Too Many Men on the Field

When I was younger, there was a woman known as Morganna, the Kissing Bandit. Her sport was baseball. She would run on the field during the game and kiss a player. You’d think she would be limited to positions close to the sidelines like third base or first base but she made it out to the center fielder once when I was watching. She somehow made it past security – I guess there was a lot less security then…

I did not watch the Kansas City – Baltimore football game yesterday but I heard today that Taylor Swift ran on the field and kissed one of the players. I didn’t hear the full story, so I’m hoping this happened after the game was over and not during play. Not to take anything away from Morganna, but kissing a football player is way harder than kissing a baseball player.

I give Swift all the credit in the world. Morganna never had to deal with face masks. I don’t remember her kissing any catchers. Or home plate umpires.  

On Brand

 

The ultimate success in marketing is when your brand name becomes the product name. For instance:

•                       Kleenex – “Use a Kleenex for that.” If people say this to you, well…
•            Frigidaire – My friend’s mom called refrigerators that. “You forgot to put the oleo back in the Frigidaire Lloyd.” Nobody said that at our house ‘cause we had a Hotpoint. That’s a crazy name for a refrigerator, now that I think of it
•            Jell-O – I for one would love to hear Bill Cosby do a bit on prison Jell-O. “You can only get orange in there! It’s always orange! And they never put fruit in it!” I bet he ate Jell-O in there...
  
•            Bubble Wrap – If only Michael Buble did a rap album. That would be a tremendous title.
•            White Out – Not needed so much today but it’s still out there. They should do a commercial and put words to the tune Wipe Out by The Surfaris.

Wouldn’t it be cool for White Out to be a sponsor for those Penn State home “White Out” football games where everybody wears white? Why has that not happened? Earth to Penn State...

Early Bird Finds the Frozen Worm

Somebody wrote in to us years ago and asked why we never wrote about birds. Well, today’s thought, as you can tell from the title, is about birds. Today is January 21st. And I saw numerous robins this morning. They were in my tree, they were really fat, and they wouldn’t leave. Kinda gave me the creeps. I felt like Tippi Hedren, the actress from Hitchcock’s The Birds. So I asked myself, why are these robins here in January? They usually don’t come until March. I thought of these potential reasons:

•    Due to their obvious excess weight, they can’t migrate. Can’t keep up with the flock.
•    They somehow knew Easter is early this year, and so they decided just to stay through the winter.
•    The leap year thing with the extra day next month messed them up.
•    Global warming
 

Assuming the reason is global warming, that brings up another issue. With temperatures continuing to creep up every year, why has there been no discussion about moving Groundhog Day back a few weeks? There is like no way there will six more weeks of winter after February 2nd. Even with the extra day.  
 

Coffee Klatch-22

 

When we make our coffee at work you have to wait a while for our new Keurig to heat up if it doesn’t have constant use. So you do other stuff while you’re waiting for it to warm up. You check your phone, check the weather, check your shoelaces, maybe your zipper. Maybe you leave and go pull something off the printer. Does this ever happen to you: you leave and when you come back to the Keurig you can’t remember if you put a new pod in or not? And there’s a pod already in there (Kirkland. We only have Kirkland (Did I mention I’m a Costco member?)) but you can’t remember if it’s your pod or the guy’s who gets to work really early? And the reason you can’t remember is ‘cause you haven’t had your coffee?

I hate it when that happens…

Bus Fuss

 I’ve heard reports and maybe you’ve heard them too, that there were prison buses in some Christmas parades this year. Maybe they’ve been doing this for years and I just didn’t notice. Maybe the parade organizers didn’t have enough groups sign up for the parade and they needed participants, I don’t know. Here’s what we do know:
•    Nobody threw candy from the bus
•    As far as observers could tell, there was no Santa on the bus
•    The riders wore the only orange outfits in the parade
•    The bus did not blast out “Christmas in Prison” by John Prine

When it stopped at the railroad crossing and opened its door, we don’t think anybody ran out.

Forward Thinking

We stopped at a gas station on a trip over New Year's. The pump would not accept any of my credit or debit cards. That's frustrating, isn't it? After about my fourth try a guy from the pump behind me came over and swiped his card on my pump, thereby giving me a free tank of gas. I asked him why he was paying for my gas and he just smiled and said, "No reason". I told him I wouldn't stick it to him, and that I thought I only needed about 7 gallons. Then he said those five words you love to hear: “Go ahead and top off” And he followed that with, “Don’t worry – I get a 15 cent per gallon discount”. I thanked him and he drove off with his family. Sure enough, I only needed 7 gallons.

So, is that the end of the story? The end of the post? I think not. I need to pass along his kindness, pay it forward I think they call it. But I thought with my luck I’d find somebody who needed like 32 gallons. That didn’t seem to equal the benefit I had received. I’d be out 25 gallons. And I don’t get the 15 cent per gallon discount.  So I was looking for something a little smaller.

Unfortunately you don’t see many, if any, motorcycles in January. I guess I’ll have to wait ‘til it gets warmer to pay it forward. Maybe one of my cards will work by then…

Aquamotion

Did anybody out there get Battleship for Christmas? Remember the first time you played that game? The first time I played I was pretty young. The game took a really long time, ‘cause I kept moving my ships around. Hey, I didn’t know.

Did any of you do that? Doesn’t it make sense? If I’m the Admiral, I’m gonna move my fleet around, aren’t you? Nobody wants to be the Lusitania. I mean, what was Milton Bradley thinking when he (they?) designed this game? Fortunately, my opponent that day was an older friend and he was understanding.

I should probably call him and see if he moves his ships around now when he plays...