The joys of student housing

The people upstairs have recently began to play Rock Band with a bunch of friends until about 2:00 in the morning every night. At least, that's what I think they're doing. It's either that, or they're doing sweating to the oldies while on crack. But little do they know that we have a plan for full retribution. We have Rocky set to go off every morning at 1:30, 4:00 and 6:30.....Suckers.

Book one, chapter one. "It was a dark and stormy...

So, it's been a couple of weeks since I've posted. How's everybody doing? I'm okay, aside from the fact that our brand-new bikes were stolen last night. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
A week and a half ago, we loaded up a rental truck with all of our junk, and headed west to our new home. My orientation started on Friday the 19th, so we left early the day before and just drove straight through. We almost made it to Eugene (we were about 40 miles away) when the truck became leprous and started dropping pieces everywhere. Luckily, we were in the middle of nowhere (about 30 miles from a town on either side), so we felt really good about just abandoning a broken-down truck containing all of our earthly possessions on the side of the road. Even though it was a huge hassle, everything worked out really well. Nothing was stolen (until now), we didn't have to worry about parking the big truck in the tiny motel parking lot, and Budget even gave us some money back. We got all moved in, have already made lots of friends, and are really excited about our new home (minus the theft). I'm sure this is only the first of many, many adventures that I like to call "The chronicles of the Rigby Family at grad school." I'm going to end this post with a list of the things that I learned about Budget trucks during our trek.

Our good 'ol, not so trusty rental truck in front of the lava fields on Santiam Pass, with the volcano Three Fingered Jack in the background.

• The volume of a Budget gas tank (including fumes) can be exactly defined as the distance between Layton and Boise, and/or the distance between Boise and Bend, Or.
• Good idea: Driving the Santiam Pass scenic byway. Bad Idea: Driving the Santiam pass in a truck that is as wide as the road itself.
• While baling twine is excellent at securing hay into bales, it is also pretty good at securing car seats into the cab of a truck that only has two seat belts.

Strawberry jumpsuits forever

We put Rocky into these pajamas for the first time the other day. To me, it looks like what you would get if Evel Knievel and Strawberry Shortcake started a clothing line together. I don't understand why the people who make baby clothes think that the world can never have too many ruffles. I think that these clothes makers can be lumped into the same category as those people that dress their dogs in tutus, or those people that make posters with a chimpanzee in a suit and toilet paper all around the room that says something like "I should have stayed in bed this morning." In other words, they feel better about themselves by making something else look as ridiculous as possible. As a side note, I still think that Rocky looks really, really cute in these pajamas, but that just proves how biased I am towards my own offspring. Another side note: we didn't pose Rocky like this. I think she was trying to emulate the only other people who would actually choose to wear something like this. Namely, Liberace or Siegfried and Roy.

You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, lifeless, hairy hands

Last Friday I went shooting with my Father-in-Law Dick. I had never shot a pistol that wasn't air or water powered before. As you can see from the picture, I did pretty well for myself. It would be natural to chalk my shooting up to beginner's luck, but my secret is much simpler than that. I have logged countless hours playing Area 51, which is an arcade game with a gun, and it's your job to put the kibosh on an alien-uprising in a top-secret military compound. Normally I'm not one to toot my own horn, but I do have to point out that I have personally averted the end of the world many times, as well as found two bonus rooms along the way. What's the point of all these wasted hours spent at the front of Smith's making aliens explode? Well, I think that it's obvious that I'm your go-to guy if we ever get invaded by body-snatching, zombie aliens. Or if there is ever a surprise attack from stationary Granny Smith apples. And if the day should ever come that there is an uprising of zombie Granny Smiths, then I'm quite possibly the only person qualified to face that onslaught.

Stars and piñatas forever

Rooting for the good ol' US of A during the Olympics has put me into a patriotic mood lately. So I submit to you a few pictures of piñatas and birthday cakes as quintessential Americana to help bolster your national pride. It's not that cakes and piñatas are more inherently American than other things. We all know that the tradition of breaking piñatas came from Mexico, and the fount of all knowledge (Wikipedia) has taught me that birthday cakes originated with the Romans. But if you think about it, nothing is more American than taking someone else's culture and acting like we've been doing it all along.


Marci and I made a piñata for Caleb for his birthday because he always said that the piñatas were broken by the little kids before his turn came up at the family parties when we were younger. Strong Bad was a natural choice because he has the most balloon-shaped head out of anyone.


Hey batter, batter, swwiiiingg batter!!!!




We made this cake for our friend Lindsay's birthday. The fro was made out of little cupcakes, and the pick was, ...um, just a pick. You can't really see it in the picture, but the grill on the teeth says Happy B-Day.



I know this last one strays slightly from my theme of piñatas and birthday cakes, but I had to put it in. This is our actual wedding cake. Marci's cousin made it for us, and it turned out awesome! The base was made out of Twinkies around a real cake, with Lil' Debbie brown and white cupcakes at the very bottom. Then it goes ho-hos, red zingers, yellow Hostess cupcakes, and orange Snowballs. The bride and groom at the top are Han Solo and Princess Leia.

How not to do it

Yesterday, in the listlessness of summer afternoon's languor (that sounds really poetic right? I got that from the inside of one of those Dove Chocolate wrappers), I decided that it was the perfect time to take my longboard for a tour of the neighborhood. At the end of my ride, I realized that I was going way faster than I was used to (and yes, my normal speed is somewhere between wussy and three-legged goat). So I did what any quick-thinking person would do in my situation. I decided to launch my body off the board, and then use said body to stop the board.
The following is an inventory of the new holes in my clothing/appendages:
New running shoes - 1
Cargo shorts - 1
Ankle - 2
Leg - 2
Hand and forearm - 6
My red shirt from Savers that I think says "We came to party" in Danish - 17

Hot chicks...

As Marci can attest to, I get giddy like a school-girl when I can see cool wildlife up close. A couple of weeks ago, I found a nest of quail just behind our patio that were in the process of hatching. By the time I got the camera, they were already trying to get out of their nest.

I like to think that the little slip that the first quail does is, in fact, one quail giving his little quail brothers a flying elbow-drop. That's right buddy, you show them who is going to be calling the shots around here. Then, why don't you just step on someone's head to make sure that they got the point. Well done.

This was only about five minutes after they hatched. It's awesome how far they jump. I'm sure what he was thinking was: "Walking was so two-minutes old; that's baby stuff."