Here’s an interesting trick.  Take the laziest fucking thing you do.

I’m waiting.

Ok.  I get it, you’re really fucking lazy.

I’m trying to make a point here and that point is that watching TV is about as fucking lazy as it gets.  It’s lazier than playing video games (pretty obviously) and it’s even lazier than watching a movie.  How is it lazier than watching a movie?  Generally watching a movie either involves some preparation, maybe even a trip to the theater but at the very least for my friends and I there is always the post movie discussion.  An often heated debate unfolds about why this was the best/worst in the series or why you’re stupid for liking/disliking certain parts of the film, e.g.

Friend 1 “I thought the ending was stupid”

Friend 2 “Oh? Well you’re stupid.”

See?  A spirited debate weighing the pros and cons of the cinematic impact of this particular endeavor.

Where was I? Oh, right, tv = lazy.

So you take this super lazy thing you do and marketing being what it is, it’s not enough to sit their and stare blankly at the commercial for diet pop fizz, the companies that are paying millions of dollars in advertising want to know if you actually SAW their commercial for diet pop fizz.

Enter, the Nielsen company.

Actually, to be totally accurate the trouble started when they sent me a couple bucks in an envelope and asked me to fill out a simple survey.  As I tried to figure out how I would go about returning $2 to them for a survey I wasn’t really interested in, a thought occurred to me.  That thought was, “It’s probably easier to just fill out the damn survey and mail it back to them.”  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  I could have just kept the two dollars and thrown the survey out.  Unfortunately there are a couple problems with that logic:

1) It’s not that hard to guilt me.  I may have mostly shed my catholic background but the guilt remains.

2) This post would have been pretty boring if it ended with, “…and then I got $2 in the mail.”

3) Curiousity.  Probably the deadliest and least discussed of all sins.  Possibly a key ingredient to all sinning ever, now that I think about it.

So I agreed to participate and make my family and friends participate in whatever data collection Nielsen desired.  “You write a couple of things down and get a few bucks every week,” I figured.  Well, it isn’t that simple.

First off, there is a lot of data they want you to write down; enough to be annoying.  Second, you are supposed to have a “TV Viewing Diary” for every TV in the house.  Third, you are supposed to fill in each of those diaries whether you watched TV in there or not.  It’s this third part that really sucks.  We have 3 televisions, but we only watch TV on one of them.  The basement TV is basically for movies and games and the bedroom TV is for making it look like we watch TV in there.

Not long ago we cut the cable and ditched the DVR.  Our television viewing has nose dived between that and having a kid to watch.  So now, we have to fill out the same rudimentary information in each fricking log, and it is significantly more data than our actual TV watching is providing.  “No big deal, just do it,” I told my wife.  Actually, I think I amended that with, “or do what I do and just avoid watching TV so you don’t have to fill out the guide.”  Yeah, that was my solution.  If I couldn’t laze about in front of the TV I wasn’t going to watch at all.  No filling in paperwork for me.

Maybe they could just screw something into my brain and send me $5 a week without me doing any paper work.

Well, I better finish up the TV diaries before I go to bed, because they need to be in the mail tomorrow.  If they aren’t I may have to answer to Mr. Nielsen or be forced to figure out how to return my next $5.

That’s right everybody, 2013 is over and it has been a hell of a year.  I’m going to make sure that no matter how much 2014 bucks and screams it’s going to stay firmly planted over the saw horse.

Well…maybe that’s just a bunch of crazy talk but I think you know better.

We might as well look back at 2013:

Okay, not too detailed a look.  I don’t want you falling asleep reading this as badly as I am writing it.

• My wife and I had a kid.  This happened in June but I don’t think I did anything really worthwhile in 2013 prior to that.  I could pretty much skip the whole rest of this post if I had to because this is by far the main event.  I’ll sum up: I drove us to the hospital, I watched an epidural being inserted, I ran a vomit brigade, I cut the cord,  I cried in amazement, I watched stitches and cleanup.  It literally blew my mind when they left him alone with us and we didn’t have to pass some kind of written test combined with a physical challenge and a fight to death against a potential future bully’s father.
• A bunch of friends and family got married.  Seriously people, knock it off.  We can’t make it to all of them and then we feel crappy about ourselves.  If you’re going to go and fall in love just elope somewhere so nobody can be included and we non-attendees fall into the majority.
• “We” started running/trying to get into shape.  That’s right, the “Twofatlosers” started running shortly after my kid was born.  I think the idea of being able to keep up with my kid as he grows up helped motivate me.  Also, I was just sick of being fat and out of shape, which between my awesome diet and incredible lack of exercise was not a confusing place to find myself.  This was also where I got the idea for this blog.
• “We” started a blog.  This was to be a blog with a significant focus on our transformation and experiences regarding diet and exercise.  Well that bull shit is hilarious because in reality we, well I, didn’t even start the blog until we had essentially stopped our regular exercise.  I think a poor performance at somebody’s first 5K and recurring shin splint issues kind of sidelined our momentum.  Whatever, these things happen.
• I bought a new car.  You don’t need any details here, just know that it was to replace my no good, piece of crap Jeep that…well, that has actually served me well considering how much I actually paid for it and how long I’ve been driving it.  Actually it just needs a few minor repairs really.  Anybody need a Jeep?
• I installed landscape lighting.  You don’t really care about that but it was a year in the making so it was a big deal to me.  I also thought it would be a much better way to light my property than running extension cords and flood lights all over the place every winter, still not having enough light and pulling thousands of watts a day.
• My house got vandalized by some worthless puke(s).  This wasn’t really an accomplishment but getting egged and having some of my lawn ornaments destroyed was a first so I put it on the list.  I hope that whoever was involved grows up to be relatively successful so that some worthless jerk can ruin a lot of hard work they put into building a nice holiday display or vandalizes their house so that they have to nervously keep watch the next few nights.  It’s not like I was dreaming of chasing them down the driveway with a baseball bat, sword, or my bare hands.

