Catch a tiger by the meat

Not like that, you perv.

I went to Donuts with Dads (basically Dad's are invited in to spend the morning with their kindergartners) a few weeks ago with my 5 year old who quite obviously got some of his old man's humor.

One of our assignments that morning was putting together a book of some of the
stuff that worms eat.

Among the pages of the book that had egg shells and
bananas they also had "no-meat". Lucas decided that the picture that the
page for "no-meat" should be a worm looking at a tiger (obviously tigers
are made out of meat) and saying "yuk" (sic).

I'm just so damned proud.

Bracket Busted

Well I am not sure about you but my bracket is the ugliest thing I have seen since I got this really nasty blood blister on my foot. The dreaded 15/2 matchup this year has been the death of it, and mostly because I had one of those teams winning the whole thing. IDIOT. Let this be a lesson not to let your home team allegiance blind you from reality.

Yes I am waaaay too optimistic

Not only does it suck when your champ is out early because you are more than likely out of the running for any type of monetary reward or pants credit. But it sucks from a viewing perspective also. I am past the days of watching sports just to watch sports. I just can't. With the addition of kids, there are practices, games, dance classes, & other stuff to do on the weekend. Oh and my wife gets super ticked off. So when I get to sit down and actually watch a sporting event, I need to have some sort of stake in there. The stake is emotional only because gambling is illegal at Bushwood.

Don't get me wrong I really like watching the tournament and think its great to see the lesser known schools "over-achieve," but right now I am at the point of saying F it. Really the only thing that may keep me going is the interest in watching Kansas lose to whoever plays them, but the longer they make it in the tournament, the more I fall down into a sports depression.

So, I guess good luck to those of you that are still emotionally invested in this Tournament. Except if you are a Kansas fan.

Baseball needs to start soon.

Choices

Life is all about choices. The biggest choice is with whom you are going to spend that choice-filled life. That particular choice isn't easy, but hopefully you get it right.

Often you'll have other choices to make. Sometimes your mate will, too. Like when she is picking up beer, and she can't decide what kind to get you. She thinks you'd like the Hemp Hop Rye, so she puts that in the cart.

Then she remembers that she also likes it, and decides to pick up the 5 Day IPA to make sure there is enough for the both of you.

Then she's not sure you like the IPA, so she picks up some Gold just to make sure she's covered.

Then she gets home to show you what she's done, and you realize that you both made the right choice.

March Basketball Tournament

I am pretty sure if I use the term "March Madness" I need to put one of those circle r's or "tm"s by it. So I will just use the most generic description possible for the title of this article.

So all the fun starts tomorrow with 64 or so teams playing basketball against each other. While some more foresight would have been good on this (and if my work didn't block "gambling" websites) we would have got a SFA Bracket put together where we would have showered the winner with copious amounts of praise and at least 3 mentions on Facebook & Twitter. Since that fell through though, you get nothing.

Then we thought more some. And since we can't offer you the most mediocre-at-best tournament experience, we would send over a link to a great one. Here's why its great:

1. It is put on by my favorite retailer of all-time... Bonobos. If you have followed us for any amount of time, you will know that I cannot get enough of their pants, customer service, and overall coolness. I want to be them.
2. The winners get free stuff. I am not going to explain this any further.
3. The more people they get to sign up, the more money they will donate to the Deron Williams Point of Hope Foundation

Sign up at www.bonobos.com/bracket-challenge

So its really a win/win for everyone. Just pick good teams.

Here is a link to the Bonobos Bracket Challenge. Sign up and tell them the Suburban Father Alliance sent you.

Oh and while I still barely have your attention. GO MIZZOU!!!

Amighetti's Winghaven Review

I finally lured my wife out to lunch at Amighetti's (the Winghaven location). It's actually really close to her work but isn't really her sort of place. I maintained, however, that it had been life-changing for me when I first moved to St. Louis (it occupies the top two spots on our largely unused Sandwich Scale), and that I hadn't really had an opportunity to eat there in years.

I'm not going to get to pick a lunch spot again anytime soon.

