when I started this blog five years ago, I was a pet sitter and the name animal-crackers made sense. now I'm a stay-at-home-dad and freelance writer, but rather than confuse everyone by getting a different blog, it's just easier to keep posting things here.

1) I hate labels.
2) My parents have been married 38 years. To each other even.
3) I've been married eight years.
4) My brother and his wife are both Army staff sargeants in Iraq.
5) I have mixed feelings about our invasion of Iraq.
6) My sister ran away to join the circus. She and the snake handler had a daughter.
7) I love telling that story. I don't know why.
8) Most people would consider my life boring.
9) I like it when people express their opinions. I ignore many of them.
10) Before we met, my wife and I interviewed for the same job.
11) I got it.
12) They offered her a better position.
13) Including temp work, I've had 18 jobs over 17 years.
14) In college I was the Balloon Baboon. I would dress in a gorilla costume and deliver balloon bouquets. And sing.
15) Once, I was supposed to sing "You are my sunshine" -- and I forgot the words.
16) While employed as the Balloon Baboon, I worked several gigs as the Big Purple Dinosaur. Not Barney. Barney is trademarked.
17) Kids love to beat the shit out of Barney. They thought I was Barney.
18) My wife and I used to smoke Marlboro reds.
19) We used to wheeze a lot too.
20) My favorite food is pizza.
21) I'll eat most any food.
22) I won't eat mushrooms. Mushrooms are evil.
23) Except the magic trippy kind. They're not evil. They're anti-evil.
24) I've never had a magic trippy mushroom.
25) I think I tried LSD once.
26) Since I didn't hallucinate, I'm fairly sure I paid $5 for a tab of paper with a picture of Beavis and Butthead.
27) I have an MBA from an internationally ranked business school.
28) Fat lot of good that did me.
29) I like coffee.
30) My grandfather turned 18 in 1943. He joined the Army, finished infantry school and was on a boat heading for Japan when the US nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
31) If hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians hadn't died horribly painful deaths, my grandfather probably would have been killed and I probably wouldn't be here.
32) What the hell am I supposed to think about that?
33) In second grade, I was placed in the gifted program.
34) In sixth grade, a number of us gifted kids took a 10-day trip to Europe. In Amsterdam, two older boys thought it would be funny to lock me on the hotel room's small balcony. It was on the second floor.
35) I thought "I'll show them" and tried to climb down using my secret spy training. I got stuck and cried until someone pulled me back up.
36) Yeah...I'm gifted.
37) I like books. I also like maps and globes.
38) I wish I had a library in my home.
39) Our house is a fixer-upper. Although we aren't very handy, we've done okay.
40) We didn't notice two of the three bedrooms lacked doors until after we moved in.
41) Now they have doors.
42) In college I studied Hebrew, Arabic and Latin.
43) Fat lot of good that did me.
44) I would like to get a PhD in something.
45) I owe more in student loans than most people make in a year.
46) My wife and I aren't very happy about that.
47) My dad's mother took her life with a shotgun when he was 15. He found her.
48) When I was 17 my dad and I got in an argument too complicated to explain here. He ended it with "My mother blew her head off with a shotgun and I never needed a shrink. I'm just fine!"
49) That was the first time I'd heard about how my grandmother died.
50) My dad's father married his girlfriend and moved her into the house. I'm not sure how long he waited after my grandmother's funeral, but I think it was less than a year.
51) My dad and his two brothers left and moved into an apartment together.
52) My dad's father died of a heart attack about eight years later.
53) This is my dad's favorite joke: "There are three kinds of people in this world. Those that can count. And those that can't."
54) He's a funny guy.
55) I need to go pick up Josh from school.