’, you Dummyhead. You do 20 Questions Tuesday every week,” she opined
“But that’s tooo obvious,” I whined.
“How, about ‘Quick Witted?’”
“Too boastful,” I carped
“How about ‘Quirky?’” she inquired
“How would I write about that?” I lamented
“Okay, ‘Querulous,’ Jackass!” and she hung up.
“I am not” I groused to no one in particular.

So here I am, the word that Wifey feels describe me best is Querulous.

One of the big truths of my life is that fact that I am a whiner and a complainer. Don’t get me wrong. I will do things I don’t want to do, but, much to the chagrin of people around me, I will whine about it the whole time. I wish it were not the case, but, alas it is. I whine… a bunch… all the time… about everything.

What am I currently querulous about? My hip hurts, I don’t like scraping off dishes, my shoulder hurts, I need more pants, I need more shirts, the neighbors down the street are still dealing pot, Little Man wants to watch trains all the time, my neck hurts, I get headaches all the time, I am out of shape, I have a hard time coming up with blog topics, I am burnt out at work, I don’t get enough sleep, I could go on forever, well, because I am querulous.

To recap
Nobody likes a whiner
But, there are few things harder to put up with than a good example
I have a cover to create and 4 maps that need to be done by tomorrow
And, yet, here I am writing to the unseen masses
The Name of the Wind
Read it!
I command you, my minions! Read it!
And no, the name of the wind is not Mariah
That is just what it is called
Have a great weekend everyone

I: 9 of 26

Here we are week 20 of my 26 part series: The Ever So Random Alphabet of SRH. Who would have thought we would be here at this time 18 weeks ago? Who? …Really? Well, I was pretty sure we would be here. I didn’t know what letter we would be on, but I was fairly sure it would take 26 weeks. I was pretty confident that I would make it to 26. Were you guys thinking I wouldn’t make it? I mean, really, where did that question come from?

Anyway… aside from you doubters and nay-sayers, here we are at week 20. A full 10/13ths into the Randomness and I am just now getting to the 9th letter of the English alphabet, I. Some of you are going to look at this and say, “J and now I? How is that random?" Sometimes when things are truly randomized some adjacency occurs, in fact if it didn’t, I would question how random the randomness is. Anyway… enough of this claptrap, on to the meat of the matter.

I: Big I, Little i, I, i, i, Ichabod is itchy. So am I.

This letter was one of those that I had to search for. I thought about the word “industrious,” but knew that it did not refer to me. I thought of “integrity,” and then remembered that not only am I not integral to much, I am also loosing my physical integrity due to my bad knee, my worse knee, my aching hip, the shoulder that is on fire, and my craptastic ankles. Yeah, my degree of physical integrity is lacking even more than my social levels of integrity. The next word that came to mind was “interloper,” but I am not really one of those either. “Intelligent,” “Interesting,” “Ignominious,” “Integer,” “Illusionist,” “Irascible,” “Irresponsible,” “Irregardless,” wait that word isn’t even a word, “Ingenious,” “Iterative,” etc… Nothing seemed to fit for me that did not seem either pompous beyond my typical pomposity or just inappropriate. Then I thought, “Hey, wait a second, would I think “inappropriate” is the correct word? I mean I am sometimes inappropriate, but would I consider it a definitive characteristic?” The answer was a definite, “Nope.” Then I thought “Why, oh why were there no lunch meetings today with extra food I could scavenge?” But that was irrelevant… “irrelevant?” Nah… “Irreverent?” Yeaaaah, there we go. When I think of “I,” I think of Irreverant.

Took me long enough to come up with it. I have found that over my 33 years I have become more and more jaded and this jadedosity has led me increasingly down the path of irreverence. I think this does hearken back to the idea of “Funny over Nice” mentioned last week. Very little do I think is actually taboo for bringing the funny. That is where my irreverence comes in. I do not venerate or worship very much and therefore almost all topics are subject to satirical levity, and satirical levity is some good stuff. Sometimes my levity offends, sometimes it comes at the expense of others, but most if the time that satirical levity brought about by my overwhelming sense of irreverence is directed at myself.

So, when you think of the letter “I” and you think of little old me, SRH, I hope that the word that comes to mind is “Irreverent,” and not “Idiot” (although I will accept “Not Idiot” as a thought coming to your mind when you think of SRH).

To recap
Pg 398 in HP VII
Wifey and I are reading it aloud to each other
Now, ain’t that sickeningly sweet?
It should also explain why we aren’t done yet
This one does not read as well as some of the others in the series
HP V really read well aloud, even though it was the longest
Little Man has had a great birthday week
He has a complete new list of favorite toys now
Mimma got him one of those kid’s digital cameras
That kid cannot frame a shot to save his life
Heads cut off, subjects out of focus, fingers over apetures, etc...
“He’s only 4”, you say
A fact is a fact is a fact, bad framing
He is capable of getting some rather candid candid-shots though
I think I might have to set up a picture blog of all his pics that the fam is willing to share
Have a great weekend everyone

J: 10 of 26

We are closing in on the culmination of the Random Alphabet of SRH. Today is the 19th installment of the 26 part series. So, I guess you are all learning waaay more about me then you ever wanted to. That’s okay, I am learning boatloads about myself as well. Today’s letter is the 10th letter in the English alphabet, the letter J. Without further ado.

J: Big J, Little j. What begins with J? Jerry Jordan’s Jelly Jar and Jam begin that way.

J was one of the 8 or so letters that I did not have an immediate word come to mind. Other’s in this series of letters were D, E, R, and U. So far for the letters I have left, I have words for all of them except Z. Time will remedy this. Oh yes, time will remedy this indeed.

After much soul searching and looking through lists of words that start with J, I have arrived at the word that J starts. First I was going to do something absolutely esoteric and find some reference obscura from Norse or Celtic mythology that started with J. You know something like Heimdall’s sword name or some silly crap like that. Sadly, there is not much in the Celtic or Norse mythoses (how do you make the plural of the word Mythos? Is it with an apostrophe?) that start with the letter J. There is boat loads of stuff from Nordic traditions where the second letter is J, but only things associated with monsters like Jörmungandr (almost chosen merely for the umlauts over the ‘o’) and the evil frost giants popped up. In the Celtic Mythos, there isn’t even a section for the letter J. Kind of pitiful, really.

