Ten years later

By Stephen Boudreau at 02:56 AM| Permalink | Comments (11)
This coming weekend is my ten year high school reunion. Yes, it's true.

This seems like a big deal. I mean, it is ten years. That's a pretty high percentage of my life thus far. Something like 3,650 sunrises and sunsets have come and gone since I was that semi-innocent, know-it-all 18 year old kid many of you knew and loved. I find this very hard to believe. But life, as we know, teems with these kinds of fully-expected surprises.

In a blink of an eye a decade went by... sort of. I went to college. Fell in love. Got married. Moved to Dallas. Started a professional...ish career. Discovered ebay. Got a myspace page. Well... maybe it was a long blink.

Shelley and I will be heading down to my old city this Friday. I am optimistically anticipating an unforgettable weekend. I have a lot of thoughts on this milestone and I'm sure the actual event will provide me with many more. I'll share all those upon my return. First things first...

For a weekend, I'll be 18 again.

See you in Brownsville.

Amazing

By Stephen Boudreau at 06:14 PM| Permalink | Comments (1)
Tiger Woods is unreal.

Maybe I do

By Stephen Boudreau at 01:25 PM| Permalink | Comments (3)

Burger King makes me laugh.

Always use an ice chest

By Stephen Boudreau at 04:30 PM| Permalink | Comments (10)

Last weekend Shelley and I hosted a "Couples Wedding Shower" for my good friend and business partner, Chris, and his beautiful fiancee, Melanie. It was a big soiree that brought nearly thirty people into our home. I was a bit concerned about fitting that many people into our domicile, but as it turns out, we have a much higher seating capacity than I anticipated. Most of the people in attendance were strangers to me, but everyone seemed very kind, gracious and thoughtful.

There was, however, one anonymous visitor who left an indelibly negative impression. This is their story.

A Saturday night party at The Boudreausian palatial estate. As one would expect, our refrigerator was brimming with liquid refreshment of all types. One item in particular was in vast supply: beer. Namely, we had a 12 pack of Heineken (one of my favorites) and 24 bottles of Shiner Bock (a popular choice for other folks). For a party of this size, there was plenty of beer to go around.

Tucked in the back of the fridge was a lone bottle. A bottle who traversed the Atlantic, legally immigrated across our borders, and found a new home in our Jenn-Air fridge. This bottle of icy cold delight contained a special Italian beer that I enjoy above all others. Its name: Peroni. Its taste: heavenly. And so there it sat. The last of a six pack. Pushed to the very back of the shelf to make room for the influx of our party beverages. You must understand: in order to even find this bottle, one would have to dig through an obstacle course of bottled beer.

As the merrymaking was nearing its conclusion, I began picking up some of the empty plates, cups and bottles that were lying around the house.

A few empty bottles by the couch. Got'em.

A plate with a half-eaten chicken breast and dirty napkins on the coffee table. Got it.

A mostly empty cup of frozen margarita on a chair. Into the trash with you!

A nearly full bottle of Peroni on the ledge... wait... WHAT?

I stopped dead in my tracks. Who? What? How?

Shelley noticed my sudden jolt of horror. I raised my hand and pointed in disbelief. I looked at Shelley. She looked at me. My expression spoke for itself as she empathized with my pain. My astonishment. A hug from my lovely bride was my lone, but pleasant, consolation.

Now it's not that I wouldn't have shared my last bottle of Peroni with a guest. In fact, it would have been a moment of kinship. Of great satisfaction. Face to face with a kindred spirit in the beer drinking community. We would have been eye to eye, affirming one another with knowing grins.

But that was not how things transpired. A much more inconsiderate path was chosen by this secret, one-sip, peroni-hating, party attendee.

First: they had to make the effort to dig through the fridge.

Ok, so maybe not everyone likes Shiner. I know I'm not a big fan. Perhaps Heineken is too trite an import for the more astute drinker. To each his or her own.

But after seeking out an alternate beer, they knowingly took the very last bottle of this Italian treat. And then -- and this is tragic end of this melodramatic tale - after opening the bottle... they took a singular sip. Put the bottle on the ledge of a wall nook. And walked away.

Forever.

Un-freaking-believable.

