My mom would be so proud. I am finally a Judge.

Granted, it’s not for a court of Law, but it’s still called being a Judge so I’m totally counting it. Ever since I watched Night Court as a little kid, I had this dream. Updating my résumé now…

Anyhoo, my good friend NYCWD (you all know Dawg, right? He’s famous for this thing he does… What’s it called again? You know his thingy video thing… He dates another famous person… You know? ) asked me to be one of the esteemed judges for his Social Media Responder 2009 (#SMR2009) contest.  You can see my killer profile and even more awesome profile picture on PIO Social Media Training. Sweet, right?

If you’re too lazy to visit…

As an added bonus, I will be under Hilly for the duration of this contest.

As a Judge, my duties include – but are not limited to – receiving bribes, drinking Scotch, arguing with other Judges (I AM THE LAW!), Wearing a goofy hat and walking around naked under a robe. I think I’m overqualified really. But what’s higher than a Judge, really?

Anyways, when I submitted the picture above, I took like a million of them – I’m not really photogenic so it’s hard for me to find a picture I like without photoshopping the fat Hell out of it – And I thought I could amuse you with some of the rejected profile pictures. Enjoy!

My mom would be so proud.

Yesterday on Twitter, I was told by Avitable that he had a hard time believing I lived without a microwave. Poppy believed me.

Well to be fair I think his disbelief was much more about me telling the truth, but let’s not focus on that, m’kay?

So here it is, proof I don’t own a microwave:

I blogged about it on April 27, 2007. I never replaced the microwave since that day. Part of the reason is that we really don’t need a microwave, and part of the reason is that LovelyWife wants a model that goes above the stove, and most of those models requires a vent to the outside, which my kitchen does not possess at this point. Anybody owning a house knows of the domino effect when it comes to renos, and in our house we somehow go from a vent to the outside to redoing the bathrooms and the basement. Don’t ask, it’s complicated.

Look at these:

This is where the microwave should be.

Well, this is where the old microwave was. Like I said, the new one should be above the stove.

Once the Corn Flakes are removed, you can see the power outlet.

So there you go, proof that I don’t own a microwave.

So what about you? Is there anything you don’t have that other people think that you’re somewhat crazy because you don’t? I’m paraphrasing Avitable, of course. I don’t think he thinks I’m crazy. Well not for not having a microwave anyways.

Today is veteran’s day.

Remember what I did last year? This year, I’m choosing a slightly different route.

If you don’t get it… Hover your mouse over the picture.

All right.

Yesterday I Tweeted that LovelyWife was a little weird quirky. Poppy told me you’re supposed to use quirky instead of weird when I talk about LovelyWife. Makes sense.

Anyhoo, I said LovelyWife was quirky because she can spend hours watching previews. Some of you Tweeted back that it was perfectly normal, and I explained that I didn’t mean previews at the movies (those are a must) or a television show were they’d show previews of upcoming movies for half an hour: I meant previews from the PPV channel. Previews from movies that came out years ago. Previews from movies we have already seen in the theater months or years ago. Previews from movies we own on DVD.

No in order to redeem myself a little, let me tell you about a few things that make me quirky weird.

1) I floss before and after brushing my teeth. I have massive spaces between my teeth, and that first floss is necessary to dislodge bits of food stuck in those spaces. If I only floss afterwards, I feel that the spaces between my teeth are still dirty – if there was food in there, no toothpaste ever went there, right?

2) When I forget to wear my wedding ring, I feel naked and I tend to hide my hands so people will not notice that I don’t have it on. This happened less then 10 times in the past 14 years, and on many of those occasions I backtracked home to put it on before getting back to my regular scheduled activities. BTW: This is a complete departure from LovelyWife’s habit of wearing hers. In fact, I often say that when I celebrate my 15th wedding anniversary by booking an Alaska cruise, I’ll have to bring the bedside lamp because my wife’s wedding ring spends half of it’s time on there. This is part of the secret why LovelyWife and I are sticking together so long; We’ve only been married 7.5 years! Which brings me to my next thing…

3) I’ve been married to a lamp for 7.5 years now.

4) I like reading instruction manuals. I have read every single instruction manual that came with anything I bought – cover to cover. If the manual is in English and French, I read both languages. I have a few manuals that are in English, French and Spanish. In those cases, also “read” the Spanish part even if I can’t really read Spanish. It doesn’t matter how simple the product is: I RTFM. As a corollary, a lot of the manuals I read multiple times. Very few novels have I read multiple times.

5) I will only park in certain specific parking spaces. I always park the car to protect the right side. I’m obsessed with preventing any dings on the car, and I figured that protecting the right side prevents me from circling the car every time I get in (since I always see the left side getting in the car). To further illustrate, here’s my grocery store parking lot:

I will only park in the orange spots. And you can totally see my car there. Clicking makes it bigger.

So there you have it. Five more things that make me… Well, if you love me you’ll say quirky. If not you’ll say weird. I’ll let you decide.

Let me start with a TUA à la Kapgar: Happy Birthday to my long-lost sister Poppy! I hope you have an awesome year! It’s the year of the Poppy! XXX. So head over there and wish her a happy birthday. Go, I’ll wait for you to come back.

There. On with the show:

On our last day in Quebec City we visited the Parc Aquarium du Québec. Because of the “du”, I had high expectations. It might not be obvious to my non French readind readers, but the difference between “de” and “du” is really important. You see, “Aquarium de Québec” would mean “Aquarium of the town of Quebec”, but “Aquarium du Québec” means “Aquarium of the whole province of Quebec”. I figured that if they bothered using the “du”, I was going to get quite a show.

I’d like to say that getting there was half the fun, but really it was more like 97% of the fun. Of course, I’m somewhat exaggerating, but I found that the state of disrepair of the different displays, combined with the cold weather and the crappy cafeteria food (I know, what did I expect, right?) made the whole experience meh.

I took this pictures at one of the fist displays, but it could’ve been any of them, really. Really.

I kept hitting the blue button, Matrix-style. No dice.

But, I smiled and played through the pain, and the kids had a pretty good time.

Thus concludes our escapade tu Québec City. If you’re so inclined, you can view all the Québec 2009 pictures on my Flickr.

And please, don’t forget to wish Happy Birthday to Poppy.