So I had to search deeper. I had to look in the nooks and crannies in my skull to find the right word. The word that finally jumped out at me was jocular. Not jockular, for that would be something inherently not me.

joc'·u·lar [jok’-yuh-ler] –adjective: given to, characterized by, intended for, or suited to joking or jesting; waggish; facetious: jocular remarks about opera stars.

I like the funny. I really do. One of my personal mantras is “Always funny over nice.” It sounds better in Latin (any and all Latin translations would be appreciated. I am certain that my declension is off on these), Semper Jocasa abeo Bellum. I just need to put that on a coat of arms. Well, put it on a coat of arms after it has been correctly translated.

I know there are people out there who think this is not necessarily the truth (and I have let this mantra slip behind before) but I really do subscribe to this belief. There is just some stuff in this world that is funny. I love to make people laugh, and I have found that the deepest belliest of laughter comes from the unfortunate situations of others. Okay, maybe not the actual situation, those can be poignant and tragic, but commentary upon those dismal situations can be some of the funniest crap ever heard.

Don’t get me wrong, there are times when I bite my tongue. There are times I make sure that everything is okay with someone, but the thoughts are there. And let me tell you, if the thought is there, there is a high probability that someone else will hear that thought in the form of words coming out of my mouth.

Everyday is pirate day for one-eyed Suzy.

To recap:
Omnipotent? Nah. Omniscient? Nah. Omnipresent? Nah
Omnijocular? Oh HELL yeah. If I could I most definitely would
Had a delightful lunch with wifey today – even though she was crabby
Not working tomorrow
Have a great Friday, suckers!
Crabby wifey is funny
But only to me – woah, be to those who get in her way
Little Man turns 4 next week
I will be a sobbing mess
Wifey will probably just be cranky
Have a great weekend everyone

E: 5 of 26

Here we are with the 18th installment of the Random Alphabet of SRH. Today’s letter is a vowel. Today’s letter is the 5th letter of the English Alphabet. Today’s letter is the second letter of the vowel quintet. Today’s letter is E. Today’s letter was chosen via the more scientific method of looking at the remaining 9 letters of the alphabet (E, H, I, J, Q, S, V, Y, Z) and rolling a 10 sided die.

If I rolled a 0 I would roll again. I didn’t roll a 0 though. I rolled a 1. So here we are with E.

E: A, B, C, D, E… e… e… Ear, Egg, Elephant, E… e… E…

E is one of those letters that I was not able to come up with a word immediately upon seeing the letter. Don’t get me wrong, it is an interesting letter linguistically. It can be silent yet affect the sound of a vowel preceding it. It is often associated with the ubiquitous schwa sound. The long version of its own vowel sound requires the letter to be a part of a vowel laden diphthong. Odd letter, that E. Upon further introspection the aspect of SRH-iness that came to mind with E was Either.

At its basic point either is about choice. One can do either this or this or this or this. One can choose this or this or this or this. To me either is the foundation for the concept of choice, and it is one of my personal philosophies that there is always a choice. There are never absolutes. Well, except for that one. There are always choices that can be made. Oh and I guess “always” implies an absolute as well. I am soooo not good at this. Some of the choices that are possible for any given event may not be very realistic or good for anyone involved or even not involved, but they exist.

Whenever someone tells me that they didn’t have a choice, I know that they did. They may have removed choices from being possible due to whatever, but they had a choice and they chose to do whatever action they did. This is not to say that when bad things happen to people it is necessarily their own damn fault because they chose to do whatever. It is to say that certain choices did allow for events to occur how the do/did.

I am a firm believer that nothing is truly inevitable. Choice and one’s navigation through life help drive how events unfold. When someone says something was inevitable, they are disregarding choices leading up to that “inevitability.” Either some will happen or it won’t, but if it happens or not I have helped create that eventuality by my own choices.

To recap:
I am not sure that either was a wise choice
Oh well
Some of these letters are just plain difficult
Not sure what is for dinner tonight
I might let Little Man choose
Cleaned up my desk at work
It is amazing how much better my workspace seems when it is clean
Well, tidy. It isn’t really clean
The surfaces need some scrubbing, but at least most of the clutter is gone
My shoulder is getting better, but it is still hurting somewhat
I need to sleep more
Have a great weekend everyone

X: 24 of 26

Today’s random letter of the SRH alphabet is the 24th letter of the English alphabet, X. Now before everyone starts remebering that the Internet is made for porn, I want to remind everyone that I try to keep this here blogarooney riding around a PG-13 or R rating. I mindfully stay away from sexual stuff and try not to curse like I fucking (whoopsy, I guess that one slipped through) do in public. So there will not be many porn references here today. Without further ado, I give you X:

X: X is very useful if your name is Nixie Knox. It also comes in handy spelling ax and extra fox.

Since I ruled out porn references immediately upon getting this letter, I really had to think about what X could mean to me. Was I going to cop out and say that it referred to the Roman numeral 10 and come up with 10 defining characteristics of myself? Was I somehow going to make the post about xylophones or x-rays? How many words really begin with the letter X? Would I make some weird leap and talk about how bags of flour were marked with 3 x’s? Would I make this a post about X-Treme sports? I had many decisions to make. I finally decided that I would go with X and how it refers to my place in American Society. When I think of X and the life and times of SRH, I think of Gen-X.

I am firmly implanted within the Gen X society at large. I started college in the beginnings of the Grunge era of music. I was, in many ways, lucky enough to watch the disaffected youth of America shrug off the glam, excess, and materialism of the 1980’s and whole heartedly embrace the dismal apathetic mainstream counter culture of the angst ridden 90’s. If the 80’s were about spending and creature comforts, the 90’s were about spending and self misery. Oddly enough, in modern times every decade in America has been about spending and something else.

Anyway… I got watch the people around me switch from their Guns N Roses themed attire and adopt the fashionable flannel, ripped jean, and overpriced thrift store trends. It was a fascinating time. Fascinating indeed.

