We’re well-equipped for this. For instance, on Saturday, Mrs. Crappy pulled out our boxed set of Looney Tunes classics and popped them on for a traditional Saturday-morning slobfest.

This prompted the resumption of a long-standing debate in our house: “Rabbit of Seville” or “What’s Opera, Doc”?

If you’re of a certain age, chances are pretty good you don’t need any further explanation. But if you do: “Rabbit” is the Bugs Bunny episode where he is chased into the Hollywood Bowl by Elmer Fudd and proceeds to take over the production of “Barber of Seville,” featuring a complete makeover of Fudd.

“Opera” featured Fudd as a viking, chasing, and eventually killing, Bugs to the tune of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” (you know, the “kill the wabbit, kill the WAAABIT” one…).

Both shorts are undeniably classics, but Mrs. Crappy and I have never agreed on which one is best; I’m a “Rabbit” guy and Mrs. Crappy will forever stand by “Opera.”

So, of course, I asked Twitter.

And Twitter mostly agreed with me. I saw 10 responses to my question (Twitter poll: Rabbit of Seville or What’s Opera, Doc?); seven people were with me and the other three sided with Mrs. Crappy.

But while we discussed the results, Mrs. Crappy and I came up with another one that, if I’m basing this on the short’s ability to make me giggle and nothing else, that for me might top the other two. Astoundingly, it wasn’t included in the DVD set we own, so we watched it online.

Yep. Giggling like I was an 8 year old again.

Here’s what I want you to do: Guess the short in the comments. Two hints: It’s a period piece and Bugs Bunny does not appear. I’ll have a $10 iTunes gift card ready for the first person to get it right (including the correct title!). And if you want, I’d also like to hear your favorite Warner Brothers cartoon as well.

Go!

When I got to the corner of Viruth Street and Benton Avenue this morning, she told me to start running. I would be running for the next twenty minutes, something I hadn’t done since I was in the Army more than 20 years ago.

My legs felt a little heavy at the outset, and they were burning as I crossed the Jack’s Run Bridge and started the slight-but-long incline into Bellevue.

And then it changed.

Somewhere along the way, my legs started to feel stronger. I wasn’t tired. I was still heading uphill, but I was starting to feel really good.

After the nice British lady told me to turn around, much of the trip back is downhill. It wasn’t hard. I turned down Marmaduke to run out the last bit of the workout, and I was sort of disappointed when the nice British lady told me to stop.

I was also thrilled. Twenty minutes. I did it. With energy to spare.

When I run my first 5K in December, I’ll likely have to run about twice the time I ran this morning. A month ago, I would be have said that sounded nearly impossible.

Now? I know I’m gonna do it. There’s no doubt in my mind.

I was expecting a series of five-minute runs, as had been the case the previous day. The first run felt long, but I didn’t look at the clock; that always feels like cheating to me. But when the nice British lady told me I was halfway done with the workout, I had to check.

It hadn’t been five minutes. It was eight.

I know, I know. Running for eight minutes isn’t a huge deal, but it was a surprise, especially in the sense that I finished it with no trouble. And the second eIght-minute run? I was actually disappointed when the nice British lady told me to stop.

I was really excited, and told my caching staff about what happened right away. And as I was taking, I looked ahead to the next workout.

I beat C25K on Sunday morning, but it may get its revenge on me on Tuesday. That’s when the nice British lady thinks I’m going to run for 20 minutes straight.

Gulp.

And what might be the best part (and certainly the reason for not posting Saturday)? Getting in bed early enough to sleep for nine hours. Thank you, time change, for that.

We’re a day away from another home football game, and I have my regular football partner with me tomorrow. That wasn’t the case a week ago, but it worked out pretty well anyway.

I’m always a little out of sorts when Mrs. Crappy can’t come to a game. She’s been my partner in Ohio Stadium for even longer than we’ve been married, and when she can’t come for some reason, I miss her terribly.

That was the case a week ago, when Mrs. Crappy was recovering from the nasty cold and didn’t come out to Columbus. It was the case for my dad too, as my Mom, who had been sick all week, came to the tailgate party but didn’t stick around for the game that night.

And that’s how I got to watch a game — that game — with my Dad.

