The stuffed animals on the trampoline – hilarious.

Fuck you Nashville Symphony. Next time I’m going to pee into your fountains.

Well done, sir.

I’ve mentioned in the past that my daughter participates in the school’s “Power Of The Pen” stuff. It’s basically competitive writing. Last year she made it to regionals as a 7th grader – which is pretty good. We recently got word that this year she’s the 8th grade team captain. Plus, she’s doing the math team too (assuming that the dates don’t conflict with the writing thing) – it’s like straight out of Mean Girls. She’s a mathlete. She’s the only girl on the team and even she calls it Nerd Club. “Dad, I need picked up after school. I have Nerd Club tonight.” We’ll see how that goes. Also, word on the street is that there’s potential for an Honors Band invite in her future as well.

I get to talk about my son more during football season, but he does his thing in school too. He’s had his work make the district art show every year and as of yesterday he’s also received the school’s “Citizenship Award” every year too. They give one out per month. Not sure entirely what it’s based on other than being a decent person. It seems more like a “Your Kid Doesn’t Act Like A Complete Asshole” award. At any rate, it’s cool that he’s gotten one every year now.

That’s what my kids are up too. I tend to take a lot of it for granted. Sometimes I’m not sure we, as parents, make as big a deal of these things as we should – or at least as big a deal as other parents would. That sounds bad, but it’s not like we go, “Yeah? Whatever!” Quite the opposite really. But…you know what I mean.

My kids are still kicking ass.

EDIT – In the couple of hours since I wrote this, my daughter did indeed bring home an invitation to try out for District XII Honor Band.

One of my favorite bands was Saigon Kick (unfortunately famous for “Love Is On The Way” in the early 90′s). Owl Stretching is their Guitarist/Vocalist and a few other guys who’d been officially or unofficially in the band (or not) making new tunes and it really sounds a lot like old SK.

Oh, he likes to build hybrid human/mechanical cyborg demon dragon-beasts from hell that only Ninjas of Death can subdue and ride.

But your son’s little truck is nice, I suppose.

I cannot express how much I love this. LOVE!

I think he’s dead on. In fact it’s scary how much he took directly from my head…almost word for word. I’d also add that the same generation also grew up in uncommonly prosperous economic times as well – their entire youth as a generation was about unrealistic expectations top to bottom.

Ass douches!

For the record, 80′s hair band White Lion had Vito power.

The other place I expected to possibly use it (but hadn’t yet) was the car. The Camaro is pretty connected that way and there’s a USB port in it. If you hook up the iPod, you can control it from the radio. I never really used it because I was usually playing with XM. The XM trial ended a little while back and I was on the fence about renewing. It was cool and I had waited long enough to get the $77 offer, but there were only a few channels I really listened to regularly.

Google Music on my phone encouraged me to check out the Camaro’s Bluetooth Audio feature. I’m glad I did. If terrestrial radio isn’t sufficient, I’ll just use my phone. Between Pandora, the iheartradio app and Google Music, I have access to my entire personal music collection, radio from around the country and ‘personalized’ stations based on my preferences. Sorry, XM. I have no need for you.

And the phone can just stay in my pocket or console and I can snag calls with the hands-free feature. Pretty cool stuff.

In all honesty, I never really loved the iPod. I wanted to, but it’s one of the few tech/gadget/electronic purchases I sort of always regretted. It’s a unitasker gadget and that’s unacceptable and archaic (see my Kindle hate – sorry, Jeff). If a device I own can do the same thing at least mostly as well, there’s no need to a standalone device. That standalone device has to be pretty exceptional. The main thing the iPod had going for it was that it was my music specifically as opposed to music I like including some specific songs. Google Music just took care of that.

Best part is, today is also my renew date for a new phone. Looks like Santa just might be leaving me a shiny new phone (any advice on an Android phone?) this year. The timing feels right.

So today my wife and I are going for our lunch date and we’re stopped at the light on the side ride from our little community (for lack of a better term) where we turn onto the main road. There was a bunch of traffic for some reason and I happened to notice a white car was behind me. We made the left at the light. At that point he road is three lanes. I went to the far right lane as did the two cars in front of me and the white car behind me and stopped at the first light (that is always red when you make the left on the arrow from the side road). I contemplated slipping into the middle lane to get ahead of all the right lane traffic, but didn’t. There are also left and right turn lanes at this light, so it was a weird situation where the two leftmost and rightmost lanes had cars in them but the middle lane was empty. Not sure why I noticed this. Maybe because I almost got in the middle lane? Who knows?

It was after sitting there at the red light a moment that I noticed the white car swung out from behind us. My first thought was, “Oh, they’re doing what I was thinking – beating the traffic,” but then the car pulled up beside us and stopped. I looked over and the girl in the passenger seat was putting her window down and making eye contact. So I hit the button and my window went down – it was two chicks. Gonch even gets chicks when he’s with his wife going on a lunch date. I’m that cool.

The girl asks, “What’s your license plate say?”

I told her and she asked what it meant and I explained it was a nickname. It was pleasant. I’m full of notoriety lately. I actually had a dude at Traget recognize me a week or so ago from the CoasterBuzz podcast.

No idea why the plate is suddenly getting attention. But I dig it. That’s what a vanity plate is for, right?