Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 128

Large purple, blue and white hibiscus flowers decorate a blue green background on this tie. The tie I wore on Monday, September 27th, has never been one of my favorites. Too flowery, and too green. But I must admit that it did work well with the shirt.

I have looked at this tie many times and could never figure out what kind of flowers were on it; until today. Looking at the picture, I finally noticed the outline of the petals and then saw the center for what it was supposed to represent- shadow.

It is funny what you notice when you really take the time to look at something. You see it for what it is and not whatever label you had previously decided to give it. Words of wisdom that I can only hope to take back with me to my everyday life…

I have changed my mind. I like this tie.

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 127

On Thursday, September 23rd, I wore this boldly striped tie. Bright, diagonal stripes. Kind of nice, but what I really want to share is the moment of enlightenment I had over the weekend…

I have always wanted to be in a gang. Specifically, a motorcycle gang like Hell's Angels or something, but it seems that owning a motorcycle is a prerequisite to membership. So I am thinking I will start my own gang. Dad's with minivans.

I will give our group a dangerous name. Something scary and powerful like, "Devil's Pit Crew." I am still working on the name, but have already turned down my wife's suggestions of "Geeks on Wheels" and "Dorky Dads." I don't think she understands what I am looking for in a gang name.

You will find us doing donuts in the Wal-Mart parking lot. It’ll be ok, one of the Dad’s will be a cop. He can get us donuts half price at Krispy Kreme.

We will be a tough group; you don't want to mess with this bunch. We will hang out and dare some skate punk to mess with us. He won't, because he knows we have 911 on cell phone speed dial. It is listed right after poison control.

And when we see agood looking woman walking by, she better watch out! You know we will fall all over ourselves trying to get the door for her. And we will offer to help her with her bags. But she will ignore us because mini vans aren't her idea of cool. But we don’t care- because we are rebels.

The only time our language will be coarse in public is when we talk smack about our Fantasy Football team. But no one will know because we will disguise our vulgar words with nonsense screens, as in, "Grebalson mack frabbit!" Just like we do when our children accidently hammer us in the privates while playing a family game of whiffle ball. Other people don't know what we are saying, and that's the way we like it. Daddy code talk.

We are powerful and we know it because we do things like vote (but that is really only so we can be late for work or leave early to go home). The issues we really care about are; When can we turn the channel off of Teletubbies? and Does McDonald’s have the right Happy Meal toy so the kids will stop screaming?

We will be easy to recognize so that you know when trouble has shown up. We will wear t-shirts that are at least ten years old with a couple of holes in it, but we don’t care because it is the most awesome t-shirt ever. We might have cargo pants to carry all the stuff our family shoves at us (because stuffed cargo pants are way cooler than carrying a man bag around). Or we might wear jeans that are too tight, or maybe too large, but they have holes in them because we hate shopping for clothes.

All groups stand for something, and ours will be no different, except that we won’t tell what our real mission is to anyone. We will tell everyone our cover story which is that we want to promote world peace. Did you really expect that the Devil’s Pit Crew would tell the truth?

We will all get cool, scary looking tattoos. But they will the water transfer kind so that if we gain a couple of sympathy pounds our tats won’t sag. Or at least not for very long.

Yes, I think it is time for the Devil’s Pit Crew to form…

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 126

Bugs Bunny sits at the piano in his tuxedo while he ponders the composition he is about to play. Musical notes fill the background as if they have spilled out from his enormous ears. This Looney Tunes tie is fun to wear, but I am afraid it is a little misplaced since I am terribly unmusical. Unless playing the air guitar counts as musical...

This was the tie I wore on Wednesday, September 22nd, and I felt like a musical faker when I was wearing it. Luckily for me, I can now distract you with some useless cartoon information!

I think the idea for this tie came from the Bugs Bunny Cartoon, “Rhapsody Rabbit.” The cartoon was released to theaters in 1946 as a Merry Melodies short. The main differences are that on my tie, Bug's tie is red and the jacket is blue, but I will let you decide.

"Rhapsody Rabbit," from Google Videos.

