The Sound of Minivans

I would encourage you all to share this blog with others that might enjoy it so that you can both enjoy it together. Here's a new post for you:

Let me take some time to tell you about the sound of a minivan. Before I get to that, while we’re on the topic of minivans, I’m kind of angry at the people that make minivans. They only just made the minivan with the seats that turn around and the table in the middle for fun and activities and things, and I never got that as a kid and it would have made everything way better. My family went on a lot of trips when I was a kid, and they were pretty much awesome every time we arrived. The part that sucked was the driving. Four kids in close quarters for four hours is not fun, especially if you can’t use your gameboy. I think there was actually a period of three or four consecutive years where every trip there was at least one argument between us. Sometimes the fights would last all car ride. It was a logistical nightmare for my parents to place us in the most strategic way so that we wouldn’t argue. As we got older it got to be a little easier, and eventually we just got basically permanent seats, so now Ryan and I sit in the back, Erin and Caitlin in the middle, parents up front, subject to change based on who’s driving. So for quite some time I have been sitting in the back seat of the van when we go on car rides, but I know what it is like to sit anywhere. Now here’s the point: there is a variable sound system in our van. When you sit in the front, it is perfect. When you sit in the middle it’s a little messed around. When you sit in the back seat of a van, the music BLASTS into your ears at twice the volume of any other seat in the car. The people that made this system are really really stupid. I can only imagine their motivation was “let’s make it nice for the people in the front, people sit there most often” but then they forgot, almost nobody buys a van if it’s only one or two people. In fact I would guess a lot of people buy vans for bigger families, that’s who van companies market to. This leads me to believe they make the van and they know it’s too loud but they just think screw the back seat, people that sit there are probably everybody’s least favorite anyway. Luckily that’s not the case in my family, so we always have to fade forward. Then the people in the middle can’t hear anything. Whoever made turn signals is awesome; whoever made the sound system should have to sit in the back seat with full volume all the time.

The Scott and Ryan Toy Trick

Ok, sorry this is a little late... I started typing it up before Christmas and I've been a little preoccupied so I only just got to finishing and posting now. Also, I put up two thoughts for your added enjoyment.

In the spirit of Christmas, I will regale you all with one more holiday story. As previously mentioned, I was not always a major determining factor in what gifts I would give to other people. Even now, I sometimes still have no part in the decision of what I get for people. It was however, pretty easy to pick out something to give to my brother, Ryan. When you share the same age, gender, the mother, secret language, and almost every waking second with another person, you can get to know them. So there’s at least one person I should be able to get a gift for. Unfortunately, when I was kid and I went shopping, I couldn’t think much past what I wanted to play with. Flashback to my childhood, my dad is taking me Christmas shopping, we’re in the toy aisle, and he asks me to think about what Ryan might want, when the best toy in the world comes into view. I immediately knew this was THE toy I wanted more than anything else for Christmas (on that particular day), so I told my dad this was the one, this is the toy I was getting for Ryan. Well he asks me if I think he would want it or if I wanted it. Taking a second to think about what he may want to hear but remembering I wasn’t a great liar, I responded “both”. For those of you who have never experienced Christmas, it’s pretty exciting to know you’re getting a bunch of new stuff, but it’s really exciting knowing you’re giving other people good stuff. Putting those together inside a seven year old, some things are going to slip out. Wouldn’t you know, Christmas Eve, Ryan and I are bunking near each other and we get to talking about how awesome our gifts are? It didn’t take long for us to start giving hints and then just descriptions of what we got each other. Skip forward a couple hours when we open each other’s gifts and act oh so surprised that we got each other the same thing. Apparently, my dad even had the same conversation with Ryan when they went shopping. And that is the Scott and Ryan same toy trick.

So Scott Thought

Huge Clothing Sale!

Here's an old thought from a couple years ago:

I’m guessing that you’ve never actually taken the time to think about it, but a huge clothing sale is almost never what it’s advertised as. Most of the time a huge clothing sale is a really big sale for clothing, but that doesn’t seem quite right. Why isn’t a huge clothing sale a sale for really big clothing, and a clothing huge sale a really big sale on clothing? You should really be careful about the order you put words in and the message you’re trying to convey.

So Scott Thought