Take my hand

You sent me letters, you petitioned online, you left me voicemails and you verbally abused me in person. All your hard work has finally paid off. The Last Son of Bob's Blog is back! Full disclosure: The fact that the blog may or may not be back has more to do with my work schedule slowing down that it does with your letters, petitions, and voicemails. You might be thinking right now, "I don't even care that Nick is blogging again and I certainly didn't sign a petition.". Well whatever. That petition didn't sign itself and I'm not going to waste anymore time convincing you that you may or may not have signed a petition that I may or may not have made up entirely for my introduction paragraph of this blog post......which you signed a petition for. Introductory paragraph accomplished.

It has been far too long. I feel like that dad that only wants to be around his kids every other month, and when he does show up he has like tons of toys and candy. Then the kids are like "Wow dad we should do this every day!" and dad is like "Totally!", but in his head he is thinking "Being a dad is hard I am so heading to Vegas tomorrow, I hope the tiger exhibit at the Mirage is open. I love tigers. Especially white ones.". Except in this scenario the dad is having a hard time writing a blog that will live up to past blogs. So instead he watched baseball and looked up pictures of white tigers online. The tigers keep everything connected and making sense.

What better way to come back to the blogging world than by telling my trusty seventeen followers a story. Whoa hold up, seventeen followers you say? I too am shocked at the number. You know what is even better than the number? The percentages. In 2011 alone I have seen a 100% jump in followers. Amazing. What other presidential candidate can claim that his numbers have doubled in eight months? Things are looking up for my political career. You may not have realized that following my blog was committing to me as a presidential candidate. Surprise! Look at it this way, this surprise killed 100% less people than the "Iraq doesn't have weapons of mass destruction" surprise did. Note: I recently found out that my good friend Andrea hates it when people overuse quotation marks. I now fear the quotation mark and its many uses. I'm not running for the president of grammar.""""

I was trying to tell you a story, about my dancing years. Maybe it's an encore performance, we will see. When I first began clogging I believe I was in second grade. For those of you that have not read my blog previously I was was not so big, not so strong, not so coordinated, so adorable. So every boy gets paired up with a girl, your clogging partner. Or in my mind, "The girl I stand the closest to but don't talk to". We got along great. She was good at clogging, I was good at standing somewhat close to her. She was a cute girl and I looked like a cute girl. We had tons of things in common, I bet if we had talked we would have had tons of things to talk about.

I guess it is not enough to just dress up a bunch of small children in ridiculous outfits and make them frolic around in front of large groups of people. What they do is pair them up and make them do tricks. I'm pretty sure that if my mom had known that they were going to make me do tricks she would have said, "Oh, my son doesn't do tricks so well." Clogging career cancelled. Unfortunately, this scenario did not happen.

So I am in it for the tricks. Trick #1, spread legs, reach in between legs while the girl is crouching behind you and grab her hands, pull her through legs, she glides through your legs, stands up and dances around. This scenario also did not happen. What did happen was I spread my legs AND reached between my legs and grabbed her hands. That part I was pretty good at. The problem was that I wasn't strong, or large. We were the same size. So I grab her hands and pull, and she kind of slowly slides through my legs. Assuming that I don't grab her hands and fall a little off balance when I try to pull her through. Then she goes kind of crooked and kind of deflects off of my knee. Then climbs to her feet and dances around. It was magical.

So I guess the teacher saw how coordinated I was and decided, "This little boy/girl is ready to take it up a notch". So she starts by explaining how the boys are going to take the hands of the girls and swing them around and pick them up in the air and it's going to be magical. My first reaction is "This is a bad idea and you are ruining magic for me". Sometimes a persons first reaction is not the proper reaction. In this particular case it was in fact the proper reaction. The teacher proceeds to show us how to do it, the proper form and stuff like that. Now it was our turn to show perform the trick. So I turn to my partner, she says to me "Are you ready?" and I answered her "Yes", and I took her hand......

In hindsight I feel like I should have worded that answer.......a little differently.

Whoa whoa whoa that's it? You just going to end the blog on that? But we want more!

You know who else wants more? The kids with the dead beat dad that is at the Mirage enjoying the Tiger exhibit. But they never get it.

For the Love of Patio's

I had a rough day, no I had a rough week. Month. My job is very hard right now. I have gone from installing jobs and having maybe two guys working under me to not installing at all and having fifteen guys working under me. Depending on me to solve problem's ahead of them, or right in front of them so they can keep working. My main job site takes up two and a half square blocks and requires me to walk it end to end constantly, all day everyday. So that is a reasonable amount of horizontal walking. Unfortunately for me the Mormon church goes all out when they buy a small city, we'll call it Mormoville, not to be confused with Taylorsville for those that like to have trendy email addresses. (Full disclosure: Maybe 3 people understand that last sentence.)

So Mormoville is big, and unfortunately vertical. I am in the market of expansion joints and they tend to also be vertical, so if the building is 7 stories tall well "Surprise!", hope you like stairs. By the end of the day I am pretty tired, not like dead tired physically, more like "My legs haven't stopped moving for ten hours kind of tired and they would prefer to be horizontal, oh and if you put some alcohol in the bloodstream that might help too".

