This is supposed to explain where I've been

This may end up being the most important thing that I'll ever write in my life.

It all started with pee.

Urine has been a very important liquid in my life. I don't think there are has been a day in the last 27 years of my life that hasn't been – at least in some small way – effected by number one.

I've had to think long and hard about if winning a game was worth getting whizzed on.

As a janitor, I've cleaned pee off floors, walls and one time a ceiling.

I've used human lemonade as a weapon.

I've seen more bottles of pee along the side of the road then I have McDonalds bags and animal corpses.

I've taken a bottle of wee-wee that was stored, without permission, in my fridge and a milk jug of Kool-Ade to commit possibly the world's greatest act of psychological revenge ever.

And that's not even counting all the amazing adventures in my life that I've had and random, magic toilets I've found simply because they happened while I was on my way too drain the lizard.

Despite my otherwise robust and in depth pee-related resume, there are two things I've never done with the stuff. Knowingly drink it, and use it to tell the future.

The former is a trick known only to Kevin Costner in Waterworld and “Slow Bobby” Templeton in my fourth grade class, but the later is one that my wife recently preformed.

It was amazing though. Through some sort of mystical alchemy that could serve as a metaphor for our marriage, ancient Chinese wisdom and modern American technology combined with a normal bodily function to allow us to peer into the otherwise unknowable and let us know exactly what we would be doing in one year's time.

I was so nervous, I had to go. But it wasn't my time. This once, I had to stand back and let the love of my life take the spot light, and the seat of honor.

And unlike me, my wife wasn't peeing for her own selfish pleasure or for distance. My wife was peeing for a nobler cause. She was peeing for truth.

I gave her space to work. I've used more than enough men's rooms at stadiums to know that the only thing that can make it harder to produce than having someone standing watch over you is having someone standing watch over you offering tips. So I paced the hall.

I figured I'd need practice at it. Hall pacing is a time honor tradition for men in my position. Fortunately our hall is pretty short. I think its good to train a bit before moving to the big leagues.

Once the deed had been done, it was all over but the waiting. I was called in for this part. We stood there together, holding hands as our future unfolded before our eyes.

I was the most romantic thing we'd ever done in that room.

And there on the counter, too quick for anyone to really savor the moment, the second blue line appeared, bringing with it the amazing news.

She was pregnant.

We're going to have a baby.

Geek on.

Steve Shinney is super excited to welcome a new gnome into the world. He is losing sleep of many perfectly normal fatherly concerns such as “what if I'm a bad dad?” or “what if I drop the kid?” or perhaps the most frightening of all “what if my daughter wants to be a cheerleader.” Congratulations along with unoriginal parenting tips can be left before.

According to my spell check Krypton is a word but Kryptonite isn't

I have some advice for everyone out there.

Don't wear your Superman shirt to help people move.

If it's your lucky shirt, take the risk.

If it's the only thing clean, wear something stinky.

If you're going to a Superman shirt convention afterwards, change in the car.

If you're a girl, go topless.

Do whatever you have to do to avoid putting yourself through the pain and headache of two hours of stupid comments from stupid people.

I guarantee that if you don't listen to me you'll pay for it. After ten minutes of trying to get the couch through the bend in the hallway some one will be like “hey shouldn't we be done with all this by now. I mean we have Superman with us.”
And then someone else will come back with “It must be all that kryptonite I have in my wallet.”

And then the two of them will look smugly at each other and laugh and laugh.

Then you'll have to punch them both in the nutsack.

So far we haven't met any gazebos

I would apologize profusely for my recent period of inactivity, but at this point I'm like a five year old with his finger in the cake batter. I'm not sorry for what I did, I'm just sorry I got caught.

There are reasons for me not writing much lately. Several of which I can't mention just yet and some of which are just too embarrassing.

Now any of you out there who where with me during the great Karaoke incident of '04 know when I say I'm embarrassed to tell you something, it's gotta be pretty bad.

One reason for my absence that I'm not embarrassed to admit (but probably should be) is that recently I've been spending a lot of time pretending to be a lot shorter than I really am.

Finally, after a life time of wondering how I could make myself more of a social outcast, I've finally found it. I've started playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeons and Dragons has always been the split entry landing that has prevented me from falling all the way down the social steps to the basement where everyone paints miniatures and writes slash fiction about Doctor Who and Darkwing Duck.

Secretly however, Dungeons and Dragons has always been my unicorn, the one thing that I really wanted to do, but unfortunately was just too cool for.

Darn my ability to play sports and make out with pretty girls.

I've spent plenty time in fictional dungeons and slain many a dragon in my day, but still this mythical combination of the two had always eluded me and this made me sad.

But no more, all it took was seven friends and coworkers to admit to each other that we all had this same desire, burrowed away, deep in the crawl spaces of our souls.

It was a defining moment in my life, one where I never felt so united in purpose with so many people.

That's kind of sad actually.

Regardless, this fearless party of adventurers has set forth into a world of darkness, hoping to connect the scattered points of light. We fight evil, by rolling dice at it.

