Slapinions 4th anniversary, the Jonas Brothers, Texas Tech, Fantasy Football, and more

Lo and behold, the 4th anniversary of this blog came and went the other day and I didn't even post about it. How 'bout that?

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While I refuse to officially surrender I think I'm about done in my fantasy league. I took another rough loss this past week thanks to Maurice Jones-Drew, dropping me to 3-6 and 9th place in the league. That just doesn't = playoff contender.

Bay View SlapJacks 3-6-VS. pull my finger 5-4-0

Pos Player Actual
QB Peyton Manning
(Ind - QB) 23.00
WR Braylon Edwards
(Cle - WR) 1.50
WR Hines Ward
(Pit - WR) 11.60
WR Marvin Harrison
(Ind - WR) 3.70
RB Jamal Lewis
(Cle - RB) 16.40
RB Kevin Faulk
(NE - RB) 1.80
TE Zach Miller
(Oak - TE) 4.20
K David Akers
(Phi - K) 7.00
DEF Indianapolis
(Ind - DEF) 16.00
Total 85.20

Pos PlayerActual
QB Chad Pennington
(Mia - QB) 10.07
WR Andre Johnson
(Hou - WR) 6.60
WR Dwayne Bowe
(KC - WR) 7.20
WR Plaxico Burress
(NYG - WR) 9.70
RB Ronnie Brown
(Mia - RB) 14.60
RB Maurice Jones-Drew
(Jac - RB) 33.10
TE Owen Daniels
(Hou - TE) 1.30
K Jason Elam
(Atl - K) 10.00
DEF Tennessee
(Ten - DEF) 13.00
Total 105.57

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I've watched Texas Tech two weeks in a row and count me impressed. An Alabama-Texas Tech BCS title game would be a fun evening.

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Work sucks.

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Sunday was a pretty lousy day. After all that trouble over the baptism certificate we overslept and missed YaYa's religion class ["Why didn't you set an alarm?!" Lisa said. "I didn't think we need one. When's the last time anyone in this house slept past eight?"]

The Journal's print edition ran with the crappy blurb. I was so annoyed I wanted to throw out the clipping but LuLu, of all people, strongly objected. She seems very proud of me. Meanwhile, not so much as a peep from my family about the (admittedly ick) appearance. But, to be fair, I'm irked at them and therefore probably blowing their silence out of proportion.

My Godmother's husband did see it and wrote to wish me well.

[Today I go to have my picture taken and to sign the freelance agreement.]

Then, in the evening Lisa reported that her purse and keys had been stolen from a locker at work. At the end of the day they were found in another woman's locker, but I'm told it was all innocent and so . . .ok. I'm just happy it was found.

* * *
YaYa's becoming a fan of the Jonas Brothers. Track 2 is ok, but track 5, 'Lovebug' is pretty damn good. Catchy, nostalgic, and unique while still recognizable.

Man, even the happy clouds have gray linings :)

I just caught the first (online) version of the article announcing the new group of Journal-Sentinel guest columnists. My blurb is the same short, stiff, and awful sentence they originally proposed. I quote:

Daniel Slap-, 34, of Milwaukee manages [recacted]. He is married.

Gee-zeus, just write 'Dan Slap is a bore' why don't you?

They said if anyone submitted an alternate version by Friday morning it would be changed. I sent mine Thursay. I presented two options:

Dan Slap-, 34, of Milwaukee, is a [x] manager and the father of four children age seven and under.

And the more snarky, wise-ass Dan you know and tolerate:

Dan Slap-, 34, of Milwaukee, is a [x] manager and the father of four children age seven and under. A blogger for many years, his wife would like to point out that the time he devotes to his writing 'career' is mainly just an excuse to avoid changing diapers.

Obviously, I'm being a primadonna here. Just as obvious, I'm annoyed. Maybe this was an early draft, and the print version will be updated? Maybe? Do ya think?

The rest of my Saturday, or the Quest for the Certificate

YaYa is in need of a certified copy of her baptismal certificate to continue with her First Communion classes, and I've put it somewhere so 'safe' I can't find it.

