RIP Bobby "Boris" Pickett

I had one of those moments last week when I heard that Bobby Pickett had passed away. This 45 (on the parrot label) was one of the first records that I owned as a kid. I played the heck out of the record on my old "Wildcat" Portable (yeah right) record player that was the size of a suitcase. I hear the "Monster Mash" almost every halloween, but forgot there was a man behind it. Hearing it was a time transport back to younger days and was just a fun song. Hearing of his passing takes a little bit of my childhood with it, like hearing about the passing of an old TV actor or Singer that you remember from when you were a kid. I enjoy trying to find out what some of those older actors/singers are up to these days and usually you find out they are still performing (or in rehab... for hip replacement and not drugs). It kind of gives you security in your own mortality knowing that the people that you grew up listening too and watching are still alive. But at least we will have those records and reruns to keep their memories alive.

His reach is getting better

Here is Andrew at Williams burthday party. As much as we tried to keep the food out of reach it doesn't do any good for a 18 month old. CRACKER CRACKER CRACKER CRACKER.

Thanks for the photo Jeff.

Celebrity Look Alike

My Stepmother sent me pictures of her granddaughter (my step-niece?) of her prom pictures. I looked at them and kept thinking that she looked like someone I saw in a movie. Then it hit me, it's the woman from Star Trek:Insurection and Spiderman 2, Donna Murphy. I pulled up some pictures for a side by side comparison and I would have to say they are pretty close. Either way she has really grown up in the past couple of years. (by the way Kirsten is the one in the light blue dress in case you get confused)

Yeah, that was a good idea

When we first bought our house, the first thing that I noticed was the big tree in the front yard. It was too big and too close to the house. During heavy wind it would scrape against the house. The plan was to cut this tree down as soon as we could, and of course it took a year. Saturday my father-in-law called up and asked if I wanted to cut the tree down since he is the one that owns a good chainsaw. We wanted to get the tree down before it got leaves on it to make it easier to deal with. I wasn't sure if we could since the forecast was for rain and snow, but I figured we would give it a shot. We have taken down a few trees together so the actual removal of the tree went pretty smooth. We dropped all of the tree almost exactly where we wanted the piece to fall. Tom cut the limbs of the tree and I piled them on the driveway.
After taking the tree down it was amazing how open the front of the house now looks, but then I noticed all of the stuff that the tree hid. The house needs to be power washed. The trim needs to be repainted. All of the landscaping needs to be done. Bushes need to be ripped out. New plants have to be bought. Mulch must be put down asafp. And a big honkin' stump (honkin' is a technical term) needs to be removed. So the focus is going to change on our house from pulling flagstone in the backyard to front yard rescue. Yeah I know I am just trying to keep up with the smiths next door, but I think it will look nice in the long run.
After revelling in the horror of all the work I had just uncovered by taking down the tree, we made two trips to my in-law house with the wood and brush from the tree. Just as we had unloaded the last of the wood it started to snow. Man we planned that just right.

