j3 PRESENTS:: I'LL SLAP YOU FOR A SUGARCUBE...HAPPY FRIDAY

Pretty sure I never posted this, but the above photo is of a fortune that came out of a cookie (that I didn't eat because I've chosen...yes, chosen...to not eat sugar for a month). We went to Pei Wei on the day after I had begun (January 2nd) and, of all of the words in the english language that I could learn in Chinese, this fortune cookie thought that for me "sugar" would be appropriate. That's a helluva joke. I put it up on the chalk board in the kitchen. It's about the only thing driving me at this point.

Last night, I broke down and said that I had to have a burger. Problem is that I can't have a burger with ketchup which is probably the most punishing omission I'm enduring at this point because I absolutely love ketchup. So, instead, I drown everything in ranch. Yeah, that's like saying, "This month, no liquor! So pass the heroin!" Certainly wasn't a guiltless meal. Before we left, I looked in the fridge because I wanted to smuggle and old bottle of organic ketchup into the restaurant thinking that there wasn't anything wrong with "organic sugar" which was listed as the fourth ingredient. Then I was thinking, "What in the hell is organic sugar and can I have it?" Then I looked at the rest of the ingredients and it was just like any other bottle of ketchup except every ingredient had "organic" in front of it. Organic tomatoes. Organic vinegar. I'm confused. I was going to take it until my lovely wife put her foot down and told me I could not bring my own condiments into an eating establishment. Party pooper.

We had been looking at this house because, well, we get tired of everything except ourselves every two years. It's this house that overlooks a golf course and sits on a plot of land that's 115 feet wide and 200 feet deep. It's gigantic. Hardwood floors in everyroom, beautiful fireplace, two-door garage, wonderful deck in the back, new fence, right price. Only problem was the traffic. We sat in front of the house one day at 3:00PM and counted 34 cars in a five minute period. We went back at 9:00PM and counted 11 cars in another five minute period. Not totally dissuaded, I told my lovely wife that, "By bedtime, this street is probably a ghostly quiet." We thought, if we can deal with the traffic, this would be the perfect home to start a family in. We started looking at it on Sunday, dreamt about it all week and started calling our realtor until, yesterday, my lovely wife found an article on the front of the freaking paper that said the city was going to break ground next week on widening the road this house sat on from two lanes to twice the width and including a left turn lane. Yes, honey, I believe in signs. Sometimes I'm horrible at analogies. Late in the day, I just get really lazy with analogies. I don't want to think them through--they just come out. I was talking about how relieved I was that we found that out so we could close the door on that house and be happy with what we have and not be so pushy to move and widening that road certainly removed it from my mind. I said, "It's like you have an ex-girlfriend that you're kinda thinking of going back to and then you find out she's become a prostitute and you're like, BOOM, done with that relationship." It's the best I could do at 8:00 last night.

If I have to see the guy in Minneapolis hammer a nail into a board with a banana again, I'm gonna lose it. Maybe you all didn't catch that one.

Angry Tim blessed us with this beauty. I'm not a huge Creed fan, but seriously, these dudes killed it in this performance. Trust me on this one. Just trust me. Check out this performance by formerly the most hated band in the world, Creed. They're back and doing it hawdcore.