It seems it always goes that way. No matter what I do even if it’s what she’s implied, said or explicitly stated. I always find myself on the receiving end of a barrage of relentless criticisms. I try, I really do. It’s not as if I don’t want to treat her right but it’s almost as if I don’t have the capacity. Maybe it’s hereditary, maybe I was born without a specific romantic gene.

The other day for example, just before the Pistons game, I wanted to go to the supermarket to stock up on a few key items.

“Hey Hon, I’m going to Safeway real quick.” I added “real quick” so that she wouldn’t get the idea to come along. I don’t want to spend an hour there aimlessly walking up and down each aisle. It’s like she’s having me walk aisles as practice for the wedding. I think it’s in some way symbolic to her.

“Can you pick up the new Cosmo and my shampoo?” she yells out just before I can get out the door.

Uhhh. “What kind is ‘your shampoo’?”

“Never mind, just call me when you get there.”

We really need to make a damn list. Where are your local friendly neighborhood realtors when you need them? I could really use one of their picture endorsed refrigerator magnet-backed memo pads right about now.

That woman is so unorganized. Why couldn’t she have done this earlier herself?

Where are my keys? Damn. I run back in the house and find them under the TV guide on the coffee table. I really don’t want to miss the tip-off.

Why is there never parking when I’m in a hurry? But of course the one available spot has a cart left in it. You’ve got to be really lazy not to drag your cart an extra 50 goddamned feet to place it in the specified cart corral. Come on people.

Finally inside, I rush to the beverage section, well the liquor section to be precise, and grab a six-pack of Coronas. Onto the snack section. Oh, there they are, Snyder’s large hard pretzels. 2 for $5, nice. Okay, ice cream and whatever the woman wanted and I’m out of here. Wrong frozen aisle, fuck.

Okay, let’s see, Chunky Monkey. Now which aisle is the shampoo on for Christ’s sake?

“Hey, what was the shampoo you wanted?…okay, here it is…got it..yes. I got it…yes it says right on it ‘voluminous’ I know..K, bye. Fuck, I’m doing her a favor and I get an earful. No wonder I don’t do this more often.

I unload the four items on the conveyor belt.

“Sir do you have a value card?”

Oh shit, I forgot the Cosmo. Whatever, she can walk down to RiteAid and just get it herself. “Ahh, no I don’t have my card. Can I just give you my phone number?”

After scanning the items the total comes to $26.83. I hand the cashier my credit card.

“Sir, this is a cash only lane. You’ll have to go to another register to use your card.”

“I’ve only got $20 on me. Can you let me do it this once?”

“I’m sorry. We don’t even have a credit card machine at this register.”

The only single item that will bring it under $20 is her over priced bottle of designer shampoo. It’s going to have to go. The game is on in 7 minutes. She can just pick it up on her way to work tomorrow. “Okay, take off the shampoo.”

Alright, so I know she’s going to be mad at me. I didn’t get either of the things that she asked me for. I did try. I was doing her a favor why should that put me at risk if things don’t go as planned? I don’t even want to go home right now and I wouldn’t if it weren’t for the game.

I put the ice cream away, grab 2 Coronas, place the others in the fridge, grab the pretzels and sit down on the couch just it time to see the first shot being taken. Perfect. Life is sweet. Of course that’s when she comes around the corner.

“Where’s my stuff?” she asks.

“I couldn’t get them.”

“What? You said you had the shampoo. What do you mean you couldn’t get them?”

“It’s a long story. The games on. I just didn’t have enough money.”

“What do you mean you didn’t have enough money? The fucking super market takes credit cards.”

“I went to the cash check-out lane by accident.”

“But I see you got beer and pretzels.”

“That’s what I was fucking going for in the first place.”

“You’re such a selfish asshole. I ask you to do one thing for me and you can’t even do that.” she says while grabbing her purse and keys. “I do so much for you.” She continues on but at this point I’m paying more attention to Chancy Billups and Ben Wallace. Finally she storms out realizing that I’m not listening. I’m left alone to consider my actions and stew in my “disregard for her feelings.”

