I'm so festive

God bless GIMP.

It keeps me somewhat creative while preparing my blog for the holiday season. To spell it out, I added some Christmas lights to my headliner up top. Its Crocktoberfest's first Christmas, so I wanna do it up right. It wouldn't make much sense to do up the blog with Christmas spirit in mid-July, now would it?

Psssst. Mid-July is our wedding. Keep the 12th open.

I also threw a little "graphics by GIMP" below my EXCELLENT LINKS section. Turns out the little fox (dog? no idea what that thing is) character's name is Wilber. I personally think that Wilber would make an excellent mascot for my blog as well as GIMP, though I'd never try to steal him away from his current job.

I admire your work, Wilber.

Baltimore (no Billy Idol)

The Dan Band was amazing. We got to the venue a little early so we could get some great spots on the floor, and were three rows from the stage. Reese took some amazing pics! I'm sure they'll be facebook'd soon. The best part had to be when Dan called the "christmas ho" up on stage. He picked an old dude standing right in front of me to go up and dance with the backup dancers while sharing in the christmas spririt of being ho-ish. He did well as a ho. He even got a free "HO" t-shirt. Good for him!

Beer was $5 for bud light pounders. After a pre-show drink, we passed on drinking for the remainder of the evening. Two beers for $10? I don't think so.

The next day, Reese's sister took us around Baltimore and showed us the multi-million dollar mansions that we couldn't ever dream of owning. Some of these houses were the most massive homes I've seen in my life. One house had two full wings of the house covered in skylights. You know a house is huge when it has an east/west wing, but to cover them in skylights? That homeowner has some serious scratch to throw around.

The one thing I'll take from this trip is that Rollo & I can't navigate worth a shit. Reese is like our own personal Garmin.
(LaReese, LaReese, LaReese, LaReese, LaResa-Garmin!)

In the midnight hour...

She cried, (balti)more, more more!

Headin' to Baltimore with Reese & Rollo this weekend to see The Dan Band, one of Rollo's most favorite bands. Speaking of The Dan Band, I want this to be very clear: Rollo has never ONCE ripped off a single Dan Band act. I'll not hear the lies. For as long as I've known Rollo, he's been acting, dressing and (more importantly) SINGING like a girl. If anything, its is DAN HIMSELF that copied Rollo. Maybe I'll make a facebook group in an attempt to liberate Rollo from the grasp of heathenism.

Hah. Naw, Rollo's alright. In fact, he and a mere pack animal (a ram) built the very venue in which The Dan Band will be performing. Sadly, a day before construction was complete, the ram died. In memory of his once alive animal friend, Rollo named the place Ram's Head Live - particularly because he liked his ram and he liked him alive.

While in Baltimore, we plan on visiting the sights! Like The Louvre, Space-camp and the official birthplace of the neon light!
...
Either that, or we'll check out a starbucks.

Its all gravy

Yesterday at about lunchtime I visited the Giant Eagle Market District in Bethel Park. I hadn't decided if I was hungry or not, so I took a real solid look around the entire place. I, of course, was on my typical hunt for fat-free foods. I found some offerings of soup from Campbell's that I hadn't known about, in particular the New England Clam Chowder with one gram of fat in it tickled my fancy. That's pretty huge for me as I'm a lover of all things chowder. Despite the chowder, I have to think the best thing I found was the fat-free gravy.

This changes everything.

Thanksgiving would normally come and go and leave me very disappointed. Turkey is fine, yeah, but what's turkey without the gravy? What's fat-free mashed potatoes without that delicious slop? Ted (the gravy king) would have dumped me over the side of a boat and into a harbor a long time ago had he known I wasn't doing my civic duty by sampling the various Thanksgiving gravies. The best I could do would be to have some ketchup with my turkey (an OK thing, but that's about it). Now that the Heinz company has come through for me, I've now got another chance at truly enjoying Thanksgiving!

Bring on the turkey. Bring on the potatoes. Bring on the football. But most importantly:

Bring on the gravy.