List Monday - Best Muppets

1. Kermit the Frog
2. Fozzie Bear
3. Rowlf the dog
4. Sweetums
5. Beaker
6. Grover
7. Animal
8. Guy Smiley
9. Floyd Pepper
10. Mahna Mahna

San FranDisco

Upon arrival at the city by the bay, jilly saw her first trolley car and asked, "are we in toon town?"

Science...

Today, the Jillybean decided to see what would happen if one put bubbles in the fountain.  Observe:

TJ's Terrific Travels and Terrible Travails

TJ had spent the prior day facing off against a record 19,400 monsters.  He emerged largely unscathed, but his weaponry and armor had taken a severe beating.  And yet, our hero began feeling more confident and readied to face a new day's onslaught of pocket picking scalawags.

Stepping into the arena, TJ found himself face-to-face with the infamous Teva, trained by the Israeli Mossad.  TJ thrust and parried, thrust and parried, and thrust and parried again - until the beast was vanquished.  With no time to rest upon his laurels, a mechanically armored TXT was fast approaching.  This time, TJ parried and thrust thrice, rendering the defense weapon defenseless.  A smattering of other foes were also faced, none proving to be any match for our victorious veteran.

TJ finally had a day where he got the best of the beasts.

List Monday - Best of the '80's

Ahhh....musical nirvana.  Where to start?  Too...many...good...songs...to choose from.  Well, if I had to pick my top 10 of my favorite decade:

1. Icicle Works - Whisper to a Scream
2. U2 - I will follow
3. OMD - Forever Live and Die
4. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
5. Housemartins - Happy Hour
6. Furniture - Brilliant Mind
7. Prince - Purple Rain
8. Dream Academy - Life in a Northern Town
9. Erasure - Oh L'amour
10. ABC - Look of Love
11. Lightning Seeds - Pure

honorable mentions:  depeche mode, devo, human league, yaz, inxs, cure, thompson twins

Genealogy Wednesday - Ancestry answers

While perusing my trial membership of Ancestry.com, the following factoids were found:

• apparently, Poppa Harold was actually older than his sister Dottie, who might have been born in Connecticut
• Benjamen (Bert) brought the family back to NY prior to 1917, when he registered for WWI; he was still with the family at the 1920 census
• Lena (Lee) might have had a bunch of brothers and sisters
• Jack Frank (step-great grandfather) was a private detective and moved the family to Brooklyn
• Aaron Davidson might have come over in 1916, later remarried and went from Tin smith to farmer
• Sophie Segal Davidson had a brother named Louis
• Great Uncle Moe's real name might have been Murray or Moses
• Grampa Sam's grandfather Isaac Simon, from Sapowczy, E. Galicia,  came to America in 1922 - when he was 70
• Victor, Sam's Dad, came in 1921, a year before the rest of the family
• Gramma Ida's brother Jack's real name was Jacob
• Found Steph's great, great grandmama Anna Mekov (w)

I must be getting old...

• my eyebrows grow like crazy
• for my anniversary, I want a hammock
• on my way to work, I listen to AM talk radio
• I miss the good old days...of 2006
• I stay away from the beach if I think that it'll be too crowded
• I wake up feeling hung over, without having had anything to drink
• Sinatra keeps getting better and better
• I go to sleep when my kids do
• A wild night is two beers
• I tivo the "old man show"
• I blog about getting old

приветствовать

Hey, just wanted to say "Welcome" to my viewer from Moscow City.  It is a small world after all.

today, my girl is a fountain pen....

Random

Little league is over.  Not soon enough.

Saw Robin Hood.  More like Braveheart II.  Crowe is no Errol Flynne.

Saw the penultimate Lost.   Sure looks like it's setting up for a doozy of a finale.  And yet, more questions keep arising.

New trading phrase I heard today:  picking bottoms is for orangutans.

tj's Terrific Travels and Terrible Travails

Frustrated at the slow pace of his crossings, TJ came across a gaggle of Haup monsters from Hauppage, NY.  These creatures were famous for their ability to get somewhere fast by way of their hoppability.  Now TJ, being in a hurry, lassoed 3 of these beasts....which only made them angry.  They began to hop  every which way, destroying everything in their path.  Two of them even stomped TJ.  Thinking their hoppability to be mere hype, TJ released 2 of the worthless demons.  He held on to the 3rd Haup.  He hid behind its weak end, hoping that its anger would settle down.  It didn't.  This one stomped on TJ too, completing the hat trick of carnage.  TJ wasted yet another day, resting and recuperating.

list Monday - Favorite (not necessarily best) baseball players

OLDEN DAYS

• Joe Dimaggio - no one beat 56 game hit streak & Marilyn Monroe, not too shabby
• Willie Mays - Say Hey kid and The Catch
• Sandy Koufax - Greatest Jewish athlete ever

DAYS OF MY YOUTH

• Tom Seaver - Teriffic
• Rusty Staub - cool name
• Pete Rose - Charlie Hustle

MODERN ERA

• Greg Maddux - great work ethic
• Sammy Sosa - brought baseball back with his enthusiasm, problems later
• Ozzy Smith - back flips for the wiz
• Ryne Sandberg - Ryno for Manager...

