I don't know if you and I have the same sense of humor, but I can't tell you how much I enjoy these videos

There are things that make me laugh to the point of tears that my wife does not find the least bit funny. Like, not even a little bit.

I imagine this might be one of those things, but I derive immeasurable happiness from a series of Facebook clips called "The Same Video of the Same Guys Dancing to a Different Song Every Day." It is exactly what that title suggests.

What you see in every one of these videos is a few older gentlemen doing a kind of folk dance shuffle with a fiddle band in the background. But what you hear varies from video to video.

They take the footage of these same guys dancing and lay over top of it a different rock, rap, or pop song each time.

And it's always perfect.

Here's the very first one they did nearly 10 years ago:

A few things to note here:

• There is a community of Facebookers who comment on all of these videos. They have named each of the main characters, from "Skinny Santa" (the first guy you see dancing) to "Colonel Mustard" (guy in the mustard-colored shirt) to "Maroon Cowboy" (guy in the left background).
• The best moment of every one of these videos, almost without exception, is Colonel Mustard's enthusiastic entrance 30 seconds in. The creators of the videos always time it so that he comes onscreen just as the music crescendos or gets to a chorus. It's so perfect every time, and I laugh every time. Every. Time.
• Occasionally Lady Fiddle Player in the band will get credit because her fiddling matches so well with that day's song. She deserves more recognition.

Here's another one, this time set to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off":

My love for these videos knows no bounds. Incidentally, here's the original footage from which this is all taken, with the original music and background noise:

To browse through the full catalog of these masterpieces, you have to use the Facebook link above in the second paragraph, as that's where they're mainly posted.

Terry is probably rolling her eyes as she reads this. Maybe you are, too. I, meanwhile, am soaking in the happiness that only comes from watching one of these. Thank you, Skinny Santa and the crew!

Confessions of a Dungeons & Dragons nerd

One of the classic nerd activities of the 80s (and beyond, really) was the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

For a couple of years there—say 1982 and 1983—my friends and I played us a whole bunch of D&D.

For the uninitiated, role-playing games are what you might call "games of the mind." The action doesn't necessarily take place in any physical sense, unless you were one of those people who bought little figurines and played out each adventure on a tabletop map.

Which we were not.

In the case of D&D, players control imaginary characters through different adventures in an attempt to kill monsters, gather treasure, and generally just gain experience and become more powerful. These characters have different jobs or roles, ranging from fighters and thieves to magic users and clerics. They can also be of different races (humans, elves, halfings, etc.), each of which has different natural abilities.

The action is controlled by a person known as the dungeon master. That was me. The DM's job is to describe the settings and situations, and roll various multi-sided dice to determine the outcome of the players' choices.

It is absolutely as geeky as it sounds, and we loved it.

We spent a lot of money on D&D paraphernalia, from hardbound books describing the intricacies of the D&D gaming environment and different modules (i.e., adventures) to accessories like a DM screen and various gaming templates and tools.

I don't know whatever happened to any of that stuff, as it never turned up when we cleaned out my mom's house. But in retrospect, given how much fun we had and how much the game fired our imaginations, I'm going to say it was a worthwhile investment.

It was not exactly a chick magnet of an activity, mind you, but I have no regrets.

With some time suddenly on my hands, I'm going to do a little reading

As an officially unemployed person, my main job is of course to get a job. And I spend time each day trying to do just that. Something will eventually come along, so I'm not especially worried.

In the meantime, I'm able to engage in household chores, do a little yardwork, and even indulge in some leisure activities that never seem to fit into my daily schedule when I'm working.

An example of the latter is reading.

I have always called myself a reader, which would be fine if it weren't for the fact that I haven't done that much actual reading over the past, oh, say 30 years. I like to read, I want to read. I've just not elected to make the time for it since my college years.

Oh, I've read several books in the intervening decades, but it's not the regular sort of pastime I would like it to be.

In particular, I like to read my World War I books. I've checked several of those off my list over time, but there are still many more in the "planning to read" column than there are in the "been there, read that" column.

A good number of these books I own, but others I get from our excellent public library here in Wickliffe.

There is essentially one small section of Great War books at the Wickliffe Public Library, as shown here:

You will notice two red circles in that photo, both depicting larger books that have been on my list for quite some time.

The one on the left is called "Castles of Steel." It details the naval conflict between Britain and Germany before and during World War I. And when I say "details," I'm not kidding. It's 788 pages long, not counting the notes, bibliography and index.

"Castles of Steel" was published in 2003, and ever since then I've wanted to read it. Just never had time. Here's what it looks like up close and personal:

It's sizeable.

The book on the right is titled "Isonzo," and it chronicles the long series of wasteful battles between Italy and Austria-Hungary in the area of the River Isonzo during the war. It's a relatively pedestrian 350 pages, but given how much I don't know about the campaign, I've always wanted to dive into it.

Faced with the choice of how to spend some of the open time on my sparse appointment calendar, I went to the library yesterday and checked out "Castles of Steel." Go big or go home and all of that, you know. I'm starting it today and estimate it's going to take a good month to get through.

I do, after all, have to spend some time finding a job. I'm not a total slacker.

Many of us were home video game system pioneers

In the fall of 1977, Atari released its 2600 cartridge gaming system. When someone asks whether you had "an Atari" back then, this is almost always the unit they're referring to.

We did eventually get "an Atari" in our house, but that wouldn't be for another two years. Instead, one evening in '77 my dad came home with a Radio Shack Electronic TV Scoreboard (it looked just like what you see in the image above).

