Sometimes the joke writes itself

This is one of those times...


Anyone got a joke to go along with the picture?

Want to feel old?

The baby on the cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind" album is now 17 years old...

Ouch...

Seriously?

Entry 1 on my trip with my Dad to the Black Hills of South Dakota. We left Chicago around 1:30 and drove to Iowa and encountered this exchange in Iowa...

We're travelling in my Dad's cherry red corvette convertible... My Dad: "So why aren't there any hotel rooms in town tonight?"

Motel Employee: "Because it's Tuesday night in Des Moines (Iowa) silly..."

Are you kidding me?

Another Music Meme...

I wasn’t tagged, but it looked like a cool meme so I thought I would join in… rather than try to r
I was born in 1973…and my early influences in music were my parents and my brother… thankfully, my parent’s choice of music at the time didn’t stick with me (Anne Murray? Yikes!) but my brother’s did… The Beatles, and LOTS of it…

1973: Paul McCartney & Wings - Band on the Run

1974: Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

1975: Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac

1976: Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life

1977: Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

1978: Warren Zevon - Excitable Boy

1979: The Clash - London Calling

1980: John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy

1981: Men at Work - Business as Usual

1982: Donald Fagen - The Nightfly

1983: Yes – 90125

1984: U2 - The Unforgettable Fire

1985: Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms

1986: TIE: Paul Simon - Graceland & XTC - Skylarking

1987: TIE: Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction & U2 - The Joshua
Tree

1988: Traveling Wilburys - Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1

1989: The Black Crowes - Shake Your Moneymaker

1990: They Might Be Giants - Flood

1991: Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend

1992: Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 months, and 2 Days in the Life of…

1993: Liz Phair - Exit to Guyville

1994: Green Day - Dookie

1995: Oasis - What’s the Story Morning Glory?

1996: Cake - Fashion Nugget

1997: Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever, Amen

1998: Elliot Smith - XO

1999: Wilco - Summerteeth

2000: Elliot Smith - Figure 8

2001: Ben Folds - Rockin' the Suburbs

2002: TIE: Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot & Norah Jones - Come Away with Me

2003: Fountains of Wayne - Welcome Interstate Managers

2004: Green Day - American Idiot

2005: Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation in the Backyard & Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

2006: Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways

2007: TIE: Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather

2008: haven’t found anything this year that qualifies

Back Again Part 3: Back with a Vengeance

Yes... again, I'm back to more regular blogging. For those of you who had been sending emails asking where I was, here it is.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Frequent readers will know we put an offer on a house a few months ago… a house we liked SO much, we put our old house on the market, by owner.

It sold in three weeks (I swear we didn’t make a pact with the devil)…

Things were going smoothly… we had a closing for the new house, we had a closing for the old house, and we had all our ducks in a row.

Then came the home inspection on the house we wanted to buy… and… well… let me just say this; son of a bitch.

The sale fell through when the home inspection revealed that there was close to $50,000 worth of needed repairs (who needs a foundation anyway?)

Knowing we hit the mother lode in selling our old house this quickly in THIS market, we decided to move forward on the sale of our house and build on the lot we bought last year.

So we started looking at housing options in between selling our old house and moving into the newly constructed house.

Many ideas were floated… stay with my in-laws (eep) until we decided upon renting a small apartment… we looked at half a dozen, and each one was worse than the next…

Until… manna from heaven…

We found an apartment in the new school district that The PB & The J would be attending, under $750 a month with all utilities included (I imagine those of you reading this on the Coasts are shaking your hands to the sky screaming… ya gotta love the Midwest).

We signed the lease, paid the security deposit and first months rent and were all set to move as soon as we closed on our house.

The contract we had our attorney draw up called for the closing to happen before June 15th.

The buyer, or more specifically, the buyer’s MOTHER, had other ideas.

Herein lies the rub…

When we started this endeavor and the buyer, more specifically the buyer’s mother, did everything.

She called to express her daughter’s interest in the house…

She called to express her daughter’s desire to see the house…
After seeing the house, she called to express her daughter’s desire to purchase the house…

She called to express her daughter’s wishes to sign the contract…

And she called to express her daughter’s agreement on a date to sign the contract…

So we signed the contract saying that they would be out of the house by June 16th… this was around April 26th.

