Bridesmaids & Batteries

I told Annie that I was interested in seeing Bridesmaids when we first saw the poster a month ago.  I knew that it had something to do with a bakery (my cupcake blogs were abuzz), and I love the girls from SNL.  Well, the movie was a hit, but we didn't get to see it until last night.  It was truly hilarious and a highly recommended movie.  Hell, you've heard that all week.  However, I woke up this morning frustrated by unanswered questions that apparently haunted my sleep.  (IMDB this shit if you don't remember character names from 3 days ago anymore!)

1) Why can't they make anybody from the Midwest in movies sound like they're from the Midwest?  They had crazy accents flying around the whole movie, and not one sounded Milwaukeen.  I know people study accents.  Come on!
2) What was the pill/drink combo that Helen gave Annie, and why wasn't she ever caught purposefully giving her a concoction that would fuck her up?
3) Does Annie ever get back into baking professionally?
4) What was it that Helen said that convinced Rhodes to come reunite with Annie after the funeral?  And where, exactly, did he change from his uniform to the hipster suit?
5) How long can a butterfly survive enclosed in an envelope?

I guess I can't expect things to come full circle if the script is written entirely by women.  (Considering how popular yesterday's post was, I guess I have to keep things controversial.)  [I'm clearly joking.  Women are smarter than men.]  {I'm out of parenthetical enveloping symbols after this.}  <Except these, I guess.>

I figure that some of these questions were left unanswered to leave room for Bridesmaids 2 (where Annie and Rhodes get married) and Bridesmaids 3 (where Megan marries Air Marshall Jon) and, assuming Hollywood continues as it has, Bridesmaids 4 (where talking puppies get married) and Bridesmaids 5 (where one of Rita's 'sticky' boys grows up to marry Helen's step-daughter) and Bridesmaids 6 that I can't even pull out of my ass right now.

Moving on...

I stayed home yesterday to fix my car.  It was just the battery, though it was hard to diagnose.  The most physically intense part came where I had to try and jump start the car so I could drive to a store and replace the battery.  My car was parked in the car port under our apartment building, so the hood was inaccessible.  I turned the key (it didn't start if you've been keeping up), but I was able to put it in neutral and let it roll down the driveway.  However, I'd have to turn the car uphill in order for me to park it downhill (everything in the bay area is at some sort of angle).  There was some pretty crazy leg pressing going on as I pushed my car slightly uphill, jumped in, pulled the steering wheel with everything, and managed to depress the manual brakes before ramming Annie's gas-guzzling SUV.

I have no real tools at my apartment, but I managed to do it all by myself.  It required using a random-ass assortment of tools available at the local auto parts store.  While struggling to get the battery out in the parking lot, there were some great moments.  One African American guy walked by (and into the store) shirtless, openly smoking a joint.  He didn't seem to give a f*ck.  Also, two Hispanic guys climbed out the back of a semi trailer and asked me what the price of some tires sitting outside were, as if I gave a f*ck.  I'm out $100, but that's way better than I thought it would be in the middle of my freakout.  I then went home and made chili in a crock pot, and I took the rest of the day off work for some macho time watching Bill Burr's first HBO Special.  Once again, I had one of those days where my pimpmones were flowin'!

Can I even talk about bridesmaids and pimpmones in the same post?
~RoB

Easter Games

It's an annual tradition (started long before I came around) that Annie's family celebrates Zombie Jesus Day by getting together and playing games.  There is usually a theme to the weekend (Deal or No Deal, Olympics, etc.). There's usually some tennis (sometimes a tourney).  The weekend usually ends with an easter egg hunt for the kids (and like Xmas, 'kid' is loosely defined as anyone without a child, so I'm still thrown in with middle-schoolers).

I've made references to the manliness of working with my hands over the past few weeks.  Well, these are the secret project I was working on:

Cornhole!  Complete with maize & blue cornbags.