I think that’s the 2013 highlight reel.  Oh sure, I glossed over a lot of great times with friends, family etc.  but who wants to really hear about those good things.  Maybe I’ll pepper some of that in over the next few weeks but just in case I don’t, know that if you were involved I cherished those activities and wish I could have a transcript of most of what took place.

In any case, it’s time to get serious with 2014 and I’ll let you know what the plan is soon.  Until I figure that out, these will have to serve as my primary course indicators.

This post is obviously only to fulfill my obligation of posting something on Frida…god dammit.

Well, there goes that shit.

Why am I tired?

• I work a full time job
• I was working on home improvement shit
• We started watching boring shit on YouTube
• I’ve been drinking Mike’s hard root beer for the last few hours

Oh my god, I just fell asleep in the middle of writing this blog post.  This is really bad.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, decided to use plastic sheeting to create a vapor barrier in my basement.  I think we got some serious bang for our buck R value.  Man, it’s cozy down here now…in the 70’s and we shut one of the space heaters off.

Also decided to build a bar height game table out of plywood and PVC.  Why?  Well, because we’re big freaking nerds and we like to play board games.  I wanted to be able to play them standing because it takes up less space and it’s easier for people to move around.

Dude!  We were talking about Dead Space sssssssssssssss earlier.  That game is crazy and I want to play the third.  I’m crazy for still typing right now…must go to bed goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I could only dodge this bullet for so long.  It’s time, once again to go to the dentist.  Yes, it’s that happy time we schedule twice a year to let us know that while we may be adults, we are incapable of taking care of our teeth properly.

I’ve know it was coming for a while but I didn’t really worry about it until a week before hand.  I gradually started preparing but the last few days, there has been some intensive activity and some late nights.  That’s right, I’m cramming for the dental exam.

I knew brushing wasn’t enough but…but…flossing SUCKS!  That wasn’t going to be a good enough explanation for the hygienist so it was time to hit the floss hard.  Twice a day, extra detail work, longer brush times, more mouthwash, less coffee…ok not less coffee.  Finally I’m down to the wire, exam in less than twelve hours.  I’d probably perform better with some sleep but instead I went with a brush-floss-water pic-2nd round of water pic-water-mouthwash routine.  My teeth feel like they’re about to fall out of my head which I will take as an indication of success.  I’m sure when I wake up in the morning I’ll have to peel my pillow off of my face like some sort of massive gauze pad.  Do they make Neosporin for gums?

The dentist is sure to be impressed with my extra-cleaned teeth but may be a little dismayed that it looks like I’ve been going at my gums with 60 grit sand paper.  Hey, something has to give.

I’ll tell you why, because there’s just too damn much stuff to do.  The problem is that I’m really tired so I basically don’t have the energy to do really important stuff, no, I basically just putter around looking up stupid crap on the internet.  Projects that I probably won’t see through for some time take precedent over mundane tasks that would be better accomplished immediately.  Oh, those boxes that need to move out of the hallway?  I can do that at any time so I’d better research this home improvement project that I have no intention of starting anytime soon.  The cleaning that needs to happen before we start getting holiday guests?  I’d better just investigate purchasing a new home theater set-up instead.

ARGH.

Seriously.

• Buying Presents – The internet was supposed to make this easier, right? NO. It has now presented us with an infinite number of options and feedback.  You can basically go through your gift recipients entire list of gift ideas and shoot them all down based on 2 bad ratings out of 1274 on Amazon.com; “That’s funny, cuz the thingy didn’t work right when I tried it and I threw it out and never tried again so I guess we’ll never know what was wrong with it.”
• Winter Weather – My relationship with winter weather is…well, did you ever see Fatal Attraction?  It’s like I want to take Winter’s bunny and put it in a pot of boiling water!  Wait…no that doesn’t make any sense if you’ve ACTUALLY seen Fatal Attraction.  I want to drown Winter in a bathtub.  Actually I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen Fatal Attraction.  How about this?  I like snow if it stays where it belongs (not on my driveway, sidewalk, vehicle or road) but there really isn’t anything else that I’m looking forward to from this weather.
• Cleaning/Straightening for the holidays – This is probably the worst offender right here. 90% of the year we are content to live in our ridiculous self induced locally produced episode of Hoarders.  The difference is that when the lights come on the people from Hoarders don’t scatter like cockroaches, they stare like deer.  Oh, first we try to convince ourselves that our friends and relatives understand and they don’t really care if it’s a mess.  Then at the last minute the cold bright light of reality shines on us and we realize that if we don’t take that pile of old nail clippings out of the closet and pour out the jars of urine, we’ll be carted off to crazy town…or at least stop getting invited to parties.

Well, off to bed.  I’m sure I’ll manage to ruin someone’s holiday by forgetting to do some dumb thing in time.

No, I mean, literally, this crap…I don’t have time for this crap.

Sometimes the holidays make you go crazy and you just want to murder people and it’s like,  “Hey, didn’t I used to like this time of year?”  I thought we were supposed to look forward to this and be having fun!?

Remember folks, the presents and all of that bullshit aren’t really what matters.  What matters is friends, family and spending time with loved ones.  Unless that’s the shit that’s driving you nuts, in which case stick to the commercialized garbage and focus on gifts, reindeer and shamrock shakes…or whatever flavor Christmas is.

In other news we have a recent increase in readership!  Now there were SIX new spam messages waiting for me in our inbox and TWO of them were in Hebrew!

Peace out fools.