Miss Ukraine Universe Hanna Nepliakh, Kurt Angle For The Ladies & Ole Miss Unleashes Secret Baseball Weapon
Goodbye winter, hello uncovered yard landmines & the baseball signup process
There we were in the man cave last night watching golf and college baseball -- well, my wife wasn't watching either -- enjoying the final Sunday of February and multiple different topics were running through my head.
Look, I'm not some barbaric simpleton who doesn't want to look out for the best interests of the kids. I'd just like to know what lawyer got his hands on local youth baseball and concussion money.
Slightly switching gears here, we go north to IKEA Saturday to get my wife some storage for her home office and we do the whole let the kids run through the 570 sq. ft. apartment thing upstairs at IKEA and then make our way downstairs. We don't put a single thing in our cart. We're here for office storage, not oven mitts that will disintegrate in five months.
Ok, the first storage unit is in Aisle 4, Bin 26 or whatever it was. So we head over to Aisle 4 and there's a border guard who holds us up.
"Do you have an official waiver on file with us," he asks?
What?
"You need to sign an official waiver to grab boxes in this area," he answers.
Guess who won a lawsuit against IKEA? That's right, someone had a box fall on him/her and now the Canton, MI IKEA (maybe it's the same way in other stores, no clue) requires you to sign a waiver before you enter specific aisles.
And then we get to the bin for the shelving. Nope. Not there. Empty.
It turns out that of the three items that we were going to buy, IKEA has exactly NONE in stock. I've been buying crap from IKEA for 20 years and I've never had this problem. A worker told us we can...you guessed it, go to the website and set an alert to find out when they get a new shipment of the items. Let me guess, we'll have to create a profile to get the alerts.
This world has done lost its mind.
• Indy Daryl is back on a Monday morning to share his latest thoughts:
Good morning on this last day of February! I am sitting here at the kitchen table, watching the final stages of a beautiful sunrise, firing off a couple of early work emails and catching up on Screen Caps for the last couple of days.
You have been on an incredible run, particularly with the dog stories and I have loved every single one of them. As my mother-in-law's family is full Swedish and emigrated from Finland to Chicago in the late 40s, I know a thing or two about becoming the IKEA catalog. I had never heard of IKEA until I got married, and now I swear there is at least two items from there in just about every room in our house....
Full disclosure: I am all in on the, now, NYT game Wordle. It is truly a delight. I play. My wife plays. And a couple of buddies play as well. We are always talking about what words we start with, how we try to figure things out. All that to say I had an experience yesterday where the first three letters turned green after my third guess, and I prematurely celebrated the win (I can take the obvious jokes....).
I then easily guessed the correct word on the fourth try but It got me thinking about similar gaming or sporting experiences. Ones that you are participating in, don't really mean all that much, but damn if they don't leave a sour taste in your mouth; but also keep you coming back for more. The best I could think of was watching what you thought was the perfect putt only to leave it half a roll short; you're watching the ball roll, right on line, tracking with the hole and then BOOM, the rug is pulled out from underneath and it just doesn't quite have the juice to get there.
What other ones can you think of? SC folks?
And yes Beau, my mom does make delicious cookies :)
Have a great Monday and enjoy the sunshine!
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It's great to have Daryl back. His winter hibernation is clearly over, and I guarantee he's noticed the earlier sunrises. As for this Wordle thing, do I have to create an account to play? Between creating the concussion awareness profile and the IKEA lawsuit prevention waiver thing, I'm wiped out. I need a vacation from the signup process thing.
As for Daryl's question about the gaming or sporting experiences that keep you coming back, I'm on record as saying duckpin bowling is/was my addiction. I still want a strike. And now I find myself needing to reserve a lane this week. Thanks, Daryl.
• Let's go to Mexico where Mike T. and Cindy T. have been since after Christmas, I believe. Mike T. handles today's report:
Greetings from beautiful Mazatlan Mexico amigo!
Wow, we are right in the thick of the world's third-largest Carnival here in Mazatlan. Today and Tuesday are the huge parades with over 250,000 people attending. Cindy and I aren’t into the huge crowds and late nights anymore, so we walked the parade route this AM before the place gets to crazy.
We attended several in the past and it gets mucho loco. The Malecon is closed to cars and the route is about three miles long. The crowds line the street to watch the parade and the huge fireworks show afterward.
Last night they did a reproduction of the battle of Mazatlan between the Mexicans and the French navy. The parade is cool, but the fireworks are awesome.
(Ed. note: Mike wants you guys to know it was $1 per Pacifico at the parade.)
• Jay J. writes:
I have two pair of Bose audio sunglasses. At a normal volume, no one can hear them from 6” away. But my ears don’t have pods in them so I can hear background noise, like kids, a wife, etc. perfect for the office.
Very rich sound. $250, but mine are prescription so the lenses about another $400. But worth it.
The only downside to wearing them, is now my wife assumes I’m not listening to her when we have a conversation. I have to take them off when she wants to “talk to me”.
• Mig writes:
Prior to downsizing I had a nice 5-acre spread and mowed about 3 of those. Moles were a constant battle. I bought every trap, bait. poison, and contraption sold at Lowes and Tractor Supply for over a decade. None of it worked. The poison might have worked but I wanted to see the body. A confirmed kill so to speak. One time I tried smoke bombs. They didn't work but it was cool to see smoke coming out of all the tunnel entrances and exits all over the yard.
