How embarrassing

Last year we had to live with my mom for about 5 months while we were looking for a new house about this same time last year. We had our mail forwarded to my mom's house for that short period, and now to our new house. For some reason she still gets junk mail for us at her house. I keep telling her that if it doesn't look important to just throw it away, but she insists on bringing it to our house to let us throw it away just in case we would actually like to look at.

Fast forward to last night. Usually I rarely get a chance to see the mail in our house since Jen takes care of it, but she does leave the catalogs out for me to look over. Usually this is my "Creative Irish Gifts" catalog and such. Last night I see a pile of catalogs and start looking through them. The last one that I come upon is a Playboy catalog. WOO HOOO!!. Just like the Victoria Secret's catalog, but a bit more edgy with videos on "self pleasure" and a few other swings and such that aren't for the kids. So of course I am looking through the catalog, for possible Christmas gifts let's say :). All of a sudden I realize that all of this mail came from my mom's house since it was all had my mom's address but our names. Great, now my mom thinks I am a sex freak that orders this stuff from Playboy. (OK once from the Adam and Eve catalog, but that was years ago.) Nothing like being 39 years old and still dreading the thought of your mom busting you with a dirty magazine, or thinking you are a freak. Damn how embarrassing. How do you let your mom know that you have no idea why you got the catalog without looking like you are trying to cover something? How in the world did I get on this mailing list? I think I will just ignore it and pretend like I didn't even see it.

Let's Talk Turkey

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving. Every year we do the same thing. Lunch at the in-laws at 1:00pm with Jen's side of the family. Now it's nice to know exactly what we are doing every year, but you count on it being a stress free fun family event, of course it wasn't this year. We show up to the in-laws a little after noon and enter the house to some new faces this year. It's not unusual to see some new people at the lunch since there are still a few single members of the family and EVERYONE is invited to lunch. There are three kids in the living room (around 7 or 8 years old) playing on the floor. Upon seeing that I have a Disney Scene-It game in hand comes up to me and grabs the game. Doesn't ask, Doesn't know me, Doesn't care. I will call this oldest brat... brat (and that is being kind compared to what I was thinking). He opens the game (it was still shrink wrapped) and proceeds to layout the game and get the DVD into the player, and then starts yelling that it isn't working. OK, One: It's not your house Two:It's not your TV Three: Ask someone to help him. Finally my father in-law helps him get the DVD working, but I could see that he was really thinking about not letting him play at all since he was being such a shit, but he let him play. This brat was horrible, yelling at his brother and sister because they didn't know the answers and calling them stupid. I was about to get vocal with this brat, but hey it's not my kid and I don't know his parents (or what trailer park they were from). I was trying to leave the room, find a beer, and a quiet corner near the food, but no, my kids want to be in the same room. Andrew actually started chewing their pokemon cards and I was thinking "you go kid". Besides the brat, my day was basically spent chasing kids around the house. I miss the days when Andew wasn't moble since it made watching him so much easier. Man, Andrew was all over the place. Usually when we are at the in-laws I get help from them watching the kids, but they had 30+ people to take care of so it was up to us.

I was milling around the food having a few snacks and I look down the hallway to see a bunch of kids. I see the brat and another kid (who I know) around the same age wrestling with each other. And then I see his mother heading down the hallway toward the kids and I soon realize that they are fighting!! The mother yells at them to stop and they don't. MY TURN, I HAVE HAD ENOUGH. I say one word "HEY!!" and they immediately stop, and the parents pull them aside to have talks with both of them. I finally see the brat's mother and she seems pretty normal, but I can tell that she has little to no control over this brat.