Took the pups to this cool dog beach in far away Del Mar yesterday.  There were actually dogs on surfboards surfing.  Drove down PCH through this town called Leucadia.  We passed this store called Leucadia Donut Shoppe.  Naturally, we stopped.  It was only 10ish, but they were basically out of donuts.  I said to Jillie, "not much of a donut shoppe," and she replied, "now it's just a shoppe."

Sun Devils got mercied out of their first game of the double elimination Tournament of Champions...by the same team we beat the other night.  Next (and hopefully last) game Thursday.

Surprise....

Went out to the garage today, to refill Cubby's dog food...only to find a surprise visitor.  A 2.5 foot common variety snake.  It wasn't scary, per se, but the slithering startled me so that I screamed like a little girl.  Three shovel smacks later....no more snakey-poo.  Needless to say, tomorrow is clean the garage day.

My little Modigliani...

Bad news Bears...

After 16 inglorious defeats (a coup attempt, a barrage of hate emails, and a stern talking to by a grouchy old umpire), the AAA Sun Devils of the San Clemente little league won their final game of the regular season 13 - 12.  Josh scored twice.  On to the tournament...

The Weekend in review

After enjoying their week in Carlsbad (and what's not to enjoy), my loving parents graciously agreed to watch my rugrats, so that the bride and I could spend a lovely weekend on Coronado Island.  We dined al fresco in Del Mar on our way down.  Settled into the Glorietta Bay Inn and spent some time on the beach.  We supped at Oceanaire - Club Lucky meets Eddy V's, where my wife consumed an entire fish.

Sunday, we got to spend Mother's day with my Mother.  We surprised everyone with a trip to the Coach House to see Bella Donna and Hot August Nights -  Stevie Nicks and Neil tribute bands.  A good and loud time was had by all.

List Monday - Best of the '70's

Well, I've been thinking about the best songs of this plaid decade and like the apparel, it is just too musically diverse.  I broke it down by best of genres, as I delineate.  Bands like Zeppelin and Stones have already been covered; so, they won't be covered again.  Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves...

1. Punk Rock - the best of decade:  Clash -London Calling, Talking Heads-Psycho Killer, Blondie - Heart of Glass, Knack - My Sharona, Police - Roxanne
2. Prog Rock - Genesis-Carpet Crawlers, Pink Floyd-Wish You Were Here, ELO-Strange Magic
3. Arena Rock - Styx-Come Sail Away, Journey-Loving,Touching,Squeezing, REO-Time for Me toFly, Cheap Trick-Surrender
4. Hard Rock - Rush - 2112, Boston - More than a feeling, Aerosmith - Dream On, 
5. Pop Rock - Abba
6. Singer Songwriter - Springsteen - Born to Run, Billy Joel - Piano Man, John Lennon - Imagine
7. Funk/Soul - Earth Wind & Fire, Marvin Gaye
8. Reggae -  Anything Bob.  Can't go wrong with Peter Tosh or Jimmy Cliff either.
9. Disco - Bee Gee's are cool.
10. Cheesey - Pina Colada Song, Raindrops keep falling, Tie a yellow ribbon, Afternoon Delight, Muskrat Love, etc.
11. All of the above:  Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody, Meatloaf

random

Saw Iron Man 2 today with the wifey.  Cool flick, but did not rock as much as the first one.

The little league team is now 0-15.

Had a slightly better week at work.

Josh finished Phantom Tollbooth.  He got into it a little bit.  That's cool.  Now he's reading H. Potter, #5.

Jillian was on TV show about a lady with 15 personalities.  That's cool.

Parents coming by tomorrow.  That's cool.

Final coolness:  off to an exciting, romantic mother's day weekend with the mother of my children.  Yay.

There's a conspiracy out there...

Some say it was a keyboard error.  Some say it was the European contagion.  Others, the Chinese hacking our systems.  Still others, it was the Dukes.  I say:  more sellers than buyers.  The Tea Party.  Zambrano in the bullpen.  (A personal keyboard error of my own - that actually went in my favor, for a change.)  Plus, the quotation systems went haywire.  We'll see....

List Monday - Top TV Shows of all time (in my lifetime)

1. Soap - way ahead of it's time...launched Billy Crystal....Chuck & Bob, need I say more...
2. Seinfeld - yada, yada, yada
3. M*A*S*H - brilliantly hilarious or hilariously brilliant
4. Sopranos - best drama
5. Cheers - like an old friend
6. Rescue Me (Hill St. Blues) - only dvd i ever bought to watch missed episodes, firemen edge out cops
7. Entourage - too hip
8. Arrested Development (Taxi) - too dufus....slightly beat out Taxi, also greatly written
9. Happy Days - like my imaginary friend of youth
10. Dick Van Dyke Show - without this, none of the other comedies above would be possible...

Smellivision

We were at the pizza joint by the movie theatre. There was a dad and daughter eating with their 3D glasses on. It was like the pizza was coming right at them.