Stay-at-Home Dad

Bill Burr's beat this one to death, but it is time to put in my two cents.

Oprah claims [stay-at-home] moms have the "most difficult job on the planet".  I call bullshit.  (Again, I'm not the first.  Bill put it together on his last special that Annie and I were at the taping of.)

I'm working part-time at the wind farm right now.  3 days a week.  When I started there, I was only supposed to be there for 6 months or so, before I went off to upstate New York.  When NY fell through, they had already hired two engineers to replace me.  They can't really afford to keep me on full time.  So this is what I worked out with them while I find something else.

At first, the two days off were supposed to be used to thoroughly search for a new job.  Instead, it has turned into typical domestic activity.  I clean and cook and hang with Angel and Zumba.  It's a blast.  This morning I went to a salsa class at the sports club I'm a member of.  I'm going chocolate tasting at 1pm.  Plenty of time to shower before I go out dancing tonight.  I'm one of the Real Housewives of Oakland on Wednesdays & Fridays.

Atlanta, the only one I ever watched.  I was on the couch for weeks after surgery.

Granted, I don't have any screaming kids making me want to force Nyquil down their throats for some quiet time.  However, I can't imagine it's all that bad.  You just watch cartoons, color, and eat candy.  Rough life.

For now, I'm able to catch up on a movies.  Read books.  Blog.  Grocery shop/post office/everything without lines.  Play games.

If you manage to place yourself in the arms of a sugar momma (like me, be jealous), and you get to be a stay-at-home anything, you've won life's big lottery.

Britney = Sugar Momma. I went there.

Nap time,
~RoB

Podcasts

I drive ~39 minutes one-way to work.  I did the same commute in the summer of 2008, and I was almost excited to catch back up on all of my podcasts.  My enthusiasm ran out as quickly as my podcasts did.  The only things that I regularly listened to before this summer were: Bill Burr's Monday Morning Podcast, Freakonomics, and This American Life.  I highly recommend the latter two to everyone, but the first one is more up my alley than most people's.

Anyway, I went on a rampage of trying new podcasts.  I'm really happy with them some, and I have a few that I'd like to say aren't so good..  Car Talk is amazing, and How Stuff Works is super interesting.  Planet Money hits an interest that I've only recently come across: economics, so I listen to that regularly.  Adam Corolla's podcast sucked, so I really don't understand why it is so popular..  I've unsubscribed to TED Talks (stupid without video) and Comedy Central (same problem).  ESPN's B.S. Report and Jillian Michaels' podcast didn't do if for me, either.  A new podcast from the producers of WWDTM! has been pretty good, and its called How to Do Everything.

I'm a big fan of Doug Loves Movies, but I don't think I've correctly guessed a single movie yet from the Leonard Multin game.  I tried Jordan, Jesse Go!, but I don't think that I get it.  Not really my thing.  I'm also trying to settle on Sklarboro Country.  I'm a big fan of the Sklar Bros, but hearing them (instead of being able to look at them) as they continuously switch between each other is almost too much for my brain.  I like their interviews, though, so I'll probably keep trying.  Joe Rogan's podcast is just too long, he gets too long winded on some of his crazy rants, and I get distracted every time I think about the Fleshlight.  Bring back in the long list of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! and Napa Valley Wine Radio 'casts that I allowed to build up in my iPhone, and I've got quite the fleet of entertaining sound bites to get me from here to work and back each day.

I've also learned some really important things from these podcasts over the last few months:

• How to Do Everything taught me that the only sure-fire way to get rid of hiccups is to stick your finger up in your butthole and tickle the inside a little bit.  Think about that next time you have the hiccups.
• Doug <3s Movies taught me that Johnny Knoxville lost a tooth to a high-velocity dildo while filming Jackass 3D.
• Doug Loves Movies also taught me that a taping of Mr. Belvedere was shut down early because Christopher Hewett sat on his own balls.  (He also had another instance where he fell out of a harness during a production of Peter Pan and landed on his balls... stopping production for another day.)  Pretty much, we learned that Mr. Belvedere had gigantic testicles.
• Planet Money, on a more serious note, has taught me that nobody in the world knows what the fuck they are doing when it comes to the economy.
• Oh, and How to Do Everything taught me that Annie is just as awkward on the radio as she is in real life.

BB's MMPC makes me think the word 'cunt' alot, to myself, too,
~RoB

Bridesmaids & Batteries

I told Annie that I was interested in seeing Bridesmaids when we first saw the poster a month ago.  I knew that it had something to do with a bakery (my cupcake blogs were abuzz), and I love the girls from SNL.  Well, the movie was a hit, but we didn't get to see it until last night.  It was truly hilarious and a highly recommended movie.  Hell, you've heard that all week.  However, I woke up this morning frustrated by unanswered questions that apparently haunted my sleep.  (IMDB this shit if you don't remember character names from 3 days ago anymore!)

1) Why can't they make anybody from the Midwest in movies sound like they're from the Midwest?  They had crazy accents flying around the whole movie, and not one sounded Milwaukeen.  I know people study accents.  Come on!
2) What was the pill/drink combo that Helen gave Annie, and why wasn't she ever caught purposefully giving her a concoction that would fuck her up?
3) Does Annie ever get back into baking professionally?
4) What was it that Helen said that convinced Rhodes to come reunite with Annie after the funeral?  And where, exactly, did he change from his uniform to the hipster suit?
5) How long can a butterfly survive enclosed in an envelope?

I guess I can't expect things to come full circle if the script is written entirely by women.  (Considering how popular yesterday's post was, I guess I have to keep things controversial.)  [I'm clearly joking.  Women are smarter than men.]  {I'm out of parenthetical enveloping symbols after this.}  <Except these, I guess.>

I figure that some of these questions were left unanswered to leave room for Bridesmaids 2 (where Annie and Rhodes get married) and Bridesmaids 3 (where Megan marries Air Marshall Jon) and, assuming Hollywood continues as it has, Bridesmaids 4 (where talking puppies get married) and Bridesmaids 5 (where one of Rita's 'sticky' boys grows up to marry Helen's step-daughter) and Bridesmaids 6 that I can't even pull out of my ass right now.

Moving on...

I stayed home yesterday to fix my car.  It was just the battery, though it was hard to diagnose.  The most physically intense part came where I had to try and jump start the car so I could drive to a store and replace the battery.  My car was parked in the car port under our apartment building, so the hood was inaccessible.  I turned the key (it didn't start if you've been keeping up), but I was able to put it in neutral and let it roll down the driveway.  However, I'd have to turn the car uphill in order for me to park it downhill (everything in the bay area is at some sort of angle).  There was some pretty crazy leg pressing going on as I pushed my car slightly uphill, jumped in, pulled the steering wheel with everything, and managed to depress the manual brakes before ramming Annie's gas-guzzling SUV.

I have no real tools at my apartment, but I managed to do it all by myself.  It required using a random-ass assortment of tools available at the local auto parts store.  While struggling to get the battery out in the parking lot, there were some great moments.  One African American guy walked by (and into the store) shirtless, openly smoking a joint.  He didn't seem to give a f*ck.  Also, two Hispanic guys climbed out the back of a semi trailer and asked me what the price of some tires sitting outside were, as if I gave a f*ck.  I'm out $100, but that's way better than I thought it would be in the middle of my freakout.  I then went home and made chili in a crock pot, and I took the rest of the day off work for some macho time watching Bill Burr's first HBO Special.  Once again, I had one of those days where my pimpmones were flowin'!

Can I even talk about bridesmaids and pimpmones in the same post?
~RoB