Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Sponge-Worthy

One of our adoring fans posed this question to us recently in a comment: Whither SpongeBob? He should, after all, constitute a full third of our blog, if the tagline above is to be believed.

Well, dear readers, fear not. We have not forgotten about our absorbent and porous friend. Although he has not had a starring role in our blog until now, he has made several cameo appearances. One such appearance was in the form of a band-aid (although it was pointed out to me later that it was no mere band-aid I used that day -- it was a glow-in-the-dark one!); another appearance here detailed our impression of Mr. SquarePants' adventure on the silver screen.

And, as you may have guessed by the new name adorning these pages, the current and previous title of our blog have paid homage to classic quotes from the TV series:

"Art thou feeling it now, Mr. Krabs?"
-- Spongebob, Mid-Life Crustacean

"Just look at him. Square... the shape of evil!"
-- Sheldon J. Plankton, The Fry Cook Games

Having established the subtle, yet unmistakable presence of Mr. SquarePants, we can turn our attention to the manner in which we became fans.

I first became aware of the aforementioned character in 2002, when I began my job in Colorado. The department I was in had established a team mascot, which was a talking SpongeBob SquarePants doll ("Bring it around town," he exclaimed). Every month the department would vote for a member that had performed exceptionally well, and the winner had the honor of possessing the doll, which was nicknamed "FancyPants," for that month. Lest any harm befall the mascot, the Code of Ethics within the department included the line "Treat FancyPants with Respect."

Having never heard of him before, I asked Wendy one day if she had heard of a cartoon named something along the lines of "SquareBob SpongePants." She had, fortunately, and she corrected my mistake.

Not long after that we began watching the TV show on Nickelodeon and discovered that we quite enjoyed it. SpongeBob is zany, naive, and, perhaps, somewhat gay (not that there's anything wrong with that). A fine combination. And a fine show.

We thank you, Mr. SquarePants, for providing hours of entertainment. And to our readers: should you ever have any SpongeBob-related questions, please do not hesitate to ask. We shall always endeavor to answer.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Well.

Last night, I finally fell asleep around 4 a.m. This morning, I got up at 8 a.m. I left about 10 minutes later than I should have for work and was stuck behind someone going 5 miles under the speed limit for probably a third of the way there.

When I finally got to work, it turned out that the server was misbehaving, and I spent probably 30 minutes trying to get my computer to restart. I spent another several hours looking up the zip codes for over 200 addresses, for a mailing we're doing.

When I got home today, I discovered that the two boxes of Christmas presents we had to mail to ourselves had arrived and had been sitting outside our garage in the rain all afternoon. I brought them in, checked the mail (in the rain!), and then walked all the way across our light beige living room carpet before noticing that I had stepped in mud while checking the mail. I also managed to almost completely shred one of the crusts I needed to make dinner while trying to get it out of the pan.

The carpet is now clean, a pot pie is in the oven, Randy is on his way home, and I am drinking a much-too-strong pina colada.

So. How are you all doing?

As promised, here's a selection of the 100 memories from our Christmas trip.

1. Wendy accidentally walking in on a little girl in the women's bathroom at a gas station, apologizing and moving on to the next stall, where she accidentally walked in on a little boy.

20. Abby doing the laundry dance.

22. Santa bringing Randy's mom a tulip toilet seat.

26. Santa bringing Randy's dad an Aircap 2 - strongly reminiscent of a chemical warfare mask.

27. Playing Battle of the Sexes with everyone at Randy's house.

28. Discovering that Cory is rather metrosexual, and thus knew many of the answers to the female questions.

31. Celebrating our fourth anniversary!

34. Nearly running out of gas on our way back to Kansas City, but fortunately just making it to a gas station in Topeka.

38. Graffiti in a Kansas bathroom: "God is the reason for the season," except "God" was crossed out and "Jesus" was written above it.

70. Randy's dad saying he wanted a 52" plasma TV for Christmas, and Wendy telling him that all we could find was the 56" one, which wasn't what he asked for, so we didn't buy it.

76. Walking down the aisle at Wal-Mart with Wendy and Abby and hearing a little boy say, "Mom, that lady is cute! Both of those ladies are cute!"

80. Getting home and discovering that our suitcases had been searched.

(Which surely had nothing to do with...) 82. Wendy having her Miss Army knife confiscated by Midway security.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Happy 2006!

Hola, amigos. Sorry it's been so long since we rapped at you, but we're back now!

December was busy, but not terribly exciting through most of it. My back problems were re-diagnosed as possible gallbladder problems, and then re-re-diagnosed as possible back problems. I suspect that I did in fact have a severely pulled muscle or deep bruise, since it seems to have finally healed almost completely over the last week or so despite my less-than-healthy holiday diet (which would probably not be the case if it was a gallbladder problem).

So I spent more time this past month than I would have liked at the doctor, and the rest of the time frantically trying to get the Christmas shopping done. We did get it all done, with time to spare, thanks to the beautiful, beautiful internet.

We were able to go and visit both families again this Christmas. We first headed to Tulsa to spend some time with Randy's family. We had a great time hanging out with everyone, and were very pleased to meet Joy's fiancé, Cory. He's a funny, wonderful guy, and they're obviously very much in love. We approve!

After a few days, we drove up to Wichita to see my family as well, and again spent most of our time hanging out and playing games. While we were in Wichita, we celebrated our fourth anniversary. It fell on the same day as OU's bowl game. OU won, sealing the victory with a late interception, which was a nice gift. (Sorry we were so, um, exuberant with our cheering, Mom. We didn't mean to wake you!)

We're glad to be back home now, although I wish we could have stayed longer. We had a wonderful time with both families. Coming soon: a selection of our 100 memories from this trip. I'm sure you can't wait!

May you all have a happy 2006!