It was essentially a black-and-white console that featured a number of variations on Pong. Sure, the games you could play included "tennis," "hockey," and "squash," but really, they were all just slight reworkings of Pong.

Still, I was immediately hooked. And fascinated. Back then, the idea of doing anything on your TV besides watching Channels 3, 5, 8, and 43 was remarkable. You could control what was happening on the screen. I can't emphasize enough how novel this was.

I played that Radio Shack game a lot. Then, the following year, I received a color gaming system for Christmas. While it was made by Atari, it still wasn't the 2600. It was this:

You could play four different kinds of pinball as well as Breakout, Break Away, and Basketball. Those knobs on the side controlled the pinball flippers, while the dial moved your paddle in the other games.

I would come home from school for lunch almost every day and play that thing to death.

Then came The King, or at least The King of its time, the Atari 2600. That was my big present for Christmas 1979. It was a huge part of my life for the next four years until I got my Commodore 64. Like my friends, I amassed a pretty big collection of cartridges. We would go over each other's houses and play all the time.

All of these systems were extremely primitive by today's gaming standards, but as I said, for the time they were revolutionary. My dad being an early adopter of a lot of electronic gadgets, we actually had a whole bunch of things that could be characterized as "revolutionary" (or at least "extremely neat").

None of it was Call of Duty or Fortnite, but then again, at the time, it didn't need to be.

The Amazon van makes frequent stops at our house

I registered for my Amazon.com account in 1999, the same year I also logged on to eBay for the first time.

If back then you would have asked me which of the two would have the biggest long-term impact on American shopping habits, I would have said eBay, hands down.

Amazon was, after all, primarily a place where you could get books and/or CDs. Or at least that's what my first several purchases were limited to.

eBay, on the other hand, offered everything. I would have assumed that, rather than brick-and-mortar retail stores, product manufacturers would just start putting their wares on eBay and selling through that model.

And many do, of course. This isn't to denigrate eBay at all. I still make a purchase or two per year there, particularly if it's a hard-to-find item.

But it's no Amazon. Nothing is Amazon except Amazon itself.

In many ways, Amazon has become Walmart, but in a much better way than Walmart was ever Walmart.

We have a huge Amazon distribution center near our house. There are times when I will order something and it gets here in far less than 24 hours, almost certainly because it was in stock at that facility in Euclid.

This is stunning to me, a person who grew up in the 70s and 80s when, if you ordered something by mail and were told it would arrive in 4 to 6 weeks, by gosh, they meant 4 to 6 weeks.

That perspective alone makes me appreciate the speed of Amazon transactions all the more.

I do understand there are legitimate concerns with Amazon, not the least of which is the threat it poses to local mom-and-pop businesses. And I really do try to patronize those businesses when they have what I need.

But the reality is that, thanks to its convenience and wide selection, Amazon has a devoted customer base within my house.

Like many people, we serve as a regular stop on the Amazon person's delivery route. We have a stockpile of Amazon boxes and envelopes.

It won't be long before Amazon will start delivering stuff before we even realize we need it. Then we'll know we're really in trouble.

We're in that stage of life when the driveway is always filled with cars

Obviously not our house, but this is sometimes what it felt like when I was growing up.

For a long time—from 1992 when we were married and bought our first house until 2010 when Elissa got her license—I never thought much about the way in which cars should be arranged in our driveway.

Because, of course, we only had two cars at any given time during those years. And both our old house and our current house have two-car garages, which meant both cars were always safely tucked away and our driveway generally clear for whomever needed it.

In subsequent years, as other kids turned 16 and bought cars, things got a little trickier.

It was, however, never as challenging as it could have been. We are blessed with a two-car-wide driveway. I grew up in a one-lane driveway home, which meant that the first person out every morning (usually my dad) either needed to be the last one in the driveway lineup, or else my mom—and later me—would have to back cars into the street to allow him to exit.

Even nowadays, though, with two kids out of the house and Jack still not driving, things can get a little funky when it comes to the driveway traffic report.

This is usually the result of one (or more) of the kids' significant others or friends coming over, parking in the driveway, and potentially blocking the way for someone who wants to exit.

Let's say, for example, me.

But really, I can't complain. If nothing else, this part of our lives has given me great appreciation for the person who designed the layout of our property and included that 19-foot-wide driveway.

God bless you, sir or ma'am. You have given the gift that keeps on giving.

I'm trying to figure out a way to use the word "perfidious" in a blog post

I'm one of those people who love words in general, but there are certain words that are particularly high on my list.

One of those is "perfidious." It's used to describe someone who is disloyal or treacherous. If you do something that demonstrates perfidiousness, you can be said to have performed "perfidy."

These are wonderful, delicious words.

Yet this is not a blog that lends itself to perfidy of any kind, unless you count my children's habit of leaving crumbs on the kitchen counter and not closing cupboard doors the way they're supposed to, in which case, yes, they can accurately be described as perfidious.

Or the times when they're told to keep the door to the kitchen bathroom closed because Fred's special cat food for his urinary tract problems is in there and his brother George, among others, will tip over the container in an effort to eat this expensive food, and they fail to follow even that simple instruction.

That's pretty perfidious.

Speaking of the cats, any time they poop or pee in a spot other than their litter boxes and I have to clean it up, "perfidious" is probably the gentlest word I use to describe them.

Now that I think about it, there seems to be an abundance of perfidy happening all around me every day.

I will be sure to report it here on the blog regularly.

And you can bet that, when I do, I will most certainly use the P-word.