Top Five Things to do on a Cold, Rainy Day

Sleep in/Stay home from work
This is a given...there are fewer things sweeter or more comforting than staying in bed when you would normally be getting up and about. Rain levels the playing field (most people want to stay home on a rainy day) and gives a convenient excuse to remain in a cocoon of blankets or in the arms of a loved one. This often goes hand in hand with actually seeing a new episode of The Price is Right rather than catching reruns on the Game Show Network. If you actually get out of bed, your natural progression will lead you to the couch where you will probably watch more television and the choices typically consist of old episodes of Golden Girls, Wings, or Designing Women.





Rent/Go see a movie
Another favorite, this can be a great event...especially if combined with smuggling your favorite alcoholic beverage along with you. Tip to the guys: ask your girlfriend/fiancee/wife to bring along her "big" purse. It's important to be discrete in your consumption. Get caught and you'll probably get kicked out or possibly arrested. Done right, your drink might just help you forget about the a-hole talking on his cell 2 rows in front of you and the chatty high school twits in the row behind you. Please remember to drink and watch responsibly.





Sit by a fireplace
Cold weather is one thing, but cold and wet weather is another beast altogether. During these chilly events, whether you go ice skating, shopping, snorkeling, few sensations offer us more satisfaction than warming frosty hands and pink noses by the fireplace. Typically, the level of discomfort is proportionate to proximity to the fireplace. Gradually, we move back and away as we singe body hair. A great thing about fireplaces, or more specifically, fires, is that marshmallows and s'more's soon follow. YUM!






Eat a hot bowl of soup
Living in the South, I don't think most people appreciate a tasty bowl of soup. Creamy or brothy, vegetables and meat, clams, crab, and corn, soup is the ingredient to warm up your insides while the fire is comforting your outsides. The first spoonful of soup, delicately cooled by breaths that don't spill the soup from the spoon, slides down your throat, and can be felt all the way to your tummy.





Party with friends
There's always an excuse to drink with friends. Cold and wet gives you two excuses. I hope everyone has a great weekend. Be careful wherever you may roam and may your costumes be funny and original.







Coming up next week: Pictures from the Halloween Party and other seasonal posts such as favorite scary movies, great costumes, and gags to pull on unsuspecting trick-or-treaters.

Poppin' my Ebay cherry!!!

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that I am selling a fantastic Clemson bottle opener that plays the Tiger Rag when a bottle is opened on Ebay...the winner also gets free tickets to the Clemson Carolina game this coming November!!!

Let your friends know!!!

Bid here!

10/30 Just an update: The tickets went for nearly 400$
Thanks to the lucky Clemson student that outbid everyone else!!!

An Ode

Random Shout Out:

I would like to send a special message to the computerized credit system at Target, which 6 years ago allowed me to purchase my first item on credit. After 2 years of trying to pay off a bill of no more than 400$ I finally made my last payment and the XBOX was mine!!! With 24 months of financing and several late fees to boot, I had probably paid double what the XBOX was worth. You can imagine that I was surprised to find recently that my credit was actually in good standing. Since that time I have been able to purchase many things on credit and it all started with irresponsibility and credit mismanagement. How's that for luck?? Either the credit bureaus are really stupid, or they are incredibly smart. Probably the latter.

It seems impossible to avoid buying any major purchase without credit, unless you are filthy, stinking, rich. How many people do you know that don't finance their car or house?? I guess what I want to say is thanks to the person or computer program that allowed me the opportunity to have things without paying for them up front, and to slowly take more and more money from me in interest. Kudos to you...

Where in the world is Robb Calhoun??

Missing: Robert Calhoun
Last Seen:

REWARD:
Any persons having information regarding the whereabouts of this missing blogger can contact me immediately to discuss your reward. It will most likely be in the form of advice or compliments.

Robert was last seen commentating on the integration of African-American culture into the ordinarily Eurocentric Wall Street Journal. His sharp social commentary and obssession with ol' Milty Friedman leads many to believe that he may have been given a pair of cement shoes from someone close to the President. Some theorize that his last blog was a shocking and revealing expose on his years of being a congressional page for Mark Foley.

James Yeh has been cleared of all suspicion due to the fact that Robb was trying to help crank up his Google rankings in his last post.

The blogging community, or a small fraction of us at least, would like the return of IHNJ to come quickly. Personally, I am sick of seeing the same story about Roca wear in the WSJ. I get it, it's a white paper reporting on black culture...how taboo!!

Thank you for your time.

The truth is...Robb's lappy is broked and he can't currently update...I'll try to keep you up to date on his estimated return date...(I am trying to see how many times I can say date in one post)...date.

