Trop's most excellent Halloween

We had so much fun this year for Halloween. In years past, we've partied with folks from the college and always thought it was a lot fun.

We didn't know what we were missing until this year. Friends that we've gotten to know through our cafe invited us to their party. OMG it was fun.

King Tut was our host, and here I am taunting him with my whip. The man was a shameless flirt who kept stealing my whip and fondling my wife's breasts.

We love this guy and his wife, but we're a little nervous they might be swingers: swingers who want to swing with us. Seriously.

[Is this an "occupational hazard" of being a lesbian that I'm just now discovering?]

For the record, Court and I aren't swingers. Though to be honest, we might reconsider if it meant spending quality time alone with Tut's wife. She's HOT.

We met a lot of new people, including a few French couples who are in East Jesus for a year (their French company's US headquarters are here, and Tut is an engineer at the company). They taught us a really fun game they call Wolf. It's actually called Werewolves Of Millers Hollow.

I hate games, yet I thoroughly enjoyed this one. That's probably because Wolf requires no skill. I suck at games of skill. Anyway, if you like games, especially social/group games, you will like this one. I'm sure of it. Here's a version that you can play with a regular deck of cards.

It's not a bong, it's not a pipe

Turn down your speakers, the train was going by when I took this...

End of summer purge

I'm sorry to see summer come to an end. It's been a good summer. It's the easy time of my calendar. Soon financial aid season will be upon me and I'll be at my laptop for hours upon hours, days and weeks at a stretch. Not looking forward to that. In fact, I'm dreading it.

I had my annual physical last week and though I don't have all the lab results yet, I don't expect any surprises. I'm feeling better than I have in a long time. The coughing that had me down during spring (likely allergies), is long gone. The nausea that began last year and worsened this past spring is also gone. It left with Celexa.

Speaking of Celexa, I think I'm finally through the withdrawal. Looking back on it, the process probably hit its apex when I was in Oregon in June. I was so miserable that weekend I wanted to die. I wasn't depressed or suicidal. I just wanted to die. Hard to explain. It's all behind me thankfully. I feel great, both emotionally and physically.

I think my thyroid may be off kilter a bit, so I half-expect to get a call from my doctor to change my Levoxyl dosage. I say half-expect because if my thyroid was off like I think it is, I'd be dropping a lot more weight. I have been dropping weight, but it's because I've been working at it.

After a seven month stretch when I took a break from weight loss and rarely exercised, I picked it up again, in earnest. I came off a stressful winter/consulting season with a serious case of cabin fever. When work wound down, I busted out. I've spent every possible minute of every day this summer outside (or in the pool), doing something.

The batting cage is the perfect compliment to Frisbee golf [I throw from left-to-right and swing from right-to-left]. Just saying.

I've had a lot of time for the outdoors because this is my off season. I've not been especially busy with work. I do a different kind of modeling in my off season. I do these cookie-cutter, assembly line, predictive models. I get a fixed price per model, and there are enough to do that I earn half of my year in my off-season. Yet I hardly work at all.

Unfortunately, the rest of my year doesn't come so easily. I haven't figured out how to adapt my econometric models to an assembly line system so that I can get the same price-to-effort ratio. I need to work on that.

When one can't work, one must play. Playtime aplenty has had its rewards. I dropped 10 pounds over the summer.

I've dropped 50 pounds since quitting my day job 14 months ago. My knees are a lot happier and I no longer suffer from GERD.

I'm working hard to drop 25 more. Then my plan is to clean up the rest of my act just long enough to pass a physical for affordable health insurance. The difference between Fat Trop and Lean Trop is about $200/month in premiums. Cha-ching.

I've blogged enough for now about banjo, except for this cute thing. The kid in the lesson before mine is an 8-year-old girl learning guitar. She's just starting out and already she's doing a respectable rendition of Walk the Line. When her lesson was wrapping up, I overheard her tell the instructor "They're going to make a movie about me, just like in Walk the Line." So. Cute.

If there was a movie about your life, what celebrity would play your part? No clue who would play me in a Trop biopic.

