Have you ever re-gifted? Well, I'm re-posting. This was originally from June of '08 but I thought any new readers might get a kick out of it.

This post is not about the spam you sneak in into your kids lunch when they least expect it. You know, the mystery pink meat substance that we all had to eat once or twice while growing up in the 70's. This post is about the even nastier spam you reluctantly allow to fill your inbox.

As much as we all hate to get electronic spam, I may have found that there are actually a few redeeming values to spam. I know, I know, you can't believe what you are reading. Take a deep breath and see if you might not just agree with me.

Email spam is good because:

1. People without friends that would otherwise never receive an email are now guaranteed to receive an abundance of mail every day!
2. Should you ever need your manly organ enlarged you will know exactly who to contact!
3. We can all say that we've won the UK Lottery!! 167 times in one month.
4. Three names: Nandy Gaskins, Lagina Welty and Dorcas Dull. Should you ever need a baby name you can just use the sender name from your latest spam. These are the last three senders names on three of my latest spams.
5. If you ever need $72,000,000 from a bank in Ghana you know where to get it.
6. You're always sure to get a file full of hysterical cartoons.
7. You can easily kill off 7 people by not forwarding the latest "must forward or else" chain email.
8. You can eliminate friends you don't like by not answering the 20 question chain email and forwarding it back to them and 20 other friends.
9. Deleting spam gives you 20 minutes of break time at work.
10. Deleting spam quickly increases your eye/hand coordination.
11. It gives you something to forward to people you don't like.
12. Has created an entirely new industry in spam prevention.
13. Just getting to say the word spam is kinda fun.
14. You don't have to eat email spam!!!!

That's about it. Please copy and paste this post into an email and forward it to 10 of your closest friends within 1 hour. If you don't you'll have bad luck for 7 days, if you do, you will win an unexpected prize. Be sure to link back to this blog also... curtistucker.com. That is all.

Labels: funny moment, Internet

It was always fun to play outside with your friends in the 70's. Seems like everything we did was outside. One of the best parts of starting a new game was figuring out who was going to be "it".

These are a few of the ways we would choose who was "it":

1. Bubblegum, Bubblegum
2. One Potato, Two Potato
3. Eeney Meeney Miney Moe

The games we played as kids:

1. Kick the Can
2. Hide and Seek
3. Smear the Queer (politically incorrect I know)
4. Murder in the Dark (inside)
5. Dodge Ball
6. 4 Square

We also made up our own games. One game we called Musclins was a combination of tag, hide and seek and kick the can. Burn out was a game played between two four square squares. The point was to throw a ball as hard as you could into the opposing four square and get it by your opponent. The ball had to bounce once within the four square area.

My favorite game of all was trampoline dodge ball! Two guys on each side of the trampoline trying nail the guy on the trampoline with a dodge ball. Could life have been any better?

Labels: 70's, Fun Events, Memories

This is an update for the girls to read one day in the future:

February 17, 2009 -
You girls are watching lots of Sponge Bob Square Pants these days. Not sure why but you are. We just had Valentine's and you both received necklaces, scratch pads and candy. Both of you take dance, piano, tennis and tumble. We saw Paul Blart Mall Cop and you loved it. Go figure.

Chaney scribbled permanent marker on the counter and has been banned from television for a week. This is good because you have not been doing piano practice and this will now give you plenty of time. Chaney, you love to give gifts and you love to get gifts.

Piper, your dance group performed at the boy's college basketball game last night. You had your teeth cleaned today and will head to Stillwater to see about braces down the line. Piper, you have become interested in the computer and want to start your own blog.

Both of you are attending Cimarron Montessori School and are pretty darn smart. I take you to lunch every Monday and we eat at the Club every Friday.

Labels: Daughters, Family, Memories, Sisters

Today's world is full of safety lids, seat belt laws, restrictions and many other things that have been created and forced upon us for safety's sake. When I look back at some of the things we did as kids I often wonder how we made it to adulthood.

This is a list of things that my friends and I did but probably should not have done. We made it through every one of these events without major injury. I post this list to inform my daughters that I know about these things and I will be monitoring that they are not repeated.

