Some days it's not worth chewing through the leather straps

You Are Romanticism You are likely to see the world as it should be, not as it is. You prefer to celebrate the great things people do... not the horrors they're capable of. For you, there is nothing more inspiring than a great hero. You believe that great art reflects the artist's imagination and true ideals. What Art Movement Are You?

I'm just full of advice, among other things. If you are hosting a party, be prepared:

From Snopes comes this handy-dandy list of New Years Superstitions! I wasn't aware of most of these, how about all of you? Because January 1 is the first day of the new year, we have drawn a connection between what we do on that day and our fate throughout the rest of the year. Here are some of the ways we attempt to guarantee a good outcome through our acts on that portentous first day: • Kissing at midnight: We kiss those dearest to us at midnight not only to share a moment of celebration with our favorite people, but also to ensure those affections and ties will continue throughout the next twelve months. To fail to smooch our significant others at the stroke of twelve would be to set the stage for a year of coldness. • Stocking Up: The new year must not be seen in with bare cupboards, lest that be the way of things for the year. Larders must be topped up and plenty of money must be placed in every wallet in the home to guarantee prosperity. • Paying Off Bills: The new ye...

See, disabilities can sometimes disappear.

Christmas Eve 1921 Pa never had much compassion for the lazy or those who squandered their means and then never had enough for the necessities. But for those who were genuinely in need, his heart was as big as all outdoors. It was from him that I learned the greatest joy in life comes from giving, not from receiving. It was Christmas Eve 1921. I was fifteen years old and feeling like the world had caved in on me because there just hadn't been enough money to buy me the rifle that I'd wanted for Christmas. We did the chores early that night for some reason. I just figured Pa wanted a little extra time so we could read in the Bible. After supper was over I took my boots off and stretched out in front of the fireplace and waited for Pa to get down the old Bible. I was still feeling sorry for myself and, to be honest, I wasn't in much of a mood to read Scriptures. But Pa didn't get the Bible; instead he bundled up again and went outside. I couldn't figure it out becaus...

From episode 10 of Season 1 of the West Wing, this requires just a bit of background. Earlier in the episode, Mrs. Landingham tells of her twin sons being killed in Vietnam on Christmas Eve, and how she always thinks of them during Christmas. She thinks of how scared they must have been and how she couldn't have been there for them. The clip is a bit long, but gives the background on how Toby became aware of the homeless vet who passed away, and the strings he pulled to get him an honor guard burial. The final sequence of the honor guard burial intermixed with the boys choir in the White House makes me cry every time I watch it. To me, this was television at it's finest. Merry Christmas all:

This is the adult version of the night before Christmas. Damn funny!

My most favorite Christmas tree decoration! Bonus points to those who can name the Shuttlecraft...

This is interesting, and a little bit scary at the same time. Answer a few questions then click the "find your candidate button" and the program selects the candidate who's position on the issues is most like your own. Probably not enough questions to really flesh out the right candidate... Try it!

Be sure to keep your eye out for these toys, they aren't available just anywhere! Thanks to my buddy Mike for passing these along to me.

Lot's of language in this one, keep the kids out of the room, better yet, just don't even open it up. But I laughed and laughed... What's It Gonna Be? on FunnyOrDie.com

I've seen this before but not with the puppet. Very cute! The Man Song - Watch the top videos of the week here

I haven't been this entertained by Cello music since Electric Light Orchestra in 1977...

1. Schizophrenia --- Do You Hear What I Hear? 2. Multiple Personality Disorder --- We Three Queens Disoriented Are 3. Amnesia --- I Don't Know if I'll be Home for Christmas 4. Narcissistic --- Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me 5. Manic --- Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and ... 6. Paranoid --- Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me 7. Borderline Personality Disorder --- Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire 8 . Full Personality Disorder-- You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll tell You Why 9. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ---Jingle Bells,Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells! , Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells ... 10. Agoraphobia --- I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day But Wouldn't Leave My House 11. Senile Dementia --- Walking in a Winter Wonderland Miles From My House in My Slippers and Robe...

I got Elf'd

I wrote about the field beside our house awhile back. A couple of day ago on our dog walk we found that someone had come through with a backhoe and ripped apart the Beaver dam, and wrecked their house. I suppose that some Government entity decided that they were chewing up too many valuable sticks and Cottonwood trees and decided to step in. Probably didn't even give the poor Beavers a chance to get out of the den before they ripped things apart. It's pretty sad...