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 125

The tie I wore on Tuesday, September 21^st, was one of my all time favorite ties. This was the best tie picture that my new Droid X has taken of my ties. I think Calvin kept a steady hand on this one.

Purple is one of my favorite colors, and I love paisley so it is easy to see why this tie ranks high on my “Like” scale. Matched with the purple dress shirt and this was a very good tie day for me.

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 124

Continuing the blurry trend from the week before, the tie I wore on Monday, September 20^th was pretty nice, but you will have to take my word for it.

The light blue pastel background is not my favorite but it is offset by the tiny purple paisley designs that alternate across the face of the tie. I like the tie but it always makes me think of spring and specifically, Easter. So it felt a little out of place for me.

This past weekend I went to the outlet mall in Williamsburg. I stopped in a few men’s clothing stores and found myself judging the tie and shirt combinations that they used for the displays. Many of the sets that were used were not to my taste but I could see how they matched. This kind of bothered me.

I think I have become too conservative and set in my ways. I need to make a bold statement with tomorrow’s outfit. Maybe it is time to bring out the forgotten Christmas tie…

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 123

A solid week behind tie postings… Still trying to catch up!

The tie I wore on September 16^th was a Countess Mara tie that had some interesting diagonal designs on it. Black, maroon, and blue with paisley on it. You know it was a winner with me!

You will notice that the picture is a bit blurry. I have been experimenting with my new Droid X and have still not figured out how I will be using it from day to day. Taking snapshots is great but I think my son’s hand wiggles a bit and it is not always easy to see how blurry the image is until you zoom in. I obviously did not check this picture out before I rushed out the door for work.

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 122

It is early in the year and I have already fallen behind on my tie postings! I am sure that this is not looked at as any kind of a tragedy by anyone but me, but I hope to get things straight asap.

The tie I wore last Wednesday was a conservative tie from the 80’s. The stitching gives the colors a muted feel so the tie is not a bold colored “in your face” tie, but a more subtle version with pastel colors. This tie was easy to match with a shirt and pants (thank goodness).

I am getting worried about the ties I have left… They are going to challenge me.

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 121

Tuesday’s tie and shirt matchup was scary. I thought that the little blue designs of the shirt would go with the large designs of the tie. I mean, the designs were surprisingly similar, shouldn’t they work? In this case no. The effect was way too busy.

This is similar to my return to work – busy!

I have decided to name copyright/trademark a new weight loss plan. I am going to call it the “Educational Technology Diet.” It is a very simple plan, really. No breakfast- lots of coffee instead, no lunch (maybe a snack if you can sneak it in), and a normal whatever you want to eat dinner. Work until you drop with a ton of things that never decreases, and the pounds will melt away!

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 120

I have tried to picture myself wearing all of the remaining ties in my collection. The picture is scary. I will be wearing some unusual combinations of shirt and tie.

After a stellar opening kickoff weekend ending in the Redskins defeat of the Cowboys (that kept me up late the night before), Monday was a day that was much more about the shirt than the tie. I wanted to proudly show the world that I am a Redskin fan!

It was a wonderful Monday.

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 119

Looking at this swirling mess, I think I was way off on Thursday. The red tie with large paisley designs together with the vertical stripes of the shirt did not work at all.

I had hoped that the combination would make a positive statement. Instead, what it said was, “I can’t dress myself.”

Thursday was NFL kickoff day. So I was distracted as I put together my outfit for the day. Pigskin spheroids bounced through my head all morning long. It was the beginning of the professional football season, and the beginning of the fantasy football season. This is the one day that makes fall worth living!

I know many people don’t understand fantasy football, but if you like football, you would love fantasy football. I have my favorite team, but participating in fantasy football has allowed me to appreciate players across the league, not revile them just because they wear a different jersey (unless they are Cowboys or Eagles- I won’t draft players from those teams). Twenty years ago, I used to watch maybe 2 NFL games a week, now I watch as many as I can. This is not work for me, this is fun…

Just like most everything else, you don’t know what you are missing until you try it. Peer pressure is a great recruiting tool that I have used in the past to convince friends to play. Now they are fantasy monsters…

My only player that I had playing on Thursday night, Visanthe Shiancoe, the starting tight end for the Vikings, scored 13 points for me. The most points scored by any player that night on either team. This initial surge allowed me feel secure in a win for week 1 by the “Dogmanfunk All-Stars” by 7pm Sunday night.

