My son and I went to a warehouse store yesterday and picked out the following items: two "take 'n bake" pizzas, a case of canned pineapple and one large bag of prunes. In my world, that's a shopping cart that says par-tay!

We carefully picked out our checkout lane. There's an art to this. You can't just pick the shortest line; you also have to look at how many items are in other people's carts. I'll take a long line where people only have a couple items (like us) over a shorter line with 2 carts that are loaded up like the Beverly Hillbillies truck.

However, shortly after we got in line, a "gentleman" with a hugely overstuffed cart said "excuse me" and shoved his cart right in front of us! His wife was standing in line in front of us without a cart, saving a spot for them! I'd seen her, but thought she was with the group with a cart ahead of us!

Not wanting to get into a "shopping cart rumble" in front of my impressionable teenager, I made a confused face, then just moved over to a better line.

Now, I ask you; is this fair?  Can you hold a place in line for somebody with a shopping cart? It's my position that the cart itself has to be in line in order for you to officially be "in-line."  Am I wrong on this?  Was this guy right? And do you want some prunes, pizza and pineapple?

Today was supposed to be casual friday around here, so I put on the new jeans I bought a couple weeks ago. (Not shown here! But this is the idea!) Unfortunately, I'd just washed them for the first time, and now they are way too tight!  They also lost an inch or two in length, so not only am I stuffed into tight jeans, I also have exposed ankles.

Just off the phone with my wife Lisa, who said "Yeah, right. The jeans shrunk. That's my excuse too."

"They DID," I insisted,

"Yeah, that's what every woman says; 'the jeans shrunk!'"

But in my case, it's true. And all that Mountain Dew and Oreos the last few weeks had NOTHING to do with it!

I'm pleased to see a couple favorites of mine join the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame! Heart is a band that completely blew me away years ago at a concert, and I've been a fan ever since. They're one of those rare bands that sounds better live than they do on recordings. You just have to be there, but they really rock.

Donna Summer takes me back to my younger days when I'd listen to pop music on my little transistor AM radio, and l remember loving "Love To Love You Baby" and "Hot Stuff." I've always been more of a pop-music fan than a hard-rocker, and I'm glad the Hall is opening up the doors a little wider for pop acts!  Donna would be so proud!

I don't think anyone's noticed yet, but today I smell like my garage (shown here). On the way out the door, I grabbed an otherwise clean, blue hooded sheatshirt (It says "Orlando"on it!) that's been hanging in the garage a couple weeks.

It's a combination of garage dust, oil and tires, which I think is a delicious, macho, he-man smell that Ralph Lauren should contact me about bottling if he really wants to make a buck or two. In the meantime, I think I'll put some more clothes out there!

I'm getting increasingly annoyed with the people on TV ads (shown here) for casinos. Have you been to a casino? Where exactly are they keeping all the 23-year-old, beautiful, well-dressed fancy people, who smile and win and then jump up and down in slow motion? (They're so sophisticated too! They have wine!)

The actual people in every casino I've been in are regular people, like my parents. (shown here)

Another sad day today. Today I've been thinking about how I'm going to discuss this with my kids.  The other day we were thinking about taking our kids to a movie, and they both said they were scared of somebody shooting them. Seems like our kids are growing up in a world where they have to be scared all the time.

It's all changed so much since we were kids. When I was 9, my parents put me on a Greyhound bus alone for 6 hours to go visit my cousin. Later, as teenagers, we'd drive over to the airport and wander around just watching people and the planes take off. You could walk right up to the gate without a ticket or even a good reason to be there. Nothing like either of those could happen today.

I don't know if we were actually safer back then, but I know we weren't as scared as my kids are now. I hope it's not always this way.