So for my non-nascar friends and readers…Tony Stewart’s nickname is Smoke (think “tire smoke” not cigarettes). He has his own line of “Smoke” products in addition to the usual sponsor related garb that all drivers have. Anyway many months ago I found his new line of Smoke Hats. And let me tell you…they are awesome. It took me awhile to decide which one I wanted to get but after much much deliberation (and some emailing back and forth with bfm) I decided on his “circus hat” which looks like this:

I wanted this sucker so bad I preordered it. Yes you read that correctly…I preordered a hat.

Anyway, my brother was over today and happened to be by the door when someone knocked and there was a UPS man standing there with a smallish box in hand. I was excited…it was my hat. My brother handed me the box and I started looking for my keys to cut open the box with. My brother, being the man that he is, whips out his pocket knife and carefully cuts through the tape. I opened the box a tad to peek in. I could tell what it was even though it was all covered in paper and stated “Oh cool- its my hat” and then promptly put it aside thinking it would be rude to open it while my brother was visiting. Well he was having none of that. He picked the box up and quickly started pulling the packing out of the box. He pulled off the last bit of covering and then pulled out the hat…(see above picture), gasped and said “That is a FREAKING! COOL! HAT!” ripped off the hat he was wearing and put it on his head. He laughed and said just kidding and took it back off and admired it a bit and waxed a tad about how cool the hat was. So…you see where I am going with this right? Yep. I gave it to him. He said he was kidding and that I should keep it…but I insisted.

By the way, speaking of my brother, I found out a couple of weeks ago that not only did I make him into a NASCAR fan…but he’s picked Tony as his favorite driver. So I told him “You can keep it. It’s your first Tony Stewart hat.” He wore it home (he lives just across the street) tags and all.