Date Night

In the hustle and bustle of everyday life it can be quite easy to forget how things were like before you were married. More specifically, in the beginning of a relationship, time spent with each other is accounted by "dates." As a matter of fact, women typically use a number of dates as a measuring device of when it is acceptable to sleep with a guy. Eventually though, you lose count. Once this happens, you begin to keep track of a relationship based on weeks, months, and eventually, years. I have lived with my wife for over a year now and sometimes I forget what it felt like to come to her house, pick her up, take her out, pay for dinner and a movie, and try to get some at the end of the night...so tonight, I am not going to take her out, but we are going to have a date night. Some leftovers and a couple of bottles of cheap white wine followed by cuddling on the couch while we watch Friends on DVD til we pass out.

I can truly say that I don't miss late Friday night benders with my friends in hope that we'll meet a couple of loose girls at a bar and get lucky. We talked a big game about how we would make out that night and the night never became anything we thought it would. I know that some people live like that and that's great for them, but I sure don't miss the disappointment of going out and coming home alone. I am glad I found the one for me and feel lucky to go home to her everyday.

Stephen Colbert on South Carolina

This is several months late, but I just wanted to share Stephen Colbert's monlogue on the difference between South Carolina and Georgia in peach production

Enjoy...

Go Tigers!

Pink noses, rain slickers, drunken and beligerant fans...this is Fall college football.

In our first taste of Autumn, the forecast in Winston-Salem was Sunny and Pleasant, however, the actual weather was upper forties, wet, and windy. Not pleasant, not pleasant at all. Polly and I came to visit family (sister Leslie, her husband Joey, and their 2-year-old son Evan) and venture into the home of the Demon Deacons in an effort to support our Clemson Tigers in their effort to better their record to 5-1 and halt the roll of Wake Forest in their apparent domination of the ACC. For the first three quarters, we felt embarassment, shame, and hostility as biblical Daniels in the Lion's den. As a foreigner in a land of endowment and tobacco, my family and I had no idea that the uppity undergrads of Wake Forest were so bitter and rude. I know that every college has their bad seeds, their obnoxious drunks in collegiate hard hats or bowties, but the comments, actions, and threats from the Deacon faithful verged on homicidal. With a flicker of Orange around me I felt confident that things wouldn't get out of hand. However, we endured the "SUCKS" that followed our spelling of C-L-E-M-S-O-N and the taunts from the "drunken asshole in the hard hat" who had written a clever phrase on his yellow, plastic helmet which read, "Tuck da' Figers." I have two theories on the choice of head gear for this "special" fan. Either he is consistent in his efforts to piss off all fans that come to Wake and he is protecting his head from sharp projectiles OR he has a pervasive emotional disorder that often leads to self mutilative behavior where he bangs his head...hard, on the closest brick wall.

All in all, I have to say that the last quarter was the most exciting time I have ever had at a football game. We played with poise and a little luck and all the trash talk that went uncontested was worth it. I have two things to say to these particular fans from Wake:
1)Now you've played a real college football team, beating Duke by a PAT doesn't count
2)Duck da' Feacons

A Joke

If Pinnochio has a cocaine addiction and lies about it, does it just make it worse?

The Autumn Cometh

Here in quaint, calm, equine-obsessive Aiken, South Carolina we don't have the typical seasons that are taught in early education. Ordinarliy the climate is either obsessively balmy or frickin' freezin'. Now I know what you are saying, "Robert, you live in the South...how cold could it really get??" Granted, we rarely dip below 32 degrees Farenheit, but our perception of the temperature is as real as any Northern forecast. Here in the South, we have no idea what it is like to deal with that type of weather and the effects that it has. We aren't forced to clean our cars on a weekly basis in order to prevent the road salt from eating through the lower half of our vehicles. During the spikes in fossil fuel prices we are only slightly exposed to the home heating costs that burden our neighbors to the North. And God forbid we see a single, solitary, unique flake of snow or see ice on any road...we will promptly close our schools and complain about how unsafe the conditions are for going anywhere. Overprotective and neurotic mothers will swarm the grocery stores like locusts and snatch up every gallon of milk, every loaf of bread, and jug after jug of drinking water until the shelves and coolers are barren.

I think its hilarious to listen to locals talk about how a different climate has no idea what it's like to be in their particular climate. People in the South boast that the humidity and the heat during our Summer months are unbearable, but we somehow make it through. Northerners can tell stories of times when so much snow fell that they literally had to tunnel out of their front door through the snow. Floridians and others in the Gulf area are annually threatened by hurricanes while midwesterners are plagued by the terror of Tornado Alley. These are clearly established patterns of meteorology and each person should be aware of the weather patterns of their particular locale. I don't care to hear of someone from Boston complaining that it's too cold when December and January come along. Similarly, with all sensitivity to those that have been affected by ANY hurricane or typhoon, if you live ANYWHERE in Florida, especially towards the south of the state, odds are that every year you are going to experience some sort of hurricane winds and rain. I can't stand these people that say year after year, "Poor me, poor, poor me." Get your crap together, sell your house, and MOVE!!!!