Sheet Blanket Sheet

I think I have come up with pretty much the best bed covering ever. This item was spawned out of need a couple weeks ago when it was brutally cold in Wisconsin, right after I got back for the semester (and of course it was nice just prior to that). It was so cold, in fact, that my apartment was unable to keep up and it was freezing even inside. And by freezing I mean it was about twice freezing, but still it was low sixties and I was wearing what I called an indoor jacket. While I normally like it when it is colder in my room when I go to bed, and warm in my bed, this was cold enough that my bed wasn’t really getting warm. So I had to go extreme: I put on long underwear and a onesie (pronounced one – zee), but that wasn’t enough. That’s when genius struck and I created what I like to call sheetblanketsheet. I have two beds and thus two sets of sheets on my beds with just one crappy comforter, which makes this all possible. Both of the sets of sheets are those “tshirt soft” things, and they are soft, but when you take one, put a plush blanket on it, and then cover with the other, you get something magical. It doesn’t matter which way you flip it, it’s always the softest, most comfortable bed covering I’ve ever felt. Thus I think it would be a good idea if people made comforters like this, or people should at least make comforter covers that are just two really soft sheets put together.

So Scott Thought.

Sports with My Dad

I don’t know how many of you have ever watched sports with my dad, but it’s quite an interesting affair. For starters, to get the full experience, you should be at his house when you do, and it’s especially good when he’s in the kitchen and you’re in the living room. Don’t get me wrong, I like to be with him, but the kitchen tv is just faster than the one in the living room, so sometimes you hear his enthusiasm before you even know what’s happened. Those of us who know have labeled this effect: the kitchen, as in oh, the kitchen’s happy or the kitchen seems upset by that call. But if you do experience this experience, you should also be sure to spend some time with him actually near him watching the game. It’s extra good because he has actually developed the kitchen sense to an art. Even when he’s not in the kitchen, he knows what will happen before it does. In football, for every flag he calls the foul before the announcer, in fact most of the time he calls the foul before you even know there’s a flag. But his ability goes past flags and fouls, he also knows what to say about the game. Yes that’s right, he makes the commentary before the announcers do. It’s almost scary sometimes because he will be word for word correct before the announcers say it. This is the level I would like to get to while I watch sports.

So Scott Thought

Super Seasons: Winter

Two thoughts for you, one old one new, I hope you like them as much as I do.

I like the seasons. I like all the seasons. I would never want to live on a beach or mountain, but I would live on a mountain on the beach. Or I would have two houses, one on a mountain and one on a beach. The changing of the season is just so awesome, I feel like they all have so much to offer. Take winter for example, you may think aww this season sucks because it’s cold and snowy and slippery and the days are short and that salt crap gets on all my stuff, but you’re not even trying to like winter then. Truth be told, the cold is a nice break from the heat and you know it, otherwise every summer on the hottest day you wouldn’t think damn I wish it was a little cooler right now. Plus with the snow everywhere it looks beautiful. Even when there isn’t snow, it’s still interesting to see trees without leaves. And do you know what shorter days mean? That’s right, longer parties, I mean nights, darker skys, more stars. And don’t even get me started on the slippery, it’s the best. I just run around and slide on the ground all the time. It’s fun, exercise, awesome, and it gets me places faster. The salt does suck though, it ruins a lot of fun, but winter doesn’t make salt, people do, so stop hating on winter. (ps winter also has Christmas and new years. Done).

So Scott Thought.

Grocery Shopping/My Mom Rocks

I’ve got to give some props to my mom right now. Until this year, I’ve never really had to go grocery shopping for myself. Back when I still lived with my parents during the school year, they would make me go out and grab a couple things from the store, and I always thought that was bad. And I’d have to go on a trip to the grocery store with my mom every once in a while, but I never really put too much thought into the trips other than, “how can I get mom to buy this?” but now I actually have to get food for myself, and I never knew what kind of work and skill it requires. I feel like I’m always going to get food from the store and I can never get a good variety (I always feel like I’m eating the same things, especially by the end of the food). And I need to do extensive recipe research to figure out what food I need to buy to make certain things, and until now I’ve never noticed how good my mom is at all of this. Not only does she manage to find really good food, but for a long time she was doing it for six people (right now I only shop for one) and she finds such a remarkable variety of good and healthy food, not to mention she makes it seem easy. Thanks mom.

