Jim Flanigan Looks at the World
Turning the Mundane into Fundane Since 2015
I am leaving this weekend for a few days to holiday at a lake close to the Canadian border. Our destination is a place I vacationed at decades ago when I was a wee lad. I am prepared to have my memories far exceed reality. However, we may never make it there. Here are the instructions once we get close.
Continue reading “Lost is my Predicted Destination”
If you want, I don’t mind you nominating me for FOTY for taking my 15-year-old daughter to St. Louis for a working Spring Break last week. Maybe if I got her a t-shirt like this.
Although I probably want to continue to use that guy’s pic and not mine.
Anyway, I know you’re thinking, “Why didn’t I ever think of taking my family to the murder capital of the USA for some recreation AND forced work over Spring Break?” I can assure you that my daughter did get paid for her time, got to choose the restaurants we ate at, and got a company shirt out of the deal. (And we always felt safe.) She was happy, and that was before we even got to the attractions. First stop? The giant Union Station koi pond! Uh-oh.
Continue reading “Spring Break in … St. Louis?”
There’s already a plethora of beloved winter holiday characters like Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman, Krampus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (drinking problem perhaps?), and the Grinch. But there’s always room for one more to gather around my yule log. Introducing Pumpkinman.
We have no snow on the ground, but I did have rotting pumpkins. What better use than this? And if you are so inclined, make a Pumpkinwoman or non-binary Pumpkinperson.
Pro Tip: Magic marker does now write well on wet, rotting pumpkins. It’s probably for the best. The face I was drawing on the collapsing pumpkin was trending creepy.
As a new holiday tradition, I’ll give you daily updates and pics on how Pumpkinman is doing. Maybe Pumpkinman will get himself involved in all sorts of hilarious antics like the Elf on a Shelf. Perhaps he’ll be smoking a pipe, wearing a jaunty driving cap, growing a carrot nose, or injecting his stick arm with heroin. We’ll see what hilarious mischief he may be up to. Pumpkinman and I wish for you plenty of good holiday cheer and clean needles.
It snowed last night and into this morning. I am glad that we put up holiday decorations yesterday when it was a mild day with some sun. However, after getting this inflated, I am moved to ask a question. Is it traditional for reindeer to wear life preservers at Christmas?
After experiencing the whole hit or miss experience with Christmas lights yesterday, this cartoon gave me a chuckle.
May your holiday decorating go smoothly this year.
Are you up for a one question concert quiz? Lovely! Please read on. We have an extended holiday weekend in the US with lots of concerts in town. A couple friends and I were choosing between these two free concerts.
I know you’re thinking, “Who the hell is Mark Farner?” He was a vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter for Grand Funk Railroad, so certainly a front man for GFR like Gramm was for Foreigner.
Frontier Days doesn’t really take place on the frontier, but in Arlington Heights, a suburb of Chicago. It’s not that far, but I wasn’t up for a drive on consecutive evenings. We had to pick one. The setlists were compelling. Here’s a link to Gramm’s setlist featuring a veritable hit parade of familiar Foreigner tunes. Here’s the link to Farner’s setlist featuring slightly older Grand Funk hits.
So, quiz time. Which did we choose?
Continue reading “Concert Quiz”
Here we are on my 4th day of blogging.
That means it’s late for most people to start shopping for holiday gifts, but it’s still a bit early for me. I consider myself more of a pressure shopper. However, just this very morning, I gave myself a gift. It wasn’t easy, and it took some effort. I do appreciate the effort I put into my gift to myself.
I use Wordle to wake up and get my brain working in the mornings. This is before any caffeine or other stimulants that are typically found around most American homes like bennies, coke, crank, uppers, blow, speed, snow, etc. have entered my body. Consequently, I sleepwalked through many Wordle gaffes that I should have avoided had I actually thought about my guess rather than randomly mashing the keyboard until I make a word. I’m kind of a 4-try guy in Wordle, but those numerous early-morning Wordle goofs ran up my 5-try tally well beyond my 3-try total. Well, as of this morning, I am pleased to report that my 3-try and 5-try totals now match.
I know it’s not much, but on another grey morning while dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder, it’s a great gift to myself. I’m so thoughtful of a gift-giver to me!
Don’t worry, I have something specifically for you later in this post, but I first have a last-minute holiday gift-giving idea for everyone. Wouldn’t this look sharp on the finger of a loved one?
Continue reading “Holiday Gift Giving”
Here we are on the third of Twelve Days of Blogging, and I am thrilled to report that I am not yet out of ideas for twelve straight days of blogging.