Another reason I'm sad to see summer end: Amanda. I enjoy being home with her through the day. I'm so lucky to have that. We'll still have it after school starts, but it won't be the same.

Amanda has been pumped for school after her first two orientation classes; her full schedule starts tomorrow. I hope she takes to college the way I did. I hated high school so much that I almost skipped out on college. As it was I delayed college until I was 20. That was the right thing for me. I hope this is the right thing for her.

I am so desperate to see Amanda blossom.

Courtney and I spent a lot of date nights this summer at city stadium, where the Hillcats play. Minor league baseball is a lot of fun. We went to the game last night and saw a great fireworks show afterward. I'm going to miss nights out at the stadium.

NASCAR has been SO much fun this summer because my guy has been at the top of the charts most of the season. He had a bad night last night though. Hope that's the last one. NASCAR lasts until November, so there's a lot of racing left.

Finally, I'm sorry to see summer end because with fall comes another birthday (October). I'm going to be 49 this time, and that's hitting me HARD.

Desktop Porn

My fun day

Yesterday my very good friend John, from graduate school, came for a visit. We had a lot of fun showing him around.

We took him to Thomas Jefferson's private home, Poplar Forest. I love that place. Fascinating.

Then we showed him Liberty Mountain. From there we went to the Old City Cemetery. Then we took a stroll through one of the city's parks. I showed him the dirt pool.

We capped off the night with dinner here.

Two signs of a fun day

LOVED the private Cabana. I drank too much, smoked too much, ate too much, and got too much sun.

I had a GREAT time.

Cabana rental is THE way to go.

Our midsummer staycation

We have a fun weekend lined up. We considered hosting another weekend-long keg party, but not knowing how hot it would be, we opted for adventure instead.

Tomorrow we are heading to Greensboro NC with friends to spend the day at the water park. We've reserved a cabana so that we'll have beer service.

Saturday we'll stay in town and do local things (disc golf, go karts, batting cages, etc). We'll cap off the day with a Hillcats game and the fireworks show afterward. We'll have friends over for a bonfire in the back yard after all that.

Sunday we are driving into the mountains for a six-hour mega-tubing trip on the James. We did a shorter one last year with the kids and really loved it.

After a full day of that, Court's planned for just the two of us to go to the drive-in.

Have I crossed a line?

We have friends, Jenny and Susan. Saturday we had an all day play date with them. We met for lunch, played outdoors all day, and then ended up at their house for a movie and other extra-curriculars.

Somehow, my wife managed to leave her bra at their house.

[I don't even want to know.]

We saw Jenny and Susan again last night, and learned that they have been flirting with each other with my wife's bra. They've taken turns leaving it in places where the other will find it.

Today I became an accomplice. While posting gay cafe fliers around town with Susan this afternoon, I drove her to Jenny's car (parked at the hospital where Jenny works) to hang the bra --my wife's bra-- from Jenny's rear view mirror.

I don't think Court will ever get her bra back.

Well, that didn't take long

Although we knew in March that my chapter 13 was almost paid off, we had to keep making payments until it was officially discharged. That meant over-paying by a certain amount. That amount wasn't clear until Friday, when we got the refund in the mail.

In the meantime, we decided that whatever the amount, we would allow ourselves to spend it, all of it, on anything we wanted.

When the check came we divvied up the money.

My share is already gone. I spent it in just four days. It nearly drove me crazy having that cash. I considered buying a DSLR camera, a new cell phone, an HDTV for the bedroom, and/or a sewing machine.

What did I end up buying? First, Court and I went together on a Wii, (including the Wii Fit and Wii Sports). We've been wanting one since they first came out, but the cost was always out of reach until now.

I suck at video games, so I am sure to suck at Wii. But if it will help me lose weight, then I don't care how bad I suck at it. I want to look good naked and I'm willing to do what it takes to get there (short of liposuction).

Even with that purchase, I still had a fair amount of money left over. The pressure to spend it was killing me.

