Tag Archives: ketchup

20 Life Hacks You Didn’t Know You Needed Until Now!

I wrote this a while back, we need to be done with these ridiculous Life Hacks.8

 

1. Remember the name of someone you just met by writing it down in an old tattered spiral notebook you keep folded in half longwise and hanging out of your back pocket. Bonus points for asking them to spell it and give country of origin.

2. Keep track of all of the cords around your computer or entertainment center by randomly unplugging them and looking to see what device won’t work. I can’t keep up with those little bread bag holders during the 10 days I have the loaf of bread, how am I supposed to avoid losing them long enough to build a cord labeling system?

3. Keep your car from running out of gas by looking at the fuel gauge and add more when the needle gets close to the E.

4. Look thinner in pictures by going on a diet and losing weight.

5. Use stuff like a paper clip or clothes pin or scotch tape or a chip clip or rolling tightly to keep your bag of chips from getting stale. Don’t use pant hangers, what are you some kind of freak?

6. Throw a Frisbee like….you know what? If you don’t already know how to throw a Frisbee, don’t bother trying now. There are some things you should just be able to figure out without the internet.

7. Make a grilled cheese the way your mom taught you and the way that has worked for a hundred years. Do you have any idea how hard it is going to be to clean the melted cheese out of your toaster, not to mention once you turn that thing on its side guess who has 3 years of crumbs to clean up?

8. Leave ketchup and mustard in the bottle they came in and set it out for a cookout. No one wants to scoop mustard out of your rusty old muffin pan and you know what is less than one dish to wash? No dish to wash.

9. There is a right way to put your daughter’s hair in a pony tail, dads, and it doesn’t involve the dirty hose from a vacuum cleaner. Stop being a stereotype.

10. Open a banana by pealing from the stem like a normal person. Stop making monkeys your life coach, monkeys don’t care if their banana is smashed but you have a shirt on.

11. Just turn your windshield wipers on low, there is no prize for spending your entire commute trying to lock in the perfect intermittent setting.

12. If you want extra ketchup grab another little paper ketchup cup. There is a stack of like a million right in front of you and they are free. Don’t hold up the line by unrolling the top of your little paper ketchup cup to hold 1/8 of an ounce more. What are you, a serial killer?

13. Use household cleaners to clean things around the house because vinegar smells like someone just peed on a pile of rotting fruit.

14. Get free on demand movies by calling your cable company when you finish watching it and telling them that your toddler did it by mistake, threaten to cancel your service if they don’t agree. (this one only works like 1 or 100 times depending on the direction of your moral compass).

15. Wear goggles when you are chopping an onion to keep from tearing up.  They also keep blood out of your eyes when you are chopping up people because what kind of psychotic freak cooks with goggles on, Dexter?

16. Use a crayon, brown marker, or furniture polish to cover scratches on wood. Or go out and find a place that will sell you a single walnut so you can try this thing you saw on the internet.

17. Keep milk from going bad by drinking all of it in a reasonable amount of time and never ever under any circumstances believe some nonsense on the internet that tells you to keep drinking milk past the expiration date. Gross.

18. Use a toilet paper roll for an iPhone speaker because that was the one decoration you were missing in your cubicle. Congratulations, you just became the weird guy people are afraid to talk to. Good luck dodging all of the ladies when you start rocking out to your toilet phone.

19. Instead of taking pictures of your friends holding the thing they are borrowing from you, get new friends that don’t try to steal your stuff.

20. Just pour your pancake batter out with a spoon or measuring cup. We don’t need it in a ketchup bottle. Stop creating fixes for things that aren’t broken. Have you ever tried to wash the inside of a ketchup bottle? Do you know how hard it is to pour pancake batter into a ketchup bottle? Just stop it, this wasn’t a problem or life struggle before the internet saved us from it.

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20 Pro Tip Life Hacks that will Literally Save Your Uninteresting Internet Dependent Life.

If this changed your life, is it really worth living?

If this changed your life, is it really worth living?

1. Remember the name of someone you just met by writing it down in an old tattered spiral notebook you keep folded in half longwise and hanging out of your back pocket. Bonus points for asking them to spell it and give country of origin.

2. Keep track of all of the cords around your computer or entertainment center by randomly unplugging them and looking to see what device won’t work. I can’t keep up with those little bread bag holders during the 10 days I have the loaf of bread, how am I supposed to avoid losing them long enough to build a cord labeling system?

3. Keep your car from running out of gas by looking at the fuel gauge and add more when the needle gets close to the E.

4. Look thinner in pictures by going on a diet and losing weight.

5. Use stuff like a paper clip or clothes pin or scotch tape or a chip clip or rolling tightly to keep your bag of chips from getting stale. Don’t use pant hangers, what are you some kind of freak?

6. Throw a Frisbee like….you know what? If you don’t already know how to throw a Frisbee, don’t bother trying now. There are some things you should just be able to figure out without the internet.

7. Make a grilled cheese the way your mom taught you and the way that has worked for a hundred years. Do you have any idea how hard it is going to be to clean the melted cheese out of your toaster, not to mention once you turn that thing on its side guess who has 3 years of crumbs to clean up?