Foolishly thinking that we were going to sell our house in a few weeks, we had a moving sale and unloaded The PB & The J’s playset (which they had outgrown anyway), our washer and dryer (over 10 years old and were on its last legs) and a few other large items we didn’t want to take with us…

The Monday after the sale we were told that we would be closing the next week, so we started vigorously packing.

The next week came, and we heard nothing from the buyer, nor had our attorney.

This is when things started going downhill fast…

Our attorney contacted the buyer and, when got no response from them, the buyer’s lender.

He was then told that there was a problem… the buyer was listed on her mother’s mortgage… and we couldn’t move forward until the mother re-financed and taken her daughter’s name off.

Problem is, the mother – who works for a title company so one would think she would know this would create havoc – decided to do some upgrades on her house at this time and had it cut up and messy.

Lovely…

Our attorney, being an attorney, started to push for a closing date… the mother started pushing for everyone to mind their own business.

Then… suddenly, weeks after the initial offer sheet was signed; a glimmer of light appeared.

The mother was having her home appraised and re-financed while taking her daughter’s name off the mortgage and the closing was slated for July 1st (2 weeks after the closing was contracted to occur). We lined up help to move us on June 28th…

Hallelujah, we were closing!

…

Not so fast there chuckles…

The Friday before the closing our attorney called us and said the lender was backing off of the closing because “they had concerns about her (the buyer’s) income.”

WHAT!!??

She was pre-approved… everything was falling into place… what the hell happened in that short amount of time??

Turns out nothing… the attorney was told that by the mother, who had decided things were moving too quickly for her and decided to slow things down a bit.

Long story short (to late)… we closed last Thursday…we (technically movers, thank GOD!) moved out Saturday… handed keys and possession over on Saturday night… and we are now, officially, apartment dwellers whilst they build our house… which is expected to start now the first part of September.

This is a long-winded way for me to say that my life is starting to level off now and I’ll have more time to write… including a blogging first on Kemp’s Blog.

Next week I join my Dad on a road trip… a road trip in his 2006 red corvette convertible to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

I plan on blogging the trip… so stay tuned.

Didn't I just have one???

Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear MEEEEEEE, happy birthday to meeeeeeeeeee

I hate birthdays...

Breaking News

We have a closing date...

oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God...

More details as they occur...

What, me worry? Yes.

For the last few months I’ve been in a state of confusion.

Not in the comedic sense… but not in the overly dramatic sense either. Kind of a middle ground…

The writing has dried up… the ideas have vanished… and time has evaporated…

My life is, for the most part, good… I have a steady job, I have my health (save for this damn right foot that hurts beyond belief), I have a wife and daughters who love me, I have the means to build a house, I have the time to do things I enjoy… and yet… something’s missing.

And I have no idea what.

I just haven’t been in, the mood, to mingle lately… in real life or in the blog life. I read posts by my blogmigos, yet I don’t comment because I can’t think of anything to say or simply don’t want to…

I just don’t know…

So Kemp, what have you been up to lately?

Well…

We found a house, made an offer, had the offer accepted, put our house on the market, saw it sell within 3 weeks (in this market), had the home inspection done on the new house which showed that there was over $50,000 worth of repairs needed including electrical, plumbing and foundation work, rescinded said offer, threatened legal action if our earnest money wasn’t returned, continued with the sale of our house, decided to build on the lot we bought last year, realized we will be homeless by June 6th, started looking for apartments to live in while the house is built, got our earnest check back, started packing, started looking at house plans, found a house plan, looked for builders, found a builder, met with builder, found out it will take anywhere from 6 months to 1 year to build house, started freaking out, started to get ready for HoMu’s graduation this weekend (she finally finished her Master’s Degree), getting ready for The PB & The J’s 6th birthday, decided to have a family one at Chuck E. Cheese (eep) and another at our house with their friends from school and dance (double eep), decided to have a moving sale at the end of the month, found an apartment, realized I hadn’t gotten HoMu anything for her graduation yet and realized that we have to move by June 4th.

What’s up with you?

MeatLoaf (the singer, not the entree) and Tiffany (the singer, not the lamp)

I... I have no words to describe what I feel right now...

11 Years of Marriage

To My Darling Wife, on the Anniversary of our Marriage

Seasons change…

Years change…

Thoughts change…

Ideas change…

Lives change…

One thing that has not changed,

and will never change,

Is the beautiful togetherness that we share,

and the beautiful love that we share,

Happy 11th Anniversary My Love, I love you always…

and forever

Here we go again…

We did it about a year ago...