Collapsed Beer Pong (L) & Flip Cup (R) Tabletops.

Unfolded Collapsible Beer Pong (T) & Flip Cup (B) Tabletops.

Ladder Golf!

Somehow, Annie and I got put in charge of the games this year.  So, she came up with a tailgate theme (bringing the best of the Midwest to her granola-y, hippie, Californian family).  I commenced to getting all of those games built and painted.  Don't get me wrong, Annie helped a little (she half spray painted the tops of the bases of the ladder golf... and some of the yellow on ladder golf... and the big M's on beer pong and cornhole [which I outlined for her]).  I also had some help from her uncle and his powertools.  In general, though, most of this was done by me with really simple tools and a fair amount of time!

We split the 20 people into 10 randomly-assigned teams and randomly assigned each team a color.  We asked teams to wear their colors and made everyone play each other until there was an overall winner.  Yes, some people ended up playing beer pong with their grandparents.  Yes, children were screaming at parents to flip cups faster.  (People were allowed to drink whatever they wanted, so the 12 year old wasn't throwin' back brewskies.)

Judging by the volume of the festivities (and my slight drunkenness after adding Jack to my Coke for the drinking games), much fun was had by all!

We needed to build these for our epic Michigan Football Tailgating plans this Fall anyway,
~RoB

Examine Your Zipper

Move over MacGyver.  Or, is MacGruber a more appropriate reference for my generation?  Anyway...

In my few days of epic manliness, I decided to fix something that has been bothering me for months.  Let me start by saying that I've never been a big fan of jeans.  (I have to emphasize that I mean jean pants, cuz I've always had a soft spot for jean shorts.  Screw you.)  Anyway, Annie convinced me to buy two ridiculously cheap pairs of nice jeans at Old Navy on Black Friday.  (Soon to be called Rebecca Black Friday?)  They were $15, and it was getting cold, and I had been considering buying some nicer/trendier jeans.  I now wear them almost every day.  They work for every occasion.  I trade off between the two pairs for every day at work.  One problem though.

The zippers suck!  They never stay up.  I'm regularly seen zipping up my pants during all kinds of awkward moments.  Here's where my magical fix-it powers (available this week only) come into play.

Though my female roommates never seem to be able to find them, I feel like I live in an endless sea of bobby-pins and hair-ties.  This was a perfect chance to steal one of them and do some good for the world.  (I don't think I'm overestimating the whole-wordly appeal of my fly not being unzipped all day.  I had to give up my lent avoidance of underwear because of it.)  Anyway, here was my fix:

I had to chew a paper clip into the right shape to fasten a tool to pull the hair-tie through.

It works perfectly.  There's just one frustrating thing, which I've never realized before.  Zipping your pants before buttoning them is surprisingly difficult.  I never thought of doing it 'backward' and it made me wonder how many people actually fasten their pants that way.  (I had a friend in college that admitted to always wiping his butt 'backward' [top to bottom] and it blew my mind.)  Anyway, this wonderful mechanism has to be fastened to the button before the button is shoved in the hole to finish the pants-fastening.  That'll do, pig.

You can tell how fast (and how unfiltered) a post is written based on the number of parentheticals,
~RoB

Pimpmones

Yesterday, I went over to Annie's uncle's house to use some of his power tools.  The projects (yes, plural!) that I'm working on will be featured later this month (get excited!).  Anyway, I spent all day Sunday doing things by hand.  I was sore and getting whiny.  So, I had Annie call around and see if anybody had a circular saw and a Dremel.

Back to the point, yesterday I used a circular saw on plywood and managed to assemble two hinged/collapsible wooden objects that I designed.  I got to use sawhorses, a power screwdriver, a hacksaw, and a Dremel.  By the time Annie showed up to get me, I was in a rippling, hairy-chested man-frenzy.

