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The Rambling Insomniac
Tom is a 25+ year resident of Germantown and the surrounding community. He currently lives in Hubertus with his wife and two small kids on a hobby farm near Bark Lake. Tom's blog will likely not save the world, but hopefully, you'll get some enjoyment from his ramblings.
January 2008 - Posts
By Tom White
Thursday, Jan 31 2008, 12:55 PM
Years ago, before my wife Steph and I had kids, we had a running joke with our friends Tim and Debbie. Tim and Debbie shared a mutual “dislike” for crying and screaming babies with us. When we were out-on-the-town, we’d joke amongst ourselves that “They are playing our song” whenever we heard a crying baby.
Well, years later, Tim and Debbie are now the proud parents of their two boys, Joey and Michael, and Steph and I have our little beauties, Buck and Lyndsy. While having kids of your own certainly puts screaming and crying kids into perspective, I’d be lying if I said the noise of a whining kid has gotten any easier for me. Well, I guess it has a little, but crying to me is as bad as hearing fingernails scratched on a chalkboard.
Which brings me to our son Buck…bless his over rambunctious little self. You see, Buck has been quite the whiner since the day he was born. Don’t get me wrong or anything, Steph and I love him to death, but he literally hasn’t stopped crying in his three years on this planet! He was very colicky as an infant, and is just plainly a “cry-baby” now as a toddler. We’ve tried all the tricks to break his habits of whining, but not many work for long, so we simply give him our love and accept him for who he is.
Okay, I’m probably being a little harsh on the boy, as he doesn’t cry all the time. However, the poor little fella' came down with the flu this past weekend, and hasn’t stopped crying or whining for 6 days straight. Steph and I are doing our best to give each other breaks from his persistent wailing, but honestly, it’s been a long week. Luckily, it appears he is at the tail end of it, and we’ll soon have our little bundle of joy back.
Oops, got to run now, I think I hear them playing our song!
G’Night G’Town!
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears. ~John Vance Cheney
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By Tom White
Thursday, Jan 24 2008, 05:25 PM
I always hear stories of people running into or meeting famous people. Well, that just never happens to me. There’s a rumor in my family that we are somehow related to Pat Boone, but short of that, no brushes with fame exist in my family tree. That is until I met my friends Dave and Denice at the bar this past Saturday night.
I walked in, and the place was pretty dead. Dave and Denice were at the bar, as well as a few other couples, and there was a group of people monkeying around over by the pool table. I was exchanging the typical small talk with Dave and Denice, when this conversation ensued;
Dave: “Check out that guy over there playing pool. He looks like Deuce Bigelow.”
Tom: “Wow, he does sort of look like Rob Schneider.”
Dave: “Wait until you see him in the light. It REALLY looks like Deuce Bigelow.”
Denice: “I think I’m taller than Rob Schneider?”
Dave: “Dude?”
Tom: “Dude?”
About then, the Guy That Looks Like Rob Schneider walks into the light so we can see his face.
Tom: “Dude! That guy really does look like Rob Schneider!”
Dave: “Dude! It’s Deuce Bigelow!”
Denice: “Dudes! I think I’m taller than him.”
We then go about our business, enjoying our conversation and a beer or two. About ten minutes later, the Guy That Looks Like Rob Schneider guy approaches us and says, “Hey, were you the guys that wanted to buy me a drink?” Having heard this line used by a million other cheapskates in bars, Dave and I quickly respond;
Tom: “Nope. Sorry man, it wasn’t me.”
Dave: “Wasn’t me either Dude, but weren’t you the guy that was going to buy us a drink?”
We laugh, and the Guy That Looks Like Rob Schneider laughs and shakes Dave’s hand and looks at us as if to say, “Wow, you guys are jerks”. He then walks on down to the next set of patrons at the bar and asks the same question he asked us. While he walks away, we talk again;
Tom: “Oh my God! That guy could be Rob Schneider’s twin!”
Dave: “I think just shook Deuce Bigelow’s hand!”
Denice: “I’m totally taller than that guy!”
Tom: “Dude!”
Dave: “Dude!”
Denice: “Dude!”
We then overhear the Guy That Looks Like Rob Schneider talking with the patrons at the end of the bar. Turns out they did offer to buy him a drink, but he kindly turns them down. He then leaves with the rest of the group from the pool table. Just then, the bartender comes up to us and says, “Isn’t that cool that Rob Schneider was in here!?” and Dave, Denice and I all look at each other like we’re all total idiots.