But the question must be asked, “What about you now identifies you as a Gen-X-er?” Well, aside from my sarcastic cynicism, I have a pre-requisite goatee and tendency toward gloom. I am not completely hopeless mind you, but my cynicism does get in the way of giving people the benefit of the doubt. Wow, that sentence just reads very odd. I still purchase Pearl Jam releases and I was very sad about Nirvana’s demise. I am a slacker and definitely subscribe to the idea of ironic detachment.

Anyway… It floors me that the Gen-X-ers are now thirty-somethings, and that many of us have kids. What up wit dat?

To recap:
The Ubergeek fest ’07 was not nearly as fun this year
The people I went with were fun, but the vendor area had much to be desired
I probably will not be blathering on about it on Monday
Great! Now I have to come up with a topic for Monday
Just dandy! Thanks a frikkin lot Origins!
No songs running through my head today
None at all
If my shoulder is not feeling better by Monday, I am definitely seeing in a doc
Have a great weekend everyone

O: 16 of 26

This is the 16 th installment of the Random Alphabet of SRH. Oh, I and I am sure it will be a doozy. The letter for today is the 15 th letter of the 26 letter English alphabet, O. O is one of those vowels that you never notice how much it is used until someone points it out. The reason no one recognizes the importance of O is because it is often paired up with other vowels or at the beginning of a list of rather short prepositions. Without further ado, I give you…

O: O is very useful. You use it when you say: “Oscar’s only ostrich oiled an orange owl today.”

I have always been surprised that Suess did not make that sentence “Oscar’s only ostrich often oils orange owls.” I think it is better alliteration, but who am I to question the Suess?

Anyway, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about when O graced my page. It really was rather simple when I even remotely thought about it. When I think O, I think Orange Rice.

Orange Rice has been a theme of Wifey and my life ever sine we made it for Little Man for the first time. I remember it pretty clearly because this little guy who couldn’t eat too many things really liked this meal the very first time we made it. It has been a weekly or bi-weekly staple ever since.

I get questions about Orange Rice all the time. “What exactly IS Orange Rice?” “Is it really any good?” “Why does Little Man like Orange Rice soooo much?” “Do you like Orange Rice?” “How many times have you made Orange Rice?” “What is the biggest amount of Orange Rice Little Man has eaten in one sitting?” “Does Little Man really like Orange Rice that much?” “Come on, I have a 3 year old, there is no frikkin way a 3 yr old can eat THAT much at one sitting. How much does he really eat?” There are others, but they are basically variations on the above theme.

I would answer all these questions today, but half of the questions are all about not believing me. I am going to ignore those. Sure I am given to hyperbole (it is the funniest form of humor afterall) and sometimes I exaggerate (like every second of every day), but really in matters dealing with Orange Rice I assure you there is no need for either.

What exactly IS Orange Rice?
Orange Rice is a casserole found in the Betty Crocker’s One-Dish Meals cookbook. It is on actually the Beef and Wild Rice Casserole found on page 118 of this cookbook. We started fixing this meal when Little Man was still allergic to soy, egg, dairy, peanuts, and tree nuts, so we had to “doctor it up” pretty significantly. Here is the recipe that is now emblazoned in my skull. I can make this stuff with my eyes closed now. Sure the kitchen would be a nasty mess if I did so, but who cares? I made it with my eyes closed. Beat that!

Anyway here are the ingredients to the version that we make currently.
1 box Uncle Ben’s Long Grain and Wild Rice Fast Cook Recipe
1 Can Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup
1 lb of Ground Meat (I switch it up between Beef, Turkey, and Chicken {Hey, I need more variety})
1 medium sized white onion
1 / 4 th cup soy-milk
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons of Penzey’s Italian Herb Mix
2 teaspoons of Penzey’s Granulated Garlic
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:
Preheat the oven at 350 F

Prepare the rice according to the box directions except throw away their craptastic seasoning packet and add a pinch of salt, a couple shakes of pepper, 1 tsp of the Italian Herb Mix and 1 tsp of the Granulated Garlic.

In a separate dish,
Chop the onion into medium sized pieces. It doesn’t have to be diced, but if you want it diced, be my guest
Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil and cook the onion until it just starts to become translucent
While the onion is cooking season with salt and pepper
Brown the meat until cooked through
While browning the meat season with salt and pepper and add the remaining garlic when the meat is almost done
Add the condensed soup, rice, and soy-milk
Sprinkle remaining Italien Herb Mix on top of casserole
Bake for 30 minutes

Done.

We often eat this meal using tortilla chips as a scoop. Little Man is adamant that the tortilla chips be the Tostitos Natural Yellow Corn Tortilla Chips. He is a picky eater.

Anyway, that is what Orange Rice is.

As for how goods it actually is? Little Man really likes the stuff and I find it to be an “OK” meal. I could not eat it everyday like the boy can, but that is okay. We really have made this meal every week or every other week since the first time we made it. Little Man does not seem to tire of it in the least. There are some doctored versions that he has not been impressed with however. For example, one time I tried using Penzy’s Buttermilk Ranch Dressing base as the predominant seasoning. He didn’t like that so much.

Little Man has honestly eaten 3 full sized plates of this stuff in one sitting. It was a bit scary. I swear I could have bounced a quarter off his over full belly. Wow, was he full.

Anyway, that is the tale and construction of Orange Rice.

To recap:
Work was an absolute bear today
My apologies to Lord Pithy
He knows why
I was a bit unhappy about the email as well
I went from one fire drill to a second and then oddly enough to a third
Stupid fire drills
It doesn’t help that I am physically exhausted
Wifey, hurry back so I can sleep
Just kidding, Sweety
But not really
I had to wait until I was home and Little Man was asleep to post
Wifey gets home late Saturday night
It won’t be soon enough
I fear I shall be more insane by then
I am sure that next week’s posts will all be happy go lucky due to the return of Wifey
No really, next week will be all rainbows and unicorn farts
Have a great weekend everyone

B: 2 of 26

Today’s installment of the Random Alphabet of SRH is not really all that random. I mean, come on, when I decided to do all 26 letters on Thursday’s and my birthday is on a Thursday. It only makes sense that Today’s letter is the second letter of the English alphabet, B.

Without further ado,

B: Big B, Little b, What begins with B? Barber, baby, bubbles and a bumblebee

Like I said earlier, the serendipity of the whole calendar thingy really made this one an easy one. B is for Birthday.

