My philosophy is that it’s worth the money to just buy a new one. This goes with many things like such as (see what I did there?) most toiletries (bar soap, toothpaste, etc.), car tires (learned that one the hard way), and um, well right now I’m running short, feel free to help out in the comments.

Back to hand soap.

Seriously, it’s so much harder to get the hands clean with watered-down hand soap. You have to pump a lot more times, you are guaranteed to make a mess all over the counter, and you leave without really feeling like you have clean hands. All for what? Maybe saving a quarter per year? Maybe a dollar if you go crazy with it? Hand soap is crazy cheap, just buy a new one.

So, me being who I am, I searched the old INTERNETS for some pictures or something on this phenomenon. Apparently, you could kill somebody by adding tap water to your hand soap. Yep, it’s murder. See, tap water in soap can be a nice place for pseudomona bacteria to grow, which is the subject of this lovely picture. Psuedomona means false unit, which is totally awesome. It can lead to some sort of nasty bacterial infection, which could possibly lead to problems bad enough to kill people who already suffer from serious health problems like diabetes. Here’s the nitty gritty.

If you have a hard time believing that, take a glass of tap water and let it sit for a week then take a drink. You wouldn’t want to do that right? Yeah, not so good. So if you add tap water to your soap to save a penny or two at hygiene’s expense, you’re actually throwing hygiene right out the window and just smearing bacteria all over your hands. Nice work frugal idiot.

Just go to your local dollar store and get a new supply that will last you many months anyway (since you add water to soap, I assume you don’t respect hand-washing and probably skip that whole scene after just taking a leak, you dirty bugger).

And finally, I just played a game online against somebody named Gerd Hums.

End of line.

Something I’ve noticed over the years is how careful you need to be when using your horn while driving. I learned to really appreciate the power of the horn when I lived in New York for a couple of years. People there are very quick to let you know if you are slowing down the flow of traffic.

I figure there are three types of honks: friendly “hello” honks, heads up honks, and straight up rage/anger honks. I drive a 1999 F-150, which has one of the best stock horns in all the automotive world. It’s got about three or four different horn tones at once, and they are all loud and abrasive. That means I can really lay on the rage/anger honk, but need to use some precision on the other honks. There is a fourth “honk” but that doesn’t involve a car, my friends Didi and Dotti would understand.

Friendly “Hello” Honk: This one has to happen in quick little taps. It must be at least two honks, and can be probably no more than four. Any less and you sound like you’re a bit mad or something. More on this in the next part.

Heads Up Honk: This almost has to be two quick little honks. The reason it needs to be two though is something I learned a bit ago.

There was a weird turning lane situation where I was going to turn left, and a car was rolling toward me in the same turning lane waiting to merge with my oncoming traffic. I turned in a bit earlier that I should have I guess, so I tried to give two quick Hey I’m here honks, but I girly-pressed the second honk and it had no sound. I think that sent the wrong message. I ended up going back to my right, into my previous lane and driving around the other car. The large woman in there didn’t look too pleased with me. I was honestly just trying to avoid a crash, and she thought I was mad at her or something. Kinda dumb.

Rage/Anger Honk: This is my favorite, especially with my horn. This one you kind of arch your back, get your shoulders right in there digging into your seat back and fully extend your arm, getting plenty of pressure on the palm of your hand pushing deep into the horn. I prefer to go for at least 3 seconds, sometimes for up to 6 or 7 seconds to really let it set in.

Here’s my best use of this horn. At an intersection years back, I was stopped at a stop sign. I was set to turn left, and there were a few cars lined up across from me at another stop sign wanting to go straight through the intersection. So, the first car had the right of way. I let him go, and in this intersection, we weren’t exactly head on, we were shifted further to each others’ right than usual. So I started rolling out to get my left turn in quickly so the second car at the sign wouldn’t have to wait too long.

Well, that car’s driver didn’t feel it was necessary to stop, and I’m not somebody who likes to be disrespected like that. I had mostly made my turn, so I was nose-to-driver-side of this car. I laid on that horn buddy! The guy gave me a “Hey it’s cool that I just cut you off” wave, and I held the horn, with eye contact, until that wave turned into him showing me his longest finger. Yep, classy move buddy.

That got me to laugh pretty loudly. My horn has the effect of making people feel panic, which I love to watch happen. I don’t know, I’m a nerd and I love to kind of let people know how I feel about them.

This post is kind of lame, yeah, but it had to be put out there. People, use your horns! It’s a lot of fun, but be careful to not make them sound to angry. Even on the small taps, you’ve got to put some muscle into it, or you’ll just be awkwardly pushing on your steering wheel only to have nothing happen.

