is that enough flair? today i am taking a day off. a much deserved day off. i have "shut eye," the less contagious cousin to pink eye. it's an affliction of the central laziness system. very debilitating. many assorted michigan folk were in town this weekend and that tends to make for some long nights. not as long as previous long nights since people start passing out around midnight nowadays but still, long nights. there is no greater shame than realizing that half the crowd will be asleep by two. we used to stay up until dawn people! wha'happen? even putting on a late night movie is hardly an option now because nobody bothers to pretend that they'll stay awake. "let's just turn off the lights and go straight to sleep, why waste the electricity?" it's a blow to reckless all nighters.



eric and anna are here for the first stop on their "anna has two hearts" world tour. anna (and eric by association) is with child. with child. can this sort of craziness be explained? to the untrained eye and the naked mind, it seems like this version of anna is the exact same version of anna from before. but when you start to play soccer, the most important rule is "don't kick the ball hard at anna." (kick it hard at jon g instead -- he got pegged three times, once from behind by his own teammate. what a way to sacrifice for the team.) during game play i kind of, not really almost, slide tackled near/at anna. i felt so bad. luckily my soccer skills are about as impressive as my memory so there was no danger. but when you have the shot, you shouldn't always take it. don't be maverick man, don't do it. especially with pregnant friends around. see, what i should of done was pull a somersault galvez-style to totally avoid anna altogether. but i can't somersault worth shit. so i had to suffer from post-slide tackle stress. i'd like to say that from that point on my soccer aggressiveness was curbed (i blew many many open shots after that) but in reality i think i just sucked more apparently. soccer is incredibly fun with a bunch of friends though. everybody running up and down the field for no good reason is kind of excellent for extraneous humor.



oh, gene received his button machine. this is the picture of the buttons we went wild on. brooke burke, eat your heart out. you'll notice that none of these buttons have dave's son marketing tie-ins. this was because the button machine was used for non-sanctioned purposes. but now that the button making itch has been scratched (after i made like thirty buttons), we can return the button machine to it's original use; which is to make gene famous. man, buttons are cool. is there anything more appealing than looking at a nice neat collection of buttons? if girls came pre-packaged with buttons it would be game over. i almost had a religious experience on saturday night, with all those buttons laid out on the ground before me. the question now is "where to wear all these buttons?" one tip james picked up at the mall was to put a button on a wristband, thus going from trendy to ultra-trendy, nipping at the heels of "way too much."