didja miss me?

Yes, it's been a long while since I've written. No no no no, stop sniffling now. It's not you, it's me. I stopped writing to everyone, not just you.

I sincerely apologize to those of you who live for my once-weekly updates. I laugh at you a little bit, too, bc I really don't feel as if my writing is anything special. It's actually not much more than a translation of some of the incessant chatter bouncing between the insides of my skull.

Where have I been these past few weeks? Nunya. Nunya Bidniss.

Seriously, lemme do a quick recap to get you all up to speed.

FOUR Fridays ago, we bounced up to Ohio for a family wedding. My cuz Dana got hitched. It was a beautiful ceremony (with all the required Catholic aerobics) and a great party afterwards. It also just happened to be Ohio Bike Week. :) Pics here.

THREE Fridays ago, Samantha graduated high school. I'm not sure why, but the school decided to do the ceremony in the football stadium, instead of at the Patriot Center. Mother Nature decided to make it about 140 degrees and 140% humidity that afternoon. Once the sun went down, it turned out to be a really nice event. Sam's on her way to Radford in the fall, and totally stoked about it. She's already got her roommate (another girl from her HS) and I've already sent money.

I'm really proud of my baby girl.

TWO Fridays ago, I hit the road with a couple friends from my office. We bike together during the week, and have done a few triathlons together. This time we were on the way to a much much MUCH bigger race: The Gran Fondo Fab Fifty. We camped Friday night near Deep Creek, before hitting the race Saturday morning. My pics here.

The Fondo is a road-bike race, starting at the top of Wisp Ski Resort, and running up down and around all the mountains at Deep Creek. It is by far the most challenging ride I've ever done. Taller, steeper, farther, and faster than ever before. I had to resist making SteveAustin sound effects. The killer? The last two miles of the course are spent riding back to the top of Wisp Mountain.

Fondo Stats

• Linear distance: 50.76 miles
• Total climb: 5,800'
• Elapsed time: 4:01:23
• Best part: INSANE TOP SPEEDS!!!!

After the race completed Saturday, me & the guys high-tailed it back to NoVA to celebrate Seth & Susan's wedding. It was a blast - hanging out with old friends and meeting a lot of new ones. Of course, smashing the glass and dancing the Hora were included. Tony spotted the chairs on the dance floor first, but we may have tied in the sprint to grab a leg. I guarantee that if the chandelier was a tiny bit lower, we would have had an incident.

ONE Friday ago was the holiday weekend, which also coincided with Samantha's 18th birthday. I left work early, and left all of you in the lurch. Sorry again. I didn't want to distract anyone, and extend your workday any longer than it needed to be.

Anyway, thru the weekend we spent a lot of time with fam & friends & neighbors. Multiple BBQs, multiple fireworks displays, and way too much food. Sam wanted to get some top-shelf steaks to celebrate her birthday dinner. Ray's the Steaks in Arlington was perfect. I'd been to Ray's HellBurger before, and the Steaks had an equally impressive reputation, and they didn't disappoint. Capital Grille quality at Outback prices, and zero pretentiousness. Do it.

Sam made her own birthday cake:


This weekend is looking to be another good celebration of summertime. One housewarming, one (dual) birthday party, and a BBQ with some old friends. Screw Michelob. Weekends were made for grillin'!

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Finally. A TRUE time waster! This one is so easy, but so addictive at the same time. Two button controls: left arrow, right arrow. Rotate.

Six Degrees of Black Sabbath. Pick two musicians, and see how they're connected. Just like the Kevin Bacon game, without the Bacon.

TheSmokingGun has a contest, built from the game Clue: identify which criminal used which weapon when they were arrested for assault. Hurry, though, the contest ends at 6pm EDT!

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Boston's Barstool Sports has the best salute to the 4th of July and the good ol' US of A. I wish I could come up with stuff like this.

My kind of party.

Not-so-much my kind of Capt. America burrito party.

I kissed a lot of girls these past couple weeks. Or imagined so, at least.

Child stars and how they've (not?) changed.

Lots of reasons for non-soccer fans to watch the World Cup (for real).

One more reason to cheer for soccer:


I'll fess to it though, here's the real reason why I've been watching the World Cup.


Cool optical illusion in real-life:

Now I understand!


Final thought ... your weekend may start when this cycle completes...


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not always friday

Please tell me this wasn't you.... (click to view if necessary)
(I love that comic. More here.)

I voted this morning at the local elementary school. I knew it was going to be busy, and I expected a wait, so my expectations were set pretty low. I planned on the possibility of being there for a while, and my plan was pretty accurate.

For the first 45 mins or so, things were really moving. The line ran the entire length of the school hallway, but it was shuffling forward at a regular pace. No worries, no problems. Plenty of time to say good morning to people from the neighborhood, and to meet new people near me in line.

Things began to suck when we got closer to the cafeteria, where the actual voting was taking place. In order to validate the voter registration, entry to the cafeteria was broken up into 3 sections of the alphabet by last name. A-G on the left, H-O in the middle, and P-Z on the right. My wife, with her hyphenated last name, jumped ahead of me and about 20-30 other people. Cool for her, not realizing yet how badly I was about to get effed.

I started noticing that two sections of the alphabet were moving very rapidly, while my section was rather stagnant. More and more people got called ahead of my group. I'm still not stressed, really, but starting to wonder how the array of names could be that lopsided. I'm still in the hall outside the cafeteria, so I can't really figure out the details of the situation yet.

After a while, I'm getting a little worked up. Between 75-100 people with lucky last names bestowed upon them have passed our sorry lot in the hallway. The election hostess is passing BS and illogical excuses about how the names have been divided, and our group was just really large. The words weren't hers, she was just relaying the same BS that somebody inside had told her to say.

FINALLY, over 1/2 an hour later, I get into the cafeteria. My wife has voted, left the school, driven to work, and already started her day. The first 45 minutes in line covered the entire length of the school. The last 30 paces had taken another 45 minutes. But now that I was inside, I could identify the source of my stress: BINGO LADY.

Bingo Lady was validating I.D. and cross-referencing names against the master book; the gate-keeper into the actual polling station. Does "Bingo Lady" put a picture in your mind? If so, I'm sure it's accurate. She was near 80, shaky, mumbling, and craning her head back to read the master book thru the bottom half of her bi-focals. And she was REALLY EFFING SLOW. She could have spotted the hell out of B-14 or I-23, but looking up last names alphabetically just wasn't in her skill set.

Bless her heart, she was out there working the election, which is 1000x more responsibility than I took today. But DAMN did somebody at that polling station put her in the wrong position. There were a dozen other people who could have been shuffled around to make it work better. There had to be someone on that team with better vision and reading skills, and I'm sure there was other tasks that Bingo Lady could have managed very well. The fucktards in charge of the day simply failed on organizing their people.

Each year after voting, I walk out of the school with a smile and sense of pride for doing my part. Today I left bitter. My smile today was stolen by the fucktards.

I will happily wait 2 hours, if that's what it takes to vote. As it was, I waited 45 minutes to vote, plus another 45 minutes for stupidity.

Side note, much happier news - my kid voted in his first election today. I'm pretty proud that he stepped up and did his part,too. Not a lot of young'uns do that.

Now that I'm done venting, I'd really like to hear your voting stories. For real. Click here, or use the link below, and lemme know....