Shortly before we moved I came on to a method told to me by an Amish guy while drinking Busch and some whiskey called Rich and Rare. It's not either of those but it was Delberts go-to for garage drinking.
First, you have to flatten all the tunnels and check them the next day to see which tunnels are the most active. Moles are most active at night. On a couple of the active tunnels you open a hole in the top of the tunnel and place a standard mousetrap on both sides of the hole. I baited the trap with peanut butter.
Place a 5-gallon bucket over this setup and make sure you put something heavy on top of the bucket. I used a cinder block. Check the trap the next day. In a 2 year period I got 5 moles. I had the bodies. Then we moved. Now I mow, I mean my wife mows, a postage stamp lawn on shale so bad a mole couldn't get through if he tried.
I have also included a photo of the complete tap list at The Bottleneck. Great Dive Bar in Danville, OH. Friday special is a fresh-pressed hamburger and fresh-cut fries for 6 bucks. If your ever near Knox County I can give the the dive bar tour. I'm also a quarter mile to the entrance of Apple Valley Golf Course. A nice little track in the middle of nowhere.
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What a beautiful beer tap. Now, at a place that does a $6 burger and fries deal, I have to believe a Busch draft is $2.25 - MAX. Anything over that and I have a big problem. It would be like the hip Chicago bars serving PBR draft for $5 so the hipster nerds can tell all their fellow hipster nerd friends how cool they all are because they drink PBR. I'm not going into a bar to brag about suckin' down Busch Lights in a hipster way. I'm rolling in there after a long, hard day of work in the yard to get a burger, fries and a tall Busch Light for under $10.
• Craig V. writes:
I think it was a big miss not coming down to the Indianapolis IKEA. You could’ve dropped Mrs. Screencaps off and you and the boys could’ve hammered balls at TopGolf across the street for hours. Coin flip on who has a more expensive day.
Couple things from the Saturday edition.
1. I think I’ve told you before, but I’ve been reading this since there was Screencaps AND the Daily Dump over at BC. Anyway, back in my younger years, I was reading strictly for the IG models—at least I will admit it. Anyway, the resurrection of screencaps and the community around it is far better than its predecessor. Now I still like the IG models don’t get me wrong. But I am all about the user-submitted content which is the absolute best. There are times I wonder if I’ve been around another ‘Caps loyalist and not even known it. We need some sort of acknowledgement in public like the Jeep wave.
2. On Karen Rovell…you mentioned not wanting to pad the pocket of Rovell and I couldn’t agree more. He sucks. But I do need a ruling on something…me and another buddy pitched in 40 bucks each to have Karen do a Cameo for our buddy’s birthday. Yes, we could’ve got Chris Hanson (the catch a predator guy) for the same price. BUT, our buddy despises Karen like most of us, if not more. So the question is this…was this padding his pocket or a great gag gift? I will hang up and listen.
Keep up the great work as always.
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Official ruling: Paying Rovell to do a Cameo for your buddy is 100% OK because you're doing it as a gag. Sure, he's going to flip the $35, or whatever his take is on the video, and buy a ticket stub that's going to drive me insane, but you'll always have that gag video to piss off your buddy. That's worth it.
• Finally this morning, LSU fan Joe M. is here and he's not cool with the dog stories readers shared:
Joe, I’m sure you’ve seen the story about Shaq buying a family a minivan and taking them to lunch, etc. Link here.
His reputation is not undeserved. Everywhere I went at LSU (Ag department, suck it aTm) there was never any shortage of older ladies that could run on for a long time with stories about what a nice, considerate man he was to them.
Picture a little five foot nothing secretary to an academic advisor schooling Shaq about how she knew his grades were down and he needed to call his momma, and him responding with, “Yes ma’am, I’m sorry Mrs. XXX,” that is Shaq. These women would dress him down for leaving LSU without a degree, after he’d been in the NBA for a decade! He’d take it like a champ and be as sweet as pie to them. Why was he coming back to the College of Agriculture when he wasn’t enrolled? Well, he liked his people. He didn’t have an excuse to be there, there were no statue being dedicated etc., he just dropped in.
He is 100% the opposite of Ron Artest, LeBron, Simmons and a lot of the recent NBA crew. People can get autographs all day long, but Shaq is the guy I’d want to randomly meet my family at the Houston Zoo and narrate exhibits for my kids. He’s seven feet of sweet. Did I just coin that?
The dog stories in screencaps are horrid. I click on screencaps to take my mind off of reality while everyone is introducing themselves on conference calls. I think a post with dog pics is going to be awesome with nice pics of beaches, balls, etc., and then all of a sudden, “Daisy died of cancer,” etc. SMH. Now I scan for pictures of dogs, and have to scroll over them until after the workday, because I can’t be a recovering puss on work calls. And that’s exactly what the posthumous dog posts do to me. It’s already dusty in here just thinking about some of the posts. Go away dust.
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Noted, Joe. However, sometimes the readers feel the need to get some tough times off their chest. I'm here for it all.
And with that, let's get Monday rolling. March is here tomorrow. Let's finish off February strong and head into spring.
Email: joekinsey@gmail.com
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