The mind of a woman

Sunday after lunch with the in-laws we decided to leave the kids with grandma and grandpa and try and get a few projects around the house done. It is soooo much easier and quieter without the little rug rats around. We get home and decide that we will run over to Lowe's and get a few things for projects around the house, and the fact that we have coupons to use (whee). The original plan was for two things, but of course Lowe's is like a candy store to me and I have a list a mile long of things I need or might need someday. But I was trying to be good and not go too nuts. We kept it to $85 (after coupons and gift card) for some essential things for the house. Mostly to finish the kids bathroom remodel. One of the things for the bathroom remodel is replacing the towel ring (for hand towel) and toilet roll dispenser since the two were a hodge podge of pieces. We go down the bathroom accesories isle looking at new fixtures whereupon we find some real nice fixtures made of solid brass that cost an arm and leg. I asked Jen if we truly needed solid brass fixtures for a "ducky" themed bathroom. Probably not. She was fascinated by a toilet roll dispenser that pivoted up to change to roll (pivot... pivot ala "friends") . So we work our way down the isle to the cheaper bathroom fixtures and I see the exact style of fixtures that would match the towel rack already in the bathroom. I mean it is an exact-dead-on match and I point it out to Jen. She tells me that the hand towel ring and the toilet roll dispenser wouldn't match the towel rack!! What? It's an exact match!!! No, she explains it wouldn't match the "newness" of the old towel rack. I paused....... she stared to say something but I just held up my hand, I told her to give me a minute to bask in the obscurity of that comment. ahhhhhhhhhhh riiiiiggghhhhttt. I could be wrong or it might be a girl thing. And we're moving.. and we're moving. The funnier part of the story is that when we got home I tried to reinstall the towel rack (you know the non-newness one) and I found that the brackets were missing, so unless they sell the brackets separate I am going to have to buy a new towel rack anyway. Also the old hand towel ring is now missing.. anyone else smell a conspiracy??????
We also bought a new light for the kids bathroom which I found out was a little smaller than the first light so now I am going to have to tear the light and mirror out to fix the holes and dents left by the last light and then repaint (yellow "ducky" color). Sigh..After this bathroom is our bathroom and the den and then.... and then.... and then...... and then......

post script to this story. Jen read my blog and corrected me. It wasn't the "newness" of the fixture it was the "shinyness" of them. Yeah that makes it make more sence.

Thank God kids are durable

The other day Andew climbed onto the lazyboy and was playing around. He usually does pretty good at behaving himself on the chair, but he was being kind of a daredevil. He reached over the side of the chair to grab something on the floor and I yelled at him as soon as I saw this since I could just see him falling head first onto the floor. He grabbed whatever he was trying to get and sat down like a good little boy. Next thing I know I catch him out of the corner of my eye over the side of the chair, but this time I see him fall over the side and see his feet where his head should be, and right on his head. I race over to the chair thinking he broke his neck or about a million other things when you see that kind of thing happen. He cried for about a minute, but then calmed down and wanted to play again.. whew... Every day Andrew is more and more of a daredevil jumping on the couches and flirting on the edge of safety and danger. I am not sure if he really wants to explore the area or just loves the attention that he gets from jen and I when we yell and run over to grab him. Also at that age he doesn't get that if he gets hurt doing something that he will possibly get hurt again if he does the same thing. But lucky for me kids are pretty durable.
I told my mom this story and it reminded her of a story of my brother Dan. He was playing on the fireplace of our old house on Bradford Drive and somehow slid off the hearth and nailed his back on the bricks scraping it really bad. He gets up screaming and runs toward my mom and somehow passes out mid stride and goes head first into the stereo system. My mom was talking to her mom on the phone and said "I think Dan just killed himself". She runs to comfort him with screaming and blood everywhere, but hey he survived like most kids do. Just like the time I got hit in the face with a garden hoe, but that's another story....

Never play Tug-O-War with a Crocodile

I came across this picture and thought it was either photoshopped or a sick April Fools Joke played by a zoo, but nope a Taiwanese veterinarian lost a tug-o-war (and his arm) to a croc while treating it.

A zoo worker had his forearm reattached Thursday after his colleagues recovered the severed limb from the mouth of a 440-pound Nile crocodile, an official said. The crocodile severed Chang Po-yu's forearm on Wednesday at the Shaoshan Zoo in the southern city of Kaohsiung when the veterinarian tried to retrieve a tranquilizer dart from the reptile's hide, zoo officials said.
The Liberty Times newspaper said Chang failed to notice the crocodile was not fully anesthetized when he stuck his arm through an iron rail to medicate it.
As Chang was rushed to the hospital on Wednesday, a zoo worker shot two bullets at the crocodile's neck to retrieve the forearm, said Chen Po-tsun, a zoo official.
"The crocodile was unharmed as we didn't find any bullet holes on its hide," Chen said. "It probably was shocked and opened its mouth to let go of the limb."
The 17-year-old reptile is one of a pair of Nile crocodiles kept by the Kaohsiung zoo. The crocodile is listed as an endangered species, and is rapidly disappearing from its native African habitat.

