Things I learned about my husband by looking through his iPhone pictures

Okay, I’ll admit, I didn't really learn anything new about my husband.  The photos just confirmed what I already knew about him.

He likes football:

Cars:

Car parts:

More cars:

And cars that go very fast:

And Tractors:

Oh and more tractors:

He likes fishing:

And he doesn’t totally hate my cat:

Although he loooves his dog:

And of course Crown Royal.

 And there you have it!  I wonder what my phone photos would say about me?  There are probably too many pictures of my cat, I'm guessing.

Super Giant Fish at our Front Door

So, I just realized the Big Buck Hunter has been in our front entryway for OVER TWO YEARS. I keep holding out hope that one day we'll class it up enough to move that thing somewhere... not so obvious. Like a Man Cave. Chris DEFINITELY needs a Man Cave. I think his new ploy is keep buying hideously unsophisticated things that have no business in the house so that we end up with so much redeneck man-crap in our front foyer that I have no choice but to agree to let him have a man cave. And, oh, yeah, his giant mounted fish finally arrived.

You can't quite tell here, but this thing is "to scale" meaning that fish is about 6 feet long.

Note the Big Buck Hunter in the background...

And, in the true irony that is my life, the boys fired up the Big Buck Hunter and began playing while I was typing this blog.  (They had to move the fish out of the way first, of course.)

Cruise Tip #2: rednecks like big fishes

For their birthday this year, Frick and Frack (that's my husband and his twin, in case you were having trouble following there) got to go on a fishing boat in Cabo with their friends Sleepy E, Wobbie, and Vegas.  It was Sleepy E's idea (shout out to him and the lady), and it totally rocked.

It wasn't supposed to be a whale-watching tour, but they got to see THIS:

And then, to top it all off, Chris caught a 160# Striped Marlin.  Well, it was really a collective effort, but Chris happened to be the one holding the reel at the time so he got the credit:

And of course there were the usual "beggars of the sea" hoping for handouts of fish:

After you catch the fish, they give you a couple of options.  You can keep it, or you can throw it back.  If you choose to keep it, you can either ship the meat to your house or donate it to the tour boat operators as part of their gratuity (so it doesn't go to waste).  But if you choose to keep it, after you've figured out what you want to do with the meat, you can then choose to HAVE IT MOUNTED AND MAILED TO YOUR HOUSE.  For a fee, of course.

Let's think about this for a minute, and see if you can figure out which option my husband chose.  And remember, this is the guy who wanted Big Buck Hunter in our front entryway. 

If you guessed, "MOUNT IT!" you guessed correctly.  In just a few weeks, plus fees and shipping and handling, we will be the proud owner of a 160# striped marlin to hang over the Big Buck Hunter game in our foyer.

This man needs a man cave STAT.  Before my foyer starts looking like a Bass Pro Shop.

School Pride

Seeing as how the husband's family always sends us gear promoting the University of Iowa, it seemed only fair that my family send us gear promoting Kansas State.  And my parents did just that for Christmas.


Afterwards, the husband and I had the following conversation.

THB:  I like my new K-State sweatshirt, but I think it's funny that they picked the camouflage one.  What, do I scream redneck?

ME:  I wouldn't say so much 'scream' redneck but you definitely 'announce loudly.'

Sprint Car Racing

The husband and I went to lunch with our boss last week.  The restaurant had those TVs that are mounted to the ceiling, and at one point my husband and my boss were distracted by a NASCAR-type race.  Only instead of NASCAR cars racing around the track, it looked more like matchbox cars with trays mounted to the top of them.

We watched them for a bit, as they took a series of continual left turns, until I decided to ask a question.

"There aren't actually people in those cars, are there?"

I could tell immediately from the look on my husband and my boss's face, that this wasn't the most astute question I could have asked.

"What was the question?" my husband asked me.

Alarm bells were going off in my head, and I knew it was a bad idea to repeat the question, but I was already committed at this point.

"There aren't any people in those cars?" I asked again, trying to make it sound like I knew the question was ridiculous and was just testing them to see if they knew.

They weren't buying it.  Chris's eyebrows went up.  "Yes, there's people in them."

"Can you actually fit a person in those cars?  They look so tiny."

"How do you think they get around the track?"

"Um, remote control?"

Monsoon Season, Part 2

It may have looked ridiculous when our shade awning was secured to the patio with ratchet straps, but it worked. 

As evidenced by what happened when we took them off and another storm blew through...

Prank Of The Century

… because that’s what good friends are for.

