My father-in-law was telling me the other day about how he heard of someone that spelled their name "le-ah".  Like me, he assumed the name was pronounced like Leah or perhaps Leigh.  As it turns out "the dash is sounded out" as they heard from the parents.  How do you say it?  Le-Dash-Ah or Ledasha.  Wow.

And do predators not watch Dateline and recognize the house when they show up?

"I hid the camera around the trailer for a while.  I got the idea off that show where the guy catches perverts in his kitchen every week.  He should really move..." - Randy on My Name Is Earl

Mr. Fred (my father-in-law) took me down to Montgomery for a Biscuits vs Barons game.  They have a pretty cool stadium that is built out of an old train depot:

The biggest question I have though, is what's up with their mascot?  It doesn't look like anything I've ever seen in nature before.  It's not too far off of a Snuffleupagus.  I really expected it to be named "biscuit eater".  But alas, it's just "Big Mo".

Brie and Steve joined us for Helena's annual Buck Creek Festival.  The main section of the festival was a lot of booths for food and arts & crafts type businesses.  It was interesting to walk around, but wasn't really my scene.

We entered the rubber duck race, which was amusing to watch.  Here they are trying to "launch" all the rubber ducks.  As you can see, there were quite a few of them.

Once the ducks got to the spillway, they couldn't always make it over the edge, so quite often they'd just sit on top.  Amusingly, you can see in the picture how the water on the left side is flowing freely while the water in the middle has almost completely stopped flowing.

The one big downside that I saw to the Buck Creek Festival was that after the race, several hundred people had to walk back to the main part of the park.  All of them had to funnel down to a single-file line as the "bridge" to get back over part of the water was a 2' wide piece of steel.  A lot of folks got fed up (like the kid in the lower left) and just walked through the water. 

What do you think it means if you go to a restaurant and get a fortune cookie that doesn't have a fortune in it?

We went to a Barons game a while back for Thirsty Thursday.  They had pepople in life-sized Oreo and milk costumes.  I've been trying to decide for a while now if that is the coolest costume ever or if that'd be the worst job ever...

This has to be one of the strangest stuffed animals I've ever seen...  it's label says it's a "crocodile", but I've never seen a crocodile with long, floppy, Easter-bunny-ish ears.  Get yours now at World Market!

How many of you remember Dan Quayle?  I saw this the other day in Publix.  Apparently Dan isn't the only one that mis-spells potato.

Laura loves this article as it justifies what she's always known.  I like it because it says she has a "defect" :)

And just in case the image doesn't come through clearly:

It used to be that "only your hairdresser knows for sure" whether you color your hair, but redheads can now include their anesthesiologist.  A recent study showed that natural redheads need 20 percent more surgical anesthesia than do women with other hair colors.
Dr. Daniel Sessler, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Lousiville, said he and his colleagues scientifically proved what anesthesiologists long have noticed in the operating room: that redheads seem to require more anesthesia.
To test their theory, Sessler and his co-workers induced general anesthesia in 20 healthy women - 10 with naturally bright-red hair and 10 with dark hair.  They then observed how the subjects responded to a pain stimulus.  Depending on the pain response, the anesthesiologists raised or lowered the dose of desflurane, a common inhaled anesthesic, until the ideal dose was reached.  Redheads needed significantly higher doses than either the dark-haired subjects or the few blondes the researchers tested.
One explanation why carrot-tops need stronger anesthesia is that they possibly have greater pain sensitivity.  They have a defect in the "melanocortin-1 receptor," which makes red pigment instead of the normal dark pigment (melanin) for hair.

So it seems that just about every bank under the sun right now is trying to tighten up their security online.  I can understand it to a point.  I thought one bank took the cake by requiring me to type in an 8+ character password using a graphical keyboard on the web page (not allowed to use the keyboard).  Bank of America gets the award for most amusing implementation.  I thought it'd be funny to pick what appeared to be a cracker as my SiteKey.  And of course, to complement it, I used the word "cracker" as the image title.