Sure, not all of my planned blog ideas are monumental. One of the ideas I have is for a picture of “Merry Christmas” spelled out using toenail clippings. However, mine are not enough. All I can make is “Merry Chris,” and the one Chris I know is somewhat surly. I could settle for “Merry Xmas,” but I don’t want to disappoint you, the reader, by not providing the full, traditional Christmas salutation. I suppose I could use some older ones that I have stored in jars in the basement, but I really wanted them to be fresh clippings from this Christmas season. I guess you can just call me a traditionalist. Now I’m playing a waiting game for someone else in the house to trim their toenails to be able to make that post happen. I know you’ll be waiting on pins and needles.
Wow, this post about a true Christmas miracle really went off the rails quickly. Well, let’s get back on track. After already detailing a recent Hannukkah miracle, I am thrilled to report being witness to a true Christmas miracle involving my wife’s pumpkins (not a euphemism).
Continue reading “A True Christmas Miracle!”
With 2 weeks until Christmas, I best get some holiday posts rolling. I thought I’d begin by checking out our neighborhood for holiday decorations.
Except, I wasn’t expecting the holiday to be Independence Day.
But this one is more like it. I really don’t know how they do this every year.
Continue reading “Let the Christmas Decorations Begin!”
It’s nice that our neighbors behind us decided to install an airport landing strip in their backyard this holiday season.
I do need some trees trimmed in the back, so I’m not objecting to a small plane or two trying to land.
It’s not like we don’t have some of our own interesting decorations in our trees out front. Take a look …
Continue reading “Holiday Decorations in my Neighborhood”
My summer vacation is over. Sadly, I never did solve any of the mysteries at the old lake house we stayed at. However, we did have fun there. I took some time to touch nature.
Rather, nature touched me. And hey, what’s with not shaving when I know I’m going to have my picture taken with a dragonfly on my nose? And what’s with that wild hair from my eyebrow? I wish I had such wild hair on the top of my head. The family pics would look better. Here’s a family pic we took at a science museum in Milwaukee we visited.
Doesn’t that sound like a Scooby-Doo episode? Well, we certainly have mysteries at this vacation lake house we are staying at for a few days. First, I discovered this mysterious trap door in the floor in one of the closets.
Mystery #1 – Why was I rooting around the floors of the closets in someone else’s house?
Yes, of course I tried to open it. You can see it is screwed down tight. Fortunately, my ten year old daughter had a screwdriver.
Mystery #2 – Why is my ten year old daughter bringing a screwdriver on vacation?
But before I could solve that mystery, I received this mysterious text message from the owners of the lake house …
I haven’t posted in almost a week. Followers of this blog are rejoicing. However, questions are raised.
They say the week before a vacation and the week after are the 2 busiest weeks of the year. Add in business travel to the week before I take a vacation to make it even busier and less post-friendly. So that’s where I am now. On vacation, or on holiday as they say in the UK, or England as we say in the USA, or the Kingdom of Trumpland as they say in the White House, or Crazytown as I say. Ugh, a nice vacation/holiday post ruined by Trump. Let’s get this back on track with a pretty sunset pic from our vacation lake house.
Beautiful sunset notwithstanding, I do have problems with this lake house, and surprise of surprises, it has to do with a familiar subject …
Last week was my vacation week. We hosted friends on the 4th, and then headed out to a lake house for a few days. I came back exhausted. My wife told me that one day I was in the water swimming or on the water in a kayak, canoe or pedal boat for at least 6 hours. Whew! It took me a day to recover from my vacation.
Yesterday, we dropped our little 9 year old daughter off at camp for a week, and were so distraught that we went directly to have a nice lakeside dinner at a resort town. Although I have to work this week, we have made plans for every night while our daughter is away. I don’t have to schedule my pool time around when she and her friends are not splashing in it. I can watch R-rated movies anytime I want on the family room TV. I don’t have to respond to hearing “Dad” 50+ times a night. Is it wrong to feel that this is actually my vacation week?
While important things are happening world-wide, I continue to idle away on holiday. If I spend another hour in water today, I think I will officially reach saturation point and may have to be wrung dry. The place where we are staying, Bear Cave Lake, is decorated in a rustic, fun way with lots of kitschy, humorous signs. In an effort to log another blog post with virtually no effort, here are some of the funnier signs …
I saw no signs of bears at Bear Cave Lake, but did not venture into the Bear Cave which also appears not to exist. Whatever happened to truth in advertising?
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World 