So I did something a little crazy. I bought a banjo. It's a used banjo of course; new ones cost a small fortune. Beginning next month, I'll be taking lessons every Tuesday afternoon with Warren at East Jesus Music. I'm really psyched about it.

I'm glad the money is spent. Now I can go back to complaining about my allowance.

We're back

We had a great time. I'm exhausted and have two models due tomorrow. Full story and more pictures later.

Have a great weekend everyone

We're going off the grid for a weekend of camping with friends.

Someone is compensating

I'm rethinking my baby daddy fantasy.

Things got a wee bit out of hand

The party started at about 4:00pm yesterday and didn't end until 9:00pm today, when we finally had to tell people to leave.

We had a great time.

ETA: More pictures here.

What it's like to be married to Courtney

My keg party TO DO list:
Mow the lawn
Rake leaves
Hose out coolers
Put up the screen house
Set up the grills
Gather the firewood
Pat out 48 beef patties


Her keg party TO DO List:
Put out the frozen cream puffs
FB people with directions to our house

I just hope I won't end up like this

We're throwing a keg party this weekend. The forecast is for sun, temps in the mid to upper 80s, and low humidity. That's perfect weather for volleyball and horseshoes, beer on tap, and burgers and brats on the grill.

I haven't been to a keg party since my early years in grad school.

Wonder where they rank this at Amazon?

I never considered taming my tongue a thing worth doing.










Hat Tip

You know you vacationed with your teenager when...

Your picture of her is this...










and her picture of you is THIS.

The view out my window

My most excellent day at the paperclip

As you may have guessed, I had a great time at the race on Sunday. We left the house at 8:00, stopped at Panera for breakfast to go, and reached the track by 10:00.

We were directed to an access road that leads to several parking lots located behind the camping area. While it meant easy-in/ easy-out from the lot, it also meant walking all the way through the campgrounds. And they were muddy. This is how things were after two days of constant rain:


When we got to the track, our first order of business was buying tickets. We decided to wait to buy tickets for fear the race would be rained out. Though we paid a bit more per ticket, we ended up in very good seats. More on that later.

The next order of business was finding a good position for the airing of NASCAR Raceday Live, scheduled to begin at 11:30am. Here's how the show looked from our point of view. We had to fight for position. And it was VERY windy.


We stayed through the first 30 minutes of the show and then headed off to buy merchandise.


After that we headed through the gates and to our seats. We had excellent seats. We were right off turn two, about 24 rows up, with a great view of pit stall #1 and the pit road finish line. In a race where it's hard to gain track position, pit strategy is everything. We saw several close battles to be first off pit road.


This was our view of the back stretch.


The pre-race flyover.



My guy, Tony Stewart, had a GREAT race. A lot of tires were blowing, ruining the fortunes of many drivers by putting them lap-after-lap down. Stewart finished a solid third, his best finish so far this year. Take a look...



The best part? Court and I behaved like the married couple we are. We held hands almost the entire time we were there. Sitting in the stands, I either had my arm around her, or she had hers around me. My back started bothering me, so I spent the last 250 laps kinda leaning on Court. We were clearly a couple. And no one batted an eye. No one gave us grief. In fact, no one even noticed us that I can tell. It just goes to show you: NASCAR fans have way more class than most people are willing to admit.

The guy in the seat next to me was a real-estate agent from NC. I told him about my desire to own farm property somewhere between Hickory and Asheville. He's a Jr. fan. The guy next to him was a Harvick man. Next to him was an Edwards fan. And next to that guy were Stewart fans (husband and wife). Most of the people in our section were married men out on a Sunday without their wives. One in ten people were women, who were generally there with their husbands.

The last 50 laps were COLD. Clouds came out and it was VERY windy. I had trouble driving home for the wind.

We had a great time. I can't wait until the race in October. Maybe I'll persuade Syd to come back for that one. Who knows what I might do to her otherwise.

St. Patrick's Day, Trop-style

I have to make a run to the deli in about 10 minutes to pick up our Reuben sandwiches.

We're going to a fertility/ mid-wife thing across town at 1st Christian.

After that, we're hooking up with friends for karaoke night at Applebees.