Quoting "Mean Girls" regarding the poll...

Look, seriously, stop voting for Grease and Wicked. It's like fetch: "Stop trying to make [Grease and Wicked] happen. It's not going to happen!"

In addition to that little tidbit, I found a great quiz here. Just so you know, I got 13 of 15 (I mean who knows the names of the ugly girls?). And no, I didn't need any help, so don't cheat (Heather!).

So You Think You Can Dance...

Am I the only one watching this show? Well if so, it is a travesty of huge proportions!

This is so ultimately better than American Idol- the talent is superior to anything you've ever seen.

First of all, these dancers come from all backgrounds. There's this one Latino gang-boy, who before the show started, all he could do was crazy spin dances on his head. Now, he is prancing across the stage like a Victorian Ballet Queen. It beats all I've ever seen.
What's more, is that my personal dancing style is improving, right along with the Gang Head Spinners. I like to imitate the moves I see on screen in the privacy of my own living room. I've picked up a few moves in the style of "Krumping" so I can pretty much be a super-cool street fighter/dance ingenue.

Kids at Christmas

Since none of you liked my baseball post--which I refuse to give up due to the lukewarm, or lack of, reviews--I thought I might offer something a little different. While I admit, kids are not planned in our immediate future--did I just put a curse on myself?--I do think having kids will one day be a lot of fun. I was always very excitable at Christmas, and I know Tricia loves opening presents, so it's possible that this scene could be one day recreated in the Butts household--probably by Matthew Lewis Butts (MLB, get it?). As the guy on YouTube said: who doesn't love Nintendo 64? (edited: Hat tip to Parisa Toghiani)



PS - "School Marm and Researcher" has got to go Hopper. Get with it!

A Baseball Post, sort of....

For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge baseball fan. I like going to games, watching them on TV, scanning for them on AM radio while Tricia and I are driving around on any given summer night. I even paid extra money so that I can listen to every game, every day on the Internet, broadcast by the hometown announcers. That's a little purchase I like to call "best purchase I've ever made".

Anyway, if you don't know, Roger Clemens is a baseball player who was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in the 1983 out of Texas. He pitched for the BoSox until 1996, then signed with the Toronto Blue Jays, partly because he felt unwelcome in Boston (then-GM Dan Duquette was quoted as saying that Clemens "had entered the twilight of his career"). He pitched for the Jays for a few years, but then orchestrated a trade out of Canada in 1999 to the Yankees, where he won a World Series in 1999 and 2000.

After pitching in 2003, he debated about whether to retire, but decided to sign a one year contract with his hometown Houston Astros in 2004 for like $5 million (he was worth much more) so that he could be close to home (and not be at the stadium on days he wouldn't pitch) and pitch with his buddy, Andy Pettite, who had also recently signed a contract. After that contract and declaring he was "99% retired", he decided to re-sign another one year deal for 2005, this time with no hometown discount and at a value of $18 million. In 2005, the Astros reached the World Series for the first time, led by their hometown boys of Clemens--who had pitched amazing that season, giving up fewer than 2 runs per nine inning pitched (consider that a great pitcher gives up a little less than 3)--Pettite, and longtime Astros Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio (who had changed positions numerous times for "the good of the team" and is approaching 3,000 hits in his career). A storybook ending? Wrong! They were swept 4-0 by the Chicago White Sox.

After that season, Clemens kept saying he was retired and never tried to negotiate a contract, but it was always a "wink-wink" kind of deal. My memory is a little hazy, but I think he was offered a deal and if he refused that deal and had not signed by a certain day, he couldn't sign with any team until May 1. Which is great because he could miss spring training and the first month of the season and pitch better later in the year because he was less fatigued. So the Rocket gave it another go, this time signing a $22 million dollar deal that would be prorated to his number of starts. He finished the year 7-6 on an abysmal team, giving up a sterling average of 2.3 runs per nine innings (as a 43 year old). He was 43, he was tired, he was 80% retired.

SIKE! At 44 years old and with offers from the Rangers, Astros, Yankees, and Red Sox, Clemens announced his decision to come out of retirement and pitch for the Yankees, at a salary of $28 million (prorated to about $18 million).

