This one goes to eleven!

Hey now, there, y'all, it's been almost a week since I've been here. I believe I have been actually, for reals, busy for several days.

Oddly, though, now that I'm sitting down at Ms. HotSexyNew iMac to write...suddenly, I cannot remember one thing that I've done recently. Age? Writer's block? Cheap Merlot? You decide.

I think I must list. Perhaps I will also cluster. It's my only hope. (Warning, I sense exclamation points ahead. I cannot summon the words to express myself tonight, so thus I shall rely upon punctuation marks to convey my meaning. OK!! Yeah!!)

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1) Baby! Erin had her baby, three and a half weeks early...and...it's a boy! His name is Dean, an homage to both Ben's middle name and the Rat Pack. (Had I known, I would have sent them lil' sippy martini cups.)

I have not seen photographic evidence of this baby thus far, but I see no reason to doubt her story. Mom and baby are reportedly well - no word on how Ben is doing; I'm suspecting either "giddy" or "stupefied" - and hopefully all are home by this evening.

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2) Schlitterbahn! We went to Schlitterbahn on Sunday! Opened it and closed it, even; 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Both girls went with, as did our good friends Eric and Christie, who had never been.

A time was had, my friends, a time was had. It was the perfect day: coolish (for July in Texas,) slightly overcast, rainy early in the morning so many folks were scared off. During the day, it only rained lightly for about half an hour, and that was timed nicely right at the dinner hour. OG and Eric were their energetic selves and rode everything. Even YG, formerly assumed to be a complete pantywaist, rode some pretty hardcore slides. (She also proudly displayed her new "dunk her head underwater" skills, newly learned in swim lessons, about 50 times throughout the day, causing me to fear for her brain cells by a certain point.)

There are many things about Schlitterbahn that make it way cooler than other water parks, first and foremost being the use of real (and cold as fuck) Comal river water in the rides in the older section, and the several tube chutes that just dump your ass into the actual river. But, also great is the fact that they let you bring in coolers, so you aren't forced to spend scads of money on shitty hamburgers and funnel cakes.

But, this time, I finally got to do the coolest thing at Schlitterbahn...the Master Blaster! ('Cause, see, someone chose the perfect day to go, when the lines for it weren't four hours long! Wait, who was that brilliant person? Oh, yes, it was ME!) For those who have not tasted the joy, the Master Blaster is an uphill, water, roller coaster. It's fuckin' sweet. And, I'm glad I finally got to do it, because I am absolutely unwilling to wait in the ungodly lines for it on a typical day.

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3) IKEA! I hate IKEA! Did I ever say that I loved IKEA? I don't! I absolutely fucking loathe them!

See, I bought this bookshelf there a few weeks ago. (Note: It is not actually a cheap piece of crap from IKEA, it is a reasonably expensive piece of crap from IKEA. This fact will come into importance later in the story.) I don't have a truck, so I got Cristen to watch the kids, took out the carseats, folded all the seats flat in the Pussy Wagon, and drove 20 minutes up the highway to get there.

It lay around my house tripping us, in its ginormous boxes, for about two weeks, but I finally got to work on it and finished it a few days ago. It was not mentally challenging - assembling IKEA furniture isn't, generally - but it was time-consuming, and did involve another slog back up there to get a missing bolty thing.

This thing, by the way, not being a cheap piece of crap from IKEA, is actually pretty solid, and pretty heavy. Though I put it together myself, I did some back hurting picking some of the pieces up, and it took two of us working substantially to lift it up to the wall after I was finished.

So, I'm up on the ladder, just about to fasten it to the wall - last step, you know - when The Man comes through, points to the side panel, and says, "Did you know this is cracked?"

Herm?

No, goddamn it, I did NOT know it was cracked, splintered, right down the middle of the wood, with no relation to any screw or anything that I had done during the assembly. Fucking fuck.

But, you know, I can handle defective merchandise. What, as it turns out, I CANNOT handle, is IKEA's return policy. It spaketh thus: You may pick up this extremely heavy fucking thing and put it back on the ground, turn it back upside down, disassemble three quarters of the entire bloody thing so that you may bring in a SIDE PANEL TO A BOOKSHELF, and bring that one piece in to be replaced. Or, you may disassemble the ENTIRE THING and return it to us IN ITS ORIGINAL PACKAGING, to return it to us. (Which was already cut up in the recycling pile, because we are GOOD ANAL RETENTIVE LIBERALS.)

And do you know what they do to those folks who send bitchy e-mails about this policy? They send them auto replies! Several!

The upshot of all this is that I am in no way, shape, or form, disassembling this stupid thing. So, tonight, we lay it back on my floor, and I attempted to wood-glue the crack into stubborn submission...and of COURSE, I rubbed my index finger along the crack to schmear the glue in, and of COURSE I ripped an inch-long gash in it on the razor-sharp splinter.

I tell you, folks, I've decided IKEA is not worth the hassle. For a few dollars more, I could have driven two minutes away to about twenty good furniture places near to my neighborhood and had a nice bookshelf delivered and installed for me. AND, I'm guessing, if a big crack developed down the side of said bookshelf, someone might, just might, have said, oh, "Sorry?" Or, "Hey, you get a new one, since that one's broken! And we'll bring it out to you!"

For the moment, I'm swearing off IKEA, 59-cent stoneware bowls or not.

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4) I saw the new Harry Potter movie at a sneak preview on Monday! It was...pretty good! The kids have all learned to act, and their real-life friendship is apparent. All the supporting cast is as fantastic as usual...god, I love Alan Rickman, as previously noted, and Imelda Staunton as Delores Umbridge was an inspired bit of casting. But, the plot of the movies is getting pretty familiar by now, and this one didn't have the wonderous imagery that Alfonso Cuaron put into the third one, or the character development that Mike Newell put into the last one. And, it seemed woefully abridged - that's probably to be expected, as it was an 800-page book - but some major plot points were left out.

However, I did enjoy it. I'm certain that you will, as well.
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5) Give yourself over to absolute pleasure, bitches...it's your lucky bun day!

It's Spinal Tap, at Live Earth, and....the Army of Bass Players...O.M.F....G.
No words. No words at all. Can describe. How cool. THIS IS.



Stonehenge was pretty effing funny, too...




Yes. You're welcome.

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6) Your Simpsons Self! You should, by all means, go to the Simpsons Movie Website and create your own Simpsons Avatar, like THIS ONE:


...and you should then thus post them on your blog. Or send them to me.*

Because they are awesome.

(As is John, yet again a source of all things cool.)

*I couldn't save mine to my computer, for some reason. I had to print it out and then scan it.