Be a bad role model!

After spending a long weekend with our good friends Julie and Dan up in Crivitz last month, we had plenty to reminisce about. Some things you plan for. Dinner at their favorite supper club. Taking a pontoon boat out on the lake. Going fishing in the morning.
The best memories are the ones you don't plan. For example, that Saturday night we had a scrappy game of Pictionary. Teams were guys versus girls, which included our friends' 9 year-old son and 12 year-old daughter.
Now, by 9 pm on a Saturday, we were pretty much like anyone else in Northern Wisconsin...half in the bag and feeling no pain. The difference though was that we were playing a game with children and adults, not sitting on a bar stool like we are used to.
Now, I'm as competitive as anyone, but Robyn really started taking offense to the guys' dominating ability at Pictionary, and soon most of her sentences started with "I'm sorry kids, but...." or "Excuse me kids, but..." and ended with something like "That fucking sucks!" or "Screw you guys! You're cheating!"
The night wound down and eventually we went to bed, and after we were home, we had forgotten about our expletive-laden behavior.
That was, until our friends were discussing with their kids whether or not they would like Uncle Pat and Aunt Robyn to watch them overnight while they went out of town.
"Yeah!" yells their son Danny. "We love them! They drink beer and swear!"
So there you go. We don't have any children of our own. But we can definitely be a bad influence on our friends'. Let us know if you need us to watch your kids as well. Just make sure there is beer in the fridge.

Attack of the 10,000-pound baby

You never know how shopping is going to go awry. Sometimes it happens in ways that take days to discover.

Robyn had gone shopping earlier in the week for some essentials goods, and all was fine until we had a conversation Saturday morning before she went to work. I was making a shopping list of my own, and I put down a gallon of milk.

"We went through a gallon of milk since Tuesday?" she inquired.

"No, we never had any milk in the fridge this week." I'm typically the only one that drinks milk. A combination of growing up in Wisconsin and my recently fractured femur has made me overly calcium-aware.

"I definitely remember buying a gallon of milk this week," Robyn stated. "That means," Robyn stares into space as the realization hits her. "That the gallon of milk is still in the trunk!"

Now Robyn had mentioned casually the previous night that on her drive home from work it smelled like an animal had died in her car. We both dismissed it until now, as the mind-boggling, disgusting pieces fell into place.

As Robyn got ready for work, I steeled my resolve and went downstairs to the garage to inspect the trunk.

I opened the trunk to indeed find the MIA gallon of milk, in all of its putrid glory. Now in ancient times, Mongols used to fill leather skins with goat milk, and the churning action of their galloping across the steppe would render the milk into a yogurt-like substance. Now, a Toyota Corolla is no Mongolian mount, and the random rolling of the milk gallon on Robyn's daily commute wasn't bouncy enough to generate anything close to an edible milk by-product.

Instead, the plastic gallon of milk had ballooned outward, and while the top remained intact, it had seeped roughly half of its contents out, into the trunk-liner carpeting, and down into the well that holds the spare tire. I gingerly picked up the jug and brought it over to the grassy area next to the garage. The remaining milk had separated into a think clear liquid, and a slowly moldering solid. As I opened the top to drain off the liquid and throw the rest into the trash, the escaping gases gave off a hiss like a 2-liter bottle of soda.

I went back upstairs to update Robyn on my findings.

"So, how bad is it?" she asked.

"Well, it smells like a 10,000-pound baby spit up in our trunk."

"Sell the car," she said. "Now."

I left the car there and drove Robyn into work. On the way home I stopped and bought a bottle of Odo-Ban, which promised to eliminate odors. After 2 hours of stripping the liners out and scrubbing the trunk with a series of Pine Sol, Odo-Ban and heavy-duty carpet cleaner, I felt confident I had exorcised the funk from the trunk. I was very pleased that the engineers at Toyota had included 2 rubber drain plugs in the bottom of the trunk. The Japanese car makers had obviously anticipated the need for hosing out a trunk out periodically.

Or they had had an encounter with a 10,000-pound baby of their own.

XeroCal! It's really work!

Robyn was kind enough to bring this wonderful diet aid to my attention. XeroCal Plus was advertising in a womens magazine for its product, which is a coffee-flavored diet supplement drink and pill.
Several subtle things tipped me off that this might be a foreign company. But why listen to me? The testimonials speak for themselves:

Hansathorn Hoampawanwong says: "I have recommends many friends to try this product. It's like...I have changed to the new person!"

Jinsiri Morkta says: "I tried every ways to reduce weight. My children had to bring me to hospitals frequently. I want you to try this product...it's really work!"

Chalisa Supasirirat: "I saw this product in the ads and interested."

I didn't feel a need to buy a diet aid before, but after these glowing reviews, how could I resist!