8. Leave ketchup and mustard in the bottle they came in and set it out for a cookout. No one wants to scoop mustard out of your rusty old muffin pan and you know what is less than one dish to wash? No dish to wash.

9. There is a right way to put your daughter’s hair in a pony tail, dads, and it doesn’t involve the dirty hose from a vacuum cleaner. Stop being a stereotype.

10. Open a banana by pealing from the stem like a normal person. Stop making monkeys your life coach, monkeys don’t care if their banana is smashed but you have a shirt on.

11. Just turn your windshield wipers on low, there is no prize for spending your entire commute trying to lock in the perfect intermittent setting.

12. If you want extra ketchup grab another little paper ketchup cup. There is a stack of like a million right in front of you and they are free. Don’t hold up the line by unrolling the top of your little paper ketchup cup to hold 1/8 of an ounce more. What are you, a serial killer?

13. Use household cleaners to clean things around the house because vinegar smells like someone just peed on a pile of rotting fruit.

14. Get free on demand movies by calling your cable company when you finish watching it and telling them that your toddler did it by mistake, threaten to cancel your service if they don’t agree. (this one only works like 1 or 100 times depending on the direction of your moral compass).

15. Wear goggles when you are chopping an onion to keep from tearing up.  They also keep blood out of your eyes when you are chopping up people because what kind of psychotic freak cooks with goggles on, Dexter?

16. Use a crayon, brown marker, or furniture polish to cover scratches on wood. Or go out and find a place that will sell you a single walnut so you can try this thing you saw on the internet.

17. Keep milk from going bad by drinking all of it in a reasonable amount of time and never ever under any circumstances believe some nonsense on the internet that tells you to keep drinking milk past the expiration date. Gross.

18. Use a toilet paper roll for an iPhone speaker because that was the one decoration you were missing in your cubicle. Congratulations, you just became the weird guy people are afraid to talk to. Good luck dodging all of the ladies when you start rocking out to your toilet phone.

19. Instead of taking pictures of your friends holding the thing they are borrowing from you, get new friends that don’t try to steal your stuff.

20. Just pour your pancake batter out with a spoon or measuring cup. We don’t need it in a ketchup bottle. Stop creating fixes for things that aren’t broken. Have you ever tried to wash the inside of a ketchup bottle? Do you know how hard it is to pour pancake batter into a ketchup bottle? Just stop it, this wasn’t a problem or life struggle before the internet saved us from it.

 

 

 


Don’t Step on the Magic

Sweet

Saying Yes

ketchupbread

Because why not ketchup.
Stock Photo

Sometimes you have to give in to originality. You need to stop letting your daily decisions be regimented by social norms. Sometimes the only consequence of saying yes is your kid’s snaggle-toothed smile.

What I’m trying to say here is that I just put a turkey and ketchup sandwich into a school lunch. That’s right, I pack lunches. I also get daily lunch reviews that occasionally could make the harshest New York Times food critic cringe at times. I am still waiting for my Zagat rating though.  My initial reaction to this request was saying no. I mean ketchup on a sandwich is weird, Subway has 37 different condiments you can put on a sandwich and ketchup is not one of them. I don’t want my kid to be known as the ketchup sandwich girl.

Then I thought about it for a bit and wondered who made me the boss of what tastes good to my first grader.  Once upon a time I was a kid too and I am sure I was into some stuff that was weird.  I’m sure I got told no a few times to my suggestions of strange ideas and eventually put those ideas to rest and got normal.  I’m not suggesting that this was completely my idea but had I stuck with some of my outside the norm ideas we probably wouldn’t have had to wait this long to be able to buy containers of dehydrated cereal marshmallows that we are now free to enjoy on everything from Rice Crispies to spaghetti.

The world is going to do a fine job of stepping on the innocent magic a child is born with.  Over time a part of their creativity will get broken and pushed aside as they get normal and get accepted instead of getting fun and getting crazy.  Luckily a ketchup sandwich doesn’t really have any negative side effects and saying yes was easy.  The rest of the day though, I thought about how easy it would have been to just say no and step on a little bit of her magic without even realizing it.  I’m not suggesting I need a medal or anything.  A trophy maybe but not like with a big ceremony and a marching band and having to give some inspirational tear jerking speech while I accept a key to the city and a free Subway sandwiches for life card.

It isn’t like making a ketchup sandwich made her day that much more awesome or not making it would have crushed her but the situation did offer me a chance to reflect on how fast life can kick the childhood magic right out of their hands.  I’d like to try and keep it around a bit longer, I mean who knows what kind of amazing ideas could be floating around in her head afraid to come out because they may be weird.

Sometimes I think it is good to remember that being a parent is just as much about saying yes as it is about saying no and sometimes saying yes can be totally sweet.

 

Weak

Didn’t We Just Do that Whole Cicada Thing?  

