Go Blue

Annie and I had the opportunity to help a close friend paint obstacles in the playground for a preschool that she runs.  Can you find the one that we painted?

I'll give you a hint:

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but Annie's kind of a psycho when it comes to football.  I mean, I'm a huge Michigan fan, but she is insane.  It's like dating a boy.  The other day at the gym, I came out of the men's locker room to see her sitting in the lobby talking football with the guys.  Anyway, it's a big day today for the boys in blue, so I hope they crush the Irish.  After all, it is a historic night for the Big House!

At least she made the best thing that she's ever cooked in the over 8 years that I've known her last night.  It was a peach tart made from fresh peaches from the farmers' market.  Once again, you should follow that link, make it (it's simple), and thank me later.

It was her first excuse to use our fancy tart pan.

Go Blue,

~RoB

Backpacking

It was really cold, and it was flowing much faster than this picture is showing.

Annie did a great job detailing my first experience backpacking.  We went all out for my first time, and I feel very accomplished afterward.  Sweet, darling, innocent Annie was nice enough to leave out some of the details more appropriate for my blog than hers:

We delayed our trip by a day because I didn't feel spectacular.  I was in full-on allergy mode, and my domestic partner's mother decided to poison me with a concoction of over the counter medication.  I've learned not to take dosing advice from her, even though she's half my weight.  She's a professional.

Bugs are damn annoying.  I was covered in 100% Deet which smells lethal.  Almost flammable.  Yet, there were no fires, so I couldn't roast 'mallows like I'd always imagined camping entailed.  I want s'mores if I'm walking my ass that far without a shower.

How's that for a view?

We had a wine platypus.  Yeah, most people hike with these little plastic, flimsy bottles filled with water.  We are not most people.  We poured a petite sirah into one of them before leaving.  This is a level of classiness not seen before in camping.  (Except it was designed specifically for wine, so I imagine it is a top seller in yuppie sporting goods stores.)

I didn't poop for over 24 hours.  This is/was a big deal.  You're asked to pack out any toilet paper you use.  You have no clue how much toilet paper I use to wipe my ass.  I'm not clean down there until you would blow your nose in the tissue after wiping.  You also have to dig a hole for your poop.  Nope, not worth it.

I experienced what it was like to skinny dip while being sober, in the full light of day.  Skinny dipping is way more awkward than I remember it being in the past, but those incidents were always clouded by the alcohol fairy (or at least the extreme blackness of night).

This was the view from my water seat above.

I got a little whiny in the morning.  Big surprise:  a fat guy on a thin mat resting on the ground didn't find himself very comfortable.  I also got really hot.  So, sleeping didn't go as well as planed.  ~RoB minus sleep becomes Dragon Rob!  Food helped a little, so did motion in the direction of the car.

You must separate yourself from your chapstick the entire time that it is dark out.  It is unacceptable.  I need my chapstick more than I need oxygen.  More than I need sex.  (If there was a better advertisement for Chapstick, I'd like to see it.)  Apparently bears like fruity smelling things, and it was the choice between luscious, soft, creamy lips or arm wrestling a grizzly.  My brain won the argument, but just barely.  I could probably take a bear if it had my last Cherry Chapstick.

Found a teddy bear saying "I <3 Chapstick". This was next to it.  WTF?

Apparently, I purchased a fancy, new, inflatable camping mat from Annie's dad's store (30% family discount!), and we're going out for 2 days in Pt. Reyes at the end of this month.  I'll either be really good at this soon, or I'll be craigslisting a fancy, new, inflatable camping mat from Annie's dad's store.  We all know I'm meant more for a fancy hotel downtown than a rustic campsite anyway.

Happy Camping,
~RoB

Hand Washing

I'm a little confused by society's requirement that I wash my hands after I pee.

Also, furry people with warts must hold hands.

If you've ever taken a shower with me, you know quite well how ritualistically clean my penis is.  It gets washed 2 or 3 times in the course of a single shower.  I can't really say that I take better care of any other part of my body.  Maybe my teeth.

