Good Friday

O Sacred Head now wounded
With grief and shame weighed down.
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns Thine only crown.
How art Thou pale with anguish
With sore abuse and scorn.
How dost that visage languish
Which once was bright as morn.

What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee dearest friend
For this Thy dying sorrow
Thy pity without end?
Oh make me Thine forever
And should I fainting be
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love to Thee.

"O Sacred Head", Amy Grant

Yumlicious!

Westbound

Julie took me to Ike’s restaurant last night for my birthday. Very good food and I ate way too much. We each got the NY Strip which was very good, and then split a chocolate cake with extra ice cream for dessert. EXCELLENT chocolate cake. Yumlicious!

Most likely, by the time you read this post, we’ll know if we actually got any of the snow they’re predicting. Last I saw we’re now under a winter storm warning. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Looks like the Bombay Bistro isn’t open.

Julie got me some meat rubs for the grill and a barbecue brush that has a reservoir in the handle that pumps sauce through the brush when you need it. Pretty cool! Now to get some meat and start grilling again!

I LOVE hearing people hack up a lung on the bus. Ain’t nuthin’ sweeter.

I sometimes think it would be cool to work on a construction site. I’d want to be on terra firma, so no iron work on a skyscraper, but something like a dump truck driver would be cool.

Man, what an ugly green car.

In all seriousness, probably one of the best hours to listen to radio is Fridays from noon until 1PM CST. Dennis Prager, one of my favorite radio hosts, devotes an entire hour to happiness. Rather fittingly it’s called the Happiness Hour and I highly recommend that you listen to it if you can. Dennis happens to think, and he makes a valid point, that the most important thing you can do is be happy, and it’s really intriguing to listen to the topic that week and understand how it impacts your happiness. He’s on AM1280 here in the Twin Cities and you can listen to him on line as well. It’s not at all political, it’s just about how to be a happier person.

OK, now back to the frivolity…

I would really hate to live along a highway. They put those walls up but how much do they really keep the sound down? I wonder.

Lyric of the day: “Call the police / There’s a madman around” – “West End Girls”, Pet Shop Boys

Bonus lyric: “You think you’re mad, too unstable, kicking in chairs and knocking down tables.”

Weirdly White and Nerdy

Eastbound

We’re having this American Idol challenge at work where we have to pick the bottom three vote-getters each week along with who we think will be voted off. Since Tuesday nights are usually spin I’m not able to watch the shows, so I’ve retained the counsel of my friend J-Flo to help me with my picks. Thanks, J-Flo!

They say it’s your birthday. It’s my birthday, too, yeah!

Julie was saying she heard possibly 4-8” of snow on Friday. Or this weekend. Or sometime in the next few days – I don’t remember. What’s up with that? Where was this back in January when it SHOULD have been snowing? Although, I’m not so sure why I’m getting upset about it, the weather folks are wrong 90% of the time anyway.

Calvin and Hobbes is such a great cartoon. That and Far Side. Funny stuff right there, let me tell ya’!

“Pizza… burgers… San Diego… Detroit Tigers… the Buckeyes… peanut butter and jelly…” “Uhhhh… THINGS PAT LIKES!!!” “Correct!”

If you haven’t seen the YouTube video of Weird Al’s song “White and Nerdy” you HAVE to watch it. Hilarious! Click here to see it.

Lyric of the day: “Sweeter than cotton candy / Stronger than papa’s old brandy / Always that needed smile / Once in a while she would break down and cry” – “Sadie”, Spinners (Editor’s note: “Sadie” is a great song. If you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing it you should definitely look it up.)

Bonus lyric (also from “Sadie”): “If there’s a heaven up above / I know she’s teaching angels how to love”

Double the Trees

Eastbound

…and that is how I became known as George.

I was going to write an entire blog post backwards but I couldn’t reach the keyboard.

If some biological freak of nature occurred and all languages were wiped clean from the earth how would we create a new language? You know, like in Men In Black where you look at their little pen deal and it makes you forget things, what if something like that happened and we had no memories of verbal communication and couldn’t read or write? Would the “new” language we create be at all similar to what we had? I think this topic is deserving if its own post. The questions and possibilities are endless. Endless I tell you!

I like Fig Newtons. Just the plain old Fig Newtons, not all the different flavors and what not.

And what not. An interesting way to end a sentence or thought, and what does it mean? I like how it sounds and what not. It just seems to tie up a sentence well, and yet, I’m not really sure what I’m saying… and what not.

Speaking of names, Delano is one you don’t hear much anymore.

Just call me Angel of the Morning.

When I was a kid we lived a few houses down from this really great family. The mother and father of that family were like a second set of parents to me – we were quite close. I remember going down to their house and the father, whom I called Daddy M, would come outside in the morning with some burnt toast that he was eating for breakfast. He would try to get me to eat it by telling me that eating burnt toast puts hair on your chest. At which point I would come to a couple of conclusions: 1) he must eat a lot of burnt toast, and 2) why would I WANT a hairy chest?

That maid from “The Jeffersons” was a hoot!

