What's the hub-bub.... bub?

So a couple of weeks ago before we got nuts busy here at work I was surfing around the 'net and noticed another thing with a Myspace logo and address to I decided to investigate. Now I am clearly not in the intended demo of this website, but I decided to check it out. Hey it's free. So I signed on and created an account. I did a little work on designs and stuff. It was really confusing how to do things and set things up. I am trying to decide if it is because of my age or if it's just the fact that it's hard to figure out. I fiddled with the site for a couple of days and ended up really hosing it up so I decided to mess with it later. Last week my brother started his myspace account too and invited me to join his group of friends. So I blew the dust of my account and fixed the problems that I had created. I have been tinkering for a few days now and I am trying to understand how this stuff works, and I think I have my account correct. So I was waiting for myspace to amaze me and show me new and exciting things annnnnddd it hasn't. I can have an IM through them. Ok I already had one with AOL and Yahoo. I could start my own blog. Ok I kinda already have one of those too (even though it's nice to know I have options if it pisses me off again). I searched and found 9 people from high school with accounts and only 1 that I actually recognize. Of course I have received a bunch of invitations from other people to be their friends and I have no idea who these people are, but they are filling my inbox. Lucky for me it's my inbox on my bullshit throw away e-mail account. So far I am not too impressed or do not see what the big deal is, but hey I can say that I am on myspace!! Maybe that's the point. Oh well if you want to see it : http://www.myspace.com/davesbeachbar

I AM TIRED OF BEING PUKED ON !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday I am up with the boys and we are working on breakfast. You know the one where Andrew eats his bowl of cereal and drinks his juice and then "helps" me with my cereal. In the middle of "helping" me with my cereal Jen decides to give Andrew a vitamin supplement since he hasn't been eating his vegetables, so she give him this dropper full of vitamins. At first no reaction, then a look of utter disgust, then the cough starts and I think, "oh Sh*t, nooooooooooo" and then THAR SHE BLOWS!!!!!! Son of a B**ch. I don't want to move him since I think I would rather have one spot to clean up than a string of puke all the way to the bathroom. The funny part is that both Jen and I put out hands in front of his mouth thinking that we could catch everything that would exit (silly parents). So I am sitting there with a handful of puke, a baby crying because he just puked, and a huge (you know) in the middle of the floor. Jen runs to get some towels to clean up and I notice that she runs upstairs to grab towels. Huh? Just grab anything close. She didn't know that I was unable to move because of my handful and other stuff. So we finally get that cleaned up and Andrew calmed down. I think we are really have to look into a carpet cleaner if mom ever takes her carpet cleaner back. I don't blame Jen for giving him the vitamin since neither one of us would have known he would have that kind of reaction.

Fast forward to lunch. We go over to the in-laws for a lasagna for lunch. Andrew eats pretty well but not that well. Probably not a good idea for spicy food after puking, but we figured the last time was just a reaction to the vitamin. Of course for some reason my mother in law makes the lasagna with sausage rather than hamburger to add to the spicy. After eating the boys are running around the in-laws house and Andrew head for the kitchen and I hear the familiar sound of "that" cough. As soon as I grab him to run him to the bathroom "THAR SHE BLOWS (again)" Son of a B**ch (again). This time I didn't do anything stupid like try to catch it in my hand. I just held him while he hosed off the linoleum floor in the kitchen, once again keeping him in one place. It takes everyone else a minute to realize what is going on and by the time someone gets me something for Andrew to puke in he is done. Poor kid. The rest of the day was real bland food and we kept an eye on him, but he seemed to be alright. Now the F****ng cat is starting to ack almost every night. sigh.

Mom Story

Here is another addition of a mom story. You know the cute and funny things my mom does that someday I hope to be able to tell the kids about their fun grandma.

A while ago my mom invited us over for dinner for a visit since she hadn't seen the kids in a while. If she doesn't see the grand kids at least once a week she gets withdrawl. We sat down for a lasagna dinner with salad and bread and a tasty glass of wine. As she is serving the lasagna I can see that it's the good lasagna that is able to be cut and stand up in a block. I don't really like a lasagna that is real loose and hard to scoop out on a plate. Don't get me wrong I will still eat a soupy lasagna, I just like the kind that stands up on it's own. As Garfield said "I have never met a lasagna I didn't like". My first couple of bites into the lasagna I noticed that it was very tasty but a little dry. I looked at the cross-section of the piece that I had done with my fork and started to count the layers of noodles. Now a good lasagna will have 3 or 4 layers of noodles, but I kept counting 5...6...7...8. Eight layers of noodles? I commented to mom that that was alot of noodles, but then she told me that she just used the same package that she always used, but then all of a sudden a look came over her face. Or maybe she was supposed to use half the package. Or maybe it was the smaller package that she usually bought instead? She was a little embarrassed, but the lasagna was delicious and we just all got a big smile out of it. That's what being together is all about, being together and smiling. Love You Mom