In comes my next issue. Tradition is that the kids get their food first and then everyone else. We get food for both my boys and finally head toward the line after 10 minutes or so (30+ people you know) By the time I get my food and sit down, the kids are done eating and want to go outside and play. Damn. So I am trying to shovel down my food with my son trying to hand me his shoes and coat. I sure am not going to let my kid outside alone and especially with the brat. So I go outside with William and he is playing with the other kids, basicly just chasing them around. I soon realize that I am the only adult outside with these 8 kids. I guess I am the only one that cares. Granted they were all around 8 years old so parental supervision isn't really necessary. So I am watching William and keeping an eye on the other kids so they don't get into trouble or destroy my in-laws place. The brat finds my in-laws burn pile and starts throwing sticks from the pile into the pond where I have to stop them. Then all of the kids are around the pond and going into the woods to find sticks to throw into the pond. WHAT PART OF DON'T THROW STICKS INTO THE POND DIDN'T THEY UNDERSTAND!! It sucks that I end up being a babysiter for all these kids and I am not even getting paid for it. I don't know how many times I yelled at the brat to stop doing stuff. I figured that I was just making sure William doesn't get to close to the pond and I guess I can fish a kid out of the pond if he falls in too. I would have taken William inside but he was having so much fun, and who knows what would have happened to the other kids if I left them alone with the Lord of the Flies. Finally after a half hour, the brat's mother comes out and yells at them because they were told to stay away from the pond. HUH? No one told me that. Opps. So I feel bad since I let them play around the pond, but hey that's what kids their age do. My saving grace is that the brat was leaving to go to his father's house, but that got delayed by "tattoo talk" with they guy she was with (classy). Finally things calmed down a little and it was back to chasing kids inside. Then we packed up and headed to my brother's house for dessert. That was surpisingly the normal part of the day. After a visit there back to the house to pass out and get ready for work the next day for both Jen and I at 6:00am. Damn. Of course Andew has an issue so we end up being up for a couple hours in the middle of the night. Man I need a nap.

ChristmasWeb

Yeah, I have been playing again. Here is the daveandjj.com Christmas page. Hopefully I can get together with Keith so we can make it the home page for the site. I was going to tweak the design some more but my mac died and took my files with it, so this will do for this year at least.

www.daveandjj.com/christmas

Now I am trying to decide what holiday to do next. After new years it will be valentines day. Maybe a sexy daveandjj.com website.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Beverage firm offers pea-flavored soda

39 minutes ago

SEATTLE (Reuters) - After introducing the world to new soda flavors like fish taco and salmon, Seattle specialty beverage maker Jones Soda Co. is offering a new flavor: Green pea.
Green pea, along with other unusual sodas such as turkey and gravy, dinner roll, sweet potato and antacid flavor, will be part of the company's $10 to $15 "holiday pack" of bottled drinks available nationwide.
Peter van Stolk, chief executive of Jones Soda, said on Monday the collection of strange-flavored sodas usually sells out quickly, even though he can not stomach the drinks. Past flavors included broccoli casserole, corn on the cob and Brussel sprout.
"Why people buy it is beyond me. I can't drink a bottle of this stuff," said van Stolk.
Jones Soda, which sells traditional sodas alongside more exotic flavors like fufu berry and green apple, first introduced the holiday soda pack in 2003, gaining notoriety for its turkey and gravy flavor soda.
"We have the market share leader in turkey-flavored beverages," said van Stolk. "We know we can't compete with Coke or Pepsi by playing their game, but we know they're not going to come out with a turkey flavor or antacid flavor."
Asked if there were any flavors that were off limits, van Stolk said he put his foot down when it came to curried chicken flavor.
"Fish taco was just nasty and we tried curried chicken. That was just wrong," he said.


Other Flavors this year are Turkey and Gravy soda, Sweet Potato Soda, Dinner Roll Soda, Pea Soda, Antacid Flavored Soda

If you must, the new holiday pack can be seen here:

http://www.jonessoda.com/files_new/turkey06.html

Planning that Assault

With Thanksgiving next week (huh? what? no way!) I started thinking about decorating the house this year for Christmas. I am mostly in charge of decorating the outside with Jen doing most of the stuff in the inside. Of course with a 1 year old there won't be much inside this year. So far the plan for the Christmas tree inside this year is to get a real one and put it in the corner where we can barricade it with land mines and barbed wire, or maybe just a gate. William's first Christmas he really didn't mess with the tree that much, but Andrew is a little more of a free spirit. Last year for the outside decorations I only put up a couple wreaths on the front porch since we had just moved in and I didn't have the time (so unlike me). This year I am chomping at the bit to put up lights,but like most people in a new neighborhood I am kinda waiting to see when the neighbors start working on them. I don't want to be the nut who puts them out too early, but I also don't want to do it if it is snowing or 30 degrees outside either. I am thinking this weekend or next weekend to start working on lights (nothing turned on until after thanksgiving or the first of Dec, I refuse to). With a new house I get to plan on where to put lights and how to best use my decorations. I am trying to plan on stringing together the lights to end up near an outlet where I can put a timer. At the other house I put all of the decorations on the lightswitch since I didn't have any outdoor outlets, but this house has an outlet right on the front porch. At the last house I did put lights on the 2nd story gutters, but I was basically taking my life in my hands doing that getting on a cold, wet roof and hanging over the edge, so I am thinking "no" to the second story this year. Maybe I will do like the last house is just gradually add a little more each year. Of course thinking about this, I remember that I have to pull everything out of the attic, . There are about 6-8 of those huge tupperware containers in an attic with no stairs and me only with a 6 foot ladder, so prepare yourself for the story about that to come.