So, why is it that when I walk into a public restroom, after touching the doors and the light switch and any other medium in my way, do I not immediately wash my hands before pulling lil' ~RoB out to pee?  I mean, I have a perfectly good idea of where my penis has been for the past 45 minutes since I last peed.  I don't, however, have any clue what kind of creepy, diseased crackwhore you finger-banged during lunch before coming in here to wash off your hands.  Or, slightly more realistically, if you dragged your ass out of here after pooping without appropriately anti-bacterializing (word?) yourself.  Shouldn't I be worried about me?

Dirty touches door.  I touch door.  I touch penis.  BAM!  Gonorrhea.  Or poison ivy.  Or something else I'd rather not have my penis infected with.

Things would be different if I was serving food or something.  But the average person should feel privileged to touch the hand that touches my pristine penis.  That being said, I always wash my hands.  Always.  Regardless if I'm doing #1, #2, #3, or some sick combination of all the former with extras.  Well, that is unless I'm naked, but then I usually don't use my hands at all during the process of urinating.

So... who wants to shake my hand?
~RoB

Royal Wedding - Day 2

If you haven't already, you should catch up with us so far by reading about Day 1.

I woke up with a little bit of a hangover.  For me, that means I'm super, duper hungry and I have to poop.  I don't throw up, I'm not out for the count, I may need a nap, but in general it's just that I need protein and some bathroom time.  However, the after effects lasted longer than I'm used to (into the early afternoon), which makes me feel like I'm getting old.  I've been told (by this girl) that we have harder and harder times rebounding as we get older, and I'm starting to believe it.

So, that first Jack&Coke at around 1:50pm didn't go down so well.  Why was I drinking at 2pm?  Well, we were at a Nebraska fan sports bar watching football.  In full Michigan garb.  Our game was about to begin.  Wait, weren't we in NE for a wedding today?  Yeah, but people keep scheduling their damn weddings on football Saturdays, so you have to work in some football whenever possible.  Anyway, the double Jack&Coke (it was only $1 more) didn't taste very good.  However, all of the shitty bar food that we devoured did, so it worked.  Though we were the clear minority, everyone was really nice, and most of the football on the TVs was going our way, so we just enjoyed.

Skip ahead to a trolley that was taking us from the Hilton to the church.  The church was cute and tucked into downtown.  Overall, the wedding felt super fancy schmance (word?).  It made me remember how different people dress between the two coasts.  A tie is pretty formal for a Northern Californian, and it was the extent of my outfit.  Yet, I was the only man not in a suit at the church.  (Heck, I had sneakers on.  There was dancing to be done later.)  It was the fastest ceremony that I can remember, and the preacher/minister/pastor/deacon? was pretty entertaining.  It was over, we were standing in the courtyard ready to throw petals, the bride and groom came out and loaded the party bus, and then the progression to the wedding needed to be figured out.

This was the most awkward part of the weekend.  The whole wedding party loaded the bus.  Then all the hip, young kids loaded it.  Everyone that Annie and I knew was on the bus.  Yet, there was a substantial group of people still loitering outside of the church, mostly the bride's family.  So, we just waited around for some sort of group motion toward the reception, by some mode of transportation.  I was positive that the reception was just a block away.  I kept pointing at the building I thought it was.  Eventually, we reloaded the trolley and made it to the reception without any problems (I was wrong and glad I didn't drag Annie to the wrong place).  However, there were a good 10-15 minutes of Annie and Rob standing around awkwardly and alone.

The beginning of the reception was a cocktail hour with, yet again, another open bar.  We met up with a friend from MI and proceeded to 'try' all of the appetizers that we're being served.  Some were 'tried' more than once.  Shit didn't get real until we walked into the ballroom though.  It was like walking into the new Aria in Vegas.  A huge chandelier winds down from the ceiling with the 6?-tiered cake centered beneath it.  It was beautiful and impressive.  There were so many money signs floating through my head.  (I'd be lying if I didn't say that I kept thinking about all of the money going by at every step of the process.  It didn't make me any more excited to get married one day.)

S&N initials were found everywhere.  It was a lesson in advertising.

