Light Reading

It's spring break around here.  I am propping up my feet and getting into some quality literature.


First, picking a reading selection from my personal library.

Hmmm...This one looks promising.

Next, getting comfortable.

Look at this physique.

Here is a good selection I will share with you.  My perspective on our wonderful species.

How did this cat get a modeling gig and I cannot?

 These appear to be more along the lines of my roommates' perspectives.

And as always, good reading leads to...

Dinner Guest

Yes, Mr. Toad...
You are welcome for dinner. Just come on in to our humble abode...
DARON! Quit jumping around like a loon!  You are scaring my dinner...I mean dinner guest!

So close, yet so far away.

I am Stunning

I thought I would reflect on those good old days when I was just a wee scraggly barn kitten complete with ear mites, ring worm, and a broken tail.  I loved sleeping on Jessie's face, peeing in the craft box, and attacking every foot I could find.  I've included some of my baby pictures for you to see the transformation into the magnificent feline I've become.

Mommy dearest.

First bath.  I think we can agree that I am ugly in an adorable sort of way.

Periscope tail.

This necklace is dazzling on me.

The gang together. (Ronnie and Patsy)

Pathetic

So a storm knocked out the cable around here.  End of the world for the roomates...  Finally some peace and quiet for me. (Not for long.) So they got a new receiver and went about the task of setting all their shows the record.  Here is the list Daron came up with. (see post title)


Bones
Hawaii 5-0
Castle
Revenge
Modern Family
30 Rock
Up All Night (Cutest Baby Ever!)
Awake
Nikita
Supernatural
The Finder
The Voice
House
Alcatraz
How I Met Your Mother
The River
Body of Proof
Criminal Minds
Touch
Person of Interest
Bachelor
Bachelor Pad
Bachelorette
Rules of Engagement
The Office
SNL
Sing Off
Raising Hope
Love in the Wild
Walking Dead
Justified
American Horror Story
The Killing
Haven
Face-Off
Rizoli and Isles
Glades
Leverage
Breaking Bad
Sister Wives
Burn Notice
Breakout Kings
Sweet Home Alabama (Bachelor, country style)
Alphas
Project Runway
Falling Skies
Comic Book Men
Talking Dead
Being Human
Top Shot
Dexter

Bible Challenge!

So it was Daron and Jess's night to host Bible study.  They have been meeting with this group every Tuesday for about 6 months and the idea is different people host on a rotating basis and are in charge of a topic of study, some discussion questions, and dinner. Sometime there are study nights and sometimes there are fun nights.  They decided to combine the two this week and host a Bible Game Night. 


Here was the gist of the evening...

Games:

Bible Guess Who (20 Questions)- 5 points per correct response

Draw a Bible character card submitted by someone in the group.  No peeking!   Ask 20 yes or no questions to guess the person you drew.  

Bible Story Charades- 5 points per correct response

Get your team to guess correctly as you act out Bible stories provided by the 
opposing team.

Parable Pictionary- 5 points per correct response

Get your team to guess correctly as you draw Bible parables selected by the 
          opposing team.

Bible Catchphrase- 1 point per correct response

Get your team to guess correctly as you give clues for Bible words provided by the opposing team.

Bible Outburst- 1 point per correct response

As a team, name as many things in the category as possible in 2 minutes.

Bible Scattergories- 1 point per correct response

Write a response matching the selected letter for each prompt.  Only original and accurate responses count.

Rules:

Boys vs. Girls.

Teams keep a running tally of points for each game.

There were a few hitches, but it turned out to be a pretty good time.  If you yourself are this nerdy and want to do something similar Jess has printables for the Bible Catchphrase, Outburst, and Scattergories she would be willing to share.  Oh, and I guess I should include that victory went to the boys team.

The Tuesday Crew

Lie

A buddy cat blogger of mine posted this charming bit from his roommate's daily cat inspiration calendar.  I thought I'd share.  Jess and Daron don't even care enough to have a cat themed calendar...

 'Cats have incredible vision, but they never see your flaws'.

WRONG! I see all their flaws.  Honestly, who wrote this ridiculous anecdote?

Oh Really?