That's right, "Your SiteKey Image Title cannot contain profanity."  Cracker.  Really?!?

A different bank got it right and didn't think "cracker" was profane.

The last time I ate at McDonald's I flipped my burger carton over and saw this:

Since this accounted for 95% of my daily saturated fat, I figured I might die in the car on the way home from work that day.  Curious about other items McDonald's is trying to use to kill me?  Check out their nutrition information here.

Laura has told me I'm not allowed to eat at McDonald's anymore.  That's probably a good thing.

I was using the laptop in our living room the other night and went to Amazon.  Their homepage was trying to upsell us with a 1080p plasma and women's underwear.  I thought this was a very interesting combination.

While we were down in Orange Beach, Lauren was housesitting for us.  She left this behind.  Still not sure what it was.  As a picture, it looks a lot like bacon, but it appears to be a lot thicker than a strip of bacon in person.  Either way, it was scary and we threw it out.

This was on the wall in the Sam Adams brewery in Boston.

There is a new and uppity place in the Huntsville, AL area called Providence.  Everyone who is anyone is moving there and a lot of businesses are trying to cater to them.   And to get to work every day, they have to drive past Phuket.  I can't even imagine how funny it'd be getting directions from someone saying "turn right at Phuket".  Either way, Phuket - Extraordinary Thai Experience is a real place.  Here's as much proof as I can offer over the internet.  This is the original picture Keith sent me that gave me a good chuckle:

Isn't this just infuriating?  Bad programmer.  Bad.

And in case you can't read the scaled down version of the error message...  "Unexpected error encountered.  It is recommended that you restart the application as soon as possible."  Grrr.

So last Thursday we went to On Tap with some folks.  Good times.  Until the waitress brought out our (probably 4th) round of beverages.  Two of us received glasses that were about 1/2 inch taller and a little bit fatter than the others.  Caused quite a stir at the table and we attempted to specify our glass choice going forward...  to no avail.

One thing I forgot to mention...  on the way down I-95 to Boston, we noticed a very amusing car:

I think it was originally a Mercury Topaz.  In addition to the "Rap is to Music like Graffiti is to Art" bumper sticker, he has the perfect example to back it up.  Oh, and he named his masterpiece:

I am not sure what kind of shaggin has gone on in the "Shaggin Wagon", but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a good experience since it was in a Mercury Topaz.

Laura and I were in the Dollar Tree store in Hoover on Saturday and noticed this little gem:

Is this a coloring book about coloring with God?  Or is this in fact a coloring book about death?  I don't know, but I was a bit afraid to touch it.

So I remember a long time ago being at Christian's place and making fun of him for having extremely old pretzels (almost 2.5 years actually).  The other day I was cleaning out the chip cabinet and noticed a bag of pretzels that had not been opened yet.  They're not quite as impressive as Christian's bag, but this one managed to make it over 1.5 years.  They actually didn't taste too stale until the third one I tried.

One thing that is interesting about these pictures is you can tell that in the span of almost a year, the price of pretzels increased about $0.20 per bag.

Sometimes I can't help but be amused at the advertisements I see on the side of the road.  The latest one I think is funny is called Poop Be Gone.  Of course, it does make me wonder if this is a local business that sprung up after someone watched Envy.

So I'm typing away on my computer, minding my own business...  And I received an ICQ contact request.  Thankfully I have my Trillian settings so that I have to authorize people before I see their messages...  just the request for this one was bad enough:

I try to keep my blog G-rated (except for any picture involving Christian, of course), so I blurred out an expletive, but you pretty much get the gist of the message.  I wonder if it's a sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Britney Spears have "made it" in life.  Pretty sure ICQ spam is not part of that benchmark. 

I love cats...  they taste just like chicken:

Who in their right mind puts a trailer hitch on a Miata?

Crazy was up here last weekend for City Stages.  He rented a car so he could run around town.  Funny that he flew in from Texas just to get a rental car with a Texas license plate:

I'm almost certain I've seen this car out on the road since then with a new driver.  Strange that it would happen in a city of about a million people.