I have mentioned before that my birthday is bittersweet (here and here), but I am going to attempt to not dwell on this too terribly much because, well, I have covered the topic pretty thoroughly and I really don’t want to become repetitive in my posting repetitive in my posting repetitive in my posting repetitive in my posting repetitive in my posting

**SMACK**

Thanks… where was I? Oh yes, today I am going to belabor a point that my previous birthday posts haven’t touched on. Let’s see… ummm… what to write about? What to write? Ummm… some aspect of birthdays and how they have affected my life. Okay here we go, where I was on my Birthday, as far as I can recall.

0 - 2 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
3 Moving from Oklahoma City to Montgomery, Alabama. No really that was the day the family was driving to Alabama
4 Montgomery
5 - 17 Birmingham, but nothing remarkable. I know I had the requisite pool party (even though I hated the water), a few themed parties, but nothing sticks out in my mind.
18 I think Capt. McArmypants and I were in Edinburgh, Scotland for that birthday
19 The fateful day that altered my life
20 Kent, Ohio visiting some college friends. We went white water rafting and then had a party
21 I remember absolutely nothing about this day… and I can’t for the life of me think of why this day is completely obliterated out of my psyche
22 I seem to think I was in Columbus, Ohio for this one, but I cannot think of any details surrounding it.
23 I was working at RPS as a loader. This was the summer prior to the nuptials so many a day is blurred with wedding plan details
24 – 30 all in Columbus, Ohio with Wifey
31 Columbus, Ohio just after a trip to Colorado Springs
32 and 33 Columbus, Ohio

Well, that is the listing of birthday locals. All the same birthday angst and emotions apply as in the previous birthday posts, but those survivor guilt feelings and sadness of the loss seem to have been dulled by the passage of time this year.

To Recap:
I am 33
And yet only 14
US v Canada tonight on Fox Soccer Channel
It should be interesting, the US is not playing that great and Canada is
Luckily what seems to through the US out of its game is extremely physical play, and I don’t think the Canucks will come out studs up the entire night
Little Man and I will be watching the first half
Then it is bed-time for the little one
I will be getting some “Birthday Chocolate Chip Cookies” sometime this afternoon lovingly made by Wifey and Little Man
What can I say, the boy really loves baking
Mainly because he like eating the cookie dough
Since he is allergic to eggs, there isn’t any in the dough and he can eat as much of it as he wants
So can Wifey and I
That cookie dough is absolutely sinful
Have a great weekend everyone

U: 23 of 26

I am going to attempt to crank out the 14 th instance of the evermore increasingly Random Alphabet of SRH. Today’s letter shall be U, the 23 rd letter of the English alphabet. Again, this is a letter that was a late addition to the fold. In fact the Romans never even heard of this letter. If you asked a Roman to spell “nuts,” first of all, you would need to be asking a relatively wealthy one, and secondly you would have to ask them in a dead language, and I am pretty sure your pronunciation would be off. Not to mention the lack of Latin words for nut, almond, walnut, hazelnut, pecan, etc… Anyway… if you somehow broke through the language barrier to have them spell this word, they would spell it N-V-T, because they used “V” as a “U.”

Wow, that was a lot of work for very little humor payback.

Anyway…

U: Big U Little u, What begins with U? Uncle Ubb’s umbrella and his underwear too.

Nothing just jumped out at me for the letter U. I did not expect it to because it is not a letter that very many words begin with. Especially if you remove the category of “un-”’s. Anyway, I chose to go with Underwater. I can’t believe I am sharing this crap with you people.

Okay here it goes…

When I had just turned 5, my parents enrolled me into a swimming class at the local pool. I was the youngest and smallest of the kids in the class. No big deal, right? Wrongo! I remember being very happy with the class, because I was getting to play in the pool. Who doesn’t want to do that? We did kick-board exercises, boatloads of splashing, and jumping in and out of the pool was always fun. It was all good clean cool-water fun… until the end of each class.

There were about 15 of us with, if I remember correctly, 3 instructors and a couple of life guards on the edges of the pool. At the end of class the instructors and students all joined hands and formed a big circle. We sang some stupid song like “Ring around the Rosie” or some such crap and everyone in the circle bounced up and down to the music while the circle slowly rotated. Whilst in the shallower parts of the shallow end of the pool this was great fun, but as the water started getting deeper everyone was dipping lower in the water until finally they were bouncing off the floor of the pool and getting a breath of fresh summer air when they bobbed out from under the surface. I was the smallest kid in the class, so I had shorter arms and shorter legs than everyone else in the class. When I was in the deep water, the surface was tantalizingly close, yet ultimately denied to me.

You are beginning to get the still-traumatizing picture aren’t you?

Since my legs were shorter, when the other kids in the class pushed off from the floor of the pool, my feet had not hit yet. By not hitting the bottom, I was not able to get any upward momentum so I could breach the surface like a gasping humpback. Since my arms were shorter and I was dealing with bigger kids who also wanted to breathe, I was in essence held underwater by their longer arms. They held their arms straight down and as close to their sides as they could so they could stretch for the surface wanting to inhale sweet sweet air. Hey, you six year old jackasses, I wanted some air too!

There I was slowly turning blue going around in a circle, I couldn’t push off the floor to make a dash for the surface and only the top of my head cleared that surface when those selfish bastard breathing kids basically held me under with their longer arms pinned to their sides. There I was straining for the surface, in the deepest depths of the shallow end of the pool, while all the older kids were greedily gulping down air.

Oh sure, one could argue that I never did drown, but that is immaterial. You weren't there, Man! You don't know! I may not have drowned but I was certainly traumatized! Needless to say I don’t necessarily like to be underwater. Don’t get me wrong I can swim like a fish and hold my breath for a goodly long time now, I just don’t like to. One should not be surprised that I am not a beach person.