Mentally I am also fried. I have never seen a job with as many problems as this job. Little things, big things, everything is screwed up. Nothing is ever right. If nothing is ever right it is rather difficult to keep your employees busy. Luckily we have to uninstall as much as we install because everything is always wrong. Mormoville is all about repetition. They can proudly proclaim that their entire Construction Building was not only built fast, but it was built three times. Kudos.

I like Kudos granola bars, who is the genius that named those? If I invent a granola bar I am going to name it "Fantastical". Mmmmm Fantastical, only served at Phil's Pub.

Ok, what in the hell am I talking about, (rereading) Mentally fried, physically tired, invented a new granola bar.

I just got home. I went straight to the fridge and got a beer. I turned around and saw Phil looking at me with the "Hey drunk, I don't know if you know this, but I don't use toilets and I have been inside this house for 8 hours. Maybe, just maybe, you should take me outside to relieve myself before you tie one one" face. I hate that face, so judgmental.

I finally get the dog urine situation resolved and move onto my things to do list.

Things to do:

1. Empty fridge of beer.

So I get started, I twist the cap off the bottle, get a little angry at the pain I experience in doing so. Side note: I have worked construction ten years, my hands=softer than your hands. I will put money on it. I don't care who you are. I will win this bet.

Beer opened. I lay back, put my feet up and take a sip. Awesome. This is good. Almost perfect. I turn to my left and look out the window. "Oh it looks nice out there." My brain starts slowly thinking about the outside. At this point in the day the brain doesn't do anything fast. It's like watching somebody type that doesn't know how to type. Kind of makes you want to scream "Use the god damn home row!!!!!"

Wait.....where am I(rereading), mentally and physically invented a granola bar while teaching type class. Giddy up.

I'm staring outside and after about 30 minutes of zero thoughts my brain finally comes up with one statement.

Brain: "It would be sweet to be drinking this beer with your feet up........outside."

Wow brain. You be workin some overtime today! (At the cost of proper grammar) I'm staring outside, wanting to be outside. Dreaming of a patio. Oh I love patios. I do not own a patio. I wish I owned a patio. If somebody would sell me just their patio, I would seriously consider it. Is there anything better? No matter what you are doing, it could always be better if you were outside, on a patio. Add a fire pit to that patio and it is like an explosion of awesomeness comparable to hot peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream.

The moral of the story is that Annie just called, she is off work and on her way to our house to pick me up. Then we are going to a patio to fulfill my dream. See ya kids later. Sorry for the wait on the latest blog.

Full disclosure: I did not proofread this at all. So sorry for that.

A list of things that add up to awesome.

1. Recently Adrian Gonzalez signed a 7 year 156 million dollar contract with the Boston Red Sox. If I was in the mlb I would take a much different approach. I'd want to be that guy that never leaves baseball. How better to do that than by signing an affordable 30 year 90 million dollar contract? Ya so I would be 50 years old and contractually the team would have to roster me. So I guess I would just get drunk in the dugout.

2. Donald Trump isn't going to run for president. What he is going to do is get you to watch the season finale of "The Apprentice" by pretending that he might run for president.

3. Sarah Palin's daughter Bristols job is to go around the country and lecture high school students about having kids at a young age and out of wedlock and how hard it is. Bristol Palin made six figures in 2010. Essentially this is like hiring a pot head to give a speech on motivation.

4. The age that the United States government can draft you to go to war and the age that you can buy a beer are not the same age.

5. A dog never gets frustrated or bitter or holds a grudge. Phil locked himself in the bathroom all day. Not a big bathroom, a half bathroom. When we got home after eight hours and let him out the translation of his reaction is as follows, "Oh hey guys, ya I've just been hanging out in the bathroom, not a lot of space in there. It's cool I sniffed the trash for a while, that was fun......who's outside? Do you have a treat? Lets have treats. I love you mom and dad. Lets see how many toys I can fit in my mouth."

6. If I had a child and they locked themselves in the bathroom I suspect that they would not react in this way.

7. When a fly ball is hit and the outfielders don't communicate properly and the ball falls on the ground in front of them it makes me laugh. Nobody can look cool in that situation, nobody.

8. Sarah Palin makes $100,000 per speaking engagement.

9. To date I have made $0.00 per speaking engagement.

10. If you had a pet goose and he slept on the bed with you on your down pillows, that would be messed up.

11. I don't understand when people find out I like baseball and say something along the lines of "Baseball sucks, it's gay." Football is a much "gayer" sport than Baseball statistically.

12. Sports Athletes aren't role models. Athletes get paid millions to play a game. That isn't real life. Look up to your dad because he goes to work every day.

13. I look like a little boy without facial hair.

14. True friends never tell me that eating or doing anything will "put hair on my chest".

15. There is a thin line between having a rug and having a room that you could only partially afford to carpet.

16. The United States of America invaded two countries and lowered taxes.

17. Years later we criticized the banking industry for making poor financial decisions.

18. In general babies aren't cute, you have my permission to call my baby out.

19. Puppies are always cute. If you ever say one of my puppies isn't cute I will fight you.

20. In the near future there will be a facebook group getting people to boycott the oil companies for a day. Too bad the oil companies are not as near sighted as the people who would boycott something for one day knowing that the next day they will be consuming the boycotted item. AA was set up for people in this category.

