Monday, July 23, 2007

Harry Potter Widower Diary

Another "what happened" weekend

Friday - I got to play in a golf outing at Gray Goose in Decatur with my boss from work, all expenses paid whooo hoooo!! It was a beautiful day outside. How did I play? uhhh yeah....It was a beautiful day outside. Man I played like total crap. Even though it's a Florida scramble and I don't play that often I count on contributing to the score more often, or at least give the team a few options. Two years ago when I played in this outing I was the designated driver since I could get off the tee box pretty good. I had more flubbed shots then I have ever had in my life. I had a number of really nice shots, but the flubs won. I think I was trying too hard, but when I had a few beers at the turn I started to calm down a little bit and not really care. We ended up tying for 3rd place in our flight with a 63 and I brought home a few giveaways for the kids to play with. Overall it was better than working for the day. Friday night I was thinking of running out to the store to get the new Harry Potter book for Jen at midnight, but I chose sleep instead. That and she wouldn't be able to start reading until she got home from work Sat. afternoon.

Saturday - The usual 8:00am wake up with the boys. We all just hung out at the house. For our Anniversary I bought Jen a Jack Skellington Picture that was pretty cool and hung it over the bed. It actually looks pretty good there and we might leave it. Jen got home at 1:00 and went into immediate "Harry Potter" mode where she was on the couch reading her book and oblivious to everyone and everything. I took William for his haircut at 3:00. Overall he did pretty good, but started crying and fidgeting halfway through. When we got home we packed up the boys and all their stuff and went to Grandma's house. This is our first experiment of letting the boys spend the night with grandma. Jen and I left the kids at grandma's (I don't think they even cared that we left). Then the big question was "what do we do without kids?". It was our Anniversary, but we hadn't really planned anything. Options were Cinema grille to see harry potter, just go and see harry potter, or do a nice dinner. We finally ended up going to Triangle Park for a nice dinner. After a nice dinner it was 8:00pm and again it was "what next?" There was no reason to go home since we didn't have to put kids to bed and I didn't feel like going home yet. I knew that Jen wanted to get back to her book so that was also a consideration. I decided that we should drop in on the Cramers for a surprise visit and wouldn't you know it they weren't home. Neither was Tracy. Crap. So I finally lamented and we went home. Man we are getting to be old fuddy duddies. Jen went into "Harry Potter" mode and I worked on cleaning up the basement from the flood a couple of days ago.

Sunday - Without children crawling all over me, I had the chance to sleep in, but not the ability. I can only lay down for so long before my back starts to hurt. I woke up at 8:00 but was able to sleep on and off for another hour. Jen got ready for work and I got ready to pick up the kids. My father-in-law calls me about working on the water heater. A little bonus from the basement flood is that I noticed that everything else had dried up besides the area around the water heater. Then I noticed water leaking from the heater. Son of a B****. So after picking the kids up at grandma's (it went relatively well) I took the kids over to the other Grandma's for the day so Tom and I could work on water heater replacement. First stop was Lowes to pick up the water heater and some supplies. Second stop was to Menards (for more supplies) after getting the heater home and seeing that we will have to adjust the gas/water pipes to get it to work since this new heater isn't exactly like the 16 year old one in the basement (go figure). After all this running around it's already 5:00pm and we figure that we better not start now since we still would have hours of work to do, so we decide to put everything back to the way it was (thank God we didn't tear out the old one like I wanted to do early on).....The third stop was to Menards again for more supplies since we broke a valve that allows water into the water heater. Hopefully the heater will hold out until next weekend. So back to the in-laws to pick up the car and head back home to try and air the house out to get the smell of stinky carpet out of the house. We put the kids to bed and Jen went back to "Harry" mode. She finished the book a little after midnight.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

The Red Barchetta


One of Rush's biggest hits was a song titled the "Red Barchetta"off the "Moving Pictures" album back in the 80's. Neil Peart wrote the song based on a story that he read in Road & Track that was called "A nice morning drive" written by Richard Foster back in 1972. I just read on Neil's website that he had attempted to contact Mr. Foster for years but was unable to do so. Neil gave Mr. Foster credit in the lyrics sheets of the album. It wasn't until 1996 that Mr. Foster googled himself and found the notation on the lyric sheet. The following stories are very interesting dealing with how they finally got together and went for a ride in the hills of West Virginia.

Neil's Story



Richard's Story of the Encounter



The Original Story from Road & Track
Small world huh....

Tonights Forcast: Partly darn with a chance of WTF!!