Wesbound

The bus driver will announce the stop he’s coming up to in case you want to get off the bus. When we’re downtown he announces every cross street – 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, etc. If I was the bus driver I think I’d skip a street every once in a while just to panic people. “4^th…. 5^th… 7^th… just kidding! 6^th…”

So, was the first Doubletree hotel opened next to a hotel that only had ONE tree? “You get DOUBLE the trees at OUR hotel!”

Can I be Frank with you? I need someone to Jimmy the lock because I lost my key. I better be careful or they’ll call Adam 12 and then the landlord will Sue me for damages. I suppose I could just call my landlord and maybe he’d Grant me temporary access. I must have accidentally threw my keys away when I acted on the decision to Chuck my empty water bottle into the river. It did Bob for a while before it sank. I imagine if I DID find my keys they’ll be Rusty now. Oh well. I guess I’ll just go get a cup of Joe.

And before he leaves downtown he usually says “This is 696 express to Chaska blah blah blah.” I think I would throw something in there like “Albuquerque” or “Memphis”.

Lyric of the day: “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm, Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” – “Mmm Mmm Mmm”, Crash Test Dummies

The Byerly's Euphoria

Eastbound

We have a different bus driver on this snowy St. Patrick’s Day. A woman who got on the bus behind me asked the driver why she didn’t stop at the last pick-up point. Ooops.

May all your lights be green.

So…. Snow. Normally I like snow, but in the middle of March not so much. It’s time for spring, by golly. We’re itching to get the bikes out and be done with spinning in a small, hot spin room. Hopefully by the end of the month we’ll be able to do that.

Of course, some people ride their bikes year-round. Eric, who was our coach for our century ride in 2006, puts a few thousand miles a year on his bike and rides it everywhere. He’s one of those guys that is built to ride a bike. That’s not me. I’m more built to ride in a car. Or the bus.

Euphoria: A simple change to which syllable you emphasize and it’s what Danny DeVito would ask the voters regarding his wife Rhea Pearlman when it came time to vote for the Emmy Awards. “You for Rhea?”

“You can’t eat your pudding if you don’t eat your meat! How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”

Byerly’s: My friend Lee was in the market for a new home so we went through an open house. It was a bright, sunny day and when we went inside to look around Lee set his sunglasses on the kitchen counter. After taking a tour of the place we were getting ready to leave and the realtor, seeing the sunglasses on the counter, asked whose they were. I replied, “They’re buyer Lee’s”.

What else would a mountain be capped with if not snow?

Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage. A horse and carriage? Is that why, when you get married, they say you got hitched? And, if marriage is like a horse and carriage, who is the horse and who is the carriage? I think Julie would quickly say which part of the horse I am. Lovingly, of course.

Lyric of the day: “You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds! Stand still laddy!” – “Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)”, Pink Floyd

For Cryin' Out Louden

Westbound

I love Fridays. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that in prior posts but it’s worth repeating again. I love Fridays! And this morning on the way to Target to get on the bus “Friday I’m In Love” by the Cure came on the radio. Perhaps one day I’ll compile a list of Friday songs or songs about the days of the week. Wouldn’t that be terribly interesting?

Any of you smoke cigars?

There is a lady who rides the bus every afternoon, only the westbound ride, and she must have some terrible back issues. She can never sit for the entire ride and will usually stand hugging the seat in front of her. She brings her own pillow to sit on and never really seems to be comfortable. It must be terrible. I’ve had back issues but not like she must be going through. And she wears two pairs of pants – not sure what that’s about.

I usually sit on the left side of the bus on the way home, that way I’m not getting hot sitting in the sun. This is a repeat topic from a previous post so I’ll stop right there.

A seal walks into a club…

Champagne… not a huge fan…

I wonder if people driving in their cars can see me in the bus. Or is the glass dark enough and there’s enough of a reflection that they can’t see me? I can see them.

So, a high-end call girl sets you back as much as $5,000 an hour, huh? Boy, I remember in the OLD days…

Last night on Letterman’s Top 10 they had the top 10 rejected names for Dr. Seuss books. My favorite was “Obama’s in Pajamas”.

I heard SuperValu was changing their name to SuperDuperValu.

Lyric of the day: “Take a whiff on me, that ain’t no rose” – “Dead Skunk”, Loudon Wainwright

We Put the Fun in Fungus

OK, I had to quickly do this post. I have a site meter on the blog that tracks how many people visit the blog, how long they actually stick around (not long usually, not that I blame them), how they came to the site, etc. Well, I looked at that info tonight and I just had to share this with you.

I can look at a report that shows me if they found my blog via a search on the Internet, and usually its from people doing a search for something to do with toes or numbness (since the blog name is Crash 'n' Numb Toes) or Team In Training. But today two people found the blog by searching on the following words:

1) substance stinks in between toes

OK, I guess this is an understandable search. Everyone's feet stink, and maybe someone has some additional fungus issues they're dealing with. My guess is they didn't find any answers on the blog. But the one below is what REALLY got my attention...

2) sucked my nephews toes 11 years old

What kind of sick freak is this?! All I can say is "wow". I just had to share this with you.

OK, now you can read the latest post below.