21. The Utah legislature is closing liquor stores that turn a profit year after year for the state. My normal reaction to such nonsense would be "What are they drunk?". Yet, in this case they are clearly not drunk.

22. I purchased a bottle of lemonade last week. It had writing on the bottle that said "Made with real lemons". Oh good. Thanks for using the primary ingredient to the drink I am drinking. Seriously though, be on the lookout for bottles that do not state this, you don't want that shit.

That's a good middle finger, well built, extra strength.

IT HAS BEEN A WHILE.

I hope you missed me as much as I missed you, my nine followers. I gotta say I am a little bit depressed. I have been at nine followers for a while, not a lot of upward movement in the followers section. I know that turnout is pretty low in presidential elections but I don't think nine will cut it. So I guess my goal for 2012 is to leave the single digit followers in the past and move on to double digit followers. That is a good step. Also, I don't have any followers from another country. I wish I did. I consider myself exotic and I don't understand why I don't have international appeal. Maybe it's because I'm too "dashing"..........

You might be wondering what I am talking about, I don't know. I am kind of rambling.

I do have a story, which is what pushed me back into the blogging world. I have been working at the City Creek project downtown. It is a massive project spanning two square blocks. Lots of work, very stressful, blah blah I'm sure I will post a blog about it in the future. What happened today was when I was driving home.

I was still in the city, I hate driving in the city. I hate that there are stoplights located in the middle of the damn road that are only there to allow pedestrians to cross the street. It is slow enough stopping every block at a red light, now we have added lights every half block. When I am president I promise to make these sorts of shenanigans illegal. Quite frankly, it's bad for the environment for me to be stopping at all these red lights, when a human, arguably not bad for the environment in its simplest form, could easily walk a block or two to get to that Carls Junior across the street. Not only is this good for the environment, but it would lower health care costs. I am pretty sure there is a formula that could be created that would show the association of "Distance you had to walk to Carls Junior" in relation to "The decline in health care costs".

Second thing I will do as President, I will take this formula....lets call it, "President Naylor's guide to walking so much you lose weight and stop costing America money". I will turn it into a law that requires fast food restaurants be located a certain distance from the nearest parking lot. You want a Baconator that's fine, you can have a Baconator, after you walk 4.8 miles uphill. I hope you enjoy it, Subway is only a half mile away.

Wow, I just wrote that. Might as well go with it.

So I am driving in the city and not only do I not like stopping at these mid-block pedestrian inconveniences, I also suck at it. Half a damn block between red lights, can't even check facebook in that distance. I might as well push the damn van to save the environment. Third thing I will do as Presi....no I better not do that.

I am having a hard time getting on with the story.

Ok ok ok what is important here, oh ya I suck at stopping at mid block red lights. I am driving home, listening to the radio, kind of spacing out. When suddenly I realize I just blew through one of these hated mid-block red lights. Unfortunately there was a man crossing as well. He was about five feet to my left. I understand I might have reacted poorly to this situation, but I also think he was slightly overreacting. He felt the need to show me the length of his middle finger. It was a pretty long and well built middle finger. Definitely in my top 50 of middle fingers that an angry dude has shown me. He also mouthed two one syllable words, I couldn't hear the words because Lady Gaga was on the radio. We will just assume that he said "Ga Ga", and then he was just wondering if I had a middle finger as well built as his. For the record, my middle finger trumps this dudes middle finger. I will go out on a limb and say I can deliver one of the most presidential middle fingers in the history of middle fingers. JFK worthy.

My actual reaction to this situation was completely different and influenced by my lovely wife Annie. Annie used to drive a prius and she always told me that whenever people would honk at her on the freeway she would just wave. So I did this.

I turn to the guy to my left by five feet and wave. He didn't like this at all, but I was in a car so I wasn't too worried about a foot pursuit.

I continue driving and approximately two blocks later a guy in a Toyota Sequoia was trying to merge and I slowed down to let him in. He in turn waved to me. I waved back, this I can recommend. Me and this guy are like on the same page. I like the right lane, he likes the right lane......I'm sure we have other things in common as well.

Two completely different waves. The first wave guy was a jerk, that probably cheats on his taxes and beats his wife and/or girlfriend, and likes the Yankees. The second wave guy? Oh this guy is awesome! He drives a Toyota Sequoia? I love those types of automobiles, I have actually been considering purchasing that exact type of automobile. Such a nice guy. I bet he hates the Yankees, unlike that jerk Yankee fan that apparently has a problem with almost being ran over.

Very interesting. Two situations, both ending in a wave. I just wonder, if the Yankee fan would have been driving the Sequoia how much would I hate Sequoia's? Probably a lot, but today I am pro Sequoia's.

I just re-read this post, I'm weird.

-Nick

So that's what an Std feels like.

I am now twenty-eight. I decided to ring in my birthday at Kobe Sushi. This is my story.