1. Like most kids we snuck out while spending the night at a friends house. The danger here was that is would be 2 am in the morning and we were between the ages of 9 and 12.
2. Roofs. We climbed onto or out on every roof we could find. In grade school we would climb on the school roof to retrieve any dodge ball that might have been lost earlier in the day.
3. We actually used to slide down the valley of our two story roof on a Frisbee. We would sit on the Frisbee and slide almost to the end of the ridge and at the last moment we would use our feet to stop just before plummeting off the edge and falling two stories to the ground.
4. We would sometimes sneak the trampoline close to the garage so we could jump off the roof onto it.
5. We spent many an afternoon winding through the drainage tunnels under our town. Many times we would get several blocks underneath the streets. Of course nobody knew where we were in case we ever got stuck.
6. Fire. A really bad one. We set a few things on fire that we probably should not have. Especially at the houses that had fireplaces. Anything plastic was meant to melt!
7. Climbing trees. We used to climb some trees so high that we were on branches that could barely hold our weight. I remember feeling a few trees lean so far that I thought I was a goner.
8. Throwing things at cars. We had a ritual of throwing eggs and snowballs at cars. Our biggest problem there was that we usually threw from one of our own houses and those that got hit knew where to track us down.
9. Pool hopping. Many times we get a big group of guys together and go from pool to pool hopping in and running like heck. We would hit the hotel pools and as many backyard pools as we could find.
10. Sledding down hills on pieces of cardboard. This one did cause me to get 6 stitches when I ended up hitting a broken bottle with my knee.
11. I may add to this list as I remember more long lost adventures that we had as yutes.

I know there were many other things that we did that we knew were on the "do not do" list but as kids you do as much as you can get away with. Like I said earlier, we all made it to adulthood and we're no worse for wear. What daring things did you do as kids?

Labels: 70's, Fun Events, Memories, Parenting

Well, history was made tonight. Our five-year-old ate her first sandwich. Yes, that's right, we forced our child to eat a plain ham sandwich. I know you're thinking we're such bad parents and kids should not be forced to eat things they do not like. Unlike the days when we were kids.

The list of things that she won't eat include sandwich's, hamburgers, pizza, ketchup, BBQ sauce and a few other grossly horrific food items. We've let her get by with this for some time now because she does eat carrots, sweet potatoes and most other foods.

Tonight's historic event was followed by my speech about what I had to eat as a kid. If you grew up in the 70's you might remember a few of these. The absolute worst was liver! You know the liver that looked like a steak. I think that might have been a food I refused to eat a time or two. When I did eat it I was holding my nose, literally, and would fill my mouth with some liquid to get it down. If today's kids only knew!

Other foods of contention included hominy. What in the heck is hominy anyway? Then there were the oldies but goodies like broccoli, brussel sprouts, spinach and lima beans. Yes, lima beans! Who eats lima beans? What about spam? Are your kids eating spam? On the holidays we had to eat unearthly things like black eyed peas and stuffing.

On the other hand, I also remember the great things I ate as a kid. Who didn't grow up on fried bologna sandwiches, Spaghettios, mac and cheese and frozen pizza?

My how the times have changed. So, when my girls grow up and read this many years from now, remember that mom and dad weren't so bad after all.

Labels: 70's, Daughters, Dining, funny moment, Memories, Parenting

Remember back in the day when you wanted a photo? We're talking back when I was a kid, in the 70's. We'd either pull out our slim, black 110 camera or if we were lucky we'd pull out the bulky Polaroid Instant Camera.

Taking pictures has come a long way baby. As kids we could get instant Polaroids with the funky colors and funny border around them like the New Years 2009 photo above or we would have to send our 110 or 35mm film off to be developed. A week or two later it would return and we would gleefully rip open our envelope to see our dozen grand photos.

If you were like my friends and I, you would find a stack full of blurry photos mixed in with a few shots of your friends with their heads cut off. At that age it didn't matter much, that the color was bad, the composition was horrible and you just shelled out eight bucks for twelve bad pictures.

Fast forward to 2009 and my how things have changed. Polaroid camera you say? 110 film you ask? Those days are long gone. Today we have micro cameras that take pictures big enough for posters and they're digital! That means you get to take as many pictures as you want and you can delete the bad shots. Wow! What a deal.

No more film, no more waiting, no more photo albums... what!! No more photo albums? That's right. With the ease of today's photography many people are accumulating thousands of digital pictures without ever taking the time to get them developed and stuck into photo albums. We've all got a zillion pictures but we can't ever look at them. Wrong! Read on...

I'm guilty of not getting digital photos developed and now have a good thousand pictures taking up space on my computer. Today there are great sites like Flickr and Facebook that allow us to post our photos online. This is a great way to share photos with people a world away.

I've also recently discovered a great software called Jalbum. This software builds your albums for you and helps you upload them to their site or your own site. It's great!

I recently uploaded the photos from our 2008 Disney World trip. They are now online for the family and the world to see. Take a look and see what we were doing exactly one year ago today. Just click on the main photo and it will transition to the next. Enjoy!

The Tucker 2008 Disney World Trip

Labels: Daughters, Family, Fun Events, Hot Wife, Memories, Parenting, Photo, Road Trips

Labels: funny moment