I ordered a small Italian Classic Salad and a half of a Little Bit of Italy sandwich. The sandwich wasn't nearly as good as I had remembered it. I'm not a cheese lover, but I can make due with most Italian cheeses, but this sandwich was like all cheese and no meat. It was all gooey and gross. I think that if I ordered it sans cheese it would be OK, but I'm thinking its bread/stuff in the middle ratio would still be WAY too high.

Not enough in the middle.

My salad wasn't much better. I largely ordered the Classic instead of the house because I wanted the Parmesan cheese on it. It came out with no cheese on it. The artichokes weren't marinated, the olives were OK, but the only thing I really enjoyed on it were the tomatoes (and not the fancy marinated tomatoes that apparently cost me an extra $2, either).

Not worth the extra $2.

On the bright side, my small salad was enormous.

On the less bright side, my wife's full sized spinach salad was the same size. It also came smothered in onions, which I had specifically requested it to come without. She did like the walnuts on it (candied just enough to be crunchy but not overly sweet), but that's a pretty hollow victory.

WTF?

In sum, we were very disappointed by the stuff that didn't come the way we ordered it as well as by the stuff that did come the way we ordered it, although to be fair I think that even if we ordered the thing that came the right way the way we actually wanted it it still wouldn't have been very good.

There are those that say "don't order salads at a sandwich shop" and also those that will say "don't go to the version of the restaurant out in the suburbs," but to those people I say "If they can't make something good don't put it on the menu -- excepting of course chicken fingers which should suck -- and if they can't make a location not suck don't open it."

In any event, I think we're gonna have to re-rate the Sandwich Scale.

Snowboarding is for the young and the stupid

As many of you now know, I go on a ski trip every year with my wife.

Unfortunately the older I get, the more I hate ski boots. They're skinny and hard and they put your ankles at angles that are really only useful while you are, you know, skiing. Typically, however, I spend a lot more time getting into position to ski than I do actually skiing. This year, I thought I'd be clever and try snowboarding.

Just because the boots look more comfortable.

Which totally sounds like a recipe for success.

And it was. I was walking pain-free circles around my wife. Even managed to strap one foot in, scoot around and get on the ski lift without any trouble. "How hard can it be?" I thought. Heck, even a Kardashian could probably do it.

Let's just say that I snowboarded with all of the suave and grace you could reasonably expect from a man of my size and age who had never snowboarded before and who was never all that great at skiing in the first place.

I fell for the first time after getting about 6 feet off of the ski lift (for those of you scoring at home, that's 2 inches of snowboarding and 5'10" of me falling forward). Twenty-five feet down the mountain I had fallen approximately 50 more times. Little people (the child kind) and old people (the old people kind) zipped all around me. There were actually a few times where I stayed on my feet for a minute, then I'd have to attempt something crazy like "turn" or "slow down" and the whole "fall, curse, flip around awkwardly, stand, slide, and fall" routine would start all over.

It was around this point that I became perfectly aware that if I was going to stay on that board for one more second that someone (and probably not me) was going to die.

It was a long walk down the hill. I care too much about the little people (of all kinds).

STL Ski Trip

Every year some old friends of my wife (and more recent friends of mine) organize a ski trip that always starts in St. Louis and usually ends up in someplace like Wisconsin. The trip (branded as "a beer trip with skiing included") never fails at being a good time. The basic schedule usually goes something like this:

1. Meet at noon at a local car drop off point. Board bus.
2. Drink beer for 5 hours nonstop. 
3. Visit rest stop, which you only need if you smoke because you've been peeing every twenty minutes on the back of the bus.
4. Drink on bus for three more hours.
5. Arrive at resort, eat twice your weight in pizza, drink hot tub while sitting in beer.
6. Heave snorily.
7. Wake up early, go skiing, knock back a few at lunch, leave slopes early, drink until dinner.
8. Eat dinner, race back to resort rooms and commence formal drinking games.
9. Wake up the next morning and "prepare to leave" (an Algonquin word for packing super fast then drinking Bloody Mary's while watching people who actually care to ski).
10. Drive back on the bus, be surprised how drunk you get on the ride back, be thankful your wife chose to just watch the movie and not be like [waves at all of you] you, then sweet-talk her into White Castle on the drive to your house.