I woke up at 5:40 and went to work, I got off around 6 that night, got cleaned up and our friends the Moretti's picked me and Annie up. I have always wanted to go to Kobe Sushi because they have something called the Hellfire challenge and I really wanted to do it. So did it I did.

Me, Annie, Brett, Tiff, Vachel, Krak, and Whipple went to the restaurant and got started. By got started I mean we started drinking because we got there at 7 and all of their rolls go on sale at 8. We all like drinking so it wasn't awkward or anything. We had some good conversation filled with plenty of laughs.

Finally it is time to order and I begin the Hellfire challenge. The challenge gives you a free t-shirt and your picture on the wall upon completion. It requires you to eat 2 pieces of level 6 sushi, 2 pieces of level 6.5, and 6 pieces of level 7. I am excited. Supposedly the level of spice doubles with each level.

As it turned out I hadn't eaten anything all day, this might have caused me some problems. So they bring out level 6 and I destroy it. I am very confident, they got nothing! Should we take the picture now? Should I take my shirt off? I think I should take my shirt off.

Level 6.5 shows up. I put a piece into my mouth and attempt to casually continue telling Krak a story. I am stopped mid speech by my sinuses completely evacuating. That's ok though, I mean I was kind of stuffed up so now I don't have to worry about that anymore. Problem solved!! I finish up 6.5, it was hot, I'm getting a little nervous.

Level 7 shows up after I sign a waiver that states that I will not sue Kobe Sushi if I die. This perhaps should have been the first indicator telling me to throw in the towel. I signed it and prepared for the worst. They brought me out a plate that had two pieces of level seven sushi on it. They looked like fire that had been turned into a solid.

The consensus at the table was that I should eat them both as fast as possible, then order the next two pieces. I agreed. I placed a piece into my mouth and immediately had a feeling that I had made a horrible mistake. Brett provided support and I placed the second piece in my mouth. I swallowed.

There was no going back.

My mouth was on fire. It was like somebody had poured gasoline into my mouth and lit it. I had a lemon, milk, water, and beer. None of these items helped. Nothing I did could extinguish the fire going on inside my mouth.

First things first, I know when I'm in trouble and I was in trouble. I aborted the Hellfire Challenge to the disappointment of the rest of the table. I am guessing it was twenty to thirty minutes before my mouth was no longer in pain. At minute thirty I felt good, at minute thirty-one it broke through my stomach defenses. This is bad. Really bad. I am a complete mess.

Tiff was our designated driver, I was in the backseat wanting to die. Upon our arrival I got out of the car, went directly inside and proceeded to vomit three times. As I began throwing up I was so relieved. Get this out of my stomach! I was a fool to think it would be that easy. Funny thing about extremely spicy food being thrown up. It doesn't lose it's spiciness, it is every bit as spicy on the way up as it is on the way down. Remember how my mouth was no longer on fire? So much for that, at this point in my life my stomach is in an extreme amount of pain and my mouth is back to square one. I WANT TO DIE.

I go to bed. I do not sleep well. At about three in the morning I wake up and need to relieve myself. I go into the bathroom and begin relieving myself. Apparently, the fire that was inside my stomach has no seeped into my urinary tract. So......what this means is that it burns everything in its path. Now I don't want to get too graphic here but if you know much about the exit of the urinary tract.....you can understand my particular pain in this situation. I wanted to squeal, but it was the middle of the night. So I just sat there and absorbed the pain. THIS WAS NOT ON THE DAMN WAIVER. I didn't even realize this was possible, but it should certainly be on the waiver. I finally finish up and go back to bed completely miserable.

I wake up in the morning and go to work. I feel awful. I went to college, lived up on campus, I have experienced some nasty hangovers. This blows them all out of the water. I am a mess until about noon. Finally I feel better! It is a miracle, I have never been so relieved.

At two I realize that I need to go the bathroom. The kind of bathroom visit that a guy doesn't do standing up. Luckily I feel fine now so I'm not too worried. Funny how life works. I should have been worried.

The male anatomy has 3 main entrances/exits to the body. Not everybody has experienced fire in all three within eighteen hours, but I have.

The Unintended Lap Dance

This blog will put you on a plane to Vegas.

I recently went to the World of Concrete Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is pretty intense. Lots of man things going on. This blog isn't actually going to address Vegas itself though. Today I will let you into my head and let you look through my eyes. What you will see is a plane.

As me and Annie are boarding the plane there is an extraordinarily annoying man in front of us. The kind of guy that says things really loud, then starts laughing as if you are somehow in on the joke. Then when nobody responds he thinks that that is somehow a sign that he should continue making obnoxious remarks in an attempt to please the crowd. Enter the crowd pleaser. So he was pretty cool. Luckily we only had to put up with this guy for the boarding part. Then we would be free to find a nice quiet corner on the pla...ahh damnit he is sitting directly in front of me. I am not sitting with Annie, I am sandwiched in between two professional looking gentleman right behind the crowd pleaser.

I know my previous blogs talk about how small I was growing up. For those of you that do not know me or have not seen me for ten years I am no longer small. I am tall, and I have broad shoulders. I know what you are thinking, "I bet it sucked sitting in the middle then." Yes. Yes it did.