Eating, drinking, first dances, cake cutting...  Finally, it was time.  I had told some of the locals about my dancing experience and how I was a Zumba instructor.  It was time to show off.  So I did.  I danced a ton for the rest of the night.  Whenever in similar situations, I have to take regular breaks for water and to wipe down my sweaty body.  (It's always a fun game hiding water glasses and napkins from the wait staff so that I can continue to use them... while they're told to pick them up.)  The Cupid Shuffle came on 2nd or 3rd, and I got called out by the DJ.  "I'd follow the guy in the tie."  I'm the guy in the tie.  There was one other guy there I saw swing dancing with his mother... or something, but he was my only competition.  It was all about ->this guy<-.

I danced with the bride's mother, an aunt, the groom's mom, heck... everyone.  Some dudes, too.  At one point I was starting to wind down (and the music wasn't helping), when a middle-aged woman approached me.  "I just wanted to let you know that you have quite an audience; you need to keep going.  You've been winding down a little, and I thought I'd let you know we're all watching you now."  Then she returned to her group along one of the walls.  This was right on par with the group of white guys standing by my table that fist-pounded me at one point when I was returning to my table for the water/napkin routine.

I've never Soul Trained.  There was talk, but it never got pulled off.  I was also told that I should try a back flip off of the main table.  I considered it, but Annie called me stupid and brought me back down to Earth.  At one point, a girl grabbed the mic and thought it was drunken karaoke time.  (This same girl had an epic moment where she fell in front of the bride and groom later that night in the hotel, was picked up by the groom, and started to be escorted back to her room before one of her friends found her and yelled at her for being dealt with by the bride and groom on their wedding night.  When the bride was telling the story the next morning, it sounded like a dream... but it wasn't.  It was hilarious.)

The reception ended at midnight.  We all lit sparklers to escort the bride and groom out.  Then, the cool, hip kids progressed to a late-night pizza parlor and sports bar.  Nothing significant happened after that, and we progressed back to the hotel without hitting any bars, and we went to bed at a reasonable hour.  Oh, we did have to walk by a mural twice during this portion of the night.  There was a creepy girl painted that stared into your soul, no matter where you were standing.  It still kind of haunts me.

The girl under the arrow.  I picked a weird angle so that she doesn't invade your dreams.

I woke up feeling spectacular.  That didn't appear to be the case for most of the other participants.  They apparently didn't burn the alcohol off by dancing like the rest of us.  There was one last group brunch before we all split to head home.

So, that was the wedding.  I really don't know if I could handle the attention that a bride and groom get for a whole day.  I'm happy enough blogging for attention, where I don't have to make eye contact or small talk or "practice hugging short people".  This was, hands down, the fanciest wedding I'll ever attend.  I'm very happy that I was able to be there for the bride and groom, and they seemed very happy to have us travel so far to share it with them.  I'm also happy that I met a bunch of new people that I very much enjoyed, and I've already started my Facebook pursuit of all of their friendships... for stalking at a later date.

Yet another wedding this weekend in Oakland!
~RoB

The last day in Omaha is summarized here.

Royal Wedding - Day 1

Annie and I took off to Omaha, NE, to participate in the wedding of one of my favorite people ever.  He's the groom in the pic below (not to say that his new wife isn't just as amazing as he is).

All of these fancy cartoons are taken from the groom's blog.

The trip started with an invitation to the rehearsal dinner.  (Technically, I guess it started at 3:45am when the taxi picked us up to drive us to SFO.  After all, we had 2 cities to touch down in before we would eventually make it to Omaha [though we were on the same plane throughout].)  I guess checking into the hotel happened before the rehearsal dinner, as well.  We took a shuttle from the airport to the wrong Hilton.  Why the fuck are there two different Hiltons in downtown Omaha?  We also received a gift bag when we checked in, which excited Annie so much that she hasn't stopped talking about it.  Seriously.

Moving on.  I had never heard of general riff-raff being invited to the rehearsal dinner (or anybody outside of the actual rehearsal), but I'm glad they did it.  It was the first opportunity to meet people and family, and it was a good introduction to the high taste and classiness that the wedding would be.  We discovered that there were only a handful of people that we knew, and only 1 or 2 that I knew well (the groom was a friend of mine from U of M).  So, I had to come out of my shell a little and try to be social.

