Not Sure the Cold is Worth the Press It's Getting

I've been out and about running errands twice today, and while it's damn cold I have to say, it ain't worth the hype.* 

*the exception being for the homeless, who I hope are in shelters, and the poor souls stuck on a bus stop

A TV Review

Listening to the Centerpieces debate and break down an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender for the zillioneth time. I've been in college English classes with less insightful, strident analysis. Andddddd, now that I typed that, they are raising their voices and threatening to brawl. Sigh.

You Are My Sunshine

A small wall plaque Lisa bought for YaYa. She used to sing the song to her when she was little and it became Lisa's nickname for her.

Cold Day

MPS has closed Monday due to cold weather, extending Christmas vacation an extra day for the kids. For all you West coast/southern people who whimper when it's 50 degrees - we're expecting a HIGH of negative 13F with a wind chill of -22F.

I Don't Blame Them

MPS has closed Monday due to cold weather, extending Christmas vacation an extra day for the kids. For all you West coast/southern people who whimper when it's 50 degrees - we're expecting a HIGH of negative 13F with a wind chill of -22F.

How would I rate 2013?

2012 SUCKED, so there was little chance 2013 wouldn't improve on its predecessor. Even had the bar been higher, I'd rank 2013 as one of the good ones. Employment was steady, everyone was healthy, we made some improvements around the house, I started law school, and we avoided the 3D's - death, divorce, and dismemberment - always a good thing. I hope 2014 continues the trend, and I hope the year rocks for you and yours. Happy New Year everyone!

James Avery

RIP James Avery, aka Uncle Phil from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air". He was 65

The Wrong Use of the Force

Watch your hands mister!

A Saying of Mine

What other people think of you is none of your business. If God wanted you to hear what was said behind your back, he'd have put ears on your ass.

A New Years Card :)

Elysium

Just finished watching "Elysium" VERY good flick, and well worth the rental.

A Crime to Remember

Greatly enjoying the ID network's "A Crime to Remember", a well done and insightful series that follows crimes of the distant past. Within one of its darkest tales, the gruesome "Career Girls Murders" of 1963, a reminder that even the worst aspects of human life carry within it some purpose: the mistakes made during the investigation of that crime led NY to abolish the death penalty and the US Supreme Court to deliver its "Miranda Rights" decision.

A Follow-up to the (missing?) follow-up

Not sure what happened to it, but I don't see my follow-up on LuLu anymore. It was a sprained ankle and foot. She was fitted with a walking boot and crutches, but they saw no broken bones on the X-ray. :)

Exam Grades

Remember when I said my contract law final was one of, if not *the*, hardest exam of my academic life? Did you think I was exaggerating, or being unduly modest regarding my performance? Think again. The professor emailed the class the results, which account for 100% of your final grade in the course. Of the 80 questions on the exam, the best score (not mine) was 52 correct, or 65%; the worst was 23 correct, or 28.75%. I notched a 36, or 45%, and thanks to the curve created by this collective ass whupping I received a B on both the exam and the class. This, well, . . . . wow. Lisa dismissed the results of the class as evidence it was designed to scare and weed out the weak links of the incoming class, but either way . . . zoinks!

A Broken Foot??

We went sledding today at Pulaski Park and  LuLu may have broken her foot there while snowboarding. Lisa's at the hospital with her right now. I swear, these kids will do anything for attention ;)

Gordon Hinkley

A big RIP to Milwaukee broadcasting legend Gordon Hinkley, who passed away this week at age 88.

Mike Hegan

RIP former Brewer and announcer, Mike Hegan, who also had lent name on a batting cage facility here in Milwaukee. 

Found It!

A Christmas miracle! Out of the blue I found LuLu's long lost Junior vest - missing half a year - folded up neat as can be right where we've looked a dozen times. Lisa credits the big J.C. with the victory on this one, but I object: if he wanted it found, he'd have led us to it months ago. All credit for this one, IMHO, to one Dan Slapinions, aka Tammy Faye Sugarbaker, aka Wonderman, aka Boone Doggie.