Yes, me.  The wine-sipping, beer-hating, musical-loving, ballroom dancer felt super manly.  My man-hormones (I'm officially dubbing the word pimpmones; get that sh*t on UrbanDictionary stat!) were raging.  As soon as I got home I was flexing my muscles in bed, which led to DIWMGf.

I'm waiting to stub my toe and be returned to reality.

I made one huge discovery in going from manual to power tools.  You've heard the old adage, but it has changed:
Before power tools: 'Measure twice, cut once.'
After power tools: 'Measure once, screw it!'  (you can quickly redo the whole darn thing if you need to)

I discovered this after screwing up one of my drill-holes by 1/4", something I would have never done when I was methodically taking my time and manually screwing each screw in.

My pimpmones be flowin',
~RoB

P.S. Ewww, I don't actually have a hairy chest.

Role Reversal

Annie: We're going Dancing!

Rob: enthusiastically Really, where?

Annie: You do realize I mean Michigan Basketball made the NCAA Tournament, right?

Rob: disappointed Oh.  Yeah...   Of Course!..
                                                                                    Can you hold my purse?

I'm so manly,
~RoB

What Doesn't Kill You...

... will probably come back and get you next time.  Granny, who was rushed to the hospital on Christmas Day was diagnosed with lung cancer this morning.  One of her lungs collapsed during the biopsy.  Sounds like things are a big mess.  Please don't send your sympathies to me.  I appreciate it, but keep it to yourself.  I'm not a very emotional being, and it makes things awkward.  I'll just assume that you all send well wishes.

I'm far from macho, but I rarely show any emotion other than happiness.  I cried when I was 16 while being a pall bearer for a close friend.  I don't think I've cried since then, and it'll take something at least as bad as that to get a big stir out of me.  I don't ask for help.  Annie hates that I hide all emotion with humor.  It's the most guy thing I do.  Maybe one day I'll be mature enough to sob like Urban Meyer or John Boehner, since they are such respectable people...

I filled out the paperwork to take a Leave of Absence from UCLA today.  That was a hassle (still not done).  I have absolutely no intention of ever returning to L.A., but Annie demanded I have a backup plan.  I have no clue how much $$ I'm going to have to pay UCLA, but it doesn't sound like they'll let me off easy.  Let's make sure that those grad students don't leave without overwhelming debt, after all!  I also spent 59 infuriating minutes on hold trying to change my jury duty.

I packed up my office at school.  It's sad that roughly 1/6 of my possessions are text-/notebooks for college classes.  Today was the first big wave of "what the fuck am I doing?"  My whole life has been pretty easy.  Big decisions have usually been between two things I'm good at, and most big moves were lined up so that I could dance through life without much stress.  Considering where I've come from, I've been more than successful.  However, in just a week or two, my credit cards will be maxed out, my checking/savings accounts will be zero, and I will not have a job.  That's really scary.  It also makes me fear that my ever-interesting life is going to become mundane and boring like everyone else's.  I know having an interesting life (like I feel I have had for years) is mostly what you make of it, but I have had a lot of experiences to work-with/choose-from throughout the past decade.

I decided to watch True Grit in Westwood Village to kill time until my office would be empty.  I really enjoy good Westerns!  I invited some friends.  When I showed up, the theater was a TV show set.  Oh L.A., you never fail me when I'm worried about being boring.  I was disappointed that I couldn't see the movie, until I asked the theater across the street (where The Tourist is playing) what was being filmed, and they slipped in that they took True Grit for the day.  I went to the 5:10 show and was the only one in there, cuz everyone was too busy gawking outside to find the movie.  Tourists.

The TV Set, an abstraction from my crappy iPhone camera

Working with AAA insurance to replace some of my damaged stuff, and I'm loading my car up again for another trip to the Bay.  My next departure depends entirely on other people doing their jobs quickly.  I sliced my finger on the sharp edge on the box for cutting reynolds wrap.  Apparently, I shouldn't scoff at all the ridiculously stupid labels that dumb people require on everything.

No job offers yet,
~RoB