Two! How insane is that…..time sure does fly. We love you, you little stinker!

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Last night we did something new as a family, we went and cut down a Christmas tree! It was cold outside, which seemed like perfect weather for such an occasion. It was pretty neat really. It was like a drive through tree chopping. You pull into this tree farm. You drive up to the lady, she hands you a saw and a piece of paper that talks about not cutting your fingers off or something like that, I didn’t read it. You then drive down the hill and find a tree you want to kill. You then try and figure out how you can cram it into the trunk of your “car”.  Everyone else had a truck. I felt like a mafia hit man trying to shove a body in there.

Once I got that bad boy crammed in there we paid for our kill and drove on home. I wrangled that monster out of the trunk and into our teeny-tiny apartment living room and stood it up. That is when all the scary bugs and creepy crawlies came flying out and swarmed our living room. It was like one of the 7 plagues of Egypt! They must have held on for dear life barreling down I-75. Because as soon as we reached home sweet home they made them selves known. I am just glad a squirrel did not jump out of it.

Once we put the lights on it, and lite it up we showed it to Desmond, we was unsure of it at first but warmed up to it. I am sure before the week is out we will have pulled it down a dozen times.

I am getting old it seems. 30 is finally kicking in. I am turning into the grumpy old man that the younger generation hates. I have feared this day for sometime now. I can either embrace it, or fight it. I am not sure what to do. The past few weeks has brought me face to face with the “you kids get off my lawn ” syndrome as I like to call it. It all started with Indiana Jones. I noticed two words of bad language that have never been used in any of the previous Indiana movies. Why Spielberg? Ohh why? Did you feel the need to put them in the new one? It actually ruined the movie for me. Completely unnecessary. Now when Desmond is old enough to watch these movies with me and enjoy them, I have to make an effort to bleep it out….twice. We may just stick with the original, it was the best one anyway. So take that!

Moment number two was tonight at Sonic. I was trying to place my order into the speaker box from hell. The poor little girl on the other end was trying I know that, but when ”BoomShalaka” pulls up in the spot next to us in his low riding, 17 inch chrome rimming 92 Honda Accord, with a speaker system that can be heard and felt by the Mars Lander (who has a twitter account btw) and the ground shaking below me. She can’t hear me. After repeating my order 6 times to get a 99cent peanut butter milk shake, I explode. I scream at BoomShalaka to turn his bloody radio down, he pretends to not hear me, and drives off. Then to make matters worse, the girl keeps calling me “Mam”. This has been a thorn in my side for most of my life, I am always mistaken for a Mam on the phone, I don’t know why, I guess I talk softly. I firmly and deeply in the manliest voice I can, I  speak into the speaker system, and say, “its Siiiiiiiirrrrrrr”. She doesn’t care, now shes mad at me. I can totally tell from her 15 year old tude, whatev’s! At this point I am just beat down, I politely as I can beg “please lady I just want my freakin milkshake, before I have a stroke”. Desmond slept through the whole thing. Jackie laughed and reminded me of my blood pressure. At that point I relized I just needed to let it go, and suck on my peanutbuttery goodness.

Some people say 30 is the new 21. I am beginning to think 30 is the new 60. However I will fight to remain young, and pray for patience. I can laugh at myself, I promise. Look at this blog for crying out loud. Desmond’s picture today is a representation of how I feel. Sometimes I want to just pull my hair out. He however makes it look so cute, thats something I am not sure I can pull off nearly as well.

Thank you to all who looked for my wallet over the holidays. I found it last night. It would seem it was in my camera bag all along, just like I thought, however it was in a pocket that I failed to see. So I am a nard. I looked and emptied that bag 3 times. I failed to see the side pocket. I apologize to all who hunted to no end to help me find it.

Thanks.

So in the last 24 hours My Digital Eye site has had a flurry of web hits. I was featured on a few popular photo blogs so I got a lot of inbound hits from them. Pretty cool to watch and see through out the day. I am sure it will slow down, but it is fun to ride the global wave for a day.