Alone! Alone! With my best friends: the Pistons, Coronas, Snyder’s, and Ben & Jerry’s. Perfect! Life is sweet.

I can tell you why she broke up with me but either you won’t believe me or you’ll laugh in my face. You see, every morning I get up at 6:45 and I wake Emma up once I’m finished with the shower. Well…I set the alarm for 6:36. I love the snooze button. I’m supposed to get up after one snooze but I tend to hit the snooze again at 6:45 at which point I slip into a half asleep half awake coma. A few minutes later I’m awoken by the fear that I slept much past the 10 allotted minutes of slack I’ve given myself each morning.

The quick burst of adrenaline now pumping through my veins has me jumping out of bed and running to the shower faster than if I had just slid through a puddle of llama vomit and pig manure. I know I’ll be fine if I just take a quick shower, I can make it to work on time. Figures; the one time I get it right. I get it wrong.

After a quick rinse I grab a towel from the shelf and glance at the wall clock, 7:09. Oh thank god, I’ll be okay. Then I hear it, quietly at first but it gets louder. Beep! beep! beep! beep! beep! beep. Damnit! I did it again. She’s going to kill me.

And that there my friends is why she left me. I never remembered to actually turn the alarm off, I just hit the snooze button. It wasn’t my tendency to leave the empty Trisket boxes in the pantry or that I feed garlic to the dog as a joke, it gave him the most god-awful gas. It wasn’t even my lack of stamina in the bedroom. My point of weakness was the damned alarm clock. I can think of many other good reasons why she could have left my broke, always tired, non-romantic, obviously self-loathing ass. But that’s what broke the camel’s back.

I didn’t argue with her. Matter of fact, it might be nice to be on my own for a bit. That way I won’t have to worry about such trivial things as the fucking snooze button. I also don’t have to waste attention on the toilet seat, pubic hair covered floors, expiration dates on dairy and other arbitrary crap deemed important not by majority but 50%. 50% percent, that should be a stalemate. Everything should have remained the way it was. She wanted me to do it, and I didn’t. That’s one vote each way. Nobody wins, nothing gets done. Fair enough. Right?

To be honest it wasn’t actually the annoying beeping that got her feed up with me. After threatening me with no sex for a month, she made me agree to turn the alarm off. I thought I could do it and I was right I did, only problem is I fell back asleep after turning it off. Wrong day for that. She had to be at work early to prepare for the biggest presentation of her career.

Not only did she arrive after the meeting ended, in her rush to get to the office she ended up colliding with the potential clients as they were exiting the company parking lot. The bad thing was that she would have still had her job if she hadn’t gotten in the accident. It seems her colleague handled the presentation fine and they decided to go with her company; well that was until she had them head butting the front airbags of their 2 month old silver BMW M5.

She got canned, I got dumped. I think it’s a fair trade. I did feel bad, I just didn’t really think it was my fault. I did what she asked. I turned the alarm off.

Have BBQ at a San Jose Giants game during a warm summer night and bring a big bag of peanuts. We have to play the fast ball challenge, catch some foul balls, eat seeds, drink beer and get some sweet autographs.

Play basketball at Campbell courts. I love playing on a warm summer Saturday afternoon. The kids are all playing with Super Soakers on the field near by. Someone always brings a boom box and plays some great tunes. Everyone is in a good mood and there are usually some pretty good games. We could have a barbeque afterwards.

Go surfing at Moss Landing and Pleasure Point. I love going in the early morning before anyone is awake. The sun rises just as you’re paddling out. The spray from the waves as you ride over them wakes me up. It’s so refreshing. We can go by Emily’s Bakery on the way back.

Run a bunch of 5Ks. Anyone else wanna do a few with me. I need to get into way better “running” shape. I would love to get into triathlons. There will be quite a few in the Bay Area this summer.

Go hiking in Yosemite. I would love to go for 5 or 6 days. We could spend the first night at Camp Curry like the good ‘ol days. Then set off on a 30 or so mile backpacking excursion. I’d like to go through Tuolumne Meadows.