Mrs. Crappy’s been my official football partner for more than a decade now, but my Dad and I go back even further. My first Ohio State game was with him — a Wisconsin game, no less, in 1974. Long before I was in high school, he made a point of taking me to what would be the last game between Upper Arlington — for whom I would play several years later — and Bishop Watterson, the local Catholic high school; that rivalry was ending as UA moved to a new conference, but I mostly remember the pre-game meal we shared at White Castle. There were Browns games in the old Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, including one bitterly cold game in which Cleveland secured a playoff berth.

And there were Ohio State games. Too many to count in the stadium — I was the default choice when mom decided it was too cold or rainy to go — and even more on TV in our house or elsewhere.

I am the way I am, in terms of football, because of him. He’s a little more understated these days, but the stuff I remember:

• TP-ing the house of a Michigan fan after the 1975 comeback win.
• Standing by the outerbelt waiving an enormous Ohio State flag — which I still have — at passing traffic after we watched the 1979 win against Michigan.
• Dangling my buddy Carolina Boy over the edge of our deck because he wore his Michigan gear to one of my folks’ Beat Michigan parties.

Has this rubbed off? As I gave what can only be described as a totally over-the-top pep talk at the end of our tailgate toast on Saturday, I heard someone say to my father: “Yeah, he’s your son.”

Father and son got to watch a remarkable game on Saturday night. Ohio State’s first late touchdown — the long Braxton Miller run — had both of us jumping up and down — something that’s not easy for Dad these days. We reacted differently to Miller’s long TD pass, though — as the stadium erupted around us, we could only look at each other in disbelief.

He’s got a few more games on me — to the tune of 20 seasons or so — but neither of us could come up with one that compared to last week’s win against Wisconsin. We saw an all-timer. And I got to share it with the guy who is the reason for me being the fan I am.

I get to watch this week’s game with Mrs. Crappy, and I’m happy she’s back. But I will always be grateful for — and I will never forget — last weekend.

Thanks, Dad.

Wooooo, another birthday, even in the woods. Thanks to Em, the baker (as well as the photographer), and Mrs. Crappy, her co-conspirator.

(Soggy wood jokes? Really? C’mon, guys…)

And that’s why my softball league is better than yours.

Thanks, Jeremy.

And that’s when the day got weird.

Mrs. Crappy found a place in Fairlawn called the Sweet Pea Cafe that had a fabulous-looking breakfast menu and sparkling reviews on Urbanspoon and Yelp. I had taken a cursory glance at the menu the week before and hadn’t noticed the corn-and-bacon pancakes — please allow me to repeat that: CORN-AND-BACON-PANCAKES — and I was stoked when we placed our order. The wait certainly would be worth the payoff, right?

Waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

Um.

Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question. We arrived in time to spend about 45 minutes on breakfast before we headed southwest towards Cincy, and while I didn’t expect breakfast to hit our table Pamela’s fast, I also didn’t think waiting for our meal would eat up that entire 45 minutes. When we finally gave in, we were met with a shrug from the owner, who made us wait to ask him about the wait for our order.

No food. Indifferent owner. Sweet Pea Cafe outside of Akron? Avoid.

And while we gamely made do with our day-old Giant Eagle subs for breakfast, we got lost in Akron. We found the nastiest rest rooms we’ve seen for years in a gas station-Subway combo south of Columbus. We had to switch hotel rooms in Mason — our Cincy-area stop — because the bathroom in our first room hadn’t been cleaned. We encountered horrid traffic outside of Riverbend. We even had to move once we got parked because the kids who were directing traffic weren’t bothering to direct traffic.

But once we finally kicked back in the lot with a beer or two, the crap of the day started to melt away. It wasn’t as hot in Cincinnati has it had been at Blossom. We met an excellent dude from Louisville who works as a brewer for New Albanian in southern Indiana, who was happy to give us a taste of his excellent APA before we went inside.

And then there was the show.