So Daron and Jess were hanging out with some pals last night and were telling me about the game they played.  Always nice to hear about the wonderful time I was left out of.  Here is the idea as they tell it.  There are five word cards put down and every player ranks them in order of importance.  There are a few variations for playing and scoring, but at one point in the evening they were just putting the words in the order that they saw fit and comparing responses.  During one round, these words came up: fingers, philosophy, music, peace, and medicine.  There were five people playing and all five came up with a different word as the most important of the list. Interesting.
Here are the responses:
Daron- Fingers (Go ahead...rub it in.)
Jessie- Peace (Says the one who is always shoving me off the couch.)
Jo- Medicine (I didn't mind the ringworm...beats the vet.)
Andrew- Philosophy (Huh?)
Kristin- Music (I wouldn't know the joy of this from what I am subjected to around here.)
Personally, I am not sold on any of these.  How about you?  What would you pick as most important?  

Weekend Hodge Podge

So Jess headed to Greenville for the first time this weekend to do some wedding dress hunting with her friend Jen.  She was also the privileged attendee of the cake testing appointment too.  Red Velvet! (Just what she needed... Fatty.) With all the wedding talk and festivities, she was reminded of her own wedding day not so long ago...  She came home, whipped out the album (Thank you Gallery By Laura!) and reminisced for about an hour.  I never heard mention that the cat of her dreams couldn't attend... 


Here is a little St. Patrick's day miracle that came on the ride home from Greenville.

Here are some pictures to reminisce by.

Other treats for Daron and Jess this weekend...
Lunch with their Myrtle Beach buddies Dustin and Leslie.
Mizzou losing in the first round...just kidding, my bracket is sunk.
$50 from PTO to do classroom shopping with!
Marker tie-dyeing. (At least these spots didn't come from slobby eating like most do around here)

Weekend treats for me...none.  Typical.

South Carolina Cousins

So we had some visitors this weekend...although, this is the last time they can officially be called visitors because they are soon to be residents of the great state of South Carolina!  Welcome Julianna and Justin!  They found a place in Greenville this past weekend and will be moving sometime in May! Jess is thrilled!  It seems like only yesterday Julianna and Jess embarked on a trip through the south with wide eyes and concerned faces at the various cultural oddities.   Now some five years later with cowboy boots on and sweet tea in hand they lounge under the shade of a palmetto tree and call out "Howdy Ya'll" to their neighbors... well, they might not quite be there yet, but at least they both have SC in their mailing address.


Now the cousins of our dreams are wielding hammers and hedge trimmers and getting the place in shape for the move.   I'm rooting for the success of the week's itinerary, Jules!

Me looking grumpy (beautiful).

Friends on a Buffalo

Guest Writer: Daron Hoft


So I wanted to use Louise's blog to let everyone know about my trip to Illinois a couple weekends ago. He was hesitant at first as he did not want me to drag down the quality on his blog, but after some haggling he finally gave me the green light. You may wonder what the price was for such a lofty honor so let me tell you: 100 ear scratches, 15 tuna flavored treat, 1 can of real tuna, and 25 chest naps. It's a small price to pay I guess.


There are pictures below and I apologize for the quality. I forgot to take the camera so the only pictures I have were taken on my phone, and I don't have one of those smarty phones that are all the rage these days so the quality is pretty poor.


So I decided to take a trip back to my hometown of Decatur, IL to see some of my best buds from when I lived there. Some I haven't had a chance to see since Jess and I got married, so it was a long time coming. I took off Friday morning at 6:00 am hoping to arrive at around 5:00 pm. I ended up arriving at 5:15 pm, so I would say I did pretty well. The trip down was probably the most depressing drive of my life. I think I saw the sun for a total of 15 minutes, if that. It was raining off and on the entire trip and was gloomy and cloudy the entire trip. When I was leaving Kentucky and entering Indiana, the weather was the worst. It was raining so hard I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. I later found out that some tornado's did a lot of damage on my route. I was a couple hours ahead of them, so thankfully I arrived safely. I knew the weather was bad, but I was oblivious as to how bad until I arrived and saw some of the damage on the news.

Lunch on the drive.

After arriving on Friday, we just hung out and had some pizza and got caught up. I stayed at Clint and Robin's house. Some of you may have heard me mention our 'Monday Night Club'. We use to get together at their house every Monday and watch 24 and Prison Break. We had many great times. Some nights we would even dress up for the night (crazy hair and workout night both jump to mind). Paul, Justin, and Catie also came by. It was so nice catching up with them. Sadly, I only got to see Robin on Friday as she flew out of town Saturday morning for a business trip. After catching up some, the boys decided to play some video games in Clint's man room. The game of choice was some classic NFL Blitz. 

