I'm buying one of these for each of my brother-in-laws

Order your own here. There's also a democrat version.

This reminds me of my nephews

Cristoph Niemann is an illustrator who tells the story of his sons who are infatuated with the New York Subway system. Sounds a bit like Henry and Sammy to me.

Skunked

We've been trying to catch a skunk in the backyard to no avail. (They keep taking the bait.) But my nephew Sammy is super intrigued by the prospect of catching the skunk and is waiting for video footage of the capture.

I'm going to post this sign to let the skunk know he's welcome and lure him into a false sense of security.

Good Luck

It's been a long time since I've blogged. I've been extremely busy in every facet of my life. I've been facebooking more. It you aren't on there, you should be.

Here's something from one of my favorite blogs that made me laugh.

This is a cake featured on Cake Wrecks - a blog that looks at cakes that came out horrifically (and often hilariously) bad. Read the story behind how this one came to be.

They're serious

You probably can't see it but this house had estate sale signs in the front yard as well as a hearse parked out front.

Madonna & a-rod

Rick and terry got topical at this year's aaf outing.

Happy belated to Sammy and early birthday to Lisa

I asked this robot to deliver you a cake. Hopefully you got it and he didn't malfunction on the way over.

Joan's new blog

Joan has fallen prey to sibling pressure and got herself a real live blogspot blog. Read all about her new exciting life as a contributing member of society working for the Cleveland Foodbank. She's making us proud.

Doing my duty

Jury duty is so much fun. It involves lots of waiting around for them to call your name. Highly exciting. The entire group was briefed on procedures and stuff. The highlight was when they had to do another announcement reminding us not to smoke in the restrooms as the whole building is a non-smoking facility. Seriously?! Someone was smoking in the restroom? What the hell is wrong with people. They were pretty explicit about the not smoking thing in the video.

The video orientation was pretty hilarious. It was about 20 minutes long. 10 of those minutes are spent telling you what a valuable service you are providing to society. Then they tell you how rewarding it can be for you - apparently you can make many lifelong friends with the people you serve with. The closest I've come to a "friend" today was a woman insistent on telling me how delicious her sausage from the food court was "it was right off the grill and greasy!"

The video goes on to tell you about all the waiting you'll be doing. In fact, they show a guy using one of the tables to work on a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be called. I figured it was just for dramatic effect. I mean who even thinks to bring a jigsaw puzzle? I dismissed it as an editorial embellishment but I was looking for a place to set up my computer on some of the counters around here and there's a sign posted reading: Please do not use this counter for puzzles. So maybe I'll bring one in tomorrow.

I need to learn to play my banjo

Baby Loves Banjo
Originally uploaded by Kamepyon

before we have kids.

I dare you to tell me this doesn't make your heart smile.

A robot for Sammy

Went to the world of coke museum. It's pretty neat from an advertising perspective. They talk a lot about the marketing advances that the company had made through the years. There's also a 4D movie with a ferret that was pretty dippy. The best part is the 64-flavor tasting room. There's pops from all over the world. Beverly from italy is the worst tasting one in the place. The robot pictured above is a packaging robot. It could pick up bottles, pack them into boxes and even get new boxes to fill. Pretty neat.

Rick as Scarlet

I think I've discussed Rick here before. He's my friend and mentor from AAF-Cleveland. He's known throughout AAF for his penchant for costumes. They're usually themed to whatever city we're in, so for Atlanta he was Scarlet O'Hare. The best part is the reactions he gets from people not expecting a cross-dressing Executive Director.

The creepiest part of the costume was Rick's chest hair visible through the mesh top of the dress.

I'm back.

In case you live under a rock and haven't been following my adventures on www.markiella.com, I'm now married and honeymooned. It was a very nice affair all around. So check back often for more bflk antics.

WALKIES!!!

Don't know if you can see but that's a woman walking her cat on a leash through downtown Cleveland.

Dog tired

Chloe recovering at home.

It's a family blog

Created by OnePlusYou
You can let your kids read BFLK, dammit.

One of my pet peeves

Couples that sit on the same side of the table. Weirdos.

Go cavs: round 1, game 2

Ricky and vince fired up over the largest cavs's playoff win in franchise history.

New Pornographers

Tuesday nite Mariella and I went to see the New Pornographers at the Beachland Ballroom. A band called Okkervil River opened for them. They're were pretty good. The N-Pers were great too but Neko Case wasn't with them, so it was a little disappointing.

The six-million dollar dog

Stupid dog peeking around the corner.

Chloe had been throwing up all last week. We took her to the emergency vet clinic after the Cavs game on Monday nite. Four hours later, we left several hundred dollars poorer and with some pills (that we couldn't get her to take.) She seemed fine for the next couple of days but didn't eat anything all week and started puking again on Thursday. So Mariella took her to the vet on Friday where they repeated the x-rays and the bloodwork. The bloodwork was fine but her stomach looked odd to the vet. So she suggested that we take her to the animal hospital. So on Saturday we spent the better part of the day waiting around an exam room. The vet finally told us that she needed surgery - which isn't cheap. But Chloe pulled through and the surgeon pulled out her stomach: a liter of liquid (a lot for a 12 lb. dog), some string, some hair and some little green bits of plastic. Nothing was getting through past that clog of crap, so it sounds like she's all better now and pound-for-pound the most expensive dog on the planet.