So I sit down, get buckled up and am ready to go! Just a short one hour flight and I can hit the tables and become a two millionaire. I used to want to be a one millionaire but Annie told me that that is not enough money for me to retire on. So I have my eyes set on being a two millionaire. Aim for the sky.

The plane takes off. I need you to understand that the next few items I talk about all happened at approximately the same time. The crowd pleaser in front of me is bald, I know this because my eyes are eighteen inches from his skull. The crowd pleaser had placed himself between two girls in their twenties. One of the girls was reading "The Hunger Games", I have not read that book so I had a great idea to try and peak through the crack in between the seats and read along with her. I could see about a quarter of the page sliced vertically. Quite frankly I wasn't entertained and I'm not sure the author writes in proper sentences.

After about two 1/4 pages of "The Hunger Games" our reading gets interrupted by the drink service. Which just so happens to be my favorite part of the flight. I order a Heineken. The flight attendant looks down at me and states "That will be five dollars.". I hand her a five dollar bill. Transaction over. What's that? You don't take cash? Oh well my bad, I thought you told me that my beer would cost five DOLLARS. I am pretty sure I know what a dollar is. I graduated with kollege(fan service). I feel our society has taken a big step. We ask people to pay for an item, yet we don't accept the currency that we ourselves just asked them to pay with. Don't think about that too long.

I get my beer. I am about to get back to reading a quarter of the book in front of me when the crowd pleaser has now interrupted this girl so many times that she has given up reading altogether. I did catch a short piece of what he said, "I haven't read a book since third grade.". Here's the thing, I have heard people say something along these lines before and I just want to clear things up and make myself clear. I'm not going to go deep into this, I just feel like something needs to be said about that sentence.

THAT IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. PLEASE STOP PRESENTING IT LIKE ONE.

I have to get my mind off of this guy. I grab a magazine in front of me and hit the jackpot. Half finished crossword puzzle. Score. I immediately get to work, one problem, I don't have a pen. Ok, I am taking this puzzle up a notch, going to do this crossword puzzle completely by memory. I can do it. Back to work. Progress is slow. New problem, the previous crossword puzzle contestant was apparently not super smart. Perhaps he did not graduate with kollege. Confident yes. A pen? Really? Ok, so I have a half finished crossword in front of me that I am trying to finish by memory, except now I have to remember that some answers are wrong so then I have to....WHY did the seat in front of me just hit me in the head?

Oh this is great. Crowd pleaser was not happy with the straight up angle of his seat, so he chose to recline his chair 4 inches into my face. I didn't have a lot of space to begin with. This guy is now like on my lap. There is no way the enjoyment one receives from reclining that amount is possibly worth the cost that is me being forced to receive a lap dance from the crowd pleaser. Nobody wants a lap dance from the crowd pleaser. I think he also ruined lap dances forever for me. I mean that was my first lap dance ever, and it was forced on me and there certainly wasn't a physical attraction between us.

So I am sitting there, staring at this head in my lap, a little uncomfortable with how close it is to my beer. I can't do this, if I wasn't so damn tall maybe I wouldn't be looking down on the crowd pleasers skull but I am. Ok I can deal with this, I will just hold up the magazine to block my view.

I do this for a minute and then I really take in my surroundings. I am completely uncomfortable, receiving an unintended lap dance, doing a half done crossword that is wrong, all by memory. I give you the crossword as I saw it below.

First thing, top left corner of the crossword states "Fun!"

Nope.

Second thing, don't use a pen to do a crossword, not even Lebron is that cocky.

Third, what in the hell did this person write at the top of the page? I finally gave up on doing the crossword and spent the remainder of the flight trying to figure out what that last word is. I think that word is a link to why there were so many errors within the crossword itself. Don't try to tell me that that the last word is supposed to be "ridiculous" either. I reject that.

The plane lands! I survived and am completely ready to tear Vegas apart. I will leave you with one last story. We were waiting for our bags and decided we would go to the bathroom and this will be the first time this story has been told. It was traumatizing. For this particular bathroom visit I needed to go into a stall. The toilet had a motion sensor flushing mechanism. I do not like these. So, I go into the stall and I grab one of those sheets that is pre-made for the toilet seat. Note: The inventor of that sheet deserves to be a two millionaire.

Ok, anyway I grab the sheet but I guess I was standing to the side of the toilet. Well I place the sheet onto the toilet, which was a clean looking toilet for your information. Somehow while I am bending over to do this I set off the flushing mechanism. Which under normal circumstances would be fine. Under these particular circumstances we have like the Niagara Falls of flushing velocity potential. We will call it the FVP, the FVP is through the roof on this thing. I guess when you have a toilet bowl that is shaped a certain way, combined with a high FVP, it tends to shoot a reasonable amount of water straight up into the air. Which just so happened to be on or around my face.

Aim for the sky. Literally.

As many of you know, I was pretty manly growing up. Not a wuss and certainly not feminine at all. So obviously knowing that the above statement is true, you would completely understand why my brother Josh and my father would take me duck hunting. They took me out on "The Opener", which is the first day of the duck hunt. It would be more appropriate to name it "The unsuspecting duck firing squad".