Occasionally we speak in funny voices, but that doesn't seem to have any effect on the evil so it's kind of tailed off.

Still, we don't talk too much about our exploits with the outside world. We've already found the prejudices that kept us from playing as kids is still alive and well today.

It blows my mind that these days, a group of men and women, ages 23 to 35 can spent hours in a windowless basement waggling small plastic guitars and pretend to be rock star and no one will say boo, but have a group of the same demographic in the same place and have them do math and pretending to be guys with swords and gnomes and all of a sudden people start getting uncomfortable.

The one defense that I have against the attacks such uncomfort spawns is the fact that I play a dwarf.

I don't know what it is, but when I tell people I play a son of Earth, people seem to understand a little bit. I guess no one can deny that short, bearded men such as my self only have so many options in life and pretending to be a shorter, more bearded man seems to be one of them.

I think that may have been why so many people gave me hammers for Christmas.

With adult life as busy, complicated and down right scary as it is these days, I happy to have an escape, one made better still by the presence of friends and five pound bags of Swedish fish.

I highly recommend it to anyone who, like me, wants to roll maximum damage, but was too scared to before.

In conclusion, elves are gay.

Geek on.

Steve Shinney is a level two dwarf ranger and has waited his whole life to say that. Intense mockery can be left below.

This is all true, that's what makes me awesome

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. I have myself another nemesis.

Yep, the guy at the who butted in front of me in line for Spiderman 2 and my grade school bus driver, Mrs. Henderson (also known as Mrs. Hendersucks) now have company as the most hated people in my life.

My dentist.

I know I tend to write a lot about the dentist. There's just something about having to sit still for a half hour that leads to a lot of introspection. It's either think, or listen to Afternoon Delight four times so this is what you get.

My last dentist appointment was during my lunch hour. Which is lame because my lunch periods are usually spent being happy that I'm not working, not being sad and wishing I was working.

I kept putting off actually leaving and trying to find things for me to do. It was the most productive I'd been in months.

Unfortunately when the time came that I could no longer put off leaving, disaster struck.

It was about half way to the dentist's office that I realized that in my hurry, I had forgotten to brush my teeth. I was going to let some one go digging around in my mouth without at least trying to get rid of the Oreos I had for lunch and covering the smell of my breakfast taco with something more minty.

Dental journals generally refer to this as a dick move.

Seriously it's kinda like having some one come over to fix your toilet but not flushing first.

I felt bad about it. I really did. I looked everywhere for a mint or some gum or anything to kind of cover up the smell with but all I could find was a dried old french fry and that didn't help much.

It tasted good though.

As I sat there, waiting for my great shame to be discovered, I start to rationalize. Maybe this wasn't that bad. Maybe the dentist would appreciate someone not being all anal about cleaning up before they came in.

Then again should could just find some new metal thing to jab me with.

As the preparation went on however, I was started to think that I might be able to get away with this. Neither the dentist nor the hygienist had said anything, and I wasn't getting any of the all to familiar “this guy is disgusting but I don't dare tell him” looks.

That's when she said something made it all too clear that not only did she notice, she intended to take revenge.

“I think we can do this without numbing you up.”

Come again. You think you can stick a working drill into my mouth and poking around with giving me some sort of drugs? You know for some one who went to school for more years than I've been alive, you're not very smart. There's nothing you could say to make me ever agree to this madness.

“Unless of course you're scared.”

OK, well there is that.

She had me where she wanted me there. While I am all to familiar with the fact that I have a regular threshold for pain, there is no way I will admit that in public.

Except on the Internet apparently.

You know what never mind that last bit. I was totally cool with her drilling one of my favorite teeth without pain killer. It just meant I wouldn't drool on myself when I went bear punching later that day.

Yeah I'm freaking tough.

Actually with the exception of the extremely surreal feel of the drill grinding against my teeth, I didn't feel any pain. I don't know if I just that manly or she was just that good or if the whole Novocaine thing is just one big scam that we've all agreed to because its really hard to argue with a medical professional, especially one holding a drill.

Anyway, my plan for revenge is simple. I'm going to brush my teeth so good, use high powered mouth wash and even floss to make sure she never gets another crack at me.

That'll show her.

Steve Shinney is not afraid of drills anymore. He is still afraid of bees. Very afraid of bees. Comments should be left below.

I still don't know what to do with the pizza guy

I had three goals when I became a homeowner:

I would install a secret passageway between the kitchen and the conservatory.

I would never become one of those old guys who spend half of their time complaining about how other people's dogs always poop in their yards.

I would create a series of progressively complex and potentially dangerous traps to thwart any attempted burglars in an improbable yet hilarious sequence of events that would make Rube Goldburg proud and that kid from Home Alone crap his pants out of jealousy.

So far I'm batting at about 500.

No go on number one. The fact that my house doesn't have a conservatory was kind of a kill joy on the whole project. At least I don't think we have one. I'll admit, I don't really know what a conservatory looks like out of the context of a murder investigation.