This is good stuff! Banned Commercials - The best video clips are right here

We were dressed and ready to go out for the New Years Eve Party. We turned on a night light, turned the answering machine on, covered our pet parakeet and put the cat in the backyard. We phoned the local cab company and requested a taxi. The taxi arrived and we opened the front door to leave the house. The cat we put out in the yard, scoots back into the house. We didn't want the cat shut in the house because she always tries to eat the bird. My wife goes out to the taxi, while I went inside to get the cat. The cat runs upstairs, with me in hot pursuit. Waiting in the cab, my wife doesn't want the driver to know that the house will be empty for the night. So, she explains! to the taxi driver that I will be out soon, "He's just going upstairs to say Goodbye to my mother." A few minutes later, I get into the cab. "Sorry I took so long," I said, as we drove away. That stupid bitch was hiding under the bed. I had to poke her with a coat hanger to get her t...

Yeah Carl, truth baby! Tell it like it is...

For those of you who have been keeping track of our progress we are all now home from the hospital. Thanks to all who kept up with us and left such great wishes, I will try and get time to post every now and then. But I gotta tell you, this is full time work around here keeping Skyler entertained and trying to get some work done!!

For instance, those folks in Malibu during the fires... Here is the whole story!

I'll bet grandma was proud! Best First Dance at a Wedding - Watch more free videos

Trying to catch up on my blog reading at the hospital yesterday while Skyler slept. All the fine folks on blog role are accessible, except for one... ;^) Must be all those posts about Milton Berle, huh Grant? Updated later: Sorry I pooched up the screen snapshot earlier, here is what is so funny!

Had a family photo taken up in Boulder at the Humane Society last week and just got the picture delivered. Unless you have tried this on your gaggle, you just can't imagine the fun of trying to get two dogs that are going crazy sniffing everything, and an uncooperative son to look forward and smile on cue! It's all for a great cause though, to help out the 4 footed homeless.

"No doubt a brain and some shoes are essential for marathon success, although if it comes down to a choice, pick the shoes. More people finish marathons with no brains than with no shoes." Don Kardong, 1976 Olympic marathoner Now get out there and run off that Turkey people!

I have created a site that you can go to in order to keep up to date with what is going on with Skyler's back surgery on November 26th. Just click on the link below to check out pictures, what is going on, and background information. I won't be updating this too often as we go through the 2 weeks or so of the hospital stay, but will try and read you all as much as I can! Thanks a lot everyone, take care, Chris http://skylerspine.blogspot.com/

Here is a little quiz to take during those down times between eating and fighting with the family! ;^) Happy Thanksgiving all, Chris (Skylers dad)

Must be some old British show, pretty good.

There was a great story last night on the news about the mascot for the University of Colorado, Ralphie the Buffalo. Ralphie 4 is set to retire at the end of the year to make way for Ralphie 5. The team that handles Ralphie is working with the new young lady, training her to run the stadium before the game and at the start of the second half. It is a wonderful tradition at every home game, and if Colorado makes it to bowl games, Ralphie also travels. It is one of the best openings of any football game you will ever see, as Ralphie thunders down the sideline, turns at the end of the stadium and heads down the other sideline back into her truck. Click here to read the story, and check out the video, it is pretty cool! My favorite memory of Ralphie running the stadium is back in the 80's when Oklahoma came to town. They had a loud mouth linebacker named Brian Bozeworth that thought he would come out from the sidelines and stand in the way of Ralphie running. It wasn't until ...

I took this interesting quiz after a friend sent it to me last night. It goes by very fast, you only have 8 seconds per question to respond. It turns out that my aging brain cells are actually a bit smarter than average, which I was quite surprised by! Check it out .

Chris over at Some Guys Blog has a post about the different barbers that he has seen through time. This reminded me of a joke I have had laying around! A little girl goes to the barber with her dad. She stands next to him as the barber cuts his hair, eating a snack cake. The Barber says to her, "Sweetheart, you're going to get hair on your twinkie." She says, "Yeah, I know. I'm gonna get boobs too!"

I emailed this to some of you already, so sorry if this is a repeat. But there are some still photos to go along this time. Skyler took a tour of a local news station last week. The Meteorologist, Angie, is very nice and remembered him from a tour he took there several years ago. When he got there, she was going into the backyard to do the weather outside, and said to my wife Hurry up, we go on the air in just a minute. Then she wheeled him right into the shot! Pretty fun stuff. Sorry for the poor quality of this video, I don't have a decent digital video camera, so I had to video off the TV screen...