There was way more food than I expected, and it was really good.  (I ate just before going so that I wouldn't be a ravenous monster.)  The red wine was Flowing, with a capital 'F'.  Anytime somebody walked by, your glass was filled.  I probably drank something like 10 glasses.  After a slide show, we all congregated to the bar, and the Jack&Cokes started to make their appearances.  Then there was talk of progressing onto the next bar.  Which led to more and more bars, until we closed the bar at our hotel and I finally returned to the room with an already sleeping Annie.

Notable moments were:

Giving the bartender at some dive a $10 tip after keeping a tab open.  Alcohol was cheap, and we drank alot, so it was a fair tip.  However, he walked out from behind the bar to approach me as I was walking out, shake my hand, and thank me for the tip.  This is why I tell Californians that they have no fucking clue how nice we are in the Midwest.

A fight broke out at one bar right next to us.  The crowd splitting the multiple guys apart ended up pushing us into the bar.  We pushed back, and one of the groomsmen jumped in front of the groom in an attempt to shield him.  (Way smarter than my "punch him, pussy" cat calls.)  It was just this side of ridiculous, but the craziest part was the drunken redneck yelling "I'll fucking kill you, faggot!"  Who the fuck says the word 'faggot' anymore?  In my head I pictured him spelling it 'faget' or 'faggit'.  We were also surprised that they let him sit back down and continue drinking.  I guess it makes sense not to kick everyone out so that they can kill each other in the street.  Or maybe that's just how things roll 'round here.

Great Facebook statuses when I woke up:  "Alcohol is so cheap!" In Nebraska, True.  "What bar number is tjis?"  Fair question, but asking the same thing 12 minutes later is a bit obnoxious... and a sign that things are going downhill.  "Crazy dex happening in rhe 5040s. Come lisson!"  This was the last thing I communicated before passing out around 2am.  I thought I could hear some wild sex going on in my hallway.  I apparently thought we should all congregate outside of the participants' door and enjoy it together.  Note:  drunken texts are funny and between two people.  Drunken facebook statuses are funny and between 1,000 people.  Try to keep that math in perspective next time, drunken ~RoB.

Magically, a hotel shuttle arrived outside of one of the bars as we were all about to stagger home.  I have no clue who was in a right enough mind by that time of the night to make it happen, but kudos to them.  There were way more of us than the shuttle should transport, so the Super Groomsman (who shielded the groom) and I were going to walk back.  It would be an opportune time to start burning off the alcohol before taking off to nappy, nappy land.  They ended up shoving our whole party onto this little shuttle, which probably wasn't smart by any means.  I stood the whole way back.

My attempt at taking a pic turned into a fairly accurate representation.

Those people still going strong made our way to the hotel bar just before last call.  We ushered out a bride and groom, still in full wedding reception garb, cuz everybody within 4 states was getting married at our hotel in Omaha over Labor Day weekend.  Anyway, by this time there was a half dozen of us, including a girl that had fallen out of the shuttle onto the pavement at the Hilton, only to return in sweatpants and a renewed enthusiasm for drinking.  I had promised the Super Groomsman that I would still walk around with him before hitting the sack, but whiny messages from drunken Annie sent me up to my room with the groom when he finally decided to call it a night.  I found out the next day that the Super Groomsman managed to stay out an hour past that point, and he eventually returned to his room "smelling like a homeless person".

It had been a while since I've hit the hard alcohol, and Day 1 in Omaha was way more fun than I had prepared for!
~RoB

(Day 2 to come.  Day 3 is summarized in my last post.)

The Wave

I spent almost all of Labor Day weekend in Omaha, NE for a wedding.  It was great fun.  My first time in Omaha.  I'll dive into the drinking and facebook statuses and food and dancing and fanciness in another post.  However, one of those wonderfully awkward moments happened at the airport on the way home.