That brings me to the purpose of this post. One, I want you all to know how truly patient Tricia is because she has to put with this type of story, both in subject and length, roughly 5 times a week. And like all those stories, they have a point that is usually dumb and serves no purpose other than to show her a stupid clip I found. Which is the precise point of this post. I have a video I want to post and I hope you all will humor me in watching it. It shows the Roger Clemens (Rocket! Rocket!) 50 years from now, George Steinbrenner (who is about 80 years old now and has owned the Yankees since the 1970s, a stint that included a few years where he wouldn't be the "owner" because he had been on probation for giving illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign), and the son of current General Manager Brian Cashman (who has tried really hard to get Steinbrenner to bring his payroll down to closer to league average of ~$90 million/year from nearly $250 million/year). Obviously, I found it funny and look forward to many more years of "Rocket! Rocket!"

New Business Venture, perhaps?

If our blog pulled up on your screen and you instantly felt your heart rush with Blogging-Excitement over the sheer awesomeness of our "new look" then let me alert you to the Creator of the Blog Header: Heather Joy Tomlinson Skaggs. I think she could totally do Blog Headers for a living, don't you?

Trey and Heather are so excited about how great our blog looks!

Just in case you were wondering.....

I'm sure many of you wondered what I did all weekend. Well. Glad you asked. I read over 300 pages of the worst (yet very required) books in history: "The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language."
Yes.
It's for class.
Intro. to Linguistics, which is an undergraduate survey course and possibly the hardest class I've ever taken, Grad school included.
AGH!
Only 100 more pages, then another book that argues the opposite position of the book I'm reading now, then a 12 page paper arguing what I believe about both. Yikes, I know.
Meanwhile, I can pretty much tell you anything you want to know about the formation of phonemes and how creolization occurs.

Big Mistake.

I thought I was in pretty good health and mildly fit when Lessye decided we should do Pilates at the Sanderson yesterday.

I thought, "I run all the time... can't be that bad."

Well, it was.

First of all, the Instructor Girl make up exercises that involved contorting my body in ways it shouldn't go. Secondly, I realized that my big toes sweat. No really! I know it's gross, but they were. And just the two big ones, so I guess the rest are okay.

Another aspect that is really embarrassing is that my whole body was violently shaking during one of the ab exercises. I couldn't participate at all, I just had to lay on the mat and pray all the other girls were hurting too much to notice that I couldn't move.
It is a mere 16 hours later and my body has completely revolted on me. No seriously, there are these little muscles in my upper back/shoulders that I didn't even know were there and now because of them, I can't really turn my head all the way to the left or right.
As much as it hurts, though, I'm probably going to go back next week. Beauty is Pain!

LAGL on YouTube!

Who doesn't love Anna Little? Nobody. In fact, Omaha's TV station loved her so much, they put her on the news. Then YouTube. Without further delay, former Miss MSU, Kappa Delta alum, Roadrunner president, and Miss Alcorn County Junior Miss....Lindley Anna Glyn Little.

A few notes...

I haven't been the best blogger here of late, but for those who care, here are a few tidbits going on in our lives or some highlights of the past few days:

1. First and most foremost, I was just offered the greatest teaching job this morning! I could not be more excited because I'll be teaching fun classes like Creative Writing and Drama, plus they asked me to plan a new course of Broadcast Journalism which will start up in 2008. I'm a little nervous about Drama class, but I guess we'll see! (Note: I'm mostly nervous this will entail me directing a High School play)

2. My good friend and co-worker extraordinnaire got married this past Saturday. It was a beautiful wedding in Tupelo, and Caleb suggested we hit up some stores while we were there. He was referring to the Mall at Barnes Crossing ("the place with it all!" hahaha. . catchy jingle), but I got my way and dragged him into my favorite store in Tupelo: Shoe Carnival. Hello, this store is so freaking awesome. I always make them do trivia while I'm in there so that I can spin the wheel (obviously, more practice for W.o. F... the Ultimate Wheel) and win shoe prizes.