We recently had some tenants vacate our rental house in Phoenix. Which is a very special story and deserves a blog post of its own, but what you need to know now is that, amongst the grime and broken furniture and non-functional cars and other trash that they left us, there was one really cool present:

A giant stone tortoise.

As in, this thing weighs like 300 pounds of poured concrete, tortoise.

Well one of our friends, we call him Sleepy E, he secretly liked the tortoise and wanted it for his backyard. So we told him we had already promised it to Frick’s significant other, St. Yvonne.

And then we began secretly plotting how we could give the tortoise to him in the most inconvenient and annoying manner possible....  Because that’s what good friends are for.

Here’s all you need for a good prank:

1. A giant stone tortoise (or turtle, for the non-biologists amongst us)
2. A very tall ladder
3. A pickup truck to transport the very tall ladder
4. An orange bandanna borrowed from Payson’s wife to “flag” the end of the ladder where it sticks out the back of the pickup bed (for safety!)
5. Someone to run the video camera and 5 strong men of questionable intelligence 
6. It also helps if you have a full moon, but that one is optional.

The big unknown that could throw this whole plan in jeopardy was that Sleepy E and his wife have some dogs that like to bark at strange noises. We were very concerned about how we were going to accomplish this prank without alerting the dogs, who would then awaken the household with their barking.  Well, it turns out the neighbors were having a very loud party that night, which easily drowned out the sounds of the prank-in-progress.  Prank completed successfully.

AND NOW I GIVE YOU…..

Giant Stone Tortoise on Rooftop:

P.S. Sleepy and Mrs. Sleepy -- THERE'S A GIANT STONE TORTOISE ON YOUR ROOF.

Monsoon Season

How to protect your hot tub awning from blowing over in a dust storm? 

Two words:
Ratchet straps

Monster Truck Rally

Last night, Chris and I were relaxing in the living room, watching an episode of House.  At one point in the episode, Dr. House has the team meet him in the parking lot of the hospital.  The following scene takes place:

House has driven Colossus, a bright yellow-and-blue monster truck, right into his handicapped parking spot (and several others). He's got to lower a rope ladder from the window just so the team can climb in, which they all do.

As House and his team are careening around the city, discussing medical diagnoses in the giant monster truck, Chris turns to me.

"You know," Chris says, "that's not how you get into a monster truck."

ME: Hunh?

CHRIS:  You don't lower a rope ladder and climb in through the window.  You get in from underneath.

(Pause)

CHRIS:  And also, you can't fit that many people in the cab.  There is no backseat in a monster truck.

Uh-oh, somebody call FOX.  The screenwriters need to brush up on their redneck.

Willie Nelson, Kid Rock, and the Mayor

A few weekends ago, The Husband and I went to an outdoor country music festival known as “Country Thunder” located in the nearby town of Florence, AZ. The headliners for the night were Willie Nelson and Kid Rock. We did the usual giant-outdoor-music-festival activities, which included:

• Browsing the sales booths with the trashy t-shirts
• Spending 20 minutes trying to guess how many food/drinks you will eat/drink so you don’t have leftover food and beverage “tickets” and yet you don’t have to stand in line again
• Spending an insane amount of money on “tickets” for food and beverages
• Playing the beanbag toss and winning a free radio station t-shirt (if you’re me)
• Playing the beanbag toss and not winning (if you’re the husband)
• Getting your picture taken by one of the program sponsors
• Stuffing your face with food and drinks so that you don’t waste any of those no-cash-value tickets
• People-watching
• Oh, yeah, and maybe also listening to some country music artists singing

At the end of the night, as we were leaving the Kid Rock concert, we left the gate behind a sweet older lady who looked like she should be baking cookies or knitting, not attending a Kid Rock concert until 11pm on a Saturday.

“Hey, look at that kick-ass grandma in front of us!” one of my friends said. “That’s so cool she went to Kid Rock. I’ve got to get my picture with her!”

“Excuse me,” we said, “would you mind taking a picture with us?”

“Oh hello,” she said, smiling, “I’m the Mayor of Florence!”

So it turns out we got our photo taken with the Mayor.

But no story is complete without some pictures. I mentioned earlier that the group of us got our photo taken by one of the program sponsors, Cricket Wireless. While I was online searching for my picture, I browsed through some of the other yahoos that had their picture taken. I’ve picked some of the winners and posted them here. Enjoy.


Um, NO. No, thanks.



Three guesses (and the first two don’t count) on which headliner this guy came to see.




Hey look! It’s Kid Rock and Pam Anderson… oh, wait, nevermind.



Excuse me, sir? I believe you may be accidentally wearing your girlfriend’s cast.



Only slightly more fantastic than if he had been wearing one of those t-shirt tuxedos.