Then we rescinded it...

Then we bought something else with the goal of building...

But then, this past week, like you would see in some un-original romantic movie starring Hugh Grant, we saw each other... there was an instant connection... a sense that this was right... this was ideal... so, we made our move...

The wife and I put an offer on a larger house this past Saturday… again.

This house is our dream house… it is a quad-level with 2,400 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a kitchen that would make Alton Brown proud (complete with skylights), a formal dining room, dinette, family room, living room, basement, deck…

Did I mention it has an in-ground pool with a heater? (Did I mention that that was the only thing The PB & The J saw?)

So we made an offer… we put the ‘For Sale’ sign in our yard… and we’re holding onto our lot for the time being.

Now we wait… while we try and sell our house so we can buy a newer and larger one… with a pool… so we can move all of our crap stuff?My God… what the hell are we thinking?

Anyone want to buy a house? 2 (possibly 3) bedrooms, kitchen and dining room recently remodeled, new windows, new roof with nice landscaping?

Anyone?

Hey!

Go over and wish Back to Me's Samantha Jo, and her husband, congratulations on the birth of their first child...

Woot, woot!

Note to my Cardinals, aim for the crotch

It's as if thousands of men weeped in pain, and then were silenced...



From the Chicago Cubs official site: "Outfielder Felix Pie missed a couple of days early because of a twisted testicle."



Besides the obvious statement of, 'OMFG that's got to be painful!', the more important question is; How exactly does this happen to someone?



Though I don't think Cubs fans can blame Bartman for this one...

Wow...

does this bring back memories... kinda sad really...

Things that make me wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat

"Rosie O'Donnell and Fran Drescher are working together on creating a new sitcom."

Hello? Is anyone there?

Yes, I am still here... I am still writing, I just haven't had a chance to write lately.

Not only did The Peanut Butter get the flu, so did Honey Mustard... the two of them then got upper respitory infections... followed by The Jelly getting a sinus infection (but NOT the flu thank God).

I, knock on wood, have not gotten anything... wait, does my throat feel scratchy now? Do I feel warm?

Sorry.

This weekend marks the annual Chorizo-making fun with my Dad, brother and a slew of cousins and Uncles. And making a special guest-appearance this weekend is none other than that other missing blogger; Scott.

Hopefully I will have more stories to regale you with upon my return.

Now I'm going to take some Vitamin C and echinacea...

OH YEAHHHHHHH

Valentine's Day

No, you’re not having a bad flashback… I wrote this post for Valentine’s Day 2006… but I’ve updated some areas, so enjoy this post with 40% added material…

Tomorrow I will post the poem I wrote for my wife the year we started dating, which was published in my univeristy's poetry magazine...

I love my wife more and more each day. And each day I am grateful she is with me for eternity and has given us our beautiful daughters, The Peanut Butter and The Jelly. She laughs at my jokes, she compliments my cooking and, last but not least; she makes me a better man, husband, and father, and for that I can never thank you enough. I love you, always… and forever.Ok… how about some handy dandy Valentine’s Day statistics… cause nothing says love like statistical data…

+ 15% of U.S. women send themselves flowers on Valentine's Day
+ 73% of people who buy flowers for Valentine's Day are men, 27% are women
+ about 3% of pet owners will give Valentine's Day gifts to their pets (your dog wants Ghiradelli)
+ California produces about 60% of American roses, but the majority sold on Valentine's Day in the United States are imported, my guess for that would be because it’s winter here
+ 64% of men do not make plans in advance for a romantic Valentine's Day with their sweethearts (I would have thought that number would have been much larger)
+ Consumers will spend an average of $77.43 on Valentine's Day gifts this year

Did you enjoy those? I knew you would. Ok… how about some Inane Valentine’s Day trivia…

On this date in 1929, the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" took place in Chicago, Illinois. Seven gangsters, all rivals of Al Capone, were killed. People think that it was Capone’s men that did the killing but they’re wrong. It was the seven gangster’s wives who didn’t even get a card, much less flowers or chocolates, for Valentine’s Day… Remember the saying: hell hath no fury like a woman forgotten on Valentine’s Day.

