The Mark of a Gentleman

I'd be lying if I said I even have the slightest idea how to write a blog post anymore.
The past few months have been nothing short of a whirlwind of excitement, panic, stress, bewilderment, confusion...and all that merely in the 5 seconds following my wife handing me a plastic stick and whispering, "Guess what this means??"...

"Oh! Check 'em out, he's just like Baloo from The Jungle Book!"
For once, the hoard of selfie-taking, gorilla-impersonating, cage-rattling teenage girls was correct.  The bear that stood before us, separated by a 5-foot wide retaining moat and some uncomfortably thin-looking plexiglass, was indeed standing on his...

I'm quite sure I've got the buffest eyeballs on the planet...
...because an entire childhood of rolling them at the merest mention of my father's "back in the day" flashback narratives should have at least toned a few of those corneal triceps back there, right?  But alas, such is the punishment to all those who...

Happy 2014, everyone!
Yes, yes I know it's nearly the end of the first 1/12 of our Earth's annual outrageous 29.78 km/s jolt around Superman's best friend, but having been busier than a mosquito at a nudist colony these past few weeks (and with no sign of it slowing down...