These fine ladies are demonstrating the versitilty of the Jack Daniel’s bandana. Now they just need one more lady in need of a miniskirt, and they’d have a complete set.



Their parents don’t let them out of the house much.

So if she’s a “playboy bunny” then he’s a… what is that thing… an armadillo?

I really have no explanation for this one.

This lady’s outfit just screams “class.” Or, something like that.

The Clampetts move to Phoenix

Okay, so we might be a little redneck.  And I say "we" in that affectionate, my-husband-is-so-I-am-by-association sort of way.  I guess we have established already that we can light a fire with a blow torch and live in a trailer and enjoy NASCAR so it's not a far stretch to imagine the "formal entryway" to our new home.

Allow me to share a picture.

Oh, what is that in the corner?  Is that the arcade game Big Buck Hunter? Why yes, it does appear to be Big Buck Hunter.  Let's take a closer look...

Yep, definitely Big Buck Hunter (PRO! Open Season!).  It goes great with the brand-new keg fridge we installed in the kitchen.

To be fair, I should mention that we also installed a top-knotch wine fridge next to the keg fridge.  And also to be fair, the husband and I did make a deal regarding the Big Buck Hunter.

Husband got BBH.  I got a fancy new library in what used to be the breakfast nook.  And not just any fancy new library, but a library that my husband and his friends spent many hours perfecting into the beautiful, built-in materpiece that it is today.

Suddenly, our house is very popular with all of my husband's friends.  And I don't think it's because of the library...

The Finale: Camping Miracles

Next to our campfire, left behind by the previous campers, was a giant log. Someone had obviously dragged it there, with the intentions of burning it, because there was a tie strap still twined around it. They had gone to a lot of trouble to get that giant log next to the campfire, but never ended up burning it.


(can is for scale)

We had a theory. We figured they had been sitting around the campfire late at night (there was almost definitely alcohol involved) and two or more of them had decided that burning a giant log was the thing to do. In their late night fervor and alcohol-muddled reasoning, it seemed like a brilliant idea. They set off, tow rope in hand, to go collect a giant log. Probably by the time they got back two hours later, stumbling along with a giant tree stump dragging behind them, their friends were all asleep/passed out, and the log-draggers lost their enthusiasm and went to bed themselves. The next morning when everyone got up it suddenly did not seem like such a brilliant idea. So the log was left next to the campfire, for us to find.

The boys took one look at it and said: “Lets burn it.”

We were all highly doubtful that the log would actually burn. Especially after the Great Flood of 2009, in which the log was not covered to protect it from the rain.

But since there weren’t going to be any fireworks this Fourth, we decided, “What the heck, let’s go for it.”

The boys were in charge of the log burning, as it was their idea. They were more than happy about this. We decided that we would wait until the night of the Fourth, as sort of a celebratory thing. A bonfire tribute to Lady Liberty and a grand finale for the last night of our camping trip.


(working out the logistics of moving the log)

In yet another camping miracle, the log not only burned, but made a perfect campfire. It was rather hot, at first (we all had to move our chairs back about five feet), but it burned steadily and without the constant need for more fuel. We could enjoy it and not have to ever get up for more firewood.





Slowly, the evening slipped into night. An almost-full-moon came out, shining silvery through the trees and the mist, coyotes howled in the distance, classic rock played quietly on the radio, and everyone sat around an effortlessly burning campfire in perfectly temperate weather. And as beautifully as it began, the Fourth of July came to a close.

Camping, Part I: Because Matches Aren't Good Enough

Sometimes my husband surprises me. Like, when we’re getting ready to start the campfire and he brings out the blow torch.

Yes really, the blow torch. We are so classy.

Thus, please enjoy my pictorial essay on How to Light a Campfire With a Blow Torch. Somebody should post this on WikiHow so I can get my 15 minutes. (Well, maybe not, because it’s probably a bad idea for people to be running around our national forests with blow torches. Smoky the Bear would be crying himself to sleep.)

Step 1: Get firewood

No… scratch that.

Step 1: Go to ATM and pull out $100, because that’s about how much you’ll need to buy wood in the middle of the desert.

Step 2: Get firewood



Step 3: Gather together your materials.



Step 4: Put the wood inside the fire ring. Keep the beer separate from the other materials, so that you can periodically hydrate while working hard at making the campfire.



Step 5: Break out the blow torch. Light wood.





Step 6: Get another beer, since you’ve finished the first one. Then sit back and relax.

The usual yard sale stuff

Backhoe... $5900
Water Tank... $3900
Big Cooler... $3900

Everything you need for your very own in-ground cold-water redneck pool?

Priceless.