So last night Jen and I head for bed around 11:00. We notice the sky flashing with lightning and hear a few low rumbles of thunder. As we were watching "King of the Hill" and drifting off to sleep we notice the lightning get brighter and more often and the thunder getting louder. The boys have slept through thunderstorms before so I wasn't that concerned that it would bother them, but then a few lightning strikes came real close to the house and the thunder was pretty loud.....It first started with Andrew waking up crying, darn, but I looked in at William and he was sawing logs, cool. So we decided we might as well take Andrew into our bedroom since the chance of getting him back down to sleep would be pretty slim until the storm passed. Just our luck a few rumbles later William wakes up crying and screaming, sh**. So we are all sitting on our bed watching the local TV doing stories on the storm and keeping the boys entertained. We got hit pretty hard with rain and wind. The umbrella on the back deck blew out of the table so I ran downstairs and stuck my nose outside just far enough to collapse the umbrella so it wouldn't fly away and got soaked. After watching Letterman and the beginning of Ferguson at 1:00am I decide that the storm has pretty much passed and the thunder wasn't as loud. I put William to bed relatively easy and he falls asleep after 5 or 10 minutes. Andrew is another story. Jen has to deal with him and he is AWAKE and wired for some reason so he immediately goes into full bore crying and screaming (which William stays asleep for thank God). So Jen is in Andrews room trying to calm him down and I hear the sump pump in the basement running and running and running. I decide that I better go down and check it out since I don't really trust that sump pump. (the damn thing ran during the drought conditions of last week for some reason). As I hit the basement floor off the stairs I feel -squish- (Son of a B****) and then I get to the door of the furnace room and -squish- (F***). I open the door to see sump pit overflowing with about 1/4 inch of water in the furnace room. Thank God the sump was working, but there was too much water coming too fast for it to handle it. For what I can see most of the water is contained in this room with a few spots in the carpet getting wet and along the walls of the furnace room. I quickly start pulling things out of the room. Lucky for me there wasn't anything in the room in cardboard except the box for the battery backup that I have yet to install. (just became a priority). Good thing that I didn't get around to my project of putting a bunch of stuff under the stairs like I was planning. After getting all of the stuff to the dry area of the basement I start taking buckets of water from the sump pit upstairs and dumping it in the shower drain. I am not sure I was doing any good, but I didn't know what else to do. It seemed that after an hour the water level in the pit was getting lower. I notice more flashes of lightning and go upstairs to see if I can find a radar on the TV. Nope. I guess they check-out at midnight at the local stations. Lucky for me the second storm never hit. About 2:30 the sump was able to catch up to the water coming in and I felt safe enough to go upstairs to bed. I layed there until after 3:00 listening for it to go on and then turn off since I was still paranoid, but exhaustion got the better part of me and I fell asleep. Waking up at 7:00 was fun this morning, but I made it. Now just the sound of fans downstairs trying to dry up the carpet. Overall I would have been really FUBAR'd if the sump went totally out and nothing got damaged so I was petty fortunate.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Birthday weekend

Yeah Saturday was my birthday. 40 years old. Shit. Everyone around me is telling me its not a big deal, but the majority of them are under 40 so come and see me in a few years :)

Friday: It started last year where I would bring my hot dog steamer and a batch of my coney sauce and treat the staff here at work to coney dog Friday, so I did it again this year. It was a pretty good time and the coneys turned out real good too. Yum. Some of the other staff people brought some chips and pop so I didn't have to eat the entire cost of the lunch like last year. Friday night Jen and I were going to go out to the Cinema Grille and see Harry Potter since she had to work Saturday night (my birthday). About 1 in the afternoon I she called and informed me that she had to go into work since another manager couldn't make it in so that shot those plans in the butt. Welcome to the world of retail management. So I went home and the boys and I just hung out.

Saturday: After waking up and heading downstairs. Jen presented me with some birthday gifts. A new remote control for the TV, a bag of circus peanuts (I LOVE THEM), and a boccie ball set (will go well next to the cornhole game next time at Jeff's). She also got me a polo shirt that I think was supposed to be a father's day gift but left in the back of the car. After Jen left for work my mom called and she came over and we ended up ordering pizza and drinking a few beers and visiting.

Sunday: We woke up and headed for church. After we got home we weren't really sure what we were up to for the day. We had talked about doing the cinema grille thing that day or just grabbing a nice lunch. We decided to grab a nice lunch and do the Harry Potter thing next weekend. We called around for babysitters but weren't able to find one on such short notice. Yeah I know we should have planned the day out better and arranged stuff but I didn't feel like doing that. So we ended up taking the kids with us to Lunch at Outback Steakhouse. Last time we were there Andrew was in a bassinet so that makes it over a year ago. Overall the boys did pretty good. Andrew got bored and started fussing about halfway through lunch and William had to make 3 trips to the bathroom. After lunch we took the boys home and put Andrew down for a nap. I took off and bought a new golf glove and headed to the golf range to hit a bucket of balls. I get to play in a golf outing on Friday so I needed to hit a bucket to make sure I didn't embarrass myself like in my last round a month ago. I get to the driving range and throw my new glove into my bag. I have the whole range to myself. I first head to the grassy area on the left side of the range since I like to hit off the grass rather than the mats since it gives a better response to what I would do on the course. I see the grassy area on the left is pretty rough and real spotty so I head to the grassy area on the right side of the range. Now this is at least a 500 yard walk so it's a pretty good stretch of the legs. I find the grassy area on the right in the same sad shape so decide to hit from the mats and walk halfway back to the pro shop to a mat, whereupon I find that I have lost my new golf glove. Crap. Did I leave it in the car? So walk back to the car and no glove, back to the grassy area on the left and no glove and walk all the way back to the grassy area on the right and there it is. So I have already walked a couple miles in finding a place to hit and then in search of my glove. I know the girl working the pro shop was wondering what the hell I was doing. I hit the entire huge bucket and overall hit them pretty good and straight with a couple of total flubs. I can tell it had been a while since my left forearm was getting tight. I went home and hung out with the family for the rest of the night.