This, my friends, is why people use ice chests.

Real Christians of Genius

By Stephen Boudreau at 11:54 AM| Permalink | Comments (5)

Relate. Remember. Laugh.

Rodney White

By Stephen Boudreau at 10:48 AM| Permalink | Comments (2)
Over the past year I have become enamored with the artwork of a Brooklyn based artist named Rodney White. When we moved into our new home earlier this year we purchased a mounted print of one of his pieces named "Roses".

Without question, the retro-vintage look is something I connect with - very reminicent of old-time billboards. The color combinations, the quirky and sometimes meaningful messages, the wood canvases, the spectacular typography... they all start up the right side motor of my brain.

Smooth as silk

By Stephen Boudreau at 02:35 PM| Permalink | Comments (11)

A surprising twist of fate befell me last week.

Last Tuesday as Shelley was packing her bags for a brief stay in Tampa Bay on business, she mistakenly smuggled my Gillette Mach 3 razor to the southeastern peninsula.

There I was. Alone. Scruffy. Razorless. If the story ended here, surely this would be just another sad, hopeless tale about a guy who couldn't shave . . . or slit his wrists. But no, my friends. For the sake of all things unimportant enough to blog about, the story does not end there.

A simple packing error turned into the closest shave of my life.

That afternoon I went to Walgreens on a mission. A mission to not only find a new razor, but to upgrade my shaving experience. You see, when it comes to facial hair, I may have a few patches that run the race a little slower than the others . . . but where it grows, it grows like marijuana fields in Mexico.

The Mach 3 has always done only a semi-decent -- albeit unspectacular -- job at cleaning me up. Moreover, I have always loathed having to devise a financing plan to cover the overpriced Mach 3 razors. Needless to say, all of this caused me to be quite skeptical regarding what I believed was Gillette's over hyped, overpriced new five blade, money-sucking, face-shaving mechanism: the Fusion.

As I examined the competition, though, I was left with only one conclusion: Gillette is the Microsoft of the shaving kingdom.

First we have Bic. They offer a variety of face cutting tools I liken to orange pixie sticks with an edge. These things look like they could no more easily erase my facial hair than one of their classic erasable ink-ball pens. Perhaps I won't entrust my cheeks to a company whose logo is a man's body whose head has been replaced with a magic eight ball. My sources say no.

Next.

Schick seems like the most viable of adversaries to the shaving giant. But they are certainly no Apple in Microsoft's eye. One reason being, Apple is awesome. Schick is not.

The "Quattro", Schick's premier offering, may be good enough for Andre Agassi's bald cranium, but this wasn't my first encounter with this four-bladed shear. Once in a fit of rage about having to relinquish three tons of bullion in order to purchase an 8-pack box of Mach 3 razors I ended up with a 4-pack of Quattros. I should have thrown in a value-sized carton of Band-Aids.

Was there no worthy competitor in the face razor market?

I briefly recalled watching a movie where John Wayne used something that looked like a machete to shave his chin. After a brief mental assessment of our kitchen knife catalog I decided the butcher's knife was better left to chop the raw meat, not create it.

There was always waxing. Laser surgery. Maybe a patchy beard?

No . . . none of these was going to work for me.

But there he was. My old nemesis. Mocking me for even thinking I could be like John Wayne.

Five blades? That's preposterous. Who needs five blades to shave their face? (Not to mention that sixth blade for those tough spots to reach) Who wants to commit to leveraging a second mortgage to pay for cheeks a smooth as a baby's bottom?

Who?

Apparently, I fit that description quite well. After only a moment's hesitation to do a quick mental reworking of my household budget, I reached for the Fusion.

There it was in my hands. I turned for the cash register. What was I doing? Was I out of my mind? I have resented that Mach 3 for the better part of the past 10 years!

: : dramatic pause : :

Seven days have passed since I sold my shaving soul to the Fusion. I must confess I have no regrets. This is the finest shave I have ever experienced. Shelley is on the verge of Fusion conversion and soon, we will all become part of the Gillette matrix.

These cheeks are as smooth as silk and, in what can only be described as an ironic twist, I can push off shaving for an extra day if I prefer.

Eat your heart out John Wayne.