I’ve been a horrible blogger for the past 2-3 weeks and I wish it was because nothing exciting has happened, but unfortunately that’s not the case.

Not only have we been extremely busy, more on that later, but I also failed at posting some items that I try tried to be consistent with in the past.

I missed releasing my March edition of “Things I Have Overheard” because something happened to the draft I update in my Yahoo mail. I even had Yahoo restore my email but the majority of March’s overheards are gone.

I also missed remembering my Pappaw, The Man Who Helped Mold My Life, who passed away six years ago on April 4.

I mentioned that we had been busy, so here’s a little recap on some of what we were up to…

I found an awesome soul food place in Memphis, Boss Man’s Pit Stop.

Grill pork chop, mac and cheese, fried okra and yams from Boss Man’s Pit Stop.

I Won an Award

A co-worker and I won a new award in my department.

I was posing for a photo shoot where I was pretending to pour a bottle of oil into a funnel that was placed in an engine. Maybe it was because it was the first time I had taken off my bracelets in 3-4 years that had me all flustered, but I totally forgot to take the funnel out of the engine before closing the hood.

Later that afternoon the guy smelled something burning as he was driving home, looked under the hood and found a funnel melting on the engine of his brand new truck. My co-worker and I felt horrible about it because he had been kind enough to let us use his truck for the shoot and we had pretty much ruined the engine in his truck.

The plastic eventually all melted off his engine and he was OK with the mishap, but he did bring in the melted funnel to show our boss.

He made a trophy and award out of it.

This is what was left of the funnel.

We Had Visitors

My sister and my nephew, Junior, came up to spend a night with us for a soccer tournament Junior was playing in.

Junior and I sat back in my Man Cave room where I was attempted to teach him to play Texas Hold ’em poker.

I say attempted because at one point he thought he won a hand where an “8” was showing.

Junior: (turning over his cards) 5 + 3 = 8 (pointing to face-up card).

Broke my heart to tell him he lost and to take his chips from him. But hey, better me take his chips than some hustler, right?

Jake and his girlfriend, Hannah, came down from Kentucky to spend a few days with us.

I stocked up on goodies for Jake’s arrival. I made him take all of the uneaten food when he left.

We Ate Out

We took them to Huey’s, a local Memphis favorite, for burgers one night.

Jake and I started laughing about what was drawn on the wall next to Tammy.

Tammy: (laughing) Oh yeah, it’s a torpedo.
Me: That’s no torpedo, it’s got balls.

The giant “torpedo” tapping Tammy in the forehead at Huey’s.

We Went Downtown

We took Jake and Hannah to some of our favorite spots, like East End Grill, where Tammy got a little very inebriated. We also took them to Beale Street which was overflowing with fans from Dayton, Ohio and Gainsville, Florida who were in town for the NCAA tournament.

Hannah, Jake and Tammy checking out the action on Beale Street.

Beale Street was filled with Dayton Flyer red.

Jake found a hat at A. Schwab.

Hannah and Jake checking out where Gibson guitars are made, just off Beale Street.

Despite Tammy’s protests we hit Earnestine & Hazel’s.

We hit a few places on Beale Street, but once I told Jake and Hannah about Earnestine & Hazel’s being haunted, they both wanted to go there. Tammy, who had already been there once, wasn’t as excited about going back, but we went anyway.

Earnestine & Hazel’s looks like it hasn’t been touched since the 70s and the upstairs housed a brothel into the early 90s. It has a jukebox that seems to have a mind of its own and it even played by itself a couple of times when we were there.

We met up with some friends and ordered E&H’s world famous Soul Burger while we soaked in all of the charm and history.

The world-famous Earnestine & Hazel’s Soul Burger.

While we were downtown we also smuggled out a locally brewed beer bottle for Jake to add to his ongoing collection and Tammy thought “they sell pot in there,” about one store on Beale (they sold paraphernalia, NOT actual drugs).

My Food Bucket List

I finally knocked off another item from my Food Bucket List, a pretzel from the Flying Saucer Emporium.

I Saw A Wiener

A pregnant co-worker found out the “flavor” of her baby and told me the ultrasound of her first child was “obvious, even to the untrained eye.”

Is THAT his wiener?!?!

So, she came back from her doctor visit and announced they were having another boy. Then she showed me a picture of the ultrasound and I was sure it was “obvious.”

Me: (standing in the middle of the department) Is THAT his WIENER?
Co-worker: Noooo…
Me: THAT looks like a wiener.
Co-worker: That’s his leg.
Me: Are you sure?
Co-worker: Yes. This is a leg, this is the other leg. THIS is his wiener.
Me: (disappointed) Huh… Well, you said it was obvious and THAT was pretty obvious. You don’t get any more of an “untrained eye” than me.

Other Stuff…

I also ran a March Madness pool…

We stayed out until 3 a.m. on a Friday night…

We went to another Dishcrawl, Best of the Bars, where we ate some awesome food from some downtown bars in Memphis. Dishcrawl Memphis

Dishcrawl Memphis: Fried ribs from Flynn’s on Beale Street.

We went to a Memphis Grizzlies game and sat behind a Justin Bieber wannabe.

The Justin Bieber wannabe in front of us at the Grizzlies game.

We went to our first Crawfish festival in Memphis, at Overton Square.

This is what two pounds of crawfish looks like.

I ate one crawfish and got a hamburger with garlic Parmesan fries instead.

My cheeseburger and garlic Parm fries from Bosco’s.

And then there was the one thing we did that took most of our time over the past month, we bought a house. There will be more on that later.