"Swish"bucklin': An Unfantastical Voyage into the Dinner/Theatre Realm

what the hell.

as a teacher, i'm pretty much screwed in terms of salary. granted, i make enough money to live comfortably on, but not nearly as much as i should for the work that i do. this is, in itself, an old (and rather cliche) argument, and one that i'm going to avoid (for the time being); the only reason i bring up teaching at all, dear readers, is because occasionally, while the Great Salary God might forsake us with terribly fury, the God of Random Discounts and Coupons seems to smile upon we poor, humble instructional heroes and heroines.

for the month of june, all teachers in orange and osceola county (and up to one guest!) recieved $10 tickets to the infamous 'pirates dinner adventure,' a staple in orlando's sprawling dinner-and-a-show industry that preys on tourists and idiots. shows like these generally cost $65 per adult, and you're given a lackluster meal, a corn-dog stage show of some sort, and limitless opportunities to buy worthless crap over the course of two, tourist-friendly hours.

for $10, though, we figured 'why the hell not.'

our first mistake in all of this was assuming that 'complimentary drinks' meant free beer. well, that was true and it wasn't true: 'complimentary drinks' meant you were allowed two free beers, but the server was allowed to bring you one before the show, and one an hour later following the meal. in both cases, the beer was stale, watered-down, and served in a plastic, 10 oz. 'mug.'

i'm a man of simple tastes, folks. it doesn't take much to impress me. i knew going into this whole, wretched affair that the show was going to be horrible, and that the food was going to be bland at best. it was my own ignorance, i guess, that led me to believe that, heck, for $65 you might actually receive 'complimentary drinks.'

with free beer, i need nothing else to enjoy an evening out with the missus.

i did not enjoy my free beer at pirates dinner adventure. it was awful. so was the service, so was the performance, so was the food. for the love of all that is holy, stay the hell away from this place. if you take away one, single, solitary thing from all of my idiotic ramblings, it is this one point of empirical wisdom from yours truly:

stay at home and avoid this attraction like the plague.

- brian

Snazzercisin'

what's up, players.

we're about three weeks into the summer, folks. three weeks have gone by and i've managed to accomplish little of what i had initially set out to do. the lesson planning for the upcoming 2009 - 2010 school year? yeah, not so much. the writing? a little, but not nearly as much as i'd prefer. the mundane side-projects - cleaning up my iTunes libraries, working on iMovies and slideshows for family, cataloging and organizing my vinyl record collection (i know, shut up) - here and there.

the problem in my inefficiency so far this summer stems from one, blatantly obvious source: my daughter.

chasing after this one year old time bomb takes up practically every, single, waking moment of my daily routine, and my consequent inability to get anything done, day in and day out, is driving me insane. nothing gets done with a kid in the house. feeding, changing, bathing, playing... and i though the wife was high maintenance.

on a plus side, folks, i have managed to somewhat land myself into a pseudo workout routine of sorts. for about 30 minutes a day, a few days a week, i bust my ass on the Nintendo Wii Fit, which, for those of you who can generally be found living under a rock on most days, is a videogame that utilizes a sensor-based board so that the user can exercise whilst playing videogames.

i know it sounds stupid, folks, but it works. at least it does for this guy, at any rate.

i should probably be doing it everyday - despite all of this exercisin', i think the remainder of the day where i'm loafing around my apartment playing super-dad is canceling out all my hard work - but, for the time being, i'm holding onto that almighty clothing standard of dudehood: medium sized shirt/32" waistline. that's my 38th parallel, and i'm going to hold that line as long as i can.

speaking of which, its time to get off my ass and start this evening's sweatfest.

cheers,

- brian

Cannonball One

hey folks...

we decided to throw the kid a birthday party a few days early this year in order to coincide with a saturday and kris' family flying in to town. this fiasco ended up costing us way more than we would've liked, but it was all worth it in the end.

we opted for a luau-themed party, as we couldn't really bring ourselves to throw the kid a standard, pink-and-princess shin-dig (which is the standard for infant chicks), and, being only twelve months old, alayna really doesn't have any particular interests or hobbies (besides crawling towards our flatscreen and smacking the crap out of it with her grubby, snack-ridden hands).

from the get-go, our plan was to have people over for a grill-out by our complex's pool, and then later transport everyone back to our place for cake and cocktails. we weren't sure if drinks were cool or not in public property, but we had a four gallon concoction of mai tais (crafted by yours truly) prepared and ready to go back at the house. the pool-side lunch went over well enough for what it was - a bunch of people shielding meat with paper plates and shooing away flies while others swam in a pool.

we either ended up buying too much food or else everybody who showed up were in 'polite' mode. consequently, we plan eating leftovers for the next month or so.

kris had prepared two cakes for the occassion, which was truly a baptism by fire for her, as she had never before made a cake and had no idea what she was doing. the giant sheet cake (pictured) turned out decent enough, and the cannonball's personal cake (fashioned after a grand piano, as the kid does enjoy the jams) turned out really well. you can see other pictures at my dad's picture site here.

not that it mattered to alayna, who only wanted to smack her hands in it, and didn't care about the baked item's decorative qualities in the slightest.

my dad ended up making it down and swung in for a surprise appearance that morning, so he was able to enjoy the kid's first birthday as well as kris' mom, sister, and the nephew/niece combo. it was a loud, crowded, confusing day with way too much crap going on to focus in on one thing in particular, and i, for one, was glad to see it over and done with. by my own rationale, i think i'm over and done with big kid parties until the kid turns 16.

then all i have to do is buy some junked-up used car and a card.

now, if you'll excuse me, i have about two and a half gallons of mai tai to see to...

cheers,

- brian

Summer Vacation. Engage.

here we go.

technically, my summer vacation started monday. i'm sorry for the two-day late start.

monday was a half day for me, more or less, but we were all required to go anyway. had to turn in my school laptop, my set of room keys, get a bunch of other random blah-blah signed off on. not too difficult. most of the day was spent working on the book in my now-barren classroom, as i had taken care of most of the cleaning-out and wrapping-up process the previous friday.

getting paid to do nothing is awesome... which is why i'm looking forward to the next three months.

last year, about this time, we were prepping up for the cannonball's arrival. the three months that followed were lack-luster in terms of shenanigans, as we ran on little or no sleep and every move we made revolved around the newborn. this summer, yours truly has a few initiatives that he's going to try and push through before he has to once again juggle a bunch of ape-ish teenagers come mid-august. they are as follows:

1. keep up on grad school crap and finish assignments as early as humanly possible. this is way easier than it sounds. yes, i have nothing else to distract myself from getting my master's, now that i'm done with work... except for that whole 'kid' thing. you try writing terms papers while a toddler is ripping DVDs and books off the shelves and screaming her ass off. go ahead.

2. develop a work-out routine. this hasn't been nearly as difficult as the grad school crap - i've actually managed to get off my ass every day since school let out. this should account for something, too, as it comes from someone who despises exercise just as much as he despises cats or diane sawyer.

3. work on my writing. now that i've been accepted into the writing program, and am getting professional advice and guidance, i can finally start the ball rolling with freelancing writing. (if i can find the time).

4. update and manage all mundane side-projects. lots of boring shit that isn't really important or entertaining, but time-consuming and eating away at the back of my conscious. clean up my files on the computer. finish the last african adventures movie. organize all my work files. pfft...

5. prepare lesson plans and classroom management/discipline plan for the 2009-2010 school year. bwah-ha-haha! yeah right...

we'll see how all this crap works out with me now being a full-time housedad. i'll be in touch, kids...

the world's greatest DILF,

- brian