Besides the day to day tasks involved in faking a living maintaining a weblog, I have kinda accidentally put on a new hat. You see, I've never considered myself much of a writer, yet to my surprise have been contacted recently to do just that. It's a classic case of the king's new clothes if there ever was one, only I'm the one parading around the streets in the nude. But as they say, practice makes perfect, and I am committed to knuckling down in order to polish the turd that is my prose so brightly it will blind a man just to look at it.

At any rate, one of the proverbial juggled balls is the long awaited AHTBM store. I know I must sound like a broken record by now, but for a good portion of Monday afternoon, The Puppet Master and I kept our noses to the grindstone in order to smooth out all of the rough edges and come up with something good.

Or at the very least, mildly acceptable.

The Puppet Master put it best in an email sent shortly before the trigger was pulled;

"Can't really think of what else could go wrong until we push this live and see what goes wrong."

If you're so inclined, it can be found at the top of the site, or if you wish, here.

However, besides working on the store, and kicking paper footballs around with myself, my primary focus is to regularly curate the random submissions that I am blessed to have come across my desk.

Case in point- This graphic that was sent in from Matt;

Suck on that, Sully.

Or, if you will- this link sent from J.P.H.N.H.;

Sleep Talkin' Man;

"Don't... Don't put the noodles and the dumplings together in the boat. They'll fight! The noodles are bullies. Poor dumplings" indeed. It's like The Sleep Talkin' Man took the words right out of my mouth.

So is AHTBM a bicycle related weblog?

Only sometimes.

And really as far as that's concerned, I figure a good time to put this video up again would be right about now;

Truth be told, I dug around in my inboxes and cleaned them up a bit recently (Cosmo Magazine listed 'cleaning out your inbox' as one of the things that can make your life feel better) and discovered a veritable treasure trove of things I'd been sitting on, waiting for that perfect day. I can't think of a more perfecter day than this one.

Loren sent me the following link forever ago, but I was so taken with it I had to keep it around.

Honestly, who here among us couldn't love a site called knitting for psychos?

Landon from Tonic Fabrication sent in the following clip some time ago as well, with a note attached that said something to the effect of "I don't know what to make of this. Maybe you do."

As it turns out, I do not:

Now then... To prove how far back we're digging, Timothy sent this next item on September 30th, but if memory serves, I had an omelet party I had to attend that day, so I never got around to doing anything with it;

"Stevil,
Great post yesterday. Alley cat poster art is really summoning the welcome nadir of western culture.
Thought I'd share some photos related to Unicorns and our recent PhillyFixed wudder bottle acquisition.

-Tim"

You see why I've been keeping items such as this squirreled away for so long. I suppose ifin any of you all wanted to get your hands on one of them bottles, (especially the strategically placed ones which I'm sure cost extra) shoot old Tim an email and see what he can do for you.

Speaking of balls, The Cycle Jerk, (the Washington DC one, not the Denver one, who seems to have taken themselves so seriously, they've poofed from existence), got ahold of me with a sad story about a pair;

"Hey Stevil, just thought I would bring a tragedy to your attention."

Every time a redneck looses his truck nuts, God kills a kitten.

Funny story is one time a year and a half ago or so, The Skipper tried to sneak a pair onto my truck, but I caught him. I then returned the favor by stringing them up on the bottom of Mr. Blacksock's mini van;

I think he liked it.

Well, I have barely scratched the surface of the cache of goodness that exists in my inbox, but assuming your attention span is waining, I'll pull the rip chord and we can float gently back to reality.

There are two final items worthy of your attention. The first is that I want to extend a very sincere thanks to those of you who have seen it in your hearts to place orders of my goods, and in turn helped me get a handle on paying off my vet bill. I can't describe the stress I was feeling, and knowing that you all were there to lend a helping hand is an indescribably good feeling.
I hope you like your stuff and use it with the knowledge that a fuzzy buddy is alive and well because of your order.

Secondly, one of the enterprises that I previously mentioned doing work for is of course none other than Mission Workshop. Well, Billy and I have put our heads together and have conceived of a contest/collaboration that is so epic you are guaranteed to want to take part.

Keep your eyes peeled for details as they should be forthcoming shortly.

On that note, I'm up and I'm out.