Man Room TV

Man Room Theater Seating

Saturday I saw my first 3D movie. Clint, Paul, Justin, and I went to see The Lorax with Clint and Robin's kids. They have a boy who is 4 named Phoenix and a girl named Jeri who is 6. They are good kids who can be quite entertaining at times. After the movie, Clint dropped the kids off at their grandma's house for a sleepover. We then went to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner then back to the house to play games and eat junk food. We spent more time in the man room and played Bomberman and NFL Blitz and some NBA Jam. Fun times were had.

Sunday morning Clint made some bacon and eggs and we just chatted it up for a few hours. We pretty much talked about a lot of somewhat serious stuff. Pretty much Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It was a good chat. We didn't make it to church, but our talk was practically a Bible Study. Later in the afternoon Paul and Catie came over. More chatting and joking was had. Catie then took off and Clint, Paul, and I just lounged a bit. We watched about 30 minutes of what might be the Best/Worst movie ever called RoboGeisha. It was as Bad/Awesome and you might expect.

Monday morning I headed back to South Carolina. The trip home was much better due to the fact that the weather was perfect. I did however have to scrape ice/snow off my windows because it did snow Sunday night. It might be the only snow I see all year.


It was good to get home to my beautiful and amazing wife. I missed her. It was good to sleep in my own bed, even though the couch I slept on at Clint's was pretty darn comfortable. Jess had some balloons and Reese's Eggs waiting for me which you might have seen on one of Louise's other posts. I really miss my Illinois friends. It was so great to see them. It's amazing when you can go close to two years without seeing certain people and you pick up right where you left off. It's like I was never gone. When is someone going to invent a teleportation device so trips like this can be made any weekend we feel like it?




Below are going to be some random observations and whatnot from the trip.


1. Catie has a neighbor that is an old retired guy who likes to tell her the worst jokes on the planet. The biggest joke of all is his name is Jack D. Bone. I kid you not. The 14 year old in all of us thinks that is beyond hilarious. Many jokes were made at poor Jack's expense over the weekend.


2. Below is a picture of Phoenix and Jeri in a pose that is eerily similar to one of Wes and I when we were kids.

3. This video is the first in a 4 part series. I have only seen #1, but it was amazing none-the-less.

In closing, I would like to thank Louise for giving me this forum to talk about my trip. Thinking back on my trip, it probably sounds like an incredibly boring trip but it was really amazing. I love those guys so much and miss them like mad sometimes. It was so good to catch up and just see their faces.

Home!

The traveler returns!  (Finally a clean cat box again!)

Double Entree

Here is the latest in food news around this place...


Daron has been out of town visiting friends in Illinois so Jess decided to do some experimental cooking in his absence.  Laura also had a dish to make so they went to the store and convened in the kitchen here at 1900 hours.  On the menu from Jess: Black Bean Burgers with guacamole, spinach and feta.  On the menu from Laura: Creamy Mexican Chicken Salad with beans, corn, celery, and peppers.  If you can't tell, they were trying to be healthy.  If this was a competition I think there would be two losers.  


The bad news:  They may have forgotten half the ingredients in Laura's dish and Jess's may have been severely overcooked.  Needless to say, I am omitting the recipes.  (Sorry to Kristin for being the unfortunate dinner guest of the evening.)


The good news:  Jess now has Amber's (much more savory version) of the Black Bean recipe in her inbox and they succeeded in consuming very few calories! 
Here is a photo of the fixings pre-consumption/disappointment.

Chicken salad shown grilled in a tortilla

In other food news Jess is eating a cookie back from the 2/26 post. yikes. Blogging sure makes you more aware of food expiration dates...

Year in a Weekend

Jess just received her notice in the mail that upon arriving in Texas she will be doing a year of celebrations to catch up on all that has been missed with her pals.  Genius plan, Joy, although I think Jess would benefit from slowing the years down as opposed to speeding them up.  Never-the-less, she is very excited for egg dying, birthday cake eating, trick-or-treating, and caroling!  She promptly went out and bought her white elephant Christmas gift. (Shown here wrapped- no spoilers! (...spoilers that you are getting a crappy gift that is.))  

Craft Fair

Jess went out with Kristin today to check out the treasures at the local craft fair.  She came home reporting about there being a mix of junk and fun stuff.  Then she proceeds to pull out the "fun stuff" she was persuaded to buy.  I wonder what the junk looked like?  Jane and Shelly, she needed you to help scope out the craft of the year and possibly follow the example of others.  I think she is drawn to anything with eyes. 

Lightening Bug Lantern

Other "good", but passed up crafts...

• Finger puppets (see below)
• Stained glass welded wiener dog
• Flamingo Lawn Ornament made out of a propane tank and rod iron