On the last day that Annie and I were in Omaha, we were eating lunch with the bride and groom and the groom's brother and girlfriend, and some other peeps.  The groom's brother and I realized that we were taking the same shuttle from the hotel to the airport.  Ha.  That's funny.  We're like the same people.  (Except they were heading back home to Brooklyn, and we were flying to San Francisco.)

But then we asked what flight they were taking, and we pieced together that we were actually taking the exact same flight out of Omaha.  We had a layover in Chicago (yeah, look at a map, Southwest), and they had the same one.  We also learned that the groom's father was going to be on the flight with us.  Look how cute we are!

So, we all get to the airport.  Annie and I apparently run through the airport, because we were through security and at our gate in a few minutes.  (By the way, Omaha is the emptiest airport I've ever seen in my life.  It was almost creepy.  The TSA agents were lonely and wanted to be our friends.)  We sat down at our gate, and we ran into the groom's father within a few minutes.  We wondered how the groom's brother and sister had gotten so far behind us, which led Annie and I to realize just how quickly we move through airports these days.

There was also one last kicker we discovered.  For those that have never flown Southwest, it has open seating, and you just walk on in the order that you checked in.  For the flight to Chicago, the order we were in line was:
A40 - Groom's Dad
A41 - ~RoB
A42 - Annie
A43 - Groom's Brother
A44 - Groom's Brother's Girlfriend.
One big happy family.  Though it is half true to say that it all happened by chance, we were on the same schedule forcing us to check in after the wedding reception, so it's not too surprising.  Yet, why is it so difficult to make this happen when you actually try?

Anyway, I took off to the bathroom and to fill up my TSA-emptied water bottle.  Upon coming out and walking in front of my departure gate, I looked toward the hallway leading from security.  I saw the groom's brother finally coming through and he waved.  That's fun.  I waved back.  Then I turned to continue my way to my seat, and I realized the groom's dad was behind me.  I hadn't just been waved at.  Yet, there was no mistake in my 'standing in an empty airport terminal waving wildly at, what turns out to be, nobody' wave.  Awesome.  Why am I so awkward?

I mean, I totally understand.  I had just met the groom's father this weekend and I absolutely loved him.  He was kind and smart and nice and always smiling.  I'd enthusiastically wave at him on sight if he was my dad.  Especially if we didn't see each other often and we got to spend most of the rest of the day together.  Me on the other hand, I'd only wave at me if I had to.  (Most people have to, when I awkwardly wave at them across BART cars and public venues, lest they look foolish.  By most people I mean Annie.  I usually wave like a toddler, too.)

Not exactly related, but the same feeling.

Suddenly we all got our hands up...
~RoB

Off the Ground

I dropped a gummy bear on my kitchen floor, and I immediately picked it up and popped it in my mouth.  It made me realize that I'd eat most things off of the ground.  It reminded me of a drunken time at the Rose Bowl where I pulled a fallen Jello shot out of the dirt and straw and shoved it in my pie hole.  It was more dirt and straw than Jello, and I gnawed on it like a cow, but I managed.

Though this isn't an extensive list, it is a collection of those things that I would immediately eat off of the ground without any consideration:

• Gummy Bears
• Bagel Bites
• Gummy Worms
• Pizza Rolls
• Sweethearts born before 2010 (they got shitty last year)
• Charles Chocolates' Orange Twigs (went out of business, so I'd scrape it off if it was squished)
• Jello Shots, apparently
• Sixlets
• Just about anything else that's sweet

I do know that both a wasabi pea and a savory rice cracker spent a significant amount of time (read: months) on the floor of my office without being eaten.  I'm looking at the savory rice cracker as I write this.

Oh, apparently the 5 Second Rule is bullshit, but fuck science.  Who eats bologna anyway?  Hell, who has carpet?  Eating bacteria keeps you strong and your body's defenses vigilant.  I say that without any actual knowledge.

Anyway, in payment for my vacation and the sporadic posting that 3 weddings in the next 5 weeks (as well as football season) will force, you should make and eat this (not on the floor): a Cookie Dough Pie.

This is what it looked like when I made it. Get your own! (Couldn't be easier.)

Happy to be back,
~RoB