That's the definition of having a bad day.

Current Events

Usually I don't take time to comment on current events, but I am so pissed that I feel I must. The story (if you want to call it that) is the current flack with Don Imus. First of all this is such a non-story it's not even funny. He calls the members of the Rutgers womens basketball team "nappy-headed hos". What is all the uproar about? He is a talk show host and he is known for stating his opinion. And that is exactly what that is.. his opinion, and it's not even that bad of a slur. It's not like he called them watermelon, fried chicken eating n*****s. He said it in a joking manor and was not malicious in the comment. He makes this one comment and gets the black extortion machine of al sharpton and jessie jackson pounding at his door demanding his job (and money). These two take any opportunity to get their faces in front of the press for their "cause"(not civil right, but money for them). Imus should have issued an apology one time and moved on. This could have been a freedom of speech issue and Imus rolls over like a puppy and takes it in the shorts. I'm not sure if I am more pissed at this being such the huge reaction to a non-story or the reaction of Imus to roll over like that. Any other "talk show" host would not cave like that. But I guess if you are more worried about your pension then sticking to your guns then "dance puppet, dance". I am sure he will be the tv/radio stations' bitch and do whatever they want to keep his job (pity). Either that or he will take this opportunity to retire or quit to count his money.
In other news they finally determined Anna Nicoles baby's daddy. THANK CHRIST. I am sure we will never hear another thing about this story now..... yeah right.

Happy Easter

I was bracing myself for another nutz busy Easter weekend like last year, but I was pleasantly surprised how it wasn't too bad. Saturday was a pretty lazy day. Jen had to work in the afternoon and I actually got a chance to grab a little nap when I put Andrew down for his nap. All because William let me take a nap. He had his moments when he felt he had to bang on a toy or two, but he wasn't constantly coming over to me and saying "wake up, wake up". Saturday night Jen got home and she stared putting together food for Sunday. Unlike last year where we were frosting cakes and cookies till the wee hours, this year she went for one dish that was relatively simple to put together. It's called dirt, and it's a real tasty pudding/whipped cream dish with Oreo's on top. Yummy. There was a small catastrophe when Jen boiled the eggs to color. Over half of them cracked open during the cool off stage. The cracks were so bad that they couldn't be colored, but they will still come in handy for deviled eggs. While Jen was working on that I was on a quest to finish painting the boys bathroom by the end of the weekend. It was half done, but we just had too much stuff going on to finish. For some reason William really fought us in going to sleep Saturday night so I wasn't able to put a brush in paint until 9:30 or so. I finally got what I wanted to accomplish for the night done around midnight. I figured that if all I had to do Sunday night was roll the walls then I could knock that out pretty quick. Sunday morning the alarm clock goes off at 5:15am and I wake up Jen so she can go to the Sunrise service with her parents at 6:30am. I don't feel brave enough to try and wake up the boys to go to this service just yet. I get up a short time later and get the boys ready for mass. We then all go to 8:30 mass with Grandma. After church we head over to mom's house for brunch. She makes a tasty breakfast casserole with other baked goods. Both the kids get a huge basket full of toys and stuff to play with. After noon we go over to Jen's Aunt Carol's house for lunch. The boys do pretty good behaving themselves and I only have to chase Andrew up and down the stairs about 20 times. We find out that Andrew LOVES Jelly Beans. One of the toys that the kids played with were these plastic guns that shot foam discs. They will be finding these discs all over that house for years and probably in the strangest places. After eating and visiting we head home with some tired kids (and Jen) around 6:00pm. We put the kids to bed (with William fighting us again) and I finally got the bathroom finished around 11:00pm. Overall not a bad weekend, I say that the nap on Saturday helped me for the weekend.