So get out there and start honking! Oh, also, don’t honk when you’re picking somebody up at their house. Seriously, be a decent human and go knock on their door. Maybe send a text. Just don’t sit out there and lay on your horn, so inconsiderate! OKBYE

We get people from all over, so it’s fun to hang out with them. It’s kind of like I’m going to different little hang out spots all over the world, but it always happens about three minutes away from my house. Kind of a neat thing. Just in the past month, we’ve had people from probably seven or eight different countries.

A theory I’ve recently concocted is that many Californians seem to think that California is not one state, but two: Southern California and Northern California. I would add to this that those same folks are unaware that California doesn’t actually end just to the North of San Francisco and Sacramento, but continues on for about another 250 miles or so to the North.

To me, it makes more sense to call the San Fransisco area Central California. Maybe they don’t know what California looks like, I’m not sure. Pay attention though next time you’re around a group of people from California.

Other than that, I’m still me, still riding sideways on the water, still rocking and rolling. Until next time, be excellent to each other!

There were a few years where I was into baseball, then I completely lost interest. That’s fine that it’s something that people enjoy, I can understand that people have different tastes than me. What I do have a problem with though, is the media’s infatuation with the soap opera that is now pro baseball. I am a fan of the NBA and NFL, and other pro sports, so I check ESPN’s website often. Baseball stories take up possibly half of the front page stories. They cover a couple dozen sports, and pro baseball hogs the attention for some reason.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that nobody really seems to care about the integrity of the game. They seem to solely be interested in the gossip of the whole thing. If this doping problem were to happen on such a large scale in any other sport, people would say the league is a joke and attendance would severely suffer. But baseball is America’s past time! So who cares that it’s filled with a bunch of cheaters, I can still go to the game and get drunk and pick a fight, woo!

That was dumb. The end.

Also, this picture is neat!

The days start out pretty calm, very humid, sticky, and warm. All those make for great morning wakeboard sessions. Then like clockwork, between 2:00 and 4:00pm, the wind gets a bit of a chill to it, then picks up by about 20 mph and the lake gets horrible. Typically lightning, thunder, and sometimes rain are involved. I guess afternoon storms are the norm here. So we’ll usually bring the boats in to the shore and hang out at the camp anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple hours. After the storm has blown over, the lake is usually very smooth again, and the day ends with a great sunset and a calm lake.

The coolest part about all of this is that when we bring the boats in, sometimes us coaches just play in the rain doing stupid stuff like little kids…while we’re on the clock. Like last week we soaped up the trampoline in the rain to see if we could jump up on it and slide all the way across. Then we went to the water and flew a big flat tube (the kind you lay out on to relax on the lake) like a kite. Good times, good times.

It’s the only grocery store I’ve ever gone into and found myself thinking “What a great store.” The few I’ve been into are clean, well stocked, huge, and have a great selection of just about anything I could imagine. We had an English fellow here at the camp a few weeks ago, and he went there with us and found that they had a British food section. I’ve never heard of such a thing.

So yeah, this post is really awesome and exciting, haha. I was just so impressed by the place that I had to put something up about it. How bout that!

As a wakeboarder, I get the wind knocked out of me from time to time. It’s kind of funny when it happens whilst floating in the water. Usually after a hard wreck, I struggle to get my mouth to where I can breath in some air, because I have just exhaled most of it upon impact. When I can’t breath when I get to that point, it’s a pretty unique feeling I suppose. I’m used to it now and just wait it out, but I imagine there are people who can’t remember the last time they had their wind knocked out. I love that phrase. It’s the only time our breath is referred to as wind, neat.

Anyway, I bet most people won’t get the wind knocked out of them 5 times their whole lives. Something I’ve only done once that I remember though, is falling down a flight of stairs. That’s another panic inducing moment. It’s one of the worst feelings because it lasts for what seems to be a very long time, and you feel like you should be able to stop yourself with each bounce, but just can’t stop until eventually you land on the floor. At that moment, your brain catches up to your body and you realize what just happened and wait for the pain to set in.

There’s no real point to this post I guess. I think I just realized that my panic level got much lower with getting my wind knocked out because of the frequency with which it happens. I wonder if other panic situations are similar in that aspect.

Neat, I just found an explanation of what happens when the wind is knocked out of a person. And as we know from Michael Scott, anybody who wants can edit Wikipedia, so we know we are getting the best possible information:
Having the wind knocked out of you.

I haven’t been to any other Harts stores recently, so I don’t know if this is a unique situation or not, but it really is super awesome. That’s all.