Touchdown My Pants: The 5th Day of Giftmas 2009

Touchdown My Pants: The 5th Day of Giftmas 2009

There are a lot of things in my life that I’m more proud of than I probably should be. Being able to diagnose my own injuries without seeing a doctor; knowing what porn sites contain viruses and pop ups; and being able to tell the difference between the Jonas Brothers to name a few. At the top of the list, however, is my fantasy football prowess.

For those of you who don’t know what fantasy football is, it’s basically D&D for people who make fun of the people who play D&D. We make our own team of NFL players and score points based on how well they perform each week. See, it’s totally different. And then we talk shit about our teams to each other like we had something to do with their success. It’s the last refuge of the unathletic. And it works with almost 100% success. Whereas you used to have to be athletic to brag about your sporting prowess, now you can stay connected by studying real athletes on the internet and television. Congratulations, America.

But this season marks a first. Touchdown My Pants (my fantasy team) won the fantasy championship which means I will actually get money for all the hours I poured into studying these real athletes. And so Jen and I went to Outback last night and I splurged on the 12 oz. rather than the 9 oz. that I normally get. It was still just meat loaf, but I was content. And we cheersed each other and proclaimed loudly “Here’s to Touchdown My Pants!” An elderly couple near us turned red. Three guys at the table across from us bought us a couple shots. The waitress gave us a free dessert. Thank you, Joshua Cribbs for your timely kickoff returns.

Re-Quote of the Day 12/21/06

“Fantasy football is like Dungeons & Dragons for guys who used to make fun of Dungeons & Dragons in high school.”

-Dave Bradshaw

He admittedly stole this from a comedian, but we can’t think of who, so Dave gets a point for now.

Ho-ho!

Santa’s ding-dong.

Still Standing Right Here…

Death by Kitten: The 4th Day of Giftmas 2009

Death by Kitten: The 4th Day of Giftmas 2009

This is an actual sentence I said last week.

“Hey Keith, my kitten ate Jen’s roses and puked all over your invitation. Could you give me directions to your baby shower again?”

I’m going to table the fact that I attended a coed baby shower for a little while so I can introduce you to the reason I show up to work with scratches all over my forearms and face. That would be Poe, the little kitten that I decided to plague our perfect happy home with. She’s apparently a “Russian Blue” breed, which is odd since she’s completely grey. And her eyes are yellow. And she’s from Jessup.

So I’m not necessarily a cat person at all. Which is another way of saying I’m straight. And yet, some impulse I had made the decision to add another cat to our 11th floor apartment.

Oh yeah. We already have another cat. Oh, and I moved in with Jen. There. Now you’re caught up.

So the main problem isn’t with the kitten, but it’s with her interaction with the 22-pound beast which Jen keeps trying to convince me is a cat. See, Poe likes to play and Sweetie (fat cat) is old and prefers to lay there and be left alone. Well, anytime Sweetie gets up to go anywhere, Poe will run behind her, jumping and swatting at her tail the entire way like it was a toy. As you can imagine, this pisses off the big cat. Especially when trying to use the litter box. As soon as Poe hears the scratching of the litter, she goes running after her. So what this caused is that now, Sweetie feels so much anxiety over going to the litter box, she will more often than not, shit on the wood floor. This does not make me happy. But think about it. If every time you went to the bathroom to crap, your little sister would hit you in the ass, wouldn’t you just do it wherever the heck you were at the time?

Anyway, an unfortunate side effect to this is that dried poop seems to be the most fun toy in the world to the kitten, provided there’s no chapstick available. So occasionally, we’ll move the couch to find a few pieces of dried, hardened Sweetie poop. It’s a sad life to have accepted for the three of us that aren’t Poe. I wish whatever part of me said “I’m not a cat guy” had spoken up louder back in April.

C is For Cookie: The 3rd Day of Giftmas 2009

C is For Cookie: The 3rd Day of Giftmas 2009

This batch of cookies that I made for my class in an effort to bribe, err… thank them – wasn’t my first. Nor my best. Nor were they even really mine. How much ownership am I allowed to take for opening a batch of cookie dough and heating it up in the oven? I was merely a vessel for Tollhouse to get their cookies to my class. They deserve any positive evaluations that I get as a result. I’ll make sure to put that in my end of the year report.

Anyway, I first brought my cookies to the UB campus last December in an inadvertent cookie-baking contest between me and the Dean of Students. In an evite, I declined entering the chili cook-off but I would happily join (create) a cookie-baking contest. It was innocent enough to start. It was really just my way of bowing out of the chili contest and letting the party know I wasn’t just free-loading free chili. Well, then the trash talking started. And apparently, Kathy (the aforementioned Dean of Students) can bake some nasty borderline-addictive Christmas Cookies. Oops. Too late to back out now. Coworkers heard of this and started to talk trash on her behalf. “Your cookies better have crack cocaine in them if you want them to have a chance.” Well, they did not. In fact, my special “Christmas Cookies” had exactly whatever Nestle told me they should have and in those exact proportions. I just put red & green M&Ms in them so I could call them “Christmas Cookies.”

