Greetings and salutations

Peer pressure, Communism, Lyme disease, Global warming...I can't decide why I clicked on the "Blogger.com" site and logged in...but the name I had originally selected for this blog "It's cheaper than therapy..." probably best describes why I've joined the weblog world.

Let's get the introductions out of the way first. I'll be going by J, and you're clearly someone who must be incredibly bored if you're reading this. Good, now that we've been formally introduced let me catch you up on things. I graduated high school back in 1994, married my high school sweetheart in 2002, and our daughter was born in 2004. Our household also includes 3 cats who happen to think that they run the show. To be completely honest...I'm surprised one of them doesn't have their own blog yet.

More about me: I work in the health insurance industry (more on that later) and like most guys my age...I like sports (football & baseball particularly), expensive electronic gadgets, movies, and select TV shows.

I'm sitting here trying to think of something witty or interesting to end my first entry with and for some reason I can't decide if I should go with my "Unadvertised Sale" rant, or the story where my buddy and I come up with the coolest horror/monster movie concept ever. I'm going to pull a last minute switch-a-roo...and for the record none of this is fabricated or embellished, this actually happened...

It's 1994 and the trio of my future wife, my bestfriend, and myself are going to our local ice cream parlor for a treat. My mother asks us (me) to bring her back a hot fudge sundae made with her favorite ice cream...chocolate almond chip (nice choice). No problem. Backstory: my Wife had been trying to impress my mother for quite some time during our early courting stages to try to "out girlfriend" my previous girlfriend (who happened to be insane). Flash back to our story...so we go and get our treats and order mom's sundae. Problem...no chocolate almond chip ice cream. Now we were specifically instructed to not 'fall' for the "we don't have any of that ice cream" trick that they'd try to pull...we were to ask them to open a 1/2 gallon of the aforementioned chocolate almond chip ice cream and use that to make the sundae. My wife is...shall we say...averse to confrontation so we ask the fella behind the counter if we could buy the 1/2 gallon of ice cream and then have them make the sundae with it. He agrees. So far our plan is working flawlessly. About 200 yards from home a thought hits me like one of Zeus's thunderbolts.....What the heck are we going to do with the left over 1/2 gallon of "evidence" that we now had to tote inside? If my parents saw it they'd know what we did and throughly disapprove...and knowing my Wife I KNEW that failure on such a simplistic task was not an option. Here's what we came up with...me and Wifey-poo go in first, distract the parents with our successful procurement of the sundae, and then the best friend sneaks in and hides the "evidence" in the freezer and no one would be the wiser. This part is completed without incident. We adjourn to my room for debriefing. Upon further discussion it is determined that the hiding the ice cream in the freezer is an unacceptable alternative as my parents buy the groceries and they'll obviously know that there's an extra 1/2 gallon of contraband ice cream in the freezer. We sat quietly trying to come up with a suitable alibi if our ploy is discovered when...I came up with an alternate plan as to what to do with the ice cream. I turn to my Wife and with a completely straight face tell her "You need to go down stairs...get the ice cream...take it to the bathroom...open the window...and THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW INTO OUR NEIGHBORS YARD.". All is quiet in the room for about 3 seconds and then my Wife answered...and upon hearing her answer I knew she was the women I was going to marry...she said "You'll have to come and help me, I don't think I can throw it far enough". Some how my sweet, innocent, and gullible Wife thought I was serious. Well in the end we did nothing...zip, zilch, bubkiss...we left the ice cream in the freezer and no one was the wiser. I learned a few lessons that day but the most important was to never assume my Wife knew I was kidding...

When I get down, need a laugh or pick-me-up...I often dig deep in the memory banks for a visual of my wife opening a little crank out window in my parents downstairs bathroom and chucking a 1/2 gallon of Friendly's chocolate almond chip ice cream into our neighbors yard.

Thanks Honey.

- J