The Best Christmas Gift Ever

My favorite gift this past Christmas was a Sephora 'Scent Sampler' that Erin picked out for me. It was a kit with 10 different fragrance samples, and a gift certificate for a full-size bottle of my choice.





After many weeks of comparing and constrasting, I selected 'Very Irresistable' by Givenchy. I happily redeemed my certificate this weekend at Sephora. Thanks Bill and Erin!



PS - this is my second blog post ever. My first was in October of 2005, the infamous rat incident.

The Tale of Dermot's Pants

Roughly 6 months ago, the 'mot was out visiting and left behind a pair of khaki pants (or so we think). The pants were discovered some weeks later though we struggled to determine their proper owner. We both attributed the pants to Dad, who is renowned for leaving things here during his visits. We grudgingly packed the pants up and sent them to Arkansas.

Upon arrival and unpacking Dad declared the pants weren't his, saying "while they are nice pants they aren't mine - I haven't worn wool pants since the 60's!" Indeed the pants are 100% wool.



Dad sent the pants packing with Bill to Nebraska as he was planning a trip out around New Years. In the meantime, we continued to ponder on the pants true owner. After Bill brought them back to CA, the beagles seemed to have some attraction to the pants, enjoying the warmth of the wool.



After Rick declared he would never wear wool it hit Dermot that they could indeed be his pants. We're speculating at this point but that's what we've got to go on. The pants will be heading back to Michigan later this month as the most well-traveled yet unworn pants in the country.

Treasure Trove at Sears

Erin and I were at Sears picking out a new dishwasher (nice new stainless model) when I happened onto a bin of deep discount video games. I bought two that I had an interest in playing; Club House Games for under $7.00 and Pokémon Trozei for under $4.00. I had been selling some old games on Amazon and decided to see how much my new pick ups were going for. Turns out Club House Games was going for like $45.00 dollars! I sold mine immediately. The Pokémon title was going for nearly $20.00. SELL SELL SELL. I went back to Sears today and picked up some more gems. Digimon World DS cost me $6.97 and is selling for $45.00. Castlevania Portrait of Ruin cost me $4.97 and is selling for $35.00.

The moral of the story - go check your own Sears discount bin for these games and make a quick buck!

Dish Network

The dish is high-end stainless, $9.58 with tax at Wally-World. The other hardware was $4.09 with tax at Lowe's. $13.67 total. Time consumed was pretty minimal, maybe 20 minutes.

Iron Man

I haven't been this excited about a comic book movie in a long time. Check out the trailers and start counting down until May when this hits theaters.

PSA

I got one of those forwarded health scare emails about danger to pets and was about to delete it when I realized it was legit. The health scare is, don't feed raisins or grapes to your dog because they may cause acute renal failure killing the animal. I believe it is legit because it is considered true by snopes.com, an excellent website that researches the authenticity of such things. This is scary for me because I sometimes give Yuki raisins. I'll stop doing that now of course.

DON'T GIVE YOUR DOG RAISINS OR GRAPES. IT MIGHT HURT YOUR DOG.

-Thanks to Mitsuko for the tip.

Brake-Fast Dog Bowl

I stumbled onto this dog bowl at Amazon.com. The bowl's design prevents your dog from bolting their food. The obstructions make dogs slow down to eat. The bowl is also designed to slide around on the floor further slowing Fido's meal time. Yuki tends to wolf his food down way too quickly. I'd consider this bowl for him except for the fact that it costs $36.00.

Juicy Fruit Change

Everyone has chewed a piece of Juicy Fruit gum. For years the formula has been the same: yellow package, silver foil wrapper, grey stick of gum. Well, that formula has changed.

The yellow package is still the same.


The silver foil wrapper is still the same.


But the grey stick of gum has transformed into a yellow stick. It seems Wrigley's has added yellow food coloring to the mix.

No word on whether Double Mint now contains green food coloring.

Halo 3 Flaming Helmet

I was playing a little Halo 3 online when, for the first time ever, I happened into a game with a Bungie employee. Bungie is the company that makes Halo. You can tell he's an employee because of his flaming helmet, a visual perk that no one else can get.

