Another Costco Miracle

When I was a small child I had a hatred for Costco because it was built right on top of the cool field where we would go and pretend we were being chased by velociraptors in the tall grass. In later years I realized that it maybe wasn't such a bad thing that Costco displaced the velociraptors. But, yesterday, I was thoroughly convinced. We (some work buddies and I) have a weekly tradition of going to eat lunch at Costco on Tuesdays. Whenever someone messes with Costco Tuesday I usually get cranky at them. Well, this week I was the one to mess with Costco Tuesday and they were cranky at me. What they didn't realize was that I was inspired. Since we didn't go on Tuesday we decided to go on Friday. What a joyful occasion it was. The above "Super Demo" sign was our first clue that happiness was about to fill our lives. Apparently they were promoting food that people should buy for the super bowl. They had tables and tables and tables of free samples.

My friend Mike is here to share his feelings on the joy that he experienced.

All in all, I would say it was a Costco miracle. I don't even regret losing the velociraptors. Although, it's possible they're still there somewhere.

Third Moniversary

Well, today is our third Moniversary. I wasn't necessarily planning to recap each month, but the Moniversary series has been fairly popular, so for at least the time being, it is continuing. Here are a few of the adventures we've had in the past month. Of course, we had our first Christmas together, and that was quite an adventure. Robyn covered that on her blog. She also covered her first experience shoveling snow.

1. Purchasing a New Bed
We purchased the bed, but we have not yet recieved it. It should be delivered sometime in the upcoming week. It was quite fun, and the purchase process was a bit of an adventure. Our salesman had told us that whatever bed we decided we wanted, it was important for us to lay on it for an extended period of time to really be sure we like it. So, after we selected the one we were pretty sure we liked, we chilled on it for about 45 minutes there in the store. We felt a little wierd just laying on a bed in the middle of the store, but we felt that the research was an important part of the purchase. The fun part was listening(some might call it eavesdropping) to all the conversations of the other patrons of the store. You can learn alot about people by what they say as they are shopping for beds. A few of the most interesting things we heard were:

Salesman: "You should bring your wife in and you should both pick a bed together"
Patron: "I'm the one who doesn't sleep well. It won't really matter what she thinks, I just want to pick one that I like." (At this point Robyn thanked me for letting her be part of the process)

Another family came in:
Salesman: "What can I show you today?"
Husband: "We're looking for a king size bed"
Wife: "Our kids spend so much time in our bed with us, there isn't room for us anymore, so we need something bigger."

There were a few other interesting ones, eventually we got up off the bed and purchased it. I'm excited to have the bed in our house where we can enjoy it without having conversations all around us.

2. The Favorite Uncle Project
So my family has been slacking in the area of providing nieces and nephews. But one bonus of marrying Robyn was that her brother and his wife live close by with their 2 kids. I've had tons of fun playing with them, and I'm working on being their favorite uncle. There have been a few instances that have shown me I'm making progress on that project. The first is with my niece Addie who just turned 4. Robyn was on the phone with Addie's dad, and Addie asked who he was talking to.
Kenny: "It's Robyn do you want to talk to her?"
Addie: "No, I'm just too arranged to talk to her."
Kenny: "What does arranged mean?"
Addie: "It means I'm just a little shy."
Robyn: "Ask if she wants to talk to Jeff"
Kenny: "Do you want to talk to Jeff?"
Addie: "Oh yes, I'm not too arranged to talk to Jeff."
She then proceeded to tell me everything she knew about Kung Fu Panda.

The second story is about my nephew Ian. Robyn was picking up their family from the airport, since they were coming back from Maryland where they had gone for Christmas. There wasn't going to be room in the car, so I had stayed home. Robyn took my Mercedes to pick them up, so when they got in the car Kenny said something to Ian about how he was in Jeff's car. Apparently the rest of the way home he talked excitedly about how he was in my car.

3. The New Years Kiss
Robyn's family has a tradition of trying something new for the new year. We tried out chocolate flavored tortilla chips, sweet potato chips, acai berry juice and a few other random things. We spent the evening at home playing games (I dominated at Monopoly) and watching movies. The most important new thing was that we had someone to kiss on New Years. (Both of us have always been single on New Years.) My friend Jared was hanging out with us, so we did our best to tone it down for his sake.

4. Robyn learns binary
So one night we were in bed talking. I can't recall how it came up, but somehow we ended up talking about binary. I told Robyn it was simple to learn and I could totally teach her. One thing led to another and soon I had a whiteboard in the bed with us and was explaining how to understand different numerical bases. She first learned binary and then she learned hexadecimal. She's a genius. Not only can she convert both to decimal but she can even convert binary to hexadecimal. I married a smart one.

5. Robyn learns about tower defense
Often when I am looking to relax, I will play simple flash games on the internet. One of my latest that I recently beat is desktop tower defense. Before my obsession with that one, I was fairly obsessed with Bloons tower defense 3. It was alot of fun, and I even got Robyn to play it. She was surprisingly good at it, and I really enjoyed watching her play, especially when she would chant "Go super monkey Go!"