And while we're on the subject of Crazy, I got an email from him the other day that was hilarious.  It had this picture in it:

And here I am giving him the benefit of the doubt thinking he was drawing on a sheet of paper and using his laptop as a desk.  Well, unfortunately, I was not correct.  Apparently Rakesh had his laptop in one hand and a dry erase marker in the other and decided it would be a good idea to draw on it under the premise that he'd be able to dry erase it later.  Wrong.

This weekend I think we accomplished what Rob wanted us to do...  party hard:

Christian and some friends came over from Atlanta and partied hard as well:

Brian showed up for the third consecutive time, further backing up his story that he shows up when he's invited:

Rob hung out with all the ladies.  I've never been quite sure why they put up with him:

Fun was had by all:

And there was only one minor incident...  do you see what Christian is standing in?

That would be most of a 10 pound bag of CB's cat food.  And what's the best way to pick up 10 pounds of cat food off of a flat floor?  With a flimsy paper plate of course:

I'm still trying to figure out how it was that Jennifer went from standing in the previous picture to laying down in cat food in this one.  I would say she was rolling around on the floor because she was laughing so hard, but I think it might have actually been that she slipped.

Anyway, Dave is confused by the lack of efficiency with which Christian is cleaning up the mess:

But before he can act, Max swoops in to the rescue:

So all in all, I think everyone had a good time.  Even little Poo had some fun:

I think Doug has the right idea. 

Over the years, Christian has always managed to steal my camera whenever we were on a trip or having a party.  The problem is he likes to take pictures of himself.  What better way to honor this tradition than to immortalize it by putting it on the web.  Here is a photo montage (from oldest to newest):

I must say that this is the scariest one so far. 

This is so sad...  apparently someone in our neighborhood had their box fall off the post (or had it ripped off).  Not being an easy thing to replace, they took the mailbox and lashed it to the pole using duct tape.  Funny how it ends up looking like a makeshift cross.

On our last trip out to San Francisco (New Year's), we were introduced to a new phenomenon...  The "enjoy!" pack.  Delta is apparently trying to make its passengers happy:

The one thing to note is the back of the shortbread:

Yes, you read it right, 31% butter!!!  How can they possibly expect to have any more customers when we're all in the hospital?

So how redneck do you have to be to seal two of the doors in your car shut with Great Stuff?

What is this fruit that Rob's neighbor is lining up so nicely in the gutter for the trash people to pick up?  They're about the size of grapefruit but don't quite look like them:

The one that got away:

So now for the amusing part of our trip...  on Thursday, we decided to go to the National Shrimp Festival and see what all the fuss was about.  They provided public transportation for $1pp, so we figured we should take them up on it.  This one was on the way out from the shrimp festival and continued to take us farther away.  We figured they'd eventaully have to go back, so we'd just ride it.  Several miles later we were in front of the Flora-Bama bar, which is just about as far away as we needed to go to get to the shrimp festival but in the dead opposite direction. 

So we dropped off whoever it was that needed to go there and the driver was attempting to turn left to go back the way we came from.  This is a two-lane road and carries a considerable amount of traffic for its size, and we're in a bus.  Great.

The driver pulled across one of the lanes (or at least that's how it appeared to us from inside the bus) when it was clear and waited for the other direction to clear so we could finally go.  About the time the other direction was clear and the driver started to inch forward more, we heard tires squealing.  Apparently the driver wasn't completely across the lane and traffic was planning on continuing around the bus until they inched forward and traffic couldn't get by (for sure) anymore. 

So the end result was that while on vacation, I was in a bus wreck with an Isuzu pickup truck:

Everyone on the bus was fine and the Isuzu driver seemed to be ok other than he'll probably have a nice, large, circular bruise on his chest (no airbags).  They sent another bus out to pick up the passengers and while still on our way to the Shrimp Festival, we heard our original driver on the radio more or less saying that the bus was "a little ugly, but it drives pretty good".  Which isn't too bad since I'm pretty sure that poor Isuzu truck was totaled.