DANGER

The iTunes free single of the week is Danger's 11h30. It's a very interesting upbeat electronic track. Definitely worth picking up for the low price of free.

More New Stuff at McDonald's

While I was trying out the McCafé at Micky D's, I noticed some other new stuff. Specifically, sweet tea and DVDs. As you can tell from the sweet tea sign, McDonald's has begun to adopt the "Micky D's" nickname and make it their own.

Heavenly Hash

Many years ago, there was an ice cream parlor in Jonesboro called Larry's Ice Cream. Their signature flavor was called Heavenly Hash. I haven't heard that name again until recently when I was in a Walgreen's. I noticed a candy egg called the Heavenly Hash Egg. It's a chocolate covered egg with marshmallow and almond filling. It's made by the Elmer Candy Corporation in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. It's a tasty egg to be sure.


Heavenly Hash is an odd name though. If you google the term, you get recipes like this one that features undercooked rice. Weird.

Heavenly Hash

1 bag miniature marshmallows
1 -15 oz. can crushed pineapple, drained, juice reserved
1 jar maraschino cherries, halved, drained, juice reserved
1 pint heavy whipping cream
1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 cups cooked white rice (slightly undercooked, not well done), chilled
¼ cup powdered sugar, or to taste

Yuki in Warhol Style

The New Knight Rider

As a kid, I loved the original Knight Rider. As you may know, they're testing the waters with a new pilot version of the show. A new Michael Knight. A new K.I.T.T. I watched the new show, and although it was bad, I still think I would enjoy seeing it come back for a run. I'd definitely Tivo it.


This is the new K.I.T.T. - a Shelby Mustang.


Here's the old K.I.T.T. - a Firebird.


This is from the new pilot. The old Michael Knight hands over the reigns to the new one.

McDonald's McCafé vs. Starbucks

As you may know, McDonald's is taking on Starbucks in the fancy coffee game. I haven't seen this in Lincoln yet, but the McCafé coffee project is all over Kansas City. I was coming from KC this morning, and as luck would have it, for a limited time McDonald's is doling out free McCafé every Monday for awhile. So, I was able to try two different drinks for free. First, I had a mocha. It was prepared much as Starbucks baristas prepare them. They gave me the choice of regular or nonfat milk. I went nonfat. It was topped with whipped cream. It was a good mocha. It was a little sweeter than Starbucks, but totally acceptable. The next drink I had was the cappuccino. I got this with nonfat milk too. It bothered the lady that I didn't want any sweet element in it. She offered caramel and vanilla, but I just went plain. It was a pretty good drink. The only disappointing part about the drinks were the menu prices. I was hoping that McDonald's would come in a lot cheaper than Starbucks. Sadly, they were only a little bit cheaper. The 12 ounce mocha costs $2.29, medium was $2.79, and large was $3.29. To be sure, that's cheaper than Starbucks, but not by much. Given a choice, the Starbucks atmosphere would draw me in favor of McDonald's. However, if I was just driving through, getting a mocha from Mc's will be a good option

Jack does Veggies!

Here is Jack's second "professional" photo. He's a vegetable chef!

Jack's First Consonant Video

Dum Dum

Even at 90% off these Dum Dum valentines aren't flying off the shelves! Makes you wonder who the real dummy is. Certainly not the consumer!

Another Week in the Life of a Small Baby

Jack had a good week though we think he may be starting to come down with another cold - at this point it seems much less serious than his first cold though. Jack listened to some good albums this week including: Toto - 4 Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska Bob Marley - Legend R.E.M. - In Time: The Best of R.E.M. He also really got into his jumping some more:



He started petting Kodak - who appears to be his favorite beagle.



All in all, life as a baby ain't half bad.

Mullins Taken Down

I've been playing a video game called "Burnout Paradise" online with Mullins. It's an open world driving game where you travel more than 250 miles of city and mountainous roadways racing and dodging traffic in speedy sports cars. If you cause someone to crash, you get credit for a "takedown". As the crash victim's car dramatically explodes apart in the game, the camera snaps a picture of the crashed player's face and sends it to the player who caused the crash. In the pictures below, you can observe Mullin's fury at being taken down by me.