Do I enjoy skiing? Sort of, but I generally only ski enough to justify going on the trip (riding to Wisconsin for the skiing would be a little like riding to Wisconsin for the wine). I mostly go on this trip because A) kids aren't allowed, and B) the trip provides the perfect mix of "romantic get away for two" with "party like a freshman blowing his student loans on spring break."

Details aren't available for next year, but if you are interested in going (and if you suck or are in any way a party pooper, please don't be interested) feel free to "Like" the very much in-progress Facebook page.

The "Rise" of the mini-bar.

Been doing a fair bit of traveling lately, and I've pretty much run the gamut of hotels. I've stayed in nice places (they kind where they organize your toiletries when they clean your room) and some not-so-nice (literally had two physical keys I had to use to get into my room). The not-so-nice hotels are often scary, but occasionally you'll find something in a nice hotel that is also frightening.

When I first checked into the MGM Grand in Vegas, my buddy Dallas gave me the hot tip that I should be sure to check out the price list on my mini bar, specifically the $30 item towards the end of the list.

Yep, intimacy kit. I assumed it had to be hot, since it was located (tastefully) in the fridge.

Looking at the contents, though (just the ones listed on the outside of the box -- I'm strictly anti-mini-bar) provided a whole new set of issues.

• Tickling feather - When I get down to tickling, I can't imagine being able to work with anything that would have fit into that box. Does the feather fold up? Does it extend, is it just 4 inches long? Doesn't seem to have enough.
• Desire dice - Dice? In Vegas? Sounds risky. Fortunately that will be mitigated by...
• Condoms - Probably a great addition, but it being in the fridge makes me think of two potential problems. One, I'm assuming that heating and cooling and reheating latex would hurt its structural integrity. Two, shrinkage.
• Intimate Oils - I find it a little odd that they branded the whole box based on the last of the ingredients, but that tells me these oils are REALLY intimate. Probably not intimate enough to get me a fifth kid, but intimate nonetheless.

Being alone in Vegas, I obviously didn't buck up for this little marvel, but even with mate in tow I doubt I'd have bucked up. The $30 probably would have lasted me longer at the penny slots.

What is up with the blog this year?

2011 was a monumental year for our little blog. By monumental, I mean it was the first full year we were in existence and dare I say "business". I think we published over 100 articles and we were the envy of all of our friends (we always were but had to validate it somehow).
So as I write this blurb without the approval of my partner in crime. I get to thinking, where is this blog taking us/me? I think when we set out to do this we had some visions of grandeur that we would own our own Segways and would have already have our kid's college paid for. Not so much as it turns out. I am still working at my normal job, trying to find some time during the day to get some words down on virtual paper. Unfortunately, that is about the only time my day allows to do this kind of stuff. I can't tell you what Jamie's schedule is, but he has one more kid than I do so I am sure his writing time is even more cramped than mine...as well as his checkbook. ZING!

I was told there would be Segways.

What's great about this post I'm doing now is that I know Jamie is probably thinking the same thing. We are always on the same page and you can't fake this kind of Bloggerhoodery. He's also probably thinking "Man I am carrying this dude." Which he is and has been doing for some time. Well, we will need to sit down and have a State of the Blog Address and start looking at some kind of road-map for the future, but we'll probably have some beers and end up talking gibberish to each other. But before that happens, we also want to hear from you. Yes you the person reading this. I don't care if you aren't a Dad or don't have kids, you have an opinion that we care about. What stuff do you like? what stuff is crap? Can you tell that this sentence is kind of just filler until something better pops into my head? So, WTF do we do now? How do we monetize this sucker (other than having you click all the banner ads on the page cough... cough...)? and how do I get a Segway dammit?

Anyway, tweet us or leave a comment somewhere, but tell us your thoughts. But seriously... Segways.