Ho Ho Ho Video!

Hi!  I'm Jake!

It's about 3:00 a.m.  This week, I am at the Loony Bin Comedy Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I can't sleep, so I decided to post a video of my brother Andy on Youtube.  This video, "Ho Ho Ho," shows Andy back in 1986, when he was almost 2.

Here are 3 Things I Am Thankful For because of the "Ho Ho Ho" video:

1. It's pretty silly/ cutesy.
This video depicts my brother back when he was still developing his brain. For some reason, when adults fail to complete simple tasks, other adults yell at them, call them stupid, say mean things.  There is no leniency. When a kid does it though, we just laugh and call it cute.  Kids bring out our kinder qualities like patience, understanding, innocence, and levity.  I am thankful for that!

These days, with all the finger pointing, hostility, escalation, we could use some benign, silly, cheesy, cutesy stuff too.  This video won't blow your mind, but it's nice; it's just nice.  I'm thankful for that!

2. It's cool to see how big things come from small beginnings.
My little brother Andy is really smart and he works hard.  He is an Eagle Scout. He is an accountant- a fun, creative accountant.  I am proud of him.  It's cool to see how much smarter he has become since he was almost 2!  I am especially thankful for that! Can you imagine if he was an adult with a 2-year-old's brain?  Actually, I have seen that before.  Moving on...

3. I like seeing the awful styles from the 1980s!
My mom's mom jeans, my sisters' mullets, my bowl cut, and Andy's bright red overalls are pretty sweet if you ask me!  Back in the day, nobody thought anything of our style!  I'm not saying we were fashionable trendsetters, but we didn't stand out either.  Everybody dressed weird in the 80s!  As a society, we all just decided to dress awfully.

Fortunately, everything people wear now is amazing. Nobody will ever look back and say we dressed stupidly in the 2010s!  I am so thankful for that!

This awesome vest will always remain in style.

Bye!  I'm Jake!

P.S. Here's a camo version of the same vest if you want to start dressing like me:

Carolina Thrift

Hi!  I'm Jake!

I'm in High Point, North Carolina, hanging out with my fianceé and her family.  Next month, we're getting married here. Yay! This week, Callie is also taking me to one of her best friends's wedding.  Yesterday, I found out that in addition to the dress up clothes I already brought out here, I need a second set of dress-up clothes for the rehearsal dinner. Fantastic.  They're doing a dress rehearsal dinner- only I am not allowed to wear the same dress clothes twice.  Lame.

This is how I like to dress,
wearing a vest, a John Deere hat,
and a puking snowman t-shirt.

Assuming I get the cheap kind of dress clothes Men's Wearhouse markets to my squalid demographic, a new set of clothes, complete with dress shirt, tie, suit, et cetera could cost me $300! That's about $350 more than I want to spend on dress clothes!

This is a problem for several reasons:

• I hate dressing up. 
• I hate being forced to dress up.
• I hate trying on clothes- especially clothes I don't want to wear and that I will never wear again! 
• I hate paying for clothes I don't want and that I will never wear again!
• After paying for my wedding ring, my suit, the honeymoon, countless meals, flights, hotel rooms, all the times I have traveled out here regardless of the work I can add on to the trip, car repairs, et cetera, ad nauseam, I am broke!  I am literally broke.  I can't afford dress clothes.
• I really hate dressing up.

Fortunately, we went to Carolina Thrift, High Point's main thrift store. Here are 3 Things I Am Thankful For because Carolina Thrift!

1. The total for our purchases was significantly less than $300.

Did I tell you how much I hate dressing up? Did I tell you how much I hate paying to dress up? Well good news: After a grueling hour picking out clothes, taking back the suit that we liked (but we found out it was a tux), wearing 10 different pairs of pants that didn't fit for 10 different reasons, we found something.  We found dress slacks, a nice shirt, and a blue, Republican blazer.

Based on the price tags, "we" only had to spend about $20.  At least it wasn't $300!  I'm thankful for that- kind of.

2. Okay, so I had a little fun- begrudgingly.

Turns out, trying on all the super-short pants and too tiny coats was fun.  It was fun finding out just how many articles of clothing had weird, inexplicable stains.  

My fianceé has often complained about my "bad taste in clothes."  However, back when I did college forensics (speech competitions, not dead people) I dressed up every weekend.  Despite my dislike for dressing nicely, I was pretty good at it. 

Yesterday, my fiancee picked out several shirts that I knew would not go with the solid blue blazer.  She picked out stripes, wrong colors, patterns, etc.  Some of these shirts were nice in their own right, but I knew they wouldn't go with the shirt and blazer we picked out.  I'm getting to the point.  The point is I knew a light blue dress shirt would look sharp with that combo.  She didn't believe me til I tried it on and put the combination together.  It was fun being right.

So, somehow, using my ego, she tricked me into having fun and taking pride in my appearance!  Tricky woman!  I am thankful for her.

3. I got a big surprise!

Usually, I get up to the register and I am surprised how much everything costs. However, as the cashier was ringing up my pants, jacket, and shirt, I noticed after every transaction, a number with a negative sign would appear too.

"$9.00.  -$4.50.  $5.00. -$2.50."

I asked what the hey was going on.  The cashier said "Everything with an orange tag is half-off today."  Incroyable!  I had no idea!  I was expecting to pay $20 and "we" only had to pay $10.59. Not bad!

See that, fancy North Carolinans?  I can come to your high societé functions dressed to the nines, but I'll also be dress to the $9.99s!  I look hoity-toity, but for a fraction of the price! I'm thankful for that!