Game Six and Parade

So I saw my favorite team win their championship in front of my face a little while ago. Here's a bunch of pictures of it. Warning, I grew a horrible beard for the playoffs. It was the first and only beard I will ever grow, so my beard is retiring undefeated. Anyway, sorry for having to look at my horrible beard.

Earlier that day was dress up for Halloween at Connor's school. Afterward we went to Mighty Subs and they gave Choo-Choo Conductor Connor a cookie:

Toronto

Recently, Heather and I went to Toronto to see my favorite band, the Replacements, play their first show in 22 years. They only announced three shows, with Toronto being the first, so-

Yo, yo, yo, look who's back. It's me, Bold Imaginary Question guy. How's that pepperoni shortage going, loser? That's not my question. It is: Who the heck are the Replacements, loser?

Oh, great, you again. Well, the Replacements, also known as the 'Mats, which is short for Placemats, which kind of sounds like the Replacements, are an American rock band from Minneapolis, active from 1979 to 1991.

Oof, you're so old. Harry Styles was born in 1994, loser. That's it, I'm out of here. No more questions for you.

OK. The 'Mats are my favorite band, so over the last 22 years I have kept tabs on possible reunions. I have always told Heather that if the 'Mats get back together we are going to see them. I always pictured this meant flying to Minneapolis for a weekend and going to First Avenue. It would be a nice trip to a city we used to live in. Instead I went to a foreign country and stood in a field for five hours for a 75 minute concert. And it was the best concert I will ever go to.

Tennessee

So, yeah I'm blogging again, deal with it! I went to Tennessee a few weeks ago, so now you have to look at pictures. Well, the night before I went to TN, the family went out for Chinese food. Yummy, Mai Tai's:

What's this?

Sunday River, No Baby

Yeah, so Heather and I went skiing for a few days and left Connor with some gypsies. Gypsies offer very affordable child care. Well, that's what we thought, and then later we remembered we were dealing with gypsies, so we pulled him out of Gypsy Camp and left him with Grandma and Uncle instead. Do you want to see the garbage we eat on a skiing vacation, and other assorted stuff? No. Well, you're at the wrong website.

Sunday River is far away so we always stop at McDonalds on the way up there and get some McSpring Rolls:

Recipe: Homemade Double Gulp

OK, this post is really dumb. I need to tell you that. So if you continue reading this post, I don't want to hear complaints that it is dumb. Well, let's get to the dumbness. If you read my earlier post you will know that I was happy a 7-11 opened nearby recently. Well, the new 7-11 was a little disappointing because they don't have Diet Mountain Dew on tap, and it is $0.20 more expensive for a Double Gulp at the new location versus the one less than two miles away. Yes, this is stuff I get disappointed about.

Anyway, I decided to make a Double Gulp at home. Here's the ingredients:

Diet Mountain Dew was on sale for $0.88 for a two liter bottle. I bought one. I put some crushed ice in a Double Gulp container that I saved. I also saved the top and straw. Let's pause right here and appreciate how dumb this is. I saved a cheap plastic container, with the top and the straw, and took a picture of it, and have now uploaded the picture to the internet. OK, so the recipe is you pour the soda into the container. Here's the result:

Afterwards there was a little less than half of the Mountain Dew left in the two liter bottle, if you were wondering. A few hours later (yes, I'm not a monster, it takes me a few hours to consume that much soda) my mother-in-law came over. She said "Oh, someone went to 7-11."
I said, "Well, actually that is a homemade Double Gulp."
"Oh, OK."
There were no follow up questions, she was happy with that answer, and honestly when you encounter something so dumb, what's the point of followup questions?

So what do you think, this was really dumb, wasn't it?

Valentine's Day

Heather and I have been married for 13 years. Our first Valentine's Day once we started going steady was 18 years ago. On that first Valentine's Day, I dipped into my meager savings and bought some flowers, probably the cheapest roses available. It was probably four roses for $10 and they looked sad. I put them in the backseat of her car and went to pick her up from her work, with her car. I was a poor college student without a car is what I am saying. She got in the car and I said something like, "Yo, it would be rad to the max if you peeped in the backseat, yo." It was 1995, that's how we talked back then. She looked back, saw the roses, and screamed, "What the heck! You stupid heck! Flowers are a hecking waste of money, heckhole! " (that was edited) I haven't bought her a flower since that day, 18 years ago.

So what I am saying is my wife is awesome and really thrifty and I <3 Heather. (Heather, you see, it looks like a heart if you look at it sideways.) For the last six years we have had a romantic Valentine's Day tradition: We go to Qdoba and get some damn chain Mexican food:

This year we got two quesadilla's, two tacos, chicken nachos, chips and salsa, and a fountain soda. Here's the bill for this feast:

$4.05 for all of that, maybe now you might see why Heather would think it is romantic? This tradition started when I got an email in 2007 from Qdoba letting me know they had a Buy One Get One free (BOGO) coupon for Valentine's Day. I am in their reward program, obvs, and I had earned a free entree for eating 10 burritos. So Heather and I went that year, I combined the coupon and the free burrito, got nothing else, and the total bill was $0.00. Heather was impressed. We've gone every year since then, and I make a point of having a free burrito stored up when we go. One year while in line, I gave Heather my Qdoba card since she was in front of me, and she used the reward card before the BOGO coupon, like an amateur, so we had to pay for one entree that year. That year was not as romantic. I take control now. The last few years they changed it so you don't need a coupon, you just need to kiss in front of the cashier to get the BOGO. If you know us, and how much we love kissing in public, you know we really go to town in front of that poor cashier. This year we had a third wheel who kept talking about cars:

In conclusion, we had an awesome feast and got home less than an hour after setting off on our date. Yeah, it's pretty much the best Valentine's Day tradition ever. 

2012: The Year in Sandwiches

Hi! I made a 40 second video showing all the pictures of sandwiches I took this year:

Some notes, so I can put some awesome bullet points in this thing.

• That's 66 photos of sandwiches. 
• There's one picture that is just a slice of pizza. That was my mistake, and I am so, so sorry.
• I decided to include burritos. They are kind of like a sandwich, bread type stuff on the outside, food in the middle.
• I decided to leave out tacos. I don't know why I would include burritos and not tacos, but I DID! SO DEAL WITH IT!

I also made a separate video showing all my food photos from the year, including all non-sandwiches if you want to see some tacos. This one is 1:19 long:

That has 130 different photos.

In conclusion, I probably take too many pictures of food, and sandwiches are yummy.