No problem. Just call the church and get a copy, right? Wrong. The church, where my parents and I were married and where YaYa was baptized, but which I no longer attend, can't locate ANY records related to YaYa.

I think the confusion stems from the fact that I bypassed the then-current pastor (with his approval) and had Fr. Frank Yaniak conduct the ceremony. He was a classmate of my Grandma, had given Last Rites to my Big Grandpa, and conducted our wedding ceremony He was a great guy and we'd become friendly over the years.

Although ill he came out of retirement for the baptism, but at that point he would have had to rely on the parish, not himself, to officially record the event.
Apparently that didn't happen.

So what we did is have YaYa and I, with our scrapbook of baptism photos and some mementos of the day, go to the evening mass. Afterwards we approached a parish official with the evidence, I turned on some charm and threw in my family connection to the church (dating back four generations), and was told to go to the rectory in ten minutes.

There we met with three parish officials and the current priest. I was shown all the records and yup, we aren't in there. They looked at the photos and clearly believed me. I got the makeshift certificate, which solves the immediate problem, but I do want this resolved. You can think it a small or foolish thing, but such a gaffe in the record can follow her through her life.

"I better check to see if my wedding is recorded," I told the room. "I'd hate to know I wasn't really married. Then again, maybe I'd hate to learn I was."

That brought some laughs, I shook some hands, and the priest gave YaYa some chocolates and she expressed her thanks.

But I must say being back there brought up some nostalgia. I liked the church, which is almost Puritan in it's simplicity (esp. for a hardcore Catholic congregation) and my family goes back a long way with the place. Really, it was just the priest who took over from Yaniak that pushed me out the door.

I'll hold my tongue because I do respect the office, but that guy . . was not someone I'd have a beer with. I once praised a Korean priest that gave an eloquent and intelligent sermon the Sunday after 9/11, and the parish priest contemptuously implied I was a racist by referencing him as 'the Korean priest' instead of his name. I, uh, didn't know his name that first day, you [bleep].

In the intervening years the church kicked him to the curb. That 'Korean' priest is now in charge of the Parish and the man I shook hands with tonight. But I'd already jumped ship and never returned.

I don't broker much crap about the Catholic Church for many reasons, but I've been lucky in that I can name two priests as men I respect, admire, and call 'friend'. I'm glad to see my original parish is now in the hands of a man who, in another set of circumstance, could have joined that group.

My weekend to date, pt. 1

It's been a chaotic couple of days around here. Yesterday we had a fire at work. No one was hurt, but as a result we physically lost a department. We were going to consolidate it anyway, given the economic climate, but fire damage and a good soaking from the sprinkler system sped up the process.

I'd have been there to help find the fire sprinkler shutoff valve, as I was the only person still employed who knew where it was, but I had to cover an evening shift of someone I'd laid off. When the call came I was in my skivvies at home.

This morning I took LuLu and YaYa to swim class. Lu refuses to put her face in the water. The teacher says she has 'wonderful skill's but needs to overcome her distaste for going underwater. She better get over it because next week is the test to advance to the next level.

Afterwards, while YaYa was swimming I headed to Home Depot to buy a lock for her door. Her room has been ravaged by Smiley nearly every school day. The latest attack led to ripped up Junie B. Jones books and a cross newly painted in silver nailpolish. That cross was a gift from my deceased grandma, and I was P.O'd. He's a demon at times.

On the way back I was pulled over by a cop and slapped with the first speeding ticket of my life, a 4 pt. $80 ticket for going 15 over. Whatever. I'm sure I was above the speed limit, but if I was 'really' going fifteen over than the cars around me were going twenty.

It reminded me of something my Big Grandpa once said. He'd been pulled over for speeding and complained that he was the slowest of the pack of cars on the highway. "I know," the cop said. "You were the easiest to catch."

What annoyed me the most was the length of time this all took. I sat for awhile, made a phone call, read more than a chapter of a book, and made another call. C'mon -my plates are clean, my record is clean. You can hop online in a second and find out how tall Charlemagne was but you can't deduce in twenty minutes whether or not I'm a Gambino hit man?