Guinness Tippping Point - More amazing videos are a click away

A man moves into a nudist colony. He receives a letter from his grandmother asking him to send her a current photo of himself in his new location. Too embarrassed to let her know that he lives in a nudist colony, he cuts a photo in half but accidentally sends the bottom half of the photo. He's really worried when he realizes that he sent the wrong half, but then remembers how bad his grandmother's eyesight is, and hopes she won't notice. A few weeks later he receives a letter from his grandmother. It says: Thank you for the picture. Change your hair style... it makes your nose look short.

In case you missed it, this is the 25th anniversary of the march in Washington DC to dedicate the Viet Nam memorial, better known as just "The Wall". When the wall was dedicated there was a lot of vets who came to try and heal the wounds of the past, some to remember lost buddies, some to try and bring closure to what happened over there. Here is the video from the march back in 1982 when the wall was dedicated: When I entered the Navy It was 2 years after the war had ended, and I met a lot of guys who served during the war. One stands out to me, and I always remember him during memorial day and veterans day. He was the only friend I lost during my 4 years in the Navy. He was Lt Commander MacDonald, call sign Frosty. he flew S3 Vikings and I had the pleasure to control him on several occasion during anti-sub operations. Frosty was the CAG, or Commander of the Air Group and he was also from Colorado. He grew up in Vail, so when we met up off ship we got along well, even...

They recorded some shows for Skyler from up in Seattle and let him know they were sending the tape to him, so we left it in the mailbox for him to pickup!

I rear-ended a car this morning. So there we are alongside the road and slowly the driver gets out of the car... and you know how you just get soooooo stressed.. and life stuff seems funny? Yeah, well I could NOT believe it... he was a DWARF! He storms over to my truck, looks up at me and says... 'I AM NOT HAPPY!'.. So, I look down at him and say, 'Well, which one are you then?' ...and that's when the fight started

Will we ever learn anything from history? Somehow, I doubt it...

Pretty amazing set of pictures, forwarded to me from one of my old friends.

Has it really come to this?

Sorry I am late with this important advice on pool etiquette, but keep this handy for next summer! I sure wish I would have known about this earlier... Pool Party Dos and Don'ts on FunnyOrDie.com

A popcorn kernel popping at 5,400 frames per second.

"I live by this credo: Have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness instead of sadness. Laughter has always brought me out of unhappy situations. Even in your darkest moment, you usually can find something to laugh about if you try hard enough." -- Red Skelton

Now this just freaks me out!!!

I saw this on Good Morning Silicon Valley, and thought it was a pretty interesting article. Here is a quote from it: "We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats. ... " The problem is that ordinary citizens don't know what a real terrorist threat looks like. They can't tell the difference between a bomb and a tape dispenser , electronic name badge , CD player , bat detector , or a trash sculpture ; or the difference between terrorist plotters and imams , musicians , or architects . All they know is that something makes them uneasy, usually based on fear, me...

"Said the guy on the reality show"... Nice save! OUT OF PROPORTION on FunnyOrDie.com

As I walked down the busy footpath, knowing I was late for an important meeting, my eye fell upon one of those unfortunate, homeless vagabonds that are found in every city these days. Wearing what can only be describes as rags, carrying every worldly possession in two plastic bags, my heart was touched by this persons condition. Some people turned to stare. Others quickly looked away as if the sight would somehow contaminate them. Recalling some long ago Sunday School admonition to "care for the sick, feed the hungry and clothe the naked," I was moved by some powerful inner urge to reach out to this unfortunate person. Yes, where some people saw only rags, I saw a hidden beauty. A small voice inside my head called out, "Reach out, reach out!" The doctor told me that with enough time and the proper physical therapy I may regain the full use of my arm and hand!

This is so beautiful, I have always loved Peter Paul and Mary. It really hits home for me...

Teri does a great job sharing her outings with us via her field trips, so I thought I would take you all along with me on the dog walk out into the field beside our house. Late edit: Blogger editor sucks! The pictures don't align at all like preview shows and I am too busy to fix it! First of all, let's get you oriented to where you are. Here is the aerial image of our house and the field via mapquest: The open area to the north of our house is the open field we like to walk the dogs in. We go other places a lot, but this is nice and easy for when we just need to run out for a quick walk. The small stream is the outlet of Standley lake Reservoir. This is leaving our neighborhood and entering the field. The view towards the dam to the west. The view to the east with the sun coming up. We have had a lot of haze, we are getting smoke from the fires out west. This is one of two Beaver ponds that are out in the field, they have been busy in the early mornings getting ready for ...