So we wake up at some ridiculous hour, four a.m. or something like that. We drive out to Farmington and park at the end of a line of approximately four million trucks. Lots of men, not a lot of women, probably no women. We are going to just go with zero women. For a demographic of people that tend to be unfriendly to the gay community they sure like spending time with the same sex. It is even more ridiculous when you think about these men going home that night, sitting in front of a t.v. and watching other men lay on top of each other while grunting. (I'm talking about football.)

Anyway, it is time to get outfitted to kill me some duck. Waders, check. I believe my waders were about 5 sizes too big. I was stoked though, I figured I could just do like extra deep wading with my extra huge waders. Next up was a camo vest, which on it's own was pretty sweet. Then my dad filled the two large pockets with approximately fifty shotgun shells. "Dad I'm gonna shoot like fifty ducks today!" "Uh-huh, sure you are." The main problem with fifty shotgun shells, is that the weight of fifty shells in comparison to my net weight....well the numbers were strikingly close.

I am officially waded down......get it...waded...down....Sorry. I bet Annie laughs.

My dad hands me my trusty shotgun and we are off, walking along the Dike. I was pretty excited, I had recently passed my hunters safety exam. Honestly, anybody could pass that exam. This is an actual question on the test. "When you approach a fence, how should you cross it with your rifle? A: Throw your rifle over the fence. B: Place your rifle carefully through the fence." I am not making that up.

Unfortunately, we did not encounter any fences along the way. I was disappointed because I had all this knowledge about proper fence procedure. I could be like "No Josh, don't throw your rifle. You have to place it on the other side. It's safer this way, wow what would you guys do without me?"

After about 5 minutes of walking I am pretty tired, we are still on the dike and I'm beginning to think that these waders are a bit unnecessary. Then things got a little bit interesting, we left the paved dike and headed out into the swampy marsh. An extraordinary thing happens when you walk in a swamp with huge boots on. You see they create a type of suction, that actually requires a reasonable amount of effort to keep walking. For a man with man strength this is no big deal, for a boy who is used to dancing shoes this is rather difficult. So I am taking it step by step, having to heave my body around in order to get my feet out of the mud, all while carrying a shotgun.

After about an hour of this we get to the right spot. For the record, the right spot looks exactly like all the wrong spots that we have been passing for the last hour. Me: "Oh dad look, some swamp, looks like a good spot!" Bob: "No son, that's a bad spot, not swampy enough." Me: "Oh, well look how swampy that spot is!" Josh: "Way too swampy rookie."

We finally found "The spot"! Ok, so lets start and shoot some ducks. Me: "Um...ok first of all, great job guys on this spot. Wow, it is....well it's a great spot, good swamp location. Um actually I was just kind of wondering, well, it's pitch black out here. So are we like looking for the Duck house or something?" Bob: "The hunt doesn't open for an hour." Oh, ok. Bob owes me an hour of my life back, good to know. I think I will be going into work late tomorrow.

After about 30 minutes we suddenly hear a shotgun go off. Everybody in our group starts loading up. I'm a little confused. Me: "So, the hunt doesn't start for 30 minutes right?" Josh: "That's the official start time, but once people start shooting it's pretty much fair game." Huh. I do not like this. It's like a guy starting the 100m dash before everybody is even lined up, and then the judges say, "Oh man you guys better get going, he's really fast."

When I imagined what the duck hunt would be like I pictured it being very peaceful, and occasionally a mean old duck would fly by and we would have the proper time needed to line up a shot and we would take it. This is not a reality. The truth is that there are thousands of ducks, who up until today have been lounging in the swamp without a care in the world and now there are people everywhere shooting as fast as they can into the sky. It's like duck genocide out here.

I AM BAD AT THIS. Everybody is shooting and reloading and shooting as fast as possible. How can they possibly be aiming? These ducks are going like a thousand miles an hour and quite frankly, I think "The Spot" kind of sucks. There are tall reeds everywhere so I can only see straight up into the sky. I am no scientist, but shooting my rifle straight up into the sky seems like bad policy. I give it a go. I aim my rifle into the sky and shoot, forget about trying to hit a duck. I'm gonna keep my goals realistic and just aim for the sky. Sky hit!

After a few minutes of this nonsense sky shooting Bob must have started to feel bad for my sky shooting. He told me not to aim at the flock of ducks, but to pick out a single duck within the flock to take down. Wow, ok sniper Bob I will do just that. That's like aiming for a plank the on the side of a barn instead of the entire barn. I barely have time to get my shotgun into the air, aiming at an individual duck seems like a joke.

I suppose that my Dad started to feel bad for me after thirty or so direct sky hits. Bob began discharging his shotgun at the same time that I discharged my rifle. Then when a duck would fall out of the sky(because Bob doesn't miss) he would exclaim, "You got one!".

I appreciated the gesture, but I was not fooled. As fate would have it I was just not meant to end the life of the world's waterfowl. I'm ok with that.

-Nick

The Bob Chronicles Volume One

Bob is the father of 4 kids. Two boys, Two girls. I completely believe that Bob had two boys and two girls because that is what he wanted. He is a very determined person. He makes things happen. If he wants to build a shed, poof, shed built. Ten foot waterfall in his backyard? Poof, waterfall accomplished. Bob doesn't have experience engineering waterfalls, Bob has life experience. He's one of those guys. You can't one up him. He will respectfully listen to your ideas and then show you that your way is not the Bob way.