To recap:
Work was busy busy busy today
Ergo, I am posting from home tonight
Sunday is my fourth Father’s day
I am trying to think of where I would like to eat
Speaking of eating, I am thirsty
That was not a huge leap
Food - - > drink
It isn’t six degrees of separation or anything like that
I mean I wasn’t trying to find a link between Craig T. Nelson and Kevin Bacon or anything…
That is the task set forth for comments
Craig T. Nelson to Kevin Bacon in 6 steps or less
Extra points if you can do this connection using Samuel L. Jackson and Joe Pesci
Okay… break!
Have a great weekend everyone

M: 13 of 26

As per Wifey’s comment on yesterday’s post, today’s letter from the Random Alphabet of SRH is the letter M. Oddly enough there is a certain symmetry for this post being about M. This is my 13th post in the Random Alphabet of SRH and aptly enough, this is the 13th letter in the English alphabet. So without further ado...

M: Big M, Little m, Many mumbling mice are making midnight music in the moonlight… mighty nice

This was one of those few letters that I was able to come up with nearly immediately. (I still haven’t figured out I, J, and Z, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.) The mere shape of the letter evokes memories of what it symbolizes to me. When I think of “M” I think of mountains.

Some people love the water. Some people love the beach. Some people feel like they are not recharged until they have dipped their feet in the ocean. Those people probably don’t have enough salt/mercury in their diet. Me, I love me some mountains. Growing up it was only an afternoon away from being in the Appalachians, but those mountains are too rounded for my tastes. If I am going to visit a mountain range that I absolutely love, I am most likely going to the Rockies. (Not the Rocky’s). So far I have only been to the Rockies a few times. Once with my family in the 80’s. Once with the Boy Scouts for a backpacking extravaganza. Once with my wife and our then 1.5 year old. Once to visit my best friend. Each time I have fallen more and more in love with that particular mountain range.

For me, there is just nothing like seeing the sunset create pools of molten gold on the side of a mountain. Waking up in the clouds where all is quiet is a wonderful experience as well. The majesty and grandeur associated with mountains is something that fills me with awe, quiets my mind and brings me a certain level of peace. People often ask where I would like to live and each time I immediately think, “In the mountains, you dullard. Where people won’t ask me stupid questions, and I can have a well fortified compound where I am the cult of personality for a small group of devoted followers, you humdrum boob!” I usually say, “Oh, I don’t know. Someplace with mountains and hiking or something,” because I don’t want them to know that I think they are a dullish humdrum boob. My internal voice external voice filter is like magic.

There is something about the forested sides of the mountains that just makes me at peace. There is something about knowing I have stepped foot above the tree-line that just makes me happy. The words alpine tundra are like music to my ears. So for the letter M, you get Mountains.

To recap:
The Internet access issues are still issues
The .blogspot domain is active, but I cannot log in to anything with blogger.com in the URL
Basically, I don’t think this will really ever be resolved
It is not a high priority on the IT staff’s “to do” list
No big deal
Tomorrow I will finish up this rail stuff that I am working on
Looks like some of my art was selected for the cover for an RPG manual
I am going to be a published artist
Who would have thought?
Not me, for sure
USA v Guatemala tonight for the beginning of the US’s run on the 2007 Concacaf Gold Cup
Have a great weekend everyone

D: 4 of 26

Here we are at week 12 for the Alphabetic Randomness of SRH. This week, the letter D comes to us from a foam ball lobbed toward my work computer’s keyboard. The ball actually typed “dewr” and reformatted my hard drive, but that is beside the point. The letter D is the 4 the letter of our English alphabet and today’s blog post.

D: Big D, Little d, David Donald Doo dreamed a dozen doughnuts and a duck-dog too.

Since I have already waxed eloquent on my love of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, I think it would be irrelevantly redundant to have D be about “Doughnuts,” (Personally, I prefer the spelling of “Donuts” but that is not what this post is about.) so it was necessary for me to come up with another D-word for this post. D is a pretty large section of the dictionary, so I did not look through the D section and decide on a word that way. I thought and thought and thought about what D-word would be significant to me. Then it hit me in all my arrogant wonder. The word I shall hold near and dear to my heart that starts with “D” shall be “Dullard.” Oh, where would we be without dullards? Oh, where would we be without rhetorical questions?

Anyway… some background. Whilst we were forced to dwell in what can only be described as Alabama, Capt. McArmypants (then he was merely NoRank McOppositionally Defiant) and I would play The Dullard Game tm. It was a simple game with simple rules that we and we alone knew. The game was born from our sense of intellectual superiority that can only be attested to our unchecked arrogance. We were asses, what can I say? (The past tense of the “to be” verb is only being employed because these games took place in the past, I don’t want anyone thinking that I am precluding myself from currently being an ass.)

The mediocre captain (he ain’t “The Good Captain” by any means. Definitely mediocre at best) and I determined, and rightly so, that the term “Dullard” has the correct level of derogatoriness to it. Dumbass, idiot, moron, dumbfuck, cretin, dimwit, and most other derogatory terms for the less than intellectual just seemed to miss. We paused on the word “twit” but eventually decided it was too British for us to genuinely use it being decidedly non-British and all. The Dullards in Alabama were fairly easy to pick out and sadly all too prevalent. Eventually we took this game on the road, but we had a difficult time determining who was a dullard in England, Scotland, or Germany. The cultural contextual clues were so different. The typical American signs just were not present, but this is not the meat of this post itself.

What I am using the term Dullard to illustrate is that many times the most derogatory term that one can use is not necessarily vulgar or inherently racist. Calling someone a dumbass, a dumbshit, or a dumbfuck is crass and the person receiving your dispersions on their intelligence disregards this due to its commonness. Now, the word “dullard?” Oh, that word infuriates it intended target. It is haughty, it is pretentious, and it is inherently comparative. Calling someone a Dumbshit does not preclude you from being a dumbshit yourself. Calling someone a dullard insinuates a certain level of superiority. One cannot call out others for being a dullard, if one is a dullard.

If you take anything useful from this post, I will be monumentally surprised. Wait, let me start that again. If you take anything from this post, please let it be my underlying point: If you can find the correct word, you can debase someone without resorting to cursing or racial epithets.* Thank you and good night.

