Author: Andy Labis

By:

The Dude on the Right
My
2006 Christmas display is done.

Thank God.

And I may never do it again.

I
finally got all of the fake snow I needed, but I think I overdid it.  I
broke the head off of my new horse riding dude, but luckily it was a clean break
since I don’t have any glue – His head rests gently on his body.  The train
doesn’t work like it should (damn cow-catcher keeps catching on the track joints
and derailing it, and the tracks need a good cleaning so even when the train did
run it didn’t have a lot of umph).  The windmill bent so it doesn’t rotate. 
I think I had some soap residue in the cup I used to fill the wood mill scene
because it bubbles a bit.  And I couldn’t find a sniper dude to man the new
mountain post (and it just occurred to me that I should have gone to the toy
store and picked up some green toy soldiers – that would have worked perfectly).

I should have picked up some more "flat" snow to cover my window blinds.  I
broke the head off of Sally from Peanuts, one of my Christmas Tree decorations,
when the tree was "side heavy" and fell over a bit when I was trying to plug it
in.  The addition of the waterfall didn’t come out nearly as cool as the
waterfall I had when I was managing a Radio Shack.  And as I look at the
waterfall backdrop now, it looks like a crazed animal, ready to eat my village. 
The "mountains" I made aren’t very sturdy, so I can’t run the ski-lift. 
And yet, another issue…

Some
of my friends say they want to come and see my Christmas display.  Sure,
the Christmas display looks cool, but now I have to clean the rest of the
Dude-Pad before any invites are sent.

My Christmas decorating used to be very
simple.  I bought a fake tree one year, decorated it, and carried it up the
stairs, to my spare bedroom, still decorated.  The next couple of
Christmas’ my decorating took about 10 minutes – I would move an end table in
front of the window, go upstairs and grab my "decorated tree," carry it down the
stairs, put it on the end table, and my decorating was done.  Then, for
whatever messed up reason (I’m blaming a friend from high school), I decided to
start my own holiday village, and now, rather than taking 10 minutes to be
festive, it takes me days.  And it never goes as smoothly as I think it
will.

That’s
why I’m thinking of taking a wide-angle picture.

Yup, getting back to my "lazy
days of Christmas decorating," I’m thinking of taking a nice wide-angle picture
of my Christmas display, getting it enlarged to about 10 feet wide, and next
year, instead of all of this "decorating" crap, just hanging the picture at the
end of my living room, and suddenly the dude-pad will be festive.  No more
broken heads, no more trains that derail, no more lame waterfalls looking to eat
my village.  Nope, just a giant photograph to unroll at Thanksgiving, and
roll back up again after Christmas.

Life seems to have been so much simpler
when I was young.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Yes, I admit, it’s been a while since my last blog.  It is, for me, that
time of year when the holidays seem to get in the way of consistency, but from
tonight until the Christmas/New Year’s time frame, I’ve got a couple of weeks of
trying to get back to normalcy, only to have it thrown out the window for a
couple of weeks at the end of December, and then comes January, the "New Year,"
when we are supposed to start again, come up with new goals, and screw them up
within about a week.

Such is life, except my last week.

My last week of not
getting things posted was about seeing friends, and isn’t that what the Holiday
Season is about?  Now, because it is a Sunday evening after a long, weekend
reunionish thing, I’m just trying to get back into the swing of things, and I
will list a bunch of topics that I may not revisit, which seems to bug the crap
out of my sister, who still wants me to explain the resolution of
my
mom’s issues in buying a new microwave.  So, here we go, with some
topics from this past weekend which will probably fall by the wayside.  If
you would really like an explanation, use the comment link at the end of this
blog, and maybe those might get to a higher priority of explanation.  So
here’s some things from my last week:

–  I met someone who might be the
great or just grandson of Colonel Sanders in an elevator.  He was wearing a
nice skull-cap and had a very cute dudette with him (I hope this doesn’t get him
in trouble if it wasn’t him, or if it was him, and his normal dudette wasn’t
with him in Chicago last weekend, well, hell, I don’t know, like I said, it
might be the great or just grandson of Colonel Sanders, or just some dude with a
skull-cap with a very cute dudette).  She was skittish about being in an
elevator, and he liked to joke around by faking jumping up and down in said
elevator.  As do a lot of my other friends.  But not me.  We all
survived the elevator ride.

–  The reason I might have met the great or
just grandson of Colonel Sanders is because of dude named Lonnie, who seems to
know about everyone, or has one of the smallest degrees of separation I have
ever encountered.  Kevin Bacon might have six degrees of separation, but
Lonnie seems to have about two or three.  And that now includes some rugby
team members.

–  Tequilya:  Is that a good or bad way to start a
weekend of being with friends?  And Karen, or maybe it was Caron, or maybe
it was Carin.  All I know is she had a fantastic smile and nice boobs.

– 
Farmers vs. Dudettes in Short Skirts:  Who is sticky-shocked?

–  A
friend of ours got married, and no one seemed to know it.  It was a small
ceremony, only family, so should your life-long friends, or just people you now
just seem to know, feel slighted that they weren’t invited to the ceremony? 
I say, "No," but someone else I know says they should have been invited.  I
just hope my pledge-bro is happy, and like the heathen I am, I wouldn’t have
made the ceremony anyways.

–  Should smoking be banned from bars and
restaurants, or should you at least voice your objection to people you know whom
you wish wouldn’t smoke?

–  If you were in a bar, and really, really,
really, really, wanted to hear a song, would you drop three bucks into a virtual
jukebox to get it to the head of the line. (I have my answer.)

For those of
you out there in internet land, if it were up to me I’d like to explain the
entire Colonel Sanders story, but if you you really want to know about "Farmers
vs. Dudettes in Short Skirts," that story is great, too.  At least if I
ever get to it.

In the end, I had a great time this "Holiday Weekend" with
friends.  I hope you do/did, too.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!