Other people's dogs do poop in my yard. Fortunately so far it's all been cover by snow so I really don't care. Plus I'm keep track of who's dogs does what so I can be sure to respond in kind once it gets warm enough to pull my pants down outside.

My video-game worthy security system is coming along, just not a quickly as I would like.

Part of it is my fault. I've taken on a couple extra projects like trying to lose weight and getting back into totem pole craving. Not to mention that I just learn that I have the travel channel. It's was hiding behind 40 channels of static, who knew.

But I refuse to take all the blame on this one. Just like the time in high school when I was found naked on a mini-golf course cowering behind the windmill, this isn't all my fault.

I've got to blame my wife a bit. She's normally all for home improvement projects when it involves replacing a shower head, cleaning rain gutters or painting elaborate Chinese characters on our walls, but try to cut some slits in the wall the crossbow bolts to shoot through and all of a sudden “You don't know what you're doing.”

Of course this recession hasn't helped matters at all. I've had to cut down in all sorts of areas. I can't afford to keep the oil at a boiling temperature so people who don't know the secret knock don't get scalded, they just get sticky.

Instead of tigers the pit under my the trap couch I have two angry raccoons a scary looking chicken.

Most disappointing is the fact I couldn't get a death ray to point at the back door and instead have to make do with a hair dryer.

But I'm soldiering on like a brave little toaster and I must admit that things are looking up. I've got too much left to do to get discouraged now. I've got springs to load, snares to set and poisonous snakes to position and poke until upset.

Home ownership, it's never done, but it's rewarding.

Now it you'll excuse me, it sounds like I may just have two raccoons now.

Steve Shinney is finally truly living the American Dream, he has a trap door that'll drop door to door sales men into fire. Comments, questions and request for special glasses that will let you see the trip wires for the next you come visit can be left below.

I'm just getting better

Is anyone else super stoked that it's February?

I know that it's not a cool month to like. The weather's still colder than a public school lunch system burrito and if you're not it a stable relationship the only cool holiday involves the entire country waiting around for an over-fed rat to tell what kind of pants to wear the next day.

This February however is off to a great start because I don't have to worry if my fly is up any more.

No, I haven't taken the plunge and switch over to sweats entirely (I have to wait 35 years or 200 pounds before I can do that). It's February 4th, which means by now, I can in good conscience forsake my New Year's resolution.

One of my New Year's resolutions this time around was to keep any and all cows from getting out. However it turns out that constantly being worried about the condition of my barn door is nothing but undue stress on bridge that probably should come down anyway before it hurts someone.

And really, let's be honest here, no one notices the 49 times that you remember to put your zipper in the full and upright locked position. It's the one time you don't that everyone decides your crotch is the thing they want to be looking at.

I'm not too worried about this though, for one, people have been surviving just fine with my fly down for years so it's not like it's going to hurt anyone.

Plus, there's plenty of other resolutions that I made at the start of this year (like my goal to eat big-boy cereal every morning) that I have kept just fine so far and it looks like I'll be able to make them a regular part of my life.

You see, I use the same strategy for self improvement as I do for putting band-aids on a flailing, oiley two-year old. Throw a bunch of them out there, and hope something sticks.

And sometimes things do. Despite what my mother may have said in her last Live Journal post, I really am a much better person than I was ten years ago. I think a lot of that can be traced back to the resolutions that I made and kept.

While I don't exercise everyday, I used to, and I still do more than the average American, and I'm healthier over all, which was the intent of the resolution so it counts.

I'm more accepting and tolerant of people whose lifestyle choices I don't agree with, like clowns or babies.

I'm no longer afraid of the vacuum.

I use mouth wash every single night.

I've done pretty good at writing this column or something else once a week.

I haven't de-pants a direct superior since '02.

I don't even remember the last time that I chased down a jr high kid, threw him in the mud, sat on his head and punched him until he peed.

Unfortunately not every resolution has gone as well as my pledge to eat more muffins.

The follow are some resolutions that I flopped on, like a fat kid trying to do a back flip.

No more making fun of fat kids.

I never really got the hang of flossing, although I think this is the white whale of resolutions. I'm pretty sure no one really uses floss, not even anal dentists (which is a really funny phrase).

I figure the only way that the floss manufactures stay is business is they also make that fake plastic grass you see around Easter, which is basically just really flat floss.

Learn the real name of the plastic table looking thing that comes in a box of pizza.

No more audibly farting at parties.

Turn into a mummy.

Come up with a new catch phrase.

Geek On.

Steve Shinney is working really hard on the resolution his wife gave him, but it just so hard to stay awake in church. Advice and encouragement can be left below.

The home depot guy what not sympathetic

Never in my life have I been more susceptible to ninja attacks than right now.

I recently moved into a house with a furnace, which is so constantly making noises that I no longer pay them any mind. If a ninja could learn to make furancy noises, (and I think we can all agree that they could) they would be able to walk right into my home and that would be the end of me.

I've never had this problem before. We got by on electric heat as a kid, and I don't remember it making too much noise. Although looking back every time it turned on my little brother would jump up to stand in front of it with his pants down.

It was kind of hard to hear anything over the screaming.