There is a mental state in the idea of being 40 years old, kinda like a halfway point. From now on birthdays with zeros at the end are getting bigger and bigger. It's like you try to throw on the brakes but to no avail. To me age on a calendar is just a way of counting days, I think of my age is just the way I feel, and so far I fell pretty good.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

It must be in the Water



For those of you who don't know yet, Jenny is pregnant again
(for the last time, even if I have to cut it off)

Damn my fertile loins (and my inability to read a calendar) !!!!

She is due January 17th about a month earlier than Jeff and Paula. Congratuations to them too !!

I will never get another good night's sleep again........

Monday, July 09, 2007

4th of July

Nothing much planned for the 4th of July... then BANG!! My dad calls Tuesday night saying that he is coming up for a visit. Cool. Originally he was planning on a trip to Arizona for the week but a little medical condition came up that kept him from flying, but was cleared for a car ride so he came up with my step mom and their dog. Another bonus was that my brother was in town so he could visit with both of us. It was alot of fun. We had a good visit and had a chance to pig out on some good snacks. One of the things that dad can't get down in Alabama is Win Schulers cheese and he is addicted to it, so we put a hurtin' on it while he was here. He was going to load up a cooler on the way home too. The boys both got new remote contol cars which were alot of fun and hopefully will be for a while until they destroy them. I don't know why but Andrew just loves stepping on top of his car. For the 4th of July we just stayed home and visited with everyone. I did buy some of the so called "legal" fireworks that just sparkled and stuff, but even those seemed to scare the boys a little bit so we sure won't be going down to the huge display for a while. Thursday we had a cookout at the house with everyone. Dad went to Sam's to pick up some supplies for the grilling and bought some of Sam's hamburger patties. Geez they were huge!! at least 3/4 of an inch to an inch thick of meat. I cooked them real slow to make sure they cooked all the way through. They were very tasty, but man that was alot of meat. Friday we did a visit to the zoo and had a good time, but it was so warm we basically just hit the high points of the zoo and still took us two hours. Friday night we grubbed from food from Riverbend Pizza and visited some more. They hit the road early Saturday morning, so Saturday and Sunday were just vegetating in front of the TV and trying to get a few more projects done. I am happy to report that the cabinets are done and just have to be assembled and installed and that will give me back a huge portion of my garage.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Yippie Ky Ay Mother F(bang)

***This was last weekend not this weekend***




Another whirlwind of a weekend started with a phone call from Keith. He was getting together some guys to see Live Free or Die Hard, the latest movie in the Die Hard series of movies. It was a midnight showing at Carmike. I was willing to go but I wasn't sure if my body was or not. I just worked a pretty hard day and midnight is past my bedtime, but I decided to give it a shot. Sure as Sh** I fell asleap on the chair, but luckily woke up in just enough time to leave the house to make the theater on time. I was actually the first one there then Scott and Keith pulled in not too soon afterward. By the time we were walking up to the box office I think I was finally awake again since I was definatly in a huge fog when I woke up. I enjoyed the movie. It was the typical, crash cars, blow sh** up and see how much of a beating Bruce Willis can take. It had quite of few times where I questioned the logic and physics of what they were doing, but quickly corrected myself thinking, "this isn't an intellectual movie... it's one where they blow sh** up!!". Overall a fun guy movie, but I think Jen would have enjoyed it too. After the show we hung out in the parking lot discussing the movie a little bit and life in general. It would have been nice to grab a beer and hang out for a while but it was already close to 3:00am and not too much is open at that time. I got home at 3:00am and it was at least half an hour to 45 minutes to wind down from blowing sh** up. Of course kids wake up proptly at 8:00am.... whew it going to be a long day.




Saturday we decided to take William to see the new Pixar movie Ratatootieee, Ratagooeee, Ratatatataaa, oh hell the cartoon with the mouse. Overall it was a pretty entertaining movie. It didn't blow me away like "Cars" did but I was entertained by the movie. William seemed to enjoy it too and took only one restroom break in the middle. I guess we can rate his movies by potty breaks.