Yes, I love football. Too bad it distracts me from dressing myself.

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 118

The tie I wore today is from the Save the Children collection. The design is titled, “Busy City,” by Josh, age 6 . Yellow is not a color I normally wear so I had to find dark colors to tone it down. A grey shirt and pants combined with the brown of my shoes and belt, just to offset the yellow in the tie, seemed to do the trick.

The tie reminded me of the family road trips that we took this summer, especially the one we took to the Eastern Shore. On this one trip my wife and I noticed something that was very peculiar. While traveling down the highway, we found that the roadside advertisements took a strange turn.

When I am traveling in a car on long trips, I tend to think like this, “Where is the next bathroom,” or maybe, “I could use some food and something to drink,” but I never really picture specific things. For example, bacon; I have never really given it much thought because bacon is available everywhere around my house. Bacon is an awesome food. But driving down the road I see that bacon is available at a little convenience shop in the middle of nowhere and the store advertises with huge billboards. Bacon just strikes me as an odd thing to put on 20 ft by 40 ft sign just to get people to stop at your store, even if it is crazy good. But it is never alone on the signs… and this is the bizarre part.

The following items are advertised together along the highway on house sized boards; Peanuts, Bacon, Cigarettes, and Fireworks. By themselves, each one is not so bad, but together they seem truly odd. If these products were only advertised by one store, maybe we never would have noticed as we tried to keep to the speed limit to avoid a speeding ticket in the middle of nowhere-ville, Virginia. But this was not an isolated observance.

Does anyone travel down the road and think, “I am out of cigarettes. Oh look, there is a place right up the road that has Bacon, too! Man, I am hungry… and what goes good with bacon? Peanuts! Yes! Just 5 miles up the road. And it has fireworks? That is awesome. Junior still has eight fingers. He’ll love some M-80’s!”

Maybe I am just out of touch with the rest of the world.

Tie a Day (Year 2), Number 117

I decided to continue the Tie a Day blog this year because I still have some ties left unworn. Since I tend to anthropomorphize random inanimate objects, I became worried that last year’s tie left-overs might get their little tie feelings hurt. I can’t have angry ties on my conscience!

Today is the first day of school for the 2010- 2011 school year. I feel overwhelmed. Needless to say I did not think too hard about my tie choice. They were so many things running through my head this morning that it is surprising that I was able to match the colors in the tie with the shirt and pants I selected.

Today’s tie is a repeating blue paisley design on a textured maroon background. The texture is a repeating snowflake like design. Brought back from the late 80’s, this hand sewn Italian silk masterpiece was manufactured by Britches of Georgetowne. This resurrected tie complemented my attire and started the year off in a conservative, and nicely retro way.

This summer I took a technology break. I was certain that I would be overwhelmed as this school year began, so I gave myself a technology vacation. In many ways it was harder than I thought it would be because I love gadgets and how they work. Instead, I tried to focus on my family. I just hope I didn’t annoy them too much (My family not the gadgets. I am sure the gadgets didn't miss me at all.).

The technology vacation is officially over today as I attempt to normalize myself (if this is possible) and dive in head first into the instructional technology deep end. In anticipation of this day, I purchased a Droid X to replace my existing cell phone- a Blackberry Storm. The box should arrive any day now, and as I wait, I am spending my time envisioning how perfect my world will be once this magical piece of technology is in my hands. What joy it will fill me with as I connect to the world while on the go!

Of course, fantasy is always far better than reality. Should I spend my time telling myself how terrible my new phone would be? No, that is wrong. Then I would be killing hope. Instead, I will spend my remaining hours before the X arrives with visions of the perfect technology nirvana that this one item will bring to me.

I wonder if there is a “complete bliss” ap? I bet there is…