Rumor Mill

Rumor has it that a certain family from the East might be heading to the Fort for Thanksgiving....


And that she is pregnant again.... (not really, just wanted add some excitement)

:)

And Now, The News

I figure rather than doing a bunch of posts that I would just make one with stuff going on.

In the Son of a B****h column

I am working on my Mac friday and it freezes up (like macs are apt to do sometimes) so I hit the reset button, whereupon it won't boot up with the master drive and I can't get it to recognize the drive at all. Of course that is the drive with all of my files on it. Our IT guy just looked at it and thinks the drive is toast, so yet another computer that fried on me in the past couple of weeks. My PC got infected with spyware and I ended up wiping out the harddrive and starting over from scratch, so I am still in the middle of reloading the programs that I want. But unlike the Mac, I was able to backup my files on the network before the hard drive wipe. I do have a backup disc that I did a month or so ago with my mac stuff, but still it's the idea of starting from scratch again with another computer at my station. My boss is really going to start to wonder what I am doing over here.

In the good times column

We went over the Jeff and Paulas for a housewarming party on Saturday and ended up having a good time. Jeff ended up pulling out a horseshoe type game with bean bags and wood stands with holes in them. It's called cornholing or the corn hole game since the bean bags are actually filled with corn. WARNING: DO NOT LOOK UP CORNHOLING ON THE INTERNET (LIKE JEFF'S MOM DID) YOU WILL GET SOME RESULTS BACK THAT YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE. We took the kids outside to get them some exercise, whereupon the adults stayed out for hours and the kids lasted 10 minutes. The game is extremely fun and simple (so to speak). Tons of Inudendo. What is it with the simple games being the most fun, like when we played 'spoons' in Chicago for Jeff's bachelor party. I felt so stupid suggesting the simple game, but we ended up having a blast with it (the beer helped too). I see this game being used quite a bit in our get togethers for years to come.

Movie Review

Jen and I pawned the kids off on grandma and grandpa and had a "Date afternoon". We went and saw Nightmare before Christmas in 3-D. Jen (and Carrie) is a huge Nightmare fan as proven by our Jack Skellington antenna topper. I kinda like the movie. I really enjoy the animation and imagery, but the story bugs me for some reason. This is my first 3-D movie, and I do have to say that for a movie that wasn't actually designed to be 3-D they did a very good job at creating the illusion with the rich backgrounds. I would recommend the movie if you are a nightmare fan or like seeing 3-D stuff. One small complaint is that we went to the matinee to save a few bucks and ended up being charged $2 apiece for the glasses, but hey, they were ours to keep.... uh, yeah these will come in handy. The funny part is that they look exactly like the ones they had for Chicken Little with the green frames like the lead character wore, so I am thinking they ordered to many for "Chicken Little" and thought what else can we release. But hey, if they come out with something else, I am ready.

Leaves

For the first time since moving into the new house I got to put my leaves out by the road and the city takes care of them. Now people in the neighborhood were doing the same, but they were putting their leaves actually on the road instead of on the lawn just off the road. I have heard and read that you are supposed to put the leaves on the lawn next to the road and not on the road. Along with making driving a little more difficult, they are more apt to blow to the neighbors property. So being the good city boy, I put my leaves on the lawn. Upon getting home I see that they have either driven a truck or tractor though my lawn to get the leaves. WTH? What happened to getting the chain gang out there to pull them with rakes out onto the street. Yeah I know officially the lawn area next to the road is actually city property (right of way), but they aren't the ones that have to deal with dead grass and ruts in the yard for the rest of the year. Luckily the ground was still pretty solid and didn't really do any damage, but I can still see clearly where they drove over MY lawn. (Hey if I maintain it, it's mine). Gee, guess where I am putting the leaves the next time....

