I went to my quarterly blood draw yesterday

and because the imp's babysitter had a dental appt for one of her boys, boy.imp went with me.
Yep, boy.imp got to watch daddy bleed into a clear plastic bag for about 15 minutes.

his comment to wife.imp last night whilst they were discussing the event was:
b.imp: I will never, never, never, ever, ever, ever...

then he fell asleep because boy.imp is apparantly suffering from flu-like symptoms. Wife.imp also fell asleep and I watched the OSU men's baskeball team get dismantled by a very impressive squad from North Carolina.

Girl.Imp finished reading the last Harry Potter book and wants to start with the beginning of the series and work her way through. She has also found the joy of books on tape!! She now prefers to sit next to the cd player upstairs and shuns tv and the computer (so now we are sans Hannah Montana and You.Tube in our house)

Does anybody know if/when Dr. Who and Torchwood's next seasons will be broadcast in the USA airwaves?

Have I mentioned that we have corrupted the imps? Because of us they know most of the NPR daily shows, including Car Talk and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.

They just love 'How Things Are Made', 'Dirty Jobs', and 'Mythbusters' on the Discovery Channel and they would get to see more American Chopper if Paul, Sr. would censor his thought processes a tad more regularly.

So, Santa is bringing some Boss gifts for the imps this year (that's right girl.imp, daddy has been talking with Santa and I know what he is bringing you! hahahahahaha)

Mother Nature will have her little pranks...

I have discovered something truly awful. I have learned that when I go for a massage (yes, I can easily manage 12k miles per year +, so I do go in for the occassional massage to keep things from knotting too tightly) that I have so much body hair that if I were to vacation in the Western States I might be mistaken for a miniature missing link!

Ok, that was not the awful surprise. That was an eye opener. I mean the masseuse must use so much oil that the sidewalk would work like the 'Slip'N'Slide' when I leave.

No, the awful part is that I have learned that the massage works better when I shave my belly (and/or legs/arms/back). Imagine that phrase.

'Shave my belly'

What a truly horrible thought. I mean, when I was in high school I had a little body hair but nothing but the thin trail from chest to --further south. So the other day I did shave the round ball that used to be my abs and realized how truly fat I am under all that hair.

Talk about a motivating factor. Diet, exercise...uh uh. The best therapy is stripping oneself down to the skin.

So amongst all the other little jokes: Rampant ear hair, full body hair suit, the odd eyebrow hair that must grow 10x faster than all other hair on my body, I have truly seen how husky my abs now are.

Thank you Ma Nature. I am officially in my middle-age. A slow, hairy, fat-storing age magnet.

Thank God somebody had the good sense to invent the TRIKKE!

Yes, Dennis will soon beat his belly back into submission and move into his twilight years as simply just a midget missing-link wannabe!

It is Mid-November and it is time for...

'The Annual Mowing of Our Leaves'!

Yes, here at 'The Playground' I have given up on the traditional rake. This style of leaf removal tends to eat up an entire weekend and I have to store 20+ bags of leaves in my garage for days on end until trash day.

Why mess with the old way, when one can mow the leaves down to a fine yard mulch inside of 2 hours? (less if, for instance, the leaves were not actually shin deep in the yard)

But Dennis, you'll stand out as as a radical if you persist in this new wave thinking!!

What will your neighbors think if you abandon the yard rake?

Well folks, today they saw a good idea in action and joined in. One neighbor actually started out with the rake and soon moved up to a riding mower...

Yes, it does feel good being an innovator!

I was going to post about how to muzzle the stalkarazzi (thank you Mr. Clooney for this idea) today. But I will back-pocket this idea for the moment.

It could be my grief or the fact that boy.imp is still so small

But yesterday the fam left 'The Playground' to visit the grandparents and to watch the Buckeyes completely dismantle 'that team from up north'.

However I noticed that during the game that boy.imp was resting his head on wife.imp's chest. Later during the day I cornered wife.imp in the kitchen:

me: do you realize that boy.imp's head will fit in your bra?

There is still some slight bruising to my left arm...


Today wife.imp and girl.imp were about to go shopping and I was rough-housing with boy.imp (who now likes punching things). I made the mistake of rolling onto my back as he started his swing. He adjusted his aim and ensured that there will be no more imps born into our family.

Just so that you know, girl.imp likes to wake one up, in the early morning, by breathing on one's face. I just hope her future spouse is more tolerant than I am...I do have to admit that this is a fairly effective system of waking one from a deep sleep.

Both imps like to announce when they toot. Boy.imp takes it a step further and likes to toot then reach around behind him and 'grab' the toot so he can then 'throw' it at someone...

Into Autum...

Again let me apologize for not having posted recently. The Happy Birthday wishes for boy.imp were appreciated and passed on to the lucky lad.

Since my last post, I have suffered through a severe stomach flu, the Buckeyes lost and my grandmother passed.

Not to trivialize her death, but she had been hanging on for weeks and was not anticipated to be with us for the new year. Among everything else, her cancer returned and her arthritis was severe. The funeral was Wednesday and it is believed she is much happier now.

Anyway the imps are both happy, healthy and apparantly wide awake.

It's November already?

Today is boy.imp's birthday.

(thank you for those kind thoughts)

Last night wife.imp realized that his birthday was upon us and we had not bought him a gift, a cake, anything. So she left it up to me to wrap his gift (a Christmas gift substituted nicely as his birthday gift) and to make dinner reservations.

Problem 1: While in college I roomed with my brother. We exchanged gifts that were stapled into brown paper bags. Oddly, neither of us were put off by the 'wrapping'. Probably because we knew that we were just going to tear it off and throw it away and that should we try to do a nice job, it never looked nice. That and we had no $$.

I did wrap the gift and wife.imp did her best not to stand too close to the offending tape job as the imps tore it apart. Which was rather nice of her because she does a fantastic job with straight edges and clean lines. My effort covered the entire box (this time) and had edges and the cut meandered like the slow moving Big Muddy from edge to edge.

Problem2: I took us to a restaurant that the imps used to love, but now prefer Bob Evans and McDonald's instead. The main reason for going was not the food, which was typically adequate, it was the Birthday tadoo that the staff puts on; yelling, cheering, getting the rest of the patrons to join in the celebration.

However, we merely witnessed this hubbub at another table. Our server, apparently thought boy.imp too young to stress for (yes, I did inform him that we were there to celebrate a birthday). I, in return, felt that a large tip was too much to stress for...

Since Halloween...

Our neighbor purchased a Nurse outfit for his daughter. A real bargain at $2.99. However he neglected to read the clipboard part of the outfit.

suffice to say, he is no longer allowed to shop for costumes for his daughter...

I was listening to the 'Capitol Steps' while doling out the candy. I did not really hear the innuendo in the lyrics, until a couple 4-year-olds ran up with thier parents.

***
The imps have been running around the house challenging our authority. At various times the following can be heard throughout the Playground:

'Do you want a piece of me, Old Man' or 'Do you want a piece of me, Old Woman'

Girl.imp tried to throwdown with wife.imp on Saturday and got her butt kicked!!!

***
I was at work on Saturday (and missed the OSU - Wisconsin game--which sucked because it was a good win) and was kicked off of somebody's property. This is not too bad as it occassionally happens that some landowners do not appreciate the Oil and Gas business. However this guy wanted to vent at 'The Man' and Saturday I played the role. So after he vented he had this real exaggerated finger-snap, pointing thing going on as he told me where my car was (we were standing right next to it) and bid me 'good day'.

I had to admit, I just made his day.