I loved the set list from the start, but I have to admit that I was still feeling a little clenched from everything else that happened that day — so the band sort of snuck up on me a bit. I hadn’t heard a Punch You In The Eye before; I hadn’t seen a Twist in a couple years. But when Mound started up, I finally started paying attention. A smooth Jibboo, a Fee that Mrs. Crappy almost missed and Backwards — still my favorite song from Joy and one that’s turning into a monster live — wrapped up the first set, with a cool breeze and a stunning sunset to top it off.

The second set started with an indication that the band wasn’t fucking around: Carini. Bam. My first Tweezer, a Crosseyed that rivaled the one we saw at Star Lake in 2003, a Boogie On that might not have been in the ideal place in the set — I was awfully happy to hear it nonetheless — and the capper: a raging Julius into a perfect YEM. Encore? Loving Cup and a thunderous Tweezer Reprise.

Maybe with the exception of Steam, this show had a different feel than the one the night before — a little darker, a little more intense. Blossom was an explosion of energy; Riverbend was about plumbing the depths. Different shows, yes, but the band was near its best both nights.

We didn’t make the same mistake at Riverbend that we had at Blossom — this time, we found food in the lot before we left. Mrs. Crappy found a guy selling the ubiquitous veggie burritos: still warm, beans, zucchini, carrots, peppers, rice and cheese. It couldn’t possibly be more cliché; it also couldn’t have been any better at that moment.

We had a 30-minute drive from Riverbend back to the hotel, and we kept passing exits along Cincinnati’s outerbelt that teased with gleaming White Castle signs. I drove past them all, full, tired and happy.

I say this thinking specifically of music and what my brain chooses to hear when I come across a snippet of a song. My ears lock in on the melody, often to the detriment of whatever might be happening with the song’s lyrics. Mrs. Crappy is the opposite. After two or three plays, she’ll know the lyrics all the way through — but she might not be able to hum a bar of the melody.

The best example I can offer is Wilco’s Via Chicago. I hear a soaring country song, interspersed with sharp dissonant interludes, something that never fails to thrill. Mrs. Crappy hears the lyrics — “I dreamed about killing you again last night/and it felt all right to me” — and, at least the first time she heard the song, was sort of horrified.

This quirk of my synapses nearly drove me nuts earlier this week. While watching Dancing With the Stars — strictly for work, I swear — I noticed a newish Target commercial. There’s a kid, trying to drag one of those giant plastic balls out of one of those giant bins; he knocks several balls out on the floor of the store … and then Target erupts into a swirl of summertime activity: grilling, setting up tents, sliding on Slip ‘n Slides and other general merriment involving products you can purchase at a Target store near you.

And of course, I am paying attention to the music. It’s a Sixties song, with a pretty distinctive fuzzy electric guitar riff. I know the song. But something in my brain locks up, and before I can hear even just a snippet of the words — which is more than enough to find a song title these days — the commercial is over.

Crap. I know the song. And for the life of me, I can’t recall what it is.

I took to Twitter; Gina saw the commercial too, but with her family and 18 dogs and cats running around, she didn’t hear the music. The spot is apparently new enough that it hasn’t yet shown up on any of the sites I usually hit to find out the name of that song in that damn commercial I just saw.

If my brain were wired differently — if I heard the words first — I would have been able to look up the song title before the commercial break was done. And while most of the time this arrangement between my brain and me works out pretty well, this time my brain definitely left me hanging.

As soon as Dancing was over — Did I mention that I was watching strictly for work? I did? Allow me to stress that once again — I marched upstairs and fired up iTunes, thinking that Apple’s Essentials mixes would lead me to the promised land.

After an hour of searching, I came up empty. And I would have searched longer, but Mrs. Crappy arrived home from the school board meeting she had to cover and she needed the iMac to write up her story and email it to her newsroom.

I went to bed, defeated.

I was saved the next morning, though. I woke to find a tweet from @LeeDrever, a dude from Vancouver, who had the song title and the artist all ready for me. I don’t follow Lee and he doesn’t follow me; I have no idea how he came across my tweets about the Target commercial, but if I ever meet him, my brain and I are going to buy him a beer.

The song?

How’s that for a bit of obscure Sixties bubblegum psychedelia?

My brain is filled with this kind of stuff; my fear is that it will only become harder and harder to retrieve as the years pass. But my brain and I will be OK. As long as it continues to help me out once in a while.