To recap:
D is also for Darth Vader Reference pic can be found here
I love the Wacom Tablet that Wifey got me for Christmas!
I have started drawing more
I am really happy with how this one turned out
It has severely cut into my World of Warcraft time
I don’t mind so much though
I am not sure I like my new phone ring tone
I should have thought about the D word longer, shouldn’t I?
I could have made some crap up about dirigible
Who doesn’t want to read about airships?
Instead I write a post that makes me seem like a pompous ass
Who’s the real dullard now, SRH?
Who’s the real dullard now?
This post boiled down to “Fear my massive vocabulary!”
Or rather “Quake at SRH’s gargantuan lexicon!”
Sweet Jebus! I am a vainglorious ass!
Have a great weekend everyone


*I know there is at least one other who agrees with me.

W: 23 of 26

Ah, the 11th installment of the More Than Random Alphabet of SRH. Since Wifey is in town today, I have defaulted to the normal “randomly ask Wifey for a letter” method of letter generation. Today’s letter ended up being “W.” The 23 rd letter, W, is one of the later additions to our alphabet. It was added to denote the soft “V” sound which makes me wonder why it is not referred to as “doubleV, but that is beside the point.

W: W… w… w… Willy Waterloo is washing Warren Wiggens who is washing Waldo Woo

(Who said Dr. Seuss wasn’t into the homoerotic subtext?)
Hmmmm… Sometimes I think that Wifey is a bit on the self serving side of things. I think after she saw me do “P is for Progeny,” she figured W would be for Wifey. Well, she is incorrect. W in my world stands for Wendigo.

The Wendigo is a Native American mythological creature that is much like the yeti or sasquatch or Bigfoot. It is a large furry bipedal creature known to inhabit the mountainous wilds of North America. These creatures are distinctly different from yetis, sasquatches, and bigfeet due to their penchant for human flesh…

Oh, who am I kidding. W really is for Wifey. We got married almost 10 years ago, in fact this September will be our 10th anniversary. We were young kids at the time; the tender age of 23 without many real cares in the world. Well, I guess we cared about things like “where should we order pizza from tonight?” and “How late should we sleep in this morning”, but those aren’t really “cares”, per se.

But much like I did not belabor you with tales of Little Man, I also shall not regale you with tales of Wifey. Instead, I will focus on a few things that have changed in my life due to Wifey’s influence.

I learned to communicate my feelings better: Being married to an ex-therapist has its upsides and its downsides. While she will give me a quick-fire psychological profile of my friends and really nail their true selves to the wall with her clinical eye (hilarious upside), she sometimes will use those very skills against me (unfortunate downside). She often makes me really think about my motivations and what feelings are causing me to do various actions. She is typically 80-90% correct, but you did not hear that from me.

I learned that buying clothes that fit will make you look better: She introduced me to the idea that clothes that fit were not only comfortable, but that they were also more aesthetically pleasing. She has me wearing clothes that fit and make me seem like I am in a state of relative physical fitness, instead of shoving myself into pants that are too small and make me look like a be-panted sausage. She has helped me to get a more accurate self body image than I had before, and more than that she has helped me to accept what that image is with a small bit of grace. That is one of the greatest trivial life-lessons she has taught me.

I have learned that cheese is really over-rated: Wifey hates cheese; therefore most meals at Casa del SRH are cheese-less affairs. You know what? I don’t really feel like I am missing anything at all. We still cook tasty meals with a full bouquet of flavors and aromas. Since close to eliminating cheese from my diet, I have noticed how many people rely on cheese to make the meal. It is a culinary crutch, in my opinion. I know that there are a boat-load of you jokers out there who are going to come to the defense of cheese and insinuate that I have never had really “good” cheese. That may be true, but good cheese, as I understand it from the connoisseurs, is supposed to stand on its own not become a bland “sauce” to be slathered over some kind of breaded chicken.

I have learned to love who I am: I don’t necessarily know why, but Wifey fell in love with me. She has spent the past 12 years teaching me that I am worth loving. Because she loves me, I can love myself, but not in that way, you gutter dwelling porn fiends! I mean I guess I could still love myself that way, but that was not what I was getting at. Great, now I am flustered.

To recap:
It looks like Little Man likes painting pictures that in coloring book
He is surprisingly good
He will also body surf down our neighbors bank
He’s surprisingly good at that, too
I am not sure what will be for dinner tonight
It will not be cheesy though
Wendigo’s are not as scary as vampire bears, but you might not want to meet one.
Have a great weekend everyone
If you are in the States, have a great extended weekend but be safe

P: 16 of 26

Here we are with the tenth installment of the Ever More Patternless Random Alphabet of SRH. It is later than usual, but later is better than neverer. Today’s Random Letter Meanings for SRH comes from the anonymous comment from yesterday. Today’s letter is the 16 th letter of the English alphabet, the letter P.

P: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O…. P, Painting pink pajamas, Policeman in a pail. Peter Pepper’s puppy. And now Papa’s in the pail.

P is one of the letters that didn’t take me long to figure out. The word that immediately came to mind when I thought of the letter p was “Pee,” but everyone pees so how personal is that for my alphabetic identity? The second word that came up was progeny. So today’s word, boys and girls, is progeny, my progeny to be exact.

Today’s post will be about Little Man’s impact on my life, not necessarily about Little Man.
Rapidly coming up on four years ago lives were altered permanently by the arrival of our baby boy.

Here is a partial list of things that have changed since the arrival of Little Man:

• My hale and hearty yoga instructing brickhouse (she’s mighty mighty) of a wife sustained significant injuries to her back and hips due to labor complications
• My sleep deprivation hit all time highs, or is it lows?
• I started significantly losing hair (unfortunately not on my back)
• I think that had to do with sleep debt
• We started cooking almost all of our meals due to Little Man’s food allergies
• Housekeeping became a thing of the past
• Work only mattered due to the paycheck
• Priorities were re-arranged
• Amount of trains seen in person and via YouTube
• I became a little boy’s hero
• That one is scary, because heros always end up letting you down eventually
• Superman isn’t real, Batman is psychologically messed up, Captain America is dead,
• And my brother has a hard time looking past his own reflection in the mirror
• My TV viewing habits
• Amount of computer game time
• I started checking my language at home
• I started cursing more at work
• I achieved a cursing/noncursing balance
• A harmony of coarse and smooth language
• My knowledge of asthma and food allergies
• I started driving different
• More erratically due to lack of sleep
• Amount of conversations surrounding the topic of poo
  

Here is a partial list of things that have not been changed (much) since Little Man’s arrival:

• My wardrobe
• Love of Wifey
• The sheets on the bed (yee-uck)
• Sense of humor
  

All in all the changes in my life due to the arrival of my progeny are all worth it. When he falls asleep on my arm it is amazingly sweet. That is until I cannot feel my fingers due due to his noggin resting in the crock of my elbow. I love his inquisitiveness and how it makes me create plausible answers to a 3.75 year old’s burning questions.