Jackson. Matter of fact Jackson and Garden City but mainly Jackson. Boys weekend out. The buffet is so good. I could spend all night just at the buffet. That’s what I should do. I should run 5 miles every day while we’re there, not only so I can eat a lot but so I can waste some time. If I spend too much time in the casino I lose it all. Someone will have to hold onto my wallet. They have poker rooms too. We haven’t been there since they put those in.

That’s all I can think of right now. I’ll add more later. What else can you think of?

If you were wondering what to get me for my birthday (it’s not for a abit anyways), wonder no more. Someone out there please buy me a box Gummy Bacon. I probably won’t eat much of it but it would be so cool to carry around and give out to people. It actually resembles bacon to a degree. You could gross out quite a few people. I know my dad would freak. He goes nuts when I eat turkey bacon “raw.” It’s fully cooked! It’s like cold cuts. Ian doesn’t like it so much when I do that either, or is it Lance? I can’t remember.

P.S. I’m currently listening to “Get Drunk and Be Somebody” by Toby Keith. If you don’t have this song go to iTunes a get it immediately. I can’t wait for summer.

Ahh, it’s that time of year again where cute little girls in cute little uniforms attack you at the entryway of every supermarket chain from Albany to Anchorage. What better symbol of suburbia is there than Girl Scout cookies. They’re like boxes of love. A typical bounty of these delicious cookies lasts only long enough to have you buying more the next time you go to the market. In a house with seven kids, not including friends, these babies are like gold. You’d be lucky to get your greedy little paws on a couple of each flavor.

Additionaly, Dryers/Edys is putting out it’s seasonal offerings of three Girl Scout cookies, Peanut Butter Patties (Tagalongs), Caramel DeLites (Samoas) and Thin Mints. They all contain chunks of the cookies mixed in the ice cream. I haven’t tried these myself and sadly I won’t this year but I encourage all others out there to give in to temptation and give your stomach what it wants. They offer all three flavors in regular and light varieties.

“Anything to drink?” the waitress asks.

“Water’s fine,” I say.

“Uh…I’ll have Lemonade,” chimes Sam.

“Does Lance like Lemonade?” Sam ask.

“Don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“Cause he drinks so much juice.”

“That’s a good point. I’ll have to ask him.”

So I sent Lance a little texty poo. “Dude, do you like Lemonade?”

“Yeah dude.” He replied.

“Do you drink it often?” I inquired.

“No. Why?”

“Sam wanted to know because you drink so much juice.”

“ohh, lemonade isnt really juice. Its sugar water. I like apple juice cuz its 100%”

“Good point sir.”

“Well im glad i could answer his question. I expect a blog to be published about this!”

“I don’t, maybe.”

“Why not, you know? The entry could read, ‘Lance doesnt like lemonade as much as apple juice.’ the hits will flood in!”

*8 ounces of apple juice contains 120 calories and 27.2 grams of sugar.

**8 ounces of lemonade contains 110 calories and 29 grams of sugar.

I love kSno. How cool would it have been to be apart of this picture. Go 60’s! Visit www.ksno.us to hear the best overall radio station.

What does this look like to you? Well, it’s popcorn. The folks over at Dale and Thomas Popcorn make some pretty crazy corn. With flavors such as Sweet Georgia Pecan, Ragin’ Cajun, Peanut Butter & White Chocholate Drizzlecorn as well as the new additions of Buffulo Wing, Blue Cheese and Honey Musturd there’s bound to be something for everyone.

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They also have a blog titled PopcornCulture where you can keep up-to-date on all things popcorn.

Sam being a good son and washing his parents car.

1. Buy Gucci premium ice cube molds.

2. Go out with Kate.

3. Shred more Gnar Gnar.

4. Go out with that one bitch…Kate I think it was.

5. Man, that girl Kate is so cute.

6. I Love Kate.

Do Not Throw This AWAY!

- Max