This time was no different. Me and a small Mexican boy named Ozzie competed for prizes. I won, duh. I'm an awesome spinner. I got a festive Shoe Carnival cup, and because I was so enthusiastic, the announcer slipped in a $3 coupon. SO- my $60 shoes, were half off (ongoing sale) plus the added $3 off, for a total of $27! Awesome! I know!

3. Yesterday at work, Patrick and I hosted an event in the office we called "State your Sweetness." It basically consisted of two desserts: Razzamatazz and Cobbler Cubed. Allow me to explain Cobbler Cubed.... It is your basic cobbler, but with a layer of cream cheese and a bottom layer of crescent roles. To say that it is delightful and just shy of Heaven is no exaggeration.

4. A few days ago, I saw the Ticket Nazi in civilian-wear, going about his everyday business. Until that moment, I had only seen this ogre-ish fat man waddling around campus, bitterly slapping parking tickets on every car he could. It was kind of like seeing Croom around town... very surreal.

5. Caleb's birthday was a ton of fun. He played a double header for FBC church-league softball team (we won both) then we had a mini-party with my family which included carrot cake (more cream cheese goodness).

That is all for the random notes for now. I'm supposed to go back on duty for Orientation, so I have to jet. Have a great day!!!!

Happy Birthday to Charles Caleb Butts!

Please join with me in celebrating the man we all know and love. Happy Birthday, Caleb!

Caleb Up-Close
Caleb Celebrating
Caleb Intently Watching Sports
Caleb Showing Off His Powers of Voodoo
Caleb as Model Husband
Caleb Overly Excited Over Eating a Foreign Orange
Caleb Amongst Pals
Caleb as Easy Rider
Caleb as Medical Missionary
Caleb Being Irresponsible with a Samurai Sword in Junior High

Three Cheers for Embarrassing Pictures on Your Birthday!!!!

The Throne

Every man of the house needs his own chair, so we've been searching for just the right one for quite some time. While surfing the net recently, Caleb discovered the "Berkeley Recliner" at SamsClub.com which is perfect because all the Butts are Sams Club Members. The Berkeley is only available in the Huntsville and Birmingham Sams though, so we got his mom to go sit on them in Huntsville. Sadly, the Huntsville Sams were chock out of the Berkeleys so not a lot of help there.

So on our way to Kimberly Corbett and Bo Jeffares wedding on Saturday, we thought, "what the hey. Let's stop in the Tupelo Sams and see if by some miracle they happen to have the Berkeley!"

And they did.
There it was in all its deep caramel colored 100% leather glory: The Berkeley.

There was only one on the shelf, so we bought it up before anyone else could lay claim. Then we realized that the gigantic box would never fit in the Altima's cute little trunk. So we vowed to come back on Sunday and go now, merrily, to the Corbett-Jeffares nuptials.

It was a blessed union, indeed, but as we were leaving Tupelo, we couldn't help but think that maybe, maybe, we could somehow squeeze The Berkeley into the Altima somehow, thus avoiding the 120 mile trip back to Tupelo. So even though it was 8:20 pm and Sams Club was set to close at 8:30, we dashed on over to bring our new baby home.

The Bouncer-ish man at the front door was pretty confident that we could un-box The Berkeley and since it came in two pieces, we could just fit the pieces in the car. Enthusiastically, we wheeled the huge box up to the loading dock as Sams Club closed for the night behind us.

We unboxed The Berkeley and I must say that thing was pretty heavy. So there we were in our wedding clothes, trying to fit a really hefty chair into a compact car. Well. It didn't work. No matter how hard we pushed or even at just the right angle, that thing would not go. A very cordial old man with a drastic comb-over even tried for a while, but to no avail.

We had to get the Sams people to let us back in and store the disheveled box in the front so we could drive all the way back on Sunday to pick it up. On Sunday, we finally got the beautiful chair home and put together. I must say, The Berkeley is huge. In the context of the huge Sams Club warehouse, it seemed like a normal sized chair, but in the context of the apartment living room, it is quite massive, a force to be reckoned with. I like to call it The Throne.

So, if you're driving through town, definitely stop by and try out The Throne. It's super comfy and big enough for a family of four to sit on it.