Not only were my Christmas Cookies outmatched and unoriginal, but they also weren’t even really Christmas Cookies, according to one co-worker…

The 3rd Day of Giftmas 2009

“Putting M&Ms in your cookies doesn’t make them Christmas Cookies, it makes them Pedophile Cookies.”

- John Chapin

We all celebrate in our own way.

Sticking to the original recipe,

Doughboy.


Still Standing Right Here…

Class Dismissed: The 2nd Day of Giftmas 2009

Class Dismissed: The 2nd Day of Giftmas 2009

So in a strangely trusting and possibly incompetent decision, someone somewhere in the University of Baltimore thought it would be a good idea to let me teach a class. And not like UMBC did when I taught badminton and duck pin bowling. This was a freshman seminar class called “Applied Learning and Study Skills.” Before you put a stop payment on your tuition check, I was team teaching this class with Katie. She was going to be responsible for all the course content and I was to make sure we had enough dry erase markers in the classroom. This was going to be even easier than coming up with a syllabus for badminton.

Long story short, Katie quit the week before class started, leaving all the course content to me. Thankfully, I had already taken care of the dry erase marker situation, so there was one less thing to worry about. I made a promise to them earlier in the year that I was going to make them cookies. It was my way of saying “Thank you for pretending I was a real teacher for the entire semester.” But the next thing I realized, it was final time. So I had to make them cookies on the same day that I had to give them the class evaluations. Coincidence? I’ll tell you one thing I learned from being a waiter. Make sure you do your best ass-kissing right as you give them the check. I call it the “Waking Ned Devine” principle. Good Joe and I saw this movie about ten years ago and the movie sucked, but had a great last five minutes. We left the theater and Joe actually said “Wow, that movie was awesome!” I informed him that the movie was indeed not awesome, but just had a good last five minutes. To this, he lost the excitement in his voice, dropped his shoulders, started to frown, and replied "Hey... you're right." I’m hoping that I performed a good enough misdirection with the cookies and the collaborative final. “What? You didn’t learn anything and feel completely unprepared for college? No, look over here! Those are M&Ms in the cookies. Yummmmm!”

So one of my students was working on the in-class final that I gave. She was having trouble with the assignment and said something eerily similar to an old classic quote…

The 2nd Day of Giftmas 2009

“Jeez. I have to study to study.”

- Ave

Now where have I heard that before?

The professor of fun,

Duck Pin Dustin.


Still Standing Right Here…

Rubbing One Out: The 1st Day of Giftmas

Rubbing One Out: The 1st Day of Giftmas

Well, I got pleasantly surprised by my first Giftmas present last night. Jen forced me to meet her downtown after work and on our 15-minute walk there, I guessed about 47 wrong answers, including the Harlem Globetrotters, a Krispy Kreme tour and a couple’s therapist. Before I knew it, I was being led into a room and being told to take my clothes off. I was really hoping it wasn’t the Krispy Kreme tour.

So anyway, this was my first professional massage and I really wish I had prepared maybe a little better. I hadn’t shaved my back in a few months and I was down to my last pair of boxers before laundry day, thankfully still on their first rotation. They were clean, but old and possibly stained. I’m not sure. I just threw them away after the session was over.

I was honestly a little nervous. Thankfully I hadn’t eaten any cheese all day, which was good news for everybody. Jen and I were getting an hour-long massage together. The masseuses came in and though it was dark, I could tell hers was a muscular foreign guy and mine was an attractive foreign girl. Jen was underneath a sheet the entire time. I had a washcloth over my ass. I was praying that I didn’t get a noticeable erection. At first. By the end, I was a little upset that I didn’t. And it wasn’t for lack of trying on Yuliya’s part. Or mine. Apparently, you get yelled at for shoving your finger up your ass during a massage. But you don’t get kicked out like you do at Mid-Atlantic Physical Therapy. And there was no happy ending either. At least not until about an hour later. When we went out for sushi. Then had sex.

So the massage ended and we both shamefully toweled off and proceeded not to make eye contact with one another for the next 10 minutes. I went to the bathroom, which thankfully had a sign saying “Employees Must Wash Their Hands Before Returning to Work.” That seems like agood company practice. On the way out, they gave us their business cards and schedules. And I guess it’s not standard practice since Yuliya didn’t do it, but Jen’s guy put his cell phone number on there. And directions to his house. But I doubt that means anything.

Lying still and thinking about baseball,

The massaganist.


Still Standing Right Here…