What do you do when you're getting Kung-Fu'd by a master?

You wait until he's stuck in his carrier and squish him:

I was cleaning out a computer the other day and realized it was quite possibly the dirtiest computer ever.  Believe it or not, the computer was still functioning 100% which is quite surprising.  It's amazing how much dust can be hiding under the front cover.

I have been forever teased by my lovely wife Laura that my car smells like crayons.  She enjoys making fun of it and basking in the joy of hearing some other unsuspecting person say "why does your car smell like crayons?" when they get into my car.  It's not funny, but at least I finally found out it's not something I dropped under the seat that's decaying (some of you might remember the opened Pepsi can my friend Lyle left under my seat for 1/2 a year that I only found because one day I saw a trail of ants going toward it).  the important part is that I am not alone:

Article on My VW Lemon.  Or go to their main site to see other complaints about VW Jettas.

Thanks goodness this wasn't our house - but I saw it on the way out of the neighborhood this morning...  can't believe it's the neighbor's tree.  Rumor has it the tree was cut by "professionals".  You can see the straight across cut they made on the trunk of the tree.  Brilliant.

This is Rob's foot.  People were mean to him while he was sleeping.  Now he's using fingernail polish remover.

Those of you that knew Crazy at his previous job would apprecaite what Laura and I did to the keys to his (Kia!) rental car. 

Crazy.  You know who you are.  For those that don't know, here is Rob's drawing of him from a Maccaroni Grill table cloth:

So apparently one of my (now former) co-workers had a former co-worker that would say some very funny things at work.  They made a web site of his sayings.  An example:  "A margarita will help you greatly"

Wisdom of J Dog

I believe they could not determine for sure where the hive is, so they just sealed up the access holes for it.  Let's hope they don't decide to move farther inside the building.  These bees are apparently the ones that were outside the hive when they sealed it.

This is my next-to-last day at my old job and there is a cleanup crew here to stop a bee problem.  Apparently they have a hive between the brick veneer and the rest of the building.  A few have made it inside, but for the most part, they're interested in the pollen, etc, in the woods surrounding the building.  I think they will try to transport the hive if they can locate and remove it.  Might make for another interesting picture if they have to remove a chunk of brick.

One of my friends from work had a Lunchables for lunch the other day.  I had forgotten that those even existed.  I'd like to think it was intended for one of his children, but it's pretty funny if it wasn't.  It had tiny tacos, a CapriSun, and a little box of Nerds.  Amazing how many memories it brought back.  He added the yogurt.

I took it upon myself to make Laura a birthday cake...  the frosting never really became frosting...

It did finally harden a little and start sticking to the cake.  So I took a knife and believe it or not, it finally looked like a normal frosted cake.  Glad it worked out ok.

This is one of those times that everyone should run and hide.  The Perfect Storm is upon us.  Two of the famed trucks of death were spotted in a row today waiting to get on US280.  I really wish Rob had seen this since he loves these trucks (threatens to turn them in to the police for "cruising" every time he sees one).  His main complaint is that their only purpose is to drive around, which translates into getting in the way since they do things like stay in the left lane going very slowly on very busy streets, etc.  Amos would call the Perfect Storm that would come off of having two such negatively charged objects so close together a "Noreaster".

http://www.widro.com/throwpaper.html

It's amazing how much time you could spend doing this and never get bored.

So this is just wrong on so many levels.

I saw this link and couldn't help but wonder if they put lights on them at Christmas....

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/faketree.htm

There is one of these in Vestavia Hills that doens't even look like a tree...  it looks like a traditional pole with three branches - like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree that has cell antennas on it.

I have seen this thing around town a good bit and finally caught it while it was not moving at interstate speeds.  I can't believe someone actually has to drive this for their job.  It looks like it was originally a Suzuki Grand Vitara (or something slightly smaller) with a few slight modifications and a paint job.  I think the brush guard on the front is a nice touch.  Just makes me wonder if this is more or less embarrasing than the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.