I'm not as irked as I sound, as I reckon I was due. But not only did the cop sit there with lights ablazin' the whole time, a second squad arrived to back him up after I'd been there ten minutes, which is just downright embarrassing when you're sitting only a block from home.

I'm pleading not guilty and we'll hammer it out in court.

* * * *

Then it was trips to The Salvation Army, Sam's Club, WalMart, and Aldi's with the family. Man, that list makes us seem trailer poor, doesn't it? Not a horrible way to spend an afternoon, but not exactly dinner and a movie.

Quote of the Day

Yesterday Smiley trapped the Lump in the corner of the dining room, using the high chair and a sheet to make a tent of his own. Lump, although untouched and in no danger, was screaming to escape. I came into the room and lifted her into the clear. I then turned to Smiley and said, in a mock scolding voice: "Nobody puts Baby in the Corner!"

Lisa started laughing, and realizing I had planned my words from the moment she cried she said, simply, "Dork."

Quarantine

I can barely put into words what a waste of money it was seeing this movie, especially since it was only our second movie of the year and our anniversary to boot. [we went to a late show, after trick-or-treat]

It wasn't as dramatic a disappointment as The Happening, as I went into it expecting only a solid horror flick, not a piece of pop art. Still, I found it lacking on a number of levels.

Zombies hold a special place in my heart. They aren't vampires, the pitiful Freudian refuge of the sexually repressed, or werewolves, which in the best of stories still come across as a silly Old World superstition. If you do it right, zombies can be a frightening stand-in for our paranoid fear that society is crumbling. They are a glaring affront to the reality that we hold dear, one that always, always leads to the collapse of social roles and in the end, inevitably, civilization.

Plus they eat people.

None of the deep stuff takes place here. In the movie, shot first-person Blair Witch style, a television crew is trapped inside an apartment building newly quarantined by the government. Inside a sinister new virus is loose, transforming victims into pseudo-zombies and picking off the group one by one.

It's as dumb as it sounds. The sub par acting does nothing to make us forget ridiculous affronts to commonsense. I don't view these as spoilers, but just in case close your eyes:

* a woman is drooling foam and incoherent. Another woman did this and ate someone. So what do the heroes do? They act ignorant of the prior scene and gingerly help her to 'safety'.

* Contagious, fatal disease? Why, let's force everyone out of their apartments and into a common area, just so the illness can spread faster.

* Why would you think a french door could keep out a rabid zombie?

* If you beat someone to death with a camera, would it really keep working?

And so on.

Many of the complaints online about the movie stem from the camerawork, but the herky-jerky style didn't bother me. No, but the technique's limitations irk me. No one person can be at the center of every action, particularly when it all takes place in a large building. But it's necessary to advance the plot, and so the filmmakers force the camera into places it would not realistically be, and it rings false to the viewer.

Like I said, a waste of time.

1.75 out of 4, 45 out of 100.

YaYa's 7th Birthday

YaYa's 7th birthday party was held at Incredi-Roll on 108th and Oklahoma, in what was formerly Wisconsin Skate University. And yes, Lisa and I skated. :)





But this was YaYa's day, and she had a blast.





We'd rented the Princess area for her get together, and she loved it. It even had a throne!











All the usual suspects were there. Family, Chris and her kids, some school friends, and even our neighbor's daughter.

















She even got to spend a few minutes in the cash machine!







It was a very nice party: fun, relaxing, and just what she wanted. Happy Birthday YaYa!

I quit smoking two years ago today

Today marks two years since I last had so much as a drag of a cigarette.

I quit cold turkey the day before we left on our Disney Vacation, giving myself 24hrs to ride through the worst of it before departing. I'd been smoking a pack or more a day for ten years, having taken up the habit in the weeks preceding our wedding.

[To be honest, quiting smoking was obviously easier for me than losing weight: even if you reach your 'goal' weight, you still have to eat everyday, forcing a decision. You don't *have* to smoke once you quit]

Sticking to it was made simpler by the fact that it's damn hard to smoke at Disney. There was a shortcut across the park, right behind Cinderella's castle, that was a smoking area. That was hard to navigate, but it was a clear exception.