My Son the Movie Critic

Sunday night we got the opportunity to see "Meet the Robinsons" with the rest of Jenny's co-workers from the Disney store. Usually when something new from Disney comes out everyone from the store tries to see it together. It helped this time that one of the co-workers also works at "Rave" so he got us all in for free and he also saved us some of the best seats in the house. SCORE!! Now I saw the previews for this movie and wan't overly impressed or excited to see the movie, but I have been wrong before (I love "Return to Me" even though it's a chick flick). We were taking William with me since he did so well when we went and saw "Cars" in the theatre. I found out Friday that we were going to the 3-D showing and wasn't too sure if William would like that or get the concept, but hey we decided to give it a try. So we head out to the movie Sunday night a little later after a frantic search for our old 3-D glasses from "nightmare before christmas" but only can find one pair. Lucky for us they didn't charge us $2 for the glasses like Carmike did. So we get to the movie theater early and find our contact who gives us our passes to turn in for tickets. As we are stading in line everyone else shows up and starts handing us their passes to us to turn in for tickets so we ended up turning in 19 passes for tickets. I am not sure why we even had to do that since this whole outing with the employees was worked out beforehand but we took care of it (next time we don't get their early) So we go in and we are still a little early before the show. The line for popcorn is a little long and I didn't want to miss the begining of the movie. Another concern that I had for the movie is that William would have to go to the bathroom or that he would have an accident, but hey he has been 6 days without an accident in his underwear. whoo hoooo!!! Or at least a pee accident, he still can't grasp the poopy in the potty concept yet. So I take him into the bathroom and he pees. He finds the automatic toilets and faucets interesting. So we get to our reserved seats (cool) and we decide to sit in the middle since William has just pee peed in the potty and should be good for a while. One of Jenny's co-workers sits next to us with her family. Funny thing is that her co-worker and I went to high school together and were actually friends in marching band where we sat in the same seat on the buses during road trips, so I am relieved that I know the person sitting next to me. I decide that there is enough time to grab some snacks before the show begins. So Murphy's law of lines I pick the wrong one. They are all slow, but for some reason the person running my line is in charge of making the popcorn so she takes on order, fills it, and then messes around with the popcorn. At one point she disappears for a couple of minutes and then come out of the back room dragging a bag of unpopped popcorn, takes her time to fill the tub under the popcorn maker and mixes the next batch of popcorn. I am thinking, "well thank God they aren't busy or anything like that". So she finally gets back to servicing customers. I get up there and order popcorn, pop, and candy. ($10, dang). So I get back to my seat and of course the movie had started so I have to quickly walk in front of the family sitting next to us. Making this harder is that everyone is wearing 3-D glasses so they are staring intensely at the screen. We settle down and start watching the movie and I think the 3-D thing is kinda scaring William a little bit. He starts watching the movie over the top of his 3-D glasses and I am trying to keep him from doing that. About 10 minutes later he stands up and tells me, "pee pee in pottie". What? You just went!! But you can't argue with a kid especially since he is doing so good. So bother the family next to us walking in front of them. To the bathroom, do your thing, wash your hands and back to the movie bothering the family next to us. WE DID THIS 4 MORE TIMES DURING THE FREAKING MOVIE!! I am not sure if William wasn't into the movie, or was more entertained by the automatic faucets than the movie. I tried to move William and I to other seats with better access to an isle after the 3rd time, but he didn't want to do that since Jen was still in our original seats. Thank goodness that I really didn't care that much about this movie since I didn't get to see any of it, but I thought maybe it would be cute, or if nothing else I love the 3-D thing. So thankfully the movie ends and I apologize to the family next to us and they are very understanding since their 3 kids aren't too much older than William. i was thinking that if the movie wouldn't have been free I would have bought them passes to another show. So if you ask me how "Meet the Robinsons" was I will say "I don't know", if you ask William he might say it was good but it couldn't beat the automatic faucets.

