"No, the OTHER Old Country Singer..."

Kenny Rogers is one of the pitchers on my fantasy baseball team. I was making a comment about how he at least had the good sense to punch the water cooler with and thus break his non-pitching hand when the Wife entered into a drawn-out oration about the merits of the name 'Kenny' and its alternatives and origins and whether one would really want to be named after a merely "semi-famous" person or whether one should just have his named changed entirely to, say, Bill, and when the verbal essay had reached the point where I was wondering what she was talking about, I had to interrupt:

"What are you talking about?"

"You know, the country singer. With the braids."

Now having seen plenty of "Legends of Country" commercials and not recalling seeing Kenny Rogers ever having hair long enough to be braided, or at least not nicely braided, although the thought is a pretty humerous one, I had to break it to her.

"Wow. That's Willie Nelson. That's not even close. Thanks for playing." (Reaches for the computer. Not actually planning on recording this one, until...)

"I'm not talking to you anymore." (Ok. That I have to share.)

And thus I endured many threats of things one might be able to do to me in my sleep and kicking in the head, and that, doctor, is how I ended up in here with a mild concussion.

Free Delivery. (Minimum order $30,000)

You know how in late summer you can find small stands along country roads selling sweet and crisp fresh sweet corn? You know how pretty much everyone loves good sweet corn? It seems the German equivalent is spargel, a white aparagus eaten by everyone around here but, well, me because I don't do asparagus. Out of principle.

When spring rolls around you start seeing those little stands all over the place, and as an added bonus many of the restaurants in town offer special 'Spargel-Spiesekarten,' which is easy to do when your restaurant is locally owned and operated and not, say, an Applebees where the manager doesn't actually know anything about putting together their own menu from locally available ingredients and the kid in the kitchen doesn't see any need to favor quality over quantity, but am I biased on this one? Naa....

The spargel was brought to my attention again today as I pulled from my mailbox a brochure for a local pizzeria advertising their spargel-week. Anyone up for a hollandaise, gouda, spinach leaf, chicken breast and asparagus pizza? How about gouda, rosmary sauce, grated potato, ham, leek and asparagus? I've refused to eat many of those things for most of my life, but they even sound good to me.

You can order one for yourself at www.joker-pizza.de.

Lesson of the Day. Or WIFE101 from the Graduate Program at the University of How the Hell was I Supposed to Know That?

If someone asks you to volunteer to do chores at their house, and you're usually not willing to do chores at your own house, don't tell your wife why you're going. Just say your boss invited everyone over for pizza and beer and leave it at that. That's not an obvious one, guys, so write that down. You don't want to learn that the hard way.

On Any Given Day...

...there's a reasonable likelihood that the following phrases will be uttered in our apartment. (Not by me.)


-"Get off of me."

-Any of a number of unintelligible whining noises that mean I'm probably in trouble but don't know what for.

-"Put that away."

-"I'm not talking to you anymore."


Sometimes they occur in direct succession, in that order.

Got Doner?

All over Europe, or Germany at least, one can go no more than about a city block without running into some type of doner vending facilities.

What is a doner, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. In it's original form, probably lamb or goat as that is the preferred meat of the Greek/Turkish eastern Mediterranean types that came up with this tasty idea. In Germany, a doner, sometimes also called a 'kebap,' is seasoned beef roasted on a small spit and shaved onto grilled flatbread, usually topped with lettuce, onions, paprika and some kind of yogurtish dressing. Very tasty.

I haven't seen a doner stand in the US, that I know of, though I probably wasn't looking. They can be found in Iraq, though, so perhaps they simply haven't jumped the Atlantic yet. Or Minnesota doesn't have enough of a middle-eastern ethnic community. There are plenty of Turkish communities scattered about Europe. Keep your eyes open, though. If you do see a doner stand, a good doner is definitely worth a few Euro.

This particular doner was purchased out of a giant donertier, an imaginary animal, which is appropriate because the meat is actually unidentifiable as displayed. There's zoological information about the critter on the little doner box, but it's in German, naturally, so I didn't catch much of it.


The Wife requests I note that the car was not in motion at the time of this photograph.

Temporary Solutions

We recently acquired a hoopdee (def. hoopdee- the old-ass car purchased by US servicemembers for as little money as possible in order to supplement the lone car the DoD allows us to bring from the US). I either had to a) purchase one, b) get good at finding hidden car keys in the morning, or c) warm up to walking the half-dozen or so miles to work. Or brace for tears on a regular basis. $600. Best money I ever spent. Except perhaps the roughly twice that amount I had to spend to bribe, nay, persuade the Wife to marry me.

Long story short, the car leaks antifreeze at a significant rate. Knowing nothing to speak of about auto repair, my attempts to diagnose the problem have yielded the following conclusion: if we give the car enough time after putting in the antifreeze, the leaking seems to stop on its own.

Things I should never have to hear.

Especially since I don't own any type of electric or hybrid vehicle.

"Honey, go outside and unplug the car."


**I realize now that Minnesotan readers (and myself for that matter) may well have owned a car at one point that required plugging-in in order to be started in the morning. That makes my having to go out and disconnect the battery on my car due to all the crazy supplemental wiring the previous owner installed significantly less interesting and/or funny. I'm very sorry. I'll never not be interesting again.

Me. Not dead.

Alternately titled: Big Fish. Small Pond.

Been a while. I've been almost busy, but not with anything interesting, really.

We have a company league softball game today. Every time we have a game I get reminded by every single person on the team that we have a game. I don't think it's because LT's are notorious for missing that kind of thing, either. They just really want me to be there. And I'm not that good. I haven't thrown a ball in two years, but I keep hearing comments about the 'cannon' in left center. I enjoy the running around, though. On the field I can't help feeling a little like the J-league softball equivalent of Garth in the music store in Wayne's World.

...I like to play.