Turns out the Guy That Looks Like Rob Schneider really was Rob Schneider, aka, Deuce Bigelow. He was in town to see the Packer game on Sunday, and was staying with friends of his from Jackson.
So although I wish I could tell a story of how I partied with Rob Schneider, and did shots with him and played pool with him all night, I honestly can’t. In fact, when I met Rob Schneider, I was kind of a jerk to him.
I hope that when I finally meet Britney, I at least recognize her.
G’Night G’Town
People should realize we’re jerks just like them. ~ Bono
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By Tom White
Friday, Jan 18 2008, 01:18 PM
G'Night G'Town
Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. ~Sholem Asch
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By Tom White
Thursday, Jan 10 2008, 05:02 AM
If you just came to this web page looking for free Applebee’s coupons, let me start by apologizing to you. You have just become a statistic in a little experiment of mine. Many years ago, I saw a band at Summerfest that called itself “Free Hot Lunch”. They stated that by having a name like that, it was the only way they’d get anybody to come see them, thus, the title of this blog.
Let me explain – As a blogger for GermantownNow.com, I am able to see statistics related to all the blogs that I have written. Not detailed demographics or anything, but one thing I do get to see is how many “hits” or visits each of my blogs has received. Of the 35 blogs I’ve posted over the past 8 months, the Top 3 in “hits” received are as follows:
“Ghost, Goblins, Bacon and Eggs” – 1338 visits
“The Treasure Hunt” – 1269 visits
“Daylight Savings” – 1070 visits
What’s interesting to me is that most of my blogs average somewhere around 800 hits. So why would “Ghosts, Goblins, Bacon and Eggs” or “The Treasure Hunt” receive so many more hits than all the others? From my own critical point of view, these certainly weren’t my best pieces of literary work. In fact, the content of these blogs was rather mundane. This leads me to my hypothesis that maybe the title of my blogs plays a critical factor in how many visits each blog receives. Hmmm….but, if that is the case, I would have thought “Dear Britney,” would have received more than 856 hits?
So again, I’m sorry if you came here looking for a free Applebee’s coupon. Maybe you can go to FreeStuff.com and find something there as a token of my appreciation for visiting my blog. If you came here looking for Ghosts, Goblins, Bacon or Eggs, below is a picture of the bacon and eggs I wrote about in that particular blog for you to enjoy. For anyone interested in my silly little experiment, feel free to contact me if you are interested in the results.
G’Night G’Town!
Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.
~Wehrner Von Braun 
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By Tom White
Friday, Jan 4 2008, 08:46 PM
I was listening to National Public Radio the other day and heard an interview with the renowned American journalist, Daniel Schorr. Schorr, who is now 91 years old, was reflecting back on his career in journalism and talked about a job offer he received from CBS Radio back in the 1950’s. As part of the offer, CBS told Schorr that they would eventually expect him to do television reporting in addition to radio. Since television was so new at the time, Schorr had to ask CBS to clarify exactly what they meant by that because television reporters simply didn’t exist yet. To me, it’s mind-boggling that for some living generations, television wasn’t always a part of their daily lives!? But I guess that’s true about a lot of things. It seems every 30 years or so, something completely new and unexpected comes along and changes everything. Think of the evolution of automobiles that started in the early 1900’s….then television came in the 1950’s…..then came computers in the 1970’s and then came cell phones in the new millennium. All of these things are now so ingrained in our daily lives, it’s hard to imagine what we did without them.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could predict what the “next big thing” was going to be? I’m not talking about small things like Velcro, Starbucks, Bottled Water or Beanie Babies; I’m talking about things that actually change the world and they way we live in it. Something that 30 years from now my kids will ask me “How did you guys ever live without these Dad?” It would be easy to assume that the next big thing will be something in the computer sciences field, but that assumption wouldn’t necessarily be valid. Most life-changing items that have come along in the past century really had no predecessor to predict their popularity.
I’m a terrible typist, so as I sit here and type this blog, I think to myself that it sure would be great if I could simply transition the thoughts in my head to my word processor without having to physically type them. I also wish that I could just imagine a beer, and suddenly one would appear in my hand. And then I’d think about a particular song I’d love to hear right now, and it would simply start playing for me.
Sound crazy to you? Well, I bet they told Henry Ford that he was crazy when he built his first automobile prototype.
G’Night G’Town!
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer. ~Farmer's Almanac, 1978
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