They should have given this car better handling considering all the ladies I had to dodge trying to get at me and my sweet ride. Photo from cardomain.com

They should have given this car better handling considering all the ladies I had to dodge trying to get at me and my sweet ride.
Photo from cardomain.com

Ever have a memory that seems like it occurred pretty recently and then realize it was 10 or 20 years ago?  Man, that is like age kicking you right in the breadbasket (when I was a kid, I used to watch wrestling and “bread basket” was what they called that part of a male that rests below the belt and is very sensitive to pain.)

Last night while I was wondering when David Letterman stopped being funny he made some joke about the pending Cicada Apocalypse on the east coast. I looked at my wife and asked how this could be news when it just happened like last year?  Only it didn’t happen last year, it happened 17 years ago.  That’s right, 1996 was the last time the 17 year Cicadas took over both the east coast and the monologues of used to be funny late night talk show hosts.

17 years ago I was popping a Spin Doctors CD into my disc-man and putting a tape with a cord connected to it into my in dash tape deck, hoping not to drive over too many bumps because we all knew that anti-skip technology was mostly hollow promises and nothing is worse than being right in the middle of belting out “If you want to buy me flowers” and your music screech to a halt.

How could that much time have passed so quickly?  How have I been alive long enough to remember the great 17 year cicada outbreak of ’96?  Which, if I recall correctly, did not in any way live up to the hype so I am pretty skeptical of the upcoming reunion tour.  Life has a way of sneaking by and tricking us sometimes. Sure, I realize that I have had 17 years of life experience since the last cicada show-down and I’m happy I’m not still driving a faded blue Chevrolet Cavalier with a leaky sunroof.

Just like flipping through the pages of a calendar and thinking Christmas will be here soon because, how long can it possibly take to live 6 pages, time can seem equally as fast when you look back at things that feel like they just happened and then realize it was long enough ago that you still had a bowl cut.  I’m not sad about getting older and I am having a good time filling each year with memories just as sweet as that Spin Doctors CD.  Sometimes though, having time roundhouse you from out of nowhere with how old you are can be completely weak.


He Who Holds the Hose is King

Sweet

Summertime and the Livin’ is Easy 

I would say this is a sign of a job well done.

Well maybe not easy with all of the SPF 401K and Citronella smoke flumes, not to mention the hideous sight of dudes in those big leather Velcro sandals; but even though the season presents a few obstacles to avoid, it is totally worth it.

Who doesn’t love cooking meat over an open flame and being barefoot 93% of the time?  We had some people over to the house last weekend and I had a hard time being a grown up.  That slip and slide was like some kind of tractor beam sucking me in.  We ate and drank and talked and drank and had a great time with friends.  I like to think that I am just the biggest of the kids but after seeing how fast my 30 minute investment in filling water balloons was squandered by greedy children with poor aim, I had to fight the urge to use the situation as their first lesson in supply and demand economics.

When a kid is waiting for you to fill a water balloon the anticipation is almost palpable.  It is like little snippets of Christmas eve standing right in front of you in dripping shorts and covered with grass clippings.  I don’t think it is a secret, but the two most important ingredients in water balloon fun are mischief and someone dry and unsuspecting.  That person is usually a grown up and you will often find them on a power trip as they escalate the water fight to the next level by manning the water hose.

The night was basically all of the good things about summer wrapped up in bacon and tossed in a deep fryer and then dipped in ketchup. (I was going to wax poetic there and say something like “dipped in giggles” or “dipped in the setting sun” but let’s be honest, ketchup stands alone.)  In short, it was awesome.

Summer also brings with it one of my favorite words: vacation.  I am looking forward to heading down to the beach next week so I can update my summer wardrobe.  Embarrassingly, I have been stuck in “past season” Corona wear for way to long and it is time to style up and get my boogie board on.  Summer is totally sweet.

 

Weak

All Good Things Must Come to an End 

“The Sad Clown” is a painting of Emmett Kelly by artist Barry Leighton-Jones
(because I guess you aren’t supposed to just say “image via the internets.”)

I am a pretty mild-mannered guy but there is a good 45 seconds every Sunday night that I seriously contemplate burning my office to the ground.  What is that?  I thought that I would have outgrown that by now.  I may not spend half of the night moping around like I did when I was a kid in school, but there is no escaping that separation anxiety and postpartum weekend depression can be just as real in your 30’s as it was when you were twelve.

I don’t think that grown-ups are supposed to admit that kind of stuff out loud since life is so much bigger than just waiting for the weekend to get here.  I enjoy my career, work hard at it and sometimes it doesn’t stop to observe the Sabbath.  In a lot of ways I am lucky to enjoy what I do and for it to be bigger than just punching a time clock everyday.  I am grateful for that but at the end of the day, the reality is no one has to pay you for what you do on the weekend because it is the stuff that we would do for free that yields the largest return on intangible investment.

One day my daughter might read this when she is twelve and push it right back into my face saying  “AH HA! I knew it.”  Sorry about that fellow grown-ups, I know that this was supposed to be our little secret.

Weekends are great and time with friends and family invaluable, but that little moment on the occasional Sunday night when you have to swallow the dread and carry on like a grown-up is totally weak.


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