Flood of '82

Some of the local news programs have been doing a look back at the flood of 1982 and I thought I would do the same. It's hard to believe that it was 25 years ago, but heck that's just more proof how old I am getting. Now it was not unnatural for the rivers to flood around here in the spring, but there was alot of snow melting and rain that year. My school was closed and high school students and other kids were encouraged to try and help since the flood was so catastrophic. I was a high school freshman and my brother was a junior. Our mother dropped us off at the coliseum where the sandbagging station was set up in the basement area. I remember seeing piles and piles of sand with people all over them filling up the sandbags and tying them with this cool little tool that wrapped the metal wire around the top of the bags. I remember seeing a kid asleap in a corner clearly exhausted and covered head to to in sand. Looking back on that I can't believe that my brother and I were just dropped off to do this, but hey they were different times. I can't remember how, but pretty soon Dan and I were on a bus heading for the river like being shipped out to army camp or summer school (same thing). I vaguely remember my mom telling us to stay at the coliseum, but leave it to Dan to want a little adventure. I remember forming a human chain of kids my age throwing a sandbag back and forth and up the line until it got to the top of the dike. It was a real gloomy day and the work was dirty and thankless but we did this for a little while (I can't remember how long) The great part about this is that is was mostly kids my age and it didn't matter what school they were from or if it was a girl or guy they all help the same. At one point I seem to remember Dan meeting up with someone else he knew and he ditched me. Nothing like being a 15 year old kid on his own like that. I think they ended up going to the mall or something like that. I got back on a bus and made it back to the coliseum where I met up with Dan again. I remember that while we were waiting for our mom to pick us up that a red pick-up truck pulled up with a "Coke" logo on the side. The guy inside asks if we had been sandbagging and we told him that we had just finished. He told us to help ourselves and pointed to the back of the pick-up. There was an entire pickup bed filled with ice and coke. That was a great thing for Coke to do for all of the volunteers. We grabbed a couple a piece and got hopped up on caffine waiting for mom.

Thinking back on this a couple of things come to mind. I doubt that the city would ever allow kids to sandbag like that since in these lawsuit crazy days I am sure they would rather the city be under 6 feet of water than open themselves up to possible liability lawsuits.

Would current day kids show up like that? I would like to think so.

Would the parents let their kids do that again? I doubt it since everyone seems overprotective of their children these days.

The funny ending to this story is that the city had to go on all of the TV and radio stations telling people not to steal the sandbags from the dikes to keep as souveniers because it could weaken the dikes and the flooding wasn't quite done yet. Who in their right mind would want a dirty sandbag as a souvenier? I am sure most of these ended up in the corner of a garage or outside next to the shed, but hey, if that sandbag could talk....

NEW RUSH SINGLE IS OUT !!!

THE NEW RUSH SINGLE IS OUT CALLED "FAR CRY" FROM THE ALBUM SNAKES AND ARROWS. YOU CAN HEAR THE SINGLE ON RUSH.COM. NEW ALBUM IS DUE IN STORES ON MAY 1ST.

WHOOOO HOOOOOOOO

Duh

So we get a delivery here at work. There is a whole pallet full of magazines that has shifted off its pallet in the back of the delivery truck. These are thick glossy covered magazines that were stacked pretty half-assed the first time and not bundled for crap. So of course they call on three of us to go out to the truck and hand load all of these magazines into a box on another pallet. Lucky for us it was around 60ishdegrees and not 10ish degrees so it wasn't too bad into the back of a truck. So the truck driver is helping us with this project and I notice that he is wearing gloves. And these are those real thick orange gloves with grips on them. I am not really sure why he is wearing them but i figure that he has a reason. All of a sudden he asks me, "Would this be easier without my gloves on?". Huh? Is he asking for my premission, like I am a glove expert? I just looked at him and said, "huh... probably", and he took them off. After we unloaded the truck I just looked at my co-worked and shook my head.

Work Weekend

Man I am busy at work so sorry I haven't checked-in in a while.