That is the father that I know and love. I knew him to be this man growing up, which is what leads me to this blog topic "The Bob Chronicles". He didn't always give it to me straight though. Sometimes he was rather misleading, and considering I had complete faith in Bob's word, it caused some problems.

Item number one, I remember this girl in elementary school that had really rich parents and they lived in a really big house and everybody knew which house it was. One day we were driving by the house and I asked my Dad what this girls parents did for a living. His answer was as follows, "They print money in their basement.". Wow my mind like exploded. For one, why doesn't everybody just print money in their basement? It seems like a no brainer, I call it going directly to the source. Wait, "Dad why don't we print money in our basement?". "No more questions son.". Ok but that is bush league, we should be printing money in our basement, do you even want to be rich Bob?

So I believed it. I took that statement straight to school and I repeated it. "They are rich because they print money in their basement." I believed it, my friends believed it, it became known as fact. I do not resent Bob for planting this information inside my head. I love it.

I can't wait to have kids of my own that I can plant information in their head as well. For example, me and Annie have agreed to teach our children that number 1 means you have to go poop and number 2 means you have to pee. It's harmless, but can certainly cause some amusing interactions in kindergarten or when a babysitter is over.

Around the same age Bob took some time while we were up camping to give me some survival tips. I don't know if they were tips so much as him enjoying himself but oh well. We were out in the wilderness and I wanted to know what to do if I ever encountered a bear. I think at this point he just kind of assumed that I was a lost cause and I had no chance at defeating a bear. Bob? Of course Bob could defeat a bear, come back when you have 10 bears and a moose.

Anyway I had asked him what to do when I encountered a bear and his response was as follows, "Ok, the bear is going to charge you and when he opens his mouth you throw your arm into his mouth, reach all the way down to his tail, grip and rip the bear inside out." WOW. That sounds very intense, nevermind the obvious complications in that my arm is 18 inches long and a bear is quite a bit longer than that. Luckily I have never encountered a bear, though I assume that Bob has left many a bear inside out in his travels.

Bob is a workin man. In the summer he would try to put me to work in the yard. "Nicholas, take off your dancing shoes and come outside. We have work to do. What? No you can't bring your trolls. What? Yes you have to take your tap shoes off." So he would take me out into our backyard, which to a kid is like a thousand miles long. He would make me weed the driveway. Which was kind of ridiculous because most people have a driveway that covers say 20 ft. Not to be outdone, Bob's driveway was the LENGTH of the yard.

Ok, so I have to weed the yard. Good to know the details up front. As a kid I was not such a good...um....worker. So I was a bad worker. I would pull a few weeds, then go lay on the grass for a few minutes. Unfortunately while I was laying on the grass the weeds I had previously pulled had grown back! This is like torture!(side note: When I say I laid on the grass for a few minutes I believe it was in fact a week.) So their are now more weeds growing in the driveway than when I originally started. I have spent approximately 2/3 of my summer vacation pulling the same weed over and over and Bob is relentless!

One day, when his frustration with my skills at being a man were at their peak he finally stated my favorite Bob quote of all time. He looked down at me while I was complaining and said "If it was easy I would get a couple of ten year old girls to do it." This is like Bob's trademark comeback to people complaining. It's like he has SOS Staffing on speed dial and they have a bunch of girls ready to come out and do labor. The premise of it is completely ridiculous.

The worst part is as I get older it becomes more and more degrading to me as a person. I mean when I was 7 and he said it to me in my head I was like "Actually some ten year old girls would really speed this process along. Thanks for the help.". When I was 15 I was like "Oh man, most ten year old girls are as big as me, this is going to be embarrassing." Now when he tells me that I just go back to work. Appreciating the phrase and how it has withstood the test of time.

There are a lot of stories that belong in the Bob Chronicles, it's not something that I can just wrap up. They are alive and well and we will see them again.

-Nick

I'll have the lobster with a side of Troy.

I spent New Years with the right people.

This year on New Years we arranged a night of dining with a few of my closest friends. It was lovely and I will show you my night through my eyes. We were having dinner at eight at The Melting Pot, which is spanish for "Awesome food that makes you scream.". We got on the road early and just had to stop at the wine store in order to seal the deal. We arrived at the wine store at 7:10, it was closed. Being New Years and all I felt this was a little offensive. I feel like

if you truly wanted to curb drunk driving there are plenty of other drinking demographics that I would punish first. So we set our course for the liquor store, which also carries wine. Closed. Damn, really? Whose idea was this? If you are gonna curb drunk driving why not close all the liquor stores from November to January. If you are going to do something don't half ass it.

Luckily, Whipple(Whipple is a person) had two bottles that he had purchased at the wine store prior to 7:10. Well that's certainly a start. We get to The Melting Pot early and they have a pretty small waiting area. On top of that the people eating at our future table are not done, so we have to wait. After about 20 minutes of sitting vertically Whipple (person) asks if the host will bring us a wine opener. This is why I like Whipple, you would have thought that wine glasses would have been in that sentence as well but no, lets just get the bottle open. Once that happens we can work out the other trivial items.