I didn't think the decision would stick, but it did. For a long time I counted the hours since my last cigarette, but when I dropped that practice (after a thousand or so hours) I knew I was heading for success.

That's not to say a single drag wouldn't toss me back into the habit. I still swoon over the smell of a cigarette at times. Not often, but when it happens it's . . .well, it's like getting really horny after taking a vow of celibacy. It's awful.

And there are times I miss how damn appropriate and iconic it is to have a cig, anti-smoking propaganda be damned. Plus there's all the built-in breaks. "Sometimes I wish I still smoked," I told an employee, gazing wistfully at her co-workers puffing away outside. "I could have 10 breaks a day, instead of, you know, just an eight-hour one in my office."

But 90% of the time I can be around smokers and not even think about picking one up. Frankly, it was too painful to go through withdrawal again, and the blow to my self-esteem would be life-threatening.

Ah, well. Here's to not having to search the couch cushions for a lighter!

Overall, a crappy day. But good things too.

I'd like to point out, purely in good humor, that when I announced that my dream of writing a newspaper column came true the post garnered only four comments, while a one sentence blurb about a dead author spawned eight :)

Don't fret - it was a much more vocal reaction than that of my family. Only Lisa seemed genuinely happy for me, and much love to her for that.

Work - the work that pays the bills - is on a downward spiral in the last six weeks. It's part panic, part increased competition, part seasonal downturn, and partly the result of the current economic climate.

Someday I'll tell the tale of the crazy layoff that took place today. Nothing like being ordered to get rid of the sister of your second-in-command/good friend. It certainly won't kill morale, seeing as she was only one of three sisters employed there and one of the most popular over the course of her decade long service. Nope, won't affect morale at all.

Certainly won't make me even more vilified then ever. Silly to even think so.

On a more positive front I've received three letters now from the Journal . This Sunday a blurb describing each of the new writers will appear in the paper, and mine was so bare bones it looked clipped from a 'Dick and Jane' book. So I had them change that, and on Tuesday I have to have my photograph taken for publication and sign a freelance agreement with the paper.

They said that the two contest submissions can be used as our first pieces, but I slammed out both of them in the two hours before the deadline. I don't have a bleepin clue what the subjects were, much less if they were worthy of publication (although they say they beat out the work of more than 70 unsuccessful applicants). Long and the short of it, only God knows what my first published work will look like :)

A later email came in describing the nuts and bolts of the gig, which will include public "feedback [that]can be caustic". The letter also flat-out states that no one will be allowed to or asked to stay on past the one-year term of the deal, under any circumstances.

Fine by me. I'm just happy for the opportunity.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Several hundred years ago Agnes Nutter, witch and alleged psychic, is burned at the stake in England. No matter to history, really, save for the fact that she accurately foretold the end of the world. Which is soon. Very soon. Next Saturday, actually, just before dinner.

Cue a delivery room in England, where a Satanic but slow-witted nun somehow loses sight of the Antichrist, delivering him into the arms of a common farmer. Oops.

A decade later it's time for Armageddon, but two angels - one on each side of the aisle - decide to circumvent the powers that be to secure their cushy gigs on Earth and keep the boy in the dark.

Will they succeed? Will they fail? Will Agnes write a sequel from beyond the grave?

All this and more are answered in Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Gaiman is a writer a greatly admire, while Pratchett has long been recommended by a friend of mine. This novel, written as a collaboration decades ago, is a favorite among their fans and for good reason.

It's a darn funny novel that touches on questions of faith, morality, and the celestial use of Freddie Mercury's voice.

I highly recommend the book, eagerly await Gaiman's next work, and look forward to exploring Pratchett's catalog as well.

[note: YaYa, btw, is currently plugging away at Gaiman's YA novel Coraline, which I'm reasonably sure is too scary for a seven year old and the primary reason, along with Goosebumps, why she is (mildly) scared of the dark lately].