To recap:
Day 3 is down and Day 4 is almost over, a little over a day left for the sole care provider role
It will be nice to have Wifey back
I think I might be zoo-ing it tomorrow
It would be fun to look at the tigers
And relish the hippo free zoo
Little Man and I will be doing something fun, gosh darnit!
2 of the 3.5 digital mounds of dirt rendered
1 more, but three versions of it
Ham, green beans, and crispy crowns for dinner tonight
Little Man’s menu
I haven’t slept an average of 3.5 hours of sleep a night without Wifey here
Lordy, am I tired
I still think REVENGE is the best name for a soft drink ever!
Open up a can of REVENGE
The secret ingredient is vengeance
Have a nice weekend everyone

C: 3 of 26

In the ninth installment of the More and More Random Alphabet of SRH and This Here Blog, the letter C came up. That is right, the third letter of the English alphabet, C.

C: Big C, Little C, What Begins with C? Camel on the ceiling, C…, c…. C

I have a list of the words I want to write about for theis series, and I still have 3 blanks that I am trying to consider. C was a letter that never had a blank associated with it. For me the letter C stands for Cat.

I have always been a cat person. My dad is insanely bad relating to people, but cats flock to him like he is the crazy lady in the dilapidated house down the road that every neighborhood seems to have. Stray will flop in front of the man so he will rub their belly. He has stopped cat fights by bellowing “Hey” and the cats slink off in opposite directions like they were chastised by their authority figure. It really is something to behold. He hold sway over felines. “Sway,” I say “Sway!”

Anyway, Dad instilled into me a love for the creatures as well. I love cats, I always have loved cats and always will love the little beasties. Alas and alack we had to give away our three cats upon the diagnosis of Little Man’s asthma. It seems that, in general, asthma and cats are not a good mix. It also doesn’t help that Little Man had a virulent reaction to cats with his allergist’s tests as well.

I know, I know, many people say that their animals are their children. These people don’t have children. I love those cats dearly, but they had to go. I miss them greatly. They are wonderful little creatures. I have had 7 cats grace my life.

Sox: A cat who adopted my brother and I as her kittens. She was a black cat with white paws and a white bib. The most loving cat I have ever encountered. She was wonderful. Sox passed when I was in High School. She was a really good cat.

Boots: A cat who adopted my family and demanded attention. Sox was the first cat I met, but Boots is truly my first cat. He too was black with white paws and a white bib. He was a stray tom when he started hanging around the house. He and Sox tolerated each other, but they were never friends. Boots left me while I was in college. Ksig and I went and had drinks in his honor. Ksig still calls me out about that.

Mama Cat: A Siamese who decided to have her litter of kittens on our back porch without our permission. She was so cross-eyed that she could see the past and the future. Her 4 kittens were Ferrari, Spiderman, Snowflake, and Clyde. We gave all five of these cats away.

Geisel: Named after Dr Suess. We adopted him on the day the news reported that DR Suess had died, ergo the name. He was a short and squat tabby. Actually our exchange student Janne adopted him. This was not the brightest of cats. We think he has some hearing issues as well as sight issues. He was louder than a stampeding elephant and would regularly thump into door jambs as well. He left on night never to be heard from again. We aren’t really sure what happened, but with his hearing and sight issues…

Senor Don Gato: For short, Senor. He is an all black and currently living with my parents. He is a belly loving whore. He flops in front of most people asking for belly love. Doesn’t matter if he knows them or not. Wifey and I got him 4 days into our marriage.

Lenny: Senor’s litter mate. He is a “Russian blue” in his coloring and sheds like a mo’fo. He has not been in the house for 2.5 years and we are still finding his sheddings in the house. Lenny suffers from PTSD. He is hyper vigilant and rather skittish. Lenny and Senor are both reformed farm cats, so they were never really all that lap cattish. Or so we thought… My parents were wonderful enough to take them when the Dr advised us to get the cats out of the house. Turns out that we were holding Lenny and Senor back somehow. Dad, because he is the King of Cats, has transformed our non-lap sitters into lapcats, much to my parents’ chagrin. Now those 2 cats won’t leave mom and dad alone. They are thriving in that environment.

Charlie: Charlie is a brown tabby. She is a handful to say the least. We got her when we foolishly stepped foot into the local Cat Welfare shelter. He actually hugged Wifey when we took her out of her cage. She is a very loving little cat, and it broke our heart to give her away. We gave her to a co-worker, who in turn gave her to her sister. Word through the grapevine is that Charlie is doing okay.

I miss the cats. I miss how alive they make the house seem. Without the animals in the house, I notice just how un-occupied the house is when we come home.

On this somber note, I shall go to the recap.

To recap:
I miss the cats
Wifey doesn’t so much
She misses them just not as much as I do
I need some new pants
The next 2 cats I own will be named:
The Lizard King, and Captain Sisko
Not sure when that will be exactly
Maybe when Little Man opts for allergy shots
Little Man knows that he is allergic to dairy, eggs, treenuts and peanuts
We are proud of him for knowing that
It could just save his life
Wow, I am late in posting today
Have a great weekend everyone

N: 14 of 26

I usually have Wifey choose the random letter of the week (to ensure non-author bias of letters), but she is all meetinged up at the moment and cannot assist in my letter choosing. So I did the next best thing. I threw something at my keyboard from the walkway by my cube and went with the first letter that I had not yet done. Sure it took 5 tries to blindly hit the keyboard and not get / or ` (oddly I got % as well... I haven’t figured that one out yet). Today’s randomly selected letter of my 8 th installment to my Increasingly More Randomer Alphabet of SRH is the 14 th letter of our English alphabet, the letter N. So without further ado…

N: Big N, Little n, What begins with those? Nine new neckties and a nightshirt and a nose

It was pretty easy to choose my own personal N-word… Whoa! Wait a second. That did not come out right at all. Let me try this one again, the first thing that came to mind when I thought of words near and dear to me that start with the letter N was absolutely Nothing.