Adorable

 Lulu pullin Isaiah around on the sled.. Lol

Playing in the Snow at Ravina

 

Our Snowman

LuLu won!

LuLu is THRILLED with a Monkey-go-Happy she won in a worldwide contest on pencilkids.com! It came all the way from New Zealand! To win it she had to correctly id the foreign city shown in a video, which i identified as Cracow in the first ever use of my eastern European history degree! Lol good for her!

The 2013 Holiday Program

Departing for the 2013 school Holiday program 12-17; I missed it due to a final exam.

Anchorman 2

Home again, after seeing "Anchorman 2" with Lisa, courtesy of $5 Tuesday's at your local Marcus Theatres - with popcorn included in the price. LOL'd a ton, picked up a few new catchphrases, and followed it up by going out for decrepit, moderately burnt coffee at the airport Denny's. 

We finished the date with a flourish:, by stopping at the grocery store for kielbasa that YaYa told us  she needed *at 9 PM*  for a cultural fair at school tomorrow. LOL

Contract Law Final

I'm back from my Contract Law final, and officially done with my first semester of law school. The test itself was a b--ch, right up there with the toughest of exams I've ever taken (for a course where ambiguity is bad and vagueness is a killer, there sure were a lot of vague and ambiguous questions). I still finished after two of the allotted three hours, and I'm reasonably certain I didn't fail. I've taken the night off from work and - if I can get Lisa to agree - strongly desire to party all night, Old School style.

update: He did not, in fact, party all night. Old School. Or New School. 

A Little Light Reading

My contract law flash cards

Joan Fontaine

Some news this morning that made me literally gasp with shock, which makes no sense, as the woman was 96 years old: the GORGEOUS and talented Joan Fontaine has passed away. Since the late 80's, when I was a devoted watcher of the AMC (back when it was an actual classic *movie* station), I have been a fan of her work, and, to be honest, her hotness. Along with Brittany Murphy, she is now enshrined forever in the Dan Slapczynski Eternal List of Five. RIP

 @ Landmark Family Restaurant 

As Seen at Marquette's Bookstore - Ron Burgundy

RIP Quasi

Quasi, our deformed pleco, died overnight. He's been sick for over a week. Not 'ich' sick, but "lets move from the old folks home to the hospice" sick. RIP sir, and may you swim straight forever in whatever pseudo-heaven your soulless self has gone to in the sky.

Peter O'Toole

Actor Peter O'Toole has died at age 81. RIP

Audrey Totter

Audrey Totter, a Hollywood femme fatale I just watched in "The Set-Up" last week,has passed away at age 95. RIP beautiful.

Congrats!

Congratulations to Jolenne K on graduating from college today!

China has landed an unmanned probe on the moon. I . . . am not pleased.

Hot Dog!

To my great shock, it appears that I learned something in Criminal Law and the final went well!  I think that, barring the professor being on the take, I aced 32 of the 45 problems, bombed one, and listed 12 under "maybe" - but I'd go to Potawatomi on the odds of those "maybe's" being largely "correct" answers. This portion of the exam is only 1/3rd of the Final - the other 2/3rd's coming from two 2000 word take home essays I had to hand in to receive today's exam - so the possibility still exists that I stunk it up. But if I did, I stunk it up less than I feared four hours ago.

Quote of the Day

“The better we become, the less conscious we are of our goodness. If anyone admits to being a saint, he is close to being a devil. Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that of all men, he was the most perfect, but he had so many cracks in his soul that he abandoned his children after their birth. The more saintly we become, the less conscious we are of being holy. A child is cute so long as he does not know that he is cute. As soon as he thinks he is, he turns into a brat. True goodness is unconscious.” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Yowsers

Smiley may never box, and God willing he avoids street fights, but let me tell you *that boy can PUNCH!* I was working on the bag when he put on his gloves. He stepped in and barraged it with some combinations, then ripped into it with hooks that would rattle any ribcage. Mein Gott, he's got some power for his age.