Saturday Jen had to work to I was watching the boys. Now usually I can't really work on too many projects when I watch the boys since they both try and "help" me, and I am not able to leave them downstairs while I go upstairs so I usually don't try, but Saturday I decided to try. After putting Andrew for his nap (thank God he still takes naps) I decided to try and get a few things done with William "helping" me. The first project that I wanted to tackle was tearing apart a toilet in the kids bathroom so we could remove wallpaper and paint behind it. We found out that they wallpapered before putting things in the bathroom so there was even wallpaper behind the mirror. Now I have never torn a toilet half apart so I was a little nervous but felt pretty confident. William was actually pretty helpful holding some of my tools and trying to stay out of the way. He was actually kinda quiet not to wake his brother, even though I had to remind him numerous times.. shhhhh. I think he really enjoyed helping me so he was just too excited. So Project #1 done, hopefully it will go back together as easy. Project #2 was to paint a little area in our bathroom of a sample of color that we were trying. My mom had just painted her bathroom that color and I liked it, but putting it on our walls.... ahhhhh.. not so much. I think it is the fact that her bathroom only has a fluorescent light and we have tons of natural light in our bathroom. So the search continues for colors for the bathroom, and the job of annoying Jenny since I have an opinion about the color. This drives her mom nuts since my father-in-law usually just goes along with whatever she wants, so she is not used to a man with on opinion. he he he..

MISSION COMPLETION !!!! (for you little Einstein fans out there)

Sunday was at the in-laws for lunch and lounging. I decided that I needed to start going to vollyball again on Sunday nights. Not only to get my butt some exercise, but to give me a break from a rut I have kinda been in lately. I didn't realize that it had probably been about a year and a half since I have played, where I used to go every week pretty regularly. The funny part is that almost all of the people who played were the same that have been playing for years now. It felt good to run around and chase the white ball. (I look forward to chasing the little white ball soon). I felt pretty good after playing for a couple of hours but my forarms were red and stinging after playing for a while. I got home and headed for bed not really sure how I would feel in the morning. Overall I didn't feel too bad. There were a few muscles that reminded me that they were still there and they were not too happy with me. My knees were pretty sore but worked their way out by afternoon. The hardest injury of the night was a jammed middle finger, that flippin hurt and it was hard to type the next day for sure. I was thinking at least I didn't hurt a priest this time. (Slight accident with the priest and a broken ankle last time, oopps)

Hopefully I can keep that up and keep a good exercise regimin until I can get outside and start working on stones again (sigh).

It was pan-dee-leer-ium....Part Deuce,Ducks,Deux, Douch,

(WARNING: PEOPLE WITH WEAK SOMACHES MAY WANT TO STOP READING HERE)

So of course after William gets rid of the hershey squirts, Andrew gets the stomach flu. We notice that he is filling up the diaper at pretty regular intervals. The unfortunate part of his poop is that it doesn't really stink (thank God) so he could be sitting in it for a while unless we check him all the time. Being a one year old he really doesn't care if he has a pants full as long as he gets to play with the car-du-jour. After a couple days of dealing with this we noticed that his butt was so irritated with the poop that it actually caused little blisters on his butt. After dinner, it was bath night, so I proceeded to take the boys upstairs. Now I knew that with an irritated butt that he probably wouldn't like being in warm water, but I figured if I could get him in and out pretty quick and wash his butt that he might feel a little better. Nope. He was pissed the second he hit the water (I might have made it a tad too warm). He screamed and cried the whole time he was in the tub, and I washed him and got him out of the water as quick as possible. I got him out and dried off and put cream on his butt and got him dressed. He walked out of the bathroom still crying a little bit and coughing. I went to grab him to dry his hair, and as soon as I put my hands under his arms, the contents of his stomach emptied onto the bedroom floor. I was thinking thank God I hadn't picked him up where he would have 'chucked' all over me. As soon as there was a slight pause in the 'chucking' I took him back into the bathroom so he could puke in the toilet and of course he was done by that point. I would have taken him in sooner, but I figured one good place in the bedroom is better than a long trail all over the place. We finally got him calmed down and Jen proceeded to work on the clean-up. (funny I don't remember him eating pears). We got things cleaned up and I brought up my mom's steam cleaner that we still have and cleaned and deodorized the carpet since the smell was starting to get to me. Of course this whole time of dealing with Andrew we are trying to keep William out of the line of fire and lucky for us he pretty much just stayed to the side.
That was last week, but now Andrew is doing much better. Along with his stomach virus we found out that he also had an ear infection and bronchitus (poor kid). But he is feeling much better now.