That’s right, dear readers, I shall again wax eloquent about nothing (I am down to “dear reader” now, aren’t I? Oh well, the show goes on).

The concept of nothing is a difficult one to talk about because, well, how does one describe the idea of absence? Because of that intrinsic difficulty nothing truly isn’t anything without, well, anything. One cannot directly describe nothing, one has to skirt the edges of nothing. You can only make inferences about nothing. Its description is implicitly defined. It is everything, something, and anything’s antonym. That is just how it is when you are dealing with nothing.

Why is nothing important to me? Well, the irony of it all… The irony of the lack of it all? Oh, Hell, even I am confused now, and I am writing this drivel. Truly nothing is interesting to me because of the simplicity of the idea and just how earth-shattering a concept it truly is. The idea is simple because even a 3.75 year old can grasp the concept.

Little Man, How many rocks are in the box?
Papa, you silly! None!

But it is also difficult, because, as I mentioned above, it is basically not explicitly definable. Truly its definition is a conundrum because when you give it definition, you give it substance, and when you give it substance, it loses its nothingness

The earth-shatteringness of the concept comes from its application. If one removed the concept of nothing from our world system, it would collapse under the extra weight of itself, because there would always have to be something… anything.

My love of the concept of nothing harkens back to when I was in college studying some of the history of math. Yes, yes, I know… History is already dry, Math History was something beyond arid. It was desiccated. It was beyond dehydrated. I don not wish the fate of a history of math class on anyone, but I digress. The interest in the class did not occur during monotone lecture during the class, or the mandatory slumber inducing reading outside of class, but when the ideas from the class re-hydrated later by beer.

Ah, beer induced mathematics and philosophy… In some ways I miss it and in others I am glad they are over. I love the semantics associated with nothing. I love the mathematical semantics as well as the grammatical semantics. Nothing defies most typical conventions. The conundrums associated with nothing is where I reside.

To recap:
Franklin the plastic owl is Little Man's good friend now
Little Man's favorite thing to do with Franklin is launch him down the slide
Or kick him off the slide
I am not sure I would want to be Little Man's good friend
Wifey can sleep through anything except Little Man's feet on her throat
Or sleep next to him, now that I think of it
I have been playing phone tag with a doctor's office
All I want is some allergy medicine!
Have a great weekend everyone

G: 7 of 26

The letter G is the 7 th letter in the English alphabet. It is one of those letters that would be very noticeable if it were not available to use. I asked Wifey last night what letter today would be about and she immediately said, “G.” She said that she chose G because she was going to be “Gone all weekend.” She is bitter like that. Without further ado…

G: A, B, C, D, E, F, … G! Goat. Girl. Goo-goo goggles. G… g… G

I have found that this process of coming up with a representative word for every letter of the alphabet is difficult at best. So far, out of the 6 letters I have worked with in the Increasingly Random Alphabet of SRH and His blog, only 3 of them have been easy to come up with a definitive word. G is one of these difficult to come up with ones. Of all 26 letters I have not figured out 7 words. G rests firmly within this category of “undetermined.”

It took some real thinking to come up with it, but I think for me G is for Grape Soda.

I know I have waxed eloquent before about the joys of the grape soda, but I will endeavor to do so again. Previously I went into different brands of grape sodas and how I liked them, today’s post will focus solely on what a grape soda means to me and why they are an integral part of my life. Without even further ado…

I had my first grape soda when I was in Venice, Florida with my grandpa on my father’s side. I think I was 7 or 8 at the time. I liked grape suckers (who remembers Dum Dum’s?), I liked grape Jelly. I liked other grape candies. I did not like grapes, for they did not seem all that grape flavored to me and I studiously avoided fruit as a child and sadly as an adult. Anyway, prior to the grape soda I had with Grandpa H, I had only been exposed to the 2 main colas and Sprite. When the first drop of soda hit my tongue, I knew that my relationship with soft drinks had been permanently altered. Now there was a drink I would actually crave.

When we made our way back to Birmingham from that fateful trip to Florida I had a new mission. That mission was to make grape sodas part of my everyday existence. Luckily, at the time there was a local bottling plant in Birmingham that made it’s own grape soda. Buffalo Rock Bottling Company was the proud manufacturer of Grapico. I think Grapico was a less than clever word play of Pepsico and Grape. Well played Buffalo Rock, well played indeed.

Today when I drink a grape soft drink (by the way I am quite the drink snob. I like bottles… not cans. It can be plastic bottles, but I prefer the glass bottles. It just tastes better without the addition of the aluminum aftertaste) it takes me back to a more carefree time in my life.

A time when I thought that my parents were typical. A time when I thought that those skinny assed tiny crappy meat breakfast pork chops were the only kind of pork chops in existence. A time where I thought that since my parents didn’t want cable TV, that people who had it were being extravagant. A time where I thought that to be in good health my leg length should be longer than my waist size. I swear in junior high school some of my jeans were painted on. I was soooooo happy when baggy jeans came about.

Grape soda for me accompanied cream horns as a snack. (Not that many cream horns mind you...) Grape soda was an afternoon treat when I watched GI Joe, Transformers, DuckTales, Looney Tunes, and other afternoon cartoons (Thundercats, Bravestar {Shudder}, Silverhawks {double shudder}, et al…). Grape soda was the drink of homework completion celebrations. Grape Soda was comfort.

Now, grape soda is a bit bitter sweet because while it sends me into a nostalgic tailspin, but it also reminds me of the naivety of my childhood and the vast amounts of denial I grew up with. What it all boils down to is that I dig me some grape soda. It is fizzy, it is hyper-grape flavored, it has a substantial amount of salt in it… making you want more. It is a wonderful product. Just plain wonderful.

To Recap:
I am still solo parenting it this weekend
Not looking forward to it
Speed of the PUMA!
WTF?!? Speed of the puma?
Why not speed of a cheetah?
Bravestar you make no sense
And 30-30 is just a moron
Grapico is one of the top ten search strings that lead people to this blog
They typically don’t stay
Mainly because I make fun of Alabamians
But who doesn’t
Have a great weekend everyone
I hope I will