What started out as a practice joke by Yoda turned into a bloody battle between rivals. Across the hall from my office lies Yoda, who keeps guard of my buddy Chad’s desk. On my desk Darth Tator who protects me and my belongings each day. When Yoda tried to wear his helmet, it turned ugly, and over the course of two days an ugly battle ensued. Here are some snaps of the battle…..

What you are about to see if not for the weak hearted…..Viewer Discretion is Advised.

I hope a lesson can be learned from this, to love and not hate.

My mother and grandmother would say the strangest things to me as a child. Many times I knew what they meant, but had no idea what it had to do with what I was doing wrong. My grandmother would yell at me down the driveway “STOP ACING THE MAGGOT! Ok, so let’s think about this, I knew this meant for me stop doing what I was doing, but maggots? acting? I’m confused. “You’re a right eejit” she would say, “I am”? I would ask…I thought I was Irish. “ohh you think you’re a right article”. You mean I am in the paper? “Now wipe that puss off your face” she would tell me, as I try and eat my cabbage, potatoes with a side of sheep hearts.

My mom was just as confusing, she would say things to me that were just impossible when you think about it. Like when she would grab me by the ear and say “look at how filthy the inside of your ears are, just look at them! Are you trying to grow potatoes in there?” Ok 1st off, look at the inside of my ears? Are you serious? I tried, it’s not possible. 2nd, potatoes? Growing in my ear? That would be a right sight to see. The visual imagery alone is enough to scare me into cleaning my ears daily. “Gregory Hogan, if and when you fall off that wall and break both your legs, don’t come running to me!” Again, not possible.

I have also been called lots of interesting things in my life, Irish people have the strangest names for children who need a good telling off, this will be the clean version of that list. Boyo, eejit, git, article, divil, dosser, gobshite, squealer, and thick. I am sure there are tons more, but I am just jadded from writing, and I think I will now go hit the sheets for the night.

*WARNING* I just read that Conkers or “Hourse Chestnuts/Buckeye’s” are highly poisonous and can kill you if eatten. DO NOT EAT. I do remember tasting one when I was a a kid, that might explain a lot.

Autum is here and the leaves are starting to fall. This is the time of year for all young boys in Ireland to play a game called “Conkers”. The school I went to had four conker trees that grew along the back of it, these were huge tree’s, and every year they would produce conkers. What is a conker? It is a beautiful brown smooth shiney nut about as big as a golf ball. The are very hard like a chestnut. The game conkers is played like this. You take a conker and drill a hole in it, then take a shoe lace and tie a knot in one end. Run the other end through the hole in the conker until it sits nicley at the other end with the knot. Now you would find another person with the same setup and one person would hold their conker out so it hung from their hand. The other person would swing their conker into it and you would go back and forth until on broke, if yours broke, you have been conkered. Some kids would try and be smart and have conkers froozen from the year before, but these were easy to spot, because the conker would no longer have the nice brown shine a new conker has. There was always a great big hunt each morning before class started for a great big conker that may have fallen from one of the trees the night before. When one was found it was the talk of the school. I have not seen a conker tree here in the USA. This past time was was great and there were a lot of good times, and a lot of heart breaks when a boy would have his conker smashed to smithereens by another boy. Espically when that conker had been king of the hill, and its reign was over. It was sometimes a boys 1st life lesson in defeat. If I had to pick a “thing” that reminded me of Autum in Ireland more then anything it would be the conkers, they are wrapped in a very spikey casing, but once you crack open the shell the prize that is inside was, well….beautiful. Much like people in the world. It’s what is inside that matters, and usually most people are just conkers. (hahaa, get it? I’m so whitty) Anyway Google tells me they are Horse Chestnuts. Does anyone know if we have them here in the USA? To me they will always be conkers. I sure wish I had one.

Speaking of Chupacabras! Today is Possum Gammy’s Birthday! As we all know today another Limerick is released, although there was an early preview of this Limerick last week, that was only the Beta Version, it was still in it’s early stages. So today will be it’s official release. Happy Birthday Possum, I hope you get a big gut full of HGTV and Starbucks Coffee.

There once was a possum named grammy
who drinks more Starbucks then all of Miami
shes a crafty ninja by trade, who never gets paid
and she sleeps by the telly in her jammy’s