"Your Trial Period Has Expired"

Yes, Sarah completed our marriage trial period today by changing her name and offically becoming a Smith.

It wasn't an easy process, and no I'm not talking about dealing with the Social Security Office or the Driver's Licensce Bureau. We Smiths have upped the entry standards. We don't let just anyone into this select group.

Here's one requirement that might surprise you. Before joining our team you must be able to milk a cow.

As you can see Sarah seemed to enjoy the challenge and passed with top scores. Additionaly, she also passed all day cooking with Teresa and Mary Lou, Tarkio Sports Trivia and her personal favorite CB Radio lingo.

Kidding aside, just a little blog post to share the good news.

BEWARE!!!

This is a quick cautionary note to the KC crowd. I ran into a couple of disorderlies while visiting your city this past weekend. Below are the two quick photos I snapped of them in action with a little back ground of what troubles they may cause.

The Muddler - Brian Slaughter


WAAY Back in 1992 this Fairfax Bulldog upset my Tarkio Indians on our senior year Homecoming night. The good news for him is he still fit into the old high school jersey, the bad news is it didn't have much negative impact on my fantasy drafting ability. I'll be looking to avenge that '92 loss in week 9 of this year's season.

The Hustler - Travis Smith


Travis was kind enough to invite me out for a round of golf at his club, Lion's Gate Golf & Country Club. The place was fantastic. However, through 5 holes of golf I was feeling pretty bad for Travis. He was all over the course. His "close" came on hole 6 with this very swing. He pulled the ball well left into the water taking yet another Bogey. Hole 7 Travis says "why don't we play for some money?" and I took the bait. He proceeded to amazingly turn his game around taking money from me most of the way in to 18.

Despite these trouble makers I still managed to have a great trip to the Midwest.

the tale of two tubes of toothpaste

Trying saying that two times fast.

The story begins with a trip to the grocery store. It was about a month ago and I was armed with a list of things for the household. My trips to the store are both good and bad. Good because I stick to the list thus being both efficient and thrifty. Bad because I'm inexperienced with some items and don't always select correctly from the plethora of choices.

On this particular trip, you guessed it, toothpaste was on the list. For me, toothpaste is toothpaste. Stick with our regular brand, add a little whitening and all is good, right? Not so much. Toothpaste must be Crest with whitening AND with Scope. I wasn't up for a return trip so Sarah made an extra stop on the way home the next day for the improved tube of toothpaste.

Now for the good stuff. Within every problem lies a little opportunity, correct? You see, Sarah (in my opinion) is a bit excessive with the use of toothpaste. Those of you having family members with a similar problem know exactly what I'm talking about. Little tiny bits of toothpaste left in the sink after the brush, some extra "foam" on the bath towel after wiping their mouth.... you get the idea. I don't know how we live with it!!!

So for the last month I've been using my toothpaste while Sarah has been using her tube.

The tube on the left, over 1/3 empty, is Sarah's 2nd Tube! The tube on the right without Scope is mine. As visually impacting as this is, Sarah couldn't have cared less. I urged that a reduction in toothpaste use could save us 2 maybe 3 tubes of toothpaste each year... Dozens of tubes over our lifetime. Some laughter, but still nothing from Sarah. I considered going with "kids in Africa would love to have your extra toothpaste" but decided against it. I chalked my efforts up with a loss and blogged on.

Brett Smith, trying to change the world 1 tube of toothpaste at a time.

sleep, swim, eat.... repeat

Wow. I've really been feeling the pressure lately.

Millions are tuning in daily to watch Michael Phelps with his "ooohh so boring" life of sleeping, swimming and eating. Sure throw in a hand full of gold medals, few world records and it does get a little interesting.

My dilemma? I'm getting somewhat similar traffic on this site but can't find anything blog worthy about my sleeping, working and eating. Yesterday, out of ideas, I attempted Phelp's 10K calorie diet with hopes amazing results. Kickin' it off, three egg sandwiches, four sausage links, a stack of pancakes and a o-so-big glass of OJ to wash it down. What exciting things might lie ahead of me?!?

My confidence was high... Full of fuel to power me through the day. Not 30 minutes later, I felt STUFFED and lacked the energy to accomplish much of anything.

Olympic swimmer, no. Beached whale, yes.