Alexander Graham Bell applied for his patent on the telephone on Valentine's Day, 1876… guys, could you imagine how V-Day would be if Bell hadn’t invented the phone? I would say, but I’ve grown accustomed to my genetalia.

That some famous people have gotten married on February 14th? The Captain to Tennille, Elton John to Renate Blauel, Jerry Garcia to Deborah Koons,

What’s that you say? Now you want some... Historical background on Valentine’s Day?

As early as the fourth century B.C., the Romans engaged in an annual young man's rite to passage to the God Lupercus. The names of teenage women were placed in a box and drawn at random by adolescent men; thus, a man was assigned a woman companion for the duration of the year, after which another lottery was staged. After eight hundred years of this practice, the early church fathers sought to end it. They found an answer in Valentine, a bishop who had been martyred some two hundred years earlier.According to church tradition St. Valentine was a priest near Rome in about the year 270 A.D.(At that time the Roman Emperor Claudius-II who had issued an edict forbidding marriage. This was around when the heyday of Roman empire had almost come to an end. Lack of quality administrators led to frequent civil strife. Learning declined, taxation increased, and trade slumped to a low, precarious level. And the Gauls, Slavs, Huns, Turks and Mongolians from Northern Europe and Asian increased their pressure on the empire's boundaries. The empire was grown too large to be shielded from external aggression and internal chaos with existing forces. Thus more of capable men were required to be recruited as soldiers and officers)When Claudius became the emperor, he felt that married men were more emotionally attached to their families, and thus, will not make good soldiers. So to assure quality soldiers, he banned marriage.

Valentine, a bishop , seeing the trauma of young lovers, met them in a secret place, and joined them in the sacrament of matrimony. Claudius learned of this "friend of lovers," and had him arrested. The emperor, impressed with the young priest's dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to the roman gods, to save him from certain execution. Valentine refused to recognize Roman Gods and even attempted to convert the emperor, knowing the consequences fully.

On February 24, 270, Valentine was executed, but not before, while in prison awaiting his fate, he came in contact with his jailor, Asterius.It seems Asterius had a blind daughter and requested Valentine heal his daughter. Through his faith he miraculously restored the sight of Asterius' daughter.Just before his execution, he asked for a pen and paper from his jailor, and signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine," a phrase that lived ever after.Valentine thus became a Patron Saint, and the spiritual overseer of an annual festival. The festival involved young Romans offering women they admired, and wished to court, handwritten greetings of affection on February 14. The greeting cards contained St. Valentine's name.
And now you know… the rest. Of. The story.Still hungry for more? How about... Kemp’s Top Ten Valentine’s Day/Romantic Movies:
- Casablanca
- Pride & Prejudice
- The Philadelphia Story
- Reality Bites
- Before Sunrise
- Amelie
- Chasing Amy
- It Happened One Night
- Say Anything
- The Princess Bride

Still hungry for more Valentine's Day-related madness? Ok. Here’s... How to say “I love you” in other languages.

In Danish – “Jeg elsker dig”
In Dutch -- "Ik hou van jou"
In Esperanto -- "Mi amas vin"
In French -- "Je t'aime"
In German -- "Ich liebe Dich"
In Indonesian -- "Saya cinta kamu"
In Italian -- "Ti amo"
In Japanese -- "Aishite imasu"
In Latin -- "Te amo"
In Mandarin Chinese -- "Wo ai ni"
In Polish -- "Kocham cie"
In Romanian -- "Te iu besc"
In Russian -- "Ya vas liubliu" (which you would know if you’ve ever watched “The Great Escape”)
In Spanish -- "Te amo" (Wait, or is that how you say it in Italian?)
In Swedish -- "Jag alskar dig"
In Turkish -- "Seni seviyorum"

Now you want some Quotes about Love, don’t ya?
“Love is the delightful interval between meeting a girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.” - John Barrymore
“I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.” - Henry Ward Beecher
“Love is a power too strong to be overcome by anything but flight.” - Miguel de Cervantes

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” - Robert Frost

“In love there are two things: bodies and words.” - Joyce Carol Oates

“Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.” - Peter Ustinov

A Living Legend

Last night Honey Mustard and I went to a concert...

Who did we see?

None other than The King himself...

Mr. B.B. King...

At 82 years of age, the man can STILL grind that axe...