Nelson Mandela

RIP Nelson Mandela, a giant of our time :(

BREAKING NEWS: The Brewers have traded Nori Aoki to the Royals for 24 year old lefty Will Smith. Aoki was the lone Brewer on my fantasy team, and a good one at that. I'll miss ya!

Christmas Card Time!

Addresses, addresses, I need your addresses! Please...my new phone has no addresses saved from the old one. If you normally get a team slap xmas card, then please private message me your address. If you don't normally, and would like to start receiving the coveted "most awesome family ever" xmas card, then PM your address as well!!! Basically, you don't send your address, you could be crying over the loss later :) Lisa 

A Night of Boxing

Just watched Sergey Kovalev KO Ishmayal Sillakh 52 seconds into the second round . . . wow, that was impressive. Kovalev packs a thunderous punch for a light heavyweight.

update: I just finished watching the main event, the Adonis Stevenson/Tony Bellew fight. Stevenson has freaky power, it's true; but to my eyes (and I'm just a fan, not an expert) he seems very one dimensional in the ring. If he matches up against Kovalev - and from Stevenson's comments, Adonis is ducking that fight - I'd bet on Kovalev.

My Thoughts

RE: the (mild) hue and cry that we should remember the driver of the car too, not just Paul Walker, when talking about the fatal crash:  if you want to be remembered when you die, *DO SOMETHING WORTH REMEMBERING*. If I die the same day a pop star dies, good luck finding my obit. I'm cool with that, in large part because I hope to one day be the somebody that overshadows Joe Blow's passing.

Pitch Perfect

Watching Pitch Perfect with the family and some company. Anna Kendrick is simply LuLu transported to the future and assigned a different name. They look like clones for Pete's sake.

Paul Walker

I didn't know Paul Walker as an actor, haven't seen any Fast & the Furious movies, and don't remember him in Pleasantville. Still, a human is a human, so RIP.

We Blew It (but innocently)

YaYa is upset we put up the tree in her absence. She was there when we bought it but headed out to Grandma's before the decorating. But as I told her, Mom did 96% of it, as she always does, because she likes her tree just so; all the rugrats did was hand her some ornaments and hang a couple at the end. They were also stuck going to Mass, cleaning the yard, and putting away laundry; think she'd still want to trade places with them? :)

Black Friday 2013

Longest line of the day? Joann Fabrics, of all places, where the line not only snaked around a roped off queue but continued down about 40% of the store's considerable length. Second place? Easily Kmart, where the line was awe-inspiring but rather quick. No line of note at Dollar Tree.

Alas, the one item I needed to buy on Black Friday I failed to procure, and off-sale I may not be able to pull it off this Christmas. Won't be the first time I've had to improvise, but . . . sigh. I did get a few deals on smaller items last night, and *fingers crossed* my co-workers hopefully scored on two items for me earlier this morning. So far today we've cleaned and rearranged the living room and we're gearing up to go buy a Christmas tree, with some talk we may cut one down ourselves. 

Happy Black Friday everyone.

Jane Kean

RIP 90 year old Jane Kean, aka "Trixie"  from the Honeymooners :(

Wow

A video for the song "The Way" by Ariana Grande just came on the TV. I swear to Gawd, for weeks I've heard this on the radio and thought it was a surprisingly good Mariah Carey tune. That girl has some pipes!

Frustration

"Tolzein would have been on his back or throwing INT's [today], we saw 3 losses with him, I don't need to see anymore" You're an idiot, sir. This is a poorly constructed, shoddily coached Packers team, currently led by a QB [Flynn] that is a favorite of the coach despite being laughed off the roster of many a better team. Where are all the Matt Flynn/Ted Thompson fanboys now?

Chicken Soup

Best Dang Chicken Soup we've found at the grocer