The host........the host. Real quick on the host. He has the type of mustache where you feel sexually violated just by having him talk to you. I just can't figure out how people wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and think in their mind "Oh ya, this looks good.". Who doesn't want to be secretly sexually violated on New Years? Anyway, the host informs Whipple that there is a restaurant bar that we could go hang out in. Wow, so nobody thought it appropriate to inform a group of people carrying wine that instead of sitting on each others laps we can go to THE BAR? I suspect the discreet molester just wanted us close.

Once we got comfortable in the bar things were looking up. The wine was flowing and we were busy catching up with our friends. Unfortunately I kept getting distracted by the TV in the bar. I really hate TVs in restaurants and bars cause even if I have no desire to watch television, it just kind of sucks you in. "Excuse me, Danny, I know you are excited about your new rifle but the mediocre movie Troy is playing just over your right shoulder. Can we talk about it later?" Which brings me to my next point, who plays TROY in a restaurant bar? I do not own a restaurant, I do not "officially" own a bar, but I have a pretty good idea about what types of television programs you should be playing. Espn and Cnn.

My friend Daniel decided the mood and setting was right, and he gave me my Christmas present. I display it to my left. That is me at the end of my High School career. It is moments like these that make me cherish my wife Annie more and more. Some people shouldn't be allowed to dress themselves or pick their hairstyle. I am one of those people and I accept that.

We finally are finally seated with our party of nine. The discreet molester gets one more chance to make us all uncomfortable and we sit down! Now, in my head I had kind of pictured us as being at the same table. Instead, we are sitting next to each other but in two different booths. So the two bench seats are essentially on the same plane but there is a divider separating the two booths. They remove the divider and we are kind of all one group. The group at the other table is just like four feet away from the closest member of the other group. Not very good for conversation, though it did keep Daniel a safe distance away, preventing any more incriminating photos from surfacing.

Bring on the fondue! Upon reviewing the menu I am immediately disappointed. Typically in your dinner options you choose what kind of lobster, steak etc. you want to dunk in your cooking......liquid. It is a nice restaurant and the lobster and steak is delicious. My favorite part of the menu in the past has been that no matter what you picked you always got ravioli on your plate as well. It was ridiculous. Nobody wants Chef Boyardi with dinner, that's something people do in the safety of their home when nobody is looking. On this special night the ravioli is missing from the menu, in it's place is chicken. Now I'm all for eating chicken but I don't know if a restaurant should take this kind of risk. Letting each person at the table decide how long to cook poultry seems like bad policy. I mean, what if the guy that put Troy on the bar television comes in for dinner? Actually, he'd probably deserve it. Troy on the bar television, seriously.

So we are sitting in our booth with five people, just close enough to a booth of four people containing the rest of our party to occasionally catch the end of a story. Which then requires that booth to retell the story to me and this cycle goes on and on. Very inefficient, I think we only had about two topics of conversation that was continually regurgitated to other members of other booths.

The cheese fondue was awesome. End paragraph.

If you didn't notice earlier my mind has spaced and I don't know what to call the dinner fondue. So the dinner juice shows up and we dig in, it's pretty good. Honestly I wasn't blown away like I have been in previous encounters, but it was definitely good.

There is one minor inconvenience about the boiling dinner juice. The steam from the pot of ramen broth isn't going straight up into the air. I think we might have messed with the airflow of the room when we removed the barrier between booth one and booth two. It is instead, flowing directly into my face. I have photo evidence which I will post below.

As you can see, I am clearly getting a facial of broth steam, which lead to steak in broth steam and shrimp and chicken in broth steam. At first it was funny, but after about thirty to forty minutes of this I am officially saturated to the pore in ramen. Not my finest moment.

Now I come to the part of the story where I realized I was spending New Years with the right people. Whipple was trying to fish out a piece of meat from the dinner juice. Whipple is really smart, studied in London, working on his second degree, reads a lot, not so good at fondue. He's good at other things. Something about keeping his meat on the stick (that's what she said) just didn't work for him. So he is doing this for like the fourth time and he pulls up a piece of meat and a piece of broccoli. I might mess the fine details up since I was late in the game of ramen facials. Anyway, this piece of broccoli has a hair about twelve to eighteen inches long wrapped around it.

Odds of that hair belonging to my wife, 95%.

This is a super strong hair too. It is easily holding the weight of the broccoli, and it just came out of our fondue pot. We all marvel at the strength of the hair, we set the broccoli/hair down, we all look at each other. We all grab our fondue sticks and proceed with dinner, having a good laugh as we do. The group decides to inform the waitress that we are eating hair fondue. She immediately goes to get the manager.

The manager shows up and Annie picks up the broccoli by the hair and shows him. His response is as follows, "Wow(laughing), I'm not laughing, I mean wow that is gross". We ended up getting a discount for eating steak and lobster fondue with a hint of Annie in it. It was sometime after we decided to continue eating the tainted fondue that I realized I was with the right people on New Years.

Happy New Year everybody and thanks for reading.

-Nick