what's better than hoops, ice cream and pizza???

we took the kids to a pizza place today. three classrooms, nine teachers, and about 25 toddlers. yeah, it was a bit crazy, but more fun than anything else. everybody should take a two-year-old to a place like that-- great pizza and a coupla' big game rooms.

there's a kid i'll call doc who was by my side most of the day. i'm calling him doc because we spent a lot of time at the basketball game. and he's got skillz. oh yeah, with a z.

his basketball chops are almost as good as mine are right now, which is... which is actually not saying a whole lot. i'm awful. i do absolutely nothing to dispel the notion that white men suck at basketball. i'm terrible. really, they should go back in time and rename that woody harrelson/wesley snipes movie, "white men can't jump: the ryan martin story."

this is true, i type-cast myself in a short skit for my church a year or two ago as a guy who couldn't play basketball. a role i was born to play. except, when the film was rolling-- and i have three witnesses to back this up-- just about everything i was putting up was going in. nothin' but net. it was so embarrassing-- i was TRYING to miss, and all of the sudden i was michael jordan. that's how bad i am at basketball.

but doc was making his shots on purpose. and he made a lot of them. if we were betting against each other, i would have had to pay for his college education. but as much as he was enjoying this, and as much fun as he was having with the other games in the room, and as much pizza and ice cream as he devoured, y'know what made him bellylaugh the hardest??? the hand dryer in the kid's bathroom!

and i can't blame 'em, honestly. it was an xlerator! i love those things. i've always hated the automatic hand dryers in public bathrooms, because they never get my hands all the way dry. but xlerators go the distance. and they sound like a jet engine taking off. which scared doc at first, until i jumped in with a timely, "no, no, check it out man! w'hooooooooooo!!!" and then it was, "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! DO IT AGAIN, RYAN, DO IT AGAIN!!!"

lol, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of games and toys and pizza and ice cream, and my man and i are hogging up the bathroom, playing with the hand dryer! i love my job!


the five things i fell in love with today...

1) xlerator hand dryers. seriously, even if you're a strict paper towel guy/lady, y'gotta check these babies out! you'll thank me later.
2) mike & mike in the morning. these guys are great! mike greenburg this morning: "y'know, when football players fight, you get nervous. but when baseball players fight... even i think it's funny!"
3) this afternoon, while listening on the ipod to jay-z's "dirt off your shoulder," i saw a woman across the street actually brushing the dirt off her shoulder. good times.
4) wintergreen altoids.
5)i saw it again today, and i am now very much, absolutely 99.9% convinced that it was indeed a true-blue, all-american, i-know-it-deep-within-my-heart-of-hearts woodchuck.

...probably.


song of the day...
"diamond heart" by marissa nadler

movie of the day...
"sideways"