Halloween Collage

Larger image can be seen Here

Here is the latest pictures from MR's party. I need more people's halloween pictures to fill out the picture and so they can say that they were there. E-mail them to me people. I need a pic of marcus for sure since he was actually there.

Just a little venting

I need to vent a little bit, not bitch, just vent.

Daylight savings - yeah I know it's been done to death how much people hate it, but I have to agree and add my two cents. I spent the past couple of weeks getting used to driving to work with the sunrise hitting me in the eyes as I get on the highway, and then to the point where it was actually dark when I left for work, and than all of a sudden POOF, it's light in the morning again and I have to go through the whole thing of driving into the sunrise again for the next couple of weeks. And then at night, I could always tell what time of year it was by seeing what time it started getting dark outside. It was getting darker sooner a couple weeks ago and then POOF, it's getting dark by 6:00pm. Yeah I know it's more of a mental thing, but still after being used to something for 39 years it's hard to get over it.

Halloween Candy - I can see why candy companies put out "fun size" candy bars a couple of years ago. They are just the right size for a bit or two, but why the hell did they come out with the "mini" size??? You have to eat at least two at a time to get a mouthful. And what is it with people giving ONE of these "mini" sizes out for halloween and thinking that it's more than enough? Yeah I know I am not the one getting the candy but still it's the principle. The kids get loaded up with enough candy anyway, but still. I always made sure when I bought halloween candy that I would go no smaller than "fun" size and I hope you do the same. We actually went to a house giving out "full" size candy bars. Of course it was peanut butter cups that William can't have so I took care of it (urp). Or if I want to be a little more health conscious I was planning on buying some little toys to hand out this year from the good old Oriental Trading Company.

Halloween Teens - I know that it's voluntary for people to decide when they are old enough to trick or treat, but after seeing a bunch of teenagers (mostly girls) going door to door, barely wearing a costume kind-of outfit, I think there should be a law.

Spyware - I had always heard of people getting viruses and spyware stuff but never thought I would get nailed. I was visiting a clip art site to get some art for my webpage (no it wasn't a porno site) and all of a sudden I get flamed with a ton of pop up ads and later find out that a program was loaded on my machine that seeks out pop ups, so I will be typing along and all of a sudden 5 or 6 will pop up at one time. It's annoying and pisses me off. I would love to get ahold of these S.O.B.'s and get their nuts in a vice. I have asked the braintrust of friends and they have come up with some great ideas for programs and setting, but nothing seems to be able to fully get rid of my problem, so it looks like a possible hard drive wipe and reinstall.

whew.... that's better... thanks for listening...

Halloween 2006

More pictures Here

Every year Halloween has been a little different. Last year we couldn't get William in his costume, and this year we can't get him out of it. Last year Andrew wasn't quite a month old so this year we got a costume on him, and of course he hated the top of the costume so he wouldn't put it on all the way. We ended up going over to a friends house again like last year. All of these people are part of a play group that Jen is involved with so there were a TON of kids there. I think the last count was around 15. Jen had to work so it was up to me to get the kids together and over to the party before they left to go trick or treating. We made it in plenty of time since we ended up eating first and then heading out. The boys were having fun playing with all the kids and Jen ended up arriving a short time later. When it came time to go trick or treating we put costumes on both the boys and William and I headed out. Last year William hated wearing his costume and we were late to the party so this was the first time he has actually been trick or treating, and so it is MY first time trick or treating in 25 years or so. I was very proud of William. He did very well staying with our group and going up to doors and kinda saying "trick or treat" and "Thank You". The fact that he was following two girls helped. (that's my boy). We were out about 30-45 minutes and all over the neighborhood. I was kinda surprised that there weren't more people handing out treats, but as I soon came to find out, it's a neighborhood with older people. It was getting pretty chilly by the time we decided to call it a night, and lucky for William, his Tigger costume covered his head and hands so he stayed warm the whole time. After getting back to the house we packed up and headed to Grandma and Grandpa Clymer to say trick or treat to them since they live in the middle of nowhere. After a visit we headed home and put two very tired and sleeping boys to bed. Where a short time after that Jen and I fell asleap too. I will say that I did get a chance to watch "Young Frankenstein" Sunday night while we were carving pumpkins. Fraur Blucher (neighhhhhh)