Happy Birthday William !!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday we had William's 4th birthday party. I am getting better at understanding that for kid's birthday parties: people come over, eat, open presents and leave. Usually when we plan for people comming over we look at putting out a big spread of all different types of food and plan on people hanging out for a couple hours at least. When Jen asked me about the plans for William's birthday party I told her let's just keep it simple. Throw some hot dogs in the steamer, grab some chips and dip and call it a day and not go plan crazy. Jen agreed with me but then it got changed with carrots/dip and also a fruit tray with 4 different types of fruit. (funny I don't remember that in the original plan on keeping it simple). So Friday she gets rid of the kids to do some baking and cleaning of the house. She figured that she could get most of the stuff done at that time, but it didn't quite work out that way. Jen worked friday night and I worked on cleaning the house a little bit friday night so we could have a no-pressure kinda morning until the party started at noon. Saturday morning we all got up around 8:00ish so we are thinking 4 hours to knock out some of the little stuff and we are ready to go. Jen is working on getting the cake decorated, of course it's not just frost a cake, it's the "lightning McQueen" cake that requires all kids of different types of frosting tips and colors. At the begining of the frosting procedure (of course after the powdered sugar explosion in the kitchen) Jen quickly realized that she needed a color that she didn't have. She needed brown food coloring to make the red not so red (huh?) But the car is red. It must be a frosting thing. So I have everything else pretty much done for the party so I volunteer to buzz down to the store for the food coloring and a couple other little things that we forgot. I take Andrew with me since there is nothing like trying to decorate a cake and having an 18 month old crying to pick you up. So Andrew and I head down to the store that I figure will take about 15 minutes tops. Nope. I look for hot dog buns with the rest of the bread. Are they there? Nope, or not the ones that Jen told me were on sale, but I found them a few isles over. I look for crackers that Jen says were right by the front of the store, but of course they got moved. So I went to the cracker isle. Are they there? Nope. I just happened to stumble on them back by the pop and cheese. Yeah that makes sense. Next I look for the food coloring, so I find the display of cake decorating supplies. Is the food coloring there? Nope. I call jen and find out it's across the isle with the cake pans. (allrighty then) I am starting to get a little worried since this little jaunt is starting to take a little more time than I planned and I know Jen has alot of work to do on this cake. (There is a reason I don't do the grocery shopping) But hey, at least Andrew is behaving and having fun with me. So I quickly try to find a checkout isle that doesn't have an amish person buying half the store and decide to use the U-check out thing. I didn't want to use them originally since the buns were buy one get two free and I wasn't sure if it was automatic at the U-checkout thing. So I am checking myself out with my 6 items and I reach in my pocket for my wallet, and no wallet. Son of a B***h. I forgot that when I grabbed my clothes for the party that I changed jeans. So I leave my bag of stuff with the checkout dude and take Andrew and haul ass home to grab my wallet. So I go back and pay for my stuff and get home. Total time for the little jaunt was about an hour. Jen takes the food coloring and starts frosting like a fiend. I am also trying to get some last minute stuff done, trying to keep the kids happy, trying to keep Andrew from touching the steamer, and putting all of the food out. At noon Jen is still frosting the cake. As people start to arrive Jen finishes the cake and we all take a deep breath. After that we had a pretty good day. William had fun with the 3 other kids that showed up to the party. Most everyone else was friends and relatives. He got a ton of presents and really enjoyed the day. More "Cars" matchbox cars to add to the collection and some clothes that he quickly discarded to name a few things. Andrew also had alot of fun and also got some presents from Grandma. People came, ate, and then left after an hour or two. We got an extended visit with the Cramers when their car wouldn't start so I ran Keith home while they waited for the tow truck and Jen and Lori complained about us. After everyone left we got a little while to clean up a little bit and take it easy until Jen had to go to work. Another birthday down, thank God we kept it simple.