So Scott Thought.

 

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

Toys vs Clothes

To clear up any confusion about the last topic, I want to give all a closer look at my life so you know exactly what is a toy and what is clothing. I have always liked toys. Ever since I can remember, I always need to be doing something. Sometimes I can be content just listening to something or just watching something, but not often. That thing needs to be really important to me, otherwise I tend to lose my focus on it. However, when I combine listening with watching, it is commonly much more entertaining. Similarly, just being about to hold an object isn’t really fun, I need to be doing something with it. The more interesting parts on an object, the better it is for me. It can have sides that move like a Rubik’s cube or things that move on their own like magnets or an interesting exterior like a koosh. So anything that can occupy my time will probably entertain me and is therefore a toy. Also, sometimes toys need to be combined in order to work properly. Allow me to give some examples:

·         Juggling balls: toy

·         Book: toy (note at one point in time books were not toys because I didn’t like them and they were not fun)

·         Gameboy: toy. Game boy is a toy because it can be played with when added to other toys such as pokemon games

·         TV series on DVD: toy. TV (toy) + DVD Player (toy) + DVD (toy) = fun for me (toys!)

So that’s toys. On the other hand we have clothes. Now I’m a man (like not a XX (pronounced double X)) which means I was a boy. I won’t say I didn’t like clothes because that was only true twice a year. I didn’t care about clothing at all. There were two requirements I had for clothes: they covered me and they weren’t uncomfortable. Beyond that I did not care about clothes enough to throw them out if they were too small. This lead to a healthy amount of clothing in my possession, which means I never had to get clothes for myself, nor did I have the desire to. I got all my clothes from two sources twice a year: parents and grandparents on Christmas and my birthday. I always felt like my receiving clothing inhibited my receiving toys. I would always think to myself why don’t they forget the clothes and just give me double toys. So as a kid I didn’t like clothes gifts and I did like toys gifts. This can lead to some confusion about what is toy and what is clothes. If I didn’t like it, no matter how much of a toy it was, it went into the clothing, for example:

·         Clothes: clothes

·         Books: clothing until I was about 15

·         A watch box: clothes, and not because it holds watches that could be considered clothing, but because when you get a watch box when you’re younger than 19 it really sucks as a gift. Luckily, then you turn 19 and it’s pretty awesome.

·         A crazy watch that lights up to tell time: trick- both, fun to play with and wearable. Clothing and toy

I hope this give people a clearer picture of what is a clothes gift and what is a toy gift. I would also like to reiterate that I actually quite enjoy receiving clothes now because, as I said, I don’t get my own clothes. I’ve bought myself maybe one outfit of my wardrobe, but I really like it all. So the people that have been getting me clothes are doing a good job, which makes me excited to get more clothes. I also still like toys. I will never stop liking toys.

So Scott Thought.

Gift Giving

As a child, my parents and my grandparents used to like to make holidays a magical occasion. They would do lots of things, like take us in a limo ride on St. Patrick’s Day, or going to the cabin for Memorial Day and Labor Day, or hiding Easter eggs and Easter baskets. Christmas time in particular was always fun, the seasons are finally changing and it’s snowing, you just got off thanksgiving break and have all of December to look forward to Christmas. If we take a look at Christmas in particular, it gets better still: there are extra gifts all around, it’s a day of complete lounging around and relaxation, there’s good food, you get tons of new stuff, and it’s at the beginning of break. But honestly as a kid you tend to miss a lot of that. Christmas is still best but it’s a lot more about presents and the break. As a kid, I kind of grouped my presents into two categories, toys and clothes. Toys were exciting, clothes were boring. Basically, if something wasn’t a piece of clothing, it was in the toy category. This was a pretty good system because about half of my gifts were toys and the other half were clothes. This grouping actually still works quite well even now, with the key difference that I enjoy the clothes much more now. One other thing that is a little different now as opposed to when I was a kid is that I’m much more integral in the picking out the gift I give to others part, and it disappoints me a little. I think it’s really hard to give people gift in the clothes category if you are a guy. It takes a somewhat good knowledge of a person to know some clothes they want, and an even better one to know their size. This is doubly true if he is giving that gift to a girl. So that immediately takes out half of the gifts someone can give. I think this is why jewelry was created: so men could give girly gifts to women.

So Scott Thought.